HOW EVOLUTION ORIGINATED SPECIES.
It is when Evolution gives the particulars of these changes that it becomes especially interesting. We will, by way of lighting up the examination, consider a few of the stories it tells us as to how things came.
Spencer tells us how the backbone came to be, for the primitive animals had none. Prof. Conn quotes his account as follows: "He thinks the segmentation, the division of the spinal column into vertebrae, arose as the result of strains. Originally the vertebrate was unsegmented, but in bending its body from side to side in locomotion through the water, its spinal column became divided by the action of simple mechanical force." (Evolution of To-day, p. 65.) Thus what we usually consider a serious calamity, the breaking of one's backbone, became one of the greatest blessings, for what would we be without flexible backs, with which to follow the meanderings of Evolution?
Evolution also tells us how legs originated. The earliest animals were without legs. Some animal in this legless state found on its body some slight excrescences or warts, which aided materially its progress as it wiggled along, and thus it acquired the habit of using these convenient warts. This habit it transmitted to its posterity and they increased the habit until the excrescences, lengthened and strengthened by use, became legs of a rudimentary kind, which by further use developed a system of bones and muscles and nerves and joints such as we have ourselves.
Spencer's account of the origin of quadrupeds is that the earliest animals propagated by dividing into two parts, and in some of these the division was not perfectly made, and so the animal had duplicated ends, each of which had legs, forming finally the present quadruple arrangement.
Eyes originated from some animal having pigment spots or freckles on the sides of its head, which, turned to the sun, agreeably affected the animal so that it acquired the habit of turning that side of its head to the sun, and its posterity inherited the same habit and passed it on to still other generations. The pigment spot acquired sensitiveness by use and in time a nerve developed which was the beginning of the eye. From this incipient eye came the present wonderful combination of lenses, nerves and muscles, all so accurately adjusted that, of the sixteen possible adjustments of each part, only once in a hundred thousand times would they come together, as they now are, by chance.
Land animals began thus, according to Evolution: In a time of drought some water animals, stranded by the receding waters, were obliged thenceforth to adopt land manners and methods of living. Although, strangely, the whale by the same cause was forced to the water, for it was once a land animal, but in a season of drought was obliged to seek the water's edge for the scant remaining herbage, and, finding the water agreeable, remained there and its posterity also, and finally, the teeth and legs no longer needed, became decadent and abortive as we see them now. Darwin inferred the history of the whale's marine career from seeing a bear swimming in a pool and catching insects with its wide-open mouth as it so skimmed the water's surface.
The same drought produced another and wonderful change, for it is to this that the giraffe owes his long legs and neck. The herbage on the lower branches withering up, he was obliged to stretch his neck and legs to reach the higher branches. This increased, as all such changes increased, in his posterity, and finally after many generations produced the present immense reaching powers of the giraffe. So that the same drought deprived the whale of his legs and conferred them upon the giraffe.
The mere recital of these speculations will be enough for all who have not surrendered their judgment to the keeping of others. It seems scarcely necessary to assure readers unacquainted with the theory, that this is not exaggeration or caricature. We have simply abbreviated, and rendered into untechnical language, the accounts of evolutionary writers given in all seriousness and with high-sounding scientific terms. Any such work will give many specimens of similar accounts. Reply seems unnecessary, yet must be made.
1. All this is pure speculation. Not a single such change is known, or has been observed.