SCHOOL SCIENCE SERIES, NUMBER FIVE 



Involution, Heredity, and 

 E.\igenics 



By JOHN MERIvK COUIvTER. Ph. D. 



Head of the Department of Botany 



University of Chicago 



This little book is the result of an expressed need on the 

 part of high school and college teachers for a more 

 simple and compact treatment of organic evolution than 

 has heretofore been available. Such monographic treatment 

 the elementary textbooks, by virtue of their organization, 

 do not supply. On the other hand, the covering of this topic 

 adequately by supplementary reading has proved too large 

 a task for the time available. So the design of this little 

 book is to be supplementary to elementary biological texts; 

 to furnish in brief and simple form a serviceable idea of 

 modern conceptions in this great field, and of their signifi- 

 cance in human life. 



In the v^hole history of thought nothing is more signifi- 

 cant than the conception of evolution. When the evolu- 

 tion of organisms became an accepted doctrine, all funda- 

 mental ideas had to be recast in the new^ light. This is 

 more than historic. It is an affair of today as w^ell as of 

 yesterday. The thinking of today that is most significant 

 is thinking in terms of evolution. Intelligent interpreta- 

 tion of life depends upon it. 



Yet it is a fact that the "average citizen" has but the 

 vaguest ideas of what evolution is. It is in our teaching 

 of elementary biology in high schools that we have the 

 best opportunity to correct this state of affairs. But it is a 

 neglected opportunity. Certain present tendencies in science 

 teaching leave small space in the elementary courses 

 for anything which is suspected of being "abstract." Un- 



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