http://www.westmorelandconservancy.org/Vestiges.html
Biologically speaking, a vestige is a body part or degenerate body organ that has lost its function. The animal and plant world is full of them. Some snakes, for example, still retain the thigh bone of the hind legs, a vestige of the lizards from which they evolved. They are covered over with flesh and serve no purpose. The "dewclaw" of dogs is a vestigial thumb and some horses (whose hoof is just an enlarged toe)have a small digit on the leg, a leftover from other toes they have lost. Eohippus, the ancestral dawn horse was a four toed beast.
There is even vestigial behavior. All the dogs I've had as pets went through a strange ritual before laying down. They would turn in circles scratching the rug with their paws. I originally thought they were trying to scrunch the rug into a heap to be more comfortable until I watched one perform this ritual on a tile floor. Then it dawned on me what the dogs were really doing. Domestic dogs are descended from European and Siberian wolves who make their beds in the wild. They scratch away the leaves, dig up the dirt a little and pack it down with their feet. Wolves will turn around several times while they hollow out this depression for their bed. Canis domesticus is repeating this ancient behavior handed down to him through genes over the millennia. This behavior will eventually disappear. Then, on rare occasion it will spontaneously reappear. This is easily understood by those knowledgeable in genetics and gene mutation rates.
Humans do not escape vestigial structures. In fact, we harbor 88 of them. Most appear and disappear during the embryonic growth period but a few persist into adulthood and most of them are well known, the appendix being the most famous of the bunch. Some of the others include goose bumps, the tiny muscles that raise vestigial body hairs to keep us warm, the nictitating membrane or third eyelid that is reduced to the pink flesh in the corner of the eye, wisdom teeth, the tailbone and ear muscles. A few people even have tail muscles.
Mystery surrounds many of these relic structures. We don't even know why we lost our body hair. The Ainu of northern Japan retained much of theirs, but not enough to forego the need for clothes.
Vestiges seem to appear everywhere you look. I see them in the transportation industry. In the 1940's automobile radiator caps protruded through the hood so you could add water to those old inefficient radiators without lifting the hood. But once the radiator cap was placed beneath the hood and out of sight the car didn't look right. People missed that radiator cap at the front of the car, so it was replaced by some kind of metal sculpture, usually a charging ram, bucking stallion, flying eagle or mermaid. These elaborate sculptures were eventually reduced to a simple plaque, and finally disappeared altogether, but in the past decade I've seen a few reappear, just as vestiges do in the biological world by back mutation.
Our language is also loaded with vestiges. Stagecoaches were replaced by trains that called the passenger cars coaches. This term carried into the airplane era when you could fly first class or go "coach."
Living rooms in houses have became vestigial. They are present, but hardly ever used. Everyone gathers in the family room. In some homes the living room has totally disappeared and been replaced by the great room.
I see vestiges of human occupation as I walk the woods. It is fun to interpret these clues to the past. Old fence posts, cut stumps, foundation stones, apple trees, daffodills and irises growing in the woods and barbed wires running through the middle of tree trunks are vestiges of past human residence. Once I saw a hollow limb that had broken off and become wedged in the crotch of another tree. The hollow end protruded from the crotch of the trunk horizontally providing a dry haven for any animal seeking shelter. I looked inside to see if anything had nested there or was using the cavity for a home. Instead what I saw was a strange looking eyelet bolt embedded in the decaying wood. The branch had grown completely around it. I thought for awhile as to why it was there and then wondered if it was a support for a child's swing. I began looking around and sure enough, soon found the foundation stones of a building. It was all that remained of an old homestead.
In a young woods in Butler County I came upon two blazing stars, a prairie species, vestiges of the prairie that once occupied western Pennsylvania before trees re-invaded after the ice Age. The Jennings Blazing Star Prairie along Route 8 is not the only remnants of this former ecosystem. Several others on private property are known.
While hiking a trail in the Loyalhanna watergap one late April I spied an unusual snow-melt pattern. There were streaks of snow in the woods that resembled railroad ties. Upon close examination that's what they were. The timber in the area had obviously been removed around the turn of the century by an old narrow gauge logging train. A slight depression existed where the abandoned ties had been left to rot and the last of the snow was lying in them. Had I passed by two days later I would never have noticed it.
Old logging railroad grades are often marked by strips of black birch trees that love the acid ballast the ties were laid on. Birch trees are short-lived, but many of these old strips still exist to tell us how the timber of the last century was removed.
Likewise a line of black cherry trees in the forest marks the boundary of an old field. Birds feeding on cherries sit on fence posts and excrete the seeds. Old fields were often lined with these bird planted cherry trees. When the field is abandoned and replaced by woods we'll have a long column of cherry trees to tell us these were formerly agricultural lands.
Unusual tree growth patterns aren't really vestiges, but they tell a story of previous lightning strikes, fire, fallen trees, degrees of previous shading or damage from gnawing animals or defoliating insects. The most common unusual growth pattern is an elbow in the trunk. The tree trunk suddenly makes a 90 degree turn and then climbs straight again. It is easily explained. A falling tree came down on a young tree bending it over and pinning its upper branches to the ground. A new shoot grows from the point of the bend and the remaining trunk eventually dies and rots away leaving a sharp crook in the trunk. There are many other deformities that tell a story. They are often puzzling and difficult or even impossible to interpret, but add interest to a woodland walk.
The woods are an open history book. Vestiges are clues to the past and while tramping through the forests and thickets one is constantly reminded of all that has gone before.
