The Fitness of the Environment 
By LAWRENCE J. HENDERSON 
Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry in Harvard University 
Cloth, 12mo, $1.50 net 
“Darwinian fitness is compounded of a mutual relation- 
ship between the organism and the environment. Of this, 
fitness of environment is quite as essential a component as 
the fitness which arises in the process of organic evolution; 
and in fundamental characteristics the actual environment is 
the fittest possible abode of life.” Such is the thesis which 
this work seeks to establish through discussions of the physi- 
cal and chemical characteristics of life and cosmogony, and 
through critical study of the properties of matter in their 
biological relations. 
Water and carbonic acid are shown to be the primary con- 
stituents of the environment. Analysis shows their proper- 
ties, together with those of the component elements, hydrogen, 
oxygen, and carbon, to make up a series of maxima, among 
all known compounds and elements, so numerous, so varied, 
and so highly favorable, to the organic mechanism that the 
fitness of the world for life assumes an importance not less 
than the fitness which has been won by adaptation in the 
course of organic evolution. 
A final chapter discusses the bearing of these conclusions 
upon theories of organic evolution, modern vitalism, includ- 
ing the views of M. Bergson, and the old natural theology, 
and seeks to harmonize implications of design with the 
mechanistic view of nature. 
“The author’s style is so simple and clear that the volume combines 
the entertaining advantages of a novel with the instructiveness and 
vigor of a thoroughly scientific text.” — American Journal of Science. 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
