Organic Evolution

Abstract

DR. SALEEBY has written a little book on a great subject, and there is much to admire in his achievement. Without technicalities and with vivacious clearness he discusses the history of the idea of organic evolution, the so-called evidences which show the validity of the evolution-formula, the conditions of evolution (heredity and variation) and the factors in the process (natural and sexual selection), the evolution of plants. the history of the horse, the past and future evolution of man. And we can get all this for a shilling! The author writes in an unconventional chatty way, and is nothing if not up to date. He seems, however, to have written in hot haste, for he makes many slips. Perhaps it does not matter much that he speaks of Alfred Russel Wallace as being in 1858 “a young surgeon,” but it is hard on the whale to have it said of him that his five “fingers, hand and all, are buried deep in blubber, and serve him no purpose whatever.” Surely Dr. Saleeby's teacher, Sir William Turner, to whom he gracefully refers, will be rather shocked at this libel on the whale's flipper. Perhaps it does not matter much that a certain Matthew Hay (Patrick Matthew?) is credited with having conceived the idea of natural selection in the early years of the nineteenth century, but we are somewhat baffled by being twice told that while the hen has three and a half fingers, the embryo chick has a five-fingered hand. If we dissect the embryo we shall see this, we are told. We do not like Dr. Saleeby's version of the lineage of extinct forms “which continuously connect the horse of today with a five-toed ancestor,” but we object still more to the statement that “the adult or fully-developed barnacle is far inferior to the larva, for it is little more than a fixed fleshy stalk, upon which grows the body and its shell”—“a palpable case of what we call degeneration.” If all degeneration were on the lines of the barnacle's life-history, it would be difficult to distinguish it from progress. We wish there had not been these and other blemishes in this sprightly and interesting little book, for it is sure to be popular.

Organic Evolution.

By C. W. Saleeby Pp. 124. (London and Edinburgh: T. C. and E. C. Jack, n.d.) Price 1s. net.