576 
NATURE 
[AucustT 8, 1912 
are occupied with the anatomy and physiology 
of the semicircular canals—those amazing, 
delicate, extended tubules of the internal 
ear, which, being themselves in different planes, 
somehow ensure our adjustment to the different 
planes of our surroundings. The third part of the 
book, pages 339 to 525, is concerned with sea- 
sickness, which Dr. Byrne has studied for many 
years, with consummate patience, in himself. He 
rightly points out that the final arbiter, in sea- 
sickness, is neither stomach, nor semicircular 
canals nor other outlying kingdoms of the body, 
but the brain itself, the Capitol of life. Every 
page of his book is full of learning, and crowded 
with condensed facts: it is a splendid example of 
laborious thoroughness. Such work seems to 
leave not a word more to be said on the subject. 
(4) It is a strange contrast between Dr. Byrne’s 
close-packed, exhaustive monograph and Mr. 
Crispin’s short manual. Mr. Crispin writes for 
“those who are stationed or travelling in out-of- 
the-way parts of the world, away from medical 
advice.’ His book is very short, very laconic; 
the rules which he gives are shrewd, practical, and 
accurate, so far as they go, but the book is too 
short. Still, it is a good little book, and he writes 
of what he knows through and through; for he 
is Assistant-Director of the Sudan Medical Depart- 
ment. The book gives many useful hints for the 
safe-guarding of a man’s health when he is hope- 
lessly out of reach of medical or surgical help. 
(5) Dr. Woodcock’s book offers another con- 
trast. It is a series of essays on the doctor’s life 
and work, his duty to his patients, his duty to 
the public, his duty to his own profession. It is 
written very pleasantly, with innumerable good 
instances, vivid experiences, and kindly words of 
praise for the famous doctors and surgeons of 
to-day. Perhaps the best chapters are those on 
contract practice, Poor Law experiences, and 
public health. Dr. Woodcock has seen dreadful 
things in the slums, and has fought them. In 
other happier chapters, he praises Edinburgh, his 
University, and Leeds, that nursing-mother of 
many great physicians and surgeons. It has been 
said that “doctors, when they write well, write 
very well indeed,” and Dr. Woodcock can write 
very well indeed. He is at his best when he tells 
of what he has seen with his own eyes and done 
with his own hands. 
(6) Dr. Lickley’s manual on the nervous system 
is very clearly written and well illustrated. He 
is a demonstrator of anatomy at Newcastle (Uni- 
versity of Durham), and writes for students medi- 
cal and non-medical. The chapters on the minute 
anatomy of the brain and spinal cord must be read 
alongside of dissections; but there 
NO. 2232, VOL. 89] 
passages in the book which are of great interest 
to the general reader, and are made easily intelli- 
gible by diagrams and pictures. There is room, 
in the next edition, for a diagram of the motor 
areas of the brain, marked in their proper places 
on its surface. We commend this book to all who 
wish to get a plain understanding of the chief facts 
concerning the central nervous system. 
BIOLOGICAL PROBLEMS. 
(1) Upon the Inheritance of Acquired Characters. 
A Hypothesis of Heredity, Development, and 
Assimilation. By Eugenio Rignano. Autho- 
rised English translation by Prof. Basil C. H. 
Harvey. With an Appendix upon the Mnemonic 
Origin and Nature of the Affective or Natural 
Tendencies. Pp. v+413. (Chicago: Open 
Court Publishing Co., 1911.) Price 12s. 6d. net. 
(2) Biological Aspects of Human Problems. By 
Christian A. Herter. Pp. xvii+344. (New 
York: The Macmillan Co. ; London: Macmillan 
and '@o., Ltd!, 191m) ericesossGd-nets 
(1) HIS book, by the talented editor of 
Scientia, appeared in French in 1906, and 
later in German and Italian. We welcome it in its 
excellent English translation by Dr. Basil Harvey. 
Approaching the problem of inheritance from the 
side of physics and engineering, Rignano con- 
fesses that he was at first attracted to Weismann’s 
position that there is no evidence of the trans- 
mission of somatic modifications. He felt, how- 
ever, that the fundamental biogenetic law of 
ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny was difficult to 
reconcile with non-transmission. Reflecting on 
this difficulty, he was led to a new biogenetic 
hypothesis, which suggests a mechanism whereby 
the inheritance of acquired characters may be 
effected. Whatever one may think of the special 
hypothesis which the book expounds, there can be 
no two opinions as to the author’s fair-mindedness, 
scholarship, and ingenuity. 
According to Weismann’s view, a reproductive 
portion of the germ-plasm is segregated in early 
development from the portion that forms the soma, 
and remains apart without sharing in  body- 
making. According to Rignano’s ‘“‘centroepi- 
genetic hypothesis,” “the germinal substance, 
although limited to a single zone, and separated 
and differentiated from the rest of the soma, never- 
theless exercises its epigenetic, formative action 
upon all the rest of the organism and during the 
whole of development, without undergoing any 
alteration whatever through this participation in 
development.” \Ve do not understand why the 
somatogenic part of the germ-plasm, which has 
the developing of the body as its business, should 
are many ! require any assistance from the primordium of the 
