Page - 250 - in The Origin of Species

250 ORIGIN OF SPECIES in appearance than a bristle or vibraculum, and an avicu- larium like the head of a bird ; yet they are almost certainly homologous and have been developed from the same common source, namely a zooid with its cell. Hence we can under- stand how it is that these organs graduate in some cases, as I am informed by Mr. Busk, into each other. Thus with the avicularia of several species of Lepralia, the moveable mandible is so much produced and is so like a bristle, that the presence of the upper or fixed beak alone serves to determine its avicularian nature. The vibracula may have been directly developed from the lips of the cells, without having passed through the avicularian stage; but it seems more probable that they have passed through this stage, as during the early stages of the transformation, the other parts of the cell with the included zooid could hardly have disappeared at once. In many cases the vibracula have a grooved support at the base, which seems to represent the fixed beak; though this support in some species is quite ab- sent. This view of the development of the vibracula, if trust- worthy, is interesting; for supposing that all the species pro- vided with avicularia had become extinct, no one with the most vivid imagination would ever have thought that the vibracula had originally existed as part of an organ, resem- bling a bird's head or an irregular box or hood. It is inter- esting to see two such widely different organs developed from a common origin; and as the moveable lip of the cell serves as a protection to the zooid, there is no difficulty in believing that all the gradations, by which the lip became converted first into the lower mandible of an avicularium and then into an elongated bristle, likewise served as a protection in differ- ent ways and under different circumstances. In the vegetable kingdom Mr. Mivart only alludes to two cases, namely the structure of the flowers of orchids, and the movements of climbing plants. With respect to the former, he says, "the explanation of their origin is deemed thoroughly unsatisfactory—utterly insufficient to explain the incipient, infinitesimal beginnings of structures which are of utility only when they are considerably developed." As I have fully treated this subject in another work, I will here give