February i6, 191 i] 



NATURE 



505 



I ).ir\vin himself, though it was reserved for later inves- 

 lii^^ators to discover how powerfully it reinforced the 

 p distinctively Darwinian doctrine against Lamarckian 

 attack. 



Throughout Prof. Baldwin's work we find that his 

 vivid realisation of the dominant fact of adaptation 

 keeps him faithful to Darwinian standards. 



"It is well," he says, "to cast about for other 

 principles — to work out Vitalism, Mendelism, Muta- 

 tionism, &c. — in those sciences which do not have to 

 deal with the problem of adaptation, or of the accom- 

 modation of the organism through its external char- 

 acters. But wherever the question arises of the rela- 

 tion of organisms inter se, and to the environing 

 conditions of their life, the foregoing \i.e. variation, 

 accommodation, selection] are not only the fruitful 

 principles, they are the only principles we are able to 

 consider at all." 



F. A. D. 



OVR BOOK SHELF. 



The Manuring of Market-Garden Crops. By Dr. B. 

 Dyer and F. W. E. Shrivell. New edition. Pp. 

 144. (London : Vinton and Co., Ltd., igio.) 

 Price 15. 



^L\RKET-GARDE^• crops play a considerable part in the 

 agriculture of districts near to towns, especially on 

 light soils in not too high or exposed a situation. 

 Formerly the scheme of management was fairlv 

 straightforward : the grower sent in his vegetables in 

 carts to the early markets, sold them, and reloaded 

 his carts with dung from the town stables with which 

 to fertilise the next crop. But with the introduction 

 of the motor omnibus, the motor lorry and car, and 

 the electric tram, the supply of town dung has fallen 

 off, so that the grower has less available and has 

 also to pay more for it. Increasing competition 

 from abroad has forced down the price of his pro- 

 duce, and has placed him in the unpleasant position 

 of seeing his income fall while his expenses have in- 

 creased. In order to meet the position he has turned 

 his attention to artificial manures, and there is every 

 indication that they will cheapen the cost of produc- 

 tion. 



Although a large number of experiments have been 

 made to show the effect of artificial manures on farm 

 crops, few, if any, had been made with market- 

 garden crops until recently. Dr. Dyer and Mr. 

 Shrivell have for the past sixteen years been making 

 trials at Hadlow, the cost of which is borne by the 

 Permanent Nitrate Committee, and have summarised 

 their results in the little volume before us. Practically 

 all the crops in ordinary cultivation are grown here, 

 and as each is the subject of at least half a dozen 

 trials, the number of plots is very considerable. At 

 no other place in the country, so far as the writer is 

 aware, are so many trials of market-garden crops 

 attempted, and this furnishes the most extensive 

 demonstration we have of what artificial manures will 

 do in this particular direction. 



The plots are intended solely as demonstrations ; 

 they do not appear to be duplicated, and no deter- 

 mination seems to have been made of the magnitude 

 of the experimental error. Hence the results have no 

 precise quantitative sigrnificance, nor perhaps was it 

 meant they should. Their chief value is to show the 

 grower that he is not entirely dependent on town 

 dung, but can use a mixture of artificial manures 

 with smaller quantities of dung than hitherto, and 

 can get as good a crop at less cost. 



NO. 2155, VOL. 85] 



Guide to the Crustacea, Arachnida, Onychophora and 

 Myriopoda exhibited in the Department of Zoology, 

 British Museum (Natural History). Pp. 133 + 90 

 illustrations. (London : Printed by order of the 

 Trustees of the British Museum, 1910.) Price is. 

 This guide admirably fulfils its functions ; it is written 

 i.i a clear style, and indicates tersely the main points 

 of interest associated with the chief families and 

 genera. The principal characters of each subdivision 

 —class, order, tribe, family — are concisely stated, and 

 those of its members are singled out for mention 

 which most aptly illustrate points in morphology or 

 distribution, or show some striking habit. The sec- 

 tion on the Crustacea opens with a short account of 

 the lobster — its external features and appendages, 

 some of its internal organs, its development, moult- 

 ing, and the asymmetry of its chelae, following which 

 are short notes on modifications caused by parasites 

 and on adaptation to environment. 



The systematic account of the Crustacea contains 

 a large number of interesting references to morpho- 

 logical and distributional points, which make it valu- 

 able apart from the special purpose for which it was 

 prepared. To give two instances — (i) the formation 

 Oi a respirator}- siphon by apposition of the antennules 

 in the Albuneidae and of the antennae in Corystes, 

 and (2) the appearance of Apus in Scotland in 1907, 

 which is ascribed to the introduction of the eggs, 

 perhaps on the feet of birds, from the continent. 

 The Arachnida (including Limulus and the Eun.- 

 pterines) and Myriopoda are dealt with in a similarly 

 interesting manner, and short notes are added on the 

 Trilobita, Pycnogonida, Pentastomida, and Onych- 

 ophora. A little more space might well have been 

 devoted to the Ixodidae in view of their great import- 

 ance in connection with the spread of disease in man 

 and animals. The figures, many of which are new, 

 are excellent and well support the text. 



Life and Hahit. By Samuel Butler. New edition, 

 with author's addenda. Pp. x + 310. (London : 

 A. C. Fifield, 1910.) Price 55. net. 

 Published in 1878, this was the first — and the most 

 important — of Butler's writings on evolution. The 

 present volume is practically a re-issue of the original 

 edition, though a few hitherto unpublished appendices 

 have been added. 



The central point of Butler's system — that heredity 

 is memory — has been alluded to in our recent notice 

 of the reprint of his later work, " Unconscious 

 Memory " ; and we may pass it over with the remind- 

 ing remark that automatic action proves former prac- 

 tice in a pianist or knitter, therefore the apparently 

 unpractised but perfect pecking of a newly-hatched 

 chick proves that the chick has done it before (when 

 it existed in the bodies of its parents) and now remem- 

 bers how to do it again. This, then, is the point at 

 which Butler continually hammers, and it brings up 

 difficult and humorous questions, e.g. the question 

 of personal identity. If a person at eighty is legiti- 

 mately regarded as the same person as he was when 

 he was an embryo, we cannot tell where to stop chas- 

 ing him back, so to speak, for he is as much the 

 impregnate ovum as he is the fcetus, and he is as 

 much his parents, or part of them, as he is the ovum. 

 The upshot is that all animal and vegetable life must 

 be regarded as "nothing but one single creature, of 

 which the component members are but, as it were, 

 blood corpuscles or individual cells; life being a sort 

 of leaven, which, if once introduced into the world, 

 will leaven it altogether." 

 ; Butler was somewhat of a dilettante, and he admits, 

 ' with his usual whimsicalitv, that he did not at first 

 I believe in his own theorv ! — that he onlv believed in 



