1876.] 
Notices of Books . 
401 
must therefore earnestly deprecate the appearance of works like 
the one before us, believing that they retard instead of promote 
the definite solution of the question they attempt to discuss. 
We must go still further : we utterly repudiate the claims of 
metaphysicians and philologians, as such , to be heard on the 
origin of species. Prof. Max Muller has possibly traced human 
language back further than any other investigator, and has made 
words tell us historial secrets almost as interesting as those 
which the geologist elicits from the examination of fossils ; but 
words can evidently bear no witness as to a state of things ante- 
cedent to their origin. When Prof. Muller declares on the 
Darwinian theory he is very much in the position of a topographer 
who, having traced every affluent of the Thames to its source, 
and, if you will, gauged its flow and analysed its water, should 
therefore think himself competent to decide on the origin of the 
clouds and mists by which those affluents were originally fed. 
Let us now examine in what manner the author has executed 
his task. The first point that strikes us is that he does not dis- 
tinguish with sufficient clearness between Evolutionism — the 
dodtrine of a progressive mutation of species — and Darwinism, 
— the explanation of such changes by the hypothesis of Natural 
and Sexual Selection. The former, we need scarcely remind our 
readers, may be and is admitted by those who cannot accept the 
explanation offered by Mr. Darwin. 
We next notice that Mr. Maclaren places the views of mere 
literary men of the world, such as the late Bishop Wilberforce 
in the same rank with those of original observers, such as 
Messrs. Darwin and Wallace on the one hand and Mr. Mivart 
on the other. Are we to infer that he would, as a lawyer, accept 
hearsay evidence as at all approaching in weight to the testimony 
of an eye-witness ? The criticisms of the Bishop, as taken 
from his article in the “ Quarterly Review ” may be interesting 
as a specimen of the manner in which unscientific minds are 
apt to deal with scientific questions, but as a contribution to 
biology they merely provoke a smile. Mr. Maclaren re-quotes 
from Dr. Wilberforce the passage in which Prof. Owen urges 
— “ How unerringly and plainly the extremest varieties of the 
dog kind recognise their own specific relationship ; how differently 
does the giant Newfoundland behave towards the dwarf pug, on 
a casual rencontre, from the way in which either of them would 
treat a jackal, a wolf, or a fox.” Yet we have the strongest pos- 
sible evidence that the domestic dog, Canis familiaris, is an 
artificial produdt formed by the intermixture of different wild 
species. Even now the breed is known to be fruitfully and pur- 
posely crossed with the wolf and the fox, whilst no one has been 
able to point out the dog as existing anywhere in a state of 
original wildness. There is generally more or less manifestation 
of hostility when a tame animal meets a wild member of its own 
species. Need we then wonder if a dog meeting a fox or jackal 
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