98 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



regarding animal structures which have appealed in particular 

 to zoologists, and have tossed zoological science to and fro 

 for many a year. The history of the rivalry between the 

 competing claims of a science which would view animal 

 structures as things in themselves, morphological units to be 

 studied separately, and one at a time, and one which would 

 regard structures as but the concrete embodiment of the 

 functional activities of animals is admirably given in Mr E. S. 

 Russell's recent volume on Form and Function} Here he 

 sketches, with insight, the constant variations of stress in 

 the science of animal structure, from form pure and simple, 

 to form as a resultant of life activity. The positions of the 

 leaders of both schools are restated ably and freshly, and 

 one is reminded in the reading, of the wave of reaction which 

 is setting in against the excesses to which description of 

 specimens has been carried ; as if many words made for 

 completeness or finality. Descriptions can scarcely be final 

 or satisfactory until structure is regarded as more than an 

 efflorescence in three dimensions, and pure description is 

 ameliorated by interpretation. 



In addition to these two predominant modes of regarding 

 animal adaptations the functional or synthetic, and the 

 formal or transcendental Mr Russell distinguishes a third, 

 the materialistic or disintegrative an attitude which regards 

 living things as no more than the mechanical result of the 

 interplay of the physical and chemical constituents of their 

 bodies. It is true that biologists have still much to learn 

 regarding the application of the recognised laws of nature to 

 the interpretation of adaptations, and no one doubts that 

 animal structures are subject to the physical and chemical 

 necessities which govern other mundane things ; but this 

 after all only explains part of the story of life. The 

 materialistic view is clearly not Mr Russell's. Like many 

 modern workers he favours the view that animals are, in part, 

 of their own making, and many a reader of his interesting 

 study of the swing of the pendulum of zoological investiga- 



1 Form and Function: A Contribution to the Study of Animal 

 Morphology, by E. S. Russell. London, John Murray, pp. viii. + 383. 

 Price 10s. 6d. net. 



