We regret deeply that our knowledge both of natural history and of
machinery is too small to enable us to undertake the gigantic task of
classifying machines into the genera and sub-genera, species,
varieties and sub-varieties, and so forth, of tracing the connecting
links between machines of widely different characters, of pointing
out how subservience to the use of man has played that part among
machines which natural selection has performed in the animal and
vegetable kingdom, of pointing out rudimentary organs [see note]
which exist in some few machines, feebly developed and perfectly
useless, yet serving to mark descent from some ancestral type which
has either perished or been modified into some new phase of
mechanical existence. We can only point out this field for
investigation; it must be followed by others whose education and
talents have been of a much higher order than any which we can lay
claim to.
Some few hints we have determined to venture upon, though we do so
with the profoundest diffidence. Firstly we would remark that as
some of the lowest of the vertebrata attained a far greater size than
has descended to their more highly organised living representatives,
so a diminution in the size of machines has often attended their
development and progress. Take the watch for instance. Examine the
beautiful structure of the little animal, watch the intelligent play
of the minute members which compose it; yet this little creature is
but a development of the cumbrous clocks of the thirteenth century--
it is no deterioration from them.
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