850 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XII. No. 309. 



as rapidly as the pressure gradient. This was 

 more noticeable with the coarse shot than with 

 the finer. For pressure gradients of about 0.01 

 cm. of water pressure per centimeter of length 

 of material, the rate of flow through the coars- 

 est shot was ten times the rate through the 

 finest, while for a pressure gradient fifty times 

 as great the rate of flow was a little less than 

 three times as great in the coarsest as in the 

 finest. With each size of shot the space occu- 

 pied by air was about 39 per cent, of the total 

 space occupied by the shot. 



Wm. S. Day, 

 Sec'y of Section. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



A DISCLAIMER. 



The attention of the undersigned has been 

 called to the fact that an organization known 

 as 'The American College of Sciences,' situ- 

 ated in Philadelphia, is issuing circulars ad- 

 vertising a course of instruction in hypno- 

 tism as prepared in part by them. These 

 circulars contain manj' statements about hyp- 

 notism and about the advantages to be derived 

 from its study and practice which are not jus- 

 tified by the articles written by the undersigned, 

 which in their judgment cannot be substantiated 

 by any facts known to science, and which they 

 believe to be in the highest degree misleading. 

 Furthermore, the undersigned are of the opin- 

 ion that the practice of hypnotism by the gen- 

 eral public is attended by dangers which have 

 no compensating advantages, and would in no 

 case countenance any scheme which encourages 

 its practice under such conditions. They feel 

 it incumbent upon them, therefore, to make 

 a public statement of the circumstances under 

 which these articles were written. 



Each of them was requested, individually, by 

 ' The New York State Publishing Company,' of 

 Rochester N. Y., to prepare an article for a col- 

 lection of such articles. Inquiries made of this 

 Company elicited no suggestion that the col- 

 lection was to be issued by any other than the 

 usual method of publication and sale, and the 

 articles were contributed by the undersigned 

 without their having any knowledge or sus- 

 picion that they would be used as constituent 

 parts of a course of instruction in hypnotism. 



Had they known that they would be so used, 

 they would have refused to contribute the 

 articles in question. They now disclaim all 

 responsibility for the methods adopted by the 

 American College of Sciences and for all state- 

 ments made in its publications, excepting only 

 those found in the several articles above re- 

 ferred to, and for them their individual authors 

 are alone responsible. 



While the position of the undersigned on 

 these questions is perhaps already sufiBciently 

 well known to the academic world, they feel 

 that this disclaimer is due to the general public. 



J. Mark Baldwin, Princeton University. 



W. P. Carr, Columbian University. 



E. W. Scripture, Yale University. 



J. W. Slaughter, University of Michigan. 



Alfred Reginald Allen, Philadelphia 

 Polyclinic Hospital. 



Gabriel Campbell, Dartmouth College. 



Arthur MacDonald, U. S. Bureau of Edu- 

 cation. 



James H. Leuba, Bryn Mawr College. 



Robert M. Yerkes, Harvard University. 



Clark Wissler, Columbia University. 



Ernest Carroll Moore, University of Cali- 

 fornia. 



Edward H. Eldridge, Temple College. 



William Romaine Newbold, University of 

 Pennsylvania. 



CURRENT NOTES ON METEOROLOGY. 

 A recent study of eclipse meteorology. 

 ' A Discussion on the Observations recorded 

 during the Solar Eclipse of January 22, 1898, 

 at 154 Meteorological Stations in India ' is the 

 title of Vol. XI, Part II, of the Indian Meteoro- 

 logical Memoirs (Calcutta, 1900). This is a re- 

 port by Mr. John Eliot, Meteorological Reporter 

 to the Government of India, consisting of 66 

 pages of text and tables, together with 38 plates 

 showing curves of temperature, pressure, cloud- 

 iness, humidity, etc., at different stations. In 

 these plates the actual and probable curves of 

 the diurnal variation of the different weather 

 elements are given for a large number of sta- 

 tions, so that the efiects produced by the eclipse 

 can easily be seen. A brief summary of results 

 gives in a very condensed form the most im- 

 portant points brought out in Mr. Eliot's study. 



