REVIEWS. 
405 
everyone is not yet embued with Darwinian doctrines; and indeed of 
those tliat are there are many not honest enough, or too timid to confess their 
faith. No doubt it is safer and more prudent to go in the highway of the world, 
and to follow the ordinary trafi&c, even in science. 
Tor our part, we are rather erratic, and being good pedestrians, we jump 
over a fence, step over a style, take footpaths in preference to turnpikes, and 
have more than once lost ourselves in a wood. It is true by so doing we have 
suffered some inconveniences, we could not always find an auberge when we 
wanted refreshment, we have more than once been attacked by thieves, been 
benighted, and have met with other mishaps ; but then we have often been 
rewarded with such glorious views from the hill top, such picturesque scenes 
in dell and valley, that the advantages of 'freshness, truth and beauty, have 
far outbalanced all evils, and we are as ready as ever to take the cliaiice of a 
•deviation, as if we knew not of attendant inconveniences. 
Mr. Page takes the more legitimate roads, and will consequently avoid many 
of the scrapes into which we might have got, had we attempted what he has done. 
" In attempting this (botanical) arrangement, numerous varied and complex as 
vegetable life may at first sight appear, the botanist has happily a few great fixed 
principles in nature to guide him ; ti/pe and order run uns\\'ervingly throughout 
the whole : and though the Creator might easily have constructed each species 
after its own type, and rendered plants as varied in their individual forms, as 
they are numerically abundant, yet He has thought fit to restrict himself, as it 
were, to a few types, and humanly speaking, like a skilful inventor to pro- 
duce an almost endless variety from the co-adaption of a few simple elements 
and complexity of design by the elimination of a few primal patterns. As in- 
numerable hues can be produced from a few primitive colours, as endless strains 
of music flow from the touches of a few simple words, or as the ideas of all 
times and nations can be expressed by the combinations of some twenty 
or thirty letter-sounds; so in the structure of animals and plants every 
variety of form, every conceivable adaptation of structure, proceeds from 
the modification of a few elementary forms and types in nature. Without this 
uniformity of plan aud design, the study of nature by man's limited faculties 
would have been impossible. In summing up the co-adaptations of the flora 
and fauna, these are the views which the author takes-: "Perfect as the exist- 
ing flora and fauna may appear each in its own proper Hue, they are only con- 
stituent portions of a greater life-system bound together by numerous co- 
adaptations and adjustments. As each is adapted to, as well as dependent on, 
external conditions, so both are dependent on one another, and as at present 
constituted, neither could possibly enjoy a separate existence." 
Having laid before his readers a sketch of the Present Life of the Globe, its 
plants and animals ; the causes which effect their growth ; the conditions 
which govern their geographical distribution ; their ordinal characters ; and 
the functions they are destined to perform in the economy of creation, our 
author turns to tlie extinct — the geological record. The chronology or the 
arrangement of the world's Past into rock -formations, and life-periods is the 
first subject ; the continuity of natural law, the second ; and these are followed 
by a disquisition on palaeontology, the problems it has to resolve, its progress 
and prospects. The more detailed considerations of tlie geological subject are 
divided into the Par Past, the Middle Past, the Recent ; the last includes the 
Terteary period, the age of great mammals, existing forms and distribution of 
life, general and local extiuctions, MAN-prehistoric and historic, and the muta- 
tions of the human race. 
Mr. Page then lays down "The Law;" and this, of course, must be re- 
garded as the principle chapter of the book ; and some of the subjects treated 
are amongst the grandest that can occupy the mind of man. 
