456 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 351. 



lish the proposition that all discord is wholly in- 

 dependent of beats. Whether it be due wholly 

 or partly to beats or to something else quite 

 unknown as yet, Mayer's curve is sufficient to 

 disprove the statement that the maximum of 

 discord is due to always the same number of 

 beats, whatever may be the pitch. 



It was not my intention to publish any de- 

 tailed criticism of the point to which I took 

 exception in my review of the book of physics 

 under examination. But Mr. Meyer will, prob- 

 ably agree with me in objecting to the following 

 sentences, which may now be quoted: "One 

 cause of discord is the presence of beats between 

 the two notes, and the greatest discord results 

 when the beats are about 32 per second. If the 

 number of beats is fewer than 10 per second, 

 they are not agreeable, but do not produce dis- 

 cord. Discord is caused by sounding together 

 notes that give more than 10 and less than 70 

 beats per second." Whatever may be the 

 cause of discord now agreed upon among psy- 

 chologists, Mayer's law comes nearer to being 

 a statement of the truth than the sentences 

 just quoted. The author is creditably cautious 

 in assigning the presence of beats as ' one 

 cause.' Presumably it may not be the only 

 cause. But his quantitative statements war- 

 ranted my criticism that he had " defined ' dis- 

 cord ' more sharply than the facts warrant by 

 failure to recognize Mayer's law." 



If Mr. Meyer will criticise the quoted sen- 

 tences from the standpoint of the psychologist 

 he will doubtless confer a favor upon physicists 

 who have not kept up with recent 'advances in 

 psychology. 



W. Le Conte Stevens. 



"Washington and Lee University, 

 August 31, 1901. 



MAGAZINE entomology. 



It has been the habit to charge newspapers 

 with the dissemination of scientific misinforma- 

 tion, and undoubtedly with considerable justice. 

 But they are not the sole sinners. In the Sep- 

 tember number of McClure's Magazine there is 

 a paper entitled ' Next to the Ground ; Stories 

 and Scenes of Farm Life,' by Martha McCul- 

 loch Williams. The amount of misinformation 

 it conveys cannot be equalled by any bit of 



newspaper writing, and for ignorance on the 

 part of the author it is certainly entitled to 

 the palm. First, we have information about 

 the dragon fly, and the superstition concerning 

 snakes that is connected with it ; that is all 

 right ; but we are immediately afterward' in- 

 formed that it begins its early life as a fat white 

 grub, variously known as Hellgrammite, dob- 

 son, etc. Now, in the first place, the hellgram- 

 mite is neither white, nor fat, nor is it a grub ; 

 and in the second place, it has absolutely no 

 connection with the dragon fly. 



From any elementary work on entomology, 

 national or foreign, the writer could have ob- 

 tained an accurate life history of the dragon fly, 

 and also information as to the adult stages of 

 the hellgrammite. She may have seen a dragon 

 fly ; she certainly never saw a hellgrammite to 

 know it. Then we learn something about the 

 locusts, and most interesting, we are told that 

 the eggs are laid in the pith of dying twigs. 

 So much has been written about these insects 

 that it does seem as if the authoress might have 

 known better than to make an assertion of this 

 kind. Pithy stems are rarely used by locusts, 

 if at all, and dying twigs are never attacked. 

 The eggs are always laid in growing shoots, 

 and in the wood itself. I wonder where she 

 saw the black beetles or ' Betty bugs ' that 

 were three inches long? She speaks of them 

 as ' Scarabs,' and the largest of these, occurring 

 in the United States entitled to that name, are 

 not more than one inch in length. 



More marvelous than anything else is the de- 

 scription of the change from the tumble bug, 

 black and loutish, into a 'June bug,' green all 

 over, with copper yellow tints on the legs, etc. 

 Where in the world this information came from, 

 if it was not the product of overstrained imagi- 

 nation, seems incomprehensible. In fact, read- 

 ing the entire paper, which covers eight pages, 

 there is more dense ignorance and absolute mis- 

 information crowded into it than I have seen 

 anywhere on a similar subject within the last de- 

 cade. And what there was in it anywhere, to 

 recommend to the editor its publication, seems 

 almost beyond finding out. There has been of 

 late years a great revival of interest in natural 

 history. We have had many useful and accu- 

 rate books, including the topics on which Martha 



