SCIENCE. 



FRIDAY, DECEMBER 25, 1885. 



COMMENT AND CRITICISM. 



All Americans have been amused with the 

 stories which have recently appeared in the news- 

 papers, of the intense state of excitement to which 

 the English people have allowed themselves to be 

 roused by the elections just closed. There is, of 

 course, good reason for the difference in American 

 and English election manners in the prolongation 

 of the agony which the protraction of the English 

 elections entails. In the Lancet for Dec. 13 ap- 

 peared an article on ' Deaths from election fever.' 

 The writer takes the ground that the feebler minds 

 of a community are those which take the most 

 interest in politics. " This being so, it ought to 

 surprise no one that a large sprinkling of the 

 * minds ' subjected to the strain and excitement 

 attendant on a general election should give way, 

 or that in a certain proportion of instances brains 

 should be so affected as to suffer those coarser in- 

 juries which end in speedy death rather than pro- 

 tracted mental disease." Is this to be accepted as 

 a fair statement of the facts in England, and do 

 we experience in the United States an increase in 

 the number of deaths from brain-diseases at times 

 of great political excitement ? 



While there is much to rejoice at in the 

 recent circular issued by A. C. Armstrong & com- 

 pany, concerning the New Princeton review, yet 

 there is one paragraph that cannot but have a 

 disappointing effect when read by those whose 

 interest in philosophy is purely scientific, and not 

 dogmatic or polemical. It is clearly implied that 

 no philosophical articles, however meritorious, will 

 be admitted into the Review unless they are in 

 accord with the system of realistic philosophy, on 

 which the venerable president of the college of 

 New Jersey lays so much stress. From the point 

 of view of science, this is an unfortunate determi- 

 nation. We have in the English language only 

 one really scientific philosophical journal, and 

 that is published in London. The Journal of 

 speculative philosophy is excellent in its way, but 

 it is not in the accepted sense of the word ' scien- 

 tific' Many of our other periodicals admit philo- 

 No. 151. — 1885. 



sophical articles, but they are lost sight of amid the 

 surrounding mass of theology, literature, and art. 

 The New Princeton review had been eagerly looked 

 forward to as supplying a want, as far as its 

 philosophical department was concerned. Now 

 its preliminary announcement disappoints this ex- 

 pectation. We repeat, that, from a scientific 

 stand-point, it is unfortunate that this new maga- 

 zine is to be a dogmatic philosopher and an organ, 

 rather than scientific and critical. 



Most of the interior of New South Wales, 

 which is occupied by the watershed of the Dar- 

 ling River, the main line of drainage of the Aus- 

 tralian continent, is a great alluvial plain, with 

 little slope in any direction, and no well-defined 

 water-courses in a considerable portion. The fall 

 of the Darling through much of its length is but 

 a few inches to the mile. The soU is of salt or 

 bitter lake formation. The industry to which a 

 large portion of this territory is Hkely to be de- 

 voted is sheep-raising, provided a sufficient sup- 

 ply of water can be obtained without requiring the 

 sheep to travel too long a distance. As di'oughts 

 occur extending over periods of from one to three 

 years, the solution of the problem of water-supply 

 is vital to the settlement of the country. Since 

 the soil is light and unstable, permanent dams 

 cannot be constructed in the rivers without great 

 cost, and the declivity is too slight to permit of 

 water being conveyed by artificial chamiels or 

 canals to any distance from the streams. It has 

 been found by artesian boriugs that some of the 

 beds of loose sand interstratified with the clays 

 yield a large supply of fresh water ; but the limited 

 amount of research that has yet been made is not 

 sufficient to assure the squatters that water can 

 thus surely be found, and the search for water by 

 that means is too costly and uncertain a process 

 for the settlers. The construction of storage- 

 tanks, to be supplied by surface di-ainage, has 

 therefore been suggested. Under the arduous 

 conditions imposed by the probabihty of long 

 droughts, these earthen tanks should be made 

 much larger than has been the practice hereto- 

 fore. The smallest reservou', to supply some 

 eleven thousand sheep, pastured on an area of six 

 miles square, would requu*e the excavation of 



