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If individual disuse diminished the weight of the duck's wing-bones by 9 per cent. there would be nothing left to account for. I suspect that investigation would reveal anomalies inconsistent with the theory of use-inheritance.
This marked reduction, too, quite unlike the slight reduction of the wing-bones to which the other ends of the muscles are attached, was universal in the eleven specimens measured by Darwin; and the bone, though acknowledged to have been modified by artificial selection in some breeds, is not so open to observation as wings or legs.
Some of the fowls which fly least have their wing-bones as long as ever. In the case of the Silk and Frizzled fowls ancient breeds which "cannot fly at all" and in that of the Cochins, which "can hardly fly up to a low perch," Darwin observes "how truly the proportions of an organ may be inherited although not fully exercised during many generations."
Carefully calculated, the reduction of the weight of the wing-bones in this breed is only 8·3 per cent. relatively to the whole skeleton, or only 5 per cent. relatively to the skeleton minus legs and wings. The latter method is the more correct, since the excessive weight of the leg-bones increases the weight of the skeleton more than the diminished weight of the wing-bones reduces it.
Part of the wing-bones, the jaw-bones and half of the thigh- bones remain. Everything else flesh, fat, eyes, bones, brains and tendons is all to be taken away. While dissecting it will be of use to keep in mind that, in taking off the skin from the body by means of your fingers and a little knife, you must try to shove it, in lieu of pulling it, lest you stretch it.
Heaped in corners, and upon the tops of the book-shelves lay bric-a-brac in hopeless confusion; toy canoes from Kamchatka and the Southern seas; wooden masks from the burial places of the Alaskan Indians and the Theban Tombs of the Nile Kings; rude fish-hooks that had been dropped in the coral seas; sharks' teeth; and the strong beak of an albatross whose webbed feet were tobacco pouches and whose hollow wing-bones were the long jointed stem of a pipe; spears and war-clubs were there, brought from the gleaming shores of reef-girdled islands; a Florentine lamp; a roll of papyrus; an idol from Easter Island, the eyes of which were two missionary shirt buttons of mother-of-pearl, of the Puritan type; your practical cannibal, having eaten his missionary, spits out the shirt buttons to be used as the eyes which see not; carved gourds were there, and calabashes; Mexican pottery; and some of the latest Pompeiian antiquities such as are miraculously discovered in the presence of the amazed and delighted tourist who secretly purchases the same for considerably more than a song.
In four out of twelve breeds the wing-bones had become slightly heavier relatively to the leg-bones. Do not these facts tend to show that the changes in fowls' wings are due to fluctuating variability and selective influences rather than to a general law whereby the effects of disuse are cumulatively inherited?
Allen, the coxswain of the gig, skins them very well, having had some lessons from Ward before we left England. I want very much to catch an albatross, in order to have it skinned, and to make tobacco-pouches of its feet and pipe-stems of the wing-bones, for presents. Sunbeam of summer, oh what is like thee, Hope of the wilderness, joy of the sea. Wednesday, October 18th.
We find that all the changes are in the direction of shorter and thicker bones a tendency which must be largely dependent upon the suspension of the rigorous elimination which keeps the bones of the wild duck long and light. The used leg-bones and the disused wing-bones have alike been shortened and thickened, though in different proportions.
He went on till he had dressed the interior of the skin with the soap preparation, and after filling certain parts with cotton-wool, and tying the wing-bones together, he turned it back, smoothed the plumage, and I saw that it was another of the short blue-barred kingfishers similar to that we had obtained before.
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