J , 1 « I I 8 



XAI L'RE 



89 



have demonstrated this truth, which 

 is now clearly realised. Methods owing their 

 origin to the pioneer investigations "I Freud, 

 Jung, and others are novt being widely used 

 by workers who do not necessarily agree with 

 the theoretical views held by these writers. 



We may now consider the way in which the 

 medical problems of the war have affected the 

 outlook of psychology. Ii seems certain thai after 

 the war greater emphasis will be laid upon the 

 importance of instinctive and emotional factors 

 and upon the power of non-rational beliefs to 

 influence conduct. "Individual" and "social" 

 psychology can no longer be regarded as separati 

 departments. The rather exclusively intellectual- 

 istic viewpoint of psychology will be enormously 

 modified and supplemented. In justice to psycho 

 logj it should be pointed oul that in the years 

 ding the war the beginning of this change 



-pert in England was clearly apparent in the 

 h workers as Hart, Ernest Jones, 

 McDougall, Shand, Trotter, and Graham Wallas. 

 I ! is newer psychology, if properly taught, will 

 be of distinct help to medical men in enabling 

 them to deal more scientifically with the enormous 

 and dail) increasing number of mental and ncr\- 



disorders which are attributable, directly and 

 indirectly, to the war. 



In conclusion, brief reference should be made 

 to another problem the urgency of which is great, 

 but towards the solution of which almost nothing 

 has yet been attempted in our own country. We 



to the scientific selection and training od 

 persons for important tasks demanding special 

 innate and acquired aptitudes and capacities. The 

 war has demonstrated, and is demonstrating, in 

 a depressingly convincing waj the ease with 

 which square pegs may be placed — and kept 

 in round holes. The physical capacities of re- 

 cruits for the Army have usually been tested 

 before they have been allotted to their special 

 work; but in scarcely any case has there been 

 any scientific attempt to determine how far they 

 are mentally fitted for the exacting tasks allotted 

 to them. 



As this article is being written an instructive 

 contrast comes to hand from the Surgeon- 

 General's Office at Washington. In the Psycho- 

 lot March, ii)i s . Major Robert M. 

 Yerkes describes "the history of the organising 

 of psychological military service" in the United 

 States. We may mention lure one point of in- 

 terest. The lowest 10 per cent, and the highest 

 5 per cent, discovered in the psychological exam- 

 ination of recruits wet I to a searching 

 individual examination, on the basis of which a 

 special report was made to the medical offii et 

 The example of such a rational attempt to dis- 

 cover the incompetent and the specially competent 

 before, and not after, valuable time has been 

 wasted may be recommended to the consideration 

 of all who are anxious to further the best employ- 

 ment of our human resources. 



T. H. Pear. 



'353- VOL. I02 



/ HE /('/ I/. Si " 1/; ECLIPSE OF 



OBSERVATIONS ol the solai eclipse of June 8 

 appear to have been ver\ successful on the 



whole, notwithstanding the general prevalenci ol 



cloudy conditions along the path of totality, ex- 

 tending from the State ol \\ to Florida. 

 Preliminary accounts of the work oi th< parties ol 

 observers from the Lick and Mount Wilson obser- 

 vatories are given in the August issui ol the 

 Publications of the Astronomical Society ol the 

 Pacific (vol. XXX., No. [76), and of those from the 

 Verkes and numerous other observatories in the 

 August-September issue of Popular Astronomy 

 (vol. xxvi., \o. 7). 



Prof. Campbell's party was located at 

 GoldCndale, Washington, and on an otherwisi 

 completely cloudy day the sun was seen in a per- 

 fectly clear gap from less than a minute before 

 totality to a few seconds alter the end of totality. 

 With a lens of 6-iri. aperture and 40-ft. focal 

 length, pointed directly at the sun, photographs 



of the corona were obtained which are described 



a, surpassing in definition any previously obtained 



by the Lick observers. The corona was remarkable 

 for the sheaths of streamer- which surrounded all 

 tin principal prominences, and Prof. Campbell re- 

 marks that "it seems impossible to question that 

 the forces in the sun responsible for the promi- 

 nences are the forces which are responsible for 

 the coronal streamers situated near the promi- 

 nences." Excellent photographs of the corona 

 were also obtained with other instruments, and 

 streamers to the east of the sun were recorded to 

 about three solar diameters. Special cameras were 

 employed for registering the brighter stars in the 

 region near the sun for the purpose of testing the 

 Einstein effect, and as stars fainter than Sth mag- 

 nitude are shown on the plates it is possible that 

 measurements may lead toimportanl results. A spec- 

 trogram obtained with a three-prism spectrograph, 

 showing the spectrum of the corona east and west 

 of the sun, with iron comparisons, was taken for 

 the accurate determination of the wave-length of 

 the well-known green line of "coronium," and a 

 preliminary measurement has shown that the wave- 

 length differs very little fiom 530 yo A. With a 

 single-prism spectrograph, the well-known coronal 

 lines 3601, 3987, 4086, 4231, and 5303 were pho- 

 tographed, and seven other bright lines were sus- 

 pected. On these plates the coronal spectrum only 

 extends 6 or 7 minutes ol arc from the edge of the 

 sun, and no absorption lines appear in this region; 

 the inner corona thus appears to be radiating its 

 own light, and does not reflect sufficient sunlight 

 to impress the Fraunhofer lines on its continuous 

 spectrum. The irregular distribution of "coro- 

 nium" v as successfully recorded by the use of an 

 objective-grating adjusted for the green line in the 

 third order spectrum. Fi\c observers g; ■ atten- 

 tion to the "shadow band " phenomena at the be- 

 ginning and end of totality, with results which 

 appear to be more definite and accordant than on 

 any previous occasion. With reference to the 



