April 9, 1908J 



.\ATURE 



533 



llu> Dancing Mouse; a Study in Animal Behaviour. 



By Robert M. Yerkes. Pp. xxi + 290. (New York: 



Tiie Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan and 



Co., Ltd., 1907.) Price 55. net. 

 'I'm-; most characteristic feature of the best psychology 

 of the present day is tlie tendency to loolc fur much of 

 the explanation of mental life in its antecedents and 

 surroundings. The older individualistic position is 

 being rapidly left behind. The continuity of mind is 

 now as clearly recognised as the continuity of life. 

 Lower forms of mental activity, in the race no less 

 than in the individual, are found to throw much light 

 upon the nature of developed human consciousness. 

 .Such forms are, however, matters of inference, not of 

 direct observation ; it is therefore not surprising that 

 the science of comparative psychology is so far from 

 keeping pace with its elder brother, comparative 

 anatomv. The work thus far done has been of a 

 somewhat sporadic nature, in one prominent case, at 

 least, vitiated by faulty psychological theory. More 

 decided progress may be looked for in the application 

 of the experimental method. 



Dr. Yerkes 's book on the Japanese dancing mouse, 

 the first of a series to be devoted to the study of 

 animal behaviour, is an excellent example of this plan 

 of procedure. A very full description is given of the 

 two principal forms of test employed, viz., the light- 

 discrimination test and the labyrinth test. The former 

 was e'Tiploved to investigate not only the visual dis- 

 crimination of the animal, but also its powers of learn- 

 ing by experience and of retaining the lessons thus 

 learnt. As " motive " to the use of the discriminative 

 faculty. Dr. Yerkes employed punishment, in the form 

 of mild electric shocks for mistakes made, considering 

 this not only more humane than the motive of hunger 

 usually employed in such experiments, but also better 

 adapted to the peculiarities of behaviour of ihe animal, 

 viz., its superabundant activity. Here the criticism at 

 once suggests itself that such a mode of procedure 

 would probably encourage a mechanical production of 

 habit in the animal, and fail to stimulate any germs 

 of higher mental faculty that might be present. The 

 icsults obtained certainly fail to show, the presence of 

 .-my reasoning power above sense discrimination. Even 

 the inference to power of discrimination may not be 

 completelv justified. Sense-differentiation and the 

 mechanical working of hedonic selection would seem 

 able to account for all the facts. Yet the mice might 

 have been capable of higher mental processes, e.g. in 

 terms of kinaesthetic imagery, which the experiments 

 failed to call into operation owing to the insufficiency 

 of the stimulus or motive employed. 



.Apart from its value as a contribution to science, the 

 book is an e.xtremely readable one, and is, moreover, 

 admirably bound and printed. W. B. 



Studies in the Medicine of Ancient Indict. Part i.. 

 Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body. By 

 Dr. A. >. Rudolf Hoernle, CLE. Pp. xii + 252. 

 (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1907.) Price los. 6d. 

 SoMK time ago, when Dr. Hoernle was preparing 

 an edition of two old Indian medical tracts, pre- 

 served in the Bower manuscript of the fifth century 

 .^.D., he was surprised to find how little we knew of 

 medicine as taught and practised in Ancient India. 

 The volume under review is the first fruit of a resolve 

 to make good that deficiency in the history of 

 medicine so far as it can now be made good by a 

 study of existing manuscripts and documents. Of 

 the three systems of medicine which have come down 

 to us the most ancient is that ascribed to .Atreya, a 

 physician who is assigned by Dr. Hoernle to the sixth 

 century B.C. ; the system ascribed to Susruta, the 



NO. 2006, VOL. 77] 



surgeon, is nearly as ancient; the third system, that 

 of Vagbhata, the Galen of the mediaeval East, as Dr. 

 Hoernle describes him, dates from the seventh cen- 

 tury A.D., and is a compound of the two older systems. 



Evidently amongst the ancient Indians, as among 

 medical men of to-day, a knowledge of the bones was 

 regarded as fundamental in the study of medicine. In 

 the system of Atreya the number of bones in the 

 human body is given as 360 (the nails, teeth, and 

 tooth sockets are counted as separate bones) ; 

 in that of Susruta 300, while in Vagbhata's 

 system they number 360. In modern text-books 

 of anatomy the number of bones is variously 

 estimated from 200 to 214, the number varj'ing 

 according to the inclusion or exclusion of certain 

 small bones and some which are only occa- 

 sionally present. The ancient Indian anatomist shows 

 an intimate knowledge of animal tissues in classify- 

 ing the cartilages with bones ; he regarded cartilage 

 as an immature form of bone. In the course of 

 transcription the te.xt naturally became corrupt ; for 

 instance, in Atreya 's system the two humeri, four 

 «rist bones and two eyes (their outer coat was believed 

 to be cartilaginous, hence they were classified as 

 bones) came to be omitted, but the total number of 

 360 was made good by increasing the number of face 

 and neck bones. In all three systems the thumb is 

 stated to have three joints or phalanges ; Dr. Hoernle 

 points out that a similar mistake is made in the sum- 

 mary of bones given in the Talmud. The Talmudic 

 summary, probably derived from the Greek school at 

 Alexandria, follows very closely the systems of Ancient 

 India. How far the systems of medicine amongst the 

 early Greeks and the Ancient Indians were related 

 cannot yet be estimated ; thanks to the labours of Dr. 

 Hoernle we know much more of the systems prac- 

 tised amongst the Indians than amongst the Greeks. 



.Altogether Dr. Hoernle, although not a medical man 

 himself, has laid medical men under a deep obligation 

 to him by rendering so easily accessible the knowledge 

 and practice of physicians who tended the sick in 

 northern India some centuries before Christ was born. 



The Sea-shore, Shown to the Children. By Janet 

 Harvey Kelman. Described by Rev. Theodore 

 Wood. Pp. xi + 146; with 48 coloured plates. 

 (London and Edinburgh : T. C. and E. C. 

 Jack, n.d.) Price 2s. 6d. net. 



This book belongs to the " Shown to the Children " 

 series, and consists of forty-eight coloured plates with 

 a short description written in the simplest possible 

 language of each of the subjects depicted. 



From such an immense choice of material it was 

 no doubt difficult to decide what should be described 

 and what left out, but, on the whole, we think that 

 the choice has been a very good one. The chief 

 objection to the book is the use of English names 

 for most of the objects described. Some of these 

 names are unfamiliar to us, while others are surely 

 local. In some cases the generic name has been 

 used, e.g. Chiton, Purpura, Pinna, Terebella, &c., 

 and we think it would have been an advantage if 

 this system had been more freely adopted, the English 

 names only being used where there could be no doubt 

 whatever as to their being well-known ones. 

 Alcyonium is called "the sea-finger"; in some 

 localities, at least, it is known as " dead men's 

 fingers." Pleurobrachia is called " the sea-acorn," 

 but in another well-known book of the sea-shore its 

 English name is given as "the sea-gooseberry." 

 The name " sea-acorn " is usually applied to a 

 barnacle. 



This attempt to give English names to objects not 



