Scientists Rethink Evolution?    

   The lady and her husband found a hummingbird with its beak caught in a mesh.   

   Elsewhere, in ivory towers, scientists admit that beauty has them rethinking evolution. Not rejecting; just rethinking. 

   The bird seems to be all feathers with tiny bones beneath skin that is thin as tissue. Its head is smaller than the lady's little fingernail. Its skull would fit inside a pencil eraser. 

   Biologists now suggest that natural selection doesn't explain certain properties of selected species. 

   The breast is iridescent gray, the feathers brown, progressively shorter as they form a notch. Flat feathers layer like scales all the way up the breast, light brown at the shaft, but each tipped with emerald. 

   Mr. and Mrs. could see all this because the little one didn't survive its entrapment in the screen. How could these distinctive marks have had time to evolve before larger, faster birds of prey wiped them out? 

   Evolutionists speculate: It could be "reproductive preference, or aesthetic evolution, or runaway selection." 

   The wings are transparent. Long gray pinions in full spread form a net to catch the air. The leading edge of each wing is crowned with green feathers, gathered like a cape. 

   Evolution is "so innumerable and dynamic" - etc. etc. - "a single outcome can confound science for centuries." (Therefore, you creationists, give up. We're not ever going to believe.) 

   The ruby throat: it is spectacular, the final touch.

   This hummingbird didn't survive a screen door. But, its kind has survived a predatory world for untold centuries, with beauty to spare. 

Based on column by Janie B. Cheaney

WORLD magazine

      Jimmy