EVIDENCE FROM DIRECT OBSERVATION AND EXPERIMENT
Within the period of human history we do not know of a single instance of the transformation of one species into another one, if we apply the most rigid and extreme tests used to distinguish wild species from each other.[[2]] It may be claimed that the theory of descent is lacking, therefore, in the most essential feature that it needs to place the theory on a scientific basis. This must be admitted. On the other hand, the absence of direct observation is not fatal to the hypothesis, for several reasons. In the first place, it is only within the last few hundred years that an accurate record of wild animals and plants has been kept, so that we do not know except for this period whether any new species have appeared. Again, the chance of observing the change might not be very great, especially if the change were sudden. We would simply find a new species, and could not state where it had come from. If, on the other hand, the change were very slow, it might extend over so many years that the period would be beyond the life of an individual man. In only a few cases has it been possible to compare ancient pictures of animals and plants with their prototypes living at the present time, and it has turned out in all cases that they are the same. But these have been almost entirely domesticated forms, where, even if a change had been found, it might have been ascribed to other factors. In other cases, as in the mummified remains of a few Egyptian wild animals (which have also been found to be exactly like the same animals living at the present day), it was pointed out by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire that, since the conditions of the Egyptian climate are the same to-day as they were two thousand years ago, there is no reason to expect any change would have taken place. But waiving this assumption, we should not forget that the theory of evolution does not postulate that a change must take place in the course of time, but only that it may take place sometimes.
[2]. The transformation of “smaller species,” described by De Vries, will be described in a later chapter.
The position that we have here taken in regard to the lack of evidence as to the transformation of species is, perhaps, extreme, for, as will be shown in some detail in later chapters, there is abundant evidence proving that species have been seen to change greatly when the conditions surrounding them have been changed; but never, as has been stated, so far, or rather in such a way, that an actual new species that is infertile with the original form has been produced. Whether, after all, these changes due to a change in the environment are of the kind that makes new species, is also a question to be discussed later.
The experimental evidence, in favor of the transformation of species, relates almost entirely to domesticated forms, and in this case the conscious agency of man seems, in some cases, to have played an important part; but here, even with the aid of the factor of isolation, it cannot be claimed that a single new species has been produced, although great changes in form have been effected. It is clear, therefore, that we must, at present, rely on other data, less satisfactory in all respects, to establish the probability of the theory of transformation.