CREATION BY EVOLUTION
The naturalist does not require such evidence of evolution as that described above. If future enquiries should prove that it and similar evidence are based on insufficient material and are hence illusory his faith in evolution would remain unshaken. Why is this? Because during the whole of his life’s work he is always meeting with facts which, on the theory of evolution, receive a clear and fascinating interpretation, but which without it are meaningless. Accept evolution and they fit into their place in the scheme of things; reject it and they are isolated and devoid of interest. An instance or two will make this clear.
The female of the common vapourer moth has lost the power of flight. The brown male, which has a white spot on each forewing, flies actively by day and may be seen dashing through the streets and squares of London seeking the female where she sits quietly on the outside of the cocoon from which she emerged. Later on she will lay her eggs on this cocoon and die without leaving it. The little caterpillars that are hatched out eat many kinds of plants and are in no danger of starvation, for a short journey will bring them to food. Therefore the female does not require wings in order to seek the plant that provides food for her offspring and lay eggs on it, and she does not have to seek her mate. All the seeking is done by him. He will even enter a house and creep under a door to enter a room where a freshly emerged female is being kept in a box. Now the evolutionist knows that this nearly wingless female is descended from ancestors that possessed wings like other moths and that her rudimentary wings have become what they are by gradual degeneration. Why are the rudiments there? No theory except evolution can give a reasonable answer. To believe that by an arbitrary act of creation one moth was given useful and another useless wings is a childish creed—an
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