step's views on evolution are not obvious from his books. at one point he referred to "the wonders of creation". however, he wrote a chapter in the same book on the giant tortoise of the galapagos islands that included a reference to charles darwin, but without a mention of evolution. religious examples are frequent in his books, for example, quoting beecher's "of all man's works of art, a cathedral is greatest; a vast and majestic tree is greater than that", and again, "thousands see in cathedral aisles the reproduction in stone of the pine-forest or the beech-wood."