ORGANIC EVOLUTION 



CHAPTER I 



INTRODUCTORY 



Until about one hundred years ago, it was all 

 but universally believed that the different kinds of 

 plants and animals as men knew them had existed 

 as such from the beginning. The progeny of cows 

 were always calves, of oaks always acorns. Cows 

 and oaks had long been known ; and if they had 

 not changed in two thousand years, they doubtless 

 had not changed in the six thousand years of the 

 earth's history. Not only did animal and vegetable 

 species breed true to their kind, but they did not 

 breed among themselves, or, if they did, the hybrid 

 race was not perpetuated. Doubtless, therefore, cows 

 had always been cows, and oaks oaks. 



But indeed men had not been left to draw such 

 an obvious inference, for there was extant a divinely- 

 inspired account of the origin of species, wherein it 

 was authoritatively stated that they had been called 

 into being by " special creation." 



To-day, however, there triumphs, after a struggle 

 of several decades, another theory, which goes by the 

 name of organic evolution. This theory states that 



