Page - 496 - in The Origin of Species

496 ORIGIN OF SPECIES which has become useless would be rendered, independently of the effects of disuse, rudimentary and would at last be wholly suppressed; for the variations towards diminished size would no longer be checked by natural selection. The principle of the economy of growth, explained in a former chapter, by which the materials forming any part, if not useful to the possessor, are saved as far as is possible, will perhaps come into play iy rendering a useless part rudimen- tary. But this principle will almost necessarily be confined to the earlier stages of the process of reduction; for we can- not suppose that a minute papilla, for instance, representing in a male flower the pistil of the female flower, and formed merely of cellular tissue, could be further reduced or ab- sorbed for the sake of economising nutriment. Finally, as rudimentary organs, by whatever steps they may have been degraded into their present useless condition, are the record of a former state of things, and have been retained solely through the power of inheritance,—we can understand, on the genealogical view of classification, how it is that systematists, in placing organisms in their proper places in the natural system, have often found rudimentary parts as useful as, or even sometimes more useful than, parts of high physiological importance. Rudimentary organs may be compared with the letters in a word, still retained in the spelling, but become useless in the pronunciation, but which serve as a clue for its derivation. On the view of descent with modification, we may conclude that the existence of organs in rudimentary, imperfect, and useless condition, or quite aborted, far from presenting a strange difficulty, as they assuredly do on the old doctrine of creation, might even have been anticipated in accordance with the views here explained. SUMMARY In this chapter I have attempted to show, that the arrange- ment of all organic beings throughout all time in groups under groups—that the nature of the relationships by which all living and extinct organisms are united by complex, radi- ating, and circuitous lines of affinities into a few grand classes,—the rules followed and the difficulties encountered