And Finally, As A Clinching Argument, In One Of The Neighbouring Settlements There Is A Barrel-Organ Which Plays Its Psalm Tunes In The Middle Of Its Jigs And Waltzes.

After this all lingering doubts concerning the falsehood of Darwin's theory must be at an end, and any person of ordinary common sense must admit that the theory of development by natural selection is unwarranted by experience and reason.

The articles conclude with an implied statement that Darwin supposes the Polar bear to swim about catching flies for so long a period that at last it gets the fins it wishes for.

Now, however sceptical I may yet feel about the truth of all Darwin's theory, I cannot sit quietly by and see him misrepresented in such a scandalously slovenly manner. What Darwin does say is that sometimes diversified and changed habits may be observed in individuals of the same species; that is that there are eccentric animals just as there are eccentric men. He adduces a few instances and winds up by saying that "in North America the black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching - almost like a whale - insects in the water." This and nothing more. (See pp. 201 and 202.)

Because Darwin says that a bear of rather eccentric habits happened to be seen by Hearne swimming for hours and catching insects almost like a whale, your writer (with a carelessness hardly to be reprehended in sufficiently strong terms) asserts by implication that Darwin supposes the whale to be developed from the bear by the latter having had a strong desire to possess fins.

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