August 24, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



313 



In explanation, it is postulated that the 

 blood pressure increases and the blood vessels 

 and smooth muscular fibers contract in order to 

 prevent the blood from collecting in the ab- 

 dominal cavity, the brain requiring additional 

 blood pressure for its additional activity — regu- 

 lated by the sympathetic nervous system. 



Mosso is right in denying in this lecture tele- 

 ology to the reflex phenomena of strong emo- 

 tions, but he is wrong in statements as to 

 Darwin's theory, for this the latter never 

 claimed for strong affective states. It is the 

 excitement, and not the mode, of the emotion 

 (pleasant or unpleasant) which, in case of the 

 bladder, determines the loss of organic equi- 

 librium. This is a conclusion easy to accept 

 when we consider that one of the functions of 

 the visceral blood vessels is to be a reservoir 

 for blood necessarily expelled from other bodily 



parts. 



Geoege V. N. Dearborn. 

 Tufts College Medical School. 



SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS AND ARTICLES. 



The Journal of Comparative Neurology, May, 

 1900. The first article, ' Observations on Sen- 

 sory Nerve Fibers in Visceral Nerves, and on 

 their Modes of terminating,' by Dr. G. Carl 

 Huber, details observations made upon the in- 

 nervation of the hollow viscera by means of 

 methylene blue intra-vitam. This is followed 

 by a short note by the same author on ' Sensory 

 Nerve Terminations in the Tendons of the Ex- 

 trinsic Eye-muscles of the Cat,' the organs 

 being somewhat different from the ordinary 

 neuro-tendinous spindles found in the other 

 skeletal muscles. Dr. Huber and Mrs. Lydia 

 M. DeWitt follow with a paper of 50 pages and 

 sis plates entitled 'A Contribution on the Nerve 

 Terminations in Neuro-tendinous End-organs,' 

 describing the structure of these sense organs 

 as studied by the methylene-blue method in 

 amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. In 

 all cases the tendons are supplied with a special 

 nerve end-organ consisting of several tendon 

 fasciculi, embryonic in nature, which in birds 

 and mammals are generally surrounded by a 

 connective tissue capsule, while they are usu- 

 ally not so surrounded in reptilia, and never in 

 amphibia. They are generally, but not always, 



innervated by a single non-meduUated nerve 

 fiber, which, after repeated branching, ends in 

 one or many tufts of non-medullated fibers, the 

 details of whose structure vary with the different 

 animals studied. Dr. H. H. Goddard describes 

 and figures a new brain microtome recently 

 made at Clark University for cutting entire hu- 

 man brains. F. J. Cole, of University College, 

 Liverpool, gives a prospectus of 'A Proposed 

 Neurological Bibliography of the Ichthyopsida. ' 

 'The Number and Size of the Nerve Fibers 

 Innervating the Skin and Muscles of the Thigh 

 in the Frog,' by Elizabeth Hopkins Dunn, 

 M.D., demonstrates that the fibers innervating 

 the thigh are more numerous and of greater 

 average caliber than those innervating the rest 

 of the leg. Hence in the frog the fibers of 

 greater diameter run the shorter course. 

 About 8 per cent, of the fibers which innervate 

 the thigh divide, one division running on into 

 the lower leg. Dr. H. Heath Bawden gives 'A 

 Digest and a Criticism of the Data upon which 

 is based the Theory of the Amoeboid Move- 

 ments of the Neurone,' accompanied by a bibli- 

 ography of 115 titles. The usual book notices 

 complete the number. 



The July number (Vol. I., No. 3) of the 

 Transactions of the American Mathematical So- 

 ciety contains the following articles : ' Wave 

 propagation over non-uniform conductors,' by 

 M. I. Pupin, of New York, N. Y.; ' Ueber 

 Systeme von Differentialgleichungen denen 

 vierfach periodische Functiouen Geniige lei- 

 sten,' by M. Krause, of Dresden, Germany; 

 ' On linear criteria for the determination of the 

 radius of convergence of a power series, ' by E. 

 B. Van Vleck, of Middletown, Conn.; ' On the 

 existence of the Green's function for the most 

 general simply connected plane region,' by W. 

 F. Osgood, of Cambridge, Mass. ; ' ' D ' lines on 

 quadrics,' by A. Pell, of Vermillion, So. Dak.; 

 ' Sundry metric theorems concerning n lines in 

 a plane,' by F. H. Loud, of Haverford, Pa.; 

 ' An application of group theoi-y to hydrody- 

 namics,' by E. J. Wilczynski, of Berkeley, 

 Cal. ; ' Determination of an abstract simple 

 group of order 2'.3^ 5. 7 holoedrically isomor- 

 phic with a certain orthogonal group and with 

 a certain hyperabelian group,' by L. E. Dickson, 

 of Austin, Tex, 



