622 



sciuJsrcE, 



[Vol. IX., No. 229 



MILLER'S ESSENTIALS OF PERSPECTIVE. 



In 'Essentials of perspective' Prof. L. W. Mil- 

 ler sets forth in a very attractive manner the prin- 

 ciples of this study of representation which has 

 grown to be such a bugbear among artists and 

 draughtsmen. 



In his method of treatment, the author has 

 achieved considerable success ; for, while point- 

 ing out and emphasizing all right principles, he 

 has presented the subject in a purely objective 

 manner, which renders it exceedingly agreeable 

 to the student. 



Recognizing Professor Ware of Columbia as a 

 teacher, Professor Miller endeavors to present as 

 much science as the artist ever has occasion to 

 use ; and, steering clear of technical treatment 

 and purely theoretical discussion, leading prin- 

 ciples are successively developed by the aid of 

 cases of direct application to practical work. 



The value of this method is agreeably shown in 

 the chapter on horizons, .where the subject is 

 efficiently covered without reference to the geo- 

 metrical analysis usually involved. 



That portion devoted to curvilinear perspective 

 is particularly interesting, from the graphic man- 

 ner in which the bearings of this somewhat ob- 

 scure branch are brought out. 



The book will find its most valuable place with 

 artists and architectural draughtsmen, and should 

 do much to rescue the study of perspective from 

 the neglect into which it has fallen. 



LA TERRE DES MERVEILLES. 



Our western surveys have been the opportunity 

 of numerous writers abroad. Foreign travellers 

 are very susceptible to the attractions of oiu- 

 exceptional wonders, and devote themselves to 

 Niagara, the Yosemite, the Yellowstone park, 

 and the Colorado Canon, much after the fashion 

 of historians who write chiefly about kings and 

 battles, and say little about the common people in 

 the dull times of peace and prosperity. But it 

 is still proper enough that great kings and decisive 

 battles, or curious regions where nature has done, 

 or, better yet, is still doing, her most wonderful 

 and peculiar work, should take the most of our 

 attention. This must be so as long as the diamond 

 is prized as a gem. Mr. Leclercq, president of the 

 Royal geographical society of Belgium, is there- 

 fore fully warranted in dividing the account of 

 his travels in this country into three volumes ; one 

 telling of the trip from the Atlantic to the Rocky 



Essentials of perspective. By L. W. Millek. New York, 

 Scribner. 12°. 



La terre des merveilles. Par Jules Leclekcq. Paris, 

 Hachette. 8°. 



Mountains, another given to an overland journey 

 to Mexico, and a third devoted to the Yellowstone 

 national park. The last is very neatly done. It 

 is intelHgently written, without undue excite- 

 ment or exaggeration : it is well illustrated by 

 good woodcuts drawn from photographs, and not 

 from the imagination of the usual Parisian artist, 

 who has so often given free rendering to his 

 home-made conceptions of foreign lands. We 

 should be fortunate if all travellers' stories were 

 as well told. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



[Continued from p 616.] 

 Instinct in the cockroach. 

 I WISH to bring before the notice of your readers 

 the following curious instance of the operation of in- 

 stinct in the cockroach (Blatta). During the hot 

 months of the year, my laboratory is to some extent 

 infested by these active insects, and I have been for 

 several years observing their habits. At the distance 

 of two feet above one of the benches, and fixed to 

 the wall, is a double gas- bracket, the outer arm of 

 which is seventeen inches long from the joint to the 

 burner. On more than a dozen occasions, I have 

 observed that a full-grown cockroach would climb 

 up the gas-pipe and along the bracket towards the 

 burner, but, finding the bracket a few inches from 

 the flame too hot to traverse, would crawl back a 

 few inches, wait a second or two, and then return 

 towards the flame. If uninterfered with, he would, 

 after a few trials, leave the bracket altogether, and 

 return down the pipe, and run off at full speed. But 

 I wished to see how he would act under peculiar cir- 

 cumstances. I therefore heated the bracket by the 

 flame of a Bunsen lamp at a point fourteen inches 

 from the tip and three inches from the joint, and 

 waited. The insect, as iisual, tried to leave the 

 bracket by walking back towards the wall, but, find- 

 ing his retreat cut off by the heated metal, became 

 very much excited, and commenced running rapidly 

 between the distal end of the bracket and the part 

 which I had heated. After doing this several times, 

 he selected the coolest part of the bracket, midway 

 between the illuminating flame and the part heated 

 by the Bunsen, crouched for a spring, and leaped 

 on to the bench. He was running off rapidly, when 

 I swept him from the bench, and crushed him on 

 the floor with my boot. The insect deserved to es- 

 cape, but T killed him because I wanted to observe 

 the action of a fresh cockroach every time under 

 the same circumstances. On more than a dozen 

 occasions has the same performance been gone 

 through. By many people such action would be ac- 

 counted for by the mere word 'instinct,' but it 

 seems to me singularly like the operation of reason. 

 This is exactly what takes place when a fire occurs 

 in a high building. Thfe inmates (particularly 

 women) jump wildly from the upper windows with- 

 out waiting to see whether all other means of escape 

 are exhausted — and get smashed on the pavement. 

 Our friend ' the unspeakable Turk ' says that women 

 have no souls, and yet, although much higher in 

 organization than the cockroach, they act, in similar 

 circumstances, precisely in the same way. 



George Hat, M.D. 

 Pittsburg, Penn., June 7. 



