Abstract
(1) PROF. ABBOTT'S aim is to give “a simple statement of the fundamentals of General Biology,” both for the general reader and the laboratory student. He deals with both plants and animals, shifting his field so as to get the best illustrations. The main subjects discussed are—living substance, the primary functions, metabolism, growth, differentiation, development, variation and heredity, organic response, species and their origin. The book is well-illustrated and marked by three other qualities—an admirable clearness which points to teaching experience, a pleasant freshness of treatment which is in part due to the numerous references to recent work, and an all-roundness of survey, for almost every aspect of biology is at any rate recognised and illustrated. This third quality lays the book open to the disadvantage of sometimes saying too little, but most introductory books of this sort say far too much. But we should have liked, for instance, to know more about those sea birds which “lay their eggs on the bare rocks and pay no more attention to them thereafter.”
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Towards Nature—Study 1 . Nature 94, 227–230 (1914). https://doi.org/10.1038/094227b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/094227b0