July 15, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



91 



character. Having opportunity to make use 

 of the services of a professional cheiromantist, 

 he submitted to her the hands alone (the per- 

 sons being concealed and no words spoken) of 

 30 pupils of both sexes, half of them of ex- 

 ceptionally high and half of abnormally low 

 intelligence, demanding only whether she 

 found them intelligent or not. Her diagnosis 

 was correct in 63 per cent, of the cases. 

 Again, he had photographs made of the hands 

 (front and back views) of 20 pupils of both 

 sexes, and submitted them for judgment to 

 20 persons. The percentage of correct de- 

 termination of sex was 70, of intelligence 54. 

 But applying the method of majorities (see 

 Borel's paper above), 76.5 per cent, of the 

 judgments were correct; the majority being 

 superior in correctness of judgment not only 

 to the average, but to any one of the individ- 

 uals composing the average. These results 

 surpass those obtainable by chance; and there 

 is therefore some indication of intelligence 

 furnished by the form of the hand, deserving 

 of more detailed study. 



14. A. Binet: A Pedagogical Causerie 

 (27 pp.). — Expresses the author's belief that 

 psychology has more value for pedagogy than 

 was attributed to it in a recent book by 

 James; defends the value of examining the 

 vision of pupils; describes the classes of ab- 

 normal pupils recently established in the 

 schools, and the manner of admitting pupils 

 to them only in case a definite but brief exam- 

 ination of their scholastic attainments has 

 shown them to be at least three years behind- 

 hand, and another examination according to 

 the " metric scale " (described above) has 

 shovsn their intelligence to be defective by at 

 least two years; exhibits the value both to 

 normal and abnormal pupils of their associa- 

 tion in the same school but in diiferent 

 classes; discusses the question of accurate 

 control of actual progress made, a necessary 

 condition of scientific pedagogy, and asserts 

 that according to one method of control a 

 class of abnormal pupils gained two and a 

 quarter years in one year of the new instruc- 

 tion; develops a plan of mental orthopedic 

 treatment; and gives the results of anthropo- 



metric measurements that have been made in 

 comparing normal and abnormal pupils. 



15. The volume concludes with a number 

 of bibliographical analyses. 



E. B. Delabarre 



Bkown Dniveesity 



The Conquest of Disease through Animal Ex- 

 perimentation. By J. P. Warbasse, M.D. 

 Pp. xii -f 176. New York, D. Appleton & 

 Co. 1910. 



Dr. Warbasse has written a very timely book. 

 The public hears much from the opponents of 

 animal experimentation. Books, special pe- 

 riodicals and public lectures denounce the 

 practise of vivisection and the inoculation 

 of animals with disease germs; even exhibits 

 are gotten up, representing animals undergo- 

 ing tortures, showing the instruments used to 

 operate on animals without, it is claimed, the 

 use of anesthetics, making a veritable chamber 

 of horrors for the purpose of prejudicing the 

 public against methods of scientific inquiry 

 which have produced so much of value in con- 

 trolling human disease. The anti-vivisection- 

 ists are busy; they are often influential, and 

 too frequently they are unrestrained by a 

 suiSciently scrupulous regard for truth from 

 misrepresenting, often grossly, the cruelties 

 practised in and the value resulting from 

 experiments on living animals. Repeated 

 attempts are made to get laws passed through 

 state legislatures and the national congress 

 preventing or greatly restricting such experi- 

 mentation. It can not be doubted that the 

 ardent propaganda of the opponents of vivi- 

 section influences public opinion to a very con- 

 siderable extent. It is easier to appeal to the 

 naive sympathies of people by recounting tales 

 of cruelty to poor dumb animals than it is to 

 give them an adequate conception of the bear- 

 ing and probable utility of the scientific ex- 

 periments on living animals which are being 

 carried on for the conquest of disease. Dr. 

 Warbasse gives, in popular form, a good sur- 

 vey of this general field of investigation. 

 There are chapters on the technique of animal 

 experimentation, the extent to which pain is 

 probably inflicted on animals, the discoveries 

 in physiology due to animal experimentation. 



