168 Scientific Intelligence. 



to our power, in the present state of science, to reach even a high 

 degree of probability in cosmogony." 



The following extract from the publishers' notice of this work 

 is mostly erroneous and quite misleading : 



" Since the accompanying standard circular was prepared, in the summer 

 of 1910, Professor See's celebrated discoveries in Cosmogony have been 

 confirmed by many eminent astronomers ; so that the Capture Theory has 

 triumphed all along the line. Foremost among these verifications must be 

 ranked Professor E. W. Brown's confirmation of the Capture of Satellites, 

 announced to the American Association for the Advancement of Science 

 at the Minneapolis meeting, December, 1910 (Science, Jan. 20, 1911, p. 93), 

 and more elaborately treated in the Monthly Notices of the Eoyal Astro- 

 nomical Society for March, 1911, p. 453. In this paper Professor Brown 

 shows, by an extension of the methods adopted by Professor See, that the 

 asteroids are transferred from beyond Jupiter's orbit to the zone within, and 

 that some of them may become satellites in the process of transition. The 

 captured satellites may move either direct or retrograde, as first announced 

 by Professor See in May, 1909." w. b. 



5. The Teaching of Geometry ; by David Eugene Smith, 

 Teachers College, Columbia University. 12mo, pp. v, 339. 

 Boston and New York, 1911 (Ginn & Co.). — This is a clear dis- 

 cussion of the merits of Geometry, of the means for making the 

 subject more attractive and of its relation to the other sciences. 

 The rise of Geometry is outlined, and the evolution of the method 

 of teaching it, and the development of its definitions and assump- 

 tions. The mathematical curriculum has been subject of late 

 to such severe attacks by exponents of loose theories of education 

 that the support afforded by such a broad view of the subject is 

 welcome. w. b. 



(5. The Hindu- Arabic Numerals ; by D. E. Smith and L. C. 

 Karpinsky. 12mo, pp. 160, Boston and New York, 1911 (Ginn 

 & Co.). — A very complete and scholarly treatise on the origin 

 and introduction into Europe of the modern number sj^stem. 

 Copious notes and references put the reader in touch with all the 

 important literature of a subject which has an even stronger 

 interest as bearing on the history of civilization than on its 

 mathematical side. 



Few stop to think how much of modern progress depends on 

 these labor-saving symbols, and fewer still realize that their 

 general acceptance in the transactions of commerce dates back 

 only four centuries, and that a system of place values strug- 

 gled for a thousand years to supplant the crude notation of the 

 Romans. Specially interesting in this volume is the chapter on 

 the symbol zero, the invention of which came long after that of 

 the others, which without it were of comparatively little 'u^e. 

 The author aptly points out how the production of this crux ol 

 the system was beyond the power of any race but the Hindus, — 

 though to them in complete harmony with the philosophy whose 

 highest good is the Nirvana. w. b. 



Obituary. 



Major Clarence E. Dutton, the eminent geologist, died on 

 January 4 in the seventy-first year of his age. A notice is 

 deferred to a later number. 



