January 24, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



151 



organisms consist of distinct, separate and 

 independent units. 



As a practical application of the theory he 

 suggests that many forms of insanity are 

 merely the distinguishing characteristics of 

 human mutants. " Dementia prcBcox is nei- 

 ther fatal in itself, nor curable. Were it either 

 ■we could not of course regard it as the expres- 

 sion of a character or group of characters, or 

 compare its victims to mutants." In addi- 

 tion to the punctuation, one might be inclined 

 to object to the implication that the possessor 

 of a new character can not be compared to a 

 mutant if the new character be fatal to its 

 possessor. 



The author assures us that the philosophical 

 conclusions in the last chapter were reached 

 before reading Bergson. There is something 

 of a similarity — at least as to the quality of 

 indefiniteness and the appeal to the unknow- 

 able. The concluding .sentence is a warning 

 that the belief in natural selection encourages 

 a belief in " the right of the spirit of compe- 

 tition which is daily invoked in order to 

 smother those altruistic feelings that are an 

 important part of the human mind." 



The discussion of "species" is interesting 

 and the important facts concerning the rats 

 are well presented. 



Frank E. Lutz 



The Flowing Road; Adventuring on the Great 

 Rivers of South America. By Caspar 

 "Whitney. Philadelphia and London, J. B. 

 Lippincott Company. 1912. Pp. 319. 

 Illustrated. 



The title of this book leads one to look for 

 something in the way of scientific results, but 

 the author disclaims any scientific mission 

 (173), and it is only by much courtesy that 

 it can be regarded as scientific in any sense. 

 But in spite of this, it is a book full of in- 

 terest for every one who knows, or wishes to 

 know, about the ups and downs of canoe travel 

 in the thinly populated and little-known re- 

 gions of the upper Eio Negro, or for the mat- 

 ter of that, on any of the rivers that empty 

 into the Amazon. 



The author's preface would lead one to sup- 



pose that Humboldt and Wallace were almost 

 the only explorers of the upper Rio Negro 

 region, and he fails to mention Dr. Richard 

 Spruce, who lived and labored there longer 

 than all the others put together. Humboldt 

 was on the upper Oronoco only two months — 

 April and May, 1800; Wallace went up the 

 Rio Negro in August, 1850, and returned to 

 Manaus May IT, 1852; Spruce lived in that 

 region from December, 1851, to December, 

 1854 — ^just three years. The account of 

 Spruce's residence is given in the " Notes of 

 a Botanist on the Amazon and Andes by 

 Richard Spruce, London, 1908," and his re- 

 sults are published in more than fifty scientific 

 papers, mostly on South American botany and 

 natural history, brought out by the learned 

 societies of England and Scotland. 



Likewise no mention is made of the almost 

 incredible explorations of Henri A. Coudreau 

 in the Amazon region, including a trip up 

 the Uaupes in 1884, and described in his 

 " Voyage a travers les Guyanes et I'Ama- 

 zonie," Paris, 1887. 



This, however, has but little to do with the 

 book itself. In spite of the almost deadly 

 sameness of the region and of the daily life, 

 the author finds something or much of in- 

 terest and beauty everywhere, and under all 

 circumstances. And it is a great pleasure to 

 follow a man who likes to see the animals 

 without wanting to shoot them all to pieces, 

 who accepts the weather and the fortunes of 

 travel as they come along without complaint, 

 who has human sympathy with the people, 

 however humble, and who doesn't want to 

 impose his ways of doing things upon every 

 one he meets. This wholesome attitude of the 

 author, even if there were nothing else in it, 

 makes the book richly worthy of the attention 

 . of naturalists and of others who would travel 

 in the country treated of. 



Another peculiarity of the book is that the 

 author doesn't begin in New York or London 

 with the details of how many trunks, boxes 

 and packages he had and what each one con- 

 tained; he doesn't describe the voyage out, 

 and the steamer, and the service, and the fly- 

 ing fish, and the southern cross and all the 



