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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. No. 830 



body, instinct, reason an^' memory, and withal 

 takes occasion to present disquisitions on the 

 method of science, on the relative values of 

 induction and deduction, on idealism and 

 common sense, and one chapter bears the Teu- 

 felsdrockhian heading " Necessary Truth." 



The book is an output of the study and the 

 author glories in that it is. Laboratory and 

 statistical methods are in his opinion prac- 

 tically superfluous in the study of heredity; 

 simple observation of patent facts and deduc- 

 tion alone are essential. 



Not seldom in biometric inquiries . . . several 

 scores or hundreds of observers and thinkers are 

 employed for years in ascertaining, with a much 

 less degree of certainty, that which a single 

 thinker may deduce in two minutes from known 

 and admitted truths. 



If the reader will think over the evidence on 

 which I shall draw for the purpose of the present 

 volume, I believe he will conclude that, if any of 

 it bears a doubtful aspect to his mind, it is that 

 large mass which has been furnished by labora- 

 tory inquiry. 



These quotations reveal Dr. Eeid's attitude 

 toward two popular methods of modern biolog- 

 ical inquiry and, at the same time, they reveal 

 his limitations as a critic. And an additional 

 imperfection in his treatment of his subject is 

 the failure to take sufficiently into account the 

 known complexity of cell structure and the 

 bearings of this on inheritance. For him the 

 cell is the ultimate unit and even in these 

 days of atom-splitting deductions we find in 

 his philosophy no consideration of any lower 

 structural or physiological units, no sugges- 

 tion of the important bearings which our 

 knowledge of the architecture of germ plasm 

 may have on the subjects he discusses, and 

 this because, in his opinion, the discussion of 

 such matters would be merely "valueless 

 guessing — valueless because incapable of being 

 tested " ! Why they can not be tested like any 

 other theories or facts it is difficult to under- 

 stand. 



But in spite of these limitations, indeed, to 

 some extent because of them. Dr. Reid has 

 given us a book full of suggestive ideas. In- 

 deed, so full is it of suggestions that it wiU be 

 impossible here to do more than give a brief 



outline of some of his conclusions. What 

 may be regarded as the basis of his argument 

 is the idea that " Evolution is only another 

 name for adaptation and in" the last analysis- 

 all adaptation results from the natural selec- 

 tion of favourable variations." This is the 

 ISTeo-Darwinian creed, but Dr. Reid adds to it 

 the idea that it is not so much the evolution 

 of definite characters that is the office of nat- 

 ural selection as it is the provision of possi- 

 bilities for variation and the regulation of 

 their magnitude. Growth is the result of 

 stimuli, such as nutrition, injury and use, and 

 natural selection has brought about such re- 

 sponses to these stimuli as place the organism 

 in adaptation to its surroundings. Thus it is 

 not a large muscle nor an elongated neck that 

 is inherited, but the possibility of developing 

 these peculiarities under the influence of the 

 stimulus of nutrition or use. Inheritance of 

 acquired characters does not occur, it is not 

 the character that is inherited and no char- 

 acter is any more acquired or innate than 

 another. A serious fallacy in the Lamarckian 

 position, according to Dr. Reid, is that it 

 demands that a structure enlarged under the 

 stimulus of use, for example, should give in 

 another generation a similar response to the 

 altogether different stimulus of nutrition. 

 Por him the Lamarckian position is foolish- 

 ness ; " it is dead as an accepted interpreta- 

 tion of the facts." 



To the question that underlies the develop- 

 ment of possibilities of variation, the cause of 

 variation, Dr. Reid gives no satisfactory an- 

 swer or theory. What is inherited is the 

 germ plasm, and variations in this may be pro- 

 duced either " spontaneously " or by the action 

 of the environment, this meaning apparently 

 the external environment. The latter cause is 

 of little moment, since it can act only injuri- 

 ously and can therefore have been of but rare 

 occurrence in individuals that survive and re- 

 produce. It is on " spontaneous " variations 

 alone that natural selection acts and this 

 spontaneous variability has itself been evolved 

 under the action of natural selection. But 

 how these " spontaneous " variations occur is 

 not even hinted at and on this point we are 



