1879.] 
( 4§7 ) 
NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
Evolution , Old and New ; or the Theories of Buff on, Dr. Erasmus 
Darwin , and Lamarck , as compared with that of Mr. 
Charles Darwin. By Samuel Butler. London : Hard- 
wicke and Bogue. 
The work before us appears to have a threefold objeCt. The 
author undertakes the rehabilitation of certain Evolutionist 
worthies of days bygone — possibly too much negleCted and even 
misinterpreted — the refutation of the hypothesis of Natural 
Selection, as put forward by Mr. C. Darwin and by Mr. A. R. 
Wallace ; and, lastly, the exposition of his own peculiar views 
on the development of species. Mr. Butler does not appear to 
be a working biologist, nor indeed a man of science at all. Still, 
unlike the bulk of outsiders who have written upon Evolution, he 
rejeCts the old hypothesis of Special Creation, and if his conten- 
tions do not everywhere command our implicit assent, they can- 
not fail to supply every true naturalist with abundant matter for 
profitable reflection. 
It is generally, and perhaps too hastily, assumed that the 
Doctrine of Development, as met with in the works of Bulfion, 
Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck, was so crude and imperfeCt as 
to necessitate its rejection by men of sound and sober judgment, 
whilst Mr. C. Darwin, by supplying his idea of Natural Selection, 
has converted the chaos into a cosmos, and rendered the adoption 
of Evolutionism not merely possible, but almost imperative. 
Mr. Butler, on the contrary, holds the very contrary opinion : — 
“ Fresh from the study of the older men, and also of Mr. Darwin 
himself, I failed to see that Mr. Darwin had ‘ unravelled and 
illuminated ’ a tangled skein, but believed him, on the contrary, 
to have tangled and obscured what his predecessors had made in 
great part, if not wholly, plain. The older men, if not in full 
daylight, at any rate saw in what quarter of the sky the dawn 
was breaking, and were looking steadily towards it.” Again we 
read— “ Those were the days before ‘ Natural Selection ’ had 
been discharged into the waters of the Evolution controversy, 
like the secretion of a cuttle-fish.” One of Mr. Butler’s charges 
against “ Darwinism ” is that, shutting out purpose and intelli- 
gence from the work, it refers the formation of species to the 
accumulation of small and hap-hazard variations — an objection 
which has been urged by Mr. J. J. Murphy and by Mr. Mivart. 
A not less capital point is that Natural Selection, though it may 
preserve any variation that proves advantageous, has plainly 
nothing whatever to do with the origin of such variation. This 
