Evolution: An Investigation and a CritiqueGraebner, Theodore
Religion
Evolution: An Investigation and a Critique
Graebner, Theodore
Evolution; Religion and science
"The new-born kangaroo," says Professor Owen, "is an inch in length,
naked, blind, with very rudimental limbs and tail; in one which I
examined the morning after the birth, I could discern no act of sucking;
it hung, like a germ, from the end of the long nipple, and seemed unable
to draw sustenance therefrom by its own efforts. The mother accordingly
is provided with a peculiar adaptation of a muscle (_cremaster_) to the
mammary gland, by which she can inject the milk from the nipple into the
mouth of the pendulous embryo. Were the larynx of the creature like that
of the parent, the milk might, probably would, enter the windpipe and
cause suffocation: but the larynx is cone-shaped, with the opening at
the apex, which projects, as in the whaletribe, into the back aperture
of the nostrils, where it is closely embraced by the muscles of the
'soft palate.' The air-passage is thus completely separated from the
fauces (mouth), and the injected milk passes in a divided stream, on
either side the base of the larynx, into the oesophagus. These
correlated modifications of maternal and foetal structures, _designed_
with especial reference to the peculiar conditions of both mother and
off-spring, afford, as it seems to me, irrefragable evidence of
_creative forsight_. The parts of this apparatus cannot have produced
one another; one part is in the mother, another part in the young one;
without their harmony they could not be effective; but nothing except
design can operate to make them harmonious. They are intended to work
together; and we cannot resist the conviction of this intention when
the facts first come before us."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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