I02 



NATURE 



[March 24, 192 1 



home. " In later years I found out that the 

 diamonds of the duck-pool were rpck-crystal, the 

 g-old-dust, mica ; but the fascination of the pond 

 held good for all that. It was full of secrets that 

 were worth more to me than diamonds and gold." 



The autobiographical chapter, " The Boy who 

 Loved Insects," is charming, and we are glad to 

 see the inclusion for young geometricians of the 

 discussion on the logarithmic spiral which Fabre 

 appended to the story of the spider's web. We 

 wish, however, that it had been possible to omit 

 Fabre 's unfortunate but characteristic taunting 

 of the evolutionists. He asks where the snail 

 with its spiral shell of lime and the spider with its 

 spiral thread of silk " pick up this science." 

 "We are told that the Mollusc is descended from 

 the Worm. One day the Worm, rendered frisky 

 by the sun, brandished its tail and twisted it into 

 a corkscrew for sheer glee. There and then the 

 plan of the future spiral shell was discovered. 

 This is what is taught quite seriously, in these 

 days, as the very last word in science. The 

 Spider will have none of this theory, for she is 

 not related to the Worm. Yet she is familiar 

 with the logarithmic spiral and uses it in her web. 

 . . . What guides her? Nothing but an inborn 

 skill, whose effects the animal is no more able to 

 control than the flower is able to control the 

 arrangement of its petals and stamens. The 

 spider practises higher geometry without knowing 

 or caring. The thing works of itself, and takes 

 its way from an instinct imposed upon Creation at 

 the start." Now the grea^ observer was within 

 his rights in suggesting that instinct is unanalys- 

 able animal-genius, or any other theory of that 

 elusive kind of behaviour, and he was within his 

 rights in stating that in his opinion the wide- 

 spread occurrence of the logarithmic spiral in 

 Nature pointed to a " Universal Geometrician, 

 whose divine compass has measured all things," 

 but he was not within his rights in travestying the 

 evolution theory. 



This is a delightful book, and very pleasantly 

 printed. Only a few blemishes have caught our 

 eye, like Moquin-Tandom ; and was not the adjec- 

 tive that Darwin applied to Fabre " inimitable "? 



Our Bookshelf. 



A Physician's Anthology of English and American 

 Poetry. Selected and arranged by Dr. 

 C. A. Wood and Dr. F. H. Garrison. 

 Pp. xxiii + 346. (London : Humphrey Milford, 

 1920.) 8s. 6d. net. 



We have got rid of the old convention that all 

 flowers at a funeral must be white : we send them 

 now in all the colours of the rainbow. So is this 



NO. 2682, VOL. 107] 



wreath, laid on Osier's grave by two men who 

 loved him. They have done well. It is a delight- 

 ful book : sincere, quiet, companionable, thought- 

 ful, as good a friend as anyone could wish to have 

 in his pocket. Note the place of the apostrophe : 

 it is a book for a doctor, not only a book by two 

 doctors. Here and there, of course, it challenges 

 a reviewer, but that is the way of all anthologies. 

 For instance, there is more of Clough than of 

 Christina Rossetti : and the last poem of all, from 

 Weir Mitchell, is inferior to a similar poem by 

 Stevenson. There is rather too much of Lecky, 

 and even of Matthew Arnold : and Siegfried 

 Sassoon's poems of the War have that imperfec- 

 tion which is criticised in Mrs. de Selincourt's 

 perfect story of " Autumn Crocuses." But these 

 are mere little hole-pickings in a very beautiful and 

 well-wrought fabric. 



The preface is admirable : and all that the 

 anthologists say of the influence of the doctor's 

 experiences on the doctor's thoughts is true. 

 But they do not make enough allowance, it may 

 be, for the touch of antagonism between practice 

 and poetry. It may come natural to a doctor to 

 say with Weir of Hermiston, " I ha' no call to be 

 bonny " — in part because he is a man of science, 

 and there is a world of difference between science 

 and poetry; in part because his day's work is 

 essentially objective. He exalts it with his kindly 

 feelings, but it remains an affair of signs and 

 symptoms which do not lend themselves to poeti- 

 cal treatment ; rather they cry aloud for medical 

 or surgical treatment. 



One more point : there have been, and are, men 

 who are both doctors and poets ; but we must not 

 include in that list men who gave up practice for 

 poetry: who "qualified," but did nothing much 

 as practitioners, and later were poets. The medi- 

 cal profession cannot lay claim to Keats or 

 Schiller. But this point lies outside the treasures 

 of "A Physician's Anthology," and we con- 

 gratulate the good physicians who made so good 

 a selection. 



Elements of Statistics. By Prof. Arthur L. 



Bowley. Fourth edition. Pp. xi + 459. 



(London : P. S. King and Son, Ltd. ; New 



York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920.) 245. 



net. 

 Although Prof. Bowley 's " Elements of 

 Statistics " no longer holds the practically 

 unique position as a text-book which it held on its 

 first appearance twenty years ago, yet teachers and 

 students alike will welcome this new and enlarged 

 edition of a work the valufe?^ of which has been 

 proved by experience in the interval. The second 

 part of the book, which deals with the higher 

 mathematical treatment of statistical methods, has 

 been entirely rewritten, and the author admits 

 his indebtedness to the work on those lines done 

 in recent years by Prof. Edgeworth, Mr. Udny 

 Yule, and others. Prof. Bowley, however, while 

 going beyond the limits set in earlier editions, by 

 assuming now in the reader a knowIe;dge of the 



