The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-01-23
PRESIDE SCIENCE
By RANsoME SUTTON

This question has been asked: If evolution be true, should we not have long line of easy gradations. one form slipping into the next higher, with no distinct species at all?
 In many cases we do see species grading into the next higher species, but in other cases the evidence has been obliterated by bacteria, the ele- Oftentimes the difficulties of finding connecting links are as great as those encountered by a, person who tries to trace out the evolution of a machine. Watts first steam engine. for ex- ample, was not a locomotive :n any sense, yet it was ancestral to the To- comotive. Watts invention was changed and improved hundreds of times, some of the improvements be- ing made in England. others in Ameri ca, Germany and France, and at length the amazing modern 'moguls" appeared upon the scene.
 As everyone knows, Watts steam engine grew into Stehenson's locomo- tive, so unlike as to seem unrelated, yet many of the connecting links have disappeared. The New York Central Railroad company succeeded in un- earthing one intermediate ''species"- the dinky little locomotive that ran between Albany and Schenectady in 1881. The species to which it belonged became extinct soon after the appear ance of a higher species, having an improved boiler and steam-blast.
 Whether the subject be machines or living things, evolution proceeds in the same way-not by creating some thing out of nothing, but by improv- ing upon prototypes and with surpris- ing suddenness after improved types appear the prototypes disappear.
 As if it were a difficult thing to do, I have been asked to name one spe- cies of animals that has graduated by evolution into another species"
 I shall name three about which there can be little doubt;
 The Gallus bankivus, still existing in the wild state in the jungles of India, has graduated slowly into all our different species of domestc fowls. Chicken fanciers are continually building up new breeds. In the Gen. tury Dictionary, under the word Gal Jus, the ancestral jungle-fowls are pic tured.
 The evolution of the horse, begin ming with the little, fox-sized Eohip- pus of eocene time (which was not a horse) has never been questioned by any student who has seen Professor Marshs collection of fossil horses in the Yale Museum. From the Eohip- pus an age later the Orohippus de- seconded; it was somewhat larger than its ancestor, and it had only four toes on its front feet, whereas the Eohip- pus had four toes and a rudimentary fifth. Next came the Mesohippus, | having three toes and a parliamentary l fourth, then the Miohippus, with the middle toe enlarging into a hoof, and finally the hoofed ponies of pliocene time, upon whose ankles the ancestral toes had degenerated into ''dew claws" So here are species grading into species, without a break in the line of descent.
 And how about the whale? Ten million years ago it's ancestors were little land animals, living like wharf rats along the waters edge. In time they took to the sea, accompanied by quite number of land species. Seals otters and walruses have not yet be. come entirely aquatic, but whales porpoises and dolphins became SC thoroughly adapted to seafaring condi- tions that they cannot now live on land. It is no longer necessary tc argue that a whale is not fish. Be ing q mammal, it's ancestors lived or the land; they Fhave been traced back