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(4.) THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES by means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of the Favored Races in the Struggle for life. By Charles Darwin, M. A. 12mo. 432 pp. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Cincinnati: Rickey, Mallory & Co. –

Mr. Darwin has dressed up anew and in a somewhat attractive style the old "development theory." Few have introduced it so cautiously or advocated it so plausibly. He contends that there is no fixedness of species. A variety in botany or zoology he contemplates as "species in the process of formation," or "incipient species." He assumes "that there is a real variability in organisms, acting through the medium of the reproductive system, and that when the progeny so varied finds itself better adapted for the surrounding conditions than its predecessors, it gains an ascendency in the competition of the multitude of creatures for existence, establishes itself, and exterminates those which it has vanquished."

Thus a new species is developed and perpetuated. We have space here only to indicate the theory of the author. The examination of the theory and of the facts on which it purports to rest, and also of its consequences, we must leave to some more fitting occasion.