OcrosEr 25, 1918] 
below us on the mountain slope and that the 
apparent motion was caused by the actual mo- 
tion of the stage. At any rate there can be 
no doubt that the fireflies were flashing in 
unison. 
Fremont Morse 
Director of Coast Surveys 
Mania, P .I. 
SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 
The Passing of the Great Race. By Mapison 
Grant. New York, Charles Scribner’s 
Sons. 1918. Pp. 296. 
It is rare that an author of a scientific work 
which is not a text-book has the pleasure of 
seeing a second edition within two years. Mr. 
Madison Grant’s recent success is sufficiently 
justified, since he has written both boldly and 
attractively, and has produced a work of solid 
merit. Even the title, “The Passing of the 
Great Race,” is of the sort to make a popular 
appeal, for there always seems to be an eager- 
ness to read of some horrible future in store 
for mankind. Hence the success of books on 
degeneracy, race suicide, cessation of intellec- 
tual evolution, disgenice influence of war, and 
the elaborations of obvious pessimism—books 
and articles usually written by persons blind 
to the complexity of the problems and to the 
optimistic significance of facts and arguments 
on the other side. 
Mr. Grant believes in the inborn value of 
the Nordic race, that tall, fair-haired, long- 
headed breed which started from the shores 
of the Baltic some three thousand years ago, 
formed the ruling classes in Greece, Rome, 
northern Italy, Spain, northern France, Eng- 
land and parts of the British Isles, and then, 
in the southern countries, passed away either 
through its inability to stand the climate in 
competition with brunette types, or through 
dilution and pollution of its blood by mixture 
with inferior peoples. 
The present reviewer accepts, in the main, 
this racial theory of European historical an- 
thropology. This theory rests upon two chief 
factors. The first is that so well elaborated 
by Mr. Grant in his book, namely, that it is 
supported by the facts of history. In other 
SCIENCE 
419 
words, if we start with an extreme “ heredi- 
tarian” hypothesis as to the special value of 
the Nordic race, we do write a good ethnolog- 
ical and anthropological history of European 
and Asiatic culture. The broad panoramic 
changes are systematically and reasonably ex- 
plained by such an hypothesis. There is no 
shifting about—something relying on a theory 
and then having constantly to resort to some 
involved explanation because the theory has 
failed to work. In all this Mr. Grant’s book 
is admirable; but it is open to criticism at the 
hands of opponents. The author rarely if ever 
discusses disputed points. For instance, he 
alludes frequently to the fact that in all Euro- 
pean literature and art, the heroes, saints and 
madonnas have always been depicted as 
blondes, but he ignores the fact that its signifi- 
cance has often been questioned. In this mat- 
ter, antagonists to the doctrines of heredity 
and to the native superiority of the blonde race 
usually say that the blonde type was admired 
because of its rarity. How is this to be an- 
swered? It is an affair of the author, not the 
reviewer. 
In the last pages of his book, Mr. Grant 
gives a bibliography; but nowhere does he in- 
sert a footnote or give a reference to the 
sources of his information. While this may 
in some slight degree make the text more read- 
able, it is a great pity that a reader can not 
more easily trace to their origins or further in- 
vestigate many of the interesting and novel 
statements met with in this provocative book. 
The second good reason for believing in the 
importance of inborn native mental differences, 
and consequently in the truth of most of what 
Mr. Grant asserts, is that there is a mass of 
carefully finished statistical research on the 
problem of human heredity which tends to 
support the whole theory of race as against en- 
vironment. If adult human differences within 
a single family and within a single class are 
largely the result of pre-formed differences in 
the chromosomes of the primary germ cells, 
then there is at least a good hypothesis that the 
same is true for racial differences. 
However, it requires further proof in the 
case of race, since the children of the same 
