290 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
by one vertebra longer than in man. There still exist 
rudimentary muscles in the human tail which formerly 
moved it. 
Another case of human rudimentary organs, only belong- 
ing to the male, and which obtains in like manner in all male 
mammals, is furnished by the mammary glands on the 
breast, which, as a rule, are active only in the female sex. 
However, cases of different mammals are known, especially 
of men, sheep, and goats, in which the mammary glands 
were fully developed in the male sex, and yielded milk as 
food for their offspring. I have already mentioned before 
(p. 12) that the rudimentary auricular muscles in man can 
still be employed to move their ears, by some persons who 
have perseveringly practised them. In fact, rudimentary 
organs are frequently very differently developed in different 
individuals of the same species; in some they are tolerably 
large, in others very small. This circumstance is very im- 
portant for their explanation, as is also the other circum- 
stance that generally in embryos, or in a very early period 
of life, they are much larger and stronger in proportion to 
the rest of the body than they are in fully developed and 
fully grown organisms. This can, in particular, be easily 
pointed out in the rudimentary sexual organs of plants 
(stamens and pistil), which I have already mentioned. They 
are proportionately much larger in the young flower-bud 
than in the mature flower. 
I have remarked (p. 15) that rudimentary or suppressed 
organs were the strongest supports of the monistic or 
mechanical conception of the universe. If its opponents, the 
dualists and televologists, understood the immense signifi- 
cance of rudimentary organs, it wculd put them into a state 
