34. BOMBAY DUCKS 
pared with man. This they indeed are, but not so 
helpless as might at first be supposed, because they 
have other compensating organs. 
The elephant possesses a trunk which is nearly as 
useful as an arm. The sensitive upper lip of the horse, 
the tapir, and other creatures, is a rudimentary prehen- 
sile organ—an attempt at a hand. The beak of the 
parrot, the crow, and the woodpecker, and the claws of 
most birds perform many of the functions of the human 
hand. The fore-limbs of some mammals, as, for in- 
stance, the bear and the squirrel, are utilized in a similar 
way. 
In addition to these auxiliaries nearly every verte- 
brate animal boasts a tail. To the naturalist this is 
perhaps the most interesting of all organs. It is one of 
the few luxuries which parsimonious Dame Nature 
allows her children. Always a useful organ, the tail is 
in hardly a single instance absolutely essential to the 
existence of its possessor. I doubt if any animal exists 
that could not manage to jog along through life without 
its caudal appendage. 
The organ seems, so to speak, to have arisen by 
accident. Without desiring to dogmatise, I think it 
may be laid down that the early ancestors of the vast 
majority of existing back-boned animals were am- 
phioxus-like creatures devoid of limbs. When these 
appendages first budded forth it chanced that the hind 
pair did not arise at the extreme end of the animal ; 
they took origin some little way forward. And, as the 
vital organs did not extend to the whole length of the 
body, there remained a posterior portion of comparative 
