Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/211

Rh are absolutely isolated, and little satisfactory reason has ever been given for deriving them from any one of the existing divisions of the class more than from any other. The question has indeed often been mooted whether they have been derived from land mammals at all, or whether they may not be the survivors of a primitive aquatic form which was the ancestor not only of the whales, but of all the other members of the class. The materials for—I will not say solving—but for throwing some light upon this problem, must be sought for in two regions—in the structure of the existing members of the order, and in its past history, as revealed by the discovery of fossil remains. In the present state of science it is chiefly on the former that we have to rely. One of the most obvious external characteristics by which the mammalia are distinguished from other classes of vertebrates is the more or less complete clothing of the surface by hair. The Cetacea alone appear to be exceptions to this generalization. Their smooth, glistening exterior is, in the greater number of species, at all events in adult life, absolutely bare, though the want of a hairy covering is compensated for functionally by peculiar modifications of the structure of the skin itself, the epidermis being greatly thickened, and a remarkable layer of dense fat closely incorporated with the tissue of the derm or true skin; modifications admirably adapted for retaining the warmth of the body, without any roughness of surface which might occasion friction and so interfere with perfect facility of gliding through the water. Close examination, however, shows that the mammalian character of hairiness is not entirely wanting in the Cetacea, although it is reduced to a most rudimentary and apparently functionless condition.

In the organs of the senses the Cetacea exhibit some remarkable adaptive modifications of structures essentially formed on the mammalian type, and not on that characteristic of the truly aquatic vertebrates, the fishes.

The modifications of the organs of sight do not so much affect the eyeball as the accessory apparatus. To an animal whose surface is always bathed with fluid, the complex arrangement which mammals generally possess for keeping the surface of the transparent cornea moist and protected, the movable lids, the nictitating membrane, the lachrymal gland, and the arrangements for collecting and removing the superfluous tears when they have served their function can not be