“Let us briefly consider a few of them,” continued Mr. Midith. “A good farmer always reserves the best of his crops for seed. This is _artificial_ selection; that is, the best and fittest is artificially reserved by man for seed, which is to produce the next year’s crop. A stockbreeder reserves the largest, strongest, fleetest and most symmetrical individuals to propagate the race. “The horticulturist selects seed from the choicest flowers and fruit. You see all this is selection, but not natural selection; it is artificial, as you call it, because it is done by man. Man aids nature, so to speak; but nature unaided makes just such selection during the lapse of long ages. In the plant and animal kingdoms, especially in the lower orders millions must perish in order to give room and opportunity for a few to live. As long as muscle, and not reason, is the most advantageous weapon in the struggle for existence, the strongest, toughest, fleetest and fiercest ones survive and reproduce the race, and in this manner the superior qualities of the parents are continually transmitted and added to, in the offspring. “Organs develop by healthful use and become rudimentary by disuse. The blacksmith’s arm becomes strong by constant healthful use. The eyes of moles became rudimentary by disuse. The crabs and fishes in the Mammoth Cave have lost their eyes entirely by disuse, but the sockets remain as rudimentary remnants. If we should keep the right arm constantly out of use, and do all our work with the left, that is, beginning at childhood, there would be a perceptible difference in the size and function of the two arms in one generation; and, if this practice were continued for thousands of generations, use, disuse and heredity would no doubt aid in bringing about a vast inequality between the active and inactive arms. “There are vast transformations taking place before our own eyes, on earth the same as on Mars, which are wonderful proofs of evolution. For instance, the frog begins life as a fish and then lungs displace gills. Butterflies, bees and beetles of all kinds start out as grubs and undergo wonderful transformations. “Embryonic (pertaining to the rudiments of an undeveloped plant or animal) growth furnishes one of the strongest, as well as the most startling proofs of evolution. Each individual passes through all the successive stages which have preceded in the line of its tribal history. “In morphological structure, convincing proofs of evolution are found. We find fossil remains of animals that have gradually developed in size from a fox to your modern horse.