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In as short a compass as 180 excellently written pages the author has set out to convey 'in the plain language of everyday use … a summary of the conclusions derived from many years spent in the quest of the problems of life and the baffling manifestations of its activities in the sequence of living creatures.' Professor Wood-Jones, F.R.C.S., F.R.S., was latterly, until his recent demise, the Sir William Collins Professor of Human and Comparative Anatomy, and Conservator of the Anatomical Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. He was also the author of a number of highly interesting and valuable publications of which some of the best known are especially concerned with examples of the indivisibility of function and of anatomical structure, e.g. on the curious pseudo-thumb of the giant Panda that in a bamboo-eating animal has been evolved from a modified sesamoid bone and a displaced muscle attachment in a hand that has been already highly specialized in a different direction. (Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond. B. 109; 113.) Wood-Jones has also elsewhere given original examples of the various structural adaptations of the teeth, claws, beaks, etc., in various animals to the function, highly important for survival, of fur and feather toilet. His assertion that the rough tongue of the cat tribe is an adaptation to toilet habits has been accepted by Julian Huxley. His argument that the very early appearance of the peculiar squatting facets on the os astragalus and tibia of the infant Australian aborigine constitutes a self-evident demonstration of Lamarckian inheritance is probably well known. In the present volume he has illustrated his arguments with a number of impressive examples of the more highly adaptive features of living organisms. For any reader (e.g. a simpleminded mechanist) who still needs to be impressed in this respect, this and all other popular works of this author are to be recommended. A more sophisticated reader might however regard these same exampl