314 



NATURE 



[August 4, 1904 



doubtless be unfair to say of the author that, so far 

 as his treatment of Darwin is concerned — 



" Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike," 

 he would 



"Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike; 

 Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, 

 And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer " — 



but we cannot acquit him of a somewhat captious 

 method of dealing with Darwin's clear and well con- 

 sidered utterances. We have seen of late a great deal 

 of groundless objection to the Darwinian position, and 

 many quite uncalled-for attempts to minimise the value 

 of the Darwinian contribution to evolutionary theory. 

 We may freely concede that the opinion expressed in 

 the " Origin of Species " in favour of the transmission 

 of acquired characters has not stood the test of in- 

 vestigation ; but this is a negligible matter in com- 

 parison with the enormous impulse to evolutionary 

 theory given by the doctrine of selection, which 

 doctrine it was the peculiar merit of Darwin and 

 Wallace to have presented in such a form as to com- 

 mand the attention of all scientific workers, and the 

 assent of most. It cannot be said that the various 

 attempts to dispense with selection have met with 

 success, and in spite of the " carpers carping with their 

 carps," we think that the Darwinian treatment of 

 variation and selection still affords the only basis for 

 a reasonable account not only of adaptation, but also 

 of the origin of species. F. A. D. 



THE FAVNA AND FLORA OF ALASKA. 

 Harriman Alaska Expedition. Edited by Dr. C. H. 

 Merriam. Vol. v. Cryptogamic Botany (pp. ix + 

 424). Vols. viii. (pp. ix + 238) and ix. (pp. 284). 

 Insects. Vol. x. Crustaceans (pp. 337) ; illustrated. 

 (New York : Doubleday, Page and Co., 1904.) 



FROM time to time brief notices have appeared in 

 our columns of various issues of " Papers from 

 the Harriman Alaska Expedition," published in the 

 Proceedings of the Washington Academy of Sciences. 

 The whole of these papers, together with others 

 hitherto unpublished, are now in course of re-issue in 

 the form of a series of handsome and well illustrated 

 volumes, with the title cited above, and under the 

 editorship of Dr. C. Hart Merriam, the well known 

 chief of the Biological Survey of North America. As 

 the various papers are reprinted from the original 

 electrotypes, and the original pagination is given 

 in brackets, there is no likelihood of any confusion 

 arising by quoting from the re-issue. Of these 

 volumes, four are now before us. 



Before going further, it may be well to state that 

 the work does not attempt to give a complete account 

 of the fauna and flora of the Alaskan peninsula. In 

 the insect volumes, for example, many of the papers 

 deal only with the material brought back by the ex- 

 pedition, although in a few instances the existing state 

 of our knowledge of each group is given so far as 

 Alaska is concerned. Even where no attempt is made 

 to formulate complete lists, in many cases the material 

 obtained was, however, so extensive as to include the 

 greater part of the representatives of the group de- 

 NO. 1 8 14, VOL. 70] 



scribed. In emery instance the description and identifi- 

 cation of the specimens collected have been assigned 

 to specialists. 



The volume on cryptogamic botany contains not only 

 the new information acquired as the result of the ex- 

 pedition, but an account of the previous state of know- 

 ledge of the subject. Special interest attaches to the 

 general account of .Alaskan vegetation given in the 

 introduction. The southern districts of Alaska, it 

 appears, are characterised by the grandeur of their 

 forests and the brilliancy of the flowers beyond the 

 forest tract, the usual alpine conditions prevailing 

 above the timber belt. Closer examination even of 

 the wooded area reveals, however, a wealth of flower- 

 less vegetation which gives to the flora a character 

 it would otherwise lack ; while the flowers of the 

 mountain tops and prairies are set in beds of moss 

 and fern. In the forest, owing to the abundant rain- 

 fall, every mouldering log, as well as the standing 

 stems, are clothed with moss, which carpets the 

 ground, and hangs in festoons from the branches. 

 Among the mosses and liverworts grow many of the 

 more delicate flowering plants, while the many fleshy 

 funguses make this carpet their special home. The 

 open glades are occupied by peat-mosses (Sphagnum) 

 in considerable variety, which afford a basis for cran- 

 berries, sundews, and butterworts. North of the 

 forest zone appears a wet, boggy tract, passing into 

 the frozen Arctic tundra, the mossy carpet of which 

 is, however, spangled in summer with a perfect blaze 

 of flowers. In these open areas ferns grow in great 

 luxuriance, and on Kadiak Island the traveller may 

 wade through beds of bady-fern nearly waist-deep. 



No less than eight specialists have given their 

 services to the determination and description of the 

 cryptogams collected during the expedition. 



Passing to the volumes on insects, we have to note, 

 in the first place, that this department in the expedi- 

 tion was confided to Prof. Kincaid, of Washington 

 University, who collected some 8000 specimens, re- 

 presenting about 1000 species, and, secondly, that 

 under the general title of insects are included both 

 myriapods and arachnids. In the first of the two 

 volumes, special value attaches to the paper on myria- 

 pods by Mr. O. F. Cook, since it treats of all the 

 known members of that little-worked group hitherto 

 obtained from north-western North America. Previous 

 to the Harriman Expedition, our knowledge of the 

 .■\laskan insect fauna was mainly restricted to the 

 Coleoptera and Lepidoptera, and consequently special 

 efforts were made to collect the other groups. The 

 result has shown that Alaska possesses a rich entom- 

 ological fauna which awaits other collectors to reveal 

 fully. Out of the 1000 species collected, 344 have 

 been regarded as new to science. Special attention 

 was devoted to the study of the adaptation of Alaskan 

 insects to their surroundings, more particularly in the 

 Sitka district, where the annual rainfall attains the 

 enormous total (for a non-tropical or subtropical zone) 

 of 105 inches. As might have been expected, the 

 Diptera were found to form the predominating element 

 in the insect fauna, but of this group only a small 

 percentage has hitherto been, in all probability. 



