300 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
work on its first appearance, we shall not do more than cursorily glance at 
the more important additions and alterations which the present edition con- 
tains 5 hut we may express our wonder at the amount of matter which is 
collected on the subjects of the horse, ass, pig, cattle, dog, cat, rabbit, pigeons 
— especially pigeons — fowls, canaries, hive-bees, and silk- worms. And all 
this, which covers over 300 pages, and which is exclusively relative to animal 
life, is valuable original material, collected from various observations, beside 
those of the author, and dealing most minutely with the anatomical differ- 
ences — in some instances most important — that are displayed by animals 
that have originally come from the same pair of ancestors. On the subject 
of plants Mr. Darwin’s book is no less copiously instructive. And on such 
questions as inheritance, selection, variation, and pangenesis, which Mr. 
Sorby has recently supported,* and on which the author gives much addi- 
tional argument to what appeared in the former edition of his work, the 
book is full as full can be. Perhaps one of the most interesting points in the 
present edition is the reference to Dr. Brown-Sequard’s very remarkable 
results obtained from experiments on rabbits. These show us most conclu- 
sively— for the experiments have been tried on many thousands of specimens 
— that animals born of parents that have been rendered epileptic by section 
of the sciatic nerve, are themselves distinctly epileptic. And not only this ; 
but that changes in the shape of the ear, ophthalmia, absence of toes, &c., 
occur in the descendants of animals in which these conditions have been the 
result of operation. Assuredly in such a fact as the absence of toes in the 
descendants of animals whose toes had been destroyed, we have — if the 
evidence is sufficiently powerful — an important argument in support of 
pangenesis. 
We could quote more largely from the author’s interesting researches, 
but we have done enough to show the great importance of his labours, 
and to prove the interesting character of the volumes under notice. In 
one or two instances in which Mr. Darwin has had to refer to papers in 
this journal, it is to be regretted that he omitted the word “ Popular ” from 
the title, as there may be some confusion as to the source referred to. It is 
to be observed, also, that the volumes are not so large in shape as the former 
ones ; this has been effected by no change in the type, but by cutting down 
the pages a little. The result has been to make the work far more convenient 
for reading. 
POPULAR CHEMISTRY, t 
T HERE is a considerable difficulty in reviewing such a book as that before 
us, from the circumstance that it is intended to play a double part. 
That is to say, that one is disposed to be neither severe nor unduly favourable 
in his notice of the work. But if one would honestly and bluntly express 
* In his address to the Royal Microscopical Society, published in the 
u Monthly Microscopical Journal,” March 1876. 
t “ A Class-book of Chemistry on the Basis of the New System.” By 
Edward L. Youmans, M.D. London : Henry S. King & Co. 1876. 
