Page fourteen 



EVOLUTION 



May, 1932 



Fundamentalist Follies 



In this Monthly Feature Edwin Tenny Brewster 

 will refute all fundamentalist objections to evolution. 



NO TRANSITIONAL FORMS? 



"\Y7HERE are the transitional forms be- 

 tween the various classes or orders? 

 There are none. . . . there are no relics 

 which even by an artificial arrangement can 

 be made to show a transition between the 

 different classes, or even between the vari- 

 ous orders , . ." 



Thus in The Defender (Sept. 1931, pp. 

 II, 14) George McCready Price, Professor 

 of Geology and Philosophy, in Emmanuel 

 Missionary College. The context shows 

 that "class" and "order" are used strictly 

 in the technical sense: Fishes, Amphibia, 

 Reptiles, Birds, and Mammals are the five 

 classes of Vertebrates each of these being 

 subdivided into various orders. Letting, 

 then, the orders go, and confining ourselves 

 to the classes, what our Professor of Funda- 

 mentalist geology and philosophy says is that 

 there are no "transitional forms', present- 

 day or fossil, between Birds and Reptilps, 

 Fishes and Amphibia, Amphibia and Rep- 

 tiles, Reptiles and Mammals. 



Well, aren't there! Reptiles are a class. 

 So are birds. And there is Archaeopteryx, 

 from the middle of the Age of Reptiles, 

 just about where one would expect it on 

 evolutionary grounds, figured and described 

 in the textbooks for three generations. 



Archaeopteryx has wings and feathers. 

 Therefore, by definition, it is a bird. But 

 is has a reptilian skeleton, with three great 

 claws at the angle of its wing where a 

 modern bird has only a rudimentary thumb; 

 it has a lizard's tail as long as its body — as 

 all birds have in the egg; it has teeth — of 

 reptilian type. Its skull if found alone, 

 would have been considered that of a rep- 



tile. How much nearer could anybody get 

 to "a transition between the different clas- 

 ses," reptiles and birds? 



Besides, there are the toothed birds from 

 the American Cretaceous, later in time than 

 Archaeopteryx and therefore more birdlike, 

 already known to three generations of man- 

 kind. These have proper bird's wings with- 

 out claws and the usual keel on the breast- 

 bone where the great flying muscles attach. 

 But they have half a hundred shoe-peg teeth 

 like the reptiles and the fishes, and verteb- 

 rated tails long enough to wag. Moreover, 

 their vertebrae are concave on both ends, 

 like all fishes, many extinct reptiles but no 

 modem birds. 



How is this for a transition between two 

 classes? 



To link reptiles and mammals, there are 

 the mammal-like reptiles, many different 

 sorts, from the end of the Permian and 

 Triassic, just where they should appear in 

 the evolutionary series. The more primitive 

 kinds are certainly reptiles, reptiles in every 

 bone and joint. But they have the general 

 build of a dog, standing well off the ground 

 on four strong legs. Some of them have a 

 mammal's teeth, not the numerous conical 

 pegteeth of all other reptiles that have teeth 

 at all. The more advanced forms are so 

 like mammals that it is merely a verbal quibble 

 whether they shall be considered mammals 

 or reptiles. 



But one need not to go back to any 

 "relics" for "transitional forms" between two 

 classes. The class Amphibia itself is just 

 such a link between reptiles and fish. 



Fish breathe by gills only — barring, of 



$4.50) an English book with remarkable 

 illustrations. Those which are photographs 

 are very fine; those made from drawings are 

 astoundingly poor, where they involve restor- 

 ations of fossil animals. As a survey of geo- 

 logic history, however, the book does quite 

 well, even though some of its theories are 

 rather old-fashioned. Unless one reads a 

 textbook he can do no better. 



But what textbook? There are several 

 good ones in the field of geology, yet not 

 many that are convenient and readable. 

 Fortunately, one of fhe best has appeared in 

 a new edition— ELEMENTS OF GEOLOGY, 

 . by 'William J. Miller (D. Van Nostrand, 

 $3.00). I like it because, in less than 500 

 pages, it presents the essentials of geology, 

 with direct reference to regions in North 

 America. Now that we have become a 

 nation of nomads, we travel each summer 

 through much of the country that Dt. 

 Miller describes, so that his text may serve 

 almost as a guide book. As one glances 

 through the abundant illustrations, he will 



find many that show familiar scenes, accom- 

 panied by text which tells what the scenes 

 signify — and thereby makes our own visits 

 to them worth while. 



But this is not quite what I started out 

 to say. Most of us don't read when we are 

 on vacation; nor can we hope to visit all of 

 the places mentioned in any good textbook 

 of geology. The value of such a book 

 lies partly in explaining things unseen, and 

 partly in assembling its information where 

 we may get it quickly, when ever we want it. 

 This requires careful selection and organiza- 

 tion, plus a good index, which textbooks un- 

 happily do not always possess. That ELE- 

 MENTS OF GEOLOGY meets these require- 

 ments is the best evidence I can offer that 

 it is a suitable introduction to a science in 

 which "popular" (which means pleasantly 

 readable) books are very few, and of none 

 too high calibre. Yet this remark may not 

 be quite fair — for unless one demands his 

 intellectual food very, very soft and sweet, 

 he'll find Dr. Miller pleasant reading. 



course, the lung-fishes which have lungs be- 

 sides. So, too, does the Mexican salaman- 

 der axoloti which never develops lungs at 

 all. But the same species farther north is 

 like most other salamanders and newts. It 

 statts life as a fish, with gills only. Later, it 

 acquires lungs and loses its gills, just as the 

 frogs and toads do. So, in general, an 

 amphibian starts life as a fish and ends it 

 as a reptile. But vatious amphibians, our 

 common mud-puppy among them, starting 

 as fishes, develop lungs without losing their 

 gills, and for the rest of their lives are both 

 fishes and reptiles breathing whatever they 

 can get. But certain toads, and various of 

 the tailed amphibians besides, have put the 

 gill-bearing fish srage back into the egg, 

 and hatch as air-breathers only. 



So we have in the amphibia absolutely 

 all stages between fish and reptile. Most 

 amphibia, in a single brief lifetime, run 

 through them all. 



So much for breathing organs. Lungs sug- . 

 gest hearts. Great play has been made by 

 certain Fundamentalists over two, three, and 

 four-chambered hearts. Two, three and four 

 being discrete integers there can't be any 

 evolution from any to the next! 



But let us see! Fishes have in their hearts 

 two chambers only — except, as usual, the 

 lung-fishes which have three. The amphibia, 

 as tadpoles, have a two-chambered heart, 

 being essentially fishes. As adults they 

 change to three chambers which is charac- 

 teristic for reptiles which the adult amphib- 

 ian essentially is. 



But while the amphibian heart is, when 

 adult, frankly thtee-chambered, lizards, 

 snakes, and turtles among the teptiles have 

 the ventricle partly divided by a septum. 

 This septum is variously developed in dif- 

 ferent reptiles. In the crocodile it is vir- 

 tually complete, so that the crocodile has 

 the four-chambered heart of mammals and 

 birds, except for a small apertute through 

 which no blood circulates. Thus the tran- 

 sition is complete from two chambers to 

 three and from three to four, precisely as 

 it should be on evolutionary grounds. 



So with all other organs. In general, con- 

 ditions are simplest in the fishes; but some 

 fishes foreshadow what the amphibians ate 

 to exhibit. Various amphibia, either in their 

 adult state or as they pass from pollywog 

 to adult, exhibit all transitions from fish 

 to reptile. Reptiles, present-day and fossil 

 together, bridge virtually all the gaps be- 

 tween themselves and the birds. By way of 

 the theromorphs, they tie themselves in all 

 sorts of ways to the lowest mammals — the 

 egg-laying mammals of Australia. 



The fishes, in short, are ancestors to the 

 amphibia. The amphibia, in their turn are 

 ancestors to the reptiles. But the reptiles 

 have two offspring, the mammals and the 

 birds, neither of which is ancestor to the ^ 

 other, rhough Fundamentalists are wont to 

 attribute this opinion to the scientific world. 



Evidently^ then. Fundamentalist natural 

 history is not at all the kind one sees in 

 actual fossils or observes for himself in the 

 local frog-pond. 



