292 



NA TURE 



{Jan. 26, I 



and, therefore, the creatures whose pain and travail can- 

 not 'possibly serve any moral purpose. Yet the moral 

 sense of man, in its most " intuitive '' or least rational 

 form, is outraged even by the practice of vivisection with 

 a view to an ultimate amelioration of sentient life. 



Our object in saying this much is to show that Prof. 

 Schurman does not appear to have perceived the basal 

 difficulty against which he has to contend. The question 

 which he undertakes to answer is whether the moral sense 

 is of absolute or only of relative significance. But this 

 question he merely begs on behalf of the intuitionists. Of 

 course, if it be thus assumed that the moral sense is of 

 absolute significance, it is reasonable enough to show 

 that the fact of its utility is not opposed to the assump- 

 tion. But where the validity of this assumption is the 

 matter in dispute, an intuitionist only plays into the 

 hands of the utihtarian by arguing that in his view of 

 morality "an ideal of action may be affiliated to 

 Darwinism as readily as any other." Nevertheless, 

 although we thus deem Prof. Schurman's essay a failure 

 in its argument against the mechanical interpretation of 

 conscience, it is otherwise an able contribution to the 

 literature of ethics; and anyone who is already an 

 intuitionist may properly accept the work as proving that 

 there is nothing in Darwinism, per se, which can be 

 logically regarded as inimical to his theory. 



George J. Romanes. 



AN INDEX-CATALOGUE. 

 Index-Catalogue to the Library of the Surgeon-General's 

 Office, United States Army. Vol. VIII., Legier— Medi- 

 cine (Naval). (Washington, 1887.) 

 THE regularity with which the large annual volumes 

 of this great work reach us is most reassuring, and 

 now its completion in some six more years may be 

 looked upon as practically certain, considering the vast 

 resources of the United States, and the energy which its 

 editors have shown. It still remains unique among 

 printed catalogues in its immense lists of articles from 

 every species of periodical literature, arranged under sub- 

 ject-headings, and drawn from more than 3400 Journals, 

 Reviews, Transactions, &c. It has added to its list last 

 year 165 new periodicals, and its tastes are sufficiently 

 catholic to include such as the Revue Philosophique, which 

 contains important matter bearing on the fundamentals of 

 physiology and psychology, but hardly touching on any 

 professional details. 



The entries are carried up to the end of 1886 ; the 

 volume has a "few words of preface dated June 1887. 

 When it is considered that the papers of Delhi, Madras, 

 and Adelaide, for example, take some weeks to reach 

 Washington, and that any of these may contain entries 

 which should take a place in any part of this book of 1078 

 closely printed quarto pages, there seems to us certainly 

 to have been no loss of time in publication. There are 

 many entries, in this volume, of Chinese and Japanese 

 books, magazine articles, and manuscripts, which the 

 editors insert in EngHsh characters, and are kind enough 

 to translate for us. Of the European languages also, 

 Hungarian, Russian, and Polish are as a rule translated, 

 much more ^freely than in the last volume ; but Swedish 

 and Danish' rarely, and Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, 

 Italian, and Greek not at all. A very commendable 



practice has sprung up, though it is not found everywhere 

 possible, of putting the date of birth after a hving author's 

 name. Thus we read Lussana (1820— ), Luys (1828—), &c. 

 It would be very convenient if this could be further ex- 

 tended, though of course the difficulties in the way 

 are obvious. There are some very large collections of 

 entries under such words as Liver (70 pp.). Lungs (30 

 pp.), Lithotrity and Lithotomy (40 pp.), and the extent 

 of the bibliography is well illustrated when we find 213 

 books and 646 articles entered under such a simple 

 heading as Measles. By far the largest aggregation, and 

 one as yet unfinished in this volume, is under Medicine, 

 which in the present volume occupies 288 pages. It is a 

 heading under which the subdivisions have been difficult 

 to arrange ; but the large bulk of matter has, on the 

 whole, been well distributed. Under such a subdivision 

 as Medicine (Anecdotes, Curiosities, &c.), we naturally find 

 strange companions, such as " Uriel to his Compeers ; 

 adapted by Ithuriel " ; " The Doctor, by the Author of 

 'Betsy Lee'"; "Sniggers (J.), Gnihtontuobaodahcum," 

 the last a Spiegelschrift in print. Under Medicine 

 (Systems, Theories, and Practice), we find a large group 

 of the elder writers who are chiefly of historical interest, 

 extending from " Averrhoes : Incipit Liber de medecina 

 Averoys qui dicitur Coliget,&c.,imp.foHo, Venetiis, 1482 

 (Gothic letter), to the writers of the last generation, such 

 as Dr. C. J. B. Williams (1842), and, curiously enough, 

 containing only one small volume among the modern 

 hand-books, " Elements of Practical Medicine, by A. H. 

 Carter, 1881," which might have come more appropriately 

 among Medicine (Manuals) or Medicine (Practice of), 

 along with the mass of modern text-books. Groups are 

 chronicled under Medicine (Magical, Mystic, Spagyric) of 

 some 300 books, and of some 250 under Medicine (Chrono- 

 thermal, including the Thompsonian system), which serve 

 to remind us of the chequered history and varied prin- 

 ciples of the healing art. To the accuracy of this vast 

 body of references, amounting to more than 40,000 in all, 

 it is Time that will bear the best testimony, as it has borne 

 to those of the earlier volumes. A first testing on such 

 detail as is practicable shows the figures right, and the 

 text sometimes— as, for instance, in the case of M. Luys- 

 more accurate than that of the author's own publisher in 

 his advertisement columns. It is a mistake, we must 

 allow, but we trust a very pardonable one, to have spelt 

 the name of a distinguished living physician as " S. 

 Wilkes " ; and it is a pity that, under the record of Hos- 

 pital Reports (London), we should find mention only of 

 those of the Hospitals of St. Thomas and St. George. 

 But these are trifles ; when we close the heavy volume 

 we cannot help feeling a hearty admiration of so 

 much hard and careful work well spent, not on the 

 aggrandizement of any individual fame, but on the steady 

 and strenuous advancement of learning. 



A. T. Myers. 



OUR BOOK SHELF. 

 A Vertebrate Fauna of Sutherland, Caithness and West 



Cromarty. By J. A. Harvie-Brown and T. E. Buckley. 



(Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1887.) 

 This is a good type of all that a hand-book on local 

 natural history ought to be from a naturalist s point ot 

 view. While it appears to be as exhaustive as any two 



