Septembeb llj 1914] 



SCIENCE 



383 



A Grammar of English Heraldry. By W. H. 



St. John Hope. 



One great merit of these books is that they 

 frequently call attention to neglected subjects, 

 or cut familiar subjects at unfamiliar angles. 

 Thus they should be instrumental in releasing 

 us from the tyranny of the conventional text- 

 book. We ought to have a similar series in 

 America, dealing with subjects of special in- 

 terest to us, and using American examples in 

 illustration. T. D. A. Cockeeell 



University of Colorado 



The American College: What it is and What 



it may Become. By Charles F. Thwing. 



New York, Piatt & Peck Co. 1914. 



President Thwing's " The American Col- 

 lege " is a handsome book of 294 pages. Per- 

 haps because the author had already published 

 sixteen volumes in the same general field, the 

 seventeenth gives the reader the impression 

 of being thin in some spots and padded in 

 others. The author must have either an ex- 

 traordinary memory or an excellent biblio- 

 graphical card index on academic subjects. 

 At any rate, the quotations scattered through 

 his book, if a little too numerous, are un- 

 tackneyed and interesting. His academic 

 experience has been great and his sympathies 

 are keen. There is little or nothing in the 

 book with which one would disagree, and some 

 of the sections are particularly good, as, for ex- 

 ample, the discussion of woman's education 

 and the frank confession of our present igno- 

 rance as to the differences between men's minds 

 and women's. The book, as a whole, however, 

 suffers from a lack of definite " attack " on the 

 part of the author. It seems addressed to no- 

 body in particular — or rather to different peo- 

 ple at different times, students, parents, trus- 

 tees, millionaires. 



Possibly these matters have been discussed 

 in some of the other books by the president of 

 Western Reserve University, but so far as the 

 present volume is concerned there is no men- 

 tion of what seems to the reviewer to be really 

 the most significant thing to-day — the rapid 

 differentiation throughout the United States 

 of the colleges that mean business from those 

 that do not. There seems to be insufficient 



emphasis, also, on the need of developing a 

 sense of individual responsibility on the part 

 of the student, and on that most acute prob- 

 lem which faces every live college, that of dis- 

 tributing the new wine of the present vintage 

 of thought with as little damage as possible to 

 the bottles provided by the previous genera- 

 tion. P. P. Keppel 



SCIENTIFIC JOUBNALS AND ARTICLES 

 The contents of the September Terrestrial 

 Magnetism and Atmospheric Electricity are 

 as follows : " The Local Magnetic Constant 

 and Its Variations," by L. A. Bauer; "Mag- 

 netic Declinations and Chart Corrections 

 Observed on the Carnegie from Long Island 

 Sound to Hammerfest, jtSTorway, June to July, 

 1913," by L. A. Bauer and J. P. Ault; "The 

 Atmospheric-Electric Observations made on 

 the Second Cruise of the Carnegie" by C. W. 

 Hewlett ; " On Certain New Atmospheric- 

 Electric Instruments and Methods," by W. E. 

 G. Swann; Letters to Editor, Notes and 

 Recent Publications. 



SPECIAL ARTICLES 



THE MEASUREMENT OF CHANGES IN THE RATE OF 

 FECUNDITY OF THE ESfDrVriDUAL FOWL ^ 



1. The purpose of this preliminary note is 

 to call attention to a method of measuring and 

 representing graphically changes in the in- 

 tensity of ovarian activity, as indicated by 

 rate of ovulation in the domestic fowl. It 

 has been fully established^ that if one con- 

 siders the egg production records from a 

 group or flock of hens as a whole there are 

 observable regular and distinct cycles in the 

 production. Thus, we have distinguished in 

 former publications between winter, spring and 

 summer cycles of flock production. It has not 

 hitherto been possible to observe precisely or 

 to measure any such cyclical changes (either 



1 Papers from the Biological Laboratory of the 

 Maine Agricultural Experiment Station, No. 70. 



2C/. Pearl, R., and Surface, F. M., "A Bio- 

 metrieal Egg Production iu the Domestic Fowl." 

 II. Seasonal Distribution of Egg Production. 

 U. 8. Dept. Agr. Bur. Anim. Ind. Bulletin 110, 

 Part II., pp. 81-170, 1911. 



