July 29, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



159 



the leaders this will be found true. Lippin- 

 cott's " Dictionary " contains sketches of 

 some 3,000 Americans. Each of these per- 

 sons, it is fair to say, attained high distinc- 

 tion. Of all Americans they may be said to 

 be at the top within a fraction of one per 

 cent, of the highest. From this work (Lippin- 

 cott's) I took at random and regardless of any 

 consideration 25 names, counted the adjec- 

 tives of praise applied to them, and the lines 

 of space devoted to their sketches. The aver- 

 age number of adjectives found was .64 and 

 the average number of lines of space, 8.68. 

 Many hundred names may be found without a 

 single adjective. Again, in the above table it 

 will be observed that only 9 men received less 

 than 16 adjectives and only 10 received less 

 than 200 lines. This shows an agreement 

 little short of remarkable. In this study of 

 historiometry it is not a question of order 

 within the series. It matters little in a list of 

 50 or 500 whether a name holds tenth or 

 fortieth place. Any apparent disagreement in 

 the above then is really negligible. 



The fact that a certain name received on 

 the first ballot 47 electoral votes (notwith- 

 standing the fact that it requires but 51 votes 

 to elect a name to the Hall of Fame) and on 

 the next only 29, the same occurring in several 

 other instances only to a less marked degree, 

 is strong evidence in favor of the reliability 

 of "the objective methods. It should also, in 

 all fairness, be kept in mind that the electors 

 were not granted absolute freedom to select 

 whomsoever they would. The sixth rule gov- 

 erning the proceedings required that the first 

 fifty names chosen must include one or more 

 representatives of a majority of the fifteen 

 classes of citizens therein enumerated. Just 

 how great an influence this attempt to insure 

 the " recognition of the multiformity of human 

 activity " had, we do not know. There is, 

 however, reason to believe that the figures, 

 showing the final votes received, afford a fair 

 resume of the electors' judgments of the rela- 

 tive standing of America's great men.° The 



= See "Hall of Fame Official Book," by H. M. 

 McCrackeu, New York, 1901; also subsequent 

 reports. 



Hall of Fame votes have been useful in giv- 

 ing us something reliable to work by in our 

 study of the objective methods. The mere 

 " relative standing " feature aside from this 

 has been more interesting than useful. As 

 stated above it is not, for historiometrical 

 purposes, a question of order but rather of 

 groups " objectively compiled." 



By the above comparisons and others which 

 I have undertaken, including a study of Cat- 

 tell's list of great men (space method) I am 

 in spite of my original prejudice convinced 

 that either of the objective methods (adjective 

 or space) may be successfully employed in the 

 selecting of a list of indefinite length. In- 

 deed I know of no other method that even ap- 

 proaches them in efficiency. They promise 

 invaluable aid to students of historiometry as 

 the science develops. 



M. D. Liming 



Cambridge, Mass. 



v lime and legume inoculation 



It has been long recognized that liming pro- 

 duces different eifects on different soils, and 

 it has been pointed out^ that for the growth 

 of flowering plants, lupins especially, there is 

 an optimum relation of lime to magnesia. In 

 certain portions of the coastal plain it has 

 been observed that oyster-shell lime is mark- 

 edly superior to stone lime, especially in its 

 eft'ect on securing stands of alfaKa and 

 clover. The stone lime, in many cases at least, 

 was found to be derived from dolomite and 

 therefore highly magnesian. Soils from some 

 of these regions are rather high in magnesia.^ 



The effect of magnesium carbonate on 

 nitrifying organisms was studied in connec- 

 tion with one of these soils. In our tests mag- 

 nesium carbonate and calcium carbonate in 

 quantities varying from 0.25 per cent, to 2.00 

 per cent, were added to a sandy loam showing 

 the above-mentioned characteristics; ammo- 

 nium sulphate was also added. At the end of 

 an incubation period of fourteen days the 



^ Oscar Loew, " The Relation of Lime and Mag- 

 nesia to Plant Growth," Bureau of Plant Industry 

 Bulletin No. 1, 1901. 



^Bureau of Soils Field Operations, 1901, pp. 186. 



