7 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



attention to these preliminary questions as to the limits and the spe- 

 cific laws of sociology ; and we are compelled to go back as far as his 

 " First Principles," etc., to get a knowledge of the way in which those 

 questions are answered by his system. This is to be regretted, not so 

 much because of the practical inconvenience of perusing many vol- 

 umes about matters but indirectly connected with the object of our 

 researches, but far more on account of the impossibility of summarily 

 reviewing so monumental a work in the few pages of this essay. 



To French positivism, sociology appeared too much isolated from 

 genuine knowledge by a gulf which Comte asserted to be unfathom- 

 able. With the modern scientific school, the danger comes rather from 

 the opposite side, and sociology is threatened, so to say, with being 

 swallowed up, or absorbed, by zoology. 



Indeed, to botanists 'and zoologists is due the capital discovery of 

 the unquestionable fact that (with the single exception of the lowest 

 monocellular ones) organisms are societies. And if we were arbitrarily 

 to*reserve the appellation of society exclusively to the dems of M. Cat- 

 taneo's classification, still we could not get out of the difficulty even 

 by such an anthropomorphic (i. e., anti-scientific) restriction. An " or- 

 ganism is a society " — that great sensational thesis is imposed on our 

 mind more and more with every new advance of natural science ; while, 

 on the other hand, the chief sociologists of these later years, starting 

 from their more or less synthetic point of view, come to the conclusion 

 that " society is an organism." * The great Darwinian law of the strug- 

 gle for life, which is the specific law of evolutionary biology, plays a 

 part still more and more prominent in the most recent sociological 

 writings, and the very object of social science appears to be well-nigh 

 dissolved in the vast domain of biology. 



THE HICKORY-NUTS OF NORTH AMERICA. 



Br JOSEPH F. JAMES. 



IT is a favorite pastime of our country population during the long 

 winter evenings to gather round the fire and crack and eat hickory- 

 nuts. It is an amusement, too, peculiarly American, and for the simple 

 reason that in this country alone are the nuts to be had in any abun- 

 dance. Perhaps, where almonds or English walnuts are equally com- 

 mon, cracking hickory-nuts is superseded by a resort to these other 

 fruits. They, however, are much easier to open than the hickory- 

 nut, and with thinner shells are readily cracked at the table. But in 

 America, in those districts where the peanut does not take the place 

 of other nuts, the cracking of the hickory still continues. Whether it 



* Sec the "Revue Philosopbiquc " of M. Ribot, for 1883, passim. 



