Scientific Serials

Abstract

THE greater part of the Revue des Cours Scientifiques for July 23, is occupied by the commencement of a very able paper read before the Anthropological Society of Paris by Prof. Broca, on the Transformation of Species. Commencing with the pre-Darwinian theories of transformation of Blainville and Lamarck, he then proceeds to give a résumé of the theory of Darwin, and the arguments in favour of or against the permanence of species, drawn from the observation of living species and from palæontology. Following this we have, à propos of the war, an article on field ambulances and hospitals, by Prof. Champouillon. In the number for July 30, we have the rectorial address of von Littrow to the University of Vienna, on the backward state of science among the ancients, and the conclusion of M. Broca's paper on the transformation of species, in which the subject is treated from a philosophical point of view, and the professor sums up strongly against the idea of permanence. The hypothesis of Natural Selection is then discussed, but a much less certain conclusion arrived at. The number for August 6 opens with a report of the discussion on the nomination of Mr. Darwin as corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences, to which we have referred in another column. This is followed by a singularly able and exhaustive review by M. Claparède, of Geneva, of Mr. A. R. Wallace's Essays on Natural Selection, in which he points out that while Mr. Wallace demands the intervention of a superior force to explain the foundation of the human races, and to guide man in the path of civilisation, he altogether denies the existence of such a force as assisting to produce the inferior races of animals and plants, which he attributes entirely to the operation of Natural Selection. In the same remarkably interesting number of the Revue, we have also Mr. Marey's extremely important paper on the Flight of Birds.