NATURE 



91 



THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1909. 



THE "ORIGIN OF SPECIES" AND ITS 

 LESSONS. 

 Charles Darwin and the Origin of Species; Addresses, 

 ^-'C, in America and England in the Year of the 

 Two Anniversaries. By Prof. E. B. Poulton, F.R.S. 

 Pp. xvi + 280 and index. (London : Longmans, 

 Green and Co., 1909.) 



ON November 24, 1859, appeared the first edition of 

 tliat immortal worli — the outcome of twenty years' 

 research — which was destined to revolutionise scien- 

 tific thought, first in the domain of organic nature, 

 and ultimately in every department of intellectual 

 activity. The celebrations of the jubilee of this publi- 

 cation and of the centenary of the birth of its illus- 

 trious author, held at Baltimore in January, at Oxford 

 in February, and at Cambridge in June of the present 

 vear, have been the means of directing public atten- 

 tion in such detail and in such forcible terms to the 

 magnitude of Darwin's achievements and to the far- 

 reaching consequences of his labours that it may well 

 be doubted whether any further tribute can be paid to 

 the memory of our great countryman. Nevertheless, 

 on the present occasion, practically coincident with the 

 fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the " Origin," 

 it is only appropriate that we should direct attention in 

 these columns to the latest contribution to Darwinian 

 literature, the above work by Prof. Poulton, which 

 the author has happily contrived to issue on the exact 

 date of the anniversary. The readers of Nature may 

 be reminded that in these pages, to which Darwin 

 himself was a rare contributor, some of the greatest 

 questions raised by the publication of the " Origin " 

 have been fought out by the leaders of science in that 

 fipld of natural knowledge which, at the touch of 

 what Helmholtz designated the "new creative 

 thought," became reduced from a state of chaos to 

 one of scientific order. 



Of that generation of naturalists who were active 

 workers before the publication of Darwin's book, 

 there are but few survivors. Alfred Russel Wallace, 

 to whom the present volume is appropriately dedi- 

 cated, Sir Joseph Hoolver and Sir Francis Gallon are 

 happily with us. But the later generations, who have 

 been taught to accept organic evolution as an estab- 

 lished doctrine, are apt to overlook the extent of their 

 indebtedness to that memorable publication of Dar- 

 win's half a century ago. Before the appearance of that 

 work the group of sciences now comprised under the 

 general term Biology were still under the thraldom of 

 an ancient cosmogony from which the physical 

 sciences had been emancipated, if not completely at 

 least to a very large extent. The year 1859 marked the 

 beginning of what may fairly be described as the 

 Reformation Period of biological science. At some 

 future period, when the progress of knowledge shall 

 have enabled a still later generation to obtain a just 

 perspective of the bearing of Darwin's work upon the 

 current thought of his time, a re-publication of some 

 of the arguments that were urged against his teach- 

 ings will furnish most instructive material for the 

 NO. 2091, VOL. 82] 



historian of science. What impression would be 

 produced now, for example, by a critic who in a scien- 

 tific journal gravely opened an attack upon the 

 "Origin of Species" with the remark: — 



" It will not be denied, we presume, that animals 

 were created for the use of mankind. Man was to 

 have dominion over them " (Edinburgh New 

 Philosophical Journal, i860, vol. xi., p. 283). 



The reviewer concludes with a general appeal to 

 the churches to unite in demolishing the new heresy. 



The work now under consideration which has 

 prompted the foregoing retrospection is by an author 

 so well known as one of the soundest of the modern 

 interpreters of Darwinism that a brief summary of 

 its contents will suffice to commend the book to the 

 serious consideration of all naturalists. More especially 

 do we commend this, as also Prof. Poulton's other 

 writings, to those who have caught up the cry, 

 popular in some circles, that although evolution is 

 established Darwinism is dead, or, to quote from the 

 preface, to those who " recognize a prophet in every 

 reed shaken with the wind." Of the seven chapters 

 in this new memorial volume, the first (" Fifty Years 

 of Darwinism ") is revised and extended from the ad- 

 dress given at the centenary in Baltimore in January ; 

 the second ("The Personality of Charles Darwin") is 

 compiled from notes of a speech delivered on the same 

 occasion ; the third gives an account of the centenary 

 celebration at Oxford and the speeches made on that 

 occasion; the fourth gives the speech delivered by 

 the author at the banquet at Cambridge in June, and 

 the fifth ("The Value of Colour in the Struggle for 

 Life") is reprinted from the Cambridge memorial 

 volume, which was noticed in these columns at the 

 time of the international celebration last June 

 vol. Ixxx., p. 481). Chapter vi., which will 

 be new to most of our readers, is on the 

 mimicry in the butterflies of North America, 

 and is compiled from notes of the anniversary address 

 delivered to the Entomological Society of America at 

 Baltimore in December, 1908. The seventh chapter 

 contains a number of letters written by Darwin to Mr. 

 Roland Trimen and hitherto unpublished. As with 

 all Darwin's correspondence, it is perhaps hardly 

 necessary to say that these letters will be found most 

 delightful reading, and their interest is enhanced by 

 Mr. Trimen's own reminiscences of Darwin and by 

 the recording of the most severe and perhaps the only 

 severe thing that our magnanimous leader ever said 

 of a scientific contemporary.' 



In addition to these chapters, there are four 

 appendices which are by no means the least interesting 

 sections of the work. In the first of these, Darwin's 

 views on the hypothesis of multiple origins are sum- 

 marised, and in the second his conclusions with 

 respect to what are now called "mutations" are 

 marshalled in systematic order, and leave no doubt 

 that this mode of evolution had over and over again 

 been considered by him and always rejected as a 

 modus operandi in nature. The mutation theory is 

 happily paraphrased by Prof. Poulton in the preface 



1 The remark referred to (p. 28, notel is quoted from Prof. Poulton's 

 article in the Qiiartcrly Kcview of last July. 



