FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



13; 



Meyer, A. R. The Distribution of the 

 Negritos in the I'hillppine Islands and 

 Elsewhere. Dresden (Saxony): Stengel & 

 Co. Pp. 92. 



Nicholson, H. H., and Avery, Samuel. 

 Laboratory Exercises with Outlines for 

 the Study of Chemistry, to accompany any 

 Elementary Text. New York: Henry Holt 

 & Co. Pp. 134. 60 cents. 



Scharff, R. F. The History of the Eu- 

 ropean Fauna. New York: Imported by 

 Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp. 3.54. .$1.50. 



Schleicher, Charles, and Schull, Duren. 

 Rhenish Prussia. Samples of Special Fil- 

 tering Papers. New York: Eimer & 

 Amend, agents. 



Sharpe, Benjamin F. An Advance in 

 Measuring and Photographing Sounds. 

 United States Weather Bureau. Pp. 18, 

 with plates. 



Shinn, Milicent W. Notes on the De- 

 velopment of a Child. Parts HI and IV. 

 (University of California Studies.) Pp. 

 224. 



Shoemaker, M. M. Quaint Corners of 

 Ancient Empires, Southern India, Burmah, 

 and Manila. New York: G. P. Putnam's 

 Sons. Pp. 212. 



Smith, Orlando J. A Short View of 

 Great Questions. New York: The Bran- 

 dur Company, 220 Broadway. Pp. ">. 



Smith, Walter. Methods of Knowledge. 

 An Essav in Epistemologv. New York: 

 The Macmillan Company. Pp. 340. $1.25. 



Southern, The, Magazine. Monthly. 

 Vol. I, No. 1. August, 1899. Pp. 203. 10 

 cents. $1 a year. 



Suter, William N. Handbook of Optics. 

 New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 

 209. $1. 



Tarde, G. Social Laws. An Outline of 

 Sociology. With a Preface by James Mark 

 Baldwin. New York: The Macmillan Com- 

 pany. Pp. 213. .$1.25. 



Uline, Edwin B. Higinbothamia. A 

 New Genus, and other New Dioscoreaceje, 

 New Amaranthaceso. (Field Columbian 

 Museum, Chicago Botanical Series.) Pp. 12. 



Underwood, Lucien M. Molds, Mil- 

 dews, and Mushrooms. New York: Henry 

 Holt & Co. Pp. 227, with 9 plates. $1.50. 



United States Civil-Service Commis- 

 sion. Fifteenth Report, July 1, 1897, to 

 June 30, 1898. Pp. 736. Washington. 



^raflmcttts of Science. 



The Dover Meeting of the Brit- 

 ish Association. — While the attend- 

 ance on the meeting of the British As- 

 sociation at Dover was not large — the 

 whole number of members being 1,403, 

 of whom 127 were ladies — the occasion 

 was in other respects eventful and one 

 of marked interest. The papers read 

 were, as a rule, of excellent quality, 

 and the interchange of visits with the 

 French Association was a novel feature 

 that might bear many I'epetitions. The 

 president, Sir Michael Foster, presented, 

 in his inaugural address, a picture of 

 the state of science one hundred years 

 ago, illustrating it by portraying the 

 conditions to which a body like the as- 

 sociation meeting then at Dover would 

 have found itself su"bjeet, and suggest- 

 ing the topics it would have discussed. 

 The period referred to was, however, 

 that of the beginning of the present 

 progress, and, after remarking on what 

 had been accomplished in the interval, 

 the speaker drew a very hopeful fore- 

 view for the future. Besides the intel- 

 lectual triumphs of science, its strength- 

 ening discipline, its relation to politics, 

 and the " international brotherhood of 

 science " were brought under notice in 

 the address. In his address as presi- 

 dent of the Physical Section, Prof. J. H. 



Poynting showed how physicists are 

 tending toward a general agreement as 

 to the nature of the laws in which they 

 embody their discoveries, of the expla- 

 nations they give, and of the hypotheses 

 they make, . and, having considered what 

 the form and terms of this agreement 

 should be, passed to a discussion of the 

 limitations of physical science. The 

 subject of Dr. Horace T. Brown's Chem- 

 ical Section address was The Assimila- 

 tion of Carbon by the Higher Plants. 

 Sir William H. White, president of the 

 Section of Mechanical Science, spoke 

 on Steam Navigation at High Speeds. 

 President Adam Sedgwick addressed the 

 Zo()logical Section on Variation and 

 some Phenomena connected with Re- 

 production and Sex; Sir John Murray, 

 the Geographical Section on The Ocean 

 Floor ; and Mr. J. N. Langley, the Physi- 

 ological Section on the general relations 

 of the motor nerves to the several tis- 

 sues of the body, especially of those 

 which run to tissues over which we 

 have little or no control. The president 

 of the Anthropological Section, Mr. C. 

 H. Read, of the British Museum, spoke 

 of the preservation and proper explora- 

 tion of the prehistoric antiquities of the 

 country, and offered a plan for increas- 

 ing the amount of work done in an- 



