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PROTOPLASM: Physical Life and Law.

By LIONEL BEALE, F.R.S.

Facts and Arguments against Mechanical Views of Life as accepted by Huxley, Herbert Spencer, Strauss, Tyndall, and many others. HARRISON & SONS, 59 Pall Mall.

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London: EDWARD STANFORD, 26 and 27 Cockspur Street, S W

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The object of this book is two-fold. Firstly, it is intended to supply chemi cal lecturers and teachers with a useful repertoire of experiments, suitable for illustrating upon the lecture-table the modes of preparation, and the properties, of the non-metallic elements and their commoner and more important compounds. Secondly, it has been the author's ol ject to furnish the chemical student with a book which shall serve as a companion to the lectures he may attend-a book in which he will find fully described most, if not all, of the experiments he is likely to see performed upon the lecture-table, and which will therefore relieve him from the necessity of laboriously noting them and often sketching the apparatus used. In this way the student will be spared much unnecessary and distracting work during the lecture, and will therefore be better able to give his undivided attention to the explanations or argu ments of the lecturer.

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ACTA ERUDITORUM; from its commencement in 1684 to 1734, and Supplementa 1692-1734. in 32 Vols. NOVA ACTA ERUDITORUM, 1735 to 1763. and Supplementa 1735-1741. Indices, 6 Vols., 1693-1743 in 3 Vols.

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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1892.

CRITICISM OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY.
"Criticism of the Royal Society" which appeared in
the Times of December 1st is so obviously the

ork of a writer unacquainted with the inner life of the ociety, that it might well have been left to "waste its weetness on the desert air," had it not been taken eriously in an editorial article of the same issue of the ading journal. In fact, the relations of the "Criticism" > the editorial leader suggest that the discharge of these ombs into the scientific camp was carefully arranged; be writer of the criticism having managed to persuade he editor of the Times that the Society is in a bad way. That really is a serious matter, and justifies a brief but careful critique of the "Criticism."

The "Criticism" says:-"The Royal Society is officially "and statutorily described as the 'Royal Society for improving natural knowledge,' that is to say for promoting and rewarding original investigation."

The first half of this statement is quite correct, but the second is as completely erroneous. From its earliest days the Royal Society has conferred its Fellowship on persons who had nothing to do, directly, with original investigation, but were promoters of the "improvement of natural knowledge" in other ways. And so very loosely were the conditions of admission construed, half a century ago, that the Society was in danger of sinking into a mere club. From this fate it was rescued by the reform effected by the vigorous efforts of Sir W. Grove and the late Mr. Leonard Horner, which restricted the number of new fellows to be annually selected (not elected) by the Council to fifteen. These fifteen names are presented to a General Meeting which may, if it pleases, reject any or all of them and substitute more or fewer other names. The control of the Society at large is absolute. Nevertheless, in the five and forty years during which this arrangement has existed, we can call to mind only one occasion in which a decision of the Council was seriously challenged in the General Meeting and a name omitted by the Council added to the list. On the face of it, this does not look as if the Council had abused its power of selection.

The "Criticism" proceeds:-"It will hardly be contended by any one at all conversant with the matter that fifteen elections per annum are inadequate for the due recognition of really original work. On the contrary, it is only by a loose and wide interpretation of the governing clause in its constitution that the Royal Society can fill up, year by year, the full number of its permitted elections."

Yet every one "at all conversant with the matter" is perfectly well aware that sundry persons of just weight and authority in the Society have, for some time, been of opinion that the fifteen elections are inadequate ever for the purpose of recognizing original work; and that, for a number of years, this view has been pressed now and again on the Council. It is said that if fifteen were considered barely enough forty-five years ago, the prodigious increase of scientific workers, especially in Great Britain and the Colonies, during that time, must

have rendered that number insufficient for the present day; and that, seeing the necessity of allotting a fair share of the elections to each of the representatives of the many different branches of Science in a list of candidates whose number averages about sixty, the election of men who ought to come in is, every year, necessarily

postponed. We offer no opinion on this difficult question:

but that the facts are as we state them is notorious to every one who has served upon the Council. However, it is easy to submit the selective work of the Council to an effectual test. In the last twenty years 300 Fellows have been elected. Let any competent judges go over the names of these gentlemen, with the view of picking out ten whose right to be there admits even of being fairly questioned. We are confident that he will not succeed in finding that number, nor the half of it. No body of men ever has been, or ever will be, unaffected, to some degree, by personal influences, or prejudices, or errors of judgment; even ecclesiastical preferment is said not always to follow in the track of the purely spiritual gifts and graces. But a Council which can defy all hostile criticism of 295 out of 300 of its selections, and fairly defend the rest, may cheerfully meet its enemies in the gate.

The "Criticism" exhibits a no less curious ignorance of the actual facts in dealing with the relations of the officers to the Council. The critic knows nothing of the curious revolt that took place a score of years ago, aided and abetted by the majority of the officers of that time, for the purpose of rendering themselves powerless in face of the rest of the Council. He does not know that, subsequently, officers of the Society have over and over again urged that prolongation of the term of service of the rest of the members of the Council which can alone enable them to take the share they ought to take in the government of the Society. Few persons are aware of the great amount of business-some of it of a very troublesome and responsible character-which comes before the Council of the Royal Society. In his first year of office, a new councillor is a learner; at the end of the second year, just when he is becoming useful, he goes off, by a rule which the general body of the Fellows object to alter. Formerly the President's term of office was unlimited; now it has practically reduced itself to five years. Unless the other officers-and particularly the principal secretaries-retained their offices for a longer time, the affairs of the Society would soon either be reduced to chaos, or be carried on, somehow or other, by the one permanent official-the Assistant Secretary. The Society could not have a better Assistant Secretary than it possesses, but he has no seat in the Council; and even if it were desirable to reduce the secretaries to nullities, the situation would become impossible. Under these circumstances, it is clear that the officers must know more about the business of the Society than ordinary members of the Council; that, therefore, willy-nilly, they must exercise a preponderating influence; and, finally, that it is desirable that they should do so.

Again, the insinuation that this influence is exerted unfairly, in favour of a particular academical institution, could not have been made by any one acquainted with the actual government of the Society. Of the officers, two are members of Scottish Universities, one of thes

and two of the others, of the University of Cambridge, one has been honoured by both Oxford and Cambridge degrees. Where is the "excessive representation of one great academical institution" among these gentlemen? Undoubtedly one of the English Universities has a large share; but, if the author of the "Criticism" imagines that the influence of that University, or of any member of it acting on behalf of his University, had anything whatever to do with the election of these officers to the posts they hold, it is simply because he is utterly unacquainted with the circumstances under which these appointments were

but who have chosen to abstain from taking the which would, as a matter of course, have placed the its ranks and have enabled them to take their fair s in the burden of its work; no one but themse responsible for their singular position-the Royal So farà da se, and does not require their aid.

made ; and more especially with the difficulty of finding IF

competent men who are able and willing to devote an immense amount of time and trouble to the affairs of the Society.

So with respect to the "reappearance" of similar names on the Council "every five or six years." If the critic had ever taken part in the business of selecting a new Council; or even if it had occurred to his somewhat captious mind (1) that all branches of science must be represented; (2) that men who can and will give a great deal of time to the service of the Society are alone useful; (3) that it is not everybody's business to be a useful councillor; (4) that people who live far out of London, as a rule, find it difficult to attend the frequent meetings of the Council and its committees, he would not have found it necessary to suggest corrupt motives for this fatal reappearance of the same councillors; and that in spite of the rule that a man must be off the Council for a year before he can be re-elected.

It is further made a reproach to the Society that among the yearly elected fifteen "the professor abounds greatly, while independent investigators of the type of Joule, Brewer, Spottiswoode, De la Rue, Darwin, Gassiot, Grove, and others who have been the glory of English science, are comparatively rare." To which singular statement (most singular perhaps in the collocation of names) it would seem necessary to reply only by putting two questions. Will the critic point to any man ranking even with the least known of those whom he mentions, now living, who is not in the Royal Society, or who has not been placed on the Council, except of his own choice, or from the accidents of residence and occupation? And, secondly, has it occurred to him that in the last quarter of a century, a multitude of new professoriates in science have been created, and have been filled by the best workers the appointers could find? And if these gentlemen have not left off working the moment they were made professors, does it not seem probable that the Council of the Royal Society may have had even better grounds for selecting them for the fellowship than their appointers had for making them professors?

Finally, the "Criticism" affirms that "eminent professors may be named who are also eminent improvers of natural knowledge, yet are not fellows of the Royal Society."

We venture respectfully, but firmly, to question the accuracy of this statement; unless these "eminent improvers of natural knowledge" have voluntarily abstained from seeking the fellowship. It is not for the Council to ask any one, however "eminent," to join the Society. And if there are persons who have been glad to accept honours from the Royal Society's hands,

THE ELEMENTS OF PHYSIOLOGY

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Elements of Human Physiology. By E. H. St
M.D. Lond. (London: Churchill, 1892.)
F this book is intended as an introduction to the
siology a medical student ought to acquire it
its purpose admirably, but it would be too much t
that it could in any way take the place of the large
books. Such a book as this, rightly bearing
word "elements" in its title, if used, as it s
be, as a guide,” will give the student an are
ance with the subject which will be an a
introduction to more detailed works. Dr. S
has written in some 400 small 8vo pages a concer
account of the physiological processes of the body.
knowledge given is fully up to date. It must
been a difficult task to do this in so small a space
out merely recording a succession of disconnected
and rival theories. Dr. Starling is to be congra
on having accomplished this task well. The jar
selection he has made of the really important points,
his terse and clear mode of expression has enabled t
produce a book which besides being instructive is int
ing, which with a condensed manual is seldom the
The danger of the book lies in its excellence.
student, a medical student aiming at a mere qualifu
trusts, with the aid of some histology, to this book
he

may doubtless accomplish his immediate object. who would then be satisfied that he possessed a k ledge of physiology such as a medical man stor equipped with? If the student could not merely but also assimilate all that is brought before here, his mind would not only be supplied with m formation, but also receive a useful training. The rience of teachers, however, is that the average st does not understand the intricacies of many of the cesses and mechanisms of the animal body by h them tersely expounded to him in a few sentences may learn those sentences, but his ignorance is a exposed if he is brought face to face with the same q along another path. The more a medical man ko what physiology can teach him of those portions science which come into the most intimate relati ? medical practice, all the better.

The danger is the

this book falls into the hand of the student he * satisfied, and refrain from consulting fuller works or from practical laboratory work, on the importar which the author in the preface so rightly insists.

The introduction gives not only an account general properties of living matter, but also a survey of the build and functions of the animal touching even on development. This is followed account of the chemical constituents, and as this D largely referred to by the student during the re the book, it is a necessity, but would, I think, hav | better placed at the end.

In the chapter on blood and lymph a fuller account of leucocytes with their varieties and functions, and especially of the proteid and other substances associated with them, would certainly have been desirable. It is of course easy, in reviewing so small a book, to find instances of curtailment and of omission, but the life history of the leucocytes is of supreme importance medically, that even the account of the derivatives of hæmoglobin might, for their sake, have been shortened.

The phenomena of muscular contraction are well described, and the account of muscle and nerve currents is especially clear and to the point.

In the chapter on the vascular mechanism two tracings of pressure in an artificial schema are taken from Prof. Foster's text-book. The tracings are accurately reproduced. In the description of these we are told that, after a high peripheral resistance is introduced into the circuit, "the pressure on the arterial side at first rises with every beat till it has attained a certain height, where it remains stationary, merely oscillating with every stroke of the pump. The venous manometer, on the other hand, shows no rise of pressure, and its oscillations becomes less and less, till they disappear and the flow becomes continuous." A glance at the tracing shows, however, that there is a rise of pressure on the venous side, and moreover a maintained rise. This is a very important point about the tracing. A student grasps readily the action of the arterial blood pressure in forcing the blood from the aorta to the capillaries, but he is at a loss to understand why it comes back again from the capillaries towards the heart. It cannot be too much insisted on that we have a pressure, a small and gradually falling pressure, in the veins, and that this is the important determining cause of the venous flow. The author, in this the proper place to bring this prominently forward, leaves it out entirely, though it is incidentally referred to later on, and leads the student to suppose that the presence of the valves in the veins and the aspiration of the thoracic movements, important though they may be, are the chief factors.

The subject of endocardial pressure and of the pulse is treated, clearly and concisely, in the light of Hürthle's important work. This is particularly welcome, as, if I am not mistaken, this is the first occasion that these researches have been brought before English readers.

In the discussion of the causation of the heart's beat it does not seem clear why "the beat always starts in the sinus" when we are told that the sinus contracts feebly and slowly. The fact that the sinus has a more rapid rhythm than the other chambers of the heart, and so initiates the whole cycle, is not distinctly brought out. The author follows Schmiedeberg's opinion in stating that muscarin acts by stimulating the nerve-endings of the vagus. This is by no means certain, and we should have welcomed some mention of Gaskell's opinion that its action is a direct one on the muscular tissue, and some of the reasons for taking that view. In the description of the vasomotor mechanisms I have found no adequate statement of the important part vaso-dilator nerves play in regulating the circulation in skeletal muscle.

In the account of the nervous mechanism of respiration, which is well up to date, in including some of the results of the work of Head, we should have expected also some statements of Marckwald's observations on the influence

of section of the medulla above the respiratory centre. No reference seems to be made of the influence of impulses reaching the respiratory from higher centres of the brain. It is also unfortunate that when the student turns, as directed, to Fig. 61 he finds that the tracing selected of the effect on the respiration of section of the vagi does not show the increase in amplitude as it does the decrease in rate, although he is told that both the changes are brought about. On page 266 there is an obvious misprint; the word "expiratory" should be "respiratory." On page 291 there is another misprint, "B," in the equation should be, of course, "Br." A few lines further on there is, however, a serious error. We read, "From the amount of nitrogen given off the amount of urea present in the urine, may be calculated. 35'5 c.c. of nitrogen correspond to one gram of urea." The theoretical amount calculated for one gramme of urea is 3727 c.c. at standard temperature and pressure, while 35'5, or more exactly 35'4 c.c., is the amount which Hüfner found was actually liberated not by one gramme, but by one decigramme of urea.

The chapters on the special senses and on the central nervous system are some of the best in the book. The methods of tracing fibres in the cord and brain are fully gone into, so also is localization of function, and indeed the account of the brain throughout is very clear and good.

At the end of the book is a short appendix, in which is given a description of apparatus purely physical in nature. Every teacher will agree with the author that it is not only desirable, but necessary, to put this in a manual of physiology. The ignorance of the construction and use of the simplest physical apparatus, which the average medical student carries with him into the physiological laboratory, is usually almost as perfect as it can be. Much of the time of a demonstrator of physiology has at first to be given to the teaching of some of the simplest physical methods. L. E. S.

APPLIED MECHANICS.

Elementary Manual on Applied Mechanics. By Prof. Jamieson. (London: C. Griffin and Co., Limited, 1892.)

THIS

years.

HIS is the latest addition to the series of books introduced by Prof. Jamieson during the last few Like his useful work on the Steam Engine, it is the outcome of the course of lectures which he delivers to his own students. It is replete with the many mechanical contrivances to be found in the workshop, one chapter being devoted to the consideration of the screw-cutting lathe alone.

The illustrations, with which the book abounds, and the necessary descriptions of the various machines considered, are all that one may wish for.

An excellent feature of the book will be found in the manner in which, after having enunciated a principle, the author has applied it to some well-chosen examples. In this direction he has proceeded to an extent which will be highly appreciated by the student. Further, he has availed himself of any opportunity to obtain results experimentally, and these form a very instructive series of examples for the young engineer.

A careful perusal will show that the author considers it desirable that all matters pertaining to units, definitions, symbols, &c., should be carefully attended to. But in his treatment of these he has not been entirely successful.

Take, for instance, his definition of the moment of a force on p. 15:-" The moment of a force is equal to the force multiplied by the perpendicular distance from a point on its line of action." This is rather ambiguous, and we should prefer to see the words, with respect to a point, included in the definition.

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Man and the Glacial Period. By G. Frederick Wright, D.D., LL.D., F.G.S.A. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., 1892.)

THE title of this book raises expectations which the contents fail to satisfy. Out of 374 pages only sixty are devoted to the consideration of "the relics of man in the Glacial Period," and the treatment of the subject is, to say the least, uncritical. The reader does not learn from Prof. Wright that strong doubt has been expressed as to whether some of the "finds" of human relics in North America were really made in undisturbed glacial deposits, while his discussion of the European evidence is crude

and inadequate, not to say misleading. The author apparently only a slight acquaintance with the literat of the subject, acquired chiefly from such recond sources as Lyell's "Antiquity of Man," and treatises on, general geology. Of the many interesting facts bear: on man's relation to the Ice Age which have been de covered since those works were published our author is parently ignorant. Nor has "a summer spent in Euruge sufficed, as who could expect that it should, to make 1; of his volume deals with the glacial phenomena of Nor for his other deficiencies. Fortunately, the major por... America, for here he is on safer ground. We feel s however, that many of his statements and conclusion will receive scant support from geologists across the water. It would be interesting to know, for example, what evidence can be adduced to show that the souther part of the United States was submerged during the Glacial Period to the extent of 500 feet, so as to bring the waters of the Gulf of Mexico into Illinois art Indiana. Again, we were under the impression that the author's "Ohio Lake," which he supposes came int existence when the great ice-sheet advanced into thr region, had been effectually disposed of by Mr. Leverer and Prof. Chamberlin. Throughout the book the unity of the glacial period is confidently upheld, a view whi Prof. Wright is, of course, entitled to maintain; but he might have informed his readers that with few exceptions American geologists are quite of another opinion. He fails to understand the evidence adduced by Chamberlit and others in favour of the periodicity of glaciation, while so far as one can gather from his pages, he seems to know nothing of the facts bearing on this question which geologists in Europe have accumulated, especially during the past few years.

Altogether we much prefer the author's earlier work, "The Ice Age in North America," of which the present is more or less of an abstract. In the former the facts of detail, and the writer's crude speculations and hypotheses American glacial geology were given in considerable were less obtrusive. Should the present work come to a second edition we would advise Dr. Wright to get some scientific friend to assist him in its revision. Loose un scientific phraseology and incorrect definitions are of not infrequent occurrence throughout the volume. Thus we read of "glacial ice," of "beautiful crystals of porphyry, &c., and are told that névé is the "motionless part" of a glacier, although a little further on we learn that it is from this "motionless" névé that "the glacier gets both its supply of ice and the impulse which gives it its first motion." Obviously Dr. Wright is unacquainted with the observations of MM. Pfaff, Kloche, and Koch on the movement of névé, while he might increase his knowledge of glacier motion by studying what Messrs. McConnel and Kidd have to say upon that interesting subject. Beetles, Butterflies, Moths, and other Insects. By A. W. Kapple and W. Egmont Kirby. (London: Cassell and Co., 1892.)

THIS work is a slight sketch of the more prominent British insects, intended for youthful and very inex perienced entomologists. The first section is devoted to classification, the key to the orders of insects being a fairly workable one, though it takes no account of the very numerous exceptions. Then follows a section on structure, in which when describing the eye the authors ignore the latest experiments on the subject, proving that the compound eyes form but a single image of the object seen; they also treat the tongue or proboscis as if it were homologous throughout the orders, whilst in lepidoptera it is developed from entirely different organs from what it is in the others, except in the very lowest family; and again when describing the legs they fall into the almost incredible error of speaking of the first joint as the trochanter, saying it is joined to the thorax by a hinge

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