33^ 



NATURE 



[August 13, 1891 



voyage of the Beagle, and the later writings of Darwin, 

 the author has been enabled to construct such a very 

 readable volume, is the best tribute to his skill. 



The task which Mr. Holder took up was by no means 

 an easy one ; the difficulty which he had to confront did 

 not arise from paucity of material, but from a super- 

 abundance of records, owing to the very complete account 

 of his own travels and observations which Darwin has 

 bequeathed to us. To extract the salient points from 

 these records, and to dress them up in the writer's own 

 language, was a labour requiring considerable literary 

 ability. Mr. Holder has shown that he was well quali- 

 fied for the undertaking, and it is refreshing— after the 

 "Summary of the Dartvinian Theory," and similar 

 productions to which we have recently been treated in 

 this country — to find that an American naturalist is able 

 to write an account of Darwin and his work in language 

 expressing his own ideas on the subject, instead of string- 

 ing together a lot of disconnected quotations from 

 Darwin's writings. Not the least praiseworthy feature 

 of the book is the comparatively small number of 

 extracts from the writings of his hero ; the author is 

 wise enough to recognize the fact that most reading 

 naturalists may be supposed to be familiar with the 

 text of the "Naturalist's Voyage," the " Origin of Species," 

 and other Darwinian classics. 



The present volume is one of the " Leaders in Science " 

 series, published by the firm of Putnam's Sons. The 

 author says in the preface : — 



" When the publishers proposed to me the subject of 

 the present volume, a life of Charles Darwin for American 

 and English readers, I was particularly gratified with the 

 suggestion that the work should be adapted to young 

 readers as well as old. It has always seemed to me that 

 the life of Charles Darwin was one eminently fitted to be 

 held up as an example to the youth of all lands. He 

 stood as the central figure in the field of natural science 

 in this century, and while it is yet too early to present 

 his life with any approximation of its results upon the 

 thought of the future, it is apparent to everyone that his 

 influence upon the intellectual growth of the country, and 

 upon biological science in particular, has been marked 

 and epoch-making. 



" In the preparation of the work I have not attempted 

 an analytical dissertation upon Darwin's life-work, neither 

 have I discussed his theories or their possible effect upon 

 the scientific world, but have simply presented the story 

 of his life, that of one of the greatest naturalists of the 

 age ; a life of singular purity ; the life of a man who, in 

 loftiness of purpose and the accomplishment of grand 

 results, was the centre of observation in his time ; re- 

 vered and honoured, yet maligned and attacked as few 

 have been." 



Having thus defined his object, the author proceeds to 

 narrate his story, beginning with the boy Darwin, passing 

 on to his Cambridge career, and then leading us through 

 the scenes of his wanderings as naturalist to the Beagle. 

 The major portion of the volume (twelve out of the 

 twenty chapters) is thus pleasantly filled up ; all the 

 little personal incidents which give colour to the in- 

 dividuality of the man are skilfully brought in, and here 

 and there the author interposes observations of his own 

 which help to throw light on the questions discussed and 

 the facts recorded by Darwin. Having in view the taste 

 of his younger readers, a number of full-page illustra- 

 tions have been introduced, some being reproduced from 

 NO. I 137, VOL. 44] 



Spry's " Voyage of the Challenger," others from Gosse's 

 '* Romance of Natural History," others from Brehm's 

 " Natural History," from -Figuier's works, and from the 

 Century Magazine. Many of the illustrations are 

 new, the frontispiece, representing Darwin in his garden 

 with the squirrels running up him, being well worthy of 

 notice. 



The working period of Darwin's life from the return of 

 the Beagle to his death is dealt with in three chapters, in 

 the course of which the author relates the history of the 

 " Origin of Species," and the impetus given to the 

 publication of that work by the independent discovery 

 of the principle of natural selection by "Alfred Russel 

 Wallace, a young Welsh naturalist, who was then 

 travelling in the Malay country." This incident is of 

 course familiar to all, but as an old story retold by a 

 transatlantic admirer of Darwin it reads even now with 

 the charm of freshness. The later works are referred to 

 in chronological order, and in a succeeding chapter we 

 have a catalogue of the honours conferred upon Darwin 

 during his life. The seventeenth chapter contains an 

 account of the Darwin family, beginning with William 

 Darwin, of Marton, near Gainsborough, in 1500, and 

 concluding with Erasmus, elder brother of Charles 

 Darwin, the friend of Carlyle, who was described by 

 the latter in his " Reminiscences," and whose amiable 

 character was more fully portrayed by Miss Julia 

 Wedgwood in the Spectator in 1881. The latter 

 description, from the pen of Miss Wedgwood is given 

 by Mr. Holder in extenso. 



The narrative, as such, ends with the death of Darwin 

 in 1882, and the reader will turn with renewed interest to 

 the eighteenth and nineteenth chapters, containing Mr. 

 Holder's account of the Darwinian theory. The prin- 

 ciples of this theory are fairly well expounded, considering 

 the small amount of space which has been devoted to 

 them. Natural selection is illustrated by a happily chosen 

 and original example from the animal kingdom, viz. the 

 adaptive coloration of the fauna of the Sargasso Sea. 

 Another illustration of the principle is drawn from the 

 vegetable world, viz. the evolution of a hairy seed adapted 

 for aerial transport. The questions of geological time 

 and the palaeontological evidences of organic evolution 

 are also touched upon, and here we think the author 

 might have used more judgment. The formation of the 

 chalk, for example, is not quite satisfactorily given, and 

 the statement that the chalk cliffs of Dover have been 

 elevated "by some convulsion of nature" (p. 185) will jar 

 upon the geological susceptibilities of his readers. In 

 a work intended for popular reading it would also have 

 been safer to avoid any estimate of the time required for 

 the denudation of the Weald, the more especially as 

 Darwin himself admitted the unsoundness of such esti- 

 mates by omitting this section in the later editions of 

 the "Origin." The ancestry of the horse, and Prof. 

 Marsh's discovery of the Odontornithes, are well brought 

 in in connection with the palaeontological evidence. We 

 may point out in passing that the diagram illustrating the 

 evolution of the horse, which fronts p. 62, is referred to 

 both on pp. 189 and 190 as " the accompanying diagram," 

 which is obviously an oversight. 



In tracing the history of pre-Darvvinian evolution, the 

 author mentions the views of Bonnet, the doctrines of 



