September 5, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



337 



Is that the idea that Professor Bolley in- 

 tended to convey, that the number of persons 

 referred to by him in this connection is less 

 than " a few " ? Or does he mean more than 

 " a few " ; or exactly as many as " a few " ? 



This array of logical discvission is of course 

 mere quibbling, and is designed to bring out 

 the writer's surprise, that a learned teacher, 

 in a scientific disquisition in a scientific jour- 

 nal, should have introduced this slangy and 

 meaningless expression, that has appeared of 

 late years as a malevolent fungus growth on 

 our " mother tongue," and become a sort of 

 fad much affected by the " light weights " of 

 our present social and literary world. 



With apologies to all concerned. 



T. G. Dabney 



Cl'aeksdale, Miss., 

 July 17, 1913 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 The Fitness of the Environment. An Inquiry 

 into the Biological Significance of the Prop- 

 erties of Matter. By Lawrence J. Hender- 

 son, Assistant Professor of Biological Chem- 

 istry in Harvard University. New York, 

 The Macmillan Company. 1913. 

 This book is essentially a discussion of the 

 nature and implications of organic adaptation, 

 i. e., of the relations between the living organ- 

 ism and the environment, but is written from 

 an unusual point of view. 



Darwinian fitness is compounded of a mutual 

 relationship between the organism and the en- 

 vironment. Of this, fitness of environment is quite 

 as essential a component as the fitness which arises 

 in the process of organic evolution; and in funda- 

 mental characteristics the actual environment is 

 the fittest possible abode of life. Such is the 

 thesis which the present volume seeks to establish. 

 This quotation from the preface defines 

 clearly the author's general purpose and indi- 

 cates broadly the general nature of his treat- 

 ment. In his discussion he inverts the order 

 of procedure customary with biologists. 

 Adaptation, he points out, is a reciprocal re- 

 lation, depending quite as much on the exist- 

 ence of special conditions in the environment 

 as in the organism. This environment — na- 

 ture, or the physical cosmos — exhibits in its 



ultimate constitution certain characteristics 

 .which are of such a kind as to favor the pro- 

 duction and continued or stable existence of 

 living systems or organisms. The world, in 

 other words, is, and was from the beginning, 

 fitted for the abode of life. This was the 

 contention of Paley and the other natural 

 theologians. It implies a bioeentric concep- 

 tion of nature — a conception once familiar 

 and, indeed, historically the first to be formed, 

 but which has fallen into disrepute since the 

 rise of the theory of evolution. Dr. Hender- 

 son aims at rehabilitating this view and sup- 

 porting it by an appeal to the results of 

 modern physical science. His conception of 

 nature has thus some of the characteristics of 

 Paleyism in a modernized form, but is essen- 

 tially uncolored by theological and philosoph- 

 ical prepossessions. The greater part of the 

 book is devoted to an account of the chief 

 physico-chemical peculiarities of the environ- 

 ment. This is largely a description of the 

 general properties of matter, with especial 

 regard to their biological fitness. Attention is 

 called to many conditions favorable to the 

 production and continued existence of living 

 beings. Carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, the 

 most abundant and widely distributed of the 

 elements, and their chief compounds, particu- 

 larly water and carbon dioxide, possess a 

 variety of properties and modes of behavior 

 which render them ideally adapted to the 

 formation of systems having the characteris- 

 tics that we call vital. What is insisted on as 

 remarkable is not merely the existence — in 

 such a substance as water — of single properties 

 that are biologically favorable; it is the pos- 

 session of a unique comhination of character- 

 istics shown by no other substance, and which 

 so far as we can see could not possibly be pos- 

 sessed by any other substance, that gives water 

 its unique fitness as a component of living 

 matter. Similarly, with carbon dioxide and 

 the other chief compounds of carbon with 

 hydrogen and oxygen : they are uniquely favor- 

 able as constituents of protoplasm and no sub- 

 stitutes are conceivable. 



In support of these contentions, the au- 

 thor proceeds as follows: He first reviews 



