Miscellaneous Scientific Intelligence. 327 



observations or the relations of a class of facts which appear to 

 be connected under as few general propositions as possible, if it 

 is found necessary to introduce abstract entities transcending* 

 the actual observations, the author is of the opinion that the 

 degree of abstractness which may be usefully and safely applied 

 is a matter for judgment and choice. 



In particular the consideration of distance and congruence are 

 rejected as fundamental ideas but in effect they are replaced by 

 a theory of related ranges. Although the plan soon leads into 

 the exposition of non-Euclidean geometry, the author believes 

 that many students of the class who look forward to becoming 

 engineers or physicists will find the course stimulating and easy. 



Subsequent volumes will deal on the basis of results obtained 

 in this volume, with conies, quadric surfaces, cubic curves in 

 space, cubic surfaces and certain quartic surfaces. f. e. b. 



IT. Miscellaneous Scientific Intelligence. 



1. Smell, Taste, and allied Senses in the Vertebrates; by 

 G. H. Parker. Pp. 192, with 37 figures. Philadelphia and 

 London, 1922 (J. B. Lippincott Company). — This new volume in 

 the series of monographs on experimental biology by American 

 writers explains without unnecessary technicalities the structure, 

 physiology, embryological development, and evolution of the 

 chemical sense organs, or chemoreceptors, of man and the other 

 vertebrate animals. The subject is treated from a comparative 

 standpoint, the conditions found in man being first discussed, 

 followed by an account of the homologous structures in the other 

 groups of animals. The final chapter explains the interrelations 

 of all the chemical senses and compares the chemoreceptors with 

 the receptors for mechanical and radiant energy. At the end 

 of each chapter is a brief bibliography of the more important lit- 

 erature on the subject. 



The book brings together the results of recent studies on these 

 complex sense organs, some of the most important of which have 

 come from the author's own investigations, and makes the infor- 

 mation so comprehensible that even the general reader can now 

 gain a clear conception of the nature of some of the sensations 

 which he has daily experienced but little understood, w. r, c. 



2. Science and Human Affairs from the Viewpoint of Biol- 

 ogy ; by \Yintertox C. Curtis. Pp. vii, 330. New York, 1922 

 (Harcourt, Brace and Company). — The author follows the his- 

 tory of the scientific method from the earliest times and shows 

 how human progress has always been associated with advances in 

 natural science. And this is particularly true of biological 

 science, by means of which man has come to know about himself, 

 his origin, his developmental history, his physical, physiological 



