No. 383.] REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATURE. 879 
that, for scientific people at least, the central fact of organic evolu- 
tion had been established beyond question. In opposition to this 
view, we have a book of nearly 400 pages, by Prof. Alfred Fair- 
hurst,' who has been “for many years a teacher of various branches 
of natural science.” We doubt, however, whether his arguments will 
be found convincing by many who have paid very much attention to 
the biological sciences. The object of the book is “to promote the 
belief inTheism and in the existence of a spiritual nature in man 
which Theism alone can explain.” Therefore, the author attacks 
evolution, not because Theism and the doctrine of evolution are 
necessarily antagonistic, — the author does not think that they are, 
—but because the belief in Theism in some people has been 
decreased by the propagation of the theory of evolution. 
The difficulties that the author arrays against evolution are the old 
familiar ones: the origin of living material, the survival of primi- 
tive types, divergent evolution, absence of “missing links,” the 
appearance of highly organized forms in early fossiliferous rocks, 
uselessness of nascent organs, instinct, and the like. He does not 
attach much weight to the evidence from homologies and vestigeal 
organs. -For example, “they (fins) are said to be homologous to 
the limbs of higher vertebrates, but I regard the homology as far- 
fetched.” Again, “embryo man with gill arches is still man, and if 
we can read the lesson within it, we will find that this embryo man 
points upward to adult man with all of his marvelous powers of 
mind, and not downward to something infinitely below him.” 
To properly answer arguments presented from the point of view 
of this book, one would have to preface his remarks by a treatise 
on elementary biology, comparative anatomy, and embryology, and 
introduce a chapter on the natural history of animals and plants, with 
remarks on fossilization. The limits of a review will hardly permit 
me : R. P. B. 
Fusion of Pupæ.— In the Woods Holl Lectures for 1896 and 
1897, Henry E. Crampton, Jr., gives an interesting account of his 
experiments upon the pupæ of Lepidoptera. By cutting away por- 
tions of two pupæ, and joining the cut surfaces, he was able in many 
1 Fairhurst, Alfred. KEERN Evolution Considered. St. Louis, Christian Pub. 
2 Crampton, Henry E, Jr. Coalescence Experiments upon the Lepidoptera, 
Holl. 
Biological Lectures delivered at the Marine Biological Laboratory of Woods 
Boston, Ginn & Company, 1898. pp. 219-228. 
