DISCOVERY 



337 



only in the literal sense of inquiring into the relation 

 between the root-system of plants and the ground from 

 ■which they obtain most of their raw material, but in a 

 figurative sense. His aim is to learn all that is possible 

 about the manifold factors which govern the life, the 

 wanderings, and the interrelations of the component 

 elements of vegetation. 



In Part I the author explains what Ecology is ; he 

 draws an apt comparison between ecology and the study 

 of man : " It is not sufficient to study the structure of 

 his dead body in the dissecting-room and the functions 

 of his organs and tissues in the laboratory. To learn 

 what man actually is and does in the world, we have to 

 go out into the world and study him as he lives and works 

 among his fellows. And the same is true of plants." 

 Ecology is concerned not only with natural vegetation, 

 but with vegetation that has been in a greater or less 

 degree interfered with by man. In Part II the reader is 

 introduced to Plant Communities, the Plant Association, 

 the Succession of Vegetation, and other subjects. The 

 next step is to learn how to make an ecological survey of a 

 tract of country ; a primary, or extensive, survey must 

 be followed by a more intensive study of the detailed 

 problems of vegetation. The author wisely emphasises 

 the problems which need only simple methods ; he wTites 

 primarily for the beginner. Part V is devoted to eco- 

 logical work in schools. Nature Study as taught in some 

 schools has little or no educational value. As jVIr. Tansley 

 says, many teachers substitute " facile and largely 

 inaccurate generalisations for observation of nature and 

 soxmd deduction," instead of training the pupils to 

 observe " the facts of nature as they are, and then to go 

 on to find out as far as possible how they came to be so." 



The book is neither cheap nor beautiful, but it is full 

 of sound advice clearly given ; it is written by a botanist 

 exceptionally well qualified by experience and by the 

 prominent part which he has taken as a pioneer of plant 

 ecology in this country to speak with authority. Mr. 

 Tansley's book may be confidently recommended to 

 teachers, as also to those for whom botanical inquiry 

 is a hobby and not a profession. A. C. Sew.\rd. 



Philosophical Studies. By G. E. Moore, Litt.D. (Kegan 

 Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co., Ltd., 155.) 

 In this volume Dr. Moore collects together ten papers 

 on various philosophical topics, written at various times 

 eight of which have been previously published, mostly 

 in the Proceedings of the A ristotelian Society. All the 

 papers, he tells us, are printed without substantial change 

 The best known of these papers is the Refutation of 

 Idealism, which appeared in Mind in 1903, in which Dr. 

 Moore claims not only to knock the bottom out of Idealism, 

 but also to have detected a " self -contradictory error " 

 which " no philosopher has ever yet succeeded in avoid- 

 ing." Dr. Moore now says : " This paper now appears 

 to me to be very confused, as well as to embody a good 

 many down-right mistakes." It is a pity that he did 

 not at least add a note to tell the reader where he thinks 

 he has gone wrong. The author himself should be called 

 on to review this paper. 



All the papers except two, which are ethical, are 

 concerned with that set of problems usually called the 

 Theory of Knowledge, which occupied the main atten- 

 tion of the classic wxiters from Descartes to Kant and have 

 never to this day been laid to rest. Dr. Moore is an 

 acute and careful writer, and on all the problems he 

 touches he has some good point to make. He is, however, 

 rather timid and over -cautious. He is always laudably 

 anxious to define precisely the question he wishes to 

 answer — so much so that he sometimes approximates to 

 the method caricatured in one of the Bab Ballads, which 

 spends so much time on explaining what is not its subject 

 that it never reaches a subject at all. He is also — less 

 justifiably in our opinion — very anxious to isolate the 

 question, and in particular to discuss it apart from any 

 w-ider metaphysical bearings it may possess. This is 

 often annoying, especially when the author brushes these 

 questions aside with an airy, " I do not know whether . . ." 

 One jumps to the classic retort, "Sir, you are paid to 

 know ! " The distressing frequency of italicised mono- 

 syllables and of the parenthetical " I think " are minor 

 symptoms of this weakness, and sometimes give the 

 impression of affectation. 



But, if these are defects, they are the defects of quali- 

 ties : nowhere is precision more valuable and more 

 difficult to attain than in philosophy. If Dr. Moore 

 could only persuade his thought to move on rather more 

 generous lines, suppressing some of the more verbal 

 niceties, he might produce work very much more impres- 

 sive than anything he has yet written. In the mean- 

 time students of philosophy will welcome these collected 

 papers on their own merits. J. L. S. 



The Children of the Sun : An Inquiry into the Early 



History of Civilisation. By \V. J. Perry. (Methuen 



& Co.,' 185.) 



Mr. Perry's inquiry into the early history of civilisation 



owes much in its method to the late Dr. Rivers, a debt 



which the author fully acknowledges in his preface. 



But the line of investigation which Dr. Rivers followed 



in attacking the special problems of Melanesia is here 



developed to such a degree, and applied with boldness 



and originality to so wide a range of subject, that it may 



be regarded as striking a new note in anthropological 



investigation. 



Professor Elliot Smith, to whom this volume is appro- 

 priately dedicated, and Mr. Perry, as is generally known, 

 are the protagonists on one side of a struggle which has 

 been going on for some time in the world of anthro- 

 pological study. While it is generaly recognised that the 

 culture of man throughout the world presents certain 

 common features, the opinion current among anthro- 

 pologists generally is that these common features are 

 mainly, though not always, the result of an independent 

 evolution conditioned by the common mental, moral, 

 and physical constitution of man and liis method of 

 reacting to his environment. Professor Elliot Smith, 

 however, influenced by his study of the early Egyptians 

 and their civilisation, has advanced the view that these 

 common elements are due to a diffusion of culture from 



