dry land. But all mundane things
(not excepting politics) tend to move in circles, ending where they
began; and so the foot, if we follow it far enough, will take us back
into water. See how the rat--I mean our common, omnivorous, scavenging,
thieving, poaching brown rat--when it lives near a pond or stream,
learns to swim and dive as naturally as a duck. Next comes the vole, or
water-rat, which will not live away from water. Then there are water
shrews, the beaver, otter, duck-billed platypus, and a host of others,
not related, just as, among birds, there are water ousels, moorhens,
ducks, divers, etc., which have permanently made the water their home
and seek their living in it. All these have attained to web-footedness
in a greater or less degree.

That this has occurred among reptiles, beasts, and birds alike shows
what an easy, or natural, or obvious (put it as you will) modification
it is. And it has a consequence not to be escaped. Just as a man who
rides a great deal and never walks acquires a certain indirectness of
the legs, and you never mistake a jockey for a drill-sergeant, so the
web-footed beasts are not among the things that are "comely in going."

Following this road you arrive at the seal and sea-lion. Of all the feet
that I have looked at I know only one more utterly ridiculous than the
twisted flipper on which the sea-lion props his great bulk in front,
and that is the forked fly-flap which extends from the hinder parts of
the same. How can it be worth any beast's while to carry such an absurd
apparatus with it just for the sake of getting out into the air
sometimes and pushing itself about on the ice and being eaten by Polar
bears? The porpoise has discarded one pair, turned the other into decent
fins, and recovered a grace and power of motion in water which are not
equalled by the greyhound on land. Why have the seals hung back? I
believe I know the secret. It is the baby! No one knows where the
porpoise and the whale cradle their newborn infants--it is so difficult
to pry into the domestic ways of these sea-people--but evidently the
seals cannot manage it, so they are forced to return to the land when
the cares of maternity are on them.

I have called the feet of these sea beasts ridiculous things, and so
they are as we see them; but strip off the skin, and lo! there appears a
plain foot, with its five digits, each of several joints, tipped with
claws--nowise essentially different, in short, fro