Januaky 7, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



27 



reason, though no excuse, for disliking med- 

 ical men, has begun the publication of affi- 

 davits from discharged employees of the insti- 

 tute, picturing the " horrors " of animal 

 experiments, particularly the epoch-making 

 experiments of Carrel on blood-vessel anasto- 

 mosis and the transplantation of viscera and 

 other parts. It is made to appear that these 

 are revelations of the secrets of the torture 

 chamber, though all that these persons have to 

 tell has already been told time and again in 

 reports to societies and in the medical and 

 other scientific journals, and even in the secu- 

 lar press. Among the horrors mentioned is 

 that the experimenter after grafting a leg on 

 a dog " twisted " it to see if the bones were 

 knitting, and the impression intended to be 

 conveyed is that the limb was turned round 

 and round provoking howls of agony. An ex- 

 perimenter, no matter how " cruel " he was, 

 would not be so foolish as to vitiate his experi- 

 ment by breaking up the adhesions in this 

 senseless way, and what he did, if he " twisted '' 

 the leg at all, was what every surgeon does 

 with a fractured bone to assure himself that 

 union is taking place. Another harrowing 

 detail is that the dogs, when operated upon, 

 under an anesthetic it is admitted, lost more 

 or less blood. Still another is that when one 

 of the operations failed and the dog was in 

 pain he was chloroformed at once so that he 

 should not suffer. And so with all the rest of 

 this well-paid-for matter. The head lines are 

 horrible, but any one of moderate intelligence, 

 reading the affidavits and noting the char- 

 acter of the experiments and that they were 

 always done under anesthesia, can see that 

 they were conducted with no more " cruelty " 

 than any surgical operation on man or beast. 

 Many columns of equally hideous and bloody 

 details could be written from the account of 

 a scrubwoman or a day laborer who was al- 

 lowed the run of the operating room and surg- 

 ical wards of a hospital for a day or a week; 

 and the surgeons who were racking their 

 nerves and wearying their flesh in the en- 

 deavor to relieve pain and save life could with 

 equal effect be called butchers in the stirring 

 head lines. — Medical Record. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 Les Zoocecidies des Plantes d'Europe et du 



Bassin de la Mediteranee. By C. Houard, 



Docteur es sciences Laureat de I'Institute. 



2 vols., 1,247 pp., 2 full page plates and 



1,365 figs. Librarie Scientifique. Paris, 



A. Hermann. 1908. 



The plan of this work is especially interest- 

 ing to botanists since the eecidia are grouped 

 with reference to the host plants instead of 

 the insects or other animals which cause 

 their formation. The host plants are ar- 

 ranged in accordance with Engler & Prantl's 

 " Pflanzenf amilien " and under each species is 

 given the eecidia which occur upon it, witli 

 cross references for those species of eecidia 

 which occur on more than one host. Each 

 family of host plants is preceded with a re- 

 sume of the characters of the eecidia which 

 occur upon its species. The work records a 

 total of 6,239 species, with descriptions of 

 each. In general, the descriptions are short 

 and clear so that there should be very little 

 difficulty in identifying the species. How- 

 ever, in some cases the data were evidently too 

 meager to enable the author to give complete 

 descriptions. 



The figures are clear and for the most part 

 have been copied from the works of the au- 

 thors who described the species. Following 

 each species of eecidia are the references to the 

 bibliography. Each species is also accom- 

 panied by abbreviations which explain the 

 part of the plant on which it occurs, whether 

 it is simple or compound, whether the meta- 

 morphosis occurs in the eecidia or in the 

 ground, the time required for its complete 

 development, and the geographical distribu- 

 tion. 



Among the host plants are many groups 

 which in America, so far as we now know, 

 have few or no eecidia, viz., the fungi, algse, 

 liverworts, mosses and ferns. There are also 

 many families of flowering plants, of which 

 the American representatives do not bear 

 eecidia. About one third of the known genera 

 of American eecidia are also common to Eu- 

 rope, but only a very few species are common 

 to both the old and the new world. Of the 

 few species which are common to both Europe 



