152 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. VoE. VII. No. 162. 



the subject by those who attach most im- 

 portance to it. 



In 1859 and 1861 Eeichert described and 

 figured (Der Bau des menschlichen Gehirns, 

 Plates II. , X., XI., p. 65, line 5) a furrow on 

 the mesal aspect of the thalamus, connect- 

 ing the ' aqueduct ' with the foramen Monroi. 

 To this he applied the name sulcus Monroi, 

 which has been generally employed. In 1 884 

 the mononym aulix was proposed by me, and 

 the feature has been shown distinctly in 

 the New York Medical Jouryial, March 21, 

 1885-, p. 327, and ' Eeference Handbook,' 

 Vol. VIII., p. 122, and IX., Fig. 418. 



In his exposition of the schema adopted 

 by the Anatomische Gesellschaft (B. IST. A., 

 pp. 157-159) Professor His insists upon 

 the great morphologic significance of the 

 dorsal and ventral zones, and of the ' sulcus 

 limitans venti-iculorum '* by which they are 

 demarcated. He further declares that 

 the continuation of this sulcus is the 

 sulcus Monroi. But his figures represent the 

 sulcus as terminating, not, as with Reichert, 

 at the foramen Monroi, but at or near the 

 optic recess, and, without explanation of 

 the radical deflexion, he says, "Die Sulci 

 Monroi laufen jederseits im Recessus opticus 

 aus." The confusion caused by this unspeci- 

 fied transfer of a title to a different feature 

 is augmented by the account of the same 

 matter by C. S. Minot in the Popular Science 

 Monthly, July, 1893 ; here the text is ex- 

 plicit as to the importance of the sulcus 

 and its termination at the foramen Monroi; 

 but the figure represents the boundary be- 

 tween the zones at a point farther caudad. 



In this connection it should be stated 

 that the recent studies of Mrs. S. H. Gage 

 upon embryo cat, turtle, batrachian and 

 bird {Amer. Nat., October, 1896, 837) have 

 revealed sulci having various directions, 

 but not, apparently, demarcating the dorsal 

 and ventral zones. 



*For this I have proposed the more definitely cor- 

 related name sulcxts intei-gondlis. 



In view of the present aspect of the case, 

 while I see no impossibility in the repre- 

 sentation of the dorsal and ventral zones in 

 the first three segments of the brain, and 

 while such zones might well be demarcated 

 by the furrow originally described by 

 Eeicherfc as 'sulcus Monroi' (my aulix), 1 

 hold that the interpretation of the olfactory 

 portion of the brain as merely one part of 

 the dorsal zone of a segment must be sup- 

 ported by something more than the designa- 

 tion of a limiting sulcus which is appar- 

 ently either non-existent or without inter- 

 zonal significance. 



PsycJiology. Peofessoe J. McKeen Cattell, 



Columbia University. 



The speaker said that the knowledge of 

 paleontologj^, reasonably presupposed by 

 Professor Osborn on the part of all students 

 of natural science, could scarcely be ex- 

 pected in the case of psychology. Neither 

 was it possible to exhibit the whole of 

 psychology on a single blackboard, as Pro- 

 fessor Osborn had done for paleontology, or 

 even in a more bewildering series of charts, 

 such as Professor AVilder had found need- 

 ful for neurology. He could only make 

 some very general, and, he feared, some- 

 what trivial remarks. 



Each science has problems in common 

 with other sciences and problems peculiarly 

 its own. We who are trying, each of us, to 

 advance some little department of science 

 cannot but sometimes stand at gaze before 

 the magnitude of modern science. How 

 can we see the forest for the trees, the 

 library for the books, the world for the 

 facts ? Professor Klein has said that mathe- 

 matics is ten thousand years in advance of 

 the other sciences, but how does he know 

 whether the sciences are an asymptote to 

 his mathematics or whether mathematics 

 are going off on a tangent to the rest of 

 the universe? Professor Klein tells us 

 that to the regular polygon of 65,537 



