Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 65.djvu/462

458 feed in this way. In these as well as in mammalian forms which present relatively slight limb specialization, the mouth parts have in many cases undergone modifications which render them effective instruments for grasping, rending, digging, picking and the like. Such adaptations are shown in the snouts of the mullet and pig; the beaks of the paddle-fish, the duck-billed otter, the humming-bird and the secretary; the tusks of the boar, the horn of the rhinoceros, the proboscis of the tapir, the tongue of the chameleon and the trunk of the elephant. In all these cases the specialization of the limbs which accompanied such modifications of the mouth parts consists in an adaptation of the function of locomotion in connection with the particular conditions under which the life of the species is carried on; in consequence of which their general features have diverged very widely from those of manipulative organs.

The earliest form of locomotion which vertebrate limbs fulfilled was propulsion through the water. The problem to be solved did not include the support of the body, which was buoyed up by the dense medium in which the animal moved. The same dense medium afforded a sufficient resistance to allow of a relatively slow and weak movement on the part of the locomotive organs. The earliest vertebrate limbs, or the body extensions which foreshadowed them in times still earlier, needed neither the strength and rigidity of the terrestrial leg nor the expanse and velocity of stroke of the aerial wing.

If we conceive the progenitor of the limbed vertebrate to have progressed by means of an undulatory motion of the whole body, brought about by a peristaltic wave of contraction passing from front to rear of the animal, it is not difficult to infer the advantages which would accrue to those individuals in which a modification appeared in the form of flexible extension parallel to the longitudinal axis of the body, by the independent undulations of which progression became possible. The economy resulting from reduction of movement in the whole body mass would be accompanied by a decrease in the likelihood of attracting notice, a greater control of movements in taking food, and a more exact process of perception in adjusting the body to surrounding changes.

Though the series of limb forms is obscure in its earlier parts, the whole group is generally supposed to have its prototype in the lateral fold of the primitive fishes, in which locomotion took place through a wave-like movement passing backward along the length of the web. Out of this primitive lateral fold the various fin-formed limbs which characterize the aquatic progenitors of the land vertebrates arose by a series of modifications in which the following stages may be noted: In the undifferentiated swimming folds first developed a system of parallel rods extending from the body surface to the margin of the web, which probably both served the purpose of increasing the resistance