BOOKS AND CURRENT LITERATURE 



A New Problem in Adaptatiox. — The more deeply lying problems of 

 organic adaptation are treated from a new and most illuminating point 

 of view in Henderson's unique discussion of "the fitness of the environ- 

 ment,"' and all biologists interested in organic evolution will do well to 

 give this book very serious consideration. More than that, the book 

 deserves the attention of all physiologists, of whatever school, and stu- 

 dents of the broader aspects of the non-biological natural sciences will 

 also find it full of philosophical interest. 



If organisms are fitted or adapted to thrive in such environments as 

 the world offers to them, it is obviously just as true that these environ- 

 ments are fitted or adapted to allow organisms to thrive therein. Biolo- 

 gists have wondered at and tried to "explain" the fitness of organisms to 

 their surroundings, but the little volume before us appears to embody the 

 first serious scientific attempt to study the adaptations of the surround- 

 ings to living things. As the author points out, the idea of fitness in the 

 environment is not entirely new; it inspired much writing in the now 

 practically forgotten field of natural theolog\', and a few instances of 

 environmental fitness are the common property of scientists, but "it has 

 been the habit of biologists since Darmn to consider only the adapta- 

 tions of the living organism to the environment " (p. 5). As the re- 

 viewer has emphasized elsewhere,^ fitness or adaptation, is a characteris- 

 tic or quality which objects are observed to possess in various degrees, 

 and like other qualities of objects, these are explained, in the scientific 

 sense, by showing how they depend upon other and more fundamental 

 qualities of the same or other objects. Thus, the fitnesses of li\ang things 

 are to be referred back to peculiar properties or powers residing in these 

 things, which in turn are functions of still more fundamental qualities, and 

 so on to the limit or our present knowledge. Explanations are first ex- 



' Henderson, Lawrence J., The fitness of the environment, an inquiry into the 

 biological significance of the properties of matter. Pp. xv + 317. New York: 

 The Macmillan Company. 1913. ($1.50.) 



* Livingston, B. E., Adaptation in the living and non-living. Invitation paper 

 read at the SjTnposium on Adaptation of the American Society of Naturalists, 

 Cleveland, January 2, 1913. Amer. Nat. 47: 72-82. 1913. 



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