580 
NATURE 
[APRIL 21, 1904 
things needed besides technical knowledge to make a 
good engineer. 
Mr. Gotshall’s works is distinctly the more ambitious 
of the two, in that it seeks rather to point out the 
general principles applicable to all cases of electric 
railway projection, whereas Mr. Gonzenbach confines 
himself to the consideration in outline of a particular 
case. The student will derive from Mr. Gotshall’s 
book a good idea of the importance of every detail in 
the original scheme, and will see how greatly the 
operating costs and the dividends may be affected by 
careful design throughout. He will also be able to 
glean some useful hints on the methods of dealing with 
promoters, landowners, and so forth, with whom, if 
he is ever called upon to draw up a scheme for an 
electric railway, he is likely to have much to do, 
Many of the details and particulars in both books are 
naturally not applicable to this country, but this does 
not materially detract from their value. MEnS: 
The Pests and Blights of the Tea Plant. Second 
edition. By Sir G. Watt and H. H. Mann. Pp. 
xv+429. (Calcutta, 1903.) 
Tus work first appeared in 1898 as a report of par- 
ticular investigations on tours, but is now a large 
volume of more than 400 pages, with numerous illus- 
trations. The amount of information collected is 
enormous, and one may understand that no tea-planter 
can dispense with the work, the more so since such 
subjects as hybridisation and the different races of 
tea seed, weeding, tilling and cultural operations 
generally, drainage and manuring of tea, pruning and 
plucking, &c., are fully dealt with, in addition to the 
enumeration and description of the multitude of insect 
and fungus enemies which the long suffering shrub 
harbours. 
By means of conspicuous marginal notes the authors 
have undone most of the disadvantages inevitable 
from their general method of lumping together scraps 
of information derived from all kinds of sources, the 
relative value of which, moreover, is generally capable 
of being sifted because the references are given; in 
spite of this, however, and indispensable as the encyclo- 
paedic information is, we think much might be done 
in improving the style if the materials were better 
woven into a more narrative and continuous form. 
Why is it that the introductory sections on general 
physiology of plants—the fundamental study without 
which the sequel is useless—are so often badly done 
in such works as this? Does it mean that the great 
schools of science have even yet not impressed their 
learning on the officials entrusted with such important 
treatises, or is it that an older generation of workers 
not familiar with modern researches dominates the 
situation ? 
Highways and Byways in Sussex. By E. V. Lucas. 
With illustrations by Frederick L. Griggs. Pp. 
xx+416. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1904.) 
Price 6s. 
Mr. Lucas himself aptly describes his book. He tells 
the reader :—‘‘ My aim has been to gather a Sussex 
bouquet rather than to present the facts which the 
more practical traveller requires,’? and he has 
succeeded in writing a delightful, chatty account of a 
county in which Londoners have an especial interest. 
The history, architecture and folk-lore, the animal and 
plant life of the county, and the customs and 
characteristics of the people are all noticed by Mr. 
Lucas and skilfully woven into a pleasing narrative. 
The illustrations, of which there are nearly eighty, 
are excellent, and add greatly to the charm of the 
book. 
NO. 1799, VOL. 69] 
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 
(The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions 
expressed by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake 
to return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejected 
manuscripts intended for this or any other part of NATURE. 
No notice is taken of anonymous communications.] 
Learned Societies. 
Tuere are two other defects of the present system of re- 
porting on papers to which | desire to direct attention. In 
the first place there are certain mathematicians who re- 
semble the Athenians in the time of St. Paul, who “ spent 
their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some 
new thing.’? They are consequently averse to reporting 
in favour of a paper unless it contains new results. Against 
this excessive craving after novelty I emphatically protest. 
Many interesting results frequently drop out incidentally in 
the course of a long and complicated investigation, whilst 
others have been originally obtained by some cumbrous, 
troublesome and antiquated process,‘ and in my judgment 
a paper which supplies concise, simplified and improved 
demonstrations of results of this character is quite as valu- 
able as one which is devoted to the investigation of new 
results. 
In the next place, as a general rule, none of the 
councillors present have read the paper unless any of them 
happen to be referees. Moreover, a good many of the 
ccuncillors present, even if they had tried to understand the 
paper, would be quite incapable of expressing an opinion 
as to its merits, and I well recollect that I myself have 
sometimes experienced considerable embarrassment when 
invited to vote officially as a councillor against the publica- 
tion of a paper which lay outside my own line of reading, 
and I have sometimes got over the difficulty by abstaining 
from voting.” 
I regard Prof. Bryan’s suggestions as altogether im- 
practicable. In the first place no person possessing ordinary 
common sense would run the risk of adverse criticism by 
consenting to report on a paper relating to a subject with 
which he was only slightly acquainted. In the next place 
no author, except a very junior one, would consent to 
subject his papers to the extensive revision, which Prof. 
Bryan appears to contemplate, at the suggestion of an 
unknown and possibly a very junior referee. He would 
probably regard such suggestions as a piece of impertinence 
(and I recollect one such case in connection with a foreign 
mathematician), and he would make short work of them 
by insisting on the society printing his paper as it stands 
or returning the manuscript for publication elsewhere. 
I believe that every Royal Academician possesses the 
privilege of hanging a certain number of his pictures every 
year, and I see no reason why a similar privilege should not 
be extended to members of learned societies with regard 
to the publication of their papers. A. B. BASSET. 
Fledborough Hall, April 16. 
Department of International Research in Terrestrial 
Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution. 
Tue trustees of the Carnegie Institution at their annual 
meeting last December authorised the establishment of what 
is to be known as the ‘‘ Department of International Re- 
search in Terrestrial Magnetism.’’ An allotment of twenty 
thousand dollars was made with the expectation that if the 
proposed work should be successfully organised, a similar 
sum would be granted annually for the period requisite to 
carry out the plan submitted by the writer, as endorsed by 
leading investigators, and published in ** Year-book ’’ No. 
2 of the Carnegie Institution. 
The undersigned has been appointed director of the de- 
partment, and has been given full authority to organise 
it, beginning with April 1. Arrangements have also been 
made so that the magnetic survey and magnetic observ- 
atories of the United States, conducted under the Coast and 
Geodetic Survey, will remain in his charge as heretofore. 
1 ‘The method by which Euler's equations for the rotation of a rigid body 
used to be proved is an example. 
2A very glaring example of the imperfections of the present system will 
be found in the PA. Trans., A. 1892, in connection with Mr. J J. Water- 
ston’s paper. 
