BOOK NOTES.
In this work this veteran author and investigator in the field of the psychology of instinct brings together the general results of his own investigations, which chiefly touch the sense of sight, smell, taste, hearing, touch and its derivative senses, the relations between the senses and the mental powers. He also reports further experiments on the sense of sight of ants, criticises experiments on sight, color, and distance sense of insects published since 1887; then treats of orientation in space, the power to communicate, the memory of time and place, with a final chapter on the soul and reflexes.
The author is extraordinary-professor of zoölogy at Vienna. The contents of this rather stately book will be sufficiently indicated by giving some of its twenty-one chapter heads. They are printed in the form of lectures: animal psychology with and without a soul; the powers of distinction and formulation of problems, protozoa and cnidaria, star-fish, worms, mollusks, Crustacea, insects (four lectures), vertebrates (eight lectures). In a final chapter the author seeks to describe the structure of the geistig world, in which he brings together his own special theories.
This is an interesting, rather systematic and yet popular work with nearly a hundred cuts and illustrations and at the end a copious bibliography upon the subject. It treats fraternal confederacies, nesting, architecture and engineering, supplying of rations, feeding the commune, the language of ants and other insects, female government, problem of communal dependence, of warrior ants and their equipments and how they carry on war, alien associates, aphis herds and associates, the founding of slave making, problem of sanification and personal benevolence. From this very title it will appear how dominant is the author's purpose to present his theme as a study of natural civics.
After describing the general causes of migrations, salient instances are described among mammals, birds, and the lower animal forms. All together it is a compilation of material that has long been desired.
It is assumed that Mendelism is a subject which has come to stay and to play an important part in human affairs; whether in agriculture, horticulture, cattle raising, or sociology, its voice will be heard.
