By HERBERT EUGENE WALTER. 272 pp. Price $1.50; by mail of THE SURVEY
$1.65.
Everyone interested in the modern problems of eugenics and the care of
defectives will find much of value in this book. The author says: “An
attempt has been made to summarize for the intelligent but uninitiated
reader some of the more recent phases of the questions of heredity which
are at present agitating the biological world.”
The book is an excellent statement of the present most generally
accepted theory of heredity, with only as much reference to other
theories as will enable the reader to see how modern theories have grown
out of the old ones.
Much of the book is extremely interesting to anyone with the least
beginning of a scientific mind. The incidents with regard to the various
experiments by biologists are illuminating.
The author is fair and guarded in his statements on questions which are
in dispute. Although there can be no doubt as to his own beliefs in such
matters, for example, as the inheritance of acquired characters, yet he
gives both sides of the question fairly. Some of the instances of
experiments read like a romance. The story of Lamarck’s Evening Primrose
as studied by De Vries is fascinating.
Of course, to the socially minded person, the most interesting part of
the book is that which deals with its application to man, and the
chapter on human conservation which takes up such topics as how mankind
may be improved, control of immigration, discriminating marriage laws,
educated sentiment, segregation of defectives, etc., is compelling and
well worth study.
The text is illustrated by a large number of diagrams some of which,
although simple to the student of biology, will require considerable
study by the ordinary reader. On the whole, the book is a valuable
contribution to our literature on heredity and will be of great service
to those who, while unable to study eugenics exhaustively, still feel
that they must know the general theories on the subject.