i88o.] 
585 
Analyses of Books. 
now useless rudiments of parts or organs which in their fore- 
fathers exercised some important function. Thus the rudimental 
breasts of the human male are a far-off reminiscence of the 
hermaphroditism which we meet in many lower animals ; the 
pyramidal muscles, a remnant of those which close the pouch of 
the marsupials. The coecum is another obsolescent organ which 
in man, so far from being of any use, affords merely the possi- 
bility of a painful death. There are more than twenty authentic 
cases on record where the entrance of a grain of sand, a grape- 
stone, &c., into this appendage has occasioned fatal peritonitis. 
Prof. Martins does not omit to rebuke the unqualified writers 
who impute to Darwin the assertion that man is descended from 
the gorilla or the chimpanzee. 
A second section is devoted to the transitions between organic 
beings, and to the non-existence of species as natural objective 
realities. As a prolific hybrid he mentions /Egilops triticoides , 
a cross between wheat and JEgilops ovata, often found in the 
South of France. 
In the third seCtion the author gives a survey of the embryo- 
logical proofs. He concludes with a passage which we feel bound 
to transcribe : — “ The principle of Evolution is not confined to 
organic beings ; it is a universal principle, governing all things 
which have a beginning, a progressive duration, an inevitable 
decline, and a prospective end. The application of this principle 
is ordained to facilitate the progress of all science, and to throw 
a new light upon the history of humanity : the solar system, the 
earth, organic beings, the human race, civilisation, nations, lan- 
guages, religions, social and political order, — everything obeys 
the law of Evolution. Nothing is created,* everything is trans- 
formed. Solomon probably knew this when he exclaimed ‘ Nothing 
new under the sun ! ’ The evolution of living nature is the type 
and the pattern for everything which advances in the physical 
as well as in the spiritual and moral world.” This is admirably 
expressed. But does not the author, when he formally proclaims 
immobility and a definite retrogression impossibilities, forget 
that the organic world affords instances of both, as has been well 
shown by Dr. Dohrn and Prof. Ray Lankester ?f Degeneration, 
degradation may be traced in animal and vegetable life, in the 
history of language, and in social science. 
The essay on the life and works of Lamarck scarcely brings 
out with sufficient distinctness his connection with Buffon. It 
contains one most painful passage. On his death in 1829, at 
the age of 85, his two daughters were left without resources : — 
“ I myself saw, in 1832, Miss Cornelie de Lamarck, for a paltry 
remuneration, engaged in fixing upon white paper the plants in 
the herbarium of the establishment where their father had been 
* That is, no new element is flung, as it were, catastrophically among what 
already exists. 
f See Journal of Science July, 1880, p. 465. 
