OBJECTIONS TO EVOLUTION 165 



difficulty that lies in the way of evolving any complex 

 organ, .namely, of preserving it through its incipient 

 and useless stages. 



All the stages of the evolution of each kind of ver- 

 tebrate's wings are left for the imagination to supply. 

 There is no evidence from fossils of the existence of 

 any of the necessary steps of evolution in the case of 

 any wing. We have already spoken of the rudiment- 

 ary and other wings of birds that are not used for 

 flight, and of the fact that if they show anything it 

 is the process of decrease in size by disuse. If it 

 could be shown that the wing of an Apteryx, or even 

 of a Penguin, could be developed into an organ of 

 flight by use, then the argument based upon different 

 uses at different stages of evolution would be admis- 

 sible, but this has not been done. 



If the evolution of any kind of wing seems impos- 

 sible, much more so would be the independent evolu- 

 tion of three kinds of vertebrate wings. Indeed, ac- 

 cording to evolution, we would be obliged to assume 

 that the evolution of wings was no very difficult mat- 

 ter, for we find each of the winged vertebrates appear- 

 ing at a comparatively early period in the history of 

 the class to which it belongs, and, in the case of each, 

 the first known could fly. 



On the other hand, we would have expected that 

 organs so highly developed and differentiated as 

 wings would not have appeared till late in the history 

 of each class. The same is true with regard to the 

 wings of insects. 



With regard to the origin and preservation of 

 organs, Romanes says: " Even if it be granted that 

 there are structures which in their first beginnings 

 are not of any use at all for any purpose, it is still 

 possible that they may owe their origin to natural se- 

 lection — not indeed directly, but indirectly. This pos- 



