July 5, 1900] 



NATURE 



221 



of his earliest studies he returns as to a first love. On 

 the soul-theories of savages and the corresponding 

 eschatology he writes convincingly. The plurality of 

 souls in pulse and blood and breath and shadow, the 

 gradual elimination of some of these and the syncretism 

 of the rest, the place of the dream image in the evolution 

 of the cult of manes and in the selection of totems, the 

 literal and unsymbolic character of the latter, the order 

 in which the heavenly bodies enter into primitive 

 worship— these are the points on which Dr. Schultze 

 compresses year-long work into moments of insight and 

 selective description. Believing, as he does, that 

 Germany has a colonial future in direct contact with 

 primitive stocks. Dr. Schultze offers his essay to the 

 understanding of the savage as a help forward to the 

 achievement of the educational mission of his country. 

 A pious gift. H. W, B. 



The Study of Bird-Life. By W. P. Pycraft. Pp. 240. 

 Illustrated. (London : George Newnes, Ltd. 1900.) 

 This little volume belongs to "The Library of Useful 

 Stories,'' now in course of issue by the publishers ; and 

 although it must have been difficult to compress a general 

 review of the leading facts of bird-life into such a small 

 compass, the author may be congratulated on the success 

 of his attempt. As Mr. Pycraft is a morphologist rather 

 than a systematist, it would naturally be expected that 

 he would incline rather to the morphological and phylo- 

 genetic aspects of his subject, and this we find to be the 

 case. We have, for example, an excellent chapter on 

 the morphology of the bird's wing, while two others 

 treat of avian pedigree, and a third is devoted to the 

 distribution of birds in space and time. Perhaps the 

 most specially interesting chapter in the volume is the 

 one dealing with the flightless birds and their fate, since 

 this is a sulaject on which the author is peculiarly qualified 

 to speak with authority. 



Although, of necessity, written from a purely popular 

 standpoint, the volume contains many passages which 

 are well worth the attention of the scientific ornithologist. 

 If there be a fault, it is the introduction of irrelevant 

 matter, the place of which might have been better occu- 

 pied by details pertaining to the subject in hand. And 

 if a second edition be called for, the author will perhaps 

 be inclined to modify the statement in the tenth chapter, 

 that " the kind of rock" in which bird-remains are found 

 is sufficient to give a notion " of the bird-life of that 

 particular period of the earth's history." R. L. 



An Introduction to the Differential and Integral Calculus 



and Differential Equations. By F. G. Taylor, M.A., 



B.Sc. Pp. xxiv -f- 568. (London : Longmans, Green 



and Co., 1899.) 

 The appearance of still another treatise of this kind 

 shows how earnest and how prevalent is the desire to 

 introduce students of physics to a knowledge of the 

 calculus at as early a stage in their career as possible. 



The author has studied simplicity of treatment, but 

 has evidently striven to secure accuracy as well as clear- 

 ness and distinctness in his exposition of the principles 

 of the subject. A special feature, which will be of great 

 advantage to the ordinary student, is the detailed 

 discussion of numerous examples. 



Interspersed throughout the several chapters the 

 student will also find an abundance of not too-difficult 

 exercises carefully graduated and with answers appended. 



A fair and not excessive amount of space is devoted 

 to the subject of curves, and the illustrative diagrams are 

 distinctly drawn. 



The section on the integral calculus concludes with 

 applications to volumes and surfaces of revolution, 

 centroids, and moments of inertia. 



The last section of the book forms a good intro- 

 duction to the methods of dealing with ordinary 

 differential equations of the first and second orders. 



NO. 1 60 1, VOL. 62] 



ENGLAND'S NEGLECT OF SCIENCE. 



JUST before the first movement organised by Lord 

 Roberts there was probably not one thinking person 

 in England who was not ready to vote for an immediate 

 change in all sorts of English methods of doing things. 

 Consequently everybody was willing to listen to the 

 advice of men who had for years been crying in the 

 wilderness and prophesying disaster. Now, however, 

 that we have worried through our military trouble, we 

 shall probably feel so much ashamed of our intense 

 fright as to put aside most of our desire for reform, and 

 even to have less thought of it than before the war began. 

 It is, therefore, the duty of those who have earned the right 

 to a hearing to prevent the nation from sinking down into 

 its sleepy acquiescence with old methods of working ; and 

 I am glad to see that Sir Norman Lockyer, in his speech 

 at the Royal Academy dinner, referred to scientific edu- 

 cation as a great, necessary line of defence of our country, 

 secondary only to that of our naval and military forces. 

 Again, two articles have appeared in the Kblnische Zeitung 

 (March 10 and 11), which criticise our manufacturing 

 and business and military want of method with an un- 

 sparing pen. The German writer and many English 

 writers seem to think that we ought to copy Germany. 

 Nobody can feel more than I do the great necessity 

 which exists for reform ; but I think that our reform 

 must be far more thorough than anything which can be 

 regarded as a mere copying of Germany ; the methods 

 which we adopt must be English methods, invented by 

 Englishmen for Englishmen. If our methods are to help 

 to lead in the future to a history comparable in glory with 

 the history of the past, there must be a great common- 

 sense reform in education in England from top to toe. 

 My friends. Profs. Ayrton and Armstrong, and I have so 

 often pointed out the deficiencies of England in matters 

 which we have carefully studied here and in foreign 

 countries, that I hardly know whether an idea on this 

 subject is my own or one of theirs ; I do know, however, 

 that we preach often on this subject, and that we never 

 seem to be much attended to. 



One thing that seems to be quite exasperating is that 

 almost all the most important, the most brilliant, the 

 most expensively educated people in England ; our 

 poets and novelists ; our legislators and lawyers ; our 

 soldiers and sailors ; our great manufacturers and mer- 

 chants ; our clergymen and schoolmasters, are quite 

 ignorant of physical science ; and it may almost be said 

 that in spite of these clever ignorant men, and men like 

 them in other countries, through the agency of a few men 

 who are not ignorant, all the conditions of civilisation 

 are being completely transformed. I do not merely mean 

 here ignorance of the principles of science, I mean also 

 ignorance of all those methods of working which come 

 from experimental and observational scientific training. 

 The great men go occasionally to popular scientific lec- 

 tures (as they go to the Royal Academy), and they think 

 that they comprehend something of the latest scientific 

 discoveries because they have seen some fireworks and 

 lantern slides ; they are genial to scientific men when 

 they meet them at dinner parties ; but, in truth, scientific 

 men are as much outside their counsels as sculptors or 

 painters, or musicians or ballet-dancers. Among these 

 great men a few visits to Albemarle Street are sufficient 

 to create a reputation for science. I wish to show that 

 this ignorance of our great men tends to create ignor- 

 ance in our future leaders ; is hurtful to the strength of 

 the nation now, and retards our development in all ways. 



These great men really direct the building of ships of 

 war, and the creation of munitions of war ; that is, they 

 select the men who have to do these things, and they also 

 lay down the unscientific rules which prevent their 

 selected men from doing their work scientifically. 



I will give an e.xample. They order that the building 



