502 



NATURE 



[August 23, 1917 



eluding the plant as poisonous is given in each 

 case, the toxic principle is described, as are also 

 the symptoms, and references are given to the 

 bibliographical list at the end of the volume. A 

 short chapter is devoted to plants which lie more 

 or less under suspicion of being poisonous, and 

 there is also a brief account of the effects of wild 

 plants on milk. 



, (3) Mrs. Ellis has written some useful descriptive 

 text to a series of sixteen good coloured draw- 

 ings by Miss Ethel Barlow illustrating some of 

 the common herbs used in medicine. 



(4) Mr. Graveson writes for the general reader. 

 In a series of twenty-eight chapters he describes as 

 many flower-rambles made between March and Sep- 

 tember. His style is discursive, but conveys some 

 information on the life-history of the commoner 

 wild plants. There is a good deal of "folk-lore " 

 derived from well-known sources, and also plenty 

 of quotations from the poets. The best feature 

 of the book is the series of plant-sketches by Mr. 

 J. Wood, which are included iji the form of full- 

 page plates. 



IS THE ANGLO-SAXON DOOMED? 



The Passing of the Great Race; or, The Racial 

 Basis of European History. By Madison Grant. 

 Pp. xxi + 245. (London: G. Bell and Sons, 

 Ltd., 1917.) Price 8s. 6d. net. 



T N this work Mr. Grant takes up a theme which 

 -■- was broached by Dr. Gustav Retzius in his 

 Huxley lecture to the Royal Anthropological Insti- 

 tute in 1909. In speaking of the two competing 

 types of European — the tall, long-headed, blue- 

 eyed Nordic type, and the short, round-headed, 

 dark-eyed Alpine type — Dr. Retzius expressed 

 himself thus : — 



"There may lie in the circumstances to 

 which I have called attention a very real 

 danger of the North European dolichocephalic race 

 not being able to hold its own. Just as it has 

 been ousted during the past thousand years from 

 Germany and other countries in Central Europe 

 by the dark-haired, small-statured brachycephali, 

 so, too, will it probably have to yield place here 

 [England] and be reduced in numbers ; perhaps 

 by degrees disappear entirely out of the father- 

 land of their ancestors, by reason of the ever- 

 increasing might and power of industrialism, with 

 which they seem ill-fitted to cope successfully in 

 the long run. The prospect is depressing, it 

 cannot be denied, but the development of things 

 in the world is not seldom harsh and unmerciful." ' 



That is the opinion which an excellent repre- 

 sentative of the Nordic type formed of the 

 future of his race in Europe. In a broad way 

 Mr. Grant's book deals with the fate of the 

 Nordic type in the LTnited States of America, 

 and from stray statements, which appear in a 

 somewhat disjointed manner throughout its pages, 

 we gather that the future of the Nordic type is 

 as sombre in America as in Europe. " One often 

 hears the statement made," writes Mr. Grant, 



1 Journ. Roy. Anthrop. Institute, 1Q09, vol. xxxix., p. 300. 



NO. 2495, VOL. 99] 



" that native Americans of colonial ancestry are 

 of mixed ethnic origin. This is not true. At 

 the time of the Revolutionary War the settlers in 

 the thirteen colonies were not only purely Nordic, 

 but also purely Teutonic, a very large proportion 

 being Anglo-Saxon in the most limited meaning 

 of that term." 



Mr. Grant evidently uses "Teutonic " as a term 

 for men of the Nordic type inhabiting modern 

 Germany, and forming less than a sixth of the 

 population of that Empire, but as "Teutonic '* in 

 ordinary language has come to be equivalent to 

 German, it would be a scientific gain if anthropolo- 

 gists could agree to apply the term "Teutonic " 

 for the designation of the round-headed, fair- 

 haired non-Nordic prevalent and predominant 

 German racial type. That, however, is a side-issue ; 

 the main matter is that everyone who has investi- 

 gated the problem will agree w-ith Mr. Grant that 

 the men who secured the United States (and 

 Canada) as a home for white men were almost a 

 pure embodiment of the Nordic type. We expected 

 Mr. Grant to give us the results of systematic 

 inquiries and exact figures as to the prospects of 

 the type in the modern population of the United 

 States. We know how in recent years millions of 

 the competing dark-haired, round-headed type have 

 left Central Europe and crowded into the manufac- 

 turing centres throughout North America. "Our 

 immigrants now," says Mr. Grant, "largely repre- 

 sent lowly refugees from persecution and other 

 social discards. . . . European Governments took 

 the opportunity to unload on careless, wealthy, 

 and hospitable America the sweepings of their 

 jails and asylums." 



Races from the shores of the Eastern Mediter- 

 ranean are crowding into the Southern States r 

 the negro is more prolific than the native white 

 man. "As in all wars since Roman times," so 

 Mr. Grant avers, "the little dark man is a winner 

 from the breeding point of view." There are 

 ample and trustworthy statistics to prove that the 

 descendants of the original colonists are much 

 less prolific than other and different human stocks 

 which have recently arrived in America. It must 

 be admitted that there is a danger of the fair 

 heritage gained by the enterprise and courage of 

 the Nordic pioneers — a heritage in which the best 

 traditions of Anglo-Saxon life were established — 

 passing to a type of man that the early colonists 

 would not have shed a drop of their blood to save. 

 It is just for that reason we wish that the author 

 of this book had stated his case somewhat dif- 

 ferently in a work which has the alluring title, 

 "The Passing of the Great Race." A. K. 



ANOTHER TEXT-BOOK OF HISTOLOGY. 

 A Text-hook of Histology. By Prof. H. E. Jordan 

 and Dr. J. S. Ferguson. Pp. xxviii + 799. 

 (New York and London : D. Appleton and Co., 

 1916.) Price 155. net. 



T^HE appearance of another text-book dealing 



-L mainly with human histology and obviously 



designed chiefly for medical students naturally 



