the same. How can it be worth any beast's while to carry such an absurd
apparatus with it just for the sake of getting out into the air
sometimes and pushing itself about on the ice and being eaten by Polar
bears? The porpoise has discarded one pair, turned the other into decent
fins, and recovered a grace and power of motion in water which are not
equalled by the greyhound on land. Why have the seals hung back? I
believe I know the secret. It is the baby! No one knows where the
porpoise and the whale cradle their newborn infants--it is so difficult
to pry into the domestic ways of these sea-people--but evidently the
seals cannot manage it, so they are forced to return to the land when
the cares of maternity are on them.

I have called the feet of these sea beasts ridiculous things, and so
they are as we see them; but strip off the skin, and lo! there appears a
plain foot, with its five digits, each of several joints, tipped with
claws--nowise essentially different, in short, from that with which the
toad, or frog, first set out in a past too distant for our infirm
imagination. Admiration itself is paralysed by a contrivance so simple,
so transmutable, and so sufficient for every need that time and change
could bring.

There remains yet one transformation which seems simple compared with
some that I have noticed, but is more full of fate than they all; for
by it the foot becomes a hand. This comes about by easy stages. The
reason why one of a bird's four toes is turned back is quite plain:
trees are the proper home of birds, and they require feet that will
grasp branches. So those beasts also that have taken to living in trees
have got one toe detached more or less from the rest and arranged so
that it can co-operate with them to catch hold of a thing. Then other
changes quickly follow. For, in judging whether you have got hold of a