INFERENTIAL. 6*7 



conditions of the successor's life, and were 

 effected by Power that could command the 

 forces that evolved them. 



But why are incipient teeth formed in the 

 embryo of the calf and adapted to a different 

 purpose ? why, in the embryo of the whale, 

 do incipient teeth appear merely to dis- 

 appear? and why are fragments of thigh- 

 bones, apparently useless, left in its body ? 

 It is not to be conceived, that the Power 

 that transformed the organs of the ante- 

 cessor could not have so adjusted the new 

 Specific life - forces that no trace of teeth 

 should have appeared in the embryos, and 

 no fragments of hind-legs in the body of 

 the whale ? In that case the transformation 

 would have been more complete, humanly 

 speaking, a better finished job, and no 

 trace would have been found in the successor 

 of the modifications that show whence it 

 came. 



What, then, is the purpose or what the 

 object of these imperfections or flaws, if we 

 may so call them ? Do not these singular 

 phases, cognisable in the embryo to the 

 eye of science, and fragments of organs, 

 patent in the corpus to the unaided senses, 

 suggest the idea that their purpose is, like 

 footprints in sand or straws dropped in a 



