Page - 518 - in The Origin of Species

518 ORIGIN OF SPECIES tern in the wing and in the leg of a bat, though used for such different purpose,—in the jaws and legs of a crab,— in the petals, stamens, and pistils of a flower, is likewise, to a large extent, intelligible on the view of the gradual modi- fication of parts or organs, which were aboriginally alike in an early progenitor in each of these classes. On the prin- ciple of successive variations not always supervening at an early age, and being inherited at a corresponding not early period of life, we clearly see why the embryos of mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes should be so closely similar, and so unlike the adult forms. We may cease marvelling at the embryo of an air-breathing mammal or bird having branchial slits and arteries running in loops, like those of a fish which has to breathe the air dissolved in water by the aid of well- developed branchiae. Disuse, aided sometimes by natural selection, will often have reduced organs when rendered useless under changed habits or conditions of life; and we can understand on this view the meaning of rudimentary organs. But disuse and selection will generally act on each creature, when it has come to maturity and has to play its full part in the struggle for existence, and will thus have little power on an organ during early life ; hence the organ will not be reduced or rendered rudimentary at this early age. The calf, for in- stance, has inherited teeth, which never cut through the gums of the upper jaw, from an early progenitor having well- developed teeth; and we may believe, that the teeth in the mature animal were formerly reduced by disuse, owing to the tongue and palate, or lips, having become excellently fitted through natural selection to browse without their aid; whereas in the calf, the teeth have been left unaffected, and on the principle of inheritance at corresponding ages have been inherited from a remote period to the present day. On the view of each organism with all its separate parts having been specially created, how utterly inexplicable is it that organs bearing the plain stamp of inutility, such as the teeth in the embryonic calf or the shrivelled wings under the sol- dered wing-covers of many beetles, should so frequently occur. Nature may be said to have taken pains to reveal her scheme of modification, by means of rudimentary organs.