80 Reviews—D Archiacs Paléontologie. 
works with his pen rather than with his head; he revels in facts: 
facts that can be collected and arranged; useful to the student, but 
telling us nothing more than what was known before. Anything 
like a new idea is repulsive to him, as it opens out a path hitherto 
untrodden, strewn with thorns instead of flowers, angular boulders 
instead of well-worn sand. Thus we read nothing of Professor 
Huxley’s ‘ Homotaxis,’ nor of Professor Ramsay’s ‘ Breaks; but 
we hope to do so by-and-by, although the consideration of such 
novel, and, consequently, it may be, erroneous ideas, will doubtless 
interfere with his mental comfort and repose. 
There is one subject, however, of which, notwithstanding its 
repulsiveness, M.d’Archiac has felt bound to treat, namely, the 
Origin of Species; and he almost atones for the omission of other 
matters, by his diffuseness on this. He takes each chapter of Mr. 
Darwin’s celebrated book seriatim, and endeavours to refute the 
propositions contained in them, according to his notions of refuta- 
tion, in the most uncompromising manner imaginable. We object 
strongly to the tone of his remarks and arguments, which are very 
unlike the results of a calm consideration of a scientific theory by 
a philosophical paleontologist. 
That Mr. Darwin’s hypothesis should have been received in 
France with less favour than in England is not astonishing. French 
paleontologists have less need of it than we have, the value of their 
‘species’ bearing to that of ours almost the same proportion that a 
franc does to a sovereign. Where they divide, we connect; no 
principle is required for unlimited splitting ; but when we mass 
together specimens differing to some extent from one another, we 
want a theory for the existence of the variation in order to justify 
our practice. 
M. @Archiac’s notions respecting the principle of Natural Selec- 
tion may be inferred from the tone of the following paragraph :— 
‘It is in the history of life at the surface of the globe that the secret of 
this succession of biological phenomena may be found. But to suppose 
that nature is obliged to perform for the duration of her work precisely 
that which man strives to perform to alter or to destroy her, is to have 
a strange idea of creative power! It would have been left to a farmer, 
to a horse-breeder, to a pigeon-fancier, to a florist, or to a gardener to detect 
thus her most profound secrets! The interest, chance, caprice, or amuse- 
ment of the first comer would have carried him ten times further into the 
knowledge of the laws which govern the organic world, than all the natu- 
ralists who, for two hundred years, have studied, compared, and meditated 
with the scalpel and the microscope! O vanité des sciences et des savants ! 1? 
Our author considers this kind of criticism profound, for at the 
beginning of the chapter, in a footnote, he complains that all the 
reviews of Mr. Darwin’s book that he has read are too superficial. 
Whatever opinion different naturalists may hold respecting the truth 
or the probability of Mr. Darwin’s hypothesis, we never before 
heard of one who doubted the scientific value of the book, or the 
candour of the author; but M. d’Archiac thinks otherwise; accord- 
ing to him, Mr. Darwin ‘n’y parle que de lui et de ses amis,’ his 
