NATURE 



265 



THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 1905. 



ZOOLOGICAL BOOKS FROM GERMANY. 



{1) Anthropogenie oder Entwickehmgsgeschichte des 

 Menschen; Keimes- und Stammes-geschichte. By 

 Ernst Haeckel. Fifth revised and enlarged 



edition. 2 Vols. Pp. xxviii + 992; with 30 plates, 

 512 text figures, and 60 genetic tables. (Leipzig: 

 Engelmann, 1903.) Price 25s. net. 



•(2) Morpliologisclie Studien. Als Beitrag zur Method- 

 ologie ::oologischer Probleme. By Tad. Garbovvski. 

 Pp. vii+189; 6 chromolithographic plates. (Jena; 

 Fischer, 1903.) Price 28 marks. 



(3) Untersuchungen iiher den Phototropismus der Tiere. 

 By Dr. Em. Rddl. Pp. viii+188. (Leipzig: 

 Engelmann, 1903.) Price 4s. 



(4) Graber's Leitfaden der Zoologie fiir hohere 

 Lehranstalten. Bearbeitet von Dr. Robert Latzel, 

 k.k. Gymnasial-Direktor. Fourth revised edition. 

 Pp. 232 ; illustrated. (Leipzig : G. Freytag, 1904.) 

 Price 3.80 marks. 



(i) T^HE first edition of Prof. Haeckel's book 

 -L appeared thirty years ago, and the fourth 

 ■edition in 1891. With eacli reappearance the book has 

 increased in size and in stateliness, and this is particu- 

 larly true of the new edition. The sequence of editions 

 reads like a developmental process, say in crustaceans ; 

 there is some ecdysis, there is addition of new parts, 

 there is a growing beauty, but the essence remains the 

 same. The veteran evolutionist has gone over the whole 

 work again ; he has incorporated new discoveries, he 

 has added fresh arguments and illustrations, but the 

 gist of the book remains unaltered. Our familiar old 

 acquaintances — the Monera and the Gastraeada, the 

 biogenetic law and its helpmate coenogenesis, dystele- 

 ology and monism, and so on — are all as alive as ever, 

 and with much to say for themselves. As Haeckel 

 says, the book may have its faults; but has anyone 

 given a better popular presentation of the concrete 

 facts as to the position of the human organism in its 

 place in nature, or, for that matter, has anyone else 

 ever tried? We may object to some of his embryology 

 and to some of his phytogeny and to all his philosophy, 

 but here is a vivid, picturesque account of man's de- 

 velopment and of his plausible pedigree. It is a 

 historic document which will occupy an honourable 

 place among the archives of biology. It is an achieve- 

 ment on the author's part to have made this revision 

 now — adding about 100 pages, three score and ten 

 figures, ten plates, and eight genetic tables; we could 

 not expect him to change his cherished convictions. 

 Nor, as he says, iias he seen any reason to do so. The 

 parts we like least are where he brings in new or 

 relatively new discoveries somewhat casually, as we 

 may illustrate by referring to the centrosome which 

 he calls a " nicht fjirbares Korperchen." What is it, 

 then, that stains so intensely with iron — hematoxylin? 

 (2) Dr. Garbowski has ceased to find satisfaction in 

 the conventional formulae often used in seeking to 

 NO. 1838, VOL. 71] 



interpret phylogenetic advances. He has ceased to 

 believe in the homology of the germinal layers, in the 

 gastrsea theory, and in the coelome theory ; and he 

 thinks that the usual application of the so-called bio- 

 genetic law is for the most part fallacious. In all this 

 he is not so solitary a sceptic as some of his sentences 

 would lead one to suppose. 



There is a branch of astiological inquiry in which 

 the zoologist interprets the whole organism as a system 

 of adaptations, and seeks to show how the various 

 items in this system may have arisen in the course of 

 variation, and may have persisted by enhancing the 

 survival-value of their possessor. There is another 

 branch of aetiological inquiry which tackles the deeper 

 problems of morphogenesis, which inquires into the 

 formative conditions leading to various big steps in 

 organisation-progress — such as the origin of an 

 enteron, the establishment of metamerism, the develop- 

 ment of a coelom, or the institution of a vertebral axis. 

 It is with these morphogenetic problems that Dr. Tad. 

 Garbowski is mainly concerned, and he wishes to find 

 a via media between the use of what he believes to 

 be obsolete verbal formulae and the extreme of bio- 

 mechanics. 



" Darwin and his school sought to discover the 

 nature of transformation without knowledge of the 

 internal processes, and the ' Entwickelungsmechan- 

 iker ' are trying to interpret the latter apart from the 

 immanent effects of the former." 



It is easy enough to say that sponges are quaintly 

 inverted primitive Metazoa, that annelids represent 

 ancestral Chordates on their backs, that Trochophora 

 have sprung from Ctenophora — the illustrations are the 

 author's — but what we must get at is an observational 

 or experimental knowledge of the actual way in which 

 architectural changes of moment are brought about. 

 In short, we must deepen our physiological-morph- 

 ology, getting beneath mere form-changes to the 

 functional changes which condition them. This, so 

 far as we can see, is what Dr. Tad. Garbowski is 

 driving at. We are surprised, by the way, that he 

 does not include Rauber's " Formbildung und Form- 

 storung " in his huge bibliography. 



The first chapter is devoted to a study — full of interest 

 — of Trichoplax adhaerens, with subsections on Trep- 

 toplax and Salinella ; the second chapter discusses the 

 Mesozoa in general; the third chapter describes various 

 processes of gastrulation, and ends with a rejection of 

 the gastraea theory ; the fourth chapter deals with the 

 two primary germinal layers, the mesoderm and the 

 coelom, and ends with a rejection of the germ-layer 

 theory. In conclusion, the author expounds the scope 

 of physiological morphogenetic studies. There are six 

 fine plates. 



Dr. Garbowski is iconoclastic, and his recoil from 

 some familiar theses is thorough-going, but his 

 scepticism is neither une.xpected nor unwelcome. The 

 late Prof. Glaus had promised to protect him if the 

 Thames caught fire, so to speak, but the author is 

 quite able to look after himself, and his theses will 

 find as much acceptance as opposition. We have all 



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