NATURE 



[September 6, 191 7 



The place of story-telling, of music, and of the 

 arts in home education is considered, and the 

 book closes with a section on home nursing and 

 first aid. Some of the illustrations are useful 

 and interesting ; others, such as a tableful of 

 labelled bottles of unwholesome sweets, have 

 rather an irritating effect. 



(2) It is open to question whether it is well 

 tliat the attention of young women should be 

 concentrated too closely and continuously on the 

 problems of home-making and child-fearing unless 

 they have a definite prospect of marriage, or of 

 putting the training to practical account in some 

 other way. But a basis of general knowledge of 

 the home-making arts is necessary to every 

 woman. This, and the perception that there is 

 a high standard to be reached, can be gained 

 comparatively early in school life, perhaps best 

 between the eleventh and fourteenth years. There- 

 fore we welcome very warmly an " Elementary 

 Text-book of Home-making " by Prof. Helen 

 Kinne and Anna M. Cooley, both teachers of the 

 subject in Columbia University. The book, 

 which is American in its setting, is written in 

 Story form, and is intended for use as a supple- 

 mentary reader in elementary schools. The 

 directions for the sanitary arrangement of the 

 house, the furnishing and cleaning of rooms, the 

 care of the baby, and the preparation of food are 

 clear and simple. Emphasis is laid throughout 

 on the duty — and the means — of simplifying life 

 and economising labour that a higher degree of 

 niental health and physical efficiency may be 

 reached by the maker of the home, as well as by 

 its other inmates. The "typhoid " fly has a chapter 

 to itself, and an optimistic picture, published by 

 permission of the Louisiana State Board of 

 Health, shows a child, in the year 1920, gazing 

 at a fly on the edge of its plate and asking in- 

 terestedly, "What's 'at?" If anything could 

 bring about so desirable a state of things in so 

 short a time, it would surely be the dissemination 

 of the terrifying figure on the next page of a fly 

 the legs of which are festooned all over with 

 germs "greatly magnified." 



(3) Vegetable culture has become a very im- 

 portant homecraft in these days, and this little 

 book, "Food Gardening for Beginners and 

 Experts," will be found a useful guide. It gives 

 very simple directions and diagrams for arrang- 

 ing a plot or garden in three sections, so that 

 each is heavily manured and limed once in three 

 years. Tables show the proper rotation of vege- 

 tables for each section, and brief instructions are 

 given for the culture of each kind. A calendar 

 of garden operations is appended, but no guidance 

 is given as to the probable differences of 

 time for seed-sowing in various parts of the 

 country. 



(4) " One Hundred Points in Food Economy " 

 is stamped with the approval of Prof. Halliburton, 

 and in these days of tabloids it may make some 

 appeal. We quote one " point ":" Food substi- 

 tutes are not to be despised. Why? Because 

 many of them are equal, or better, than the food 



NO. 2497, VOL. 100] 



they are intended to sjabstitute, but, on account 

 of ignorance, prejudice, or habit, they may not be 

 so popular." Why should anybody write English 

 like that? M. R. T. 



I SPECULATIVE ANTHROPOLOGY. 



Modern Man and His Forerunners : A Short Study 

 of the Human Species, Living and Extinct. 

 By H. G. F. Spurrell. Pp. xn- 192 + illustra- 

 tions V. (London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 

 1917.) Price 75. 6d. net. 

 r T may be at once admitted that the author of 

 ■*• this book is a daring and original thinker, 

 who has used man, ancient and modern, as a stalk- 

 ing-horse to cover a series of essays dealing with 

 the origin and fate of man and of man's highest 

 form of modern civilisation. The author, had he so 

 chosen, is well qualified to write a book on modern 

 man and his forerunners ; he has made notable 

 contributions both to anatomical and to medical 



I literature; as a physician he has resided in South 

 America and West Africa. Indeed, the very best 



I parts of his book are those in which he records 

 his studies of the habits and psychology of apes 



I and monkeys. His interests, however, are 

 centred, not on the anatomical features of species 

 of man and ape, but rather on those mental 

 characters which come into action when in- 

 dividuals become grouped in herds and com- 

 munities. 



Dr. Spurrell pictures three selective phases in 

 modern man's evolution. In the first and earliest 

 phase man's struggle was with his environment, 

 the fittest individuals surviving. In the second, 

 that of primitive communities, the struggle was 

 with other communities^ "The object of such a 

 community," says Dr. Spurrell, "is not to pro- 

 mote the survival of the fittest, but to fit as many 

 as possible to survive." In the second phase 

 selection was no longer individualistic. In the 

 third phase, when primitive communities have 

 become welded into nationalities by the intro- 

 duction of those conditions of life to which the 

 author would restrict the term "civilisation," the 

 form of selection again changed. "At the begin- 

 ning of civilisation the individual method of 

 selection again came into play. Individuals with 

 a greater capacity for civilisation had a greater 

 chance of surviving and leaving children to carry 

 on their qualities." Civilisation tends to favour 

 the survival of the rapacious, selfish individual. 

 "The basic weakness in civilisation," writes Dr. 

 Spurrellj "lies in the deeply rooted predatory 

 instinct in human nature." 



From such quotations it will be seen that Dr. 

 Spurrell is not optimistic about our future. "The 

 ultrmate extinction of man is, of course, as in- 

 evitable as was that of the innumerable species 

 with whose remains geological strata are packed," 

 is a sentence from the last page but one. Yet 

 the author has many clever and mordant state- 

 ments to make. " It is the fittest armies which 

 survive war, not the fittest individuals." "Civili- 

 sation is essentiallv a slavery, the need of money 

 being its whip." "What the masses want when 



