238 



NATURE 



\yuly 25, 1872 



theory of birds' nests and the colour of female birds is 

 noticed with strong disapproval ; and a crushing array of 

 facts is adduced as being opposed to my statement that 

 "when both sexes arc coloured in a strikingly conspicuous 

 manner the nest is of such a nature as to conceal the sitting 

 bird." The whitcthroat, thrush, snipe, skylark, and hedge- 

 sparrow are adduced as opposed to my views ; but as they 

 must all be coloured in a strikingly conspicuous manner 

 if they are to be of any use to Dr. Brec or his hypothetical 

 schoolboy, the reason why they are cited remains a 

 mystery to me. Two pages farther on wo have more 

 misquotations or blunders. At p. 229 we are told that 

 Nitzsch's " feather tracts" are those parts of the body 

 which have the skin uncovered 1 while at p. 230 we find 

 that it is the brilliant rays absorbed by feathers that pro- 

 duce the vivid, varied, and beautiful colouring of birds ! 

 At p. 259 it is stated that " inconceivably minute changes" 

 are alone utilised by natural selection- -a misrepresenta- 

 tion which no word of mine or Mr. Darwin's will justify. 

 At p. 261 we have this passage : — "Mr. Wallace adopts 

 Mr. Darwin's view, that there is no such thing as instinct 

 at all, in the sense in which wc understand the word. 

 He considers it the ' result of small contingent conse- 

 ciuences, as produced by natural selection.'" As the 

 "he "in this sentence appears to refer to Mr. Wallace, 

 and the last ten words are given as a quotation, I felt 

 rather ashamed of myself for writing what I could not the 

 least understand. But a careful examination of my paper 

 shows me that I have said nothing about the " result of 

 contingent consequences ; " neither can I lind anything of 

 the kind in Mr. Darwin's writings on " instinct." We 

 must pass it over, therefore, as one of the ingenious para- 

 phrases by which Dr. Bree endeavours to elucidate a 

 difficult subject. 



In a large folded frontispiece we have "The De- 

 scent of Man, after Darwin's Theory," and this is ex- 

 plained at p. 325 ; but here, too, Mr. Darwin has not 

 been read aright, for " man's ancient ancestor, with cocked 

 ears, tail, prehensile feet, both sexes bearded and hirsute, 

 males with great canine teeth," is placed between 

 Marsupials and Lemurs, whereas Darwin places it after 

 the origin of the catarrhinc monkeys, in fact, at Fig. 

 1 5 of Dr. Bree's diagram. Our author makes a great 

 point of this, and says : — " From such a Darwinian crea- 

 tion were descended the lowest of the quadrumana, the 

 lemurs." 



At p. 331 we have another of our author's enigmatical 

 sentences : — " If an optician makes an object-glass, he 

 does so in reference to the objective, the lens." I had 

 previously imagined that the objective ivas the object- 

 glass ; but at p. 351 I was still more puzzled by refe- 

 rence to the " final law of the pendulum " and the " final 

 law of the screw " — two things I had never before 

 heard of. 



We think we have now shown that this book contains so 

 large a number of errors, misrepresentations, and miscon- 

 ceptions as to render it cjuite untrustworthy. We proceed 

 to give a few instances of the author's copious use of de- 

 clamation, assertion, and opinion, of doublful facts and 

 illogical arguments. 



Of declamation and assertion we liave an abundance, 

 the following being a favourable specimen :— " The system 

 of Darwin is eminently illogical, and must tall. It is an 



hypothesis which draws large but unsound deductions 

 from the rare and abnormal deviations, leaving the real 

 field untouched and unexplored. It is founded upon the 

 exceptions, not the rules of nature. It is utterly opposed 

 to design, to the teachings of animal mechanics, to the 

 grand and beautiful and everlasting proofs upon which 

 the tcleologist loves to dwell. It is a cokl, unsound, un- 

 philosophic, degrading system of assumed probabilities, 

 which, if true, would be ten times more wonderful than 

 anything assumed or believed by the most strict and rigid 

 disciple of special creation. Nay, still further, if proved 

 in every point to be true, it would still leave the fact of 

 special creation in all its wonderful mystery. The organic 

 cannot be formed from the inorganic ; nor could the 

 organic, if it were so formed, be endowed by any physical 

 force with the laws and properties of life. Go on still in 

 speculation, and I ask. Whence the inorganic — its be- 

 ginning, its ending, its grand and inexplicable laws, which 

 the physicist in vain attempts to correlate with the 

 vital.'' Whence gravitation, and what? the sidereal 

 system and its movements? the Spirit that breathes 

 through illimitable space, and lives through an eternity of 

 time ? " 



A large portion of the volume is occupied with quo- 

 tations from Agassiz, Haughton, Flourens, Owen, and 

 other opponents of Darwinism ; and Dr. Bree complains 

 that these authors have hardly been noticed and not re- 

 plied to by Darwin or his supporters. But the reason of 

 this is explained in the pages of the present work (where 

 we may suppose their best passages are quoted), I y the 

 almost entire absence of argument directed to the essen- 

 tial points of Mr. Darwin's theories, and the immense 

 preponderance of loose assertions, in support of which no 

 evidence is given. Thus, Agassiz asserts that " the 

 differences " among domestic animals " are not of the 

 same kind as the differences we observe among wild 

 animals ; " that " the differences we observe among wild 

 animals are the result of a creative power ; " that " domes- 

 tication never produces forms which are self-perpetuat- 

 ing ; " that " iXt all times the world has been inhabited by 

 as great a diversity of animals as exists now ; " and other 

 similar assertions, almost all of which are controverted by 

 accumulated facts in the works of Mr. Darwin. Chapter 

 x.wiii. is entirely devoted to an account of Agassiz's 

 views of design, and supposed proofs of a creative mind 

 at work in every step of the development of a group of 

 animals. The facts will appear to most naturalists 

 thoroughly consistent with the theory of evolution and 

 that of natural selection ; while the arguments involve a 

 view of the Deity which most philosophical thinkers will 

 find it hard to accept. Agassiz compares the Creator to 

 an engineer, and speaks of Him as "constantly and 

 tliouglitfiilly 7i'orking among the coniplicated structures 

 that He has made." This idea is not that of an omniscient 

 Creator, but of some inferior being with an intellect vastly 

 superior to man's, but yet limited. " Thoughtfully ivorh- 

 ing" implies effort to understand and overcome difficul- 

 ties ; whereas ///()«t,'/;/ at all, as wc think, is utterly opposed 

 to the conception of omniscience. 



Another chapter is devoted to I'jof. Haughton's theory 

 of "Least Action in Nature ;" and here, again, all the 

 established facts are perfectly consistent with, and almost 

 necessary deductions from, evolution and natural selec- 



