SSS Se SES aE eH) ASR: = as = Kean ee saat : Pech iot ? is pana oe ug ve ‘ieee peti? i” V Plas 4 PTA ei THE PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION BY GEORGE McCREADY PRICE THE PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION. Cloth, $1.50. POISONING DEMOCRACY. A Study of Present-Day Socialism. Cloth, $1.25. Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doc- trine of Creation, Cloth, $1.00, The Phantom of Organic Evolution By GEORGE McCREADY PRICE, M.A. Professor of Geology, Union College, Neb. Author of “QO. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation,’’ etc. New York CHICAGO Fleming H. Revell Company LONDON AND EDINBURGH Copyright, 1924, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY Printed in the United States of America ‘New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street PREFACE acting as the principal of a small high school in Eastern Canada, he began his serious study of the problem of organic evolution. His introduction to the problem was through the writings of such men as Grant Allen, Edward Clodd, and Samuel Laing,— not a very promising beginning, some of my readers may say. The study soon extended to Herbert Spen- cer, Huxley, Le Conte, and Haeckel, together with the various other classical exponents of the doctrine as taught during the closing years of the nineteenth century. | In my endeavour to get back to the original sources, or to the elementary facts, a vast amount of Govern- ment Reports and other documents had to be gone through; and for a time it really seemed to me that there must be something to the general idea of organic evolution, after all. But in the course of my investi- gations I came across an example or two of what the geologists now call “ deceptive conformity,’’ where strata alleged to be very “ young” occur in perfect conformity over wide areas on top of very much “older” beds, the two being lithically identical, so much so that, ‘‘ were it not for fossil evidence,” as the Government geologist expressed it, “ one would naturally suppose that a single formation was being dealt with.’ To me it seemed self-evident that no great interval of time could possibly have elapsed between the deposition of these two successive beds, | 5 Si twenty-five years ago, while the writer was 6 PREFACE which are so nearly identical in appearance; whereas the common interpretation of evolutionary geology said that a vast interval of time, represented by many millions of years, is here represented by this insignifi- cant line between two strata which look perfectly con- formable, with nothing to show for this long interval, either in the way of erosion or deposition. Soon afterwards I ran across something even more significant. I found some examples of an exactly similar conformity, but in the reverse order, with the alleged “old” rocks on top, this time, and the “young ”’ strata underneath, but with every physical appearance of having been actually deposited in this order of sequence. A great light began to break in upon my soul. I realized that possibly no fossil form is older or younger than any others intrinsically and necessarily. That is, these buried fossil forms possibly may not represent successive “‘ ages” in the long development of organic life; on the contrary they may all have been living contemporaneously, and may each have been buried in its own locality by whatever caused the geo- logical changes. Accordingly, if a catastrophic inter- pretation of the geological changes were adopted, and if we do not arbitrarily put some of these fossils in one age of the world’s history and some in another, but admit that they may have all lived contempo- raneously together, what sort of chance would there be left for a theory of organic evolution under such cir- cumstances? The two decades or more that have followed have been devoted to an almost continuous study of the problems of organic evolution, with results as shown in my published writings. Some of these writings have PREFACE 7 been devoted to the moral and religious aspects of the doctrine; others deal exclusively with the geological, the latest of the latter class being a Textbook in which the science has been reconstructed in such a way as to place it inductively on bare facts alone, with the theories separately stated. The present volume is an - effort to consider all of the more common biological arguments which are relied upon by evolutionists to prove their theory. While not by any means exhaus- tive, it is probably the most complete and specific of any of the many books written in recent years against the theory. There are certain classes of people for whom this book is not intended. It has not been written primarily for the standpat- ters in natural science. So far as my observation goes, these men do not read very much on the other side of these questions. For them these are closed questions, not subject to further debate. For instance, when Henry Fairfield Osborn rushed into print in criticism of Bateson’s Toronto address, deploring that such an address had been given and saying that it tended to “confuse ”’ the public regarding the facts of organic evolution, he naively displayed by statements in this attack itself that he had not at that time read Bate- son’s address. And, of course, it would be quite too much to hope that such standpat evolutionists would ever condescend to read such a work as this, except sub rosa. These men have long had a quarrel with me regard- ing the manner in which these new views are being pre- sented. They say that these alleged new scientific facts have not been presented in the regular or ethical way, that is, through the standard scientific journals 8 PREFACE first of all. And they scornfully refuse to consider al- leged facts which have not been first approved by some scientific society, or published in “ orthodox ” scientific journals, but which have first been issued in popular or even in religious periodicals. But how shall we ever make any progress in a fur- ther understanding of these matters, if the regular scientific channels are kept closed to the presentation of new ideas which seem heretical to scientific ortho- doxy, and then all ‘“‘ reputable” scientists refuse to read or consider any new facts or new ideas which are presented in any other way? Twenty-five years ago, when I first made some of my revolutionary discoveries in geology, I was con- fronted with this very problem of how these new ideas were to be presented to the public. And it was only after I found that the regular channels of publication were denied me, that I decided to use the many other doors which stood wide open. Perhaps I made a mis- take. Perhaps I should have had more regard to the etiquette of scientific pedantry, and should have stood humbly hat in hand before the editorial doors which had been banged in my face more than once. But I decided otherwise, with a full realization of the consequences; and I have not yet seen any reason for thinking that I really made a mistake. Some day it may appear that the reigning clique of ‘‘ reputable ” scientists have never had a monopoly of the facts of nature. Secondly, this book is not intended for that large class of ‘‘ progressive ” theologians who claim that re- ligion is merely a matter of internal, psychological ex- perience, that it does not have anything to do with the objective facts of natural science, nor do the latter have anything to do with religion. People who are PREFACE 9 obsessed by this bias or prejudice derived from the Kantian philosophy cannot be expected to attend to any such objective evidence as may be here presented. A complementary class is found among scientists, who affect to ignore any line of argument which brings God or the truths of religion into correlation with scientific facts. But I cannot thus put asunder what God has joined together; to me religion and objective facts are only different aspects of one great unity; and I believe that any method of handling any subject is correct and proper, providing it adheres to the well- recognized canons of logical and philosophical method. I regret to say that many of my fellow scientists have so confined themselves to some narrow specialty that they are not at home in any general discussion of the broader aspects of such a topic as this of organic evolution. Nor is this book intended for those people with chiefly a religious or a literary education who affect to ignore the discoveries of objective science. Such per- sons would take no interest in the argument presented in the following pages. Not only are they oblivious of the apparently strong arguments which have hith- erto been relied upon to establish the doctrine of or- ganic evolution in opposition to the Bible doctrine of creation, but most of them are quite unaware that any conflict between these ideas has been in progress. Such people may as well sleep on, amusing themselves in their dreams with the scholastic pedantries of a bygone age. But this book is written for all those candid people among scientific workers who still have open minds and are not cocksure regarding the dogmas which have been taught for two generations in the name of natural 10 PREFACE science, who are not quite certain that the doctrine of organic evolution is forever a closed question upon which no further light need be expected. It is also written for those among the so-called “‘ Fundamental- ists” who wish to be informed regarding the strictly scientific aspects of those main questions which are in dispute between them and the “ Modernists.” A third class of readers may be included, namely, the great general public, who may not belong to either camp, but who have heard the ringing battle-cries of the lead- ing champions of the conflicting hosts, and who wish further information as to what it is all about. G. McC. P. Union CoLLEGE, NEBRASKA. Contents Quo Vapimus? Tue NExt GENERATION THE STONES THAT Cry Out FOLLOWING THE GLEAM SPECIES AND THEIR ORIGIN . Too Many ANCESTORS . THE DEVELOPING EMBRYO THE BLoopy LADDER UBINAM GENTIUM SUMUS? . 13 21 44 67 91 113 150 179 197 “ Phylogeny, 7. e., reconstruction of what has hap- pened in the past, is no science, but a product of fan- tastic speculations.” | J. P. Lotsy, Evolution by Means of Hybridization. “If one scans a bit thoughtfully the landscape of human life for the last few decades, he can hardly fail to see signs that the whole battle ground of evolution will have to be fought over again; this time not so much between scientists and theologians, as among scientists themselves.” WILLIAM EMERSON RITTER, The University of California, I QUO VADIMUS? I HE theory of organic evolution has itself gone through an evolution or development. If we speak of its modern form as having begun with Buffon (1707-88), Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), Lamarck (1744-1829), or Oken (1776-1851), we may well speak of its having reached its culmination about the beginning of the present century, and as being now well along in its decline. It is still taught (or taken for granted) by all college and high school text- books dealing with biological subjects; but in every single department of natural science, those arguments which formerly were relied upon to prove organic development from the moneron to man, have been quietly undermined and discredited by modern dis- coveries. Soon after the beginning of the dispute between the Neo-Lamarckians and the followers of Weismann regarding the inheritance of acquired char- acters, Sir William Dawson declared that Darwin’s theory seemed to have entered upon a process of dis- integration. But with the progress of discovery we have witnessed this disintegration at work with the other parts of the general theory, such as the methods and the limits of variation, and especially the geologi- cal concept of a definite historical series of plants and animals in a well-defined order, which is the indispen- 13 14 PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION sable outline upon which any scheme of organic devel- opment must be built. The first criticisms of the evolutionary scheme of geology appeared in 1902 and 1906, with works by the present writer. Gradually this attack on the evo- lutionary outline of geology gathered strength; but it seems doubtful if any mere academic objection to the theory would ever have effected the overthrow of an idea which had become so integral a part of all biologi- cal thinking. It was the religious aspects of the revolt against the theory which gave it strength, just as it had been the atheistic implications of Darwinism as an “Anti-Genesis,” to use Haeckel’s term, which in the first instance had made the theory so popular during the closing decades of the nineteenth century. To-day it is largely the religious implications of the problem which still make it a popular subject of dis- cussion. But the problem of organic evolution is primarily a scientific problem, and ought to be discussed as such. I am never ashamed to point out the bearings of scien- tific facts and theories upon religious truths; but in the following chapters the discussion will be carried on along scientific lines, scientific reasons alone being adduced as proof, and the evidence of well-known sci- entists alone being brought forward in support of the facts presented. II But a remarkable situation must be pointed out in this connection. The recent discussion of the differences between the Modernists and the Fundamentalists has brought out the curious fact that the ones who pride themselves on — QUO VADIMUS? 15 their modernness are nevertheless aligning themselves with the reactionaries in science. For there are two quite distinct classes among scientists, so far as their attitude toward the problem of organic evolution is concerned. And it is surely an interesting phenome- non to note that the friends of the Bible, who have been accused of having a “ static ” religion, are never- theless progressives in their attitude toward modern science; while the so-called ‘‘ Modernists”’ are as static or reactionary in their science as they are “ pro- gressive ” in their religion. The obscurantist or reactionary group among bio- logical scientists may be illustrated by such men as Henry Fairfield Osborn, J. McKeen Cattell, Edwin Grant Conklin, H. H. Newman, Vernon Kellogg, and Karl Pearson. These with many others may be re- garded as the Old Guard, the standpatters, regarding the doctrine of organic evolution. The real progres- sives among modern scientists may be represented by such men as William Bateson, Thomas Hunt Morgan, Hugo de Vries, J. P. Lotsy, J. C. Willis, H. B. Guppy, Arthur Willey, J. T. Cunningham, and D. H. Scott, men who, though still retaining a general faith in the doctrine of organic development somehow, very clearly and very positively tell us that they do not know kow any such progressive development among animals and plants could possibly have come about. For many years members of the Old Guard have adopted a very lofty air toward their opponents. They have systematically ignored all opposing arguments which have been directed against the theory as a whole, though freely discussing any objections offered by “reputable ” scientists against any of the various details. But this lofty method of ignoring all direct 16 PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION opposition becomes suspicious when the opposing ar- guments have attained their present proportions. For it now becomes a question whether the reason for ignoring these arguments is not really a fear to meet them in the open. Furthermore, the ignorance which the Old Guard have been fond of charging against their opponents may have another side to it. In the present state of modern science, ignorance of biology and geology means chiefly an ignorance of the wealth of solid scientific arguments against the theory of organic evolution. Evolutionists may not be so anxious for Fundamentalists to become familiar with the facts of biology and geology, when they realize that these modern facts are being used against them and their theories. ! For the evolutionists to keep on ignoring these mod- ern scientific objections to the theory of evolution, may be an indication of their shrewdness; but for the friends of the Bible to keep on ignoring them would be an indication of stupidity. For it is a fact that the modern discoveries in heredity and variation, in embryology, and in geology, make the case against organic evolution vastly stronger than even most Fun- damentalists have supposed; and it is to a study of these various subdivisions of the subject that the reader is invited in the following chapters. ri In other words, all the important lines of argument which have commonly been put forward as evidence in favor of organic evolution will need to be considered in the following pages. They will include such lines of study as:— QUO VADIMUS? 17 1. Genetics,— Under this subject will be given the pertinent facts which are now known regarding such subjects as variation, adaptation, etc. The modern discoveries along these lines are the causes which have brought both Darwinism and Lamarckism into such disrepute as true explanations of how evolution has come about. But they leave untouched the larger or more general problem of evolution somehow. 2. Paleontology The evidence supposed to be furnished by the fossils has for over a hundred years been the real raison d’ étre for any and all theories of organic evolution. The writings of the present author were the first in modern times to point out the false logic of the current geological theories, as well as many examples and facts which are wholly inconsist- ent with the evolutionary arrangement of the fossils, upon which as an outline the theory of organic evolu- tion has always been built. Only a mere outline of the geological argument can be presented in the present work; the details of this argument will be found else- where in the published works of the present writer. 3. Embryology The remarkable facts brought to light by the study of the developing embryo during the early part of the nineteenth century, were scarcely second in importance as giving an impetus to the gen- eral idea of organic development. Under the enthusi- astic tutelage of Louis Agassiz, the world was asked to look at the wonderful parallelism between the growth of the individual from the one-celled stage (ontogeny), the alleged succession in time of the re- lated species (phylogeny), and the present classifica- tion of the modern forms in a systematic arrangement (taxonomy); and there is little wonder that in the hands of Haeckel and others this “argument from 18 PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION comparison ” became one of the very strongest, the one utterly unanswerable argument, which always left the opponent or objector dumb with a nameless stupe- faction. As we look back upon this argument and this situa- tion from the vantage ground of two generations of thought and study, we see that the effects of this argu- ment were quite grotesque. How well it illustrates the fallacy in logic of attempting to prove a question \ of fact by mere analogy. Many analogies, as we know, are wholly fallacious; while no analogy can really prove anything at all, it can only illustrate what is already known from other reasons. ‘Thus we see that the overwhelming popularity of this argument was merely an exhibition of the gullibility of the aver- age person, who has usually had little training in logi- cal processes, or who may even have a congenital in- capacity for careful, persistent thinking. With the collapse of the evolutionary arrangement of the fossils, however, the situation has become even more amusing to those who can assume a detached attitude upon the solid facts of science and watch the procession of dupes go by. For it now appears that the geological arrangement of the fossils is in reality only an artificial scheme, after all, just merely an ancient taxonomic series of the total forms of life formerly living on the globe. Thus we have two artificial series, in the above mentioned argument of Haeckel, and only one real or objective series. In this view of the case, it becomes a real intellectual amusement to watch the methods employed by Haeckel, Romanes, Le Conte, and others, in proving their theory of organic development. And accordingly, this argument from embryology has lost all its force QUO VADIMUS? 19 for every one who has arrived at the sophisticated view of geology and paleontology. «« 4. Natural Selection— A separate chapter is here given to the theory of natural selection. Not that this theory ever contributed any logical support to the general doctrine of organic evolution; and not that in this middle of the third décade of the twentieth century any formal refutation of this theory is needed. A dead lion needs no bullet. Nevertheless, this doc- trine has so permeated modern thinking in history, in sociology, in pedagogy, to say nothing of theology, and in so many ways is this theory bound up with the general concept of organic evolution, that a separate and formal treatment seems advisable. HY, Fifty years ago, or even twenty-five years ago, many thousands of well-meaning Christians would have been glad to make peace with the theory of evolution by a compromise. Many were willing to concede evolution as the origin of the plants and animals, if only a real creation were left for man himself. We now realize that this compromise was quite uncalled for. To-day there can be no thought of compromise in this way on the part of any one who is even moderately informed regarding the present scientific situation. All the groups of well-ascertained facts (in distinction from pure speculations) are now seen to be on the side of the doctrine of a literal Creation of all the great groups or kinds of plants and animals, and against any scheme of explaining the origin of these larger groups which could properly be called a process of organic evolution. As a whole, the theory of organic development 20 PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION from the protozoa to man is a blunder, an utterly impossible scheme, if the new evidence of geology be given any consideration. ‘True, atheistic materialism will always continue to deny the possibility of a world cataclysm; but even with this denial, in the light of the exposure of the false logic and pseudo-scientific methods in the evolutionary arrangement of the fos- sils, organic evolution can no longer hold up its head among the reputable sciences founded on facts and logic. | Organic evolution is dead, so far as thousands of intelligent people are concerned. This volume is merely a sort of funeral oration. Requiescat in pace. BIBLIOGRAPHY (Pro-Evolutionary ) Kellogg, V. L., Darwinism To-day; 1893. Evolution the Way of Man; 1924. Le Conte, Joseph, Evolution and Religious Thought; 1899. Newman, H. H., Readings in Evolution, Genetics, and Eugenics; 1922. Romanes, G. J., Darwin and After Darwin; 1892, Scott, W. B., The Theory of Evolution; 1917. Thomson, J. Arthur (Editor), The Outline of Science, 4 vols.; 1922. Van Loon, H., The Story of Mankind; 1921. Wells, H. G., The Outline of History, 2 vols.; 1920. II THE NEXT GENERATION I dwarf, both pure bred, we always get all talls in the first hybrid generation. There are no dwarfs, and no intermediates. And it makes no difference whether the pollen came from the tall and the ovule from the dwarf, or vice versa. In the language of the new science of genetics, the tall factor or character is said to be dominant, and the dwarf character is reces- sive. But when we plant the seed from these new hybrid talls, the plants of the second hybrid genera- tion always show a tendency to split up into talls and dwarfs. We always get 25 per cent which are talls and prove to be pure bred, breeding true ever after- wards; 25 per cent which are dwarfs and breed true; and 50 per cent which are talls, but by further propa- gation show themselves to be hybrids, breaking up in the next generation in just the same proportion as was stated for the first hybrid generation. And like Ten- nyson’s “ Brook,” this process will go on forever, and can be tested out by any person in any part of the world. Fac ie Similarly, if we cross a black and a white (albino) guinea pig, we always get all blacks in the first hybrid generation; and it makes no difference whether it was the father or the mother that was black. But in the 21 I: we cross a tall pea (Pisum sativum) with a 22 PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION next generation we get 25 per cent pure bred blacks; 25 per cent pure bred whites, just as pure bred in re- spect to their future progeny as if they had come from a thousand generations of unmixed ancestry; and 50 per cent which will be black in colour, but which will prove to be hybrids, breaking up in the next gen- eration in the very same mathematical proportions as before. On the other hand, if we cross a black and a white Andalusian fowl, we get something which seems at first glance to be different from the results just stated. For in the first hybrid generation the chicks are a queer mixture of colour, called “blue” by poultry men. In this case it seems that neither factor has been dominant, but that each has been of about the same potency. However, in the next generation we get the same old percentage, 25 per cent pure bred black, 25 per cent pure bred white, and 50 per cent hybrid blue. And thus it goes on ever afterward. In reality this case is not at all different from the one mentioned above; the apparent difference has come about because neither the blackness nor the whiteness was dominant, each proved to be equal to the other. II These facts illustrate the great principle that the various characters or factors of plants and animals are transmitted separately and unblemished in heredity. And the great wonder is that we did not find this out hundreds of years ago. Thousands of colours, shapes, sizes, and whatnots in plants and animals have now been quite fully in- vestigated according to these laws; with the result that we are now beginning to know something quite definite THE NEXT GENERATION 23 about combinations of factors or characters in plants and animals, just as we have already learned about a great many combinations which we can make in chem- istry. Of course, our knowledge of the possible com- binations in plants and animals does not at all ap- proach the completeness which our knowledge has reached in chemistry. Doubtless it never will be as complete; for these combinations among living crea- tures are a much more complicated process, and the difficulties in the way of biological experiments to il- lustrate all these combinations are a million times greater than in chemistry. But the two classes of combinations, the biological and the chemical, seem to resemble each other very closely, and the one class of phenomena is evidently just as much a matter of law as is the other. All these results among plants and animals have been worked out long since the day of Charles Dar- win. They are known as Mendelism; and were first brought to the attention of the world at large about twenty-four years ago. Since that time these new prin- ciples have completely changed the views and the theories of the scientific world regarding heredity. One of the assumptions made by Charles Darwin in » building up his theory of organic evolution, was that , plants and animals naturally tend to vary in all direc-; tions and to an unlimited degree. He recognized no law in connection with variation, for in his day no such law was known. But Mendelism is now show- ing us quite definitely How plants and animals vary. Just as definitely the new science of heredity is show- ing us the precise limits of these variations, and the limits of the possibilities in the way of the hereditary transmission of characters. And as Edwin Grant, 24 PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION Conklin has said, “ At present it is practically certain that there is no other kind of inheritance than Men- delian.” III The Darwinists used to emphasize the fact that no two individuals are exactly alike, that not even two leaves on the same tree are alike. All this is true; but we now see that this general fact has a very different meaning from that which Darwin read from it. We now know that these variations or differences between individuals of the same species are of two kinds, quite distinct from each other: 1. Individual variations, or fluctuations, as the scientists term them, which seem to be caused by the environment, that is by differences in heat or cold, in the amount of food, or by some other unknown factor. But these fluctuations never prove to be hereditary; that is, they are never passed along to the next gen- eration. 2. The other kind of variations are termed muta- tions or modifications, which are born with the indi- vidual plant or animal, which are the result of inheri- tance, and which are faithfully passed along in heredity either as dominant or as recessive characters. The changes which are induced in the plant or the animal during its lifetime, spoken of as the effects of its environment, that is, produced by variations in temperature, by good food or bad, by exercise or the lack of it,—all such changes are mere fluctuations, and are not passed along in heredity to the next generation. To use the current scientific phraseology, all such variations are “ acquired characters;” and scientists are quite agreed that acquired characters are never THE NEXT GENERATION 25 transmitted in heredity. ‘This is the same principle as the well-known impossibility of perpetual motion. A wheel by its turning is never seen to work up more and more speed, or more and more energy of rotation, merely by its turning, and by itself. It takes some external force even to keep it going. And it seems to be one of the best established principles of biology that the effects of the environment are never passed along from one generation to the next, unless in a few ambiguous cases which are clearly cases of degeneracy. On the other hand, all distinct characters or factors, whether of form, or size, or colour, or whatever, are modifications; and they are always faithfully carried along in heredity, according to the principles above mentioned which are now universally known as Men- del’s laws. IV When these new ideas regarding heredity were pre- sented about a quarter of a century ago, they met with a great deal of incredulity and opposition on the part of scientists; for they were very clearly contrary to what was at that time considered to be absolute scien- tific fact. The ideas then current, received from Dar- win and his immediate successors, had made no pro- vision for such facts as these; and it took a consider- able time for biologists to get their bearings with ref- erence to these new facts. However, the students of heredity have long since made up a modus vivendi in view of these new principles; and to-day these discov- eries of Gregor Mendel, with some related discoveries which have since been made, completely dominate the whole of biological research in the field of heredity. But the reader must not get the impression that 26 PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION under such a system as that spoken of above there is no room for anything really new. It is true, that. when we are dealing with only one pair of contrasted charac- ters at a time, as in all the examples mentioned above, there is not much room for any strictly new types, ex- cept in cases similar to that of the blue Andalusian fowls, which are a blending of the two contrasted char- acters. However, when we come to combine two pairs of contrasted characters, there is then room for two wholly new types to appear; and when more than two pairs of contrasted factors are blended there is room for many new types, the number of new types in each instance being capable of exact arithmetical prediction. For example, if we cross a round yellow pea with a wrinkled green pea, we get all round yellows in the first hybrid generation. This hybrid round yellow pea looks exactly like one of its parents; but this is be- cause roundness of form and yellowness of colour are both dominant characters. That this new pea is really a hybrid is proved in the next generation; for out of every sixteen in this new generation, we get nine round yellows, like the one grandparent, one wrinkled green, like the other grandparent, but three yellow wrinkled, and three round green,—these latter ones being wholly new kinds, so far as their direct ancestors are con- cerned. And a certain percentage of these new kinds will always come true to seed, thus proving that they are not hybrids, but pure bred. But it is evident that these three yellow wrinkled and the three round green peas have been made di- rectly by our method of combination, just as we can make new substances in the chemical laboratory by proper combinations. And if we were to go on to com- bine three pairs of contrasted characters, or more, the THE NEXT GENERATION 27 result, while still more complicated, can nevertheless be worked out and explained and even predicted with precision, though several quite new types may have been originated in this way. Thomas Hunt Morgan, of Columbia University, one of the leading workers along this line, has produced over two hundred new kinds of the fruit fly (Drosophila), almost every organ of the animal having varied in one or more particulars. Plant breeders have also originated many wonderful new types by directed and purposed crossings. In the year 1910, a red sunflower was discovered growing by the side of the road near Boulder, Colo- rado. Now the sunflower is peculiar in that it must have pollen from some other individual plant in order for its seeds to be fertilized, in other words, it must be cross-pollinated in order to develop perfect seeds. But there were no other red sunflowers with which to cross this stranger. So it was crossed with an ordi- nary yellow. Fortunately, the red colour proved to be dominant; and several pure bred reds were obtained. Sometime before this, the English growers had de- veloped a so-called “primrose” sunflower—a very light or straw-coloured yellow. What would happen if this primrose sunflower should be crossed with one of these pure bred reds? ‘The crossing was done; but, sad to say, nothing but reds developed. This was clearly disappointing; and if the experimenters had not known anything about Mendelism, or if all this had happened under the old regime of “ pure Darwinism ”’ of fifty years ago, probably the experiment would not have been carried any further. But the experiment was continued; these disappoint- ing reds were allowed to cross, and their seeds were planted. And in the next generation two wholly new 28 PHANTOM’OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION types appeared or were separated out, as the Meu delians say. A certain percentage of the total plants proved to be red, like one pair; another percentage was primrose-coloured, like the other pair. But there were two kinds which showed a surprising colouration; a certain percentage was of a wine-red or old-rose colour; while another certain percentage was of a dark orange colour. Of course, both the old-rose and orange sunflowers were wholly new types. It is probably safe to say that such colours in sunflowers had never been seen on earth before; for such combinations as pro- duced them can hardly be imagined to occur in the wild state. Yet if either of these types had been found growing wild and we had not known its method of origin, and especially if this new and strange colour had been accompanied (as it might easily have been) by new forms of leaf or of other habits of growth, we should without doubt have called it a new species; and scientists are now agreed that probably hundreds and thousands of just such Mendelian segregates have been listed and described as new species, among plants, and birds, and insects. In addition to the principles brought out above, we occasionally see what are termed “ sports,” or ‘‘ muta- tions ” arising suddenly in some way that cannot well be accounted for. J. P. Lotsy is of the opinion that the only source of variation of any kind is through hybridization, or through the crossing of contrasted unit characters. Other biologists do not agree with him; but it is not known how or why these sports or natural mutations do arise, if not because of some’ com- bination of the factors of heredity. At any rate, when such sports or mutations do arise, they obey the law of THE NEXT GENERATION 29 Mendelian inheritance in all subsequent tests of breeding. By means of combinations suggested by these new principles of heredity, many hundreds of new kinds of plants and animals have been manufactured in the seed patch or in the breeding pen; and these modern methods of breeding have introduced rule and system into the old hit-and-miss methods of former days. Doubtless we have thus produced very many kinds which if found wild in nature would forthwith have been listed as “‘ new species.” The work of Hall and Clements, as recently published in their monograph, The Phylogenetic Method in Taxonomy, has shown that our classification lists are overburdened with great numbers of distinct “‘ species ” which are nothing but Mendelian segregates, which will not stand the tests of breeding. As Professor William Bateson said in his address before the British Association at Toronto, De- cember 28, 1921: ‘‘ Plenty of Mendelian combinations would in nature pass the scrutiny of even an exacting systematist, and be given ‘ specific rank.’ ” V But where are we, in the light of these new facts? Have we at last solved the old problem of the origin of species? Do these principles let us into the secret of how new types of life have really originated in na- ture in the long ago? And is it true that now we need only to project these modern laws and processes back far enough into the past to account for not only spe- cies, but genera, and orders, and classes? In short, does this new view of nature help us to see how any one distinct type of life may have originated from some quite different type of life? 30 PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION When the laws of Mendelian combinations were first made familiar to the world at the beginning of the present century, many loudly proclaimed that the riddle had at last been solved. But further experi- ments and further study of the real results thus ob- tained have dashed the hopes of those who were look- ing to these new facts of genetics for light on the general problem of organic evolution. As a recent biological writer has stated the matter: “T well remember the enthusiasm with which the Men- delian theory was received, when it was introduced to the scientific world in the early years of this century. We thought that at last the key to evolution had been discovered. As a leading Mendelian put it, whilst the rest of us had been held up by an apparently impenetrable hedge, namely, the difficulty of explaining the origin of variation, Mendel had, unnoticed, cut a way through. But, as our knowledge of the facts grew, the difficulty of using Mendelian phenomena to explain evolution, became apparent, and this early hope sick- ened and died. The way which Mendel cut was seen to lead into a cul-de-sac.” (E. W. MacBride, Science Progress, Jan- uary, 1922.) Evidently the plain facts brought to light by experi- mental breeding are not much to the liking of the people who call themselves the representatives of the old traditions. Mendelism seems to be getting them nowhere, except up a blind alley, into a cul-de-sac. Robert Heath Lock gives us a very candid summary of the results of Mendelian breeding: “On the mind of a biologist familiar with what was known of heredity only about twenty years ago, these facts must fall with a sense of complete novelty. The ideas cur- rent even so short a time ago are not so much extended, or even altered, as replaced by an entirely new set of ideas. And it may be remarked in passing that the biologist of fifty THE NEXT GENERATION 31 years ago and more was much nearer to our present line of inquiry.” (Variation, Heredity, and Evolition, pp. 225-226; 1920.) Lock was a botanist; and it is well known that as a class the botanists have been much less free in accept- ing the doctrine of organic evolution. In his presi- dential address before the Botanical Section of the British Association, at the Liverpool Meeting in 1923, A. G. Tansley stated that in the light of recent de- velopments in botany the search for common ancestors among the great groups of plants would seem to be “literally a hopeless quest, the genealogical tree an illusory vision ” (Nature, March 8, 1924; p. 356). In commenting on these pronouncements of Tansley, Prof. F. O. Bower, of the University of Glasgow, declared: “At the present moment we seem to have reached a phase of negation in respect of the achievements of phyletic mor- phology, and in conclusions as to descent.” And he adds: “T believe that a similar negative attitude is also to be found among those who pursue zoological science.” (Jb. id.) In view of such statements as these, one is surprised at the confident agsertions of the public broadcasters of the evolution dogma, that all scientists are agreed regarding the stability of the theory of organic evolu- tion. Perhaps so; but it rather appears to me that these confident assertions of the evolutionary advo- cates are more like the whistling of small boys in the dark, a psychological device to keep up their own courage. VI Prof. Paul Kammerer, of the University of Vienna, as might be expected, also takes the ground that the 32 PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION discoveries connected with Mendelism offer us no help in solving the problem of how species have originated. In a recent publication he thus expresses the present situation: “ Aside from very limited fluctuations around a fixed cen- ter, the predispositions of these characteristics cannot become greater or less and cannot be changed at all. Just as in- numerable masterpieces of music are assembled from a few fundamental tones, just as a few fundamental tints magically reproduce multicoloured reality, so is the ability of the living world to assume different forms derived from comparatively few fundamentals.” He goes on to say that the present tendency in biology is to emphasize the unchangeableness of types; that what little change is admitted ‘‘ would be much too limited to bring about a development of species, and even still more limited to create even larger groups and classes. “The theory of evolution at the present time is pointing in that direction; it is returning to the theory of non-evolu- tion.” (Literary Review, Feb. 23, 1924; p. 538.) Of course, Kammerer thinks that this tendency toward non-evolution is all wrong; and he argues that only by a return to Lamarckian factors can the doc- trine of evolution be again started on the right road. Nevertheless, this testimony is of value in showing the direction of modern tendencies in genetics. Kam- merer’s own hobby, the alleged transmission in hered- ity of characters acquired by the parents, is much like the celebrated glamour of light referred to by Words- worth, it is a phenomenon which never was on sea or land. THE NEXT GENERATION 5) VII Some years before he died, Alfred Russel Wallace stated with some detail the reasons why Mendelism does not help the general theory of organic evolution: “On the general relation of Mendelism to evolution, I have come to a very definite conclusion. That is, that it has no relation whatever to the evolution of species or higher groups, but is really antagonistic to such evolution. The es- sential basis of evolution, involving as it does the most minute and all-pervading adaptation to the whole environ- ment, is extreme and ever-present plasticity, as a condition of survival and adaptation. But the essence of Mendelian characters is their rigidity. They are transmitted without variation, and therefore, except by the rarest of accidents, they can never become adapted to ever-varying conditions.” (Letters and Reminiscences, p. 340.) Vill There are really two difficulties in this connection. (1) Natural species, or well defined species as we find them in nature, are quite generally cross-sterile with one another, even when we take considerable pains to make them cross; whereas the new kinds which we have developed under Mendelian methods, or which we have produced under domestication among plants and animals, are almost invariably cross-fertile with one another. Darwin rather made light of this barrier of cross-sterility which nature has erected between natural species; but modern scientists see in this bar- rier something which we cannot produce artificially in any way, and which we have never yet seen arise under natural methods. In this barrier we seem to have something which quite effectually differentiates natural species from those Mendelian segregates which we can easily produce artificially. 34. PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION And yet it seems almost certain that very many so- called ‘‘ species” of the systematists or taxonomists have arisen naturally, even though we may not have hit upon the precise method. As Bateson remarks: “We may even be certain that numbers of excellent spe- cies recognized by entomologists and ornithologists, for ex- ample, would, if subjected to breeding tests, be immediately proved to be analytical varieties, differing from each other merely in the presence or absence of definite factors.” (Mendel’s Principles of Heredity, p. 284; 1909.) Still we do not know how this barrier of cross- sterility which separates most true species as found in nature could have arisen. As Bateson himself ex- pressed it in his Toronto address: “The production of an indubitably sterile hybrid from completely fertile parents which have arisen under critical observation from a single common origin, is the event for which we wait.” (Science, January 20, 1922.) (2) The other difficulty with which we are con- fronted by Mendelism is even more serious, when we attempt to use these facts regarding heredity to explain the origin of genera, families, orders, classes, and phyla. For we soon find that there are very definite limits to the kinds which we can produce in this fashion. We find that we are merely working around within a limited circle; for by back-crossing we can always work back to the original forms with which we started, just as the chemist can always work back- wards and get the original compounds with which he began his experiments. And just as the chemist finds that he can never get out of his retorts and test tubes any new element which was not already contained in the compounds with which he has been working, so THE NEXT GENERATION S15) does the Mendelian find that, no matter how wide a variety of types he may succeed in producing, he is still within the charmed circle of the original type of life, beyond which it seems impossible to carry any organic changes by either natural or artificial methods. IX The meaning of the chromosomes and some of the wonderful facts connected with the developing em- bryo, will be considered in a subsequent chapter. But it may be worth our while to consider the meaning of - the facts which we have been studying. The believer in the direct creation of the original stocks among plants and animals, from which the present wide diversity has arisen by much splitting or differentiation, may almost be pardoned for an “I told you so,” in view of the facts of heredity as we now know them. Darwin’s idea was that all living forms tend to vary in a haphazard fashion and in about all possible direc- tions. He thought also that these small variations would become accumulated in one or more directions which might ultimately prove “ useful” to the organ- ism in a new way. And when these accumulated variations had progressed far enough to make the new form essentially different from its original, we would have a “‘ new species.” In reality this view of the case now appears to be little else than a burlesque on the real facts of nature. We now know quite definitely how nts and animals vary; but these variations are by no means haphazard. We have already shown that these variations are of two classes, fluctuations, which are never hereditary, and modifications, which always have hereditary pos- 36 PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION sibilities, either as dominants or as recessives. The former are probably the chief ones with which we need to be concerned in any comprehensive scheme of evolu- tion; but they seem to be few in number, and besides there seems to be no method by which several domi- nant factors can become accumulated together in any one form, so as to make a new type of animal (or plant) which is essentially different from any of its ancestors. One fact of prime importance in this connection, is that any natural organism, whether plant or animal, seems to possess more potential characters than it can give expression to in any single variety or kind. Thus it becomes necessary for some of these characters to become latent, in order to allow others to be mani- fested. This tends to permit many variations within the bounds of the species. But this specific elasticity as thus exhibited seems to be very definitely limited within comparatively narrow lines beyond which we have never yet seen a single type pass under either natural or artificial conditions. We can produce varia- tions galore; but when we have made them we can repeat the process over and over again with the very same results; and we can by back-crossing return to the original forms with which we started, just as we can in the case of a chemical compound. Hence the believer in creation may well ask, where is the evolu- tion in all this? Or how do these facts of heredity throw any light on the problem of the origin of real kinds, any more than our manipulation of chemical compounds throws light on the origin of the elements? Quite obviously, in biology as in chemistry, we are only working within a definitely limited circle, merely marking time. THE NEXT GENERATION 37 And we can now better understand another remark by Professor William Bateson, to the effect that, ‘ had Mendel’s work come into the hands of Darwin, it is not too much to say that the history of the develop- ment of evolutionary philosophy would have been very different from that which we have witnessed.” Xx The present situation in biology was well stated by Dr. D. H. Scott, the paleobotanist, in his address be- fore the British Association in 1921, where he said: “ At present all speculation on the nature of past changes is in the air, for variation itself is only an hypothesis, and we have to decide, quite arbitrarily, what kind of variations we think may probably have occurred in the course of de- scent.” (Nature, Sept. 29, 1921.) He went on to say that, “ For the moment, at all events, the Darwinian period is past; we can no longer enjoy the comfortable assurance, which once satisfied so many of us, that the main problem had been solved —all is again in the melting-pot.” He thought, how- ever, that the general idea of evolution still remairts, “even if we hold it only as an act of faith,’ because he said that the evidence of paleontology is still un- shaken. Whether this is true or not we shall see in the next chapter. XI However, it may be well to note in passing that not all of our leading scientists have retained their confi- dence in evolutionary pedigrees based on the fossils. Dr. J. P. Lotsy, the Holland botanist, expresses him- self as follows; 28 PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION “ Phylogeny, 7. e. reconstruction of what has happened in the past, is no science, but a product of fantastic specula- tions.” (Evolution by Means of Hybridization, p. 140; 1916.) And he seeks to emphasize this point in the follow- ing language: “Those who know that I have spent a considerable part of my life in efforts to trace the phylogeny of the vegetable kingdom, will know that this is not written down lightly; nobody cares to destroy his own efforts.” (Jb., id.) It is worthy of note that Dr. D. H. Scott, in his most recent book, while protesting that Lotsy has probably gone a little too far, adds: “Like Dr. Lotsy, I have become skeptical of late as to most phylogenetic reconstructions.” (Extinct Plants, etc., p. 18; 1924.) Furthermore, Prof. A. C. Seward, of Cambridge Univer- sity, tells us that “The present tendency is to discard the old-fashioned genealogical tree with its wonderful diversity of branches,” as at all a suitable method of picturing the course of organic development. For he says that “a student who takes an impartial retrospect soon discovers that the fossil record raises more problems than it solves.” (Nature, April 26, 1924.) These are clear and unambiguous statements; and they are from the very leading botanists of the world. And it should be remembered that these statements are made by these men quite apart from the damag- ing evidence which has been presented by the present writer in his various works, a summary of which will be presented in the next chapter. XII Another summary of the present situation was given by Bateson before the American Association, at To- THE NEXT GENERATION 39 ronto, December 28, 1921. Parts of this address have been often quoted from, but the points which are of interest to us in this connection are well summarized in the following: “We cannot see how the differentiation into species came about. Variation of many kinds, often considerable, we daily witness, but no origin of species . . . Meanwhile, though our faith in evolution stands unshaken, we have no accept- able account of the origin of “species.” (Science, Jan. 20, tee) XII The definite conclusions which we may draw from all this welter of discussion and experimentation are not ambiguous, nor are they of small importance to the general problem of organic evolution. We seem to have in nature certain great groups of living creatures, call them what we will, genera, families, or tribes, but usually larger than the “ species,” all the members of each of which have probably descended from common ancestors. Within any of these great groups new types have appeared repeatedly, and may appear again under suitable conditions. Such new types, however, never seem to get outside the limits of the original types, strictly speaking. Possibly, under the very peculiar conditions subsisting immediately after the great world- cataclysm revealed to us by geology, distinct kinds (‘species ”) may have split off or may have become differentiated in ways or to an extent which we have never yet succeeded in duplicating by any of our ex- periments in genetics; but even these seem properly to be well within the bounds of those original stocks from which these species or genera arose. As we shall see later, the Family seems to be generally the original unit. But as for attempting to explain by the known 40 PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION laws of heredity and variation the origin of the fami- lies, orders, classes, and phyla, this notion seems ut- terly fantastic and unscientific. _ In other words, each of these great groups of plants or animals (genera or families), seems to be a strictly closed system, allowing of considerable variations within the system, but definitely limited in the number and the extent of these possible variations. Thomas Hunt Morgan has told us how these prin- ciples work out in the case of the Mendelian segre- gates of Drosophila, when he shows that the same mutant type has appeared over and over again. He says: “It has long been known, in a general way, that the same kinds of mutants reappear in the same species. We are now beginning to get evidence from pedigree cultures that the same types may occur in different species . . . [They are called] identical mutants . . . Such a case has arisen between the two species of Drosophila simulans and. melanogaster. Sturtevant has shown that there are thirteen mutants that are the same in both species . . “Tf, then, it can be established beyond dispute that simi- larity or even identity of the same character in different species is not always to be interpreted to mean that both have arisen from a common ancestor, the whole argument from comparative anatomy built upon the descent theory seems to tumble in ruins.” (Scientific Monthly, March, 1923; p. 246.) It is true, Dr. Morgan proceeds immediately to dis- claim the latter suggestion, remarking that the inevi- table ruin of the whole argument based on comparative anatomy is only ‘a first impression.” On the con- trary, this impression seems to stay by me for a long time; though I am willing to admit that with this evi- dence we must suppose the two species here spoken of, simulans and melanogaster, have had a common THE NEXT GENERATION 41 origin, and are themselves only equivalent to Men- delian segregates. But I cannot shake off the conviction that in all these Mendelian experiments we are only working within very definite limits, tramping over the same old ground time after time, though occasionally finding some little nook or corner which has not been hitherto explored. XIV No wonder the doctrinaire evolutionists are growing very impatient with these evident implications of the Mendelian results. In addition to the opinion of E. W. MacBride, already quoted, that these new methods of investigating heredity have led biologists into a cul-de-sac, the same author also declares that Mor- gan’s mutations “‘are pathological in character and have no analogy with the differences between natural races and species.”” Even Prof. W. Johannsen, of Den- mark, seems to be of about the same opinion, and says that ‘‘ The problem of species-evolution does not seem to be approached seriously through Mendelism nor through the related modern experiences in mutations ” (Nature, January 12, 1924; pp. 50, 51). However, to the real seeker after the ultimate truth of nature, these discoveries and tendencies are very illuminating. It is only the ardent believers in organic evolution to whom this whole subject seems distaste- ful, who complain that Mendelism has led them into a cul-de-sac, and that the problem of species-evolution does not seem to be approached seriously by these great fundamental facts regarding the heredity of all living things. 42 PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION Far from being of assistance in support of the theory of organic evolution, the laws of Mendelian ' breeding are now seen to be among the strongest proofs against those theories about the origin of plants and animals which have so long been taught to the world under the name of Charles Darwin. Julian S. Huxley has recently expressed his impa- tience at the indifference or even the active hostility toward Mendelian investigations displayed by many students of evolutionary problems. In a recent num- ber of Nature he has expressed himself as follows: “Tt is a matter of constant surprise why many who pro- fess themselves Darwinian of the Darwinians should not only not avail themselves of the new tool | Mendelism], but also evince positive hostility to it. The new principles are, indeed, the only tool we at present possess which is capable of putting evolutionary theories to experimental test. Yet, with a few honourable exceptions, most taxonomists and ‘evolutionists’ prefer to stick to speculative methods—specu- lative because incapable of being tested either by experiment or by calculation—and make no attempt to use the new prin- ciples in experimental work,—or, for that matter, even in interpretation.” (Nature, April 12, 1924; p. 520.) No doubt the opponents of Mendelism are right. These modern methods in experimental breeding are a nuisance; for they do not get us anywhere in explain- ing organic evolution. These standpat evolutionists had better stick to their ‘“‘ speculative methods.” By discarding the results obtained from the seed patch and the breeding pen they can go on in their dream- ing, without ever awaking to the uncomfortable feel- ing that they have been running up a blind alley, a scientific cul-de-sac. THE NEXT GENERATION 43 BIBLIOGRAPHY Bateson, Wm., Mendel’s Principles of Heredity; 1909. Bishop, T. B., Evolution Criticised; 1918. Bower, F. O., The Present Outlook on Desceni; Nature, March 8, 1924. Conklin, E. G., Heredity and Environment; 1921. De Vries, Hugo, Die Mutationstheorie; 1901. Lock, Robert Heath, Variation, Heredity, and Environment; 1920. Lotsy, J. P., Evolution by Means of Hybridization; 1916. Morgan, Thos. Hunt, and others, The Mechanism of Men- delian Heredity, Revised Edition; 1922. Morgan, T. H., The Bearing of Mendelism on the Origin of Species; Scientific Monthly, March, 1923. Newman, H. H., Readings in Evolution, Genetics, and . Eugenics; 1922. Punnett, R. C., Mendelism; 1911. III THE STONES THAT CRY OUT I HE most serious mistake made by Charles Darwin was his misplaced confidence in Ly- ellism. It will be remembered that Darwin as a young man had eagerly read Lyell’s Principles of Geology, that he had taken a copy of this work with him on his voyage in the Beagle, and that to the mem- ory of Lyell he had dedicated his record of the discov- eries which he made during this trip. And there is no doubt that the geological picture of a long series of successive forms of life in ever-ascending and increas- ing complexity and perfection of organization, was the ever-present idea in Darwin’s mind on which he un- dertook to build his scheme of organic evolution. It should also be remembered that Huxley declared Lyell’s system of uniformitarian geology to be “the chief agent in smoothing the road for Darwin,” so far as he himself was concerned, and so far as multitudes of others were concerned who reasoned just as he did. In our day, when the biological argument has been quite thoroughly investigated and has proved very disappointing, it is this background of the successive forms of developing life which constitutes ‘‘ by all odds the strongest evidence that we have in favour of or- ganic evolution,” as Thomas Hunt Morgan has de- clared. But in the light of the facts as we now know 44 THE STONES THAT CRY OUT 45 them, this confidence of Charles Darwin in the accu- racy of this long, developing line of geological life- forms, is now seen to have been a mistake,—a case of misplaced confidence. And I have said that this was the most serious mistake made by Darwin, in spite of his complete ignorance of the laws of heredity, as Mendelism has now revealed them to us. It is now almost a century since Charles Lyell first formulated and developed his system of uniformitarian geology. As we look back upon it from this vantage ground of the accumulated discoveries of nearly a hun- dred years, the actual amount of knowledge which was then possessed by scientists regarding those facts upon which geology must be built, is seen to have been most pitifully small and meagre. At that time Lyell and his fellows knew nothing of the conditions prevailing at the bottom of the ocean. Our knowledge of the condi- tions prevailing over three-fourths of our world may be said to have begun with.the explorations of the Chal- lenger Expedition, in 1872. Not only was Lyell ig- norant of the conditions prevailing over the ocean bot- tom, he was also obsessed with the dogmatic prejudice inherited from Cuvier that essentially all of the plants and animals found as fossils in the rocks were “ ex- tinct species,” quite different from the somewhat sim- ilar forms living in our modern world. This prejudice about “ extinct ” species was in its turn based on an ex- tremely narrow and unsound theory, likewise inherited from Cuvier, about the “‘ fixity ” or unchangeableness of species. It is true, that even now we are still quite unacquainted with the forms of life prevailing over large parts of Africa, or South America or Asia; but we have at least discovered many thousands of brachio- 46 PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION pods, or mollusks, or crustaceans, or whatnot in vari- ous parts of the world which are identical with cor responding fossil forms buried in the rocks of North America, or England, or Japan, or Australia. In another respect also we now see that Lyell was mistaken. He was quite convinced that there are now slow processes of diastrophism prevailing all over the globe. By diastrophism is meant the theory that the coasts are in places moving upward or downward with reference to the ocean at a slow, gradual rate; and Lyell’s doctrine of uniformity was largely based on the evidences which he accumulated to prove this doctrine. Upon this doctrine Lyell built up his system of uni- formity; and his thought was that if these hypothetical changes of level around the coasts could be prolonged over a Sufficient length of time, the bottom of the ocean might become dry land, or the land might in turn become the bottom of the ocean; and this would then explain why we now find sea creatures as en- tombed fossils in the limestones and shales of our plains and mountains. I do not have the space here to enter upon this sub- ject fully. The reader will find the matter considered at length in Chapter XIII of my textbook, The New Geology. To this work also the reader is referred for a statement of the facts now known which disprove the theory that the various kinds of fossil animals and plants have existed in a definite chronological or his- torical order over the earth in the long ago. This lat- ter was, as I have said; the thing upon which Charles Darwin built up his scheme of organic evolution, and as I have remarked above this constituted his most serious mistake. THE STONES THAT CRY OUT 47 II It would be an interesting study to trace the de- velopment in Darwin’s mind of this idea of organic evolution, for he no doubt owed much to the specula- tions of his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, quite as much as he owed to the theories of his predecessors, such as Robert Chambers, Lamarck, Cuvier, Buffon, and many others. We have not the space to enter upon these enticing investigations. We are here con- cerned chiefly with a brief account of the general les- sons to be learned from a study of the whole field of fossil forms as revealed to us by modern geology. The great comprehensive fact in this connection is that over great areas of our globe we find rocks now composing plains or mountain elevations which were once laid down by moving water, in most cases ob- viously ocean water, since these rocks contain fossils or forms of life which live in the ocean and some of which live only in the deeper parts of the ocean. The great problem of geology is to tell how these world- changes have been brought about. Lyellism says that the changes of ocean and land were regular and grad- ual or slow, similar to changes which are said to be now going on. The new views of geology tell us that this theory of uniformity is quite inadequate; and these new views say that the evidence, taken as a whole, points to some great world catastrophe, a real cata- clysm, as having taken place in the long ago. And it . says that if this great world-convulsion be regarded as an actual scientific or historical fact, we can then ac- count for essentially all the great outstanding problems presented by the stratified rocks and their fossil con- tents. We may now consider briefly some of the facts which are relied upon to bring us to this conclusion. 48 PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION IIL A good example to begin with would be the’ fossil mammoths or elephants which have been found in Northern Siberia. Most people have read of these huge creatures which have been kept in natural cold storage for so many thousands of years, their flesh so well preserved that it is readily eaten by polar bears, wolves and dogs. But many are not aware of the enormous numbers of these creatures which are found in these arctic lands. Just when they were first dis- covered is not known; but ever since the tenth century at least, there has been a regular trade in the tusks of these fossil elephants, this trade going both eastward to China and westward to Europe, with a regular market quotation of price current for this fossil ivory, just as for wheat or cotton. There is an annual ivory sale in London; and while the figures are not at hand for recent years, in the year 1872 it is recorded that 1,630 tusks of Siberian mammoths were placed on sale, though the next year only 1,140 were reported. One author estimates that the tusks of a thousand ani- mals are brought to market annually; while still an- other writer in a recent English magazine says that in one year he himself saw a thousand tusks. And since less than fifty per cent of the tusks actually found are in a state of preservation sufficient to warrant their being taken to these far-distant markets, one can have some idea of the enormous number of these animals which must have been discovered in the past hundreds or perhaps thousands of years. The localities where they are found most frequently are also remarkable. Mammoth remains are scarce in Southern or Middle Siberia; but they abound in the extreme north, along the shore from the mouth of the THE STONES THAT CRY OUT 49 Obi to Bering Strait. They are more frequently found in the banks of the streams or rivers, or where the ocean has undermined the cliffs on the shore. It seems that they become increasingly abundant the fur- ther north we proceed, the islands of New Siberia, far within the Arctic Circle, being one of the chief collect- ing localities. Indeed, the soil of Bear Island and of the Liachoff Islands is reported to be composed almost as fully of mammoth bones as of sand and ice. Under the extreme climate of these northern lands the soil remains continuously frozen to a depth of sev- eral hundred feet, thawing out only to a depth of a foot or two in favoured localities during the short sum- mer, thus allowing for the growth of a few wild flow- ers and bushes. Most of the specimens of fossil ele- phants which have been described by competent scien- tists have been found when undermined by some stream, a part of the animal appearing in a certain sea- son, next year a little more becoming visible, and the whole carcass having become loosened and having dropped to the bed of the stream only after several years of such gradual exposure. In this way, when finally loosened from the cliffs, the body is usually much decayed. But even under such conditions, the meat has sometimes been found so fresh as actually to be used for breakfast by the explorers who happened to make the discovery. These fossil ‘‘ mummies ” are not found in clear ice, as is commonly supposed, but usually in stratified beds of sand or gravel intercalated with beds of clay, all of the beds being continuous and undisturbed, prov- ing that they were buried in these beds as a natural deposit, and that the bodies of these animals had not fallen into some fissure in the strata. It very fre- 50 PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION quently happens that the animals appear to be in a semi-erect position; and thus when uncovered by the erosion of the surface, the tusks and the head are the first to appear. Not many specimens have been care- fully reported on by competent scientists; but it seems to be the ordinary thing to find the animals with their stomachs well filled with undigested food; while the blood vessels of the head are congested with blood, as in the case of animals suffocated by drowning. One specimen at least is reported not only with a stomach full of food, but with its mouth full also, showing as one author expresses it, that the animal was “ quietly feeding when the crisis came.” The modern Indian elephant is so nearly identical with these fossil mammoths that there can be no doubt they are of the same origin, even if we do not suppose the modern ones to be the direct descendants of the mammoths; for several other “species ” of fossil ele- phants are also found in various parts of the northern hemisphere. But the modern elephants are entirely confined to the tropics, and whenever they have been taken to cooler countries they seem always to have had a hard time. History records that Hannibal brought thirty-seven elephants into Italy, but that only one of these had survived the first winter, when Hannibal un- dertook to cross the Arno. The suggestion that the elephant might possibly live in the present climate of Northern Siberia, seems too grotesque even to be men- tioned here, if it had not been proposed by some peo- ple in an effort to evade the force of the argument pre- sented by these elephants in cold storage. The idea has been industriously circulated that these mammoths had a good coat of hair; and it has been argued from this that they may have been able to en- THE STONES THAT CRY OUT 51 dure a cold climate. However, from the specimen of mammoth skin, a square foot or so in area, preserved in the National Museum at Washington, D. C., it will be seen that the hair, while long, is very thin, and could not have been of much protection against the cold. Recently, however, the skin of the mammoth has been subjected to a careful microscopic study; and it has been found that the skin, like that of the modern elephant, had neither sweat glands nor sebaceous glands, a peculiarity confined to a few animals which live wholly in the tropics. M. H. Neuville, to whom I am indebted for these facts, goes on to say: “The very peculiar fur of the mammoth thus furnished only a precarious protection against cold, a protection analo- gous to that enjoyed at present by a few mammals of the tropical zone. Its dermis was, it is true, very thick, but no more so than that of existing elephants. It appears to me impossible to find in the anatomical examination of the skin and pelage, any argument in favour of adaptation to cold.” (Report of the Smithsonian Inst., 1919; p. 332.) Not many scientists have ever attempted to explain these fossil “‘ mummies ” without some sudden and ex- tensive change of climate. Thus, James D. Dana, the Nestor among the geologists of a generation ago, after speaking of the conclusive evidence of a warm, genial climate in these extreme arctic regions while the mam- moth and his companion animals were living there, said that this wonderful climate must have been “abruptly terminated,’ and must have ‘‘ become sud- denly extreme as of a single winter’s night,’ since which time it has never relaxed its arctic severity. Other scientists have used somewhat similar language, for these thousands of carcasses now found in such ex- 52 PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION cellent cold storage are indubitable proofs of these facts. But what was it that caused this sudden and ex- treme change of climate? Quite evidently this change of climate, whatever its cause, was associated with whatever buried these animals. But we are not pre- pared to assign a cause for these facts until we have considered several other groups of facts from other parts of the world. In other words, we need a general understanding of the causes which produced the geo- logical changes as a whole; but the facts which we have been examining do not tend to increase our con- fidence in the theory of uniformity. With some people who have not a full acquaintance with the facts, the popular notion of a “ glacial age ” comes in here as a possible explanation. But this myth of a great ice-cap covering most of North America and most of Europe, has been effectively dis- posed of by Sir Henry H. Howorth, in his three monu- mental works, the first of which, The Mammoth and the Flood, deals with the specific problem which we are here considering. One more fact needs attention in this connection. Sir Samuel Baker, the noted African explorer, tells us that the body of an elephant when killed in the water does not sink to the bottom, but from the first the body floats with sufficient buoyancy to support two men or more. In contrast with this fact, the bodies of all other animals, so far as we are aware, sink to the bottom of the water, and only after decomposition has set in, a period varying from a few hours to sev- eral days, will the body rise to the surface because of its being distended with gases. But the body of the elephant will float on water from the very first. Ac- THE STONES THAT CRY OUT 53 cordingly, if we may suppose that a great aqueous convulsion was the prime cause of the destruction of all these animals, it is evident that the bodies of the elephants would remain floating on the surface; and then if a marked falling of temperature accompanied this flood of waters, these bodies of the elephants, or at least many of them, would be found frozen in the surface ice, and if the latter were subsequently buried, the bodies of these elephants would also share the same fate and be covered by beds of sand or gravel. IV Another good example for study in this connection would be the fossil fishes. In many parts of the world, as in the Green River shales of Wyoming; the Lom- poc beds, near Santa Barbara, California; the black Shales of Glarus, Switzerland; or those of Monte Bolca, Italy; or of Solenhofen, Germany; large areas are found with the rocks packed full of fishes in a re- markable condition of preservation. Not only is the full outline of the fishes preserved, but even the soft parts are exquisitely shown, thus giving proof that these animals were buried alive, or at least before de- composition had set in. Nothing but some extraordi- nary convulsion of nature is adequate to explain the facts as we find them. As is well known, the Devonian rocks were formerly known as the Old Red Sandstone. These strata, found in almost all parts of the world, are so characterized by the remains of vertebrate fishes that they were often assigned to an “ Age of Fishes,” by the evolu- tionary geologists of a century ago. Hugh Miller has given us a very picturesque account of the fossils of the Devonian as they occur in various parts of Scot- 54 PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION land, and after saying that the condition in which these fossils are found presents us with ‘‘ a wonderful record of violent death falling at once, not on a few individ- uals, but on whole tribes,” he says that “‘ some terrible catastrophe involved in sudden destruction the fish of an area at least a hundred miles from boundary to boundary, perhaps much more.” And he asks, “ By what quiet but potent agency of destruction were the innumerable existences of an area perhaps ten thou- sand square miles in extent annihilated at once? ” In many places in America as well as in Europe, where remains of fishes are found in such enormous numbers, the shale or slate is so saturated with oil that the rock will burn almost like coal. Indeed, Prof. J. M. MacFarlane, of the University of Pennsylvania, has recently issued a book, entitled Fishes the Source of Petroleum, (1923), in which he argues that these fish remains are the chief if not the sole source of our mineral oils. Formerly it was thought that these ex- traordinary beds of fish were confined largely to the Devonian. Ina similar way it used to be thought that the coal beds were confined to what was termed the Carboniferous. But it is now known that coal beds occur in every one of the formations from the De- vonian onwards; and in the same way it is now known that these great accumulations of fishes are also found in every single one of the formations from the Silurian to the Tertiary. We have already shown that these names of the geologic systems have no cheonalogicl value, but are simply convenient names for classifica- tion purposes. From all this we learn that these tell- tale fish deposits occur in all parts of the globe and in almost all of the various formations. The evolu- tionary geologist would have these deposits formed by ne THE STONES THAT CRY OUT 55 many separate catastrophes; but it would be more scientific and more logical to suppose that they are all instances of what happened during that great world catastrophe which seems to be the clear and unequiv- ocal testimony of the rocks in all parts of the globe. And if our petroleum deposits were produced by these buried fish remains, we can judge of the enormous quantities of fish which must have been buried at this time. In this book by Professor MacFarlane, which was published by the Macmillan Co. only last year (1923), we have an unusually clear and forceful argu- ment to prove that fishes, buried in uncounted millions and in some sudden and catastrophic manner in each particular instance, must have furnished the organic materials from which by chemical change our immense petroleum deposits have been produced. We have space here to quote only a sentence or two from the summary of his argument. Thus he says: “In review of the evidence presented in preceding chap- ters, the author is compelled to accept that fishes are the source of practically the entire supply of crude petroleum, also of natural petroleum derivatives like the asphaltites. For fishes alone meet the requirements of the case” (p. 384). Or again: “Tt can be definitely said that, through all of the geologic formations in which fish remains occur, a large proportion of the remains consist of entire fishes or of sections in which every scale is still in position; every fin is extended as in life attitude; the bones of the head, though often crushed in and broken through subsequent diastrophic strains, still retain almost the normal positions; while near them may be coprolites of the same or some other types of fish in a prac- tically entire state. All of this conclusively proves that when ~ 56 PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION myriads of such fishes were simultaneously killed, their bodies were deposited or stranded within a few hours or a few days at most after death, so that the flesh, the liver, the alimentary canal and other soft parts were unquestionably enclosed and intact, when sediment sealed them up. For numerous ex- periments that the writer has undertaken prove, that even after five to six days dead fishes begin to lose scales, to be attacked and nibbled at by other fishes, by crabs, and by smaller fry, while as yet the flesh and entrails are enclosed, though softened. We unhesitatingly conclude then that a large proportion of the fishes met with in ‘fish beds’ and oil strata were stretched out and preserved intact either immedi- ately or within a day or two at most after death” (p. 400). De la Beche, the first Director of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, was quite positive in stating that not only the fishes but also most of the larger ani- mals must have been buried suddenly in a very abnor- mal manner. “A very large proportion of them,” he declares, “must have been entombed uninjured, and many alive, or, if not alive, at least before decomposi- tion ensued” (Theoretical Geology, p. 265, London, 1834). And in this language this accomplished geolo- gist is speaking not of the fishes alone, but of the fos- siliferous deposits in general. V If we turn to the invertebrates, we find the same tell-tale evidence from the fossils that they were buried in some extraordinary way. In millions of instances the two valves of pelecypod mollusks are found ap- plied, with the interior of the shells empty, thus prov- ing that these shells had not been washed about by the currents after the animals had died; for these shells tend to gape or open just as soon as the animal dies. The brachiopods are also usually found with the shells THE STONES THAT CRY OUT 57 empty, though there is a small hole in the hinge region of these shells which would admit mud if the shell is subjected to washing by currents of water after the animal is dead. When these valves are found closed and the interior hollow it is proof that the death of the animals and their burial was probably sudden. Further evidence in this direction is found in the fact that our modern brachiopods are mostly found in the deep waters only, where there are absolutely no cur- rents under the normal or modern condition. Indeed, the burial of these deep-sea animals in well- stratified beds, often mixed up with other animals de- rived from the lands, or still more often interbedded with sandstones or other deposits clearly derived from the land, is clear proof that somehow the normal con- ditions of land and water must have been greatly dis- turbed. For in the depths of the ocean there are now no currents whatever, no movement of the waters to disturb the most fragile oozes which now cover all of the ocean bottom. Accordingly, nothing but a veri- table convulsion of nature could interbed these de- posits from the bottom of the ocean with those sands and gravels which are solely the products of land erosion. vi These abnormal conditions are capable of endless illustration from the rocks. The strata of almost every mountain range on earth contain plenty of evi- dence of these abnormal conditions. In my Funda- mentals of Geology, and also in my New Geology, I have considered this subject at considerable length. To these works the reader must be referred for further details. Here it may suffice to say that the concurrent * 58 PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION . testimony of the geological deposits throughout the world is that some very profound and very enormous catastrophe must have happened to our world. some- time in the long ago. The cumulative evidence on this point can no longer be ignored or denied. That some great world-convulsion must have taken place since man and the other living spectes of plants and animals were alive, is as well established an historical event as is the destruction of Carthage or the fall of Baby- lon. And any scheme of organic evolution which ignores this great world event is simply building upon the sands. No such scheme has the slightest scien- tific value for the world as a whole, if it goes on abso- lutely ignoring this clearly demonstrated fact. Every theory regarding the changes which may have taken place in the structures and instincts of animals and plants, must make a full allowance for this great world- event, the most stupendous physical fact within the, direct scope of human knowledge. Accordingly, due allowance must be made for the consequences of this great event in any system of biology or of organic philosophy which expects to build permanently upon facts. VII Let us take some more specific examples. And let us consider the largest creatures which ever walked © the earth, the dinosaurs. ‘‘ One of the most inexpli- cable of events,” remarks R. S. Lull of these creatures, “is the dramatic extinction of this mighty race.” He means that there is no well established reason for their extinction at all, least of all for their apparent simul- taneous extinction over the whole world. This is what makes their extinction so “ dramatic;” for we must re- THE STONES THAT CRY OUT 59 member that these great creatures were not by any means confined to North America, but also lived in Europe, in East Africa, and throughout the central part of Asia, perhaps also elsewhere. And Henry Fairfield Osborn declares that ‘‘ The cutting off of this giant dinosaur dynasty was nearly if not quite simul- taneous the world over.” Dr. Lull was making no chance remark when he called the extinction of this mighty race “ dramatic.” But we have already seen that many other extinc- tions of races were probably very dramatic. If we take the elephants and their companion Pleistocene mammals which used to live in North America, it is impossible to avoid the conviction that they were killed off by some most extraordinary physical event. As Dr. O. P. Hay remarks, the animals found in the Pleistocene strata of North America include the great ’ ground sloths, the glyptodons, many species of horses, / several tapirs, numerous kinds of giant pigs, camels, the extinct relatives of the musk-oxen, extinct bisons, many elephants, mastodons of three or four genera, the giant beaver, and the sabertooth tiger. As this author remarks, “ Genera and families, even orders, were wiped out of existence, and these included some of the noblest animals that have graced the face of the earth.” (The Pleistocene of North America and its Vertebrated Animals, p. 5; Carnegie Institution; 1923.) But when we further remember that the long popu- lar method of arranging the fossils off in an alleged chronological order is now known to have been a big blunder, it is very evident that we have a most aston- ‘ishing collection of fossils which must very generally have been killed off and buried by flowing water in Pes 60 PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION some most extraordinary way. If the fishes were very generally throughout the world killed in such millions as to be the chief if not the sole source of our great petroleum deposits, if the dinosaurs were probably con- temporary with the gigantic mammals of the Pleisto- cene, and if the shellfish and other invertebrates also present us with similar evidences of having been sud- denly overwhelmed, surely we have a most complete vindication of the record of that most stupendous of physical events, the Deluge of the Scriptures. ‘“ The world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.” Viti One of the most complete statements of the argu- ments for organic evolution is a book, entitled Read- ings in Evolution, Genetics, and Eugenics, by Dr. H. H. Newman, of the University of Chicago. It is a sort of extended scrap-book made up of elaborate extracts from the classical evolutionary writers, with many comments of the editor. Dr. Newman gives the usual arguments based on the fossils of the horse, the elephants, and the camels which have been arranged in an alleged historical order in many of the great mu- seums. But he undertakes to summarize the geolog- ical evidence for organic evolution in ten statements (pp. 69, 70). Of these ten facts, not one is absolutely and unqualifiedly true; while some of them are per- fectly grotesque as summaries of the facts now known from the rocks. I need not discuss these ten points in detail here. Suffice it to say that these statements are antiquated, they exhibit a begging of the main question in almost every instance, and are wholly mis- leading and deceptive as a statement of the facts of THE STONES THAT CRY OUT 61 geology which bear on the problem of organic evolu- tion. But presumably they were the best Dr. Newman could do. For the details of the geological argument I must refer the reader again to my other works, particularly to my more recent one, The New Geology, a Textbook for Colleges (1923). But in view of the utter collapse of the chronological distinctions between the various fossils which have been so long relied upon by evolu- tionists, I do not think that the well-informed reader can have any profound faith still remaining in the line of evidence for evolution based on geology. And yet we should bear in mind that no less an authority than Thomas Hunt Morgan has told us that ‘‘ The direct evidence furnished by fossil remains is by all odds the strongest evidence that we have in favour of organic evolution ” (Critique, p. 24). IX Ere closing this chapter we should note again the almost complete despair among the modern botanists regarding the tracing out of the lines of evolution among the great groups of plants. The present situa- tion among the students of botany may be illustrated by the latest work of D. H. Scott, Extinct Plants and Problems of Evolution (1924). No one can read this work, together with the recent declarations of such men as H. B. Guppy, A. G. Tansley, and A. C. Seward, without feeling that these men are about giving up any hope of being able to strengthen the argument for or- ganic evolution by any study of the evidence furnished by fossil botany. This subject is too large a one to present here in detail, though a few representative quotations may not be amiss. ~ 62 PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION In 1916, Dr. J. P. Lotsy had declared: ‘‘ Phylogeny, z. e. reconstruction of what has happened in the past, is no science, but a product of fantastic speculations ” (Evolution by Means of Hybridization, p. 140). Scott thinks that this may be going a little too far; but he says, “‘ Like Dr. Lotsy, I have become skeptical of late as to most phylogenetic reconstructions ” (Ex- tinct Plants, p. 18). He proceeds to say: “The evolution of plants, so far as the record shows, does not present a uniform progression, but rather a series of di- verse periods of vegetation, each with a character of its own” (p. 215). Exactly so; these diverse groups of vegetation, “‘each with a character of its own,” are merely the buried floras of the ancient world, and undoubtedly all lived contemporary with each other. It was only by a confusion of thought that the early geological explorers thought they could place the various geo- logical ‘‘ formations” in different ages and could ar- range them in a real chronological order, though these formations have had to be made up from scattered localities all over the world. And it is by the per- petuation of this blunder that most people still seem to think there really must be some reality to the long- drawn-out chronological arrangement of these scattered floras and faunas, as taught us these many decades by evolutionary geology. The zoologists have had things 1 Notre.—The finding of a large one-toed horse’s foot, well carbonized, in a coal bed of the Laramie (Cretaceous) for- mation at Scofield, Utah, is like many other similar discov- eries which have been constantly occurring during the entire history of geological investigations, It is discredited because THE STONES THAT CRY OUT 63 pretty much their own way, and have been able to present their little artificially arranged series of ani- mals in such a way as to make these animals “ present a uniform progression ” very nicely; but the botanists have not been much consulted in the serial arrange- ment of the geological formations, and so now we hear them complain that their fossil plants do not “ present a uniform progression,” as Scott expresses it. He tells us some of the ways in which the great groups of plants do “not present a uniform progres- sion ’’: “The record [geological series] shows no time-limit be- tween Monocotyledons and Dicotyledons, and throws no light on the possible derivation of the one class from the other. Both extend back far into the Cretaceous, and throughout the whole time the Dicotyledons appear more numerous than the Monocotyledons, as they are at the present day” (p. 43). The large and important group of Pteridosperms, with the habit of Ferns but bearing highly organized seeds on their fronds, have seemed to the evolutionists a promising half-way stage between the true ferns and the true seed-plants. But Scott tells us that this ar- rangement cannot be made to work. For: it is so contrary to the prevailing theories. The finding of an angiosperm stem in a coal-ball of the Carboniferous of Harrisburg, Illinois, is almost equally disconcerting to the evolutionary theories; but it has been announced in an “ or- thodox” scientific manner (Dr. A. C. Noe, “A Paleozoic Angiosperm,” Journal of Geology, May-June, 1923, pp. 344- 347), and accordingly must now be regarded as “ authentic.” But all such discoveries only tend to prove that a fossil 1s not necessarily old because it is found in a Cambrian or an Ordovician bed, and another fossil is not necessarily young because it is found in a Tertiary deposit. 64 PHANTOM OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION “On a review of the whole evidence, the former belief in the origin of the Pteridosperms (and through them-of the Seed-plants generally) from Ferns must be given up. There is no reason to believe that Ferns, as botanists understand the name, are any older than the Pteridosperms themselves; the points in common between the two groups now appear to be homoplastic, and not indicative of the descent of the one from the other. Thus the origin of the Seed-plants is still an unsolved problem” (pp. 207-8). “On the whole, one is impressed with the independence of the various phyla of vascular plants all through the geo- logical record” (p. 202). Evidently there is not much encouragement to evolu- tionary speculations here. Even when they have had the world to pick from, and have been able (except for the predominating influence of the zoologists) to ar- range the various scattered “‘ formations ” according to their liking, the botanists have not been able to make their fossil plants ‘‘ present a uniform progression.” It is really too bad. xX The fact is, geology furnishes no true evidence for the theory of organic evolution. On the contrary, if we look at the fossil world in a broad way, it is im- possible to avoid the conviction of a catastrophic death and burial of the vast majority of the animals and plants found as fossils in the strata. Lyell and his fol- lowers have always tried to blunt the force of this evi- dence by formulating an alleged chronological scheme of the geological deposits all over the globe, so as to have these burials take place a few at a time, on a sort of instalment plan. But the methods employed to formulate this alleged chronology have always been regarded by the keenest and most logical thinkers as THE STONES THAT CRY OUT 65 a burlesque on true scientific methods; and as I have shown in my special works on this subject, these methods must be abandoned, and a truer and more scientific theory of the science must be allowed to give us the bare facts, without their being overlaid so com- pletely by evolutionary theory. < | oO oy ae 4 = = gee —- ee = S cS. = = a W QH366 .P945 The phantom of organic evolution ical HON + 1012 00146 4132