February 1, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



181 



which they should not be pleased. Nor can they 

 discriminate in the matter of poisonous herbs. In 

 the northerly Sierras they perish yearly, cropping 

 the azaleas; Julien lost three or four hundred 

 when wild tobacco (Nicotiana attenuata) sprang 

 up after a season of flood water below Coyote 

 Holes; and in places about the high mountains 

 there are certain isolated meadows wherein some 

 herb unidentified by sheepmen works disaster to 

 the ignorant or too confiding herder. Such places 

 come to be known as poison meadows, and grasses 

 ripen in them uncropped year after year. 



What have the sheep come to know of man 

 in their fifty centuries' association with him? 

 Mrs. Austin answers : 



It is doubtful if the herder is anything more 

 to the flock than an incident of the range, except 

 as a giver of salt, for the only cry they make to 

 him is the salt cry. When the natural craving 

 is at the point of urgency they circle about his 

 camp or his cabin, leaving off feeding for that 

 business; and nothing else ofi'ering, they will con- 

 tinue this headlong circling about a boulder or 

 any object bulking large in their immediate neigh- 

 borhood remotely resembling the appurtenances 

 of man, as if they had learned nothing since they 

 were free to find licks for themselves, except that 

 salt comes by bestowal and in conjunction with 

 the vaguely indeterminate lumps of matter that 

 associate with man. As if in fifty centuries of 

 man-herding they had made but one step out of 

 the terrible isolation of brute species, an isolation 

 impenetrable except by fear to every other brute, 

 but now admitting the fact without knowledge, 

 of the God of the Salt. Accustomed to receiving 

 this miracle on open boulders, when the craving is 

 strong upon them they seek such as these to run 

 about, vociferating, as if they said, In such a 

 place our God has been wont to bless us; come 

 now let us greatly entreat Him. This one 

 quavering bleat, unmistakable to the sheepman 

 even at a distance, is the only new note in the 

 sheep's vocabulary, and the only one which passes 

 with intention from himself to man. As for the 

 call of distress which a leader raised by hand may 

 make to his master, it is not new, is not common 

 to flock usage, and is swamped utterly in the 

 obsession of the flock-mind. 



Then there are the sheep dogs, those wolves 

 that we have ameliorated to protect the sheep 

 from other wolves. But our space prevents 

 even a tasting of the interesting notes on dog 

 ways that the book offers. Let us but just 

 note the strong insistence of our author ob- 



server that dogs are not bred sheep dogs, hut 

 trained to be sheep dogs. " What good breed- 

 ing means in a young collie is not that he is 

 fit to herd sheep, but that he is fit to be trained 

 to it." Rather against the inheritance of ac- 

 quirements, this. 



There is much keen observation, much 

 shrewd suggestion, and no end of delight in 

 ' The Flock.' And trained in the scientific 

 method or not, Mrs. Austin is honest and 

 truthful as one may be. That is, she tells only 

 what to her eye and ear and mind comes with 

 the seeming of truth. No rigorous scientific 

 pundit can do more. For truth is for any of 

 us too often at the bottom of the well. 



Vernon L. Kellogg 



Stanford University, 

 California 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 

 THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OP WASHINGTON 



The 185th meeting of the society was held 

 on January 9, 1907, with President Lindgren 

 in the chair and fifty-four persons present. 



Begular Program 

 The Paleozoic Section of the Upper Yukon, 



Alaska: Alfred H. Brooks and E. M. 



Kindle. 



This paper was presented by Mr. Brooks, 

 who, in company with Mr. Kindle, devoted 

 part of the field season of 1906 to a detailed 

 study of the rocks exposed between the inter- 

 national boundary and Fort Yukon, along the 

 banks of the Yukon and Porcupine Rivers. 



The total thickness of Paleozoic strata, com- 

 prising this section, is estimated to exceed 

 15,000 feet, but as the bottom was not de- 

 termined, it may be very much greater. The 

 lowest member of the succession is a series of 

 quartzites with intercalated limestones and 

 shales, which is well developed on the Porcu- 

 pine near the international boundary. Pro- 

 visionally, at least, these rocks may be cor- 

 related with the more highly altered rocks 

 called the Birch Creek schists which occur in 

 large areas south of the Yukon. On the 

 Porcupine these rocks are comparatively little 

 altered and intrusives appear to be entirely 

 absent, except for occasional small dikes, while 



