EFFECT OF COSMIC CHANGES ON PLANTS AND ANIMALS 247 



question, and has shown that the earliest vegetable specimens described by Dr. Schweinfurth from the Egyptian 

 tombs present no appearance of change. This fact appears also in the leaves and other organs of plants preserved in 

 the nodules in the Pleistocene clays of the Ottawa, and in specimens of similar age found in various places in Britain 

 and the continent of Europe.^ 



The difficulties attending the ordinary theories of evolution as applied to plants were well set forth by the same 

 able botanist in his Presidential Address to the Geological Association in 1877. This address deserves careful 

 study. One of his illustrations is the ancient willow, Salix polaris, which now lives in the arctic regions, and is 

 found fossil in the Pleistocene beds at Cromer and at Bovey Tracey. 



Salix polaris, he states, belongs to a sub-generic group containing twenty-nine species, which are arranged in 

 four sections, that to which S. polaris belongs containing six species. Now it is easy to construct a theoretical 

 phylogeny of the derivation of the willows from a supposed ancestral source, but when we take our little 

 S. polaris we find that this one twig of our ancestral tree takes us back without change to the Glacial period. The 

 six species would take us still farther, and the sections, sub-genera, and genus at the same rate would require an 

 incalculable amount of past time. 



But when we have reached the branch representing the generic form we have made but little progress in the 

 phylogenesis of Salix. The ordinal form, if it ever existed, must necessarily be much older than the period of the 

 Upper Cretaceous rocks — that is, than the period to which the earliest known dicotyledons belong. 



All beyond the testimony of our living willows is pure imagination, unsupported by a single fact. So that here, 

 also, the evidence is against evolution, and there is none in favour of it. 



Science must indeed always be baffled by questions of ultimate origin, and, however far it may be able to trace 

 the chain of secondary causation and development, must at length find itself in the presence of the great Creative 

 Mind, Who is " before all things and in whom all things consist." 



While evolution practically ignores what are virtually seons of time, its supposed proofs are wholly dependent 

 on unhmited time and the endless modifications which unHmited time is believed to beget. The human mind cannot 

 realise or reason about unlimited time and unlimited change, so evolution can neither be proved nor disproved. 

 What proof there is is, however, clearly against evolution, for if it can be shown that during vast periods of time 

 plants and animals have not perceptibly changed, then, a priori, we are bound to attribute to plants and animals 

 a very large measure of fixity and permanence : so large a measure as to render evolution next to impossible. 



There is another consideration. A large number of plants and animals, as geological records show, have become 

 extinct. 



The fact that plants and animals have appeared on, and disappeared from, the earth goes to prove that they 

 are not the product of a process of continued evolution. If they had been, it is reasonable to suppose that the 

 " missing links " would have been reproduced, and made good, by collateral evolutions, which is not the case. 



Whatever may be said as to the production of new forms in the past and present, there can be no doubt that 

 large numbers of both plants and animals have disappeared and are disappearing. 



Further, geology shows that certain plants and animals have attained a high degree of perfection, and 

 degenerated within limited cycles of time. This is true of the primeval ferns and cuttle-fishes. Moreover, crossing 

 as between the several kinds of plants and animals is in no case unlimited. On the contrary, and especially in 

 animals, barrenness, in the majority of instances, results after the first cross. Thus the horse and ass produce a 

 mule or a hinney, but the mule and hinney are themselves barren. 



There is this also to be said. The effect of evolution is to mix up every conceivable kind of plant and animal. 

 This makes for confusion. Separate creations, on the other hand, of genera, and it may be of species, by prescribing 

 Umits, lead to law and order. 



Evolution and retrogression are diametrically opposed to each other : they are reverse processes : retrogression, 

 however, undoubtedly occurs. 



All the parts and organs of plants are developed, not by environment or surroundings, but by inherent vitahty 

 and original endowment. 



When a part or organ is not used it atrophies, degenerates, and even disappears. Thus in fishes born and 

 bred in the waters of dark caverns, the eyes are reduced in size and are useless as seeing organs. The same holds 

 true of plants and animals which become parasites. The parasitic plant loses its roots, and the parasitic animal 

 its power of locomotion. There is, however, this important difference : while disuse causes the organ or part of it 

 to deteriorate, both as regards structure and fimction, use cannot make an organ or part of an organ. The so-called 

 vestiges of useful structures so frequently met with in plants and animals are the remains of types and nothing 

 more. They are not genuine organic links which prove either evolution or descent. 



I "Proceedings of the Britiah Association," 1889; " Pleistocene Plants of Canada, " Canadian Naturalist, 1866. 



