252 Notices of Books,. [April, 



man and the apes," and that " they do not seem to take us 

 appreciably nearer to the lower pithecoid form." Nor does the 

 ordinary reply of the imperfection of the geological record seem 

 to us to apply here. The remains of the animal or animals which 

 formed the link between man and the apes would be preserved in 

 the most recent formations, nearest the surface, where they would 

 have been subjected to the least destructive influences ; and it 

 is strange that no trace of them has yet rewarded the labours of 

 the many diligent searchers in this field. 



It may be some comfort to sensitive persons to hear that we 

 need not look in the Zoological Gardens or elsewhere for any one 

 species of ape to which we are bound to offer the homage of 

 paternity, that the gorilla, chimpanzee, orang, and gibbons are, 

 after all, nothing more to us than very remote cousins of the same 

 generation, but deprived of the same advantages of circumstances 

 or of education. Mr. Darwin believes that " man is descended 

 from a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, 

 probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old 

 World ; " though again we are not specifically informed whether 

 this creature is the missing link between some extinct anthropoid 

 ape and ourselves, or the common ancestor of the whole of the 

 Simiadce. If the former, how do we arrive at the development 

 of the tail ? the suppression of which Geoffroy St. Hilaire 

 believed to be indispensable to the enlargement of the opposite 

 extremity of the spinal cord. 



The subject of Sexual Selection is treated at great length, and 

 with a most instructive wealth of illustration, in the volumes 

 before us. In the lower divisions of the animal kingdom sexual 

 selection appears to have done little or nothing ; it commences 

 its operation apparently with the lowest classes of the Arthropoda 

 and Vertebrata, and its development runs to some extent parallel 

 with that of the intellectual faculties. " In the most distinct 

 classes of the animal kingdom, with mammals, birds, reptiles, 

 fishes, insects, and even crustaceans, the differences between the 

 sexes follow almost exactly the same rules. The males are 

 almost always the wooers ; and they alone are armed with special 

 weapons for fighting with their rivals. They are generally larger 

 and stronger than the females, and are endowed with the requisite 

 qualities of courage and pugnacity. They are provided either 

 exclusively or in a much higher degree than the females, with 

 organs for producing vocal or instrumental music, and with 

 odoriferous glands. They are ornamented with infinitely di- 

 versified appendages, and with the most brilliant or conspicuous 

 colours, often arranged in elegant patterns, whilst the females 

 are left unadorned. This surprising uniformity in the laws 

 regulating the differences between the sexes in so many and 

 such widely separated classes, is intelligible if we admit the 

 action throughout all the higher divisions of the animal kingdom 

 of one common cause, viz., sexual selection." Some of the most 

 interesting chapters in the whole book are those in which Mr. 



