496 



scmjsrcu. 



[Vol. YI., No. 14& 



Newcomb's preface without seeing the gross and 

 unpardonable carelessness of a reviewer who would 

 interpret it as Professor James did, not to speak of 

 the additional carelessness in writing which led him 

 to so misquote Newcomb's words as to make them 

 explicitly convey the meaning he had falsely assigned 

 to them. 



Somewhat more pardonable — if due to ignorance 

 on Professor James's part — is his speaking of Pro- 

 fessor Newcomb as ' wandering over into the eco- 

 nomic field' at an advanced period in his life. 

 Most people in this country who are interested in 

 economics know that Professor Newcomb has been 

 a student and writer upon economics for the last 

 twenty-five years or more. If Professor James kriew 

 this, — however low might be his opinion of the re- 

 sult of Professor Newcomb's studies, — his speaking 

 of Newcomb's ' wandering over into the economic 

 field' is simply inexcusable misrepresentation. 



Professor James goes on to say that "there is no 

 evidence in the style of reasoning in this work that 

 the author is at all acquainted with the recent 

 literature of the science either in England or on the 

 continent. One great advance in economic science 

 in the last twenty five years lies in a change of its pre- 

 vailing method." I, for my part, do not know to what 

 extent Professor Newcomlb may be acquainted with the 

 writings of the recent German economists or their 

 English-speaking followers ; but, so far as the absence 

 of any effect of their work upon his method of dis- 

 cussion is relied upon as evidence on this head, it is 

 very pertinent to ask Professor James how much of 

 the influence of these writers is discernible in Pro- 

 fessor Sidgwick's recent work on political economy. 

 Professor Sidgwick, being unfortunately ' professor 

 in moral and political philosophy,' may be regarded 

 by Professor James as not quite enough a specialist 

 to be cited ; but we have his own word for it (in his 

 preface) that, " among foreign writers," he had '* de- 

 rived most assistance from the works of Professors 

 A. Held and Wagner ; " and in spite of his having 

 seen the new light, his book professes to be in the 

 main a guarded restatement of the principles of the 

 old masters. 



This is not the place to enter into a general discus- 

 sion of the merits of the new economists who think 

 they have * exploded ' every principle of political 

 economy from which they can show that an erroneous 

 practical conclusion has been drawn, and who freely 

 distribute such adjectives as * crude,' ' dogmatic,' and 

 ' mazy,' in speaking of any theory which they find 

 has not taken note of every disturbing influence. But 

 it is presumptuous in a member of this school to re- 

 gard a general adherence to the methods of Mill and 

 Cairnes as evidence of ignorance or incompetence. 



It would take too long to show how unfair is Pro- 

 fessor James's presentation of Newcomb's treatment 

 of laissez-faire. I trust that the correction I made at 

 the beginning of this letter may be enough to render 

 the reader somewhat suspicious of Professor James's 

 fairness and accuracy iu representing his author. It 

 may, however, be worth while to re-enforce this suspi- 

 cion by observing that the last sentence in Professor 

 James's article is entirely and absurdly gratuitous, as 

 Professor Newcomb, in speaking (p. 158) of the gov- 

 ernment's assuming (an unfortunately chosen expres- 

 sion, I admit) that "the values of equal weights of 

 the two metals have a certain fixed ratio to each 

 other," is simply engaged in describing what govern- 

 ments do when they establish an unlimited bimetallic 



system ; his discussion of the ' views ' both of mono- 

 metallists and of bimetallists being reserved for a. 

 subsequent portion of the book (which Professor 

 James would seem not to have read) in which he 

 criticises the arguments on both sides without deciding 

 in favor of either. Fabian Franklin. 



Baltimore, Nov. 27. 



The Biela meteors. 



The Bielid meteors were observed here in consider- 

 able numbers last evening. I am sorry to say, that, 

 having been very busily occupied all day, I had quite 

 forgotten that they were expected, and so was not 

 on the lookout for them at the beginning of the 

 darkness. I suppose that in consequence I probably 

 missed the maximum of the shower, which seems to 

 have occurred very early in the evening. 



On going out of my house at 7.15, my attention 

 was immediately attracted by seeing two meteors in 

 the sky together, followed almost instantly by others. 

 While walking the first hundred yards, I saw 

 twelve ; and during the whole ten minutes' walk 

 to the Halsted observatory, I counted thirty-six ; 

 though the eye was much disturbed by the street- 

 lights, and though for a considerable part of the way 

 the view of the sky was more or less obstructed by 

 trees and buildings. The shower was apparently on 

 the wane, however, and the number per minute 

 diminished pretty regularly. Up to 7.45, about one 

 hundred had been recorded in all ; between that 

 time and 8 o'clock, only three or four more were 

 seen, and observation was discontinued. 



About half a dozen of the hundred were as bright 

 as stars of the first magnitude ; about fifty were of 

 the second and third magnitudes ; and of the re- 

 mainder a considerable proportion were between the 

 filth and sixth magnitudes, just fairly visible to 

 the naked eye, and only seen when one happened ta 

 be looking at the exact place where they appeared. 

 Of course, it is likely that the real number of these 

 faint meteors was much larger in proportion to the 

 brighter ones than the actual observations would in- 

 dicate. Several of the larger ones left trains which 

 lasted for two or three seconds, never more, and 

 were always red. In no case was the meteor, or its 

 train, of the greenish or bluish tinge which charac- 

 terizes the Leonids. The tracks were very few of 

 them more than 10^ or 15° long, and the motion was 

 rather slow for a shooting star, the duration of flight 

 being usually more than a second, even when the 

 path was not more than 5° long. In a few cases the 

 tracks were decidedly curved or crooked. 



The ' radiant ' was very well marked, — an oval re- 

 gion about 4° long, north and south, and about 2"^ 

 wide. Its centre, according to the best estimate I 

 could form, was about 2° north-west from Gamma 

 Andromedae, A.R. 1^ 50™, 5 43°. 5. The determina- 

 tion rests largely upon three nearly stationary me- 

 teors, with tracks not exceeding 15' in length, which 

 appeared within the limits of the radiant ; but it 

 agrees satisfactorily with the result obtained by 

 plotting fifteen or twenty other tracks in the same 

 part of the sky. 



It would seem from this that the radiant is now a 

 little farther east than it was in 1872, when, accord- 

 ing to A. S. Herschel (Monthly notices, vol. xxxiii. 

 p..78), its position was A.R. 1^ 41^.6 (25°.4) and 8 43°. 7. 

 In 1872 some of the best observers found evidences 

 of two or more distinct radiants. Nothing of the 



