December 14, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



587 



and having resources put at 10,000,000 Mex- 

 ican dollars. 



Of what might be called precious-stone ma- 

 terial there is very little signalized; some opal 

 is found at Tecali and Tlatlauqui, and azurite 

 occurs in Acatlan. The so-called " Mexican 

 Onyx " (an aragonite) of the district of Tecali 

 in the state of Puebla is well known, and was 

 already used by the Aztecs for ornamental 

 purposes. 



In the State College in Puebla, where courses 

 of law, medicine and engineering are given, 

 besides the customary preparatory studies, 

 there are excellent collections illustrating 

 physics, chemistry, bacteriology and histology, 

 and also radiographic and radioscopic instal- 

 lations, as well as apparatus for wireless tele- 

 graphy. There is also a well-furnished na- 

 tural history collection and an important _ 

 museum. 



The few items presented here may give a 

 little idea of the quality of this monograph, 

 though insufficient to indicate the wide field 

 it so ably covers. It certainly merits to be 

 consulted by all who are seeking information 

 regarding one of the principal states of the 

 Maxican Federation. George F. Kunz 



New Toek City 



the talking machine and the 

 phonograph 



To THE Editor of Science : Professor Peck- 

 ham's interesting account of the talking ma- 

 chine, as distinguished from the phonograph, 

 in Science of November 9, closes with this 

 statement : 



It is not probable that any one had thought of 

 a phonograph in the sense in which we use the 

 term as early as 1772. Knowledge of electricity 

 was not sufficiently advanced at that time. 



This, I presume, is a mere slip of the pen, 

 the writer thinking perhaps of the telephone 

 while writing of the talking machine and the 

 phonograph. Otherwise some of us who are 

 engaged in other fields of science, and hence 

 can lay claim to no special knowledge of phys- 

 ics, would like to have pointed out to us the 

 connection between electricity and the ubi- 

 quitous phonograph. 



J. Volney Lewis 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



Mental Adjustments. By Frederick Lyman 



Wells, Ph.D. New York & London: D. 



Appleton & Co., 1917. 



F. L. Wells wrote his book with a rather 

 unusual background. Trained in the experi- 

 mental school of Cattell and Woodworth, Wells 

 took up his work at the McLean Hospital in 

 1907, where he returned after one year's work 

 with Dr. August Hoch on Ward's Island and 

 with considerable contact with Dr. Charles 

 Macfie Campbell, to whom the book is dedi- 

 cated. Coming from a school which might be 

 frankly dynamic and objective, if it had the 

 necessary philosophical courage combined with 

 a desire for consistency, Wells found most 

 valuable opportunities at the McLean Hospital 

 owing to the excellent tradition established 

 there by Dr. Hoch in the study of an uncom- 

 monly interesting type of patients; and even 

 before he went to Ward's Island he had been 

 concerned with association experiments and 

 with problems which were bound to bring him 

 into touch with the sphere of ideas of Freud 

 and Jung. His studies of the last few years 

 have shown a growing mastery of the psycho- 

 pathological problems and the present book 

 gives ample evidence of earnest and able col- 

 laboration along lines very characteristic of 

 modern American psychopathology. 



Eight chapters constitute this book of 331 

 pages. In "Mental Adaptation" he gives 

 illustrations of types and problems of adapta- 

 tion and in a way a forecast of the book. The 

 discussion of " Use and waste in thought and 

 conduct " leads the reader, in one of the best 

 organized chapters of the book, to a very direct 

 understanding of ftmdamental adaptive trends 

 and their adjustments and supplements, many 

 times crossing the boundary between the 

 " motor " and " mental " varieties of behavior, 

 "granting, indeed, that such a boundary 

 exists." He gives a very good picture of the 

 role of fancy and autistic thinking (i. e., 

 primitive fancy unconcerned about reality) 

 and especially of the role of word-plays and 

 of rationalization. He sums up the discussion 

 by saying that " realistic thinking contributes 

 mainly to making it possible to exist, and 



