April 7, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



545 



Edw.), Grey a, Busck (not Gray a, Guenth.), 

 GueriniuSj Ashmead (not Guerinia, Bate), 

 Imeria, Cameron (not Imera, Pascoe), Ivela, 

 Swinhoe (not Ivella, Lubbock), Nisia, Meli- 

 char (not Nisa, Casey), Occia, Tosquinet (not 

 Occa, Jord. & Everm.), Reuterella, Enderlein 

 (not Reuteriella, Signoret). 



A few generic and subgeneric names have 

 been omitted; I notice the following: Crewella 

 (An. Mag. N. Hist., XII., 202), Martinella 

 {An. Mag. N. Hist., XII., 450), Gueriniella 

 (Fernald, 'Cat. Coccidse,' 331), Kuwania (t. 

 c, 32), Kuwanina (t. c, 121). 



It is worth while to say something about 

 the importation of the Record. It used to 

 come promptly by mail, but the 1902 volume 

 was just overweight. It was mailed, never- 

 theless, by the Zoological Society, with the 

 understanding that it would be delivered as 

 before. The British postal authorities took 

 it out of the mails, and turned it over to the 

 American Express Company, with whom they 

 have a contract for the carriage of parcels too 

 heavy for the transatlantic mails. The vol- 

 ume arrived in New York, but was not for- 

 warded until considerable delay had occurred 

 and I had been obliged to pay extra express 

 charges and a heavy import tax. This year, 

 by using lighter paper, I believe, the book was 

 kept just within the specified weight, and it 

 came promptly by mail, with no trouble and 

 no customs dues. It is an outrage to charge 

 duty on a book of this sort, published at a 

 loss, and one would like to know why the 

 charge was made in one case when it was not 

 found necessary in the other. 



It is proper to add, that whereas the Zoolog- 

 ical Record was formerly to be had only as a 

 complete volume, the several subjects may now 

 be purchased separately at moderate prices. 



T. D. A. COCKERELL. 



Les- Lois NaturelJes : Reflexions d'un Biol- 

 ogiste sur les Sciences. By F. Le Dantec. 

 Paris, F. Alcan. 1904. Pp. xvi + 308. 

 M. Le Dantec has two motives in view : to 

 determine the meaning of the words ' natural 

 law,' and, on the basis of this determination, 

 to define or to revise the main scientific con- 

 ceptions in use to-day. The m'^aning of 



' natural law ' is investigated from a stand- 

 point due to the teachings of biology, with a 

 resulting definition which resembles those of 

 Pearson, Mach, Ostwald, Poincare and others, 

 and is in substantial accord with the general 

 ' humanistic ' philosophy. The author then 

 discusses the meaning of such conceptions as 

 straight line, plane, continuum, mass, force, 

 entropy, absolute zero, inertia, conservation 

 of energy, atom, ether, living matter, thought. 

 With so broad a field to cover, the treatment 

 of each conception must needs be brief; but 

 it is at least direct, systematic and clear. 



In the introduction (16 pp.) the general 

 considerations are laid down which will de- 

 termine the author's definition of natural law. 

 Of the external world we know only the ways 

 in which it affects us, the relations it bears to 

 us. These ways or relations come to us 

 through several gateways — namely, the senses 

 — which the author calls the ' sensorial can- 

 tons ' (sight, touch, temperature, smell, taste, 

 etc.). Of these there are, we are told, many 

 more than physiology admits, though we are 

 not given a complete list of them. They are 

 each irreducible, inexpressible in terms of any 

 other sense. What we see has form and color, 

 but is not loud nor hot; temperature has no 

 color nor sweetness, tastes are not square nor 

 round. What is revealed to one sense can not 

 properly be described in terms of any other 

 sense. Xow science is first of all a record of 

 these quite different classes of sense-impres- 

 sions. 



The subject is continued in Book I., ' The 

 Sensorial Cantons and Monism.' Man is not 

 only passive toward the external world. He 

 reacts upon his environment; and in order to 

 do so he makes hypotheses about the constitu- 

 tion of that environment. In the early stages 

 of man's development these are quite as likely 

 to be useless as not, but natural selection pie- 

 serves the useful and weeds out the useless, 

 till in the course of ages the former become 

 instinctive. Thus our instinctive belief that 

 arithmetic is infallibly correct, or that unsup- 

 ported bodies fall, is the ' hereditary resume 

 of ancestral experience' (p. 3). We regard it 

 as an a priori truth because the belief has 

 been so long perpetuated by natural selection. 



