338 



SCIENCE, 



[Vol. VII., No. 166 



his. The philosophy of the future will not act as 

 they did, will cease to reflect upon the scientific 

 assumptions, will take them merely on faith, with 

 a few hints about the insanity of inquiring into 

 them, and with a little melancholy contemplation 

 of those dark ages when men used even to ask 

 fundamental questions. In brief, the philosophy 

 of the future will not philosophize. 



Devotion and enthusiasm in the presence of the 

 greater questions of religion and science are so 

 rare that one rejoices to find any one so enthusi- 

 astic and devout as Dr. Abbot. But when he 

 undertakes to discuss the philosophic questions 

 proper, Dr. Abbot, by his ferocious denunciation 

 of the whole past course of modern thought, re- 

 minds us of a certain newspaper musical critic, 

 whose abuse of all the better concerts that he 

 chances to attend we often have read with huge 

 delight. The critic in question is, namely, by the 

 will of an evil fortune, as accomplished and 

 scholarly a musician as many years of toil could 

 produce. Unhappily, however, it chances, that, 

 by the will of God, his nature was so constituted 

 that he hates music. The sorrows of this man are 

 hard to conceive. Josiah Royce. 



STOKES'S LECTURES ON LIGHT. 

 The singular origin of these courses of lectures 

 was described in this journal (vol. iii. p. 765) in 

 the review of the first. Though by the same 

 author as the first, the subjects treated are far 

 more generally understood by the ordinary reader 

 of scientific literature, and consequently hardly 

 admit of such original treatment as characterized 

 the former book. Of the four lectures here given, 

 the first treats of phosphorescence and fluores- 

 cence ; while the remainder, with the exception 

 of a portion of the second lecture, which relates 

 to the rotation of the plane of polarization, is 

 devoted to spectrum analysis and its revelations. 

 Perhaps the most interesting passage to the scien- 

 tific reader occurs on p. 45, relating to the au- 

 thor's claims as an original discoverer of the 

 principles of spectrum analysis. The warm dis- 

 cussions to which this topic have given rise are 

 numerous, and, as is well known, some of the 

 most eminent English writers have attributed the 

 priority of the discovery, without restriction, to 

 Stokes, leaving for Kirchhoff, beyond credit for 

 an independent discovery, only the honor of hav- 

 ing extended the method to the detection of ele- 

 ments in the sun other than sodium. Tims Tait, 

 in his ' Recent advances in physical science,' and 

 Sir William Thomson, in the President's address 



Burnett lectures on light. Second course, on light as a 

 means of investigation. By George Gabriel Storks. 

 London, Macmillan, 1885. 24°. 



(Brit. ass. rept., 1871). It was the latter which 

 called out Zollner's vigorous retort and arraign- 

 ment of English men of science in the introduc- 

 tion to his ' Ueber die natur der cometen.' In 

 this passage, after describing Foucault's observa- 

 tions on the spectrum of the electric arc, the 

 author says, "On this ground, it seemed tome 

 that the substance which exercised the selective 

 absorption in Foucault's experiment must be free 

 sodium. This might conceivably be set free from 

 its compounds in the intense actions which go on 

 in the sun or in the electric arc ; but I had not 

 thought that a body of such powerful affinities 

 would be set free in the gentle flame of a spirit- 

 lamp, nor perceived that the fact of that flame's 

 emitting light of the definite refrangibility of D, 

 entails, of necessity, that it should absorb light 

 of that same refrangibility." 



In a recent paper by Prof. S. I. Smith (Ann. 

 mag. nat. hist.) on the decapod (crabs, lobsters, etc.) 

 crustaceans from the Albatross' dredgings in the 

 North Atlantic, there are some interesting points 

 brought out regarding the deep-water fauna. An 

 unusually large number — a third — of all the 

 species of decapods obtained were from depths 

 greater than one thousand fathoms, and many of 

 the species were remarkable for their large size. 

 Specimens of one brachyuran had the carapace five 

 inches long and six broad, while others of an 

 anomuran were yet larger, the outstretched legs 

 measuring over three feet in extent. Not only 

 were there many large species, but there was an 

 apparent absence of all small species. Their color 

 was also found to be very characteristic. A few 

 species were apparently nearly colorless, but the 

 great majority were of some shade of red or 

 orange, and there was no evidence of any other 

 bright color. Of twenty-one abyssal species, 

 eight possessed normal black eyes, two had ab- 

 normally small eyes, three had eyes with light- 

 colored pigment, while of the rest the function 

 was doubtful. Of five species from below two 

 thousand fathoms, one had normal well-developed 

 eyes, and the others small, imperfect, or doubtful. 

 From these facts, in connection with others, the 

 author concludes, that, despite the objections of 

 physicists, some light probably penetrates even 

 beyond two thousand fathoms ; and he thinks, 

 from the purity of the water in mid-ocean, light 

 might reach this depth as readily as to five hundred, 

 or even two hundred, nearer shore. However, he 

 finds that there is an undoubted tendency towards 

 radical modification or obliteration of the normal 

 visual organs in deep-water species. The large size 

 and small number of eggs were also observed as a 

 marked characteristic of many deep-sea decapods. 



