January 24, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



139 



maeliine shop, and as beneficial to the com- 

 munity as it is to a smelting works. 



In furtherance of this prineip]e we miist 

 remember that language in relation to 

 ideas is a solvent, the purity and clearness 

 of which affect that which it bears in solu- 

 tion. "VVhewell, in ' The Philosophy of the 

 Inductive Sciences, 'has expressed this view 

 of the matter with noble eloquence. ' Lan- 

 guage, ' he said, ' is often called an instru- 

 ment of thought, but it is also the nutri- 

 ment of thought; or rather, it is the 

 atmosphere in which thought lives; a 

 medium essential to the acti-\aty of our 

 speculative powers, although invisible and 

 imperceptible in its operation, and an ele- 

 ment modifying, by its qualities and 

 changes, the growth and complexion of the 

 faculties which it feeds.' 



In considering the subject from this 

 standpoint, there is borne in upon the 

 mind a suggestion which carries our 

 thought far beyond the confines of the mat- 

 ter under discussion. Such power of 

 speech as man possesses is a faculty which 

 appears to divide him from all other liv- 

 ing things, while at the same time the im- 

 perfection of it weighs him down con- 

 tinually with the sense of an essential 

 frailty. To be able to express oneself per- 

 fectly would be divine, to be unable to 

 make oneself understood is human. In 

 'Man's Place in Nature,' Huxley points 

 cut that the endowment of intelligible 

 speech separates man from the brutes 

 which are most like him, namely, the an- 

 thropoid apes, whom he otherwise resem- 

 bles closely in substance and in structure. 

 This endowment enables him to transmit 

 the experience which in other animals is 

 lost with each individual life; it has en- 

 abled him to organize his knowledge and 

 to hand it down to his descendants, first by 

 word of mouth and then by written words. 

 If the experience thus recorded were prop- 

 erly utilized, instead of being largely disre- 



garded, then man's advancement in knowl- 

 edge and conduct would enable him to 

 emphasize, much more than it is permitted 

 him at present, his superiority over the 

 dumb brutes. Considered from this stand- 

 point language is a factor in the evolution 

 of the race and an instrument which works 

 for ethical progress. It is a gift most truly 

 divine which should be cherished as the 

 ladder which has permitted of an ascent 

 from the most humble beginnings and leads 

 to the heights of a loftier destiny, when 

 man, ceasing to stammer forth in accents 

 which are biit the halting expression of 

 smft thought, shall photograph his mind 

 in the fulness of speech, and, neither with- 

 holding what he wants to say nor saying 

 what he wants to withhold, shall be linked 

 to his fellow by the completeness of a per- 

 fect communion of ideas. 



T. A. RlCKARD. 



Denver. 



SOIWNTIFIO BOOKS. 



Geschichte der Metalle. Vom Verein zur Be- 

 forderung des Oewerbfleisses mit dem 

 ersten Tornow-Preise gekronte Preisschrift. 

 Von Adelbert Rossing. Berlin, Verlag von 

 Leonhard Simon. 1901. 8vo. Pp. vi + 

 274. 



This 'History of Metals' forms a great con- 

 trast to the 'History of the Precious Metals' 

 by Alex. Del Mar, reviewed in Science for 

 December 6, 1901. The latter, as we have 

 shown, is a philosophic study of the sources and 

 history of the two metals, silver and gold, the 

 work under review deals with the occurrence 

 (in nature), the history of discovery the 

 chemical, metallurgical and electrical prepara- 

 tion, the statistics of production and the cost 

 price of all the known metals, fifty-five in 

 number. Dr. Eossing's treatise forms, conse- 

 quently, a most timely and valuable comple- 

 ment to that by Del Mar. 



The arrangement of matter is very con- 

 venient for reference; after an introduction 

 occupying twenty-one pages, the metals are 

 discussed in alphabetic order, the treatment 



