742 



SCIENCE. 



[N S. Vol. XV. Mo 384. 



1885 President of the American Chemical So- 

 ciety, will be pleased to note the accurate fore- 

 east of his character made by Wohler fifty 

 years before. Booth, however, did not go to 

 Sweden, as Berzelius replied he was too old 

 to take charge of any students. 



The reviewer can give but a birdseye sur- 

 vey of the extraordinary value of these vol- 

 umes as contributions to the history of chem- 

 istry. An index of proper names adds to 

 their usefulness. 



Henry Careington Bolton. 



Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological 

 Expedition to Torres Straits, Volume II. 

 Physiology and Psychology. Part I. 'In- 

 troduction and Vision.' Cambridge, The 

 University Press. 1901. 4to. Pp. 140. 

 The inclusion of psychological tests in the 

 anthropological survey of the status of prim- 

 itive peoples is a noteworthy tendency of re- 

 cent investigation, and one worthy of the 

 highest commendation. No more interesting 

 contribution of this nature has been made 

 than the one just published by the Cambridge 

 expedition, the general director of which is 

 Mr. A. C. Haddon. The psychological obser- 

 vations are due to W. H. R. Rivers. While 

 many of the observations are rather unde- 

 veloped in type and made under unfavorable 

 conditions, yet the whole research embodies a 

 considerable amount of material that is sug- 

 gestive even where it fails to be conclusive. 

 Mr. Rivers is entitled to great credit for the 

 inauguration and the successful completion of 

 this series of tests. 



The direction of such an enterprise involves 

 great tact, a constant watchfulness for sources 

 of error, encounter with difficulties of lan- 

 guage and the explanation of what was wanted. 

 The men had to be given tobacco and the chil- 

 dren sweets as rewards of merit for having 

 their eyesight tested, while at the same time 

 an appeal to their vanity was very efficacious. 

 The story was circulated that the black man 

 could see and hear better than the white man, 

 and that the white man had come to see 

 whether this was so and would record the re- 

 sults in a big book for all to read. An over- 

 zealous native, in impressing the necessity of 



truthfulness in answering the questions asked, 

 had hinted that Queen Victoria would send 

 a man-of-war to punish those who told lies, 

 and so frightened off a group of subjects alto- 

 gether. But on the whole, Mr. Rivers presents 

 satisfactory evidences that the natives under- 

 stood what was desired and were able to give 

 proper attention to the test. 



Only a few of the more significant results 

 can here be presented in outline. Visual 

 acuity was tested in several ways, the best be- 

 ing by the use of the letter E in various posi- 

 tions (Snellen's Haken). This character was 

 presented in various sizes and arrangements 

 and the subject required to hold a sample 

 character, which he had in his hand, in the 

 position of a given character exhibited at a 

 standard distance. The smallest size of the 

 character distinguishable at the standard dis- 

 tance would thus be a measure of the visual 

 efficiency according to the usual procedure. 

 In one group of natives there were two thirds 

 who had vision between two and three times 

 what is commonly supposed to be normal 

 European vision. This conclusion must be 

 somewhat modified in view of the difficulty of 

 obtaining precisely comparable European 

 standards and in limiting the subjects to those 

 presenting no decided refractive defects. Yet 

 the balance of evidence is in favor of a slight 

 superiority of the vision among 'Naturvolker' 

 as compared with ' Culturvolker.' Bring- 

 ing this into relation with the widely cir- 

 culated reports of the marvelous visual 

 powers of savages, Mr. Rivers decidedly agrees 

 with those who interpret such proficiency as, 

 in the main, a psychological one. It is be- 

 cause the savage in his limited world knows 

 what to look for, that he is able to recognize 

 objects at a greater distance; and when the 

 European attains an equal familiarity with 

 the environment he is likewise able to observe 

 what previously passed his closest scrutiny. 

 Mr. Rivers cites a case in point from Ranke 

 who was astonished that the Indians (of South 

 America) 'could tell the sex of a deer at a 

 distance which would have implied vision at 

 an extremely small angle if the distinction 

 had depended on seeing the antlers,' but who 

 found that he could make the like distinction 



