"In this there is nothing astounding. The sun's various vibratory forces affect all living things on earth profoundly, each in a different manner. Without the light-vibrations earth's life would fade and die, the absence of the ultra-violet waves being fatal in time. Without its heat-radiations all life would freeze. And without this evolution vibration playing ceaselessly upon earth, all life upon earth would no longer be pressed upward through the paths of evolution, would slip back swiftly down those paths, down the myriad roads up which it has surged for so long. For not only is it this evolution vibration that forces earth's life upward on the way of change, it is this vibration that keeps earth's life from slipping backward!" Thus for Grant's statement. To Ferson and me it was as astonishing as to the rest of the scientific world, for not until then did we learn what work it was that had occupied Grant for so long. Yet even we two, I think, were surprised at the sensation that that statement caused. Always the work of Dr. Grant had been accepted almost without question, so great was his reputation and so brilliant his achievements. But with the publication of this amazing new theory of his, the general dislike of the man that had always lain latent, burst forth into a storm of criticism. It was admitted that the new vibratory force which Grant had discovered did apparently exist, since other scientists working on his data had corroborated his work on it. But it was denied, by Grant's numerous critics, that this force was what he claimed it to be--the cause of evolutionary change. It was impossible, they stated, that such a so-called evolution vibration could in reality be responsible for the course of evolution on earth. And it was even more absurd to suggest as Grant had done that were that force withdrawn, were the evolution vibration to cease to play on earth from the sun, the living beings of earth would slip swiftly backward on the road of change. The controversy over the thing grew, in fact, to a point of bitterness unprecedented in scientific discussion, a bitterness intensified by the comments of the saturnine and black-tempered Grant. In a series of sardonic statements, he compared his critics to those who had derided the work of Darwin and his fellows, and indulged in some rather acrid personalities. These in turn provoked fiercer attacks, and the whole matter grew thus quickly into an unseemly intellectual brawl. To Ferson and myself the whole controversy seemed a useless one, because, in the course of time, experimentation by other scientists would definitely prove or disprove Grant's theory. Yet neither of us ventured to suggest that to our bitter superior, and so the wrangle grew in intensity in the next days until it suddenly came to a head.