Miscellaneous Scientific Intelligence. 289 



shows how some of the most divergent and apparently irreconcila- 

 ble theories of vital processes, which have so often led to bitter 

 controversies, may be harmonized without injustice to either side. 

 This attitude is well illustrated in the discussion of the age-long 

 controversy as to whether the living world is ruled by mechan- 

 istic or vitalistic forces, for the author's conclusion (p. 133) is 

 that ' ' Our study has led us away from the view that there is only 

 one science of nature, consisting of precise chemico-physical 

 descriptions which have been, or are in process of being, summed 

 up in mechanical or mathematical terms. As it seems to us, there 

 is greater utility and accuracy in frankly recognising successive 

 orders of facts, each with its dominant categories. There is the 

 domain of the inorganic, the physico-chemical order, where 

 mechanism perhaps has it all its own way. There is the realm of 

 organisms, the biological order, where mechanism is checkmated 

 by organism. There is the kingdom of man, the social order, 

 where mechanism is transcended and personality reigns. ' ' 



The first volume, of ten lectures, treats of the living world as 

 it exists today, including the activities of the living substance, the 

 behavior of animals, the problem of body and mind, the fact of 

 beauty, aesthetic emotion, the issues of life, the tactics of animate 

 nature, adaptiveness and purposiveness. In the second volume 

 the evidence as to the origin and evolution of organisms is pre- 

 sented, with particular reference to man. Five of these lectures 

 deal with variation, evolution, and heredity ; the others with the 

 evolution of mind and mind in evolution, phylogeny of man, dis- 

 harmonies, parasitism, senescence, death, control of life, healing- 

 power of nature, the moral and aesthetic development in man and 

 the religious interpretation of nature. 



This work will take a leading place among the few books which 

 will give the general reader an intimate, yet sufficiently broad, 

 view of the greatest problems of life and lead him toward a sym- 

 pathetic understanding of his own relation to the universe. 



w. R. c. 



2. Mechanismus und Physiologie der Geschlechtshestimmung ; 

 VON Richard Goldschmidt. Pp. viii, 251, with 113 figures. 

 Berlin, 1920 (Gebrtider Borntraeger) . — The elucidation of the 

 sex-determining mechanism forms one of the most important 

 biological contributions of the present century. Since it has 

 been shown that the differences which distinguish the sexes in 

 man, animals, and plants are normally dependent upon a definite 

 chromosomal complex in the fertilized egg, it is of importance to 

 understand the means by which these sexual characteristics 

 become stamped upon the body. 



The author presents experimental evidence to show that in 

 some animals, at least, every fertilized egg possesses both of the 

 alternative sex factors, the predominating activity of one pro- 

 ducing the male sex and that of the other the female. These 

 factors are of the nature of enzymes associated with the so-called 

 sex chromosomes. Each of them, male and female determining, 



