188o. ] The Critics of Evolution. 4Il 
relative, the hermit crab, and begins to suck the juices of his host. 
He soon loses his eye, then his limbs, then the segmentation of 
his body, then his head, his intestines, his everything that seems 
to constitute him an animal. He grows too lazy and sinks too 
low even to eat. Around his mouth develop a bundle of roots 
which spread through the soft body of the hermit crab as roots 
of a plant through the ground, and he sinks to the level of a 
mere automatic existence. Now his host, the hermit crab, and 
this degraded Sacculina started alike, and in the long ages, before 
the hermit had come to be what he is, the common ancestor of all 
crabs, wore, in maturity, the form of this parasite in its nauplius 
stage. Parasitism has pulled the Sacculina down to utter debase- 
ment, as it has all other parasites whether in man or animals. 
Thus creation advances and recedes, and numberless instances of 
both processes could be found in nature, for description of some 
of which I would refer to “ Life History of our Planet,” by Wm. 
D. Gunning, and “ The History of Creation,” by Ernst Haeckel. 
The above instances of actual transformation among hundreds 
that could be adduced, the result of their surroundings, changes 
brought about by changed conditions, must give our critics rea- 
Son to pause before they again attempt to deny that Darwinism 
can bring to its defence the “hard logic of facts” and sound 
induction. 
We have occasionally heard the remark, that it is degrading to 
the self-respect of man to consider himself descended from a long 
line of animals, beginning with the polyp or ascidian. Let us 
consider that in evolution we have no zew truth, but an old truth 
in a new form, the evolution of the individual by a slow process 
from a microscopic germ. Everybody knows that this is the pro- 
cess of development through which every one of us has passed. 
Yet it has never interfered with our belief in an intelligent Creator. 
When asked who made us, we say “ God made us.” But how 
were we made? The only true answer must be, by a process of 
evolution, a slow process of evolution from a microscopic sphere 
of unorganized protoplasm, the germ cell. This knowledge does 
not lessen our respect for the dignity of man, why then should 
it be different in the case of the origin of our species and of all — 
Species by evolution.) 
‘The earnest reader who desires to become acquainted with the most advanced 
views of students of biology, and the recent demonstrations of the stages throug’ 
