66 A NEW THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 



But the incipient teeth, similarly developed 

 in the embryo of the whale, would interfere 

 with the growth of whalebone, necessary to 

 collect the food of the successor, and they 

 are absorbed, and leave no trace in the 

 mature animal that they ever existed. 

 Then the bones and integuments of the 

 fore-legs of the antecessor are transformed 

 into fins, and a powerful tail is substituted 

 for hind-limbs. Thus the organisation of the 

 antecessor, that lived on land, is modified to 

 adapt the successor for a life in water. Ob- 

 serve, however, that fragments of thigh-bones, 

 six to nine inches long, in an animal whose 

 length may be sixty to eighty feet, are 

 found imbedded in its flesh disconnected 

 from the skeleton. These fragments of the 

 antecessor's organs were developed in the 

 embryo of the successor, before the differen- 

 tiation between the old type and the new 

 was wholly completed, and they remain, 

 apparently useless to the animal, possibly 

 for the purpose we are presently to suggest. 



Common-sense, basing her conclusions on 

 observation and experience, has no hesitation 

 in accepting these marvellous modifications 

 as evidence we had almost said conclusive 

 evidence that adaptations so cunning were 

 devised by Intelligence that foresaw the new 



