The Men of the Mid-Pacific. Dr. ALFRED GOLDSBorough MayER. . 5 Governmental Obstacles to Insurance. Chancellor DAVID STARR JORDAN 27 The Function of Milk in the Scheme of Evolution. Dr. HENRY DWIGHT Professional Contributions to Invalidism. Dr. ROBERT S. CARROLL Is Selection or Mutation the more Important Agency in Evolution? Leith and Mead's Metamorphic Geology By C. K. LEITH, Professor, and W. J. MEAD, Assistant Professor in the This textbook of the principles of metamorphic geology is designed to present the elements of the subject in some perspective for the use of students. The principal rock groups are followed through the alterations of the metamorphic cycle, and the principles of metamorphism are inductively developed. Emphasis is placed on quantitative and graphic expressions of rock changes. This is one of the first attempts to present in textbook form an outline of the entire field of metamorphic geology. While the literature on the subject is voluminous, much of it is beyond the range of anyone not specializing in this line. The writers have embodied in this text the results of their experience in teaching, as well as extensive field and laboratory studies. For many years the Department of Geology of the University of Wisconsin has given much attention to metamorphism in connection with investigations of the metamorphic pre-Cambrian rocks of North America, and Van Hise's monograph on metamorphism is one of the expressions of this study. Since the publication of that work the subject has received more quantitative consideration, leading to certain new conceptions. These later conceptions determine the order and method of presentation of the present text. Bôcher's Plane Analytic Geometry By MAXIME BOCHER, Professor of Mathematics in Harvard University. xiii+235 pp. 12mo. $1.60. This volume follows the Harvard traditional course in analytic geometry, which assumes that its one aim is to put the student into possession of an instrument which he himself can use in proving new geometrical theorems or solving new problems. The book concentrates on a few of the most important principles. The last two chapters are devoted to calculus. HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 34 W. 33d St. 6 Park St. BOSTON 623 S. Wabash Ave. CHICAGO THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY JANUARY, 1916 M THE MEN OF THE MID-PACIFIC BY ALFRED GOLDSBOROUGH MAYER ORE than 2,000 years ago, there lived upon the Islands from Sumatra to the Philippines an ancient sea-faring race, the brown-skinned Sawaiori. Of their origin we know nothing, but that they had long been separated from the Indian Peninsula is evident, for there are no Sanscrit words in the language of their descendants. Much as the Polynesians are to-day, their ancestors, the half-mythical Sawaiori, probably were in those ages long past, for even to-day no Polynesian population has developed a national solidarity. Their political and social unit is and always has been the village, fortified, self-centered, with no communal interest and no civic virtue extending beyond the limits of its ramparts of rattan. Weak as a house divided against itself were the Sawaiori when before the dawn of our Christian era, hordes of Malay pirates began to swarm out from southeastern Asia and to overrun the off-lying islands.1 We may picture village after village obliterated in an orgie of massacre and outrage. From the roar of burning thatch the weak ones slunk away, while to the cat-like Malay the heroes fell a prey. One desperate resource remained to the persecuted race-flight over the wide and unknown waters of the Pacific. Eastward went the fugitives in two great streams, one along the northern and the other skirting the southern coast of New Guinea. But, although forced by hunger to conquer a landing place, there to grow the broad-leaved taro for the onward voyage, no home for the Sawaiori could be found upon New Guinea, for ever in his rear there lurked the Malayan prahu, while the forests around him secreted cannibals hungering for his flesh. Before the dawn of history they sailed, these mariners of a weak and exiled race, who heavy with many a fear the world has long outlived, yet braved the unknown perils of this loneliest of seas-the ocean of the long low heave, the never stilled breathing of the monster in his sleep; for calm over the Pacific has but the semblance 1 For a résumé of his own and previous researches upon this subject one should consult William Churchill's "Polynesian Wanderings," published by the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1911. of peace and over its hours of stillness there broods the threat of stormto them but the inaction of a demon nursing his rage. Thus onward sped the disheartened bands until New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago faded beneath the western sea, and the high mountains of the Salomons rose majestically above the eastern horizon. Then along the coast of these Islands, so fair to look upon, our wanderers still sailed searching always for the land of peace and finding only the abode of the Melanesian savage, but still beyond, luring them onward toward the rising sun, lay the untried ocean. Forced at last to leave all land behind, they did as wise sailors would have done, steered close into the southeast trades that blow so constantly over this vast expanse of ocean. Thus when starvation hovered near, when the last of the meagre store of fermented bread fruit had been consumed, and slaves began to fall to sustain the master voyagers, there still remained as a last resource the fair wind to bear them back to the known but dreaded shores of the Salomons. Such a course from the southeasternmost Salomons close hauled on |