776 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



When, as is often the case, a State tax is apportioned to the several 

 counties of the State, and by the counties to their respective towns, 

 there arises a double competition between assessors of counties in 

 the aggregate and of the towns for making the lowest possible 

 valuation of property, especially real estate. 



In a large number of States (twenty- one in 1890) an attempt 

 has been made to correct the undervaluation of property right- 

 fully subject to taxation by creating boards of equalization, with 

 power to raise or lower the valuations of county officials, with a 

 hope of securing substantial uniformity; but this measure has 

 not been successful, and the most intelligent members of such 

 boards have recorded their opinions that it is impossible under 

 the present system to effect any just distribution of the incidence 

 of taxation. 



"SOME UNRECOGNIZED LAWS OF NATURE."* 



BY C. HANFORD HENDERSON. 



IN Some Unrecognized Laws of Nature, Mr. Singer and Mr. 

 Berens have restated the riddle of the universe, and have 

 made a brave attempt to solve it. 



It has not been the good fortune of modern science to give us 

 a coherent philosophy of things so much as it has been to give us 

 a very nice measurement of them. Its triumphs have been for 

 the most part quantitative. " We have only so much science as 

 we have mathematics." One might almost say that science has 

 become a branch of applied mathematics. In the case of the 

 luminiferous ether, and in some other departments of physical 

 inquiry, one might even go a step further, and assert that science 

 is mathematics, pure and simple, dealing only with signs and 

 symbols, and quite unregardful of the realities of experience. 

 Brilliant and successful as this treatment has been, it does not 

 satisfy all the demands of the spirit. The old sense of wonder 

 and inquiry is still unappeased. One is often tempted to stop in 

 the midst of one's measuring rods and balances, and put again 

 the old question, the eternal Why ? 



It is this sentiment which makes us turn with some eagerness 

 to such a book as the one before us. It is an inquiry, not into 

 the phenomena of Nature, but into their causes, and more par- 

 ticularly into the cause of gravitation. At the present time, we 

 have no theory of gravitation. The several guesses that have 



* Some Unrecognized Laws of Nature : An Inquiry into the Causes of Physical Phe- 

 nomena, with Especial Reference to Gravitation. By Ignatius Singer and Lewis H. Berens. 

 Illustrated. New York : D. Appleton and Company, 1897. Pp. 611. Price, $2.50. 



