4 EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 
confined to the origin of man, but it explains 
how ail living things have become as we now 
see them, and how and why the most of them 
are being changed. It teaches that all living 
species of plants and animals, including man, 
also the thousands of extinct species which 
have left their fossil records in stratified rocks, 
have been developed from a few small and 
simple forms—probably one, and that a mere 
cell. And it shows, too, that this has been 
done by the operation of natural laws, the 
same laws we see in operation today. 
Evolution does not teach that every living 
thing is “day by day, in every way, growing 
better and better.” On the contrary, it shows 
that many species deteriorate, are driven to 
the wall and become extinct, while only the 
best fitted survive. For instance, of the twen¬ 
ty-five orders of reptiles in the Jurassic period 
—known to the geologists by their fossils— 
only five have come down to our times. But 
out of the reptilian orders, then the highest 
forms of living things, have come the superior 
orders of later times—birds and mammals. 
And this is evolution. 
We sometimes hear the statement that sci¬ 
entists are not in agreement in regard to evo¬ 
lution. The point of disagreement is in respect 
to the part played by natural selection in the 
development of species, and not as to whether 
or not evolution is a fact. The discussion is 
in regard to the how of the fact and not the 
fact itself. No great scientist since Agassiz, 
who died in 1S73, has opposed evolution. 
Neither does evolution teach that one species 
