LITERARY NOTICES. 



847 



The Origin of the Fittest. Essays on 

 Evolution. By E. D. Cope. New York : 

 D. Appleton k Co. Pp. 467. 



This volume includes twenty -one es- 

 says which represent the reflections that 

 suggested themselves to the author while 

 he was engaged in special zoological and 

 paleontological studies. These studies re- 

 lated particularly to the vertebrates, but 

 they impressed the conviction that the 

 conclusions derived from them were also 

 applicable to invertebrate animals and 

 plants. The law of natural selection of 

 Wallace and Darwin is regarded by Pro- 

 fessor Cope as only restrictive, directive, 

 conservative, or destructive of something 

 already created. It includes no active or 

 progressive principle, but "must first wait 

 for the development of variation, and then, 

 after securing the survival of the best, wait 

 again for the best to project its own vari- 

 ations for selection. In the question as to 

 whether the latter are any better or worse 

 than the characters of the parent, natural 

 selection in no wise concerns itself." The 

 expression, " survival of the fittest," with 

 which Spencer epitomized this law, is pro- 

 nounced " neat," and " no doubt covers the 

 case, but it leaves the origin of the fittest 

 entirely untouched." It is proposed, then, 

 to seek for the originative laws by which 

 the materials whence the selection is made 

 are furnished — "in other words, for the 

 causes of the origin of the fittest." The 

 laws which have regulated the successive 

 creations, as the author attempts to define 

 them in his essay on the " Origin of Gen- 

 era," appear to him to have been of two 

 kinds : the first, that which has impelled 

 matter to produce numberless ultimate 

 types from common origins ; and, second, 

 that which expresses the mode or manner 

 in which this first law has executed its 

 course, from its beginning to its deter- 

 mined end. The origin of genera is as- 

 sumed to be a more distinct subject from 

 the origin of species than has been sup- 

 posed. A descent with modification in- 

 volves continuous series of organic types 

 through one or many geologic ages, and 

 the coexistence of such parts of such vari- 

 ous series at one time as the law of mutual 

 adaptation may permit. These series, as 

 now found, are of two kinds — the uninter- 



rupted line of specific, and the same unin- 

 terrupted line of generic characters. These 

 are independent of each other, and have, 

 as it appears to the author, been developed 

 pari passu, so that he conceives it " highly 

 probable that the same specific form has 

 existed through a succession of genera, and 

 perhaps in different epochs of geologic 

 time " ; or, as it is otherwise expressed, 

 species may be transferred from one genus 

 to another without losing their specific 

 characters, and genera from one order to 

 another without losing their generic char- 

 acters." These explanations may help to 

 make more clear the bearing of what may 

 be regarded as the leading doctrines of 

 Professor Cope's theory, which are, in brief, 

 that the development of new characters 

 has been accomplished by an acceleration 

 or retardation in the growth of the parts 

 changed; that an exact parallelism exists 

 between the adult of one individual or set 

 of individuals, and a transitional stage of 

 one or more other individuals — to be dis- 

 tinguished from the inexact parallelism of 

 Von Baer, a law which expresses the origin 

 of genera and higher groups because they 

 can only be distinguished by single charac- 

 ters when all their representatives come to 

 be known (that is, that upon a view of all 

 the individuals the transitional differences 

 are so gradual that hard and fast lines of 

 distinction are obliterated) ; that genera and 

 various other groups have descended, not 

 from a single generalized genus, etc., of the 

 same group, but from corresponding genera 

 of one or more other groups — the doctrine 

 of homologous groups ; and that these ho- 

 mologous groups belong to different geo- 

 logical periods and different geographical 

 areas, and are related to each other in a 

 successional way like the epochs of geo- 

 logical time. To these are added the law 

 of repetitive action, by which the struct- 

 ures of animals are shown to have origi- 

 nated from simple repetitions of identical 

 elements ; and the existence of a special 

 force exhibiting itself in the growth of or- 

 ganic beings, called growth-force, or bath- 

 mism, the location of which at certain parts 

 of the organism, indicating abstraction from 

 other points, determines the direction of de- 

 velopment. The location of the growth- 

 force is accomplished by use or effort, 



