Rudimentary organs, again, strange appearances, like the presence of teeth in unborn whales and in the front of the upper jaws of unborn calves, the rudimentary wings of many insects, the rudimentary stamens or pistils of many flowers, are all swept into the Darwinian net. "Nothing can be plainer than that wings are formed for flight; yet in how many insects do we see wings so reduced in size as to be utterly incapable of flight, and not rarely lying under wing-cases, firmly soldered together?" These phenomena are all explicable if descent with modification is true. Approaching the close of his work, the author expressed his doubts of being able to convert naturalists of long standing to his views; but based his main hopes on young and rising men approaching these questions without prejudices. He put some puzzling questions, however, to those who might oppose him. Did they really believe that at innumerable periods in the earth's history certain atoms had been commanded suddenly to flash into living tissues? Were animals and plants created as eggs or seed or as full grown? At each act of creation was one individual or were many produced? For himself, he came to the conclusion that all organic beings had descended from some one primordial form into which life was first breathed. On this view Darwin predicted that a great increase of interest in many departments of natural history would arise. "When we no longer look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond his comprehension; when we regard every production of nature as one which has had a history; when we contemplate every complex structure and instinct as the summing up of many contrivances, each useful to the possessor, nearly in the same way as when we look at any great mechanical invention as the summing up of the labour, the experience, the reason, and even the blunders of numerous workmen; when we thus view each organic being, how far more interesting--I speak from experience--will the study of natural history become.... The whole history of the world, as at present known, although of a length quite incomprehensible to us, will hereafter be recognized as a mere fragment of time compared with the ages which have elapsed since the first creature, the progenitor of innumerable extinct and living descendants, was created.... We may look forward with some confidence to a secure future of equally inappreciable length. And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection." The concluding sentence of the "Origin of Species" has become one of our classical quotations. "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful