REVIEWS. 
187 
is not stronger than -was meet for Agassiz’s reckless assertion of false- 
hood. 
Another passage in this work which strikes us as being especially inte- 
resting, is that from a letter of Darwin’s to Professor Haeckel, in which the 
iorrner traces out the mode in which he came to hit on his great discovery, 
that of Natural Selection. He says : “ For some years I could not conceive 
how each form became so excellently adapted to its habits of life. I then 
began systematically to study domestic productions, and after a time saw 
clearly that man’s selective power was the most important agent. I was 
prepared, from having studied the habits of animals, to appreciate the 
struggle for existence, and my w T ork in geology gave me some idea of the 
lapse of past time. Therefore when I happened to read 1 Malthus on Popu- 
lation ’ the idea of natural selection flashed on me.” This fact is important 
to English readers, as we think it has not been mentioned in any of Mr. 
Darwin’s own books. 
On looking for further points on which to dwell in our notice of this ex- 
cellent work we have come across one which is somewhat painful to read, 
as the supposed facts on which it rests are now admittedly mistaken 
ones. It is as to the Pathybius. Professor Haeckel, writing before 
Mr. Huxley’s renunciation of this organism, describes it as being an 
unquestionable animal. Our readers are of course aware that Professor 
Huxley has some six months since completely given up the animality of 
this quasi- organism ; it is, therefore, the more to be wondered at that Mr. 
Lankester should have allowed Haeckel’s remarks to stand unqualified in 
the first volume, on p. 184, and in the second volume on p. 53, and have 
merely added a footnote on p. 344, vol. i., which says: “We must wait for 
fuller information on the subject of Bathybius at the hands of the naturalists 
of the Challenger expedition, before accepting it finally as a distinct or- 
ganism.” We should have expected that he would have removed the 
passages in which Professor Haeckel has so clearly given his assent to a 
doctrine whose chief advocate has torn up his brief. One explanation of this 
apparent neglect may be that the work had gone through the press at the 
time that Professor Huxley had given in his recantation, and if this be 
so, Mr. Lankester’s note was but a foresight of the ultimate result. 
After giving many examples of rudimentary organs being preserved in 
animals which have no purpose they can fulfil, and of the absence of organs 
being accounted for by natural selection — as in the case of the beetles of 
Maderia, which are almost all wingless — the author gives an excellent plate 
showing the development of the tortoise, chick, dog, and man. This shows 
very well to the general reader the close resemblance of these four distinct 
organisms at an early period of life ; first, of the tortoise, dog, and man, of 
four weeks, and the chick of four days ; and second, of the tortoise and dog, 
six weeks, the chick of eight days, and man of the eighth week. The subject 
of the wonderful relation between invertebrata and vertebrata, which was 
first indicated in the year 1867 by Kowalewsky’s researches, has been 
especially dwelt on by the author of the present work, who has given us two 
capital plates illustrating the relation between the Ascidian Phallusia and 
the common Lancelet. In the first of these, the immature animals are con- 
trasted, and the comparison shows the extraordinary relation which exists 
