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"Erasmus Darwin." By Ernst Krause. Translated from the German by W. S. Dallas, with a preliminary notice by Charles Darwin. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

If Charles Darwin had not become famous as the author of "Origin of Species" and of "The Descent of Man," it is possible that this life of his grandfather would not have been written. Yet Dr. Erasmus Darwin was quite celebrated in his day. As a physician he ranked among the foremost, while a poet his "Botanic Garden" and a multitude of other poetical pieces, making in all an octavo edition in three volumes, though now rarely read and by most persons altogether forgotten, won the admiration of men of such diverse tastes as Cowper and Horace Walpole and the father of Miss Edgeworth. He dabbled in other pursuits too, invented a mill for grinding flints, a novel carriage and a speaking machine, and had ideas about knitting-looms for stockings, weighing and surveying machines, rotary pumps and canal locks, some of which have been brought into practical use by other inventors.