CURRENT LITERATURE 
BOOK REVIEWS 
Plant and animal breeding for secondary schools 
There has been a growing demand in recent years that the secondary 
schools, especially those located in rural districts, shall give courses in agri- 
culture, domestic economy, and other subjects bearing a practical relation to 
the life of the people in whose midst the schools are located. In several 
states these subjects are now a part of the prescribed course. Such require- 
ments make demands for properly trained teachers and for suitable text- 
books. A well-conceived and charmingly written manual of plant and animal 
breeding has been prepared by Professor EUGENE DavENporRT' to partially 
meet this growing need. 
In some respects this work is essentially an abridgment of the same author’s 
earlier work on Principles of breeding, but less attention is given to philo- 
sophical discussions and more to facts regarding the origin and history of the 
various domesticated races. Several early chapters describe the manner in 
which plants and animals came to be domesticated, and point out the need of 
their further improvement. A chapter on the “ways of the wild” gives a 
very readable discussion of natural selection and the survival of the fittest, 
thus giving a basis for a proper appreciation of the relation between artificial 
selection and the natural evolutionary processes. The principles which are 
involved in the improvement of plants and animals are then discussed at some 
length, chief attention being given to Gatton’s Law of ancestral heredity 
and the correlation table. 
MENDEL’s laws are given very inadequate treatment. The author evi- 
dently has hazy conceptions of unit characters, dominance and recessiveness, 
latency, atavism, mutation, etc., and his discussions involving these subjects 
lack the definiteness and accuracy which characterize the rest of the book. 
He repeatedly emphasizes the statement that each individual possesses all 
the characteristics of all its ancestors, a statement directly opposed to all 
Mendelian experience. This lack of precision in the treatment of the prin- 
ciples of Mendelian heredity constitutes the most fundamental defect of the 
ook. It is not only too plainly apparent in the discussions, but is also seen 
in a number of erroneous definitions in the glossary, as the following examples 
a show: ‘“Gamete, the fertilized ovum”; “Mutant, an individual or 
‘Daveieek yaa Ne Dome sticated animals and plants. A brief treatise upon the 
origin and evelopment of domesticated races, with special reference to the methods 
of improvement. pp. xiv+ 321. figs. gg and frontispiece. Boston: Ginn & Co. 1910. 
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