Thus an organ which was certainly
developed as a sexual weapon, has been so guided and modified during its
increase in size as to be of use in other ways. A similar use of the
antlers of deer has been observed in India.[44]
The various classes of facts now referred to serve to show us that, in
the case of the two higher groups--mammalia and birds--almost all the
characters by which species are distinguished from each other are, or
may be, adaptive. It is these two classes of animals which have been
most studied and whose life-histories are supposed to be most fully
known, yet even here the assertion of inutility, by an eminent
naturalist, in the case of two important organs, has been sufficiently
met by minute details either in the anatomy or in the habits of the
groups referred to. Such a fact as this, together with the extensive
series of characters already enumerated which have been of late years
transferred from the "useless" to the "useful" class, should convince
us, that the assertion of "inutility" in the case of any organ or
peculiarity which is not a rudiment or a correlation, is not, and can
never be, the statement of a fact, but merely an expression of our
ignorance of its purpose or origin.
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