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EVOLUTION

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Vol. III. No. 2

FEBRUARY, 1931

20 Cents

EUOLUnON

A JOURNAL OF NATURE

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Page two

EVOLUTION

February. 1931

Scienttfic Adri'ory Board

Henry E. Crampton
Martin Dewev
Wm. King Gregory
Paul B. Mann
Elihu Thomson

EUOLUTION

A Journal of Nature

For popular education in natural <:cience

to combat bigotry and superstition

and develop the open mind

Science Editor
Allan Broms

Managing Editor
L, E. Katterfeld

Contributing Editors
Edwin Tenney Brewster
Maynard Shipley
Horace Elmer Wood II.

ANEW CHAPTER BEGINS with this issue. A number
of most eminent scientists have consented to act as mem-
bers of a Scientific Advisory Editorial Board; Prof. Henry E.
Crampton. Iiead of the Zoology Department in Barnard Col-
lege; Dr. Martin Dewey, Presidenc-tlect of the American Den-
tal Association; Dr. Wm. King Gregory, Professor of Verte-
brate Palaeontology at Columbia University and Curator of
Ichthyology at the American Museum of Natural History;
Dr. Paul B. Mann, President of the New York Association of
Biology Teachers; Dr. Elilm Thomson. Consulting Engineer
of the General Electric Company.

MORE THAN TWENTY THOUSAND new readers
are expected to receive this issue of EVOLUTION. As
an introduction we therefore state again oar aims: The purpose
of EVOLUTION is to combat bigotry and superstition by
popularizing natural science; to replace dogmatism with the
scientific method; to champion the right of schools to teach
whatever science discovers, and to maintain the duty of teach-
ers to do so no matter how this conflicts with preconceived pre-
judice; to achieve a larger place for science in education; to
develop a general interest in natural science among the people,
and to encourage the growing sense of social responsibility
among scientists. For the attainment of these ends we invite
the active co-operation of every reader.

A CERTAIN PROFESSOR HAS REFUSED to renew
his subscription because "the name, Evolution, is too
radical. The very word, evolution, antagonizes. It does more
harm than good." This same professor has written a biology
text book without mentioning evolution and actually boasts of
its approval by fundamentalist school boards.

Such a professor, no matter how eminent, is a disgrace to
his profession. For the fundamentalist who opposes teaching
evolution because he honestly believes that the eternal welfare
of h'.s children is involved, we have respect and sympathy even
while we attack his illusions. But for a scientist, who knows
evolution to be a fact, yet deliberately bears false witness in
order to sell more of his books, we have no regard at all.

It may be "good business" to please backward school-boards
in this way, but it is not honest. To hide the truth because of
fear of opposition is moral cowardice. To hide it out of re-
gard for profit is intellectual dishonesty. Instead of feehng
proud of it and pressing us to follow his example, the pro-
fessor should feel the blush of shame upon his cheeks.

No — Evolution will not resort to such subterfuge. Evolu-

tion will not equivocate, will not compromise, will not trim
and hedge and hide. Evolution will always come out boldly
v.'ith the facts. Naturally, those that prefer mental bootlegging
to this straight forward policy, will refuse their support. But
this very condition proves the necessity for Evolution and
makes us all the more determined to give the solid grain of
science instead of merely science husks. And we're confident
that enough of our readers have the necessary moral integrity
to help us ''carry on" until the pressure of organized supersti-
tion, before which the professor has yielded, disappears from
the face of the earth. L. E. K.

WHAT DARWIN'S LIFE HAS MEANT
If I were called upon to express what his life has meant, I
should answer, "He destroyed the raging faith of the human
brain that it can attain truth by logic." It is this faith which
inspires us to interpret nature as if it were answerable to hu-
man reason, as if it must be clothed in "design" or "purpose"
or "rectigradation." Darwin is slowly teaching the world that
nature is utterly beyond our thinking and that we are absurd d
if we drape it in our mental tatters. We are rational only
vAien we try to observe nature in Darwin's way.

But I feel as if the stern old humorist were standing by my
desk and were not quite happy about my simile. A better
summary of his work is given in a sentence that he wrote in
1842, in the scribbled first sketch of his theory. It suggests
how Newton rescued the human mind from its welter of super-
stition about personality in inorganic nature. Newton showed
that all matter is subject to regular laws. But organic nature
still remained beyond law, a field for a riot of superstition.
Darwin, in his study, concluding his first sketch of an evolu-
tion theory, set down his hope of the good it might accomplish
— that it might make the facts of living matter intelligible.
And he made a parable for his hope:

"We no longer look on an animal as a savage does at a ship."
— Henshatv Ward, in "Charles Darwin: The Man and His Welfare."

IN OUR NEXT
March Evolution rvill bring several noteworthy articles: —

Ales Hrdlicka of the Smithsonian Institution on the
Human Race and Its Future.

Wm. King Gregory on the recent expedition of the Ameri-
can Museum of Natural Hisrory to the gorilla country.

/. H. McGregor of Columbia University, the latest informa-
tion regarding the "Peking" Man.

H. Gideon Wells of the University of Chicago, on the new g^
evidence for evolution from Bio-Chemistry and Immunology.

H. J. Muller. concluding "How Evolution Works."

EVOLUTION, February, 1931, Vol. Ill No. 2. (Whole No. 17) Pub'ished month'v hy EVOLUTION PUBLISHING CORPORATION,
344 E. 16th St.', New York. Application for Second Class Entry pending at Post Offire, New York, N. Y. Subscription ?2.00 a year; in lists
of five or more, ^1.00; Foreign, 10c extra; Single copy 20c; bundles of 12 or more, 8 l/3c.

February', 1931

EVOLUTION

Page three

The Range of the Universe

By HARLOW SHAPLEY

' I 'HE galaxy-hunting astronomer may appear to be a rare
spirit, blessed with the privilege of associating always
with grand affairs — big stars, long distances, great spaces. But
he does not greatly delude himself. His is also a world of
littleness. His first sidereal measurement takes him out of touch
with dimensions galactic to the minutest of things. To measure
he must see. To see he must have light. To have light he must
be in contact with the infinitesimals of the sub-microscopic
world.

There is no avoiding electrons, whose diameters are a mil-
lionth of a millionth of millionth of a mile, when we measure
the galactic system, whose diameter is a million, million, mil-
lion miles. We need to consider the behavior of the individual
radiating mechanism, consisting of one atom, when we analyse
the behavior of an individual radiating star composed of more
than 1 ,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 , 000 , 000 , 000 , 000 , 000 , -
000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms. Stars and atoms must be
taken together, light waves and light years, electron motions
and drifts of galaxies.

A survey of material systems will therefore remain rightly
in the astronomer's field when it includes clusters in which
the units are stars, and atoms in which the units are corpus-
cular electrons and protons. The astronomer continually goes to
the physical laboratory for guidance in theory and for experi-
mental facts; the physicist frequently goes to the stars for in-
spiration and for data.

It is our ambition to start at the bottom and work our way
up in the world. We shall therefore begin with electrons . . .

We have no right whatever to maintain doggedly that we
have reached the ultimate in infinitesimal material systems
when we deal with these familiar material units. Experience
should quickly teach us how unsafe such an assumption would
be. A few decades ago not even the atom would have been ad-
mitted to the society of systems. Atoms were the little, hard,
ultimate chunks of matter, indivisable by grace of name and ex-
periment and scientific dogma. But atoms are no longer listed
as ultimates, they are now among the best of material systems;
and even their unit components cannot maintain the former
atomic role of being the indivisable stones from which the ma-
terial universe is built. Experience certainly recommends cau-
tion in asserting any lower limit in the organization of the
microcosmos.

On the other hand, since we can know of electrons and
protons and the units of radiation only by using electrons and
protons and units of radiation in our technique of measuring
and comprehending, it may be that we have already got near
the bottom of measurable units and systems of units. Light
waves and electrons can be rather handily used to measure
^ those bodies and systems of bodies in the material world th.it
are larger than electrons and light waves. In the relatively
coarse-grained world in which we are to work, they are efficient

tools. But in the hypothetical sub-electronic world, where there
may be systems within systems indefinitely, our coarse-grained
tools no longer bring information to our coarse-grained minds.
It may be that we are stopped in our explorations downward,
not because the limit is reached, but because of our inherent
awkwardness.

To register our conviction that the series of systems extends
downward, and that for us its limit is indeterminate, we shall
start our list of material systems with an empty dotted line, and
give it the class number — 5. The first recognizable systems,
therefore, have the number — 4. These small entities may be
appropriately given the generic name Corpuscles, and we start
out thus:

— 5

• — • 4 Corpuscles

— 3 Atoms

— 2 Molecules

— 1 Molecular Systems

0 Colloidal and Crystallic Aggregates

+ 1 Meteoric Associations

+ 2 Satellitic Systems

+ 3 Planetary Structures

+ 4 Double and Multiple Stars

-'- 5 Galactic Clusters

+ 6 Globular Clusters

+ 7 Galaxies

+ 8 Multiple Galaxies

+ 9 Supergalaxies

+ 10 The Metagalaxy

+ 11 The Cosmoplasma

+ 12 The LJniverse (Space-Time Complex)

+ 13 '

Let us indulge one idle fancy. Is our inability to get deeper
into the minutiae of the microcosmos or, in the other direction,
farther into trans-galactic space tied up somehow with our own
dimensions? It is a singular fact that electrons, in diameter,
are just as much smaller than a man as he is smaller than a
supergiant red star, the biggest body he measures. The observer
is thus geometrically near the middle of the range. Also, in ma-
terial content he is in a middle position. The biggest definitely
organized and closely coherent bodies we measure are these
giant stars that contain about 10'* corpuscles (electrons and
protons) . An average man's body contains 10^' corpuscles —
halfway down towards the unit electron.*

If the observer and interpreter were as large as Betelgeuse
might he fail in his survey to reach objects smaller than the
meteors and moons, but perhaps go far beyond our metagalactic
system in the direction of things extensive? Or if he were of
the dimensions of a bacterium, might not the sub-electronic
world open up easily, though he fail to comprehend or meas-
ure the stars and larger parts of the sidereal universe?

Excerpts from "Flights from Chaos" bv Harlow Shapley, with per-
mission of the author and publisher. Copyright, 1930, by the Mc-
Gr,iw-Hiil Book Co., Inc. New York, N. Y.

*The exponent figures indicate that ten is to be used that many
times in multiolving. If the exponent figure is preceded bv a minus
sign, ten is to be used that many times in dividing. This device saves
writing a 'ong series of ciphers, 10^* meaning I followed by 58 ciphers.

Page four

EVOLUTION

February, 1931

If, however, the technique of measurement and understand-
ing ahvays involves hght of the wave lengths and properties we
know about, a displacement of the observer from the middle of
the scale does not help in penetrating the cosmos. Bacterium or
Betelegeusian — he finds that the tools, not the vision, set the
limits, or at least constitute the handicap. New tools are needed,
not a dimensional displacement of the observer.

Our pivotal position in the scale of dimensions is probably
just another of the grim illusions that make man appear to be
importantly in the midst of the measureable world. As with his
once flourishing geocentrism, further research may again easily
decentralize him. We can attach no cosmic significance to his
position in the universe. We are, as remarked above, indulging
vain fancy . . .

Comprehensive and final, the word Universe seems most ob-
vious for the name of our ultimate class ... In our present
usage, the Universe includes every material thing we know. Is
it not natural and appropriate therefore to terminate the survey
at this point, with the classes running from — 4, Corpuscles, to
+ 12, The Universe?

If a hundred years ago we had surveyed the systems within
the universe as then comprehended, it is certain that at both
ends the list of recognized material systems would have been
more limited. Atoms were not treated as systems, but as units.
Electrons were unknown. In the macrocosmos there were vague-
ly understood galaxies, but nothing higher was definitely visu-
alized. Very little was accurately known, of course, concern-
ing sidereal distances or stellar population. The warning of
scientific history is certainly that our growing knowledge of
The Universe may soon cross present boundaries, and that we

should allow for systems beyond those now conceived. Scien-
tific pronouncements concerning unsurpassable limits in dimen-
sions and masses or ultimates in organization are likely to be
mere dogma.

I suggest, therefore, that Class +13 . . . be set up, partly
as a matter of safety, partly as a challenge.

Numbers of Particles

Hydrogen atom 2

Mercury atom 400

One gram lo''^

Comet 10"

Earth lo"

Sun lO"

Globular Cluster lo"

Galaxy 10

Supergalaxy 10

The Universe >10"(?)

Diameters of Material Systems

cm

Proton 10""

Atom 10-*

Molecule 10"'

Colloid 10-°

Comet and Meteor Stream lo'

Earth-moon System lo"

Solar System lo'*

Galactic Cluster lo"

Globular Cluster 10™

Star cloud and Galaxy lo"

The Galactic System 10^'

The Metagalaxy ^ 10^'

The Universe (radius) lO^'C?)

Evolution of Insects

By F. M. CARPENTER

' I 'HE insects occupy the same position among the inverte-
•^ brates that the birds do among the vertebrates: they are
the sole members of their respective series to develop true
wings. But the insects have undergone more changes in struc-
ture in adaptation to their surroundings and modes of living
than any other animal forms. Most of them are winged and
strong fliers; many possess oar-like legs and swim in lakes and
streams; others have legs shaped like shovels and live in the
soil; and a few others have lost all appendages and live within
the body of some animal, feeding on the tissues and body
fluids. Such a diversity of structure is an indication of great
age and implies that much modification or evolution has taken
place within the group.

From numerous investigations on fossil insects it is certain
that as far back as the middle Tertiary period (about fifty
milUon years ago) the insects had already reached a develop-
ment as specialized as that of the living species. Most of the
genera, or species-groups, of the Tertiary are still existing. It
is interesting to find that nearly all these genera once lived in
different regions of the earth than they do now. The Tse-tse
fly (Glossina), which carries the dreaded African "sleeping
sickness," now restricted to the Old World tropics, inhabited
the Colorado region during the mid-Tertiary.

If we go back to the middle Mesozoic (about 150 million
years ago) , we find a stranger assortment of insects; some of
the existing families were present, but most of the species were
less complex in structure than the modern or Teritary ones.

When we go back to the Permian period (about 200 million
years) , we can find no living families, although there are sev-
eral familiar orders, the cockroaches, dragon-flies, scorpion-flies
and such primitive types. The Permian insects, however, were
more primitive in most respects than their existing relatives.

Now if we turn over another page of our geological calendar,
we come to the Upper Carboniferous (about 250 million
years) , in which the first insects are found. Only in the top
layers of these strata do we find an existing group of insects,
— the cockroaches; all the other species, especially those of the
lower beds, belong to orders which have long since become ex-
tinct. They possessed none of the modifications or specializa-
tions which characterize our modern forms. The three seg-
ments of the thorax were equal in size and shape, showing no
differentiation; whereas in living insects the two segments which
bear the wings have become enlarged by, or for, the expansion
of the muscles within. In other groups of recent insects, such
as the leaf -hoppers, the first segment of the thorax possesses
elaborate spines or some other form of armature.

February, 1931

EVOLUTION

Page five

In the Permian we find a few other Hving orders, — the
dragon-flies {Odonata) , May-flies, scorpion-flies, Neuroptera,

1. A member of the extinct order Prodonata from the Permian of
Kansas. Existed only during Carboniferous and Permian. Some were
more than 2 V-2 feet across the wings.

Similarly, the wings of these Carboniferous insects were un-
specialized; the hind pair were of the same size and shape as
the front pair, and the veins were alike. As we follow the
insects through the geological ages we can trace the evolution
of the peculiar features of the modern species. In some groups,
such as the grasshoppers and allies, the hind wing has in-
creased in size at the expense of the fore wing; in other groups,
such as the may-flies, the hind wings have become smaller and
smaller, while the front pair have enlarged. In the Permian
may-flies, for example, the wings were just alike, in the Meso-
zoic species the hind wings were a little smaller than the fore,
and in all existing species the hind wings are so small as to be
almost useless for flight, — in some they have been entirely lost.

Of course, as the size and shape of the fore and hind wings
became different in these groups of insects, their venation was

2. Primitive Dragon-fly from the Permian of Kansas; (specimen in
Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology). Note that none of the
specialized features of later dragon flies are present.

also modified; so that in living insects the veins of the fore
wing follow a different arrangement from those of the hind
wing. The evolution of these changes can be traced in the
fossils. Again, in the Carboniferous insects the veins were
distributed equally over the wings, but gradually assumed
other positions as the wings themselves changed in shape or
mode of operation. The predatory insects, for example, in
which the ability to fly rapidly was essential, developed pecu-
liarities in the veins which strengthened the wing membrane
for powerful strokes.

Recent investigations on fossil insects have filled in many of
the gaps in the geological history of these creatures, so that
we are able to obtain a bird's-eye view of their evolution from
a consideration of the geological ranges of the major groups,
or orders. Most of the insects of the Carboniferous and Per-
mian were of orders dying out before the middle Mesozoic.

The cockroaches, or at least insects which were like them,
but a little more primitive, have existed since the Upper Car-
^ boniferous; but they have undergone considerable modification
in structure and the number of species has greatly increased.
In the Carboniferous the cockroaches comprised nearly SOfo
of all the species, but they steadily died off during the geo-
logical ages until now they make up less than a half of one
percent of the existing insects.

3. Primitive May-fly from Permian of Kansas. The wings of
these insects were ahke, but in existing species the hind wing is less
than one-third as large as the front one.

true bugs (Homoptera) , and the bark-lice (Psocoptera) ; but
they were all much simpler than the later types and belong to
extinct families. In the Mesozoic the wasp group (Hymenop-
tera) makes its first appearance, as well as the caddis-flies,
thrips, and the heteropterous bugs, and the ear-wigs. In the
Tertiary we find the white ants (Isoptera) and butterflies
(Lepidoptera) for the first time.

The significant fact concerning this sequence of insect
groups in geological time is that the groups appear in the same
chronological order as we should expect from a study of the
structures of their living representatives. The primitive orders
appear first, followed in turn by more highly specialized mem-
bers until the present complex, intricate insects developed.

4. Dragon-fly from the Mesozoic of Bavaria. Note how much
more complex rhe veins are than in the Permian specimen. (Fig. 2.)

BROMS ON THE AIR

A LLAN Broms, Science Editor of EVOLUTION, speaks
over the radio regularly three times a week as follows:

Saturdays, 11:30 A.M. Station WOR

Saturdays, 5:00 P.M. Station WEVD

Sundays, 2:00 P.M. Station WPAP

Some of his subjects this month are: "How Big Is The
Universe?" "Blood Will Tell," "What Is The Sun Made Of?"
"History In A Tree Trunk," etc. Listen in with your friends
and write your itnpressions to these radio stations. If Natural
Science radio talks are appreciated, there will be more of them.

Page six

EVOLUTION

February, 1931

Man's Day Begins

By SIR JAMES HOPWOOD JEANS

A NTHROPOLOGISTS and geologists tell us that man

/\

has existed on earth for something like 300,000 years:

we must go this far back to meet our ape-like ancestry. Be-
tween them and us some 10,000 generations of men have
walked the earth, most of whom have probably given some
thought, in varying degree, to
the significance of their exis-
tence and the plan of the uni-
verse.

Of these 10,000 generations
of men, the first 9,990 unhesi-
tatingly regarded the earth as
the center, and terrestrial life as
the central fact, of the universe.
As was suited to its majesty
and dignity as the abode of
man, the earth stood still while
the celestial sphere spun around
it, covering in the earth much
as a telescope dome covers in
the telescope; and this dome
was spangled with stars, which had been thoughtfully added so
as not to leave the central earth unilluminated at night. Ten
generations at most have been able to view the problem of their
existence in anything like its proper astronomical perspective.

The total age of the earth far exceeds the 300,000 years or
so of man's existence. The evidence of geology, and of radio-
activity in rocks in particular, shows that it must be some-
thing like 2,000,000,000 years, which is several thousand times
the age of the human race. Old Mother Earth must regard
man as a very recent apparition indeed; he has just appeared
to burrow into her, burn her forests, put her waterfalls into
pipes, and generally mar the beauty of her features. If Tie has
done so much in the first few moments of his existence, she
may well wonder what is in store for her in the long future
ages in which he is destined to labor on her surface.

For in all probability the life in front of the human race
must enormously exceed the short life behind it. A million.

Sir James Jeans

humanity is at the very beginning of its existence — a new born
babe, with all the unexplored potentialities of babyhood; and
until the last few moments its interest has been centered, abso-
lutely and exclusively, on its cradle and feeding bottle. It
lias just become conscious of the vast world existing outside
itself and its cradle; it is learning to focus its eyes on distant
objects, and its awakening brain is beginning to wonder, in
a vague, dreamy way, what they are and what purpose they
serve. Its interest in this external world is not much developed
yet, so that the main part of its faculties is still engrossed with
the cradle and feeding bottle, but a little corner of its brain
li beginning to wonder.

Taking a very gloomy view of the future of the human
race, let us suppose that it can only expect to survive for 2,000,- '
000,000 years longer, a period about equal to the past age of
the earth. Then, regarded as a being destined to live for three-
score years and ten, humanity, although it has been born
in a house 70 years old, is itself only 3 days old. But only in
the last few minutes has it become conscious that the whole
world does not center round its cradle and its trappings, and
only in the last few ticks of the clock has any adequate concep-
tion of the size of the external world dawned upon it.

For our clock does not tick seconds, but years; its minutes
are the lives of men. A minute and a half ago the distance of
a star was first measured and provided a measuring rod for the
universe. A quarter of a minute ago, Hertzsprung and Shap-
ley showed how the peculiar stars known as Cepheid variables
provide a longer measuring rod, and taught us to think in dis-
tances so great that light takes hundreds of thousands of
years to traverse them. With the last tick of the clock,
Hubble, using the same measuring rod, has found that the
most remote objects visible in the biggest telescope on earth
are so distant that light, traveling 186,000 miles a second,
takes about 140 million years to come from them to us. * * *

Our * * * infant, mankind, has made the great discovery of
the existence of the outer world, has formed some concep-
tion of his size, and adjusted his ideas, not by a process of slow
revelation, but by a brain flash of the last few seconds. In his

million years hence, so far as we can foresee, the sun will prob- mature years and his staid old age he is no doubt destined to
ably still be much as now, and the earth will be revolving round make many sensational discoveries, but he can never again

it much as now. The year will be a little
longer, and the climate quite a lot colder, while
the rich accumulated stores of coal, oil, and
forest will have long been burned up; but there
is no reason why our descendents should not
still people the earth. Perhaps it may be un-
able to support so large a population as now,
and perhaps fewer will desire to live on it. On
the other hand, mankind, being three million
times as old as now, may — if the conjecture
does not distress our pessimists too much — be
three million times as wise.

Looked at on the astronomical time scale,

A high promise for fu-
ture human achievement
is here suggested by an

From Annual Report of Smithsonian Institution,
1929, pp. 165-8.

live through the immortal moments at which
he first grasped the immensity of the outer
world. We only live through a few ticks of
his clock. * * * The wonderful thing is that
fate has selected for us what is, perhaps, in

eminent physicist. In the some ways the most sensational moment of all

next issue, in an article on the life of our race.

"WHAT IS MAN BE-

COMING?", Ales Hrd-

licka will discuss Man's

probable physical future

front the viewpoint of an

anth ropologist.

.SCIENCE LEAGUE OF AMERICA

Champions Freedom of Science Teach-
ing. Every evolutionist invited to join.
Particulars from Maynard Shipley, Pres.
830 Market Street, San Francisco.

February, 1931

EVOLUTION

Page seven

Is Man Blood-Cousin to the Ape?

A y^AN\ persons become indignant when it
■^ ■'■ is suggested that man is probably a dis-
tant cousin to the ape. Let us see.

Scientists of the LJniversity of Cambridge
and elsewhere carried out extensive and careful
experiments with a view to testing the conclu-
sions of comparative anatomists and geologists
relative to the descent and relationship of the
various genera and species of animals, includ-
ing man and the higher apes.

Some three million years ago, primitive
lemurs abounded in the region now known as
Wyoming and New Mexico, also in certain
parts of France, as is attested by their fossil re-
mains. Many zoologists believe that the mon-
key family originated in western North Amer-
ica, later spreading from this region to Europe, Africa and
Asia, as in the case of camels and the rhinoceros family, which
are almost certainly of American origin. The lemurs are
now abundant only in Madagascar, but are found in small
numbers in the tropical forests of Africa and Malaysia.

By MAYNARD SHIPLEY

Another "confession"
of an evolutionist turns
out to be a misquotation.
The Fundatnentatist Rev-
erend W. B. Riley quoted
the author of this article
as admitting that "man
has a line of descent of
his own, and not con-
nected with any other
species." What Mr. Ship,
ley really said — some-

Omitting details, it may be explained that
the precipitin reaction consists in the fact that
if the colorless part of the blood, which remains
after clotting, be taken from a human being,
and injected into the veins of a rabbit, the blood
serum of the latter will develop an anti-body,
analagous to the anti-toxin which is produced
in the blood of a horse by the injection of diph-
theria virus. After several such injections, and
a few days after the last injection, if the rabbit
is killed and bled, the serum taken can be
shown to be an "anti-human" serum. When
brought into contact with human blood it causes

thing very different — is the formation of a white precipitate; but if the

here told.

foreign blood is that of some mammal only

distantly related to man, the reaction is very

feeble, exhibiting only a certain cloudiness. But if the foreign

blood is that of a chimpanzee, gorilla, orang-utan, or gibbon,

the precipitate is thrown down!

The amount of the precipitation is a measure of the closeness
or distance of relationship. Passing from the manlike apes to

This line of descent of the man-like apes from the lowly the lower forms, the reactions become progressively weaker,

lemur can be established by various lines of evidence as rea- until the Lemuroidea (half-apes) are reached, when only a

sonably certain. It can also be shown that man himself slight reaction occurs — indicating slight blood relationship,
has descended from the same common ancestor as gave rise In Austria and Germany, the "precipitation method" is em-

to the man-like apes, and is, moreover, a veritable blood rela- ployed by the police in the detection of criminals. For ex-

tive of the great apes. To test this theory in the light of blood ample, a suspected person is brought before a magistrate and

immunity and blood relationship was one of the tasks set for charged with murder. On his sleeve blood-stains are dis-

themselves by Professors C. H. Nuttall, G. L. Graham-Smith,
and T. S. P. Strangeways, all of Cambridge.

So long ago as 1875, Landois had shown that the introduc-
tion of the blood of a foreign species into any animal resulted
in the disintegration of the minute, disk-shaped corpuscles, or
cells, which float in the watery fluid (serum) of the blood.

covered. "Where did these come from?" inquires the magis-
trate. "I was killing a chicken," replies the suspect. Now
comes the blood test. The blood stains are soaked in a very
weak solution of common salt, and, if necessary, the blood
solution is filtered until it is quite limpid and clear. Into this
blood solution a few drops of the "anti-human" serum are con-

It was found that the serum of one family of animals (but veyed; and if the stains are of human blood, a white percipi-

not one species) destroys the cells of another. Thus, the blood
of the wolf or the fox may be transfused into the dog, (or
vice versa) , or the hare into the rabbit, or the horse into the
donkey, without dissolving the cells. The cells are dissolved
if blood of two species not closely related is so transfused.
Friedenthal later showed that human blood serum dissolves

tate is thrown down; but not if the stains are of the blood of a
fowl — or of any animal except man or an anthropoid ape.

Many a murderer has been detected by this simple method.

Anti-bovine serum, or any other, may be produced in the
same way. Thus physiological tests have confirmed degrees
of relationship already established between animals by other

the red blood corpuscles of fishes, amphibians, birds, such mam- researches of anatomists and palaeontologists, showing that

mals as the cat, horse and even the lower monkeys; but not
the cells of the anthropoid (man-like) apes! Finding that the
blood of the chimpanzee and of the human can be transfused
with impunity, this experimenter concluded that this fact
proved the four manlike apes and human beings are blood
relatives, since the blood cells of all animals not closely related

the close anatomical resemblance between the four higher an-
thropoids and man really means a blood relationship.

These facts do not, however, imply that man is descended
from one or the other of the existing man-like apes, or that
the latter are evolving toward the human estate. Man is no
more descended from the gorilla or orang than those apes
are descended from the chimpanzee or gibbon. Man and the

are destroyed or injured in proportion to their relationship.

During the years 1897-99, the so-called "precipitin reaction" anthropoid apes are branches of the tree of hfe, and if we trace

^ test was discovered and developed by Kraus, Tchistowitch and these branches from their tips back to the common trunk, we

Border, and by this new method the monumental researches find there a common ancestor of both apes and man; and, to

were carried on at Cambridge by Nuttall and his associates, go still farther back in time — millions of years ago — we should

on a quantitative basis, establishing the degree or closeness of eventually find the common ancestor of all mammals — the first

relationship of nearly all genera of animals now living. warm-blooded quadruped that suckled its young.

Page eight

EVOLUTION

February, 1931

How Long Ago?

By EDSON S. BASTIN

/"' EOLOGY has made a notable contribution to an intelligent of such sediments. In other places they may be accumulating

^-' philosophy of life by giving us at least a rough idea of faster or slower, and some sorts of sediments form much more

the amount of time involved in the great pageant of life-de- slowly than others, but by many observations scattered over

velopment. In geologic, as in human history we need to see the earth he can arrive at some rough average of the time

events in their proper time perspective to understand fully necessary to accumulate a foot of these sediments. On the

their meaning. Having placed the varied forms of the past in average it appears to take something like 900 years for a

their proper positions in the great procession of evolving life, foot of sediment to be laid down.

how shall we know whether the procession moved rapidly or Now if we multiply this period of time by the total nimiber

slowly? The question is so difficult that it may never be com- of feet of sediments that have accumulated in the past to form

pletely answered, but enough has been learned to show that our great series of sedimentary rocks — 70 miles in thickness in
profoundly long periods of time are involved.

How does the geologist solve a prob-
lem of this sort? There is no mystery
in his methods. One of his simple guid-
ing principles is that processes going on

in the earth's surface today went on also
in the past — the present is the key to the
past. In the shallow waters of the shores
of Lake Michigan he sees the sand
marked by a series of little ridges and if
he watches he can see that these are
formed by the drag of the waves on the
lake bottom. He calls them ripple-
marks.

His next excursion is to a quarry where
hard rock, sandstone, is being quarried.
The quarryman with his hammer splits
a piece off a solid, flat ledge and there
on its surface are ridges or ripple marks
precisely like those he saw forming on
the lake bottom. The natural and rea-
sonable conclusion is that what is now
sandstone was once sand shifted by the
waves in the shallows of a lake or the

100 MWhon yeacs

Graph illustracing geologic time and the
evolution of earth's history. From David
White, U. S. Geological Survey.

we arrive at a figure of around three hundred million years
as the time necessary for them to accu-
mulate. Crude as is this method and
fraught with many uncertainties, it yet
gives us some rough notion of the im-
mense periods of time involved in the his-
tory of the earth.

Another method of calculating geo-
logic time is based on the amount of
common salt in the oceans. Water fall-
ing as rain on the earth's surface dis-
solves salts of various kinds as it flows
off over the surface or underground,
eventually to join the brimming river and
travel to the sea. Some of the salts are
deposited when they reach the ocean, but
most of the common salt remains dis-
solved in the ocean waters. It is possi-
ble to calculate roughly, from the known
size of the oceans, how much common
salt they contain. It is also possible to
calculate roughly how much common salt
is being carried to the ocean in a year by
the rivers of the world. Dividing the
first figure by the second gives us a figure

On another exiursion to a new locality, the geologist finds of around 100 million years for the age of the ocean. Obvi-
sandstone beds showing the same sort of markings, but this ously this method of calculation has many grave uncertainties
time the ripple marked surfaces are standing vertical instead and is valuable only in giving a rough conception of the general

of lying flat. From this he concludes, not only that lake or
ocean waters once stood where now is a sandstone quarry, but
also that since then the sandstones have been tilted by earth
movements from their original flat-lying position until now
they stand vertical.

Similarly in Italy the geologist sees rocks of peculiar kinds
forming today from cooling lavas of Vesuvius. When later,
on our New England coast, he finds rocks of almost identical
sorts he concludes that once volcanoes were active there altho

order of magnitude of the periods of time involved in geologic
history.

The newest method of measuring the age of the earth is by
far the most ingenious and probably the most reliable. There
are substances that are continually disintegrating by giving off
what are commonly called rays or emanations. The radium or
thorium salts used for the luminous figures on the dials of
clocks and watches are substances of this sort. While many
of the substances that thus disintegrate spontaneously are pro-

they have long since ceased to belch forth molten lavas and duced only in the laboratory, some are minerals occurring na-

their once mountainous forms have been worn down to low-
lying plains.

It is by methods equally logical, if not quite as simple, that
he learns something of the age of the earth. At the mouths
of rivers and along shores he sees rocks in process of forma-
tion as muds and clays and sands. By careful watching he
can learn how long it takes to accumulate an inch or a foot

turally in the rocks. Now the significant point is that the
rate at which such minerals disintegrate is nearly constant and
can be measured in the chemical laboratory in terms of our
ordinary time units of hours and years. Furthermore when
such minerals disintegrate, certain of the products of disintegra-
tion remain in their entirety associated with the original min-
eral. If then we determine by analyzing their proportions in

February, 1931

EVOLUTION

Page nine

the mineral what degree of disintegration it has undergone we
can get a measure of the number of years that have elapsed
since the mineral was first formed in its fresh state in the rocks.

Thus measuring the age of the earth in the chemical lab-
oratory, we arrive at even more astonishing estimates of geo-
logic time than were obtained by the older methods. If, using
these newer methods, we hastily run the gamut of some of the
major events of geologic history, dating them as we go, we
find that the oldest rocks now exposed on the earth's surface
were formed something like 1500 million years ago.

The first clearly recognizable remains of living forms pre-
served in the rocks — forms that lived in the sea — appeared at
least 600 million years ago, although less direct evidences show
that life itself appeared much earlier than this.

Something like 400 million years ago living forms first
crawled out of the sea to inhabit the land — these first known
land animals being scorpions. Footprints in rocks formed
perhaps 350 million years ago are our first record of back-
boned animals living on the land at least part of the time.

About 40 million years ago appeared the lemurs, the first rep-
resentatives of the great group of primates to which man be-
longs. And perhaps half a million years ago appeared in far
off Java the first of the forms that can properly be called
human.

If, to grasp more readily the relative values of these in-
tervals of time, we should reckon as one day of 24 hours the
time since clearly recognizable forms of life appeared on the
earth, then man has existed only for the last minute of that
day and the entire sweep of English History since the Ancient
Britons first crossed the channel from the continent has occu-
pied only the last second of that day.

How reliable is this geologic clock based on the dissociation of radio-
active elements? Can we be absolutely sure that their disintegration
has continued at exactly the same invariable rates throughout all the
vast stretches of time? Possibly not; but this at least is true, the
relative ages of various rocks as determined by this method agrees with
their relative ages as determined by their geologic relations to each
other — and this fact gives us confidence in the method. At least our
clock never strikes ten until it has struck nine and does not strike
nine until after it has struck eight.

Making due allowance for all the uncertainties of such
methods of estimating geologic time, it is at least clear that
the physical conditions on the earth's surface began to be hos-
pitable for life at petiods almost inconceivably long ago and

that throughout all subsequent time they have never varied
sufficiently to result in its extinction, for the chain of life de-
velopment has been continuous. There seems to be no reason
to expect that our physical surroundings will cease to be hos-
pitable to life for countless ages to come. In the relatively
brief space of man's existence on the earth — the last minute
in our geologic day — he has harnessed the inanimate forces
of nature and has brought all other forms of animal life except
a few disease germs into subjection to him; he has greatly ex-
tended his tetm of life by his partial conquest of disease and
by better protection from the elements; and he has developed
powers and qualities of mind and spirit not remotely ap-
ptoached by other living creatures.

With a clear field ahead, what magnificant ptogress may be
his if he accepts his responsibility for continued progress. His
main enemies are now within himself — and he may well beware
lest in the increased ease of living he loses the vigor and the
homely virtues that are necessary for the progress of the race
upward and onward.

Ripple-marked Potsdam sandstone with trilobite trails, Port Henry,
N. Y. (In New York State Museum).

ABORIGINES of Stone Age culture
are reported to have been found by W.
Lloyd Warner, anthropologist, on small
islands north of Australia. He said that
they have no religion and no money, but
an elaborate social organization, marked
rules of conduct and obedient children.
They are polygamous and the women do
most of the wotk. Their only weapons
are stone-headed spears.

BEST EVt>LlTION I'.MVIPHLi;'!'
The clearest, simplest explanation of
Evolution is "The Proofs of Evolution"
by Henshaw Ward, excellent for be-
ginners and opponents. Sent postpaid
for lOc; 20 for ^1.

.^C;.\IN— OUR NEW .VDDRESS
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and human racial stocks." Will interest
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Monthly, ^3.50 per year. With Evolu-
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Page ten

EVOLUTION

February, 1931

How annual clay layers were deposited in
fresh water off the receding ice front during
hree successive years. — From Antevs.

'T^HERE Still live many who take seriously the chron-
-*■ ology drawn about 1650 by James Usher,
Archbishop of Armagh, who set the date of Creation
in the year 4004 B. C by the simple method of
adding Adam's 930 years to Enoch's 365 years to
Methuselah's 969 years, etc. Dr. John Lightfoot,
Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, promptly
"improved" on this dating by specifying that the
Creation occurred on October 23rd, at nine o'clock in
the morning. But later scholars, of equal "author-
ity", have placed the date variously at 4710 B. C. and
5872 B. C, the resulting debate lasting (in certain
circles) to this very day. (See page 19.)

But meanwhile, for half a century, the geologists
have been confidently talking of millions and lately
of billions of years since the Earth was born, and
have developed dependable methods for closely esti-
mating the ages of our oldest rocks. But especially
conclusive is a method now used by the glacial geolo-
gists to date (almost to the year in some cases)
the progressive recession of the great ice sheets
from northern Europe and North America, which
dates take us back definitely some 13,500 years, long
before the orthodox- dates of Creation.

The method, originally suggested a century ago by
an American geologist, Alfred Smith, and first ap-
plied about 50 years ago by Baron Gerard DeGeer
of Sweden to working out a post-glacial chronology,
consisted in counting the number of layers in clay
deposits, each layer representing a year, much as we
measure the age of a tree by counting its annual
growth rings.

Several years ago, in a rear storeroom of the
American Museum of Natural History, I was privi-
leged to examine a collection of banded clays care-
fully preserved in long metal trays and soaked with
glycerine to keep them from drying and shrinking.
From them, Dr. Chester A. Reeds and other geolo-
gists were reconstructing the history of the New Jer-
sey, New York and New England areas since the
close of the Great Ice Age, long before the coming

THE GREAT CLAY

of the white man. They already had a complete
year by year record covering thousands of years, but
, not definitely connected with modern dates.

They had examined hundreds of clay pits (often
already nicely dug out for brick yards) along the
Passaic, Hackensack, Hudson, Cormecticut and Mer-
rimac rivers. They either measured the series of clay
layers by marking them on long, strong strips of
paper (see center illustration), or they took samples
of the clay itself by pressing a long, narrow metal
tray vertically against the smoothed clay wall and
then cutting the enclosed clay loose from the mass.
This latter method was often necessary when the
layers were too alike in thickness, but showed distinc-
tive differences in color or texture by which they
could be identified in several locations. In the lab-
oratory, all the measures were charted for ready
comparison and the work of counting for actual
dating was done.

At that time, one of the group. Dr. Ernst Antevs,
was away up in the wilds of Canada, laboriously
gathering more samples and measuring clay layers in
an attempt to extend the series of years and fix defi-
nite dates for all the various stages of melting and

RETREAT OF THE LAST ICE SHEET
IN NORTHEASTERN NORTH AMERICA

POSITION OF RETREATING ICEEDGE

at eerTBin years in relalion To

an erbilranly chosen zero

(one intheConnechcut Valley

and a different one in itie

Timistiaming-Aljtnbi legion)

at beginning of KlrWeld stagk
stendofLakelroquoiE "
... etbeginningof marine "
MORAINES

general

The letters indicate moraines: T.M. — terminal moraine. R.
— Ronkonkomon, H.H. — Harbor Hill. M. — Mississinawa.
D.— Defiance. A.— Alden. N.F.— Niagara Falls. P.H.—
Port Huron. — From Antevs.

Annual clay layers and
nesses on a strip of paper

retreat of the great ice
all Canada and the not

When the long cold s
Age came to an end, tl:
melting. This does nc
backward, but merely
than it moved forward
retiring ice front, ponds
form, banked on the s
north by ice itself. Tl
melting ice, would be )
that had been ground ai
beneath the moving, cri

During the warm !
rapid, the swiftly flowi
the finer silts to great
gravels settle at orice on
the cold of winters sto)
waters would slacken a:
settle slowly in still wal
greasy clay. Each passi
by an alternating pair c
pair recording a yearly
called (from the Swedi

February, 1931

EVOLUTION

Page eleven

CALENDAR

By ALLAN BROMS

Fortunately, the layers are not all alike from year
to year. Long, hot summers resulted in thick gravel
layers, while shifts in outflow caused new kinds and
colors of outwash deposits. Such distinctive layers
can often be identified over wide areas in several clay
deposits. By going from one to another and making
careful comparisons, a complete series may be worked
out from the overlapping local records to make a
continuous calendar for thousands of years. In
northern Sweden, fortunately, it was possible to trace
the series to the very fronts of existing snow-fields
(where just such clay layers are now being laid down
each year), so connected definitely with our times.

Obviously, no layer could be formed at any point
until the ice had melted away and uncovered it. As the
ice edge receded, each sucfeeding annual layer would
extend a bit farther north, overlapping somewhat
like the shingles on a roof. The margin of the
layer (where it touches bedrock at any date), there-
fore marks the edge of the ice-sheet at that date.
By this method, the stages of retreat of the Baltic
Ice Sheet have been carefully dated as shown on the
small map. The entire record, though it does not
go back to the very beginning of the glacial recession,

)d of recording their thick-
im Antevs.

that last covered nearly
1 United States,
which caused the last Ice
ge of the ice receded by
ean that the ice moved

it melted away faster
ere and there along this
lakes of icy water would

by earth ridges, on the
Abaters, derived from the
ly with silts and gravels
jlverized both within and
g mass of mile-thick ice.
vers, when melting was
vaters would carry away
nces, but let th^ coarser
lake bottoms. But when

the melting, the flow of
) permit the finer silts to
o foifti a denser layer of
;at would thus be marked
avel and clay layers, each
:her and deposition cycle,
la "varve."

RETREAT OF THE LAST ICE SHEET
IN NORTHERN EUROPE

POSITION OF RtTREATiNG ICtEOOE
" " " " " Gothi-glacial

ist cenain years in relslion 10
an arbirranljr chosan lero
(ont in Sweden nnd a differenr
one in Finland)

MORAINES

Moraines in general

. . . JVounger moraines in
■\0enm8rk and Seanla

-..._ fini-jlacial icedivii

— poal-glaciat ■■ "

Present Bainc drainagedividi

The principal moraines are indicated as follows: F. —
Flaming. B. — Bi indcnburg. Poz, — Poznan. Pom. — Pom-
merania. — From Antevs.

The dates of the principal stages of retreat
of the Baltic Ice Sheet.

does go back some 13,500 years, long before the Fun-
damentalists' year of Creation.

A long, oscillating halt of the ice front in the
Danish Islands and southern Sweden ended some
13,500 years ago. By this time or soon after, our
own ice sheet was just retiring from the Great Lakes
region. A notion of the succeeding stages in both
areas can be gained from the two large maps that
show what we have learned from the Great Clay
Calendars. The relative completeness of the Baltic
Calendar is apparent. The American Calendar has
serveral gaps, which we must fill as best we may from
other calendar data, such as the gorge-cutting by
Niagara Falls, the changes in the Great Lakes, and
by tracing across the country the long moraines of
dumped earth and rock which piled up along the edge
of the melting ice sheet at its greatest extension or
where it halted or readvanced slightly in its general
northward retreat. Such moraines are indicated by
dotted lines on the maps and do serve to mark con-
temporaneous locations of the ice front, since they
were deposited at much the same time. The year
figures given on the geologists' working maps are not
oar own calendar dates, but are relative to arbitrary
base locations of the ice front (for no actual dates are
ever known at the outset). But on the American
map, figures have been guessed at for the number of
years after the beginning of glacial retreat. Both the
southern and northern ends of this record are miss-
ing, but good guesses seem to be that this beginning
occurred about 40,000 years ago, certainly more than
30,000, probably less than 50,000. In this brief
period (brief geologically) the great ice sheets have
shrunk to some mountain glaciers in the Alps and
Scandinavian mountains and to a more considerable
ice cap over Greenland. But even the Greenland ice
cap, thick and immense though it be, is a mere rem-
nant of the miles-thick ice sheet which once covered
some four million square miles of our continent.

References: Ernst Antevs, "Recession of Last Ice Sheet in
New England" (1922); "The Last Glaciation" (1928).

Page twelve

EVOLUTION

February, 1931

How Evolution Works

By H. J. MULLER

V. X-RAYS CAUSE MUTATIONS
TF this general conception of mutation is valid
•*• we must regard it as being merely a kind of
placing of the problem; we should not yet
know just which were ordinarily the critical
processes concerned, still less the exact steps in-
volved. The conception carries with it, how-
ever, suggestions for further experimental in-
vestigation. For among the agents of an ultra-
microspically random character, that can strike
willy nilly through living things causing drastic
atomic changes here and passing everything by
unaltered there — not a ten thousandth of a
millimeter away, there stand preeminently the
X- or Y- (gamma) ray and its accomplice, the
speeding electron. There is nothing in protoplasm which can
effectually stop the passage of X-rays or the related
waves of shorter wave-length — gamma and cosmic rays.
For the most part, in a cell, the rays will pass through
but at isolated, unpredictable spots, depending upon
unknown "chance" details of energy-configurations, a definite
portion, a "quantum," of the rays will be held up, and part of
the energy thus absorbed will issue forth in a hurtling electron,
shot out of the atom that stood in the way of the radiation.
The atom will be changed thereby, and hence the molecule in
which it lies may undergo a change in its chemical composi-
tion. But for every atom thus directly changed there are
thousands of other atoms changed indirectly. For the electron,
shot out hke a bullet (except far faster) , tears its path through
thousands of atoms that happen to lie in its way, leaving in its
wake a trail of havoc before it is finally stopped. In this
process, many of the atoms through which the electron tears
have one or more of their own electrons torn out or dislodged
from their proper places; this change in the structure of the
atoms often causes them to undergo new chemical unions or
disunions that in turn alter the composition of the molecules
in which the atoms lay. If a gene is a molecule, then, with
properties depending upon its chemical composition, it can be
shot and altered by the electrons resulting from the absorption
of X-rays or rays of shorter wave-length. The only question
would be, can enough mutations be caused in this way to be
detectable by our present methods, with doses of rays small
enough not to kill or sterilize the treated organism?

With these points in mind, the author undertook in the fall
of 1926 a series of experiments designed to test the question
at issue. The fruit-fly, Drosophila, was used, since it is so
easily and rapidly bred in large numbers and since it rendered
possible the employment of special genetic technique for the
finding of mutations, that had been elaborated in the course
of my previous work on linkage and mutation in this organism.

It would take us too far afield here to examine this technique
in detail. Stocks of flies had been made ap containing in
given combinations certain genes with conspicuous effects
which would serve to notify the investigator that the chromo-
some under consideration was present. On making given

The opening chapters
in our last issue consid-
ered the various theories
of the cause of evolution,
reviewed the principles
of genetics, proved the
randomness of mutations
and traced their origin to
the "newly found world
of the little," the genes.
We'll send this first part
to any new subscriber
upon request.

crosses of these stocks with other stocks va-
rious combinations of characteristics would be
expected in the first and following genera-
tions. If flies with some particular expected
combination were, however, absent from a
given culture, it would mean that a mutation
had occurred that had given rise to a lethal
gene — one that had killed the flies containing
it before they had a chance to hatch. By
noting which combinations were missing it
could be deduced which chromosome of the
fly the lethal was in, and at what place in the
chromosome it lay. On the other hand, mu-
tant genes having visible instead of lethal
effects would be detectable through the ap-
pearance of the visible variations, and these too could be traced
to their chromosome position through studies of the nature and
frequency of the combinations in which they appeared. Mutant
genes that were recessive to the normal type, however, and
most mutations are recessive, would not have a chance to be
seen or found until the second or third generation of offspring,
subsequent to their origination. The reason why recessive mu-
tations are not evident at once has been explained previously.

In these experiments the adult flies — in some cases the males,
in other cases the females — were placed in gelatin capsules and
subjected to doses of X-rays so strong as to produce partial
sterility, though the other functions of the flies are not notice-
ably disturbed by a dose several times stronger than used here.
The treated flies were then bred to untreated mates, and at the
same time numerous control matings of the same genetic type
were carried on for comparison, consisting of untreated males
crossed by untreated females. Thousands of cultures were
used in this and subsequent experiments, in order, if possible,
to settle the matter beyond any doubt.

Startling Results

The results in these experiments were startling and unequiv-
ocal. To the toiling pilgrim after plodding through the long
and weary deserts of changelessness, here indeed was the Prom-
ised Land of Mutations. All types of mutations, large and
small, ugly and beautiful, burst upon the gaze. Flies with
bulging eyes or with flat or dented eyes; flies with white, purple,
yellow or brown eyes or no eyes at all; flies with curly hair,
with ruffled hair, with parted hair, with fine and with coarse
hair, and bald flies; flies with swollen antennae, or extra an-
tennae, or legs in place of antennae; flies with broad wings,
with narrow wings, with uprurned wings, with downturned
wings, with outstretched wings, with truncated wings, with
split wings, with spotted wings, with bloated wings and with
virtually no wings at all. Big flies and little ones, dark ones and
light ones, active and sluggish ones, fertile and sterile ones,
long-lived and short-lived ones. Flies that preferred to stay on
the ground, flies that did not care about the light, flies with a
mixture of sex characters, flies that were especially sensitive to
warm weather. They were a motley throng. What had hap-

February, 1931

EVOLUTION

Page thirteen

pened? The roots of life — the genes — had indeed been struck,
and had yielded.

It must not be supposed that all the above types appeared
congregated together in one family. The vast majority of the
offspring that hatched still appeared quite normal, and it was
only by raking through our thousands of cultures that all these
types were found. But what a difference from the normal fre-
quency of mutation, which is so painfully low! By checking up
with the small numbers of mutants found in the numerous un-
treated or control cultures, which were bred in parallel, it was
found that the heaviest treatment had increased the frequency
of mutation about 150 times — that is, an increase of 15,000
per cent.

VI. SIMILARITY OF THE X-RAY TO THE
NATURAL MUTATIONS

Yet these mutations were obviously of the same general
nature as the spontaneous mutations that occur without X-ray
treatment. This was shown by the fact that in many cases
changes had been produced which were undoubtedly identical
with spontaneous variations which had been found in the pre-
vious history of the Drosophila work; the effects in these cases
appeared identical in every particular, and the method of in-
heritance, the position of the gene concerned in the chromo-
some, was found to be the same.

The new types of mutations, like the old, conformed in their
general expression and mode of inheritance to certain general
principles which I have previously observed to hold in the case
of the mutations occurring in untreated material. One of these
principles was that the great majority of the mutations — of
X-ray as well as of natural origin — are recessive to the normal
type, despite the presence of a rather small minority of domin-
ants. Thus the technique of breeding out through a number of
generations in order to find the mutations was found to be justi-
fied. And it may be remarked here that if human beings are
affected by X-rays in the same way as flies, we can not expect
to find much evidence of a mutational effect of X-rays on them
from data derived only from the first, or even the first, second
and third human generations, and such a negative result will
therefore by no means indicate a lack of significant genetic
effect.

The second principle observed was that the X-ray mutations,
like the natural ones, included both inconspicuous as well as
conspicuous changes, changes of slight or almost imperceptible
degree as well as striking changes of structure or quality, and
changes that registered their effect, so far as could be deter-
mined, only in slight lowerings of the general vitality, as well
as those that were more graphically describable. If anything,
the more easily overlooked effects were the more frequent.

A third principle noted was thnt moslTof the X-ray muta-
tions were in some way detrimental to the animal in living its
life — they were steps in the wrong directions in the struggle for
existence. This finding has already been discussed in the case of
the natural mutations, and it has been explained that this is
just what is to be expected, on the whole, of changes that occur
* at random, accidentally, "by chance" — I care not what term vou
wish to use to describe the idea that they occur without refer-
ence to their consequences, unadaptively, and hence are more
likely to be "wrong" than "right" changes, just because there
are more wrong roads than right roads to follow, and because.

as is well known, the right road is apt to be the narrower. In
the case of the X-ray mutations it is easily seen that, if the
change occurs as I have pictured it, it must occur accidentally,
without reference to the possible advantage or disadvantage it
would confer, since the shooting electrons let loose by the
X-rays are coursing helter-skelter through the cell, quite blindly,
and are just as apt to hit one gene as another, to strike it either
on its left or its right side, through its heart or its appendix,
so to speak, and so will cause one change or another indiscrim-
inately. We have in the X-ray mutations, then, a group of
variations which seem necessarily to be random, and hence
would necessarily be mostly detrimental. In view of this, it is
interesting to compare with them in this respect the natural
mutations, and to note that, so far as our evidence goes, the
natural mutations have, on the average, every bit as much ten-
dency to be detrimental as the X-ray mutations have. The ob-
vious conclusion is that the natural mutations too must be ran-
dom changes, in the same sense that the X-ray mutations are.

Most Mutations Kill

As in the studies on natural mutations, so too among our
artificial ones, the great majority were lethal — they killed the
fly before it ever hatched, except where there was a normal
gene from the other parent to dominate over the lethal and
save the fly's life, so that it could be bred and the method of
transmission of the lethal studied. The changes in wings, eyes,
etc., previously mentioned were only the exceptional visible
changes, culled from out of a great mass of lethals. Thus,
although the great majority of the descendants of X-rayed flies
that lived looked normal, many of them carried, hidden by the
dominant normal gene, a recessive lethal gene. And if we
count up all these lethals we find that the majority of the
offspring of heavily X-rayed flies are not really normal in their
genes after all, for something over 50 per cent, of them contain
some kind of lethal mutation that will not work its destruction
until a still later generation. This too deserves being considered
iu its bearing on X-ray effects in the case of human beings.
Now previous studies of Altenburg and myself on natural
mutations have shown that among them too, although the
total frequency of mutations is so much smaller, nevertheless
the number of lethals is just as large, relatively to the number
of other, visible mutations which occur naturally, as it is
among the X-ray mutations. As the lethals differ from the
others, after all, merely in being more detrimental, this result
simply means that natural mutations are just apt to be very
detrimental, i.e., lethal, as are X-ray mutations, thus confirm-
ing what I have called the "accidental" character of the natural
mutations.

The descendants of the X-rayed flies have been bred through
many subsequent generations. It is found that, where a gene
was not caused to mutate in the first place, it will not show a
subsequent tendency to mutate, without further treatment, i.e.,
there is no perceptible after-effect on the genes that escaped an
immediate hit. On the other hand, those genes that were hit
and mutated now breed true to their new type,' which in the
great majority of cases gives evidence of being as stable as the
original type was before treatment. We now have in the labor-
atory various mutant races of flies, derived from our earlier
X-ray experiments, which have passed through something like
fifty or more generations since the time the mutation took

Page fourteen

EVOLUTION

February, 1931

place, and there has been no sign in them of any tendency to
revert back to the originally normal condition. They have their
own, new norm; they are real, new variants. The new forms
are permanent, in so far as the word permanent may be applied
legitimately to living things. And when crossed to other forms,
the new differences obey the same laws of Mendelian and chro-
mosomal inheritance as do the gene-differences existing be;tween
natural varieties.

VII. THE NATURE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF
THE GENETIC EFFECT OF RADIATION

It might perhaps be contended in some quarters that while
the artificial mutations may be similar in some respects to
natural ones, and even identical with some natural ones, yet
they may not be similar to those particular natural mutations
which may be termed "progressive:" the mutant genes resulting
from which survive, multiply and thus become a part of the
heritage of an evolving species. Such claimants would hold
that the X-ray action is necessarily destructive, causing only
loss and injury, and that thus it can work only harm, or at
least can cause no indefinite amount of progress in organization.
Such a contention would rest upon a misconception of the ac-
tion of the X-ray, for it can be shown that the speeding electron
is capable of imparting energy to other atoms through which it
goes, and that the resulting chemical changes may be of a
synthetic character as well as otherwise.

It is evident, as my wife has suggested, that if the change
induced by X-ray from, say, a gene designated as large A, to a
mutant gene of different composition, designated as small a,
has really involved a destructive process or a loss, then the
opposite change, from small a to large A, must, conversely,
involve a constructive process or a gain. With this question in
mind. Professor J. T. Patterson and I have been engaged in
some extensive irradation experiments involving particular
characters. The character which we have used most is the re-
cessive mutant character termed "forked bristles" (f), as com-
pared with the dominant normal straight bristles (F) . The evi-
dence is now positive and convincing that the X-rays not only
induce the mutation of straight bristles to the recessive forked,
but also the precisely opposite type of change: namely, forked
bristles to the dominant straight, and abundant controls have
shown that it is really the X-rays which are the inducing agent.
Since giving this lecture, the author has received several very
important articles by N. W. Timofeef-Ressovsky, describing
numerous cases of the production of mutations in opposite direc-
tions by means of X-rays. Various different gene-loci were in-
volved, and in the case of one locus (that of white eye) the
mutations of, and to, various different allelomorphs, were ob-
served. The mutations arising as a result of X-raying are, there-
fore, not merely destructive changes, not merely losses. If some
are losses, others, then, are gains. Doubtless, as in the case of
most chemical reactions, most mutations too are changes involv-
ing substitutions and rearrangements, not mere losses or gains.

Not Mere Curiosities

It should be mentioned that, in addition to the changes in in-
dividual genes which X-rays bring about, they also cause —
with considerable frequency, as Altenburg and I have shown —
breakages of entire chromosomes or strings of genes, accom-
panied by reattachments of the broken-off fragments to differ-

ent chromosomes or to the chromosome-remainder from which
they were broken, at a different point from before. The re-
arrangements of genes thus resulting can be analyzed by breed-
mg tests, and at the same time checked up by studies of the
chromosomes as seen through the microscope — an undertaking
which Dr. Painter and I have been cooperatively engaged upon
during the past two years. There is evidence that such rear-
rangements of chromosome parts, as well as mutations in in-
dividual genes, have occurred repeatedly in natural evolution.
The question may now be raised: to what extent can all these
results be regarded as mere curiosities: effects confined to the
mature sfjerm-cells of the fruit-fly, and of little significance
elsewhere? In this connection, it may first be pointed out that
my results in producing gene mutations in the fruit-fly were
immediately confirmed by "Weinstein, working at Columbia
University, later by others (Hanson, Patterson, Harris, Oliver)
at this laboratory, and more recently by Serebrovsky ;ind his
colleagues in Russia and by Dr. and Mrs. Timofeef-Ressovsky
in Berlin. In my own work, the treatments were not confined to
sperm-cells, but were also applied to the female, and it was
found that both the mature eggs and the immature female
germ-cells (oogonia) were susceptible to the mutation effect.
Harris has recently extended the finding to the immature germ-
cells of the adult male. Paterson has found the early germ-cells
of both male and female larvae are likewise susceptible and
also the larval somatic cells. The latter finding, which has
recently been announced also by Timofeef-Ressovsky, opens up
a whole realm of interesting possibilities in the production of
mutant areas of the adult body, derived from cells of the treat-
ed embryo — such effects as might result, for instance, in an
individual with eyes of different colors, or with parts of the
same eye different. Casteel has been making an anatomical
analysis of these latter effects through microscopic sections of
the eye. The production of mutations by X-rays is thus a gen-
eral effect for Drosophila, producible in all kinds of cells in
that organism. What, now, of the generality of the effect on
other organisms?

Results Amply Confirmed

I need not, perhaps, remind the general reader of the fact
that all the principles of heredity so far discovered in the fruit-
fly — the favorite experimental object of many modern genet-
icists— -have proved applicable to animals and plants in general.
It is more to the point to mention that investigators elsewhere,
working on other organisms, have now reported results of the
same kind as those now in question. Thus, Stadlet. at the
University of Missouri, was independently attempting to in-
duce gene-mutations in barley and corn by means of X-rays
and radium at the same time that I was doing my first experi-
ments along these lirfts on flies, and he has found indubitable
evidence of the production of gene-mutations in monocotyle-
donous plants by both these means. Following my work on flies,
Whiting has obtained positive results by the use of X-rays on
wasps. Blakeslee, Buchholtz and the others of this group have
a mass of interesting mutation results from X-rays and radium
applied to the Jimsonweed, Datura, that extend the findings ^
concerning lethal as well as visible mutations to dicotyledonous
plants. With these so widely separated bits of the living world
sampled and all responding positively, it is a reckless critic who
still would doubt the probable generality of the phenomenon.

February, 1931

EVOLUTION

Page fifteen

Radium rays, like X-rays, produce mutations, because they
too, being short-wave-length higli-frequency electromagnetic
waves of great energy content, release high-speed electrons, and
the cosmic rays, which are still more extreme in these same re-
spects, and so release electrons of still higher speed, must neces-
sarily act likewise. For, as Hanson has shown in experiments
with radium, the number of mutations produced depends simp-
ly on the number of electrons released and the speed and dis-
tance they travel (i.e., on the total energy of ionization) re-
gardless of the source of the electrons. Oliver, too, in experi-
ments with X-rays in our laboratory, has obtained evidence
that the number of mutations produced is directly proportional
to the dosage of radiation used, and Stadler's work points in
the same direction. This being true, there being no evidence of
a minimal or "threshold" dosage, we are forced to conclude
that the minute amounts of natural radiation present almost
everywhere in nature — some of it of terrestrial origin, derived
from the radium and other radioactive substances in earth,
water and air, and a smaller part of it of cosmic origin, appar-
ently derived from the diifuse and distant factories of matter —
all this natural radiation tnust be producing some mutations in
the living things on the earth. These mutations must be very
scattered and very infrequent in proportion to the total non-
mutated population, just because the amount of natural short-
wave-length radiation is very small at any one place, but, con-
sidering the extent of the earth and the multiplicity of living
things, the total number of mutations so produced per year
must be very considerable. It can, therefore, scarcely be denied
that in this factor we have found at least one of the natural
causes of mutation, and hence of evolution.

To Find Other Factors

And yet, despite the fact that radioactive processes are
capable of causing the changes that lie at the basis of evolu-
tion, and do undoubtedly cause some of them, it is probable
that they themselves are responsible for only a minute fraction
of the mutations that occur in nature, and that their value,
for the theory of evolution, lies rather in their illustrating the
general type of the phenomena to which mutations belong, and
in providing us with all kinds of mutations in abundance for
purposes of analysis. X-ray, cosmic rays, and the radiation
from radioactive substances are not themselves the cause of the
vast majority of natural mutations, if the calculations which
L. M. Mott-Smith and I have recently made are correct, for
these calculations indicate that the amount of such radiation
in nature is far below what would be needed to produce the
numbers of mutations which are observed to occur. There are
probably, then, other factors, working in a similar way to
X-rays, that are the actually operative causes.

The attempt to find these other factors is proceeding. The
natural phenomena most closely related to the radiation which
we know to be effective are rays of the ultraviolet region of
the spectrum (of wave length too short to affect our eyes).
Though preliminary tests conducted by Altenburg have not
demonstrated an effect of such rays, it is too early to be
certain of a conclusion here, for a mixture of wave-lengths was
tried, none of which, however, were of the extremely short
type, and it might still be tru that some particular wave-

lengths, especially the very short ones (more nearly like
X-rays) , would be found effective. It is to be recalled in this
connection that Gurwitsh and other Russian investigators claim
that rays of exactly this kind are produced in living matter —
a kind of ultra-phosphorescence — stimulating cells to divide.
If the random motions of the atoms and molecules of the
cell, striking against one another, are capable, when "favorable
hits" occur, of causing mutations, as we have supposed the
X-ray "hits" to do, then raising the temperature should cause
a rise in the mutation frequency, just as it causes a rise in the
rate of other chemical reactions. E.xperiments by Altenburg
and myself indicate that it does so; this work requires large
numbers and is now being repeated. On the other hand, more
specific chemical influences have so far failed. Returning to
the investigation of the possible effectiveness of poisons and
other influences than X-rays, I have, during the past two
years, tried out a number of drastic treatments, using a re-
fined genetic technique similar to that in the X-ray experiments,
which would have allowed of the detection of lethals and other
mutations with far greater ease, and therefore in greater
abundance, than in the inconclusive experiments of the past.
Included among the treatments were heavy doses of manganese
and of lead salts, which had been claimed by J. W. H. Harri-
son (on the basis of what appeared to me genetically uncon-
vincing data) to produce visible mutations in butterflies. There
was also included a repetition of the experiments reported by
Morgan, who at one time suspected that he had been able to
cause visible mutations in the germ-cells of red-eyed flies by
injuring their eyes with a hot needle, an operation which was
followed by a release of the optic pigment and its distribution
throughout the body. But our trials of all these and of a num-
ber of other chemical agencies have given negative results,
and it is becoming evident that a mere derangement of cell
functionings does not ordinarily cause mutations.

Another method of studying the way in which mutations
are produced is to investigate the possible effect of other
conditions applied along with radiation. There is now evidence
that some other conditions, internal and perhaps also external,
accompanying an X-ray treatment, can affect the sensitivity
of the cells to that treatment. Thus Stadler finds that the
sprouting cells of seedlings have mutations produced in them
in much greater abundance, by a given dose of X-rays, than
do the dormant cells of seeds, though some mutation^ are
produced in both. Yet in the case of flies both Hanson and
Harris, working independently, find that the genes of growing
immature male germ-cells are far less sensitive to the mutating
effect of radium or X-rays than are the dormant genes in ma-
ture spermatozoa. I find that the genes in the spermatozoa
of the adult male are also more sensitive than those in the
germ-cells of the female, or than those in the germ-cells of the
larval male. It is probable that part of these apparent differ-
ences are due to a relatively lower multiplication rate of most
mutated immature germ-cells, as compared with the non-mu-
tated ones. There seems to be even more difference in their
sensitivity to the gene-rearranging effect of the rays than in
their sensitivity to the transmuting effect on individual genes.
The activity of metabolism, however, varied by starving, and
by feeding and mating the female, had no perceptible in-
fluence in my experiments, and, as both Stadler and I have
found independently on barley and flies respectively, extremes

Page sixteen

EVOLUTION

February, 1931

Question Box

Answers by Allan Broms, unless otherwise credited

NIAGARA VERSUS CHICAGO

Q. In your "Story of Niagara" you
claim the Falls are cutting upstream to-
wards Lake Erie. When it cuts way
through, will it not lower the Great
Lakes and leave all the lake cities, that
are now quarreling with Chicago over its
drainage canal, high and dry? — J. P. C.

A. Maybe, as far as lowering the out-
let and therefore the surface of Lake
Erie is concerned. This may cause a
temporary waterfall or rapids in the De-
troit River outlet of Lake Huron, but
the stream would soon clear away the
glacial moraine material which makes the
barrier there. Lake Huron and Lake
Michigan, would then also be lowered.

The problem is complicated by a tilt-
ing of the earth-crust now going on in
the Great Lakes area. The northeastern
portion is rising, a movement that has
been in progress ever since the glacial
ice sheet retired froni this region, so re-
lieving the pressure on the crust, most
recently of course in the northeast. The
north shore of Lake Ontario, for in-
stance, is rising faster than the south
shore, which is being slowly submerged.

The Niagara lakes outlet is thus slowly
rising in a sort of nip and tuck race with
its erosional deepening. If the rising is
faster than the deepening, the level of
the Great Lakes above it will also rise,
perhaps enough to flood Chicago (solv-
ing the problem of its drainage canal)
and drain southwest to the Illinois and
Mississippi rivers as they did once before
when the banking ice sheet to the north-
east prevented eastward drainage. TTie
race, therefore, is really between the Ni-
agara and Chicago outlets, with the ulti-
mate,result uncertain. But whatever the
fate of the lake cities, let it not effect
your sense of real-estate values, for it is
all far in the future and some human
channel-deepening at Niagara or a few

well placed stone embankments along
the lake fronts could easily thwart this
leisurely upheaval by Nature.

THE "MISSING LINK" AGAIN

Q. I have heard a lot about the
"missmg link." What is it? — A. K. S.

A. Objectors to evolution have per-
sistently argued that there is some "miss-
ing link" between man and his animal
ancestors. The term has been loosely
and variously used to mean either some

Gorilla,
intermediate ape-man supposed to be
lacking, or the presence or absence of
some distinctive organ marking man
apart from the apes.

Before 1892, when the fossil remains
of the Java ape-man. Pithecanthropus
erectus, were found, the first objection
had some point. But now we have not
only this half-human fossil, but a whole
connecting series, those above the Java
type, such as the Peiping, Piltdown,
Heidelberg, Neanderthal and Cro-Mag-
non men, and below it the manlike ape
of Taungs. Consequently, only the most
Ignorant now talk of such a missing link.

But so-called "missing links" of the
other sort pop up from time to time.
Typical is the claim that "man has no

tail," it being assumed that apes have
tails, which happens to be untrue. All
that apes have are some bony remnants
of a tail, but if that gives them a tail,
then man has it, too, for he has similar
remnants. Also many attempts have been
made to find something distinctive
about the human brain. Back in 1863,
Huxley had to prove that the "hippo-
campus minor of the posterior comu of
the lateral ventricle," a little himip with-
in the inner cavity of the human brain,
also existed in the apes, that being the
"missing link" according to Fundament-
alist objectors of his day. More recently,
the ape has been credited with an extra
fold in the back of his brain, called by
the Germans the "Affenspalte" (apei
fissure) and said to be lacking in man,
which made it at once in some way im-
portant. But G. Elliot Smith showed
that it does occur in man, but usually
only on the left side (associated with
right-handedness) and that the brain
casts of several early fossil men also
show it, in the case of the Java ape-man
on the right side, indicating that he was
left-handed. The human brain really is
somewhat more finely wrinkled than the
ape's, but this we would expect, the sig-
nificant thing being that the general pat-
tern of the brain folds is quite the same.
The only real gap in man's whole
pedigree is that between the first fishes
and their immediate ancestors who
lacked a backbone. But even here we
have good theories, the only trouble be-
ing that we have two of them. However,
the "missing link" objectors will find no
comfort here, for that gap is too far
back in our ancestry to save us from our
obnoxiously close kinship with those ugly
apes. The evidence of that kinship b
much too overwhelming when we con-
sider all we have in common in bodily
structures, chemical functioning, embry-
onic development and now those most de-
cisive blood tests. Besides, the "missing
link" is actually not missing.

of heat or cold applied in treatment have little or no effect.

Thus the study of the physiology of mutation-production
is opening up, though as yet in a very empirical stage. And
meanwhile, X-rays and their relatives remain the only p-ime
cause of mutations yet known.

Since, now, mutations in general bear all the earmarks of
the X-ray mutations, then, even though most of them have
not actually been produced by radiation, it seems legitimate
to use the readily obtainable X-ray (radium, etc.) mutations
as the handle by which to study their nature. These X-ray
mutations are certainly accidental, being produced by ultra-

microscopic events, not individually controllable, that take place
without reference to the outcome or the advantage for the
organism. The natural mutations — the majority of which can
be reinvoked by X-rays — are on the average equally as detri-
mental, and of the same nature, so far as their effects are con-
cerned, as the X-ray mutations. Can we then escape the con-
clusion that they are accidental in the same sense, and that
specific mutations are therefore not dictated by any "adaptive
reactions" or other specific respcinses of the organism to climate
or to any other features of its mode of life?
(To be concluded)

February, 1931

EVOLUTION

Page seventeen

The Amateur Scientist

A Monthly feature conducted by Allan Broms

NATURE'S HUMBLE PLOWMEN

A CCORDING to an

official report,
one great damage done by the
Mississippi flood was drowning the earth-
worms throughout the inundated area.
This does not indicate a wave of official
compassion for earthworm feelings, nor
even concern over wholesale loss of good
fishing bait, but merely that earthworms
have come to be recognized as an eco-
nomic necessity in that they act as Na-
ture's lowly plowmen who loosen, pulver-
ize, moisten and otherwise transform our
soils to greater fertility.

Charles Darwin was first in realizing
their soil-forming function and the vast-
ness of their gardening operations. His
studies extended over more than forty
years, finally resulting in his book, "The
Formation of Vegetable Mould Through
the Action of Worms," published in
1881 shortly before his death and
strangely enough, "best-seller" for his day.

The most patient experiment of this
most patient experimenter was on earth-
worms, when he spread chalk over a field
and then waited 29 years to dig and learn
how deeply the layer had been buried.
For his father-in-law, Josiah Wedgwood,
had suggested that the sinking of stones
into the soil might be due to the earth-
worms bringing earth to the surface in
the form of their castings. Darwin's
research proved this, that the worms, in
their burrowings, ate earth for the organ-
ic matter it contained, then deposited the
excrement castings on the surface.

He found an average of more than
50,000 earthworms to the acre in the
tillable soil of England (in America
they are fewer) , that some 18 tons of
soil per acre passed through their bodies
yearly to cover the surface at the rate
of an inch thickness every five years, in
the course of ages thus burying even
large rocks, monuments and ancient
buildings. A recent German estimate in
Kosmos gives this earthworm horde five
or six times the importance of the human
race, if we measure them by relative bod-
ily volumes.

The earthworms are an ancient tribe,
for we already find fossil burrows of
their kindred in Cambrian rocks, some of
them crescent in cross-section because
their walls caved in when other worms
pressed too close in their later burrow-
ings. The tribe as a whole is distributed
throughout the world, some attaining
great size, such as those of Ceylon, n foot

and a half long, and thick as a snake,
But individual species (there being over
a thousand) have more limited ranges.
The earthworm's habit of coming out
of their flooded burrows after a rain has
led the Germans to call them "rain-
worms." They also come out at night,
returning at daybreak to escape their
proverbial enemy, for the early bird
catches the late worm. They can dis-
tinguish between light and darkness, buj
the tail is light-sensitive as well as the

head, and the worms are really blind, and
also deaf. Sense of taste they have, for
they are choosey of their food, and also
a sense of touch that warns them of
dangers that shake the ground. But
they can do little to protect themselves
beyond "Crawling into their holes and
pulling the holes in after them" by plug-,
ging the openings with dirt. So they
survive by sheer numbers and a very re-
tiring disposition.

BOOKS

THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF
HUMAN NATURE. By H. S. Jen-
nmgs, W. W. Norton & Co., N. Y. $4.00

We are what heredity and environment
make us. Heredity makes us deeply, environ-
ment remakes us superficially. Old funda-
mental biological truths these are, to which
modern genetics has added vastly illuminating
details on the mechanism, processes and limi-
tations of both inheritance and variation. The
whole subject is complex in its working de-
tails, yet not too complex in its basic laws.
Jenning.s reveals his own clearness of thought
by the relative simplicity of his presentation.
He has seized upon the basic laws, presented
much vital detail in developing them, and so
succeeded in makmg a readable book that is
sound'y scientific. He makes the genetic ap-
proa.h, but reveals the interplay of mutually

limiting factors, and judges the conflicting
theories that the specialists of eugenics, be-
haviorism, etc., have overemphasized in their
narrower viewpoints. In indicating the limita-
tions of each factor, Jennings has given us a
singularly whole view of what modem experi-
mental biology tells of the making and re-
making of our various human natures.
FLIGHTS FROM CHAOS, By Har-
low Shapley. McGraw-Hill Book Co.,
N. Y. ?2.50

THE MYSTERIOUS UNIVERSE.

Sir James Jeans. MacMillian Co., N. Y.

$2.25

Shapley and Jeans present a contrast which
has become almost typical among physical
scientists. Both write with delightful clearness
in apt, popular phrases, and both have taken
for their theme a survey of the Universe, with
Its unfolding mysteries. Both recognize that
we find more mysteries as our vision of the
Universe opens up, but what a contrast in
attitude from mental chaos towards orderly
scientific understanding as we awaken to the
uniformities in the behavior of nature. Jeans
sees but deeper mystery, finds faith in the
involved mathematical metaphysics of the Ein-
sceinian ''relativists" and "multi-dimension-
ists," takes seriously the new sort of ether
composed of permeating mathematical form-
ulas, and somehow, among the dimensions,
finds a Creator who is essentially mathema-
tician. Shapley remains matter of fact, cata-
logs the material "systems'* from atom to
Universe, but fills his catalog with hints of
coming knowledge, an unfolding vision of the
vast galactic systems making up the incompre-
hensibly immense Universe, from time to
time puts the upstart, Man, in his place, and
altogether makes his catalog an absorbing de-
light. Best of all, he holds true to the well
tested scientific method, indulges no metaphy-
sical assumptions, mathematical or otherwise,
but goes on ever confident that careful obser-
vation and experiment will yield their secrets
of order in this, our Universe of seeming
chaos. The contrast between these authors is
one between the patient, plodding scientist
who checks his brilliant imagination by labori-
ous tests, and the impatient metaphysician
who trusts all to the treacherous logic of the
human mind.

MATERIALISM AND VITALISM
IN BIOLOGY. By Sir Peter Mitchell.
Clarendon Press, Oxford. ?.70 in paper.
SPIRAZINES. By Carl F. Krafft. Pub-
lished by Author. 2510 "Q" St., N. W.,
Washington, D. C. ?.50 in cloth.

These two thin volumes discuss the nature
of life from the mechanist standpoint, the
one being a summary by an eminent British
authority of our progress in understanding
what life must be, with something of recent
achievements. The other presents a new phy-
isco-chemical theory by an American special-
ist in organic chemistry. The first is popu-
l.irly presented, the second technical. The one
tells tales of organic compounds and seem-
ingly living sruff made in the laboratory,
while the other thrills as a plausible scienti-
fic guess at the inner working structure of the
stuff of life.

Page eighteen

EVOLUTION

February, 1931

Fundamentalist Follies

In this Monthly Feature Edwin Tenney Brewster
will refute all fundamentalist objections to evolution.

THE ORDER OF CREATION

The words of my text are to be found
almost anywhere in Fundamentalist
writings — for example, in the Bible
Champion, July, 1929, page 30.

"The fact of the matter is, the evolu-
tionists first arranged the fossils accord-
ing to the evolution theory, and now
they turn about and claim that their ar-
bitrarily classified series proves evolution
— a clear case of arguing in a circle."
Interesting! Important! If true!
The fact of the matter really is that
the entire scheme of geologic ages, the
order, that is to say, in which fossil crea-
tures occur in the rocks, was not discov-
ered by "evolutionists" at all. The men
who did it believed, one and all, in spe-
cial creation. The main part of the job
was all finished off and done with dur-
ing the first half of the nineteenth cen-
tury. Evolution does not appear on the
scientific map until the second half.

Cuvier began it, and "Strata" Smith.
But Cuvier was the great apostle of
"Multiple Creation," whose opinion and
arguments discredited the dawning evo-
lutionism of his day. Smith was a Fun-
damentalist, who did not even agree with
the evolutionary geology of Lyell and
never heard of Darwin at all.

Then came Sedgwick, Buckland.
Hugh Miller, and the rest of that group,
with Agassiz. Not one man in the entire
lot accepted evolution. Buckland and
Miller died before The Origin of Species
appeared; Sedgwick, though he had
taught Darwin geology, wrote against
him savagely and never accepted any of
his views. Agassiz, "last of the Crea-
tionists" wrote against evolution almost
the last thing he ever did.

Even Lyell, the outstanding advocate of
evolutionary geology, did not accept the
evolution of animals and plants until his
epoch-making Principles of Geology had
gone through nine of its eleven editions.
So even Lyell, for most of his life, was
not an evolutionist.

But all these men, creationists every
one, held to our present-day ideas as to
the order of succession of types of life
on earth — to precisely that order, in
short, that is now the most effective of
all evidences for organic evolution. Of
course they held to it: they were the peo-
ple who worked it out.

In short, this oft-repeated statement
that evolutionists arranged the order of
events in geologic time is simply one

whacking Fundamentalist Fib. In this,
present-day evolutionists have simply
taken what pre-Darwinian creationists
have given them, adding only corrobora-
tion and detail.

A publication that does this sort of
thing right along, and evidently deliber-
ately, ought to rechristen itself. Bible
Champion indeed! Champion something
all right! But what?

EVOLUTION AND THE
MURDER RATE

"In England, a Bible land," writes Re-
vivalist Biederwolf in the most Funda-
mentalist of monthlies, the Bible Cham-
pion (Aug., 1929, p. 410) "there is only
one murder to every 178,000 inhabitants.
In Holland, a Bible country, there is
only one murder to every 100,000 of the
inhabitants. In Spain, where there is no
Bible, there is one murder for every 4,113
inhabitants." The Reverend Dr. Bieder-
wolf— as is the way with Fundamentalists
and their facts — gives no authority for
figures, but they seem correct thus far.
To put the same information in the
more usual form for all statistics, .in
England, on the average, out of every
hundred thousand persons, slightly more
than half of one person gets murdered
every year and in Holland just one flat,
while in Spain the homicide rate is 24 per
100,000.

But alas for Dr. Biederwolf's reason-
ing— he stopped his figures much too
soon! There may be no Bible in Spain
in spite of unnumbered churches and
priests; but Tennessee, U. S. A., is so
much a Bible land that it was the first
community in the entire world to pass
laws against "unbiblical" Evolution — and
Memphis, Tennessee, where sat the very
first legislature that passed a "monkey-
bill," according to the official statistics
of the Prudential Insurance Company for
1928, 135 William Street, New York
City; released for publication, March
14, 1929, has a murder rate of 60.5! So
the metropolis of Fundamentalism and
Anti-evolution actually is more than twice
as murderous as Bibleless Spain, sixty
times more wicked than Bible-criticising
Holland, and 107 times more addicted to
smashing the chief of the Ten Command-
ments than the land of Darwin, Huxley,
and Spencer, where modern Evolution
was born!

Moreover, the ten most criminal cities
of the United States, with an average

murder rate of 38.6 per 100,000, or half
as much again as Bibleless Spain, all are
in the Bible Belt! Even Chicago scores
only 15.8, while New York, with its 6.7,
is getting well down to a tenth of the i

murder rate of Bible-reading Memphis.
As for the great manufacturing cities
of New England, where half the popula-
tion is Roman Catholic and the rest
splits between infidel and "modernist",
where all educated persons for two gen-
erations have taken the ancestral monkey
as a matter of course, these run about
two annual murders per hundred thous-
sand persons. Cambridge, the seat of
Harvard University, where Evolution
first entered the United States, scores
1.6; the Yale district, where they have
lately opened a new museum devoted to
proofs for Evolution, is down to 1.1.
Several of these big cities do not appear
in the Prudential statistics at all, because
they had no murders in 1928. All these
"teach evolution in the public schools"
along with the multiplication table. But
Memphis, where they do not teach Evolu-
tion, had that same year 115 murders,
and Birmingham, Alabama, 122.

In short, the oft-repeated formula of
the Anti-evolutionist, "Tell a man that
he is the offspring of a brute and he will
behave like one," works out actually —
but just backwards. It is precisely the *
persons who think they were monkeys
once who take special pains not to act
like monkeys now. England. Holland,
France, Germany, and the non-Funda-
mentalist parts of the United States aver-
age about one murder to the hundred
thousand inhabitants, and below one per
cent illiteracy. But in Fundamentalist
districts, where "monkey-bills" just miss
passing or go through with a rush, illiter-
acy runs 10 and 20 per cent; even some
preachers — Anti-evolutionists to a man —
cannot read or write; and the murder
rate, highest anywhere on earth, is four,
five and six times that average for even
these murderous United States!

"By their fruits ye shall know them."

Who He Was

AT least a dozen EVOLUTION
readers have informed us regarding
the "Dr. Etheridge of the British Muse-
um" who is constantly quoted by funda-
mentalists as a renowned world authority
and about whom we asked in our last
issue. _

He was an assistant in the Geology
Department of the British Museum from
1881 ot 1891, forty vears ago, and died
in Australia at the age of 84 in 1903.
Truly, it must be tough to have to go
back that far to find a backer.

February, 1931

EVOLUTION

Page nineteen

Funnymentals

"The man who teaches evolution is a plain
perjurer, no matter whether he occu'iJies a
chair in the university or is just an ordinary
intellectual tramp/' Rev. Dr. Mark A.
Mathews, First Presbyterian Church, Seattle,
quoted by Seattle Times.

"We believe that the Genesis record ot a
literal creation in six twenty-four-hour days is
an inspired record of a historical fact. We
deplore the present tendency to interpret the
past history of the earth m terms of long
geological ages, for we mamtain that the
theory of evolution rests on unproved hypo-
thesis, whereas the facts of science support not
only the great fundamental doctrine of crea-
tionism but also the idea of the destruction
of the world by the flood as portrayed in the
Bible.

"We atHrm that the variations occurring in
plants and animals do not indicate evolution-
ary progress, but are clearly interpreted in the
light of conditions prevailing since the flood,
and we utterly repudiate the implication that
man originated from any lower form of life."
Resolution adopted by World Conference of
Seventh Day Adventists (299,555 members)
San Francisco, July, 1930.

"The time has come when bishops who be-
lieve the tommyrot of evolution and allow it
to spread under their jurisdiction ought to be
compelled to resign their office. Missionaries
who teach it ought to be called home.
Preachers who preach it ought to be nade to
vacate their pulpits. Professors who teach
it in our Christian schools and colleges ought
to be driven from the institutions. While
editors who proclaim it through their papers
ought to be silenced and their pens dried
up, * * =^

"There will never be another genuine re-
vival of religion in this world until the Chris-
tian church repudiates the most subtle and
monstrous lie that the devil has ever thrown in
the face oh the Son of God, and until it drives
the whole diabolic spawn of evolution .nto the
nethermost depths of hell where it belongs,
when finally the Angel of the Apocalypse puts
the lid upon the pit and bottles up the whole
pestiferous tribe, there to await the final
judgment of an insulted God." From "The
Devil Unmasked," pamphlet published by San
Antonio Bible Institute.

"Some may say, why not ignore evolution
and let it die of neglect? This scheme might
apply to a fierce dog, but evolution is far
from a fierce dog character. It is more like a
itealthy hyena in its habits." C. H. Buchanan,
D.D., in Jan. 1930 Bible Champion.

4^ "If we make a reasonable allowance for the

work of the Deluge, or the Flood, we shall
not have enough fossils left over, unexplained
and unaccounted for, to make much of n
showing toward a long age previously." George
McCready Price in July, 1929, Bible Cham-
pion.

Evolution does not deal with bibli-
cal interpretation. However, to give
our readers an idea of questions agitat-
ing the fundamentalist world we reprint
this from the December 1950 "Chris-
t lan Fu n damentalist.' '

Three Views of Creation

By DUDLEY JOSEPH WHITNEY

There are among Bible believers three dis-
tinct views regarding the events of creation
week. The first view is that taken by Doctor
Riley; that the earth is ages old and that
these ages correspond with the outline of crea-
tion as given in Genesis I so excellently that
one is compelled to believe that these ages
were the "days" of creation.

The second view was that taken by Mr.
Rimmer: that the ages may have occurred and
doubtless did occur, but that the earth under-
went a complete rum, then a reconstruction in
literal days. An Italian scholar, G. Bartoli,
has essentially the same view, only believes the
earth before its ruin was a product of direct
instant creation, rather than a development of
long ages.

There is, however, a view distinct from
both of these which has at the present rive
what seems stronger backing in scienre than
either of the other theories, namely, that
the stratified ro;ks and the fossils therein are
the result of the Deluge and were not de-
posited during geological ages, or in a pre-
Adamic ruin. This is the view so ably de-
veloped by George McCready Price, and ac-
cepted by many others who have made a care-
ful study of the subject.

In the very nature of the case the davs of
creation according to this theory would not
be geological ages, for no sign of such ages
would be found in the rocks and, as a natural
consequence, literal day creation would be
believed.

The correct method of solving the problem
would seem to be to see how well each of the
thrci^ views of earth history harmonized with
the Bible; then to see, too, how well they har-
monized with true science — and true science
does not mean the fanciful views commonly
put forth by many men of standing as
science.

Forty years ago and even less, striking har
mony seemed to appear between historical
geology as accepted by scholars and the first
chapter of Genesis. This seemed to make be-
lief in geological age "days" unavoidable.
The view was that the primordial earth was
very hot; the water now in the oceans was
part of the atmosphere on account of heat;
thus "the earth would be waste and void,
and darkness would cover the face of the
deep." A cooling would partially clear the
atmosphere and let light penetrate, also the
oceans to form; then would come a sequence
of events, or of living things, as described in
Genesis.

However, rimes have changed, knowledge
has increased, and the apparent harmony be-
tween Genesis and what Prof. Price calif
"evolutionary geology" has largely disappeared.

To begin with geologists no longer assert
that the earth was a molten hot globe that
gradually cooled, thus developing the history
suggested in Genesis. They simply cannot
tell the early conditions of the earth, though
many believe that the earth started small and
cool and grew to its present size and condition.

Again, Genesis asserts the covering of the
earth with vegetation the third day and the
creation of water hving creatures, and of
birds and "creeping things" on the fifth day
This would make one full day between the
creation of vegetation and the creation of those
animals lower than the beasts. Geology, how
ever, has shell fish, and non-vertebrates of all
leading types, filling the seas long betore any
iigns of land vegetation appeared. Here, then,
IS a serious discrepancy between Genesis and
geological ages. There are also othei discrep-
ancies. The apparent harmony between Gene-
sis and standard theories of earth history is
very general and indefinite. They agree in
the progress from simple earth and simple
living things up to the higher forms, but any
real identification of definite "days ' of creation
with definite geological ages is virtually im-
possible.

Prof. Price and others who have adopted his
views of earth history have completely dis-
credited the doctrine of geological ages with
every careful, honest student of geology and
surely one should not wish to harmonize Gene-
sis with bad science!

Let every person interested read carefully
the Deluge account: see that awful rains
and floods occurred for forty days, that the
Ark was afloat for months after that and
that it grounded on what is now some of the
highest land in western Asia and that a full
year and more from the start of the disturb-
ance passed before the occupants of the Ark
could issue forth on the land.

The obvious thing to decide is that the ruin
we see was the ruin brought about by the
Deluge. That is very simple and very na-
tural; it clears the whole problem up, not
only in theory, but in practical science. There
is therefore no occasion whatever for trying
to account for the fossils by any pre-Adamic
ruin and actual science, too, is contrary to the
doctrine of geological ages. If the rocks came
through the Deluge and not through geologi-
cal ages, literal day creation is the most rea-
sonable kind of creation to accept.

The thing to believe about creation, as
indicated both by the Scriptures and by true
science, is the divine creation of an ideal earth
(evidently in literal days) and the ruin of that
earth by the Deluge. Upon the ruins of that
earth we now live. There is no occasion to be-
lieve in geological age "days." and the evi-
dence is against them.

TIIK (iKK.AT EVOI.ITION DEBATE

Between Prof. Joseph McCabe and
Rev. W. B. Riley, which Riley would not
publish in his fundamentalist magazine,
appeared in full in three issues of Evo-
lution. Postpaid, 25c.; ten or more I5c.
each. Sells like hot cakes at meetings.
We'll mail the three numbers containing
this debate to any list of names for 15c.
a set. Fire a Broadside at your friends.

Page twenty

EVOLUTION

February, 1931

HOOTS! — SANDY, WEE LADDIE, THE EVOLUTIONISTS
CANNA MAKE MONKEYS OUTER WE

Can You Answer

These Questions?

See Page

How Many Corpuscles Have

You?

3

How Many Atoms In A Star?

3

Are Cockroaches Increasing?

5

When Did Insects First Appear?

4

Is The Human Race "Old"

6

What Is The "Blood Test"?

7

How Is The Age Of The World

Measured?

9

Where Is The 13,500 Year Clay

Calendar?

11

What Causes Evolution?

12

Do We Know All About It?

15

What's The Missing Link?

16

What Does The Murder Rate

Show?

18

Of What Use Are Worms?

17

Will Niagara Run Dry?

16

DON'T YOU THINK IT WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA

to send a sample of Evolution to every biology teacher in the United States? We have found these
teachers our best "prospects." They are most directly threatened by anti-evolution laws, they all real-
ize how ridiculous such laws are; they feel the need for popular education on the subject; they want
to be well "posted" and are able to appreciate the unusual authenticity, accuracy and lucidity of Evo-
lution.

IT HAS ALREADY BEEN TRIED IN NEW YORK

with remarkable success. Scores of High School Biology teachers are subscribers. Some take over a
100 copies and sell them to students. Most scientific journals are too "high-brow" and most popular
magazines make "sensations" out of the subject, which is still worse. Evolution, being both accurate
and easy to read, fills the bill for teacher and student alike. If we can send a sample to each of the

22,000 HIGH SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES

thousands of the biology reachers will subscribe and many will also order bundles of Evolution for
their students as New York teachers are already doing. It costs about a nickel to send a letter with
sample, so to fire the entire broadside will require

ELEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS

Let us make this investment in popular education this month.

E volut ion

.S44 East Hi Strert, Xi'w Yolk, X. Y.

I contributo .f.

$11(1(1.

til

.SLMIll

samples

to

$ 51 Id.

tn

seiui

samples

to

.f 1(1(1,

to

senil

samples

to

.$ 5(1.

to

send

samples

to

.$ 25.

to

send

samples

to

$ 10.

to

send

samples

to

$ 5.

to

send

samples

to

22,0(iit High School Ijiology Teat-hers

1(I,(J(K) High School Biolog.v Teachei-s

2,0110 High School Biolog.v Teachers

l,0o(» High School Biolog.v Teachers

500 High School Biolog.v Teachers

200 High School Biolog.v Teachers

100 High School Biology Teachers

Name

.\ddress

MULTIBINOER

I^Z^ Syracuse, N, Y.
^^^ Stockton. Calif.

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