SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 



275 



sary to supply the material from other 

 sources, when the articles were submit- 

 ted to the subjects for revision. 



In The Down of Reason* Dr. Weir 

 has provided a most interesting book 

 for the unscientific reader as well as for 

 the comparative psychologist. He traces 

 the gradual unfolding of conscious mind 

 in animal life from the actinophryans 

 which discriminates between the grains 

 of starch and sand, and the Stentor 

 which changes its position to catch a 

 ripened spore, to the higher forms that 

 decorate their homes, exhibit parental 

 affection, exercise mathematical faculty, 

 and extricate themselves from unfore- 

 seen dangers. As the field of observa- 

 tion of the senses of touch, taste, and 

 smell has been so thoroughly worked 

 by Lubbock and other naturalists, spe- 

 cial attention is paid by the author to 

 the senses of sight and hearing, in regard 

 to which he furnishes new and valuable 

 data. In addition to these he claims to 

 establish the fact that tinctumutations 

 and " homing " are auxiliary senses — not 

 instincts. He located the center of color 

 changing in the frog exactly below the 

 optic, and by artificial stimulation pro- 

 duced the alteration in tint, and by ex- 

 cision, or ti'eatment with atropine, de- 

 stroyed the chromatophoric function. 

 By experimentation upon snails he found 

 the center of the sense of locality at the 

 base of the cephalic ganglion, and, re- 

 moving it, rendered them unable to re- 

 turn to their homes. Many anecdotes 

 are given showing that the lower orders 

 of animal life exercise conscious deter- 

 mination, and that among those with 

 more complex nervous systems there is 

 a mind akin to that of man. Not only 

 do animals remember friends, strangers, 

 and events, but they love, hate, and 

 fear. They evince aesthetic feeling also 

 when the spider ornaments its web with 

 logwood flakes, the dog howls in har- 

 monic accord with the church bell, and 

 salamanders assemble at the sound of a 

 piccolo. Still higher psychical attributes 

 are those of animals that show parental 

 alfection or ability to count, like the 

 mason wasp, which provides invariably 

 five spiders for the male larva and eight 

 for the female; or the harvester ants 



* The Dawn of Reason. By James Weir, Jr., 

 M. D. New York : The Macmillan Company. 

 Pp. aU. Price, $1.25. 



that plant their grain, wood and win- 

 now it. Examples are cited of the ca- 

 pacity of the elepluuit to form abstract 

 ideas and of the dog to indulge in brown 

 studies. The author scouts at the the- 

 ory that " specialized instinct," or " in- 

 telligent accident," prompts actions in 

 animals which in man would be ascribed 

 to reason. " Instinct," he writes, " is 

 the bugbear of psychologists," and there- 

 upon he diflerentiates sharply the two 

 sadly confused functions. 



In the thesis entitled A Step For- 

 icard, F. Theodor KriKjer proposes, as a 

 measure of possible social reform, plac- 

 ing the medical and legal professions 

 wholly under the direct control of the 

 civil authorities, to be exercised through 

 duly constituted boards or departments 

 of the several communities. 



In his study of Centralized Adminis- 

 tration of Liquor Laws in the American 

 Commonwealths (Columbia University 

 Studies in History, Economics, and Pub- 

 lic Law) Clement M. L. Sites finds that 

 widely variant policies are followed by 

 the several States in the regulation of 

 the liquor traffic, all based upon the 

 broad powers of taxation and police. 

 While we hear much of characteristic 

 plans of regulation, little is said about 

 characteristic systems of administration. 

 This is because the liquor laws are 

 administered incoherently. There is no 

 consensus, even within the Common- 

 wealth, in standards of administration. 

 Each community practically determines 

 for itself how the law shall be enforced, 

 and we have all degrees of enforcement, 

 from rigid severity to none. The vari- 

 ous plans of regulation are classified by 

 the author according to the dominant 

 aspect in which they regard the liquor 

 traffic. It has been treated as an open 

 traffic, subject simply to taxation and 

 reasonable safeguards; as a necessary 

 but dangerous business, to be limited 

 to approved persons and places and sur- 

 rounded by special safeguards; as a 

 criminal enterprise, to be suppressed, 

 like highway robbery; and as a subject 

 of legal monopoly. It is the purpose of 

 Mr. Sites's essay to follow the develop- 

 ments of centralized administration that 

 have taken place in recent years in each 

 of these spheres, and in that of the in- 

 stitution and maintenance of judicial 

 proceedings. The phases of current de- 



