Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/123

 life and natural selection must be equally powerless"—a statement which is self-evidently absurd; for, although a man may doubt whether the alleged cause (natural selection) is competent to effect all that Darwinians here suppose, this writer only weakens his own case by showing that he is ignorant of such a cause having been alleged. And no less unfortunate is he when "attending to the suggestions of the mind" in the matter of protective coloring. For, after stating one or two cases of protective coloring, he makes the startling announcement: "Here, then, are examples of the adaptation of the species to the conditions of their existence which can not. . . . be by virtue of any law of nature; for we neither know of any such law, nor can we conceive of any that could produce the effects in question exclusively in the case of the few species alluded to without regard to the multitudes inhabiting the same localities." Here, again, the most charitable supposition we can make is, that the writer has never read the doctrines which he undertakes to criticise. For, if, after having read all the evidence in favor of protective coloring, he could think to dispose of it by so absurd a criticism as this, we must refuse to consign him a place even among those whom he calls "men of reasoning." If three animals—A, B, and C—inhabit the same locality, and if A is protectively colored, while B and C are not, what must we think of the reasoning which from these premises alone definitely concludes that the imitative coloring of A can not conceivably be due to the operation of a natural law? There may be a thousand and one reasons why B and C should not be affected by the law of protective coloring; yet, merely on the ground that all animals in the same locality are not so affected, we are told to conclude that all the thousands of cases in which animals are thus affected constitute no evidence of the operation of a natural law! Did ever our "man of reasoning" hear of a method of reasoning called the method of concomitant variations?

Lastly, the reviewer enlarges upon the absence of paleontological evidence of connecting specific forms; but, as we have already sufficiently gauged his competence to deal with such subjects as the imperfection of the geological record, I will not occupy further space by considering what he says, further than to show by one concluding quotation the truly appalling state of things, which "it can require but little reflection to perceive" would have been the result of organic evolution, had the world been so unfortunate as to have been subject to such a process. "It requires but a very small stretch of thought further to perceive that, so far from such a principle of creation affording reasonable grounds for the inference of the development of the species, according to the present intent of the term, the result must have been the absolute exclusion of all species whatever—the production of an indiscriminate mass, or rather mob of animals, extending in indistinguishable series from one end of the creation to the other."

Here I gladly stop. It is not to be expected that the majority of