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NOTICES OF BOOKS. 



On Growth and Form. By D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson. 

 xvi -I- 793 pages, with 408 illustrations in the text. 

 9 X 6 inches. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1917.) 

 Price 2l5. net. 



Prof. D'Arcy Thompson has laid us all under a debt of gratitude 

 in giving us this very fascinating book. Gathering a multitude 

 of illustrative facts from many and varied sources, and adding 

 many observations of his own, he has succeeded in showing us 

 what promise there lies in the endeavour to apply the laws of 

 physics and mathematical methods to the forms occurring in the 

 organic world. The style in which it is written is both dignified 

 and clear, and possesses a literary grace and charm which makes 

 reading a pleasure though dealing with such an abstruse subject 

 as the foundations of biophysics. " My sole purpose has been." 

 the author says, " to correlate with mathematical statement and 

 physical law certain of the simpler outward phenomena of organic 

 growth and structure or form : while all the .while regarding 

 ex hypothesis for the purposes of this correlation, the fabric of the 

 organism as a material and mechanical configuration." 



It was Galileo who nearly 300 years ago enunciated what is 

 now known as the " principle of similitude," and the author 

 treats this as a preliminary to a fine discussion on the Rate of 

 Growth : dealing with growth in its relation to magnitude and 

 to that relativitv of maonitudes which constitutes form. " Rate 

 of growth is subject to definite laws, and the velocities in different 

 directions tend to maintain a ratio which is more or less constant 

 for each specific organism ; and to this regularity is due the fact 

 that the form of the organism is in general regular and constant." 



To the microscopist, however, the chief interest will be found to 

 lie in the study of the conformation, within and without, of the 

 individual cell ; in the study of cell-aggregates and the forms of 

 tissues. In these chapters (IV-YIII) the author shows how 



