202 WALTER KIDD, M.D., F.Z.S., ON 



of the evidence for Design in animated nature. Let the Dar- 

 winian study his plants and animals, and let him prove to the 

 hilt the necessity of his " teleology," and call it what he likes, 

 even to Germinal Selection. Upon this side of the question 

 all one need say is " Fas est ah hoste docerV It is, however, 

 a totally one-sided view of the matter to contemplate the 

 adaptation of organisms to environmcjits, even from Pre-Cam- 

 brian times to 1897. 



13 Now, environments provided and pre-arranged, as in the 

 case of our mammalian embryo, lead the mind to a corre- 

 spondence growing from the dawn of Creation, under which 

 organisms are adapted to environments and environments 

 jjvoduced for organisms, and this has proceeded in a majestic, 

 orderly manner. It is a spectacle known onl}"- in the present 

 century through the labours of geologists, one which poets, 

 sages, and scientists of old desired to see but saw it not. 

 Yet for all this interminable progression of nature, which has 

 already required some millions of years for its passing, is ample 

 room alloAved, with divine insight, in the first two verses of 

 Genesis. Be it remembered that the age of Moses was one in 

 no way enlightened, but rather darkened by the science of the 

 time, nor was the veil lifted in later days, when Isaiah, with 

 wisdom not his own, summed up in prophetic words some of the 

 results of geological science — " He formed it to be inhabited." 



14 In the earliest times it was not enough that the little molten 

 mass, which became our planet, should cool down to the 

 required temperature for the existence of life. Lord Kelvin 

 lately pointed out at this Institute on the one hand the necessity 

 of an atmosphere encircling the globe, in which a due propor- 

 tion of oxygen should exist for the purpose of animal life, and 

 on the other that this probably could not have come from 

 the previously molten and now cooling crust of the earth. 

 Introduction of free oxygen from some other source in a suited 

 form was essential, and he suggested that this was supplied 

 by the prior creation of vast quantities of low plant life, algae 

 and the like, which, growing in the seas, should by their own 

 vital processes supply for the coming animal life that oxygen 

 without which this could not be. If this were so the great 

 role which plant life of all kinds was in coming ages to exer- 

 cise, that of commissariat department for the animals of earth, 

 air, and water, was remarkably foreshadowed and initiated. 

 And it is equally remarkable that the Mosaic cosmogony 

 declares the precedence of plants in the order of production 

 of orpjanic existence. 



