EVOLUTION.

Evening Star, Issue 4177, 17 July 1876, Page 4

EVOLUTION.

To the. Editor

Sir, - As the question of Evolution is at present engaging a good deal of attention amongst us 1 would bo obliged if anyone more acquainted with the subject than myself would enlighten mo and other of your readers as to how tho following can bo reconciled with the probabilities of the theory : If 1 understandtheprinciplcinvolved in the evolution theory aright it is this : that all animated things on our planet owe their being to one primordial germ, and the variety that now exists among them is due alone to tho difference of food, climate* and such other modifying influences as may have affected them during a long course, of ages. Now whatever may have been the genesis of living things, there are now two families in the animal kingdom so widely distinguished from each other by anatomical and other physiological peculiarities, that the most marked difference in the operation c£ modifying causes—one would suppose—co»M only bo sufficient to account for. I refer to the flesh-eating andherb-eatinganimala.. And yet it is difficult to conceive how those two orders of animals could ever have been tho progeny of a common stock, seeing that the influences by which they were surrounded must of necessity have over been the same. The carnivora could not exist or bare been perpetuated without tho herbivora to servo them as food, and for that cud tho same habitat must have been common to both involving, as it does, all tho Huron Tiding conditions as being tho same to either. If it is assumed that carnivorous habits were gradually acquired by a portion of the origiual ancestry, and for a while they fed «n flesh and grass indiscriminately until tho habit became confirmed, what, it may bo ' aske’l, was the cause of the acquired taste, and how did th« mere circumstance of a flesh diet charge tho l.oof of the deer into the claw of the lion or its molar dentistry into a fang ? I here speak of the herbivora being evolved into the carnivora: but supp >siug the contrary to Lave been the case, the difficulty, to my mind, is not lessened—tho distinctions remain, and are as unaccountable by the one process as the other. It is a convenient thing, no doubt, to have an eternity to fall back upon and say that a long timo was involved in tho change, but the causes must bo specific and probable to induce us to assent to a doctrine which is perhaps incapable of full proof, albeit the adhesion of some men eminent in science who have become its apostles.—l , am, &c., J.B. Dunedin, July 14.