



Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Chris Logan and the Online
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THE MEANING OF
EVOLUTION

BY

SAMUEL CHRISTIAN SCHMUCKER, PH.D.

PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES IN THE
WEST CHESTER STATE NORMAL SCHOOL
WEST CHESTER, PA.

[Illustration]

The Chautauqua Press
CHAUTAUQUA, NEW YORK
MCMXIII




COPYRIGHT, 1913
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY


Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1913




CONTENTS


    CHAPTER                                             PAGE

            A FOREWORD                                     1

         I. EVOLUTION BEFORE DARWIN                        7

        II. DARWIN AND WALLACE                            21

       III. THE UNDERLYING IDEA                           44

        IV. ADAPTATION FOR THE INDIVIDUAL                 87

         V. ADAPTATION FOR THE SPECIES                   125

        VI. LIFE IN THE PAST                             149

       VII. HOW THE MAMMALS DEVELOPED                    192

      VIII. THE STORY OF THE HORSE                       220

        IX. EVOLUTION SINCE DARWIN                       233

         X. THE FUTURE EVOLUTION OF MAN                  249

        XI. SCIENCE AND THE BOOK                         274

    INDEX                                                293

    APPENDIX                                             299




A FOREWORD


Before my window lies an enchanting landscape. It embraces a stretch
of open rolling country, beautiful as the eye could wish to rest upon.
The sun with its slanting rays is not giving it heat enough in these
winter months to make it blossom in its radiant beauty, but the mind
goes easily back through the few brown months to the time when the
field not far away was waving with its rich yellow grain so soon to be
food for those who planted it. Beyond this field lies an orchard
where, in regular and orderly rows, stand the apple trees whose bright
blossoms in the spring make the landscape so beautiful and whose fruit
in the fall serves so richly for our enjoyment. A little farther on, a
pasture is filled with sleek-coated cows, feeding quietly and
patiently until the evening when they will return to their stalls to
yield their rich milk. Still farther on lies a tract of forest. The
varied shades of the beeches, the tulip poplars and the chestnuts make
an exquisite contrast and give to the landscape its attractive
background framed in by a distant hill. Behind this hill flows a
mighty river carrying on its breast the ships by which we share the
over-abundance of our own blessings with our brothers on the other
side of the sea, from whom in turn we receive of their overplus.
Beyond this teeming river lies a level stretch of fertile land and
then the mighty ocean. On one side of the scene runs a busy highway.
Along this men pass and repass, some on foot, others drawn by their
patient and submissive horses. Still others are carried by the
new-found power of the sunshine imprisoned beneath the rocks in the
oil that has been forming ever since the sun shone down upon the great
forests of the far distant past.

In a pathway to one side, some children are playing. One of them has
laid upon the ground a rectangle of stones divided into four and her
little mind sees before her the house which is teaching her to get
ready for the work that shall come to her in later life. Meanwhile her
short-haired companion is prancing around astride a stick; he too,
little as he suspects it, is getting ready for life.

It needs little reflection to realize that the scene has not always
been what it is. The underlying ground has surely been there longest,
its age vying only with that of the bounding ocean that beats upon the
shore and works the sand into fantastic stretches. The forest has been
there long and so has the stream; the road perhaps ranks next in age;
then come the orchard trees, and most recent of all the waving grain.
People come and go but form no stable part of this landscape. We know
how the grain came to be there, and we understand the orderly
arrangement of the orchard trees; the road too we can explain. How
came the stream there, and how the forest trees? Have they always been
there, or did they too have a beginning? Was there a time when there
was no ocean? When was this time? How came they there?

When the lisping lips of my young child asked me, "Papa, who made me?"
I told him "God," and he knew enough and was content with his
knowledge. After a while he grew older and his inquisitive spirit
began to puzzle with the question of how God had made him. When his
growing mind was ready for the new knowledge I took him to my side and
told him the great mystery of life. I told him how he owed to his
father and to his mother the beginnings of his life, how God gave him
to us. Now a new era opened in his childish mind. As he grows on to
greater maturity he cannot help wondering how the first man