NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.
This volume contains a selection made from numerous essays published by Dr. Gustav Jaeger, who is well known to the English-speaking world through his hygienic discoveries and researches. To many it will come as a surprise that the familiar name of the author is also attached to many original contributions on the subject of organic evolution, and that his work was not only approved, but commended, by Darwin himself. The contents of the present volume are divided into Part I.—Zoological; Part II.—Anthropological; Part III.—Varia. In each section zoologists will find much to interest them, though probably our readers will be more attracted by the first part.
Dr. Jaeger is an original thinker; his views are enunciated with much force and accentuated by brevity, whilst quotations and foot-notes are phenomenally absent. He seizes his problem, wrestles with it, and, it must be said, usually declares that he has conquered it. Essays V. and VI., "On the Origin of Species" and "Sexual Selection," though devoted to now somewhat hackneyed subjects, are brimful of original suggestions and fresh points for consideration; in fact, it is quite a relief to find a writer treating these topics by the Darwinian method and yet from his own point of view. As regard sexual selection Dr. Jaeger is one of the small coterie who are gradually acknowledging the strength of this hypothesis—in fact, to use his own words, he is "inclined to attribute considerably more importance to sexual selection than Darwin does." Another most interesting zoological essay is "On the Physiological Importance of Savorous and Odorous Matters (matters which can be tasted and smelled)." The author's "starting-point is that every animal species has its specific odour." He also claims the same diversity in taste, not only as regards the birds, but that the eggs of every
