Page:Alerielorvoyaget00lach.djvu/242

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220
A Voyage to Other Worlds.

and hear with two ears, and touch with ten fingers and rest on a duality of limbs? How many possible forms are there, which eye hath not seen, nor the heart of man conceived." These strange forms are to us grotesque, but not necessarily impossible.


P. 203. "They had hands unlike the avine tribe." As the most serious objection I met with in my "Voice from another World" was to the supposition of vertebrate beings existing with three pairs of limbs, I venture to quote Professor Owen on this point: "We have been accustomed to regard the vertebrate animals as being characterised by the limitation of their limbs to two pairs, and it is true that no more diverging appendages are developed for stature, locomotion, and manipulation. But the rudiments of many more pairs are present in many species; and though they may never be developed as such in this planet, it is quite conceivable that certain of them may be so developed, if the vertebrate type should be that on which any of the inhabitants of other planets of our system are organised." [1]In some fish, if I mistake not, there are more than two pair of limbs. As to the question of muscles, the amount of vital force, if increased, might generate strong muscular action without large muscles.


  1. Owen "On the Nature of Limbs," p. 83.

THE END.


WYMAN AND SONS, PRINTERS, GREAT QUEEN STREET, LONDON.