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CURRENT LITERATURE 



BOOK REVIEWS 



Evolution 



A book by Lotsy 1 is the most recent contribution to the literature of evo- 

 lution. The author is evidently handicapped by the intricacies of English 

 spelling and punctuation, for there are scores of instances of misspelled words, 

 incorrect punctuation, and faulty idiom. It is to be regretted that these types 

 of elementary error were not eliminated by the publisher, for the book-making 

 is otherwise excellent. Perhaps the commonest error is that of ignoring the 

 accepted canons of word division at the end of a line. With great frequency 

 monosyllabic words are divided and words are broken in the middle of a syllable. 

 Unfamiliarity with English idiom also leads frequently to strikingly awkward 

 expressions. For example, on page 29, the following meaningless sentence 

 occurs: "This species undoubtedly are in an uninheritable way." On page 

 I 120 this paragraph occurs just as quoted: "While hare and rabbit don't pair 



in nature, a male hare doubtless would do so if sufficiently long isolated with 

 Jr female rabbits, in the absence of male rabbits on an island, as ressorts from 



the experiments of Mr. Houwink, showing that the hare looses its inborn aver- 

 sion of a tame rabbit, if it is taken soon after birth from its mother, and sucked 

 by a tame rabbit foster-mother." Similar passages are frequent. 



Another peculiar type of error is in the use of "e.g." and "i.e."; for the 

 author reverses our usage constantly. He has also invented another abbre- 

 viation which serves him well, using "f.i.," apparently for "for instance." 

 Not infrequently Dutch and German words are substituted for English, as 

 "bij" for "by," "unter" for "under," and "alle" for "all." Any English 

 writer, in an evening's work, could have edited the book into acceptable 

 form and it is to be regretted that some such editing was not done. 



Apart from these most obvious mechanical imperfections the book is of 

 considerable interest, in that it serves to emphasize the importance of hybrid- 

 ization as a factor in evolution. The author's position, however, is an extreme 

 one, in that he holds hybridization to be the sole cause of variation. The 

 principal ideas that form the backbone of his argument are as follows. 



1. Linnean species, or Linneons as he calls them, are not species at all, but 

 artificial groups of intercrossing types, that are constantly giving Mendelian 

 ratios. All so-called mutations are merely extracted recessives, which if iso- 

 lated produce new pure types. 



1 Lotsy, J. P., Evolution by means of hybridization. 8vo. pp. viii+166. The 

 Hague: Martinus Nyhoff. 19 16. 



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