Doug,
Is a donkey a horse? How do you distinguish generally between the species? They are after all classifications invented by man. If you change one type of dog to be as small as a mouse and another type to be as large as an elephant (and that's not so hard actually if you've got a couple of thousand years to kill), then put them adrift on separate islands for another few tens of thousands of years then I would suggest you may have two separate species.

BTW The cost of transmuting lead into gold is too high. It can be done! Stars do this sort of thing all the time. Most of what your are is second hand star dust, ie your C, N O atoms came from a stars which exploded before our sun formed.

Regards

And happy to pursue off-line any-time :-)

>Dave,
>
>When you use the word 'evolution', by that do you mean change within one genus/species or one species becoming another?
>
>I'd agree that dogs can 'evolve' into other 'kinds' of dogs but that they can never become something that was not dog.
>
>IOW, lead does not transmute to gold. If you believe in transmutation just hang on and I'll sell you some neat lead bars - 1/2 price at only US$100.00/ounce. <g>
>
>
>Best,
>
>DD