Januabt 8, 1886.] 



SCIEXCE. 



25 



On the occasion of introducing his course of 

 Lectures at the Sorbonne, M. Ribot reviewed the 

 history and aims of psychology. England, Ger- 

 many, France, Italy, and the United States, by 

 instituting collegiate and university chairs in this 

 lepartment, and by publishing journals, books, and 

 researches devoted to it, all show an increasing 

 activity in this direction. According to M. Ribot, 

 a psychologist is a naturalist : his subject is a 

 part of biology, and is to be treated by precisely as 

 scientific and as exact methods. It is not a meta- 

 physics in any sense, and is no more called upon 

 co speculate on the nature of the soul than physics 

 Co lead us into the essence of matter. It is not a 

 psychology with any religious, moral, or any other 

 :endency, but is a science founded on objective 

 facts, true for all men alike. There are no systems 

 i>f psychology : there is one psychology, as there 

 is one chemistry. 



This psychology, however, was possible only 

 after physiology had been brought to a high state 

 :>f culture. The physiology of the nervous system, 

 and especially of the brain, is the necessary basis 

 for a scientific study of mind. Psychology also 

 borrows from pathology, because nature pre- 

 pares experiments which no man would venture 

 bo perform. It owes a debt to anthropology, to 

 the social sciences, to culture and history. It takes 

 a broad point of view, having already adopted the 

 methods suggested by comparative biology and 

 the evolutionary movement. The field is already 

 so broad that specialists are necessary, although 

 the whole development is not fifty years old. 

 M. Ribot has given expression to a conviction 

 which is now everywhere current, and which 

 seems destined to play an important rdle in the 

 science of the future, in this country as well as 

 elsewhere. 



GENERAL ABBOTTS REPORT ON THE 

 FLOOD ROCK EXPLOSION. 



The advance sheets of General Abbott's report 

 to the chief of engineers on the ' Earth-wave at 

 the destruction of Flood Rock ' have been kindly 

 sent to Science, and form the basis of the follow- 

 ing account : — 



As to the destruction of the rock itself, 48,537 

 pounds of dynamite No. 1, and 240,399 pounds of 

 rackarock, equivalent in all to about one hundred 

 and fifty tons of dynamite, were stowed away in 

 the galleries within the rock, and simply a touch 



on a telegraphic key by little Miss Mary Newton 

 set the whole mass into instant explosion. Pho- 

 tographs taken by three cameras, all exposed be- 

 fore the mass of water lifted by the blast had 

 reached its greatest height, indicate that all parts 

 of the mine were fired at practically the same in- 

 stant ; and, by means of electric recording appa- 

 ratus, this instant was recorded to be ll h 13 m 50 s .2, 

 eastern standard time. It should have been at 

 eleven o'clock precisely, and readers of Science are 

 aware already that observations of the earth-wave 

 were lost at several stations by this delay of nearly 

 fourteen minutes. Concerning this, General Ab- 

 bott says that if these volunteer observers who 

 have criticised the delay hi an unfriendly spirit 

 had known how seriously it endangered the suc- 

 cess of the official work intrusted to Mm, they 

 would doubtless have taken a more charitable 

 view of the matter. It was without question un- 

 avoidable, and is much regretted : but, if a similar 

 opportunity ever occur again to make earth-wave 

 experiments on so large a scale, it will be well, on 

 the one hand, for those in charge to give official 

 notice of possible delay when the appointed time 

 is announced, and, on the other, for the detached 

 observers to watch their instruments steadily until 

 a message is sent them that the shock is over. 



One of the photographs caught the first sight of 

 the earthquake produced by the explosion. The 

 cameras were eleven hundred and thirty feet from 

 the rock, and the first exposure was made about 

 two-tenths of a second after closing the mine cir- 

 cuit. The view shows that the camera was then 

 still steady ; the disturbance had not quite reached 

 it, but was only about one hundred and seventy- 

 five feet away. The second picture was taken 

 four-tenths of a second later, and by this time the 

 more violent portion of the wave had passed. To 

 measure the velocity of progression over greater 

 distances, members of the engineer corps and 

 other officers of the arrny were stationed at four 

 points on Long Island and at West Point ; and, 

 besides the successful observations from these 

 places. General Abbott gives records from Goat 

 Island (the torpedo station at Newport, R. I.), 

 Hamilton and Harvard colleges ; and to these 

 we may add Princeton. Accounts of the observa- 

 tions made at the latter two points have already 

 been given in Science. At all these stations the 

 observers watched a surface of mercury in which 

 the reflection of some small, well-defined object 

 could be seen. The arrival of the disturbance 

 shook the mercury, and caused the reflected images 

 to disappear. The reports generally agree that 

 the maximum of disturbance was very quickly or 

 immediately reached, and none of them express 

 serious doubt of the accuracy of their determi- 



