16 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
performing any service—adapted for a purpose, but without 
in reality fulfilling that purpose. When we consider the 
attempts which the earlier naturalists have made in order 
to explain this mystery, we can scarcely help smiling at the 
strange ideas to which they were led. Being unable to find 
a true explanation, they came, for example, to the conclu- 
sion that the Creator had placed these organs there “for the 
sake of symmetry,” or they believed that it had appeared 
unwise and unsuitable to the Creator (seeing that. their 
nearest kin did possess such organs) that these organs 
should be completely wanting in creatures, where they 
are incapable of performing a function, and where it 
cannot be otherwise from the special mode of life. In 
compensation for the non-existing function, he had at least 
furnished them with the outward but empty form; nearly 
in the same manner as civil officers, in uniform, are furnished 
with an innocent sword, which is never drawn from the 
scabbard. I scarcely believe, however, that any of my 
readers will be content with such an explanation. 
Now, it is precisely this widely spread and mysterious 
phenomenon of rudimentary organs, in regard to which all 
other attempts at explanation fail, which is perfectly ex- 
plained, and indeed in the simplest and clearest way, by 
Darwin’s Theory of Inheritance and Adaptation. We can 
trace the important laws of inheritance and adaptation in 
the domestic animals which we breed, and the plants which 
we cultivate ; and a series of such laws of inheritance have 
already been established. Without going further into this 
at present, I will only remark that some of them perfectly 
explain, in a mechanical way, the coming into existence of 
rudimentary organs, so that we must look upon the appear- 
