634 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVI. No. 932 



Dr. Williams in connection with the patent 

 have been doing a great and unwarranted in- 

 justice to a high-principled man, whose char- 

 acter and whose long and disinterested devo- 

 tion to science should have made it uimeces- 

 sary to break the silence he has long main- 

 tained, as I now do, without his knowledge, 

 to right a wrong; and, as I sincerely hope, 

 to remove completely any ground for misgiv- 

 ing on the part of any one of his many dis- 

 tinguished friends toward a loyal and worthy 

 colleague. Eoger H. Williams 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 Heredity and Eugenics. A course of lectures 

 summarizing recent advances in knowledge 

 in variation, heredity and evolution and its 

 relation to plant, animal and human im- 

 provement and weKare. By William 

 Ernest Castle, John Merle Coulter, 

 Charles Benedict Davenport, Edward 

 Murray East, William Lawrence Tower. 

 The University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 

 1912. Pp. viii + 315. $2.50 net, $2.Y0 

 postage paid. 



In view of the great leap which the study 

 of genetics has taken in the past decade, and 

 the notable contributions which are made al- 

 rttost daily, both in facts and in theories, it is 

 hardly surprising that general systematic 

 texts in the subject are not forthcoming at 

 this time. Instead we have treatises of spe- 

 cial phases of the subject, such as Mendelism 

 or eugenics, and the publication of lectures, 

 which are usually general summaries of more 

 or less wide scope, attempting to keep abreast 

 the times. Such a series of lectures delivered 

 at the University of Chicago in the summer 

 of 1911 is now presented to the public in book 

 form. Considering the fact that " the lec- 

 tures were given by five lecturers, with no op- 

 portunity to relate the lectures to one another 

 other than as suggested by the assigned titles," 

 the book, as a whole, presents a rather sur- 

 prising unity, though somewhat lacking in 

 balance and by no means covering uniformly 

 the range of the subtitle. This, however, 

 could not be expected under the circum- 



stances, and the explanation in the preface 

 disarms this criticism. 



We are told that these lectures " were not 

 intended for those trained in biology, but for 

 a general university audience, interested in 

 the progress of genetics as a matter of infor- 

 mation rather than of study. The lecturers, 

 therefore, did not address themselves to their 

 colleagues. . . ." One familiar, however, with 

 the " general university audience " not trained 

 in biology, and with the difficulty the average 

 student has in absorbing a working knowledge 

 of such phenomena as dihybridism and mul- 

 tiple factors, is inclined to suspect that unless 

 the lectures were supplemented with " asides " 

 which are not included in the text, the " col- 

 league," or at least the person who had made 

 some previous study of the subject, carried 

 more away from them than the person with- 

 out preparatory biological training. It is safe 

 to say that the comparatively small amount 

 of repetition which occurs will prove no detri- 

 ment to the general reader. 



Professor Coulter undertakes the rather 

 thankless task of paving the way for the real 

 procession, which is to follow. In the first two 

 chapters, dealing with " Recent Developments 

 in Heredity and Evolution: General Intro- 

 duction " and " The Physical Basis of Hered- 

 ity and Evolution from the Cytological Stand- 

 point," he has done this in an orthodox, but 

 on the whole very clear and interesting, man- 

 ner. The relation of the processes of inherit- 

 ance to evolution, plant and animal breeding, 

 and to eugenics, is pointed out and a cytolog- 

 ical basis supplied upon which the Mendelist 

 may hang his interpretations without com- 

 punction. Coulter, unlike many cytologists 

 at the present time, evinces no hesitancy in 

 placing upon the chromosomes the burden of 

 hereditary transmission (p. 32). 



In the third and fourth chapters Professor 

 Castle treats of " The Method of Evolution " 

 and " Heredity and Sex." These chapters are 

 very similar to parts of the same author's re- 

 cent book,' which is itself a series of lectures 



' ' ' Heredity in Eelation to Evolution and Animal 

 Breeding." D. Appleton & Co., New York, ]911. 



