Nature's Method. (T. Fisher Unwin.)—This little pamphlet, for it is
so small that, though bound in cloth, we can hardly call it a book, deals with the Darwinian theory. The author denies some of the conclusions that Darwin arrived at and would qualify others, but in so small a space there is only room for such criticism to be destructive and not constructive. The chief difference seems to be that our anonymous author declares that Evolution progressed- by successive stages or steps, and not by an imperceptible merging of characters, and he refuses to assign to natural selection and the struggle for existence that importance as factors which Darwin allotted to them. But, indeed, a few pages hardly suffice for more than the marking out, as it were, of our author's objections, That Darwin, realising the importance of these factors, exaggerated them, there is no doubt. As a matter of fact we can none of us tell what factors, and how many, balanced or outbalancod each other in the process of Evolution.
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