Liesl f = 7 
64 THE FIXITY OF SPECIES. 
proved that a single species has been established solely 
or even mainly by the operation of Natural Selection.” 
Professor Fleischmann, of Erlangen, has gone so far 
as to say that “the Darwinian theory of descent has, 
in the realms of nature, not a single fact to confirm 
it.” Dr. Ethridge of the British Museum says: “In all 
this great museum there is not a particle of evidence 
of transmutation of species. Nine-tenths of the talk 
of evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on ob- 
servation and wholly unsupported by facts.” Prof. Owen 
declares that “‘no instance of change of one species into 
another has ever been recorded by man.” Dr. Martin, 
Sanitaetsrat, of Germany, who has conducted some 
highly technical experiments in the blood reactions of 
various animals and man, on which he bases his con- 
clusions, says: “Since Darwin we have been accustomed 
to consider the concept ‘species’ as something insecure 
and unstable. The whole organic world must be 
thought of as fluid if the evolution theory is to find 
room for action. It required, indeed, all the great in- 
vestigator’s keenness to fence his theory against the dif- 
ficulty which the lack of transitional forms occasioned, 
and against the fact that the rise of a new species has 
never been observed, much more against the fact that 
all processes in artificial breeding have not sufficed to 
fix permanently the changes which have been attained. 
We admire the clever structure of the theory, but there 
is no doubt that the obstinacy with which the organism 
clings to its species-characteristics is the point on which 
it is mortal. One is, in fact, as much justified in speak- 
ing of a struggle to retain these characteristics as to 
speak of a struggle for existence.” 
Man has been able greatly to modify many vegetable 
productions. Witness the comparatively recent changes 
