200 WALTER KIDD, ESQ., M.D., F.Z.S., 



,his higher mental and moral <][nalities under certain condi- 

 tions, and no better illustration of this can be given than the 

 case of Alexander Selkirk, a vigorous Scotchman thirty years 

 old. placed in the island of Juan Fernandez, and rescued by 

 Danipier, of Avliom Rogers says in his narrative, "Innnediately 

 our pimiace returned from the shore and brought abundance 

 of cray-fish with a man cloathed in goat-skins, who looked 

 wilder than the first owners of them. . . At his first coming 

 on board us he luid so much forgot his langUMge for want of 

 use that we could scarce understand him ; for he seemed 

 to speak his words l)y halves." This "degeneration" was 

 accomplished in four years and four months. 



It was strongly contended by Pr(jfessor Haycraft in his. 

 Milroy Lectures on " Darwinism and Race Progress " that 

 civilisation and preventive medicine have together markedly 

 diminished the vigour of those races to whom they have 

 been applied, and he stated, " Preventive medicine is trying 

 a unique experiment and the result is already discernible — 

 race decay."* 



" The introduction of this conception (degeneration or pro- 

 gressive siraplitication) necessarily has had a most important 

 effect in the attempt to unravel the genealogical affinities of 

 animals. It renders the task a more complicated one ; at the 

 same time it removes some serious difficulties, and throws a 

 flood of light on every group of the animal kingdom."t This 

 " degeneration " appears to be of that kind which leaves iu 

 the particular organism vestigial characters on its upward 

 course of development, but degeneration from a higher to a 

 lower type is a view of the process which needs to be reckoned 

 with. 



It is submitted that the case for evolution though vast iu 

 area and unlimited in ambition, is still unverified ; and a 

 Quarterly Reviewer speaking of the lifework of Owen was 

 able to sa}^, "It can now be said that the greatest English 

 comparative anatomist of this century has. after a considera- 

 tion of the hypothesis for more than the duration of a gener- 

 ation, continuously and finally rejected it."'| The case for 

 design with whicli creation is linked, stands reinforced l)y 

 the fruitful labours of a generation of evolutionists, and the 

 multiplied proofs of adaptation of organisms to their eiiviroii- 



* Lancet, 1894, p. 457. 



t Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. .xxiv, p. 811. 



X (^uarterb/ Review, Ai)nl, 1895, p. 398. 



