EVOLUTION DEBATE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 26 October 1925, Page 8

EVOLUTION DEBATE.

ENDS IN UPROAR. LONDON, September 4. The well-known American professor, Mr. George McCready Price, was shouted down at the Queen’s Hall last night, when he debated “Evolution” with Mr. Joseph McCabe. . Mr. McCabe said there was not a university professor in , the world today who did not emphatically endorse the doctrines of evolution. There was the story of the rocks to support it, and in the skulls of man-like apes was to be found a type getting nearer and nearer to that of man himself. Air. Price discredited the argument that the rocks proved the theory of evolution. The interpretation of what the different strata represented might be quite another thing. There was no agreement among biologists as to any cause or method that could possibly bring about a change of type. He held that evolution was not a conclusion, but an interpretation. It was not sufficient to stand a skeleton of a. man alongside that of an ape, or that of a bird against a reptile’s «kele_ ton.

Both speakers were allowed a short reply, and when Air. Price declared that “far from our being descended from the apes, the apes might as well be a degenerate form of mankind,” interruptions became more frequent, until half the audience seemed to be on their feet arguing among themselves

One young ivoman in the circle shouted determinedly at the speaker until at last he sat down.

Earl Russell, the chairman, rose to close the proceedings, and 6aid that their guest and lecturer Professor Price should have been permitted to make his points uninterrupted. * “Well, I could not stand it any longer,” shouted the young woman, still on her feet and glaring at. the platform. “Anyway,” yelled a man, “I didn’t come from an ape.”