14 APRIL 1917, Page 17

An Introduction to Biology, and other Papers. By A. D.

Darbishire. (Cassell and Co. 7s. Gd. net. )—The late Mr. Darbishire, an accomplished young Oxford biologist, died of illness contracted in camp before ho could complete his hook. Ho had written a lively criticism of the materialistic theory of life, and just as he came to face the constructive side of his essay—" Is the soul a more aggregate symptom of a mechanism —the body ? Or is the body not rather the instrument of the soul ? "- he had to lay his pen aside. The scattered papers which have been

collected by his sister, with a brief memoir, hint at the answer which he would have given. He was strongly influenced by Samuel Butler and by M. Bergson, but he was an original and fearless thinker and inquirer whom English science could ill spare.