March 1, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



341 



announced in the lengthy title of his book. 

 He is intimately acquainted with the recent 

 work in breeding, and has, himself, made some 

 valuable contributions to knowledge. As a 

 student at the Royal Botanical Gardens in 

 Peradeniya, Ceylon, and later in Cambridge 

 he has worked with Indian com and with 

 peas. 



The book begins with an introduction in 

 which are briefly discussed: Linnsean species, 

 Jordan's species, variation, mutation, discon- 

 tinuity of species, the work of Mendel and 

 evolution theories. Later chapters are largely 

 given to a fuller discussion of the topics here 

 introduced. The first half of the book is 

 rather elementary, intended presumably for 

 the general reader. Natural selection, evi- 

 dences of evolution and ' biometry ' are treated 

 in detail. It must not be supposed that the 

 treatment of these topics is purely per- 

 functory. Even in the driest parts of the 

 work there are sharp and valuable criticisms 

 of the theories of the day. The author pays 

 his respects to the theories of ' protective re- 

 semblances,' ' mimicry ' and ' inheritance of 

 acquired characters.' He shows the inade- 

 quacy of natural selection for the origin of 

 species and prepares the reader for the subject 

 evidently most dear to his own heart — ' Men- 

 delism.' 



In describing the operation of Mendel's Law 

 our author is at his best. He makes clear 

 some things not generally understood in re- 

 gard to the position of the ' Mendelians.' 

 Thus (p. 180) he says : " dominance is by no 

 means an universal phenomenon. * * * In a 

 considerable number of instances the hetero- 

 zygote is found to exhibit an appearance 

 which is more or less intermediate between the 

 types of character shown by the parents." 



On page 205 it is shown that new forms 

 arising in the midso of an old-established 

 species need not be 'swamped' by intercross- 

 ing. A chapter on ' Eecent Cytology ' is 

 chiefly an elementary account of the cell, but 

 some discussion is given of the probable rela- 

 tion between chromosomes and Mendelian 

 characters. Weismann's views and those of 

 the ' Mendelians ' are contrasted (pp. 261- 

 262). The discussion of the alternating 



generations of plants as the ' a;-generation ' 

 and ' 2x-generation ' (p. 270 et seq.) will in- 

 terest some readers, while his remarks on the 

 improvement of the breed in the human race 

 will not be taken more seriously than intended 

 by the author. 



The book has few glaring faults. There is 

 no bibliography. This is most unfortunate, 

 since the work is so well calculated to intro- 

 duce college students to the problems of 

 heredity and evolution. Certainly a few of 

 the more useful works might have been named. 

 On page 92 Davenport's ' Statistical Methods ' 

 is referred to as ' Structural Methods.' Dr. 

 MacDougal is called Macdougal (p. 139). 

 Perhaps ' nitch ' (p. 286) is not a misprint for 

 'niche' but an example of reformed spelling. 

 A lack of subheadings makes the book less 

 easily used for reference than it should be. 

 Francis Ramaley 



Univeksitt of Colobado 



SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS AND ARTICLES 



The opening (January) number of volume 

 8 of the Transactions of the American Mathe- 

 matical Society contains the following papers : 



G. A. MiLLEE: 'Generalization of the groups of 

 genus zero.' 



P. MoELET : ' On reflexive geometry.' 



G. A. MiLtER : ' The groups in which every sub- 

 group is either abelian or hamiltonian.' 



H. F. Blichfeldt : ' On modular groups iso- 

 morphic with a given linear group.' 



W. E. Stoet: ' Deniunerants of double differ- 

 entiants.' 



A. Ranum : ' The groups of classes of congru- 

 ent matrices, with application to the group of 

 isomorphisms of any abelian group.' 



Claea E. Smith : ' A theorem of Abel and its 

 application to the development of a function in 

 terms of Bessel's functions.' 



W. B. FiTE : ' Irreducible linear homogeneous 

 groups whose orders are powers of a prime.' 



L. P. BiSENHAET: 'Applicable surfaces with 

 asymptotic lines of one surface corresponding to 

 a conjugate system of another.' 



The December number (volume 13, number 

 3) of the Bulletin of the American Mathe- 

 matical Society contains: Report of the Sep- 

 tember Meeting of the San Francisco Section, 

 by W. A. Manning; 'Projective Differential 



