Birds and Nature Vol. 09 No. 5 [May 1901]: Illustrated by Color PhotographyVarious
History
Birds and Nature Vol. 09 No. 5 [May 1901]: Illustrated by Color Photography
Various
Birds -- Periodicals; Natural history -- Periodicals
As I have already said, Darwin neither invented nor discovered the
doctrine of Evolution. But he placed it upon a firm foundation by the
discovery of the two great factors to which I have referred, and, by
incessant observation and indomitable energy, he demonstrated the truth
of them beyond any reasonable doubt.
The proofs of the truth of Evolution are of two kinds—palaeontological
and embryological. The palaeontological evidence has found its way into
popular books, and even into some of the literary newspapers. The
history of the horses, of the crocodiles, of the rhinoceros is known in
detail. All the stages have been found which intervene between the
four-toed Eohippos of the Lower Eocene and the zebra and horse of the
present day. Thanks to the late Professor Marsh, of Yale, not only are
the successive steps in the evolution of the foot-structure preserved,
but so also are the various stages in the evolution of the teeth. The
occasional appearance of a three-toed horse points very plainly to a
three-toed progenitor, a striking example of atavism, that is, the
reappearance of a characteristic which has “skipped” one or more
generations.
If the principle of heredity be true, one would expect to find in the
development of animals and plants, traces of the line of descent. “If
Evolution be true, one ought to find, following back the development of
the egg, that specific details would vanish and give rise to more
generalized features; that the earlier the stages, the more the embryos
of related forms would resemble each other.” This is exactly what is
found, there being, in a vast number of instances, a remarkable parallel
between the palaeontological record and the embryological evidence. A
detailed examination of the facts would not be intelligible to anybody
who is not a practical biologist; but I am fully warranted in asserting
that every organism in the course of its life-history (technically
called ontogeny) is a recapitulation of the history of the
race—technically known as phylogeny.
There is other evidence in abundance. The phenomena named atavism is a
part of that evidence. Almost everybody has seen well-defined and
regular stripes upon horses, and nobody doubts that they indicate a
zebra-like ancestor. Again, in the inner side of the human eye is a
little red fold, known as the plica semilunaris, the remnant of an
ancestor which possessed a third eyelid, similar to that possessed by
some reptiles and birds of to-day.
Who are the supporters of the doctrine of Evolution? Practically the
whole scientific world. The late Professor Marsh, the distinguished
palaeontologist, when president of the American Association for the
Advance of Science in 1878, said:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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