178 
One of the curiosities of literature may be found in tracking 
the effects of different authors* ideas on cognate subjects. 
Lamarck talks of the shore-bird feeding at the muddy edges 
of the water ; and to avoid sinking on the soft substance, 
stretches its legs to the very utmost, and the consequence is 
the establishment of the long and bare-legged waders. The 
author of the Vestiges of Creation speaks of the colonizing 
principle of certain wading birds, which might have advanced 
into “ dry grounds and woods ; elected to the new life perhaps 
by some of those varieties of appetency which occur in all 
tribes ; thus exposing themselves to new influences, and 
ceasing to experience those formerly operating, until by slow 
degrees, in the course of a vast space of time, the characters 
of the pheasant tribes were evoked.** Lamarck sends the 
shore-bird into the mud to get his long legs, and the author 
of the Vestiges plucks him back again to resume his short 
ones, at the same time converting the spoonbill or the stork 
into the pheasant. 
Foetal inferiority is again advanced in the address on Con- 
tinuity,** as supporting its views. I do not see how it is 
possible to sustain an argument on the adult and perfect, from 
the unborn. Progression to the typical, implies imperfection 
in all the uterine stages up to the last. I am afraid Harvey 
must bear the blame of promoting the doctrine of embryonic 
lowliness, and the deductions thence ensuing; for he speaks 
of the gradual development of the embryos of all animals, from 
the structureless mass to the perfected creature ; yet neither 
the elaborate chapter in the Vestiges , nor the adhesion of 
any present writer, shows more or less than that the embryo 
of each race produces its like; that the bird never stopped 
short at the reptile, nor the mammal at the bird. If the first 
stage were the perfect image, there never could have been 
any other stage. Uterine growth is nothing more than the 
gradual perfecting of the hind; fitting it up for the after- 
purposes of its peculiar existence ; of necessity, therefore, not 
fully formed till the period of parturition. Through whatever 
stages the embryo may pass, the idiocrasy is never lost — it 
is true to its kind in the first stage as the last. 
Rudimentary organs are again pressed into the service ; 
and which — as we read in the last cited paper on Continuity 
— “ must either be referred to a lusus naturae, or to some mode 
of continuous succession.** Take the Apterix. It cannot be 
a lusus naturae, for that is an abnormal growth ; whereas the 
Apterix produces its like. Here we find the wing of the bird 
reduced to the lowest rudimentary form — a mere stump. 
Continuity says, this effete wing is derived from continuous 
