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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIII. No. 593. 



plenished -witli oxygen and returned to the 

 chamber. This type of respiration apparatus 

 has always been recognized as being the most 

 perfect in theory, but serious practical diffi- 

 culties have been found in its use, and the 

 more easily manipulated if less perfect 

 Pettenkofer apparatus has been the type most 

 commonly employed. It was a bold attempt, 

 therefore, to reconstruct a complicated appa- 

 ratus, in a scale sufficient for experiments on 

 man, and the authors are to be congratulated 

 upon their success in devising the first prac- 

 ticable large apparatus of this type.' 



It is, of course, entirely outside the scope 

 of a review to enter upon even an outline 

 description of the apparatus. A study of the 

 monograph can not fail to impress the reader 

 with two things — the ingenuity displayed in 

 the devising of the various parts of the 

 apparatus and the unusual amount of care 

 which has been devoted to the search for 

 sources of error and the determination of 

 their probable magnitude. In the latter re- 

 spect the volume affords an instructive ex- 

 ample of true scientific accuracy, consisting > 

 not in inerrancy, but in a critical estimate of 

 the degree of approximation to the truth. 

 Noteworthy, too, is the very interesting method 

 of computing the results of the respiration 

 experiments by which they are made to a large 

 degree to check each other. Check tests of 

 the accuracy of the apparatus as a calorimeter 

 have been made, in which known amounts of 

 heat were generated in it electrically, and 

 also so-called alcohol check tests, in which 

 known quantities of ethyl alcohol were burned 

 in the apparatus and the evolution of carbon 

 dioxide, water and heat and the consumption 

 of oxygen were compared with the theoretical 

 amounts. The observed results differed from 

 the theory by less than one per cent., thus 

 justifying the claim of the authors that the 

 results approach in accuracy those of the most 

 approved methods of chemical analysis. 



The monograph closes with a description of 

 one of the numerous experiments on men 

 which have been made with the apparatus, the 

 experimental periods covering from one to 

 thirteen days, and which have demonstrated 



its entire practicability. American science is 

 to be congratulated upon the addition to its 

 resources of this exceedingly valuable instru- 

 ment of research, and the Carnegie Institution, 

 has performed a great service in rendering its 

 construction possible. 



H. P. Armsby. 



Studies in General Physiology. By Jacques 

 LoEB. The Decennial Publications, Second 

 Series, Volume XV. Chicago, The Uni- 

 versity of Chicago Press. 1905. 

 These studies present a collection of widely 

 scattered papers of Loeb on subjects of general 

 physiology. The two volumes contain 37 

 papers, monographs, essays and shorter papers, 

 only 13 of which were previously published in 

 English. The publications cover a period of 

 fourteen years, from 1889 to 1902. Some ot 

 these papers were published in pamphlet fonr 

 and were quite inaccessible. These papers 

 present by no means all the studies which this 

 productive investigator has published during 

 that period; nor are there included in this col- 

 lection such studies which were published in 

 conjunction with some of his associates and 

 pupils — a fact which the reviewer can only 

 regret. With the exception of two or three 

 short papers, every study in this collection 

 presents a more or less extensive original in- 

 vestigation on some biological subject, invari- 

 ably bringing to light new facts and new 

 points of view. Although these studies deal 

 with a great variety of diverse subjects, there 

 is one apparent background to them all : it 

 is the aim to discover the physical and chem- 

 ical causes of living phenomena. 



The papers are arranged chronologically : 

 the first of them dates from 1889 and the last 

 was published in 1902. The great variety of 

 subjects treated in these numerous papers 

 might, perhaps, be classified in the following 

 four groups : ' Tropism,' ' Physiological Mor- 

 phology,' ' The Physiological Effects of Ions ' 

 and ' Artificial Parthenogenesis,' intermingled 

 with a few miscellaneous subjects not exactly 

 belonging to any one of these groups. The 

 chronology of these papers helps us to get an 

 insight into the gradual development of the 



