220 Scientific Intelligence. 



physicist naturally chooses the one which most nearly corresponds 

 to the more or less rough group in a material body and that has 

 been up to the present the Euclidean geometry. Whether physi- 

 cal space is warped by one or two parts in a million may be left 

 for the future to decide. 



In the author's view geometry is not an experimental science 

 but merely the result of reflection upon our experience, and to 

 ask whether the geometry of Euclid is true and that of 

 Lobatchewsky false is as absurd as to ask if the metric system is 

 true and that of the foot and inch is false. f. e." b. 



II. Geology and Mineralogy. 



1. James Hall of Albany, Geologist and Palaeontologist, 1811- 

 1898; by John M. Clarke. Pp. 565, portraits and charts, 

 Albany (S. C. Bishop), 1921 ($3.70 net).— This is truly a 

 remarkably interesting study of the great state geologist of New 

 York and international man of science, James Hail, by a versatile 

 son of the same state. No geologist will fail to read it, and all 

 well-informed men of science should do the same. It is not only 

 a faithful portrayal of an extraordinary man, who turned out a 

 prodigious amount of geologic work, but as well a setting forth 

 of North American geology as it was emerging from the Wer- 

 nerian stage into full manhood. It is a true picture of the 

 pioneer days of the earth sciences in this country. 



Hall was a tall, well-set-up, blue-eyed man, decidedly dynamic, 

 sensitive to an extraordinary degree, irascible, and with sur- 

 passing ambition. He was rarely ever sick, and yet in his own 

 mind, his physician tells lis, he was "a dying man for fifty 

 years. ' ' Feverish, with unrestrained impulses, he appears to be 

 always in trouble with most of his associates, and yet often misled 

 by his confidence in those less close to him. It seems a curious 

 commentary that he lost much money in mining. 



In 1837 Hall began his survey of the wonderful Fourth Dis- 

 trict, at the western end of New York State, and spent five years 

 in the study of its geology, "the most excellent piece of field 

 work he ever did. ' ' From this work he gradually rose to be the 

 master mind in the State Survey, and for sixty-two years he 

 dominated the Paleozoic geology, and especially the paleontology, 

 of North America, leaving as his monLiment thirteen great quarto 

 volumes besides many other works in paleontology. The Palaeon- 

 tology of New York was the dominant note of his long life. 

 Curiously, though he was an evolutionist thirteen years before 

 the appearance of The Origin of Species, yet he never wrote any- 

 thing on this subject. "It was ever conditions not theories that 

 confronted him and he went on heaping up new facts to the end. ' ' 



As one reads the book, it becomes apparent that New York has 



