THE DARWINIAN THEORY.

Otago Witness, Issue 1323, 7 April 1877, Page 3

THE DARWINIAN THEORY.

To many persons the Darwinian theory of the evolution of species is excessively revolting, and to uneducated minds especially appears pre-eminently ridiculous. But learned and cultivated minds may be found in abundance which are strongly prejudiced against Darwin's explanation of the origin of mankind. The evolution theory seems to ' be steadily gaining in public favour, and the only reason, doubtless, why it does not prove more universally acceptable to orthodox people is, that from a primd facie point of view it appears so utterly

antagonistic to all their cherished conceptions, and because there is one missing link in it which renders a great deal of assumption and imagination necessary to make it complete.-.that is, the absence of definition of the point at which the presumably soulless animal merged into a man, possessed of that " eternal inmost '» principle; the immaterial spirit. This we do not now assume to explain; but we would ask Christian people not to reject the theory merely because of the want of this great final stone to complete the edifice which Darwrin has reared— and which the wonderful advancement- of human civilization may yet supply-^-but calmly and considerately to examine the numerous striking proofs which Darwin ,has adduced for his -hypothesis, , and which seem to constitute a consecutive chain of facto that make it logically complete up to the point we have named. . But, to come to the point which has suggested these preliminary remarks, another proof of evolution theory 1 has lately been furnished in certain fish, which havebeen imported from China to the Brighton Aquarium. We had lately occasion to record. with decided incredulity, the story of a boy with a telescopic eye, derived from a doubtful authority; but these fish it appears, are really endued with optics of tfie description accredited to that, no doubt, bogus juvenile. By careful breeding, extending over a long period, the Chinese have managed to produce, from a fish having visual organs of the usual kind, a creature with eyes situated at the end of a long cylindrical projection on the principle of a telescope. It has long been known that by tedious culture and ]udicious engrafting, fruit, vegetables, and flowers can be changed from their primal condition, and also, that in the animal world, m-breeding will do much , to modify the peculiarities of race ; but it remained for the Chinese to have shown what oculists would have denied, that the eye can be so treated as to stand out two inches from the head.- Probably this fact will be seized on by Mr Darwin and reproduced in his next work, as another instance of the thousand-and-one curiosities of nature, which are, like pieces in a Chinese puzzle, gradually coming together to form a harmonious whole— American Paper. ' s