April 3, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



511 



Act," providing national support for at least 

 one such station in every state. At the time 

 of his death, in 1909, there were fifty-six of 

 these stations in the United States with an 

 average annual income almost eleven times 

 that of the Connecticut station at its founda- 

 tion, to say nothing of the enormously in- 

 creased research activities of the United States 

 Department of Agriculture. Truly the little 

 seed planted in 1853 had become a tree. 



In the organization and development of 

 these new institutions the standards established 

 by Professor Johnson and the experience 

 gained at the Connecticut station were mate- 

 rial factors in bringing about the success 

 which was so soon attained. At the outset, 

 the American stations were of necessity largely 

 occupied with the analysis and valuation of 

 fertilizers. From the very start, however, orig- 

 inal research formed a part of the program of 

 the Connecticut station, while the increase of 

 the state appropriation in 1882 and the assign- 

 ment to the station in 1887 of part of the 

 Hatch Fund, enabled investigation to be ex- 

 tended to wider fields. Throughout, the work 

 of this station, both under Professor Johnson's 

 administration and that of his successor, has 

 been characterized by the same sane method, 

 the same absence of sensationalism and the 

 same confidence in the power of good works 

 which characterized the fertilizer analyses of 

 the early fifties. 



In 1896, Professor Johnson became pro- 

 fessor emeritus, and in 1900 resigned the office 

 of director of the experiment station, occupy- 

 ing for a year longer the position of advising 

 chemist which was created for him. He 

 passed peacefully away July 21, 1909, having 

 retained to the last his keen interest in the 

 progress of science and in the problems pre- 

 sented in the development of modern chemis- 

 try. 



Such was, in barest outline, the active life 

 of an unusually gifted man who had a high 

 conception of the obligations of the scientist 

 to the public. No brief review can do justice 

 to the delightful personality of the man as 

 those knew it who were closely associated with 



him, and which pervades the book like an 

 aroma, revealing itself especially in the judici- 

 ously chosen extracts from his correspondence 

 which constitute the major portion of the 

 volume. His biographer has done her work, 

 not only with filial piety but with notable dis- 

 crimination and restraint and with marked 

 literary ability. In these days of intense em- 

 phasis upon the practical, no more inspiring 

 or elevating volume can be recommended to 

 the student of agriculture who is looking for- 

 ward to a career as teacher or investigator 

 than this record of a life which attained suc- 

 cess in the best sense through the unselfish 

 consecration to the public service of the rigid 

 training and high ideals of the genuine man 

 of science. 



H. P. Armsby 

 State College, Pa. 



Researches on IrritabilUy of Plants. By J. C. 



BosE. London and New York, Longmans, 



Green and Co. 1913. Cloth, 15x23 cm. 



Pages sxiv + 3Y6 ; 190 illustrations, largely 



graphs. Price $2.50. 



Physiologists who are familiar with the 

 earlier electrophysiological researches of Bose 

 will be interested in his recent volume on cer- 

 tain kinds of plant responses, which recounts 

 the results of an application of his very in- 

 genious methods to new kinds of problems. 

 Research workers will find this book replete 

 with novel ideas and novel ways of attaining 

 quantitatively comparable measures of plant 

 irritability. The author is not primarily deal- 

 ing with the fundamental problems of proto- 

 plasmic phenomena; his work may be said to 

 concern itself, rather, with the physics of the 

 plant as a whole, or with that of its organs, 

 than with the component cell happenings to 

 which recent physiological inquiry seeks to 

 reduce these aggregates. It is somewhat re- 

 markable that animal physiology, on the one 

 hand, has attained a high state of develop- 

 ment along the lines here dealt with (vdth its 

 studies of the superficial phenomena of muscle 

 contraction, blood pressure, the electrophysi- 

 ology of muscle and nerve, etc.), and that the 

 findings of this sort of study form a very 



