256 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XI. No. 27S 



In the annual report for 1S87 the superintendent gives an inter- 

 esting statement regarding the game living in the limits of the 

 park : — 



" Immense herds of elk have passed the winter along the trav- 

 elled road from Gardiner to Cook City with the same safety which 

 herds of domestic range cattle enjoy in other localities. Several 

 stacks of hay, which had been placed along this road in anticipa- 

 tion of winter freighting, were appropriated and doubtless enjoyed 

 by these animals. It is difficult to form any accurate estimate con- 

 cerning the number of elk that passed the winter in the park : cer- 

 tain it is that the number that wintered in the valley of Lamar 

 River and on its tributaries have been estimated by all who saw 

 them at several thousands. The elk are accustomed, when driven 

 out of the mountains by the snows of winter, to follow down the 

 course of the mountain-streams into the lower valleys. For this 

 reason but little efficient protection can be afforded to this species 

 of large game in the park except upon the Yellowstone River and 

 its tributaries. 



" The elk which follow down the outward slopes of the moun- 

 tains surrounding the park, along the tributaries of the Madison 

 and the Gallatin on the west, or the Snake River on the south, 

 pass beyond the park limits before the hunting-season permitted by 

 the territorial laws has closed, and fall an easy prey to the hunters 

 who are in wait for them. 



" A small number of buffalo still remain in the park, but, after 

 as careful and thorough an investigation as is practicable, I am un- 

 able to state their numbers with any approach to accuracy. My 

 impression is, that they have been heretofore somewhat overesti- 

 mated, and that at the present time they will not exceed one 

 hundred in number. They are divided into three separate herds. 

 One of these ranges between Hell-roaring and Slough Creeks in 

 summer, well up on these streams in the mountains, outside the 

 park limits ; and in the winter lower down, on small tributaries of 

 the Yellowstone, within the park. If the reports made several 

 years ago can be relied on, this herd has rapidly diminished, and 

 it is doubtful if it now exceeds some twenty or thirty in number. 

 Whether or not this decrease has been due to illegal killing by 

 hunters, or to other causes, I am unable to say, though I do not 

 believe that many have been killed within the past two years. An- 

 other herd ranges on Specimen Mountain and the waters of Peli- 

 can Creek. The herd was seen by reliable parties several times 

 last winter, and was variously estimated at from forty to eighty. 

 A traveller on the Cook City road claimed to have counted fifty- 

 four near the base of Specimen Ridge. A scouting-party which I 

 sent out during the month of May found but twenty-seven head of 

 this herd, with four young calves. It is possible that the herd at 

 this time was broken up, and that but one portion of it was found. 

 The third herd ranges along the continental divide, and is much 

 scattered. A band of nine or ten from this herd was seen several 

 times this spring in the vicinity of the Upper Geyser Basin. It will 

 take close observation for several years to determine with any cer- 

 tainty the number of these animals, or whether or not they are 

 diminishing in numbers. It is practically certain that none have 

 been killed within the park limits during the past two years, and 

 yet there is an equal certainty that the present numbers do not ap- 

 proach those of past estimates. 



" Large numbers of antelope are found in the park. A herd of 

 some two hundred passed the winter within a mile of the town of 

 Gardiner, pasturing on the plain between the Yellowstone and 

 Gardiner Rivers, south of the town. They were unmolested, 

 though it was found necessary to occasionally drive them back to- 

 wards the hills, that they might not get beyond the park limits. 



" The mountain sheep are found in all of the mountain ranges 

 within the park. A band of seven or eight spent a large portion of 

 the winter in the cliffs along the travelled road between Mammoth 

 Hot Springs and Gardiner, and they became so accustomed to the 

 sight of travellers as to manifest but little more timidity or wild- 

 ness than sheep of the domestic variety." 



The progress of road-construction in the park has been greatly 

 retarded by the lack of sufficient appropriations. It is greatly to be 

 regretted that the beauties of the park, that, in the words of the 

 statute, has been " set apart as a public park or pleasuring-ground 

 for the benefit of the people," is not rendered accessible in all its 



parts to the public by the construction of roads and bridges, the 

 cost of which has been estimated at Si3o.ooo. 



It appears that the only method of enforcing the laws and regu- 

 lations regarding the park is the expulsion of all offenders, there 

 existing no court which has jurisdiction over such cases. The 

 superintendents of the park have for a number of years asked that 

 such a court be established, but so far Congress has not acted upon 

 their suggestions. 



It seems, however, on the whole, that the park is well protected 

 from injury, and the steadily increasing number of visitors shows 

 that it has not decreased in attractiveness either to Americans or 

 to foreigners. 



A NEW SCIENCE OF MIND. 



The authorities of the College de France, the representative in- 

 stitution of the higher education in France, have transformed, as 

 already reported in Science, the chair of the ' law of nature and of 

 nations ' into a chair of ' experimental and comparative psychology." 

 The significance of this action lies in its calling the ' new psychol- 

 ogy ' to a co-ordinate rank with the more widely recognized and 

 historically sanctioned sciences. This honor has naturally caused 

 considerable inquiry as to the nature and the objects of the new 

 science ; and M. Paul Janet, the well-known writer on ethical topics, 

 undertakes to enlighten his countrymen in this regard (' Une 

 Chair de Psychologic Experimentale et Comparee au College de 

 France,' Revue de Deux Mondes, April I, 1888). 



M. Janet, with perhaps pardonable patriotism, poses the new 

 psychology as of French origin, but it is really connected with the 

 past by many roots. It is related to the objective study of mind 

 furthered by Hartley and Locke, by Descartes and Cabanis ; its 

 welfare has been more essentially secured by the general renais- 

 sance of physiological and neurological studies of which the name 

 of Johannes Miiller is representative ; the modern alienists drew 

 attention to the valuable mine of mental phenomena that disease 

 laid bare ; and, after it emerged as an independent study, it willingly 

 acknowledged its indebtedness to physics and physiology, as well 

 as to psychiatry and anthropology, without forgetting its parentage 

 from the psychology of the past, itself the result of a progressive 

 philosophic insight. 



The term 'physiological psychology,' though quite generally in 

 use to describe the new movement, really expresses but one, though 

 perhaps the most important and advanced, division of a scientific, 

 or, as M. Janet prefers, an objective psychology. The new psy- 

 chology, however, is characterized as much by its method, its spirit, 

 as by its contents ; and it was for this reason that the chair was 

 called one of ' comparative ' and ' experimental ' psychology. 



Difficult though it is to summarize the various lines of interest 

 that unite workers in the several specialties of the new psychology, 

 the attempt may be useful. From the physiological side, psychology 

 finds that the phenomena with which it is concerned occur in con- 

 nection with a material organism of an intricate and mysterious 

 construction. The analogues of the acts which we recognize in 

 ourselves as the indices and concomitants of psychic states are un- 

 mistakably found in the lower animals. No matter how far down 

 in the scale we descend, we nowhere lose the thread that makes 

 the world akin. "The tendency of modern inquiry," says Mr. Ty- 

 lor, " is more and more towards the conclusion, that, if there is 

 law anywhere, it is everywhere ; " and in the amoeba stretching out 

 its extemporized arm in response to an irritation in its environment, 

 psychology detects a real though remote analogy to that varied and 

 far-sighted adaptation of means to ends that characterizes the life of 

 a high civilization. The problem, then, is to trace the successive 

 stages of this co-ordination of nervous structure with psycho-physi- 

 ological function ; to see reflex act emerging into instinct ; to see 

 instinct acquiring more and more adaptability, and sending the 

 young into the world less freighted with the ready-made acquisitions 

 of their ancestors, and freer to shape their lives according to out- 

 ward conditions, until, in the human infant, nature presents at once 

 the most helpless and the most educable of organisms. This gen- 

 eral problem includes many special ones. In ascending the evolu- 

 tionary scale, the nervous system increases in complexity ; the parts 

 become more specialized and more integrated ; finer methods of 



