with a commercial wood products utilization company. DR. EDWARD A. SPITZKA assumed his new work in the neuro-psychiatric section, medical division, War Risk Insurance Bureau, Washington, D. C., on March 1. DR. HORACE W. FRINK, assistant professor of neurology at the Cornell Medical College, has sailed to work in psycho-analysis with Professor Freud at Vienna. PROFESSOR SELSKAR M. GUNN, formerly associate professor of public health at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has served for three years as associate director of the Commission for the Prevention of Tuberculosis in France, has left for Prague, Czechoslovakia, where he is to act as adviser in Public Health to the Ministry of Public Health. This appointment is in connection with the program of cooperation between the International Health Board of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ministry of Public Health. A MEMORIAL lecture on the life and work of the late Sir William Abney will be delivered before the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain by Mr. Chapman Jones. As a tribute to the services and character of the late General William C. Gorgas, the Senate has ordered that the remarks made at the memorial services in his honor, held at Washington, D. C., January 16, be printed. UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL THE sum of $1,000,000 has been given to the new School of Medicine and Dentistry of the University of Rochester, by Mrs. Gertrude Strong Achilles and Mrs. Helen Strong Carter, daughters of Henry A. Strong, who died in Rochester in 1919. The money will be used toward the erection of a clinical hospital as a memorial to the father and mother of the donors. THE Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society announces that in the department of mathematics at the University of Illinois, As sociate Professor R. D. Carmichael has been promoted to a full professorship; Dr. C. F. Green, Dr L. L. Steimley, and Dr. B. Margaret Turner have been appointed instructors; Professor E. R. Smith, on leave of absence from Pennsylvania State College, has been appointed associate. DR. RHODA ERDMANN, formerly lecturer at Yale University, has been appointed lecturer on experimental cytology in the University of Berlin. AT the University of Cambridge Dr. W. L. H. Duckworth, Jesus College, has been appointed to the newly created readership of anatomy, Mr. F. A. Potts, Trinity Hall, demonstrator of comparative anatomy, V. C. Pennell, Pembroke College, an additional junior demonstrator in anatomy and Dr. C. S. Myers, Gonville and Caius College, has been appointed reader in experimental psychology. DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE HUMAN NATURE AS A REPEATING FACTOR: THAT THRICE TOLD TALE THE following comments on Professor Wood's "Thrice Told Tale," SCIENCE, January 14, 1921, are based upon my long experience in showing celestial objects through a great telescope to tens of thousands of Saturday-night visitors, and in explaining photographs of star clusters, the Milky Way, spiral nebulæ, etc., to thousands of others. Perhaps these comments will be of interest to the psychologists. I fear that Professor Wood is unduly concerned about the victimization of present-day expositors of the universe, including himself. Contrary to his implication that the response to his (Wood's) explanation of the universe, made by the chance visitor to his ingenious telescope, could never be made again, I would say that the incident in all its essentials has certainly happened many times, and it will doubtless occur many times in the future, for human nature is a first-class repeating factor. When visitors to an observatory get a sudden appreciation of the bigness of our sun and other stars, of the number of suns in our stellar system, of the possible number of 66 planets revolving around those suns, of the strong probability that intelligent life exists in abundance throughout the universe, of the number of the spiral nebulæ, of the probable sizes and masses of the spirals, etc., they frequently react with the comment that, if what the astronomer says (of the universe) is true, it doesn't matter much whether we (the people of the nation or the peoples of the earth) do this or do that. Their "this" and their "that" are generally dictated by the subject which happens to be uppermost in the public mind at the time. If our country is thoroughly interested in the presidential campaign, as it certainly was in the struggle of June, 1912, what is more natural than that Professor Wood's lone visitor should not be the only person to illustrate his philosophy by turning to that absorbing question of the day? And so, following a sudden comprehension of the extent and contents of the universe, our Hercules cluster visitor reacted, "I think it doesn't matter very much whether Roosevelt or Taft is nominated at the Chicago convention;" and G. Lowes Dickinson's lone telegraph operator in a railroad shack in the Rockies reacted, "I guess it doesn't matter two cents after all who gets elected president." Other visitorial reactions here have drawn upon other subjects occupying the public mind, but there is no call to describe them now. I recently asked one of my colleagues who has dealt extensively with the visiting public in the past twenty-six years whether he has had any experience bearing on this subject. He replied: "I have on several occasions drawn visitors' responses paralleling the incident described in your address. I have observed this reaction, not only in connection with visitors to the observatory, but from members of audiences to which I have lectured. Last month I delivered a short lecture to the patients in the tubercular hospital at Livermore, California, 'Life in other worlds,' making references to the great number of suns in our stellar system, the possible multitudes of planets revolving about those suns, and the probability that many of those planets are inhabited. At the close of the lecture one of the patients came on up to me and said, 'After listening to your lecture, I don't think it matters much whether we patients get well or not."" I am respecting the value of understatement in saying that the essential parts of Professor Wood's story have happened here many times in the past thirty-three years in connection with the more than 200,000 visitors whose ideas of the universe have been enlarged in an immense number of cases by looking through the telescopes or by listening to the interpretation of astronomical photographs. I hope it is also an understatement to say that my experience in dealing with the public along this interesting psychological line seems to have been somewhat more extensive than that of others who have written on the same subject. May I turn from these natural happenings to an incident truly astonishing? In some wellknown book I have read of a human being who, looking at the moon through a telescope, was told that the large ring-formation in view was the crater Copernicus (or possibly Tycho or Archimedes-I can not locate the passage now), and who said to his instructor, “I should like to know how astronomers discovered that the name of that crater is Copernicus." This imaginary event is widely known in astronomical circles, but no one, in my opinion, had thought that it actually happened or even could happen. Yet, one Saturday night in the nineties a visitor descending from the observing chair said to me in all seriousness and innocence, "I was able to follow your description of the moon's surface, but I should like to have you tell me how astronomers discovered that the name of that large crater is Copernicus." If this unnatural incident could repeat, why waste energy and ink over the hypothesis that Wood's neighbor, acting in accord with widely prevailing philosophy, was a genuine unique? W. W. CAMPBELL MOUNT HAMILTON, CALIFORNIA, February 17, 1921 GALILEO AND WOOD TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: I have long been interested in horns, and I should dearly like to blow a blast on a David Wilbur Horn. To him I will say merely "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" Let the chemist take heed when murdering romance lest he also murder Cicero. I beg to associate myself with that veteran story-teller, T. C. Mendenhall, whose stories were so good that it never occurred to any one to doubt them. I will take a little whack at the Galileo story myself, after relating my experience with the Wood story. In the summer of 1912 I was on the train going from London "up" to Cambridge with the guests for the quarter millenium of the Royal Society when I heard Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler telling it to Sir Oliver Lodge, and I assisted him, as Professor Wood had told it to me several years before as having happened at Easthampton. What was my surprise then at seeing Professor Campbell's account as happening later at the Lick Observatory! I immediately wrote him and Professor Wood. In my opinion Wood's story is the better, but I never could believe that the definition in that revolving mercury paraboloid could be good enough for a farmer to make such an observation. I always felt that this telescope in the well was one of Professor Wood's jokes. It was particularly wooden. Perhaps Professor Wood will pardon me if I insert some lines that I wrote in his guest book expressing my feelings on the subject. It will easily be seen that I am no great poet. Ding, dong, bell, What did he get out? What a silly prof was that, He never knew what he was at. I am bound to admit that the Royal Society did not agree with me when they elected him a foreign member. As for Galileo, some years ago I was invited to deliver an address at the dedication of a new physical laboratory at a great university not a thousand miles from here. Sup1 Poetic for mercury. "I pre posing I was to be "the big noise pared an address about an hour long, but was somewhat disconcerted on being introduced by the dean in an address of about half an hour, in which much of the wind was taken out of my sails. In it he used the words, "When Galileo dropped the two weights from the tower of Pisa he sounded the death-knell of the Aristotelian philosophy." Singularly enough the same sentence occurred in my address. But I had my revenge. In beginning I disclaimed all possibility of thoughttransference, and when I came to the quoted words I added " as Sir Oliver Lodge says." I was rewarded with roars of laughter, and when I arrived at the club was told that the joke was much appreciated, as the dean was not popular. The joke would have been on me, however, if my manuscript had been looked at, for no more than the dean had I given Lodge credit for the remark that we both had cribbed. He laughs best who laughs last, for the dean is now president of that great university, while the subscriber is even less of a noise that he was then. However, hurrah for history! was it Napoleon who called it "mensonges convenus "? ARTHUR GORDON WEBSTER WORCESTER, MASS., February 13 ARCHEOLOGICAL SPECIMENS FOR MUSEUMS THE curator of the Museum at Phillips Academy has received authority from the trustees to reduce the number of specimens possessed by the department of archeology. We have large numbers of various objects in stone, bone and clay, found during the course of our explorations in New England, the Middle West and the South. We propose assembling collections ranging from 500 to as high as 4,000 specimens, all recorded as to locality from our catalogue, etc., and to send these to museums, natural history societies, etc. There is no condition, but it is requested that certain of the specimens be exhibited. They will be found of value to students. These exhibits have cost us a great deal to accumulate, and while we ask no financial PUBLICATIONS OF THE VIENNA MUSEUM DR. VICTOR PIETSCHMANN, as successor of the late Dr. Steindachner, writes of the sad plight of the museum of Vienna in having no means for publication, and no means of disposing of two works already printed. One of these is a Monograph of the Genus Tenthredo, the other a Monograph of the Siphoneæ Verticillateæ from the Carboniferous to the Cretaceous with plates, by Dr. J. Pia. This great work on fossil plants is said to be of especial value, and Dr. Pietschmann has great hopes that some one in America may take fifty copies at $5.00 each. The price is not great and the crisis is pressing. I suggest that any one willing to help this great center of scientific work to rise to its feet, may (as I have done) send a check for the equivalent in Kroner of five dollars to Dr. Pietschmann, Mechelgasse 2, Vienna 111.3. DAVID STARR JORDAN QUOTATIONS THE PROTEction of BRITISH OPTICAL THERE are two main objects which the Bill to be introduced should secure and reconcile. On the one hand, if the industry is to be saved, the manufacturers must be protected from foreign competition aggravated by the state of the exchange; and, on the other, the users of scientific instruments must not be prejudiced or hampered, either by being unable to obtain the best instruments or by having to pay an extravagant price for them. These apparently conflicting interests are not merely recon cilable; they are interdependent. If the British optical industry should dwindle and die, the scientific users of instruments will be at the mercy of foreign manufacturers, they will have to pay a heavy price for such dependence, and they will be handicapped as compared with scientific workers in foreign countries possessing a flourishing scientific instrument industry. Similarly, if the scientific users can not obtain the best instruments for their work, or if they have to pay an exorbitant price for them, their work will be hampered, their demand for instruments will decrease, and the manufacturers will ultimately suffer. The industries, through the British Optical Instrument Manufacturers' Association, ask shortly for the following measures of pro tection: 1. No optical glass or scientific instruments to be imported into this country for a period of, say, seven years, except under license. 2. Such licenses only to be granted in respect of goods which are not being made in Great Britain in the required quantities or of the required quality. 3. An expert licensing committee to be set up. 4. The optical instrument manufacturers are prepared, in order to guarantee reasonable prices, to submit to a control of profits. The manufacturers are satisfied and confident that, under such conditions for a limited period, they would be able to establish the optical glass and optical instrument industries on a sound and stable basis, and also be able at the end of the period to meet any foreign competition in the open market. On the other hand, unless they secure this limited protection, it is more than prabable—indeed, it is almost certain-that the manufacture of optical glass in this country will cease, and that, in consequence, some of the largest British manufacturers of optical instruments will greatly curtail their production. The proposed measures seem to protect adequately the interests of the scientific users. Moreover, such a system of control of imports for a limited period seems preferable to anything in the nature of a permanent tariff. It is not likely to have on the industry the emasculating effect of a protective tariff; provided that the period be limited, and that the licensing committee adopt an enlightened policy, prohibition of imports, except under license, is rather calculated to act as a stimulus on the development of the industry. There is, finally, one point not dealt with in the proposals outlined above. In return for this shield from danger during a limited period, the country may well ask: What guarantee is there that the manufacturers are taking due measure to promote and prosecute the scientific research and scientific methods on which alone ultimately these, or any other, industries can be made efficient and able to stand against foreign competition? The leading manufacturers have combined to form a scientific instrument research association, and in addition many of them are engaged continuously in scientific reseach. But it is not clear that all the manufacturers who are demanding the legislative measures outlined above are contributing in either or both of these ways to the advancement of the industry. It is worth considering whether the proposed licensing committee should not take this factor into consideration in any specific case in which it is asked to grant or to refuse a license. Nature. SCIENTIFIC BOOKS Mineralogy: An Introduction to the Study of Minerals and Crystals. By EDWARD H. KRAUS AND WALTER F. HUNT. McGrawHill Book Co., New York. 1920. 561 pages, about 700 figures. When a new book enters a field supposed to be already rather thoroughly covered, the first thing that will be inquired about it is, wherein does it differ from previous books? A hasty glance through the present volume yields one answer: in the character and quality of the illustrations. The usual line-drawings of crystals are abundantly supplemented by half-tone views of crystal models, which enable the reader to gain an unusually good idea of the shapes of the crystals described. Then there are portraits of leaders in mineralogy and allied sciences, both past and present, and representing various nationalities. And, finally, there are numerous photographs of mineral specimens, bringing out typical features of the 150 mineral species covered. Other noteworthy features are a readable chapter on the polarizing microscope, one on gems and precious stones, and one in which the minerals are classified according to ele ments present, and their uses are discussed. The last 150 pages of the book are devoted to an elaborate determinative table, based on physical properties. Every effort has been made to bring out the practical side of the subject, to show wherein the facts given bear on the everyday experiences of the reader, and to make the subject matter interesting as well as informing. In certain respects, moreover, the book is more up-to-date than is usual in an introductory text. For instance, in the definition of a mineral, allowance is made for recent discoveries as to variability in composition, and for the occurrence of colloid minerals, thus: "A mineral is a substance occurring in nature with a characteristic chemical compoa definite sition, and usually possessing crystalline structure. Further, a table is furnished for the use of the Merwin color screen in identifying elements by flame tests; and special tests to distinguish calcite from aragonite and from dolomite are given. Modernized formulas are listed for pyrrhotite, limonite, and bornite. . The make-up of the book is on the whole good. The crystal models would have shown up better if they had been coated with ammonium chloride before photographing. There are a number of places in which the type has evidently become pied after the last proof was corrected, but these can be readily set right on reprinting. Through a change in the vowel in the last syllable, the birthplace of scientific mineralogy appears as a castle, rather than the more appropriate mountain; microcosmic |