February 26, 



1920J 



NATURE 



687 



great corals, huge siliceous sponges, and what not 

 more — first-fruits of the noble harvest to be 

 g'athered from the "Depths of the Sea." 



In some things, and again it is no wonder, Mr. 

 Buchanan prefers the old times to the new. He 

 tells us of the cool comfort of an old wooden ship, 

 its perfect fitness for the work of exploration, and 

 how we have no ships nowadays like the Chal- 

 lenger. We are half-tempted to agree with him. 

 He commends, even with enthusiasm, the old- 

 fashioned hempen dredge-rope and sounding-line, 

 and assures us that "wire is the very emblem of 

 treachery." In later years, when wire had come 

 into use, he says : " I never attached a thermo- 

 meter to the wire without feeling that I was 

 guilty of a form of cruelty — cruelty to instru- 

 ments." This is a much harder saying- — to those 

 of us who have used nothing else ; let us hope 

 that it is the wire which has altered, and not the 

 men. 



It need scarcely be said that this book is well 

 worth reading. It has many pages to interest 

 even the man in the street, and has both an 

 historical interest and something more besides 

 for the present-day student of oceanography. In 

 these seven-and-forty years methods have been 

 refined, new theories and concepts formed ; but 

 we do not forget that birthday party on board 

 the Challenger, nor Mr. J. Y. Buchanan, who is 

 the last of the godfathers. 



D'Arcy W. Thompson. 



INDUSTRIAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

 Lectures on Industrial Psychology. By Bernard 

 Muscio. Second edition, revised. (Efficiency 

 Books.) Pp. iv-t-300. (London: George Rout- 

 ledge and Sons, Ltd. ; New York : E. P. Button 

 and Co., 1920.) Price 6s. 6d. net. 



THIS book is founded on a course of five lec- 

 tures which were delivered before a general 

 audience at Sydney University, but they must 

 have been considerably expanded when put into 

 book form. The author does not lay claim to 

 have made any first-hand investigations on the 

 problems with which he deals, but the book is very 

 far from being a mere compilation. It shows 

 throughout a deep insight into the principles of 

 industrial psychology, and is especially lucid on 

 the much-debated question of scientific manage- 

 ment. 



Mr. Muscio takes in turn the various objections 

 to this system raised by the workers themselves, 

 and with great ingenuity tracks down the true 

 inwardness of these objections, and discusses the 

 manner in which they may be overcome. He main- 

 tains that the main fact to be insisted on is that 

 NO. 2626, VOL. 104] 



the new methods prevent waste of human energy, 

 and render it possible to obtain a given output 

 from a much smaller expenditure of human energy 

 than that hitherto found necessary. Labour's 

 objection that the general introduction of scientific 

 management would cause widespread unemploy- 

 ment applies equally to every improvement intro- 

 duced into industry in the past. The difficulty 

 can be largely overcome by installing the improve- 

 ments gradually and absorbing the surplus 

 workers by the simultaneous introduction of other 

 forms of labour. 



Again, Labour maintains that scientific manage- 

 ment leads to undue speeding up. There is much 

 truth in this assertion, but the difficulty can be 

 overcome by the introduction of longer intervals 

 of rest and by shortening the working day. Other 

 objections to the system could be avoided by 

 arranging for an adequate system of industrial 

 education. The employer and employee must co- 

 operate in the introduction of a scheme whereby 

 no time study of an operation shall be made, and 

 no bonus sj^stem adopted, without the consent of 

 the worker. 



A very interesting and important field of indus- 

 trial psychology centres around vocational selec- 

 tion. This subject is discussed at length by the 

 author, and concrete instances of the methods as 

 applied to the selection of telephone girls and 

 electric-street-car drivers are described in detail. 

 Industrial fatigue is treated rather briefly, and is 

 the least satisfactory part of the book, as the 

 information adduced is largely out of date. That 

 concerning industrial accidents is fragmentary 

 and misleading, and no reference is made to the 

 "safety first " campaign, and to the effects of sug- 

 gestion on the avoidance of accidents. The lec- 

 tures were apparently written in 1916, and the 

 author has endeavoured to bring them up to date 

 in this revised edition by the somewhat irritating 

 and unsatisfactory method of appending foot- 

 notes. H. M. V. 



CRIMINOLOGY AND NERVOUSNESS. 



(i) Criminology. By Dr. Maurice Parmelee. 

 Pp. xiii -1-522. (New York: The MacmUlan 

 Co. ; London : Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1918.) 

 Price los. 6d. net. 



(2) The Mastery of Nervousness based upon Self- 

 Re-education. By Dr. Robert S. Carroll. Third 

 revised edition. Pp. 348. (New York: The 

 Macmillan Co.; London: Macmillan and Co., 

 Ltd., 1918.) Price los. 6d. net. 



(1) pvR. PARMELEE has written a very read- 

 i_-/ able book on the various aspects of crime 



and criminals. He has disclosed nothing that is 



