February 5, 1892.] 



SCIENCE. 



town in England which at one time had a great reputation for 

 locomotive building. It is Stourbridge. The locomotive which 

 M. H. correctly states was operated at Honesdale over a half-cen- 

 tury ago, was made there. From this fact it was called the 

 Stourbridge Lion, not " Stonebride," as your correspondent has it. 

 This name and the reason for it are very familiar in Scranton, 

 whence I write, but as a clincher, I may say that I recently con- 

 versed on ihe subject with a lady who enjoyed the acquaintance 

 of Mr. Allen, the engineer of the locomotive in question, and 

 from her I once more learned the facts here narrated. 



Stanley j\l. Ward. 



Scranton, Pa., Jan. 36. 



papers, and strive to have as many as possible read and discussed 

 in Section F, the balance of shorter ones to be considered as best 

 they may at the clubs. As a section of botany is asked for, let 

 the botanists in particular show, by their works, their faith in the 

 raasonableness of the demand. 



Byron D. Halsted. 



Rutgers College, Jan 25. 



A Section of Botany in the American Association.' 



The thought of having a section for the botanists in the Ameri- 

 can Association should be very inspiring to all who have at heart 

 the thorough study of plant life in America. All admit that Sec- 

 tion F is now crowded with members and papers, and doubtless 

 many are deterred from taking part in the sessions from lack of 

 opportunity. At the last meeting numerous papers were passed 

 ■without comment or discussion that the programme might be car- 

 ried out. 



The work of the section has naturally divided itself into two 

 groups, namely, that pertaining to animal life, and to botany. 

 In order to gain more time and draw together more closely those 

 who are interested in particular branches, clubs have been formed. 

 Thus the entomological and botanical clubs have arisen and grown 

 into features of the week of as much importance as the section 

 and more perhaps to the younger members. These clubs should, 

 and doub less will, be continued. In the section itself for years 

 there has been an attempt on the part of the programme commit- 

 tee to group the subjects so that zoologists and entomologists have 

 had a half-day assigned tbem, alternately with the botanists. 

 This has virtually broken up the continuous attendance of mem- 

 bers upon the sectional meetings, and excursions or other events are 

 indulged in by the party not upon the programme. Perhaps to 

 our shame, this has been particularly true of the botanists, who 

 have sometimes left the zoologists with a depleted but more ho- 

 mogeneous and attentive audience. Also within the past few 

 years the plan of having time assigned for a series of connected 

 papers upon one or more of the branches of science coming under 

 the present scope of the section has still further differentiated the 

 work. As Section F now stands its sessions are largely an alter- 

 nation of groups of subjects with an audience that shifts with the 

 programme. 



A notice of an amendment to divide Section F is therefore well 

 founded; the division is very natural and one that, in fact, has 

 already been made, so far as arranging the programme by group- 

 ing the subjects and by the work of the clubs will permit it. In 

 short, it has gone as far as it can save by a division of the section 

 itself. 



The contemplated division will bring many gains without cor- 

 sponding losses. Time will then be offered for thorough sectional 

 work upon the two large and growing fields of biological science, 

 instead of the rapid reading of papers, as at present, followed by 

 little or no discussion before a half-interested audience. 



With a Section of Botany, for example, officers can be selected 

 w^ho will be interested iu all subjects presented, a condition that 

 does not always obtain under the present arrangement, to say 

 nothing about the difficulty that may now arise as to the proper 

 apportionment of the official plums among the aspirants for hon- 

 ors. 



If we believe in the principle of division of labor and speciali- 

 zation, in short, in the theory of evolution in its broad and best 

 sense, we cannot but feel that the proposed step is in the direc- 

 tion of advance, and realize that the last few meetings of Section 

 F indicate clearly that the time to take the step forward is at 

 band. 



The best way to make the importance of a division still more 

 emphatic is for every student of the biological sciences to come, if 

 possible, to the Rochester meeting with a large number of full 



J Tils letter al30 appeared in the Botanical Gazette. 



AMONG THE PUBLISHERS. 



The Regent Street Polytechnic Institute of London proposes 

 to bring over a thousand or more of its young clerks, mechanics, 

 and apprentices to visit the Chicago Exposition; and its secretary, 

 Mr. Robert Mitchell, is about to arrive at New York on his way 

 to Chicago, for the purpose of making transportation and other 

 advance arrangements. Steamship arrangements have already 

 been made. Mr. Albert Shavv, American editor of the Review of 

 Reviews, describes in an illustrated article in the February number 

 " The Polytechnic and its Chicago Excursion." 



— In the February number of Babyhood Dr. William H. Flint 

 discusses the dislikes of children to certain articles of food and the 

 means of overcoming such antipathies. Of equal value to mothers 

 is an article on " Colic," by Dr. C. L. Dodge, in which the causes, 

 symptoms, and treatment of that common ailment are clearly 

 described. " Ought Obedience to be Enforced ? " " The Tyranny 

 of Whims," "Talking about Children in their Hearing," etc., are 

 some of the other topics discussed. The medical editor furnishes 

 advice concerning such " Nursery Problems" as the voracious ap- 

 petite often seen in children, the desirableness of giving fruit to 

 infants, the treatment of eczema, etc. 



— Claus Spreckels, the millionaire sugar manufacturer, whose 

 plantations are in the Sandwich Islands, has written to Mrs. Helen. 

 Mather that he has carefully read her book, "One Summer in 

 Hawaii " (Cassell Publishing Company), and that he " commends 

 it to the earnest attention and study of all such as are desirous of 

 obtaining a knowledge of the beauties of that comparatively un- 

 known and still less appreciated Paradise of the Pacific." 



— The Cassell Publishing Company will publish in February 

 "Across Thibet," by Gabriel Bonvalot, author of "Through the 

 Heart of Asia," with upward of one hundred illustrations, made 

 principally from photographs taken by Prince Henry of Orleans. 

 Of this book the London Times says: " M. Gabriel Bonvalot has 

 already achieved a high reputation as a central Asian explorer. 

 'Across Thibet' is thus recommended alike by the character and 

 literary skill of the explorer aud by the interest and novelty of 

 the regions explored by him. The journey here described was 

 undertaken in the company of Prince Henry of Orleans, son of the 

 Duke de Chartres, and of Father Dedeken, a Belgian missionary, 

 with a rare taste and aptitude for adventurous travel and a keen 

 appetite for sport, and it tried to the utmost the endurance and 

 the enterprise of all three. The copious illustrations due to Prince 

 Henry's camera are full of interest and the translation is excel- 

 lently done." 



— There has just appeared in the "Johns Hopkins University 

 Studies in Historical and Political Science " a pamphlet by Paul 

 E. Lauer on " Church and State in New England." Beginning 

 with the Reformation in England, the author traces the move- 

 ment of thought on the relations of church and state, first among 

 the Puritans of England and then among their descendants in the 

 New World; and shows how the new ideas of religious freedom 

 expressed themselves in political action, ending with the complete 

 secularization of the state in the present century. The main 

 principles involved and the mode of their application are well 

 shown, and the narrative, though desti iite of imaginative insight, 

 is straightforward and clear. Unfortunately for Mr. Lauer, how- 

 ever, it is all a threshing of old straw. The story he relates has 

 been told so often and so well that this pamphlet is more likely to 

 weary than to interest the reader. Moreover, it is impossible to 

 treat satisfactorily of the relations of church and state in any na- 

 tion apart from the genei-al religious and political history of the 

 time, so that Mr. Lauer's work is incomplete and fragmentary. 



