SCIENCE. 



FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1887. 



COMMENT AND CRITICISM. 

 The authoeities of the Johns Hopkins universi- 

 ty have always held, and rightly, that the true uni- 

 versity must not only afford ample opportunities 

 for original research in library and in labora- 

 tory, but that it must also afford opportunity for 

 the publication of the re&ults of such research. 

 As a result of this policy, the publication of the 

 American journal of mathematics, the American 

 chemical journal, the American journal of philol- 

 ogy, the Studies from the biological laboratory, 

 and the Studies in historical and political science, 

 has been successively and successfully undertaken. 

 The announcement is now made that this formid- 

 able list is to be extended by the addition of an 

 American journal of psychology, under the editor- 

 ship of Prof. G. Stanley Hall. The journal is to 

 be published quarterly, and the first number wUl 

 appear at an early date. The scope of the journal 

 is to be as wide as that of psychology itself, 

 though we infer from the announcement, that the 

 major portion of the space will be devoted to the 

 results of investigation in psycho-physics, psycho- 

 genesis, and to the physiological side of mental 

 science in general. It is pui-posed also to repro- 

 duce entire valuable articles from other journals, 

 when they are not readily accessible in their origi- 

 nal form. The journal will, it seems to us, find a 

 field awaiting it ; for the Revue philosophique 

 and the Philosophische monatshefte, together with 

 their continental contemporaries, are hardly read 

 in this country at all ; and their columns seldom, 

 if ever, print an article by an American scholar. 

 Mind, to be sure, has been very generous of late 

 in its allotment of space to American authors, 

 but it has a very limited circulation in this 

 country. To appeal, first of all, to American 

 readers and students of mental science, and to 

 embody the latest results of American research, 

 should be the particular aims of the new journal. 



estry is now issued. A region like middle and 

 southern California, on the borderland between 

 sufficient and insuflScient rainfall, where irrigation 

 is essential to agriculture, must care for its 

 streams, and must therefore care for the forests 

 where they rise. By this it is not intended to 

 assert that forests exercise any control over the 

 amount of rainfall, and it is a satisfaction to see 

 that this popular fallacy receives no very direct 

 support in the report under consideration : but as 

 regulators of discharge by streams, the importance 

 of the relation between forests and rainfall cannot 

 be questioned ; and in a state like California, 

 where the forests are peculiarly limited to the 

 higher, rough, non-arable lands, whence the 

 streams flow down to the farms below, the pres- 

 ervation of a fair share of the trees is a prime 

 necessity. In the southern part of the state the 

 balance of conditions is so delicate, that the for- 

 ests merely survive, but have no recuperative 

 power. If destroyed, they do not spring up again, 

 but leave the surface barren. It is in such dis- 

 tricts that much damage has already been done, 

 not only in defacing the hill country, but in in- 

 creasing the irregularity of stream-flow. The 

 rain runs off from a bare hillside in a violent 

 flood, carrying soil and gravel with it, and leav- 

 ing no store of moisture in the ground to supply 

 springs in the dry season. The forestry board and 

 the school of forestry, inaugurated at Los Angeles 

 in the University of southern California, have 

 therefore a large work before them, that must be- 

 come of much value to the state. 



In California, if anywhere, forestry should 

 claim proper attention from the state ; and, ap- 

 parently on the principle of better late than never, 

 the first biennial report of the State board of for- 



No. 210 — 1887. 



In the Nineteenth century for January, Mr. 

 George J. Romanes replies to the critics of his 

 paper, read some time ago before the Linnaean 

 society, on ' Physiological selection, — an addi- 

 tional suggestion on the origin of species.' He 

 says that the first mistake his critics made, was in 

 treating his idea as a fully elaborated theory, in- 

 stead of, as was intended by Mr. Romanes, a mere 

 suggestion or working hypothesis. He quietly 

 adds that the study of his critics' arguments only 

 makes him think more highly of his suggestion. 

 Mr. Romanes' hypothesis of physiological selec- 

 tion sets out with an attempt to prove, that, con- 



