denly manifest all the signs of intoxication. Dr. Crothers concludes, 1°, that symptoms of alcoholic poisoning cannot be trusted as evidence of the immediate use of alcohol; 2°, that the excessive use of alcohol leaves a permanent defect or impress on the brain, which will go down into the future with great certainty. The author says that he presents these facts as a sort of preliminary survey of a comparatively unknown field. The subject is of so great and so far-reaching interest, that we trust the survey will be speedily pushed to completion.

AT THE LAST GENERAL MEETING of the English society for psychical research there was some discussion over Mr. Myers's paper on multiplex personality, which was published in the Nineteenth century for November, and an extended account was given by Mr. Myers of some observations made by Mr. Gurney, Dr. A. T. Myers, and himself at a meeting in Paris of the Société de psychologie physiologique. At their conclusion, Prof. Henry Sidgwick, who was occupying the chair, made some remarks on the general subject of psychical research, which, both because of their import and the distinguished reputation of the speaker, will undoubtedly carry much weight and attract very general attention among scientific men. Professor Sidgwick said that the society for psychical research had now reached an important crisis. The work prepared by Messrs. Gurney, Myers, and Podmore, entitled Phantasms of the living," of which we will give our readers an extended notice shortly, was about to be put in the hands of the public; and for the first time the scientific world would have before it in complete form the grounds for the momentous conclusion' announced some time ago by the authors of the book, and in which he (Professor Sidgwick) was entirely disposed to concur, the italics are our own, that the mental state of one person might affect another otherwise than through the recognized channels of communication by the senses, and even at a distance so great as to render a physical mode of communication very difficult to conceive.

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Were this result to be generally accepted by scientists, Professor Sidgwick continued, even those now most opposed to psychical research would admit the great importance of the achievements. However, he did not anticipate any such

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46

sudden conquest of the scientific world, though he thought that this failure to convince would result only from paying no attention to either the evidence or the reasoning of the authors of Phantasms of the living.' Undoubtedly some, not a few perhaps, would read the book and remain unconvinced. Professor Sidgwick cited as ground for this expectation the thoughtful and instructive address of Prof. Simon Newcomb, president of the American society for psychical research, published last summer. Professor Newcomb had undoubtedly given serious and candid attention to the subject before pronouncing the discouraging opinion that the work of his society had "almost entirely removed any ground which might have existed for believing thought-transferrence a reality." While welcoming this candid criticism from Professor Newcomb and others, Professor Sidgwick could not accept it as valid, for it mainly rested on the fact that the English society had constructed no theory of thought

transferrence.

To this Professor Sidgwick answered, and we think his answer fully meets the objection, that the establishment of the fact of thought-transferrence, and the framing a theory to account for and explain that fact, are two very different things. The one cannot be legitimately rejected because the other is not immediately forthcoming. Still the crucial point is to exclude, in the experiments, all communications through the recognized channels of sense; and Professor Sidgwick expressed the hope that Professor Newcomb, and any others who shared his opinion, would indicate exactly how, in their view, the experiments could be made more conclusive. Professor Sidgwick's entire address was calm and judicial, and his avowal of his belief in the possibility of thought-transferrence, while guarded, is a serious blow to those who have been doubting the value of the very carefully and conscientiously conducted investigations and experiments of the English society for psychical research.

THAT PASTEUR'S VIEWS are not accepted by all was shown by the criticism passed upon his recent report which was read at the Academy of sciences, and to which our Paris letter alludes in this number of Science. In Pasteur's report there were included 1,700 French who have been inoculated for rabies. M. Colin, a veterinary surgeon, takes

exception to these figures. He thinks that a very large number of dogs that have bitten people, and supposed to be rabid, were not rabid, and points out several other possible errors in Pasteur's deductions.

THE UNSEEMLY WRANGLE that has been caused by the Quarterly review article on Mr. Edward Gosse has greatly excited the literary men at the universities. Whatever be the merits of the case, from this distance we can only see that the whole proceeding is derogatory to the dignity of men of literary reputation and culture. Journalistic quarrels are usually of no benefit and questionable taste, but it would be bad indeed if the outcome of this one should be, as one English critic insinuates, to prove that at one university is a professor who is not a scholar, and at the other, one who is not a gentleman.

THE AMERICANISTS.

THE sixth session of the Congress international des Americanists was held in September last at Turin. It may not be amiss to say that the previous meetings were held at Nancy (1873), Luxemburg (1877), Brussels (1879), Madrid (1881), and Copenhagen (1883). The sixth session would have been held last year had not the cholera prevented. The congress held its meetings in the old chamber in the Carignan palace, where the deputies of the Sardinian kingdom held their meeting, while the capital of that kingdom remained at Turin. M. Desiré Charnay opened the real business of the meeting with an address complaining that too little attention was given in Europe to the study of American history, and too much to that of the east. 66 Why," said he, "men care more for the discovery of a finger of Venus or a toe of Mercury than they do for the finding of a whole city in America." He instanced especially the apathy with which Maudslay's work was received in England, saying that it took the directors of the Kensington museum three months to make up their minds as to whether they would accept a monolith as a gift.

The first discussion arose on a paper read by M. Guido Cora on the Zeni Brothers. The speaker delared that the well-known map which goes under the name of the Zeni map was the best authority in the case. He recognized the Faroe Islands in Frislanda; Iceland in Islanda; Greenland in Engronelant; and portions of North America in Estotiland and Drogeo. M. Beauvois thought that the Zeni explored Newfoundland, while M. V. Schmidt argued that Engronelant

corresponded to the modern Angramanlant and Norway.

M. Jiminez followed with a very long and detailed communication on the migrations of the Carib race. In his opinion, that movement was by the Amazon and Orinoco rivers. Then M. le Baron de Baye presented a note by the Marquis of Monclar with regard to a trepanned skull from the upper basin of the Amazon, and M. Pigorini a memoir of M. Strobel upon picture-writing of South America. M. Grossi finally read a paper upon coins of the old and new worlds.

The next day M. Schmidt presented, in behalf of Dr. H. Rink, a paper describing the Eskimo tribes of the extreme west and east. He gave very detailed statements of the manners, customs, houses, dress, social order, myths, and traditions of those tribes. Dr. Rink agrees with Captain Hohn, that the Eskimos have occupied the coasts of Greenland on all sides.

A description, purporting to have come from Mr. A. S. Gatschet of the ethnological bureau at Washington, of the Maya dictionary, was then read. Without doubt it is of the greatest importance in the study of this ancient language, and the deciphering of the old inscriptions in that language. The dictionary, or rather vocabulary, forms part of the Carter-Brown library in Providence. The dictionary is in two parts, each forming a small quarto volume. Part i. contains the Maya-Spanish part; part ii., the Spanish-Maya part. It was probably composed between 1590 and 1600. It is named after the monastery where the author lived, Motul. The author is unknown, and the copy in question is not the original manuscript, but a copy. According to a somewhat minute calculation, it was estimated that the volume contained about 15,400 terms. Others have thought the number higher. It gives us the Maya tongue as it existed at the time or shortly after the conquest. A vote was passed asking the government of the United States to publish the dictionary at its own expense. The congress soon after adjourned, after providing for another meeting at Berlin in 1888.

ARCHEOLOGICAL ENIGMAS.

THE meeting of the Anthropological society of Washington on Nov. 16 was devoted to the reading of two papers bearing on the antiquity of man in America. Mr. G. K. Gilbert, chief geologist of the U. S. geological survey, described minutely the finding of an ancient hearth on the southern shore of Lake Ontario, at the bottom of a well about thirty feet deep. The formation at the base of which the hearth was discovered is one of a

series of shore-deposits left by the receding ice of the last glacial epoch. Mr. Gilbert described minutely the manner in which these old beaches were built up by moving gravel one after another by a series of inverted imbrications or overlappings, and relegated the hearth in question to one of the first of them laid down in this particular series, roughly estimating the time at about seven thousand years ago.

Mr. Gilbert was followed by Mr. W. J. McGee, who described the finding of an obsidian spearhead or knife, four inches long and beautifully chipped, in Walker River Cañon, Nevada. The greatest care was taken in removing this find, and all the intelligent forethought which a trained geologist could exercise was used to mark the exact conditions of the case. Not the slightest evidence of intrusive burial or bank veneering appeared, and Mr. McGee was convinced that the weapon was deposited when the stratum contain

THRESHING-SLEDGE.

ing it was laid down, the time being approximatively that of Mr. Gilbert's find.

Mr. John Murdoch reported at the same meeting the discovery of a pair of wooden snow-goggles, like those now used by Eskimo to protect the eyes from the glare of the sun and driving snow, in a shaft which his party dug at the depth of twentyseven feet below the surface. Mr. Murdoch's discovery made an interesting connecting link in the interpretation of Mr. Gilbert's hearth.

Two of these finds were neolithic of the most advanced type, and located at the close of the last glacial epoch: they certainly start ten times more questions than they answer.

The national museum has lately acquired two specimens from different parts of the world, which introduce an element of confusion into archeological speculations. Both of them represent the use of stone implements of the very rudest type by peoples above savagery.

One of these specimens is a tribulum, or threshing-sledge, from Tunis. It is a low sledge or drag made of two planks, seventy inches long, nineteen inches wide, and ten inches thick, turned up

slightly at the front, and narrowed like a squaretoed shoe. Three stout battens across the upper side are securely nailed down. On the under side, just where the flat portion commences, are seventeen strips of iron, like dull knife-blades, arranged in two rows quincuncially. Along each margin of the under side are four similar dull blades. All the remainder of the bottom is occupied with sixteen rows of stone teeth, sixteen in a row, arranged quincuncially and projecting about an inch. These teeth are nothing but bits of jagged quartz, and, if picked up independently of their environment, would hardly be regarded as wrought by human hands.

The other paleolithic' civilized implement is a Spanish Rallador, or grater, from British Honduras. It consists of a plank of hard wood eigh teen inches long and ten inches wide, into which have been driven nearly two thousand bits of quartz no larger than tiny arrow-heads, only they are not chipped in the least, and are less shapely.

With such material as the Gilbert hearth, the McGee spear-head, the Murdoch spectacles, the Tunis tribulum, and the Honduras grater accumulating around us every day, the question does not seem to be as to the antiquity of man, but whether or not archeology will help us in ascertaining his pristine condition on this continent. Dismissing the tribulum (the stone furniture of one of them would stock an African paleolithic cabinet), we have evidence which would satisfy some minds that at the end of the glacial epoch there lived men who built fires, chipped obsidian most beautifully, and wore snow-goggles, while in the nineteenth century A.D. men were still in the lowest story of the stone period. O. T. MASON.

THE HEALTH OF NEW YORK DURING OCTOBER.

THE health department estimates that on the 1st of October the population of the city of New York was 1,449,958. Of this number, 2,977 died during the month, which was an increase of 210 as compared with September: 1,275 of these deaths occurred among children under five years of age. There was a marked reduction of deaths from diarrhoeal diseases. The maximum mortality from this cause was in the month of July, when no less than 1,382 deaths took place; in August this was reduced to 705; in September, to 479; and in October, to 234, only about onesixth the mortality of July. Fifty-eight more deaths are chargeable to consumption than in the preceding month, although the average for October is about that of other months of the year. But 18 persons died from scarlet-fever, a small

number, considering the size and circumstances of the great metropolis: in fact, the mortality from this cause during the entire year has been remarkably low. Diphtheria, on the other hand, has markedly increased, there being recorded 165 deaths, as against 85 for September. This is the largest number of deaths since February, with the exception of the month of May, when exactly the same number of deaths occurred as in October. A corresponding increase in this disease is noticeable in the city of Brooklyn. Diphtheria is very prevalent in other cities as well, notably in St. Louis and Chicago. The largest number of deaths in any one day in the month was 118, on the 21st. The largest daily mortality of the year was 240, on the 8th of July.

The mean temperature for October was 54.90° F., slightly below the mean for the past ten years, that being 56.33° F. At 3 P.M. on the 12th the thermometer registered the highest temperature of the month, 78° F. The mean for the past ten years in October is 79.5° F. The lowest temperature was 33° F., at 5 A. M. on the 17th, the mean for the ten years being 35.3° F. The rainfall during the month amounted to 3.07 inches, the average for the decade being 3.34 inches. Taken as a whole, October of the present year may be looked upon as an average October, differing in no important respects from the same month in other years.

CO-OPERATION IN A WESTERN CITY.

THE American economic association is to be commended for the practical and educational value of its publications. This association has an object in view, and that object is, by historical and statistical inquiries and examinations into actual conditions, to reach conclusions which will aid in solving the social and economic questions now so prominent.

of Minneapolis. In the introduction, reference is made to the marvellous growth of Minneapolis, now the largest wheat-receiving market and flourmilling centre in the world; the daily capacity of the mills being about thirty-five thousand barrels. To supply the demand for barrels requires about seven or eight hundred coopers, a large majority of them working in co-operative shops.

Following Professor James's admirable monograph on The relation of the modern municipality to the gas-supply,' which attracted such wide attention, the association publishes this history of co-operation in the city of Minneapolis, throwing light upon one of the most important phases of the labor problem. Dr. Shaw has had the opportunity of observing the development of the most successful examples of co-operation which this country has yet furnished, and in a clear and pleasing style has sketched their organization, growth, and results.

The most valuable part of this monograph is that giving the history of the co-operative coopers Co-operation in a western city. By ALBERT SHAW. Baltimore, American econom, assoc., 1886. 8°.

The co-operative movement in this city dates from the spring of 1868, when several journeymen coopers informally opened a co-operative shop. This experiment, owing to the want of proper organization and management, was short-lived. A like attempt in 1870 came to an end for similar

reasons.

In 1870 began those experiments which have made Minneapolis the milling centre of the world, and as a consequence this city became a coopers' Mecca. From 1871 to 1874 the journeymen cooper's were able, through their union, to secure good terms from the bosses.' But, owing to the constantly increasing number of coopers, employment became precarious, and wages were forced down. To escape the unjust and often tyrannical treatment of the bosses, a number of the journeymen decided in 1874 to organize a co-operative company upon business-like principles.

In November, 1874, the Co-operative barrel manufacturing company was incorporated, and business was commenced with a brotherhood of sixteen men, each making an initial investment of fifteen dollars. The most important features of the company's by-laws "are those which provide that all members must be equal shareholders, and that the gains or losses of the business are to be apportioned, not pro rata among the members, but in proportion to the work they have done. Losses and gains of a different sort for example, those resulting from the work of hired help, from outside ventures undertaken by the association, gains from the appreciation of real estate, or losses from fire or from non-paying creditors are to be apportioned equally among the members. The distinction between the two kinds of profit and loss one kind affecting the men as capitalists, and the other kind affecting them as laborers shows keen economic insight, and has great practical value.”

From its meagre beginning in 1874, this co-operative enterprise has prospered, until, in March, 1886, the president of the company estimated the cash value of its assets at $58,000, its total liabilities not exceeding $13,000. In addition to this, the entire membership of ninety are estimated as property-holders to an average amount of at least $3,000 each. A majority of the members own homes, and of this number it is interesting to