918 
A NATIONAL DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH. 
To THE EpiToR oF ScreNcE—In the ex- 
cellent article on ‘The Progress and Achieve- 
ments of Hygiene,’ in your issue for No- 
vember 26th, there is an error of omission 
which, whether intentional or not, should not 
be allowed to pass uncorrected in a journal so 
prominent as SCIENCE.’ 
On page 796 the writer says: ‘Since Con- 
gress has failed to act upon the President’s re- 
peated recommendation and the petitions of 
numerous medical societies for the creation of a 
National Health establishment, there is no good 
reason why the scope of duties and powers ex- 
ercised by the Marine Hospital Service should 
not be enlarged ;”’ making no allusion, what- 
ever, to the comprehensive bill recently drawn 
up by the American Medical Association, to be 
urged before the present session of Congress. 
The bill, as formulated, provides for an inde- 
pendent department, of which the Marine Hos- 
pital Service shall constitute, as it should, a 
subordinate bureau. 
The conservation of the public health, con- 
sidered even from a purely economical stand- 
point, is of national importance and should be 
relegated to no subordinate bureau with or 
without ‘an advisory board.’ To doso would 
be to postpone, perhaps for decades, the im- 
perative and rational step which should be 
taken now. 
The head of the new department ought to be 
made a cabinet adviser, but perhaps this may 
not be at present. Ifnecessary, the Constitution 
can and will in time be altered to give it addi- 
tional powers consonant with the requirements 
of modern sanitary science. To quote Dr. 
Girdner in the North American Review for the 
present month, what is needed is: ‘A unify- 
ing and supervising force in the national gov- 
ernment which will direct, harmonize and 
render efficient the agencies of the various 
States.’’ 
C. H. PRESTON. 
DAVENPORT, December 7, 1897. 
SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 
Habit and Instinct. By ©. Luoyp More@an. 
London, Edward Arnold. 1896. 8vo. Pp. 352. 
This is a work on comparative psychology 
SCIENCE. 
[N. S. Von. VI. No. 155, 
largely based on observations of bird life, and 
containing appropriate speculations concerning 
the origin and development of certain mental 
phenomena. The press work is excellent, the 
one illustration fair and the binding poor. 
In the preface Professor Morgan makes a 
gracious allusion to those whom he met during 
his lecture tour, and he shows throughout the 
entire book an appreciation of, and a remark- 
able familiarity with, the work of American 
biologists. This may be due to the fact that 
‘Habit and Instinct’ is the embodiment, in 
book form, of a series of lectures delivered in 
various university centers of the United States ; 
but one experiences an exhilarating sensation of 
novelty in reading a book on modern biological 
problems which is neither supported by the 
legs of Lord Morton’s mare nor infested with 
bob-tailed mice and epileptic guinea pigs. 
First, defining his use of such terms as habit, 
instinct, reflex action, connate and deferred ac- 
tivities, automatism, etc., he divides the animal 
activities into those which are inherited and 
those which areacquired. From the biological 
point of view, habits are acquired activities of 
the |individual, while instincts are congenital 
activities not characteristic of the individual 
alone, but of all the members of the group to 
which the individual belongs. 
The first third of the book is largely descrip- 
tive of the habits of young birds and mammals, 
the birds_in particular being selected from rep- 
resentative groups. The anecdotes are told in 
a most entertaining manner, but one fears that, 
as the embryologist drew many false conclu- 
sions from data supplied by the highly special- 
ized meroblastic egg of the hen, so the com- 
parative psychologist may be deceived by the 
data furnished by the highly specialized mental 
equipment of the bird. Though the observa- 
tions would doubtless prove less entertaining, 
it is in the lower rather than in the higher 
vertebrates that one would search for the more 
simple and less involved mental phenomena. 
The anecdotes are generally pertinent, but a 
half page of speculation as to how a pig would 
jump out of a chair is neither instructive nor ~ 
conclusive. 
Having arranged his data, Professor Morgan 
really begins his work in the sixth chapter, 
