October 8, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



499 



" Thoughts on the Application of the Prin- 

 ciples of ' ISTatural Selection ' and ' Inher- 

 itance ' to Political Society " did not partic- 

 ularly stress the importance of the biological 

 terms he at times employed. Although in one 

 passage Bagehot refers to natural selection 

 among animals and in human history as " iden- 

 tical in essence," he nevertheless in the very 

 next paragraph remarks concerning his use of 

 the term : " At all events to the sort of applica- 

 tion here made of it [i. e., in ' Physics and 

 Polities'], which only amounts to searching 

 out and follovcing up an analogy suggested by 

 it, there is plainly no objection." Bagehot 

 points out, as does Keller, the fact that differ- 

 ences in customs affect the eiEciency of rival 

 groups and may thereby indirectly affect the 

 chances of survival possessed by their ob- 

 servers. Bagehot went on, as does Keller also, 

 to treat in a very broad way the relation of 

 custom, of unconscious imitation, of reason 

 and of many other factors to the survival and 

 progress of groups and nations. Bagehot did 

 this, however, without at all falling into the 

 confusion necessarily produced by ignoring or 

 rather obliterating by a tour de force the plain 

 distinction between natural selection in the 

 strict Darwinian sense and the same term 

 loosely used for natural conscious or uncon- 

 scious social choices. Transference of biolog- 

 ical terms into the sociological field and use of 

 them in the literal fashion employed by Pro- 

 fessor Keller does not offend so seriously in 

 " reasoning by analogy " as it does in what 

 seems to the reviewer a misleading and scien- 

 tifically illegitimate use of precise biological 

 terms. There is no need to repeat in a some- 

 what different form the sort of thing which 

 followed Spencer's application of the term 

 organism to society. 



The foregoing criticism, however, is very 

 largely one of terminology and the careful 

 reader will find much of great value in Pro- 

 fessor Keller's book. The differences among 

 customs, the ways in which various customs 

 have originated, the effects of conscious and 

 unconscious imitation, the relation of sugges- 

 tion, of conflict and of reason to the develop- 

 ment of specific customs — ^these and other spe- 



cial subjects are presented and illustrated in 

 an interesting fashion. 



A. A. Tenney 



PROCEEDINGS OF TSE NATIONAL ACAD- 

 EMY OF SCIENCES 



The ninth number of Volume 1 of the Pro- 

 ceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 

 contains the following articles: 



1. The Indian and Nature: Alice 0. Fletcher, 

 Peabody Museum, Harvard University. 

 Glimpses are given of the line the Indian 



pursues in his endeavor to express his view of 

 nature and of the relation he believes to exist 

 between its various forms and forces and him- 

 self. 



2. The Mechanism of Antagonistic Salt Ac- 

 tion: Jacques Loeb, Eockefellet Institute 

 for Medical Research, New York. 



The author studies the effect of the concen- 

 tration Cm of the salt at the external surface 

 of membranes in addition to the concentra- 

 tions Ci and Cii of the salt outside and inside 

 the membrane and finds that Cm is service- 

 able in explaining the mechanism of antagon- 

 istic salt action in certain cases. 



3. The Nitrogen Prohlem in Arid Soils : Chas. 

 B. LiPMAN, College of Agriculture, Univer- 

 sity of California. 



A summary of some recent investigations 

 and field manifestations with reference to 

 their bearing on problems of soil fertility in 

 California. 



4. A Notation for Use in the Discussion of 

 Star Colors: Feedeeick H. Seares, Mount 

 Wilson Solar Observatory, Carnegie Institu- 

 tion of Washington. 



The extension of absolute scales of photo- 

 graphic and photovisual magnitudes to the 

 fainter stars provides a method of determin- 

 ing the colors of objects at present beyond the 

 reach of spectroscopic investigation and it is 

 convenient in the statistical discussion of 

 such color results to introduce a notation 

 similar to that used for spectral classification. 

 The letters h, a, f, g, etc., are used to corre- 

 spond to B, A, F, 0, etc. 



