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Updated: June 2, 2025
It is true, of course, that some birds sing during the autumn, and, if the climatic conditions are favourable, in the winter also, just as others betray, in the autumn, symptoms of emotional manifestation peculiar to the spring; but just as the manifestation of the latter is feeble and vestigial, so, too, does the song of the former lack the vigour and persistency which is characteristic of the spring.
These are the thymus and thyroid glands, apparently vestigial structures. The thymus gland attains a considerable development in the embryo and shrinks away to the merest vestige in the adult. It begins to form early in the embryo life as an epithelial ingrowth from the throat, and extends from the neck into the chest.
Mr. Smith, remarks our author, 'we have a striking vestigial specimen of an almost extinct type." The quarrels of the doctors do not concern me. I have worked out a classification of my own which holds good for the entire profession. All doctors, I believe, may be divided into those who go clean-shaven and those who wear beards. The difference is more than one of appearance.
Extreme hairiness of body, on the other hand, which might well be taken as a simian or vestigial character, is seldom met with in the Bantu, but is equally common among Europeans and Australian aboriginals and is found particularly developed in the Ainu of Japan. The texture also of the African's hair is less like that of the hair of the man-like apes than is the hair of the European.
Back in the early life of the peoples from which we spring is the taboo, and in our own life there are customs so analogous to many of these ancient prohibitions that they must be accounted survivals of old social habits just as the vestigial structures within our bodies are the remnants of our biological past.
Our knowledge is not adequate, but it may not always remain inadequate. We have already had some very astonishing suggestions in this direction from Doctor Metchnikoff. He regards the human stomach and large intestine as not only vestigial and superfluous in the human economy, but as positively dangerous on account of the harbour they afford for those bacteria that accelerate the decay of age.
Whenever we classify and compare human languages, we find similar consistent anatomical evidences of their relationships and evolution. We can even discern counterparts of the vestigial structures like the rudimentary limbs of whales. In the English word night certain letters do not function vocally, though in the German counterpart Nacht their correspondents still play a part.
In a word, this vestigial coat indicates in the clearest possible manner that the ancestor of the human species was not only hairy, but also arboreal in its mode of life. Every human infant is bow-legged at birth, and the natural position of its curved limbs is like that of the gorilla's, for the soles of the feet are turned toward one another.
It needed the shock of the great war to bring home the wisdom of that old Scotchman of Königsberg to the mind of the ordinary man. Moreover in support of the dynastic system was the fact that it did exist as the system in possession, and all prosperous and intelligent people are chary of disturbing existing things. Life is full of vestigial structures, and it is a long way to logical perfection.
This characterization is justified by those vestigial and rudimentary structures that represent organs of value to human relatives among the lower animals, though they play a less active part at the present time in human economy. There is scarcely a single system that does not exhibit many or fewer of these rudimentary structures, but only a few need be specified.
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