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NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 



The Coming of Evolution ; the Story of a great Revolution 

 in Science. By John W. Judd, C.B., LL.D., F.R.S. 

 Cambridge University Press. 



There are evolutionists and evolutionists : those whose 

 studies and knowledge compel them to hold fast to that con- 

 elusion as a necessity for thought and work ; and others who are 

 loyal to the great conception, without possessing the experience 

 that proclaims its truth. There is of course a still larger 

 number who deny evolution on non-scientific grounds. To all 

 these the logic of this little book should prove very useful, 

 though Prof. Judd in his few pages, can of course, only sketch 

 the principal movements in the great battle that has been fought, 

 and now — we may be allowed to say — won. 



^^ Ideas of evolution, both in the organic and the inorganic 

 world, existed but remained barren for thousands of years," 

 and Prof. Judd gives us an excellent illustration of what that 

 sentence means. "Talking with Matthew Arnold in 1871, he 

 laughingly remarked to me, ' I cannot understand why you 

 scientific people make such a fuss about Darwin. Why, it's all 

 in Lucretius ! ' On my replying, ' Yes ! Lucretius guessed what 

 Darwin proved,' he mischievously rejoined, ' Ah ! that only 

 shows how much greater Lucretius really was — for he divined a 

 truth, which Darwin spent a life of labour in groping for.'" 



In this small publication is an ample vindication of the part 

 played by a few geologists in clearing the way for Darwin. In 

 1797, the year in which Hutton died, were born George Poulett 

 Thomson (who afterwards took the name of Scrope) and Charles 

 Lyell. Both were brought up under the strongest influences of 

 the then prevalent anti-evolutionary teachings, but both ulti- 

 mately became champions of evolution, and headed the success- 

 ful revolt against catastrophism, and the substitution in its 

 place of uniformitarianism, or, in other words, evolution. " The 



