Miscellaneous Intelligence. 467 



3. Man : A History of the Human Body ; by Arthub Keith, 

 M.D.,LL.D. Pp. 256. New York (Henry Holt and Company) ; 

 London (Williams and Norgate). — A concisely written account 

 of the natural history of man, his structure, ancestry, develop- 

 ment, relationships, and racial peculiarities. The introductory 

 chapters contain a brief description of the bodily structures, with 

 particular emphasis on the characters of the brain, followed by an 

 interesting discussion of man's place among animals. Stature, 

 proportions, and posture are next considered, then the tail and 

 numerous other vestigial structures which show man's kinship 

 with other groups of animals. A brief description of the develop- 

 ment of the embryo and of the organ systems of the body leads 

 to a discussion of the evidence which malformations and monsters 

 afford as to man's past history. Changes in the body during 

 youth and age, sexual characters, and racial characters are treated 

 in such a way as to furnish convincing evidence that the human 

 species is still in process of evolution, while the concluding chap- 

 ters treat of the bodily features as indexes of mental character, 

 the skin, glands, hair, and sense organs, the wonderful mechanism 

 which adapts all the organs to the functions which they are 

 called upon to perform, the signs of degeneration, the capabilities 

 of regeneration of parts, the antiquity of man and his genealogy. 



This little book has the double merit of containing a vast 

 amount of useful information in small compass and presenting it 

 in an entertaining manner. w. R. c. 



4. The Growth of Groups in the Animal Kingdom • by R. 

 E. Lloyd, M.B., D.Sc. Pp. vii, 185, with two colored plates. 

 New York and London, 1912 (Longmans, Green and Co.). — 

 The author states that " the aim of this small book is to lessen 

 the belief in Natural Selection as a creative agency," and to offer 

 in its place further support for the theory of the origin of species 

 by mutation. To this end he presents a number of somewhat dis- 

 jointed essays discussing the instability of species, the absence of 

 definite criteria by which they may be distinguished, and their 

 possible origin by the growth of groups of individuals of similar 

 characters. 



The evidence is supported by the results of a study of the 

 rats of India, by a critical review of Tower's work on the potato 

 beetle, and by an examination of only twenty-two individuals of 

 a genus of fishes. The new data which the book contains form 

 an important contribution to the science of genetics, but the philo- 

 sophical arguments in the concluding chapter can hardly be 

 expected to gain any new converts to the mutation theory. 



W. R. C. 



5. Genetics: An Introduction to the Study of Heredity; by 

 Herbert Eugene Walter. Pp. xiv, 272 ; 72 figures and dia- 

 grams. New York 1913 (The Macmillan Company). — Out of 

 the world-wide experiments in animal and plant breeding of the 

 past decade has arisen the new science of genetics. The applica- 

 tion of the newly-discovered laws of inheritance has already 

 modified the practical breeding of domesticated animals and 



