BOOK REVIEWS 231 



Animal Husbandry for Schools, by Merrit W. Harper. The 

 Rural Textbook Series, L. H. Bailey, Editor. Pages 409. The 

 MacMillan Co. Price $1.40. 



This is another excellent book on animal husbandry. The order 

 of treatment is much the same as the preceding. The first five 

 chapters are devoted to the horse and his kin, discussing the breed- 

 ing, judging, feeding and care. Chapters 6-1 1 inclusive discuss 

 similar topics for cattle; 12-15 inclusive, sheep; 16-19, swine; 

 20-23, poultry. There is an appendix of 60 pages including 

 valuable reference tables, and 32 pages of laboratory exercises. 

 This is a particularly valuable part of the book and will help even 

 the inexperienced teacher to accomplish actual field work on the 

 subject. Presumably these books on animal industry will more or 

 less occupy the place heretofore given to a more general study of 

 animals. The experiment will be watched with great interest by 

 teachers to see in how far these commonplace materials of the farm 

 will vitalize the animal study, and whether our educational results 

 will be any better with horses, hogs and poultry than it has been 

 with the subject matter of the ordinary zoology text. 



Genetics and Introduction to the Study of Heredity, by Herbert E. 

 Walter. Pages XIV plus 272. The MacMillan Co. Price $1.50. 



This book is based on a course of lectures given at Brown Univer- 

 sity, winter of 1911-12, and repeated the following summer at the 

 Summer School of Biology, Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. It 

 seems the best popular presentation of this subject of heredity that 

 has yet appeared, and while popular it is also thoroughly scientific. 

 The reviewer does not know of any book that would be more 

 stimulating to the average student and that would better enlarge a 

 teacher's vision of the significance of nature in its present day 

 problems than this book. Chapter i defines the field of heredity ; 

 chapter 2 discusses the carriers of the heritage, the chromosomes ; 

 3 is on variation and shows how this topic at foundation is based 

 on heredity. Chapter 4 discusses mutations; 5 the inheritance 

 of acquired characters; 6 the pure line; 7, segregation and 

 dominance; 8, reversion; 9, plant inheritance; 10, sex deter- 

 mination; II, the application to man; 12, human conservation; 

 13 gives a good though, brief bibliography. 



The style is simple and clear and the reader must gain a pretty 

 accurate insight into the present problem of heredity in so far as 

 this can be given in book form. 



