Januabt 17, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



61 



The list would be far too long. At the close 

 of the war over a hundred psychologists had 

 received or were about to receive commissions 

 in the army; many more were doing work 

 equal in merit to that done by the men com- 

 missioned; many were fulfilling the regular 

 duties of teaching and devoting to war work 

 the time previously given to scholarship, re- 

 search and personal affairs; many more were 

 carrying the extra burdens of regular work 

 due to the more direct national service of 

 others. If there were any differences in sac- 

 rifice or in achievement, they may well be left 

 hidden in the more important fact that the 

 psychologists of America worked to help win 

 the war and worked together. 



E. L. Thorndike 



PUMPELLY'S REMINISCENCESi 



Physicists and farmers are agreed that 

 after the cider has been squeezed out, what 

 remains of two apples can be contained in 

 less than the volume of one. So it is with 

 these " Reminiscences " : by squeezing out the 

 rich juice of the narrative, as some impatient 

 and matter-of-fact man of the street might ad- 

 vise, the remains of the two large volumes 

 could be reduced to a single small one; but 

 how disappointed that compressed record, with 

 every story dried to mere pomace, would have 

 left the lingering reader! The detailed nar- 

 ratives of deliberate pages like these are not 

 only of deep interest to many sjinpathetie 

 contemporaries of the author, but of immense 

 value to their studious successors; for the 

 well-filled books reveal the deeper meaning 

 that lies behind a mere chronicle of events 

 and dates. Would that more of our eminent 

 men might employ the leisure of their later 

 years — if perchance their later years are spent 

 in leisure — in writing out their memories, for 

 the enjoyment of their younger friends and 

 the edification of posterity. Yet with respect 

 to the Reminiscences before us, posterity should 



^ My Seminisccnces. By Baphael Pumpellt. 

 New York, Henry Holt and Co. 1918. With illus- 

 trations and maps. Two vols., 844 pages, numbered 

 consecutively. 



be warned not to take them as the record of an. 

 average geologist of our times; for while all 

 notable men are of their own pattern, Pum- 

 pelly's life has been the very extreme of in- 

 dividuality. Furthermore, contemporary par- 

 ents of boys who gather minerals and fossils 

 should, in spite of the disregard of America's 

 leading educator's advice shown by our pro- 

 tagonist in the training of Raphael junior, 

 beware of letting their sons embark upon an 

 erratic education of the kind here set forth, 

 in the hope that they will repeat the extraor- 

 dinary career to which it led; unless they 

 ■ miraculously possess a Pumpellian heart, head 

 and body — a pure and guileless heart, a clear 

 and sagacious head, and a strong and courage- 

 ous body; and of that rare endo^vment oiu: 

 sons have not one chance in many thousands. 



Aldrich's " Bad Boy " was a little chocolate 

 saint along side of young Raphael in his na- 

 tive New York town of Owego about the 

 middle of the last century, where his piratical 

 adventures, after reaching the high level of a 

 stabbing affray in a quarrel over the division 

 of booty among the members of the gang, 

 were cut short by a wise mother's appeal to 

 family pride, clinched by a more corporeal 

 argument. A few years later a daring climb 

 up the cliff of West Rock at New Haven, 

 where the lad was attending a preparatory 

 school, ought alone to have qualified him for 

 admission to the geological course at Yale, 

 had he not soon afterwards, on reaching the 

 responsible age of seventeen, suddenly decided 

 to forego the advantages there offered and, 

 improving vastly on his grandfather's trite 

 device of entering upon a life of adventure 

 by running away to sea, annoimced to a well- 

 selected one of his two parents that he wished 

 to study in Germany. She, after the manner 

 of her tactful kind, presented the proposition 

 to her husband, who, after the fashion that 

 has prerailed with men in his difficult position 

 since the days of Eden, assented; and in 1854 

 mother and son crossed the Atlantic in a sail- 

 ing vessel to Hamburg. 



Hanover was selected as a first station of 

 educational progress, and there two professora 

 were promptly chosen; one was a riding 



