Abstract
ALTHOUGH bravely marked as "Revised Edition" on the title-page, this appears to be no more than a reprint of the revised edition of 1929, which was itself not greatly modernized from the original of 1917 Perhaps it would have been kinder to have allowed this old favourite to go out to grass on the uppere shelves of the library. The sections on adaptation to different environments, and the chapters on the evolutionary comparative anatomy of various groups of animals still provide an easily read, if out-of-date, introduction for elementary students. But the sections dealing with the processes of evolution are pathetic. The single short chapter on "Heredity", for example, contains fairly long paragraphs on such pre-genetical ideas as atavism, telegony, prenatal influence and the transmission of parental conditions ; and although a sentence is inserted stating that "What is called telegony does not actually exist", the discussion leaves the definite impression that all four ideas are more or less acceptable biological concepts. The following paragraph on sex determination achieves the noteworthy feat of discussing this problem without once mentioning chromosomes ; but the discussion on Mendelism, after devoting a total of four pages to an explanation of the F2 1 : 2 : 1 ratio, does reach out towards the present sufficiently to incorporate a final two lines : "Mendel's laws, therefore, are apparently a generalisation of the greatest importance and apply universally to all cases of inheritance".
Organic Evolution
By Prof. Richard Swann Lull. Revised edition. Pp. xx+744+31 plates. (New York: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1947.) 40s. net.
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W., C. Organic Evolution. Nature 163, 195 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/163195b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/163195b0