Storage Batteries A one year's course for beginning students Theoretical Mechanics By J. H. JEANS The subjects dealt with are the general principles of dynamics, the laws of motion, statics, and dynamics of a particle and of rigid bodies. Emphasis is placed primarily on the elucidation of the fundamental physical principles rather than on the elaboration of a mathematical theory. Care has been taken to illustrate all principles and results by a series of practical examples and applications. The amount of mathematics in the text has been reduced to the minimum. 364 pages, illustrated with diagrams, $3.00 Ginn and Company "Exide Batteries" Are thoroughly satisfactory for scientific work, which accounts for their being used in so many of the educational and research laboratories throughout the United States. If you are equipped, and after long service your "Chloride" battery needs some renewals; or if you contemplate a new installation we are ready to serve you. By arrangement with the factory we act as Special College Representatives and are prepared to furnish portable or stationary outfits, with any number of cells for current capacity from ampere to any maximum desired. May we send you catalog? To aid us in rendering good service, please state what your requirements are. JAMES G. BIDDLE 1211 ARCH STREET The above titles represent University of California Publications in Engineering, Anthropology and Botany. Other series published by the University of California include Agricultural Sciences. Entomology, Geography, eology, Pathology, Physiology Psychology, and Zoology. Complete lists of titles and prices will be sent on request The New Rationalism By EDWARD GLEASON SPAULDING THE DEVELOPMENT OF A CONSTRUCTIVE REALISM UPON PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEMS $3.50 net "The New Rationalism" is both an Introduction to philosophy and a constructive development of Neo-Realism. As an Introduction it presents systematically those philosophies, such as Idealism, Phenomenalism and Pragmatism, that now receive most discussion and exercise the greatest influence. However, in making this systematic presentation, the author aims to discover those hidden assumptions from which philosophers uncritically and unconsciously really derive their respective systems, so that, in this regard, the volume is a not inconsiderable departure from the usual Introduction. Its contents are based in part on the author's course, through a term of years, at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Accordingly, it is written for those who, among students, scientists and laymen are more interested in problems of fact than of history. The book is also constructive. For in his search for those tacit assumptions upon which philosophies rest, the author finds that the use of reason and the presupposition of reason's methods are common to all philosophizing. Upon this basis, the author develops a philosophy of the ideals of the reason as well as of the facts of sense experience. Such a position is appropriately called The New Rationalism. THE NATION says: "Professor Spaulding's book is an admirable piece of work. Nowhere else can one find so detailed and so successful an application of the conclusions of modern logic to the problems of philosophy. It has not only done much to rejuvenate rationalism, but it has also shown that a realism which is based upon stern logical principles, and which takes into sympathetic account the results of the physical sciences, may still be able consistently to vindicate freedom, teleology, and the realm of values. There can be little question that the' New Rationalism' is the most important philosophical volume of the year." Henry Holt and Company PUBLISHERS OF THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW NEW YORK CITY 46203. Tubing, F. S. Pure Gum, thick wall. 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Pure Gum, thin wall, of the same quality as No. 46203 but with thinner SCIENCE FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 1919 CONTENTS The American Association for the Advancement of Science : The Need of Conservation of Our Vital and Natural Resources as emphasized by the Lessons of the War: PRESIDENT HENRY STURGIS DRINKER Chemistry and Medicine-a Tribute to the Memory of John Harper Long: PROFESSOR JULIUS STIEGLITZ Scientific Events: Biological Surveys of States by the United States Department of Agriculture; The Census Bureau; The Bureau of Standards Scientific Notes and News University and Educational News Discussion and Correspondence: 27 31 .... 38 Two New Instances of Polyembryony among the Encyrtida: DR. L. O. HOWARD. The Foundations of Mechanics: PAUL J. Fox. Tropical Enervation: VAUGHAN MACCAUGHEY 40 43 43 It has been a cheap and easy criticism to stigmatize our people as money-loving, selfcentered, and materialistic, and this characterization, apparently generally held in Germany as a true picture of the people of the United States and of our national life, has, by some, even here at home, been more or less accepted as correct. The great soul of the American people, their intense patriotism and love of country, their devotion to ideals of right and of self-sacrifice and altruism, were not dormant but were hidden. We have enough of the Anglo-Saxon of our English brethren in us still not to seek to parade our better traits in boasting self-assertion-but when the time of trial and sacrifice comes, our people respond, and respond as a nation. A marked instance of this national trait was given in our treatment of Cuba twenty years ago. It was incredible to some of our foreign critics that this country could enter into a war with Spain solely to remedy the abuses of her government of Cuba, and to free Cuba, yet the event showed that such was actually the case -and now the world recognizes that we entered into the world-war just ended, solely and only as a matter of high national duty-and with no thought of national gain in money, trade or territory, but only because we recog 1 Address of the Vice-President and Chairman of Section of Engineering of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Baltimore, December 26, 1918. nized a great duty to the fulfillment of which we must devote ourselves and to which we gave our national life and our nation's full re sources. But while our country entered on this task with no thought of gain, we have, in the accomplishment of duty, received great gain, not only in the spiritual uplift as a nation that we must feel in the realization of what as a nation we have done, but in the material benefits that have come to us from the new conditions forced by war necessities in our business life. These conditions are so many and involve such large and complex issues that they are staggering in their contemplation. Take the railroad situation alone, and consider the immense gain and enlightenment to the country resulting from the far-reaching changes in the government's attitude toward railroad management, necessitated by the war. For years for a generation-thoughtful and informed men have realized the want of logic and of business sense typified and enforced by national legislation in the Sherman Act and by the countless restrictive impositions of state legislatures on the proper and businesslike management of our railroads-preventing pooling-forcing in the fierce competition for business the routing of freight over unnecessarily long routes-compelling absurdly low rates for service and other restrictions generally having their incentive in political expediency rather than in careful economic study. The public has erroneously been taught to believe that drastic uneconomic competition between our railroads, and also between our industries, should be encouraged, and indeed enforced as the law of the land, instead of the encouragement of wise economic cooperative regulation and understanding, tending to secure the best results at a minimum of waste in effort and money. The war came-urgent war needs in transportation involving the transport of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and of enormous quantities of material, made essential cooperative management of our transportation lines. A Director-General of Railroads was appointed -and presto, in a night shall we say-all the unnecessary and vexatious restrictions on cooperative methods in our transportation systems were set aside the government instinctively adopted business methods in the management of business enterprises, the Sherman Act was ignored, and the Interstate Commerce Commission was relegated for the time to dignified isolation and a condition of innocuous desuetude. For years the railroads had urged and shown the impossibility of keeping up their plants and equipment and of rendering due and proper service without proper and adequate remuneration in freight and passenger rates. The government, suddenly saddled with the actual responsibility of operation, and brought fact to face with a realization that the railroads it had taken over could not be run on air, brushed aside statute law and political criticism, and summarily, as a war measure, raised the charges for passenger and freight service, in reality a measure long needed in peace and the public accepted it all and labor benefited by increases in pay which the public was forced to provide. In industry the same lesson was enforced by the war. We were suddenly brought to an appreciation of the fact that Germany's conservation policy in her support of the practise of cooperative effort rather than that of destructive competition had built up an organization of economic strength that enabled her, from her national resources at home, without outside aid, to play the aggressive and enormously strong part she maintained up to the very end of the war. The war has, in transportation and in national industry, taught and enforced on our nation-quick to learn-these lessons of waste in the past and of future economic management by joint cooperative effort, and of all the lessons of conservation of our resources taught by the war, those of needed cooperative effort in our railroad and industrial interests are perhaps the most prominent and important in a material sense, and the lesson has been one not only to and for the public and our national and state authorities, but one by which those interests are directly benefiting. The railroad |