“DECEMBER 31, 1897.] 
them to a hearing, they generally begin 
with some, to them, trifling performance, 
such as upsetting the law of gravitation or 
disproving the rotundity of the earth. 
Such work ought to be harmless, but unfor- 
A monthly 
journal published at the seat of one of our 
tunately it is not always so. 
largest universities, not bearing the imprint 
of the university, however, devotes a large 
proportion of its space to the exploitation 
of the belief that the surface of the earth is 
concave and not convex, presenting in evi- 
dence experimental details and results 
which, if true, would be startling. Such 
publications as this demand and receive no 
further attention than the occasional filing 
away of a copy as a curiosity. Neverthe- 
less, it calls itself a Scientific Monthly and 
‘the greatest scientific paper in America.’ 
Occasionally books, more dignified in 
character and appearance but equally un- 
sound in doctrine, are issued, with the im- 
print of publishers of established reputation, 
and which seem, therefore, to require more 
serious consideration. Of this class, is a re- 
cent volume bearing the not inappropriate 
title ‘Some Unrecognized Laws of Nature,’ 
the authors being Ignatius Linger and 
Lewis H. Berens. It isa large, handsomely 
gotten-up octavo of over five hundred pages 
and its substitute is‘ An Inquiry into the 
Causes of Physical Phenomena with Special 
Reference to Gravitation.’ The largeness 
of the subject makes the reader a bit sus- 
picious to start with, and this feeling is con- 
siderably enhanced by the first sentence in 
the preface, which is as follows: ‘“ At last, 
after years of patient plodding in dim 
regions, where the footprints are few and the 
SCIENCE. 
Ol 
pitfalls many, the time has arrived when 
we are enabled to place before the world of 
science the first fruits of our exploration.” 
A book with such a beginning means either 
a great deal or nothing at all, and in the 
present instance a brief examination of its 
contents suffices to show that the only mes- 
sage which it brings is the too common one 
of well-meaning men attempting to explain 
what they do not themselves understand 
and to overturn well-established principles 
of a science of which they appear to be 
quite ignorant, by the use of arguments 
and data the soundness of which they are 
utterly incapable of judging. It is really a 
rather ostentatious attempt to explain the 
fundamentals of physical science by men 
who seem to lack all training in methods 
of physical research ; who show gross igno- 
rance of the latest results of physical investi- 
gation, and who are, therefore, totally unfit 
for the task which they have undertaken. 
A few citations and examples of their 
methods and conclusions will furnish suffi- 
cient defense for this statement. 
They declare that the four great funda- 
mental and universal laws of matter are 
“ persistence, resistance, reciprocity and equaliza- 
tion, each one of which,’ they say, ‘can be 
seen at work in every single phenomenon 
within ourreach.’ Their attack upon the 
Newtonian law of gravitation consists of 
the assertion that attraction is not propor- 
tional to mass, and this side by side with 
the equally emphasized assertion that the 
term ‘mass’ conveys no distinct idea and 
that we have really no notion of what it 
means. This, of course, is mere play, and 
would be unworthy of comment if it were 
