399 
1876 .] Notices of Books. 
of the last few years warrants us in adding a fourth. Every man 
of culture — no matter how little qualified by especial training or 
previous study — deems himself entitled to pass an authoritative 
judgment on the most abstruse questions in organic science. 
Lawyers, divines, mathematicians, literary men, financiers who 
j have never devoted an hour to the serious study of zoology or 
botany, — who have never observed a novel facff or verified an old 
one, who have never even determined a species, and who would 
be utterly at sea were they to make the attempt, — consider them- 
selves competent to discuss the origin of species, not merely in 
private, but for the edification and guidance of the public. This 
is not the case in other departments of knowledge. Some years 
ago there arose a dispute among physicists concerning two rival 
views on the nature of light, — the undulatory and the emission 
hypothesis. Considerable animosity prevailed between the com- 
batants, and some of the language used was decidedly unpar- 
liamentary ; yet the outside public wisely held aloof, and left the 
matter to be decided by experts,- — men versed in physics and 
mathematics, and capable of rightly appreciating the evidence 
adduced on either side. 
More recently we have witnessed a discussion in chemistry 
between the respective partizans of the new and of the old no- 
tation. The controversy opened out for many men a royal road 
to eminence, by giving them an opportunity for writing books 
for which no raison d'etre would otherwise have existed ; but the 
public and the general press did not interfere on the one side 
or the other. Why it should have adopted so different a course 
with respect to the origin of species is not clear ; it cannot be 
because the subject is more within the grasp of an unprepared 
mind. We will venture to declare that zoology and botany, if 
taken up as sciences, are far more complicated and difficult than 
chemistry or physics ; it may be because the origin of species, 
that of man included, is a more interesting subject than a theory 
of light : this, however, is the very reason why it should have 
been let alone. It is only too interesting, and excites too much 
passion and prejudice to be dealt with by any but specially disci- 
plined minds. 
Turning from the actual to the hypothetical, let us suppose-— a 
thing not entirely inconceivable — that a difference of opinion 
were to prevail among the legal profession upon some important 
topic, and that an outsider— a botanist, or a geologist, or an 
electrician, ignorant of law and relying merely upon his general 
mental cultivation — should write a book, formally summing up 
the arguments on either side, and pronouncing a decision, would 
not all the Inns of Court ring with contemptuous and most justi- 
fiable laughter ? But where is the essential difference between 
such a supposed case and the one before us ? We know that 
exception will be taken to this view. Our author remarks that 
the evidence for or against Darwinism ought to be intelligible to 
