Mar. 



SCIENTIFIC NEW^S. 



207 



The Story of Creation. By Edward Clodd. London : 

 Longmans, Green and Co. 1888. Price 6s. 



The almost immeasurable modification in established 

 conceptions — a modification little short of revolutionary 

 — which has resulted from the general acceptance by 

 scientific men of the hypothesis of evolution, and from their 

 application of it to the study of all classes of phenomena, 

 tends somewhat to blind the eyes of those who breathe 

 the scientific atmosphere to the actual mental condition 

 of many whose lives are passed outside it. It is very 

 difficult for some of us to form any idea of a condition 

 in these days which renders possible those crude con- 

 ceptions of natural law which have been altogether dis- 

 carded by the best thinkers of the new era. We forget 

 the great difficulty with which changes penetrate beyond 

 that stratum of plastic minds which is, so to say, always 

 in a state of preparedness for improvement, always 

 looking for light. We forget, too, that even where there 

 is natural capacitj' and every willingness to accept an in- 

 crease of knowledge, there is often so great a lack of 

 previous training as to lead to a lack of power to appre- 

 ciate the close reasoning, and the mass of evidence and 

 technical detail, which are essential for the establishment 

 of any new hypothesis as a doctrine of science. Until 

 a new hypothesis has become a received doctrine, and 

 has to some extent acquired what we may call a backing 

 of authority, it is almost impossible to present it in a 

 form likely to affect seriously the mode of thought of 

 any but a select minority. On the whole it is quite as 

 well that it is so ; for the plastic minority alone is capa- 

 ble of both assimilating and discarding rapidly without 

 danger to its stabifity. With the less easily modifiable 

 majority, a change is a much more serious matter, being 

 equally difficult to make and to unmake, and therefore we 

 may rejoice that no transforming influence can in general 

 be prematurely or hastily brought into action. But with 

 regard to the hypothesis of evolution, we may safely 

 say that it is high time some attempt should be made to 

 present it in a form which may lead to its being " under- 

 standed of the people." Its powerful effect for good on 

 our views of the world of matter — on biology, chemistry, 

 geology, astronomy and, not least, on moral and social 

 problems — justifies, if justification were needed, the de- 

 mand that it should no longer be the exclusive pro- 

 perty of the elect among thinkers. Men — men in general, 

 not only men in particular — are growing to feel the need 

 of a coherent system which shall explain for them, if 

 not the inexplicable Why, yet something of the How. 

 And for men in general, at least for those who will, in 

 something like earnest, bend their minds to the subject, 

 Mr. Clodd has condensed into some two hundred pages 

 the Evolutionist's Story of Creation, of that gradual pro- 

 cess of unfolding by which, out of glowing gas, there 

 came to be the men who read and think of it. Mr. Clodd 

 has brought to bear upon his task rare natural gifts of 

 clear-thinking andjlucid expression, and these, working 

 upon a fund of knowledge have enabled him to pro- 

 duce a book which it is not too much to say may bring 

 home to any ordinarily intelligent reader the meaning 

 of the evolutionary hypothesis, and its application as a 

 master-key to the secret workings of nature. 



The book is not a mere exposition of Darwin's theory, 

 for that dealt only with organic evolution, and in Mr. 

 Clodd's own words, " Whatever lies within the pheno- 

 menal — the seen or felt — and therefore within the sphere 



of observation, experiment, and comparison .... is 

 subject-matter of inquiry." It gives, as far as may be 

 in so small a space, a "general conspectus of evolution " 

 in its widest range, including not only the evolution of 

 inorganic matter, and of living things, but also the 

 evolution of mind, of society, of language, art and 

 science, of morals, and of theology. We have nothing 

 but praise for the manner in which the difficulties in- 

 herent in such a task have been met and overcome, and 

 we can hardly give more pointed expression to our feel- 

 ing of approbation than by saying that in our opinion 

 Mr. Clodd has done for the general public what Fiske did 

 for the special public, when, in the two volumes of 

 " Cosmic Philosophy," he gave the substance of the many 

 volumes of that magnificent, yet almost inaccessible, ex- 

 position of evolutionary philosophy and science — the 

 Synthetic Philosophy of Herbert Spencer. 



The Farmers^ Friends mid Foes. By Theodore Wood, 

 F.E.S. London: Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey, and 

 Co. Price 3s. 6d. 



We have here a work which we may, without hesita- 

 tion, pronounce interesting and instructive. The author 

 proceeds on the lines laid down by Charles Waterton,. 

 protesting against the reckless and misguided slaughter 

 of many creatures which are often harmless and 

 even useful. So far we are heartily with him. But it 

 seems to us that he overdoes his task. He under-values 

 the good which man may hope to affect by a judicious 

 interference with the fauna — the animal population — of 

 any country, and he pleads for certain offenders with too 

 much eagerness. 



In the introductory chapter we find a view taken of 

 the condition of men which we cannot entirely endorse.. 

 Says Mr. Wood : " There is no animal which he (man) 

 can justly consider as a personal enemy." To this 

 dictum we demur ; the mosquitoes, the sand-flies, the 

 chigoe, the land-leech, the screw-worm are as much 

 enemies to the primitive savage as to the citizens of a civi- 

 lised community. 



Again, we read " that all injure us, and almost all 

 benefit us by the character of their food." We may at 

 once name the swallow tribe and the wagtails as species 

 which do not injure us in the least. In the multitude 

 which do not benefit us must rank all the parasitic 

 species, all the blood-sucking flies, which not merely 

 irritate and tease us, but introduce into our tissues the 

 germs of zymotic disease. 



Still, as regards a very large part — perhaps the bulk 

 — of the animal kingdom, we have to balance the injury 

 inflicted by any particular species against the benefits 

 which it confers. Such utterances as the one here 

 quoted from the chairman of one Agricultural Society,, 

 that " every bird that flies, and every creeper that 

 crawls, endeavours to do the farmer mischief," is deplor- 

 able nonsense. 



Mr. Wood's defence of the sparrow is, we think, 

 scarcely judicious. 'A heavy charge against it, here over- 

 looked, is its often successful war against the swallows and 

 martins, our best gnat destroyers. We know instances 

 where, in spite of every precaution, these useful and 

 harmless birds have been entirely driven away by the 

 sparrows. 



In America, where the sparrow was introduced by a 

 deplorable mistake, it has been found that they in like 

 manner persecute and drive away birds which are much 

 more efficient insect-destroyers than themselves. Num- 



