68 
authorities have encountered comes from the 
British traders, who have taken advantage of 
the Chinese laws prohibiting the raising of 
the poppy in China to increase the importa- 
tion of opium from India. So much for the 
boasted morality of European nations. 
Dr. Ross says nothing of another great 
moral crusade that the Chinese nation has been 
long waging, viz., that for the abolition of 
slavery. For a very full account of that move- 
ment we are indebted to Mr. E. T. Williams, 
who was long Chinese Secretary of the U. 8S. 
Legation at Pekin, and was made Consul Gen- 
eral at Tientsin in the spring of 1908. Mr. 
Williams is also a sociologist of no mean 
order, and is conversant with the entire litera- 
ture of the science. He treated this subject 
in the American Journal of International 
Law for October, 1910 (Vol. IV., pp. 794-805; 
Supplement, Official Documents, pp. 359-378), 
in an exhaustive article entitled: “ Abolition 
of Slavery in the Chinese Empire.” The 
Supplement contains Mr. Williams’s transla- 
tion of the report of the commission recom- 
mending the abolition of slavery and the im- 
perial rescript approving it. The whole is re- 
printed in pamphlet form. 
In all matters relating to the influence of 
Christianity and Christian missionary work 
in China our author is decidedly partisan. As 
an American traveling in China, he was of 
course largely beholden to American and Eng- 
lish missionaries for facilities in getting 
about, and must have seen a wholly dispro- 
portionate part of their influence in the coun- 
try, and it would have ill become him to speak 
disparagingly of such things, whatever his real 
views might have been. But his extravagant 
praise of them, even where it was deserved, 
should have been tempered by countervailing 
considerations which everybody knows to ex- 
ist. His idea of the ultimate conversion of 
the Chinese to Christianity is probably Uto- 
pian. The hint on page 235 that Christianity 
might ultimately become the “ official relig- 
ion” of the Chinese empire would be alarm- 
ing if it rested on any basis of fact. The 
present humble attitude of the few Christian 
missionaries in China is no criterion. As 
SCIENCE 
[N.S. Vou. XXXV. No. 889 
Helvetius said: “Christians are lambs when 
weak, tigers when strong.” Christianity is an 
exclusive religion. It is a militant, proselyt- 
ing, persecuting religion, in which it differs 
wholly from Confucianism, Shintoism and 
Buddhism. If there was any danger that 
China would have to pass through the ordeal 
of blood to which Europe has been subjected 
by Christianity since the middle ages there 
would surely be grounds for grave apprehen- 
sion. The Crusades, the Thirty-years War, 
and the Spanish Inquisition, would be trifles 
compared to the fanaticism of the whole vast 
Chinese population, should it ever be seized 
with the spirit that actuated Europe during 
six centuries of its unhappy history. If any 
hope is to be expressed, it should be that there 
may never be an “ official religion ” in China, 
but if there is to be such, let it be one of those 
tolerant, peaceful and rational forms, that 
harmonize with all others, permit free discus- 
sion and work to the advancement of all moral, 
material, intellectual and spiritual develop- 
ment. 
Of this book, perhaps more than of most 
others, is the trite remark of the perfunctory 
reviewer true, that it must be read to be ap- 
preciated. The above is not a review of it, 
but merely a brief mention of a few of the 
most vital points contained in it. The book 
is a study in sociology by a leading sociologist, 
based on direct personal observation, of the 
numerically greatest people on the globe. 
Lester F. Warp 
BrowN UNIVERSITY, 
PROVIDENCE, R. I. 
Natural History of the American Lobster. By 
Francis Hosart Herrick, Ph.D., Se.D. 
Document No. 747, from the Bulletin of the 
Bureau of Fisheries, Vol. 29, 1911. Govern- 
ment Printing Office, Washington, D. C. 
There is surely no one acquainted with Pro- 
fessor Herrick’s earlier monograph* on the 
lobster, who does not heartily welcome his re- 
cent book, “ Natural History of the American 
Lobster.” 
1¢¢The American Lobster: A Study of its Hab- 
its and Development,’’ U. S. Fish Commission 
Bulletin, Vol. 15, pp. 1-252. 
