THE EVOLUTION OF THE BIRD
By David Meredith Seares Watson
Jodrell Professor of Zoölogy, London University
According to the story of evolution the various kinds of animals that we see to-day are not the descendants of like animals that were suddenly created in the forms they now have; some of them, at least, are the descendants of animals of far different structure and habits. We can observe that no animal is precisely like either of its parents in all respects, but in order to demonstrate certainly the larger changes covered by the theory of evolution we should have to watch carefully the natural breeding of some particular kind of animal for a long time—for thousands or even millions of years. We can get no such evidence as that, so we must turn to evidence of other kinds.
The alternative theory to that of evolution—the theory of special creation—assumes that each kind of animal was created in the form in which we now see it. If every kind of animal had this mode of origin we should expect to find that each one is a perfect machine, with all its parts arranged in the best possible way—that is, in the simplest and most effective way to perform their coöperative functions. But we find that all animals, regarded as pieces of machinery, are imperfect; each represents an attempt, more or less successful, to adapt a pre-existent structure to some new use. If the doctrine of evolution is true we should therefore be able to show that many of the present useless or anomalous struc-
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