SCHOOL SCIENCE SERIES NUMBER FIVE* EVOLUTION, HEREDITY AND EUGENICS *For advertisement of other numbers of the series Wild cabbage and some of the forms derived from it. The tall form is wild cabbage. At upper right, brussels sprouts. Top center, collards. Below collards, kohlrabi. Lower left, cultivated cabbage. Lower right, kale. Above kale, cauliflower. From Coulter's Elementary Studies in Botany. Copyright, D. Appleton & Co. T. H. HUBBELL EVOLUTION, HEREDITY BY JOHN MERLE COULTER UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SCHOOL SCIENCE SERIES JOHN G. COULTER, Publisher 1916 This little book is the result of an expressed need on the part of high school and college teachers for a more simple and compact treatment of organic evolution than has heretofore been available. Such monographic treatment the elementary textbooks, by virtue of their organization, do not supply. On the other hand, the covering of this topic adequately by supplementary reading has proved too large a task for the time available. So the design of this little book is to be supplementary to elementary biological texts; to furnish in brief and simple form a serviceable idea of modern conceptions in this great field, and of their significance in human life. In the whole history of thought nothing is more significant than the conception of evolution. When the evolution of organisms became an accepted doctrine, all fundamental ideas had to be recast in the new light. This is more than historic. It is an affair of today as well as of yesterday. The thinking of today that is most significant is thinking in terms of evolution. Intelligent interpretation of life depends upon it. Yet it is a fact that the "average citizen" has but the vaguest ideas of what evolution is. It is in our teaching of elementary biology in high schools that we have the best opportunity to correct this state of affairs. But it is a neglected opportunity. Certain present tendencies in science teaching leave small space in the elementary courses for anything which is suspected of being "abstract." Unfortunately evolution is under this suspicion. The most fundamental and far reaching conceptions that science has achieved are ruled out of some science courses if they fail |