S80 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN SCIENCE. 



1,200 or 1,500 years. Thus with the great numbers of different 

 kinds of animals and plants there must be a continued struggle 

 for existence, animals of the same kind struggling with each 

 other, and with other kinds of animals and with plants, and 

 plants struggling with each other and with animals, and all per- 

 haps struggling against unfavorable climatic conditions. In 

 this conflict many in fact, most perish, the few only survive. 

 The strongest, the most active, the most intelligent, those that 

 are in some way superior, survive and produce offspring. This 

 process Darwin called " natural selection," Spencer calls" survival 

 of the fittest." In this way Mr. Darwin believed new species were 

 formed instead of by special creation, and that animals were de- 

 scendants from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants 

 from an equal or lesser number. Thus, he says, "From the war of 

 nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we 

 are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher 

 animals, directly follows." " There is grandeur in this view of life 

 with its several powers, breathed by the Creator into a few forms, 

 or into one; and that from so simple a beginning endless forms 

 most beautiful and most wonderful, have been and are being 

 evolved." 



Many things seem to point toward the probable truth of the 

 theory. There is no doubt about the fact of individual develop- 

 ment; we are all descended from Adam by natural processes; 

 each individual a complex organism, developed from structureless 

 protoplasm. If evolution is God's method with the individual, 

 there seems to be no reason why it may not be His method with 

 the species, genus, etc. 



In horses, the bone above the fetlock joint corresponds to the 

 middle bone of the hand. On each side of this bone there is a 

 little bone called a splint bone. These splint bones seem to be 

 of no use 01 value to the horse, and on the theory of special crea- 

 tion they cannot be explained, but on the theory of descent they 

 represent the second and fourth digits of some three or five-toed 

 ancestor, and thegeological record shows that thehorsehad such 

 ancestors. Many similar cases might be mentioned. Most ani- 



