Pace Twelve 



EVOLUTION 



July. 1928 



CREATION BY EVOLU- 

 TION: Edited by Frances 

 Mason, The Macmillan Co. 

 New York, 1928. $5.00. 



An 6X06116111 book, this, 

 with a misleading title, for 

 what is meant is not that 

 Evolution was the method of 

 procedure chosen by the cre- 

 ator — and the title suggests 

 this meaning — but that tlie 

 process of evolution is crea- 

 tive. 



The list of contributors is 

 unusually impressive. Presi- 

 dent Osborn of the American 

 Museum of Natural History, 

 to whom we owe a most sug- 

 gestive demonstration (facts 

 at hand! of the evolution of 

 the horse, opens the proces- 

 sion. He is followed by Sir 

 Cliarles Sherrington, the em- 

 inent physiologist, who con- 

 tributes an introduction. 

 David Starr Jordan, late 

 president of Leland Stanford, 

 than whom no one knows 

 more about the evolution of 

 fishes, writes about the gen- 

 eral meaning of evolution. 

 "Why we must be evolution- 

 ists" is explained by that 

 tireless popularizer, J. Arthui 

 Thomson. Herbert S. Jen- 

 nings, eminent protozoologist 

 of Johns Hopkins, has some 

 fascinating tales to tell about 

 evolution as it can actually 

 be seen in the laboratory. 

 Evidences of evolution are ap- 

 proached from many angles; 

 as gleaned from vestigial or- 

 gans (Parker), as shown by 

 the development of the indi- 

 vidual organism (MacBride), 

 as demonstrated in embryo- 

 logy (Conklin), as written in 

 the record of rocks (Bather), 

 as suggested by the geogra- 

 phical distribution of animals 

 (Scott), as told by fossil 

 plants (Berry). 



In an unsually clear ex- 

 position John W. Gregory of 

 the University of Glasgow 

 explains what a species really 

 is. 



There is a general article 

 on the evolution of life 

 (Woodward . one on the evo- 

 lution of plants (Jaeger), one each on the 

 evolution of butterflies and moths (Poul- 

 ton), of bees (Shipley), of ants (Wheel- 

 er), oi the horse (Loomis), of birds (Wat- 

 son). 



The missing link is not forgotten, and 

 its significance is commented upon by 

 Richard S. Lull of Yale. 



Professor Wm. K. Gregory of Columbia 

 discourses on "The Lineage of Man", a 

 subject he has made his own. 



Evolution 



By Langdon Smith 



W hen you were a tadpole and I was a fish. 



In the Paleftzoic time, 



And side by side on the ebbing tide 



We sprawled through the ooze and slime. 



Or skittered with many a caudal flip 



Through the depths of the Cambrian fen. 



My heart was rife with the joy of life. 



For I loved you even then. 



Mindless we lived, and mindless we loved, 



And mindless at last we died. 



And deep in a rift of Carodoc drift 



We slumbered side by side. 



The world turned on in the lathe of time. 



And hot lands heaved amain. 



Till we caught our breath from the womb of dealh 



And crept into life again. 



We were Amphibians, scaled and tailed. 



And drab as a dead man's hand; 



We coiled at case neath the dripping trees. 



Or trailed through the mud and sand. 



Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed hand, 



Vi'riting a language dumb. 



Willi never a spark in the empty dark 



To hint at a life to come. 



Yet happy we lived and happy we loved. 



And happy we died once more; 



Our forms were rolled in the clinging mud 



Of a Neooomian shore. 



The eons came and the eons fled. 



And the sleep that wrapped us fast 



Was riven away in a newer day. 



And the night of death was pas-t. 



Then light and soft through the jungle trees 



We swung our airy flights. 



Or breathed in the balms of the fronded palms 



In the hush of the moonless nights. 



And. oh. what beautiful years were these. 



When our hearts clung each to each. 



When life was filled, and our senses thrilled 



In the first faint dawn of speech. 



Thus life by life and love by love. 



We passed through the cycles strange. 



And breath by breath, qnd death by death. 



We followed the chain of change. 



Till there came a time in the law of life 



When over the nursing sod 



The -shadows broke and the soul awoke 



In a strange dim dream of God. 



I was thewed like an Auroch bull. 



And tusked like a great cave-bear; 



And you, my sweet, from head to feet, 



Were gowned in glorious hair. 



Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave. 



When the night fell o'er the plain. 



And the moon hung red o'er the river bed, 



We mumbled the bones of the slain. 



I flaked a flint to a cutting edge. 



And shaped it with brutish craft; 



I broke a shank from the woodland dank 



And fitted it. head and haft. 



Then I hid me close to the reedy tarn, 



Where the Mammoth came to drink — 



Through brawn and bone I drove the stone 



And slew him on the brink. 



Loud I howled through the moonlit wastes. 

 Loud answered our kith and kin; 

 From west and east to the crimson feast 

 The clan came trooping in. 

 O'er joint and gristle and padded hoof. 

 They fought and clawed and toie. 

 And cheek by jowl, with many a growl. 

 They talked the marvel o'er. 



I carved the fight on a reindeer bone. 



With rude and hairy hand; 



I pictured his fall on the cavern wall 



That men might understand. 



For we lived by blood and the right of might. 



Ere human laws weie drawn. 



And the age of sin did not begin 



Till our brutish tusks were gone. 



And that was a million years ago 



In a time that no man knows; 



Yet here tonight in the mellow light. 



We sit at Delmonico's, 



Your eyes are deep as the Devon Springs, 



Your hair is as dark as jet; 



Your years are few. your life is new. 



Your s(rul untried, and yet — 



Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay. 



And the scarp of the Purbeck flags; 



We have left our bones on the Bagshop stones. 



And deep in the Coraline crags. 



Our love is old. our lives are old. 



And death shall come amain. 



.Should it come today, what man may say 



We shall not live again? 



Nature wrought our souls from the Tremadoc beds 



And furnished them with wings to fly; 



She sowed our spawn in the world's dim dawn. 



And I know it shall not die; 



Though cities have sprung above the graves 



Wkere the crook-boned men made war. 



And ox-wain creaks o'er the buried caves 



Where the mummied mammoths are. 



Then as we linger at luncheon here. 

 O'er many a dainty dish. 

 Let us drink to the time when you 

 Were a tadpole and I was a fish. 



{This Poem, in leaflet form. 4 pages, to fit small envelope, sent postpaid at $1.00 per 100; 

 $5.00 per 1000. Order from EVOLVTION. 96 Fifth .4venue. Neiv York City) 



Apes deserve a place of honor in such 

 a treatise and it is accorded them by 

 their friend and explorer, Professoi 

 Holmes of the University of California. 



G. Elliot Smith, whose ethnological va- 

 garies have of late almost obliterated the 

 recognition of his eminence as an anatom- 

 ist, writes of the evolution of the brain. 



Progress as exhibited by evolution is 

 discussed by Julian Huxley, the versatile 

 grandson of a great grandfather. The evo- 

 lution of mind is shown by the veteran 



bio-psychologist, C. Lloyd Morgan. H. H. 

 Newman, finally, of the University of 

 Chicago, sums up the case for evolution. 

 And a good case it is. none the less so 

 for the honest admission by most of the 

 contributors that here as elsewhere the 

 widening disk of knowledge reveals the 

 mistifying darkness around the periphery. 

 This is as it should be, for if we knew 

 it all. the luring light of inquiry would 

 be blown out forever. 



Alexander Goldenweiser 



