Dublin Review S.R.B. 71 



THE centenary of Darwin's birth has brought forth 

 from the press a large number of works concerned 

 with the scientific doctrines associated with the name of the 

 author of The Origin of Species. Amongst them Professor 

 Poulton's work, Darwin and the c Origin ' (Longmans. Lon- 

 don. 1909. 75. 6d. net), stands out as the utterance of an 

 unrelenting Darwinian, a " whole-hogger " in the com- 

 mon parlance of the day. Others may say that Dar- 

 winism is " on its death-bed," or, like Driesch, may tell 

 us that it no longer " manages to lead a whole genera- 

 tion by the nose," or, like Bateson, assure us that the 

 theory of Natural Selection " descended like a numbing 

 spell " on the study of species and varieties by means 

 of hybridism. Professor Poulton will have none of this and 

 still holds by the ancient Darwinian faith in all its purity. 

 He believes, for we may assume that he is to be identi- 

 fied with " the Darwinian " to whom the views are im- 

 puted, " that the finished product or species is gradually 

 built up by the environmental selection of minute 

 increments, holding that, among inborn variations of all 

 degrees of magnitude, the small and not the large become 

 the steps by which evolution proceeds, He attempts to 

 avoid, as Darwin did, on the hand, the error of ascribing 

 the species-forming forces wholly to a creative environ- 

 ment, and, on the other, the perhaps more dangerous 

 error of ascribing them wholly to creative internal ten- 

 dencies " (p. xiii). Thus he is absolutely opposed to the 

 Mutationist School, which refuses to see any importance 

 in minute variations from a developmental point of view 

 and assigns all changes of species to sudden considerable 

 changes or mutations, which, in a word, believes in dis- 

 continuous, as opposed to continuous, evolution. It is 

 unnecessary to say that Professor Poulton's conclusions 

 are urged in graceful language and supported by constant 

 appeal to examples, and our only regret is that his pages 

 are not wholly free from the odium scientificum which one 

 meets with from time to time, especially where what 

 should be the peaceful name of Mendel comes into 

 question. This is a book to be read with interest, since it 

 represents a side, though not perhaps one increasing in 

 numbers and vvci'/lit, in the Darwinian controversy of the 



B.C.A.W. 



