148 Outlook to Nature 



effectively adapt the organism to its condi- 

 tions. The loss of legs in the serpents, for 

 example, is one of the clearest proofs of evolu- 

 tion or modification, even though we may 

 think of it as retrogressive ; for the rudiments 

 of legs may be found in some cases, and the 

 limb-bearing genealogy is traceable. The gen- 

 eral movement of evolution has been toward 

 greater differentiation and complexity, and, in 

 our human phrase, we sometimes speak of 

 this as " improvement " ; but any modifica- 

 tion that better relates an organism to its en- 

 vironment is improvement for that organism, 

 whether the modification is the winning of 

 new characters or the loss of characters once 

 gained. 



Evolution vs. transmutation. 



A great hindrance to a belief in organic 

 evolution is the careless use of the word " trans- 

 mutation," which connotes that one species 

 " turns into another species." The transmuta- 

 tion theory is really opposed to the evolution 

 theory, for the latter theory supposes that one 



