326. 



NA TURE 



[February 6, 1896 



mildness and dampness of the weather ; although some rather 

 low temperatures were recorded by thermometers exposed to the 

 sky, the maximuin readings have reached 45° to 50° during the 

 day-time. It will be remembsred that this period last year was 

 one of almost continuous, severe frost, which lasted until 

 February 20. 



It was pointed out in a recent article in the Engineer, that 

 the introduction of warlike stores, and their final inspection and 

 sentence, is entirely in the hands of naval and military men. 

 The matter is again referred to in the current number of our 

 contemporary as follows : " The actual manufacture only is 

 under a civilian Director-General, but, with the exception of the 

 Small Arms Factory at Enfield, the superintendents and their 

 assistants were still all naval or military officers, and have 

 remained so since the reorganisation carried out by an officer of 

 the artillery in 1887. A colonel of artillery and two captains of 

 the same arm manage the Royal Laboratory ; a captam of the 

 Navy and a lieutenant manage the Royal Gun Factory ; a 

 colonel of engineers is responsible for the Royal Carriage 

 Department ; a colonel of artillery, a captain, and a lieutenant, 

 are responsible for the Royal Gunpowder Factory ; and a 

 colonel of artillery manages the factory in Birmingham. The 

 Director-General has two military assistants, one a commander 

 in the Navy, and one a captain in the artillery, and it would 

 thus appear that he is assisted by no less than twelve officers of 

 the Army and Navy, and therefore if the work turned out to be 

 bad and dear— as it is alleged to be by the writers in the Times 

 — that circumstance seems to us to be a strong argument in 

 favour of the proposition that military and naval men are unfit, 

 from want of technical knowledge and special training as 

 manufacturers, to carry on manufacturing operations, and con- 

 firms the view which we have expressed of the imprudence of 

 placing important factories under such management, and thus 

 severely hampering a competent civilian Director-General. . . . 

 In our judgment no substantial improvement in economical man- 

 agement is to be looked for till there is a complete separation 

 between the military advisers of the Director-General and the 

 civil assistants who are charged with the actual carrying out of 

 the work and the keeping of the accounts." 



The question of the relation of psychology to physiology, and 

 of the line of demarcation between the two sciences, is discussed 

 by Prof. G, S. Fullerton in the Psychological Review for January. 

 Psychologists are often charged with occupying themselves in 

 doing work which is purely physiological, and they retort by 

 stating that most text-books of physiology include matter which 

 belongs to psychology. The fundamental assumption of 

 psychology is, to state Prof. Fullerton's argument, the assump- 

 tion of an external physical world, and of minds which mirror 

 it. It is the task of the psychologist, with the aid of intro- 

 spection, observation and experiment, to obtain a knowledge 

 of such minds, and to reduce their phenomena to laws. Though 

 little is known about the changes in a nerve during a passage of 

 a nervous impulse, the methods employed in investigating 

 physical and chemical problems may be expected to throw some 

 light upon them. On the other hand, argues Prof. Fullerton, 

 psychical facts — such as sensations, perceptions, volitions — have 

 also to be reckoned with, and one would hardly expect to study 

 them just as the changes in a muscle during contraction are 

 studied. Therefore he thinks that while the task of the 

 physiologist is to investigate, by directly objective methods, the 

 physical series of causes and effects, the psychologist studies facts 

 of another order by the method of introspection, observation 

 and experiment, and interpretation. 



In a recent note we congratulated those interested in 

 astronomy upon the fact that there would be soon a total solar 

 NO. 1 37 I, VOL. 53] 



eclipse visible almost at our doors, and that the Orient Company, 

 Messrs. Cook, and Messrs. Gaze were advertising special 

 steamers to go to Norway for the benefit of would-be observers. 

 Then we went on to say : " We notice with some astonishment, in 

 a circular issued by Messrs. Gaze and Son, the statement that 

 an official party of observers, arranged by a joint committee 

 of the Royal Society and of the Astronomical Society, are 

 proceeding to Norway, and will travel by the s.s. Norse King.' 

 We hardly think that this statement is authoritative, for 

 scientific committees are not in the habit of advertising their 

 intention to patronise any particular line of steamers ; and, 

 further, astronomers usually require more than five days to 

 adjust and set up their instruments if any work of real use to 

 science is to be done." We have received a letter from Messrs. 

 Gaze and Son complaining that the above paragraph is 

 "inaccurate," and assuring us that " an official party will travel 

 by the Norse King." We willingly comply with their request, 

 pointing out at the same time that we have been guilty of no 

 inaccuracy, and that we did not deny their statement. We are not 

 in a position to do so because, so far as we know, the Committee 

 has published nothing on the subject. What we said was that it 

 was not authoritative, and a statement of the kind made in an 

 advertisement cannot surely be taken as authoritative even when 

 it is used as a decoy. In any case we trust the " official party," 

 whether singular or plural, will have a good time ; but we still 

 hold to our opinion as to the too short interval allowed for the 

 preliminary arrangements on the spot. 



Many attacks have been made on the six zoological regions of 

 Sclater and Wallace, and one of the most determined of these 

 has been the proposal of an " Holarctic " region, to embrace 

 the circumpolar districts and adjoining lands of both 

 hemispheres. Dr. Scharff is a supporter of this view, which 

 has likewise been maintained with great vigour by Dr. Merriam 

 in America. But Dr. Wallace has shown that all the facts 

 brought forward in its favour may easily be reconciled with the 

 more orthodox view. An essay, entitled " I?:tude sur les 

 Mammiferes de la Region Holarctique et leurs relations avec 

 ceux des Regions voisines," by Dr. R. Y. Scharff, has just been 

 published as an excerpt from the M^moires of French 



Zoological Society. In the essay, which has been rewarded by a 

 prize founded at the International Zoological Congress held at 

 Moscow, Dr. Scharff commences by a discussion of the Mammal- 

 fauna of Ireland, and traces the species now existing and 

 recently extinct in that country to their places of origin, so far 

 as these can be settled by geological evidence. He proceeds to 

 Southern Europe and Northern Africa, and shows how the 

 Mammals that now inhabit these portions of the Palrearclic 

 region may have reached their present quarters. There is 

 much information to be gathered from the facts brought 

 together by Dr. Scharff, but we cannot say that he has carried 

 the case in favour of the " Holarctic " region much further than 

 previous supporters of that theory. 



The number just issued of the Arbeiten aus dem Kaiserlichen 

 Gesundheitsamte contains an official report by Regierungsrath 

 Dr. Rahts, on the outbreak of influenza which occurred in 

 Germany during the winter of 1893-94. In this epidemic, the 

 country population suffered far more severely than that of the 

 towns, and it is interesting to note that Hamburg experienced 

 an exceptionally light visitation of the disease, this being doubt- 

 less partly attributable to the cholera epidemic of the previous 

 year having eliminated to a certain extent the less vigorous lives. 

 The period of incubation appears to have varied from two to five 

 days, and the infectious nature of influenza was again amply 

 verified. It is pointed out that the careful disinfection of all 

 catarrhal expectoration is of great importance in preventing the 



