DARWINISM: ITS WEAK AND STRONG POINTS. 77 



x 



of the already strong. When an Indian tribe is about 

 to march, the tomahawk is driven into the heads of 

 the aged and the infirm to get rid of the burdens. 

 An old bison is pressed out of the herd and turned 

 mercilessly over to the pursuing horde of hungry 

 coyotes. Working bees cast from the hive the useless 

 drones. Where communities exist among animals, 

 helpless individuals must be sacrificed for the general- 

 good. 



In a published paper on Polydactyle Horses, recent 

 and extinct, by Prof. 0. C. Marsh, there is presented 

 the strongest argument in favor of evolution doctrines 

 that has ever been offered in the great biological in- 

 quiry. The able scientist has, by indefatigable in- 

 dustry, been enabled to offer unquestioned evidence 

 of the early existence among mammals of a diminu- 

 tive horse which probably sprang from a pentadactyle 

 ancestor. The professor possesses the fossil foot of a 

 four-toed animal, as well as that of the three and two 

 toed, there being a gradual rise and regular succession 

 in the development of the equine family. Besides, a 

 living horse with an extra toe on each fore-foot is 

 now on exhibition as a curiosity. The supernumerary 

 toe seems to be the late out-cropping of what was 

 once a normal state in an earl} 7 progenitor. 



Hseckel, in his Evolution of Man, has contributed 

 a chapter on the morphology of the vertebrates, which 

 contains interesting arguments worked up in favor of 

 the evolution of the human brain from lower forms, 

 the descent ending in the brainless amphioxus. If it 

 were not for the offensive partisan character of the 

 writer, the book would be a strong support for Dar- 

 winism and evolution doctrines. Sensible people are 



