October 24, 1895] 



NATURE 



627 



Deacon, and Mr. W. H. Wheeler (Secretar)') ; and as it is 

 desirous of obtaining information from as many ports as possible, 

 «e are asked to make its esistence known. A printed form, 

 showing the manner in which it is proposed to collect the tidal 

 statistics, will be sent to any one who will render assistance to 

 tliL- Committee, by Mr. W. II. Wheeler, Boston, Lincolnshire, 

 who will also be glad to receive records of tides aft'ected by 

 gales. 



In connection with the growth oi orchids, writes Mr. J. H. 

 Hart, in the October liiiHetiii of the Royal Botanic (iardens, 

 Trinidad, it has been noticed that the presence of ants is 

 apparently necessary to their maintaining a healthy condition ; 

 but whether this is in reality due to some action of the ant itself, 

 or to some indirect cause, has not yet been proved, and investi- 

 gations are needed to show what is the real influence the ant has 

 upon the health of the plant. It has been suggested that the 

 presence of stinging ants acts as a protection to the plants ; but 

 Mr. Hart is inclined to think, from recent investigations, that the 

 benefit the ants confer on the plant are those of providing it with 

 the mycelium of a fungus to cover its roots, which organism 

 enables it to take up food which would be otherwise unattain- 

 able. It may be shown that the ants act as protectors to the 

 plants, as well as providing them with a means of obtaining 

 nutriment ; but Mr. Hart believes it to be almost certain 

 that the fungus which grows in the material they accumulate 

 around the root plays a much more important part, by providing 

 the plant with food material. 



The first number of what promises to be a useful serial publi- 

 cation has just reached us from the U.S. Weather Bureau. The 

 periodical has for its name Climate and Health : it is edited, 

 under the direction of Prof. W. L. Moore, the new chief of the 

 Weather Bureau, by Dr. W. F. R. Phillips, and it is devoted to 

 climatology in relation to health and disease. Tables are given 

 showing, for one hundred selected stations, statistical informa- 

 tion relative to atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity, pre- 

 4:ipitation, wind, and sunshine : the relative [prevalence of 

 certain diseases ; and the mortality from different causes, in each 

 State. In addition to these statistics, all of which refer to the 

 conditions during July of this year, the new publication contains 

 charts showing the average pressure departures from the normal, 

 ranges of pressure, prevailing winds, and normal wind directions 

 for each week in the month, and similar charts to exhibit 

 graphically the absolute and relative data referring to temperature, 

 humidity, and precipitation. There is also a chart for each week 

 showing the total mortality by States, and representing di.agram- 

 matically the average climatological conditions so far as 

 tletermined by the mean temiierature and humidities antl the 

 .total amount of precipitation. The general aim of the Weather 

 Bureau in this new field of work is to collect the meteorological 

 and hygienic statistics considered by medical climatologists of the 

 greatest correlative importance, and to publish them in a useful 

 and instructive form. By showing the statistics of mortality and 

 morbidity side by side with those of climate, new information 

 as to connections between sickness and weather changes will 

 probably be discovered. 



The Psychologiral Review for last month contains an in- 

 teresting paper by Mr. K. .Meade Bache, on " Reaction Time 

 according to Race." He suggests that the higher intellectuality 

 of civilised white races may have been gained at the sacrifice of 

 ■quickness of response to sensory stimuli, and states that it is a 

 matter of familiar observation that Negro children are quicker in 

 their movements than the children of white folk. At his request 

 Prof. Lightner Witmer made careful and exact observations on 

 persons of the Caucasian, American Indian, and African (Negro) 

 faces. These are given in three tables. Taking resjxinse to 

 NO. 1356, VOL. 52] 



auditory stimuli, for example, the order of quickness is (i) 

 Indian, (2) .■\frican, (3) Caucasian, in the relation of 

 Il6'27 : 130 : I46°92 ; these being the reaction times in 

 thousandths of a second. .Although the numbers of individuals 

 dealt with (not more than a dozen in each case) are small, the 

 results are suggestive, and will no doubt lead to further 

 investigation. 



The attention of those who are interested in the question of 

 the inheritance of acquired characters may be drawn to a paper 

 which Prof. Mark Baldwin contributed to Science (.\ugust 23, 

 1895), under the title " Consciousness and Evolution." Prof. 

 Baldwin fails to see any great amount of truth in the claims 

 of Mr. Spencer that intellectual progress in the race requires the 

 hereditary transmission of accjuired increments in mental faculty, 

 and adopts the view advanced by Weismann in 1889, ami taken 

 up more or less independently by Mr. Ritchie and Mr. Kidd, 

 that social advance is rather by tradition than by hereditary trans- 

 mission. " Man,' said Prof. Weismann, "availing himself of 

 tradition, is able, in every part of the intellectual domain, to 

 seize upon the acquirements of his ancestors at the point where 

 they left them, and to pursue them further, finally himself 

 leaving the results of his own experience and the knowledge 

 acquired during his lifetime to his descendants, that they may 

 carry on the same process. ' Prof. Baldwin seems to have 

 reached this view independently, and his paper is well worth 

 reading. 



Under the extraordinary heading of '• The Chemical Theory 

 of Freedom of Will," Dr. W. Ostwald makes, in the Leipziger 

 Berichte, some suggestive' speculations upon the mechanical 

 theory of the universe. That all the phenomena of nature, 

 organic as well as inorganic, should be ultimately of a purely 

 mechanical character, is contradicted by the science of energy. 

 The theorems of energetics give the conditions under which any 

 event takes place ; they indicate which out of all the possible 

 courses it will follow, and to what state of equilibrium it tends. 

 .Ml this does not involve the element of time, except in the case 

 of kinetic energy. In the equations representing mechanical 

 processes, time may t)e put as positive or negative without 

 rendering them invalid. In other words, all purely mechanical 

 processes are reversible, while natural jirocesses are not. They 

 have a forward and a backward aspect. Now there are pro- 

 cesses in nature in which an agent influences the time during 

 which a certain event takes place, without being itself affected 

 in any way. This happens in all cases of catalysis, and the 

 laws of catalytic action are as yet only very imperfectly 

 understood. It is known, however, that the acceleration of the 

 process is proportioned to the concentration of the catalyser. 

 May not the human mind, the author argues, act upon matter 

 .somewhat in the manner of a catalyser, accelerating the 

 chemical and mechanical proce.sses associated with psychical 

 activity without any expenditure of energy ? This may be 

 worth considering. But it must be remembered that the course 

 of natural phen(jmena can be influenced in many ways without 

 the expenditure of energy. \n elastic missile rebounding from 

 a rigid plane is a case in point, or a river flowing between 

 its banks. 



The production of antiseptics appears to be more and more 

 engaging the attention of the great German colour manufac- 

 turers, and yet another compound, rejoicing in the name of 

 potassiumorthodinitrocresolate, has been introduced, which 

 promises to prove of considerable service both to the brewer 

 and to the horticulturist. Messrs. C. O. Harz and W. von 

 Miller have published an account of their investigations with 

 this substance — or aniinonnin, as it is more generally called — 

 in the Mueiichen Allgemeine Zeituiig, and it appears that a 



