October 27, 1910] 



NATURE 



52; 



which little genuine evidence is forthcoming. He is 

 wise in not paying too much attention to the 

 numerous scienlitic " Mother Shiptons," who have so 

 frequently attempted to gain credit for discoveries on 

 the strength only of their prophecies. But the book 

 can safely be recommended to such of our lay friends 

 as meditate living in the tropics. R. R. 



Abhandlungeii Jean Rcy's, iibcr die Ursache der 

 Gewichtszunahme von Ziivi tiiid Blei beim Ver- 

 kalken. Deutsch heratisgegebcn und mit Anmerk- 

 ungen versehen. By Ernst Ichenhauser and Max 

 Speter. Pp. 56. (Leipzig : W. Engelmann, iqog.) 

 Price 1.20 marks. 

 Jean Rey's " Essais sur la recherche de la cause par 

 la quelle I'estain et le plomb augmentent de poids, 

 quand on les calcine" have been familiar to English 

 readers for some years past, through the valuable 

 agency of the .Alembic Club, which has issued an 

 English translation as one of their series of reprints. 

 The present German translation is published as No. 172 

 of Ostwald's Klassiker der E.xakten Wissenschaften. 

 The essays, written in 1630, contain a remarkable 

 discussion on an increase in weight which had been 

 observed, bv an apothecarv at Bergerac named Brun, 

 to take place during the calcination of metallic tin 

 in an iron vessel. The conclusion, arrived at bv argu- 

 ment rather than discussion, that the gain in weisrht 

 was due to the condensation of air, was a remarkable 

 anticipation of views that were not generally accepted 

 until the time of Lavoisier, 140 vears later. The 

 German reprint is provided with a valuable series of 

 notes dealintr with the history of the essavs and with 

 various points requiring elucidation in the essays 

 themselves. 



Elementary Regional Geography. Great Britain and 

 Ireland. Bv J. B. Reynolds. Pp. viii+184. 

 (London : A. and C. Black, iqio.) Price is. ^d. 

 Cambridge County Geographies, Nottinghamshire. 

 By Dr. H. H. Swinnerton. Pp. xi + 153. Lanark- 

 shire. By Frederick Mort. Pp. viii+168. (Cam- 

 bridge : University Press, igio.) Price is. 6d. each. 

 Miss Reynolds has written an interesting and easy 

 account of the geography of the British Isles which 

 will be useful as an introduction to the subject. A 

 few practical exercises for j'oung pupils to work have 

 been introduced ; but the book would have been more 

 valuable had this aspect of the teaching been more 

 prominent. The excellent illustrations will certainly 

 secure the attention of juvenile readers. 



A very broad view of geography is taken bv the 

 writers of the latest additions to the "Cambridge 

 County Geographies." Space is found bv each author, 

 in a slight treatment of a large subject, for sections 

 on antiquities, ecclesiastical, military, and domestic 

 architecture, and on the history of the county. Both 

 volumes are well up to the high standard reached by 

 other books in the series. 



The Cambridge Pocket Diary for the Academical Year 

 iqio-ii. Pp. xv + 255. (Cambridge: University 

 Press.) Price i5. net. 

 Both the staffs and students of schools and colleges 

 will find this pocket diary very convenient. Begin- 

 ning with September 20, 1910, and extending to Sep- 

 tember 30, 191 1, it covers every length of academic 

 year, and will be useful in all educational centres. 

 Besides this interval, of time, for which full space is 

 given, several pages are devoted to the weeks until 

 the end of 191 1, so that important engagements for 

 the early part of the succeeding professional vear can 

 be booked. The diary also contains a useful mis- 

 cellany of general information. 



NO. 2139, VOL. 84] 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



[The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions 

 e.\pressed by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake 

 to return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejected 

 manuscripts intended for this or any other /)ai-f 0/ Nature. 

 No notice is taken of anonymous communications.] 



The Biological Laboratories at Woods Hole. 



I HAVE noted with interest a recent discussion in Nature 

 of August 25 and September 15 and 29 in which the 

 biological laboratories at Woods Hole have received 

 incidental mention. I pray that you may give me this 

 opportunity to correct some very prevalent misconceptions 

 regarding the status of the Government station there. In 

 Nature of September 15 Prof. MacBride has voiced some 

 of these misconceptions very clearly. " It is true," he 

 writes, " that there are two stations in Woods Hole, one 

 supported by the Federal Government and devoted entirely 

 to economic work, and the other supported entirely by 

 zoologists ; but the station which has attained world-wide 

 fame, owing to the quantity and quality of the research 

 which has issued from it, is the second and purely scientific 

 one " (pp. 330, 331). 



Now, although Prof. Herdman has pointed out in two 

 letters the misleading character of these statements, it 

 appears that Prof. MacBride is "of the same opinion 

 still," for in your issue of September 2q he avers : — " That 

 valuable scientific work of general interest occasionally 

 issues from the laboratory of the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, 

 which was founded and is maintained for research on 

 economic lines, is totally irrelevant " (p. 396). 



What the United States Fish Commission ' laboratory 

 at Woods Hole was originally founded for may best be 

 gathered from a perusal of the earlier annual reports of 

 the first commissioner, the naturalist Spencer F. Baird. 

 He emphasises more than once the futility of attempting 

 to deal broadly with fisheries problems without an intelli- 

 gent understanding, not only of marine life as a whole, 

 but of all the various physical and chemical factors which 

 may affect this. (See especially first report of the com- 

 missioner, p. xiii.) 



The whole history of the United States Fish Com- 

 mission, and of the Woods Hole station in particular, bear 

 abundant testimony to the sincerity of this broad-minded 

 attitude of its founder. The pioneer faunistic work of 

 Verrill and his colleagues in the 'seventies and 'eighties 

 was carried out very largely under the auspices of the 

 National Fish Commission, and Woods Hole was the chief 

 headquarters from which these explorations were con- 

 ducted. Furthermore, one need only refer to the past 

 reports of the commission to find in the list of those who 

 have worked at the Woods Hole station many of the 

 most prominent names in American biology. Here we 

 meet, for example, with the names of Farlow and Gill, 

 of E. B. and H. V. Wilson, of Morgan, Bumpus, Andrews 

 and Eigenmann, to say nothing of Brooks and Ryder, who 

 have passed away. These men were not, for the most 

 part, engaged upon " economic " problems in any strict 

 sense of the word. And in more recent years some of the 

 physiological work of G. H. Parker, C. J. Herrick, W. B. 

 Cannon, E. P. Lyon and others, has been conducted in 

 the Fish Commission laboratory, as well as the taxo- 

 nomic work of such men as Edwin Linton, C. W. Hargitt, 

 C. C. Nutting, W. M. Wheeler, H. L. Clark, and C. B. 

 Wilson. 



I regret that anything like a defence of the scientific 

 status of the Fisheries Laboratory has been necessary in 

 these columns, for the facts here stated are well known 

 to every American zoologist who is familiar with con- 

 ditions at Woods Hole. But unfortunately all zoologists, 

 even in America, are not familiar with the conditions at 

 Woods Hole, and the misconceptions voiced by Prof. 

 MacBride are still held tenaciously in certain quarters. _ 



As Prof. Herdman has pointed out, there are two scien- 

 tific laboratories at Woods Hole. But conditions are even 

 more complicated than this, for the Bureau of Fisheries 

 itself maintains two more or less independent institutions 

 there. One is the biological laboratory, maintained by 



1 Chaneed in 1903 to the Bureau of Fisheries of the Department of Com- 

 merce and Labour. 



