2l6 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XII. No. 300 



tributes an article on ' The Makers of New Italy,' and John Trow- 

 bridge writes on ' Economy in College-Work.' The issue of 



The Youth's Compaiiioti for November contains the article, written 

 expressly for that periodical by Mr. Gladstone, on ' The Future of 



the English-Speaking Races.' Outing for November contains, 



besides other notable features, the commencement of a series of arti- 

 cles on the ' Outdoor Life of the Presidents,' from the pen of John 

 P. Foley ; and the ' Progress of Athletism,' by Charles Turner. 



The November Century begins the thirty-seventh volume and 



nineteenth year of the magazine ; and the number is made notable 

 by the beginning of several new series, or magazine ' features.' 

 The most important of these is the first instalment of The Centiiry 

 • Gallery of Old Masters,' engraved by T. Cole, and described by 

 W. J. Stillman and by Mr. Cole himself. The engravings in this 

 series were made in the presence of the original pictures themselves. 

 They are actual copies, and unique in the history of art ; for such 

 careful copies have never before been made on wood. Another 

 series begun in November is Mr. Cable's ' Strange True Stories of 

 Louisiana.' After a preface by Mr. Cable himself, comes the ex- 

 traordinary story of ' The Young Aunt with White Hair,' from an 

 old French manuscript. Among the leading contributions to this 

 number are instalments of the ' Life of Lincoln ' and of George 

 Kennan's papers on the Siberian exile system. The guilds of the 

 ■city of London are described by Norman Moore. Other contri- 

 butions include ' Bird Music : The Loon,' by Simeon Pease Cheney ; 

 'Mammy's LIT Boy,' a negro dialect crooning song, by H. S. Ed- 

 wards, illustrated by E. W. Kemble ; ' Memoranda on the Civil 

 War ; ' Open Letters by George Kennan, Rev. T. T. Munger, 

 Richard Hoffman, and others ; etc. 



— Dr. John C. Branner, in the first volume of the Proceedings 

 of the Lackawanna Institute of History and Science, gives an in- 

 teresting sketch of the effects of glaciation in the Lackawanna- Wy- 

 oming region, his principal object being to attract special atten- 

 tion to a detailed study of these phenomena. He also publishes a 

 list of localities at which glacial stride have been observed in that 

 region, for the guidance of those who may take up the work where 

 he was obliged to leave it on being appointed director of the Geo- 

 logical Survey of Arkansas. 



— The Boylston medical prize of four hundred and fifty dollars has 

 been awarded by Harvard University to Dr. George H. F. Nuttall 

 of San Francisco, for a dissertation entitled ' A Contribution to the 

 Study of Immunity.' 



— The Journal of Econojnzcs for October opens with a paper 

 by James Bonar on the Austrian economists. Their principal work 

 has been on the theory of value, which they profess to present in 

 an entirely new light ; but Mr. Bonar shows that their view, though 

 expressed in new terms, is not so different from that of the English 

 writers as they seem to suppose. Their discussion of ' subjective 

 value ' is in his opinion their principal contribution to economics. 

 Another theoretical article is that by Stuart Wood on ' A New 

 View of the Theory of Wages.' The author starts with the fact 

 that in some employments a certain work can be done either by 

 labor or by capital ; and from this he deduces the law that in such 

 cases the price paid for a given amount of labor will be equal to 

 the interest on the capital that can be substituted for it. Then the 

 rates of interest and wages thus established will also prevail in all 

 other employments. According to this theory, wages depend on 

 interest ; but what interest itself depends on, the author neglects 

 to say. Professor Dunbar's paper on Alexander Hamilton shows 

 that in his sinking-fund scheme, and in establishing the Bank of 

 the United States, Hamilton followed English precedents, though 

 with some variations ; but that his plan for establishing the 

 national credit on a firm basis was so comprehensive and so suc- 

 cessful as to entitle him to rank as a great financial statesman. 

 The article on ' The Australian Tariff Experiment ' is a compara- 

 tive exhibit of the effects of free trade in New South Wales and of 

 protection in Victoria. The general outcome is to show that manu- 

 factures have prospered as well in the free trade colony as in the 

 protected one, while in commerce and in growth of population the 

 former has taken the lead. Wages are essentially the same in both ; 

 so that in this case, at least, protection has not raised wages. The 

 acts given in this paper have been published in different forms 



elsewhere ; but, in the present state of our own tariff question, this 

 new presentation of them will attract attention, and doubtless be 

 useful. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



*^^'^Correspondeitts are requested to be as brief as possible. The ■wriier^s name is 

 in all cases required as proo/ of good faith. 



Twenty copies o/ the number containing his communication -will be /urnished 

 free to any correspondent on request. 



The editor will be glad to publish any queries consonant with the character of 

 the journal. 



Dream Excitation. 



The direct influence of slight sense-stimuli upon the flow and 

 make-up of our dream consciousness is a well-known fact, which 

 can be proved by artificial experiment (see Maury, Le Sommeil et 

 les Reves, p. 132, etc.), but which it is difficult to confirm under 

 ordinary circumstances, since we seldom waken altera well-marked 

 dream experience in time to catch the stimulus, or without altering 

 the stimulus by movement, etc. On the night of Oct. 22 I had a 

 dream which perfectly fulfilled the conditions of this experiment. 

 I fell asleep about eleven o'clock, and found myself with a com- 

 panion in a wood, watching a number of wood-cutters at work. 

 After looking at them for some time, one of the workmen drew my 

 attention quite suddenly by .giving forth a strange sound, half mu- 

 sical and half speech, by which he seemed to be trying to express 

 something to his neighbor ; and the sound came with every blow 

 of his axe in regular rhythm. The sound seemed to me distinctly 

 familiar and yet very strange, and I turned to my friend and said, 

 " What an apology for conversation ! " Just as I spoke, I awoke, 

 and the sound of the peculiar tone of a clock down stairs striking 

 twelve broke in upon my consciousness. The four remaining 

 strokes of the clock preserved exactly the rhythm of the wood- 

 chopper's axe ; and not only so, but the sense of familiarity which 

 had puzzled me in the dream was relieved with a glow of pleasure 

 as I recognized the sound of the clock. 



This experience illustrates also the remarkable swiftness with 

 which new sensations are assimilated to the character of a previ- 

 ous dream consciousness. Before the clock began, the men were 

 simply cutting, without order or distinction. But when the sound 

 broke in, it was at once accommodated to the scene by important 

 modifications. One workman is singled out ; he begins to ply his 

 axe in the regular time of the clock-beats, and to give forth a sound 

 which preserves in its general character the peculiarities of the real 

 sound. Now, since I experienced in the dream no less than four 

 beats, as the rhythm was perfectly established and clear in my 

 consciousness, and there remained four beats after I awoke, this 

 whole accommodation must have taken place in the interval be- 

 tween the first and the fifth beat (for it was then twelve o'clock). 

 I have since measured the interval between the strokes of the clock, 

 and find it to be two seconds. The whole time from the first to 

 the fifth beat was therefore eight seconds. From this should be 

 taken the time occupied by the dozed state between dreaming and 

 waking, — say, at least one interval of from two to four seconds. 

 There remains a period of four to six seconds as the time of ac- 

 commodation. This may be called, in a very rough way, the re- 

 action time for a complex case of constructive imagination ; for the 

 constructive imagination is nothmg more than the free play of im- 

 ages in forms of ideal composition, due to the influx of additions 

 from the sensorium. There is no direct way of measuring this 

 time in the waking state, since the attention interferes with the pro- 

 cess. Mark Baldwin. 



Lake Forest, 111., Oct. 23. 



Chemical Action betvsreen Solids. 

 Apropos of Messrs. Spring and Hallock's controversy {^Science, 

 xii. p. 184), I think that the re-actions between silica and the me- 

 tallic oxides at temperatures far below the melting-point, not only 

 of both components but even of the silicate itself, have generally 

 been regarded as occurring directly between solids. When cer- 

 tain mixtures of lime and silica are strongly heated, though there 

 be not the slightest indication of fusion, yet some chemical action 

 seems to occur, for the silica now separates in the gelatinous state 

 when acted on by hydrochloric acid (Percy, Fuel, p. 46, 1875). 



Henry M. Howe. 



Boston, Oct, 28. 



