﻿Book Notices. 127 



Geological Biology, an Introduction to the Geological History 

 OF Organisms. — By Henry S. Williams. 8vo. pp. 395. Henry Holt 

 &Co., New York, 1895. 



Professor H. S. Williams, of Yale University, has written this book 

 with the view of presenting to college students as well as to the 

 general reader a clear and succinct account of the chief problems in the 

 geological history of plants and animals and of pointing out what 

 progress has been made in solving them by the investigations of 

 Palteontologists in recent years. 



The late Professor Huxley once said: "That the primary and 

 direct evidence in favor of evolution can be furnished only by 

 palaeontology. The geological record, so soon as it approaches com- 

 pleteness, must, when properly questioned, yield either an affirmative 

 or a negative answer : if evolution has taken place there will be 

 its mark left ; if it has not taken place, there will lie its refutation." 

 Dr. Williams, in this book, points out how the study of the geological 

 record shows that evolution has taken place and what the chief facts 

 and factors of this evolution are. 



The means of estimating the approximate length of time during 

 which life has existed on the earth are first explained, and the way in 

 M'hich this great length of time may be divided into geological 

 periods is referred to. The teaching of the fossil remains of animals 

 which lived upon the earth during these enormously long periods, and 

 its bearing upon the subject of evolution is then taken up, certain 

 genera of fossils being selected for especial treatment, and the 

 question : " What is a species ?" considered and answered. Dr. 

 Williams shows from these studies that the actual facts of the 

 geological history of organisms points unmistakably to a course of 

 evolution by descent in which the progress attained by each succeeding 

 form was a paramount condition of the origin of the next member 

 of the race. Dr. Williams' own investigations have added many 

 important facts to the daily accumulating body of evidence going 

 to establish this important conclusion. He is, however, a firm 

 believer in the divine origin of things. " It has been supposed by 

 many," he writes, " that evolution is intrinsically antagonistic to, and 

 has, in fact, replaced the creational conception of the origin of things 

 in the world. In one respect this is partly true ; the new view 

 has fundamentally changed tne conception of creation. Evolution has 

 given us another notion of God. In the old conception God was 

 an artificer making organisms out of inorganic matter directly, as one 

 might build up a vessel of clay and then vivify it. The new conception 

 of God, as creator, finds its concrete empirical representation in the act 

 of expressing a thought or purpose into the spoken word. Creation is 

 the phenomenalizing of will, so sublimely described in that ancient 

 formula — In the beginning God spoke and it (the whole phenomenal 



