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Erasmus Darwin. From the German of Ernst Krause, with a Preliminary Notice by Charles Darwin. (New York: D. Appleton; Portland: Bailey & Noyes.) This memoir which appeared in the Kosmos, a German scientific journal, will be interesting to English readers as affording a picture of a man celebrated in his day as a scientific thinker and as the author of some poems, antiquated enough to modern taste. He was a successful physician and was original and uncompromising in his theories upon all topics. Some boyish letters, written by Erasmus Darwin while at school, are very amusing and are quite in character. It is Dr. Darwin from whom Mr. Charles Darwin inherited his theories: the researches of the grandfather were as earnest if not so while in extent as those of the grandson. Upon the whole, the memoir presents a likeness of Dr. Darwin decidedly more curious than attractive, and it is not unlikely that the merit of the younger Darwin's theories will seem very much diminished to the minds of many readers after acquaintance with the elder man's verses and convictions.