WHAT IS PHYSICAL LIFE 



Professor Wilhelm Roux of the Uni- 

 versity of Jena is one of the foremost 

 original investigators in this field in 

 Europe. In his latest work of some two 

 thousand pages, entitled Mechanism and 

 Biology,, before advancing his own re- 

 markable views, he first labors to de- 

 molish the Darwinian theory as one 

 would clear the ground of tree stumps be- 

 fore building a house, which he does by 

 showing the extreme difficulty of account- 

 ing by simple natural selection for the in- 

 numerable adaptations, carried out into 

 the finest detail, which are met with in all 

 the organs of the vertebrate body. We 

 cannot go over the whole case which Roux 

 makes out, but will only quote this sen- 

 tence frorr a review of his book by Mr. 

 E. W. Me !3ride, a leading member of the 

 younger school of English naturalists: 

 " It must be admitted that Professor 

 Roux has brought together a most power- 



