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portions. There are none but have some description of 
organs by which they are made familiar to us, and it only 
suffices to examine closely the effects produced by these 
reunions, and those which must form their partial or total 
absence, to deduce very probable conclusions as to the nature 
and use of each organ and of each form of organ. Thus, 
in rising from the simplest to the most complicated animal 
form, we are made acquainted with the functions of organs.” 
Contrast we the definite and precise statements now quoted 
with the conjectural terms of those immediately preceding. 
In the one, all is assumption ; in the other, the conditions indi- 
cated are cognisable by means of our senses, and in accordance 
with our experience.* 
A particular organ or tissue is found, in one set of instances, 
in what is described as a fully developed and complete condi- 
tion, the nature of the functions performed by it obvious to 
the observer ; in other instances the same organ or tissue is 
represented by an “ analogue ” so rudimentary and seemingly 
undeveloped, so obviously unsuited to perform similar func- 
tions, that “ scientists 33 are led — needlessly, perhaps — to ask 
themselves the question : Why is it there at all ? To this 
they find a reply satisfactory to their own minds in their 
favourite doctrine that the circumstance indicates the process 
of “ evolution ” to be in progress. But whether towards, or 
retrogressively from, or beyond the creature in which the 
organ or tissue is in its highest or in its lowest condition of 
development, is left unstated. Reasoning such as this appears 
to have been well answered a little more than three years ago 
by a writer in a very influential review. f The argument of 
the writer in question had as its basis the several develop- 
ments,” as they might be termed, of contrivances in use at 
different periods, in different countries, and by members of 
the several social classes, not in their nature very scientific, 
they being simply supports whereon to sit. In our own 
country every conceivable kind and shape, from the three- 
legged “ cutty-stool ” in the Highland bothy to the chair of 
state in the palace, is to be found — and doubtless many more 
inconceivable to most of us could readily be “ discovered,” 
were we to ransack the strange places in Wardour- street and 
its vicinity. And yet, in designing the several members of 
this very large class of contrivances, there are indications that 
each particular portion of every such contrivance had some 
* Anatomie Comparee , 2nd edit., vol. i. p. 17, quoted in Mr. Fleming’s 
Essay , p. 52. 
t The Edinburgh. 
