152 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. X. No. 242 



want of proper support ? There are probably not more than half a 

 dozen subscribers in this whole country. Let those who appreciate 

 the importance of the work encourage it by giving it a place in their 

 private libraries. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



*^i* The attenizon 0/ scientijic 7nen is called to the advantages o/the correspondence 

 columns o/%c\^iiC^/or placing promptly on record brief prelifninary notices 0/ 

 their investigations. Tvjenty copies o/the number containing his cotnmunication 

 will be yiirttished free to any correspondent on regjtest. 



The editor will be glad to publish any queries consonant with the character 0/ 

 the journal. 



Correspondents are requested to be as brie/ as possible. The writer's name is 

 in all cases required as proo/ 0/ good faith. 



Romantic Love and Personal Beauty. 



Your reviewer has pointed out that the light and flippant char- 

 acter of Mr. Finck's style prevents his book from being taken as a 

 serious contribution to science. He has neglected to show that 

 the unintermitting vulgarity of its tone will cause it to have an ex- 

 ceedingly vicious effect upon society, if it should chance to have 

 any effect at all. Romantic love is one of the few thoroughly 

 beautiful and elevated things that civilization has yet produced. It 

 is such a means of refining and subduing the brute in man, and of 

 bringing him a little nearer to the angels, as is no other emotion 

 which he has yet developed. When a young man and a maiden 

 are in love, they walk in a very heaven, not of happiness only, but 

 of delicacy and purity. The poets and the worthy novelists have 

 invested the subject with a warm glow of high feeling and noble 

 aspiration, and even the unworthy novelists have not dared to 

 drag it wholly in the dust. It has been reserved for a Mr. Finck 

 to write of it in a tone which is not equalled by the commonest 

 and most vulgar of the daily newspapers. It is incomprehensible 

 that a book which is offered to decent people to read should con- 

 tain such a sentence as this, to take an instance at random : " Has 

 Mr. Spencer ever kissed a girl } " Romantic love is a precious 

 possession which the race has been slow to gain. It is possible 

 that it is like a delicate flower, which cannot be handled by the 

 botanist without losing its beauty and its fragrance. At all events, 

 it is of immense importance, if it is to become the subject of 

 scientific investigation, that it should not be vulgarized and cheap- 

 ened at the very beginning by such a manner of writing as this. 



Mr. Finck's book contains a number of very clever explanations 

 of minor points in biology and psychology. His main theses are 

 not new ; and, as Mr. Conn has pointed out, it is premarital court- 

 ship, and not love, that he has shown, or that can be shown, to be 

 very modern. His explanations, while they are extremely ingenious, 

 always need to be carefully examined, and are seldom fortified by 

 his reasons. His conception of how delicate a task it is to establish 

 a relation of cause and effect may be gathered from the following 

 passage : " Large numbers of tourists in Switzerland constantly 

 suffer from headache, simply because they fail to have the head at 

 night in the centre of the room, where it ought to be, because the 

 air circulates more freely there than near the walls." His literary 

 style is on no higher level than his taste and his logic. He speaks 

 of " a blue-blooded youth and a ditto maiden," and of "knocking 

 the bottom out of the theory of Alison, Jeffrey and Co." So utterly 

 regardless is he of the common decencies of language, that it is 

 impossible to attribute it to the proof-reader when we find him 

 saying that one thing is the " very antipode " of another. 



The second part of Mr. Finck's book is, if possible, worse than 

 the first. His ideal of beauty is as poor and mean as his ideal of 

 romantic love. That kind of beauty which can be heightened by 

 pomades and powders for the complexion, and by surgical appli- 

 ances for straightening noses, is not the kind which our descendants 

 will strive to perpetuate. There is something peculiarly gross and 

 offensive about all such topics to a right-minded person ; and to 

 find them discussed in fullest detail in a book which is expected 

 to influence scientific opinion on a subject of profound im- 

 portance, is certainly one of the most curious freaks that a non- 

 insane maker of a book has yet been guilty of. Mr. Finck 

 pretends to be an admirer of expression as well as of mere animal 

 beauty. But a flne and noble expression is absolutely incompatible 



with such absorption in the details of the toilet as he recommends. 

 It is impossible for a girl to practise ' making eyes ' before her 

 looking-glass, as he urges her to do, without showing the marks of 

 that vacancy and insipidity by which " the faces of many fair 

 women are utterly spoiled and rendered valueless." He quotes 

 this other fine passage from Ruskin : " There is not any virtue the 

 exercise of which even momentarily will not impress a new fairness 

 upon the features ; " but he is of too insensitive a fibre to know that 

 there is also not any vanity or vice that will not in time ruthlessly 

 destroy whatever is admirable in the face of man or woman. H. 



[We think our readers will find the above letter interesting as 

 containing the strongly expressed views of a woman belonging to 

 that class which believe they have discovered worthy substitutes 

 for some of the attractions which have proved successful hitherto in 

 bringing into existence this much-discussed romantic love. — Ec] 



Grindelia squarrosa. 



A VERY interesting find was made here recently by one of the 

 High School boys, who is making botany a specialty. The ' find ' 

 consisted of several specimens of a composite plant unknown here 

 before, but which has been decided by several competent authori- 

 ties to be Grindelia squarrosa, a plant said by Coulter to occur 

 " from the Saskatchewan to Texas, and westward to the Sierra 

 Nevadas." 



The three or four specimens were found in a pasture, at some 

 distance from the railroad. How they came there is the question 

 which is puzzling those who have seen them, as their true home is 

 said to be so far to the westward. I have heard that a few speci- 

 mens were once found in Ottawa in this State, but cannot vouch 

 for the truth of the report. L. N. JOHNSON. 



Evanston, 111., Sept. 14. 



The Term 'Topography.' 



The significance of the term ' topography ' has undergone a 

 rapid specialization in modern scientific usage that is noteworthy 

 as an indication of the increased attention incidentally given to the 

 study of physical geography. A conspicuous improvement in the 

 methods of geographic teaching in England has been commented 

 on in recent numbers of Science, and attributed to a growing recog- 

 nition of the economic bearing of geographic facts. Mr. Keltie has 

 shown that an entirely novel method of treatment, and a rapid ad- 

 vance, have resulted from this altered attitude. There is, however, 

 tacit admission, to which Mr. Davis calls attention (Science, x. 

 No. 240), that the nature of the relations of ' physiography ' to 

 human development is but vaguely understood, and that progress 

 is at present retarded by uncertainty of aim. Mr. Davis effectively 

 points out the difficulty : that for teaching-purposes there has not 

 been sufficient inquiry into the principles of geographic evolution, 

 " for topographic development is the key to a real understanding of 

 the forms of the land about us ; " that " physiography now is in a 

 low position," and " most immature " as a science in itself. Gen- 

 eralization is as yet difficult, or of questionable profit : " attention 

 should be directed instead to the minute morphology and syste- 

 matic development of individual topographic forms." Physiography 

 must make the same order of advance that biology has made out 

 of the old natural history, with its aimless catalogues of wonders, 

 and study the " simpler type-forms carefully before attempting to 

 understand the complex associations of forms that make up a 

 country or a continent." Mr. Keltie recognizes that it is " typical 

 aspects of the earth's surface," not " extraordinary features," that 

 will serve the purposes of the new geography ; " but," as Mr. 

 Davis points out, " he does not say where we shall find a scientific 

 and sufficient investigation of the forms that are chosen as 'typical 

 aspects.' There is no such investigation. The absence of any 

 thorough and consistent physiographic terminology at once points 

 out the immaturity of this study. . . . ' The Sixth Annual Report 

 of the Geological Survey,' just issued, contains, for example, a 

 number of illustrations that will be seized upon when the proper 

 text-book appears. The choice little woodcuts on p. 229, en- 

 titled ' Topographic Old Age ' and ' Topographic Youth,' are par- 

 ticularly good, but these terms will certainly be new to most 

 readers." No " scientific and sufficient investigation " of the evolu- 



