292 



NA TURE 



{Jan. 24, 1889 



Here is one quotation of many which might have been 

 chosen from Mr. Herbert Spencer: — 



" Newton described himself as unable to think that the 

 attraction of one body for another at a distance could be 

 exerted in the absence of an intervening medium. But 

 now let us ask how much the forwarder we are if an 

 intervening medium be assumed. This ether, whose 

 undulations, according to the received hypothesis, con- 

 stitute heat and light, and which is the vehicle of gra- 

 vitation,— how is it constituted ? We must regard it in 

 the way that physicists do regard it, as composed of 

 atoms which attract and repel each other — infinitesimal, 

 it may be, in comparison with those of ordinary matter, 

 but still atoms. And remembering that this ether is im- 

 ponderable, we are obliged to conclude that the ratio 

 Isetween the interspaces of these atoms and the atoms 

 themselves is incommensurably greater than the like 

 ratio in ponderable matter ; else the densities could not 

 be incommensurable. Instead, then, of a direct action 

 by the sun upon the earth, without anything intervening, 

 we have to conceive the sun's action propagated through 

 a medium whose molecules are probably as small rela- 

 tively to their interspaces as are the sun and earth com- 

 pared with the space between them ; we have to conceive 

 these infinitesimal molecules acting on each other through 

 absolutely vacant spaces which are immense in compari- 

 son with their own dimensions. How is this conception 

 easier than the other ? We still have mentally to repre- 

 sent a body as acting where it is not, and in the absence 

 of anything by which its action may be transferred ; and 

 what matters it whether this takes place on a large or a 

 small scale ? " (" First Principles," chap. iii. § 18). 



Omitting any reference to the absurd reasoning about 

 " incommensurable " densities in this quotation, and about 

 the ether being " imponderable," as if Mr. Herbert Spencer 

 or anyone else knows anything whatever on the subject, 

 I wish to call attention to the words regarding the struc- 

 ture of the ether " in the way physicists do regard it " ! 

 If they do, if they are unable to see that action at a 

 distance across a small space is just as inexplicable as 

 action at a distance across a large one, and if the ether 

 they imagine is not thought of as in some sense or other 

 a contintium for this very reason ; if, in fact, they are 

 unable to appreciate, in all the years they have been 

 thinking on the subject, what is obvious on the face of it 

 to someone who steps in, so to speak, for the first time, 

 — what singularly incompetent persons they must be ! 



That seems to be the real upshot and natural meaning 

 of many of these criticisms of science from the outsider's 

 point of view. O.J.Lodge. 



ROCKS AND SOILS. 

 Rocks and Soils : theit' Origin, Composition, and Cha- 

 racteristics. By Horace Edward Stockbridge, Ph.D., 

 Professor of Chemistry and Geology in the Imperial 

 College of Agriculture, Sapporo, Japan ; Chemist to 

 the Hokkaido Cho. (New York : John Wiley and 

 Sons. London : Triibner. 1888.) 



C'^ HEMIST to the Hokkaido Cho ! It is not the least 

 > striking feature of our time that there should be an 

 Imperial College of Agriculture at Sapporo whose Pro- 

 fessors publish researches in New York and London. 

 This is not exactly a novel experience, for events crowd 

 upon us thick and fast in these days ; but those of us who 

 can look back forty years must be struck when confronted 



with the Chemist of the Hokkaido Cho. Dr. Stockbridge 

 is not, be it understood, the alchemist to an Eastern 

 potentate, nor yet one of the astrologers, Chaldaeans, or 

 soothsayers of a modern Belshazzar, but an agricultural 

 chemist and geologist discoursing upon rocks and soils, 

 nitrates and microbes, and suggesting processes by which 

 atmospheric nitrogen is fixed in the soil by the action of 

 living organisms. The great Mikado, " virtuous man," 

 has, we know, transplanted full-grown and fully-equipped 

 knowledge from the West to his remote dominions ; and 

 so successfully, that it has rooted, and now is become an 

 article for exportation — as witness the volume before us. 

 To some of our readers it may appear unnecessary to 

 dilate upon a fact which springs naturally out of the most 

 recent developments of civilization. We need not now 

 despair of openings for aspiring young chemists under 

 the protection and pay of the King of Dahomey or of 

 Ashantee, or of an Imperial Institute at Khartoum or 

 some other part of the Dark Continent ; and truly the 

 missionaries of science are in a fair way to rival those of 

 religion in their ubiquity. 



The volume before us is of attractive appearance. It 

 is, however, hard upon the reader who takes it up in 

 order to learn something about rocks and soils to be 

 carried through the entire history of the planet on which 

 his lot is cast. Deeply interesting as are the cosmic 

 questions bearing upon the original nebulous mist, " in 

 glowing gaseous condition," they scarcely affect even 

 scientific agriculture. Besides, it is open to doubt whether 

 an agricultural chemist and geologist is within his 

 province in explaining the differences between white stars 

 red stars, and habitable planets which have gone through 

 phases thus indicated. Such information belongs to the 

 domain of the astronomer and the physicist, and the 

 agricultural study of rocks and soils should be taken up 

 at a later date of the earth's history. It is not our object 

 to criticize Dr. Stockbridge's book severely, but it appears 

 to us that if he had cut out 100 pages at the beginning, 

 and added 100 pages at the end in harmony with his 

 concluding sections, his work would have been more 

 useful. 



The two features of this book which seem to us the 

 most important are, first, Dr. Stockbridge-'s views as to 

 the " fixation of atmospheric nitrogen independent of 

 ammoniacal condensation and of nitrification." The com- 

 pounds thus formed in the soil are, we are told, complex 

 insoluble amides resembling those existing in living 

 organisms, and must have resulted through the vital 

 activity of the micro-organisms present in the soil. If soils 

 have the power of fixing atmospheric nitrogen through the 

 action of living organisms, they possess a means of re- 

 cruiting fertility independent of plant action, and of so 

 fundamental a nature that, supposing such action to take 

 place, the question of the source of nitrogen and the 

 supply of nitrogen in soils would be set at rest. Another 

 novel view is that propounded with reference to dew-for- 

 mation. Here, we have a subject which is not very clearly 

 related to that of rocks and soils. So far as the soil is a 

 vehicle of plant nutrition, its conditions as related to 

 moisture are of course important, and it is in this con- 

 nection that the theory of dew as propounded by Dr. 

 Stockbridge finds a place in his work. It is not necessary 

 here to explain Dr. Wells's explanation of the fall of dew. 



