August 31, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



215 



in the following manner : " Our chemists tell 

 us, forsooth, that the composition of water was 

 unknown until Priestley discovered oxygen in 

 1Y74. Never was there a greater mistake, for 

 did not the prophet cry out, ages ago, ' HO ! 

 Everyone that thirsteth.' " W. W. Keen 



Philadelphia, Pa., 

 August 20 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



The Physical Basis of Society. By Cabl 

 Kelsey, Professor of Sociology in the Uni- 

 versity of Pennsylvania. New York. D. 

 Appleton & Go. 1916. Pp. xvi + 406. 

 As its name indicates, this book deals 

 chiefly with the physical basis of human so- 

 ciety. The following subjects are considered 

 in sequence: the earth and man, mutual aid 

 and the struggle for existence, the control of 

 nature, the evolution of man, heredity, hered- 

 ity and society, race differences, sex differ- 

 ences, the influences of society upon popula- 

 tion, social institutions, and the nature of 

 progress. 



In the chapter on the earth and man, the 

 author introduces too much detail for an 

 elementary sociological work, especially on 

 pages 1 to 28. Moreover, the real social 

 significance of much of the material is not 

 clearly shown. It would have been much 

 better if the author had developed such a topic 

 as the size and customs of the social group as 

 influenced by the prevailing method of food 

 getting, which is conditioned by physical en- 

 vironment.^ Pages 28 and following give a 

 fairly satisfactory summary of geographic in- 

 fluences. 



In the chapter on mutual aid and the 

 struggle for existence, the author again loses 

 himself in a mass of ill-digested detail about 

 the chemical and bacteriological aspects of 

 plant life, and devotes to this subject space 

 out of all proportion to its sociological sig- 

 nificance. 



The chapter on the control of nature is done 

 more successfully, but the chapter on the 

 evolution of man is very imsatisfactory. In 



1 See Ellen Sample 's ' ' Influence of Geographic 

 Environment," pp. 54 to 65. 



this latter chapter the author launches into a 

 discussion of the old controversy about the 

 evolution of man. He has reduced state- 

 ments and quotations from authorities to 

 such small compass that their real meaning 

 and spirit are largely lost. At present, when 

 students are generally open-minded in regard 

 to the doctrine of evolution, it is a waste of 

 time to revive this theological controversy in 

 a book that is non-historical. The real sub- 

 ject-matter of this chapter, if the title is any 

 indication of its aim, is treated in a few 

 scant pages at the end. 



The chapter on heredity is superior to any 

 of the preceding and is a good treatment of 

 the subject. The clarity of presentation might 

 have been improved by better selection of 

 diagrams. The chart on page 236 illustrating 

 the inheritance of polydactylism, although 

 taken from such a reliable source as Guyer, 

 is not well selected to illustrate the inheritance 

 of a dominant trait. An analysis of this 

 chart reveals the fact that the transmission of 

 jMDlydactylism as a Mendelian trait in the fam- 

 ily shown, is explicable only on the assump- 

 tion that it is a recessive — and this contra- 

 dicts the caption. But explanation of the 

 chart in terms of the sex-limited hypothesis 

 does, however, permit its interpretation in 

 terms of dominance. Yet the author has not 

 introduced this qualification, hence the ex- 

 ample is not satisfactory. The remaining 

 .chapters are superior to the earlier ones. 



In general, the book gives all appearances 

 of having been too hastily written, and thus 

 furnishes grounds for the criticism that the 

 work of sociologists is superficial. This is all 

 the more deplorable because the general plan 

 and logic of arrangement of the book are ex- 

 cellent. F. Stuart Chapin 



Smith College, 

 Northampton, Mass. 



Recreations in Mathematics. By H. E. Licks. 



New York, D. Van Nostrand Co. 1917. 



Pp. v.4-155, $1.25. 



■This is an amusing little book with various 

 problems of more or less interest, particularly 

 to the teacher of elementary mathematics. 

 Unfortunately the historical notes are largely 



