FACULTY PUBLICATIONS
"The Crux of the Peace Problem", by Dr. W. J. Tucker, appears in the Atlantic Monthly for April, 1916.
The Musical Quarterly for April, contains "Sebastian Bach, Modernist", by Dr. P. G. Clapp.
An article entitled "Public Opinion and the Third Term Tradition", by Prof. C. R. Lingley, is in the TexasReview for April.
The American Historical Review for April contains "The Political Theories of Calvinists Before the Puritan Exodus to America", by Prof. H. D. Foster.
"Some Norms of Dartmouth Freshmen", a paper! read at the Philadelphia Meeting of the American Psychological Association, December 14, 1915, by former Professor W. V. Bingham, appears in the Journal of EducationalPsychology for March, 1916.
Guide Book to Childhood by WM. BYRON FORBUSH '88. 557 pages. Phila. Geo. W. Jacobs & Co.
This valuable compendium brings together in small space a very large amount of information about children. "It is a dictionary of child life and an encyclopedia of child training." The author has had the assistance of the staff of the American Institute of Child Life, of which he is the president, as well as of writers in several special fields and of heads of institutions or organizations working for better home life.
The book falls into two parts; the first consists of a brief systematic account of Child Study and of the Physical, Mental, Social and Moral Problems of Childhood. The second part consists of practical wisdom bearng upon almost every possible contingency in a child's life. Undoubtedly this is the most valuable portion of the book. The greater part of this section is arranged alphabetically in the form of question and answer in such a way as to constitute a topical case-study of childhood. Used in connection with the index it affords a quick answer or at least a sane and helpful suggestion along the line of almost any difficulty with which parents may be confronted. If Johnny is afflicted with childish fears, or is developing into a tease or a bully, or shows distressing nervous symptoms, or tends to shirk or show off or sleep poorly, here is the place to learn what wise counsellors have advised in similar cases.
Every parent is aware of the existence of "Doctors' Books" of one kind or another, but here is a manual built upon a broader foundation. It rests on the recognition that a child is more than a hygienic problem. It reminds us that the various mental, moral and social requirements of the child are as much in need of clear exposition for the benefit;, of well-meaning, if often neglectful parents, as are the problems of teething, diet or contagious diseases.
An annotated list of three hundred of the most helpful books upon all phases of child life should prove invaluable to parents, teachers and librarians alike.
Dr. Forbush and his collaborators are to be congratulated upon having produced a book whch should do much toward putting parents back on the job, for absentee parenthood, trusting overmuch to kindergarten, Sunday school and day school, has proved at least as mischievous as absentee landlordism or absentee capitalism. Parenthood is the most immemorial of vocations, yet how seldom has it been provided with an intelligent set of professional standards.
ERVILLE B. WOODS
Modes of Research in Genetics. By RAYMOND PEARL, Biologist of the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station. Pp. 182. The Macmillan Co. Price $1.25.
Turning aside from his enormously productive and eminently successful business of research, Dr. Raymond Pearl '99, in this volume of five essays examines, criticizes and sharpens his tools of trade.
Herein he discusses science, but he does so as a logician and philosopher. The product may be regarded as a bit of modern history of biology, covering one of its most fascinating branches in the present interesting epoch.
During the last fifteen years since the rediscovery of Mendel's principle of inheritance of ancestral traits as unbroken units, a new science of heredity, called genetics, has grown into lusty adolescence. The term genetics, invented to cover the science corresponding to the art of breeding, naturally has come to include all the vital relations between the members of one generation and the next that in any way have to do with the transmission of ancestral traits or that may result in the evolution of new types or species.
The two statistical methods of studying heredity, viz. biometry, as developed by Galton and Pearson, and Mendel's systematic plan of pedigree cultures, are compared with each other and with two additional lines" of genetic research which are more essentially biological, viz., that dealing with the early history of germ cells in the ovary and spermary, and with the fertilized ovum during the course of its embryonic development. In biometry an individual's ancestry is studied. The Mendelian plan is to study its progeny. But while one may experiment with progeny, one unfortunately cannot with ancestry. Hence we are unable to ascertain by biometry whether this or that ancestral trait seemingly due to internal, or hereditary, factors may not, on the contrary, be the result largely of environmental conditions.
"All of these methods are valuable, and each has contributed to our present knowledge of heredity. No one of the methods alone can solve the problem." None, moreover, can analyze the living material that lies at the basis of' heredity, and tell why and how this and that trait attains, either in father or in son, its own peculiar individuality. Here an appeal must be made to chemistry.
Statistical knowledge furnishes a useful description of a group in terms of its general features; it enables one to predict certain probabilities in regard to members of a group. This, as Pearl points out, is a useful practical procedure in business, especially insurance, and in sport, as in certain forms of gambling. In biology likewise such predictions may be made, but "It is a knowledge of betting odds. It has no necessary relation per se to any physical, chemical, or biological laws." So while statistics is a "highly important adjunct to other modes of research", it furnishes "a somewhat sterile kind of knowledge so far as concerns individuals."
In the fourth chapter the author develops a mathematical method for measuring the amount of inbreeding in any case, as in human relationships or stock raising, and gives coefficients to express the proportion of inbreeding due to recent kinship and to earlier, more remote, inbreeding. This chapter will seem to the non-mathematical layman, as Dr. Walter in a review in Science has expressed it, like a trip through a tunnel, Glimpses of light appear now and then amid the general gloom.
The final chapter points out that while genetics cannot revolutionize the arts of stock raising and plant breeding, based as they are upon centuries of successful experimentation, the discoveries of Mendel and his followers are of great service, particularly to the plant-breeder, who "has made Mendelism a working tool of his craft."
J.H.G.
"What the Albanians and the Friends of Albania Should Bear in Mind", by G. F. Williams '72, appears in the March number of Illyria.
Rev. Gabriel Farrell 'll, is the author of "A Successful Preaching Mission" in The Churchman of March 11.
"The Removal of Diseased Tonsils by a Method Minimizing- Hemorrhage," by A. P. Voislawsky, D. M. C. 1897, has been reprinted from the MedicalRecord for January 15, 1916.
"Moments Rich in Blessing; Addresses on the Seven Words from the Cross," by A. W. Jenks '84, is a book of seventy-eight pages published by the Young Churchman Company of Milwaukee.
