Boston Evening Transcript, 31 May 1905, Wed Page 20
The Evolution of Man. A Popular Scientific Study. By Ernst Haeckel. Two volumes. New York: G P. Putnam's Sons.
PROFESSOR Haeckel's "Anthropogenie," which now appears in translation from the fifth German edition, has probably contributed more than any other of the author's works to the spread of his reputation among the general reading public of English-speaking countries. The book first appeared in 1874 in the midst of the great controversy over Darwinism and evolution, and being frankly polemical in method, probably did as much to influence popular opinion on these subjects as anything ever printed. It went through three editions in as many years and has remained ever since the best known statement of the views of a some what radical school of thought.
On the whole. however. the second volume. which takes up our human family tree, is likely to be most interesting to the average reader. This portion of the work is essentially a treatise on comparative anatomy so far as this is concerned with the question of man's ancestry. Somewhat less technical than the first volume, it touches on a wider range of common interests. and for these and other reasons is somewhat easier reading. The volume opens with an elaborate account of those two strange beings, Amphioxus and the Ascidia. which form the connecting link be-tween the animals with backbones and those without: and after a chapter on the geological history of animal life, passes on to the consideration of the modern relatives of our own line of ancestors since the beginning of things, and traces out in much detail the parallelism between the series of animal forms and the corresponding stages passed through by the embryos of the higher animals and man. Here the reader gets the reward of his toil over the first volume, since without it many of the author's most illuminating comparisons lose much of their point. Professor Haeckel recognises thirty
distinct stages in the past history of the human race, each well represented by some living animal: and of these. eleven are invertebrate and nineteen vertebrate. From this list are conspicuously absent most of the creatures which the popular lecturer or writer on evolution is wont to cite as his ancestors. Especially has Professor Haeckel no patience with the popular idea that any creature even remotely resembling the jointed worms ever had any place in our line of decent. His general scheme is to make an animal of the type of the common fresh-water hydra the starting point from which have arisen all the higher animals from the sponges up. From this he carries our own line up to the vertebrates by way of the unjointed marine worms. the paradoxical Balanoglossus. the larval ascidian, Amphioxus, and the lampreys, to the true fishes of the shark and ray type. Thus he leaves on one side practically all the commonly known animals of woods and seaside and makes our ancestral tree less like a pine than like a juniper bush. The same arrangement appears among our nineteen vertebrate ancestors. The common bony fishes and the birds hive no part nor lot with us. We came up by way of the sturgeons and lung fishes, the tailed amphibians. and the primitive reptiles, to the egg-laying and pouched mammals, which in turn pass into the monkeys by way of the insectivera and lemurs. The entire series
therefore, includes almost no animal types which the man in the street ever sees.
The translator of a foreign work usually comes in for more kicks than half-pence; the reader forgetting, that in the case of a German scientific treatise, the marvel is, not that he does not do his work better, but that he does it at all. Mr. Joseph McCabe has at least done very much better than some other translators. of Haeckel. We note incidentally among minor blemishes an apparent uncertainty as to "shall" and "will." no doubt correlated with the translator's Scotch cognomen: the use of "sea urchin" as the popular equivalent of Echidna: and the confusing "articulation" for the segmentation of the embryo. The only really unsatisfactory portion of the translator's work. however, is the glossary. Here many of the definitions are at least misleading and not a few--caryokinesis. metabolism. plancton, for example—are flatly wrong. What profit is it to the way-faring man to be told that "sagittal" means "in the direction of an arrow (sagitta)." and nothing more! It is especially a pity that in a work otherwise so ;veil done, more pains should not have gone to this detail. No one who knows Professor Haeckel's other works need be told that in this also appears his usual zeal for slaying the slain...
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