JONE 26, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



92& 



it produces sporangia, i. e., non-sexual organs, 

 in which spores are differentiated. All that 

 morphologists aslt of Prof. Bailey is that he use 

 the same criterion with plants as with animals, 

 applying, by a common grammatical figure, sex 

 terms to the organs that produce sex cells, and 

 to the plants that carry the sex organs. It is 

 for this reason that it is proper to call a bull a 

 male animal and a cow a female animal. But 

 if the embryo produced by the union of their 

 sex cells grew into an animal 1,000,000 times 

 the size of the bull or the cow, and one of its 

 giant cells formed within itself a bull and an- 

 other within itself a cow, we should certainly 

 not be justified in applying sex terms either to 

 the monster or to any of its organs. 



When Prof. Bailey asks to have the figura- 

 tive use of the sex terms extended so as to ob- 

 scure the distinction between the sexual and non- 

 sexual phases of the plant, he asks us to return 

 to a confusion from which botanical language 

 has been happily delivered, and from which it 

 is the duty of botanists to deliver ' common lan- 

 guage. ' This deliverance can be brought about 

 simply by using untechnical terms already 

 coined and by avoiding the use of sex terms for 

 a purely vegetative organism. ' Stamiuate 

 flowers ' and ' pistillate flowers ' are phrases 

 quite as untechnical as ' male flowers ' and ' fe- 

 male flowers, ' and they have the advantage of 

 avoiding the perpetuation of obsolete ideas. 



Were the question merely one of morpho- 

 logical consistency it would be of compara- 

 tively little moment. But it is a question of 

 clearness or confusion of ideas. If the mental 

 eye, as it looks upon plants, be not single, the 

 the whole mind will be full of darkness ; and 

 if the morphological light that is in the student 

 be darkness, how great is that darkness ! To 

 advocate one set of ideas for common language 

 and another for technical is to advocate a re- 

 turn to that chaos of which the professional 

 botanist himself was scarcely conscious until 

 the light of the doctrine of the alternation of 

 generations broke forth. In its light it be- 

 hooves us to order our use of language that ap- 

 plied botany will be helped toward a clearer 

 view of plant life. 



Charles R. Barnes. 



Univebsity of Wisconsin. 



SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 

 Antropometria Militare. By Dr. Ridolfo Livi. 



Parte I. Text and Atlas. Roma. 190+ 



419 pp; 23 plates. 



The first part of Dr. Livi's great work on the 

 anthropometry of Italy has recently been issued 

 by the Director of the Italian Army Medical 

 Journal. The work ranks easily among the 

 most important contributions to anthropology. 

 The fact that in past years Dr. Livi has con- 

 tributed some of the most fundamental results 

 of his extended and careful investigations to 

 the Archivio per I'antropologia e la etnologia 

 and presented others that are not less interest- 

 ing to the Roman Anthropological Society and 

 to the Eleventh International Medical Congress 

 (Rome, 1894) has made the complete presenta- 

 tion of his data only the more eagerly expected. 

 The present part contains the purely anthropo- 

 logical results of his investigations, while the 

 second part will be taken up by hygienic and 

 in a more general way sociological statistics. 



The investigations are based on measure- 

 ments and observations upon men born in the 

 years 1859-63 and enlisted in the Italian army. 

 The anthropometrical data that were collected 

 are the following: Stature, circumference of 

 chest, weight, length and breadth of head. Be 

 sides these a number of descriptive features 

 were observed: Color of eyes and hair, com- 

 plexion, character of teeth, form of forehead, of 

 nose, of mouth, chin and face. These data have 

 been worked up in the following detailed tables : 



For each military district (Mandamento) : 



1. The frequency of statures in groups of 

 from 6 to 5 cm. 



2. The frequency of the various colors of the 

 hair and of the eyes and that of the pure blondo 

 and of the pure dark type. 



3. The average cephalic index and its distri- 

 bution in groups from .5 to 5 JJo . 



For the larger districts CCircondario) the pre- 

 ceding data are summarized and the following 

 are added : 



1. The relation between stature and color of 

 hair. 



2. The relation between stature and color of 

 the eyes. 



3. The relation between color of hair and 

 color of eyes. 



