Or would he like Cope, as long ago as 1894? He at least, I believe (I am only quoting from the books of others), was pretty definite upon the impossibility of the rudimentary forms having survival values. Or, shall we have Delage—yet another Continental name, and a Professor in these subjects?—
“On the question of knowing whether Natural Selection can engender new specific forms, it seems clear to-day that it cannot.”
That is straightforward; that is not of yesterday; that is as old as 1903.
Do let me fire one more shot at Mr. Wells—it is such fun!
I take hotch-potch from a page printed a whole nineteen years ago, this further set of names out of a much larger number there given:—
“Von Baer, Hartmann, Packard, Jeckel, Haberlandt, Goette, von Sachs, Kassowitz, Eimer.”
I quote not my own list (for I am quite incompetent here), but the words of a first-class authority who draws up this list, including many other names, and ends:—
“Perhaps these names mean little to the general reader” (Mr. Wells being here the general reader). “Let me translate them into the Professors of Zoology, of Botany, of Paleontology, and of Pathology, in the Universities of Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Strasbourg, Tubingen, Amsterdam, etc. etc.”
“And who writes thus?” Asks Mr. Wells (getting a little nervous)—why, only one of the principal and most serious critics in Biology of nineteen years ago, and with a chair in Stanford University.
I should have no difficulty in adding to the list. I have quoted here more or less haphazard and hastily from my very general and superficial reading. But surely when a man tells you that you have no authorities behind you, and that you are making things up out of your own head, even such a list as this must sound pretty startling to him. Mr. Wells had no idea of its existence. If he had he would not have questioned it.