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"In order that an animal should acquire some structure specially and largely developed, it is almost indispensable that several other parts should be modified and co-adapted.
Such mutual fitting of things diverse in origin argued design, it was held; and the designer was always treated as a man-loving deity. The first step in these arguments was to prove that the design existed. Nature was ransacked for results obtained through separate things being co-adapted.
But independently of the fact that ivory in permeated by tubes so fine that at their origin from the pulpy cavity they do not exceed 1/15000th part of an inch in diameter, OWEN had the tusk and pulp of the great elephant which died at the Zoological Gardens in London in 1847 longitudinally divided, and found that, "although the pulp could be easily detached from the inner surface of the cavity, it was not without a certain resistance; and when the edges of the co-adapted pulp and tusk were examined by a strong lens, the filamentary processes from the outer surface of the former could be seen stretching, as they were drawn from the dentinal tubes, before they broke.
So that the islands of Bermuda and Madeira have been stocked from the neighbouring continents with birds, which for long ages have there struggled together, and have become mutually co-adapted. Hence, when settled in their new homes, each kind will have been kept by the others to its proper place and habits, and will consequently have been but little liable to modification.
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