Darwiniana : Essays — Volume 02Huxley, Thomas Henry
Science
Darwiniana : Essays — Volume 02
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882; Evolution (Biology)
Such are the splint-like bones in the leg of the horse, which I here show
you, and which correspond with bones which belong to certain toes and
fingers in the human hand and foot. In the horse you see they are quite
rudimentary, and bear neither toes nor fingers; so that the horse has only
one "finger" in his fore-foot and one "toe" in his hind-foot. But it is a
very curious thing that the animals closely allied to the horse show more
toes than he; as the rhinoceros, for instance: he has these extra toes well
formed, and anatomical facts show very clearly that he is very closely
related to the horse indeed. So we may say that animals, in an anatomical
sense nearly related to the horse, have those parts which are rudimentary
in him fully developed.
Again, the sheep and the cow have no cutting-teeth, but only a hard pad in
the upper jaw. That is the common characteristic of ruminants in general.
But the calf has in its upper jaw some rudiments of teeth which never are
developed, and never play the part of teeth at all. Well, if you go back in
time, you find some of the older, now extinct, allies of the ruminants have
well-developed teeth in their upper jaws; and at the present day the pig
(which is in structure closely connected with ruminants) has well-developed
teeth in its upper jaw; so that here is another instance of organs
well-developed and very useful, in one animal, represented by rudimentary
organs, for which we can discover no purpose whatsoever in another closely
allied animal. The whalebone whale, again, has horny "whalebone" plates in
its mouth, and no teeth; but the young foetal whale before it is born has
teeth in its jaws; they, however, are never used, and they never come to
anything. But other members of the group to which the whale belongs have
well-developed teeth in both jaws.
Upon any hypothesis of special creation, facts of this kind appear to me to
be entirely unaccountable and inexplicable, but they cease to be so if you
accept Mr. Darwin's hypothesis, and see reason for believing that the
whalebone whale and the whale with teeth in its mouth both sprang from a
whale that had teeth, and that the teeth of the foetal whale are merely
remnants--recollections, if we may so say--of the extinct whale. So in the
case of the horse and the rhinoceros: suppose that both have descended by
modification from some earlier form which had the normal number of toes,
and the persistence of the rudimentary bones which no longer support toes
in the horse becomes comprehensible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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