278 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [Marcu 
in which his skepticism as to the occurrence of adaptation is clearly evident. 
LoEB seems to believe that if a case of apparent adaptation can be stated in 
terms of the action of particular substances on particular parts or stages, it is 
thereby removed from the category of adaptation. Actually of course this 
line of reasoning does not touch the real problem, for the harmonious relations 
between substance and organ of apparent specificity, time, or intensity of action, 
may themselves be adaptations. A chapter on “Evolution,” consisting of 
three pages, is little more than an acceptance of the De Vriesian as opposed to 
the Darwinian conception of the mechanism of evolution. 
The final chapter, “Death and dissolution of the organism,” begins with 
an interésting consideration of autolysis and its relation to the cessation of 
oxidations, lack of oxygen, and change in hydrogen ion concentration. Death 
in the higher animals, he says, is due to cessation of oxidations. The state- 
ment “‘it is an unquestionable fact that each form has a quite definite duration 
of life” is not in agreement with recent experimental work on some of the lower 
animals, and to say that “no species can exist unless the natural life of its 
individuals outlasts the period of sexual maturity” is to ignore the fact that 
various forms, not only among the protozoa which Logs regards as immortal, 
exist for many generations, probably indefinitely, with only agamic reproduc- 
tion. Are such forms also immortal? As regards the protozoa, however, he 
fails to note that the ‘‘immortality” depends upon reproduction. Any 
protoplasm concerned in reproduction is just as immortal as protozoan proto- 
plasm. This sort of immortality depends upon the processes of rejuvenescence 
associated with reproduction, and is merely the continuity of life through the 
reproductive process. As might be expected from the suggestion in chapter I 
that the body cell is immortal, Lors agrees with MeTcHNikorF in regarding 
senescence and death as essentially an accident due to the formation in the 
body of poisons through bacterial action or otherwise. Special chemical 
substances ¢ are the cause of death as well as of 3 most of the phenomena 
of life. 
This then is apparently Lors’s conception of the organism as a whole, & 
“‘kaleidoscopic assortment” of material factors or determiners located in the 
chromosomes, producing substances which act on another assortment of 
materials in the cytoplasm. In chapter II he says “biology will be scientific 
only to the extent that it succeeds in reducing life phenomena to quantitative 
laws.” Nevertheless, his interpretations are predominantly qualitative, and 
in various cases he has ignored quantitative interpretations offered by others. 
e , for example, no mention even by way of refutation of RmDLE’s 
quantitative hypothesis of sex. e evidence in favor of a quantitative con- 
ception of polarity and of initiation of differentiation is not considered, and no 
mention is made of the quantitative hypotheses of senescence, which, by the 
way, can be interpreted in terms which are completely in accord with the auto- 
catalytic theory of growth in favor of which Lors has repeatedly declared 
