June 10, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



903 



Eleventli and Clinton streets, Philadelphia, 

 and will use it for laboratory purposes. 



The late Sir Donald Currie's daughters, 

 Mrs. Mirrilees and Mrs. Percy Molteno, have 

 given a sum of £25,000 to the University of 

 Cape Town for the construction of a hall as 

 a permanent memorial to Sir Donald Currie. 



The alumni of Brown University by a vote 

 of 2,008 to 223 favor the removal of the de- 

 nominational restriction which requires the 

 president and the majority of the trustees to 

 be baptists. 



It is reported that from the answers to 

 several hundred letters sent by Yale Univer- 

 sity to heads of preparatory schools and pub- 

 lic high schools, the majority favor science 

 and history as substitutes for Greek at the 

 entrance examinations of the academic de- 

 partment. The changes will, it is said, prob- 

 ably be adopted at the entrance examinations 

 in 1911. 



Dr. George Blumer, professor of medicine, 

 will succeed Dr. Herbert E. Smith as dean of 

 the Yale Medical School. 



Me. H. N. Eaton, instructor in geology in 

 the University of North Carolina, has been 

 appointed to a similar position in the School 

 of Mines, University of Pittsburgh. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 Charles Darwin and the Origin of Species. 



By E. B. PouLTON. London and New York, 



Longmans, Green & Co. 1909. 



Professor E. B. Poulton, Hope professor of 

 zoology in Oxford University, has long been 

 known as the leading proposer and defender 

 of theories of mimicry, warning, directive and 

 recognition coloration and the like. Next to 

 the names of Bates and Miiller, which are 

 names of the pioneer observers and hypothesis 

 makers in this field, stands the name of Poul- 

 ton. 



The name must now be associated with 

 another distinction; it is that of the most 

 loyal present-day disciple of Darwin. Poul- 

 ton is a whole-hearted accepter and ardent 

 defender of everything that came from the 

 mouth and pen of his immortal master. 



There are no mental reservations about Pro- 

 fessor Poulton's Darwinism; no interpreta- 

 tions other than the obvious ones ; no huts nor 

 howevers. 



In his addresses (which I have referred to 

 recently in other pages of this journal) at 

 Baltimore in January, 1909, before the Amer- 

 ican Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, and at Cambridge in June of the 

 same year at the great Darwin Commemo- 

 ration Meeting, Professor Poulton was the 

 conspicuous exception among the other speak- 

 ing biologists in his unreserved acceptance 

 and defence of Darwinian selection as the 

 all-important factor in species-forming and 

 evolution. He now appears as the author of 

 a book explicitly given to the exposition and 

 defence of this factor and to the answering of 

 its critics. 



The book comprises the two addresses al- 

 ready mentioned, together with two lesser 

 ones given as banquet speeches on the same 

 general occasions; another given at the Ox- 

 ford Darwin celebration in February, 1909; 

 an anniversary address given in December, 

 1908, before the Entomological Society of 

 America in Baltimore; a group of about 

 twenty hitherto unpublished letters written 

 by Darwin to Roland Trimen between 1863 

 and 1871; and four brief appendices includ- 

 ing notes on Darwin and the hypothesis of 

 multiple origins, Darwin and evolution by 

 mutation, Darwin's health and work, and De 

 Vries's fluctuations as inconsistently treated 

 by certain English believers in them. The 

 whole collection is the consistent utterance of 

 a perfect Darwinian. 



The new Darwin letters do not add much 

 to our knowledge of the master's personality, 

 but they are interesting. They are full of 

 glimpses of hard and constant work and con- 

 tinuous and interfering ill health. They 

 touch especially — and this is their particular 

 interest to Professor Poulton — the subject of 

 color and pattern (Trimen was a devoted ob- 

 server in this field). All the references to 

 this subject are, however, tinged with the sex- 

 ual selection hypothesis which was more im- 

 portantly in Darwin's mind than any hypoth- 



