"Functionless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... being no enemies to escape from, their use was only a source of danger. We may thus, perhaps, account for the fact that many of these birds retain small but useless wings with which they never fly; for, the wings having been reduced to this functionless condition, no power could reduce them further except correlation of growth or economy of nutrition, causes which ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... classes of the sub-kingdom, it is more prevalent in some than in others—e.g. in birds than in mammals. Even, however, where it does not occur of a size and mobility to be of any use, it is usually represented, in animals above fishes, by a functionless rudiment, as here depicted in the ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes |
