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 NEW BOOKS, WITH SHORT NOTICES. 



The Beginnings of Life. ByH. Charlton Bastian, M.A.,M.D.,F.K.S. 

 In two vols. Macmillan and Co. London, 1872. — In these days of 

 bulky volumes every addition to our scientific literature should be 

 well weighed and considered, for every repetition of dubious assertions, 

 every reprint of unproven statements is a cruelty inflicted upon the 

 already overtaxed powers of the student of science. We greatly fear 

 Dr. Bastian has much to answer for in presenting the world with two 

 bulky volumes containing over a thousand pages of letterpress. There 

 is some original research, much of it bearing the strongest evidence 

 of carelessness and too easy credence, mixed with a vast number of 

 pure hypotheses and restatements of the observations of others, which 

 have been considered incredible by the majority of careful observers. 

 The greater part of the work consists, however, of an argument in 

 favour of certain phenomena not hitherto admitted to a place in 

 science, which is conspicuously loose, and in places gives evidence of a 

 negligence of known facts scarcely less remarkable than the tenor of 

 the argument itself. 



As an instance of this, the reader is referred to the 221st and 

 following pages of the first volume, in which the author quotes an 

 experiment made by M. Onimus, in which small portions of serum 

 containing no white blood corpuscles were enclosed in little bags of 

 gold-beater's skin, and placed under the skin of a living rabbit. The 

 serum in these, after remaining twelve hours under the rabbit's skin, 

 was found to be loaded with white blood cells, or leucocytes. After 

 minutely describing M. Onimus' experiment, Dr. Bastian says, " Now, 

 by these experiments, Onimus seems to have shown quite conclusively 

 that the corpuscles met with in his experimental fluids had not been 

 derived from the fission of any visible pre-existing cells. It seems 

 almost equally certain that they did not even originate from particles 

 which were recognizable by the microscopic powers employed, since 

 the fluids were at first, to all appearance, perfectly homogeneous. 

 Either, therefore, the minute particles, which were seen at a later 

 stage, must have originated owing to some primitive formative process 

 taking place in a really homogeneous organic solution, or else the 

 fluid, seemingly homogeneous, in reality contained the most minute 

 particles (microscopically invisible), derived in some unknown way 

 from the previously existing protoplasmic elements of the tissues. 

 We, however, incline to the former view ; and we believe it to be in the 

 highest degree probable that the fully-developed leucocytes or plas- 

 tides which were seen in the later examinations, had arisen out of the 

 growth and development of the mere organic specks met with in the 

 earlier stages of the inquiry." — Vol. i. p. 224. After four pages in a 

 similar strain, the author says, " Such a mode of origination of living 

 units, together with their subsequent evolution, affords, perhaps, the 

 best illustration that can be given of the birth of cells de novo in Blas- 

 temata. ,, The italics are our own. 



