252 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIV. No. 349 



SCIENCE: 



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Vol. XIV. 



NEW YORK, October 11, 18 



No. 349. 



CONTENTS: 



Electricity in Mining 243 



Evolution of Music from Dance 

 TO Symphony y. W, Powell 244 



Notes and News 249 



Editorial - 252 



The New President of Columbia. — 

 The Prospect of having a World's 

 Fair in New York. 



Mental Science. 



New Experiments upon the Time- 

 Relations of Mental Processes 252 



Health Matters. 

 The Effects of Alcohol upon Lon- 

 gevity 234 



The Food Treatment for Insomnia. 254 



Parasites of the Blood 254 



E,xecution by Electricity 254 



Book-Reviews. 

 Strength : How to get Strong and 



keep Strong. 254 



The Reconstruction of Europe 254 



Among the Publishers 255 



Letters to the Ed 

 Lightning-Strokes 

 A Queer Maple-Tr 



H, A. Hazen 257 



M. G. Manting 257 



NDUSTRIAL NOTES. 



Electric Blasting Battery 258 



An Electric Boat on the Housa- 



Mr. Seth Low, ex-mayor of Brooklyn, has been elected presi- 

 dent of Columbia College, to fill the vacancy caused by the death 

 of Dr. F. A. P. Barnard. President Low is an alumnus of the col- 

 lege of which he has just been made the head. He is a native of 

 Brooklyn, and as mayor of that city attained a national fame. 

 The general verdict is that the trustees have done well in selecting 

 a man who has always shown himself equal to the positions of 

 trust in which he has been placed, who is in the very prime of life, 

 being about forty years old, and who has the due scholarly training 

 for his new work. 



The world's-fair finance committee met Oct. 8, and re- 

 ceived the report of their executive committee. The report of the 

 executive committee was discussed, but not acted upon. After 

 careful examination of the whole subject, the committee report that 

 in their opinion no complete financial scheme can be determined 

 upon until it is approximately known what is the aggregate amount 

 of money to be raised ; and this will be largely an open question 

 until the site, plan, and scope of the exhibition are finally agreed 

 upon. It is of first importance that Congress should give to the 

 exhibition a national and an international character by appropriate 

 legal enactment, which should, at the same time, determine its loca- 

 tion in this the principal port of entry and metropolis of the coun- 

 try. It is also essential that -the exhibition should receive encour- 



agement and assistance from the State and city of New York ; and 

 the suitableness and liberality of this assistance must be an im- 

 portant factor in any financial plan which may be adopted, for if 

 direct money contributions are voted, or lands are set apart for the 

 use of the exhibition which belong to or may be acquired by the 

 city, and upon which it may lawfully erect buildings, a very much 

 less sum will be needed than if the committee must raise all the 

 money, or if private property must be leased or purchased. Mean- 

 while, to show the sincerity and willingness of the citizens of New 

 York, they recommend that steps be taken to raise a preliminary fund 

 of $5,000,000, for which stock should be issued, when authorized 

 by congressional or legislative enactment. 



The meeting of the world's-fair committee on site on the same 

 day was largely attended. The chief business was the considera- 

 tion of a report from the sub-committee on buildings, consisting of 

 Messrs. Towne, Chandler, and Hunt, who were appointed specifi- 

 cally to ascertain in regard to the value of property within the 

 boundaries of the proposed site. In substance the report said that 

 the site should be ample for the construction of five buildings, to 

 cover in the aggregate 65 acres, and 200 smaller buildings, to be 

 scattered over an area not to exceed 250 acres. In regard to the 

 area of the main site, the committee reported that the exposition 

 could be held at Riverside and Morningside Parks and on adjacent 

 private lands, of which there might be needed only 120 acres, but 

 that it could be better accommodated in 200 acres, making the 

 total area of the site from 200 to 270 acres. From all the 

 inquiries that the committee had been able to make, the price 

 of property in that section of the city was about $100,000 per 

 acre, involving an outlay of $12,000,000 or $20,000,000, according 

 to the choice of 120 or 200 acres. When the various amendments 

 had been voted on, the resolution, which was passed unanimously, 

 read as follows : " That the proposed site, which includes River- 

 side and Morningside Parks, shall be held to comprise such por- 

 tions of Central Park north of Ninety-seventh Street as are physi- 

 cally available and may be found absolutely necessary for the pur- 

 poses of the exposition, and also to include adjacent lands fronting 

 on the north and east of Central Park, is in all respects the best; 

 that therefore all efforts should be concentrated upon the acquisi- 

 tion of the needed area in this locality." 



MENTAL SCIENCE. 



New Experiments upon-the Time-Relations of Mental 

 Processes. 



With the law once admitted that all mental states are definitely 

 related to and conditioned upon physical ones, it would readily 

 follow that mental processes, or at least the physical changes that 

 accompany them, take a definite amount of time for their normal 

 performance. Furthermore, these times can be regarded as an in- 

 dex of the complexity of the act in question ; and a comparison of 

 the times taken up by various mental processes will furnish a basis 

 for their classification, and may afford desirable glimpses of the 

 nature of the processes themselves. This is the cardinal thought 

 that has urged investigators to carefully measure those simple acts 

 that lie at the basis of psychic life with all the accuracy that ihe use 

 of refined and complicated apparatus could furnish. A great many 

 interesting results were obtained, and many theories refuted. Re- 

 cently the fact has come into prominence that the attitude of the 

 subject, the direction of his attention, exercises a profound influence 

 upon the results, and many observations have been repeated with 

 this fact in mind. Among these the work of Dr. Miinsterberg 

 (" Beitrage zur Experimentellen Psychologie," Heft i, 1889), of the 

 University of Freiburg, merits detailed notice. 



As re-actions were to be made by each of the five fingers of the 

 right hand, many preliminary experiments were made with each to 

 eliminate the difference in alertness of the fingers. The fingers 

 pressed down upon the keys of a keyboard, and as soon as a sound 

 (usually a word) was heard the re-action was made by raising the 

 appropriate finger. In this simplest process of executing a move- 



