Note 42 — Chapter V · IRRECONCILABLE DIFFICULTIES CONNECTED WITH EVOLUTION

“The os coccyx in man, though functionless as a tail, plainly represents this part in other vertebrate animals. At an early embryonic period it is free, and, as we have seen, projects beyond the lower extremities.”42 It sometimes happens that we find external relics of a tail. Professor Haeckel, in Fig. 195, vol. i. of The Evolution of Man (library edition), shows the tail of a six months’ old boy, which Granville Harrison removed by operation. The anthropoid ape, like man, has only the rudiment of a tail.