J. H. Maiden has been appointed government botanist and director of the botanical gardens of New South Wales, succeeding Charles Moore who held the position for nearly fifty years.

Mr. F. F. Blackman has been appointed assistant in botany in the University of Cambridge, and Dr. E. Albrecht assistant in the Anatomical Institute of the University of Munich.

The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia has conferred the Hayden Memorial Geological Award for 1896 on Prof. Giovanni Capellini of the University of Bologna.

Prof. A. N. Kuznetzow has been advanced to the position of ordinary professor of botany and director of the botanical gardens in the University of Dorpat.

The Ninth Annual Winter Meeting of the Geological Society of America will be held in the city of Washington, D. C., on December 29, 30, 31, 1896.

Dr. H. Hanns, Th. Loesener and P. Gräbner have been called as scientific assistants to the botanical museum of the University of Berlin.

Dr. L. Kathariner, of Würzburg, goes to the professorship of zoology and comparative anatomy in the University of Freiburg, Switzerland.

Dr. V. Schiffner has been advanced to the position of professor extraordinarius of botany in the German University of Prague.

Dr. A. Möller, of Idstein, well-known for his studies of South American botany has gone to the Forestry Academy at Eberswald.

The Ministry of Education has conferred the title of professor upon the botanist Dr. Kienitz-Gerloff, of Weilberg on the Lahn.

Dr. B. Hofer, of the University of Munich, has been appointed professor of fish culture in the Veterinary school at Munich.

Dr. K. Busz, formerly of Marburg, has gone to the University of Munich as extraordinary professor of mineralogy.

Dr. F. W. K. Müller has been advanced to the position of directors assistant in the Museum of Ethnology in Berlin.

Dr. H. F. Reid, of Johns Hopkins University has been advanced to the position of assistant professor of geophysics.

Prof. K. von Kupffer, of Munich, has been elected corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences.

Dr. V. A. H. Horsley, professor of histology in University College, London, has been made professor emeritus.

Dr. Standenmaier, of Munich, goes to the Lyceum at Friesing as Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy.

Dr. J. Lerch, well-known for his studies of the Swiss flora, died at Couvet, March 13th of this year.

Canon A. M. Norman is hereafter to be addressed at Houghton-leSpring, Co. Durham, England.

Dr. F. Kohl has been advanced to the position of ordinary professor in the University of Marburg.

Dr. A. Hosius, professor of mineralogy in the Academy of Münster, died May 11, aged 71 years.

Dr. R. Zuber is now professor extraordinarius of geology in the University of Lemberg.

Dr. A. Zimmermann, of Berlin, goes to the Botanical Gardens at Buitenzorg, Java.

Dr. H. Henking is now professor of zoology in the University of Göttingen.

Prof. W. Tief, of Villach, Carniola, a student of the Diptera, is dead.

It is not an infrequent combination that the most familiar things neither excite curiosity nor are understood. title suggests an instance of this kind.

Our sub

The naive man com

monly takes for granted that he sees the landscape, and hears the orchestra, for no further reason than that they are there before him to be seen and heard. A man a degree wiser gets so far as to recognize that eyes, ears and a brain are necessary. If a biologist be asked, to-day, how we came by this apparatus, he will answer, "through evolution." This is the maximum reach of Science at present. Yet it is nearly as naive to conceive that we have minds, such as ours, merely because we have eyes, ears and a brain, as for one to imagine that he sees just because he has his eyes open. This becomes apparent if we consider the widely accepted doctrine that all the sensory currents running through the nerves to the brain are of the same general sort, as much so as those in electric wires.

This paper, under the title "Psychology and Biology" and now somewhat altered from the original, was one of six lectures on "Modern Psychology and its Bearings," delivered, by the author, at Johns Hopkins University in March, 1896.

some of which ring bells while others blow whistles. For if it be asked why our sensory currents 'ring up' such different results as sight from the optic nerve, and hearing from the auditory nerve, it is plainly not satisfactory to answer, "because we have eyes and ears," if, as this doctrine asserts, the eye and ear nerve currents are alike. Nor is it much more enlightening to be told that "it is the place in the cortex to which the different nerves run that makes the difference in the sensation resulting from them;" not unless we are in some way told wherein and why these "places" differ. It is just in the fact of never having even inquired how these "places" came to differ, that our evolutionary science falls short in one of the most curiously interesting and important questions that can arise either in biology or in psychology.

Of course, it is a fundamental assumption of both these sciences that all our mental differences are paralleled by molecular differences among the neural activities that underlie them. But this still avoids the question why these last are different, and how they came to be so. And until some answer shall be found that shall logically connect these ultimate neural peculiarities with those peculiarities in outer objects which the world commonly conceives to correspond to our various sights and sounds, it can scarcely be boasted that we are much less naive than the ancients who thought that the objects gave off films that floated into our minds bodily. I by no means imply that this doctrine of all sensory nerve currents being of the same sort is universally accepted. But where any other hypothesis has been offered in its place, the relationship between inner sense and outer stimulus has been left as barren of explanation as even in this doctrine, where, apparently, the possibility of explanation is cut off altogether. But all these matters we are to examine categorically further Sufficient has now been said, by way of introduction, to make clear that it is the variety of our sensory responses (without which our minds would not be minds), and of their connection with the sorts of stimuli with which they are now connected, that we are, in this paper, to subject to careful investigation. It should be obvious that this inquiry must in

on.

volve, fundamentally, the evolutionary relation between biology and psychology; and it is for this reason that I have selected it as worthy of the present occasion.

Plunging at once to the heart of our problem, I may state that there are two possible propositions regarding the fundamental relation of our senses to their respective sense organs; which propositions are mutually contradictory and exclusive of each other; which, being fundamental and contradictory, it is necessary to decide between, as a first step toward any permanent insight into the evolutionary relation between body and mind; yet regarding which neither science nor philosophy, up to the present moment, has given any least intimation. It will be the main purpose of this paper to set forth these alternative postulates as completely as I may, within the limit of an hour; and if within that space we do not arrive at any vantage ground, where we may venture a guess at the proper decision between them, I trust that this will but the more emphasize their vast and crucial significance. To venture a prophecy, I may state that the indispensible solution of these two postulates is not likely to be reached for many years to come, nor until wider discussions and further reaching investigations shall have been ploughed under them, than now cover the fields of the great WeissmanLamarck controversy.

The first of these postulates may be stated as follows: In the light of the little knowledge we as yet possess, it is open to conceive that, in the beginning of the present epoch of animal evolution, crude or primary protoplasm was sensitive not only to all the forms of physical stimulation which now produce sensory responses in us (i. e., sight, sound, taste, smell, touch, temperature, muscle, and other sensations), but was also capable, in response to appropriate stimuli, of an infinite, or x number of other forms of sensation which we know nothing about. In accord, and in illustration of this possibility, we may conceive that the simplest amorphous creatures now actually experience an infinite variety of transient and elementary sensations, including the few we have and a multitude of others that we never have.