e Greeks, and ends with the distressing incidents of the Greely Expedition.
Proceedings of the Sixth Meeting of the Society for the Promotion of Agricultural Science. 1885. B. D. Halsted, Secretary, Ames, Iowa. Manhattan, Kansas: State Agricultural College. Pp. 59.
The society was organized in 1880, for the purpose of bringing together those who are interested in the applications of science to agriculture, discussing the methods and results of investigations, and providing for publications relating to the same. The present meeting was held at Ann Arbor, Michigan. Among the papers recorded in the report are—"The Vitality of Seeds buried in the Soil," by W. J. Beal; "The Demands made by Agriculture upon the Science of Botany," by Charles E. Bessey; "On Some Redeeming Traits of Alkali Soils," by E. W. Hilgard; "An Investigation of the Origin of the Dandelion," by E. L. Sturtevant; and an account of some experiments on "Variation in Cultivated Plants," by W. W. Tracy. In his observations on the last subject, Mr. Tracy finds many illustrations of variations of type which cultivators had been trying to produce for years, appearing in different localities and from different stocks at about the same time, so as to seem to indicate that variation is not an accident, but a progression of the species.
The Journal of Physiology. Edited by Michal Foster and others. Vol. VII, No. 1. Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company's Works, Cambridge, England. Pp. 80. Price, $5 a volume, of four numbers.
We notice this "Journal" at the beginning of its new volume, because it is one of the principal recognized mediums through which original investigators in physiology make known the results of their work. Research in this branch of science is now very active, and is distinguished by minute attention to details. It is the custom of the "Journal" to publish the particular accounts of the experiments and conclusions of investigators, with a fullness and excellence of pictorial illustration that leave nothing to be desired. Professor Foster, as editor of this publication, is assisted in England by Professor W. Rutherford, of Edinburgh, and Professor J. Burdon-Sanderson, of Oxford; and in America by Professor H. P. Bowditch, of Boston; Professor H. Newell Martin, of Baltimore, and Professor H. C. Wood, of Philadelphia. The present number is occupied with a paper by W. H. Gaskell, "On the Structure, Distribution, and Function of the Nerves which innervate the Visceral and Vascular Systems."
Science and the State. By R. W. Shufeldt. Pp. 10.
Dr. Shufeldt advocates patronage of science by the Government, and argues that it must be a good thing because the Government already fosters some dozen or more scientific bureaus at its seat, and they are all thriving. He would extend the scope of these bureaus, and the patronage of the Government, and would have organized at Washington a Department of Science, with buildings and a dozen sections, and a Cabinet officer the Secretary of Science—to preside over the whole. The "Monthly's" opinion of schemes of this kind and its reasons for holding it have been often enough and plainly enough expressed, and need not be repeated. Happily the author—although his reference is to officers of the army and navy already in Government employ having a taste for science overruling that for their real business—has made a very terse statement of the real attitude which the Government should occupy toward scientific students. It is that it "should offer the constant opportunity to such men to do the work for which they were born, molded, and designed, but allow them to do it in their own way, at their own times, and absolutely unhampered by any but the most necessary regulations." This maxim may apply to officers in time of peace, when the corps are kept up merely for the sake of having them on hand. Broadened, and with the addition of "at their own expense or that of their friends," it would make a most excellent rule of universal application, and would convey the true doctrine.
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