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The “ Species ” Wav Reopened . [April, 
and 3, the survival of the fittest.” To find one agency thus 
classified and discussed as three may well astonish the 
reader. 
Mr. Crosland writes : “ In a recent number of ‘ Know- 
ledge ’-—a publication so named on the Incus a non lucendo 
principle, I presume — there is a review of a book by Sir E. 
Beckett on this subject of Darwinism, in which the author 
very satisfactorily shows that the spider must have made its 
web complete from the first, otherwise it would be useless.” 
If Sir E. Beckett and Mr. Newton Crosland had been in the 
habit of observing spiders they would have seen that even 
very rudimentary webs are of great service. Those species 
which leap upon their prey secure themselves by means of 
a single line, so that if they miss their spring they are in no 
danger of falling, We must further remind this writer and 
Mr. Mortimer Collins, from whom he borrows a flippant 
motto, that Evolutionism and Positivism are not identical. 
Comte, the founder of the latter doCtrine, was a firm be- 
liever in the permanence of organic species. Here, however, 
we must dismiss Mr. Crosland. If he wishes to discuss this 
subject we would recommend him to devote, say, ten years 
to the serious study of animal or vegetable life, not in books, 
but in the museum, in the laboratory, and, above all, in the 
fields and woods. At present he is rich chiefly in that attri- 
bute against which the gods themselves are powerless. 
Mr. Bouverie-Pusey is a writer of a very different class. 
He has evidently given the question prolonged and close 
attention. He does not invoke the odium theologicum. We 
find in his work no assumption of the perfection of Nature, 
no outburst of horror at the suggestion of man’s possible 
blood-relationship to apes, no assertion of mechanical crea- 
tion, — nothing, in faCt, of the Old School of Natural History 
or of the stock-in-trade of anti-Darwinian controversialists. 
His aim is not so much to set aside Evolutionism as to pro- 
nounce its formal acceptance premature. He is for sus- 
pending judgment. As to how species were originally 
produced “we must be content to own that we know 
nothing.” Again, in the last sentence of the book, we read 
— “All these considerations impress upon us more and more 
that the origin of organic types is at present, and till we 
have some new knowledge enabling us to attack the problem 
in quite a different manner, an insoluble mysrtery.” Here, 
then, we have a conclusion certainly free from rashness and 
presumption, and we cannot refuse our tribute of respeCt to 
a writer who, in an age of over-hasty speculation, evinces 
such judicial caution. 
