Reviews, Notices, Etc. 73


REVIEWS, NOTICES Etc.



THE INDIAN WADERS.*


The useful series of books on Indian birds by Mr. Finn

has received another addition in the form of a very nice little

book on the Waders. It consists of upwards of two hundred

pages of letterpress and is in two parts, the first dealing with the

perching and the second with the non-perching Waders.


Few birds are more conspicuous in India than the Waders,

few are more interesting and perhaps none are so little known to

most people.


Mr. Finn deals exhaustively with all of the wading birds

which are found in India, to the number of nearly one hundred

and fifty species. We can heartily recommend this little book to

all who are interested in Waders.



THE PROBLEM OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.


By Charxes Otis Whitman (in " Congress of Arts and Science,


Universal Exposition, St. Louis 1904," vol. v.)


This is a carefully thought out article tending to show that

although " Natural selection, orthogenesis, and mutation appear

to present fundamental contradictious" they nevertheless may be

reconciled.


The author objects " to the implication that a definite

variation-tendency must be considered to be teleological because

it is not ' orderless.' " He discusses the difficulty of accounting by

natural selection for the incipient stages of useful organisms and

points out that no one of our sense-organs can be traced to a

rudiment, except in the embryological sense; and he observes, —

" Without the assistance of some factor having more continuous

directive efficiency, selection would fail to bring out of the chaos

of chance variation, or kaleidoscopic mutation, such progressive

evolution as the organic world reveals."


After stating that the " study of the problem of the origin

of species resolves itself " . . "into exhaustive studies of single

favourable characters, in the more accessible portions of their


* How to know the Indian Waders, by Frank Finn, B.A, (Oxoii.), F.Z.S,, M.B.O.U.

Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co. Price Rs. 3-8. London: R. H. Porter.



