i«93. SOME NEW BOOKS. 389 



heron watching for trout at some broken weir, the author is equally 

 at home ; and we can thoroughly recommend his book to all lovers of 

 Nature as a living picture of many British animals in their native 

 haunts. R- L. 



The Recrudescence of Leprosy and its Causation. By William Tebb. 8vo. 

 Pp.412. London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1893. Price 6s. 



This is a book written to show that vaccination is accountable for 

 the spread of leprosy. We go so far with the author in entirely con- 

 demning the system of arm-to-arm vaccination, for it is definitely 

 certain that though the health of the child may be satisfactory, in 

 99 cases out of 100 there is no means of ascertaining the condition of 

 its progenitors. The author has collected together much information 

 concerning leprosy that is valuable to the professional as well as 

 interesting to the general reader, and concludes by observing that, 

 as the disease is " practically incurable, it behoves all interested in 

 the public well-being to do their best to prevent its diffusion," which 

 he considers is largely due to the practice of vaccination. 



Evolution and Man's Place in Nature. By Henry Calderwood, LL.D., 

 F.R.S.E., Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Edinburgh. Pp. 349. 

 London : Macmillan & Co., 1893. Price 7s. 6d. 



In the minds of many some of the value of a book on Man's Place 

 in Nature, written by the holder of an endowed chair of Moral 

 Philosophy in a Scotch University, will be discounted from the 

 outset. The Professor must hold a brief for his client, and his client 

 is Man as a Moral Agent. The interest of the book or the lectures 

 for such readers resolves itself into a curious contemplation of the 

 byeways by which the author shall arrive at the known goal. The 

 Scotch Professor of Moral Philosophy, at whose feet this reviewer 

 had the duty of sitting, cleared a Stanley path through the forest of 

 Science, raucously scaring the poor pigmies, shooting down the 

 detestable niggers, hacking through the forest, marching straight 

 with blundering and boisterous declamation on his inspired mission. 

 Quite other is Professor Calderwood. On his way to his conclusions 

 he dallies with variation and environment, embryology and evolution, 

 very agreeably passes the time of day with Huxley and Haeckel, Eimer 

 and Weismann, Helmholtz and Darwin, and says what very intelli- 

 gent fellows (in a moderate and non-moral way) they all are. But 

 when the real business comes on (in the last chapter) the naturalists 

 rather fade away, and are replaced by Aristotle and Plato, Butler and 

 Green, Shakespeare and Holy Writ, and Professor Ray Lankester ; 

 for Professor Ray Lankester has written on " Degeneration " — a 

 branch of the theory of Evolution held in high honour among the 

 dogmatic. 



Professor Calderwood accepts the principle of evolution so far as 

 man's body is concerned. With the proviso that life itself is inex- 

 plicable on mechanical or chemical grounds, and with the usual 

 quotation from Huxley against abiogenesis, readily enough he con- 

 cedes that there is an enormous preponderance of evidence in favour 

 of the organism of man being of tlie same kind, and descended in 

 the same way, as other organisms ; but in addition to this organic 

 life, he claims for man "rational life"' unexplained by science and 

 giving to man a dominance and position in nature totally unex- 



