"5. Proper Freedom-freedom from mechanical and other disturbances which would interfere with its supply of food, water, warmth and light, and prevent it from carrying on its natural functions."

And again, under the heading 'The Living Matter and the Actively Living Structure,' the author says:

"As Hertwig has so strongly emphasized, the living and active protoplasm is to be regarded not as a chemical compound or an association of chemical compounds, but rather as an orderly arrangement of these into a definite structure, of which water is an indispensable constituent. Some of the water contained within the cell should be considered to be as much a constructive constituent of the living protoplast as the water is of the crystal of copper sulphate. As, without a certain amount of water, one can never have crystals, no matter how much copper sulphate may be present, so also, without the necessary amount of water we can never have active protoplasm. When the water of constitution is withdrawn, all the activities of the cell cease with the demolition of its structure."

In the carrying out of the author's plan he devotes one chapter to nutrition, another to absorption and movement of water, still another to growth, one to irritability and one to reproduction. In the chapter on the absorption and movement of water the author's treatment of transpiration is interesting. Thus, on page 136, we find the following:

"From all their surfaces exposed to the air, plants give off water-vapor. This is a physical necessity, for water-vapor will be given off from any mass, lifeless or living, which contains water, whenever the surrounding air is not saturated with moisture, or when the mass has a temperature higher than that of the air, or when the mass, in relatively dry air, is not enclosed in a waterproof covering. Other things being equal, the amount of water-vapor given off will be greater the greater the exposed surface in proportion to the mass. With like conditions of humidity, temperature, surface-composition and surface-area, equal masses of different composition, will dry, i. e., lose water by evaporation, at different rates, a gelatinous or slimy mass more slowly than a woody one, for example. The living plant differs from a dead one of exactly the same dimensions in being able to control four of these five factors, and to that degree it is able

to control the rate and the amount of evaporation. Because evaporation from the body of the living plant is controllable within certain limits by the plant itself, and to this extent is a physiological process, it has been given the separate name of transpiration."

After a little further discussion he says: 'Transpiration is, therefore, a physical process controlled but not carried on by the living plant. According to circumstances it may be more or less rapid than simple evaporation.' This view of the nature of transpiration is one which the present reviewer has held for many years, contrary to the views of many of the older physiologists, and it is gratifying to find that Dr. Peirce holds this physical view of the transpiration process.

In passing we notice with interest what the author has to say with reference to ecology, to which he refers very briefly on pages 252253. Of it he says: 'Meantime it is more or less the fashion under the name of ecology to view things in the large way, and by feeling rather than by the application of exact physiological methods, to reach conclusions regarding the effects of environment and of association.' We gather from this that the author has little use for the looser ecological methods, and in this again the present reviewer must heartily agree with him.

The volume is full of original suggestions, and differs quite markedly from the old-time works devoted to plant physiology. We congratulate the author upon the success which we are sure must attend the publication of this book. CHARLES E. BESSEY.

THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA.

attempt being made to discuss the vast array of species in the Micro-lepidoptera.

These

The book is divided into two parts, the first fifty-six pages being devoted to the six chapters of Part I. In these chapters general directions for collecting, studying and rearing caterpillars are given-directions of great value to the beginner and of decided suggestiveness to the experienced entomologist. The remaining eleven chapters are devoted to the biographies of many species of Sphingidæ, Arctiidæ, Saturniidæ, Ceratocampidæ, Limacodidæ, Notodontidæ and Noctuidae. life histories are written in simple, lucid English, each insect being described in its progress from the egg to the adult in a way that any one can understand. The usefulness of the book is greatly increased by the admirable illustrations from photographs of living caterpillars and spread moths by Miss Edith Eliot. These are certainly among the best photographs of living insects that have been published.

The authors and the illustrator are to be congratulated on having prepared a book which will be of use not only to entomologists, but also to great numbers of teachers and pupils interested in nature study in the schools. CLARENCE M. WEED.

SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS AND ARTICLES.

THE June number (volume 9, number 9) of the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society contains the following articles: 'Singular Points of Functions which Satisfy Partial Differential Equations of the Elliptic Type,' by M. Bôcher; 'Errata in Gauss's Tafel der Anzahl der Classen binärer quadratischer Formen,' by A. M. Nash (communicated by E. B. Elliott); The Logarithm as a Direct Function,' by E. McClintock; review of Klein-Fricke's Automorphic Functions,' by J. I. Hutchinson; review of Loria's 'Special Plane Curves,' by E. B. Wilson; 'Shorter Notices'; 'Notes '; 'New Publications.' The July number of the Bulletin contains: Reports of the April meeting and sectional meetings of the society; 'A Fundamental Theorem with Respect to Transitive Substi

tution Groups,' by G. A. Miller; 'The Characterization of Collineations,' by E. Kasner; review of Goursat's 'Cour d'Analyse,' by W. F. Osgood; Shorter Notices'; 'Notes,' and 'New Publications'; 'Twelfth Annual List of Published Papers' and index of volume 9.

THE July number (volume 4, number 3) of the Transactions of the American Mathematical Society contains: On the Point-Line as Element of Space: A Study of the Corresponding Bilinear Connex,' by E. Kasner; 'On the Formation of the Derivatives of the Lunar Coordinates with Respect to the Elements,' by E. W. Brown; 'On Reducible Groups,' by S. Epsteen; 'Theory of Linear Associative Algebra,' by J. B. Shaw; 'Projective Coordinates,' by F. Morley; 'On an Extension of the 1894 Memoir of Stieltjes,' by E. B. Van Vleck; 'On the Variation of the Arbitrary and Given Constants in Dynamical Equations,' by E. W. Brown; The Primitive Groups of Class 2p which Contain a Substitution of Order p and degree 2p,' by W. A. Manning; 'Complete Sets of Postulates for the Theory of Real Quantities,' by E. V. Huntington.

THE University of Chicago will begin the publication on January 1 of a journal of infectious diseases, edited by Professors Ludwig Hektoen and E. O. Jordan. It is said that the journal will be endowed with $125,000 by Mr. and Mrs. Arnold F. McCormick.

SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES.

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO MEDICAL CLUB.

THE University of Chicago Medical Club, organized October, 1901, began its second season with a special meeting on December 1, 1902, at which Professor G. N. Stewart, who has succeeded Professor Loeb in the chair of physiology at the university, presented an interesting paper on 'Problems and Methods of Modern Physiology.'

On January 19, 1903, the club held its first regular meeting for the season, electing as officers for the year, Lewellys F. Barker, president, and Frank R. Lillie, secretary.

Meetings of the club were held through the winter and spring, as usual, once a fortnight,

and the following papers were presented in the order given:

DR. WILLISTON: The Fossil Man of Lansing, Kansas.'

DR. LUDWIG HEKTOEN: The Memorial Institute for Infectious Diseases: Its Purposes and Plans.' DR. SHINKISHI HATAI: 'The Development of the Ventral Nerve Roots in the White Rat.'

DR. C. B. DAVENPORT: Recent European Work on Experimental Evolution.'

DR. P. BASSOE: A Case of Gigantism and Leontiasis Ossea' (illustrated).

DR. L. HEKTOEN: A Case of So-called Congenital Rickets' with lantern slides.

DR. E. O. JORDAN: The Recent Epidemic of Typhoid Fever in Ithaca, N. Y.'

DR. L. F. BARKER: The Morbid Anatomy of Two Cases of Hereditary Ataxia' (family described by Dr. Sanger Brown).

DR. H. G. WELLS: 'Fat Necrosis from the Standpoint of Reversible Enzyme Action.'

DR. A. P. MATHEWS: 'On the Nature of the Action of Salts on Protoplasm.'

DR. E. P. LYON: Experiments in Artificial Parthenogenesis.'

DR. CHAS. INGBERT: An Enumeration of the Medullated Nerve Fibers in the Dorsal Roots of Spinal Nerves of Man.'

DR. S. A. MATHEWS: The Diuretic Effect of Combined Salt Solutions.'

THE June number of the Biological Bulletin contains the following articles:

AXEL LEONARD MELANDER and CHARLES THOMAS BRUES: Guests and Parasites of the Burrowing Bee Halictus.'

J. B. JOHNSTON: The Origin of the Heart Endothelium in Amphibia.'

J. W. SCOTT: Periods of Susceptibility in the Differentiation of Unfertilized Eggs of Amphi

trite.'

ARTHUR W. GREELEY: Further Studies on the Effect of Variations in the Temperature on Animal Tissues.'

BENNETT M. ALLEN: The Embryonic Development of the Ovary and Testis of the Mammalia' (preliminary account).

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE.

ANTARCTICA.

TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: In the Geographical Journal of London for May, 1903, there is a four-and-a-half-page review by Dr. Mill of my monograph Antarctica.' May I

crave space in SCIENCE to bring before American scientists some of the points touched on?

Dr. Mill says: 'Mr. Balch surely does not need to be assured that no British geographer would dream of withholding credit from any explorer on the ground of his nationality, least of all if that nationality were American.' Let me answer this by some instances.

During the last six decades certain European geographers have made repeated attempts to decry Wilkes and his officers. As late as 1901, Lieutenant Colbeck, of the Royal Navy, now commanding the Morning, published in Mr. Borchgrevink's book, 'First on the Antarctic Continent,' a chart on which the southward track of the Southern Cross is marked as between 161° and 162° east longitude down to 66° south latitude, a spot at least three degrees distant from the most easterly point of Wilkes Land. The Southern Cross then sailed eastward and never apNeverproached Wilkes Land proper at all.

theless Lieutenant Colbeck called his chart "Track of Sy. 'Southern Cross' over Wilkes Land."

Sir Clements R. Markham has made, during the last twenty years, many a disparaging statement about Wilkes and his men. Finally, in his article in the Geographical Journal for November, 1899, he says: 'The Victoria Quadrant first presents, for examination, the lands sighted by Balleny and Dumont d'Urville from 118° E. to the Balleny Islands in 162° E., namely, Adelie and Sabrina lands.' Wilkes is not mentioned. In other words, in this case the president of the Royal Geographical Society ignores absolutely American discoveries and American explorers.

Dr. Mill himself, it seems to me, is not quite fair to Fanning, upon whose veracity he casts reflections, not only in his present review, but also in the February number of the Geographical Journal. There is no reason whatever to impugn the veracity of Fanning, who was an American, as was Morrell, whom Dr. Mill also attacks, and it is worth while calling attention to the fact that Dr. Mill does not attack a single English explorer.

Dr. Mill finds fault with me because I

think Cook's voyage of less importance in antarctic geography than Wilkes' voyage. He says: "If such extraordinary reasoning were to be allowed, one might say far more justly of the first transatlantic voyage: 'North America was not discovered, a fact which would seem to rank the voyage of Columbus as of much less importance than the voyage of Cabot." But if Dr. Mill had compared the voyage of Columbus with the voyages of Columbus' predecessors, his simile would have been exact. A number of men sailed westward before Columbus, but their efforts produced no tangible result beyond showing that the ocean was a big space of water. But Columbus brought out the fact that there were great lands in the west, and for this he justly gets deserved credit. In the same way Cook only found ocean and ice round the South Pole, while Wilkes first discovered the existence of an Antarctic continent, and he, therefore, like Columbus, is entitled to the credit of the discovery.

Dr. Mill states that I have done a patriotic service, and also a service to science, in setting out the real achievements of Charles Wilkes,' and for this I beg to thank him. But he says I claim for Wilkes 'first discovery.' I have never claimed that Wilkes was the first to sight land in the Antarctic. On the contrary, I think it may have been Don Gabriel de Castiglio in 1603, or perhaps some entirely forgotten mariner whose possible discovery of West Antarctica before 1569 may have been the origin of the 'Golfo de S. Sebastiano' on the charts of Mercator and Ortelius. What I claim for Wilkes is that he was the first to discover land masses which were probably continental in their dimensions, and the first to announce to the world the existence of the probable South Polar continent. And every Antarctic discovery since the time of the American Exploring Expedition goes to show that Wilkes was correct.

aware of Wilkes' orders dated 1838 at the time he wrote of the American and French expeditions.' Yet Ross had read Wilkes' 'Narrative,' for he quotes it repeatedly. Of the long and serious investigation I made of Sir J. C. Ross' charges against Wilkes-in which I stated that Ross paid no attention to the statements nor to the charts published by Wilkes, but quietly started a grievous error, and also that none of Wilkes' discoveries were disproved by Ross for the simple reason that Ross never was within sighting distance of any part of Wilkes Land-Dr. Mill does not say a word, and by his silence, therefore, he assents to my conclusions. EDWIN SWIFT BALCH.

THE SPECIFIC HEAT OF MERCURY.

The

TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: May I direct attention to a corollary to the recently published work of Messrs. Barnes and Cook on the specific heat of mercury?* In these experiments a slender thread of mercury was heated by passing a current through it, and the results agree fairly well with other results obtained by previous experimenters who heated mercury in the ordinary way. agreement might be still closer if the other results were as accurate as those of Messrs. Barnes and Cook. Petterson and Hedelius (quoted in the article referred to) failed to work accurately enough to detect the decrease of the specific heat with rise of temperature, and Regnault even thought the change to be in the opposite direction. As it is, the results agree well enough to show that, to about one part in 300, the specific heat is not altered by the passage of a current.

This fact, I think, can hardly be self-evident, and is worth an experimental proof. Specific heat is known to vary with temperature, i. e., rapidity of agitation of the molecules, and experiments along this line may give us a clue to the nature of conduction, whether this takes place entirely through the intermeshed ether, or partly by a motion (twisting or otherwise) of the particles.

That the same is true for water as for mercury has been shown by the experiments

* Physical Review, February, 1903.

of Callendar with the same apparatus, described in the British Association 'Report' of the Toronto meeting, 1897. I have thought it worth while to test the same for solids. Carbon was the substance chosen, as being a conductor and as having the greatest known variability of specific heat with temperature and, therefore (presumably), with other disturbing factors. The method employed was to heat a fine carbon rod by a heavy current, and watch its expansion by means of an optical lever.

If a vessel containing a given quantity of water have its capacity suddenly altered by a bulging or a constriction of its sides, the result will be a change of level of the water. And if the specific heat of the carbon rod be suddenly altered when the current is started or stopped there should be observed a change of temperature which I hoped to detect by an abrupt alteration in the length of the rod. The results were entirely negative. The rod used was of French make, a Carré electric light carbon, 51 cm. long and 0.15 cm. diameter, wrapped in tissue paper and enclosed in a glass tube. Its resistance (cold), according to the nature of the contact made, was from about eleven ohms upwards. The rod was mounted vertically, its lower end resting in a mercury cup, and its upper end tilting a small lever on a knife-edge bearing. On this lever was mounted a galvanometer mirror. The current was taken from the upper end of the rod by a wire wrapped tightly around it. The tilting of the mirror was read by means of a telescope and a vertical scale placed two and one half meters away. The current used was three amperes. When the current was started or stopped a perfectly steady motion of the scale was observed. A jolt of 0.05 cm. in the field of the telescope could have been detected.

As about 6 cm. of the scale passed the cross I wires before the still damp mucilage holding the tissue paper around the carbon began to steam, it will be seen that a jolt of 0.05 cm. would have meant a change in temperature of about two thirds of a degree, taking the initial temperature of the carbon as 20°, 293° absolute. And a difference of level of

or

two thirds of a degree in 293° would have meant an alteration in the heat capacity of about one part in 450. PAUL R. HEYL. THE RANDAL MORGAN PHYSICAL LABORATORY, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.

THE PROPOSED BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY AT THE

TORTUGAS.

The first is: 'On the Pacific

*

No doubt Dr.

TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: In SCIENCE, June 12, 1903, is a letter by Professor C. B. Davenport upon the proposed biological station at the Tortugas. There are two sentences in it which I feel it necessary to comment upon. coast we have the Hopkins laboratory and that of the University of California.' The second is: 'While we are planning a chain of marine stations certainly * * Puget Sound should be considered.' Davenport, who is quite familiar with the fact that the Minnesota Seaside Station at Port Renfrew, British Columbia, is just entering upon the third year of not altogether unsuccessful effort, means by 'we' the biologists of the United States. Under this construction it is altogether proper for him to omit the Minnesota Seaside Station from his calculations. In view of the fact, however, that this station, although upon Canadian soil, from which a number of memoirs and one volume of the yearbook, Postelsia, have already been published, is managed in connection with one of the American universities and has drawn its clientele principally from the western United States, it seems proper that it should be included as one of the Pacific coast stations of America. Its position on the Straits of Fuca was selected with great care so that it might be accessible as a center for the study of the fauna and flora not only of the sound but also of the open sea.

The Minnesota Seaside Station has not passed through the stage of an extended discussion in the columns of SCIENCE, nor has it intimated its pressing wants to Mr. Carnegie or any other millionaire. It has risen quite peacefully and modestly upon a cooperative

basis which is none the less favorable for respectable work. Every year has seen considerable improvement both in its buildings and