582 



SCIENTIFIC NEV\^S. 



[June 22, iS 



THE "EGYPTIAN" ARGUMENT. 



A S regards the great doctrine of Organic Evolution 

 ■^"^ we are apt to fall into two mistakes. The first is, 

 to suppose that the antagonist hypothesis of plants and 

 animals having been at some time specially or mechanic- 

 ally created, each as we now see it, is of very remote 

 antiquity. Far from it : the philosophers, the natural- 

 ists, and the divines of antiquity and of the middle ages 

 gave it no countenance. The Talmud contains Evolu- 

 tionist utterances. Bacon and St. Thomas Aquinas alike 

 withhold their sanction from the " mud-pie theory of 

 life," as Professor Le Conte happily expresses it. In 

 short, what is sometimes known as the " Old Natural 

 History " dates no further back than the seventeenth 

 century, and is, perhaps, mainly due to John Milton and 

 John Ray. 



The second mistake is that of beheving that no further 

 discussion on tlie origin of species is necessary. It is 

 perfectly true that, in the opinion of the best qualified 

 judges, Evolution is "victorious all along the line." But, 

 not to speak oi writers and orators who have not had the 

 necessary biological training, there are, especially in 

 France, still certain "survivals," whose prejudices will 

 not allow them to judge impartially, and who think that 

 what Cuvier and his followers said, and what the 

 Academy of Science accepted as truth, must never be 

 called in question. These " survivals " from time to 

 time bring forward afresh the old, refuted fallacies in a 

 new form. Literary or political papers, thinking that a 

 member of the Academy cannot be wrong, insert 

 abridged extracts from their books, and so the general 

 public is deceived. 



In a work of this kind which has lately appeared we 

 find a repetition of one of the most plausible, but most 

 fallacious arguments in support of the permanence and 

 the immutability of animal and vegetable species. 



Everyone knows that when the first Napoleon under- 

 took his expedition to Egypt he took with him a number 

 of learned men, who were to study the country, its 

 monuments, and its products from every conceivable 

 point of view. Among their results was a series of 

 observations of the birds and mammals sculptured on 

 the most ancient monuments or actually preserved in 

 the state of mummies. These images and remains were 

 compared by Flourens with their living representatives 

 as existing in our own days ; a very close resemblance, 

 or perhaps even a complete identity, was recognised and 

 proclaimed. The sacred ibis of our century might 

 lave served for the original of the reliefs of his 

 ancestors, carved out perhaps three, possibly four or 

 five thousand j'ears ago. Hence the inference was 

 drawn by Cuvier and his disciples, and formally accepted 

 by the official school of French biologists, among whom 

 it survives to this day. 



But this contention involves certain assumptions 

 which are no part of the Evolutionist views. No fol- 

 lower of Darwin, of Lamarck, of Huxley, or of Haeckel 

 has ever asserted that the modification of species con- 

 stantly proceeds at all times, in all climates, in all forms 

 of living beings, and at a uniform rate. The Cuvierians 

 impute this erroneous belief to Evolutionists. They 

 take for granted that because a certain phenomenon can- 

 not be shown to have happened in one given locality, 

 and within certain limits of time, it can never have 

 happened at all. They assume that the lapse of three 

 or even five thousand years gives scope to decide the 

 question. They forget that in Egypt the climate and 



other outward circumstances have undergone no appreci- 

 able change within historical ages, and that there has 

 thus been no inducement for modifications in the animals. 



These considerations entitle us surely to dismiss the 

 "Egyptian argument" as inconclusive. But there is an 

 additional point, not as yet sufficiently noticed, which re- 

 duces the argument to a complete absurdity. If we 

 make a careful examination of the oldest existing monu- 

 ments we find there portrayed men of different races ; 

 or, if the term is preferred, varieties possessing the very 

 same distinctive features which we observe in their 

 descendants in our times. The negro is depicted as we 

 find him to-day, the interval of 4,000 or 5,000 years 

 having failed to modify his structural characteristics. 



If, therefore, fixity of type for a few thousand years 

 proves that certain animal species — say the sheep and the 

 goat respectiveIy,or the horse and the ass — are immutable 

 and primordially distinct, surely the same conclusion 

 must be extended to the races of mankind, and, e.g., the 

 Negro, the Arab, and the Jew must have had each a 

 distinct and independent origin. The Cuvier-Flourens 

 argument, if it proves anything, proves too much ! 



Similar observations may be made on varieties, 

 strains, or breeds of domestic animals. The ram 

 depicted on the old Egyptian monuments is identical 

 with the ram of modern Nubia, and is neither more or 

 less unlike other breeds of domestic sheep. Or, if we 

 turn to a very different climate, we find that the small 

 horse of the Lithuanian peasantry is the same whose 

 skeleton is found in ancient tumuli and bone-heaps. 



The Cuvierians are therefore in this dilemma : either 

 they must own that the Egyptian argument is utterly 

 null and void, or they must admit that it proves the 

 absolute distinctness and fixity of races, varieties and 

 breeds. But this latter alternative is fatal to them since 

 they hold that there is an utter distinction between races 

 and species, the lormer being mutable and the latter im- 

 mutable. They regard the Negro as of one species with 

 the European, and as descended from the same first 

 parents. Yet if 5,000 years have failed either to ap- 

 proximate him to the white man or to take him to a greater 

 relative distance, with what show of consistency can they 

 expect that 5,000 years should perceptibly modify the 

 relations between species ? Yet with such arguments a 

 Blanchard can seek to defend the decaying doctrine of 

 mechanical creation ! 



— «-j»t^»^*«f-* — • 

 Metalising Wood. — A process by which wood is made to 

 assume some of the special characteristics of metal is, 

 according to 77/1; Building World, being now turned to 

 practical account in Germany. By this process, which 

 has produced some remarkable results, the surface becomes 

 so hard and smooth as to be susceptible of a high polish, and 

 may be treated with a burnisher of either glass or porcelain ; 

 the appearance of the wood being then in every respect that 

 of polished metal, having, in fact, the semblance of a metallic 

 mirror, but with this peculiar and advantageous difference, 

 namely, that, unlike metal, it is unaffected by moisture. To 

 reach this result the wood is steeped in a bath of caustic 

 alkali for two or three days, according to its degree of per- 

 meability, at a temperature of between 164° and 197" Fahr. 

 It is then placed in a second bath of hydrosulphide of calcium, 

 to which a concentrated solution of sulphur is added, after some 

 twenty-four or thirty-six hours. The third bath is one of 

 acetate of lead, at a temperature of from 95° to 120" Fah., 

 and in this latter the wood is allowed to remain from thirty to 

 fifty hours. After being subjected to a thorough drying it is in 

 a condition for being poUshed with lead, tin, or zinc, as may 

 be desired, finishing the process vvith a burnisher, when the 

 wood apparently becomes a piece of shining metal. 



