October 20, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



519 



introduced into the United States army largely 

 through the efforts of Major Eussell, of the 

 Army Medical School, and was made compul- 

 sory for the oiEcers and men of the maneuver 

 division. Dr. Russell recently wrote me that 

 over 45,000 of our troops have now been vac- 

 cinated without any untoward results. He 

 says : " This is the first time in the history of 

 preventive medicine that compulsory im- 

 munization against typhoid fever has been 

 used, and no military camps have ever been 

 so free from this disease." 



We have given considerable space to the 

 presentation of this subject, not only because 

 it is a distinct triumph for American pre- 

 ventive medicine, but the lessons taught 

 should be applied in civil practise so as to 

 avert a needless sacrifice of life and money 

 from one of the so-called preventable diseases. 



Geo. M. Kober 

 Georgetown University 



Evolution. By J. Aethur Thomson and 

 Patrick Geddes. No. 14 in the Home 

 University Library of Modern Knowledge. 

 New York, H. Holt & Co. 1911. Pp. 256. 

 Price, V5 cents. 



Another successful collaboration by the two 

 well-known biological writers. Professors Ged- 

 des and Thomson, has produced a small but 

 stimulating volume, " Evolution," which is 

 the fourteenth in the new English- American 

 series called, rather heavily, the Home Uni- 

 versity Library of Modern Knowledge. The 

 earlier collaboration by these writers twenty 

 years ago resulted in a book, " The Evolution 

 of Sex," that has become a biological classic. 

 " Evolution " is, of necessity, largely a re- 

 statement of things already frequently and 

 variously stated. The series to which it be- 

 longs is meant for popular consumption and 

 has a standard that determines pretty defi- 

 nitely the activities of its contributors. The 

 facts and their significance, where this sig- 

 nificance is not too uncertain, and these facts 

 and inductions set out with some attention to 

 interestingness as well as clearness and accu- 

 racy; these are requirements of the series. 

 The authors of " Evolution " have, of course, 



no difficulty in making their volume almost a 

 model from this point of view. 



But they have been able to add color and 

 personal character to the book, to boot. Espe- 

 cially in the chapter (VL) on " Organism, 

 Function and Environment, in Relation to 

 Evolution," and in VIL, " Evolution Theories 

 in their Social Origins and Interactions," and 

 VIIL, " The Evolution Process Once More 

 Interpreted," is the personal point of view 

 revealed. And these chapters, especially, 

 therefore, will interest " constant readers " of 

 evolution literature. 



I have lately had occasion to say, in a re- 

 view of another of Professor Thomson's books, 

 that he is a good selectionist; though not a 

 bad one; that is, that he is not a selectionist 

 bigot. "However," it was added, "Darwin- 

 ism for him rests on, or is, mostly selection." 

 It is of particular interest therefore, to note 

 that in this latest personal utterance of Pro- 

 fessor Thomson, Darwinism, or, more fairly, 

 evolution, is less and less chiefly selection. 

 Indeed the closing sentences in the present 

 book — of course they are words of Geddes and 

 Thomson, not Thomson alone — are: 



Natural selection remains still a vera causa in 

 tlie origin of species; but the function ascribed to 

 it is practically reversed. It exchanges its former 

 supremacy as the supposed sole determinant 

 among practically indefinite possibilities of struc- 

 ture and function, for the more modest position of 

 simply accelerating, retarding or terminating the 

 process of otherwise determined change. It fur- 

 nishes the brake rather than the steam or the rails 

 for the journey of life; or in better metaphor, 

 instead of guiding the ramifications of the tree of 

 life, it would, in Mivart's excellent phrase, do 

 little more than apply the pruning-knife to them. 

 In other words, its functions are mainly those of 

 the third Fate, not the first: of Siva, not of 

 Brahma. 



The whole chapter of which this paragraph 

 is the conclusion is a plea for a sort of vital- 

 ism — to misuse again, probably, a usually 

 misused word. It is a sort of vitalism that 

 assumes some cause, inherent in life or per- 

 tinent only to life, capable of producing a 

 " definite variation, its branchings essentially 

 dichotomous rather than indefinite, with prog- 



