the evidence of those who watched
the reduction of the wings during the many generations in the course of
which it was being effected, and who can testify that all, or the
overwhelming majority, of the beetles born with fairly well-developed
wings got blown out to sea, while those alone survived whose wings were
congenitally degenerate. Who saw them go, or can point to analogous
cases so conclusive as to compel assent from any equitable thinker?

Darwinians of the stamp of Mr. Thiselton Dyer, Professor Ray Lankester,
or Mr. Romanes, insist on their pound of flesh in the matter of
irrefragable demonstration. They complain of us for not bringing forward
some one who has been able to detect the movement of the hour-hand of a
watch during a second of time, and when we fail to do so, declare
triumphantly that we have no evidence that there is any connection
between the beating of a second and the movement of the hour-hand. When
we say that rain comes from the condensation of moisture in the
atmosphere, they demand of us a rain-drop from moisture not yet
condensed. If they stickle for proof and cavil on the ninth part of a
hair, as they do when we bring forward what we deem excellent instances
of the transmission of an acquired characteristic, why may not we, too,
demand at any rate some evidence that the unmodified beetles actually did
always, or nearly always, get blown out to sea, during the reduction
above referred to, and that it is to this fact, and not to the masterly
inactivity of their fathers and mothers, that the Madeira beetles owe
their winglessness? If we began stickling for proof in this way, our
opponents would not be long in letting us know that absolute proof is
unattainable on any subject, that reasonable presumption is our highest
certainty, and that crying out for too much evidence is as bad as
accepting too little. Truth is like a photographic sensitised plate,
which is equally ruined by over and by under exposure, and the just
exposure for which can never be absolutely determined.

Surely if disuse can be credited with the vast powers involved in Mr.
Darwin's statement that it has probably "been the main agent in rendering
organs rudimentary," no limits are assignable to the accumulated effects
of habit, provided the effects of habit, or use and disuse, are supposed,
as Mr. Darwin supposed them, to be inheritable at all. Darwinians have
at length woke up to the dilemma in which they are placed by