NOVEMBEB 16, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



631 



-will be to assist the interpretation of field 

 facts and field experiments. For many rea- 

 sons, this shifting of emphasis must be slow. 

 Field methods must be developed and refined 

 and students must be trained in their use. 

 Field work demands instruments, base stations 

 and much experience not for months but 

 through years. In short, with these things, 

 the field will become the real laboratory which 

 must always be supplemented by secondary 

 laboratories of histology, by plant houses, and 

 the like. Each generation of botanical stu- 

 dents is apt to feel that the beginnings of 

 botany do not much antedate the beginning 

 of its study of the subject. It sees and reads 

 and does the things that are most recent and 

 rarely dips into the past. It loses sight of the 

 fact that development is of necessity a slow 

 process and that most of the ideas and methods 

 of to-day have a history. Hence, while the 

 new generation is instructed to search dili- 

 gently in the field and laboratory, it must not 

 ignore the records of the past to be found in 

 the books. 



Following the open meeting, a regular meet- 

 ing was held at five o'clock at which fifteen 

 undergraduate students, who had been duly 

 examined, were initiated in the preliminary 

 degree of ' candidatus,' and four graduate stu- 

 dents were promoted to the intermediate de- 

 gree of 'novitius.' Thereafter, at six-thirty, 

 a collation was spread in one of the labora- 

 tories to which a number of guests, members 

 of the faculty of the university, had been in- 

 vited. At the speaking after the collation. Dr. 

 Pound presided. The speakers were Dr. 

 Bessey, Dr. E. W. Davis, dean of the College 

 of Arts, Dr. H. K. Wolfe, professor of educa- 

 tional psychology, and Dr. Bolton, professor of 

 psychology. 



PHYSIOLOGICAL ECONOMY IN NUTRITION. 

 Irving Fisher, professor of political econ- 

 omy at Yale University, has been conducting 

 experiments to discover whether proper masti- 

 cation and enjoyment of food would produce 

 the 'physiological economy' claimed for it by 

 Mr. Horace Fletcher, and also whether it would 

 lead to the use of low proteid according to the 

 standard advocated by Professor Chittenden. 



The result of the experiment would seem to 

 answer both these questions in the affirmative. 

 The experiments were conducted with nine 

 Yale students and lasted from January to 

 June, 1906. Careful record of the amounts 

 of food taken, and the constituents in, 

 proteids, fats and carbohydrates, was kept for 

 each man for each day. To avoid weighing 

 at the table, the food was all weighed in the 

 kitchen and served in * standard portions ' of 

 100 calories each or simple fractions or mul- 

 tiples thereof, so that the men merely needed 

 to record the number of portions eaten. The 

 proportions of proteids, fats and carbohydrates 

 were found by means of the Mechanical Diet 

 Indicator described by Professor Fisher in the 

 American Journal of Physiology for April. 

 During the first half of the experiment the 

 men followed two rules only. The first was to 

 thoroughly masticate the food up to a point 

 of ' involuntary swallowing ' with the atten- 

 tion, however, upon the taste and enjoyment 

 of the food rather than upon the mere mechan- 

 ical act of mastication. Any 'counting of 

 chews ' was discouraged as was also the forcible 

 holding of food in the mouth, as experience of 

 others, as well as the conclusions of Pawlow, 

 had seemed to show that anything which 

 tended to make eating a bore harmed rather 

 than helped digestion. The second rule was to 

 obey implicitly the leadings of appetite, both 

 in regard to quantity of food and the choice 

 between different foods. In order that this 

 strict obedience to appetite might be the more 

 easily followed, a wide range of choice of foods 

 was supplied and no food was placed before 

 the men which was not specially ordered by 

 them. 



This first half of the experiment, therefore, 

 was really an experiment in natural eating, if 

 we may assume that it is unnatural to hurry 

 through our meals and to eat what is set before 

 us, out of politeness, habit or limitation of 

 choice. It was found that, as a consequence 

 of the thorough mastication and obedience to 

 appetite, a profound change occurred in the 

 diet of the men. There was a large reduction 

 in the quantity of liquids of aU kinds at meals 

 — water, tea, coffee and even soups. There 

 was a reduction in the total daily average of 



