102 
NATORE 
[ Dec. 8, 1870 

HAECKELS NATURAL HISTORY OF 
CREATION 
Natiirliche Schipfungs-Geschichte. Von Dr. Ernst Haeckel, 
2te Auflage. (Berlin: Reimer, 1870. London: Williams 
and Norgate.) 
ERE there any need of evidence to show how 
busy in the happier times of peace the German 
public was with Darwinism and general Natural History 
topics, it would be amply supplied by the history of this 
work, the preface to the first edition of which was written | 
in August 1868, and the second edition of which is now 
before us. 
sketch, not so much of the Darwinian theory, as of 
Haeckel’s extension of that theory ; in many respects it is 
a new “Vestiges of Creation,” the old question being 
\iewed from anew stand-point, and the treatment of it 
adapted to new feelings and new times. The old work 
was modestly entitled “ Vestiges ;” Prof. Haeckel calls his 
a History ; and indeed a detailed comparison of the two 
would bring out in a wonderfully vivid manner both the 
progress of zoological inquiry and the change in zoologi- 
cal temper which has taken place in the interval between 
the dates of their publication. 
The relation of Prof. Haeckel’s extended views to the 
original theory of Mr. Darwin is very well indicated ina 
few lines of the preface to the second edition, “ Darwin- 
ism is neither the beginning nor the end of the theory 
of evolution; it is far away removed from tending to 
narrow or to fix an absolute limit to further inquiry. Just 
as every important onward step in science becomes at 
once the starting-point of many new lines of advance, 
so Darwin’s theory of selection gives immediate rise to 
many large extensions of the general theory of evolution ; 
and of these my Phylogenic theories are some of the 
first to hand. When, then, the orthodox Darwinians 
cast at me the reproach that ‘I go too far, that ‘I out- | 
Darwin Darwin,’ that ‘by my Radicalism I do harm to 
true Darwinism,’ I see in all such reproaches nothing 
but an unwilling confession that I have extended the 
evolution theory away and beyond the limits within 
which Darwin investigated the question, and have not 
been afraid to carry it out to its grand consequences.” 
In the early edition, the first six lectures are devoted to 
a historical sketch of the evolution theory ; the creation 
theories of Linnzeus, Cuvier, and Agassiz, and the evolu- 
tion theories of Goethe and Oken, of Kant and Lamark, 
of Lyell and Darwin being taken as landmarks. In the 
second edition these chapters have been somewhat en- 
larged and improved, but on the whole stand very much 
as they were. The next five lectures (7—11) form a general 
exposition of the theory of Natural Selection, with discus- | 
sions on heredity, adaptation, and the struggle for ex- | 
In the second edition these chapters remain | 
istence. 
almost exactly as in the first. The same may be said of 
the twelfth lecture, in which a sketch is given of Onto 
geny, or the development of the individual, and a com- | 
parison made between it and Phylogeny, or the de 
velopment of the kind or species—in other words, Gene- 
alogy. The two succeeding chapters discuss rapidly the 
cosmic history of the globe, the primordial differenti ition 
of living from lifeless things, and contains, under the title 
of Periods of Creition, a short sketch of Pa’zontology. 
The work is, broadly speaking, a popular 
| dom of Protista. 

Between these two chapters the author has, in the second 
edition, introduced a totally new chapter on what he calls 
Chorology, 7.2. the theory of migrations, in which he dis- 
cusses the influence of migration on species, the causes 
of migration, the effect of changes of climate, and the 
question of centres of creation, and points out the probable 
results of the Glacial epoch. The palzontological sketch 
is also much changed in the second edition, th: “theory of 
ante-periods,” which has found but little favour with geolo- 
gists, being, though unwillingly, withdrawn, 
The remainder of the volume, nearly half, is taken up 
with a concrete history of creation, Ze. with an account 
of how, and by what steps, all kinds of plants and animals 
have grown out of the primordial moners, those first exist- 
ing living things which were, according to Haeckel, 
neither plants nor animals, but belonged to a third king- 
This part of the work therefore is a 
descriptive genealogy of all living beings, the pedigree of 
each kind of creature being made out, or rather conjec- 
tured out, as far as present knowledge will allow. 
In the second edition, as might have been anticipated, 
the genealogies are very much extended, and given with 
much greater detail than in the first ; in particular, there 
is a new whole chapter on the migration and dispersion of 
mankind, and on the species and races of men. The 
results of phylogenic speculation or inquiry are graphi- 
cally shown in elaborate genealogical trees ; and a new 
large plate shows at one glance how all races of men have 
probably spread from a hypothetical paradise once situate 
in the great continent of Lemuria, now sunk below the 
waves of the Indian Ocean, 
The result of criticism is shown in some few changes 
in the several pedigrees, but on the whole these differ in 
the second edition very little from what they were in the 
first. ‘The Halisaurians, for instance, have been brought 
back to the amphibians, and the Dinosauria have been 
brought nearer to the birds ; in fact, the whole arrange- 
ment of the Reptiles has been a good deal upset. Other- 
wise the still larger changes suggested by Prof. Huxley 
and other anatomists, are referred to, but not admitted. 
In the first edition the title-page was disfigured by being 
opposed to a picture of heads of men and monkeys, which 
was at once absurdly horrible and theatrically grotesque, 
without any redeeming feature either artistic or scientific. 
In the second edition the heads have been increased from 
twelve to twenty-four, but their quality remains the same. 
As a set-off against this, however, we are presented with 
two really beautiful and very instructive plates of the de- 
velopment of several kinds of crustaceans and echinoderms, 
and one comparing the development of a tunicate and am- 
phioxus. There is also a large comparative view, well 
worth studying, of the embryos of the four vertebrate 
classes at two different epochs of their development. 
We have, in the above, attempted to give a general 
idea of what the book is, and how the second edition 
differs from the first, rather than to enter into any criti- 
cism. The first edition has already received the ablest 
criticism this country could give. We will venture, 
however, to mike one reflection. Had the book 
been written for scientific men, it would have been 
read by some with delight, by others with feelings of 
fretfulness and worry, but by all with more or less of 
| profit, Addressed as it is, however, to an intelligent and 
ee een ee a 
eee ere eee 
Pint tenn 10%, 

ee ne 
