Vol. XVII 
F508 Recent Literature. 87 
Bumpus, on ‘The Elimination of the Unfit.’!— Professor Bumpus 
has availed himself of the opportunity to contribute to the establishment 
of the hypothesis of natural selection by the use of material furnished 
to his hands by the great storm of Feb. 1, 1898, at Providence, R. I., in 
the form of 136 House Sparrows which, as victims of the storm, were 
brought to the Anatomical Laboratory of Brown University. Of these 
72 revived and 64 perished. A careful study of these birds by means of 
detailed measurement, as of length, alar extent, the length of head, 
humerus, femur, tibio-tarsus, etc., revealed the fact that in the birds that 
died a larger proportion departed from the average or normal standard 
in one or more ways than was the case among those that survived. 
Hence Prof. Bumpus concludes: (1)....that the birds which perished, 
perished not through accident, but because they did not possess certain 
structural characters which would have enabled them to withstand the 
severity of the test imposed by nature; they were eliminated because 
they were unfit. (2) The process of relative elimination is most severe 
with extremely variable individuals, no matter in what direction the 
variations may occur. It is quite as dangerous to be conspicuously above 
a certain standard of organic excellence as it is to be conspicuously 
below the standard. It is the ¢yZe that nature favors. (3) Disregard of 
structural qualifications finally produces a throng of degenerates, whose 
destruction will follow the arrival of adversity.” The data on which the 
conclusions rest are presented in detail, mostly in the form of tabulated 
measurements. —J. A. A. 
Whitman on ‘Animal Behavior.’*—In his very suggestive paper on 
‘Animal Behavior’ Professor Whitman has made a most valuable contri- 
bution to the subject of Instinct and its relation to Intelligence. It is the 
outcome of elaborate and most careful study of the ‘ behavior of animals,’ 
both of low and of high organization, as the leeches of the genus Clep- 
size, of the large fresh water salamander of the genus Wecturus, and 
various species of Pigeons. The behavior of these different animals 
under varying conditions is detailed at length, and its meaning and bear- 
ing on the origin and relations of instinct and intelligence are most lucidly 
discussed, in connection with the leading hypotheses on the subject. 
Not long since it was a more or less generally accepted theory that 
instincts were simply inherited habits. Recently, as Prof. Whitman 
- notes, this theory has been abandoned as inadequate by some of its 
1The Elimination of the Unfit as illustrated by the Introduced Sparrow, 
Passer domesticus. A Fourth Contribution to the Study of Variation. By 
Hermon C. Bumpus, Biological Lectures delivered at the Marine Biological 
Laboratory of Wood's Holl. Session of 1897 and 1898 (1899) pp. 209-226. 
? Animal Behavior. By C.O. Whitman. Biological Lectures of the Marine 
Biological Laboratory, Wood’s Holl, Mass., 1898 (1899), pp. 285-338. 
