Part 16

A fairly good attendance, with an unusually large proportion of men prominent in science, and most cordial welcome and painstaking care of the members by the Ohio State University and the citizens of Columbus, combined to make the forty-eighth annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science a most enjoyable and instructive one. The two features of the meeting which seem to deserve the most attention are: First, the tendency which was shown in every section to direct the papers and discussions to practical subjects, so that all could participate in the proceedings and each member feel justified in having a word to say in them; and, secondly, the perfect cordiality with which the association was received and the assiduous attention with which it was taken care of by the local committee. The smaller and apparently less important details, but at the same time those which so largely determine one's comfort in a strange community, were thoughtfully arranged, and to this alone much of the success of the meeting was due. The numerous excursions were not only exceedingly enjoyable, but were arranged in every case primarily for their instructive and scientific features, and an Easterner, at any rate, could not take any of them without learning something. Another feature of the meeting that was especially satisfactory was the possibility it afforded for the younger workers in science to meet their elders, who had hitherto led the way--who were present, as we have already said, in larger proportion than usual. The importance of this feature, as President Orton pointed out in these pages a few months ago, can not be overestimated. The instruction and encouragement which a new worker in the scientific field gains from a personal acquaintance with the older men who have already achieved success and reputation in his branch of science are obvious enough. With the increasing specialization which modern research is making absolutely unavoidable, the social feature of the annual gathering of such a company of scientists is coming to be its most important function. A slight extension of it might very readily lead to the adoption of a specific policy by the several sections of devoting at least a part of their time to such a general statement of what has been accomplished in their department or to some especially important work of general interest that some of the members have been engaged in as would be most instructive to the members of the other sections. In the earlier meetings of the association the sectional chairmen often made such presentations in their stated addresses, but as times and men have changed, the idea has been departed from and this feature has become an exceptional one. If it could be restored, in a modified if not an identical form, and made a regular part of the programme of at least one of the sections at each meeting, the interest would be greatly enhanced, and in this way the chemist, the geologist, the botanist, and the others could be given regularly an authoritative account of what is being done in the other branches of science, and an important step would be taken toward doing away with the unfortunate narrowing influence which special scientific work is too apt to exercise.

The fixing of the last week in June as the time for holding the next meeting of the association, which is to be in New York, is a departure from recent practice as to date, but, aside from the special reason for it in this particular case--the probability that many of the members will be at the Paris Exposition during the following August--the experiment seems a desirable one because of the almost invariably excessive heat to which August meetings are exposed.

Scientific Literature.

SPECIAL BOOKS.

Evidences are apparent in many quarters of a reaction against the headlong rush toward aggression and territorial aggrandizement in which the American people have allowed themselves to be carried away. For a time the lovers of the Constitution of the United States as the fathers of the republic left it and Lincoln glorified it were bewildered, stunned by the revolution suddenly precipitated upon us from Washington, while the people at large seemed to be wild with enthusiasm for they knew not what, and men suffered themselves to be led--they knew not whither. Very slowly the true patriots recovered their voices, and signs appear that the people are at last getting into a mood to listen to reason. President _David Starr Jordan's Imperial Democracy_[49] comes very opportunely, therefore, to call to the minds of those who can be induced to think some of the forgotten principles of American policy, and to depict, in the terse, incisive style of which the author is master, the true nature and bearing of those iniquitous proceedings to which the American people, betrayed by treacherous leaders, have allowed themselves to become a party. President Jordan was one of the first who dared, in this matter, to make a public protest against this scheme of aggression. His first address on the subject--Lest we Forget--delivered to the graduating class of Leland Stanford University, May 25, 1898, was separated only a few days in time from Prof. Charles Eliot Norton's exposure of the reversal of all our most cherished traditions and habits which the precipitation of the war with Spain had brought about. The two men must share the honor of leadership in the awakening movement. In this address President Jordan gives a true definition of patriotism as "the will to serve one's country; to make one's country better worth saving"--not the shrilling of the mob, or trampling on the Spanish flag, or twisting the lion's tail. Even so early he foresaw the darkness of the future we were bringing upon ourselves, and said: "The crisis comes when the war is over. What then? Our question is not what we shall do with Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. It is what these prizes will do to us." This, with the wickedness of the whole business, is the burden of most of the other papers in the volume. In the paper on Imperial Expansion we are told of three "world crises" in our history when we were confronted with momentous questions. The first was after the Revolution. The second came through the growth of slavery. The third is upon us now. "It is not the conquest of Spain, not the disposition of the spoils of victory which first concerns us. It is the spirit that lies behind it. Shall our armies go where our institutions can not? Shall territorial expansion take the place of democratic freedom? Shall our invasion of the Orient be merely an incident, an accident of a war of knight-errantry, temporary and exceptional? Or is it to mark a new policy--the reversion from America to Europe, from democracy to imperialism?" President Jordan has an answer to the question, What are we to do in the shape affairs have assumed? The right thing would be "to recognize the independence of the Philippines, under American protection, and to lend them our army and navy and our wisest counselors; not our politicians, but our jurists, our teachers, with foresters, electricians, manufacturers, mining engineers, and experts in the various industries.... The only sensible thing to do would be to pull out some dark night and escape from the great problem of the Orient as suddenly and as dramatically as we got into it." Yet President Jordan recognizes that some great changes in our system are inevitable, and belong to the course of natural progress. They must not be shirked, but should be met manfully, soberly, with open eyes. A paper on Colonial Lessons of Alaska presents as an object lesson the muss we have made with colonial government in that Territory.

[Footnote 49: Imperial Democracy. A Study of the Relation of Government by the People, Equality before the Law, and other Tenets of Democracy, to the Demands of a Vigorous Foreign Policy, and other Demands of Imperial Dominion. By David Starr Jordan. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Pp. 293. Price, $1.50.]

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Mr. _A. H. Keane's Man Past and Present_[50] is a part fulfillment of a promise held out in his Ethnology, the first volume of the Cambridge Geographical Series, that it might be followed by another dealing more systematically with the primary divisions of mankind. In it the "four varietal divisions" of man over the globe are treated more in detail, with the primary view of establishing their independent specialization in their several geographical zones, and of elucidating the difficult questions associated with the origins and interrelations of the chief subgroups. The work consequently deals to a large extent with the prehistoric period, when the peoples had already been fully constituted in their primeval homes and had begun their subsequent developments and migratory movements. The author has further sought to elucidate those general principles which are concerned with the psychic unity, the social institutions, and religious ideas of primitive and later peoples. The two principles, already insisted upon in the Ethnology, of the specific unity of all existing varieties of the human family and the dispersion of their generalized precursors over the whole world in Pleistocene times are borne in view throughout. Subsequent to this dispersion, the four primary divisions of man have each had its Pleistocene ancestor, from whom each has sprung independently and divergently by continuous adaptation to their several environments. Great light is believed to have been thrown on the character of the earliest men by the discovery of the _Pithecanthropus erectus_, and this is supplemented as to the earliest acquirements by Dr. Noetling's discovery, in 1894, of the works of Pliocene man in upper Burmah. The deductions made from these discoveries strengthen the view Mr. Keane has always advocated, that man began to spread over the globe after he had acquired the erect posture, but while in other physical and in mental respects he still did not greatly differ from his nearest of kin. As to the age when this development was taking place, agreement is expressed with Major Powell's remark that the natural history of early man becomes more and more a geological and not merely an anthropological problem. The human varieties are shown to be, like other species, the outcome of their environments, and all sudden changes of those environments are disastrous. In both hemispheres the isocultural bands follow the isothermal lines in all their deflections--temperate regions being favorable, and tropical and severe ones unfavorable, to development. Of the metal ages, the existence of a true copper age has been placed beyond reasonable doubt. The passage from one metal to another was slow and progressive. In art the earliest drawings were natural and vital. The apparent inferiority of the drawings of the metal period to those of the cave dwellers and of the present Bushmen is due to the later art having been reduced to conventions. The development of alphabetical writing from pictographs is briefly sketched. Thus light is sought from all quarters in dealing with the questions of the book, and due weight is given to all available data--physical and mental characters, usages, religion, speech, cultural features, history, and geographical range. The general discussion of these leading principles is brief but clear and comprehensive. The bulk of the volume, following them, is occupied with the detailed and minute studies of the four main groups of mankind--the Negro, Mongol, American Indian, and Caucasic--and their subgroups, the discussion of each being preceded by a conspectus showing its Primeval Home, Present Range, Physical Characters, Mental Characters (Temperament, Speech, Religion, and Culture), and Main Divisions. The text is full, clear, good reading, instructive and suggestive, and in it the author has sought to make the volume a trustworthy book of reference on the multifarious subjects dealt with.

[Footnote 50: Man Past and Present. By A. H. Keane, F. R. G. S. (Cambridge Geographical Series). Cambridge, England: At the University Press. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 584. Price, $3.]

GENERAL NOTICES.

The fact that Mr. _Charles A. Dana_ stood in close personal relations with Secretary Stanton and was officially associated with him during a considerable period of the war for the Union, and was also incidentally brought near Mr. Lincoln, gives whatever he may relate concerning the events of that period somewhat the air of a revelation from the inside. Accordingly, we naturally expect to find things narrated in his _Recollections of the Civil War_[51] that could not be told as well by any one else. The account given in the book relates to events in which the author was personally concerned. Mr. Dana had been associated with Horace Greeley in the editorial management of the New York Tribune for fifteen years, when, in April, 1862, Mr. Greeley invited him to resign. No reason was given or asked for the separation, and no explicit statement of a reason was needed. Mr. Greeley, having expressed in the beginning his willingness to let the secessionist "wayward-sister" States go in peace, was in favor of peace; Mr. Dana was for vigorous war. A correspondence was opened between him and Mr. Stanton in reference to public matters shortly after Mr. Stanton went into the War Department. Then Mr. Dana was intrusted with special commissions that carried him to the front and brought him in contact with the leaders of the army; and finally, in 1863, was appointed Assistant Secretary of War, an office he filled till the end of the contest. His narrative deals as the story of one having knowledge with questions of policy, with the critical phases of the hard conflict, with the perplexities and anxieties of the men charged with responsibilities, with stirring scenes in the councils at the Capitol and in battle at the front, and with personal incidents of the men whose names the nation loves and delights to honor. All is related in the straightforward, fluent style, touching only the facts, of a writer who has a story to tell and makes it his business to tell it. The result of the reading of the book is to arouse a new appreciation of the abilities and virtues of those great men in their various walks of civil, political, and military life, who took our country through its supreme trial.

[Footnote 51: Recollections of the Civil War. With the Leaders at Washington and in the Field in the Sixties. By Charles A. Dana. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Pp. 296. Price, $2.]

Mrs. _Arabella B. Buckley's Fairy-Land of Science_ has stood the test of about thirty years' publication as one of the simplest, clearest, and best popular introductions to physical science. Originating in a course of lectures delivered to children and their friends, the thought of publishing the book was suggested by the interest taken in the lectures by all the hearers. It was a happy thought, and the carrying of it out is fully justified by the result. But thirty years is a long time in so rapidly advancing a pursuit as the study of science, and makes changes necessary in all books treating of it. The publishers of this work,[52] therefore, with the assistance of the author, have considerably extended the original volume, adding to it notices of the latest scientific discoveries in the departments treated, and amplifying with fuller detail such parts as have grown in importance and interest. A few changes have been made in the interest of American readers, such as the substitution, where it seemed proper, of words familiar here for terms almost exclusively used in England, and the introduction of American instead of English examples to illustrate great scientific truths. The book has also been largely reillustrated.

[Footnote 52: The Fairy-Land of Science. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Pp. 252.]

Some of the essays in Miss _Badenoch's True Tales of the Insects_[53] have already appeared in serials--two of them in the Popular Science Monthly. The essays are not intended to present a view of entomology or of any department of it, but to describe, in an attractive and at the same time an accurate manner, a few special features of insect life and some of what we might call its remarkable curiosities. The author is well qualified for her undertaking, for, while being an entomologist of recognized position, she has those qualities of enthusiasm in her pursuit and literary training that enable her to present her subject in its most attractive aspect. From the great variety of insect forms she has selected only a few for this special presentation, including some of eccentric shape and some of genuine universal interest. She begins with the strange-looking creatures of the family of the _Mantidæ_, or praying insects, or, as the Brazilians call the _Mantis_, more fitly, the author thinks, the devil's riding horse, which is characterized as "the tiger, not the saint, of the insect world." The walking-stick and walking-leaf insects, of equally strange appearance, but peaceful, naturally follow these. Then come the locusts, and grasshoppers, which are more familiar, and the butterflies and moths, which attract the most attention and present such remarkable forms as the case-moths and the hawk and death's-head moths. The insects made subjects of treatment are described with fullness of detail, and the record of their life histories. The book is published in an attractive outer style, on thick paper, with thirty-four illustrations by Margaret J. D. Badenoch.

[Footnote 53: True Tales of the Insects. By L. N. Badenoch. London: Chapman & Hall. Pp. 253.]

Prof. _Charles C. James_, now Deputy Minister of Agriculture for Ontario, defines the purpose of his book, _Practical Agriculture_[54] to be to aid the reader and student in acquiring a knowledge of the science as distinguished from the art of agriculture--"that is, a knowledge of the 'why,' rather than a knowledge of the 'how.'" The author believes, from his experience of several years' teaching at the Ontario Agricultural College, that the rational teaching of agriculture in public and high schools is possible and would be exceedingly profitable, and that an intelligent knowledge of the science underlying the art would add much interest to the work and greatly increase the pleasure in it. The science of agriculture is understood by him to consist of a mingling of chemistry, geology, botany, entomology, physiology, bacteriology, and other sciences in so far as they have any bearing upon agriculture. He has aimed in this book to include only the first principles of these various sciences, and to show their application to the art of agriculture. The subject is treated as it relates, consecutively, to the plant, the soil, the crops of the field; the garden, orchard, and vineyard; live stock and dairying; and, under the heading of "other subjects," bees and birds, forestry, roads, and the rural home. The appendix contains lists of trees and of weeds, and an article on spraying mixtures. Questions to be answered by the reader are attached to most of the chapters. The illustrations are well chosen and good.

[Footnote 54: Practical Agriculture. By Charles C. James. American edition edited by John Craig. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Pp. 203. Price, 80 cents.]

Considerable information about the Philippine Islands and their inhabitants is given by Dr. _D. G. Brinton_ in a pamphlet entitled _The Peoples of the Philippines_. Dr. Brinton's point of view is the anthropologist's, and accordingly, after a few paragraphs about the geography, geology, and history of the islands, he takes up their ethnology and describes their various peoples as they have been studied by the masters of the science and by travelers. Much valuable as well as interesting information is given respecting their manners and customs, languages, and literature, for the Tagals have had a written language from the earliest known times, and though their old literature does not amount to much they are to-day exceedingly facile versifiers.

The Open Court Publishing Company (Chicago) publishes _The Lectures on Elementary Mathematics_ (_Leçons élémentaires sur les mathématiques_) of _Joseph Louis Lagrange_, "the greatest of modern analysts," in a translation from the new edition of the author's collected works by Thomas J. McCormack. These lectures, which were delivered in 1765 at the École Normale, have never before been published in separate form, except in the first printing in the Journal of the Polytechnic School and in the German. "The originality, elegance, and symmetrical character of these lectures have been pointed out by De Morgan, and notably by Dühring, who places them in the front rank of elementary expositions as an example of their kind. They possess, we might say, a unique character as a reading book in mathematics, and are interwoven with helpful historical and philosophical remarks." They present with great clearness the subjects of arithmetic and its operations, algebra, equations of the third and fourth degrees, the evolution of numerical equations, and the employment of curves in the solution of problems. The translator has prefixed a short biographical sketch of Lapouge, and an excellent portrait is given.

A book of _Observation Blanks for Beginners in Mineralogy_ has been prepared by _Herbert E. Austin_, as an aid to the laboratory course, and is published by D. C. Heath & Co. (Boston, 30 cents). The laboratory course is intended to make the pupil familiar with the characteristics of minerals and the terms used in describing them by directing him to observe typical specimens and describe what he sees, and to develop his faculties of observation, conception, reasoning, judgment, comparison, and memory. A description is given of apparatus that may be home-made. The blanks follow, containing spaces for the insertion of notes under the heads of Experiment, Observation, Statement, and Conclusion.

In Volume No. XXX of the International Education Series--Pedagogics of the Kindergarten--a number of Froebel's essays relating more especially to the plays and games were printed from the collection made by Wichard Lange. A new volume of the series, _Friedrich Froebel's Education by Development_, includes another selection from Lange's publication, in which the gifts are more thoroughly discussed. "Again and again, in the various essays," the editor of the series says, "Froebel goes over his theory of the meaning of the ball, the sphere, the cube, and its various subdivisions. The student of Froebel has great advantage, therefore, in reading this volume, inasmuch as Froebel has cast new light on his thought in each separate exposition that he has made.... The essays on the training school for kindergartners and the method of introducing children's gardens into the kindergarten are very suggestive and useful. In fact, there is no other kindergarten literature that is quite equal in value to the contents of this volume." The few essays in Lange's volume that still remain untranslated are characterized as being mostly of an ephemeral character. With the publication of the present volume, of which, as of the Pedagogics, Miss Josephine Jarvis is the translator, a complete list of the original works of Froebel in English translations has been provided in the International Education Series of Messrs. D. Appleton and Company.