Γκ.
PLANKTON-STUDIEN. Vergleichende Untersuchungen ueber die Bedeutung und Zusammensetzung der pelagischen Fauna und Flora. By Ernst Haeckel. Jena: Gustav Fischer.
The first systematic studies of the innumerable organisms which almost everywhere drift about in the ocean, were made by Professor Johannes Müller who some forty years ago made excursions in the North Sea. Haeckel, then a student twenty years old, accompanied him on one of these excursions to Heligoland. Since then these investigations have been conducted on a larger scale. The English vessel "Challenger" cruised in different oceans for no less than forty months, and the results of this great undertaking were published by John Murray in the "Voyage of H. M. S. Challenger"—a voluminous work consisting of eighty-two zo-ological reports, to which Professor Haeckel also has contributed his "Report on the Deep-Sea Keratosa." The German government sent out the German cruiser "National" on the same errand. The scientists of the expedition were Hensen, Brandt, Dahl, Schütt, Fischer, Krümmel. They were at sea altogether ninety-three days making a circuitous trip on the Atlantic ocean, touching at the Bermudas, Brazil, and the Azores. The results of the expedition, published in reports by Hensen, Brandt, Du Bois-Reymond, and Krümmel, were considered as very satisfactory and received the unreserved applause of the German press. Professor Haeckel is of a different opinion. He considers the reports as standing in flat contradiction to former valuable observations, especially to those of the English "Challenger" and the Italian "Vettor Pisani" expeditions. Hensen's results rest upon a weak supposition and contain wrong generalisations; even his method is, according to Haeckel, entirely useless, giving a wrong presentation of the problems of pelagic biology.
The word "plancton" was introduced by Hensen. Haeckel adopts it because he considers the Greek term preferable to Johannes Müller's Auftrieb or pelagic Mulder (the latter has been adopted also by English, French, and Italian planctologists). By plancton (πλαγκτόν), derived from πλάζω, to roam about, is understood the drifting micro-organisms of the sea.
Professor Haeckel in the present volume not only corrects Professor Hensen's errors, but also gives a report of his own observations. Not the least valuable part of the brochure is the exact terminology which Professor Haeckel proposes in order to escape the confusion necessarily resulting from a looseness of terms.
Κ.
DIE ALLGEMEINE WELTANSCHAUUNG IN IHRER HISTORISCHEN ENTWICKELUNG.
Charakterbilder aus der Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften. By
Carus Sterne. Mit zahlreichen Porträts und Textabbildungen.
Stuttgart: Otto Weisert.
Dr. Ernst Krause, better known by the nom de plume of "Carus Sterne," has here undertaken to present the modern world-conception as contrasted with the olden one. We have scarcely ever met with a book that contains in so popular a form all the noteworthy facts of the great progress that has been achieved in science since the time of Copernicus. The results of the evolution-theory are generally known, but the road and the stations of the road on which science has reached its present position, now almost universally recognised among men, are almost forgotten. No one perhaps is better able to tell us of this great struggle for truth than the enthusiastic disciple of Darwin, Carus Sterne. Carus Sterne and his friend Prof. Ernst Haeckel, have done no small work in obtaining recognition for the theory of evolution in Germany. While Haeckel's work has been confined to the field of exact science, Carus Sterne has complemented the labors of his co-worker by pointing out the moral truths contained in Darwinism. We are aware of the fact that Carus Sterne has also written purely scientific works, "Werden und Vergehen," for instance; but what we wish to emphasise as his especial merit is that he was, so far as we know, the first to call attention to the moral workings of nature in her great cosmic empire. As an article characteristic of this trait in Carus Sterne's writings we refer the reader not familiar with German literature to his article "The Education of Parents by their Children," a translation of which appeared in Nos. 22 and 23 of The Open Court.
The present book (over 400 pages) discusses the following subjects: Pagan and Christian Cosmology; Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler; The Controversy Concerning the Geo-centric View; The Infinitude of Habitable Worlds; From Bacon to Newton; The Beginnings of an Animal- and Plant-Geography; The Doctrine of Spontaneous Generation; The Discussion Concerning the Origin of Birds; The Terrestrial Globe and Its Fossils; Diluvianism; The Mongrel Theory; The Doctrines of Preformation and Metamorphosis; The Doctrine of Catastrophes; Persistence or Mutability; The Controversy on the Anthropocentric View; The Origin of Language; On the History of Evolution.