No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
The somewhat catchy title was not necessary, for the author tells us that "the present book is my previous one [Embryology and Evolution, 19301 brought up to date and enlarged"; and that book as well as this is a very serious and intensive production.
The author deals with the following subjects: Stages of Development and Stages of Evolution ; Ontogeny ; Speeds of the Processes of Development ; Phylogeny ; IIeterochrony and Phylogeny ; Caenogenesis ; Deviation ; Neoteny ; Vestigial Structures due to Reduction ; Adult Variation ; Vestigial Structures due to Retardation ; Hypermorphosis ; Acceleration ; Paedomorphosis and Gerontomorphosis ; and Repetition.
The volume consists of a highly involved and individualistic reasoning, supported by various observations. Many may find it not convincing, but to all earnest students of the problems of evolution it will prove suggestive. The views advanced on ontogeny, which the author defines as "the result of the action of external factors in evoking responses from the internal factors of an animal to which the latter were transmitted by inheritance from its parents," will doubtless be much more satisfactory than those on phylogeny, which '(is provisionally to be regarded as a series of adult forms, which are disconnected and causally unrelated to one another, each adult form being the result of an ontogeny which differs from the previous one. ' ' However the volume, charged as it is with facts and interesting reasoning, should not be judged without a thorough perusal.
A. H.
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