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1 88 1 .] Analyses of Books . 
brought up apart from the society of their own species, will yet, 
when their reproductive instinct awakes, construct a nest in 
exact accordance with the ancestral pattern, and this is very 
plausibly explained as a result of “ unconscious memory.” But 
why does a young male bird, if reared alone, fail to acquire the 
peculiar song of his race ? 
There is another problem which we wish to lay before the 
author. It has been pointed out that the peculiarly disadvan- 
tageous positionof the mouth in the shark can scarcely be due to 
natural selection. Can it have been developed from a“ sense of 
need ?” 
In the present volume Mr. Butler brings before us the specu- 
lations of Prof. Hering, of the University of Prague, which 
singularly agree with the views expounded in “ Life and 
Habit,” and in “ Evolution, Old and New.” He then gives a 
version of the chapter on “ InstinCt,” from the “ Philosophic des 
Unbewussten” of Dr. von Hartmann, who refers the migrations 
and stratagems, the nest building, &c., of birds, and inseCts to a 
kind of clairvoyance. We might here take the preliminary ob- 
jection that to explain one unsolved difficulty by another is but a 
very small service to science. Mr. Butler points out the errone- 
ous character of some of Von Hartmann’s assumed faCts and of 
his conclusions, but many more he passes over. One of these 
errors must be, we should conjedture, the fault of the printer. 
We read that “ an insedt of the genus bombyx will seize another 
of the genus pavnopcea and kill it, without making any subse- 
quent use of the body.” We presume that the names should be 
respectively Bombus and Panorpa. We quite agree with Mr. 
Butler in rejecting Von Hartmann’s hypothesis, reared as it is 
upon a doubtful foundation. 
The first appearance of life upon our globe has been a difficult 
question for all thinkers who appreciate the formidable character 
of the evidence against so-called spontaneous generation, and 
who are not willing to admit, with Mr. Darwin, an initial creative 
intervention. Again, it has been said that Dr. Erasmus Darwin 
refuted himself by consistently extending his theory to plants, 
which, it is contended, cannot feel a sense of need. Mr. Butler 
meets both these difficulties by assuming that “ there is a low 
kind of livingness in every atom of matter.” “ Wherever there 
is vibration or motion there is life and memory, and there is 
vibration and motion at all times in all things.” I would recom- 
mend the reader to see every atom in the universe as living and 
able to feel and remember, but in a humble way.” 
Further we read: — As for the difficulty of conceiving a body 
as living that has not got a reproductive system, we should re- 
member that neuter inseCts are living but are believed to have 
no reproductive system. Again, we should bear in mind that 
mere assimilation involves all the essentials of reproduction, and 
that both air and water possesses this power in a very high 
