[August, 
480 Analyses of Books . 
seem chiefly to suggest far-fetched, and, we may venture to say, 
non-biological analogies, — of which hereafter. But whilst com- 
pelled to make this remark, we feel no less bound to record our 
convidtion that he is actuated by no spirit of hostility, either to 
the results of modern science in particular, or to the great con- 
quest of our age, the dodtrine of Evolution in particular. True, 
he accepts that dodtrine but in part. Yet, had he been from his 
childhood an observer and a student of organic nature, and had 
reached a truly biological point of view, we feel assured that 
these essays would have been seriously modified. In the funeral 
sermon which he pronounced in Westminster Abbey over the 
grave of Darwin, there would not have occurred these words : — 
“ I, who have been invited to preach here this afternoon, have 
endeavoured to deal respedtfully with his memory ” ! 
Concerning the first of these essays on the “ Connection 
between Mechanics and Geometry,” we can say nothing. In 
the second, the author discusses the “ Unity of Nature,” taking 
as his starting point certain passages in the address delivered by 
Dr. Allman, at the Sheffield Meeting of the British Association, 
in 1879. He writes : — “ The real difficulty of conception seems 
to me to be connected with the diversity of nature, supposed to 
rest upon one all-pervading principle. Grant protoplasm as the 
prime form of universal physical (organic) life ; take that as the 
biological starting-point or prime postulate, and then comes the 
difficulty of conceiving the immensely different results in which 
our protoplasmic postulate land us.” We must confess that we 
have never felt any such difficulty. But, to pass on to the main 
point of the present essay, we find the following question raised : 
“ Is it not conceivable that there may be a principle or law from 
which the existing order of physical life, with all its apparent 
anomalies, flows as a necessary result ? and would not the know- 
ledge of that principle or law, if attainable, exhibit to us the 
order of living nature, as one consistent system, free from excep- 
tions and anomalies ? ” 
Before dealing with this interesting, but not truly solvable, 
question, let us first examine what is here meant by “exceptions 
and anomalies.” Turning to subsequent pages (30 and 31) we 
find mention of, as anomalies, “ noxious snakes, mischievous 
insedts, &c.” The author says : — “ It is difficult for anyone who 
starts with the simple notion of the world existing for the sake of 
man to make out a consistent and tenable theory of nature.” 
But the naturalist of the New School does not start with the 
“ simple notion ” above referred to, and hence the existence of 
snakes and the like is to him no more of an anomaly than the 
existence of man himself. 
Again, the Bishop states that “ the nipples and ladteal vessels 
of male animals, the rudimentary feet of certain snakes, the 
teeth of whales, and other useless organs of certain living things, 
may possibly be, like branches of a hyperbola, involved in the 
