34 ANATOMICAL EVIDENCES. [Parr I. 
in an imperfect state, instead of attaining that fully developed condition which marks the 
mature age of the generality of animals. The Greenland Whale, for instance, may be called 
a permanent suckling ; having no occasion for tecth, the teeth never penetrate the gums, though 
in youth they are distinctly traceable in the dental groove of the jaws. The Proteus, again, 
is a permanent tadpole ; destined to inhabit the waters which fill subterranean caverns, the gills 
which in other Batrachian Reptiles are cast off as the animal approaches maturity, are here 
retained through life, while the eyes are mere subcutaneous specks, incapable of contributing to 
the sense of vision. And lastly (not to multiply examples), the Dodo is (or rather was) a 
permanent nestling, clothed with down instead of feathers, and with the wings and tail so short 
and feeble, as to be utterly unsubservient to flight." 
It may appear at first sight difficult to account for the presence of organs which are prac- 
tically useless. Why, it may be asked, does the Whale possess the germs of teeth which are 
never used for mastication? Why has the Proteus eyes when he is especially created to dwell 
in darkness? and why was the Dodo endowed with wings at all, when those wings were 
useless for locomotion. ? This question is too wide and too deep to plunge into at present ; I 
will merely observe, that these apparently anomalous facts are really the indications of laws 
which the Creator has been pleased to follow in the construction of organized beings ; they are 
inscriptions in an unknown hieroglyphic, which we are quite sure mean something, but of 
which we have scarcely begun to master the alphabet. There appear, however, reasonable 
grounds for believing that the Creator has assigned to each class of animals a definite type or 
structure from which He has never departed, even in the most exceptional or eccentric modifi- 
cations of form. Thus, if we suppose, for instance, that the abstract idea of a Mammal implied 
the presence of teeth, the idea of a Vertebrate the presence of eyes, and the idea of a Bird the 
presence of wings, we may then comprehend why in the Whale, the Proteus, and the Dodo, 
these organs are merely suppressed, and not wholly annihilated. 
And let us beware of attributmg anything like ¢mperfection to these anomalous or- 
ganisms, however deficient they may be in those complicated structures which we so much 
admire in other creatures. Each animal and plant has received its peculiar organization for 
the purpose, not of exciting the admiration of other beings, but of sustaining its own existence. 
Its perfection, therefore, consists, not in the number or complication of its organs, but in the 
adaptation of its whole structure to the external circumstances in which it is destined to live. 
And in this point of view we shall find that every department of the organic creation is 
equally perfect ; the humblest animalcule, or the simplest conferva, bemg as completely or- 
ganized with reference to its appropriate habitat, and its destined functions, as Man himself, 
who claims to be lord of all. Such a view of the creation is surely more philosophical than 
' Our efforts to vealize this extinct creature will be assisted by the skill of Mr. Jenssen, a sculptor at Copen- 
hagen, who has made, or is making, plaster casts of the Dodo, the size of life, and coloured from Savery’s pictures 
(Bull. Phys. Ac. Petersb. vol.v. p 318). We may hope that some examples of this work of art will soon reach 
Britain. 
