556 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



America, where party organization is more 

 developed than here, whoever declines to sur- 

 render his convictions and follow in the mob 

 which is led by a 'boss' to the polls, is 

 labeled with the contemptuous name of 

 ' Mugwump,' and is condemned as pharisaic 

 and of an unsocial disposition. In the ' land 

 of liberty ' it has become a political crime to 

 act on your own judgment." 



Mr. Spencer has not for a long time given 

 us a book from which a greater number of 

 striking and helpful quotations could be made 

 than from this ; but our notice has already 

 exceeded the limits usual in these columns, 

 and we close by renewing the expression of 

 our hope that the admirably practical teach- 

 ings which the book contains may be widely 

 diffused and bring forth fruit abundantly. 



DARWIN ET SES PRECURSEURS FRAN^AIS. 

 ETUDE SUR LE TRANSFORMISME (Darwin 

 and his French Precursors. A Study of 

 Transformism). By A. DE QUATREFAGES. 

 Paris: Felix Alcan. Pp. 294. Price, 

 6 francs. 



THE purpose of this work, as defined by 

 the author, is, looking at the subject from 

 the point of view of natural science, to de- 

 termine exactly what is Darwin's, find what 

 is true in it as well as what can not be ac- 

 cepted of it, and to try and assign to each its 

 value and the deductions which are drawn 

 from it. Reduced to the terms of a descent 

 of all animal and vegetable species by suc- 

 cessive transformations from three or four 

 original types and probably from a primitive 

 archetype, it is found to offer little wholly 

 new. Darwin himself has given a list of 

 twenty-six naturalists of various nationalities 

 who had published views more or less simi- 

 lar to his before him. Of these, M. Quatre- 

 fages has compared the expressions of the 

 French naturalists, including Benoist de 

 Maillet (or Telliamed), Robinet, Buffon, La- 

 marck, Etienne and Isidore Geoffroy-Saint- 

 Hilaire, Bory de Saint- Vincent, and M. 

 Charles Naudin. Suggestions of these ideas 

 may be found further back still, even among 

 the alchemists of the middle ages and the 

 Greek sophists ; but the question of the 

 formation of species could not present itself 

 to those thinkers with the same significance 

 that it has done with us. Beginning with the 

 seventeenth century, the proposed solutions 

 multiplied rapidly. The author, not appre- 



ciating, perhaps, the patience which English 

 philosophers have cultivated in the matter, 

 thinks the process described by the term 

 evolution too slow to account for the changes 

 of species, and prefers transformism, with 

 transformists as the appellation of the advo- 

 cates of the theory. After the accounts of 

 Darwin's French precursors, a general ex- 

 position of Darwinism and a review of its 

 agreement with certain general facts are 

 given; following which the Darwinian sys- 

 tem is subjected to a full discussion in eight 

 chapters. As every one knows, M. Quatre- 

 fages is not a Darwinian ; but differences of 

 opinion concerning heretofore unexplained 

 phenomena, he says, never make him unjust 

 toward eminent men. While he contests 

 their doctrines he desires to render a sincere 

 and cordial homage to their works. In Dar- 

 win he admires the almost chivalric good 

 faith which enables him, even when his 

 mind is most preoccupied with his hypoth- 

 eses, to be still calm enough to see in his 

 own labors reasons and facts that militate in 

 favor of his adversaries and sincerity enough 

 to point them out. " There is a real charm 

 in following such a mind in its excursions." 

 In the preface to a second edition of the 

 work he dwells upon the neutrality of the 

 Darwinian theory as concerns religious ques- 

 tions, and the impartiality with which it is 

 sustained by orthodox and by agnostic sup- 

 porters, or opposed alike by adversaries of 

 either school. 



EXTINCT MONSTERS. A Popular Account of 

 some of the Larger Forms of Ancient 

 Animal Life. By the Rev. H. N. HUTCH- 

 INSON. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 

 Pp. 254. 



THE object of this book is twofold: to 

 describe some of the larger and more mon- 

 strous forms of the past, and endeavor by 

 pen and pencil to present them as they were 

 in life ; and to illustrate how in animal life 

 the past has grown into the present without 

 the long and abrupt leaps which we are too 

 liable to regard as one of the chief features 

 of the transition. Stress is laid upon the 

 quality of the illustrations. They are still to 

 a certain extent conjectural, but they rest 

 upon larger and more accurate information 

 than any portraits of the giants and dragons 

 of old that have previously appeared. Many 



