A few months ago the _Sunday School Times_ quoted a professor in an
Illinois University as saying that the great day in history was the day
when a water puppy crawled up on the land and, deciding to be a land
animal, became man's progenitor. If these scientific speculators
can agree upon the day they will probably insist on our abandoning
Washington's birthday, the Fourth of July, and even Christmas, in order
to join with the whole world in celebrating "Water Puppy Day."

Within the last few weeks the papers published a dispatch from Paris
to the effect that an "eminent scientist" announced that he had
communicated with the spirit of a dog and learned from the dog that it
was happy. Must we believe this, too?

But is the law of "natural selection" a sufficient explanation, or a
more satisfactory explanation, than sexual selection? It is based on the
theory that where there is an advantage in any characteristic, animals
that possess this characteristic survive and propagate their kind. This,
according to Darwin's argument, leads to progress through the "survival
of the fittest." This law or principle (natural selection), so carefully
worked out by Darwin, is being given less and less weight by scientists.
Darwin himself admits that he "perhaps attributed too much to the action
of natural selection and the survival of the fittest" (page 76). John
Burroughs, the naturalist, rejects it in a recent magazine article. The
followers of Darwin are trying to retain evolution while rejecting the
arguments that led Darwin to accept it as an explanation of the varied
life on the planet. Some evolutionists reject Darwin's line of descent
and believe that man, instead of coming from the ape, branched off from
a common ancestor farther back, but "cousin" ape is as objectionable as
"grandpa" ape.