REVIEW. 765 



devote a " chapter to lifting the hem of the garment of sanctity that euvclopefi 

 each of these images and so expose to view the chiy that lies concealed." 



These unfounded charges — the italics are ours — are followed by over a luui- 

 died pages of criticisms of the theories, of mimicry, cryptic, warning and other 

 colorations which have been pushed by a few to such absurd lengths and have 

 already been sufficiently dealt with by Kellog, Beddard and others. 



The Wallace School have the theory thrust on them " that every infinite- 

 simal variation has a survival value," Their account of Mendel's phenomena 

 is strangely incomplete, of his " law," inaccurate. No mention is made of 

 the proportion of recessive and dominant olTspring arising from dominants 

 in the third filial generation. Mendel's explanation or " Law " is said to be 

 " The gamete or sex-cell of each individual crossed breaks up into its 

 component parts T and D." A biological absurdity, most certainly never 

 fathered by Mendel ! 



Mendel's very simple, almost obvious, explanation of the facts he observed 

 was that the cross-bred offspring produced two kinds of gametes — one with 

 the dominant, one with the recessive character. If these be produced in equal 

 numbers and fertilisation be fortuitous we may expect 2;") per cent. R to mate 

 with R. gametes, 2') per cent. D to mate with D gametes, 50 per cent. D with 

 R. But as the fertilised egg cell which has eithe?- of the gametes D, will 

 produce the dominant character, the result will be that this oO per cent, will 

 exhibit the D character though really DR. Hence only the 25 per cent. 

 pure R will show the recessive character, while 75 per cent, will show the 

 D character. Of these 75 per cent. 25 per cent, will be pure D and in future 

 generations all their offspring will show the D character, whereas the 50 per 

 cent, DR. will as before produce 25 per cent, pure R, 25 per cent, pure D. 50 

 per cent. DR. showing the D character. This is precisely what occurs in the 

 Mendelian phenomena. Another error of considerable importance is the 

 statement regarding Mendel. " The results of his experiments were published 

 in the Proceedings of the Natural History of Brunn in 1854.'" This would 

 give Mendel's publication a priority of five years over Darwin's " Origin of 

 Species." The fact is Mendel read his papers before the Society in 18G5. 

 They were published in 18Gfi. Unimportant slips are calling the prickly pear 

 Euphorbia^ p. 274 ; the yellow and black banded krait Buwjarus cmruleut, 

 p. 217. Can the authors give more adequate authority than on dil for their 

 statement concerning the Ovis amnion ram on page 120 ? 



The authors inform us '• Hlos^f English men of science believe that natural 

 selection offers the key to every Zoological problem," They '• are living in a 

 fool's paradise." The fault in this deduction is that the premises are doubtful. 

 " Another reason why Great Britain is losing her scientific supremacy is that 

 too little attention is paid to the study of live animals. Morphology, or the 

 science of dead animals, receives more than its due share of attention." 

 '• ll'e vish merely to insist upon the fact that the leaders of hioloyicol science must 

 of necessity he those- naturalists ivho ijo lo the tropics and other parts of the 



