278 Revieips — Dr. Chapman's Evolution of Life. 



I, — Evolution or Life, By Henry Chapman, M.D. 8vo. pp. 193. 

 . (PbiladelpLia, 1873 : Lippincott & Co.) 



IT is somewlaat astonishing to remark the amount of misconception 

 that generally prevails in regard to the writings of Darwin 

 even among many would-be scientific individuals, and how very 

 general the notion is that his main object has been to prove that 

 men were descended from monkeys. But this astonishment dwindles 

 away when we reflect how few have read his works with care, and 

 how many who have read anything of them have read with precon- 

 ceived opinions, and in a spirit of antagonism, disregarding in a great 

 measure his careful array of facts, and attempting to ridicule his 

 caiitious inferences and deductions. 



The variation of species, and natural selection or the survival of 

 the fittest in the struggle for existence, are Natural History facts, 

 and the consideration of these facts as brought prominently into 

 notice by Darwin, has led to tlie doctrine of the Evolution of Life 

 being regarded as the " Fundamental Truth of Biology." When, 

 therefore, we hear the subject treated as chimerical and purely 

 imaginary — a tale of fairy land wherein a flea might be transformed 

 into an elephant, or an antelope, by constantly stretching its neck, 

 might become a giraff"e — we feel how greatly misunderstood and mis- 

 represented the doctrine has been. This may arise from the mistaken 

 notion that it would allow any one form of life in process of time, 

 and through many generations, to develop into any other. When 

 we look, however, upon the forms of life as the modified descendants 

 of pre-existing organisms, -we consider th^ir relationship one to 

 another much in the same way as we consider that of our own 

 species individually. The relationship we bear to one another is 

 sometimes near, sometimes very distant, so that when in one case we 

 trace our descent only one grade removed, in another we are con- 

 nected only through distant generations. It is the same with the 

 different forms of life ; in each branch, starting from one type, vari- 

 ation has set in, but while some forms have changed others have 

 remained more or less stationary or altered in a different ratio, so 

 that constantly divergent forms are derived from the original type, 

 and these divergent forms must not be confounded as being derived 

 one from the other, but only as being derived from the same parent 

 , source. 



Of course it is a great question as to how far the theory of Evolution 

 may be successfully applied, but no earnest student of Nature can 

 long adhere to the very unphilosophical notion of a series of special 

 creations, and when we hear otherwise well-informed persons 

 talking of the profanity of the Darwinian theory, and insisting on 

 the literal acceptation of the Scriptural account of the Creation, we 

 cannot help reminding them that, notwithstanding the undoubted 

 figurative language in which the Mosaic Cosmogony is recorded, that 

 description is really far more consistent with the doctrine of Evolu- 

 tion than with one which requires constant special creations of 



