Lect. II.] OLD AND NEW STRUCTURES. 53 



lid, not present in the mammal, the so-called " turbinal."! Those 

 who are biologists, and care to go into this matter, will do well to 

 refer to "Wiedersheim's Lehrhuch der Vergleichenden Anatomie der 

 Wirhelthiere, Jena, 1883. In my forthcoming paper on the Edentata 

 there will be found a Bibliographical List of various Memoirs and 

 Papers on these organs. 



But the general reader wiU see that there is some big secret shut 

 up here, and that, as far as it has been fotmd to disclose itself, it 

 is all unimpeachable evidence in favour of the gradual development 

 of the higher, and even the highest, forms of animal life; those 

 curious parts of the nasal labyrinth that have had their rise and 

 their decline in the various Vertebrata, now coming into morpho- 

 logical and physiological importance, and then havmg a feeble and 

 a fading growth — these facts must now be added to the enigmas of 

 Biology. The structure of ou.r body is fuU of old things as well as 

 new ; the old things have had their day, but they are abrogated, and 

 to us practically they are "beggarly elements." But the new things 

 are not rea]j|r new ; they are merely expansions and improvements, so 

 to speak, of things as old as the hills. It is just possible that in the 

 Vertebrata of the Primary Eocks some rudiment or other existed of 

 every structure that has now completed its evolution in the human 

 body. But some one, — one whose mind carries no biological ballast, 

 is always starting up and making the demand of a sudden creation 

 of Man. Let him learn of the great Theologian, St Augvistine, 

 that the Creator of all things is patient, because eternal. This is 

 exactly what modern Biology teaches : whatever the force is 

 that worketh all in all, it is certain that it has had, j/racticalhj, 

 for all purposes of adaptive variation in organisms, unlimited time. 

 There has been plenty of time, in the gradual accretion of gentle 

 and almost insensible modification, for an almost unlimited amount 

 of variation ; but per saltum changes have often occurred ; that 

 is quite certain. These outbursts, so to speak, of morjahological 

 modification during the individual life of a creature — Butterfly 

 or Frog, for instance — are amongst the most amazing of aU pheno- 



1 Both those paired bones were named as above by Cuvier, and both 

 erroneously ; the Science of Embryology scarcely existed in his days, and many 

 of these things can only be interpreted by an embryologist. 



