Page 219 - The Error of the Evolution of Species

Harun Yahya
(Adnan Oktar)

creased. To put it another way, he attempted to account for

the phenomenon in question through evolution caused by
natural selection stemming from environmental condi-
tions—in this case, birds.
J.W. Tutt's claim may appear reasonable at first sight, but
it received little acceptance at the time. There was no evi-
dence that these moths—which flew by night and rested on
trees by day—were actually hunted by birds. This led to en-

tomologists and ornithologists looking askance at his theory. 265
Then in the 1920s, the British biologist J. W. Heslop
Harrison developed a different theory: that melanism in an-
imals stemmed directly from chemical substances in the air.
Harrison reported that melanism could be produced in sev-
eral other moth species if their larvae were fed on leaves
contaminated with metallic salts. 266 Harrison's claim was
evaluated as a challenge to Darwinism. 267 However, with the
birth of neo-Darwinism in the 1940s, it lost esteem and the

idea gained ground that melanism in moths was the result
of natural selection..
The British entomologist Bernard Kettlewell, of Oxford
University, was a researcher whose name became equated
with the Industrial-Revolution moths after his research on
the subject in the 1950s. Kettlewell carried out a number of
experiments and field studies that placed the subject firmly

on the scientific agenda. As one might expect, he was an

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