The variant differences that distinguish the mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes from one another, although tremendous, all the same appear to be of the same nature as those that describe a mouse from an elephant or a swallow from a grouse. The vertebrate animals and the insects are so radically distinct in their whole organization and in the very design of their structure, that dissenters may not unreasonably doubt whether they can all have been descended from a single common ascendant by means of the same natural laws that explicate the differentiation of the distinct species of birds or of reptiles.
In the pre-Darwin era, the broad majority of naturalists held fast to the notion that species were ontologically produced, and had not been derived from other species by any law known to us. There was, then, no inquiry relating to the origination of families, orders, and classes, since the “origin of species” was considered to be an unsolvable problem. This nowadays has all changed. The general scientific and literary world consents to, as a matter of common knowledge, the origin of species from other allied species by the ordinary process of natural birth.
We might require that a legitimate theory will enable us to perceive and carry through in some detail those changes in the form, structure, and relations of animals and plants which are transformed in short periods of time, geologically speaking, and that we can observe now at present time. We may expect it to explain adequately most of the smaller and superficial divergences which separate one species from another. And, in conclusion, we may require that it describe many difficulties and to concord many incongruities in the excessively complex phylogenetic relations and relations of living things. All this the Darwinian Theory undoubtedly does. It exhibits that new species are inevitably created, while the old species become extinct. Evolution theory likewise enables us to realize how the uninterrupted processes of these laws during the long periods is calculated to bring about those greater divergences presented by the distinct genera, families, and orders into which all living things are classified by natural scientists.
To depart for a moment from this very serious issue, I will point you to some outstanding evolution humor that has appeared in the last few years. Much needed comic easement in the evolution-creationism debate.
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