20G WALTER KIDD, ESQ., M.D., F.Z.S., 



Discussion. 



The CirAfKMAX. — We shall now welcome any remarks on th*^ 

 very interesting and suggestive paper which we have just heai'd. 

 I think all will join in giving Dr. Kidd a most hearty vote of 

 thanks for his paper. 



The Rev. Hammond R. Bailey. — I come from the home of induc- 

 tive science (Cambridge), where I was bred and reared and lived a 

 long time, though at present it is and has been my lot for many 

 years to be simply that despised character — a country clergyman ; 

 but the subject of Evolution has been bi'ought before me very 

 strongly in recent times. 



First, I thank Dr. Kidd very much for his paper, and I was 

 specially pleased to hear what he said in comparing the advance 

 of Evolution coming to the " Delta stages." 



In regard to creation there is one tremendous flaw, surely, in 

 Darwin's l)ook (I speak of his large edition corrected and enlarged 

 by himself), in which, as you all remember, he traces the 

 genealogy of man and of animals, really, to one primordial being' 

 — to one Protozoon — between the vegetable and animal kingdom 

 — something of an Ascidian, I think it is called ; and more than 

 once he excuses this and apologises for this by adapting, or 

 applying to it, the theory of Maupertuis. We can all understand 

 that the Almighty in the Universe allows to be used, or uses such 

 force as is suitable. Maupertuis, as you know, applies his theory 

 as if it excused him in reducing creation to its lowest term. Those 

 who have read his remarks will remember that he constantly cai^ps 

 at creation, as if the creation of an individual race and so on was 

 a thing to be hardly swallowed, and that the ci'eation of one 

 original was easy. There is a manifest fallacy in that. The 

 creation of one being implies Almighty poAver most assuredly, 

 and if the Almighty power can create one animal, or being, it can 

 ci'eate as many as it sees fit. You will remember, as Dr. Kidd 

 said, his great theory is " natural selection," which he plainl}- 

 learnt from what he found in artificial selection in regard to 

 animals, the force that is acting upon it being, as he says, in so 

 many words, the " struggle for existence," As far as my poor 

 reason enters into it, if there was one form of life from which all 



