ON CREATION OR EVOLUTION. 197 



moderately fertile when insects were excluded, showed, only 

 about twenty-one out of the forty-nine whose flowers wer(^ 

 asymmetrical or presented remarkable peculiarities. 



Still another class of organisms, often of remarkable beauty 

 and variety, the larvas of lepidoptcra, which in their markings 

 and colouring differ strongly from those of the pupa and 

 imago stages, and which of course are removed from sexual 

 selection, remain unaccounted for, as to their beauty, by 

 natural or sexual selection. This point has nothing to do 

 with their "protective markings." 



One patent objection to the claims of natural selection in 

 the production of species is in the earlier stages of organic 

 evolutio]!. It is not enough to be dazzled by men of vast 

 knowledge with cleverly described cases among higher 

 animals, such as vertebrata, where the ideas of struggle, 

 pelection, adaptation to environment can be more or less 

 grapjiically pourtrayed for us. The imaginary picture of 

 the lengthening of the cervical vertebrae of the giraffe, 

 again brought forward by Mr. Herbert Spencer, is at least 

 conceivably though not demonstrably true. But when we 

 are told to suppose that in the case of the myriads of 

 larvae, grubs, worms, insects, required by the voracious and 

 Avorld-wide insectivora, to Avliom a fast of four hours is 

 fatal, in the case of the thousand herrings, smelts and other 

 marine animals which a great cetacean or elasmobranch fish 

 may engulph in a day, similar lohoiescile ravages upon lower 

 forms of life going on now in numerous lower levels of life, 

 as well as the infinite extinction in this manner, Avhich has 

 reached back, for example, to Devonian times — that in these 

 cases natural selection oj- survival of the fittest must have 

 operated in the production of new species — and further that 

 it is in harmony with scientific thought that processes analo- 

 gous to those in the giraffe must have taken place in the 

 individual of the foraminifera and diatomaceas, we feel no 

 obligation whatever to accept such dogmas. In a piece of 

 chalk, composed of little else than minute Globigerina3 about 

 -{-^i,th of an inch in diameter, or a mass of cretaceous marl 

 from Upper Eocene beds, weighing 21 oz., with a sectional 

 area of 14 square inches, on which section are visible lOi) 

 univalve fresh-water fossils, Planorbis measuring from y^^h 

 of an inch, to 1 inch in diameter, Paluclina ^V^'^ °^ ^^ inch, 

 to f of an inch in length, we have an object-lesson of the 

 wholesale ruthless extermination, without regard to varia- 

 tions, favourable or otherwise, which must have taken place 



