Page Two 



EVOLUTION 



October, 1928 



The Proofs of Evolution 



By Henshaw Ward 



(This is the second of a series of three articles. The 

 first, in September, consisted of two sections, "The Spe- 

 cialists are Unanimous" and 'What Breeding Proves."} 



III. What the Rocks Prove 



'THE specialists who study all sorts of life on the earth 

 * unanimously believe that the millions of modern 

 varieties have been produced by an evolution from 

 ancient and simpler forms. But they are not unanimous 

 about how the evolution worked. For example, some 

 of the men who study life through microscopes feel that 

 Darwin's idea of "natural selection" is not proved. The 

 most famous and outspoken of these was William Bate- 

 son. In 1921 he made so strong a speech against Dar- 

 win's idea that the newspaper reporters told the world, 

 "Bateson has overthrown Darwinism." To the readers 

 of the papers this meant that Bateson had overthrown 

 evolution. 



No wild mistake in the news was ever wider of the 

 mark than this. Bateson was merely discussing, before 

 a convention of specialists, one of the technical details 

 of the theory. The whole burden of his address was 

 that the evolution theory stood unassailed. His closing 

 words were these: "Let us, then, proclaim in precise 

 and unmistakable language that our faith in evolution 

 is unshaken. We have no doubts as to the reality or 

 truth of evolution." 



Bateson was much exasperated by finding that igno- 

 rant orators against evolution quoted him as an enemy 

 of the theory. So he took pains to make a flat denial 

 of their claims, in these words: "The lines of argument 

 converging to support the theory are so forcible and 

 so many that no alternative can be entertained. The 

 geologic record is conclusive." That is, the story of 

 evolution told in the rocks seemed, even to this skeptical 

 worker with the microscope, an indisputable proof. 



It is the most stupendous record that man has ever 

 read. For two centuries the geologists have been at work 

 deciphering it. Every discovery and every guess has 

 been subjected to unsparing criticism. If any investigator 

 won fame by describing a sunken continent or the effect 

 of glaciers or the growth of coral islands, his book was 

 read by a hundred keen skeptics; every one of them 

 would have enjoyed ripping the argument up the back 

 and throwing it on the junk pile. No shred of the 

 story deciphered from the rocks has ever had a chance 

 to survive unless it could stand the wear and tear of the 

 tests put upon it by rival geologists. 



No sentence of the vast history is based on imagina- 

 tion. Every paragraph of it is an explanation of facts 

 that we can see with our eyes. The whole mass of proof 

 from the rocks is as matter-of-fact as the three illustra- 

 tions from everyday life that I give below. 



(1) When I look at a field in March and see that 

 a small boulder has been pushed up through its surface, 

 I do not say that some devil has thrust it there to spite 



me. I ask a man who has had experience with objects 

 that are heaved up in March, and he tells me at once 

 that frost is the cause. He has seen hundreds of rocks 

 and fence-posts lifted in the same way; the explanation 

 always fits; no one has ever found any other explana- 

 tion — not since fairies went out of fashion. Therefore 

 no sane man disputes the theory that my boulder was 

 pushed up by frost — though no man saw it pushed up. 



(2) I see a gully through a ploughed field — the 

 descending steps, the little sand-bars, the assorted 

 pebbles, the scooped-out holes on the sides. I do not 

 argue that an angel has been at work with a diamond 

 trowel. I know from experience — every sane man knows 

 — that rushing water once ran here and wore its bed. 



(3) I see a track in a cement sidewalk. I don't say 

 that Jack the Giant-Killer stamped it there after the 

 cement was hard. Nor do I guess that it was made by 

 an ostrich or a seal or a toad. I know that it was made 

 by a dog that stepped on the sidewalk before it hardened. 



The history of life on our globe has been pieced 

 together by reasoning that is as plain and solid as the 

 reasoning we all do about tracks and gullies and frost. 

 The history is deciphered from the remains of ancient 

 plants and animals found in rocks, called "fossils." These 

 always occur in a certain order. There is, for example, 

 a series of fossil shells in a cliff in southern France: 

 kind A is near the top, kind B is lower down, kind C 

 is next lower, kind D is lower still. Wherever on the 

 surface of the globe a cliff contains these four kinds of 

 shells, they are always in that same order. If any 

 geologist could find in Utah or Peru or Tibet one single 

 set of rocks in whicli kind C was above kind B, he 

 would be famous and happy the rest of his life. A young 

 geologist's idea of heaven would be to discover such an 

 error in the history of life. But no geologist ever has 

 detected such an error. 



The history written in the rocks declares that there 

 has been an order of development of plants and animals. 

 Not even a Bateson disputes this. He finds the geologic 

 record a conclusive proof of evolution. 



IV. What Geography Proves 



In the Pacific Ocean, six hundred miles west of the 

 most westerly point of South America, lie the Galapagos 

 Islands. They are a grim, lonely, and very ancient group 

 of volcanic rocks and small islands that rise abruptly 

 from deep water. On them are found some kinds of 

 birds and shellfish and turtles that are found nowhere 

 else in the world. Where did these come from? Were 

 their ancestors created here, or did they fly and swim 

 from South America? 



In the Atlantic Ocean, eight hundred miles from any 

 mainland, the Azores rise abruptly out of water that is 

 two and a half miles deep. They are ancient volcanic 

 islands. On them are some kinds of insects that are 

 found nowhere else in the world. Were the ancestors of 

 these insects created here, or did they migrate from 

 somewhere? 



