106 A NEW THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 



locomotion in the germ-plasm of the ante- 

 cessor were not sufficiently powerful to 

 appropriate their share of nourishment in 

 the germ- plasm, and so the organs of loco- 

 motion ultimately disappeared, and if we 

 assume that the " determinants " of the 

 backbone were the robbers, the increased 

 number of the vertebrae would be accounted 

 for. But this extraordinary hypothesis, for 

 which Darwin is not responsible, does not 

 explain how the fore-legs of the whale were 

 converted into fins, nor how the hind-legs 

 came to be replaced by a tail. 



Huxley says : 1 " Every hypothesis is 

 bound to explain, or at any rate not be 

 inconsistent with, the whole of the facts 

 it professes to account for ; and if there is 

 a single one of these facts which can be 

 shown to be inconsistent with (I do not 

 merely mean inexplicable by, but contrary 

 to) the hypothesis, the hypothesis falls to 

 the ground it is worth nothing." 



Common-sense reviewing the facts of re- 

 trogression must, we venture to assert, come 

 to the conclusion that the Darwinian theory 

 not only does not satisfactorily explain, but 

 is at variance with, the phenomena. 



1 Darwiniana, p. 463. 



