“Probably it would,” he replied, “but if you should come to compare real advantages, I am of the opinion they would be entitled to laugh the loudest. They have decidedly the advantage of you in the simplicity of their construction and in their reduced liability to get out of order. An autopsy of this latter day man would reveal a little shriveled up bit of parchment in the place where the stomach used to be, and another in the place where the bladder was, a handful of shoe strings in the place of the intestines, the total reduced in length at least one-half; some little fleshy nodules like so many beans and peas and hickory nuts to stand for the kidneys, the pancreas, the spleen and that ancient terror, the liver. It is strange that after these organs are thus discarded and atrophied, nature continues to perpetuate the remembrance of them by reproducing in every individual that is born, these odd and grim caricatures, like a miserly old woman that carefully hoards her cellar full of old tin cans and broken jugs, bottles and dishes—of no use to anybody.—But this is nature’s way. Even in your day your scientists pointed out numerous remnants of played-out organs that your race then had about them, such as the coracoid bone, the tail bones, the vermiform appendix, the ear muscles, the pineal gland and many more. But now there are to be added, this fresh batch. They will be constantly reduced in size, one generation after another, but your race will hardly exist long enough to get rid of them entirely; but they may congratulate themselves that they have ended their mischief and are no longer functional. “There are also notable changes in the skeleton of the present man. He no longer has 33 segments or vertebrae in his back bone as folks had in your day, but only 23. The seven neck and twelve dorsal segments remain the same, but the five lumbar vertebrae are reduced to two, the five sacral and four tail bones are reduced to one each, much diminished in size, the tail a mere button. So he is much shortened from the diaphragm down.”