420 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. LVI, No. 1450 



the army, that he became a major general. 

 Upon his retired pay, which, of course, ceased 

 with death, he could live comfortably with his 

 family, but only by practicing economy. To 

 gain a modest fortune it was necessary for him 

 to live the strenuous life of scientific investiga- 

 tion in tropical countries, and the time at his 

 disposal was too short. He carried on until he 

 died worn out. 



It was an irony of fate that the soldier who 

 had saved an incalculable number of lives by 

 his campaigns against yellow fever and malaria 

 in Havana and in Panama should be struck 

 down at sixty-five while risking his own health 

 to provide for his family after his death. The 

 republic is not ungrateful to its Deweys and 

 Pershings, who are rewarded with special rank 

 and high pay for life for fighting its battles, 

 but may not the charge of failing to recognize 

 the merits of a great soldier-sanitarian like 

 William C. Gorgas be preferred against it? 

 There might be extenuation if the world had 

 not acclaimed him the most efficient plague- 

 fighter of his day. Great Britain sent for him 

 when its own medical men were bafiSed by the 

 virulence of influenza in the Rand gold mines 

 in 1913, the War Department lending Colonel 

 Gorgas to find means of cheeking the epidemic, 

 in which he was successful. If he had been an 

 Englishman, Great Britain would have known 

 how to reward as well as to honor him for his 

 invaluable services. Great Britain could only 

 give to him a decoration coveted by its own 

 scientists. France made hun a commander of 

 the Legion of Honor. It can not be pleaded 

 for Congress that it has not the power in such 

 a case to reward conspicuous merit and service. 

 If a precedent had been made when General 

 Gorgas retired from the army, there would not 

 now be the spectacle of a belated effort to do 

 something in a small way for the relief of his 

 widow. — New York Times. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



Plane and Solid Analytic Geometry. By 

 William F. Osgood, Ph.D., LL.D., and 

 William C. Graustein, Ph.D. New York, 

 The Macmillan Company, 1921. Pp. xvii + 

 614. 

 This book is somewhat larger than the usual 



American text-book designed for an elementary 

 college course in analytic geometry. The mate- 

 rial is so arranged that it is easy to select there- 

 from suitable subjects for comparatively short 

 courses, and hence the book will be welcomed 

 by those teachers who believe that it is desira- 

 ble to place in the students' hands books which 

 will enable the most gifted to go beyond what 

 is discussed in class. Emphasis is laid on pre- 

 senting the subject in the simplest and most 

 concrete fonn, and on pointing out its relation 

 to physics whenever possible. It may be re- 

 called that Descartes, who is commonly re- 

 garded as the founder of analytic geometry, 

 once said in a letter to Mersenne that all his 

 physics was nothing else than geometry. 



In view of the fact that the various msithe- 

 matical theories are so interdependent good 

 text-books for courses in elementary mathe- 

 matics must cover the same fundamental ideas. 

 There is, however, considerable latitude as re- 

 gards the mode of presentation, especially as 

 regards illustrative examples and the choice of 

 the problems which the students are expected 

 to solve for the purpose of developing their 

 ability to use the subject. Students can usu- 

 ally prove a large number of theorems which 

 they do not understand until they have applied 

 them in the solutions of different types of 

 problems. The present volume contains a large 

 number of problems selected by men who are 

 well qualified to determine what is most essen- 

 tial for the later progress of the students in 

 pure and applied mathematics. 



About 200 pages of the book are devoted to 

 solid analytic geometry. Most of our courses 

 for engineering students are too weak along 

 this line. Many of the standard texts on ap- 

 plied mathematics presuppose a thorough 

 knowledge of the rudiments of solid analytic 

 geometry, and even the ordinary courses in 

 integral calculus and mechanics frequently 

 make greater demands on space conceptions 

 than the student has acquired in the brief 

 course which he followed. The developments 

 found in these last 200 pages are especially to 

 be recommended to students who seek a clear 

 presentation of very useful facts lying just 

 beyond the ordinary elementary course in 

 analytic geometry. 



