EVOLUTION IN SCHOOLS

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25181, 12 May 1947, Page 8

EVOLUTION IN SCHOOLS

Sir, —The heads of the Education Department can have little real knowledge of this subject to allow such utter rubbish to be broadcast to school children about the transformation of species. Dr. Etheridge, examiner of the British Museum, and one of the greatest fossil experts in the world, says, in “The Other Side of Evolution”: “In all this great museum, there is not a particle of evidence of the transmutation of species; this museum is full of proofs of the utter falsity of these views.’’ And Professor Townsend, in "Collapse of Evolution.” says: “Among the 20,000 species of animals already classified, not one instance is known where different species have been crossed, that the result has not been sterility in the animal begotten.” —Yours, etc., P. H. PRITCHETT. May 10, 1947. Sir, —“Biotaxy” and “F.G.” choose to regard evolutionary theory as a child of doubtful parentage. Is it possible that this of all scientific offspring, is unpopular because of the damage it does to the ego-bolstering assumption that man is fundamentally different from all other animals? Yet it can be shown that this theory, in common with all other scientific theories, is solely a collating of demonstrable facts. My dictionary defines a dogma as “a positive assertion” and a theory as “a supposition explaining something.” If “Biotaxy” can advance a theory which better collates all the facts, his name will be longer remembered than Darwin’s. Plainly, adults, too, have garbled and ludicrous versions of this matter; but is it a valid reason for distorting or suppressing the truth as we know it, that some children do not understand it instantaneously?—Yours, etc.. mr TIMOTHY’S BROTHER. May 10. 1947.