Studies in Heterogenesis

Abstract

HETEROGENESIS means, in these studies, the per saltum origin of forms of life from other quite different forms, e.g. of a ciliated infusorian from a rotifer's egg, or of a sun-animalcule from a chlorophyll corpuscle. It is long since Dr. H. Charlton Bastian first suggested this heresy; and many years of industrious observation have resulted in this large and expensive volume describing and (with 815 figures) illustrating those cases in which the author thinks he has detected the heterogenetic process at work. One cannot but admire the doggedness with which Dr. Bastian has persisted—contra mundum—in maintaining his thesis; and even those who feel quite sure that he has misinterpreted what he saw may find it interesting to discover by repetition of his experiments what did actually occur and was actually photographed. Others, again, who would not turn round to look at slides supposed to demonstrate that the egg of a rotifer may resolve itself into infusorians or into one large ciliate, may be more tolerant of the suggestion that Protistan evolution is still going on, retracing some of its ancient steps, or making new ones. It may be that Proteus still frisks a little among the Protists, or that there are mutations among unicellulars just as among De Vries's evening primroses.

Studies in Heterogenesis.

By H. Charlton Bastian Pp. ix + 354 + xxxvii; 19 plates, with 815 illustrations from photomicrographs. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1903.) Price 31s. 6d.