For Doe

Evolution for John Doe--Henshaw Ward--Bobbs Merrill ($3.50)

The late holy war at Dayton, Tenn., gave occasion for a great host of fakirs, professional prophets and pseudo-scientific potboilers to flood the land with cheap literature for and against Evolution. The end of the aftermath is not yet. Even the Bible-sellers have felt the boom and prepared popular editions of that much-feared-for book. But if any new Evolution text for laity should be absolved of the Dayton imprimatur it is the present volume. Mr. Ward, lately a teacher at the Taft School, lives in New Haven, Conn., where he is an imtimate of Professors Woodruff, Keller and Lull* of the Yale University Faculty all of whom checked his manuscript before it was accepted by the publishers.

Taking his vast subject briskly but firmly in hand, Mr. Ward describes the theory, presents the evidence, tells the history of the idea. It takes him 336 pages to put it all down thoroughly, but the style is so crisp and lively, the chapters so economically arranged, the illustrations--verbal and photographic --so clear and well-timed, that Reader Doe will come to the end breathing easily. Particularly lucid is the exposition of chromosomes and the variations they produce; particularly commendable the author's ability to keep his reader im- pressed at all times with the enormous diversity of life and the in- cessant struggle for existence. Reader Doe is most likely a memtally-gregarious animal. It should excite him not a little to read this able book and realize that of all the creatures he has learned about, he belongs to the race of the one who can tell about them all.

* Richard Swann Lull, professor of Vertebrate Paleontology, author of The Ways of Life, reviewed TIME, June 1, SCIENCE.