Volume 1

A picture book of evolution / by Dennis Hird.

  • Hird, Dennis, 1850-1920.
Date:
1906-1907
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A picture book of evolution / by Dennis Hird. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/220 (page 6)
    uncomfortable seat of the cycle and view life from an armchair, unless he travels so fast that he cannot clearly distinguish one object from another. Now, I have taken these few examples of machines, with which everybody is familiar, and the first inventions of which are within the memory of some now living, because we have a very difficult task before us in the great facts of Evolution. The account I have given of the bicycle might be called a short history of the evolution of the bicycle, and it has given us much to think about. Some of the steps of this evolution are clear to us :— Fig. 7.—The Motor Car. 1. The earliest form was so simple and rude as to be almost useless, so that form did not remain long. 2. The improved machines drove the others out of use. If you were to try to buy a hobby-horse or a bone-shaker, you would soon learn that they are no longer in the market, and probably in most towns you would not find one at any price. The steady march of improvements has banished them. This is what we mean when we say anything has become extinct. In a practical world the better banishes