6 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



tinct specieS; like the pear-tree and the apple-tree, resemble 

 each other more closely, as regards their external or somatic 

 characters, than two varieties belonging to one and the same 

 species. Nevertheless, the pear-tree and the apple-tree are so 

 unlike in their germinal (genetic) composition that they can- 

 not even be crossed. 



According to all theories of transformism, new species arise 

 through the transformation of old species, and hence evolu- 

 tionists are at one in affirming the occurrence of specific 

 change. When it comes, however, to assigning the agencies 

 or factors, which are supposed to have brought about this 

 transmutation of organic species, there is a wide divergence 

 of opinion. The older systems of transformism, namely, 

 Lamarckism and Darwinism, ascribed the modification of 

 organic species to the operation of the external factors of 

 the environment, while the later school of orthogenesis at- 

 tributed it to the exclusive operation of factors residing within 

 the organism itself. 



Lamarckism, for example, made the formation of organs 

 a response to external conditions imposed by the environ- 

 ment. The elephant, according to this view, being maladjusted 

 to its environment by reason of its clumsy bulk, developed a 

 trunk by using its nose to compensate for its lack of pliancy 

 and agility. Here the use or function precedes the organ 

 and molds the latter to its need. Darwinism agrees with 

 Lamarckism in making the environment the chief arbiter of 

 modification. Its explanation of the elephant's trunk, how- 

 ever, is negative rather than positive. This animal, it tells 

 us, developed a trunk, because failure to vary in that useful 

 direction would have been penalized by extermination. 



Wilson presents, in a very graphic manner, the appalling 

 problem which confronts evolutionists who seek to explain 

 the adaptations of organisms by means of environmental fac- 

 tors. Referring, apparently, to Henderson's "Fitness of the 

 Environment," he says: 'Tt has been urged in a recent valu- 

 able work . . . that fitness is a reciprocal relation, involving 



