1898] 271 



SOME :n^ew books 



Pkotoplasm 



The Living Substance as Such : and as Organism. By Gwendolen Foulke Andrews 

 (Mrs Ethan Allen Andrews). Supplement to the Journal of Morphology, Vol. xii., 

 Kg. 2. Boston : Giun & Co., 1897. 



This attractive and well printed volume departs from a recognised 

 tradition in an unusual fashion. It contains an intolerable deal of 

 sack but a very excellent pennyworth of bread. Let us be rid of the 

 sack first. The language of the volume is singularly repellent : it is 

 not British English, nor American English nor Germanised English, 

 nor in fact any of the recognised varieties of English adopted by 

 scientific writers : it is a curiously inflated and lyrical jargon occa- 

 sionally rising into a pretty but misplaced rhetorical eloquence, but 

 frequently taking revolutionary views of grammatical construction. 

 The treatment resembles the style : it is diffuse and pompous ; there 

 is no coherent argument, and a mania for irrelevance and repetition. 

 The good lady insists upon magnifying the application of her observa- 

 tions : from her investigation of the minute structure of protoplasm 

 and of the filose pseudopodia of Gromia she passes gaily to theoretical 

 conclusions concerning habit and heredity and natural selection. To 

 choose a sample of the book, the old method of divination has been 

 followed exactly ; a hat-pin was stuck between the leaves and its point 

 indicated the following passage : — " Fosterhood. (146) The word para- 

 sitic having by a certain frequent use associations which in some con- 

 nections are jarring, it should suffer as idea a transformation of verbal 

 form gracious enough to follow that of the fact into the beautiful 

 phenomena of parenthood. Dependent perpetuation areas may be 

 called fosterling areas ; the supporting substance foster substance, 

 area, organ, or organism. Of all areas differentiated to live at 

 expense of other parts of an organism, there are none so grossly 

 egotistic, none which so take all and keep all for themselves as 

 the perpetuation or fosterling areas. From their inception, for 

 variable periods, often covering the whole term of their existence, 

 they receive largely from the foster-substance in many of its 

 phases." For the life of him, the present reviewer, who has en- 

 joyed the advantage, likely (he fears) to be unusual, of reading this 

 passage, not only as isolated but as part of the whole volume, 

 cannot see that this means more than that if a protoplastic area is 

 fed from another protoplastic area it receives its food from that 

 other area. The same kind of criticism may be applied to very 

 large portions of the volume : there may, of course, be deeper 

 meanings and a wealth of veiled conclusions, but the bewildering 

 infelicity of the style has obscured them from at least one willing 

 mind. 



None the less it is certain that Mrs Andrews had valuable and 



