302 



NATURE 



[May 12, 1910 



and rarest distinction for State service which 

 now exists, and it is an honour to the few men 

 who hold it that a woman, Miss Nightingale, 

 belongs to the Order. 



With regard to his present Majesty, Kiiig 

 George the Fifth, to judge of what he has done 

 as Prince of Wales, we may feel sure that there 

 will be no falling off from the strenuous life of 

 public duty exhibited by his father and grand- 

 father. 



W'e are informed by those who have had the 

 privilege of conversing with him that, as one 

 of the effects of his education as a naval officer, 

 for the education of a naval officer must be 

 scientific, he is fully in sympathy with those 

 who insist upon the importance of science as 

 one of the foundations of the greatness of a 

 nation. It was this interest in science which 

 caused him to regret deeply his inability to 

 accept the presidency of the British Associa- 

 tion at its meeting in South Africa. State 

 duties had called him to India at that time. 



King George is unapproached as a traveller, 

 among crowned heads, whether of his own 

 or of previous time. The new sovereign 

 has probably seen more of the Empire than 

 has been traversed by any single person 

 among all his subjects. After the Australian 

 Commonwealth was inaugurated, the King 

 and Queen journeyed fifty thousand miles 

 by land and water. They returned to Canada 

 for the great tercentenary pageant at Quebec and 

 the consecration of the battlefields, and mean- 

 while, in 1905, they had put a girdle round the 

 globe again and traversed India from the 

 Khyber to the Ganges, and from the Himalayas 

 to the temples of the South. It has been well 

 said that not one of his subjects realises better 

 than the King how little is known of England 

 by those that only England know, or how in- 

 separably the whole life and fortunes of this 

 island are knitted up with the destinies of the 

 outer Empire. That many of the national 

 shortcomings to which it is our duty to refer 

 from time to time are fully known to his present 

 Majesty is proved by his famous warning, 

 uttered after all his journeyings, "W'ake up, 

 England." 



In the midst of the nation's grief at a loss so 

 great and so sudden that there has not been 

 time to realise it, comfort may be found in the 

 assurance which we possess that in the future, 

 as in the past, the illustrious Royal Family 



will guard the best interests of our Empire. 

 They will thus retain the affection and respect 

 of a grateful people, whose hearts now go out 

 to them in profound sympathy with their 

 sorrows. Editor. 



THE l^FAV -ORIGIN OF SPECIESr 

 The Mutation Theory. Experiments and Obser- 

 vations on the Origin of Species in the Vege- 

 table Kingdom. By Hugo de Vries, Professor 

 of Botany at Amsterdam. Translated by 

 Prof. J. B. Farmer and A. D. Darbishire. 

 Vol. i.. The Origin of Species by Mutation. 

 Pp. xv + 582. (Lx)ndon : Kegan Paul and Co., 

 Ltd., 1910.) Price i8s, net. 



THE two smaller books by Prof, de Vries 

 written in English have already put us in 

 possession of a clear account of his theory of 

 the origin of species by discontinuous variation. 

 The publication of a translation (of which this 

 is the first volume) of his larger " Die Muta- 

 tionstheorie " will be valuable to students as 

 containing the detailed arguments upon which 

 it is based. 



De Vries has long been known as a distin- 

 guished physiologist who has the advantage of 

 a sound training as a physicist. Now a physicist, 

 in attacking a problem, endeavours to get it 

 into the simplest form which admits of experi- 

 ment and measurement. Having obtained a 

 " law " which fits his results, he proceeds to test 

 its application to more complicated phenomena. 

 But " life " is a complex which at present defies 

 analysis, and the naturalist is therefore obliged 

 to surve\^ organised nature as a whole, and to 

 endeavour to extract from its observation prin- 

 ciples of general application. In this way or- 

 ganic evolution has been arrived at, for it is now 

 generally admitted to find its securest basis in 

 the evidence afforded by palaeontology of the 

 succession of living forms in the past history of 

 the earth. It might also, though less con- 

 vincingly, find it in the facts of geographical 

 distribution. Darwin did not inv^ent ev'olution, 

 but he made it immensely more acceptable, first 

 by breaking down the old belief in the constancy 

 of species, and, secondly, by giving, in " selec- 

 tion," a mechanical explanation of how they 

 came into existence. 



To this de Vries raises the same objection as 

 Huxley, though on different grounds, that "we 

 do not observe actual specific changes in 

 nature " (" Plant Breeding," p. 4). His object 

 is to overcome this difficulty. He agrees (p. 

 207) that 



" we have a doctrine of descent resting on a 

 morphological foundation: The time has come 

 to erect one on an experimental basis." 



In this he believes he has succeeded. Every- 



N.O. 2 II 5, VOL. 83] 



