206 THE MENDEL JOURNAL 



be for a little while east, the sun itself goes on to the westward, 

 with given pace to its unalterable goal. Again, Professor Thom- 

 son's allusion to Job's utterance, " Who can bring a clean thing 

 out of an unclean ? " in relation to the fact that out of a generation 

 of wheat plants susceptible to the " rust," some immune offspring 

 may be obtained, is apt to lead careless or emotional readers to 

 the contemplation of false beliefs and futile hopes. For Professor 

 Thomson asks the question, "If it is possible among plants to 

 get a pure thing out of an impure, it may be that for domestic 

 animals and for man himself the purification of a tainted stock is 

 not a chimera." It would have been more charitable to have 

 warned his readers that before the clean can be obtained from 

 the unclean, cleanness must first be put in. Professor Biften, 

 during his experiments with wheat, did not waft a magician's 

 wand over an unclean " rusted " generation, and lo and behold, 

 there came forth the clean ! Not in this way are such things 

 accomplished. The immune — the symbolically cleanly — was 

 first put in to the " rusted " generation, by the act of fertilisation. 

 Of course, Professor Thomson does not say that such wand- waving 

 feats are possible. But our experience of students and of general 

 readers — especially of social reformers seeking a justification for 

 their codes — leads us to believe it possible the passage may 

 be thus translated. All Professor Thomson desires to state 

 is that, given a stock which has become tainted, it may be possible 

 to breed out its taint. But this of course supposes that in addi- 

 tion to the taint there is some goodness. If the stock is all taint, 

 and we breed it away, nothing of the stock will be left. And, in 

 social affairs, we may be apt at the end, after we have paid for 

 the breeding away, to ask what we have obtained for our money ! 



We strongly recommend this work to all who are interested 

 in the momentous and interesting biological questions with 

 which it deals. Whether we are students, doctors, philanthro- 

 pists, Eugenists, social reformers, Salvationists, or politicians desir- 

 ous of the country's welfare, we should read it, mark it, and in- 

 wardly digest it, from cover to cover. It is not too much to say 

 that he who does that will have gained a knowledge of biological 

 and medical problems and facts wider in their range than it is 

 possible to obtain in any other single book. 



Many of the older conceptions, such as telegony and the 

 transmission of acquired characters, and the phenomena of rever- 

 sion, are considered and discussed. There is a chapter on the 

 history of " Theories of Inheritance," another on " Heredity and 

 Disease," one on " Common Modes of Inheritance," and a fourth 

 on the " Physical Basis of Inheritance." The more modern 

 aspect of the subject is described in a chapter on " Statistical 



