MA.Y 5, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



703 



Professor H. V. Wilson: 'The Organization of 

 the Ovum.' 



Professor Collier Cobb: ' Autophytographs.' 



A. S. Wheeler, 

 Recording Secretary. 



DISCUSiilON AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



A PLE.'i. FOR INCREASED REVIEWING OF SCIENTIFIC 

 LITERATURE. 



It has seemed to the writer that more atten- 

 tion should be given to reviewing current lit- 

 erature in zoology, and I am told that the need 

 is greater in some other sciences. It is not 

 necessary to dwell upon the small number of 

 universities in which the library facilities may 

 be called good, upon the fact that our students 

 are slow to gain a ready knowledge of the 

 three or four foreign languages in which ap- 

 pears an increasing volume of scientific litera- 

 ture, or upon the heavy duties in teaching and 

 administration with which our staffs of in- 

 struction are burdened. These conditions 

 make reviews of literature especially useful to 

 American men of science. There are, how- 

 ever, more fundamental reasons why the scien- 

 tific body should pay more (and more serious) 

 attention to reviewing its recent work. The 

 first is that scientific efforts are very manifold 

 and diverse and the output is very great and 

 increasing. Beyond a certain limit, without 

 an increase in the unifying forces, these ef- 

 forts are bound to become discrete and diffuse. 

 I believe that this limit has been reached. 

 That the same belief is held in Europe is per- 

 haps to be inferred from the great increase in 

 reviewing in the last few years in Germany. 



A second reason is that the review should 

 be an important means for the training of in- 

 vestigators, and for leading students to be- 

 come investigators. This function of the re- 

 view has, I believe, not been sufficiently recog- 

 nized, and it is this which especially interests 

 us in America. By reviews the writer does 

 not mean abstracts, which seek to furnish in- 

 formation by a short and easy method. Re- 

 liance on abstracts impoverishes and blunts 

 the mind and is dangerous to the true spirit of 

 investigation. Reviews which are essentially 

 abstracts of isolated papers are of doubtful 

 value. Because isolated, they do not aid the 



student in gaining a broad and fundamental 

 understanding of the field; because abstracts, 

 they can not be relied upon by the investi- 

 gator; and they are longer than necessary to 

 serve as a guide to the literature. 



There are two ways in which reports or 

 reviews may serve a useful purpose: first, as 

 an annotated bibliography or guide; second, 

 as a comprehensive presentation of the work 

 done in a given field. These two legitimate 

 kinds of reviews are quite distinct in their 

 form and purpose. The annotated bibliog- 

 raphy is useful to the specialist and instruc- 

 tor. For those who have not a large library 

 at their disposal a mere list of titles is insuffi- 

 cient. It is necessary in addition to have 

 certain information about a paper in order to 

 know whether it is important for one's imme- 

 diate purpose. It is greatly to the credit of 

 Mr. Field that some of this information has 

 been included in the Zurich bibliography. 

 Fuller information is given in several journals 

 of the Centralhlatt type in Germany. In 

 America in a special field the same kind of 

 work is being done by the Journal of Com- 

 parative Neurology and Psychology through 

 the joint efforts of its collaborators. Whether 

 other journals might not well undertake sim- 

 ilar work in their fields may, perhaps, better 

 be discussed by others. In no journal with 

 which I am acquainted are the reviews uni- 

 form in character or restricted to the kind of 

 information here suggested. To make my 

 meaning clear I may enumerate what, in my 

 opinion, should be included in these brief re- 

 views. Besides the author, title, date and 

 place of publication, number of pages, figures 

 and plates, and price of a book, there should be 

 stated: (1) the material and methods, (2) the 

 subjects treated, (3) the general purpose 

 aimed at or end attained and (4) the review- 

 er's judgment as to the adequacy of the meth- 

 ods and the reliability of the results, in cases 

 where the paper can be definitely character- 

 ized. Such reviews might occupy from six to 

 twenty lines and when printed over the re- 

 viewer's signature would constitute a valuable 

 guide for the advanced student and instructor. 



The second form of review is useful to the 

 instructor and should be especially valuable 



