120 WALTER KIDD, M.D., P.Z.S., ON 



bask ill the sunliglit, it changes again. That is what I call 

 mimiciy ; but you cannot call it mimicry just because changes 

 take place naturally in an organism possessed of life. 



Then the " sni\-ival of the fittest " is referred to in the paper: 

 *' The new meaning of the ' survival of the fittest ' has now been 

 taken to be the ' fittest to survive ' or ' fittest for the environ- 

 ment.' " Some things exist on isolated islands that are the only 

 fit ones for the environment. The thick-bodied moths of Iceland 

 are adapted to their environment, and why ? Because they go 

 underground in winter, and the dreadful storms of rain and snow 

 over their heads do not touch them, and they have also their 

 food-plants. In Iceland there is no suitable shelter under which 

 the butterfl}'' can conceal itself. There are no hollows in large 

 tree-trunks into which our common English butterfly can creep in 

 bad weather and hibernate or hang up their chrysalis in a tree. 

 There is everything to support the thick-bodied moth but nothing 

 to support butterflies, and they are not found in Iceland in any 

 quantity that could survive. In my opinion survival means those 

 which longest survive the rest. So I should do away with survival, 

 too, for it is not only that those things exist on the island, but 

 others never existed there. 



Professor Laxghorne Orchakd. — I am sure we all agree that 

 we are indebted to Dr. Walter Kidd for this valuable and 

 graceful contribution to the great argument for Design. 



It is much easier for myself personally, at least, to note the 

 many beauties of this paper than to attempt anything like a 

 criticism. Dr. Kidd has rightly drawn attention to the fact that 

 ambiguity and even incorrectness in the main terms of the theory 

 of evolution have tended greatly to its wide acceptance, and I am 

 sorry to say this has not been entirely unintentional ou the part 

 of evolutionists. Herbert Spencer himself, in his First Principles, 

 says that the system of philosophy, as he terms it, which he 

 proposes, would be more correctly described by the term 

 involution than evolution, and he says he prefers the term 

 evolution in order to make it square Avith a popular theory, 

 alluding, obviously, to Darwinism ; but, to my mind, it is scientific 

 immorality — an offence against truth, to use a term with a 

 meaning — an especially different meaning, to that in which it is 

 accepted. 



Dr. Kidd refers to the fundamental cause of variation beinsr 



