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THE POWER OF MOVEMENT IN PLANTS. By Charles Darwin, assisted by Francis Darwin. With Illustrations. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1881. 8vo., pp. 592.

The charm of the Darwins has lasted through three generations, and now the fourth in descent from Dr. Erasmus Darwin is working with the greatest representative of the name in his long and important series of observations and in publishing the results. Even to the least competent judge of botanical science, and of the correlations between the physiology of plants and animals, this volume, like everything that comes from the Darwins, has a value quite irrespective of its exact work in science. A superficial reader can appreciate the nicety of observation, the ingenious devices for recording the long-continued series of measurements, and the exhaustive study of all literature that throws light on the subject. Even in the use of the material gathered by the enthusiastic German naturalists, who are more Darwinian than the Darwins themselves, it is characteristic that the Darwins coolly record the fact that much of what is written by these ultra-admiring Germans is useless because it is unintelligible. This can never be said of anything recorded by the Darwins, either as matter of observation or of inference, while much of the most important work done by them has the added charm of being tentative, and in the form of questions submitted to the judgment of those likeliest to test the results thus published in severest hostility. It is gratifying to find that Meehan, one of our own Philadelphia observers, is cited and relied on as a thoroughly competent authority, and that Asa Gray is the representative of American botany and natural history, and the safe guide for pointing out the best sources of recent observation in the wide field covered by public and private observers in the many-sided records of phenomena useful in Darwin's last volume. The curious and mystical question of sleep in plants is discussed with great fullness of learning and nicety of observation, and in such a way as to take away all excuse for poetizing in science or for scientific poetry. This part of the volume might well

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be recast in such a shape as to give the gist of it freed from the somewhat trying scientific terminology that is used for the sake of the highest exactness; and even from the other pages of this learned work many statements might be drawn in such shape as to be a means of popular instruction. There can be no more characteristic proof of the pure love of science for its own sake on the part of the Darwins, than their devotion to the task in hand, their indifference to anything like popular applause, and their calm superiority to the enthusiasm of their professed admirers, when it is not based on careful observation. To any one who reads this last volume of the growing series of the Darwin works on their special subjects of study, it is plain that their investigations are entirely in the pursuit of scientific truth, and without any purpose of ascertaining how far results may be made to tally with conclusions absolutely defined in advance. It is very certain that a cursory reading of Darwin would effectually close the mouths of those who denounce this greatest of living naturalists, in absolute ignorance of his real achievements in the fields of science in which he has worked so sedulously, and would satisfy even the most orthodox that Darwin has no purpose other than the ascertainment of the ultimate truths of the phenomena which he undertakes to solve. He who does this can in no sense be sneered at or put down by mere denunciation; and the best way of reconciling science and theology is by making expounders in the one experts in the other of these two branches of learning, ─ for, far as they have been sundered apart and separated of late years, the divorce is caused by the doctors of divinity much more than by the students of science.