BUDIMENTABY ORGANS 189 



Attempting to find a male marsupial which nour- 

 ished the young with milk does not, however, greatly 

 relieve the subject of difficulty. How did the nipples 

 originate in male marsupials? They did not exist in 

 the Monotremes, the progenitors of the marsupials, 

 and consequently they must have been evolved in the 

 latter. They must have been evolved either inde- 

 pendently in the two sexes, or else in one and then 

 transmitted to the other. They must, in either case, 

 have been the merest rudiments, so that to account 

 for rudimentary nipples in male mammals now living, 

 nothing is gained by assuming that they were func- 

 tional in the early marsupials. If they were rudi- 

 ments at first in males they might, and I have no 

 doubt did, always remain such. 



Mr. Darwin's "suspicion" that both sexes of the 

 ancient marsupials might have yielded milk is also 

 negatived by the fact that the male Monotremes do 

 not at present thus nourish the young. 



His assumption in this matter is, I think, made in 

 the interests of the theory which he and other evolu* 

 tionists have advanced in their effort to account for 

 the origin of rudimentary organs. 



The endeavor to explain the rudimentary sexual 

 organs which it is claimed exist in vertebrates by re- 

 ferring them to some extremely ancient hermaphro- 

 dite progenitor is not supported by facts. If it was 

 ever true, then hermaphrodite forms ought still to be 

 found among some of the lowest vertebrates. Mr. 

 Darwin suggests this objection himself, and yet he 

 claims that the ancient stock of vertebrates was her- 

 maphrodite. 



That functional organs, such as the womb, could 

 have existed in the male vertebrates and have become 

 rudiments before these animals were differentiated 

 into classes, and have survived as rudiments through 



