288 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LIII. No. 1369 



made with Michaelson's wonderful apparatus, 

 no allowance appears to have been made for 

 the effect of the gravitational bending of 

 light. Obviously this would make the appar- 

 ent angular diameter greater than the real, 

 and a rough approximation shows that this 

 gravitational effect may be of the same or an 

 even larger order of magnitude than the ob- 

 served angle. 



Knowing the parallax and being able to 

 make an approximate estimate of the density, 

 the true diameter of Betelgeuse may be deter- 

 mined with fair accuracy. I have made a 

 rough calculation and, find that it is approxi- 

 mately only one fifth of the diameter given, 

 but the calculation should be made by others 

 better fitted than I am. 



Reginald A. Fessenden 



THE CONSERVATION OF GAME AND FUR- 

 BEARING ANIMALS 



The ISTew York State Conservation Com- 

 mission issues The Conservationist. Among 

 the many important communications in it, I 

 wish to call especial attention to one, " New 

 York's annual game dividend," written by 

 Warwick S. Carpenter, secretary of the Con- 

 servation Commission. 



On the 'basis of precise data the conclusion 

 is reached that the game and fur-bearing ani- 

 mals of New York state, if capitalized, are 

 worth not less than $53,000,000; they return 

 an annual dividend of more than $3,200,000; 

 and they -cost the state for their protection 

 and increase the nominal sum of $182,000. 

 This cost of protection and increase is thus 

 less than six per cent, of the annual dividend. 



There is need for emphasizing the financial 

 as well as the aesthetic and scientific sides of 

 the conservation problem and these findings 

 of Mr. Carpenter deserve wide publicity. 



Henry B. Ward 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



A Laboratory Manual of Anthropometry. By 

 Harris H. Wilder, Ph.D., Professor of 

 Zoology, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. 

 200 pp., 43 illus., P. Blakiston's Son and 

 Co., Phila., 1920. 



In order that the records of each observer 

 may be readily made use of by every other 

 observer, it is imperative that series of 

 measures be uniform and be taken in uniform 

 ways. The matter of unification was first 

 placed upon an international basis by the 

 International Congress of Anthropologists 

 held at Monaco ia 1906. The unification 

 process was carried still further at the Geneva 

 Congress in 1912. There remain for con- 

 sideration at some future Congress the gen- 

 eral skeletal measures, exclusive of the cra- 

 nium and lower jaw. 



The work of the special International Com- 

 missions rightly forms the basis of Wilder's 

 Laboratory Manual. However his statement 

 on page vi of the Preface, that the period- 

 icals in which the reports of the labors of the 

 two Commissions " appeared were exclusively 

 European," is incorrect; for a report from 

 the reviewer's pen, of the work accomplished 

 at Geneva, translated from the official copy 

 of Dr. Eivet, chief recorder of the Com- 

 mission, appeared both in Science^ and in the 

 American Anthropologist for the year 1912. 



To the measures accepted by international 

 agreement, the author adds a convenient and 

 useful list of general skeletal measures, as 

 well as angles and indices. No mention is 

 made of the Sphenomaxillary angle, which 

 might well find a place even in an abridged 

 manual. His enumeration of instruments and 

 description of the manner in which they are 

 employed are done with a thorough knowledge 

 of the difficulties which beset the beginner. 

 The pages devoted to simple biometric meth- 

 ods were vwitten for the special benefit of 

 the student, whose chief interest is in morpho- 

 logical relations, and whose mathematical 

 ability and training are not sufficient to en- 

 able him to foUow abstnise biometric methods. 



To tlie laboratory student of the subject, 

 Wilder's Manual is recommended for its lu- 

 cidity and conciseness, as well as for the 

 author's ability to transmit a maximum 

 amount of his own pervading enthusiasm for 

 the subject by means of the printed page. 



1 Vol. XXXVI., 603-608, November 1, 1912. 



