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done good service, but their labours merely show how much remains to be done. In the latter, Mr. Watt has been our principal worker; but here also, especially in the Algae and Fungi, there is scope for other observers. Some one might do a most important service by directing his attention to the Parasitic Fungi of this country.

Geology, which presents the largest and most attractive field open to students of nature in Canada, has a most important public provision made for its culture in the Geological Survey. Still the function of this Society and of private workers is not unimportant. Several of the officers of the Survey have made the journal and the meetings of this Society the vehicles of their more purely scientific researches. I need only mention the valuable papers of Dr. T. Sterry Hunt on Chemical Geology, and those of Mr. Billings on Palæontology, as illustrative of this. To Mr. Hartley, Mr. Robb, Mr. Vennor, Professor Bell, and Mr. Broome, we have also been indebted in this way. Mr. McFarlane has enriched our journal with many valuable contributions, especially on the nature of rocks, and many of my own researches, especially in Post-pliocene Geology and Fossil Botany, have been published through the medium of the Society. The field for work is still, however, very wide; more especially is there large scope for industrious collectors of fossils, if they would devote themselves to the thorough exploration of such formations as may be within their reach.

PUBLIC PATRONAGE NEEDED.

In conclusion, I must refer to what I regard as at present the most discouraging feature of our position. In the able address delivered last year by Dr. DeSola, reference was made to the slender aid and countenance which this Society receives from the public, and the same subject is illustrated by the statistics of the Society in the reports of the Council for last year, and also for the present year. A Society like this, offering to the public a well filled and well arranged museum, the advantage of attending its scientific meetings and public lectures, and of receiving its journal at a price little more than nominal, should need no advertisement; and this more especially when its working members are labouring so successfully in enlarging the boundaries of knowledge and promoting its practical applications. Those of our citizens who are not themselves naturalists, should on these

grounds be members and contributors to its funds, merely as a public institute, creditable and useful to the city. But this is not all they should also take an interest in its work. Nearly all the subjects which engage its attention possess some interest to any intelligent mind; and I believe that it is much more from want of knowledge of that which we are doing, or from want of thought, than from any other causes, that so many fail to take advantage of the privileges which we offer. I am sure that there is no intelligent man who will not find in the advantages to which I have referred much more than an equivalent for his annual subscription. Experience has, however, shown us that we cannot reckon on a work so unobtrusive as ours securing the attention it deserves. It will, therefore, be incumbent on the new Council to take steps as soon as possible for enlarging our membership by a direct appeal to the public. I trust that this will be successful, and that next year we shall be able to report that we have not only done useful work, but that our list of members has been greatly enlarged.

THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.*

(From the New York "Nation.")

The author of the "Origin of Species" is more widely known, more eagerly read, more cordially admired, and more emphatically denounced than any other scientific man of the day. The interest in him is in great measure due to the natural desire of humanity to penetrate that "mystery of mysteries "—its origin ; encomiums which even his warmest opponents (excepting those who are filled with the odium theologicum) have bestowed upon him, are just tributes to his long and faithful labours, and to the modesty which has compelled others to award to him some of the credit he seemed loth to claim; but much, if not all, of the indignation which many good persons feel towards him arises from misconceptions of his ideas respecting the Creator, which have

The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection. By Charles Darwin, F. R. S." Fifth edition. (Am. reprint.) New York: Pp. 447, 8vo.

D. Appleton & Co. 1871.

"The Genesis of Species. By St. George Mivart, F.R.S." London and New York: Macmillan & Co. 1871. Pp. 296 (with illustrations).

their origin not in his own works, but in those of certain advocates of his general views.

In truth, the candid reader of Darwin's own works can find little fault with his conceptions of the Creator so far as regards their sincerity, although it is evident that he regards the origin of species as a legitimate subject of scientific enquiry, and ignores, as well he may, the vain attempts to reconcile the conclusions to which he is led with the commonly received interpretation of Scripture. So does the author of the "Genesis of Species," who is, however, a professedly devout man, and gives many arguments and quotations, especially in the chapter on "Theology and Evolution," to show that neither "Darwinism " nor any other deriva. tive theory necessarily conflicts in the least degree with the most orthodox religious convictions.

This leads to the needed correction of another grave misconception--that "Darwinism" is synonymous with "derivation " or "evolution," and that either of these terms is equivalent to "transmutation." This idea has not only crept into the book catalogues, where all works upon the origin of species are grouped together under the title "Darwinismus," as if they treated of merely local varieties of the same intellectual epidemic, but it has also caused many who feel that Darwin's particular theory is wrong, to oppose all theories whatsoever involving the derivation of higher forms from lower.

A sketch of the views which preceded his own is prefixed, by Darwin, to the later editions of his work; but we have nowhere met with any grouping of these and subsequent theories which exhibits their relative nature. Such a classification we venture to offer here, admitting the impossibility of more than indicating the salient points of each theory and the names of a few of its more zealous advocates. We have also thought it best to omit the hypothesis of "acceleration and retardation," recently proposed by Professor Cope, and spoken of by Principal Dawson as, in his view," the most promising of all."†

"The Hypothesis of Evolution." University series. New Haven: C. C. Chatfield & Co.

For farther notice of the hypothesis here referred to, see Dr. Dawson's paper on "Modern Ideas of Derivation," in the Canadian Naturalist for June, 1869, page 134, and also the American Naturalist for June, 1870, pp. 230-237, where, in a review of Dr. Dawson's paper, Prof. Alpheus Hyatt, of Boston, refers to an essay by himself "On the

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The above will explain itself to those who are already familiar with the subject, but a few words may be added for others. If the species of animals and plants were created independently of all other species, then they must have been made as either perfect and fully formed individuals or as seeds and eggs. The former view is here ascribed to Milton rather than to Moses or Scripture, because most intelligent people now admit that the earlier chap

parallelism between the different stages of life in the individual and those in the entire group of the molluscous order Tetrabranchiata." (Mem. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist. Vol. I, part ii. 1867.) Prof. Hyatt remarks that Dr. Dawson has " given Prof. Cope the undivided credit of discovering the law of acceleration, whereas the memoir referred to above, which has escaped Dr. Dawson's notice, will remove all doubt that the aim of a large part of the observations there recorded, is identical with those of Prof. Cope's more elaborate essay. We have no desire for controversy but feel that silence in the present instance would place in a false light the object of these investigations, and vitiate the original value of the results of much labour not yet published." (Loc. cit. 234.)

We may add that Prof. Hyatt's paper was read Feb. 21, 1866, and Prof. Cope's on the Cyprinoid Fishes, in which his views were first enunciated, in Oct. 19 of the same year, though only published in the Trans. Amer. Philos. Soc., vol. 13, in 1869, after his elaborated views on the origin of species had appeared in the Proc. Phil. Acad. Sciences for 1868. No one who knows Prof. Cope can doubt that he, like Dr. Dawson and the author of the review here copied from The Nation, was unacquainted with the views of Prof. Hyatt. In justice to the latter, however, as an independent worker in this field, it is well to put these facts on record to avoid any future misconceptions.

It should perhaps be explained that Dr. Dawson's reasons for preferring the theory of Messrs. Hyatt and Cope did not imply any adhesion on his part to the hypothesis of derivation, but was based merely on the circumstance that the possibility of the passage of an animal from one genus to another by acceleration or retardation of development, seems to be proved by at least a few though perhaps exceptional facts, open to observation; while the change of one species into another is totally destitute of any observed examples or positive proof.-Eds. CANADIAN NATURALIST.

ters of Genesis cannot reasonably be interpreted in their literal sense; so that for a distinct statement of this view we must look to the great English poet, who, however, was not a scientific man.* The idea that organisms were created as eggs, which have a simpler structure, is less difficult to comprehend than the foregoing, but it is not easy to see how this could occur with the higher animals whose young are born alive, and not in the form of eggs. A rather vague enunciation of this idea is contained in a little work by Swedenborg,† which is probably to be regarded as purely philosophical and not as one of his theological works.

The second and more numerous family of theories is called "Derivative," because they all involve the supposition that in some way the lower and earlier forms have served as the means of producing higher and later ones. But it will be seen that they differ essentially as to the manner of this derivation. Lamarck was impressed with the amount of variation in size and form which the parts of an animal may undergo in consequence of their use or disuse, and so indirectly from (6 desire or any appetency" which the animal experienced, e. g., a fish might thus become a quadruped if forced to live upon the land, and an ape might become a man. The amount of change in any one generation might be very slight, but the next generation would inherit, increase, and perpetuate the transformation.

In the endeavour to give a concise statement of Darwin's own theory, we suffer from an "embarras de richesses;" for not only is his own work one long presentation of it in many different aspects, but each later writer upon the subject has given his farticular version, and from a different stand-point. Summary expressions of the theory are given by our author on pages 40, 70, 178, 412, 437; but a more diagrammatic enunciation is that of Wallace, who not only presented publicly an independent theory of natural selection at the same time with Darwin (1858), but has since paid a warm tribute to the latter's work, while expressing a doubt respecting the sufficiency of that theory for the production of man. With a few unimportant changes, his presentation is as follows:

* "Paradise Lost," Book VI.

"Worship and Love of God," Section 3.

"Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection." London and New York: 1870. Pp. 302.

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