294 Proofs of Evolution. 



away, but "worked over" the old fabric, just as thrifty 

 housewives do, and do so wondrously well. Therefore, if 

 wings are needed, the fore-limbs must go — they must be 

 transformed into wings. Ages pass on ; the earth is filled 

 with birds, beasts, and creeping things, but the quadruped 

 is king. He has grown to enormous size and strength, and 

 appears in almost endless varieties. The struggle for ex- 

 istence has preserved the strongest, the most cunning, and 

 those most highly skilled in the art of food-getting. The 

 fierce warfare through which all living creatures have 

 passed, would naturally sharpen all the senses, and stimu- 

 late, little by little, the power to observe and discriminate 

 as to friend and foe, and as to foods, and favoring localities. 

 This would induce some sort of reflection, and implant in 

 the mind at least a nebulous train of reason and ordered 

 thought. This would give the brain more and better work 

 to do, and the doing would increase its size, quality, and 

 convolutions. 



Why should advance stop at this point ? Why should 

 not the same progressive change and upward tendency still 

 go on ? Is the change from the mute little fish to a roar- 

 ing Saurian less marvelous than the advance from highest 

 mammal then existing to the earliest savage man, without 

 speech, or language, and feeding on whatever prey the 

 forest offered, including his own kind ? Doubtless man 

 lived thousands of years before he acquired what we would 

 now call language. Nevertheless, his earliest cries and 

 noises were the beginnings of connected speech ; though no 

 more intelligible than the chattering of apes. 



If we could go back to this lowest conceivable savage, 

 what should we find ? Probably this : The anthropoid ape 

 and the man-animal not quite out of sight of each other, 

 but evolving on divergent roads from a common ancestor. 

 If we could have stood near the diverging point, it would 

 have been difficult to tell which had the potency of the 

 dominant animal who rules the world to-day. 



Most people who try to reason about the matter, make 

 the mistake of attempting to bridge the chasm at once 

 from Shakspeare to a shrimp ; and they say the difference 

 is so enormous that Evolution cannot be true. But the 

 thoughtful student goes back step by step, age by age, until 

 he stands side by side with a creature half upright and 

 howling, with all the ferocious instincts of a brute, but yet 



