236 



THE ZOOLOGIST. 



NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 



Mendel's Principles of Heredity. By W. Bateson, M.A., 

 F.R.S., &c. University Press, Cambridge. 



This volume describes a great factor in organic evolution. 

 In the pages of ' The Zoologist ' (1905, p. 240) a notice appeared 

 of Mr. Punnett's excellent little work on " Mendelism." Prof. 

 Bateson now details the principles on which that philosophical 

 conclusion is based. 



The conception of evolution is a very ancient one* ; when we 

 understand its method we shall have discovered the working of 

 the cosmic process. It is not to be enunciated by terms and 

 definitions, nor demonstrated like one of Euclid's problems ; 

 neither is organic evolution the product of one factor, as appa- 

 rently insisted on by those followers of a dogmatic Darwinism 

 (certainly not that of its great master) who rigidly describe 

 themselves as " selectionists." As Prof. Bateson wisely remarks, 

 to Darwin the knowledge of Mendel's principles would have 

 come "as a delight, that progress, even if in a direction un- 

 expected by himself, had been made with that problem the 

 solubility of which he was the first to make apparent to the 

 world." In fact, the Mendelian factor supplements " Natural 

 Selection" ; even if it qualifies it does not invalidate that great 

 teaching, and both factors together will still be followed by 

 others yet to be, and which subsequently certainly will be dis- 

 covered. The greatness of a theory is in its promotion of work 

 in other directions, while the process of " Natural Selection " 

 itself will weed out much of the doctrinal commentations and 

 proposed axioms of some neo-Darwinians. 



* In the last issue of 1 The Hibbert Journal ' (vol. vii. p. 533), Ibn Ishak 

 tells us that it is an old truth in Islam. It is taught in the Masnavi of Jalal 

 ud Deen Rumi, who died a.h. 672, and is the belief of all Muslim mystics, and 

 is founded on the teaching of the Kuran. 



