Apeil 13, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



587 



Values,' Mrs. Caroline A. Creevy tells of tar, 

 camphor, mauna, opium and some perfumes. 

 In the supplement devoted to the ' Families of 

 Flowering Plants,' Charles Louis Pollard dis- 

 cusses the orders Pandanales, Helobise and 

 Triuridales. 



The Mathematical Gazette, the organ of the 

 English Mathematical Association, will in future 

 be issued six, instead of three times a year. 

 The Gazette will contain articles suggestive of 

 improvements in methods of teaching, or cover- 

 ing ground not satisfactorily treated in text- 

 books, reviews of mathematical books, together 

 with shorter notices of new, text-books, ele- 

 mentary mathematical notes, problems, and 

 other matter of direct interest to mathematical 

 teachers. 



Erythea, the Italian botanical journal, will be 

 discontinued at the close of the present volume. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADE3IIES. 

 SECTION OF ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY. 



The annual meeting was held on the evening 

 of Monday, March 26th. Professor J. McK. 

 Cattell was elected Chairman for the ensuing 

 year. The Secretary of last year was continued 

 in office. 



Dr. A. L. Jones read a paper on ' The Sym- 

 bolic Character of Geometrical Formg as a 

 Principle of Explanation. ' Among the attempts 

 to explain formal beauty, that of Lipps in his 

 ' Raumasthetik ' is the most striking. He main- 

 tains that the testhetical value of beautiful 

 geometrical forms is due to the fact that they 

 symbolize the activity of mechanical forces 

 working themselves out freely ; that we sympa- 

 thize with the forces thus , represented and re- 

 ceive pleasure when their action is unhindered ; 

 that the forces and laws of their action are not 

 consciously recognized, but are merely felt or 

 known unconsciously. His explanation involves 

 some questionable metaphysics. The action of 

 mechanical forces is no doubt au important ele- 

 ment in many beautiful objects, but it remains 

 to be proved that it is sufficient to explain all 

 formal beauty in objects. 



Dr. R. S. Woodworth presented a paper on 

 'The Fatigue of Voluntary Movement.' The 

 fatigue of movement may be studied in refer- 



ence to the loss in force, in accuracy, or in 

 speed. In each of these respects experiments 

 show that a movement may be continually re- 

 peated for hundreds and even thousands of 

 times with only a comparatively slight loss of 

 efficiency. The ergographic curve given by 

 Mosso for force of movement is to be absolutely 

 abandoned as a true picture of the curve of 

 fatigue. This fact has been of late recognized 

 in some able articles by Treves, working in 

 Mosso's own laboratory ; but it is best brought 

 out by the use of Cattell's spring ergograph. 

 One of the great causes of fatigue in force (and 

 also in speed) of movement is the failure of the 

 muscles to relax completely between successive 

 contractions. If care is taken to secure this 

 relaxation, 1000-1500 maximal ergographic 

 contractions can be made with a loss of only 10 

 per cent, of the initial force. From the slow- 

 ness of fatigue of various modes of voluntary 

 movement, the inference follows that the fatigue 

 of nerve centers is not rapid, as Mosso and 

 Lombard have supposed, but slow in progress. 

 This view is confirmed by tests of prolonged, 

 hard and monotonous work of a mental kind. 

 The quick and overmastering fatigue of com- 

 mon experience is not so much actual inability 

 and loss of function as it is disinclination, re- 

 sulting from disagreeable sensations and emo- 

 tions and from impulses to change. 



The third paper, given by Dr. Thorndike, 

 was on 'Weber's Law in Judgments of Com- 

 parison with a Mental Standard.' This paper 

 presented the results of some experiments 

 on the accuracy of discriminations of weight, 

 length and area, by subjects who judged by the 

 aid of mental standards only. Within the 

 limits chosen (40-120 gr., J-12 ins., 20-60 sq. 

 cm., and 2-12 sq. ins.) the accuracy of discrim- 

 ination was found to decrease very slowly, very 

 much more slowly than Weber's law or even 

 the law of the combination of errors would 

 allow. The theory proposed to account for this 

 was that our judgments of amount or of differ- 

 ence are of complex origin, and may be made 

 on various grounds. In so far as the ground 

 is an accurate mental standard the sensations 

 corresponding to large amounts may be asso- 

 ciated with the proper judgment nearly or quite 

 as readily as small amounts. In so far as the 



