692 Scientific Intelligence. 



the general heading ctf Adaptation and Disease, Heredity and 

 Adaptation, Growth and Overgrowth. Adami's freedom of 

 thought is made clear by this quotation: "With abundant 

 material presented to him and freedom of individual judgment, 

 it is scarce possible that the student of today should accept unre- 

 servedly the teaching of either Lamarck or Darwin. He who is 

 concerned at arriving at the truth is impatient of such labels." 

 The viewpoint is summarized thus : "In so far as between Dar- 

 win and Lamarck the essence of the teaching of the latter is that 

 variation is an active process, a reaction on the part of living 

 matter to its environment, the conclusions reached in these pages 

 undoubtedly favour the Lamarckian view. Nevertheless, to 

 accept them does not mean that the principle of natural selection 

 is thereby excluded, or that the two principles are mutually 

 antagonistic, but only that the influence of external forces is the 

 primary process in the production of variation, and that natural 

 selection is secondary, culling out those grades and forms of 

 variation which are least economical and represent the less per- 

 fect adaptation on the part of the individuals to the conditions 

 in which the family or species finds itself for the time being. 

 Seen thus, evolution, whether what we regard as progressive or 

 as regressive, is the outcome of an active process of continuous 

 adjustment between organisms and their environment." The 

 chapters are singularly replete with details applicable to scien- 

 tific generalizations of this sort; and there is no lack of frank 

 criticisms of current views. It is a book disclosing many rather 

 liberally conceived hypotheses, always presented in the guise of 

 attractive diction. l. b. m. 



Obituary. 



Doctor Charles Rochester Eastman, the well-known paleon- 

 tologist, was drowned at Long Beach, New Jersey, during the 

 night of September 27, 1918. He was born at Cedar Rapids, 

 Iowa, June 5, 1868. A graduate of Harvard and of Munich, 

 he was widely known and highly appreciated for his studies of 

 fossil fishes, and as the editor of the English edition of Zittel's 

 Grundziige der Palaeontologie. His passing is a great loss to 

 American science. Most of his work was done at Harvard, Car- 

 negie Museum, U. S. National Museum, and the American 

 Museum of Natural History. 



Doctor William Battle Phillips, the mining engineer and 

 geologist, died at his home, Houston, Texas, on June 7, 1918, at 

 the age of sixty years. He has been connected with the univer- 

 sities of North Carolina, Alabama, and Texas, and with the 

 periodicals, the Engineering and Mining Journal and the Amer- 

 ican Manufacturer and Iron World. He also organized the 

 Bureau of Economic Geology and Technology in the University 

 of Texas, and was "a man of great energy and of extensive 

 learning. ' ' 



