204 



NA TURE 



[December 27, 1900 



Whether the book was intended to be the British 

 counterpart of its ponderous contemporary in three 

 volumes recently issued by the Aeronautical Society of 

 Berlin does not appear from anything that is written 

 therein. It deals with the same large subject — scientific 

 balloon voyages — but it is not a work of reference. It 

 could hardly be so, for it has no index, and the table of 

 contents serves more to stimulate curiosity with attrac- 

 tive head-lines, as " Marooned " and " How I bombarded 

 London," than to guide the reader to any scientific 

 results. It is not even effective as an indication of what 

 is to be found in the chapters, for what the author has 

 to say, for example, on the natural history of gorse and 

 bracken is to be found in the chapter headed "fog 

 signals." 



The leading motive of the book, in so far as it is not 

 autobiographical, is the application of balloon observa- 

 tions to certain problems connected with the transmission 

 of sound, and this leads to spending midnight hours on a 

 tower of St. Paul's, to a long stay at the Maplin Light- 

 house, and other eerie expeditions, but to no effective 

 scientific results except the destruction of the author's 

 belief in aerial echoes. 



The book has, in fact, all the discursiveness of the 

 dilettante. Its scientific investigations lack the definite- 

 ness which quantitative measurements give. It describes 

 in one chapter how a certain echo always arrived behind 

 time, but it does not say how the time-table was drawn 

 up. Still, it deals with a number of interesting balloon 

 excursions and the adventures that they afforded ; the 

 style is racy in its way, the illustrations are good, and 

 the printer has given effective assistance. The reader 

 will at least learn that ballooning is still in the adventurous 

 stage, and, if he thinks about it, he will conclude that 

 some scientific methods are better than others. 



Per Aufbau der Menschlichen Seelej Eine Psycholo- 

 gische Skizze. Von Dr. H. Kroell. Pp. v-l-392. 

 (Leipzig : Engelmann, 1900.) 

 Dr. Kroell's work might Ise judged from two very 

 different points of view. As a popular and generally 

 intelligible account of the present state of our knowledge 

 as to the localisation of function in the brain and the 

 stages of cerebral development, some of his chapters may 

 be highly commended for their clearness and accuracy. 

 As a " psychological sketch " of human life and thought, 

 written with the avowed object of establishing the 

 materialist position, the book is an unqualified failure. 

 Dr. Kroell brings out materialism in his results simply 

 because he has put it into his premisses. He is content 

 to assume the first principles of mechanical physics, not, 

 as a real physicist might do, as working hypothesis, but 

 as unquestionable and ultimate truth. Moreover, he 

 states even those principles in an unsatisfactory way. 

 The difificulties which beset the problem of the relation 

 of matter and energy are ignored by the convenient 

 device of asserting that each is one aspect of a double 

 reality which the author calls " Kraft-stoff " ; unfor- 

 tunately he omits to tell us how " Kraft-stoff" is to be 

 measured. He assumes, with equal recklessness, that all 

 energy is kinetic (p. 28) and (pp! 30, 31) that the pheno- 

 mena of life 7nust be capable of being adequately de- 

 scribed in terms of rotatory motion. Dr. Kroell's 

 psychology is of the same type. He can see no differ- 

 ence in principle between the photo-chemical changes 

 produced on the retina by a light-stimulus and the trans- 

 formation of molecular motion into consciousness which, 

 on his theory, take place in the cortex. The " picture in 

 the brain " is a reality of the same order as the " picture 

 on the retina." That neither " picture," as distinct from 

 its physical conditions, exists except for the eye of an 

 observer does not occur to him. A sensation (p. 70) is 

 actually said to be a cerebral process which has become 

 " conscious of itself," though, of course, our own cerebral 

 processes are in point of fact precisely that of which we 



NO. 1626. VOL, 63] 



are never directly conscious. The sensation as a mentaJ 

 state is confused with its own cortical concomitants and! 

 baptised by the name of " picture in the cortex " (p. 98) ;. 

 and the unmeaning question has then to be discussed 

 how it comes about that the " picture in the cortex " is 

 " referred away outside " to the periphery of the body or 

 to a spot in the external world. The questions of animal 

 psychology, which all serious students of the subject 

 know to require the most cautious handHng, are settled by 

 Dr. Kroell in the same spirit of jaunty confidence. For 

 instance (p. 125), the higher animals have memory- 

 images. This is roundly affirmed without evidence, ap- 

 parently in utter ignorance of the actual experimental 

 work which has been done in the study of the animal 

 mind and the much more guarded conclusions to which 

 that work points. Animals {ib.) have " concepts," though 

 no word is said as to the evidence which has satisfied the 

 author upon this thorny and debated subject. These are 

 but a i^^N specimens of the confusions of thought and 

 reckless assertions with which the book abounds ; they 

 should be enough, however, to indicate the worth of ar» 

 argument for materialism founded on such premisses. 

 Psychologists have no right to quarrel with physiologists 

 and medical men for not being themselves psychologists ; 

 they surely have a right to expect that psychology, as 

 much as any other science, should be protected against 

 the dogmatism of outsiders who disdain to make them- 

 selves acquainted with its problems and methods. Na 

 knowledge of physiology can give its possessor the right 

 to dogmatise i priori in physics and in psychology. 



A. E. Taylor. 



Shakespeare's Green-wood. By George Morley. Pp. 



XX + 289. Illustrated. i6mo. (London : D. Nutt, 1900.) 

 Of this daintily turned out volume, some portions have 

 already seen the light in an abbreviated form in the 

 columns of Knowledge, Country Life and the Artjournaly 

 but the greater part is new And the author, who 

 is already known to the public by other descriptions- 

 of Warwickshire scenery, claims for his present effort the 

 position of being the only work that deals with the sur- 

 vival of old-time feeling and custom in Shakespeare's 

 country. 



Naturally the work is in the main interesting to the 

 antiquarian, the philologist and the student of folk-lore 

 rather than to the zoologist ; but there is a chapter on 

 birds from which the ornithologist may possibly glean a 

 few facts in regard to habits and local nomenclature. As- 

 an example, we may refer to the incidental statement 

 on p. 194 to the effect that the name "landrail" (like 

 corncrake) is derived from the cry of the bird to which 

 it is applied. It may be that this derivation, although 

 previously unknown to ourselves, is familiar to ornith- 

 ologists, but we have failed to find mention of it in three 

 standard works on British birds. 



The popular superstitions connected with the redbreast 

 and the wren are sympathetically referred to on pp. 153. 

 and 154. And an old-time belief connected with egg- 

 shells is detailed on p. 173. It appears that in Warwick- 

 shire it is the custom to scrupulously preserve these, 

 although, at the pain of ill-luck, on no account should 

 they be kept in the house. " But if by any mischance,"^ 

 says our author, " some person, unacquainted with the 

 folk-lore of the subject, should burn the egg-shells, then,, 

 in the rustic belief, the hens will cease laying. Where 

 this faith is the strongest is in the isolated homesteads 

 on the waste or by the side of a wood, and there the 

 utmost care is taken to prevent any single egg-shell being 

 thrown into the fire, so that the fecundity of the hens 

 may be stayed." It would be very curious to discover 

 the origin of this and many other strange superstitions- 

 referred to by Mr. Morley. 



To those of our readers interested in folk-lore, as well 

 as to all Shakespearian students, the elegant little work 

 before us may be heartily commended. R. L. 



