RECENT SCIENCE. 627 



spaces and, entering occasionally into the sphere of attraction of 

 the earth, fall upon its surface, sometimes contain charcoal or a 

 special variety of graphite ; but later on, in 1887, the St. Peters- 

 burg Professors Latchinoff and Erofe'eff went a step further 

 and proved that the charcoal is occasionally transformed into 

 diamonds; thus they extracted some diamond dust from the 

 meteorite fallen during the previous year at Novo Urei, in the 

 province of Penza. Some doubts were, however, entertained as" 

 regards their discovery, but the fact has been fully confirmed 

 since by Friedel and Le Bel, who found in a meteorite from 

 Canon Diablo minute diamonds and carbonados exactly similar 

 to those of Moissan.* 



It is thus evident that the artificial reproduction of the 

 diamond is not one of those accidental discoveries which may be 

 made without leaving an impression upon science for many years 

 to come. It is only one of the many advances made in a certain 

 direction, and is the outcome of the whole drift of modern research 

 which endeavors immensely to widen the means at our disposal 

 for effecting physical and chemical transformations of matter. 

 It is one step more into a new domain where chemistry, metal- 

 lurgy, and mineralogy join hands together for revealing by joint 

 efforts the secrets of the constructive forces of matter. 



The study of the direct action of environment upon organisms, 

 and of the mechanism of its action, becomes a favorite study 

 among biologists — the " transf ormists " being no more a few ex- 

 ceptions in science, but already constituting a school which has 

 several brilliant representatives in America, France, and Germany, 

 as well as in this country. It is evident that almost none of the 

 biologists engaged in this kind of research maintains any doubts 

 as to the importance of natural selection as a factor of evolution. 

 To use the words of one of the leading American transf ormists, f 

 "the law of natural selection is well established, and no more 

 under discussion." For many adaptations it offers the best and 

 the only possible explanation. But biology would have been 

 brought to a standstill if the idea had prevailed that, after a more 

 or less plausible explanation of some adaptation has been given 

 under the hypothesis of natural selection, nothing more is left to 

 be done to explain this same adaptation. For many animals whose 

 manners of life we hardly know at all — the study of animal life 

 having been deplorably neglected for the last fifty years — the ex- 

 planation would often be little better than a mere hypothesis ; but 



* Comptes Rendus, December 12, 1892, tome cxv, p. 1039; also February 13, 1893. 

 f H. F. Osborn, whose admirable essays, mentioned in a previous review, are now pub- 

 lished in book form. 



