
Maxceu 17, 1923] 
lightened, and the present unfortunate and unnecessary 
state of affairs significantly improved, by a recently 
published work. This is the “Manual of Compara- 
tive Psychology” edited by Prof. Gustav Kafka, of 
Munich, to which twelve psychologists, including 
himself, have contributed. The work itself is divided 
into twelve sections, each section constituting a specific 
‘department of psychology and being written by a 
specialist in that department. These sections are 
grouped, somewhat unequally, into three groups, each 
group corresponding to a volume of some five hundred 
pages. The three groups are: The Evolution of Mind 
(Animals, Primitive Mankind, and Children); the 
Functions of the Normal Mind (Language, Religion, 
Art, Society, and Vocational Psychology); and the 
‘Functions of the Abnormal Mind (Psychopathology, 
Sex, Dreams, and Criminals). 
This list sufficiently indicates the scope of the work. 
It is easy to find omissions: law, industry, and 
morality are inadequately represented, for example, 
while the editor himself deplores the absence of a 
section on the psychology of science, an omission due 
to his inability to find any one to write the section. 
It is easy also to find fault with the arrangement of the 
subject-matter. To mention one point only, it is surely 
not justifiable to give the impression that sex and 
dreams are abnormalities. One might again stress the 
occasional overlapping, the occasional unevenness of 
treatment and of point of view, and the more than 
occasional stodginess of manner, due largely to excessive 
compression on the one hand, and to theoretical in- 
coherence on the other hand. But this is a pioneer 
-work and must be judged leniently. If the reader 
brings an active and organising mind to its perusal, 
then the defects will be neutralised and the solid 
qualities of the work appreciated. For this reason 
one hesitates to recommend the work to the general 
reader, above all to the general reader who knows 
little or no psychology, and to whom an overloaded 
and viscous style is repellent. To those better 
versed in psychology its comprehensiveness, _ its 
accuracy, and its excellent bibliographies will make 
their appeal. They will be grateful for the compact 
account of the psychology of language. They will be 
glad to have Sante de Sanctis’ views on dreams, inas- 
much as they are the views of a man who began the 
study of dreams before Freud published his “ Traum- 
deutung ” ; and they will be appreciative of and grate- 
ful for much else in this timely work. The fact that it is 
written in German will constitute but one more reason 
for regret that an international language for science 
has not long since made the peculiar aptitude of the 
German for this type of work the common property of 
mankind, 
NO. 2785, VOL. 111] 
“NATURE 
a 
355 

Our Bookshelf. 
Handbuch der Pflanzenanatomie. Herausgegeben von 
Prof. K. Linsbauer. II. Abteilung, 1 Teil: Thallo- 
phyten. Band 6: Bakterien und Strahlenpilze. 
Von Prof. Dr. Rudolf Lieske. Pp. iv+88. (Berlin : 
Gebriider Borntraeger, 1922.) 4s. 6d. 
THE purpose of this handbook, which is to be comprised 
in a series of monographs by specialists in the various 
branches of the subject, is to give, in brief compass, a 
critical presentation of the present state of our know- 
ledge of plant anatomy and cytology. In the volume 
before us, Prof. Rudolph Lieske, of the University of 
Heidelberg, has brought together, in a commendably 
brief and useful form, a critical digest of what is at 
present-known of the morphology of the bacteria and 
ray-fungi (Actinomycetes). The first part of the book 
contains an account of the bacteria. In reference to 
the nuclei and nuclear structures which have been so 
frequently described, it is concluded that, although 
there can be no doubt about the existence of minute 
granules with nuclear characteristics, the presence of 
true nuclei in the bacteria has by no means been 
proved. The author has some interesting observa- 
tions upon the recently described symplastic stage in 
bacterial development, and on the so-called sexual 
reproduction of bacteria. Among other topics dealt 
with are pleomorphism and variability, filtrable viruses, 
and mycobacteria. 
- In the second part of the volume the ray-fungi are 
dealt with. In discussing the systematic position of 
the group it is pointed out these organisms have 
certain characteristics in common both with bacteria 
and fungi, and that they must be looked upon as an 
independent group standing between the two. The 
various forms of the Actinomycetes present an astonish- 
ing variability both in morphological and physio- 
logical peculiarities, and the characters which have 
been used by various observers to discriminate species 
are so inconstant that no dependence can be placed 
upon them. 
A literature list accompanies each part of the work, 
and there is a good index, 
Mathematics and Physical Science in Classical Antiquity. 
By D. C. Macgregor. Translated from the German 
of J. L. Heiberg. (Chapters in the History of 
Science, II.). Pp. 110. (London: Oxford Uni- 
versity Press, 1922.) 2s. 6d. net. 
Tuts volume gives a general survey of the science of 
classical antiquity, laying special stress on the mathe- 
matical and physical aspects. It opens with an account 
of the Ionian natural philosophy, pointing out that 
science is the development of early attempts of man 
to see his way in the world outside. Next there is a 
chapter on the achievements of the Pythagorean school, 
followed by two others on the progress made in the 
fifth century B.c. One of these is on mathematics, 
still under the influence of Pythagoras, and the other 
on medicine, which then reached a level not surpassed 
before the Alexandrian age. The work of Plato and 
Aristotle is adequately dealt with, while the longest 
chapter in the book is-assigned to Euclid, Archimedes, 
and the Alexandrian school. In the period of de- 
cline which followed (second and first centuries’ B.c.) 
58 «380 . = 
