The Scope and Principles of the Evolution Philosophy

SINCE the interesting biological lectures of our last year's course were delivered, a noteworthy contribution has been made to that department of evolutionary thought, by the publication of Alfred Russel Wallace's" Darwinism: An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection, with some of its Applications." A co-discoverer with Charles Darwin of the law of Natural Selection, Mr. Wallace resembles him as a writer in the simplicity and lucidity of his style; and the wealth of facts with which he has illustrated his discussion of the subject, indicating the utmost patience and thoroughness of researcll, is nowhere equaled save in those epoch-making books which indicated Darwin as the foremost naturalist of his own, or, perhaps it would not be too much to say, of any time. Writing thirty years after the publication of "The Origin of Species," and in the light of all the objections which have been brought against the theory of Natural Selection, Mr. 'Vallace declares that Darwin "did his work so well that' descent with modification' is now universally accepted in the organic world; and the rising generation of naturalists can hardly realize the novelty of this idea, or that their fathers considered it a scientific heresy to be condemned rather than seriously discussed." In the defense of " Natural Selection" as the fundamental law of biological evolution, ~Ir. 'Yallace is even more of a Darwinian than Darwin himselfshowing, it would seem conclusively, that many of those variations which Darwin attributed to sexual selection, can be explained by natural selection, including nearly all those brilliant colors in the ornamentation of male birds and animals which Darwin assigned to the choice or preference of the female. Mr. 'Yallace also trenchantly criticises the supposed law of use and disuse as affecting biological evolution,-the socalled "Lamarckian factor," the importance of which