NOTES AND LITERATURE 



( '< )M PARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 

 Bohn's "The Birth of Intelligence." 1 The gO< 



soul among masterpieces. If the reviewer recounts his ad- 

 ventures with Dr. Bohn's fascinating hook, he can perhaps 

 give a better idea of it than in any other way. Dr. Bohn 

 has for years been engaged in a study of the behavior of 

 the animals of the seashore, as influenced by the conditions 

 under which they live. His published papers set forth that 

 the behavior of these animals— the worms, crabs, snails, sea 

 anemones and the like — is wonderfully dependent on the past 

 influences they have undergone; the changes of tides, of day 

 and night, and the like, leave their records on the animals, so 

 that after removal from these agents, the creatures still show 

 the habits formed under their influence. Thus the behavior of 

 these creatures is not fixed and final, but surprisingly modifiable. 

 Such complete and overwhelming confirmation of the results and 

 views that had been independently expressed by the present 

 reviewer and going even beyond what ho had iinticipated, could 

 not be received by him otherwise than with enthusiasm; he 

 recommended the work to his friends and wrote a laudatory 

 review; 2 as Bohn in the present volume notes with satisfaction, 

 his work ' ' surprised the Americans " ( p. 71 ) . But the reviewer 's 

 enthusiasm was met in some quarters by skepticism and criti- 

 cism; it was pointed out that Bohn's results are largely given 

 en masse, as it were, and with a striking lack of that precision 

 of detail and of method which most of us have felt requisite for 

 establishing scientific results; Yerkes in 1906 said, in a review 

 of his papers, "They are not thoroughly satisfactory scien- 

 tifically for they continually suggest questions, doubts and new 

 problems." 3 The work was of precisely the kind, some urged, 

 in which inaccuracy, carelessness or prejudice would enable one 



l Bohn, Georges, " La Naissance de l'lntelligence, " Paris, 1909. 



1 Psychological Bulletin, 5, 1908, pp. 180-183. 



3 Journ. Comp. Neurol, and Psychol, 16, 1906, p. 238. 



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