IC.t 



i)is(:ovii:nY 



He quotes Miietcrlinck as an authority on seed- 

 dispersal. Maeterlinck rejects the idea of natural selec- 

 tion altogether, and prefers to speak as follows : In 

 seeds disseminated by birds " wc see developed such a 

 powerful reasoning faculty, such a remarkable under- 

 standing of final causes, that we hardly dare dwell upon 

 it. . . ." To which our author adds : " This interpreta- 

 tion enables one to understand how the plant is able to 

 communicate a share of its vital psychic equipment to 

 the animal. . . . The animal takes in knowledge with its 

 food, as it were — essential knowledge — which is ' pre- 

 digested ' by the plant." And so we are introduced to 

 the stupendous idea of mind-vitamines, which interesting 

 but hypothetical substances, in conjunction with Samuel 

 Butler's mnemic theory of heredity, are to explain many 

 remarkable facts — -their lack, for instance, accounting for 

 the sterility of hybrids (p. 105). 



,, /iood\ 

 Later (p. 198) he introduces the expression f/w \^ rj 



as a way of representing a norm of behaviour upon which 

 almost everything in Biology depends " (italics ours). 



That is just it — Mr. Reinheimer wants to explain 

 " almost everything in Biology " by means of his " bio- 

 economic law." And almost-everything-in-Biology 

 steadily refuses to lend itself to explanation by any 

 single principle. It is too complex for that. Mr. 

 Reinheimer never seems to have mastered the idea of 

 Natural Selection properly, and recent work on Genetics 

 is scarcely mentioned. He reads widely but uncritically ; 

 H. F. Osborn is quoted as an authority on one page, to 

 be followed by Maeterlinck on the next ; Lankester and 

 Bergson, Samuel Butler and Metschnikoff all apparently 

 vie with each other as supporters of his theory. 



It is a thousand pities that Mr. Reinheimer did not 

 take his central idea, the importance of co-operation for 

 biological progress, and work it out soberly and sanely 

 with reference to the ascertained facts of science. He 

 would then have given us a valuable book. As it is, 

 this idea is so overgrown with absurdities and irrelevancies 

 that it is scarcely discernible. Until the author eliminates 

 the fantastic and indeed meaningless talk about mind- 

 vitamines, plant-carnivores, symbio-psychism, symbiotic 

 restraint, mnemic heredity, the necessary degeneration 

 of all carnivorous species, and so on and so forth, the 

 book remains only a subject for melancholy ridicule. 



Advance in science comes by laying brick upon brick, 

 not by the sudden erection of fairy palaces. 



J. S. Huxley. 



Famous Chemists. The Men and their Work. By 



Sir William A. Tilden, F.R.S. (London : 



Routledge, 12s. 6d. net). 



Sir William Tilden is well known as an informed writer 



on the history of experimental science, especially of his 



own subject — inorganic chemistry. In this book he has 



sketched in a simple and interesting way the lives of 



twenty-one of the most prominent chemists of the past. 



He has taken pains to make his readers interested in the 



lives of these men as they appeared to their friends and 

 fellow-citizens as well as in the particular work in chemis- 

 try which they achieved. As the past has produced 

 nearly as many famous chemists as are alive to-day, the 

 author has wisely limited himself to a description of those 

 who have taken part in the development of a great theorj*. 

 and the theory he has chosen is the Atomic Theory, the 

 joy and glory of modern chemistry. 



It is a nice point whether the Greeks or the Hindus 

 were the first to give us the beginnings of the atomic 

 theory. The author, who doubtless hates controversy, 

 has avoided this issue by commencing with the " father 

 of chemistry," Robert Boyle, wlio lived in the seventeenth 

 century. The evolution of the atomic theory since Boyle 

 has depended on two things : the existence of the crude 

 theory prior to Dalton's (or Higgins') great work, and the 

 development of our knowledge concerning gases. Of 

 pioneers in these fields the author describes Black, 

 Priestley, Cavendish, Scheele, and Lavoisier. He then 

 reaches Dalton, but oddly enough makes no mention of 

 Dalton's rival, William Higgins. Higgins was a failure, 

 Dalton a success. Higgins, moreover, was an objection- 

 able fellow, Dalton a Christian and a gentleman. But it 

 seems now established that Higgins reached essentially 

 the same conclusions as Dalton, and published them four- 

 teen years earlier. He cannot be ignored. 



Of the chemists of Dalton's day the author has written 

 of Gay-Lussac, Proust. Berzelius, Davy, and Faraday. 

 These bring us well into the nineteenth century, wlien the 

 theory went rapidly from strength to strength. Here the 

 author confesses his difficulty in choosing whom to 

 include and whom to leave out. Liebig. the extract-of- 

 meat-merchant, is included more, I think, because Sir 

 William had an accurate and interesting biography of 

 him ready than for any great connection he might have 

 had with the atomic theory. Ramsay, too, might well 

 have been omitted, for although he was a great man and 

 great chemist, his contribution to atomic theory, his work 

 on radio-activity, was at times surprisingly ill-informed 

 and poor. Avogadro, Cannizzaro, Dumas. Frankland, 

 and Williamson are rightly included. In the section on 

 the classification of the elements the author has included 

 Mendeleeflf and Crookes, but has given merely a passing 

 mention to Lothar Meyer and Newlands. The German 

 and the Englishman are not so well known as the lion- 

 headed Russian, yet their scientific work is not less 

 important. 



Tliese little criticisms are not meant too seriously. 

 The author has a perfect right to choose his men so that 

 their biographies may be made of interest to the general 

 reader. Those he has done are well done. They are 

 accurate and they are interesting. In avoiding dullness 

 he has not allowed himself to fall into a forced breeziness, 

 and he is never slipshod. The book is cordially recom- 

 mended to readers Students of chemistry will find it of 

 most value if they use it in conjunction \vith a technical 

 history of scientific theories, such as LowTy's admirable 

 Historical Introduction to Chemistry, published by 

 Macmillan. 



A. S. R. 



