1 877.] 
Notices of Boohs . 
261 
northern and southern hemispheres simultaneously, as Mr. Belt 
supposes. On Mr. Croll’s view the two hemispheres would be 
subjedl to alternate glaciation. 
The first appearance of man in Switzerland is traced, in an 
Appendix from the pen of Prof. L. Riitimeyer, of Bale, to the 
Interglacial period. Pointed rods, carbonised along with the 
other constituents of the lignite, yet bearing evident traces of 
human labour, have been discovered among the coal from the 
Schoneich pit, at Wetzika, near Bale. But if the first traces of 
man in Switzerland are thus shown to be Interglacial, his first 
appearance in the world is much more likely to have fallen in 
the Miocene epoch. Unless our race had been already widely 
distributed, and had made some advance from its rudest con- 
dition, it would probably have perished in the first Glacial epoch, 
under circumstances so unfavourable to any being of the order 
Primates. 
Let us next turn to the question of the origin of vegetable and 
animal species. 
Prof. Heer appears as an evolutionist, but as a non-Darwinian. 
He admits that during the Geological epochs, which he has so 
ably and graphically described, species have arisen, flourished, 
and passed away, giving place to others. These changes he 
does not ascribe to a series of miracles. On the contrary, he 
holds that new species are more likely to have been of organic 
than of inorganic origin, and even suggests that certain extindt 
species may have been the ancestors of modern forms inhabiting 
the same or adjacent regions. But he does not receive “ natural 
selection ” as the cause of the mutations of species. He denies 
that all living beings are necessarily and constantly undergoing 
a process of development, or a slow and uniformly progressive 
transformation. He considers that animals display a stability 
not only in their physical constitution, but also in their instincts, 
which he regards as decisive with reference to the continuance 
of specific characteristics. 
It has been objected to this view that our observation of the 
habits and “ instindis ” of animals, especially of insedls, is far 
too recent and too imperfedl to enable us to decide whether these 
instindts are fixed or stationary. Prof. Heer seeks to elude the 
force of this argument by saying that certain species — e.g., of 
ants in Switzerland — have precisely the same 11 instindis ” as 
the same species in England or in Sweden. But as England 
has been separated from the Continent for probably 100,000 years 
it may be inferred that the instindis of these Swiss and English 
ants, both belonging to one species and derived from one com- 
mon stock, must have remained stationary for at least such a 
length of time. To this certainly ingenious argument we may 
reply that the habits, and consequently the instindis of insecls, 
at least in numbers of cases, are not specific, but common to 
entire genera, and even extend over larger groups. We need 
