I agree with the writer that this first conclusion is premature and unworthy-I will add, deplorable. Through what faults or infirmities of dogmatism on the one hand, and skepticism on the other, it came to bo so thought, wo need not here consider. Let us hope, and I confidently expect, that it is not to last; that the religious faith which survived without a shock the notion of the fixity of the earth itself may equally outlast the notion of the fixity of the species which inhabit it; that, in the future even more than in the past, faith in an order, which is the basis of science, will not as it cannot reasonably-be dissevered from faith in an Ordainer, which is the basis of religion.

VI.

THE ATTITUDE OF WORKING NATURALists TOWARD DAR

WINISM.'

(THE NATION, October 10, 1873.)

THAT homely adage, "What is one man's meat is another man's poison," comes to mind when we consider with what different eyes different naturalists look upon the hypothesis of the derivativo origin of actual specific forms, sinco Mr. Darwin gave it voguo and

1" Histoire des Solences et des Hovants depuis deux Siècles, sulvia d'autres études sur des sujets selentifiques, en particuller sur la Móleo. tion dans l'Espèce Humaine, par Alphonse Do Candolle," Genòvo: II. Georg. 1873.

“Addresses of George Bentham, President, read at the anniversary meetings of the Linnean Society, 1862–1873,"

"Notes on the Classification, History, and Geographical Distribution of Composite. By George Bentham." Separate issue from the Journal of the Linnean Society. Vol. XIII. London, 1873.

"On Palæontological Evidence of Gradual Modification of Animal Forms, read at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, April 25, 1873. by Prof. W. H. Flower." (Journal of the Royal Institution, pp. 11.)

"The Distribution and Migration of Birds. Memoir presented to the National Academy of Sciences, January, 1865, abstracted in the American Journal of Science and the Arts. 1866, etc. - By Spencer F. Baird."

"The Story of the Earth and Man. By J. W. Dawson, LL. D., F. R. S., F. G. S., Principal and Vice-Chancellor of McGill University, Montreal. London: Hodder & Stoughton; New York: Harper & Brothers. 1973. Pp. 403, 12mo.

vigor and a raison d'être for the present day. This latter he did, not only by bringing forward a vera causa in the survival of the fittest under changing cir cumstances-about which the question among naturalists mainly is how much it will explain, some allowing it a restricted, others an unlimited operation-but also by showing that the theory may be made to do work, may shape and direct investigations, the results of which must in time tell us whether the theory is likely to hold good or not. If the hypothesis of natural selection and the things thereto appertaining had not been capable of being put to useful work, although, like the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation,". it might have made no little noise in the world, it would hardly have engaged the attention of working naturalists as it has done. Wo have no iden oven of opening the question as to what work the Darwinian theory has incited, and in what way the work done has reacted upon the theory; and least of all do we like to meddle with the polemical literature of the subject, already so voluminous that the German bibliographers and booksellers make a separate class of it. But two or three treatises before us, of a minor or incidental Bort, suggest a remark or two upon the attitude of mind toward evolutionary theories taken by some of the working naturalists.

Mr. Darwin's own expectation, that his new presentation of the subject would have little or no effect upon those who had already reached middle-age, has -out of Paris-not been fulfilled. There are, indeed, one or two who have thought it their duty to denounce the theory as morally dangerous, as well as scientifi

cally baseless; a recent instance of the sort we may have to consider further on. Others, like the youth at the river's bank, have been waiting in confident expectation of seeing the current run itself dry. On the other hand, a notable proportion of the more activominded naturalists had already come to doubt the received doctrine of the entire fixity of species, and still more that of their independent and supernatural origination. While their systematic work all proceeded implicitly upon the hypothesis of the independenco and entire permanence of species, they were perceiv ing more or less clearly that the whole question was inevitably to be mooted again, and so were prepared to give the alternative hypothesis a dispassionate consideration. The veteran Lyell set an early example, and, on a reconsideration of the whole question, wroto anew his famous chapter and reversed his former and weighty opinion. Owen, still earlier, signified his adhesion to the doctrine of derivation in some form, but apparently upon general, speculative grounds; for ho repudiated natural selection, and offered no other natural solution of the mystery of the orderly incoming of cognate forms. As examples of the effect of Darwin's "Origin of Species" upon the minds of naturalists who are no longer young, and whose propossessions, even more than Lyell's, were likely to bins them against the new doctrine, two from the botanical side are brought to our notice through recent miscel lancous writings which are now before us.'

Since this article was in type, noteworthy examples of appreciative scientific judgment of the derivative hypothesis have come to hand: 1. In the opening address to the Geological Section of the British Associa

Before the publication of Darwin's first volume, M. Alphonse de Candolle had summed up the result of his studies in this regard, in the final chapter of his classical "Géographic Botanique Raisonnée," in the conclusion, that existing vegetation must be regarded as the continuation, through many geological and geographical changes, of the anterior vegetations of the world; and that, consequently, the present distribution of species is explicable only in the light of their geological history. He surmised that, notwithstanding the general stability of forms, certain species or quasi-species might have originated through diversification under geographical isolation. But, on the other hand, he was still disposed to admit that even the same species might have originated independently in two or more different regions of the world; and he declined, as unpractical and unavailing, all attempts to apply hypotheses to the elucidation of the origin. of species. Soon after Darwin's book appeared, De Candolle had occasion to study systematically a large and wide-spread genus-that of the oak. Investigating it under the new light of natural selection, he came to the conclusion that the existing oaks are all descendants of carlier forms, and that no clear line can be drawn between the diversification which has

tion, at its recent meeting, by its president, the veteran Phillips, perhaps the oldest surviving geologist after Lyell; and, 2. That of Prof. Allman, President of the Biological Section. The first touches the subject briefly, but in the way of favorable suggestion; the second is a full and ́ discriminating exposition of the reasons which seem to assure at least the provisional acceptance of the hypothesis, as a guide in áll biological studies, “u key to the order and hidden forces of the world of life.”