AuveusT 23, 1918] 
cultivation of a closer relationship than has 
hitherto existed, for the creation of new facili- 
ties of study, for the endowment of research 
fellowships on both sides of the Atlantic, and 
for the interchange of scientifie papers and 
schemes of work. 
Alive to the advantages to herself of a scien- 
tific entente, Germany before the war used all 
these means to attract American students to 
her universities and schools, and to send her 
students to American schools. <A very large 
measure of success attended her efforts, with 
the result that not medicine alone, but the 
sister sciences of chemistry, bacteriology, sani- 
tation and sanitary engineering reaped im- 
measurable benefits. In this country we have 
at last awakened to the vast importance of 
health and of all questions affecting it. Pub- 
lic opinion has demanded that a Health 
Ministry shall be called into being, and will 
see to it that the activities of that Ministry, 
when it comes, are not curtailed in its strug- 
gle with disease and ignorance and greed. 
Public opinion will equally insist that the 
knowledge gained and progress made by our 
American friends, who have essayed this task 
in a broader spirit and at an earlier date than 
ourselves, are fully utilized, and the support 
that they may be willing to afford us secured. 
* We shall fight our battle with hands greatly 
strengthened if we fight it as members of a 
world-wide community. Disease is interna- 
tional. The hope of the conquest of disease 
lies in prevention, which must be international 
as well as local. In this-respect no man and 
no community can say that they live to them- 
selves. A badly constructed drain in a coun- 
try village contaminating a source of water 
supply may give rise to an epidemic of great 
proportions, and this may conceivably be car- 
ried by hosts of one kind or another to the 
world’s end. We hope, therefore, that a scien- 
tific entente will not stop at medicine in the 
narrow sense of that term. America, for ex- 
ample, leads the whole world in the matter of 
its milk supply, and our bacteriologists and 
social workers cannot afford to let the oppor- 
tunity of help in this direction remain unim- 
proved. Our Ministry of Health, indeed, 
SCIENCE 
197 
when formed, will be strengthened in every 
way by the establishment of friendly relations 
with the State Boards of Health that have al- 
ready done so much for America. We are 
aware that some steps towards the develop- 
ment of such a policy as we suggest have lately 
been taken, and that other measures are in con- 
templation. This is satisfactory so far as it 
goes. But the broadest possible basis of 
understanding is the best basis in the cireum- 
stances, and all branches of scientific work 
having the public health as their object should 
take part in the movement.—London Times. 
SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 
Principles of Economic Geology. By Witu1aM 
Harvey Emmons. McGraw-Hill Book Co. 
1918. Pp. 598. 
There are two recent books with which this 
at once invites comparison—Lindgren’s “ Min- 
eral Deposits,” and Ries’s “ Economic Geol- 
ogy.” It is not as comprehensive as the latter, 
for it omits the whole of the important subjects 
of coal, oil and other fuels. Perhaps for this 
reason and to avoid confusion in title the word 
“Principles” is added. To the reviewer the 
fact that every improvement in transporta- 
tion or manipulation, like the cyanide proc- 
ess, increases the value of the raw material 
and consequently lowers the grade of the ma- 
terial which it will pay to work, that there is a 
tendency to work from small quantities of 
high-grade material to large quantities of low- 
grade material, that production is normally in 
an accelerated ratio, should be classed as prin- 
ciples of economic geology. But it would not 
be easy for the student to pick out these or 
any other economic principles. The economic 
data are indeed scanty and not systematic, and 
there is little or no attention paid to the prin- 
ciples of valuation. 
But if the economic side is scantily handled 
the geologic receives much fuller treatment. 
In fact twenty-one out of twenty eight chap- 
ters are |concerned with the classification of 
ore deposits in general, their structural fea- 
tures and sources. Particularly valuable is 
the summary prefixed to the earlier chapters 
on the different types of deposits. Chapters 
