Notices of Boohs. 
1878.] 
129 
There is a valuable synopsis of the Flora of the Valley of the 
St. Lawrence and of the Great Lakes, by Dr. J. Macoun, the 
Botanist to the Canadian Geological Survey, giving the localities 
of each species and descriptions of the rarer plants. 
Proteus , or Unity in Nature. By C. B. Radcliffe, M.D. 
Second Edition. London : Macmillan and Co. 
We do not wish to be irreverent, but this work irresistibly reminds 
us of an old wooden frigate hastily converted into an iron-clad in 
some real or fancied emergency. “ Substantially,” as the author 
tells us in his mythological and mystic introduction, “ a second 
and much enlarged edition of a very immature work published 
under the same title more than twenty-five years ago,” it is now 
refitted, and sent out to cruise against the dodtrine of Evolution. 
He considers that much of what he has to say is likely to find 
“ little favour in a materialistic age like the present.” Has he 
yet to learn that between Evolutionism and Materialism there is 
no necessary connection ? He gives us “traces of unity” in 
plants, in the limbs of vertebrate animals, in the appendicular 
organs of invertebrate animals, in the skull and vertebral column, 
in the animal as a whole, in plants and animals, in organic and 
inorganic forms. Passing from form to force, he lays before us 
traces of unity also in the various modes of physical force, in 
vital and physical motion, in the “ vivifying power of light and 
heat,” in the phenomena of “ instindf,” of memory, of ima- 
gination, volition, and intelligence, as well as in the personal, 
social, and religious life of man. All this is worked out with 
abundance of learning, with references to and quotations from 
numerous authors of all ages, though also with an obvious 
leaning to far-fetched analogies which almost reminds us of 
G. H. v. Schubert, or of Heinrich Steffens. But accepting in 
substance what Dr. Radcliffe has to urge, and without at all 
seeking to impair its value by fadts of an opposite tendency, we 
have to inform him that this very unity is confirmation strong 
of the dodtrine of Evolution ! It is precisely what we should 
expedt if the whole organic world had been developed from some 
common primitive form. It is precisely what we should not 
expedl if each plant and each animal were of independent 
origin. Let us take a parallel case : the chemical unity of the 
heavenly bodies, as shown almost demonstrably by spedtroscopic 
research and by the analysis of meteorites, is justly considered 
as a valuable piece of evidence in favour of the “ nebular hypo- 
thesis,” i.e., the evolution of suns and planets out of one common 
material. It is strange to find an author, after elaborately col- 
ledting instances of unity in creation, breakind down the barriers 
VOL. VHP (N.S.) & 
