.SO 



NA TURE 



[November 20, 1902 



aluminium ; of the synthesis of urea and the mode of 

 preparation of a host of substances, organic and in- 

 organic, of which the times were fertile. Very interesting 

 and instructive, too, are the references made by the cor- 

 respondents to the work of their contemporaries. Thus 

 Berzelius keeps Wohler informed of what Mosander is 

 doing, and of the researches of his pupils Dahlstrom, 

 Sefstrom, Mitscherlich, Magnus and Johnston ; whilst 

 Wohler in his turn tells, for example, what he knows of 

 Liebig's work, of the progress of Bunsen's investigation 

 of the fuming liquor of Cadet, or sends short notices of 

 what the Gottingen students, under the stimulus of his 

 direction, are turning out. 



Wohler was an excellent draughtsman. Some of his 

 drawings are as amusing as they are clever. Not 

 less excellent are his verbal sketches, as may be seen 

 in the admirable descriptions he sends Berzelius of his 

 experiences of Paris and of the French chemists of the 

 day — what Berzelius styles " die amusanten Plaudereien 

 ueber die Babylonischen Chemiker " — Gay-Lussac, 

 The'nard, Dulong, Ampere, Chevreul, Robiquet, Bussy, 

 Boussingault, Dumas, Pelouze. He thus, for example, 

 describes Ampere : — 



"Ampere. Ein Original wie es wohl wenige mehr gibt. 

 Ein ziemlich grosser alter Mann, vom Alter etwas gobuckt 

 mit dicker hangender Unterlippe, ziemlich zahnlos, mit 

 hervorstehenden, stier blickenden Augen, eine Perriicke, 

 die hier und da den Kahlkopf durchblicken lasst, gekleidet 

 in schwarzem Frack, der sehr alt und abgeschabt ist, und 

 die Wasche stets braun von Schnupftabak, den er in zwei 

 Dosen mit sich fuhrt. Dessen ungeachtet war mir dieser 

 Mann einer der merkwiirdigsten und respectabelsten. 

 Den Neckereien und Witzen, die er von den anderen 

 alten, namentlich von Arago und Thenard, zu erdulden 

 hat, entgegnet er mit einer grossen Gutmiithigkeit und 

 nicht selten mit komischem Witz. Nichts verdriest ihn, 

 und er bleibt stets in demselben guten Humor. Er ist 

 ■ohne Zweifel einer der tiefsten speculativen Kopfe und 

 scheint eine ungeheuere allgemeine Gelehrsamkeit zu 

 besitzen. Er ist selbst in den neuesten chemischen Ent- 

 deckungen ganz im Detail zu Haus." 



Equally interesting, and no less characteristic, is his 

 account of Dumas, whom he styles " der fleissigste und 

 geistvollste der jungeren franz. Chemiker." His descrip- 

 tion of the "kleiner, magerer Kerl " is too long to quote 

 here, but it caused Berzelius to say in reply, " Ich mochte 

 unendlich gem Dumas Bekanntschaft machen." 



Had space permitted, we should have liked to have 

 given a number of extracts in order to illustrate the 

 wealth of information of historical value which is 

 scattered throughout this correspondence. There is not 

 a dull page in the two volumes. At times, indeed, the 

 letters are of the greatest interest, and not unfrequently 

 they are most amusing. 



They have been carefully edited, and the commentary 

 and foot-notes supplied by Dr. von Braun serve to 

 elucidate many points which would otherwise be obscure. 

 We congratulate Prof. Wallach on the production of a 

 work which is a striking monument to the genius of two 

 men of whom it may be said, as Liebig said of his own 

 friendship with one of them, that now they are dead and 

 mouldering, the ties which united them in life still hold 

 them together in the memory of men as faithful workers 

 who zealously laboured in the same field, linked together 

 in the closest friendship. T. E. T. 



NO. 1725, VOL. 67] 



A BIOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHER. 

 Die organischen Regulationen. Vorbereilungen zu einer 

 Theorie ties Lebens. Von Hans Driesch. Pp. xv + 228. 

 (Leipzig : Engelmann, 1901.) Price y. 6d. net. 

 p\R. HANS DRIESCH is well known for his experi- 

 '~' mental contributions to "developmental me- 

 chanics" and as a man of strenuous " begriffskritische 

 Thatigkeit." He is the author of a number of essays 

 which give their readers good exercise in intellectual 

 mastication, and the book before us is another hard nut. 

 We are in entire sympathy with his endeavour after an 

 exact criticism of biological categories and with his ideal 

 of a "truly scientific biology" with thought-out and 

 unified formulas ; we suspect there is some justification 

 for his reproach that there is far too little " reines 

 Nachdenken " in the tents of the biologists ; and we share 

 his hope that " in the future the naturalist will be more of 

 a philosopher and the philosopher more of a naturalist " ; 

 but, to be frank, we wish that the author, who writes 

 much, could see his way to write a little more clearly. 

 We do not, of course, expect a philosophical criticism of 

 biological categories to read like a novel, but we object 

 to a book where the difficulty of individual sentences 

 intermittently inhibits us in our effort to appreciate the 

 general argument. It may be that biologists do not quite 

 realise how much they are losing by not reading Driesch's 

 essays ; but does Driesch realise how much he is losing 

 by ignoring the limitations of human faculty and of a busy 

 biologist's leisure ? We have to rub up our mathematics 

 to understand Karl Pearson, we have to learn statistical 

 methods, we are reminded that "nemo physiologus nisi 

 psychologus,'' we have perforce to be palaeontological, our 

 attention to chemistry and physics is essential, we are 

 told that some acquaintance with crystallography, me- 

 chanics and meteorology will not be amiss, and so on. 

 Thus a book which demands for its due appreciation no 

 small amount of familiarity with philosophical terms and 

 methods comes almost as the last straw to break the back 

 which mis-education has weakened. We remember, 

 however, that Driesch's essay is intended for philosophers 

 as well as for biologists, and we hope that the former 

 will discover a limpid stream in what seems to us a rather 

 turbid flow, broken here and there by luminous rapid 

 rushes. 



The work before us is one of a series of "studies" 

 (" Vorbereitungen") for a theory of life. It deals with 

 "organic regulations,'' i.e. with those vital phenomena 

 which may be roughly compared to the action of a safety- 

 valve in a steam-engine — a compensatory action annulling 

 the disturbing factor and restoring equilibrium. It does 

 not, however, include those coordinated locomotor regu- 

 lations which we call instinctive adjustments, or those 

 which occur after extirpation-experiments on central 

 nerve-organs. The author has abundant material with- 

 out these. In studying "organic regulations," which he 

 does with abundance of concrete instances, the author 

 has had a two-fold aim — (a) that of giving impulse to 

 research by showing in the strong light of his criticism 

 the gaps in the scientific structure, and (6) of advancing 

 a step or two towards " a truly scientific biology.'' This 

 improved biology will have its dominant concepts more 

 thoroughly thought out and more adequately harmonised, 



