62t) 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIX. No. 485. 



of that witness. To those who have paid some 

 attention to the nature of evidence it will be 

 a matter of interest to learn, firsts that addi- 

 tional witnesses and additional instances do 

 not strengthen a case; and second, that the 

 trustworthiness of witnesses is of no conse- 

 quence. What a lot of bother men of science 

 would have been spared if they had only- 

 known this before; for it is unnecessary to 

 point out that the history of science abounds 

 in accounts of efforts to gather evidence and 

 to determine the weights of various pieces of 

 evidence. 



So far as the article ' Woodcock Surgery ' 

 affords a cross-section of its author's style of 

 reasoning some of his universals seem to be : 

 (1) Action that results in a causal correla- 

 tion of antecedent and consequent is intel- 

 ligent action in the sense that the agent 

 understands the principles involved in the 

 correlation ; (2) any phenomenon which B has 

 not witnessed A can not have witnessed; (3) 

 unless an event is of common occurrence it 

 can not occur at all. 



Whom the gods wish to destroy they first 

 lure into premises of this sort. 



As regards the ' nature-study ' classes in our 

 schools, Mr. Wheeler may be spared that part 

 of his anxiety which relates to the effect of 

 such books as ' A Little Brother to the Bear ' 

 and ' Wilderness Ways.' One may well wish 

 that every boy and girl in the land might be- 

 come acquainted with Killooleet and Cloud 

 Wings and Hukweem. Children and mere 

 lovers of nature on the one hana, and com- 

 parative psychologists on the other, owe no 

 small debt to men like William J. Long who 

 have the patience and pluck to spend years 

 in the wilderness home of birds and beasts in 

 faithful observation of their life and habits. 

 Ellen Hayes. 



the present status of soil investigation. 



An address delivered on this subject before 

 the Association of American Agricultural Col- 

 leges and Experiment Stations, November 17, 

 1903, and immediately published as Circular 

 No. 72 of the University of Illinois Agricul- 

 tural Experiment Station is discussed by Dr. 

 F. K. Cameron in Science, February 26, 1904, 



page 343. Dr. Cameron states that the criti- 

 cisms of his Bulletin 22 (Bureau of Soils) 

 which have appeared are to the effect that the 

 authors of the bulletin (Whitney and Cam- 

 eron) ' have concluded that the use of fertil- 

 izers is of no value in affecting the yield of 

 crops.' He further states that ' these criti- 

 cisms have generally been copied from Cir- 

 cular No. 72, Agricultural Experiment Sta- 

 tion, University of Illinois.' 



As a matter of fact this statement does not 

 occur in Circular 72, consequently, the ob- 

 jection to ' inexcusable carelessness of mis- 

 quoting results and statements in a contro- 

 versial paper ' is strictly applicable to Dr. 

 Cameron's own first paragraph. It is not be- 

 lieved that Cameron or any other theoretical 

 chemist is so ignorant of agricultural science 

 and practise as not to know that the use of 

 fertilizers is of value in effecting the yield of 

 crops. The statement in Circular 72 is that 

 Bulletin 22 is commonly understood to teach 

 that the use of fertilizers ' has little or no 

 tendency toward permanent soil improvement, 

 and that even the effect which they do produce 

 is due very largely, if not entirely, to improved 

 physical condition of the soil.' It is certainly 

 safe to say that scientists and agricultural 

 editors and practical farmers are all agreed 

 that this is the teaching of Bulletin 22 regard- 

 ing the use of fertilizers. 



It will thus be seen that Doctor Cameron 

 devotes much valuable space to a matter which 

 is not pertinent to the discussion. 



Both Bulletin 22 of the Bureau of Soils, 

 Washington, D. C, and Circular 72 of the 

 Illinois Experiment Station, Urbana, 111., are 

 available to the reading public, and conse- 

 quently it is quite unnecessary and unreason- 

 able to expect Science to reproduce any large 

 part of those publications. The following 

 direct quotation from page 59 of Bulletin 22 

 fairly illustrates its teaching: 



In the truck soils of the Atlantic coast where 

 10 or 1.5 tons of stable manure are annually ap- 

 plied to the acre, in the tobacco lands of Florida, 

 and of the Connecticut Valley, where 2,000 or 

 3,000 pounds of high-grade fertilizers carrying 

 10 per cent, of potash are used, even where these 

 applications have been continued year after year 

 for a considerable period of time, the dissolved 

 salt content of the soil as shown by this method 



