AN EARLY AMERICAN EVOLUTIONIST. 



225 



by James W. Alexander, D. D. New York: Robert Carter & 

 Brothers, No. 530 Broadway, 1859. 



Such is the wording of this title that it received the indorse- 

 ment of no less an authority than Dr. Alexander, and the " intro- 



James Lawrence Cabell. 



ductory notice " is full of the highest praise of the work and of its 

 leading idea. 



Americans may well be proud of this book, as it states many of 

 the biological laws now recognized, and, strange to say, cites many of 

 the very instances used later by Huxley and Darwin to support 

 them. Among these we find, on page 22, that by changing food 

 and environment, " we may modify to an extent sometimes quite 

 considerable the outward structural character of many plants and 

 low animal organisms; and these newly acquired characters may 

 then be perpetuated by hereditary transmission, under the influence 

 of the law of assimilation between parent and offspring, even though 

 the causes which originally determined the variation from the primi- 



VOL. LI I. 18 



