The Strange Adventures of a PebbleHawksworth, Hallam
Science
The Strange Adventures of a Pebble
Hawksworth, Hallam
Geology -- Juvenile literature; Physical geography -- Juvenile literature
So there have been found in the rock records more or less complete
serial stories of thousands of plants and animals. In the case of man,
not only do we find that there were once human beings on earth like
the caveman with low forehead and huge jaw, but nothing has ever been
found to indicate that there were any higher types of human beings in
existence in his day. And both the caveman and the handsomest human
beings of to-day--the captain of our football team, for example--have
essentially the same bodily framework as the monkey tribe. This does
not mean that man--even so low a creature as the caveman--descended
from monkeys, any more than the fact that he has a backbone means he
descended from humming-birds. But the backbones in humming-birds,
monkeys, and men show that all are descended from older types of
backboned creatures. As monkeys and men are much more alike than men
and birds they are evidently more closely related.
We might suppose, to be sure, that men and all other forms of life
which they resemble in any way were so made from the beginning; that
is, if we hadn't learned from the records of the rocks that they
_weren't_ so made from the beginning. Yet, even after that, we might go
on supposing that each species was created separately, but that the
form was changed from age to age. But in that case what are you going
to say to this:
In man's body are several organs that are useless and often harmful.
Other animals, also, contain among useful organs some that are
"out-of-date," as we would say if we were speaking of some old machines
in a machine-shop. Why, in making a brand-new species, shouldn't Nature
have all the latest improvements from the start, just as man does in
building a brand-new home? If each species was separately created it is
hard to understand why these useless or harmful organs should be kept;
but if one species grew out of another, by gradual improvement, just as
cities grow out of villages, this is exactly what we might expect.
One of these useless organs in man is called the "vermiform appendix."
It is always getting its name in the papers by giving trouble to some
prominent man. Now this appendix, while a perfect nuisance to human
beings, is just the thing for cows and other grass-eating animals. In
them it is very large and of great use in digestion, while in the case
of man and the monkey family it has shrunk into a little affair that
puts in all its time either doing nothing or getting out of fix.
III. Upward; Always Upward
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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