EVOLUTION. 23 



Not only is there a resemblance in the general 

 structure of animals, but the organs of the members 

 of each class show a striking similarity. The arm 

 of man, the wing of the bird, the forelimb of the 

 horse, the paddle of the whale, and the forelimb of 

 the frog show essentially the same structure and 

 have the same number of bones. 



Spencer says : " What now can be the meaning 

 of this community of structure among these hundreds 

 of thousands of species filling the air, burrowing in the 

 earth, swimming in the water, creeping about among 

 the sea-weed, and having such enormous differences 

 of size, outline, and substance, as that no community 

 would be suspected between them ? Why under the 

 down-covered body of the moth and under the hard 

 wing-cases of the beetle should there be discovered 

 the same number of divisions as in the calcareous 

 framework of the lobster? It cannot be by chance 

 that there exist just twenty segments in all these 

 hundreds of thousands of species. There is no reason 

 to think it was necessary in the sense that no other 

 number would have made a possible organism. And 

 to say that it is the result of design — to say that the 

 Creator followed this pattern throughout, merely for 

 the purpose of maintaining the pattern, is to assign 

 a motive which, if avowed by a human being, we 

 should call whimsical." 



He says that Evolution alone gives a rational in- 

 terpretation to these facts. If organic forms have 



