Jan. 15, 1880] 



NATURE 



247 



regarded as the chief source of knowledge, and is accord- 

 ingly first of all investigated. 



" As regards the apparently inborn faculties which 

 young animals bring with them into the world, the author 

 explains them by repeated exertions of the muscles under 

 the guidance of the sensations and stimuli. 



" The author very carefully studied this subject, which 

 has been elaborated by his grandson with so much success, 

 and deduces his formulae especially from the first impres- 

 sions of new-born creatures. The trembling of fear may 

 perhaps be referred back to the cold shivering of the new- 

 born infant ; and weeping to the first irritation of the 

 lachrymal glands by cold air, -as well as by pleasant and 

 disagreeable odours. That anger and rage are universally 

 expressed by animals taking the position of attack, is 

 immediately intelligible. As regards smiling and the 

 expression of the agreeable sensations, the author refers 

 them, as well as the feeling of the beauty of undulating 

 lines and of rounded surfaces, to the pleasure of the first 

 nourishment derived from the soft and gently rounded 

 maternal breast." 



Here also is a remarkable passage in which the prin- 

 ciple of heredity is distinctly recognised : — 



'"The ingenious Dr. Hartley in his work on man, and 

 some other philosophers,' says Darwin, ' have been of 

 opinion, that our immortal part acquires during this life 

 certain habits of action or of sentiment, which become 

 for ever indissoluble, continuing after death in a future 

 state of existence ; and add, that if these habits are of 

 the malevolent kind, they must render the possessor 

 miserable even in heaven. / would apply this 

 idea to the generation, or production of the embryon, or 

 new animal which partakes so much of the form and pro- 

 pensities of the parent! And he continues as follows : 

 ' Owing to the imperfection of language the offspring is 

 termed a new animal, but is in truth a branch or elonga- 

 tion of the parent ; since a part of the embryon-animal is, 

 or was, a part of the parent ; and therefore in strict 

 language it cannot be said to be entirely in -w at the time 

 of its production ; and therefore it may retain some of 

 the habits of the parent-system.' " 



In the "Zoonoinia" there are many passages we should 

 like to quote, in which many of the doctrines associated 

 at the present day with the name of the younger Darwin, 

 are enunciated with wonderful clearness, even to sexual 

 selection, the struggle for existence, and the survival of 

 the fittest. Speaking of the weapons with which the 

 males of animals are armed, and their contest for the 

 possession of the female, he says : — 



" ' The final cause of this contest amongst the males 

 seems to be, that the strongest and most active animal 

 should propagate the species, which should thence become 

 improved.'" 



He concludes as follows the long passage in which this 

 idea occurs : — 



" 'From thus meditating on the great similarity of the 

 structure of the warm-blooded animals, and at the same 

 time of the great changes they undergo both before and 

 after their nativity ; and by considering in how minute a 

 portion of time many of the changes of animals above 

 described have been produced ; would it be too bold to 

 imagine, that in the great length of time, since the earth 

 began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the 

 commencement of the history of mankind, would it be 

 too bold to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have 

 arisen from one living filament which the Great First 

 Cause endued with animality, with the power of acquiring 

 new parts, attended with new propensities, directed by 

 irritations, sensations, volitions, and associations ; and thus 



possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own 

 inherent activity, and of delivering down those improve- 

 ments by generation to its posterity, world without end ! ' '' 

 In his " Temple of Nature " : — 



"About the first hundred verses are devoted to a 

 description of the pitiless struggle for existence which 

 rages in the air, on the earth, and in the water, making 

 the earth, with its incessantly warring inhabitants, like :i 

 vast slaughter-house : — 



" 'Air, earth, ard ocean, to astonish'd day 



One scene of M >od, one mighty tomb display ! 

 From Hunger's arm the shafts of Death are hurl'd, 

 And one great Slaughter-house the waning world ! ' " 



Many more passages might be quoted all tending to 

 prove what a really wonderful grasp the elder Darwin 

 had of these doctrines, to which, through his grandson, his 

 name is now so justly attached. But enough has been 

 given to show that he deserves one of the highest places 

 among those who have contributed to the progress of 

 true science, and that the verdict of Herr Krause is amply 

 borne out : — 



" That he was the first who proposed and consistently 

 carried out, a well-rounded theory with regard to tin- 

 development of the living world, a merit which shines 

 forth most brilliantly when we compare with it the 

 vacillating and confused attempts of Buffon, Linnoeus, 

 and Gdthe. It is the idea of a power working from with- 

 in the organisms, to improve their natural position ; and 

 thus, out of the impulses of individual needs, to work 

 towards the perfection of Nature as a whole." 



Erasmus Darwin's system was in itself, as Herr Krause 

 puts it, a most magnificent first step in the path of know- 

 ledge which his grandson has opened up for us. We 

 ought to be grateful to Herr Krause for taking the pains 

 he has done to show the true place of Erasmus Darwin in 

 the history of science. There are many points in Mr. 

 Darwin's intensely interesting, simple, and characteristic 

 memoir we should hare liked to notice, did space permit. 

 The memoir is eminently candid and free from bias or 

 anything like strong language, even when rehutting 

 calumnies. Mr. Charles Darwin, we may say, is the son 

 of Robert Waring Darwin, the third son of Erasmus 

 by his first wife. A genealogy of the family is given 

 which is of great interest in connection with the subject 

 of hereditary genius, so well treated by Mr. Francis 

 Galton, himself a descendant of the elder Darwin. 



NORTH AM ERIC AX ETHNOLOGY 

 Contributions to North American Ethnology. Vol. iii. 

 Tribes of California. By Stephen Powers. (Washing- 

 ton, 1877.) 

 " [T has been the melancholy fate of the Californian 

 -I- Indians to be more vilified and less understood than 

 any other of the American aborigines. They were once 

 probably the most contented and happy race on the con- 

 tinent, in proportion to their capacities of enjoyment, and 

 they have been more miserably corrupted and destroyed 

 than any other tribes within the union. They were cer- 

 tainly the most populous, and dwelt beneath the most 

 genial heavens and amidst the most abundant natural 

 productions, and they were swept away with the most 

 swift and cruel extermination." Words such as these are 

 now only too familiar to the ethnologist, and do not refer 

 alone to the Californian Indians. As the ethnographic 



