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NOTICES OF BOOKS. 



The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. By 

 Charles Darwin, M.A., F.R.S., &c. In 2 vols.; witfy 

 Illustrations. London : J. Murray. 1871. 



The first impression with many on opening this work, — the 

 announcement of which has for the last year and a half stimulated 

 the curiosity and excited the most intense interest of the whole 

 scientific world, — will possibly be one of disappointment, that 

 so small a portion of it is devoted to the main subject, an attempt 

 to trace the descent of man from those lower forms of animal 

 life which present the closest relationship to him in structure and 

 in mental development. The book is divided into two parts, of 

 which the first, " On the Descent of Man," occupies only rather 

 more than half the first volume ; the second part, " On Sexual 

 Selection," comprising fourteen out of the twenty-one chapters 

 of which the work consists ; eleven of these fourteen chapters 

 treating of sexual selection in relation to the lower animals, 

 the last three again applying the principles which have been 

 arrived at to the case of man. No one, however, will read beyond 

 the first chapter without recognising many of those qualities which 

 secured for the author's work " On the Origin of Species " a 

 reception almost without a parallel, and enabled it to effect a 

 revolution all but unexampled on the current of thought in 

 the scientific world. The lapse of twelve years has abated 

 none of Mr. Darwin's industry in collecting a prodigious array 

 of facts from all conceivable sources in support of every pro- 

 position which he brings forward; nor has it deprived us of 

 that wonderful combination of humility, confidence, and apprecia- 

 tion of the labours of others, which makes him ever ready even to 

 magnify the importance of facts which appear to tell against his 

 own peculiar views, and never backward to acknowledge when 

 he himself sees reason to change some previously expressed 

 opinion. 



Commencing with a detailed account of the homologous 

 structures in man and the lower animals, especially in their 

 rudimentary organs and embryonic development; and with a 

 comparison between the mental powers of the human race and 

 those of the remainder of the animal kingdom, Mr. Darwin then 

 proceeds to discuss the questions of the manner in which man 

 has been developed from some lower form, and of the particular 

 form which has established the best claim to be considered in 

 the light of our remote ancestor. The question naturally arises 

 in the outset, — granted the hypothesis that man has sprung by a 

 process of gradual evolution from some lower form, and does 

 not owe his origin to a separate act of creation, — are we to 



