range between indoor and outdoor temperatures. Lord Kelvin actually proposed to heat a house by a reversed heat engine or refrigerating machine. I am not aware whether this has actually been tried in practise.

By the efficiency of a boiler we mean the ratio of the energy, contained in the hot water and steam into which it has been converted, to the amount of heat that may be realized by burning the coal. This suffices to indicate the performance of the boiler, while that of the engine is a separate thing, and suffices to compare the performance of the engine with that of a perfect engine, limited as it is by the second law of thermodynamics. Mr. Forbes casts doubt upon Carnot's cycle being the most perfect one, but that was thoroughly proved by Carnot to be the case. In fact the gas-engine and the Diesel, which approach most nearly to the Carnot cycle, have the highest efficiency that has been attained. Mr. Forbes is correct in pointing out the fact that the efficiency of electric heating is unity, a fact which interests the consumer, who in this rare case knows that the meter can not do him an injustice, and yet, for all that, this is not a cheap method of heating. Electricity can compete with the ice-man.

ARTHUR GORDON WEBSTER

REVERSAL OF THE SODIUM LINE

TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: On a recent visit to a large plate-glass factory in the vicinity of Charleston, West Va., I had the good fortune to note the reversal of the wellknown sodium line "D." The instrument used was a small pocket direct-vision spectroscope, which I carry with me on technical trips.

The furnace was a 200-ton plate-glass type, gas fired; and the reversal was noted at the peep-hole near the charging end, and shortly after the introduction of a fresh charge of the "mix." The reversal was noted in the case of two furnaces, one of these giving a steady reversal, and one giving a wavering and intermittent reversal. The phenomenon was noted both by myself and also by three distinguished technical friends attendant on the

trip. Of course the reversal of the sodium lines is frequently observed in the electric arc, but this is the first instance in my experience that I have noted such reversal in a fuelfired furnace. The temperature of the furance was probably approximately 3,000° F.

The observation may be more common in the experience and observation of others; but if this brief note should prove of value, the writer will be glad to answer any detailed questions regarding this rather unique matter. I have long held the opinion that the spectroscope has not been-and is not yetused for its full technical worth in the practical arts.

CHARLES S. PALMER

UNITED FUEL GAS Co., CHARLESTON, WEST VA.

THE CARNEGIE FOUNDATION AND RESEARCH

IN THE COLLEGES

IN a paper on college government and the teacher's salary, in the 14th annual report of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the statement is made that much of what passes for research in American universities is only imitation research, which is detracting from the quality of the teaching to which the students are entitled. The conclusion is drawn, by inference at least, that the large sums of money spent on this kind of research could be expended much more profitably in strengthening the teaching work. It is unnecessary to debate the correctness of the writer's judgment as to the quality of the research work done in the universities. A large part of the research work done everywhere is mediocre or poor and it would be surprising indeed if this did not imply also to the colleges. No doubt the work done in some institutions is inferior to that of some others just as the teaching is of different degrees of perfection. It seems, however, that the writer has entirely overlooked one aspect of research work which in the colleges should be given the most serious consideration.

For many years the appreciation of the value of research has been growing in this country. This interest has been greatly stim

ulated by the war and is especially reflected by the demand for investigators by the industries. Obviously, if this interest is to be maintained, if indeed it is not to be seriously checked by unsatisfactory work of poorly trained men, a supply of investigators must be available, and they must come from the colleges. Of course, a student can not be taught to be an investigator. He can only be given the tools of the trade, the essential training in the fundamentals, and the opportunity to make himself into an investigator if he has the proper mental equipment. He must learn first of all that there is such a thing as research by which a livelihood and an honorable position can be gained. Through contact with research workers he must acquire that spirit which is absolutely essential to continued investigation, and without which few young men will choose the laboratory in preference to the more lucrative offerings of the business and professional world. This contact can be obtained only in colleges doing research work. Every one who has had experience in maintaining the personnel of an investigational institution knows that the chances of getting good research men is much greater in the colleges doing research work. Not only does he find there students sufficiently interested in research to consider it as a calling, but those who are temperamentally adapted to this exacting type of work have had some opportunity of demonstrating their fitness. Colleges doing no research work rarely turn out an investigator. It is improbable that the students in these institutions differ essentially from those whence most of our investigators come. The difference lies in the fact that nothing is done to develop those having qualifications for this work. Musicians are not developed in a technical school, nor artists in a college of law.

Presumably research is conducted primarily for the results it may yield, but what we usually consider as the results of university research is in reality but a by-product; the real results are the investigators it develops.

There has never been a time when the colleges were so unable to meet the demand for

RADICALISM AND RESEARCH IN AMERICA

IN a communication by Neil E. Stevens having the title "Radicalism and Research in America" printed in the last issue of SCIENCE, both the title and the purport of the article seem to challenge comment as a form of veiled propaganda such as is all too common at the present time. When radicalism is now pretty clearly identified with bolshevism, I.W.W.ism and other similar yearnings after dictation by the proletariat styled pure democracy, and when these eruptions within the body politic are threatening to overthrow our established system of representative (not democratic) government, the claim is set up through insinuations rather than by direct assertions that the fathers of our government, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin and Madison, were all radicals identified with such tearing-down movements. It seems further to be implied that because they encouraged science, therefore scientific men need have no fear that such overturns as our radical now propose will be other than advantageous to them.

If I have misinterpreted the purport of the article I trust that Mr. Stevens will explain just what radicalism connotes in his communication.

WILLIAM HERBERT HOBBS ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN, July 10, 1920

in Relation to Botany' (Scientific Monthly), and as Henry Jones Ford uses it in 'Radicalism in American Poltics' (July, Yale Review), in the first paragraph of which he refers to Madison and Franklin as radicals. The word can not possibly be regarded as ⚫ synonymous with, or identified with, Bolshevism, I.W.W., or anarchy." ED.]

ANATOMICAL LITERATURE

PROFESSOR ERICH KALLIUS (Anatomisches Institute, Breslau, Germany), who has taken over the editorship of the Anatomische Hefte and Ergebnisse der Anatomie und Entwicklungsgeschichte, writes that it is difficult now to obtain foreign literature and that he would be very glad if American contributors would send reprints as freely as possible for the use of these journals.

H. V. WILSON UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, CHAPEL

SCIENTIFIC BOOKS Greek Science and Modern Science. A Comparison and a Contrast. By CHARLES SINGER. London, Oxford University Press, 1920, 80, 22 pp.

This lecture, inaugurating a systematic course on the history of science and of scientific ideas, was delivered at University College, London, on May 12, 1920. Its author, one of Emerson's "monks of Oxford," was a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the recent war. Its object is to bridge over the embarrassing gap between the history of Greek science and that of modern science. It is a commonplace to deride the Middle Ages for sterility in science; the thing is to ascertain just how, where and why they were sterile. This department of historical investigation Singer defines as "the pathology and embryology of human thought"; for, in the Middle Ages, Greek science did slowly and surely die, and strange as it may seem, our modern scientific methods were actually engendered, by lengthy and painful travail, out of medieval restrictions.

Of this view of things, Dr. Singer's lecture gives a clear and intelligible account.

The

argument is as follows: It is one of the vainest delusions of the modern mind to imagine that we can entirely enter into the modes of thought of the ancient Greeks. This fact, which Singer has frequently insisted upon in private correspondence, was already emphasized long ago in the verses of one who was very close to them, the Roman Lucretius. Nec me animi fallit Graiorum obscura reperta Difficile inlustrare Latinis versibus esse, Multa novis verbis præsertim cum sit agendum Propter egestatem linguae et rerum novitatem. But it is at least reasonably certain that the Greeks based their scientific system upon Egyptian, Minoan and Assyro-Babylonian tradition, that this pre-Hellenic material was an anonymous, socialistic, collectivistic product; while the Greeks thought as individuals, not as a people, stamping their work, each one of them, with his own individuality, thus giving to science the eponymous character which it has since retained. We have only to think of Diophantine algebra, Euclidian geometry, the corpus Hippocraticum of Galenical remedies. Credulous and facile of generalization as were the Greeks, they had yet an abiding intuitive conviction that "order reigns in nature"; that behind the observed and observable phenomena there is an ascertainable law which correlates them and is their raison d'être. It is just this sense of law in nature and of the necessity for personal scientific investigation that is their most valuable heritage to posterity. This is what Sir Henry Maine meant when he said that Nothing moves in the modern world which is not Greek." In the Middle Ages, the reckless freedom in speculation as to the causes of things which the Greeks enjoyed was suppressed by prince and prelate as subversive of the feudal theory of the state and of the theological view of the universe. But, in spite of the harm it has done, there was, in Singer's view, a distinct advantage in all this. It got the practical scientific worker away from sterile speculation and down to brass tacks; so that gunpowder, printing, the mariner's compass, spectacle lenses were immediately taken up, and the outcast, outlawed medieval

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surgeon was forced to become a more practical bedside man than the top-heavy scholastic internist. The Levitical code of sanitation (isolation of suspects in eight contagious diseases), and Hindu (non Roman) surgery also gained a status. Modern science differs from Greek and medieval science, however, not so much in aims or results, as in processes and methods; and here we have "certain new factors of an order the world has not before seen." Except in the mathematics, the essence of which is to give steps and processes, the Greek scientist gave only conclusions and concealed his proofs, his findings being in the Lucretian phrase "obscura reperta." Concerning this, Singer says (p. 20):

Ancient mathematics, like everything else that has come down to us from antiquity, have of course suffered from the accidents of time, but the obscuring power of time is a mere light veil compared to that heavy impenetrable curtain that the Greeks have themselves drawn over their biological works.

The medieval scientists (witness the alchemists or Leonardo's mirror-written physiology) had the same tendency. But we pride ourselves upon the fact that our scientific monographs are devoted mainly to definite proofs of the author's propositions. The Greeks had no instruments of precision because, being speculative philosophers, they felt no necessity for proofs. Thus, while mathematics, however interrupted by the Dark Ages, is a scientific continuum, medieval science, like Greek science, is too frequently a solution of continuity, while the continuity of modern science is insured by simple preservation of records. The only danger threatening modern science, as Singer sees it, is in the isolation of scientific workers through the extreme and complex specialization of their subjects, making one branch of science unintelligible to the followers of another. The best way to obviate this danger is through the broad study of the historical evolution of science as such, for this "experimental" method will evade the pitfalls which befell Whewell and Comte, viz., the arbitrary concept of a rigid orthodoxy in science, based upon a quasi-medieval hierarchy

of all the sciences. The history of science is not secular or sociological history, but the cultural history of mankind, the bases of which are anthropology and psychology. Through this branch of study we may clarify our own concepts, document and preserve our records, correlate our findings and so establish a continuum with the future and the past.

The finely wrought argument (Singer at his best) concludes with the thought, familiar to us in certain well-known verses of Lucretius, that the distinctive hope and glory of the science of our age is "that it will place in the hands of the inheritors of our civilization and our thought, whoever they may be, an instrument that will enable them to carry on our work from the point at which we leave it." No one can read this inspiring lecture without a heightened, clarified perception of the superior worth of modern science and the dangers which beset it. In the lecturer's own words:

Our scientific system, of its nature, claims an independence of all race, nationality or creed. It is of all studies the most truly international. The scientific man may, better than most, claim with St. Paul that he is a citizen of no mean city, that he is the true citizen of the world.

ARMY MEDICAL MUSEUM

F. H. GARRISON

SPECIAL ARTICLES

THE PRODUCTION OF ARTIFICIAL HERMAPHRODITES IN MAMMALS

DURING the last ten years especially, there has been a decided impetus towards the analysis of sexual conditions, in animals, that has largely centered itself around a study of the physiology of the sex glands by means of transplantation experiments. From 1910 to 1913 Steinach reported his remarkable results obtained from sex gland transplantation in which one sex gland had been transferred to young castrated animals of the opposite sex (rats and guinea-pigs). The results in brief were: (a) masculinization of female animals by implanted testes (i. e., the young female animal, after receiving the transplant, developed into a male-like animal as indicated

by somatic changes-weight, length, skeletal changes, hair coat-as well as by psychic behavior-temperament, and reactions toward animals of the opposite sex); and (b) feminization of young male animals by the implantation of an ovary, with corresponding results.

One point of especial interest, in this work, is in reference to the apparent antagonism of the sex glands (considered as hormone antagonism) when brought together in the same individual. Steinach was unable to obtain either a growth or persistence of an implanted sex gland unless the gland of the host (gland of the opposite sex) was removed before the implantation was made.

Following Professor Lillie's study of the free-martin, and at his suggestion, I began in 1916 a study of the interrelation of the sex glands that very soon led to a reinvestigation of the conditions considered by Steinach. In his study of cattle twinning, Lillie found that in a very large percentage of cases the twin fetal circulations are connected through an anastomosis of the allantoic blood vessels, as a result of the fusion of the chorionic vesicles. In correlation with such a condition, and only when the twins were male and female, the ovarian development was suppressed in the female of the pair; also, in many cases, there was an apparent superposition of male secondary sex organs upon the "determined" female sexual condition. In offering an explanation of this unique condition, Lillie suggested the possibility of a hormone antagonism with a dominance of the male secretion1 (i. e., theoretically a secretion of the testis, carried in the blood from the male to the female of the pair, may be responsible for the accompanying abnormal condition found in the female); the development of the male sexual apparatus suffers not at all from the unusual condition. If the twins are homosexual-i. e., two males or two females-the reproductive system of each is entirely normal.

I have previously reported the progress of the investigation undertaken and have offered 1 F. R. Lillie, Jour. Exp. Zool., Vol. 23, 1917. 2 C. R. Moore, Jour. Exp. Zool., Vol. 28, Nos. 2 and 3, 1919.

a few criticisms of Steinach's conclusions. The immediate cause for this preliminary report, upon other aspects of the problem, is the appearance of a paper by Knud Sand3 relative to the possibility of obtaining a persistence or growth of both kinds of sex glands in the same host without any apparent ill effect to either gland (a hermaphroditic condition); this paper is practically a summary of a larger monograph published in Danish.

Sand, on the whole, supports the work of Steinach but has reflected some discredit on the idea of sex gland antagonism. In a later paper Steinach reported having succeeded in obtaining subcutaneous growth of both kinds of sex glands when these were grafted simultaneously on the same infantile castrated male animal, and Sand, repeating the same technic, obtained an hermaphrodite animal both somatically (both glands persisted, and the rudimentary mammary glands of the male animal underwent considerable hypertrophy) as well as psychically (the animal is described as behaving both as a male and as a female). He also implanted an ovary within the substance of a testis ("Ovario-testis") and obtained a (normal) persistence of both glands. It is difficult, however, to clearly understand all of the statements in this paper, for after describing such a persistence of an ovarian graft within a testis which he claims has been left "in their natural position," he asserts that:

Neither did I ever succeed in a real ingrafting of the heterological gland on non-castrated animals, whereas there was, as mentionel before, a positive result if the gonads had immediately been brought under somewhat the same conditions by simultaneous transplantation on the same animal, or by the intimate union formed by the production of ovario-testes.

Sand also agrees with Steinach in his ideas of psychical changes as a result of gonad transplantation into previously castrated young animals of the opposite sex; he uses as a criterion of sex his interpretations of certain features of the behavior of such an animal. 8 Jour. of Physiology, Vol. 53, December, 1919. Italics mine.