December 18, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



899 



schools the curricula of the students of civil 

 engineering provide one term only for geology. 

 The student is expected to master the prin- 

 ciples of geology and to find the applications in 

 that brief time without any previous train- 

 ing in physiography, mineralogy, petrology or 

 paleontology. It is obviously a difficult task 

 "to arrange the material so that the ground- 

 work of principles is made clear in the short 

 time allotted for the study, and applications 

 •emphasized sufficiently to make the study of 

 much practical value. This difficulty is 

 lappily met in this volume by brief and con- 

 cise statements of principles followed by 

 ample and well-chosen illustrations. 



The book is well arranged for the mature 

 and serious-minded beginner who wishes to 

 get the maximum of material in a short time. 

 The more advanced student will find also 

 many applications of geology brought from 

 widely scattered sources and some which are 

 not treated elsewhere. Separate chapters are 

 ■devoted to rock minerals, rocks, structural 

 geology and metamorphism, rock weathering 

 and soils, rivers, lakes, wave action, under- 

 ground waters, landslides, glacial deposits, 

 cements, clays, coal, petroleum and gas, road 

 material, and ore deposits. The mechanical 

 features of the work are excellent; partic- 

 ularly noteworthy are the clearly executed 

 photographs and line drawings. 



W. H. Emmons 



Minneapolis 



Die Umweli des Lebens. Eine physikalisch- 

 chemische TJntersuchung uber die Eignung 

 des Anorganischen fur die Bediirfnisse des 

 Organischen. Von Lawrence J. Hender- 

 son; iibersetzt von K. Bernstein. Wies- 

 baden, J. F. Bergmann. 1914. 

 This volume is the German translation of 

 the author's book, " The Fitness of the Envi- 

 ronment," recently reviewed in these columns.'- 

 There are a few additional features; the 

 table of contents contains a very complete and 

 convenient summary of the whole book, impor- 

 tant sentences or paragraphs are italicized, 

 1 Science, N. S., 1913, p. 337. 



and a brief final chapter has been added; 

 there is also an interesting and apposite quo- 

 tation from du Bois-Reymond in a footnote 

 on page 161; and the subject-index has been 

 omitted. Otherwise the book remains un- 



In his final chapter the author calls atten- 

 tion to the existence of " a hitherto unrecog- 

 nized order among the properties of the 

 chemical elements," — referring to the remark- 

 able manner in which certain fundamental 

 properties, which have largely conditioned the 

 course taken by the evolutionary process, are 

 distributed among the elements. These prop- 

 erties, far from being distributed with ap- 

 proximate uniformity — as the periodic system 

 might lead us to expect — attain strongly 

 marked maxima, or are, so to speak, concen- 

 trated, in relatively few elements, which at 

 the same time are among the most abundant 

 and widespread, namely: carbon, hydrogen 

 and oxygen. " As a result of this fact there 

 arise certain characteristics of the cosmic 

 process which could not otherwise occur : " 

 the implication is that at the outset of cosmic 

 evolution there were present in advance aU of 

 the conditions needed for the development of 

 physico-chemical systems having vital pecu- 

 liarities, i. e., possessing the complexity, activ- 

 ity and stability in a changing environment 

 which are essential to living organisms. The 

 properties of these three elements — and of no 

 others — show a most detailed " fitness " for 

 the production of just such systems. If, there- 

 fore, the main outcome of evolution be re- 

 garded as the development of living organ- 

 isms, " the biologist may rightly regard tha 

 universe in its very essence as biocentric." 



The volume is attractively printed and is 

 dedicated to Karl Spiro. 



E. S. L. 



TSE OXIDATION OF NITBOGEN AND HOW 

 CHEAP NITRATES WOULD REVOLU- 

 TIONIZE OUR ECONOMIC LIFE 



How is Atmospheric Nitrogen, Oxidized? 

 It is not many years ago (1898) that Sir 

 William Crookes sounded the note of alarm 



