174 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL. No. 1022 



dramatic manner in whicli Kenjira Ota arriyed 

 upon the scene of his labors, pages 148-150, to 

 find him accomplishing nothing more remark- 

 able than the measurement of the freezing 

 points of certain solutions. 



In view of the fact that none of the author's 

 own investigations have been in the field of 

 radioactivity, it seems rather remarkable that 

 the references, pages 260, 261 and 296, to the 

 author's book on the " Electrical Nature of 

 Matter and Eadioactivity " are not supple- 

 mented by the titles of well-known standard 

 works on the subject. 



However, the reviewer does not wish to be 

 understood as wholly condemning the book. 

 Far from it. The idea of writing a book on a 

 " New Era in Chemistry " is an excellent one, 

 and the story, for the most part, is most inter- 

 estingly told, but at the same time it is the 

 reviewer's conviction that no one who permits 

 so many inaccurate, careless and exaggerated 

 statements to creep into his work should go 

 unrebuked. 



The book closes with an appendix in which 

 are given some delightful personal reminis- 

 cences of the great men who made possible the 

 " New Era in Chemistry." 



Edward C. Eranklin 



Bays of Positive Electricity and their Applica- 

 tion to Chemical Analysis. By Sir J. J. 

 Thomson. Longmans, Green & Co. 1913. 

 Pp. vi + 132. Price, $1.40. 

 The day of the monograph in physics is ap- 

 parently here, and it will be hailed with de- 

 light not only by physicists, but also by work- 

 ers in all of the neighboring sciences. Eor in 

 a period like the present in which new material 

 is appearing very rapidly, and in which the 

 " accumulation time " of new viewpoints is 

 extraordinarily short, it is of the utmost im- 

 portance that the results of recent research be 

 got as quickly as possible in some form which 

 is intermediate between the journal article, 

 with its inaccessibility and incompleteness, 

 and the general treatise with its rigidity and 

 inertia. Monographs of the sort which Long- 

 mans has announced, dealing with half a dozen 



of the more recently developed departments of 

 physics and written by men who have been 

 prominently identified with their development, 

 will appeal to a wide audience. 



And if the whole Longmans series is aa 

 good as the first number, the publishers, the 

 authors, the editors and the public may all 

 congratulate themselves. For Sir J. J. Thom- 

 son has done his very best work, so it seems to 

 the reviewer, on positive rays, and the present 

 monograph is a fascinatingly simple and 

 straightforward account of that work, intro- 

 duced by a discussion of the preceding work of 

 Goldstein and of Wien, and supplemented by 

 a chapter on the Doppler effect with positive 

 rays, discovered and investigated chiefly by 

 Stark and his pupils. If any one has had 

 doubt about the effectiveness of the positive- 

 ray method as a means of discovering the sorts 

 of atoms and molecules which constitute the 

 residual gases in discharge tubes, and the 

 values of the electrical charges carried by these 

 atoms and molecules, he should take enough 

 time to study carefully the five plates of actual 

 photographs contained in this book. The par- 

 abolas shown in these photographs are about 

 as convincing evidence as could be desired. 



E. A. MiLUKAN 



SPECIAL ARTICLES 



DESICCATION OF CERTAIN GREGARINE CYSTS 



In connection with other studies on the 

 cephaline gregarine Stylocephalus gig aniens 

 Ellis some data have been collected during the 

 past fall concerning the viability of the cysts 

 of this sporozoon and the effect of drjmess on 

 the formation of sporocysts. This gregarine 

 is a common parasite in the alimentary canal 

 of the Tenebrionid beetles of the genera Eleodes 

 and Asida, so abundant in the semi-arid plains 

 of eastern Colorado. 



The cysts of Stylocephalus giganteus are 

 subspherical, about 450 microns in diameter 

 and opaque white when first discharged from 

 the host. Unlike the cysts of many species 

 of gregarines, they are not provided with thick, 

 gelatinous envelopes, their walls on the con- 

 trary, are quite thin, the gelatinous envelope 



