The illustrated story of evolution

by Marshall J. Gauvin

[Fig. 44] is a picture of Haeckel’s genealogical tree of humanity. It enables us to visualize in its main outline the history of the evolution of life. At the bottom of the tree are the monera and the amœbæ—tiny creatures consisting of a single cell. As growing life assumes diverse forms, the foremost creatures are represented by higher and higher positions on the trunk of the tree, or by diverging branches in the ascending order. Life is seen to progress from the simple to the complex, past the sponges, the molluscs and the fishes, through the amphibians, the reptiles, the marsupials, rising higher and higher in the scale of being, through lemurs, apes and anthropoids, until, at the topmost summit of the tree appears man.

And what has been the secret, the driving force back of this process of evolution? To understand the causes of evolution, it is necessary to understand the four fundamental laws of life. First, that while creatures resemble their parents through heredity, they nevertheless differ more or less from their parents—this is the law of variation. Secondly, that more creatures are born than can survive—this is the law of surplus population. Thirdly, that among living creatures, and owing largely to over-population, there is continually going on a struggle for existence—this is the law of struggle. And fourthly, that out of this struggle there results the survival of the fittest. Variation, surplus population, struggle, spell the survival of the fittest. In the struggle for existence, those creatures possessing the best bodies and the keenest minds, those that could best protect themselves from their enemies and obtain their food—in a word, those that were best adapted to their environment—survived, while the others perished. Those whose variations were unfavorable, the weak, the inferior, died. But those whose variations were an advantage, the strong, the superior, survived. In consequence of the survival of the fittest, Nature, throughout the unfolding ages, kept breeding from the best. And this practice could have but one result—the gradual improvement of every race of creatures.

It will be well to elucidate somewhat the principles thus summarily stated. First, then, as to variation. The offspring is never exactly like its parents, and no two creatures are ever quite alike. The stems, the leaves, the blossoms of the plants of any species, the size and contour of their fruits, vary greatly. No two blades of grass, or ears of corn, or grains of wheat are alike. Every tree has an individuality of form. The young of dogs, cattle, horses, sheep, of fowls and birds, invariably differ from their parents in size and form, in coloring and character.

Fig. 42.—The Brains of Anthropoid Apes and Men.

G-Gibbon. H-Chimpanzee. I-Orang. K-Gorilla. L-Bushman. M-Teuton. From Haeckel’s “Evolution of Man.”

So, too, in a large assemblage of people, you will see noses and ears of numerous shapes and sizes, eyes displaying a variety of coloration and expressiveness; you will observe that some foreheads are low and others high, some heads flat and others pointed, some round and others square; some men have long arms and legs, some the reverse; some have long bodies and short limbs, some the opposite; some have one ear, or shoulder, or hip, higher than the other, or are otherwise disproportioned. Moreover, great differences may be observed in the features of almost any family. The black haired mother has red haired daughters; the father’s features are bequeathed to his sons except, perhaps, for the eyes of one or the nose of another. Variation is a basic law of life.

Secondly, as to the multiplication of creatures beyond the power of Nature to sustain them. Darwin, in the “Origin of Species” says: “There is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate, that, if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair. Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years, and at this rate, in less than a thousand years, there would literally not be standing-room for his progeny.”

On the fertility of the elephant, Darwin remarks: “The elephant is reckoned the slowest breeder of all known animals, and I have taken some pains to estimate its probable minimum rate of natural increase; it will be safest to assume that it begins breeding when thirty years old, and goes on breeding till ninety years old, bringing forth six young in the interval, and surviving till one hundred years old; if this be true, after a period of from 740 to 750 years there would be nearly nineteen million elephants alive descended from the first pair.”

An illustration from the opposite extreme of the animal world will show that the breeding propensities of the largest existing animal are rivalled by those of the smallest. “The aphis or plant louse,” says Dr. D. Kerfoot Shute in “A First Book in Organic Evolution,” “is so very prolific that it has been estimated that the tenth brood of one female alone would contain more ponderable matter than all the population of China,—estimating this population at five hundred millions.”