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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
German -writer of the same cast of thought — Herr Louis Buchner. 
Haeckel, indeed, shows very early in his hook the tone that he takes 
throughout, for we find the terse statement on the ninth page that u where 
faith commences science ends.” Of the editor and translator we need only 
say that their respective duties have been well discharged. 
The mode which the author adopts in laying the views of modern natural 
science before his readers we may understand from a survey of the con- 
tents of the several chapters in which these views are expressed. Briefly 
they are as follows : — Nature and Importance of the Descent-theory ; Justi- 
fication of this Theory according to Linnaeus; Cuvier’s and Agassiz’s View 
of Creation; Theory of Development, according to Goethe, Oken, Kant, 
Lamarck, Lyell, and Darwin ; Theory of Natural Selection, Inheritance, and 
Propagation ; Laws of Transmission by Inheritance ; Laws of Adaptation ; 
Daws of Development of Organic Tribes and of Individuals; Development 
of the Universe and Earth ; Spontaneous Generation, Migration, and Distri- 
bution of Organisms : Periods and Records of Creation ; Pedigree of the 
Kingdom of Protista ; Pedigree of the Vegetable Kingdom ; Pedigree of 
Animal-plants and Worms; Pedigree of Mollusca, Star-fishes, and Arti- 
culated Animals ; Pedigree of Vertebrate Animals : Pedigree of Mammals ; 
Grigin and Pedigree of Man; Migration and Distribution of Mankind; and, 
lastly, Objections against and Proofs of the Truth of the Theory of Descent. 
These several chapters cover nearly 800 pages of print, so that it must 
not be said that the author has dealt lightly with his subject. But we 
think that, in addressing such a work to an English public, Herr Haeckel 
would have been well advised had he left out a good deal that he has 
written about the descent of animals. For it must be confessed that any- 
thing like a clear line of descent from the Amoeba or its congeners to man 
is absolutely out of the question in the present range of science. We may 
construct tables of genealogy, as we see the author has often done, but we 
know that in the course of a few years they are certain to be broken up. 
Therefore, to this part of the present work we distinctly object; while, of 
course, we are in absolute agreement with Professor Haeckel as to the whole 
groundwork of his scheme. And having thus so far expressed our dissent, 
we may now proceed to notice some parts of this most remarkable book. 
One of the chapters that strikes us as especially of interest is that in which 
he shows up the utter fallacy of Agassiz’s argument against Darwinism. 
Agassiz said: “ Darwinism shuts out almost the whole mass of acquired 
knowledge in order to retain and assimilate to itself that only which may 
serve its doctrine” ; to which Haeckel replies: “ Surely this is what we may 
call turning the whole affair topsy-turvey. The biologist who knows the 
facts must be astounded at Agassiz’s courage in uttering such sentences — 
sentences without a word of truth in them, and which he cannot himself 
believe ! The impregnable strength of the theory of descent lies just in the 
fact that all the biological facts are explicable only through it, and that 
without it they remain unintelligible miracles. All our 1 laborious know- 
ledge ’ in comparative anatomy and physiology, and in embryology and 
paleontology, in the doctrine of the geographical and topographical 
distribution of organisms, &c., constitutes an irrefutable testimony to the 
truth of the theory of descent.” This is strong language, but it certainly 
