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We should do our utmost to encourage the...
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THE HAYTHORNE PAPERS. No. II. — The Deve...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Books On Our Table. A School Atlas Of Ge...
The Works of Plato . A newand Htenil version . Vol . V ., containing ^ gg * By George Barges , M . A . ( Bohn ' s Classical Library . ) <*• • Konn-This the fifth volume of the tranBlation of Plato , which Mr . Bphn , with commendable during , has ventured on publishing , contains th 6 important treatise ^ ™ te LatoZvK <& the student should take up after carefully going through . the Mepvblie . It was obviously composed many years subsequent to the composition of the Republic , and is interesting as containing Platps more matured opinions on politics . In form it is the least ornate and least interesting of all his works If it be possible for a translator to drive away the student , Mr . George Burges is the man . He is more repulsive than Taylor ; for while quite as obscure , he is a worse writer , and his notes are perpetual offences . Sow to tee the British Museum in Four Visits . By W . Blanchard Jerrold . .. ) xi / / * -....-
. c . «»• *** »» ~ . — — _ „ Bradbury and Evans . Mb . BiiANCHAED JEBKOi , i >' s useful little book , How to see the Great Exhibition in Four Visits , obviously suggested a similar work on the more permanent subject of the British Museum . As a guide-book through that vast collection , it will be prized for the simplicity of its arrangement and the clearness of its style . A Practical Treatise on the Diseases of the Lungs and Heart , including tha Frin ' eiples of Physical Diagnosis . By Walter Hayle Walshe , MJ 3 . _ * J Taylor , Walton , and Maberrr .
We have been tempted to give an extended notice of this excellent work , but the fear of its being too exclusively professional has restrained us . To students we address this note . Dr . Walshe here describes the facts and principles of physical diagnosis in their applications to lungs , heart , and the larger vessels ; the principles of inspection , mensuration , auscultation , and percussion . Having illustrated these with great minuteness and lucidity , he proceeds to an elaborate investigation of the symptoms , physical signs , diagnosis , and treatment , of the chief diseases of lungs , heart , and aorta . The book is a very valuable addition to pathological literature .
Homeopathy in 1851 . Edited by J . Eutherford Eussell , M . 3 ) . . ¦ . ' Groombridge and Sons . Thc & e interested in the squabbles of Old and Young Physic—of homoeopathy and allopathy—will thank Dr . Bussell for this amusing volume of papers illustrative of the position maintained by Young Physic . We have already , on more than one occasion , indicated our neutral position in the dispute , anxious as we are for free discussion of all matters . Horses : their Varieties , Breeding , and Management , in Health and Disease . By I ) . H . Richardson . { Bic 7 iardson ' s Burat Handbooks . ) W . S . Orr and Co . Me . Miibitek has revised Bichardson ' s compact and very readable handbook on the breeding and management of horses . Harrison Weir has illustrated it ; and Messrs . Orr offer it among their Rural MandhooTcs for one shilling ! The Vpper Ten Thousand : Sketches of American Society . By a New Yorker . - ^ John W . Parker and Son ..
THESE sketches , which originally appeared in the pleasant pages of Fraser s Magazine , deserved gathering into a volume , for they present a picture of American aristocratismus more vivid and acceptable than any other work we have seen . We noticed them on their first appearance , and need only mention the fact of their separate publication . Life Aiturance : its Schemes , its Difficulties , and its Abuse : W . S . I > . Bateman . JPara Bellum . Brief Suggestions on the subject qf War and Invasion . TT J 1 ot I l chapman . Bohn ' s Illustrated Library . —Battles of the British Navy . By Joseph Allen . Vol . II . JA . vr . SjOuJ X * Bohn's Standard Library . —The Principal Works and Remains of the Bev . Andrew Fuller . By hia Son , Bev . A . 6 . Puller . ^ T H . . O . Boha . Bohn ' s Scientific Library . —Cosmos : a Sketch ( f the Physical Description qf the Universe . ByA . vonllumboldt : ^ g- £ got o . Bohn ' s Classical Library . —Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero . By C . D . Yonge . H . G . Bohn . Canada , as it was , is . and may be . By Sir R . H . Bonnyoastlo . 2 vols . Colburn and Co . Use and Abuse ; or , Riqht and Wrong in relation to Labour , Capital , Machinery , and iMnd . By William M'Combie . Ward an ^ Co . L'Eco , di Savonarola Foglio Mensile . Noa . I ., II ., and III . Partridge and Oakey . Lena ; or , the Silent Woman . By the Author of " King ' s Cope , " & c . 3 voIb . ' Smith , Elder , and Co
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We Should Do Our Utmost To Encourage The...
We should do our utmost to encourage the Feautiful , for the Useful encourages itself . —Goethb .
The Haythorne Papers. No. Ii. — The Deve...
THE HAYTHORNE PAPERS . No . II . — The Development Hypothesis . In a debate upon the development hypothesis , lately narrated to me by a friend , one of the disputants was described as arguing that , as in all our experience we know of no such phenomenon as the transmutation of species , it is unphilosophical to assume that transmutation of species ever takes plate . Had I been present , I think that , passing over his assertion , which is open to criticism , I should have replied that , as in all our experience we have never known a species created , it was , by his own showing , unphilosophical to assume that any species ever had been creat 6 d .
Those who cavalierly reject the theory of Lamarck and his followers , as not adequately supported by facts , seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all . Like the majority of men who are born to a given belief , they demand the most rigorous proof of any adverse doctrine , but assume that their own doctrine needs none . Here we find scattered over the globe vegetable and animal organisms numbering , of the one kind ( according to Humboldt ) , some 320 , 000 species , and of the other ,
if we include insects , some two millions of species ( see Carpenter ) j and if to these we add the numbers of animal and vegetable species that have become extinct ( bearing in mind how geological records prove that , from the earliest appearance of life down to the present time , different species have been successively replacing each other , so that the world ' s Flora and Fauna have completely changed many times over ) , wo may safely estimate the number of species that have existed , and are existing on the earth , at
not less than ten millions . Well , which is the most rational theory about these ten millions of species ? Is it inost likely that there have been tea millions of special creations ? or is it most likely that bycontinual modifications , due to change of circumstances , ten millions of varieties may have been produced , as varieties are being produced still ? One of the two theories must be adopted . Which is most countenanced by ' fasts ? Doubtless many will reply that they can more easily conceive ten . millions of special creations to have takeiii place , than , they can conceive that ten millions of varieties have been produced by the process of perpetual
modification . All such , however , will find , on candid inquiry , that they are under an illusion . This is one of the many cases in which men do not really believe , but rather believe they believe . It is not that they can truly conceive ten millions of special creations to have taken place , but that they think they can do so . A little careful introspection will show them that they have never yet realized to themselves the creation of even one species . If they have formed a definite conception of the process , they will be able to answer such questions as— -How is a new species constructed ? and How does it make its appearance ? Is it thrown down from the clouds ? or must we hold to the notion that it struggles up out of the ground ? Do its
limbs and viscera" rush together from all the points of the Compass ? or must we receive some such old Hebrew notion as * that God goes into a forest-cavern , and there takes clay and moulds a new creature ? If they say that a new creature is produced in none of these modes , which are too absurd to be believed , then they are required to describe the mode in which a new creature may be produced—a mode which ^ does not seem absurd ; and such a mode they will find that they neither have conceived nor can conceive .
Should the believers in special creations consider it unfair thus to call upon them to describe how special creations take place , I reply , that this is far less than they demand froni the supporters of the development hypothesis * They are merely asked to point out a conceivable mode ; on the other hand , they ask , not simply for a ( conceivable mode , but for the actual mode . They do not say—Show us how this maty take place ; hut they say— -Show us how this does take place . So far from its being unreasonable to ask so much of them , it would be reasonable to ask not only for a possible mode of special creation , but for an ascertained mode ; seeing that this is no greater a demand than they make upon their opponents .
And here we may perceive how much more defensible the new doctrine is than the old one . Even-could the supporters of the development hypothesis merely show that the production of species by the process of modification is conceivable , they would be in a better position than their opponents . But they can do much more than this . They can show that the process of modification has effected and is effecting great changes in all organisms subject to modifying influences . Though , from the impossibility of getting at a sufficiency of facts , they are unable to trace the many phases through which any existing species has passed in arriving at its present form , or to identify the influences which caused the successive modifications , yet they
can show that any existing species—animal or vegetable—when placed under conditions different from its previous ones , immediately begins to undergo certain changes of structure fitting it for the new conditions . They can show that in successive generations these changes continue until ultimately the new conditions become the natural ones . They can show that in cultivated plants , in domesticated animals , and in the several races of men , these changes have uniformly taken place . They can show that the degrees ot difference so produced are often , as in dogs , greater than those on which distinctions of species are in other cases founded . They can show that it
is a matter of dispute whether some of these modified forms are varieties or separate species . They can show , too , that the changes daily taking place in ourselves—the facility that attends long practice , and the loss ot aptitude that begins when practice ceases—the strengthening of Pa * ^ habitually gratified , and the weakening of those habitually curbed the development of every faculty , bodily , moral , or intellectual , according to the use made of it- ^ are all explicable on this same principle . An
thus they can show that throughout all organic nature there m at wori \ modifying influence of the kind they assign as the cause of these speci f differences—an influence which , though slow in its action , does , in » n ^» if the circumstances demand it , produce marked changes—an " * flu ° which , to all appearance , would produce in the millions of years , and un the great varieties of condition which geological records imply , any amo
of change . . xjon 8 Which , then , is the most rational hypothesis ; that of special cr . . which has neither a ' fact to support it nor is even definitely conce jy / or that of modification , which is * not only definitely conceivable , bu countenanced by the habitudes of every existing organism ? j That by / my series of changes a zoophyte should ever becom e a mftro ^ seems to those who are not familiar with zoology , and who . have n 0 ¦ . how clear becomes the relationship between the simplest and the mos u 0 plex forms , when all intermediate forms are examined , a very grp . ^ notion . Habitually looking at things ratber in their statical than in ^ ^ dynamical aspect , they never realize the fact that , bv small increm ^^ modification , any amount of modification may in time be generated . ^ surprise which they feel on finding one whom they last saw as a boy , e ^^ into a man , becomes incredulity when the degree of change is g ^ ^ Nevertheless , abundant instances are at band of the mode in wl . t jl 0 may pass to tho most diverse forms by insensible gradation * . -Argu
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), March 20, 1852, page 20, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_20031852/page/20/
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