October 2, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



485 



this capacity after ten years. Five years ago 

 there were nineteen men getting fifteen hun- 

 dred or less, this year only four. Then only 

 seventeen per cent, had more than three thou- 

 sand dollars and last year a little over fifty 

 per cent, were in this class. Five years ago 



the highest man had seven thousand dollars 

 and this time the highest was twelve thousand 

 with two tens. Five years ago the average was 

 $2,097 and this time $3,729, with the men at 

 present much more closely massed about the 

 average. 



The plat shows the lower line exactly as 

 published five years ago, and the upper line 

 shows the present distribution of incomes. 



Herbert Adolphus Miller 

 Oberlin College 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



The Constitution of Matter. By Joseph S. 



Ames. Houghton Mifflin Co., 1913. 8vo. 



Pp. x + 242. 



This volume represents the 1913 series of 

 lectures, six in number, given at Northwestern 

 University under the N. W. Harris foundation. 



The purpose of this foundation, as expressed 



by the donor, " is to stimulate scientific re- 

 search of the highest type, and to bring the 

 results of such research before students and 

 friends of Northwestern University and 

 through them to the world." It was therefore 

 necessary for Professor Ames, with the above 

 subject, to undertake the extremely diflBcult 

 task of presenting a true picture of the present 

 status of scientific thought upon the broadest 

 and the most fundamental, though the most 

 dimly discerned, of the fields of science, and 

 at the same time to do it in such a way as to 

 hold the attention of a general audience. 



That the lectures actually did command the 

 interest of physicist and layman alike will be 

 testified by all who heard them. Pobbed how- 

 ever of the compulsion of Professor Ames's 

 personality I suspect that the printed lectures 

 will make their greatest appeal to the scientist 

 rather than to that type of layman whose taste 

 dictates the popular science of Harpers, Scrib- 

 ners and the like. For a careful scientific anal- 

 ysis, such as Professor Ames gives, of the con- 

 cepts and phenomena which constitute the very 

 foundations of physics, even though divorced, 

 as it is here, from all attempt at mathematical 

 formulation, is something more than the diver- 

 sion of an idle hour. Indeed many a physicist 

 will ponder long over some of these chapters, 

 and read them more than once, and use them 

 continually for reference as he attempts to put 

 together the rapidly accumulating facts of 

 molecular, atomic and electronic physics into 

 a consistent theory of the constitution of 

 matter. 



There are few if any other men whose grasp 

 of both the facts and the theories of physics is 

 sufficiently comprehensive to enable them to 

 discuss with such freshness, thoroughness and 

 insight so many of the problems raised by 

 recent investigations. 



Perhaps the most charming feature of the 

 lectures is the clearness and frankness with 

 which Professor Ames reveals his own way 

 of thinking about the problems of atomic and 

 electronic physics and the definiteness of the 

 physical pictures which he calls to his aid. 

 There is no servile restatement of the most 

 striking features of some other physicist's 



