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HERE we have a batch of new books, the cutting of whose leaves is a veritable luxury. After having enjoyed them ourselves, we cannot do better than make them known to our readers.

Any work from the pen of Charles Darwin requires no recommendation whatever of ours. Whether we believe in his doctrine of Natural Selection or not, we cannot do otherwise than admit the vast influence his writings have exercised on philosophical Natural History. He seems to us to have done for this department of human knowledge what Newton did for astronomy. A new impetus has been given to every department of natural science since the appearance of his "Origin of Species." As a philosophical expounder of difficult phenomena we know not where to look for his equal. How careful an observer he is, and how diligent a collector of facts, his works on the Cirripedia, on the Fructification of Flowering Plants, especially orchids, and that on Animals and Plants under Domestication, all prove. If his "Descent of Man" seemed to some a departure from his habit of strictly adhering to facts, and appeared hazily hypothetical, we feel sure that this on the "Emotions" will more than atone for it. Every muscle in the human face has its meaning here plainly traced. The physiological expressions of men and animals are compared or contrasted, and it is not too much to say that physiognomy- before only known in the works of Bell and the empirical theory of Lavater -has obtained by the present work a scientific basis. Those of our readers who know the charm of Darwin's former works, how he leads his readers on to his conclusions in the clearest and

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most attractive of English, will experience more than their usual treat when they sit down to this book. Never was more truly realized the saying about men labouring and others entering into the fruit of their labours! The illustrations are excellent, and recourse has been had to photographs in rendering the more telling of physiognomical expressions. Even the most antagonistic of anti-Darwinians will not hesitate to admit how much he has learned from a careful study of the work before us.