EMBRYOLOGY 151 



to mean that he knows better how a lizard ought to 

 be constructed than the Power that made it. Since, 

 however, lizards have lived for millions of years with 

 their present structure, I think that I may doubt the 

 correctness of his assertion. 



Evolutionists assume that the Creator would be 

 relieved of responsibility if he worked by the process 

 of evolution instead of by fiat. It seems to me, how- 

 ever, that a " bungling piece of work " by fiat would 

 also be a "bungling piece" by evolution. The attri- 

 butes of the Creator are as much at stake by the one 

 method as by the other. 



Darwin says: "The points of structure in which 

 the embryos of widely different animals within the 

 same class resemble each other, often have no direct 

 relation to their conditions of existence. We cannot, 

 for instance, suppose that in the embryos of the Ver- 

 tebrata the peculiar loophole courses of the arteries 

 near the branchial slits are related to similar condi- 

 tions in the young mammal which is nourished in 

 the womb of its mother, in the egg of a bird which is 

 hatched in a nest, and in the spawn of a frog under 

 water."* 



This language seems to imply that the gill-arches 

 and slits in the embryos of vertebrates do not serve 

 a useful purpose. If this is true, it is impossible that 

 these parts should have survived for millions of years 

 by natural selection. 



Embryos are subject to this law, and by it parts 

 that are not functional ought, after the lapse of a 

 long time at least, to disappear. 



Gill-arches and slits have, however, survived in all 

 classes of vertebrates through the immense geolog- 

 ical periods since the classes were introduced. The 

 uniform survival of these parts in embryos for such 

 * Origin of Species, p. 395. 



