350 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIX. No. 478. 



with a vengeance was permitted to disappear 

 ' in the thick woods,' after adjusting and hard- 

 ening his clay cast. Could the creature have 

 been captxired, we venture to affirm that he 

 would have been eligible to a chair of surgery 

 in one of our leading medical schools, and a 

 phenomenally rapid progress of the science 

 would have been insured. 



Mr. Long does not rely entirely on the hazy 

 reminiscences of his boyhood. A brace of 

 reminiscing ' gunners ' is introduced and an- 

 other surgical genius among woodcocks, who, 

 though deeply versed in osteogenesis, must 

 have been singularly ignorant of such com- 

 paratively simple mechanisms as firearms or 

 he could hardly have come to such an igno- 

 minious end as hanging in a market. This 

 bird, unfortunately, had mud on both legs, 

 though only one of them had been injured. 

 It is surprising that Mr. Long supplies so 

 obvious an explanation of the presence of mud 

 on the sound leg. As he seems to set consid- 

 erable store by this woodcock anecdote, we 

 suggest that in future editions of his work he 

 discard so commonplace an explanation and 

 adopt one more in harmony with the re- 

 mainder of his story. Thus he might state 

 that the fracture occurred while the bird was 

 sojourning in a country of unusual geological 

 formation. He was unacquainted with the 

 physical qualities of the mud in that par- 

 ticular region, so that before making the cast 

 for his fracture he made an experimental cast 

 for his sound leg in order to test the cohesive 

 properties of the substance. 



The heavy artillery of Mr. Long's proof is 

 the concluding reminiscence of a lawyer 

 ' known all over ' the vast state of Connecti- 

 cut. Again, from a dead bird, which in this 

 instance he has not even seen, he not only 

 infers what the living bird had done, but he 

 indulges in some vaticination as to what the 

 bird ' undoubtedly ' would have done had he 

 escaped death or, in other words, evolved from 

 his inner consciousness as clear a knowledge 

 of firearms and explosives as of fractures and 

 casts. Since an ounce of prophylaxis is worth 

 at least a pound of cure, it is rather surprising 

 that the wise woodcocks should spend so much 

 time making casts for their broken limbs in- 



stead of keeping out of the reach of gunners. 



In last analysis the whole fanciful anecdote 

 is seen to be built on the finding of mud on 

 the legs of a couple of dead woodcocks. In 

 both cases the mud had accumulated at a 

 healed fracture, not at all an unlikely occur- 

 rence in mud-frequenting birds. In the whole 

 passage one looks in vain for a particle of 

 authentic proof that the woodcock possesses 

 any chirurgical knowledge or skill whatsoever. 

 Before publishing his article, Mr. Long should 

 have consulted his legal acquaintance on the 

 evidential value of boyhood reminiscences and 

 the tales of sportsmen. He seems really to 

 put implicit confidence in all sorts of hunting 

 and fishing yarns, even when they fall from 

 the lips of lawyers known all over the state 

 of Connecticut. The careful reader of the 

 paper can see between the lines the sly, mirth- 

 ful twinkle in the eyes of some of these old 

 gunners to whom Mr. Long seems to be con- 

 tinually running for confirmation and ampli- 

 fication of his vagaries. 



The passage above quoted is a fair sample of 

 not a little of the literature that is being 

 recommended by teachers and publishers as 

 collateral reading for the pupils of the 'nature 

 study' classes of our schools. Such reading 

 is fondly supposed to afford both instruction 

 and entertainment. That it furnishes in- 

 struction can be flatly denied, for it lacks 

 truth, the first requisite of instructive read- 

 ing. It is bad even as fiction. Amusement 

 it undoubtedly furnishes — more, in fact, than 

 the authors contemplate, since it not only 

 titillates the fancy of the boys and girls, but 

 adds to the gayety of comparative psycholo- 

 gists. Those who are attacking the fads of 

 our educational system will find plenty of 

 work awaiting them as soon as they turn their 

 attention to the excrescences of ' nature 

 study.' William Moeton Wheeler. 



SPECIAL ARTICLES. 



R?IYTHMS OF C0„ PRODUCTION DURING CLEAVAGE. 



The wonderful sequence of morphological 

 changes in indirect cell division is a subject 

 of perennial interest to biologists. The visible 

 changes are generally recognized to be the 



