498 



NATURE 



[December i6, 1920 



State which claims to be their master." But in 

 his discussion there is much that is sugfgestive 

 and illuminating. 



In his chapter on occupation and leisure the 

 author finds the contrast between profession 

 and trade to lie in the fact that the former 

 is based on service, the latter on exchange, and 

 he sees hope for the future in the thought that 

 "society has never accepted the economic basis." 

 Industry must be professionalised. This can be 

 done — it was done during the war — through the 

 trade unions and the employers' associations 

 realising that they exist "to do the work of the 

 trade, to produce the goods." 



The book is fresh, alive, and interesting. The 

 author holds that we "must begin with the 

 present : describing and defining what we witness 

 with all the power of abstraction we possess." 

 Hence we find less in this book about the Todas 

 and more about the League of Nations than in 

 most treatises on sociology. Perhaps for an 

 " Introduction " its very facility will prove to some 

 extent a drawback. The simplicity of outline 

 which the beginner demands is lost in the wealth 

 of illustration and in the multitude of apt com- 

 ments in many spheres of present and past experi- 

 ence. But the system is there if the reader has 

 the wit to come by it ; and the student of sociology 

 who reads the book will go back to his task with 

 renewed vigour. 



(2) It is not very long since the only picture 

 called up by the term "social worker" was that 

 of an unprepossessing female, of uncertain age, 

 but of undoubted respectability, who periodically 

 descended from her refined atmosphere to view 

 the lives of those strange beings "the poor." But 

 the rapid extension of the sphere of State activity ; 

 the devolution of administrative functions to local 

 bodies, and of advisory, and sometimes of execu- 

 tive, functions to workers, voluntary and official, 

 paid and unpaid ; the quickening of the social con- 

 sciousness of the Church; and, perhaps most of 

 all, the awakened self -consciousness of the work- 

 ing classes, no longer content to be experimented 

 upon, but resolved to work out their own solution 

 of whatever social ills they are heir to — all this 

 has made the ordinary citizen aware to a fuller 

 extent than ever before of his social responsibili- 

 ties. If we are not all "social workers," we have 

 at least come to pay tribute to the value and the 

 difficulty of • the services which the " social 

 worker " performs. 



Major Attlee in his book explores the wider 

 denotation of the term. He reviews the oppor- 

 tunities for social service, in the chari- 

 table society, the prison, the mission, and the 

 Church; in connection with the Poor Law, 

 NO. 2668, VOL. 106] 



the Labour Exchange, the Care Committee, the 

 Public Health bodies ; and even in the trade union, 

 the friendly society, and the co-operative society. 

 All these are grist to Major Attlee's mill ; and 

 rightly so. The social fabric has become self- 

 conscious through and through, and since in this 

 new age these activities must be performed, it 

 is desirable that they should be performed with 

 intelligence and enlightenment. The book is full, 

 racily written, and made alive with interesting 

 first-hand illustration. Not only to the aspiring 

 social worker, but also to those who are old in the 

 service, and to the ordinary citizen, the book 

 should prove a mine of information and a par- 

 ticularly inspiring example of the spirit in which 

 the social worker should pursue his task. 



The volume is the first of a series to be 

 entitled " The Social Service Library " and 

 edited by the present author. We look forward with 

 interest to the publication of the other volumes in 

 the series. 



Our Bookshelf. 



A Dictionary of Scientific Terms: Pronunciation, 

 Derivation, and Definition of Terms in Biology, 

 Botany, Zoology, Anatomy, Cytology, Embryo- 

 logy, Physiology. By I. F. Henderson and Dr. 

 W. D. Henderson. Pp. viii + 354. (Edinburgli 

 and London : Oliver and Boyd, 1920.) Price 

 i8s. net. 



The present work contains definitions of about 

 10,000 terms, including several hundred lately 

 coined expressions, many of which have not 

 hitherto appeared in a dictionary. In a first 

 edition all the attempts at definition are not likely 

 to be happy : " coelom " is " a cavity of the body 

 derived from the mesoblast " ; "coelomoduct," 

 " the duct leading directly from the genital cavity 

 to the exterior in Cephalopods and in .Annulates " ; 

 "nephridium," "any excretory organ, usually the 

 excretory organ of Invertebrates"; "micro- 

 nephridia " is not given, though the obsolete and 

 misleading " plectonephridia " appears ; " sclero- 

 tome," "a partition of connective tissue between 

 two myotomes " ; " notochord " is not given, 

 though "vertebra" is; "acanthin," "a substance 

 like chitin, strontium sulphate, forming the 

 skeleton of the Radiolarians"; "nanoplankton," 

 "microscopic plankton"; "entelechy," "the real- 

 isation of forms in plant and animal life which 

 have the power of reproducing their kind." 



Alternative pronunciations are frequently given, 

 as "different centres of learning have different 

 types of pronunciation " ; but one may seriously 

 question the admissibility of many of these — 

 e.g. of accenting "abdomen" and "gluteus" on 

 the first syllable, or "popliteal" on the ^second, 

 or "madreporite" and "mediastinum" on the 

 third ; while the only pronunciations given for 

 "lorica," "vesica," and "posticous" (on the first 



