108 THE SURVIVAL OP THE UNLIKE. [iV. 



one species into anotlier known at present ; we wish to 

 transform it into a new species. * * * Experimental 

 transformism is what we need now, and therein lies the 

 only method we can use.'' 



The Species -Dogma. 



This experiment is a most commendable object, and 

 I hope that the attempt will be made to create a new 

 species before our very eyes. This is what most people 

 demand as a proof of evolution, and they are some- 

 times impatient that it has not been done; and it would 

 seem, upon the face of it, that nothing more could be 

 desired. When I reflect, however, upon the fact that 

 this very thing has occurred time and again with the 

 horticulturist, and then consider that botanists and 

 philosophers persist in refusing to see it, I am con- 

 strained to offer some suggestions upon De Varigny's 

 excellent ambition. If I show a botanist a horticultural 

 type of recent or even contemporaneous origin which I 

 consider to be specifically distinct from its ancestors, he 



a constant modifloation of the 8i)ecies, in order that they may fit themselves into 

 the environment. 



There are several lines of proof of evolution : First, the record of the 

 rocks, or palaeontology ; second, the fact that animals and plants are widely 

 variable, — so much so that no two individuals in the world are exactly alike ; 

 third, we can see adaptive changes taking place, particularly among plants which 

 are widely disseminated by man, or which are brouglit under domestication ; 

 fourth, the presence of missing links or breaks in the chain of life, which shows 

 that those forms which are weakest or least adapted to live have dropped out, 

 and have left the others to strengthen themselves ,- and, flftli, the fact that there 

 is a perfect adaptation of all organisms to their environments or conditions of life. 



The doctrine of evolution Is old, although it was not until the opening of the 

 present century that it began to take on specific and technical form. It was 

 taught more or less vaguely by the Greeks, and, later, by the Arabs. Perhaps it 

 may be said that two cliief epochs in the history of the unfolding of the doctrine 

 are those represented by Copernicus and Darwin. Copernicus disproved the old 

 geocentric doctrine, or the notion that the earth is the center of the universe; 

 Darwin disproved the liomocentric doctrine, or the notion that man is the central 

 object of nature. We now conceive of the universe as a whole, undergoing a 

 general progressive or onward movement, in which all its parts are intimately 

 concerned. 



