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may ask me whether it may not have been in like manner that 

 the ancestor of the birds had feathers, he of the fishes had scales, 

 and so on. Yes, you may ask me if you like. How should I 

 know? 



I believe that the fore and hind legs of the vertebrata and 

 articulate classes are homologous, but the middle legs of insects 

 are not so. They, therefore, have no business where they are, 

 but are mere interlopers. As such, I have nothing to do with 

 them. I go upon guess. You tell me that that was not the 

 way Newton went to work, nor Aristotle, Butler, Paley, or 

 Herschel. I dare say not ; they were all very well in their way, 

 but I have improved on each and every one of them. 



I believe that the bear, " with his mouth open to catch flies," 

 as I have said, was the immediate ancestor of the whale. Yet 

 the bear has hind feet very useful to him, but the whale, though 

 it has fins or paddles in the place of hands, is absolutely without 

 even the analogues of the hinder limbs. How is this ? you ask 

 me. I don't know. Palmam qui meruitferat. 



I believe, of course, that the bat was not so created at first, 

 but was " worked out " of some other form hi the usual way. It 

 had at first a body without wings, small or large, just as bats 

 are now, or wings without a body, I am not quite sure which. 

 " Things that are equal to the same, are equal to one another," 

 you know. Does not Euclid say so ? You know he does, as 

 well as I do. 



I believe that they were formed to live on insects, but how 

 they managed to catch them it is not for me say. I suppose 

 they did the best they could. They only can live from foot to 

 mouth now, so that they must have been much worse off then. 

 But by degrees their fore hands began to lengthen, and then their 

 wings. As they lost their fore feet, and before they got their 

 wings, they must have been in rather a bad way, for it is clear 

 they could neither run nor fly. Myriads of them must have 

 succumbed to the process in the untold ages I have to beg, but 

 those that somehow or other lived on in the quarter or half- state, 

 and all the intermediate stages, "exterminated" all competitors. 

 This is my natural history of the bat, first edition. 



