THE EVIDENCE IN BRIEF 23 



typical vertebrate, for instance, always has five 

 fineers and five toes on each limb. This is true of 

 the frog and of man. Nor must you hastily deny 

 that it is true of the bird. True, the adult bird 

 has only three and a half fingers or digits in each 

 wing ; but if you examine the developing chick you 

 find that it has five, though of these one and a half 

 are useless and destined to disappear. But these 

 significant resemblances go much deeper. Man has 

 a muscle in his thigh which brings the legs into the 

 tailor's attitude and is so called the sartorius. But 

 if you descend in the scale, even to the amphibia, 

 and dissect a frog's thigh, you will find a sartorius 

 muscle there too. It is much older than tailoring. 

 Or take three mammals so diverse as man, the 

 giraffe, and the whale. Their necks do not resemble 

 one another; yet each contains neither more nor 

 less than seven vertebrse. Why ? And, since we 

 speak of the whale, how comes it that he, too, has 

 five fingers on each hand, though fingers, hand and 

 all, are buried deep in blubber and serve him no pur- 

 pose whatever ? There is only one theory by which 

 these facts and thousands of thousands more can be 

 explained. 



To the foregoing there will be added in the chapter 

 on the evolution of man, certain evidences derived 

 from the comparative study of disease, and the com- 

 parative study of the blood of different animals — 

 evidence which is almost uncanny in its conclusive- 

 ness. But enough has been written in this chapter, 

 it may be hoped, to indicate that the theory of 

 organic evolution is attested by witnesses any one of 

 whom would be credible, and whose united testimony 



