NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 277 



being favourable to the belief in the influence of the environment 

 as the essential factor in the transformation of living organisms, 

 and in the intervention of natural selection for the fixation 

 and limitation of species. He might have done worse. His 

 book cannot fail to be of service to the French student. It 

 teaches him that distinguished workers in Zoology are not all of 

 his own nationality, and it presents him with a well-balanced and 

 workable resume of current knowledge, free from bias. We wish 

 it success and a speedy passage into a second edition, which, if 

 called for, must be a much emended one. G. B. H. 



L'Evolution et VOrigine des Especes. Par T. H. Huxley, F.R.S., 

 &c. Avec une Preface de l'Auteur pour l'Edition Frangaise. 

 Sm. 8vo, pp. 344, avec 20 figures. Paris : Bailliere et Fils. 



This is one of the volumes of the useful series published by 

 Messrs. Bailliere, under the title ' Bibliotheque Scientifique Con- 

 temporaine,' several of which were reviewed in * The Zoologist' 

 for June, 1891. It consists of a translation of the collected Essays 

 of Professor Huxley on Evolution and the Origin of Species, 

 published between 1860 and 1887, in which the writers' aim 

 has been to popularise Darwinism and the general theory of 

 Evolution, to remove misconceptions, and to refute errors of 

 interpretation. 



These essays in their English dress are too well known in 

 this country to call for any particular comment apropos of the 

 appearance of a French translation ; but we may note the remark 

 in the author's preface that in regard to the essays published 

 between 1860 and 187 6 he has found nothing to modify in any of 

 the arguments which he then employed, and has not advanced 

 therein a single proposition which has not since been shown to 

 have been well founded. He considers that Palseontology has 

 now established beyond doubt the evolution of organic life, 

 and that the Darwinian theory is concerned not so much with 

 evolution in general, as with the causes which have determined 

 the grouping of organisms in species. He holds, as he has held 

 for the last thirty years, that the Darwinian hypothesis enables 

 the collation and explanation of a mass of biological phenomena, 

 and has not been shown to be incompatible with observed facts ; 

 but he maintains, as he did in his first published essay on this 



