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The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin
page 43 of 1105 (03%)
enclosed within a bony canal. The following fact, for which I am also
indebted to Prof. Turner, shews how closely the os coccyx corresponds with
the true tail in the lower animals: Luschka has recently discovered at the
extremity of the coccygeal bones a very peculiar convoluted body, which is
continuous with the middle sacral artery; and this discovery led Krause and
Meyer to examine the tail of a monkey (Macacus), and of a cat, in both of
which they found a similarly convoluted body, though not at the extremity.

The reproductive system offers various rudimentary structures; but these
differ in one important respect from the foregoing cases. Here we are not
concerned with the vestige of a part which does not belong to the species
in an efficient state, but with a part efficient in the one sex, and
represented in the other by a mere rudiment. Nevertheless, the occurrence
of such rudiments is as difficult to explain, on the belief of the separate
creation of each species, as in the foregoing cases. Hereafter I shall
have to recur to these rudiments, and shall shew that their presence
generally depends merely on inheritance, that is, on parts acquired by one
sex having been partially transmitted to the other. I will in this place
only give some instances of such rudiments. It is well known that in the
males of all mammals, including man, rudimentary mammae exist. These in
several instances have become well developed, and have yielded a copious
supply of milk. Their essential identity in the two sexes is likewise
shewn by their occasional sympathetic enlargement in both during an attack
of the measles. The vesicula prostatica, which has been observed in many
male mammals, is now universally acknowledged to be the homologue of the
female uterus, together with the connected passage. It is impossible to
read Leuckart's able description of this organ, and his reasoning, without
admitting the justness of his conclusion. This is especially clear in the
case of those mammals in which the true female uterus bifurcates, for in
the males of these the vesicula likewise bifurcates. (54. Leuckart, in
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