VOL. III.] Recent Literature. 177 



not yet been developed. Then any individual ant which varied in 

 its nature towards determination in facing an enemy would be a 

 great benefit to the tribe, no doubt, but would it stand a better 

 chance to survive and leave offspring who would perpetuate this 

 tendency? On the contrary, it would be far more apt to be killed 

 early in its career, for Mr. Romanes does not need to be reminded 

 of the old proverb: 



" He who fights and runs away 

 May live to fight another day." 



If every individual who possessed this tendency towards self- 

 sacrifice were to be killed off" because, as an individual, it was less 

 fit to survive, how could the species ever acquire this instinct ? 

 After any altruistic variation was well established it is easy to see 

 how natural selection might favor the group of individuals possess- 

 ing it, whether it be a mere isolated assemblage or an entire species, 

 in their combined conflicts with other groups or species which did 

 not work in harmony; but the difficulty is to understand how it 

 could become established. The individuals would necessarily con- 

 tend among themselves for superioi-ity, and this contest would be 

 a more immediate and vital one than the rivalry between allied 

 species, or even different sections of the same species. 



The American edition of this work is published in a very neat 

 and attractive form. C.A.K. 



The Contemporary EvoliUion of Man. By Henry Fairfield 

 OsBORN.'i' In this, the first of the Cartwright Lectures for 1892, the 

 author presents a general survey of the anatomical changes at 

 present taking place in man, with the intention of investigating their 

 bearing upon the question of the inheritance of acquired characters. 

 Dr. Osborn believes that all the organs of the human body are in a 

 state of change at the present time, although some are moving 

 much more rapidly than others, either progressively or retrogres- 

 sively. He proposes the term metatrophism for the " compensating 

 readjustment, whereby the sum of nutrition to any region remains 

 the same during redistribution to its parts." He considers that 

 man is changing in structure as rapidly at the present time as the 

 horse did in evolving from its five-toed ancestor. Variations in the 

 skeleton, teeth and muscles are discussed in some detail. Under 



The Am. Nat. xxvi, 455-481, 



