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special use to us, they have rather retrogaded as to that, so far 

 as we are concerned. I grant you that we are, that we must be, 

 improved upon apes, but, nevertheless, I allow that we have 

 deteriorated in our limbs from their and our unknown ancestors, 

 whose history is lost in the mists of antiquity. All this rather 

 involves a contradiction, I own, but I cannot help it. I must 

 stand by my theory. You call it a " nine days' wonder," do 

 you ? So be it. All the better, me judice. 



I believe, indeed, that on my theory this "Great Unknown" 

 having limbs of such special use to him ought to have come off 

 conqueror in the " struggle for existence," but it seems to have 

 been all the other way, and the favoured animal was " exter- 

 minated " and the inferior perpetuated, so that instead of the 

 chef tfceuvre, we have nothing but bats, seals, donkeys, apes, 

 men, and then, facile princeps, Darwin, the ne plus ultra! 



I believe that the "indefinite repetition" of the same part or 

 organ is the common characteristic of all " low or little-modified 

 forms" and therefore we may readily conclude that the unknown 

 progenitor of the vertebrata "possessed many vertebrae." It 

 militates rather against this dictum that the said ancient 

 Incognito, had limbs of more use to him than those of his 

 descendants, the horse, seal, bat, and monkey, are to them, and 

 yet that he was a " low and little-modified form." But XTimporte; 

 if my theory cannot put up with such contradictions, what is it 

 good for ? Tell me that. 



I believe that Nature does nothing "by leaps," and that every 

 separate part of every animal is the result of Natural Selection 

 in the inconceivably vast allowance of tune I ask for my theory, 

 and although this also flatly contradicts my statement that the 

 ancestor of the vertebrata put in an appearance with many 

 vertebrae ready made, I cannot give up the back-bone of my 

 argument. 



I believe, I say, that the ancestor of the vertebrata had a 

 great many vertebrae to begin with ; he must have been the 

 first, and could therefore have had no vertebrated animal before 

 him ; or, in other words, if you like it better, was created, for I 

 do not hold with the doctrine of spontaneous generation. You 



