The Descent of Man, and Selection in relation to Sex

The present volume of The Descent of Man, and Selection in relation to Sex looks more like a school cram-book than a treatise which makes a generation illustrious, and the desirableness of publishing a library edition of this and Mr. Darwin's other works is suggested.

Abstract

SINCE the first edition of this great work was reviewed in these pages (NATURE, vol. iii., pp. 442, 463), it has been repeatedly reprinted without any important change. But the new issue differs, not only in form, but also in many important additions, from the first. In spite of the added material, the whole work is now comprised in a single volume scarcely larger than one of the previous two. For this purpose the print has been much compressed, and the paper is thinner. The leaves have also been cut. So that although in some respects more convenient, the present form is less pleasing than the original one. We would suggest the desirableness of publishing a library edition of this and Mr. Darwin's other works, uniform with “Animals and Plants under Domestication,” so that the opera omnia of our great biologist may stand ranged in a well-ordered row, printed in legible type with ample margin on opaque paper, fit to be clad in the sober dignity of russia. The present volume looks more like a school cram-book than a treatise which makes a generation illustrious. A prospectus has just reached us from Stuttgart of a German translation of the works of Mr. Darwin, by Victor Carus, to be published in numbers, with photographic and woodcut illustrations, portrait, indices, &c., and to be completed in ten handsome volumes. It would surely not be creditable were there to be no corresponding edition in English. The Descent of Man, and Selection in relation to Sex. By Charles Darwin. Second Edition, revised and augmented. Pp. 688. (Murray: 1874.)