38 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 



Evolution and Natural Theologij. By W. F. Rlrby, of the British 

 Museum. 8vo. London : Sonnenschein & Co. 1883. 



Some ten years ago the subject for the " Actonian Prize 

 Essay" was the relation of the doctrine of Evolution to Natural 

 Theology ; if we were, at the time, correctly informed, two essays 

 were submitted to the adjudicators ; at any rate, Mr. Lowne, the 

 well-known student of the histology of insects gained the Prize, 

 and published an essay on the ' Philosophy of Evohition,' which 

 we must confess we have never read. We do not know whether 

 Mr. Kirby's was the unsuccessful essay, but he tells us that " a 

 great part" of the present work was written some time ago, and 

 we do see in it the very notes, — we cannot say of an unsuccessful 

 prize essay, for we do not remember ever to have had the mis- 

 fortune to read one, — but of the ordinary " prize essay." We 

 see, that is, the hasty appropriation of work done by others, 

 undigested, crude, and careless statements of facts, and an 

 uncritical use of general works and more or less trustworthy 

 compilations. For example, the Mollusca and the Vertebrata 

 are supposed to have a common origin in the "Molluscoida" — as 

 though the very facts of Tunicate development had not, once for 

 all, separated them from the Mollusca. We hear of Monera as 

 having no " outer epidermis," and we have the works of Darwin, 

 Spencer, and Carpenter quoted side by side with those of Murphy 

 and Ponton. 



Sometimes the point insisted on by the authority quoted is 

 completely misunderstood. Writing of the origin of life, Mr. 

 Kirby tells us that " the semi-organised mud at the bottom of 

 the deep sea may be the transitional stage between inorganic and 

 organic matter." There is no "may be" at all about it — if by 

 this curious mud he means the "ooze"; this is, in a sense, an 

 intermediate stage, but in the very opposite direction to which 

 Mr. Kirby points, for it is being converted into red clay and 

 green sand. 



In other cases,— e.f/. in his chapter on Evolution in Astronomy 

 and Philology, — there is no reference at all to the more suggestive 

 writers, such as Schleicher, whose famous essay, translated into 



