1918] CURRENT LITERATURE 275 
(2) that organisms which are not purposeful and harmonious cannot persist. 
We look in vain for any consideration of the organism as a whole, that is, of 
the nature of its wholeness. There is no discussion of the morphological 
problem, but structure is simply accepted or assumed as required, and the 
author is chiefly concerned with certain chemical aspects of life. 
f, however, the book is not exactly what its title leads us to expect, it 
nevertheless contains a great variety of facts, suggestions, and hypotheses 
concerning many aspects of biology, and these are all presented in the author’s 
usual interesting and persuasive style. It is quite impossible even to mention 
all the various fields which the author enters, but a brief survey of chapters 
will indicate the range of the book 
n an introductory chapter CLAUDE BERNARD’s “‘design,’’ DRriEescu’s 
“entelechy,” and von UEXKULL’s “‘supergenes”’ are briefly considered and 
discarded as superfluous. 
The contents of the second chapter are indicated by its title: “‘The specific 
difference between living and dead matter and the question of the origin of 
life.” Lorn refutes very effectively the argument for a fundamental similarity 
between organisms and crystals. The organism differs from the crystal and 
other inorganic systems in that it synthesizes its own specific substance out 
of non-specific materials. He then argues for the immortality of the body cell, 
but without discussion of the phenomena of senescence, and finally reaches the 
conclusion that life is either eternal or that there must be synthetic enzymes 
which form molecules of themselves from a nutritive solution. Apparently 
he fails to see that such enzymes offer no solution of the problem of the origin 
of life, for, according to his own definition of living things, these enzymes must 
themselves be alive 
The third chapter, “The chemical basis of genus and species,” 
specificity in grafting, blood and serum specificity, etc., and concludes that Oe 
basis of specificity is in the proteins. The next two chaptets, “Specificity in 
fertilization” and “Artificial parthenogenesis,” are in large measure an account 
of the work of Lors and his students, and contain little of importance that has 
not already appeared in the author’s earlier books. Recent work on the prob- 
lem by F. R. and R. S, Lizxe and others is briefly mentioned, but the author’s 
conclusions remain essentially unaltered. 
he sixth chapter, ‘‘ Determinism in the formation of an organs doen an 
egg,” is an argument in support of the view that th 
in the rough. The cases of visible cytoplasmic differentiation in animal exgs 
and its apparent relation to later development are cited, but no mention is 
made of the centrifuge experiments which demonstrated that, in most cases at 
least, this visible differentiation is not an essential feature in further develop- 
ment. After some consideration of the development of isolated blasto- 
meres, Logs concludes that the only regulation in the egg consists in a flow 
of materials, but he neglects to account for the remarkably orderly character 
of the flow 
