The Zoologist/4th series, vol 4 (1900)/Issue 713/Notices of New Books
NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.
Many, very many, of us who are now growing grey will recall the days of early manhood when the voice of Huxley was regarded as that of a prophet both in science and philosophy. How the great lights of those days have disappeared! Mill, Carlyle, Darwin, Renan, Tennyson, and Huxley have vanished. We can almost remember the exact circumstances of our lives when each passed away, so profound was the impression created. Younger men see fresh constellations and rising stars, but we find the firmament growing darker as these planets fade; the days seem growing shorter, and the nights longer; the ocean to be encroaching on the shore, for the beacons are disappearing.
We possess Huxley's collected writings and lectures; his cold and cheerless marble effigy adorns the vestibule of our great Natural History Museum; but of the man himself little was known to most of his readers. He was too generally appreciated as only a great man of science, or a polemical writer of much power and wisdom. These volumes come as a revelation; we used to read Huxley, and now we know him.
Huxley was entrusted with a great talent, which he did not hide under a bushel; but even then his fight for position was a strenuous one, and he probably made a wise choice in adopting for a motto in his early days the well-known words of Danton: "De l'audace et encore de l'audace et toujours de l'audace." This struggle to many would be an abomination, but to Huxley it was a necessity; he was intellectually a gladiator, and it is probable that the arena developed his immense polemical powers, which rested on a sure and certain knowledge in continuous cultivation. As we read these pages we are in doubt as to which created or supplemented the other. Great as was the original work he did in zoology, we can never forget the philosophical spell he cast over it, and to the reading public he is rather better known as the daring philosopher and metaphysician than by his biological discoveries. As an anthropologist and zoologist, he is appreciated by that small inner circle of scientific workers whose opinion alone carries any weight on these subjects; to the world at large, whose verdict is not worth too much, he is the successful foe of shams and quackeries.
Among the most interesting points in these interesting volumes are Huxley's opinions of other zoologists. He soon found out on board the 'Rattlesnake' that Macgillivray was not the "ignoramus in natural history" he had been told, and was at any rate "a very good ornithologist," and a zealous collector; William Macleay made a good impression, and was described in 1848 as "the celebrated propounder of the Quinary system." Owen "is an able man, but to my mind not so great as he thinks himself. He can only work in the concrete from bone to bone; in abstract reasoning he becomes lost—witness 'Parthenogenesis.'" The reference to the late Dr. Gray is delightful. "The dog-fox's cæcum is so different from the vixen's that Gray would have made distinct genera of them." But in a more judicial phraseology is the well-balanced verdict on his old friend Darwin: "I am not likely to take a low view of Darwin's position in the history of science, but I am disposed to think that Buffon and Lamarck would run him hard in both genius and fertility. In breadth of view and in extent of knowledge these two men were giants, though we are apt to forget their services. Von Bär was another man of the same stamp; Cuvier, in a somewhat lower rank, another; and J. Müller another."
This biography almost constitutes an abstract of the intellectual progress made during a recent fifty years, in which zoology plays a prominent part. Huxley had considerable sympathy with much that he severely criticised, and his attacks seemed often more severe because he kept in touch with the progress of the opinions he opposed. To the superficial he was a declared enemy, and they could not realise that far below the surface there may be much community of thought. His published letters now give a clue to this enigma.
And now we come to the most important consideration, the relation of Huxley the evolutionist, to Darwinism. In future years, when this period will be alike termed the Victorian age and the Darwinian era, how will he be associated with this great conception? Was Huxley the Baptist or the Paul to Darwinism? In the light of these volumes we consider him both.
The second volume has now appeared of this advanced well-named 'Treatise.' Vol. III., which appeared first, has already been noticed in these pages, and the present volume very fully maintains the excellence of the Oxford publication.
The Editor contributes an introduction on a subject of great biological importance, viz, the cœlom, a name proposed by Haeckel for the cavity in Vertebrate animals often called the "pleuroperitoneal cavity." This is a branch of technical biology of the profoundest interest, but one necessarily little discussed in our bionomic pages. This "introduction" can, however, be consulted as the last word in the investigation to date, and, as its writer has proposed, it is "the vindication of the cœlom as a morphological factor of primary importance in the animal series, and the maintenance of the conclusion that the cœlom by its presence justifies the separation of a higher grade of Enterozoa, the Cœlomocœla, from a lower grade, the Enterocœla, in which it is not differentiated as a separate cavity."
Prof. Minchin has written very fully on the Sponges. These creatures afford their evolutionary evidence, as do all other animals. "Many deep-sea sponges, especially those of the order Monaxonida, are to be regarded as having migrated downwards from the shore-line in comparatively recent times, and in such forms the influence of life in still water is seen in a great regularity of growth, resulting in the development of a secondary symmetry." The colours of Sponges are very varied, and often very bright; but Prof. Minchin states that green is a rare colour among marine Sponges, though it is the usual tint of the freshwater Spongillinæ, where, however, it is due to chlorophyll.
Dr. G. Herbert Fowler contributes the sections Hydromedusæ and Scyphomedusæ, organisms which were recently grouped together under the name of Hydrozoa. This portion of the work is distinctly of a character that does not adapt itself to quotation in 'The Zoologist,' though in a biological sense it is none the less valuable on that account.
The Anthozoa have been entrusted to the care of Mr. G.C. Bourne. The true nature of Corals and Gorgonians was first discovered by the observational method, and was accomplished by Peyssonel, of Marseilles, "who made a number of observations on Corals on the coast of Barbary, and kept several forms alive in aquaria." We are reminded of the old, old story, when we read that "Peyssonel's observations were laid before the Academy of Sciences of France in 1727, but his views were strongly opposed by Réaumur, whose authority was sufficient to condemn them."
A most welcome feature of this volume is the adoption of the historical method. Terms are traced to their proposers; the men who first extended the boundaries of knowledge are brought in line with the more advanced workers of to-day, and in the appreciation of present results the pioneers of the past are not forgotten. The evolutionary principle is emphasized on every page, without the reiteration of personal theories, or the infliction of complicated terms which lack definition and reflect too frequently only personal opinion. Whilst the work of Haeckel is recognised, we know that the true evolutionary spirit is present.
Another excellent departure is the provision of an index at the end of each section, and this in the day when the Bible and Shakspeare are still published without that necessary adjunct.
It is no disrespect to this book to regard it largely as a very useful compilation. Of course any attempt to discuss the origin of the British or any other people can scarcely be divorced from the question of the derivation of Man himself. Mr. Macnamara does not shirk this responsibility. He is convinced "that no animal whose skull is ossified according to the method which prevails among apes could possibly acquire an intellectual capacity such as that possessed by man. The genus Homo differs from the anthropoid apes in that his skull possesses an innate power of growth, especially in its anterior part, which permits full development of the anterior lobes of his brain, and thus of his intellectual capacity and speech." He adopts the view enunciated in this country by Prof. Boyd Dawkins, and considers the Eskimos as "pure descendants of the glacial inhabitants of Europe"; nor does he hesitate to write of "the men living in Europe before and during the glacial period." Of the pre-glacial existence of man, we are reminded of a special anthropological discussion on this subject, held in London some years ago, at which the President, Sir John Evans, advised the attitude of "Caution, caution, caution." The racial origin of the people of England is accepted by Mr. Macnamara as "formed by the Iberian stock, who, until the mid-neolithic period, were the only human inhabitants of our island"; and the Iberian race is elsewhere defined as "the people who were directly descended from the aborigines of Northern Africa and Western Europe." Scotland, Wales, and Ireland have distinct summaries, and the volume is another evidence of the intelligent interest taken by the reading public in the fascinating study of British Anthropology.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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