THE EPIC OF EVOLUTION 493 



that has developed a bright scarlet belly and a taste nauseous to 

 birds, in the course of its adventures in adaptation to an environ- 

 ment unfortunately shared with toad-devouring storks. When a 

 stork by chance seizes a bombinator, the victim is usually ejected 

 because of the acrid taste produced by the skin-glands of the toad. 

 Neither stork nor toad gains anything by this performance, and, to 

 lessen the likelihood of its occurrence, whenever a stork swoops down 

 upon a pond where bombinators are socially congregated around 

 the margin, the little animals quickly flop over and expose their 

 conspicuous scarlet bellies to view, thus furnishing red-light signals 

 for the stork to "stop," before an accident happens that both would 

 regret. 



A great variety of defensive devices, such as armor, shells, spines, 

 fangs, horns, hoofs, and stingers, have been developed in different 

 animals. The nonchalant skunk is so well assured by its defensive 

 fire extinguisher mechanism that it does not run away from danger. 

 This may be why so many of them, upon the intrusion of the jugger- 

 nautlike automobiles into their habitat, are run over and killed, 

 while the more cautious rabbits and other wayside animals escape. 



Plants display a great range of biological adaptations in the attempt 

 to defend themselves against browsing herbivores and devouring 

 insects. Some plants have bitter or unpalatable chemical substances 

 lodged in their tissues. Cacti and thistles bristle with discouraging 

 spines, while shrubs and trees are provided with tough resistant bark. 

 Desert plants develop fuzzy hairs that hinder transpiration, or are 

 coated over with an impervious varnish that tends to prevent the 

 loss of water from their tissues. 



There may be still other categories of adaptations, and some of 

 the foregoing examples could perhaps be assigned to other classifica- 

 tions, but the undeniable fact remains that adaptations of infinite 

 variety characterize the living world about us. 



EVOLUTION 



Evolution and Miraculous Creation 



Perhaps two of the most famous scholars of the ancient English 

 universities of Oxford and Cambridge were John Milton (1608-1674) 

 and Charles Darwin (1809-1882). Each wrote an immortal book 

 upon the same epic theme of how living things in this world came 

 to be as they are. Milton's book was entitled Paradise Lost, and 



