CURRENT LITERATURE 
BOOK REVIEWS 
Intracellular pangenesis 
DeVries’s Intracellulare Pangenesis, originally published in German in 
1889, occupies an important position in the history of modern biology. It 
represents the fundamental speculations which guided the author in the 
experiments afterward reported in his great work Die Mutationstheorie, and 
it was also the first discussion presenting approximately the modern concep- 
tion of unit characters. 
Few scientists at the present time can accept in detail the scheme by 
which DeVries at that time explained the facts of heredity, but all appreciate 
the great value of this book in directing work along experimental lines, first 
by DeVrtts himself, and after him by a great number of both botanists and 
zoologists. While this work can scarcely be considered as having more than 
a historical significance at the present time, the triumph of the general prin- 
ciples introduced by it impresses the propriety of an English translation at 
the present time. This translation™ has been satisfactorily made by GAGER 
The translator points out in a brief preface the genetic relationship of “Intra- 
cellular pangenesis” to scientific conceptions now fully established upon an 
experimental basis. 
A brief “Foreword” by StrAsBuRGER acknowledges his own indebtedness 
to the stimulating influence of DeVries, and observes that in a number of 
instances the speculative writings of that author both in Jntracellulare Pan- 
genesis and in the appended essay on Befruchtung und Bastardirung have 
proved prophetic of phenomena afterward actually foun 
The translator has added occasional brief otitis to explain certain 
allusions made by the author, or to call attention to more recent discoveries 
bearing upon the points under discussion. Several paragraphs have been 
omitted because there is no longer any necessity for speculation regarding the 
subject matter of those paragraphs. Purely as a historical work, the omission 
of these paragraphs seems to the reviewer to have been a mistake. It was 
impossible as well as undesirable to make the book contemporary science, 
though the desire to approximate this was undoubtedly the motive of the 
author and translator in making the omissions from the original work. Taking 
the place of these omitted paragraphs, the subjects involved in them are 
* DeVries, H., Intracellular pangenesis, including a paper on fertilization and 
hybridization. Translated from the German by C. Sruart GAGER. pp. xiiit27°- 
Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Co. 1910. 
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