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NATORE 
THURSDAY, JANUARY 1, 1914. 
EVOLUTION AND GENETICS. 
Problems of. Genetics. By William Bateson, 
F.R.S. Pp. ix+258. (London: Oxford Uni- 
versity Press; New Haven: Yale University 
Press, :19173.). Price 17s. net. 
N 1gor there came into the possession of Yale 
University the sum of 85,000 dollars with 
which to establish-an annual course of lectures 
“designed to illustrate\the presence and _ pro- 
vidence, the wisdom and goodness of God, as 
manifested-in the natural and moral-world.” The 
endowment is not incomparable in scope and pur- 
pose with the well-known Gifford Trust at the 
Scottish Universities, but it is perhaps charac- 
teristic of a younger nation to prefer the natural 
world to the moral, and rather to seek for wisdom 
in the facts of nature themselves than in the 
philosophic wrappings spun around them by the 
learned through the ages. Certainly it would 
appear logical that any appraisement of the 
Almighty’s influence in the natural world should 
be preceded by some knowledge of nature itself. 
The task which Mr. Bateson, as Silliman lec- 
turer, set before himself was a discussion of some 
of the wider problems of biology in the light of 
knowledge acquired by Mendelian methods of 
analysis, and the reader who would get most from 
the book should have some acquaintance with the 
phenomena of heredity recently brought to light 
by the method of experiment. To one with even 
an elementary knowledge of these phenomena, 
Mr. Bateson’s book cannot fail to prove of absorb- 
ing interest. For he has the rare gift of infusing 
something of strangeness into the commonplace, 
and in his hands the seemingly familiar takes on 
an aspect of remoteness which once again provokes 
curiosity. . 
Nearly twenty years ago the author laid stress 
on the distinction between meristic and substantive 
variation, and to-day he is able to emphasise that 
distinction. The one is. connected. with the 
mechanical side of genetics, with the manner in 
which material is divided and distributed; while 
the other deals with the chemical side, with the 
constitution of the materials themselves. To the 
mechanical problems cf genetics, the problems 
involved in cell division and in the repetition of 
parts, two of the earlier chapters in the book are 
devoted. As the result of an interesting discus- 
sion Mr. Bateson formulates the rule that germ 
cells differ from somatic cells in that their dif- 
ferentiations are outside the geometrical order 
which governs the differentiation of the somatic 
cells. With the germ cell begins a new geometri- 
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497 
cal order—a new individual. As to the process 
which led to the new order—why the cell divides, 
and why parts become repeated—we are as much 
in the dark as ever. Mr. Bateson suggests 
interesting analogies, such as a series of wind- 
made ripple marks on sand. Yet what is the 
wind, the meristic force that acts on cell and 
tissue? The answer is at present beyond us, but 
Mr. Bateson is not without hope that when the 
more highly analytical mind of the trained 
physicist is brought to bear upon the problem, a 
solution will ultimately be found. At any rate 
he is not disposed to follow Driesch in declaring 
that the expression of the living machine in terms 
of natural knowledge is a hopeless undertaking. 
The greater part of the book is concerned with 
substantive variation, and it is pointed out that 
through recent work, genetical and chemical, a 
start has been made towards a real classification 
of these phenomena. The structural and- colour 
varieties of the sweet pea, the primula, or the 
mouse can be related to the wild form in terms 
of their factorial composition. On an evolutionary 
interpretation it must be supposed that the new 
form has arisen by the loss cf a factor, or, much 
more rarely, by the addition of one. Can we 
suppose that species are related to one another in 
a similar way? Owing to sterility, experimental 
evidence is generally difficult to obtain, but there 
are strong indications that some interspecific 
crosses will eventually find a simple interpretation 
in terms of Mendelian factors. To what extent 
such an interpretation may be widely applied, Mr. 
Bateson is uncertain, but so far he does not: see 
any fatal objection. Even in the well-known case 
of the Génotheras, which comes in for lengthy 
discussion, an explanation in terms of factors is 
not yet precluded. 
Three chapters are devoted to variation and 
locality, and several interesting cases are brought 
forward which will probably be unfamiliar to 
many readers of the book. The main drift of 
these chapters is the difficulty of accounting for 
such cases through the agency of natural selection. 
‘Had the phenomena of local variation been 
studied in detail before Darwin wrote, the attempt 
to make selecticn responsible for fixity wherever 
found could never have been made.” 
Perhaps the part of the kook which will be 
read with most interest by zoologists is that 
devoted to the effects of changed conditions. 
Considerable stir in the biological world has been 
created recently by experiments which appear to 
demonstrate the transmission of an effect produced 
in an organism by a specific alteration of the 
conditions under which it normally lives. The 
best known instances are probably Tower’s experi- 
Ge 
