14 
EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 
laws of heredity from a long-past age when 
they were well developed and useful to our 
lowly ancestors. Though we outgrow primi¬ 
tive conditions and stages of development we 
can not get rid of the past, but must drag it 
around with us as the snail drags its shell. 
All the higher animals bear within their 
bodies the reminders of a humble origin, some 
of which are: The incisor teeth of certain 
grass-eating animals, so rudimentary as never 
to cut through; the small hoof points of the 
cow which do not touch the ground, and the 
rudimentary fifth and sixth teats on the hinder 
part of her udder; the splint bones in the 
horse’s leg—vestiges of toes when he was a 
three-toed animal; the scanty, downy hair that 
covers the human body. 
Certain muscles by which animals can twitch 
the skin are inherited by some persons who 
can move the scalp and the ears. The sense 
of smell in civilized man has become almost 
rudimentary. The vermiform appendix is not 
only useless but often injurious. It points back 
to the time when our ancestors were strict 
vegetarians—grass-eaters. In the os coccyx 
man carries about with him the rudimentary 
bones of a tail. This, with the fact that the 
human embryo at one stage has a tail longer 
than its legs, is Nature’s everlasting reminder 
that proud man’s remote ancestor was adorned 
with a tail. 
In order to get as clear an idea as possible 
of man’s exact place in the animal scale we 
should note the points wherein man differs 
from Lis nearest relatives—the orang, the go- 
