[page] 2

ERASMUS DARWIN. By Ernst Krause. Translated from the German by W. S. Dallas. With a preliminary notice by Charles Darwin. With portrait and wood cuts. pp. 216 Price $1.25.

Erasmus Darwin, born in 1731, and dying in 1802 was the grandfather of Charles Darwin, the great English naturalist, and was in his day remarkable as a physician and botanist, and was the author of several scientific and practical works. His poetry, which, at the time, was much esteemed, is now forgotten. In politics and social science, he was radical and advocated measures far in advance of his contemporaries, such as the abolition of intra-mural interments, a rational treatment of the insane, radical reform in female education, and the abolition of slavery at a time when all the world, including the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, regarded it as a divine institution. His scientific theories were very much in the same line as those promulgated by his grandson, and known all over the world, as Darwinism.