May, 1932 



EVOLUTION 



Page thirteen 



BOOKS 



UP FROM THE APE. By Ernest A. 

 Hooton. New York, The Macmillan Com- 

 pany, ^5. 626 pages. 

 After having passed the greater part of 

 his career as an anthropologist in turning 

 out technical papers of interest only to 

 specialists. Professor Hooton of Harvard de- 

 cided it would be "more than amusing to 

 write something which could be read." That 

 the subject-matter of the work thus offered 

 to the lay public can be made interesting 

 was evidenced by his experience as a lec- 

 turer to classes most of whom had had no 

 previous instruction in the subject — though 

 he admits that some of these students "en- 

 dured the lectures in obvious boredom," a 

 fate which will not befall his readers. 



Although "Up from the Ape" is free 

 from technical jargon and arrays of figures, 

 and "does not presuppose on the part of the 

 reader any knowledge of geology, biology, 

 anatomy, or anthropology," it is a serious 

 scientific work, even if not "clothed in sack- 

 cloth and ashes" and not expounded "in 

 accents of lugubrious pomposity," the author 

 by no means deporting himself "as if he 

 were in church." Professor Hooton calls a 

 spade a spade; and if his subject matter 

 requires a drawing, setting forth what are 

 nowadays euphemistically called "the facts 

 of life," the drawing is there — 58 of them 

 in all and 28 full-page plates. In the pro- 

 duction of these drawings, Mr. Elmer Rising 

 deserves high praise; and the photographs of 

 primates, most of them due to the skill of 

 Mr. Newton H. Hartman of the Philadel- 

 phia Zoological Garden, rise quite to the 

 realm of "art photography." 



In view of the fact that one of America's 

 greatest mathematical philosophers has re- 

 cently declared that Man "is not an animal," 

 many readers will understand why Profes- 

 sor Hooton 's Part I is devoted to an easy- 

 reading discussion of how animal relation- 

 ships are recognized by the scientist, why 

 Man is a mammal, and why he is a Primate, 

 concluded by an interesting explanation of 

 "How Blood Tells." The prejudices and pre- 

 conceptions of the average man having there- 

 by been disposed of as utterly unsound, 

 merely by a statement of irrefutable facts, 

 the author devotes his second secrion to the 

 tracing of evolutionary steps — "The Primate 

 Life Cycle" — the origin of the backbone, 

 teeth, limbs, lungs, ears and hair; the arbor- 

 eal pre-primate stage; erect posture; and so 

 on, in brief and rapid but comprehensive 

 survey. The third section deals with the 

 Primate's individual life cycle — pre-natal de- 

 velopment, childhood, adolescence, "Getting 

 Married," "Having a Baby" "Bringing up 

 a Family," etc. 



Having defined and described Man as a 

 Primate and as a civilized (or nearly civil- 

 ized) human being Dr. Hooton devotes the 

 rest of the volume to our fossil ancestors, 

 and to contemporary races (what they are. 

 how they developed, and their evolutionary 

 meaning) . Very interesting are his specu- 

 lations upon racial origins, race-mixture, and 



the cultural achievements and mental capa- 

 cities of the various races of mankind. 



Finally, the question is raised and an- 

 swered, "Why Has Man Evolved?" This 

 is, of course, equivalent to asking: Why 

 has anything, plant or animal evolved? Pro- 

 fessor Hooton offers no dogmatic answer to 

 this question of questions. He shows, how- 

 ever, that evolution in general and human evo- 

 lution in particular must have come about in 

 one of four specified ways, none of which is 

 beyond intelligent debate: no one of the 

 four theories that can be advanced on the 

 basis of present-day lack of full knowledge 

 of all factor.'", inolved is fully satisfactory. 



Professor Hooton concludes that the pur- 

 suit of natural causes leads either to the 

 deification of Nature, or to the recognition 

 of the supernatural, or to "a simple ad- 

 mission of ignorance, bewilderment, and 

 awe." Admission of our present ignorance 

 as to the causes of evolution does not, how- 

 ever, imply any suggestion that new hght on 

 the complex problems involved may not be 

 the reward of persistent diligence in the 

 search for truth — for real and indubitable 

 answers to man's supreme question. Mean- 

 while, we need always to bear it in mind 

 that (to quote the concluding sentence of 

 this truly useful book) : "Theories of origin 

 and causation are often transient and evan- 

 escent; life itself can never fail to interest 

 and evoke the inquiry of human minds." 



The bibliography comprehends the more 

 important follow-up works that the layman 

 would find of most assistance to further 

 study. The index is unusually excellent. 

 Maynard Shipley. 



THE KEY TO EVOLUTION. By May- 

 nard Shipley. Haldeman-Julius Publica- 

 rions. Girard Kans, $2. 

 What impresses me most after reading 

 Shipley's KEY TO EVOLUTION is not 

 something specifically said, but the way in 

 which all the many-sided research into 

 astronomy geology and biology lead inevit- 

 ably to the evolutionist conclusion. Nothing 

 but reading such an account as this, which 

 draws facts and quotes results from so many 

 sources that one marvels how one man can 

 read and acquaint himself with them all, 

 only such a reading can possibly give any 

 notion of the many men who are investi- 

 gating, what a multitude of fields they probe 

 into, and how every fact without exception, 

 adds to the evidence for and helps to clarify 

 the story of evolution. Nowhere else that 

 we know have the whole results of modem 

 research been brought together as they have 

 here. Yet the entire story has been kept 

 sufficiently popular, despite the fact that 

 perhaps half of the book consists of quota- 

 tions from the specialists. Between good 

 selection of quotations and just enough ex- 

 planatory text by the author, the account 

 remains one for the layman. 



Though published in "four double vol- 

 umes" and in paper covers it really is just 

 a fair sized book, the so-called volumes be- 

 ing eight sections on How Life Began; How 

 Plants Arose; The Origin of Animals; The 

 Origin of Backboned Animals; From Am- 



phibian to Man; Man, Cousin to the Apes; 

 Embryology and Evolution; and. Causes of 

 Evolution, a very sufficient summary of the 

 contents. One would have to think long 

 and hard to find any phase of the entire 

 subject that has not been treated, briefly 

 perhaps, yet quite sufficiently for so small 

 a compass. In fact one wonders how he 

 ever managed to get so much matter into 

 less than three hundred pages and still keep 

 it clear for the non-specialist. 



Allan Broms. 



Book Chat 



By CARROLL LANE FENTON 



A LL I know," Will Rogers used to write, 

 "is just what I read in the papers." The 

 statement is one which no scientist would 

 make — could make — for if his knowledge 

 were limited to what appears in the news- 

 papers, he'd be a hopelessly ignorant person. 

 But if Rogers only had said "books," few 

 scientists could have taken exception. 



My own life, outside the laboratory, seems 

 to be an endless round of reading. I read 

 for the facts I must use in writing — and 

 then, when I do laboriously arrive at some 

 conclusion or theory that seems to be new. 

 I'm very apt to come upon a book in which 

 someone already has published it. 



It's somewhat comforting, then, to recall 

 that even great scientists have found them- 

 selves in the same situation, and have made 

 their contributions by developing ideas put 

 forth by others. One of the most original 

 naturalists in America was Edward Drinker 

 Cope— yet when we read COPE: MASTER 

 NATURALIST, by Henry Fairfield Osborn 

 (Princeton University Press, ?5.00), we find 

 that the essential evolutionary ideas of this 

 unquestioned genius were published by a 

 Frenchman forty years before Cope's birth. 



Of course, that does not spoil the story of 

 Cope's life, which Professor Osborn and his 

 aides have reconstructed from an almost un- 

 believable number of letters. It is a life 

 which contradicts all of our traditional 

 opinions of a scientist's existence. Cope was 

 ever in a hurry, and ever in trouble. He 

 warred with the powers in paleontology; he 

 published a magazine that was always near 

 bankruptcy; he spent his own fortune col- 

 lecting fossils, and eventually sold them for 

 what he could get. At a time when evolu- 

 tion was none too respected by scientists, he 

 gave public lectures in the manner of Hux 

 ley. Old and worn, he died at the age of 

 fifty-seven, one of the heroic figures in 

 American science. His biography would be 

 a "book of the year" in a country which 

 cared for intellectual heroes. 



To read this book with full profit, one 

 should know something of geologic history. 

 For several years I have tried to find a book 

 which surveys the processes and the past of 

 the earth in language that one might read 

 for pleasure. My search has not been very 

 successful, though Fve found two volumes 

 which seem better than others. 



One is THE EARTH IN THE PAST, 

 by B. Webster Smith (Frederick Wame. 



