472 
NATURE 
[ Oct. 13, 1870 
Origin of Species’ I have long ago measured my 
own strength, and know well that it would be unequal 
to the task. Far abler men may confess that they have 
not that untiring patience in accumulating, and that won- 
derful skill in using, large masses of facts of the most 
varied kind—that wide and accurate physiological know- 
ledge, that acuteness in devising and skill in carrying 
out experiments, and that admirable stvle of composi- 
tion, at once clear, persuasive, and judicial—qualities 
which in their harmonious combination mark out Mr. 
Darwin as the man, perhaps, of all men now living, best 
fitted for the great work he has undertaken and accom- 
plished.” 
The third chapter is on so-called Mimicry among 
Animals, and contains an account of some of the re- 
markable cases of dimorphism observed by the author 
and by Mr. Bates, and of those in which one species 
closely resembles not only leaves and inanimate ob- 
jects, but other specially protected animal forms. The 
facts thus established are explained with great ingenuity, 
and often with equal probability, by the operation of the 
natural laws of selection. The ways in which even 
brilliant colouring may become a means of protection 
are well illustrated, so that this branch of study is made 
to yield support instead of difficulty to the Darwinian 
theory. The following chapter, the only technical one in 
the book, is an application of the same law to explain 
the various forms and distribution of the group of Pafi- 
Ziontde. It may be compared with Fritz Miiller’s study 
of the Crustacea from a similar point of view; and 
we believe that more solid progress will be made by 
carefully working out the application of natural selec- 
tion to restricted and well-known animal groups than by 
attempting the construction of more comprehensive and 
imposing phylogenies. 
In the seventh chapter Mr. Wallace makes a somewhat 
similar inquiry into the relation of the colour of birds to 
the form of their nests, and concludes, from a very wide 
survey, that when the female is of conspicuous colours, 
the nest is adapted to conceal her during incubation, while 
open nests are made by those already sufficiently pro- 
tected. The exceptions to the rule are candidly state, 
and most of them satisfactorily met. That the true law 
of the habit has been discovered is, perhaps, too much 
to say; but the evidence is at least enough to lead to 
further investigation on this interesting subject. Another 
essay, styled, not very happily, “ The Philosophy of Birds’ 
Nests,” attempts to explain the building of nests and 
also the song of birds as the result not of “instinct,” 
but of conscious imitation ;. gradual improvement being 
of course brought forward by the survival of the most 
skilful architects and the constant sexual demand for the 
best musicians. But not only does Mr. Wallace thus 
raise nest-making to the rank of an intelligent art, he 
also shows how much of human construction is simply 
imitative, and therefore as fairly to be called instinctive 
as a bird’s ; while in another passage he shows how the 
alleged wonderful displays of instinct in savages are really 
the result of habit and of reason. 
This chapter on Instinct in Men and Animals would 
naturally introduce the last two, in which the working 
and the limits of the law of natural selection on the human 
race are considered, This is probably the most difficult, 
as it is certainly the most generally interesting, of the 
questions affecting the origin of animal species Those 
who are not satisfied with the genealogies of Haeckel, and 
wait for the more cautious and philosophic conclusions 
expected fiom the master of the subject, will scarcely, we 
think, accept the views propounded in this volume by Mr. 
Wallace. He points out very clearly how most of the 
ajuman peculiarities of structure may be supposed to 
have originated by the survival of the forms fittest 
for their mode of life, and is fully aware of the neces- 
sary change going on at the same time in the 
various functions, to bring them also into harmony 
with structure. And he shows with great justice 
how mental and moral qualities must interfere with the 
absolute carrying out of the law of natural selection —not 
only in civilised communities, where it is continually and 
designedly contravened, but among all savages who take, 
for instance, the least care of the sick and aged of their 
tribe. But, beside and apart from the operation of 
the general law of organic life, with these various modifi- 
cations and restrictions, Mr. Wallace believes that 
another and independent cause has been at work in the 
evolution of the human frame, and that this has beena 
supernatural one. He maintains that the large size of 
the brain in man, the scantiness of his hairy covering, the 
great specialisation of his extremities, and some other 
peculiarly human characters, cannot be explained, except 
as the result of the direct action of the Creator’s will. In 
fact, he compares man as he at present exists with such 
products of artificial human selection as the seedless 
banana or the London dray-horse ; so that, if we may thus 
express Mr. Wallace’s theory, man is God's comestic 
animal. ; 
A great deal of the metaphysical discussion which oc- 
cupies the last pages of the volume, including the verses 
quoted from an American poetess, has, we confess, to our 
mind, the same “ double disadvantage” which the author 
finds in “the law of unconscious intelligence pervading all 
organic nature put forth by Dr. Laycock, and adopted by 
Mr. Murphy,” that, namely, of being “both unintelligible 
and incapable of proof ;” but the theory of divine artificial 
sclection supplying the deficiencies of natural selection in 
the formation of man may, we think, be at once met by 
the following considerations. 
The theory of natural selection does not suppose a kind 
of large female divinity, whose name is Nature, and whose 
function is to select from animals and plants those fittest 
for survival. The theory rests,as Mr. Wallace, in another 
part of his work, is careful to remind the reader, on cer- 
tain proved facts (enumerated at p. 302), which necessi- 
tate the survival of certain forms by virtue of the proved 
physical laws which we see in daily operation. But these 
so called laws are, to all who believe in a Creator, simply 
the manner of Hisaction. To say that our brains were 
made by God, and our lungs by natural selection, 
is really to exclude the Creator from half His creation, 
and natural science from half of nature. All the pheno- 
mena we know are of necessity ultimately referable 
to the First Great Cause: the object of science is to dis- 
cover their secondary causes; and if the theory of natural 
selection does not explain how the larynx or the brain of 
man were developed, then we must try to find another 
which will. To fall back for explanation upon the primary 
