July 32, 1898.] 



SCIEIWK 



111 



poses in the immediate future are not very- 

 bright. ' ' 



In a postscript to the Review the author gives 

 the literature down to March, 1898, which in- 

 cludes no less than eight books on the subject 

 published in Europe. 



It is unfortunate that Mr. Matthews uni- 

 formly omits initials of authors' names, for 

 Berzelius, Wohler and Moissan this is well 

 enough, but we notice the names of Brown, 

 Clarke and Jones, who certainly need initials. 

 However, the Review is a welcome addition to 

 chemical bibliography. 



H. C. B. 



Broiuji Men and Women, or the South Sea Islands 



in 1895 and 1896. By Edward Reeves. 



London, Swan, Sonneuschein & Co. 1898. 



With sixty illustrations and a map. Pp 294. 



The author of this account was born in New 

 Zealand, and from early days was acquainted 

 with the peoples of the Pacific island-world. 

 In 1895-6 he made two voyages to several of 

 its archipelagoes, the Friendly Islands, the 

 Samoan, Fijian, Society and Cook groups, jot- 

 ting down his observations and clicking his 

 camera as occasion offered. His attention was 

 especially attracted by the social condition and 

 prospects of the native population. This he 

 claims to depict with more accuracy and a bet- 

 ter knowledge than most previous writers. 



The result may be briefly stated. He considers 

 that they would be far better off if European 

 civilization, and especially the Christian relig- 

 ion, were not forced upon them. His particular 

 antipathy is the missionary. That wandering 

 worthy he regards as the evil genius of Poly- 

 nesia, and he repeatedly urges that subscrip- 

 tions to ' foreign missions ' should be stopped 

 once for all. There is little of interest in the 

 ethnographic observations, although the author 

 must have had good opportunities. 



D. G. Beinton. 



Memory and its Cultivation. By F. W. Edeidge- 

 Geeen. New York, D. Appleton & Co. 

 1897. Pp. 307. 



The author of this book says in his preface : 

 "After discovering the facts which led me to 

 write on the subject of memory, I found that 



I could learn a subject in about a fifth of the 

 time that it previously took me." As he could 

 have done it so easily, it is a pity that he did 

 not learn something about psychology and 

 physiology before attempting to write on these 

 subjects. It is scarcely necessary for the scien- 

 tific reader to go further than the frontispiece 

 to understand the character of the book. This 

 is a queer looking section of the brain, showing 

 the ' center of sensory memory ' and the ' cen- 

 ter of motor memory ' in the basal ganglia con- 

 nected with the ' seat of the faculties of the 

 mind ' in the cortex. Further on we are told 

 that there are thirty-seven of these faculties. 

 Parental love is a faculty, but not conjugality, 

 because ' conjugality is not likely to influence 

 a man who hates his wife.' The book contains 

 the stock anecdotes and mnemonic devices that 

 may be picked up from desultory reading, and 

 the author would doubtless pass for a man of 

 wide information and agreeable parts in ordi- 

 nary society. But it is a mystery why such a 

 book should be published, as the last volume of 

 the ' International Scientific Series' — a series 

 which has maintained such a high standard and 

 includes so many important scientific works. 

 J. McKeen Cattell. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



academy of natural sciences, PHILADEL- 

 PHIA, JULY 5, 1898. 



Me. Benjamin Smith Lyman referred to the 

 belief that chlorophyl required light for its pro- 

 duction and exhibited an onion which in the 

 course of seven months, without special nour- 

 ishment, had grown long, green shoots in a 

 dark closet. A potato in the same closet had 

 sent out sprouts, but they contained no chloro- 

 phyl. 



Peofessoe Heney a. Pilsbey communi- 

 cated the results of his recent study of the mol- 

 luscan group Aplacophora, dwelling specially 

 on the characters distinguishing it from the 

 gastropods. The former were first believed to 

 be worms, but the discovery of a radula in the 

 gullet and of a nervous system like that of the 

 Chitons places them among the mollusks. 

 They have a straight allimentary canal, while in 

 the Chitons it is twisted and coiled. Although 



