Report of the Board of Regents to July, 1896. Pp. 727.--Bean, Barton
A. Notes on a Collection of Fishes from Mexico, etc. Pp. 4.--Cook, O.
F. American Oniscoid Diploda, etc. Pp. 16, with plates.--Coquillet, D.
W. Report on Japanese Diptera. Pp. 36.--Enkle, Arthur. Topaz Crystals
in the Mineral Collection of the Museum. Pp. 10.--Gilbert, C. N.
Caulolepis Longidens, Gill, on the Coast of California. P. 1.--Jordan,
David Starr, and Evermann, Barton D. The Fishes of North and Middle
America. Part III. Pp. 978.--Marlatt, C. L. Japanese Hymenoptera of
the Family Teuthredonidæ. Pp. 16.--Mearns, Edgar A. Mammals of the
Catskill Mountains. Pp. 20.--Moore, J. Percy. The Leeches of the
United States National Museum. Pp. 20, with plates.--Oberholser, Harry
C. Revision of the Wrens of the Genus Thryomanes, Sclater. Pp.
30.--Rathbun, Mary J. Brachyura Collected by the Steamer Albatross
between Norfolk, Va., and San Francisco. Pp. 50, with plate; and
Fresh-Water Crabs of America. Pp. 30.--Smith, Hugh M. Amphiura, or the
Congo Snake, in Virginia. P. 1.--Smith, John B., and Dyar, Harrison G.
The Lepidopterous Family Noctuidæ of Boreal North America, etc. Pp.
194, with plates.--Starks, Edwin C. Osteology and Relationships of the
Family Zeidæ. Pp. 8, with plates.--Stearns, Robert E. C. A Species of
Actæon from the Quaternary Deposits of Spanish Height, San Diego, Cal.
Pp. 3; and Cythera (Tivala) Crassateloides, Conrad, etc. Pp. 8, with
plate.--Stejneger, Leonhard. A New Species of Spiny-tailed Iguana from
California. P. 1.--Test, Frederick C. Variations of the Tree Frog,
Hyla Regilla. Pp. 16, with plate.--True, Frederick W. Nomenclature of
the Whalebone Whales, etc. Pp. 20.--Walcott, C. D. Cambrian
Brachiopoda, Obolus, and Singulella, etc. Pp. 36.
Sue, Eugène. The Silver Cross, or the Carpenter of Nazareth. New York:
International Publishing Company. Pp. 151.
Sullivan, Christine Gordon. Elements of Perspective. American Book
Company. Pp. 96.
Terrestrial Magnetism. An International Quarterly Journal. L. A. Bauer
and Thomas French, Jr., Editors. University of Cincinnati. Pp. 46,
with plates. 60 cents. $2 a year.
Vines, Sidney H. An Elementary Text-Book of Botany. New York: The
Macmillan Company. Pp. 611. $2.25.
Volta Bureau, Washington, Publications of Catalogue of Books by Prof.
A. Melville Bell.--Some Differences in the Education of the Deaf and
the Hearing. Pp. 15.--International Reports of Schools for the Deaf.
Pp. 27.--Bell, A. G. Methods of Instructing the Deaf in the United
States. Pp. 4.--Gordon, J. C. The Difference between the Two Systems
of Teaching Deaf-mutes the English Language. Pp. 4.--Gilman, Arthur.
Miss Helen Adams Keller's First Year of College Preparatory Work. Pp.
14.--Bell, Mabel Gardiner. The Story of the Rise of the Oral Method in
America as told in the Writings of the Hon. Gardiner G. Hubbard. Pp.
50.
Voorhees, Edward B. Fertilizers. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp.
335. $1.
Wadden Turner, Susan, Prof. William, and Jane. In Memoriam. By
Caroline H. Dall. Pp. 19.
Weysse, Arthur W. An Epitome of Human Histology. New York: Longmans,
Green & Co. Pp. 90. $1.50.
Fragments of Science.
=The Huxley Lecture.=--The Charing Cross Medical School in London,
which had the good fortune some fifty-three years ago to number Huxley
among its pupils, had largely through this fact the honor of being
addressed on October 3d by Professor Virchow, the greatest living
pathologist and one of the greatest of living scientists. There was a
peculiar fitness in his delivering the Huxley lecture, for, while
Professor Virchow's work has been chiefly that of the specialist, his
co-operation with laborers in other fields, his continued efforts to
popularize science, and the prominent position which he has occupied
for the last thirty years in public life, have given him a standing in
Germany somewhat akin to that of Huxley in England. His career is a
striking illustration, as was also Huxley's, of the happy results to
humanity from a combination in one man of great ability as an
investigator with a facility for generalization and the practical
application of scientific truths to the concrete problems of science
and civilization. Professor Virchow is described as modest and
unassuming, and very much of a contrast in all ways to the ordinary
German professor. His address was on The Recent Advances in Science,
and their Bearing on Medicine and Surgery. It was inevitable that he
should refer to Huxley, of whom he was in some sense a pupil. In
speaking of the rapid growth of the latter during his four years on
the Beagle, he said: "How this was possible any one will readily
understand who knows from his own experience how great is the value of
personal observation.... Freed from the formalism of the schools,
thrown upon his own intellect, compelled to test each single object as
regards properties and history, we soon forget the dogmas of the
prevailing system, and become first a skeptic and then an
investigator." This paragraph is especially worthy of notice, because
it points out one of the invariable characteristics of the great man.
In whatever field his greatness may lie, he will be found to have
broken away from the formalism and conservatism of the schools, and
that his great work is based on personal observation and research.
This was notably the case with Professor Virchow's establishment of
the cellular pathology, as well as of Huxley's researches in
comparative anatomy. Our present school system is lamentably weak in
this particular, tending to stifle rather than stimulate originality
and self-dependence. Professor Virchow's address was, of course,
interesting and instructive, but, as he said, much too short for
anything like an adequate treatment of the subject. The chief interest
of the occasion lay in its associations. An address by Rudolph
Virchow, at a meeting presided over by Lord Lister on an occasion
commemorating Professor Huxley, left only one thing to be desired--the
presence of the latter. For a biologist, or in fact a modern scientist
of any description, one can not imagine a more delightful occasion.
=The Climate of Cuba.=--Systematic records of weather appear to be
wanting in Cuba. The meteorological observations kept up for several
years by Andre Poey are not accessible, no need of their being
published having been found. The chief source of information on the
subject is the observations which have been kept up at Belen College,
Havana, since 1859. From these and a few scattered observations of
brief periods at other towns, and by comparison with notes taken at
other West Indian stations, W. F. B. Phillips, of the United States
Department of Agriculture, has attempted to describe the climate of
Cuba. The average annual temperature of the past ten years at Havana
was 77° F., and the difference between the highest and the lowest
yearly means was only 1.1° F. The warmest month is July, with an
average temperature of 82.7° F., and the coldest is January, with an
average temperature of 70.3° F. The highest temperature recorded was
100.6° F., in July, 1891, and the lowest 49.6°. Brief intermittent
records at Matanzas, more than sixty years old, give a mean annual
temperature of about 78°, with 93° as the highest and 51° as the
lowest. At Santiago the annual mean appears to be about 80°, and the
difference between the warmest and coldest months about 6° F. Records
of temperature in the interior, such as they are, give annual means of
from 73.6° to 75°, apparently showing lower temperatures than on the
coast. The average daily range of temperature is about 10°, the
highest occurring between noon and two o'clock P. M., while sudden
variations in the temperature of the day are not unknown. The average
yearly rainfall at Havana is about fifty-two inches. The season of
heavy rainfall begins in the latter part of May and first of June, and
lasts till October, and during this period about sixty-three per cent
of the year's rain is precipitated. Rain occurs on about one day in
three, in heavy downpours of short duration. Notwithstanding the
frequency of rain during the summer months, these do not present the
greatest number of cloudy days. The days on which rain does not fall
are usually perfectly cloudless, and, in general, no clouds are seen
in summer except while the showers are falling; while in other months
cloudy days sometimes occur without rain. The average velocity of the
wind is about 7.5 miles an hour, with variations, according to the
season, from 8.5 miles in winter to 6.5 miles in summer. The diurnal
variation in wind velocity is much more pronounced than the seasonal
variation.
=The New Planet D Q.=--The number of minor planets discovered during
the last few years, and their lack of practical importance in
astronomy, has tended to distract astronomers' attention from the
search for them, as unprofitable, and the announcement of a new one
attracts little attention, as a rule. The planet D Q, however,
discovered by Herr Witt, of the Urania Observatory, of Berlin, on
August 13th last, has aroused from the first special attention through
its remarkable behavior. The orbit is a very unusual one. Mars has
always been considered our nearest neighbor, although it was known
that some of the minor planets were slightly nearer to the sun when at
perihelion than Mars is when at aphelion. But the mean distances of
the latter were in all cases much greater than that of Mars; while
that found for the new planet is only 1.46 as compared with 1.52 for
Mars, and, as the eccentricity amounts to 0.23, the perihelion
distance is only 1.13, and the least distance from the earth's orbit
only 0.15 as compared with 0.27 for Venus in transit, and 0.38 for
Mars in perihelion. The planet will thus be far closer to us than any
other member of the solar system, and will afford a most excellent
means of determining the sun's parallax. Its diameter is thought to be
about seventeen miles.
=Extra-Organic Factors of Evolution.=--Observing that our civilization
has made advances or "strides" in recent years out of all proportion
to any improvements that have taken place in our organic faculties,
Arthur Allin has insisted, in Science, on the importance of
extra-organic factors in human development. Our sense and motor
organs, he says, are essentially instruments and tools, and so is the
brain; and most if not all of the three hundred or more mechanical
movements known in the arts are found exemplified in the human body.
Our sense organs are thus indefinitely multiplied and extended by such
extra-organic sense organs as the microscope, telescope, resonator,
telephone, telegraph, thermometer, etc. Our motor organs are
multiplied by such agencies as steam and electrical machines, etc., in
the same manner. "The printing press is an extra-organic memory far
more lasting and durable than the plastic but fickle brain. Fire
provides man with a second digestive apparatus by means of which hard
and stringy roots and other materials for food are rendered digestible
and poisonous roots and herbs innocuous. Tools, traps, weapons, etc.,
are but extensions of bodily contrivances. Clothing, unlike the fur or
layer of blubber of the lower animals, becomes a part of the organism
at will. One finds himself more or less independent of seasons,
climates, and geographical restrictions." By organic heredity or the
transmission of the congenital characteristics of the parents to the
children, working alone, all progress depends upon the transmission of
variations occurring within the organism. "Moreover, these
advantageous organic variations die with the individual, and must be
born again, so to speak, with each new individual." This requires
time, and progress depending on it would be indefinitely protracted.
On the other hand, by means of social heredity, each new member of the
race has handed to him at birth the accumulated organic advantageous
variations of sense and motor organs, and the extra-organic
adaptations that have multiplied so indefinitely in the age of
civilized man. "The vast importance of accumulation of capital is
obvious."
=Fossils as criterions of Geological Ages.=--Prof. O. C. Marsh said in
a paper on The Comparative Value of Different Kinds of Fossils in
determining Geological Age, which was read at the meeting of the
British Association, that the value of all fossils as evidence of
geological age depends mainly upon their degree of specialization. In
invertebrates, for example, a lingula from the Cambrian has reached a
definite point of development from some earlier ancestor. One from the
Silurian or Devonian, or even a later formation, shows, however,
little advance. Even recent forms of the same or an allied genus have
no distinctive characters sufficiently important to mark geological
horizons. With ammonites the case is entirely different. From the
earliest appearance of the family the members were constantly
changing. The trilobites show a group of invertebrates ever subject to
modification, from the earliest known forms in the Cambrian to the
last survivors in the Permian. They are thus especially fitted to aid
the geologist, as each has distinctive features and an abiding place
of its own in geological time. In the fresh-water forms of
mollusca--the Unios, for example--there is little evidence of change
from the palæozoic forms to those still living, and we can therefore
expect little assistance from them in noticing the succeeding periods
during their life history. The same law as to specialization holds
good among the fossil vertebrates.
=Pedigree Photographs.=--Sir Francis Galton unfolded before the
British Association a plan for the systematic collection of
photographs of pedigree stock, particularly of cattle breeds, and of
more information about them than is now obtainable. He believes that a
system of this sort would greatly facilitate the study of heredity.
The author had previously shown how the general knowledge that
offspring can inherit peculiarities from their ancestry as well as
from their parents was superseded by a general law the nature of which
was first suggested to him by theoretical considerations, and this
ancestral law proves the importance of a much more comprehensive
system of records than now exists. The breeder should be able to
compare the records of all the near ancestry of the animals he
proposes to mate in respect to the qualities in which he is
interested. No present source for such information is comparable with
what the system proposed would furnish. A habitual study of the form
of each pure-bred animal in connection with the portraits of all its
nearest ancestry would test current opinions and decide between
conflicting ones, and could not fail to suggest new ideas. Likenesses
would be traced to prepotent ancestors, and the amount of their
several prepotencies would be defined; forms and features that
supplement one another or "nick in," and others that clash or combine
awkwardly, would be observed and recorded; and conclusions based on
incomplete and inaccurate memories of ancestry would give way to
others founded on more exact data. The value of the ancestral law
would be adequately tested, and it would be possible to amend it when
required.
=English Names for Plants.=--In the Proceedings of the Torrey
Botanical Club, published in its journal for July, Dr. V. Havard
suggested some principles which it would be well to follow in applying
English names to plants, predicating that an authorized vernacular
binomial should be assigned to each plant, so that ambiguity and
confusion may be avoided. In the absence of suitable English names
already recognized, it seems best to adopt the Latin genus name, if
short and easy, like _Cicuta_, _Parnassia_, _Hibiscus_, or a close
translation thereof, when possible, like astragal, chenopody,
cardamin, while the specific English name should be an equivalent of
the Latin one or a descriptive adjective. In case of all English
binomials clearly applying to well-known individual species and no
others, all substantives are capitalized without a hyphen, as in Witch
Hazel, May Apple, and Dutchman's Pipe. In all genera in which two or
more species must be designated, the genus name is compounded into one
word without a hyphen, as Peppergrass, Sweetbrier, Goldenrod,
Hedgenettle, etc.; except in long names, where the eye requires the
hyphen, as Prairie-clover, Forget-me-not. Genus names in the
possessive case (St. John's-wort) are written with the hyphen,
followed by a lower-case initial. Plants commemorating individual men
(Douglas Spruce, Coulter Pine) are written without the mark of the
possessive. In specific names participial endings are suppressed, the
participle becoming a substantive, which is added as a suffix without
the hyphen; thus Heartleaved Willow is changed to Heartleaf Willow. In
the discussion that followed this paper, President Addison Brown and
Dr. T. F. Allen deprecated the manufacture of book names. The
secretary defended the use of vernacular names, saying that they
deserved more attention, and adding that in their absence the generic
name should be used unchanged. Many Latin names, as _Portulacca_, win
their way without change as soon as they are fairly made familiar.
"Coined names seldom live. A name to be successful must be a growth,
as language is."
=Cooking Schools in Philadelphia.=--The establishment of schools in
Philadelphia for the teaching of cookery is mentioned, in the Annual
Report of the Superintendent of Public Schools in that city, among the
results of the general movement for manual training, as a means of
mental development and practical knowledge. The teaching was
introduced experimentally into the Girls' Normal School in 1887, and
was in the following year made a regular branch of the course. It was
later extended to other schools. There are now eight school kitchens
under the department of Public Instruction, situated in different
parts of the city. The question of the proper place for cookery in the
school course has been solved, for Philadelphia, by putting it in the
sixth school year, when the pupils are firmly established in the work
of the grammar grades, and their attention has not yet been directed
to preparation for admission to the High School. The course provides
between twenty-five and thirty lessons, and is completed in a single
year. It includes instruction in the care of the kitchen, and of the
stove or range, general lessons in the classification and nutritive
values of foods, the cooking of vegetables, breakfast cereals, bread,
eggs, soups, meats, simple cakes and desserts, lessons in invalid
cookery, and in table setting and serving. Special attention is given
to the preparation of nutritious and savory dishes from inexpensive
materials. About two thousand pupils, or less than one half of the
number of girls of the sixth year now in the schools, are accommodated
in the eight cookery schools. The pupils manifest an intelligent
interest in the instruction, and spend the half day per week in the
school kitchen without any appreciable loss in the other branches of
study. "It comes as a period of relaxation."
=A Trait Common to us All.=--The doctrine of the tendency of mankind
to develop the like fancies and ideas at the like stage of
intellectual infancy was mentioned by Mr. E. W. Brabrook in his
presidential address before the Anthropological Section of the British
Association, as a generalization for which we are fast accumulating
material in folklore. It is akin to the generalization that individual
savage races present in their intellectual development a marked
analogy to the condition of the earlier races of mankind. The fancies
and ideas of the child resemble closely the fancies and ideas of the
savage and the fancies and ideas of primitive man. Mrs. Gomme has
found that a great number of children's games consist of dramatic
representations of marriage by capture and marriage by purchase, and
that the idea of exogamy is distinctly embodied in them. There can be
little doubt that they go back to a high antiquity, and there is much
probability that they are founded upon customs actually existing, or
just passing away, at the time they were first played. Upon the same
principle, if we view children's stories in their wealth of details,
we shall deem it impossible that they could have been disseminated
over the world otherwise than by actual contact of the several peoples
with each other. But if we view them in their simplicity of idea, we
shall be more apt to think that the mind of man naturally produces the
same result under like circumstances, and that it is not necessary to
postulate any communication between the peoples to account for their
identity. It does not surprise us that the same complicated physical
operations should be performed by far-distant peoples without any
communication with each other; why should it be surprising that mental
operations, not nearly so complex, should be produced in the same
order by different peoples without any such communication?
=The Toes in Walking.=--An instructive discussion of the walking value
of the lesser toes by Dr. Heather Bigg is given in a recent copy of
the London Lancet. Dr. Bigg believes that the lesser toes of the human
foot are of little importance in walking--the great toe constituting
the important tread of the foot--and in proof of this he gives an
account of a patient, all of whose lesser toes it was found necessary
to amputate because of persistent contraction of the tendons. On
November 10, 1894, the toes were removed, especial care being taken to
keep the resulting scars well up on the dorsal aspect of the foot, so
as to be well away from the subsequent tread. In three weeks the
patient could stand on her feet, and, after her return home, sent the
following record of her progress toward complete recovery: December
30, 1894: "I am able to walk perfectly on my feet with little or no
pain, but can not yet wear either slippers or boots, as they are still
tender."--January 15, 1895: "I managed to get on my slippers yesterday
and wore them with ease for more than six hours."--January 28th: "I
put on my boots to-day for the first time. It still pains me slightly
to walk; otherwise my feet are going on all right."--February 18th: "I
ought to say that the steel plates only half way answer
splendidly."--March 24th: "You will be glad to hear that I can walk
splendidly now, just like a proper human being; it is just eighteen
weeks next Tuesday since the operation."--May 5th: "I have decided to
come to town next Monday week to let you see how well I can
walk."--June 17th: "I played two sets of tennis on Saturday, and my
feet were none the worse afterward."--July 24th: "You will be
surprised to hear that the big toes have lengthened half an inch since
the operation, and I have had all my boots lengthened and the toe line
made straighter."--August 30th: "I know that you will be interested to
hear that I have just accepted an invitation to a dance on September
13th. Whether I shall dance comfortably or not is another
thing."--September 14th: "I went to the dance on Tuesday evening and
thoroughly enjoyed myself after not dancing for so long. My feet were
on their best behavior, and did not pain me once during the evening. I
never realized before that I had no toes until I began to dance; then
it seemed so odd only to have one toe, but I suffered no inconvenience
whatever from the loss of them."--December 5th: "I get on so well with
my bicycle." Only two disadvantages showed themselves as the result of
the operation and these were temporary. One was that the great toes
tended to pervert themselves toward the middle line of the feet, a
thing which was readily remedied by the use of single-toed stockings,
and by packing the space in the boot left vacant by the missing toes
with cotton wool; the other was a loss of local sense on the outer
sides of the feet, which went to show that the lesser toes were missed
rather as tactile organs than anything else. This failure of feeling
righted itself in time, presumably by a vicarious and intenser sense
being acquired by the skin of the outer side of the foot. In all other
respects the loss of the toes discovered no inconvenience.