526 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



The best of the book lies, to our mind, in the chapters on evolution — the best 

 and the worst, for the rhetorical blemishes to which we have already drawn 

 attention are most crowded in the section on the origin of man ; while the chapter 

 on serial evolution is an excellent statement of the weak points in the evolutionary 

 hypothesis which are too apt to be forgotten. " Granted infinite germinal varia- 

 tions, we have yet to find machinery sufficient to select the right ones, and such 

 machinery we have not found. The selective agencies that have been suggested 

 might prune an oak certainly, but would never shape a single leaf of it." The 

 problem is still in some ways just as Empedocles left it. We still want to know 

 whether things are or are not moved by a certain principle contained within 

 themselves to arrive at certain ends. Ray Lankester admits that " we have no 

 reason to suppose that the offspring of the beetle could in any number of 

 generations present variations on which selection could operate so as eventually 

 to produce a mammalian vertebrate." "Good!" says our author, "but why 

 begin at beetles ? Why not go a step further back and say that we have no 

 reason to suppose that the offspring of the aiiuvba could in the course of any 

 number of generations present variations on which selection could operates o as 

 eventually to produce a mammalian vertebrate ? " " Here is an amoeba ! Here is 

 a man ! Can any sane thinker affirm that one amoeba has been stationary for 

 millions of years, while the other has become fish, monkey, man ? " No ! the 

 hypothesis of evolution is amply justified because it correlates so many facts and 

 has made possible so many advances, but the mechanism of the unfolding of 

 types of dead and living matter is, perhaps must be for the most part, a mystery 

 unless, as Larmor suggests, we find the solution in the structure of the atom. 



W. B. Hardy. 



Diseases of the Skin, including Radiotherapy and Radiumtherapy. 



By Ernest Gaucher, translated and edited by C. F. Marshall. 

 [Pp. xii + 460.] (London: John Murray, 1910. Price 15j-.net.) 



Dr. Marshall has already done good service to his English-reading colleagues 

 by bringing to their notice the opinions of the French school of medicine, 

 especially on the subjects of cutaneous and of syphilitic diseases. He has added 

 notably to these services by the preparation of the volume under consideration. 



This book consists mainly of a translation of the volume on diseases of the 

 skin in the well-known Nouvcau Traitc de Medecme (Brouardel, Gilbert and 

 Thoinot) written mainly by Prof. Gaucher, with additions from other works of the 

 same author. Chapters have been added on special subjects {e.g. radium therapy and 

 X-ray treatment) by such French authorities as Wickham, Degrais, Domenici and 

 Gastou. The work of Gaucher as Professor of Cutaneous and Syphilitic Diseases 

 in the Faculty of Medicine in Paris is probably not so widely known in this country 

 as that of certain of his colleagues in this branch of medicine, but to those who 

 have had the opportunity of seeing Dr. Gaucher at the Hopital St. Louis and of 

 listening to his teaching, the impression conveyed is that Gaucher is first of all 

 a well-trained and sagacious physician. He has constantly in mind the close 

 relationship of the subjects on which he gives special instruction with the general 

 discipline of medical study. We find, as is to be expected, that the opinions 

 expressed in this volume are well balanced, and have always in view the general 

 condition of the patient as well as the special disease. The pronounced opinions 

 held by Gaucher as to the close connection between internal diseases and dis- 



