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NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 



The Making of Species. By Douglas Dewar, B.A., &c, and 

 Frank Finn, B.A., &c. John Lane. 



This book appears to have been written with two intentions : 

 one to criticize much evolutionary theory, the other to give a 

 popular abstract of many of those theories which to-day, more 

 or less, occup}' the biological outposts. The authors are dis- 

 satisfied with much of the dogma that has been built upon these 

 theories, and in this protest, for the work is highly polemical, 

 many naturalists will probably not be too greatly shocked ; at 

 the same time the pages would not have suffered in argument 

 had they been written in a more subdued style. 



As regards Darwinism the authors clearly point out that the 

 dogma of the all-sufficiency of natural selection is not to be 

 ascribed to Darwin, who " at no time believed that natural 

 selection explained everything," and they further remark that 

 it is Wallace who claims the all-sufficiency of natural selection, 

 in which he is followed by Weismann and Poulton, and they 

 "dub the school " which " holds this article of belief . . . the 

 Wallaceian school." In connection with this subject, however, 

 one statement is cryptic. We are told that the Darwinian theory 

 "has the defect of the period in which it was enunciated. The 

 eighteenth century was the age of cocksureness, the age in 

 which all phenomena were thought to be capable of simple 

 explanation." Is not this antedating the theory by a century? 

 and is the mental affliction to which our authors refer quite a 

 thing of the past ? 



The section devoted to mimicry is a piece of careful and 

 judicious criticism, and one that will well repay the perusal 

 of the extreme advocates of that theory. Instances of false 

 mimicry where the mimicking species inhabit widely separated 

 continents are not infrequent, and Messrs. Dewar and Finn 

 give examples in both mammals and birds, to which many other 

 instances could be added. They pertinently observe: — "We 



