HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



83 



scription of Kamtchatka alone would make it worth 

 buying ; but there are, in addition, even more vivid 

 accounts of the Aleutian Islands, the Philippines, 

 many well-known and little-known islands of the 

 Malayan Archipelago as well as of New Guinea. 

 The book is abundantly and excellently illustrated, 

 and is exceedingly well written. 



The Best Forage Plants, (London : David Nutt, 

 270 Strand). This is a translation, by Mr. N. 

 McAlpine, of Doctors Stebler and Schroter's well- 

 known work on the above subject. The translation 

 is well done, and the thirty beautifully coloured plates 

 add to its botanical and utilitarian value. 



A Handbook of Cryptogamic Botany, by A. W. 

 Bennett and George Murray (London: Longmans 

 and Co.). A book on this subject has long been 

 required by students, and we have been frequently 

 asked to recommend one of this description, but 

 hitherto have been only partially able. It is with 

 pleasure, therefore, that we very cordially bring this 

 book before the notice of our readers. It is the 

 result of several years' hard work on a subject in 

 connection with which, perhaps, more new facts have 

 recently accumulated than any other in the domain 

 of practical botany. We need hardly say that the 

 names of its authors are sufficient to show that the 

 work here prepared for students, is of a high class 

 description. It is illustrated with 378 excellent 

 woodcuts, and deals with the vascular cryptogams, 

 the muscince, characese, algte, fungi, mycetozoa, 

 protophyta, &c. It is well printed and strongly 

 bound, and in every respect got up as a practical 

 work for earnest students. 



THE FLORA OF THE PAST. 

 By Mrs. Bodington. 



FOR many years the students of evolution have 

 longed for some master, who would do for the 

 science of Botany, what has been done for the sister- 

 science of Zoology by Darwin, Cope, Haeckel, 

 Huxley, and other distinguished naturalists. We 

 want some one who shall have the courage of Darwin 

 and Haeckel to give us, so far as present knowledge 

 goes, a genealogical history of plants. Professor 

 Coulter, in his presidential address before the Indian 

 Academy of Science, blames a "public which listens 

 with pricked-up ears, and discusses endlessly con- 

 cerning the evolution of birds, mammals and man, 

 yet which cares not a straw for the wonderful 

 structures of gymnosperms and lycopods, although 

 these latter furnish irresistible arguments in favour of 

 a theory that has revolutionised scientific thought. 

 One who staggers at the evolution of the horse can 

 nnd amongst plants such interminable intergrading 

 that fixity of species becomes a dream of the past." 

 But Professor Coulter goes on to say, " Botanists 

 have no family tree arrangement for plants, and will 

 iiot attempt the construction of one until they know 



more about the life-histories of the lower groups, and 

 more about structure of all the groups." That is to 

 say, botanists are timid, and will not dare to do for 

 their science, what zoplogists have done for theirs. 

 And so long as this is the case, how can the public 

 be blamed ? How can they take an interest in what 

 has never been put before them ? I venture to say 

 that, if Professor Coulter ever makes up his mind to 

 construct a " family tree " for plants, he will find an 

 eager public ready to prick up its ears and hear all he 

 has to say. When Darwin and Haeckel first wrote, 

 only a fraction was known of all the evidence now 

 accumulated bearing on the descent of animals. 

 Some mistakes were necessarily made. 



Darwin, notwithstanding his matchless patience, 

 was too hasty in assuming the marsupials to be in the 

 direct line of ancestry of the placental mammals. 

 ("Descent of Man," p. 209). Haeckel, who, in his 

 " Evolution of Man," was almost as hasty in his 

 conclusions as Darwin was cautious, made a false 

 assumption which caused great joy in the reactionary 

 camp. In his anxiety to avoid acknowledging the 

 necessity of a creative act for the first introduction of 

 life upon the globe, Haeckel pronounced an inorganic 

 slime of the Atlantic, to which Huxley gave the 

 name of Bathybius, to be a representative of the 

 earliest form of protoplasm or organised matter. 

 Much delight was given by this mistake to all 

 reactionaries, who have, however, founded no moral- 

 ising on the more enormous mistake of Dawson, 

 whose Eozobn Canadense has sunk under the 

 enquiries of German scientists into mere green 

 serpentine. Chemistry has now told us that 

 " Life" as an entity has no more existence than the 

 phlogiston of the earlier chemists, and that the series 

 of phenomena to which we give the name of Life are 

 the changes undergone by complex compounds of 

 carbon composing very large and unstable mole- 

 cules. 



In the earlier stages of the cooling of our globe, 

 this complex molecule was perhaps one of the latest 

 to combine its atoms ; when, we are never likely to 

 know, but the how is neither more nor less mysterious 

 than the coming together of any other combination 

 of atoms, and requires neither slime from the Atlan- 

 tic, nor the impact of a stray planet to account for 

 its existence. Owing to anxiety to demonstrate all 

 the steps in animal descent, Haeckel, as well as 

 Darwin, too hastily assumed that the marsupialia 

 are in the line of our ancestors. There was evidence 

 then that the marsupials belonged to a distinct and 

 highly differentiated line of descent from that of the 

 placental mammals, and now far back in the Jurassic 

 strata the remains of each may be found as widely 

 differentiated as they are now. There is a tremen- 

 dous break in the palseontological evidence, and we 

 must make up our minds to endure it for the present. 

 But who would blame those intrepid travellers who 

 first explore an undiscovered country, if they make 



