SCIENCE. 



FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 1886. 



COMMENT AND CRITICISM. 



The subject of agricultural experimentation is 

 coming more and more to the front, both by the 

 multiplication of state experiment stations, and 

 through the endeavor to secure national aid. But, 

 while the making of experiments in increasing num- 

 bers appears to be assured for the immediate future, 

 the more important subject of the interpretation 

 of experiments appears to receive but little consid- 

 eration. It seems to be assumed, that, once an 

 experiment is honestly made, its teachings will 

 be so obvious that he who runs may read. As a 

 matter of fact, however, the correct interpreta- 

 tion of the results of an agricultural experiment 

 (we speak now of scientific experiments) is a 

 matter of no little difficulty, and is deserving of 

 equal attention with the making of the experi- 

 ment. We are glad to note that the director of 

 the New York experiment-station, in his last re- 

 port, which we notice in another column, em- 

 phasizes the importance of a proper method of 

 interpretation and of the application of the doc- 

 trine of chances. In the strictest sense of the 

 word, no agricultural experiment can as yet be 

 called scientific, because in none do we so fully 

 understand the conditions as to properly control 

 them. In all experiments with plants or animals, 

 we have to reckon with the individual peculiari- 

 ties of the organism ; and, except under the most 

 favoring conditions, there are other conditions 

 which cannot be accurately controlled or allowed 

 for. As a consequence, the final result of such 

 an experiment, or series of experiments, is a proba- 

 bility, greater or less as may be, that a certain 

 law holds. The subject is too broad a one to be 

 discussed here ; but we are convinced, that in 

 proportion as agricultural experimenters learn to 

 distinguish clearly just what and how much their 

 experiments really prove, will they be in condi- 

 dition to make more rapid and certain progress in 

 knowledge. 



A contemplative and retrospective naturalist 

 can hardly escape the curious fantasy that the 

 very term 'fishes' may become altogether ob- 



No. 165. — 1386. 



solete, unless, indeed, it survives in the future as 

 an historical reminiscence of the time when men 

 thought there were ' fishes.' In fact, the word 

 has lost by successive trimmings a large share of 

 its ancient scope ; for it is only by generous 

 etymological tolerance that we graciously permit 

 ourselves to still talk of the invertebrate cray-fish 

 and shell-fish as fish at all, and we feel a com- 

 fortable sense of sustained politeness towards our 

 more ignorant ancestors, while we order the 

 waiter to fetch us some of the same tid-bit fishes. 

 Then we learned to extend our linguistic purism 

 to the very vertebrates, and became wise with 

 the knowledge that those evident fishes, the por- 

 poises and the whales, are not fishes at all. But 

 the taste for lopping off the meaning from an 

 innocent word had grown by indulgence ; and so, 

 having cut off the top of the fishes of our fathers, 

 we turned to the bottom, which we added in our 

 own day, and removed Amphioxus. We are 

 quite agreed that the poor creature is not even a 

 fish. Just at present we apparently are making 

 ready for another discardment. The progress of 

 science is rendering it clear that the sturgeon and 

 his congeners — the ganoids all — are more nearly 

 related to the amphibians than to the true fishes. 

 Their development in the ovum is very closely 

 similar to that of the frog and newt, and differs 

 strikingly from that of the bony fishes and sharks. 

 In the structure of the adults, too, the indications 

 point to the same affinity. Of course, if the 

 ganoids go, the dipnoans must go too, as every 

 one will admit. Now appears Monsieur Fulliquet 

 with a valuable study of the brain of one of the 

 latter, Protopterus, and discovers that it is quite 

 like that of an amphibian, and not at all like that 

 of a true fish. Our perplexity fairly reaches its 

 climax, and we wonderingly ask, Is any fish 

 really a fish? If we can forecast the progress 

 of the future by that of the past, we must answer, 

 No. 



That some portions of New South Wales are 

 not desirable as permanent places of abode year 

 in and year out. may be judged from the fact that 

 during the past three years thirteen million sheep 

 have died from want of water. It is maintained 

 by some that the recent drought was by no means 



