Zoological Society. 143 



Although we have felt compelled to say thus much against the 

 theory so ably pleaded for ia Mr. Darwin's book, we repeat that, in a 

 very limited sense indeed, there seems no reason why the theory may 

 not be a sound one ; but at present, even to that extent, it remains 

 to be substantiated. The volume is eloquently written, and its 

 immense array of facts most carefully collected. But we are bound 

 to add, that many an equivocal idea is shrouded under the fairest 

 garb ; and we find that we have sometimes swallowed a dose uncon- 

 sciously, on account of the pleasant medium through which it was 

 administered. And, as an instance of this, we will quote the con- 

 cluding sentence of the whole work, which is certainly very beautiful, 

 though we can scarcely believe that our author was iu earnest when 

 he wrote it. Here it is, without comment (the italics are our own) : 



" It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with 

 mauy plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with 

 various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the 

 damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, 

 so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so 

 complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us : 

 these laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Repro- 

 duction ; inheritance, which is almost implied by reproduction ; 

 variability from the indirect and direct action of the external con- 

 ditions of life, and from use and disuse ; a ratio of increase so high 

 as to lead to a struggle for life, and as a consequence to Natural 

 Selection, entailing divergence of character and the extinction of less- 

 improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and 

 death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, 

 namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There 

 is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been 

 originally breathed into a few forms or into one ; and that, whilst 

 this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed laws of gravity, 

 from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most 

 wonderful have been and are being evolved." 



Would not one step more plunge us headlong into the Nebular 

 Hypothesis, and the whole theory of Spontaneous Generation ? 



PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES. 



ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



March 22, 1859.— Dr. Gray, F.R.S., V.P., in the Chair. 



Mr. Gould exhibited and characterized two new species of birds, 

 one belonging to the family CucuHdcB, the other to the Coturnicece, 

 and remarkable as forming probably the smallest species of the 

 groups to which they respectively pertained. 



For a small Shining Cuckoo, killed at Port Essington, on the north 

 coast of Australia, and of the same form and very nearly allied to 

 the Chrysococcyx lucidus of New South Wales and the C. basalis of 

 Java, Mr. Gould proposed the name of Chrysococcyx minutillus ; 



