274 



NATURE 



[January 6, 1910 



acquire greater force." Accordingly we are here and 

 there treated to a useful hypothesis. For example, the 

 fact that the first collaterals from the axon of a 

 cortical projection neuron are directed back to the 

 cortex means for Lugaro that neighbouring neurons 

 are stimulated to participate in the action of the first 

 neuron, and that the function of these particular colla- 

 terals is to diffuse stimuli. 



The superficial layer of the cerebral cortex is re- 

 garded as associational in function, the middle layer 

 as motor, and the deep layer as sensory. It appears 

 that the very deepest layer of the cortex, the destruction 

 of which gives rise to the remarkable syndrome known 

 as dementia precox, is normally developed much more 

 in man than in lower animals, even the highest apes. 

 We note, by the way, that the author regards the 

 neuroglia as an anti-toxic substance, since it reacts 

 more than the true nervous tissue to toxic substances. 

 The author very properly decries, on the one hand, 

 the superficial methods of examination of insane 

 patients as practised in most asylums and, on the 

 other, the systematic examination by a hundred or 

 more tests employed by certain enthusiastic plodders. 

 The first is desultory and can never advance the 

 science of psychiatry one whit, while the second is 

 unpractical. Kraepelin's methods meet with the pro- 

 fessor's approval. 



On p. 64 Lugaro expresses the view that the mani- 

 festations of insanity at times defy comparison with 

 normal processes, but here we would accuse him of 

 failing to see below the surface; a normal instinct 

 may be compared with its distorted self in disease, 

 and any normal mental function may fitly be compared 

 with^ its absence where such absence constitutes a 

 positive symptom. 



The author's views respecting heredity are rather 

 heterodox. He starts with the premiss that the tend- 

 ency of heredity is to improve the race, and appears to 

 conclude therefrom that heredity is an over-estimated 

 factor in the causation of insanity. He has some 

 difficulty in rejecting the possibility of acquired charac- 

 teristics being transmitted but, after a long dis- 

 cussion of the matter, appears finally forced to do so. 



Private asylums receive some severe criticism. These 

 institutions in Italy are apparently in a parlous state; 

 but many in England come well beneath the ban, and 

 this part of the book should not be read in a Pharisa- 

 ical mood. 



The work should be on the shelf of every pathologist 

 and asylum physician; it is thoughtful, suggestive 

 and well written. The translation also is excellent, 

 but there are a few infinitives that might with advan- 

 tage be unsplit when the next edition appears, as it 

 undoubtedly will. 



THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF N. S. SHALER. 



The Autobiography of Nathaniel Southgate Shaler. 



iinth a Supplementary Memoir by his Wife. Pp. x + 



482. (Boston and New York': Houghton Mifflin 



Company, igog.) Price i6s. net. 



T^HE keynote of this book is to be found in its 



-*- final lines, written to Mrs. Shaler by Prof. G. H. 



Palmer : — 



NO. 2097, VOL. 82] 



" How large your companionship with him 

 was your words in this volume, and elsewhere, show. 

 Happy woman to have been so blest, and happy we 

 who were allowed to know you both ! " 



The book is the outcome of a personal re- 

 lationship, which pervades it, but which does 

 not obtrude upon the reader. We are spared 

 the emotional and sometimes spiteful passages 

 which are supposed in so many biographies to 

 add vitality to the story of a married life. We gather 

 instead a sense of peace, such as comes from long- 

 continued good work, jointly and perseveringly per- 

 formed. But we do not get to know Shaler through 

 these pages as generations of Harvard students knew 

 him. Prof. W. H. Hobbs, indeed, wrote two years 

 ago:— 



" It would be necessar)- to secure a composite 

 of the memory picture of literally thousands of students 

 in order adequately to present the characteristics of 

 this truly remarkable man to one who had never 

 known him." 



It was the man himself, a fighter from his youth, 

 vigorous, virile, yet painstaking in a high degree, 

 that established his claim on others, rather than 

 the work he did. Hence his autobiography, which 

 ends in 1861, and the modestly entitled " supplementary 

 memoir," which covers the remaining forty-five years 

 of his life, will be read with most pleasure by those 

 to whom passage after passage will recall some fami- 

 liar trait, some habit, perhaps some manner of speech, 

 impossible to set down in print. 



As an account of a life spent in transition times, 

 when the easj'-going, slave-tended society of the soutli 

 was about to organise itself for a strife of heroes, the 

 autobiography leaves us somewhat cold. We have 

 useful glimpses, however, of Louis ."^gassiz, then 

 dominating the natural science course at Harvard, 

 and the anecdotes of his methods as a curator and an 

 examiner (pp. 93-104, and 189-92) will please those 

 called to similar duties. Young Shaler, studying fishes 

 under his care, was left to describe what he could 

 observe for himself, and was merely told when he was 

 wrong; whereupon he would begin again, and so on, 

 until his master found that the results tallied with his 

 own. The impression made by Agassiz in denouncing 

 the Darwin-Wallace school is well shown by the story 

 of his pupil Stimpson (p. 129), who, when convinced 

 that he had found intermediate links among moUuscan 

 species, ground " one of these vexatious shapes " to 

 powder with his heel, remarking, "That's the proper 

 way to serve a damned transitional form." 



Shaler, of course, soon accepted the new views. 

 He studied zoology practically, by dredging, fishing, 

 and shooting, though he much disliked killing 

 animals ; and he was thus engaged, in his twentieth 

 year, when the men of his native State, Kentucky, 

 had to decide for or against the Union. The move- 

 ment in the south was regarded as desultory ; even 

 if it continued, it was not going to reach Kentucky 

 for some years; and Shaler set off with Hyatt in 1861 

 for a sail of several months about the mouth of the 

 St. Lawrence. This peaceful campaign, with its 

 scientific aims, involving a rough-and-tumble life on 

 a small boat, prepared him for many a future struggle. 



