CREATION BY EVOLUTION 



forms? For these large tortoises cannot swim. On Albe- 

 marle Island the isolation is probably topographic; it is due 

 to barriers formed by the rugged volcanic surface. When 

 Darwin, as a young man, visited these islands during the 

 voyage of the Beagle he was greatly struck by the fact that 

 each island seemed to have its own kind or species of giant 

 tortoise, and he tells us that he felt himself "brought near 

 to the very act of creation." This was one of the experiences 

 that made Darwin an evolutionist. 



But think also of the anatomical evidence. It is interest- 

 ing to compare a number of fore limbs — our own arm, a bat's 

 wing, a whale's flipper, a horse's fore leg, a bird's wing, a 

 turtle's paddle, a frog's small arm and a giant giraffe's at 

 the other extreme. They are very different, and yet when 

 we scrutinise them we find the same fundamental bones and 

 muscles and blood-vessels and nerves. "How inexplicable," 

 Darwin said, "is the similar pattern of the hand of man, the 

 foot of a dog, the wing of a bat, the flipper of a seal, on the 

 doctrine of independent acts of creation! How simply 

 explained on the principle of the natural selection of suc- 

 cessive slight variations in the diverging descendants from a 

 single progenitor." Few zoologists of today would use 

 Darwin's words "how simply explained," for we are aware 

 of factors he did not know of, and some of the factors he 

 believed in very strongly are not unanimously accredited 

 today. But all would agree that the evolution-idea illumines 

 the deep identities, amid great superficial diversities, that 

 are disclosed when we consider, let us say, the classes of 

 backboned animals. 



Another anatomical argument is to be found in the fre- 

 quent occurrence of vestigial structures in animals and in 

 ourselves. Useless dwindled relics of the hind limbs of a 

 whale are found buried deep below the surface. In the 



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