Evolution and Animal Life An Elementary Discussion of Facts, Processes, Laws and Theories relating to the Life and Evolution of Animals

Abstract

THERE is growing up a generation of biological students that does not read its Darwin, its Weismann, or Gallon; instead, it cons manuals and text-books on the works of these masters. It is so very much less trouble, if the student's object is to. satisfy an examiner, to “get up” a text-book on evolutionary problems than to extract from original sources a clear conception of the authors' theories; and yet what a world of difference is there between the ipsissima verba of a master and the cut-and-dried phrases of the manual-maker! The one is the advocate pleading his cause with all the eloquence in his. power, the other the reporter compressing the living words and phrases into the limits of a polumn. The one is inspiring, stimulating, the other can scarcely avoid exceeding dulness, and certainly no,one ever yet, was roused to enthusiasm by a text-book.

Evolution and Animal Life. An Elementary Discussion of Facts, Processes, Laws and Theories relating to the Life and Evolution of Animals.

By David Starr Jordan Vernon Lyman Kellogg. Pp. xi + 489; illustrated. (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1907.) Price 2.50 dollars net.