Natürliche Schöpfungs-Geschichte

Abstract

WERE there any need of evidence to show how busy in the happier times of peace the German public was with Darwinism and general Natural History topics, it would be amply supplied by the history of this work, the preface to the first edition of which was written in August 1868, and the second edition of which is now before us. The work is, broadly speaking, a popular sketch, not so much of the Darwinian theory, as of Haeckel's extension of that theory; in many respects it is a new “Vestiges of Creation,”the old question being viewed from a new stand-point, and the treatment of it adapted to new feelings and new times. The old work was modestly entitled “Vestiges;”Prof. Haeckel calls his a History; and indeed a detailed comparison of the two would bring out in a wonderfully vivid manner both the progress of zoological inquiry and the change in zoological temper which has taken place in the interval between the dates of their publication.

Natürliche Schöpfungs-Geschichte.

Von Dr. Ernst Haeckel. 2^te Aurlage. (Berlin: Reimer, 1870. London: Williams and Norgate.)