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SOE 73 


SCIENCE 


A WHEKLY JOURNAL 


DEVOTED TO THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCH. 


EDITORIAL CommitrEE: S. NEwcoms, Mathematics; R. S. WooDWARD, Mechanics; E. C. PICKERING, 
Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THURSTON, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry; 
J. LE ContE, Geology; W. M. Davis, Physiography; O. C. MarsH, Paleontology; W. K. 
Brooks, C. HART MERRIAM, Zoology; 8S. H. ScuDDER, Entomology; N. L. BRITTON, 
Botany; HENRY F. OsBoRN, General Biology; H. P. Bowpitcu, Physiology; 
J.S. BILLINGS, Hygiene ; J. MCKEEN CATTELL, Psychology ; 
DANIEL G. BRINTON, J. W. POWELL, Anthropology. 


NEW SERIES. VOLUME V. 


JANUARY -JUNE, 1897. 


%y 


NEW YORK 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1897 


THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY, 
41 NORTH QUEEN STREET, 
LANCASTER, PA. 


CONTENTS AND INDEX. 


N.S. VOL. V—JANUARY TO JUNE, 1897. 


The Names of Contributors are Printed in Small Capitals. 


Acquired Characteristics, The Inheritance of, E. 
D. Cors, 633; Jonn M. Macrarane, 935 
Adams, F. D., and A. E. Barbour, Laurentian 
Highlands of Canada, 96, 406, 578 

Adaptation in Pathological Processes, WILLIAM H, 
WE tcg, 813 

ADLER, Cyrus, Goode Memorial Meeting, 365 

Agassiz, Louis, WILLIAM JAMES, 285 

Agriculture, Department of, Inadequacy of Sala- 
ries, 223; A Director of Scientific Work for 
the, 267 ; Report of the Secretary of, 272 

Alabama Industrial and Scientific Society, EUGENE 
A. Smira, 72, 926 

Aldrich, T. B., Mephitis Mephitica, 911 

Allen, E. W,, Fleischman on Milchwirtschaft, 557 

ALLEN, Harrison, Glossophaga Truei, 153; The 
Effects of Disease and Senility as illustrated in 
the Bones and Teeth of Mammals, 289 

ALLEN, J. A., The Discrimination of Species and 
Sub-species, 877 

Allen, J. A.. New Species of Mountain Sheep, 618 

Allen, T. F., New Species of Nitella, 36 

Alloy of Aluminum and Zinc, 396 

Ambrosetti on the Monoliths of Tafi, 724 

American, Journal of Science, 33, 228, 406, 589, 738, 
888, 998; Association for the Advancement 
of Science, 398, 652, 965; F. W. PurTnam, 
760 ; Academy of Arts and Sciences, 801 

Ames, Joseph S., Spectrum Analysis, 319 

Anatomie microscopique, Archives d’, 183 

ee 8. A., Carbon Dioxid in the Atmosphere, 

Andreoli, E., Ozone, 798. 

Angot’s Aurora Borealis, 649 

Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes, 181 

Anthony and Brackett, Physics, 805 

Anthropological Society of Washington, J. H. 
McCormick, 35, 194, 487, 594, 856, 927 

Anthropology, Current Notes on, D. G. BRINTON, 
22, 58, 100, 141, 178, 220, 265, 302. 339, 393, 
438, 469, 509, 545, 578, 614, 650, 688, 724, 797, 
835, 871, 913, 947, 988, and Psychology, N. Y. 
Academy of Sciences, Livingston FARRAND, 
283, 776 

Antony, U., and T. Benelli, Action of Water on 
Lead Pipes, 546, and A Lucchesi, Mercurous 
Chlorid and Aurice Chlorid, 546 

Apprenticeship Question, R. H. Tourston, 299 

Archeological, Report of Ontario, 393; Discoveries 
made in the Gravels at Trenton, G. FREDER- 
Ick Wricut, D. G. BRINTON, 586. 

Arry, ALBERT L., The Educational Value of the 
Physical Sciences, 460 

Argentaurum Papers, C. A. Youne, 343 


Argon in inhaled and exhaled Air, 949 

Armstrong, H. E., Osmotic Pressure, 101; Organ- 
izing Scientific Opinion, 549 ; 

Arsenic Poisoning from Fabrics, 949 

Ashmead, Belenocnema treatz, Mayer, 237; Can- 
arsia hammondi, 559; Roptronia, 560 

Astronomical, Journal, 23; Notes, H. J., 102, 180, 
222, 303; Medal, The Bruce, Epwarp S. Ho.- 
DEN, 620; Association, British, 803 

Astronomy, Problems of, Stmon Newcomp, 777; 
Beginnings of American, EDWARDS. HoLpEN, 
929; and Physics, N. Y. Academy of Sciences, 
W. Hauock, 70, 359, 452 

Astrophysical, Notes, E. B. F., 726, 764, 836; 
Journal, 521, 591, 628 

ATKINSON, GEO. F., Die Bedingungen der Fort- 
pflanzung bei einigen Algen und Pilzen, 
George Klebs, 353; Analytic Keys to North 
American Mosses, C. R. Barnes, 519 ; Diseases 
of Plants induced by Cryptogamic Parasites, 
Karl. v. Tubeuf, 696 

Atoll of Funafuti, 343 

Auk, The, 281, 739 

Australasian Association for the Advancement of 
Science, 801 

Axe, The Grooved Stone, 914 

Ayres, Howard, Brain Cells of the Adult Body, 358 


B., H. F., Journal of Geology, 190, 282, 519, 701, 925 

Bailey, L. H., The Survival of the Unlike, 
CHARLES H. BrssEy, 109; 514 

Barn, H. F., Geological Bibliographies, 556 ; Clay 
Deposits of Miss., H. A. Wheeler, 852 

BAKER, FRANK, Vertebrated Animals in the Zo- 
ological Gardens of London, 404 

BAKER, FRANK C. and Frank M. Wooprurr, Note 
on Natrix Grohamii, B. & G., 447 

Balch, E. 8., On Ice Caves, 870 

BaupDwin, J. Marx, Die Spiele der Thiere, Karl 
Groos, 347; Organic Selection, 634 

Ball, W. W. Rouse, History of Mathematics, E. 
M, Buake, 352 

Balmer, J. J., Wave-lengths of Spectral Lines, 628 

Baltzer, A., The Diluvial Aar Glacier, 508 

Bancroft, F, W., Chelyosoma productum, Stimson, 
435 

BAncrort, WILDER, D., Traité élémentaire de 
mécanique chimique, P. Duhem, 625 

Barbour, E. H., Demonelix, 94 

Barnes, ©. R., Analytic Key to the Genera and 
Species of North American Mosses, Guo. F, 
ATKINSON, 519 

Barrows, FRANKLIN W., The N. Y. State Science 
Teachers’ Association, 457, 498, 531 


iv SCIENCE. 


Barter, C., Notes on Ashanti, 264 

Bartlett, E. J., and W. F. Rice, Silver Hydride, 157 

BARTON, G. Ila, Lieut. Peary’s Expedition, 308 

Barton, "George H., Glacial Observations in the 
Umanak District, Greenland, 89 

Barvs, C., The Blackboard Treatment of Physical 
Vectors, 171 

Barus, C., An Interferential Induction Balance, 
229; Diaphragm of a Telephone made with 
Special Interference Apparatus, 407; The Idio- 
static Electrometer, 485 

Bascom, Florence, Pre- ‘Cambrian Volcanies of the 
South Mountain District, 95; The Schuylkiil, 
177; Streams in Neig hborhood of Philadelphia 
and the Bryn Mawr ‘Gravel, 230 

BATCHELDER, C. F., Papers presented to the 
World’s Congress on Ornithology, Irene E. 
Rood, 189 

BaATHER, FE, A., How May Museums best Retard 
the Advance of Science? 671; The Re-distribu- 
tion of Type-specimens in ‘Museums, 694; A 
Postscript to the Terminology of Types, 843 

Bather, F. A., Museums and Science, F. A. Lu- 
CAS, 543 

Bats, Migration of, on Cape Cod, Mass., 
S. Minuer, JR., 541 

Bauer, L. A., Distribution and the Secular Varia- 
tion of Terrestrial Magnetism, 192; Vertical 
Karth-Air Electric Currents, 665 

Baumann, Professer Eugen, LAFAYETTE B. Mrn- 
DEL, 51 

Baur, G., Pareisauria Seeley (Cotylosauria Cope) 
from the Triassic of Germany, 720; Distribu- 
tion of Marine Mammals, 956 

Baur, G., and E. C. Case, The Pelycosauria, 592 

Beal, W. J., Grasses of North America, F. Lam- 
SON SCRIBNER, 62 

BEARD, J., Problems of Vertebrate Embryology, 

07 

Becker, George F., Rock Magmas, 33 

Beecher, C. E., Natural Classification of Trilo- 
bites, 228; Geological and Natural History 
Survey of Minnesota, N. H. Winchell, 449 

Behrens, H., Mikrochemischen Analyse, E. R., 115 

Bell, Robert, Canadian Rivers, 946 

Berman and Smits, Compliment or Plagiarism, 
61, 275, 478 

Bendire, Charles E., C. Hart Merriam, 261; 
304; Earliest Published Note of, C. H. M., 805 

Benton, Frank, The Giant Bee of India, 319 

BEeRKEY, CHARLES P., Geological Club of the 
University of Minnesota, 196, 363, 487 

Berthelot, Chemical Analyses of Weapons, 545 

BESSEY, CHARLES E., The Survival of the Unlike, 
L, H. Bailey, 109 

Bibliographia Physiologica, 105 

Bibliographies, Geological, H. F. Bain, 556 

Biedermann, W., LElectro-Physiology, Hrnry 
SEWALL, 481 

Biological, Society of Washington, F. A, Lucas, 
159, 236, 319, 487, 629, 688, 739, 810, 963; Sur- 
vey of Alabama, 144; Station, at Pufiin Island, 
840; on the Black Sea, 989 

Biology, N. Y. Academy of Sciences, C. L. 
Bristou, 71, 319; BasnHrorp Dran, 595 

Bird, Protection, Report of the Committee on, 282; 
Pictures, Professor Scott’s, F. A. Lucas, 620 

Birds, Color Change in the Plumage of, unaccom- 
panied by Moult, F. A. L., 762 


GERRIT 


CONTENTS AND 
INDEX. 


Buakn, E. M., History of Mathematics, WwW. W. 
R. "Ball, 352 ; Florian Cajori, 352 

Bloch on the Red Race of Madagascar, 266 

Blythe, Winter, Formaldehyde, 948 

Boas, Franz, The Growth of Children, 570 

Boas, Franz, Star Legend of Alaska, 216 

Bolton, Herbert, Lancashire Coal Field, 560 

Bouton, H. Carrineron, Two Extraordinary 
British Patents, 401 

Bolton, H. Carrington, Man’s Speech to Brutes, 
835 ; Early Chemical Societies, 855 

Bolyai, John, Non-Euclidean Geometry, A. 5. 
HatTaHaway, 3li 

Bones.and Teeth of Mammals, The Effects of Dis- 
ease and Senility as illustrated in the, HARRI- 
SON ALLEN, 289 

Boston Society of Natural History, SAmuEL HEN- 
sHAW, 34, 72, 196, 361, 682, 703, 891, 964 

Botanical, Gazette, Evolution of the, 24; Society, 
Royal, 270; Laboratory, A New, in the 
American Tropics, D. T. MacDoueat, 395; 
Garden, The Missouri, 610; Society of London, 
693 ; Society of America, 838 

Bowonitcu, H. P., Opportunities for Training in 
Physiology, 446 

Bowditch, H. P., The Relation between Height, 
Weight and Age, in Young Children, 131; 
Movements of the Alimentary Canal, 901 

Brabrook, E. W., Ancient Man in England, 302; 
on the Progress of Anthropology, 578 

Bradley, W. P., sand F, Kniffen, Paraisobutylphen- 
oxyacetic Acid, 157 

Brain, Primary: Seymentation of the, C. F. W. 
McCuvure, 260 

BRANNER, JOHN C., New Terms in Geology, 912 

Branner, John C., Beauxite Deposits of Aik., 702 

BRINTON, LOGE ‘Current Notes on Anthropology, 
22, 53, 100, "141, 178, 220, 265, 302, 839, 393, 
438, 469, 509, 545, 578, 614, 650, 688, 724, 797, 
835, 871, 913, 947, 988; Les Aryens au Nord et 
au Sud del’ Hindou-Kouch, Charles de Ujfalvy, 
68; Prehistoric Man and Beas H. N. Hutch- 
inson, 154; Horatio Hale, 216; Codice Messi- 
cano Vaticano, 300; L’ evolution de I’ esclayage, 
Ch. Letourneau, 448; Researches on the 
Antiquity of Man in the Delaware Valley and 
the Eastern United States, Henry C. Mercer, 
484; Biologia Centrali-A mericana: Archeology, 
J. T. Goodman, 662; Anthropologia della 
Stirpe Camitica, G. Sergi, 808; The Potter’s 
Wheel in America, 958 ; The Swastika, Thomas 
Wilson, 960; L’ Origine de la Nation Fran- 
caise, Gabriel de Mortillet, 961 

Brinton, D. G., Psychic Origin of Myth, 216 

Bristou, C. iy, Biology, N. Y. Academy of 
Sciences, 71, 319 

British Association forthe Advancement of Science, 
228, 580, 767, 915; A. B. Macauuum, 251 

Britton, E. G., Mexican Ferns, 631 

Britton, N. L., Torrey Botanical Club, 925 

Brown, E. W., The Lunar Theory, 100 

Brown, Stimson J., The Companion of Sirius, 102 

Bruner, Lawrence, Injurious Locusts, 691 

Bumpus, H. C., Suspension of Natural Selection 
and the introduced English Sparrow, 423 

Burckhardt, Carl, Limestone Range of the Klon- 
thal, Switzerland, 797 

Burerss Epwarp S. , Torrey Botanical Club, 284, 
451, 525, 595, 631, 891 


NEW SERIES. 
VoL. VY. 


Burton, A. E., on the Umanak District, 54 
Buschan on Stature and Weight, 469 

Buys-Ballot, Monument, A. LAWRENCE Rotcu, 994 
Byrnes, E. F., The Eggs of Limax, 391 


Cazgort, FLORIAN, History of Elementary Mathe- 
matics, 516 

Cajori, Florian, History of Elementary Mathe- 
maties, E. M. BLAKE, 392 

California Academy of Sciences, 583 

Calvin, S.. Slate Quarry Limestone, 317 

Cameron, F. K., Isomorphism and Crystal Struc- 
ture in Organic Compounds, 774 

Campbell, Marius R., Erosion at Baselevel, 83; 
Origin of Certain Topographic Forms, 83; 
Drainage Modifications, 437; and W. C. Men- 
denhall, Plateau of West Virginia, 947 

Candlot, E., Cements and Sea Water, 799 

Carbide of Calcium, 545 

Carleton, M. A., Stem Rust on Wheat and Oats, 
237; Climate in Wheat Environment, 810 

Case, E. C., Cranial Region of Dimetrodon, 594 

Cattell, J. McKeen, Researches in Progress in the 
Psychological Laboratory of Columbia Uni- 
versity, 209; An Ergometer, 909 

Cavins, Frederick A., Quantitative Chemical Anal- 
sis, W. A. N., 281 

Ceramics, American, 797 

Chadbourne, A. P., Individual Dichromatism, 281 ; 
and Frank M. Chapman, Spring Plumage of 
the Bobolink, 739 

Chalmot, G. de, Silicide of Chromium, 157; Sili- 
cides of Copper and Iron, 357 

CHAMBERLIN, T. C., Former Extension of Green- 
land Glaciers, 400; Former Extension of Cor- 
nell Glacier near the Southern End of Melville 
Bay, 748 ; Former Extension of Ice in Green- 
land, 515 i 

Chamberlin, T. C., Glacial Studies, 701 

Chandler, 8. C., The Variation of Latitude, 758 

Chapman, Frank M., Bird Life, Harry C. OBER- 
HOLSER, 997 

Chatelain, Heli, African Life Illustrated, 216 

Chemical, Journal, American, J. ELLiIoTT GILPIN, 
157, 356, 520, 664, 852, 961; Society. N. Y. 
Section, DuRAND WoopMaAN, 71, 289, 360, 487, 
740; of Washington, A C. PEALE, 115; V. 
K. Cuesnut, 196, 507, 774, 855 

Chemistry, Inorganic, Notes on, J. L. H., 101, 
179, 221, 266, 394, 489, 470, 545, 615, 651, 725, 
783, 798, 872, 914, 948; in the United States, 
F.W. Cuarke, 117; Inorganic and Organic, 763 

CuHEsNnotT, V. K., Chemical Society of Washington, 
196, 557, 774, 855 

Chesnut, V. K., Water Hemlock and Laurier Rose, 
237; Poison of the Biack Nightshade, 964 

Chessin, Alexander §., The Motion of a Physical 
Pendulum, 100 

Caitp, C. D., The Effect of the Density of the 
surrounding Gas on the Discharge of Electri- 
fied Metals by X-rays, 791 

Cuinp, C. M., Centrosome and Sphere in the 
Ovarian Stroma of Mammals, 231; Cleavage 
of the Egg of Arenicola, 629 

CHITTENDEN, J. B., Trigonometry, J. B. Lock, 626 

CHITTENDEN, R. H., Microscopic Researches on 
the Formative Property of Glycogen, Charles 
Creighton, 517; Internal Secretions from a 
Chemico-physiological Standpoint, 969 


SCIENCE. V 


Chittenden, R. H., The Proteolytic Action of Pa- 
pain, 134, 902; Reaction of some Animal 
Fluids, 902 ; Protagon of the Brain, 909 

Chree on Work at Kew Observatory, 666 

CuarK, ALVAN G., On supposed Effects of Strain 
in Telescopic Objectives, 768 

Clark, W. B., Upper Cretaceous Formations of 
the Northern Atlantic Coastal Plain, 94 

CuarkKEs, F. W., Chemistry in the United States, 117 

Classification, A Question of, Ropr. T, Hruy, 921 

Claypole, E. W., Human Relics in Ohio, 266 

Ciayton, H. Heum, Velocity of a Flight of Ducks 
obtained by Triangulation, 26; The Height 
and Velocity of the Flight of a Flock of Geese 
migrating Northward, 585 

Clayton, H. Helm, Cloud Heights, 264 

Climatic, Features of the Arid Regions, 469 ; 
Zones on the Island of Sakhalin, 469 

Cloud Observations at Blue Hill, 468 

Clouds over a Fire, R. DEC. Warp, 60 

Clute, W. N., Scolopendrium, 631 

Coast and Geodetic Survey, J., 384 


,CocKkERELL, D. T. A., A Study in Insect Paras- 


itism, L. O. Howard, 848; The Virginia Col- 
ony of Helix Nemoralis, 985 

Codice Messicano Vaticano, D. G. Brinton, 395 

Cohn, F., Errors of Heliometer Measures, 303 

Cougs, F. N., American Mathematical Society, 99 

Coleman, A. P., Anorthosites, 190 

Colon Group of Bacilli, ADELAIDE WARD PECK- 
HAM, 981 ; 

Color, Photography, 306; Blindness and William 
Pole, CHRISTINE LADD FRANKLIN, 310 

Compliment or Plagiarism, BEMaNn and Smita. 61, 
275, 478 ; GEoRGE BRucE HALSTED, 152, 344; 
ARTHUR LEFEVRE, 404 

Comstock, Geo. C., Wave-length of Starlight, 522 

Comstock, W. T., Molecular Rearrangement of the 
Oximes by Means of Metallic Salts, 926 

Corps, E. D., The Inheritance of Acquired Charac- 
teristics, 633 

Cope, Edward D., Henry F. Ossorn, 705; Be- 
quests of the late, 765 

Coral Reef Committee, Report of, 258 

Cornell Glacier, T. C. CHAMBERLIN, 748 

Cornish, Vaughan, On Sand Dunes, 795 

Cougs, Exxiorr, A Dictionary of Birds, Alfred 
Newton, 553 

Coville on the Water Hyacinth, 811 

Cowan, J. R. K., Tin in Canned Goods, 914 

Crampton, Jr., H. E., Fertilization in Gasteropods, 
320, 391; Ascidian Half Embryo, 595 

Creighton, Charles, The Formative Property of 
Glycogen, R. H. CHITTENDEN, 517 

Croox, A. R., Northwestern University Science 
Club, 160 

Crooks, Wm., Deforestation and Climate, 837; 
Psychics in the Study of Man, 871 

Crosspy, W. O., The Great Fault and accompany- 
ing Sandstone Dikes of Ute Pass, Colo., 604. 

Crosby, W. O.. Geology of Newport Neck and 
Conanicut Island. 407; and M. L. Fuller on 
the Origin of Pegmatite, 486 

Cross, Whitman, Leucite Hills, Wyo, 361 

Culin, Stewart, Divinatory and Calendrical Dia- 
grams, 100, 216; The Game of Maneala, 178 

Curtis, H. §., Landscape Photography, 359 

Cushing, A. R., Production of Idioventrical Rhy- 
them in the Mammalian Heart, 905 


vi SCIENCE. 


CusHine, FRANK Hamriuton, A Case of Primitive 
Surgery, 977. 

Cycle in the Life of the Individual (Ontogeny) 
and in the Evolution of its own Group (Phy- 
logeny), ALPHEUS Hyatt, 161. 


Dasney, Jr., CHas. W., A National Department 
of Science, 73; The National University, 578 

Datu, Wo. H., Distribution of Marine Mammals, 
843 

Dana, CHAarnes L., Genius and Degeneration, 
William Hirsch, 404 

Darton, N. H., District of Columbia Region, 84 ; 
Dikes in Appalachian Virginia, 84 

Davenrort, C. B., The Cell, Oscar Hertwig, 111; 
Edmund B. Wilson, 112 

Davenport, C. B., Water in Growth, 892; Ex- 
perimental Morphology, J. P. McMurricu, 
923 : 

Davis, W. M., Current Notes on Physiography, 
20, 177, 268, 336, 437, 507, 577, 647, 722, 795, 
869, 945 ; Journal of School Geography, 551 

Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory, 54, 221 

Dawson, C. F., Dissemination of Infectious Dis- 
eases by Insects, 629 

Dawson, G. M., Annual Report of the Geological 
Survey of Canada, C. H. Hrrcucocx, 621 

Dawson, W., Pre-Cambrian Fossils, 252 

Day, H. D., Magnetic Increment of Rigidity of 
Wires in a strong Magnetic Field, 888 

Dean, BasHrorp, N. Y. Academy, Biology, 595 

Dean, Bashford, Plan of Development of a 
Myxinoid, 435. 

Deaths: Antoine T. d’Abbadie, 580; Duc d’Au- 
male, 800; Kristian Bahnson, 270; Edward 
Ballard, 270; A. D. Bartlett, 839; Edson 8. 
Bastin, 617; A. A. van Bemmelin, 580; Theo- 
dore Bent, 839; Sir John Brown, 103; Jacob 
Breitenlohner, 653; C. B. Brush, 916; Alvan 
G. Clark, 950; Legrand des Cloizeau, 839; M. 
C. Contejean, 580; E. D. Cope, 616; Olaus 
Dahl, 473; Wilhelm Deeke, 270; Alfred De- 
weore, 652; Wilhelm Doellen, 548; Robert 
Douglas, 916; Henry Drummond, 472; Ney 
Elias, 950; Charles Eliot, 548; Baron von Et- 
tingshausen, 270; von Falke, 950; Edward 
Falkner, 56; Gallileo Ferraris, 304; Dr. Feu- 
lard, 839; A. W. Franks, 916; Karl R. Fresen- 
ius, 950; Heinrich Gitke, 181; Joseph v. Ger- 
lach, 103; Emily L. Gregory, 728; Traill Green, 
728: Horatio Hale, 56; E. Freiherr von Hirdtl, 
653; Charles Heitzmann, 103; Robert Hogg, 
580; Ludwig Hollaender, 652, Joseph F. James, 
580; Lorenzo N. Johnson, 442; G. A. Kenn- 
gott, 63; Peter D. Keyser, 473; David Kir- 
naldy, 304; F. W. Klatt, 652; Dr. Kolbe, 548; 
M. Carey Lea, 767; Martin L. Linell, 766; Vic- 
tor Lemoine, 728; W.T. Lusk, 950; Leopold 
Maney, 989; Dr. de Marbaix, 728; J. Biddulph 
Martin, 580; Vivian S. Martin, 105; M. Mar- 
tini, 270; Count de Mas-Latre, 103; F. J. Mouat, 
228; T. P. Morawitz, 182; Fritz Miller, 989; 
Edward Thomson Nelson, 442; Hermann von 
Nordlinger, 304; G. Ossowski, 916; Wm. H., 
Pancoast, 103; Léon du Pasquier, 652; John 
Pierce, 442; Guiseppe Protonotari, 270; Emil 
Heinr. du Bois-Reymond, 22; Timothee Roth- 
en, 472; Professor Saceardo, 223; Sinku Sa- 
kaki, 728; Prof. Satherberg, 304; Dr. Schols, 


CONTENTS AND 
INDEX. 


602; J. L. Smith, 989; E. v. Sommaruga, 
916; J. E. Stone, 839; Isidore Strauss, 161; 
A. Streng, 223; J. J. Sylvester, 472; Jean 
Hubert Thiry, 181; Luther H. Tucker, 473; 
Georges Ville, 472; W. Wallace, 340; Francis 
A. Walker, 102. W. H. Ward, 103; Joseph D. 
Weeks, 270; Karl Weierstrass, 472; C. F. Wiep- 
ken, 580; Theodore G. Wormley, 56; George 
Weyer, 181 

Debus on Dalton’s Atomie Theory, 179 

Deforestation and Rainfall, 509 

Deichmiiller’s Instrument for fixing the Position 
of the Zenith with the Meridian Circle, 222 

Delafontaine on Deeply Colored Rare Earths, 915 

Dellenbaugh, F. 8., Death Masks, 393 

Denning, W. F., Paths of 107 Meteors, ‘727 

Dewey, Lyster, H., Migration of Weeds, 811 

Dickinson, B. B., Geography in Schools, 178 

Diller, J. S., Crater Lake, 81, 406, 947; North- 
western Oregon, 263 

Discussion and Correspondence, 25, 60, 107, 147, 
185, 226, 275, 308, 348, 400, 446, 476, 515, 550, 
585, 620, 656, 694, 731, 768, 804, 843, 877, 919, 
955, 993 

Dobbin on the Introduction of the Balance into 
Chemistry, 394 

Documents Public, Report on, 399 

DopGE, CHARLES Wricut, The Principles and 
Practice of Teaching, James Johonnot, 187; 
Nature Study and Related Subjects for Com- 
mon Schools, Wilbur 8. Jackman, 188 

Dover, RrcewarpD E., Earth Sciences, 503 ; Jour- 
nal of School Geography, 552; Geology, 
N. Y. Academy of Sciences, 560, 607, 702, 890 

Dogs of the Ancient Pueblos, F. A. Lucas, 544 

Dolbear, A. E., First Principles of Natural Phil- 
osophy, 805 

Dorsey, George A., The Lumbar Curve, 579 

Dreyer, G. P., Supra-renal Capsules, 905 

‘Driftless’ Ridge, O. H. HerRsury, 696 

Druidical Remains at Dartmoor, 57, 272 

Dryer, C. R., Physiography of N. Indiana, 724 

Dupuzy, C. B., Some present Possibilities in the 
Analysis of Iron and Steel, 241 

Dudley, P. H., Railway Tracks, 359 

Dudley, Wm. L., Action of Fused Sodium Dioxid 
on Metals, 394 

Duff, A. Wilmer, Viscosity as a Function of Tem- 
perature, 485 ; Tidal Observations, 739 

Duhem, P., Traité élémentaire de mécanique 
chimique, W1LDER D. Bancrort, 625 

Dunlap, F. L., and I. K, Phelps, Urea and Pri- 
mary Amines and Maleic Anhydride, 963 

Dunnington, F, P., Laboratory of Analytical 
Chemistry, 521 

Durand, W. F., Entropy of Function, 316 

Dutch Association for Advancement of Science, 992 

Duty on Books devoted to Original Researeh, 224 

Dwelshauvers-Dery, V., Etude de huit essais de 
machine 4 vapeur, R. H. THurston, 153 


EARLE, CHaARrues, Relations of Tarsius to the 
Lemurs and A pes, 258 ; Further Considerations 
of the Systematic Position of Tarsius, 657 

Earth-crust Movements and their Causes, JOSEPH 
LEConTE, 321 

Eastman, C. R., Devonian Bone and Fish-beds of 
North America, 703; Ctena-canthus spines 
from the Keokuk Limestone, 998 


NEW eal 
Vou. V. 


Eastman, J. R., Relations of Science and the Scien- 
tific Citizen to the General Government, 525 

Ebert on the Possible Disruption of the Solar 
System, 303 

Economic Association, The American, 56 

Eichhorn, A., Mayan Hieroglyphs, 798 

Elective Studies in American Universities, 308, 445 

Electric, Omnibus, 183 ; Light Association, 953 

Elizabeth Thompson Science Fund, 800 

Emmens, Stephen H., The Argentaurum Papers, 


Emmerling, O., Arsenic in Wall Papers, 101 

Emmons, 8. F., Geology of Government Explora- 
tions, 1, 42 

Emmons, S. F., Physiography of West Coast of 
Peru, 889 

Engineers Civil, Society, of France, 271, 841, Lon- 
don Institute of, 617, 918 

Entomological Society of Washington, L. O. 
HowarD, 287, 559, 856 

EstxEs, Lupovie, Poudré, 805 

Ethno-Botany, 688 

Ethnography of Madagascar, 871 

Etruscology, Recent, 614 

Euproctis Chrysorrhea in Massachusetts, SAMUEL 
HeEnsHaw, 845 

Expeditions, 238, 57, 148, 145, 183, 224, 269, 273, 
443, 474, 512, 581, 653, 655, 728, 765, 839, 840, 
841, 874, 875, 916, 917, 951, 952, 989 

Exploration on the Coasts of the North Pacific 
Ocean, 455 

Hycleshymer and B. M. Davis, Epiphysis and 
Paraphysis in Amia, 774 


F., EH. B., Astrophysical Notes, 726, 764, 836 

F., G. W., Physical Educational! Review, 666 

Fairbanks, Harold W., Geology of San Francisco 
Peninsula, 283 ; Contact Metamorphism, 998 

Fairchild, H. L., Shore Lines of Lake Warren, 88 

FarranpD, Livineston, The American Psychol- 
ogical Association, 206; Anthropology and Psy- 
chology, N. Y. Academy of Sciences, 283, 776 

Fault, the Great, and accompanying Sandstone 
Dykes of Ute Pass, Colo., W. O. CrosBy, 604 

Fauna of Central Borneo, G. R. Stetson, 640 

Fear, The Study of, WesLEY Mruts, 153 

Fernow, B. E., Forest Reservation Policy, 489, 868 

Fewkes, J. W., Types of Pueblo Pottery, 195 

Field, G. W., Plankton of Brackish Water, 424 

Fisuer, A. K., Sharp-tailed Finches of Maine, 577 

Fisheries, Congress, National, 653; Exhibition, 
International, 918 

Fleet, An Imaginary, G. D. Harris, 586 

FLETCHER, Atice C., Notes on certain Beliefs 
concerning Will Power among the Siouan 
Tribes, 331 

Fletcher, Alice C., Early Forms of Ceremonial 
Expression, 215; Ceremonial Hair-cutting 
among the Omahas, 215 

Flexnor, Simon, Blood Serum in Animals immune 
from certain Diseases, 193 

Flight of a Flock of Geese, The Height and Ve- 
locity of, H. Henm Cuiayton, 585 

Florida Monster, A. E. VERRILL, 392, 476; F. A. 
Lucas, 476 

Folin, O., On Urethanes, 852 

Folk-lore Society, The American, Haruan I. 
SMITH, 215 

Fonvielle, de, Balloon Meteorology, 265 


SCIENCE. 


Vil 


Foote, Katherine, Centrosome and Archyplasm, 231 

Forest Reservation, 398, 654, 764, 800, 839, 893; 
Policy, P. E. Fernow, 489, 868 

Férstemann on Mayan Hieroglyphs, 871 

Francoit-Legall, on the Amerique Indians, 438 

FRANKLIN, CHRISTINE LApp., Color Blindness and 
William Pole, 310 

Franklin, W.S., Electricity and Magnetism, 485 

Franz, 8. I., Visual After-images, 776 

Frazer, Persifor, the Determination of Minerals 
by Physical Properties, E. B. MatHEws, 624 


Gacs, 8. H., N. Y. State Science Teachers’ Asso- 
ciation, 458 

Galloway, B. T., Effect of Environment on Host 
and Parasite in Certain Diseases of Plants, 963 

Ganodonta, H. F. O., 611 : 

Geikie, Sir Archibald, The Recent Visit of, J. F. 
Kemp, 785; The Tertiary Volcanic Succession, 
W. F. Morse, 788 

Generic Names, Ictis, Arctogale and Arctogalidia, 
C. Hart Mprriam, 302 

Geographentag, XII. Deutscher, Jena, 1897, F. P. 
GULLIVER, 866 

Geographical, Society, Royal, of London, 103; 
Association of English Schoolmasters, 178; 
Congress, International, 271; Magazine, Is- 
RAEL C. RUSSELL, 477; Society, Royal, 306 

Geoetephy, Journal of School, 105; Isranu C. 

USSELL, 271; W. M. Davis, 551, RicHARD 

E. Doves, 552; French, Notes on, F. P. GuL- 
LIVER, 644 

Geologic Atlas of the United States, 884 

Geolegical, Society of America, J. F. Kemp, 81 ; 
Winter Meetings at Washington, 342; So- 
ciety of London, Award of Medals, 182 ; Club 
of the University of Minnesota, CHaruEs P. 
BERKEY, 196, 363, 487 ; Society of Washington, 
W. F. Morse xt, 288, 361, 558, 811, 898 ; Inter- 
national Congress, 581, 616, 767, 800, 989; 
Survey of Colorado, 582; Work ofthe U. 8. Sur- 
vey, 991 

Geologist, American, 229, 358, 486, 854 

Geology, of Government Explorations, §. F. Em- 
mons, 1, 42; Journal of, H. F. B., 190, 282, 
519, 701, 925; N. Y. Academy of Sciences, J. 
F. Kemp, 239, 360; RicHarp E. Dopes, 560, 
702, 890; at the British Association, W. W. 
Watts, 252; Introduction of New Terms in, 
JouNn C. BRANNER, 912 

‘Gibbers,’ J. B. Woopworts, 476 

Gibbs, J. W., Hubert A. Newton, 738 

Gisps, WoLcort, A Lecture by Regnault, 409 

GIDDINGS, FRANKLIN H., Spencer’s Principles of 
Sociology, 732; The Crowd, Gustav Le Bon, 734 

Giesel, F., Solid Solutions, 470 

GILBERT, G. K., Simplified Spelling, 185; Cata- 
logue des bibliographies géologiques, Hmm. 
de Margerie, 187 

Gilbert, G. K., Tracks of HErian Drainage, 88; 
Underground Water of the Ark. Valley, 336 

Gint, THEO., Distribution of Marine Mammals, 
955 

GILPIN, J. ExuroTt, American Chemical Journal, 
157, 356, 520, 664, 852, 961 ; 

Gilpin, J. Elliott, Phosphorus Pentachloride, 853 

Glacial Man in Ohio, CLARENCE B. Moors, 880 

Glaciers of Norway, 21 

Glossophaga Truei, HARRISON ALLEN, 155 


vill 


Gomme, G. L., Folk-lore as Ethnological Data, 
545 

Goode, Memorial Meeting, Cyrus ADLER, 360; 
George Brown, 8S. P. LANGLEY, 369; as a 
Naturalist, HhNRy F. OsBorN, 373 

Goopn, J. Paun, So-called Pseudo-Aurora, 186 

Goodman, J. T., Biologia Centrali-Americana: 
Archeology, D. G. Brinton, 662 

GrRaBau, AMADEUS W., The Sand-plains of Truro, 
Wellfleet and Eastham, 334 

Graf, Arnold, Individuality of the Cell, 388 

GREEN, BERNARD R., Philosophical Society of 
Washington, 408 

Greene, C. W., Nerve Impulse, 910 

Greenland, Glaciers, Former Extension of, RALPH 
S. Tarr, 344; T. C. CoamBrruin, 400; Ep- 
wArRD H. WtuuiaMs, Jr., 448; Former Ex- 
tension of Ice in, R. 8. Tarr, 515, 804; T. C. 
CHAMBERLIN, 516 

Gregory, Emily Ray, Pronephric Duct in Se- 
lachians, 1000 

Griffin, J. J., The Diazo Compounds, 520 

Grindley, H. 8., and J. L. Sammis, Action of Mer- 
captides on Quinones, 665 

Groos, Karl, Die Spiele der Thiere, J. 
BaLpwin, 347 

Gross, Theodor, Bythium, 874 

Growth of Children, Franz Boas, 570 

GuLLiver, F. P., Notes on French Geography, 
644; XII Deutscher Geographentag, Jena, 866 

Guntz on Lithium Nitrid, 180, 266 


Marx 


H., J. L., Notes on Inorganic Chemistry, 101, 179, 
221, 266, 394, 439, 470, 545, 615, 651, 725, 763, 
798, 872, 914 

Haase, Erich, Researches on Mimicry, VERNON L. 
KELLOGG, 228 

Haber, F,, and A. Weber, on Illuminating Gas, 266 

Hale, George E., Refracting and Reflecting Tele- 
scopes for Astrophysical Investigations, 592 

Hale, Horatio, D. G. Brinton, 216; on Wam- 
pum Records, 650 

Hall, C. W., The University of Minnesota, 730 

Hall, J. V., Ferric Hydroxide, 962 

HAunLock, WILLIAM, Astronomy and Physics, N. 
Y. Academy of Sciences, 70, 359, 452 

HALSTED, GEORGE Bruce, Compliment or Plagi- 
arism, 152, 344; International Congress of 
Mathematicians, 477; Sylvester, 597 

Hann’s Allgemeine Erdkunde, 177 

Hannequin, Arthur, L’ hypothése des atomes dans 
la science contemporaine, E. A. STRONG, 736 

Harley, W. N., and H. Ramage, Spectrographic 
Analysis, 546 

Harmon, Mary P., Psycho-physical Tests, 210 

Harrington, D. W., Heart of the Guinea Pig, 907 

Harrington, N. R., Entoconchide, 433; A Nereid 
from Puget Sound, 595 

Harris, G. D., An Imaginary Fleet, 586 

Hart, Edward, Chemistry for Beginners, Jas, 
Lewis Howe, 155 

Hartley W. N., and H. Ramage, The wide Dis- 
semination of some the rarer Chemical Ele- 
ments, 394 

Hatwaway, A. §., 
John Bolyai, 311. 

Hathaway, A. S., Primer of Quaternions, ALEX- 
ANDER MACFARLANE, 699 

Hayes, C. Willard, Solution of Quartz under At- 


Non-Euclidean Geometry, 


SCIENCE. 


CONTENTS AND 
INDEX. 


mospheric Conditions, 82; and Alfred H. 
Brooks, Crystalline and Metamorphic Rocks 
97; Southern Iron Ores, 558 

Hazen, H. A., Pseudo-Aurora Again, 447 

Heilprin, Angelo, Earth and its Story, 21; As- 
sumed Glaciation of the Atlas Mountains, 88 

Helix Nemoralis, The Virginia Colony of, T., D. 
A. COCKERELL, 985 

Henchman, A. P., Eyes of Limax Maximus, 428 

HENSHAW, SAMUEL, Boston Society of Natural 
History, 34, 72, 196, 361, 632, 703, 891, 964; 
Euproctis Chrysorrhea in Massachusetts, 845 

Herreshoff, J. B., Metallurgy of Copper, 240 

HersHey, O.H., The Quaternary Deposits of Mis- 
souri, James E. Todd, 587; A ‘Driftless’ Ridge, 
696; The Loess Formation of the Mississippi 
Region, 768 

Hershey, O. H., The Formation of Till, 283 

Hertwig, Oscar, The Cell, C. B. DAvENPoRT, 111 

Heycock, C. T., Metallic Alloys, 693; and F. H. 
Neville, Sodium-gold Alloys, 914; Alloy of 
Silver and Zire, 948 

Hieroglyphs, Mexican, J. D. McGurrz, 479; ZpLia 

UTTALL, 479 

Highhole Courtship, Hrram M. Stanuey, 921 

Hitt, Rost. T., Phases in Jamaican Natural His- 
tory, 15; A Question of Classification, 921 

Hill, R. T., Phases of the Negro of the West In- 
dies, 594; and T. W. Vaughan, Lower Creta- 
ceous Grypheas of the Texas Region, 629 

Hillgartner, H. L., Experiments with X-Rays on 
the Blind, 704 

Hillyer, N. H., and O. E. Crooker, Aluminum 
Ethylate, 157 

Hime, H. W. L., Anwendung der Quaternionen 
auf die Geometrie, ALEXANDER MACFARLANE, 
699 

Hirsch, William, Genius and Degeneration, Cuas. 
L. Dana, 404 

Hitcucocr, C. H., Annual Report of the Geol- 
ogical Survey of Canada, G. M. Dawson, 621 

Hitchcock, C. H., Stratigraphy of certain Homo- 
genous Rocks, 86. 

Hobbs, W. H., Geology of Southwestern New 
England, 520 

Hodge, C. F., Physiological Influence of Alcohol, 
135 

Hoffman, Frederick L., Race Traits and Tenden- 
cies of the American Negro, W J McGsExg, 65 

HoLpEen, Epwarp §., The Bruce Astronomical 
Medal, 620; Mr. Lowell’s Observations of 
Mercury and Venus, 656; The Beginnings of 
American Astronomy, 929 

HoreatE, THomas F., Science Club of North- 
western University, 524, 812 

Hollick, Arthur, Geological Section at Cliffwood, 
N. J., 239 ; Fossil Arundo from §. I., 595 

Holm, Theo., Draba hyperbores, 236; The Grass 
Embryo, 668 

Hough, T., Duration of Cardiac Standstill with 
different Strengths of Vagus Stimulation, 12 

Howarp, L. O., Entomological Society of Wash- 
ington, 237, 559, 856 

Howard, L. O., Parasites of Shade Tree Insects, 
319; Parasites of Coccide, 560; A Study in 
Insect Parasitism, D. T, A. CocKERELL, 848 

Hower, Jas. Lewis, Chemistry for Beginners, 
Edward Hart, 155; Theoretical Chemistry, 
Ferdinand G. Wiechmann, 313 


NEW Saal 
Noite, WE 


Howell, W. H., Plethysmographic Curves 130; 
Physiological Effects of Injections of Extracts 
of the Hypophysis Cerebri, 903 f 

Huber, G. C., Sympathetic Ganglia of Vertebrates, 
132 ; Ending of Nerves in Muscle Tissue, 133 ; 
in the Viscera, 908; in the ‘ Muscle Spindles’ 
of Voluntary Muscle, 908 

Huprecat, A. A. W., Relations of Tarsius to the 
Lemurs and Apes, 550 

Huggins, William, Stellar Spectra on a Photo- 
graphic Plate, 522 

Hull on the,Glacial Period, 257 

Humphreys, W. J., Wave-lengths of the Lines of 
the Arc Spectra of certain Elements, 521 

Hunt., R., The Inhibitory and the Accelerator 
Nerves of the Heart, 130; Innervation of the 
Heart of the Opossum, 906; The Lobster’s 
Heart, 907 

Huntington, G. 5., Lemur Bruneus, 319 

Hutchinson, H. N., Prehistoric Man and Beast, D. 
G. Brinton, 154 

Huxley Memorial, 223 

Hyatt, Aupueus, Cycle in the Life ofthe Indi- 
vidual (Ontogeny) and in the Evolution of its 
own Group (Phylogeny), 161 

Hygiene, Public, Report on, in Prussia, 442 

Hysitop, JAMES H., Professor Jastrow’s Test on 
Diversity of Opinion, 275 


Ice Age, The Coming, C. A. M. Taser, 658 

India, Survey of, 184 

Induction Coil, A New Method of driving an 
Cuas. L. Norton, Raupo R. LAWRENCE, 335 

Insects, An Essay on the Classification of, JonN 
B. Smriru, 671 i 

Iowa Academy of Sciences, HERBERT OSBORN, 317 

Iron and Steel, Some present Possibilities in the 
Analysis of, C. B. DupiEy, 241 

Irving, J. D., Green River and the Uinta Moun- 
tains, 647 


J., Coast and Geodetic Survey, 384 

J., H., Astronomical Notes, 102, 180, 222, 303 

Jackman, Wilbur §., Nature Study, CHARLES 

_WricHt Dopegs, 188 

Jackson, C. L, and M. H. Ittner, Parabromdime- 
tanitrolouol, 157; Sodic Ethylate, 520; and A. 
M. Comey, Hydrozel, 651; Hydrocobaltocobalti- 
cyanic Acid, 664 

Jacoby, H., Circumpolar Stars, 359 

Jaggar, Jr., T. A., Mountain Building, 703 

Jamaican Natural History, Ropr, T. Hru1, 15 

JAMES, WILLIAM, Louis Agassiz, 285 

JASTROW, JOSEPH, A Test on Diversity of Opinion, 
26; Outlines of Psychology, Wilhelm Wundt; 
Edward Bradford Titchener, 882 

Johus Hopkins University Science Club, CHas. 
Lane Poor, 192, 318, 667 

Johnson, J. B., The Materials of Construction, 
MANSFIELD MERRIMAN, 921 

Johnson-Lavis, H. J., Highwood Mountains, 256 

Jobhonnot, James, The Principles and Practice of 
Teaching, CHARLES Wricut DopeE, 187 

Jones, H. C. and E. Mackay, The Study of Water 
Solutions and of some of the Alums, 356 

Jones, H. L. Seashore Plants, 964 

JORDAN, Epwin O., Municipal Government in 
Continental Europe, Albert Shaw, 450 

Judson, W. V., Galveston Harbor, 363 


SCIENCE. 1x 


Jurassic Wealden (Tithonian) of England, JuLus 
Marcou, 149 


Kastle, J. H., Salts of Calcium, Strontium and 
Barium, 665; and W. A. Beatty, Effect of 
Light on the Displacement of Bromine and 
Iodine, 357; Halogens in Organic Halides, 845 

Kayser, H., Spectrum of Zeta Puppis, 591 

Keilhack, K., Prof. Geikie’s Classification of the 
North European Glacial Deposits, 519; 
Thorodssen on Northeast Iceland, 796 

Keith on Some Stages of Appalachian Erosion, 507 

KELLOGG, VERNON L., Researches on Mimicry, 
Erich Haase, 228 

Kelly, D. J., Malt Wine, 774 

Ketvin, Lorp, J. G. Brartiz, M. Smouv- 
CHOWSKI DE SMOLAN, Electrification of Air by 
Rontgen Rays, 139 

Kemp, G. T., Apparatus to Avoid Explosion in 
Gas Analysis, 132; Physiological Action of 
Nitrous Oxide, 136; Gases of the Blood during 
Nitrous Oxide Anzsthesia, 904 

Kemp, J. F., Geological Society of America, 81; 
N. Y. Academy of Sciences, Geology, 239, 
360, 999; Visit of Sir Archibald Geikie, 785 

Kemp, J. F., The Leucite Hills, Wyo., 82; The 
Pre-Cambriau Topography of the Hastern 
Adirondacks, 92; Ore deposits of Butte, 
Mont., 891; Geology of the Trail from Redrock 
to Leesburgh, Idaho, 891 

Kendall on Changes in Yorkshire Rivers, 257 

Kenyon, F. C , Brain of the Bee, 358; Optic Lobes 
of a Bee’s Brain, 429 

Kimball, James P., Puget Sound Basin, 854 

King, F. H., Movements of Ground Waters, 523 

Kingsbury, B. F., The Oblongata in Fishes, 773 

Kingsley, J. S., Amphiuma and Cecilians, 436 

Klebs, George, Bedingungen der Fortpflanzung 
bei einigen Algen und Pilzen, Gro. F. AT- 
KC(NSON, 303 

Knight, N., Benzanilide, 357 

Knowlton, f. H., Flora of Independence Hill, 190 

Kober, George M., Hygiene, 856 

Kolliker’s Entwicklungsgeschichte, 342 

Krause, E. H. L., Pre-history of N. Europe, 689 

Kuhlenbeck, L., Native American Mysticism, 579 

Kimmel, Henry B., Newark Formation of West- 
ern New Jersey, 93 

Kunz, George F., Precious Stones, 184 


L., F. A., Color Change in the Plumage of Birds 
unaccompanied by Moult, 762 ‘ 

Lachman, A., Zine Ethyl, 854 

Landslip, in Switzerland, 21; The Gohna, 437; on 
the Banks of the Upper Yang-tsze, 619 

Lane, ALFRED C., The Drainage of the Saginaw 
Valley, 553 

Lane, Alfred C., The Grain of Rocks, 97 

Langdon, F. E., Peripheral Nervous System of 
Nereis Virens, 427 

Lana.ey, S. P.. George Brown Goode, 369 

Lassar-Cohn, Die Chemie im tiglichen Leben, 
W. R. O., 156 

Lavoisier Monument, Epcar F. Suiru, 403 

Lay, W., Mental Imagery, 776 

LeBlanc, Max, The Elements of Electrochemistry, 
FERDINAND G. WIECHMANN, 32 

Le Bon, Gustave, The Crowd, FRANKLIN H. Gip- 
DINGS, 734 


x SCIENCE. 


Lr Conte, Josepu, Earth-Crust Movements and 
their Causes, 321 

Lzz, Freperic §., The American Physiological 
Society, 129, 900 

Lee, F. 8., Form of the Muscle Curve, 910 

Leeds on Micro-organisms in Water, 71 

LEFEVRE, ARTHUR, Compliment or Plagiarism, 401 

Lefevre, G., Budding in Clavilinidz, 433 

Leonard, A, G., Natural Gas, 317 

Letourneau, Ch., L’evolution de Vesclavage, D. G. 
Brinton, 448 

Leverett, Frank, Changes of Drainage in the Ohio 
River Basin, 85; An Abandoned River Chan- 
nel in Eastern Iowa and the Western Edge of 
the Illinois Icelobe, 89; Glacial Deposits of 
Indiana, 263; The Preglacial Kanawha, 337 

Lillie, F. R., Origin of Centers of the First Cleav- 
age Spindle in Unio Complanata, 389 

Lindgren, Waldemar, Sierra Nevada, 190, 361, 590 

Littleton, F. T., Volumetric Determination of 
Starch, 157 

Liversidge on Gold in Natural Saline Deposits, 470 

Lock, J. B., Trigonometry for Beginners, J. B. 
CHITTENDEN, 626 

Locks, F. §, Physiological Papers, H. Newell 
Martin, 113 

Locke, F. §., Latent Period of the Motor Nerve- 
endings, 136; The Frog’s Heart, 137 

Loess, Formation of the Mississippi Region, Oscar 
H. Hersey, 768; Is it of either Lacustrine 
or Semi-marine Origin ? 993 

Loomis, E. H., The Freezing Points of Dilute 
Aqueous Solutions, 315 

Losanitsch and Jovitschitsch, Silent Electric Dis- 
charge, 440 

Lough, James E., Intensity of Sensation, 207 

Lowell’s, Mr., Observations of Mercury and Venus, 
Epwarp 8. HoLpDEN, 656 

Lucas, F. A., Biological Society of Washington, 
159, 236, 319, 487, 629, 688, 759, 810, 963; The 
Florida Monster, 476; Play of Animals: the 
Fur Seal, 480; Museums and Science, 543; A 
Dog of the Ancient Pueblos, 544; Professor 
Scott’s Bird Pictures, 620 

Lucas, F. A., Sea-lion Eumetopias, 159; Natural 
Mortality among fur Seals, 159 

Lusk, G., Production of Sugar from Gelatine in 
Metabolosm, 132; Phlorhizin Diabetes, 900 

Lydekker, R., A Geographical History of Mam- 
mals, C. Hart MERRIAM, 26, 


M., Henry L. Whiting, 300 

M., C. H., A Popular Handbook of the Ornithol- 
ogy of Eastern North America, Thomas Nut- 
tall, 110; Birds of the Galapagos Archipelago, 
Robert Ridgway, 770 ; Harliest Published Note 
of the late Chas. E. Bendire, 805 

M., W. F., Magnetic Declination, 444 

McG., J. H., Semon on the Monotremes, 643 

Mabery, Chas. F., and E. J. Hudson, American 
Petroleum, 664; and A. §. Kittelberger, South 
American Petroleum, 853, 961 

McAdie on Fog Possibilities, 265 

McCalley, Henry, Tenn. Valley Region, 
507 

Macatuum, A. B., Toronto Meeting of the British 
Association, 251 

McCauley, A., Utility of Quaternions in Physics, 
ALEXANDER MACFARLANE, 699 


Ala., 


CONTENTS AND 
INDEX. 


McCuurg, C. F. W., Primary Segmentation of the 
Brain, 260 

McCormick, J. H., Anthropological Society of 
Washington, 35, 194, 487, 594, 856, 927 

McCormick, J. H ,. Folk-lore for 1896, 195 ; Devel- 
opment of the Arts as Applied to Medicine, 220 

MacDoueat, D. T., A New Botanical Laboratory 
in the American Tropics, 395 

MacDougal, D. T., On the Tropical Laboratory 
Commission, 728 

MACFARLANE, ALEXANDER, Recent Books on 
Quaternions, 699 

MACFARLANE, JOHN M., Inheritance of Acquired 
Characteristics, 935 

McGex, W J, Race Traits and Tendencies of the 
American Negro, Frederick L, Hoffman, 65 

McGee, W J, Sheetflood Erosion, 722; The 
Muskwaki Indians, 928 

McGregor, J. H., Embryo of Cryptobranchus, 71 

McGuire, J. D., Mexican Hieroglyphs, 479 

McGuire, J. D., Primitive Drills and Drilling, 54 

M’Kendrick, J. G., Elementary Human Physi- 
ology, JosePH W. WARREN, 809 

McMourricu. J. P., Experimental Morphology, 
Chas. B. Davenport, 293 

MeMurrich, J. P., The Midgut in Terrestrial Iso- 
pods, 423 

McNarr, F. W., Newton’s Total Reflection Ex- 
periment, 620 

Man and his Environment, 947 

Marcovu, Jutes, The Jurassic Wealden (Tith- 
onian) of England, 149 

Marcou, Jules, Stratigraphic Classification, 230 

Margerie, Emm. de, Catalogues des bibliographies 
géologiques, G. K. GrnBER?, 187 

Marine, Biology of Great Britain, 55; Fauna of 8. 
African Coast, 443; Mammals, Distribution of, 
P. L. Scuater, 741; Wu. H. Dawu, 843; 
THEO. GILL, 955; G. Baur, 956; ARNOLD E. 
ORTMANN, 997 

Marlatt, C. L., The Science of Entomology, 559 

Marr, J. E., Stratigraphical Investigation, 252 

Marsh, O, C., Stylinodontia, 22 

MarsHAtt, Wm. 8., University of Wisconsin Sci- 
ence Club, 160, 408, 523, 652 

Martin, Edward A., The Story of a Piece of Coal, 
J. J. Stevenson, 810 

Martin, H. Newell, Physiological Papers, F. 8. 
Locke, 113 

Martin, R., Racial Studies in Switzerland, 22 

Mason, O. T., Primitive Travel and Transporta- 
tion, 141; Mateo Grosso, S. Amer. as a Ming- 
ling Ground of Stocks, 194; Boat from the 
Kootenay River, 927 

Mason, W. P., Qualitative Analysis, W. A. N., 280 

Mathematical. Society, American, F. N. Coun, 99; 
917; Conference at Chicago, 398 

Mathematicians, International Congress of, GEORGE 

Bruce HausTep, 477; 841 

Mathematics, Higher, ALEXANDER ZIWET, 277; 
History of Elementary, Ftortan Casort, 516 

Marupws, ALBERT, Internal Secretions, in Rela- 
tion to Variation and Development, 683 

Matuews, E. B., The Determination of Minerals 
by Physical Properties, Persifor Frazer, 624 

Mathews on Early Cambrian Faunas, 204 

Matthews and Shearer, Problems and Questions in 
Physies, 805 

Maury, A. C., Spectra of the Brighter Stars, 836 


NEW SERIES. 
VoL. Y. 


Mayan History, Ancient, 53 

Mayer, A. M., Flotation of Disks and Rings of 
Metal, 589 

Mead, A. D., The Centrosomes in the Annelid 
Egg, 232; on Centrosomes in Cheetopterus, 389 

Mearns, Encar A., A New Subgeneric Name for 
the Water Hares, 395 

Medical, Inspectors in New York Schools, 23; 
Schools, N. Y. Licensing examinations of, 
107; Association, British, 729, 840, 951; The 
American, 917; International Congress, 989 

MeeEx, S. E., Naples Zoological Station, 832 

Me.vrzer, 8. J., Emil Du Bois-Reymond, 217 

Meltzer, S. J., Contraction of the Stomach, 131; 
Bactericidal Effects of Lymph from the 
Thoracic Duct, 136; Deglutition, 901 

Menpet, LArAyeTtE B., Professor Eugene Bau- 
mann, 51 

Mercer, H, C., Potter’s Wheel in Ancient Amer- 
ica, 919 

Merriam, C. Hart, A Geographical History of 
Mammals, R. Lydekker, 26; Charles E. Ben- 
dire, 261; The Generic Names Ict¢s, Arcto- 
gale and Arctogalidia, 302; Type Specimens in 
Natural History, 781; Suggestions for a New 
Method of discriminating between Species and 
Sub-species, 753 

Merriam C. Hart, Pribilof Island Hair Seal, 519 

Merrill, G. P., Rock Weathering, 95; Rocks, Rock- 
Weathering and Soils, J. B. Woopworta, 995 

MERRIMAN, MANSFIELD, The Materials of Con- 
struction, J. B. Johnson, 921 

Merritt, Ernest, The Gyroscopic Pendulum, 316 

Metabolism in the Human Body, 493 

Meteorological, and Hydrological Meetings, The 
International, A. LAWRENCE Rotcg, 17; Con- 
ference at Paris, A. LawRENCE Rortcu, 152; 
Society, The Royal, 274; Society, American, 
295; Reprints, R. DEC. Warp, 339, 661; 
Station, Antarctic, 341; Council of Royal So- 
ciety, 583; Observatory, The Blue Hill, 613 

Meteorology, Current Notes on, R. DEC. Warp, 
219, 264, 337, 468, 508, 612, 649, 837, 986 

Metric System, 307, 513, 692, 953; Burt G. 
WILDER, 587 

Miall, L. C., Round the Year, E. §. Morss, 227 

Michaelis and Becker on Phosphorous Acid, 949 

Michelson, A. A., Earth and Ether, 889 

Microbes, The War with the, E. A. DE ScHWEIN- 
ITZ, 561 

Microtomes, Automatic, On two Forms of, 
CHARLES SEpGwick Mrnor, 857 

Minter, Jr., Gerrit §., Migration of Bats on 
Cape Cod, Mass., 541 

Millet, J. B., Kite-flying, 837 

Mitts Westey, The Study of Fear, 153; Psy- 
chology and Comparative Psychology, 718 ; 
Significance of Internal Secretion, 920 

Mills, W., Cerebral Cortex 134; Psychic Develop- 
ment of Young Animals, 209; Personal Ex- 
periences under Ether, 210 

Milne, John, Earthquake Survey of the World, 146; 
Seismological Investigation Committee, 444 

Minor, CHaruss §., On Certain Problems of Ver- 
tebrate Embryology, 107; On Two Forms of 
Automatic Microtomes, 857 

Minot, C, §., An Improved Microtome, 106; Lab- 
oratory Methods, 391 

Mixter, W. G., Electrosynthesis, 999 


SCIENCE. Sat 


Molenbroeck, P., Theorie der Quaternionen, ALEX- 
ANDER MACFARLANE, 699 

Moler, George 8., Synchronous Motor, 485 

Mollier, H., The Celts and their Wanderings, 988 

Monist, The, 69 

Moore, B. E., The Lead Cell, 484; and H. V. Car- 
penter, The Galvanic Cell, 316 

Moore, CLARENCE B., Glacial Man in Ohio, 880 

Morean, C. Luoyp, Organic Selection, 994 

Morley, Frank, The Construction of a Single Point 
Covariant with five given Points, 99 

Morphological Society, The American, G. H. 
PARKER, 388, 423 

Morrill, A. D., The Auditory Epithelium, 358 

Morss, E. 8., Round the Year, L. C. Miall, 227 

Morse, E. S., ‘Bow-pullers’ of Antiquity, 614 

Morsx11, W. F., Geological Society of Washing- 
ton, 288, 361, 558, 811, 889; Sir Archibald 
Geikie on Tertiary Volcanic Succession, 788 

Mortillet, G. de, on Small Chipped Flints, 339 ; 
European ‘Quaternary Man,’ 509; L’ Origine 
de la Nation Frangaise, 961 

Morton on the Phenomena of Fluorescence, 71 

Munby, A. E., Bunsen Burner for Acetylene, 914 

Munroe, Chas. E., Gun Cotton, 115 

Murray, John, ‘Balfour Shoal,’ 727 

Museum, South Kensington and Queen Victoria’s 
Jubilee, 397; The National, of Costa Rica, 470; 
British, Organization of the, 693 

Museums, Associations, 580; How retard the Ad- 
vance of Science, F. A. BATHER, 677 


N., W. A., Development of the Periodic Law, F. 
P. Venable, 280; Notes on Qualitative Analy- 
sis, W. P. Mason, 280; Quantitative Chemical 
Analysis, Frederick A. Cairns, 281 

Nansen’s Discovery of the Breeding Grounds of 
the Rosy Gull, T. 8. PauMEr, 175 

National, University, 197; Witt1am TRELEASE, 
345; CHARLES W. DaBNey, JR., 378; and the 
Smithsonian Institution, Benz. IDE WHEELER, 
881; Academy of Sciences, 659, 758 fi 

Natrix Grohamii, B. & G., Frank C. Baker and 
FRANK M. Woopruvurrf, 447 

Natural, History, Specimens, Postal Laws concern- 
ing, 873; History, Cambridge, W. McM. 
Woopworts, 958 

Nepreees Academy of Sciences, G. D. SWEZEY, 
15 

Nedel, E., Antiquities of Bornholm, 988 

Neiss], G. von, Paths of 100 Meteors, 727 

Neurology, Journal of Comparative, 358, 773; and 
Psychiatry, etc., International Congress of, 839 

New Books, 72, 116, 240, 284, 320, 364, 408, 488, 
524, 560, 596, 668, 704, 776, 812, 892, 964, 1000 

Newcomsp, 8., An Ambitious ‘Paradoxer,’ 400; The 
Problems of Astronomy, 777 

Newcomb, §., Address by Prof. W.H. Welch in 
honor of, 690 

Newell, W. W., The Legend of the Holy Grail, 215 

Newton on the Worship of Meteorites, 33 

Newton, Alfred, A Dictionary of Birds, Euirorr 
Cougs, 533 

New York Academy of Sciences, Astronomy and 
Physics, W. Hauock, 70, 359, 452 ; Biology, 
C. L. Brisron, 71, 319; BasHrorp Dzan, 
595; Geology, J. F. Kemp, 2389, 360, 999; 
Psychology and Anthropology, Livrneston 
FarRAND, 283, 776; RicHarp E. Dopex, 560, 


702, 890; Annual Reception and Exhibition of, 
341; RicHarD E. Dopes, 607 

Nicholas, F. C., Gold Fields of W. Columbia, 360 

Nichols, E. F., A Method for Energy Measure- 
ments in the Infra- red, 315 

Nicuous, E. L., The Teaching of Physics and 
Chemistry in the Secondary Schools, 464 

Nichols, E. L., Outlines of Physics, 805; and J. A. 
Clark, Electrification and Surface Tension of 
Water, 483 ; and W.S. Franklin, Physics, 805 

Nichols, H. W., The Genesis of Clay Stones, 854 

Nobel Bequest, 59, 108, 142, 223 

Nomenclature, and Metamorphic Lavas, H. W. 
TURNER, 226; Scientific, A Layman’s Views 
on, THEODORE ROOSEVELT, 683 

Northwestern University Science Club, A. R. 
Crook, 160; THomas F. Houeats, 524 

Norton, Cuas. L., RatpoH R. Lawrence, A New 
Method of driving an Induction Coil, 335; An 
Induction Coil Method for X-Rays, 496 

Norton, J. B. §., St. Louis Tornado of 1896, 892 

Noyes, A. A. and C. W. Lucker, Diacetylenyl 
(Butadiine), 357 

Nuttall, Thomas, A Popular Handbook of Orni- 
thology, C. H. M., 110 

Nuttauu, ZELIA, Mexican Hieroglyphs, 479 


O., H. F., The Ganodonta, 611 

0. W.R. , Die Chemie im taglichen Leben, Lassar- 
Cohn, 156 

OBERHOLSER, Harry C., Bird Life, Frank M. 
Chapman, 997 

Oberholser, H. C., American Golden Warblers, 740 

Oberhummer on the Jewish Physical Type, 650 

Opinion, A Test on the Diversity om JOSEPH JAS- 
TROW, 26; JAMES H. Hystop, 275; 513 

OsBoRN, Henry F., Goode as a STAIR 378 5 
Origin of the Teeth of the Mammalia, 576; 
Edward D. Cope, 705 

OsBORN, HERBERT, Jowa Academy of Sciences, 317 

Organic Selection, J. Marx BaLpwin, 634; Ros- 
ERT M. Pierce, 844; C, Lutoyp Moraan, 994 

Orndorff, W. R., and C. B. Moyer, Naphthalene 
Tetrabromide, 664 

ORTMANN, ARNOLD E., Distribution of Marine 
Mammals, 957 


Palmer, Jr., A. de Forest, The Pressure Coeffi- 
cient of Mercury Resistance, 998 

PALMER, T. 8., Nansen’s Discovery of the Breed- 
ing Grounds of the Rosy Gull, 175 

Pammel, L. H., Ecological Notes, 362 

‘ Paradoxer,’ An Ambitious, $8. NEwcoms, 400 

Parasitism in the Cowbird, 0. WrpMANN, 176 

Pareiasauria Seeley (C otylosauria Cope) from the 
Triassic of Germany, G. BAur, 720 

Paris Exposition of 1900, 693, 989 

Parker, G. H., The American Morphological So- 
ciety, 388, 423 

Parker, H. C., Measuring Currents, 70 

Pasteur, Mausoleum, 56; Interment, 105; Statue, 304 

Patents, British, Two Extraordinary, H. CaRrrine- 
TON Bouron, 401 

Patten, W., Preservation of Cartilage, 392; Visual 
Centers of Arthropods and Vertebrates, 431 

Paul and Krénig on the Behaviour of Bacteria to- 
wards Solutions of Salts, 440 

Paulitschke on the African Dwarfs, 510 

Pawlewski on Sulfuryleloride, 763 


SCIENCE. 


CONTENTS AND 
INDEX, 


Payne, G. F., Mineral Constituents of Watermelon, 
102 

PrEae, A. C., Chemical Society of Washington, 
115 

Peary’s, Lieut., Expedition, Gro. H. Barton, 308 

PECKHAM ADELAIDE Warp, The Colon Group of 
Baceilli, 981 

Peters, Franz, Angewandte Elektrochemie, Ep- 
GAR F. Sarre, 588 

Petit on the Action of Waters containing dissolved 
Salts upon Iron, 267 

ie Bae The Secretion and Composition of Bile, 

; Human Pancreatic Fistula, 910 

Philinecon A., Geomorphology, 796 

Phillips, W. F. R., Sunstroke Weather of aabeee 
1896, 509 

Philosophical Society of Washington, BERNARD 
R. GREEN, 408 

Physical, Vectors, The Blackboard Treatment of, 
C. Barus, 171; and Mental Tests, Report of 
the Committee on, 211; Review, 315, 484 
Laboratory, A British National Physical, 397; 
Education Review, American, 399; G. W. F., 
666 ; Laboratory, A National, at Washington, 
511; Laboratory for India, 728 

Physicians and Surgeons, The Fourth Session of 
American, 441, 547, 761 

Physics, Recent Text-books on, 805 

Physiography, Current Notes on, W. M. Davis, 
20, 177, 263, 336, 437, 507, 577, 647, 722, 795, 
869, 945 

Physiological Society, The American, FREDERIC 
8. LEE, 129, 900 

Physiology, Opportunities for Training in, H. P. 
Bowovircu, 446 

Pickering, E. C. , Method of Determining the Rela- 
tive Motions of Stars in the Line of Sight, 102; 
Zeta Puppis, 591, 726 

Pickering, Spencer, "Electrolytic Dissociation of 
Salts in Solution, 221 

Pierce, Jr., Josiah, Projection of Panoramic Views 
of Contoured Surfaces, 667 

Prerce, Robert M., ‘Organic Selection,’ 844 

Pitsspry, H. A., Lewis Woouman, Pururp P. 
CatyeRrtT, Postage on Specimens of Natural 
History in the International Mails, 402 

Plague, 219, 224, 269, 805, 341, 342, 442, 512 

Plant Registration, A Proposed Bureau of, 19 

Plateau, Félix, How Flowers attract Insects, 689 

Platinum, The Production of, in Russia, 651 

Play of Animals: The Fur Seal, F. A. Lucas, 480 

Pliocene Man in Britain, 439 

Pollard, C. L., A Type in Botany, 487 

Poor, Cuas. LANE, Scientific Association of the 
Johns Hopkins University, 192, 318, 667 

Poor, Chas. Lane, Mirror and Equatorial Mount- 
ing for Reflecting Telescopes, 668 

Porter, W. T., Physiology of the Mammalian 
Heart, 129; "The Heart. Beat, 905; Recovery of 
the Mammalian Heart from Fibrilary Contrac- 
tions, 905; Beat of the Ventricle and Flow of 
Blood through the Coronary Arteries, 906 

Porro, C,, Scientific Geography in Italy, 264 

Postage, Rates on Specimens of Natural History in 
the International Mails, H. A. Prnspry, Lewis 
WooiMan, Partie P. CaAnvert, 402 

Potomac Formation, Professor Fontaine and Dr. 
Newberry on the Age of the, Lestpr F. 
Warp, 411 


NEW al 
VoL. V 


Potter’s Wheel in Ancient America, H. C. MER- 
CER, 919; D. G. Brinton, 598 

Poudré, Lupovic Ests&s, 805 

Pratt, F. H., Vessels of Thebesius, 906 

Preuss, K. T., The Meaning of Mourning, 141 

Prosser, Chas. 8., Carboniferous and Permian of 
Nebraska and Kansas, 282, 519; and Logan, on 
the Uplands and Valleys of Kansas, 945 

Pseudo Aurora, Au Explanation of the so-called, 
J. Paunt Goons, 186; H. A. Hazen, 447. 

Psychological, Association, The American, Liv- 
INGSTON FARRAND, 206; Index, 803; Labora- 
tory of University College, London, 874. 

Psychology, Academy of Sciences, LivinesToNn 
FARRAND, 283, 776 ; and Comparative Psychol- 
ogy, WexstEy Mis, 718: Experimental at 
Cambridge, 729; and Anthropology, N. Y. 

Purrington, C. W., Telluride Mining District in 
San Juan Mountains, 890 

Purnam, F. W., American Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Science, 760 

Putnam, F. W., Early Presence of Man in the 
Delaware Valley, 196 


‘Quadrangle,’ Use of the, 581 

Quaternary of Missouri, J. E. Topp, 695 

Quevedo, 8. A. L., The Chaco Idioms, 303; The 
Chaco Tribes, 988 


R., H., Anleitung zur mikrochemischen Analyse, 
H. Behrens, 115 

Rambaut, Rate of an Equatorial Clock, 222 

Ratzel, Frederick, The State and its Soil,54 

Rayold, Amand, Test for Typhoid Fever, 159 

Rees, J. K., Great Shower of Meteors of 1833 and 
1866, 70; and Harold Jacoby and Herman §. 
Davis, Variation of Latitude, 759 

Reflection, Total, Newton’s Experiment, F. W. 
McNarr, 620 

Regnault, A Lecture by, Woicort Gipss, 409 

Reid, Clement, Excavations at Hoxne, 257 

Rep, Harry FIELDING, Glaciers of North Ameri- 
e3, Israel C. Russell, 660 

Reid, Harry Fielding, Glaciers, 91, 190, 318, 925 

Remsen, Ira, Hydrolysis of Acid Amides, 665; and 
G. W. Gray, On Isomeric Chlorides of p-Nitro- 
o-Sulphobenzoie Acid, 962 

Renouf, Edward, Metallic Carbids, 192 

Research, and the University, 470; Fund, 580 

Reubens, H, and E. F. Nichols, Heat Rays of 
Great Wave- Length, 316 

Reymond, Emil Du Bois, 8. J. Metrznr, 217 

Richards, H. M., Reactions of Plants, 596 

Richardson, G. M. and P. Allaire, Specific Gravi- 
ties of Water Solutions of Formic Acid, 357 

Ridgway, Robert, Birds of the Galapagos Archi- 
pelago, C. H. M., 770 

Ries, Heinrich, Mineralogical Notes, 560 

Rifles, Modern Army, 149 

Rinderpest, 58, 273, 654, 918, 990 

Ripley, W. Z., Racial Geography, 101, 797 

Ritchey, G. W., Large Specula, 592 

Ritter, W. E., Social Ascidians from California, 434 

Roberts, FAS W., The Value of Light Ratio, 521 

Réntgen Rays, Electrification of Air by, Lorp 
Katyn, J.G, BEATTIE, M. SMOLUCHOWSKI DE 
SMOLAN, 139 

Rood, Irene BE. , Papers presented to the World’s 
Congress on Ornithology, C. F. BatcHet- 
DER, 189 


SCIENCE. 


Xl 


RoosEVELT, THEopoRE, A Layman’s Views on 
Scientific Nomenclature, 685 ; The Discrimina- 
tion of Species and Sub- ‘Species, 879 

Rose, T. K., Extraction of Gold by Chemica 
Methods, 615 

Rorcu, A. Law RENCE, The International Meteoro- 
logical and Hydrological Meetings, 17; The 
Meteorological Conference at Paris, 152; 
Monument to the late Buys-Ballot, 994 

Rotch, A. L., Exploration of the Free "Air, 612 

Royal, Institution, 340, 729; Society, Election of 
Members, 873 ; Conversazione, 875 

Rudolph, E. , Volcanic Phenomena of 1894, fete 

Runge and Paschen, Oxygen in the Sun, 522 

Russy, H. H. , Torrey Botanical Club, 36 

Rusby, H. H. > Botany at the Pan American Med- 
ical Congress, 1896, 36 ; Solanacez, 451 

Russell, H. ine Milk Preservation, 408 

RUSSELL, ISRAEL, C., A New Geographical Jour- 
nal, 477 

Russell, I. C., Geology of Northeastern Washing- 
ton, 94; Glaciers of North America, 437 « 
Harry Fre,prne REID, 660; Glacial Ice, 590 

Rydberg, P. A., Sand Region of Central Nebraska, 
596: Flora of Western Nebraska, 926 


Saginaw Valley, The Drainage of the, ALFRED C. 
LANE, 553 

St. Louis, Academy of Science, Wm. TRELEAsE, 
36, 159, 240, 862, 452, 524, 632, 704, 776, 892 

Salaries, in the’ Department of Education, 24; of 
German University Professors, 59, 307 

Salisbury, R. D., Loess on the Wisconsin Drift- 
formation, 191; ; Stratified Drift, 191; Baraboo 
District, Wis., 870, and W. W. Atwood, Drift- 
Phenomena, 519 

Sandplains of "Truro, Wellfleet and Eastham, 
AMADEUvS W. GRABAU, 334 


’ Sanitation and Hygiene of Railways, International 


Congress of, 474 

Sapper, Carlos, Geology of Chiapas, Tabasco and 
the Peninsula of Yucatan, 191; Physical Geo- 
graphy of Yucatan, 724 

Soma oo ANY 5 Galena and Maquoketa Series, 
486 

Schaper, H., Nervous System of Vertebrates, 430 

Schlegel, G., The Position of Women in China, 393 

Schmeltz, J. D. E., Ethnographical Museums, 545 

Schmidt, Emil, Systematic Anthropology, 913 

Schrenk, H. von, Parasitism of Lichens, 36 

ScHUCHERT, CHARLES, What is a Type in Natural 
History 2 636 

Senultiicts: on Visibility of Mountains and Atmos- 
pheric Dust, 613 

Schuster, Arthur, Oxygen in the Sun, 628; and 
Sees, Practical Physies, 805 

Schwarz on Two Genera of Beetles, 856 

Schweger-Lerchenfeld, A. von, Atlas der Him- 
melskunde, 837 

ScHWEINITZ, EH. A. DE, The War with the Mi- 
crobes, 561 

Science, A National Department of, Cas. W. 
DABNEY, Jr., 73; WASHINGTONTAN, 147; and 
Pseudo-science in Medicine, Grorce M. 
STERNBERG, 199; in College Entrance Exam- 
inations, 399; Teachers’ Association, The N. 
Y. State, FRANKLIN W. Barrows, 457, 498, 
531; 8. H, Gaan, 458; E. L. NicHons, 464; 
ALBERT L. AREY, 460; Rane 8. Tarr, 498; 


X1V 


R. E. Doves, 503; THomAs B. STOWELL, 531; 
in the Newspapers, 471; Literature and Art, 
A Bill for the Suppression of, 510; and the 
Scientific Citizen, The Relation of, to the 
General Government, J. R. Eastman, 525; 
and Education, The Threatened Legislation 
against, 546; and Polities, 952; Indiana Teach- 
ers’ Association, 954 

Scientific, Notes and News, 22, 54, 102, 142, 181, 222. 
267, 308, 339, 395, 440, 470, 510, 546, 579, 616, 
689, 694, 7217, 764, 799, 838, 873, tO; 950, 989 ; 
Literature, 20, 62, 109, 158, 187, 227, ani, 311, 
Ba 404, 448, 481, 517, 553, 587, 621, 659, 696, 

32, 770, 805, 846, ’982, 921, 9058, 995 : - Journals, 

33, 69, 157, 190, 228, 281, 315, 356, 406, 484) 
519, 589, 628, 664, 701, 738, 773, 852, 888, 925, 
961, 998 ; Association of the Johns Hopkins 
University, Cuas. LANE Poor, 192, 318; In- 
struments, Tax on, 582, Exhibits at Tennessee, 
689 ; Books and Apparatus, 730 

ScLATER, P. L., On the Distribution of Marine 
Mammals, real 

Scott, William B., An Introduction to Geology, H 
S. WILLIAMS, 659 

Scrrpner, F. Lamson, Grasses of North America, 
W. J. Beal, 62 

ScrrpturE, E. W., Law of Size-weight Sugges- 
tion, 227 

Seal Fur, Investigation, 493; Fisheries, 916 

Secretions, Internal, Considered in Relation to 
Variation and Development, ALBERT MaTH- 
Ews, 683; Significance of, WESLEY MIuzs, 920; 
considered from a Chemico-Physiological 
Standpoint, R. H. CurrrenpDsEn, 969 

See, T. J. J.. The Evolution of Stellar Systems, 
180; and Cogshall on Double Stars, 303 

Semon on the Monotremes, J. H. McG., 643 

Sergi, Guiseppi, Antropologia della Stripe Cami- 
tica, D. G. Brinton, 808 

Setchell, William A., Laboratory Practice for Be- 
ginners in Botany, L. M. UNDERWooD, 735 

SEWALL, Henry, Electro-Physiology, W. Bieder- 
mann, 481 

Shaler, N. 8., Subterranean Water, 703 

Shaw, Albert, Municipal Government in Conti- 
nental Europe, Epwin O. JorDan, 450 

Sheldon, S., and M B, Waterman. The Formation 
of Lead Sulphate, 31 

Shober, W B., and H, E. Kiefer, Asymmetadi- 
azoxylenesulphonie Acid, 853 

Siebrecht, Henry A., Orchids, 523 

Simonps, FrEDERIC W., Texas Academy of Sci- 
ence, 116, 363, 488, 703, 812 ; Gifts to the Uni- 
versity of Texas, 444; Marine Fossils from 
Arkansas, James Perrin Smith, 850 

Simpson, Charles T,, The Unios, 73 

Singer, E. A., Physiology of Sensation, 207 

Size-weight Suggestion, Law, of, E. W. Scrip- 
TURE, 227 

Slavery of the American Indians, 948 

SmitH, Eveene A., Alabama Industrial and 
Scientific Society, 7 712, 927 

Smiru, Epear F., Lavoisier Monument, 403; An- 
zewandte Elektrochemie, Franz Peters, 588 

Smith, Erwin F., Bacterial Disease of Cruciferous 
Plants, 963 

SuitH, Harnan I., The American Folk-lore So- 
ciety, 215 

Smiru, JOHN B., Classification of Insects, 671 


SCIENCE. 


CONTENTS AND 
INDEX. 


Smith, James Perrin, Marine Fossils from Arkan 
sas, FREDERIC W. SimonpDs, 850 

Smith, W. 8. T., Santa Catalina Island, Cal., 648 

Smithsonian, Institution and the National Museum, 
37; Table at the Naples Station, Co. WARDELL 
STILEs, 659. 

Societies and Academies, 34, 70, 115, 158, 192, 230, 
283, 317, 359, 408, 451, 487, "523, 557, 592, 629, 
667, 702, 739, 774, 810, 855, 889, 925, 963, 999 

Séderbaum on Acetylid of ‘Copper, 872 

Sonstadt, E., Experiments on Sea Water, 179 

Species and Sub-Species, A Method of discriminat- 
ing between, C. Hart Mprriam, 753; J. A. 
ALLEN, 877; THEODORE ROOSEVELT, 879 

Spelling, Simplified, G. K. GinBeRt, 185 

Spencer, G. L., Determination of Caffeine, 240 

Spencer’s Principles of Sociology, FRANKLIN H. 
GIDDINGSs, 732 

Sprague, Charles J.. Thomas Tracy Bouvé, 72 

Spurr, J. E., Measurement of Faults, 238 

STANLEY, Hrram M., Highhole Courtship, 920 

Stanton, T. W., and F. H. Knowlton, Stratigraphy 
and Paleontology of the Laramie, 94 

Starr, Frederick, The Shell Gorgets, 265 

Steam, High Pressure, The Promise and Potency 
of, R. H. ToHurston, 578 

STEJNEGER, LEONHARD, Das Tierreich, 846 

STERNBERG, GEORGE M., Science and Pseudo- 
Science in Medicine, 199 

StTETson, GEORGE R., The Fauna of Central 
Borneo, 640 

Stetson, George R., The Hye, the Ear and the 
Common Wea! of Whites and Blacks, 35 

STEVENSON, J. J., The Story of a Piece of Coal, 
Edward A. Martin, 810 

Stevenson, J. J., Geology of the Bermudas, 239 

Stewart, C. C., Preparations of the Nerve Cell un- 
der acute Alcoholic Poisoning, 137 

Stewart, G. N., Output of the Heart, 137 

Stickney, Gardner P., Aboriginal Cultivation of 
Maize, 915 

STILEs, CH. WARDELL, The Smithsonian Table at 
the Naples Station, 659 

Stone, W. A., Experimental Physics, 805 

Storms, Winter, on the Coast of China, 649 

STOWELL, Tomas B., The Educative Value of the 
Study of Biology, 531 

Strona, E. A., L’hypothése des atomes dans la 
science contemporaine, Arthur Hannequin, 
736 

Surgery, A Case of Primitive, Frank HAMILTON 
CusHine, 977 

Swartz, 8. E., on Amide Bromides, 665 

SWEZEY, G. 1D). Neb. Academy of Sciences, 158 

Swingle, W. T. Algew from Gulf of Naples, 236 

Sylvester, Guorcn Bruce HaLsteEp, 597 


T., R. H., Alfred Tresea, 53; PUPS Machinery, 
J. Weisbach and G. Herrmann, 773 

Tasnr, C. A. M., The Coming Ice Age, 658 

Taber, C. A. M., The Coming Ice Age, G. F. 
WnicuHr, 483° 

Tabot, H. Dy Volatility of Ferrie Chloride, 157 

Tarr, Raupy §., Former Extension of Greenland 
Glaciers, 344, 515, 804; Place of the Harth 
Sciences in the Secondary Schools, 498 

Tarr, Ralph §., Cornell Glacier, Greenland, 87; 
Climate of Davyis’s and Baffin’s Bay, 590; 
Changes of Level in the Bermuda Islands, 854 


NEw | 
VOL. V. 


Tarsius, The Relations of, to the Lemurs and Apes, 
CHARLES EARLE, 208; A. A. W. HUBRECHT, 
550; Further Considerations of the Systematic 
Position of, CHARLES EARLE, 657 

Tassin, Wirt, A New Blowpipe Reagent, 597; 
Crystal Structure, 774 

Tawney, G. A., The Tactual Threshold, 208 

Taylor, F. B., The Nipissing-Mattawa River, 90; 
Moraines, of Recession and their Significance in 
Glacial Theory, 90. 

Teeth of the Mammalia, Origin of the, HENry F. 
OsBORN, 576 

Teit, James, Origin of Rock Paintings, 141 

Telescope of Greenwich Observatory, 727 

Telescopic Objectives, On supposed Effects of 
Strain in, ALVAN G. CLarRK, 768 

Teller, G. L., Proteid of Wheat, 157 

Tellurium, 726 

Terrestrial Magnetism, 191, 665 

Texas Academy of Science, FrEDERIC W. Sr- 
MONDS, 116, 363, 488, 703, 812 

Thierry, Maurice de, Atmospheric Ozone, 725 

Therapeutic Effects of high Frequency Currents, 
730 

Tuurston, R. H., Etude de huit essais de ma- 
chine 4 vapeur, V. Dwelshauvers-Dery, 153 ; 
The Apprenticeship Question, 299; The Prom- 
ise and Potency of High Pressure Steam, 573 

Tierreich, Das, LHONHARD STEJNEGER, 846 

Tight, W. G., and I. C. White, Preglacial Kanaw- 
ha, 507 

Tilden, W. A., Gases in Crystalline Rocks, 725 

Time, The Unification of, 183, 270 

Tingle, J. B., Ethylic Oxalata and Camphor, 853 

Titchener, E. B., Psychology, JosEPH JASTROW, 
882 

Topp, J. E., Voleanic Dust in Southwestern Ne- 
braska, 61; The Quaternary of Missouri, 695; 
Is the Loess of either Lacustrine or Semi- 
Marine Origin ? 993 

Todd, J. E., Quaternary Deposits of Mo., O. H. 
Toe ee 587; Moraines of the Mo. Coteau, 
72 

Topographical Maps, 305, 869 

Torrey Botanical Club, H. H. Ruspy, 36; EDwaRD 
S. Bureuss, 284, 451, 523, 595, 631, 891; N. L. 
Britton, 925 

Townsend, C. H., The Alaskan Live Mammoth 
Story, 319; The Northern Fur Seal, 487 

TRELEASE, WM., Academy of Science of St. Louis, 
36, 159, 240, 362, 452, 524, 632, 704, 776, 892; 
The National University, 345 

Trescea, Alfred, R. H. T., 53 

Trowbridge, John, Electrical Conductivity of the 
Ether, 730; and T. M. Richards on the Spectra 
of Argon, 33; Multiple Spectra of Gases, 229; 
Temperature and Ohmic Resistance of Gases, 
590 

Tsountas and Manatt on the Ethnography of the 
Myceneans, 724 

Tubeuf, Karl v., Diseases of Plants induced by 
Cryptogamic Parasites, G. F. ATKINSON, 596 

Tuffts, F. L., on Rood’s Flicker Photometer, 452 

TurRNER, H. W., Nomenclature and Metamorphic 
Lavas, 226 

Turner, H. W., Sierra Nevada 877; Amphibole- 
pyroxene Rock, 811 

Tyler, A. A., Nature and Origin of Stipules, 452 

Tylor, E. B., American Games, 22 


SCIENCE. 


XV 


Type, What is a, in Natural History, CHARLES 
SCHUCHERT, 636; Specimens, the Re-distribu- 
tion of, F. A. BatHpr, 694; Specimens in 
Natural History, C. Hart Mprriam, 731 

Types, A Postscript to the Terminology of, F. A. 
BATHER, 843 

Typhoon, The ‘IItis,’ 649 


Ujfalvy, Charles de, Les Aryens au Nord et au Sud 
de |’ Hindou-Kouch, D. G. Brinton, 60 

UnpDERWooD, L. M., Laboratory Practice for Be- 
ginners in Botany, William A Setchell, 735 

Underwood, L. M., Ferns of Japan, 925 

University, and Educational News, 25, 59, 107, 146, 
185, 225, 274, 307, 348, 399, 444, 475, 514, 549, 
584, 619, 656, 781, 768, 803, 842, 876, 918, 954, 
992; A Teaching, for London, 475 

Upham, Warren, Topography and Glacial Geology 
of the City of St. Paul, 487 


Yan Beneden, and the Origin of the Centrosome— 
A Correction, EpMuND B. WILson, 25 

Van Hise, C. R., The Deformation of Rocks, 160, 
520 


' Vaughan, T. Wayland, Geologic Notes of Kansas, 


558 ; Eocene Corals, 740; Comanche Series in 
Oklahoma and Kansas, 999 

Velocity of a Flight of Ducks obtained by Trian- 

_ gulation, H. Hnum CiayTon, 26 

Venable, F’. P., Development of the Periodic Law, 
W. A. N., 280 

VERRILL, A. E., The Florida Monster, 352, 476 

Verrill, A. E., Nocturnal Protective Coloration in 
Mammals, 229, 425; Nocturnal and Diurnal 
Changes in the Color of Certain Fishes, with 
Notes on their Sleeping Habits, 427; and K. 
J. Bush, Genera of Ledidz and Muculide, 34 

Vertebrate Embryology, On Certain Problems of, 
Jv. BEARD, CHAS. 8. Minot, 107 

Vertebrated Animals in the Zoological Gardens of 
London, Frank Baxknr, 404 

Vertebrates from the Kansas Permian, W. 8S. 
WILLISTON, 395 

Vogel, H. C., Great Refractor of Potsdam Obser- 
vatory, 591 

Voleanic Dust in Southwestern Nebraska, J. E. 
Topp, 61 


W., The Argentaurum Papers, Stephen H. Em- 
mens, 314 

Waddell, John, Permeability of EHlements of 
Rontgen Rays, 101 

Wait, Charles E., Titanium, 221 

Waite, F. C., Brachio and Lumbro-sacral Plexi in 
Necturus, 436 

Waite, M. B., Pear Blight, 668 

Walcott, Charles D., Acting Assistant Secretary 
of the Smithsonian Institution, 222; Inyo 
Range and Waucobe Lake Beds, Cal., 925° 

Waldo, Frank, Elementary Meteorology for High 
Schools, R. DEC. Warp, 312 

Warp, Lester F., Professor Fontaine and Dr. 
Newberry on the Age of the Potomac Forma- 
tion, 411 

Ward, Lester F., Cycadesidea, 487 

Warp, R. DznC, Clouds over a Fire, 60; Current 
Notes on Meteorology, 219, 264, 337, 468, 508, 
612, 649, 887; Elementary Meteorology for 
High Schools, Frank Waldo, 312; Meteorolo- 
gical Reprints, 339, 661 


Xvi 


WARREN, JosEPH W., Elementary Human Physi- 
ology, J. G. M’ Kendrick, 809 

Warren, J. W., A Search for Pexin, 903 

Warren, H. N., Calcium Carbide, 180 

Washington, Henry 8., Petrological Sketches, 282, 
925; The Rocca Monfino Region, 701 

WaASHINGTONIAN, A National Department of 
Science, 147 

Warask, S., Microsomes and Centrosome, 230 

Water Hares, A new Subgeneric Name for the, 
Epear A. Mearns, 393 

Wateville, P. de, Growing Crystals, 651 

Watson, Thomas L., Elevation of the Southern 
Coast of Baffin Land, 282 

Warts, W. W., Geology at the British Associa- 
tion, 252 

Waueu, F. A., Phases in Weed Evolution, 789 

Weather Maps, Chalk-plate, 337 

Webster, A. G., Constant Angular Velocity, 738 

Weed Evolution, Phases on, ¥. A. WaueGu, 789 

Weed and Pirsson on the Bearpaw Mountains, 577 

Weed, W. H., Laccoliths in Folded Strata, 811 

WELCH, WiLLiam H., Adaptation in Pathological 
Processes, 818 

Weller, Stuart, Batesville Sandstone of Ark., 560 

WHEELER, Bens. Ipz., The Smithsonian Institu- 
tion and a National University, 881 

Wheeler, H. A., Clay Deposits of Missouri, H. 
Foster Bain, 892. 

Wheeler, H. L., and P. T, Walden, The Action of 
Acid Clorides on the Imido-Esters and Isoani- 
lides, 357; and H. F. Metcalf, Chlorcarbonic 
Ethyl Ester and Formanilide, 521; and B. W. 
McFarland, Metabrombenzoic Acid, 853 ; Me- 
thenylphenylparatolylamidenes, 853 

Wheeler, W. M., Fauna of San Diego Bay, Cal., 775 

White, David, Type Specimens in Paleontology, 237 

White, I. C., Oil Wells, 93 

Whiting, Henry L., M., 300 

Whitman, C. O., The Centrosome Problem, 235 

Wipmann, O., Origin of Parasitism in the Cow- 
bird, 176 

WIEcCHMANN, FERDINAND G., The Elements of 
Electro Chemistry, Max Le Blane, 32 

Wiechmann, Ferdinand G., Lecture Notes on Theo- 
retical Chemistry, Jas. Lewis Hows, 313 

Wienland and Lauenstein on Oxygen and Fluorin 
Atoms in Salts? 

Wiesbach, J.. and G. Herrmann, Mechanics of 
Pumping Machinery, R. H. T:, 778 

WILDER, Burt G., The Metric System, 587 

Wilder, Burt G., Neural Terms, 358 

Wiley, H. W., Influence of Vegetable Mold on the 
Nitrogenous Content of Oats, 855; and W. D. 
Bigelow, Bomb Calorimeter, 855 

WiuiAMs, Jr., EH. H., Greenland Glaciers, 448 

Wiuuiams. H. §., An Introduction to Geology, 
William B. Scott, 659 

Williams, H. 8., Devonian Formations, 92, 738 

Willis, Bailey, Glaciation of Puget Sound 238 

Wiuurston, W. S8., Vertebrates from the Kansas 
Permian, 395 

Willoughby, C. C., Primitive Symbolic Decora- 
tion, 835 


SCIENCE. 


CONTENTS AND 
INDEX. 


Will Power, Certain Beliefs concerning, among 
the Siouan Tribes, AnicH C. FLETCHER, 331 

Wilsing onAstronomical Objectives, 503 

Witson, Epmunp B., Van Beneden and the Origin 
of the Centrosome, A Correction, 25 

Wilson, Edmund B., The Cell in Development and 
Inheritance, C. B. Davenport, 112; Centro- 
some and Middle-piece in the Fertilization of 
the Egg, 390 

Wilson, Thomas, Pithecanthropus erectus, 194; A 
Canon in Prehistoric Archeology, 594; The 
Swastika, D. G. Brinton, 960 

Wilson, W. E., and G. F. Fitzgerald, Tempera- 
ture of the Center of an Electric Are, 591 

WIncHELL, N. H., Geological and Natural History 
Survey of Minnesota, C. E. Beecher, 449 

Winkler, Clemens, The Discovery of New Ele- 
ments during the last Twenty-five Years, 489 

Wisconsin University, Science Club, Wm. 5. Mar- 
SHALL, 160, 408, 523, 632 

Witmer, L., Practical Work in Psychology, 210 

Wolf, J. E., White Limestone of Sussex Co., 96; 
Tourmalines, 891 

Woop, R. W., Diffraction of X-rays obtained by a 
New Form of Cathode Discharge, 585 

Woopman, Duranp, N. Y. Section of the Ameri- 
can Chemical Society, 71, 239, 360, 487, 740 

Woodman, Durand, Commercial Red Lead, 240 

Woopworth, J. B., ‘Gibbers,’ 476; Rocks, Rock- 
Weathering and Soils, George P. Merrill, 995 

Woodworth, J. B., Homology of Joints and Arti- 
ficial Fractions, 84; Unconformities in Martha’s 
Vineyard and Block Island, 86 

Woopworts, W. McM., Cambridge Natural His- 
tory, 958 

Wooton, E. O. Plants of New Mexico, 596 

Wortman, J. L., Ganodonta, 71 

Wright, A. W., Rontgen Rays, 759 

Wricut, G, F., The Coming Ice Age, C. A. M. 
Taber, 483; Archeological Discoveries made 
in the Gravels at Trenton, 586 

Wright, G. F., Preglacial Erosion, 196 

Wundt, W., Psychology, Josupu JastTROw, 882 


X-Rays, An Induction Coil Method for, CHARLES 

Norton and Raupu R. Lawrence, 496; 

Diffraction of, R. W. Woop, 585; The Effect 

of the Density of the Surrounding Gas on the 

Discharge of Electrified Metals by the, C. D. 
CHILD, 791 


Youne, C. A., Argentaurum Papers, 343 
Young, C. A., ‘Reversing Layer,’ 268 


Zeeman, P., on the Spectrum of a Flame, 764 

Zelbr, Karl, Planet and Comet Orbits, 102 

Zittel on the Age of Man, 339 

Ziwnt, ALEXANDER, Higher Mathematics, 277 

Zoological, Notes, 175, 302, 392, 548, 577, 762; 
Club of the University of Chicago, 230, 592, 
629, 775, 1000; Society of Germany, 616; Sta- 
tion at Naples, 729; S. E. Murr, 832 ; Society 
of London, 766, 834; Bulletin, 951; Society 
of New York, 396, 472, 547, 652 


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SCIENCE 


EDITORIAL COMMITTEE: S. NEwcoms, Mathematics; R. S. WooDWARD, Mechanics; E. C. PICKERING, 
Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THURSTON, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry; 
J. LE ConTE, Geology; W. M. Davis, Physiography; O. C. MARsH, Paleontology; W. K. 
Brooks, C. HART MERRIAM, Zoology; S. H. SCUDDER, Entomology; N. L. BRITTON, 
Botany; HENRY F. OSBORN, General Biology; H. P. BowpitcH, Physiology; 
J. S. Brnuines, Hygiene; J. MCKEEN CATTELL, Psychology ; 
DANIEL G. BRINTON, J. W. POWELL, Anthropology. 


FRIDAY, JANUARY 1, 1897. 


CONTENTS: 


The Geology of Government Explorations: S. F. 
IS RANI S jo posccoscoanosoasaaoosonQoN/AonascoDAEEeHoHoRe000000 1 


Phases in Jamaican Natural History: Rost. B. 
ISITE nasons000, obdcnooaooascoacaaqnoseqQoBenaDd0anGasEN6eG00 15 


The International Meteorological and Hydrological 
Meetings: A. LAWRENCE ROTCH.................00+ 


A Proposed Bureau of Plant Registration 


Current Notes on Physiography :— 
Physical Features of Missouri; The Glaciers of Nor- 
way ; Landslips in Switzerland ; Heilprin’s Earth 
and its Story: W. M. DAVIS.........sesssssseeecers 20 
Current Notes on Anthropology :— 
American Games as Evidence of Asiatic Intercourse; 
Racial Studies in Switzerland: D. G. BRINTON.. 22 
Scientific Notes and News ..........csccoescssscescenserenses 22 
University and Educational News. ...........0-.ceeeee-se 25 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 
Van Beneden and the Origin of the Centrosome—A 
Correction: E. B. Witson. The Velocity of a 
Flight of Ducks obtained by Triangulation: H. 
HELM CLAYTON. A Test of Diversity of Opinion: 
VOSEPHy ASTRO Warssasceseasssscescscesesccccssesernecss 25 


Scientific Literature :— 
Lydekker’s Geographical History of Mammals: C. 
HART MERRIAM. Le Blane’s Elements of Electro- 


chemistry: FERDINAND G. WIECHMANN........ 26 
Scientific Journals :-— 
The American Journal of Science. .........s.0.+c000ee0 33 


Societies and Academies :— 
Boston Society of Natural History: SAMUEL 
HENSHAW. Anthropological Society of Washing- 
ton: J.H. McCormick. The Torrey Botanical 
Club: H. H. Russpy. The Academy of Science 
of St. Lowis: WM. TRELEASE.........0.ccceeceecsee 34 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended 
for review should be sent to the responsible editor, Prof. J. 
McKeen Cattell, Garrison-on-Hudson, N. Y. 


THE GEOLOGY OF GOVERNMENT EXPLORA- 
TIONS.* 


I Ave chosen for the subject of my ad- 
dress this evening the development of our 
knowledge of the geology of the great West 
through the agency of explorations and 
surveys conducted under government aus- 
pices. y 

To the older of our members, especially 
to those who took part in those early ex- 
plorations, the matter may appear some- 
what trite, but to the younger ones, whose 
geological memory does not go back beyond 
the present Survey, I have thought that it 
might be interesting to listen to a brief ac- 
count of the origin and methods of work 
of these earlier organizations by one who 
was first connected with them very nearly 
thirty years ago. 

The period to be considered commences 
about with the opening of the century, and 
is most naturally subdivided by the Civil 
War. But in this field, as in others, the 
accumulation of knowledge progresses with 
ever increasing rapidity, so that, while for 
the first and much longer sub-period it is 
possible to trace approximately the actual 
gains that were made in geological knowl- 
edge, in the second period it is only practi- 
cable to attempt to characterize and con- 
trast the methods by which geological in- 


* Address of the Retiring President of the Geological 
Society of Washington, delivered Wednesday, Decem- 
ber 16, 1896. 


2 SCIENCE. 


vestigation was carried on. The first may 
be called the period of geographical ex- 
ploration; the second that of geological 
exploration. 


GEOGRAPHICAL EXPLORATIONS. 


It was Jefferson’s purchase of the Lou- 
isiana territory, in 1803, that gave to the 
United States government the first title to 
the Rocky Mountain region, but even prior 
to that time it appears that he had formed 
a project for its exploration. He tells us 
that in 1786, during his residence at Paris 
(as U. S. Minister) he met John Ledyard, 
of Connecticut, a companion of Captain 
Cook on his last voyage to the Pacific 
Ocean, who had just failed in the attempt 
to organize a mercantile company to engage 
in the fur trade on the western coast of 
America. Jefferson proposed to him ‘to go 
by land to Kamchatka, cross in some of the 
Russian vessels to Nootka Sound, fall down 
into the latitude of the Missouri, and pene- 
trate to and through that to the United 
States.’ Ledyard eagerly embraced the 
idea, and after the permission to pass 
through her territory had been secured 
through Jefferson’s influence, from the Em- 
press of Russia, with an assurance of pro- 
tection on his journey, he set forth from 
Paris and, proceeding via. St. Petersburg, 
had progressed to within 200 miles of Kam- 
chatka, where he was obliged to go into 
winter quarters. When he was preparing to 
resume his journey in the spring he was ar- 
rested by an officer of the Empress (who 
by this time had changed her mind), put 
into a close carriage and conveyed, day and 
night without stopping, to the frontier of 
Poland. Hereturned to Paris much broken 
down in bodily health, and not long after 
(November 15,1788) died at Cairo, Egypt, 
whither he had gone for the purpose of ex- 
ploring the interior of Africa. Thus failed 
the first attempt at exploration. 

1792. In 1792 Jefferson proposed to the 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 105. 


American Philosophical Society at Philadel- 
phia ‘to set on foot a subscription to engage 
some competent person to explore that re- 
gion in the opposite direction ; that is by 
ascending the Missouri, crossing the Stony 
mountains, and descending the nearest river 
to the Pacific.’ Capt. Meriwether Lewis, 
a connection by marriage of Gen. Washing- 
ton, who was then stationed at Charlottes- 
ville, Va., on recruiting service, secured 
the appointment, and was to have had as 
sole companion the eminent French botanist, 
André Michaux, but when the latter had 
reached Kentucky he was recalled by the 
French Minister, then at Philadelphia, ‘and 
thus failed the second attempt for exploring 
that region.’ 

1803. In 18038, two years after Jefferson 
had become President, in accordance with 
the suggestions contained in a confidential 
message from him, Congress so modified a 
pending act establishing trading houses with 
the Indian tribes as to extend its provisions 


“to the Indians on the Missouri, and to au- 


thorize an exploration of the source of that 
river and of the best water communication 
from there to the Pacific, voting $2,500 for 
the expenses of the expedition. 

Jefferson appointed to the command of 
this expedition Captain Meriwether Lewis, 
of whose special qualifications for this posi- 
tion he had had abundant proof during the 
preceding two years, during which he had 
served as his private secretary. 

Lewis repaired at once to Philadelphia 
‘and placed himself under the tutorage of 
the distinguished professors of that place,’ 
that he might be prepared to make the 
necessary scientific observations during his 
trip. At Lewis’ suggestion Wm. Clark 
was associated with him in the direction, 
and for that purpose given a commission of 
captaininthearmy. Jefferson’s detailed in- 
structions of April,1803,to guide his conduct 
after leaving the United States (the cession 
of Louisiana by France had not yet been 


JANUARY 1, 1897.] 


completed) afford a valuable insight into the 
conditions existing at that time, but time 
will not admit of any considerable quota- 
tion from them. He is to inform himself 
about the Rio Bravo, which flows into the 
Gulf of Mexico, and the Rio Colorado, 
which runs into the Gulf of California, 
which are ‘understood to be the principal 
streams heading opposite to the Missouri 
and running southwardly.’ Among the 
objects worthy of notice are mentioned: 
‘the remains and accounts of any animals 
which may be deemed rare or extinct; the 
mineral productions of every kind, but 
more particularly metals, limestone, pit-coal 
and saltpetre ; salines and mineral waters, 
noting the temperature of the last and such 
circumstances as may indicate their char- 
acter ; voleanic appearances ; climate,’ etc. 

Lewis left Washington on July 5, 1803, 
and did not reach there on his return until 
the middle of February, 1807. Meanwhile, 
after spending the winter of 1804-5 at the 
Mandan villages, in a bend of the Missouri 
about 40 miles above the present crossing 
of the N. P. R. R., at Bismarck, they had 
made a most successful trip across the 
mountains to the mouth of the Columbia 
river and back, an account of which is set 
forth in the admirable narrative first pub- 
lished in 1814 and recently republished with 
notes by Dr. Elliott Coues. This narrative 
shows a most intelligent observation of na- 
tural phenomena and makes mention of the 
existence of stone-coal along the upper Mis- 
souri river. 

Schoolcraft’s account of his visit in 1818 
to St. Louis, then a city of 5,000 inhabit- 
ants, describes a museum established by 
Clark (then Governor of the Territory) con- 
taining a collection from his trip to the 
Rocky Mountains, including ‘minerals, 
fossils, bones and other rare and interesting 
specimens,’ and Nicollet in 1839 speaks of 
Cretaceous fossils brought in by Lewis and 
Clark from the upper Missouri river. 


SCIENCE. 3 


1805-7. Scarcely less remarkable were 
the explorations of Lieut. Zebulon M. Pike 
to the sources of the Mississippi in 1805, 
and in 1806-7 to the headwaters of the 
Arkansas, on the latter of which he made 
an unsuccessful attempt to climb the peak 
which has since born his name, and was 
finally taken from Santa Fé to Chihuahua 
as prisoner by the Mexican authorities. 

Pike’s expeditions were conducted under 
orders of Gen. Wilkinson, and were essen- 
tially military in their nature. A surgeon, 
Dr. Robinson accompanied them, but 
neither he nor Lieut. Pike have left any 
record of scientific observations in the nar- 
rative which was published in 1810. 

1812. The war of 1812 now diverted the 
attention of government officials from West- 
ern explorations, but with the close of this 
war, when the treaty of Ghent had relieved 
the frontiers from the sanguinary Indian 
wats from which the people had been suffer- 
ing, the prospect of a renewed emigration 
westward revived interest in exploration. 

1820. J.C. Calhoun, Secretary of War 
under Monroe, a man of great intellectual 
grasp and energy of character, encouraged 
every means of acquiring a knowledge of 
the geography of the West. Two expedi- 
tions were organized under his orders in 
the year 1820, that of Maj. J. H. Long to 
the Rocky Mountains, and that of Gen. 
Lewis Cass along the south shore of Lake 
Superior to the sources of the Mississippi 
river. 

To the former was attached Dr. Edwin 
James as botanist and geologist, who wrote 
the narative of the expedition, together with 
a report on the geological character of the 
country, which was published in 1823. 

To Gen. Cass’ expedition, an important 
part of whose object was to investigate the 
deposits of copper, lead and gypsum sup- 
posed to exist in the Northwest, a mineral- 
ogist was appointed in the person of H. R. 
Schoolcraft, a native of Albany Co., N. Y., 


+t SCIENCE. 


who had distinguished himself by his in- 
vestigations of the lead mines of Missouri. 


GEOLOGY. 


1820. Edwin James, who made the first 
geological report of a Western expedition, 
was a pupil of Amos Eaton. It was not 
until 1832 that Eaton adopted the system 
of identifying ‘and correlating rock for- 
mations by means of their contained fossils. 
At the time of James’ explorations geolo- 
gists only attempted to distinguish rocks 
by their external lithological characters as 
belonging to one of the general great divis- 
ions of primitive, transition, secondary and 
alluvions, or recent deposits. Although James 
was evidently a shrewd observer, one would 
obtain but a confused idea of the structure 
of the country from his notes. Neverthe- 
less he was one of the first, as Walcott re- 
marks (Correlation Papers, Cambrian, p. 
396) to attempt an extended correlation of 
geological formations of North America. 
He observed the general succession of rocks 
in the Appalachian, Ozark and Rocky 
Mountains, respectively, finding granites at 
the base in either case, and tracivg the Car- 
boniferous limestones through the two for- 
mer. 

He considered the red sandstones of the 
Appalachian and Lake Superior regions and 
of the Rocky Mountains to be of the same 
age and to probably correspond to the old 
red sandstone of Werner. He was the first 
white man to ascend Pike’s Peak, and the as- 
cent which was made from Manitou Springs, 
was by no means as easy as at the present 
day. He and his companion passed the 
night part way up the slope, where the 
ground was so steep that they had to prop 
themselves up by poles between two trees 
to keep from rolling down as they slept. 
James suggested the probable existence of 
artesian waters under the Great Plains, 
then called the Great American Desert. 
The material that Schoolcraft discovered in 


[N.S. Vox. V. No. 105. 


1819 near Cape Girardeau, on the Mississippi 
River, and thought to represent the Chalk 
formation of Europe he found did not effer- 
vesce with acid, and classed it as a native 
Argil. 

Schooleraft, whose first government ob- 
servations were made in the same year, 
devoted himself more particularly to the 
economic resources of the country. Al- 
ready in 1818 he had spent three months in 
examining the lead mines in Missouri, and 
had extended his observations beyond the 
settlements into the Ozark Mountains. De- 
termined to call the attention of the govern- 
ment to the value of its mines, he returned 
to New York via. New Orleans, and there 
published his book on the lead mines, which 
brought him to the attention of Mr. Cal- 
houn, then Secretary of War, and resulted 
in his commission with the expedition of 
General Cass. His observations upon geol- 
ogy appear somewhat primitive and quaint, 
but are characterized by a shrewd common 
sense, as will be shown by a few quota- 
tions. 

In speaking of the red sandstone on the 
south shore of Lake Superior near Grand 
Island, he says ‘‘the sandstone laps upon 
the granite and fits into its irregular in- 
dentations in a manner that shows it to 
have assumed that position subsequently to 
the upheaving of the country. Its horizon- 
tality is perfectly preserved even to the im- 
mediate point of contact. A mutual decom- 
position for a couple of inches into each rock 
has taken place. As to the geological age of 
the sandstone I possess no means of form- 
ing a decisive opinion. It consists of grains 
of quartz or sand united by a calcareous 
cement and colored by the red oxide 
of iron. In some places it imbeds pebbles 
of quartz of the size of a pigeon’s egg, to- 
gether with rounded masses of hornblende 
and other rocks, and it then resembles a 
pudding stone. It has no imbedded relics 
of the animal or vegetable kingdom so far 


JANUARY 1, 1897.] 


as observed, but this is not always conclu- 
sive of the age of the rock viewed at a given 
point, for it is known that these relics are 
never uniformly distributed throughout the 
substance of the rocks, even of the newest 
formations. Its position would indicate 
@ near alliance to the old red sandstone. 
Werner has considered this rock in all situa- 
tions as secondary. Bakewell places it in a 
class of transition rocks, in which he is fol- 
lowed by Maclure and Eaton. I am not 
prepared to decide upon the point * * *, and 
shall content myselfin the present instance 
with a bare recital of the facts.” 

After the examination of the famous 
mass of native copper, variously estimated 
to weigh from one to five tons, which was 
the attraction of all travelers to the Lake 
Superior region, he says, in the course of 
his reflections upon its probable manner 
of occurrence, “‘ there is reason to presume 
that the precious metals may be found in 
the northern regions of the American con- 
tinent. Nothing appears more improbable 
than that the veins of silver ore that are so 
abundant in Mexico and the province of 
Texas are checked in their progress north- 
ward into Arkansas and Missouri by the 
effect of climate. This metal is known 
to be found in association only with certain 
limestones, schists and other rocks, and 
when these cease it is in vain to be sought. 
Other metals and minerals have their par- 
ticular associations serving as a geognostic 
matrix, and hence rock strata may be con- 
sidered as indexes to particular metals, 
minerals and ores, and the geologist is thus 
enabled to predict with considerable cer- 
tainty from an examination of the exterior 
of the country whether it is metalliferous 
or not.”’ In his ‘ Lead Mines of Missouri’ 
he had mentioned the occurrence of chalk 
with flints, at Little Chain of Rocks, on 
the Mississippi River, which he says was 
worked commercially and found equal to 
foreign chalk. This was probably a bed of 


SCIENCE. 5 


white pipe clay described by Shumard in 
1871 (Missouri Geological Survey). He 
mentions the fluorspar of southern Illinois, 
the novaculite of the Arkansas Hot Springs, 
the red pipe stone of the upper Mississippi, 
coal in western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Vir- 
ginia, Kentucky, Illinois and Missouri; 
also hydrogen gas or carburetted hydrogen 
at the Burning Spring on the Licking 
River. Pumice, he says, is brought down 
the Missouri River in the June floods, 


_and probably comes from some volcanic 


mountain at the head of the river. A 
pseudo-pumice is also brought down which 
he supposes to have originated from the 
burning of beds of coal. He speaks of a mass 
of native iron, upwards of 3,000 pounds 
in weight, discovered on the banks of the 
Red River, and now (1819) in the collection 
of the New York Historical Society. “‘ Its 
shape is irregular, inclining to oval form, 
its surface deeply indented and covered 
with oxide of iron. It is said to contain 
nickel, etc,”’ 

1821. In 1821 Schoolcraft made another 
expedition with General Cass from Toledo 
across Ohio and Indiana, past the fluor- 
spar deposits of southern Illinois, to St. 
Louis, returning by way of Chicago, an ac- 
count of which was published as ‘ Travels 
in the Central Portions of the Mississippi 
Valley.’ 

1823. In 1823 a second expedition under 
Major Long was sent out by the War De- 
partment, which followed the Mississippi 
and Red River of the North to Lake Winni- 
peg, returning along the northern shore of 
Lake Superior. To this expedition Prof. 
William H. Keating, of Philadelphia, was 
attached as geologist, and published a nar- 
rative in two volumes in 1823 (George B. 
Whittaker, London). Keating in his nar- 
rative of the expedition, which started at 
Philadelphia, notes the evidences of old 
copper mining at South Mountain, in Mary- 
land; the fact that coal mining is being 


6 SCIENCE. 


carried on at Cumberland, and at various 
points between there and Wheeling. He 
also remarks upon the Blowing Springs, 
and said he had no opportunity of testing 
whether they sent out gas or only air. He 
frequently mentions fossils observed, encrt- 
nites and productus, but does not attempt to 
define geological horizons by them, but only 
to judge whether the limestones were primi- 
tive (without organic life), transition or 
secondary. 

1832. In 1832 Mr. Schoolcraft, under a 
commission from the government, com- 
manded an expedition to the country about 
the sources of the Mississippi River, which 
he discovered took its rise in Lake Itasca, 
a narrative of which was published in 1834, 
and again enlarged in 1855. 

1832-6. The expeditions of Capt. Bon- 
neville, U.S. A., made famous by Irving’s 
two narratives, were not, strictly speaking, 
government expeditions, being conducted 
under the auspices of the American Fur 
Trading Company, while he was on leave of 
absence from the army. No geologist was 
attached to the expedition, butthe geographi- 
cal results were very important, as by them 
was first determined the enclosed nature of 
the great interior basin, which had hitherto 
been supposed to have an outlet to the 
Pacific Ocean through the mythical Rio 
Buenaventura. 

1834-5. G. W. Featherstonaugh, of 
whose origin little seems to be known ex- 
cept that he was a foreign traveler, was 
employed by Lewis Cass as Secretary of 
War, during the years 1834—5, to make geo- 
logical investigations in the Ozark Moun- 
tains and along the elevated plateau sep- 
arating the Missouri River from the St. 
Peter, or Minnesota River, known as the 
Coteau des Prairies. The report upon the 
first of these regions was published in 1835, 
and that upon the second in 1836. 

In Featherstonaugh’s time, light was 
commencing to come to the minds of Ameri- 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 105. 


can geologists out of the obscurity of ideas. 
concerning the existing division of rocks 
into primitive, transition and secondary. 
It was already practically recognized that 
different horizons could be correlated in 
different parts of the world more safely and 
accurately by fossils than by lithological 
characters. Featherstonaugh found Car- 
boniferous fossils widespread throughout 
the United States, on which he makes the 
following comments : ‘‘ Although these fos- 
sils are not identically the same as their 
equivalents in Europe, yet many of them 
are strictly so; and in all cases I would as- 
sert the generic resemblances to be stronger 
than the specific differences. On this con- 
tinent, where the Carboniferous limestones 
extend uninterruptedly for more than 
1,000 miles, we find an equal amount of 
generic resemblance and specific difference, 
and it is certain that the specific difference 
between the most powerful species of living 
animals here and those in trans-Atlantic 
countries seems to be much greater than 
that which prevails among fossils of the two 
hemispheres.’”? With regard to what had 
been generally known as primitive or inor- 
ganic rocks, however, he is not willing to 
accept the Wernerian or Plutonic theory of 
origin. Their differences with each other, 
except statuary marble, he remarks, result 
only from a difference in proportions of cer- 
tain mineral constituents, which gives rise 
to the opinion that they had a common 
origin and ‘that they have all at some 
period been either ejected from central beds 
by the expansive power generated there, or 
that they have been great intumescing 
masses which on cooling have resolved 
themselves into various stages of crystalliz- 
ation, and that their varying products have 
been brought by fusion or solution into 
distinct central localities.” 

In his report Featherstonaugh publishes 
a section 12 feet long, extending from the 
Atlantic Ocean to Texas, which presents a 


JANUARY 1, 1897. ] 


remarkably truthful representation, for the 
times, of the broader features of Appala- 
chian structure. He calls attention to the 
fact that the littoral line on the Atlantic 
face of the mountains is found near the 
falls of the rivers. In his second report he 
gives a columnar section showing the cor- 
respondence of American and European 
formations, with average thickness of the 
latter, in which the Upper Cretaceous, 
Wealden, Oolite, and possibly the New Red 
sandstones are said to be deficient in the 
United States. In this section the Cam- 
brian forms the base of the organic divi- 
sion. He remarks upon the rapid progress 
which geology has made in Europe during 
the past thirty years, and the increased in- 
terest manifested in this country as the re- 
sult of his first report, giving rise to a 
movement among the States to undertake 
geological surveys. He says: ‘A geological 
map of the whole United States, where all 
the formations are exhibited on a large 
scale, and the most important deposits of 
fuel, metals and useful minerals be accu- 
rately laid down, would be a monument 
both useful and honorable to the country 
at home and abroad, and I trust the day is 
not distant when Congress will direct such 
a map to be constructed upon a scale com- 
mensurate with the undertaking.” 

1838. In1838 J. N. Nicollet, a Savoyard 
naturalist, who had spent the last five years 
studying, at his own expense, the physical 
geography of the Southern and Mississippi 
Valley States, was commissioned by Col. 
Abert, of the Topographical Engineers, to 
make a map of the hydrographic basin of 
the Mississippi River. 

In his report Nicollet remarks on the 
universal distribution of drift material, 
even on the summit of the Coteau, which 
had hitherto been called alluvium, but for 
which he prefers the term Erratic deposites. 
His principle contribution was the recogni- 
tion of the fact that in that region there 


SCIENCE. . 7 


were limestones lower than the Carbonifer- 
ous represented by fossils. He thought to 
have the Devonion in the lower part of the 
Mountain limestone, and he obtained Tren- 
ton fossils from the limestone around the 
Falls of St. Anthony. He also discovered 
the Cretaceous above Council Bluffs, and 
recognized its importance ‘as destined to 
occupy a conspicuous place in the history of 
American geology.’ Fort Pierre Chouteau 
was the upper limit of his explorations of 
the Missouri River. He got authentic ac- 
counts of pseudo-voleanoes caused by the 
spontaneous combustion of bituminous ma- 
terial within the rocks higher up the river, 
which he thinks may account for some, at 
least, of the pumice-like material that 
floats down the Missouri River. 

1839. An important epoch in the study 
of western geology is marked by the work 
conducted under David Dale Owen, from 
1839 to 1854. Dr. Owen was the son of 
Robert Owen, the social reformer, and at 
the same time a well-to-do manufacturer, 
who had settled in New Harmony, Ind., to 
carry out practically some of his social theo- 
ries. David had received a liberal educa- 
tion abroad, both in Switzerland and Scot- 
land, and had spent ayear in London study- 
ing geology, in companionship with Henry 
B. Rogers. He later took the degree of 
M. D. in the Ohio Medical College in 1836. 
Having been appointed State Geologist of 
Indiana, he made a preliminary reconnais- 
sance in 1837-8. The then Governor, James 
Whitcomb, became later United States Land 
Commissioner, and appointed Owen to make 
a survey of the Dubuque and Mineral Point 
land districts in Wisconsin and Iowa, under 
authority from Congress, in order to enable 
him to reserve from sale those sections con- 
taining mineral wealth. This work had to 
be done promptly, and it was commenced 
in September, 1839, and completed in Feb- 
ruary, 1840. He had 139 sub-agents and 
assistants under him, examining each sec- 


8 SCIENCE. 


tion under his instruction and supervision. 
Dr. John Locke was his geological assistant 
in this work. The determination of fossils 
of geological horizons was yet very imper- 
fect, and the main conclusion arrived at 
was that the lead-bearing limestones were 
probably older than the Carboniferous. 

1841. In 1841 the Wilkes Exploring 
Expedition, which, since 1838, had been 
cruising along the coasts and among the 
islands of the Pacific ocean, reached the 
coast of Oregon. Near the mouth of the 
Columbia river the ship Peacock on which 
was Prof. James D. Dana, the geologist of 
the Expedition, was wrecked, entailing the 
loss of all the latter’s personal effects as 
well as many of his collections. 

His loss was in the end, however, a gain 
to geological science, for on his trip across 
the Cascade mountains, and to San Fran- 
cisco through the mountains of Oregon, 
past Mt. Shasta and down the valley of the 
Sacramento, he gained a personal knowl- 
edge of the geological conditions of the 
West, which was invaluable to him in later 
years when he was called upon to discuss 
the observations of later observers in the 
preparation of his Manual of Geology. 

In his report upon the geology of the 
Wilkes Expedition, Dana calls attention to 
the fact that the slates of the Umpqua and 
Shasta regions resemble gold-bearing rocks 
of other regions, but it does not appear that 
he found actual evidence of the occurrence 
of gold. 

He did observe the occurrence of sand- 
stone dikes intersecting sandstones and 
shales near Astoria, and drew some inter- 
esting conclusions as to changes of level of 
the Coast region, which were further evi- 
denced by the fiords along the coast and 
terraces along the river valleys; the latter 
he reasoned could not be explained by the 
current hypothesis that they were deposited 
in barrier lakes. As regards the whole 
Rocky Mountain region he concludes that 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 105. 


it was probably in a great measure sub- 
merged until Cretaceous or later time. 

1842-5. The three famous expeditions 
of Fremont were conducted in the years 
1842, 1843-4 and 1845 respectively. They 
covered a very large part of the Cordil- 
leran region, but unfortunately no geologist 
was attached to the expedition. Fremont 
himself, however, was a scientifically edu- 
cated man, and had served under Nicollet 
in his expedition up the Missouri. His 
scientific notes, and the fossils and rocks 
collected, were afterwards worked up by 
Prof. James Hall. 

Among the specimens thus brought and 
described were detected Niobrara lime- 
stones, upturned against the granites near 
Pike’s Peak; green clays from the Hocene 
of the Bridger Basin, thought to resemble 
Cretaceous green sand; coal from the Muddy 
on the western edge of that basin, with 
fossil ferns which Hall said were not Car- 
boniferous ; fresh water shells from the Ter- 
tiary formations there and at the head of 
the Uinta River, on the east slope of the 
Wasatch Mountains; various eruptive rocks 
from the Snake River Valley, Blue Moun- 
tains and the Cascade Range; and a series 
of specimens from a bluff 700 feet high, 
which consisted largely of volcanic ash 
with fresh water fossil infusoria, which 
were probably formed of the Tertiary beds 
of the John Day River. 

1846. In the spring of 1846 Dr. Wis- 
lizenus, ‘a German by birth, but an Ameri- 
can by choice,’ as he characterizes himself, 
and evidently a man of wide scientific cul- 
ture, undertook an examination into the 
geography and natural history of northern 
Mexico and Upper California at his private 
expense. While on his way west the war 
between the United States and Mexico 
broke out, and he was detained a prisoner 
for six months in the state of Chihuahua. 
Finding it impracticable to continue his 
work unaided, upon the arrival of the 


JANUARY 1, 1897. ] 


American troops, he accepted the position 
of surgeon in the United States army, and 
finally returned with Col. Doniphan’s com- 
mand. His narrative, with scientific ap- 
pendices, was printed by order of Congress. 
In it henotes Cretaceous rocks on the Great 
Plains, Cretaceous limestones with IJnocer- 
amus near Las Vegas, and the sandstones 
near Santa Fé ‘ thrown back at an angle of 
100 degrees by the uplift of the granite.’ 
Silurian limestones were seen near El Paso, 
and both Silurian and Cretaceous lime- 
stones around Chihuahua, Mexico. He does 
not appear, however, to have met with any 
outerop of coal-bearing rocks. He remarks 
on a decadence of mining in Mexico and 
gives interesting statistics on the ancient 
silver and copper mines in the State of Chi- 
huahua. In his report he gives what is 
called a geological map of the regions tra- 
versed, in which the occurrence of rocks of 
the different descriptions are indicated by 
words. 

1847. In 1847 under the auspices of the 
United States Land office, of which James 
Whitcomb had now become Commissioner, 
David Dale Owen commenced his final sur- 
vey of the Northwest Territory comprising 
parts of Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota and 
Nebraska. Although this work only inci- 
dentally extended into the region west of the 
Mississippi valley, it forms an important 
epoch in the geological history of the West, 
for it was the first systematically organized 
geological survey conducted under govern- 
ment authority, and by finally establishing 
geological horizons it has formed the basis of 
all later geological work in this region. 

Dr. Owen had a large corps of scientific 
assistants and through them left a strong 
impress upon geological work in the Missis- 
sippi Valley. Among them were Richard 
Owen and EH. T. Cox, who worked later in 
Indiana, A. H. Worthen in Illinois, Chas. 
Whittlesey at Lake Superior and J. G. 
Norwood in Kentucky. 


SCIENCE. 9 


After five years of field and one of office 
work, the report was published in two 
quarto volumes, with a large colored geolog- 
ical map, and a memoir on vertebrates by 
Dr. Joseph Leidy. 

1847-1850. In this connection a brief 
mention may be made of the survey of the 
Lake Superior region, generally known as 
the Foster and Whitney Survey, because, 
although not carried on in the region under 
consideration, it had indirectly considerable 
influence on Western surveys. 

Congress in March, 1847, had passed a 
law governing the sale of mineral lands in 
the Lake Superior land district which pro- 
vided that the Secretary of the Treasury 
should cause a geological survey to be made 
previous to the offering of the lands for sale. 

Dr. Chas. T. Jackson was appointed in 
the spring of 1847 to execute the survey, 
but resigned after two seasons’ work, and 
the completion of the work was confided 
to J. W. Foster and J. D. Whitney, whose 
final reports were submitted in 1850 and 
1851. They were assisted in their geo- 
logical work by 8. W. Hill and Edward 
Desor, the later an eminent Swiss geologist 
who had come to this country with Agas- 
siz; while James Hall reported on their 
fossils and made valuable geological contri- 
butions to their final report. Whitney was 
not again in government employ, but played 
an important part in the development of 
its mineral resources, by his volume on the 
Metallic Wealth of the United States pub- 
lished in 1854, in which the theoretical 
views on ore deposits were far in advance 
of any published in this country or Europe, 
and which for many years was the only 
scientific treatise on the metallic mineral 
wealth of the country. He subsequently 
(1859-60) served on the Geological Survey 
of Wisconsin, making a special study of ~ 
its lead mines, and in 1860 organized the 
State Geological Survey of California. 

1849. In1849 Dr. John Evans, under the 


10 


instruction of his chief, D. D. Owen, as- 
cended the White River to the Bad Lands 
of Nebraska, along the southeast base 
of the Black Hills, and made collections of 
fossil vertebrates in the White River Mio- 
cene, whose existence had first been brought 
to notice through specimens sent in by the 
parties connected with the American Fur 
Trading Company. He also collected Mol- 
lusea in the Cretaceous beds from Fort 
Pierre up to a point 300 miles below the 
mouth of the Yellowstone, and traced the 
great lignite coal formation from there 
nearly to the Yellowstone River. The col- 
lections made at this time by Dr. Evans, to- 
gether with those collected under the aus- 
pices of the Smithsonian in 1850 by T. A. 
Culbertson, and by Gen. Stuart Van Vliet 
of the United States army, were described 
in the Smithson contributions by Dr. Leidy 
in 1852. In this famous memoir the since 
well known forms Titanotheriwn and Oreodon 
were first described, and the age of the beds 
in which they occurred given as Eocene 
Tertiary. 

1849-50. In 1849-50, under the orders of 
Col. Abert, of the Topographical Engineers, 
Lieut. Howard Stansbury made a survey 
of Great Salt Lake, and explored its valley 
and the surrounding mountains. No geol- 
ogist was attached to his party, but his 
notes and fossils were reported upon by Prof. 
James Hall. 

Stansbury noted the widespread occur- 
rence of coal beds and recognized their 
future industrial importance, but does not 
appear to have obtained any data to de- 
termine their age. He brought in fossils 
from the Carboniferous limestone in Kansas, 
in Wyoming near Fort Laramie, and around 
Salt Lake Basin. 

1851-52. In the summer of 1852 Captain 
. R. B. Marey and Brevet Captain George B. 
McClellan, of the United States Engineers, 
made an exploration in the Red River coun- 
try from Fort Smith, Ark., to Fort Belk- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 105. 


nap, on the Brazos River, Texas. Dr. G.G. 
Shumard was appointed surgeon and natur- 
alist to the expedition, and made collec- 
tions which were submitted to various 
specialists for examination and study. 
Their reports are contained as appendices 
in Captain Marcy’s report, published by act 
of Congress. 

Hitchcock, the elder, reported on the 
specimens collected, except the fossils which 
were submitted to the latter’s brother, Dr. 
B. F. Shumard, for identification. Carbon- 
iferous and Cretaceous forms were definitely 
determined, but Hitchcock was somewhat 
in doubt, owing to the imperfection of his 
data, whether the coals of the Brazos River 
were correctly assigned to the Carboniferous, 
on account of the loose texture of the rocks, 
and the fact that lignites of Tertiary and 
Cretaceous age were known to exist further 
north. The doubt is a reasonable one, for 
these coal beds are at the present day the 
most western workable coals of Carbonif- 
erous age known on the continent. Hitch- 
cock remarks on the evidence shown in the 
canyons of the Llano Estacado, of the power 
of erosion, and shows that it was not neces- 
sary to resort,as Marcy was inclined to do, 
to the shattering of the crust by some great 
dynamic force to account for them. 

In 1853 were commenced the numerous 
expeditions under the War Department to 
explore a route for a transcontinental rail- 
road from the Mississippi Valley to the Pa- 
cific Ocean. To most of these parties a ge- 
ologist or naturalist was attached, and the 
results of their observations, together with 
those of other naturalists, are found in the 
thirteen quarto volumes of the Pacific Rail- 
road reports. They include Marcou, New- 
berry, Evans, Blake, Antisell, Gibbs and 
Schiel. 

1853-4. Two reports made by Dr. John 
Evans to Gov. Stevens upon the geology of 
the northern route were lost in transit from 
the field to Washington. Dr. Evans died 


JANUARY 1, 1897. ] 


at Washington in 1861 while at work upon 
his final report upon this region, which has 
consequently never been published. 

To the expedition which explored the 
middle route across Colorado and Utah in 
1853, under Capt. Gunnison, who was killed 
by Indians in Sevier Lake Valley, and 
through Wyoming, Utah and Nevada to 
California, in 1854, under Lieut. Beckwith, 
Dr. James Schiel was attached as surgeon 
and geologist. His report and Beckwith’s 
narration contain scattered notes on the 
geology of the route, but no connected de- 
scription. : : 

Jules Marcou, who had come to this 
eountry from Switzerland with Agassiz, was 
the first geologist to study Western rock 
formations, who had had a field training in 
Europe. While his personal familiarity 
with different geological horizons in Kurope 
enhanced the value of his field determina- 
tions, it also exposed him to the danger of 
laying too much stress in correlation upon 
mere physical resemblance. The route of 
the Whipple expedition, to which he was 
attached as geologist in 1853-4, followed 
the Arkansas and Canadian rivers from 
the mouth of the former to the source 
of the latter, and thence through New 
Mexico to Albuquerque; it then followed 
in a general way the general route of the 
Atlantic and Pacific Railroad to Los An- 
geles. His preliminary report was pub- 
lished in 1855. He also prepared a diagra- 
matic section of the country from the Mis- 
sissippi Valley to the Pacific Ocean ; like- 
wise a preliminary report upon the route 
followed by Capt. John Pope further south 
in Texas, made up from the notes and 
specimens collected by the latter. His 
claims as a geological discoverer rest upon 
the recognition of Carboniferous in Arkan- 
sas, the Permian and Carboniferous in New 
Mexico and Arizona, the Trias in Indian 
Territory, northern Texas and New Mexico. 
He thought also to have found the Juras- 


SCIENCE. At 


sic, Neocomian and Chalk at different locali- 
ties from New Mexico eastward. The ge- 
ologists who have examined this field in 
later years and in greater detail have, in 
the light of all the geological knowledge 
that has accumulated since, assigned some- 
what different ages to the beds described 
under the latter heads. This does not, 
however, detract from the value of Mar- 
cou’s contribution to American geology, 
when one takes into consideration the cir- 
cumstances under which his work was 
done and the little that was known of the 
geology of the West at the time. 

Marcou did not make the official report 
upon his geological studies. When he was 
upon the point of embarking for Europe 
with his notes and collections, in order that, 
in working them up, he might be able to 
make comparisons with material in the 
museums abroad, they were seized by order 
of Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War, 
and he was obliged to embark without 
them. His material was later worked up 
and the final report on the 35th parallel 
made by W. P. Blake, as official geologist 
of the expedition. 

Blake’s own observations were made as 
geologist in the expedition, under Lieuten- 
ants R.S. Williamson and J. G. Parke, in 
the summer of 1853, to determine the prac- 
ticability of various routes from San Fran- 
cisco through southern California to the 
mouth of the Gila River. The region is 
not one from which definite geological data 
could be obtained, the rocks, with the ex- 
ception of recent and Tertiary formations, 
being barren of fossils and classed as meta- 
morphic and eruptive. Hocene strata were 
recognized near San Diego, and Blake made 
interesting observations on desert phe- 
nomena, such as sand-polishing, prevailing 
west winds, ete. In economic geology he 
described the auriferous gravels and hy- 
draulic washings, and concluded that the 
age of the formation of gold was contem- 


12 


poraneous with the uplift of the Coast 
Ranges and with the diorite or greenstone 
intrusions. His report was submitted. in 
1857. 

1854-5. Dr. Thomas Antisell was geolo- 
gist to Lieutenant Parke’s expedition from 
San Francisco to Los Angeles through the 
Coast Ranges in 1854, and from the Pimas 
villages in Arizona, along the 32d parallel 
to the Organ Mountains, in New Mexico, 
in 1855. He considers the age of the Coast 
Ranges as post-Miocene, and notes the oc- 
currence of bituminous deposits in southern 
California. He was influenced in his views 
on mountain ranges by Elie de Beaumont’s 
theory of mountain uplift along the great 
circles, and endeavored to trace his systems 
in the West. He thus drew attention to 
the parallelism of the ridges in the great 
mountain ranges; the northwest trend in 
the Coast Ranges, the Sierra Nevada and 
the Arizona ranges, and the north and 
south trends in eastern New Mexico. He 
published colored sketch maps of sections 
of country passed through and indicated 
Carboniferous, Devonian and later rocks, 
but it appears that the only fossils he 
brought in were of Tertiary forms, and 
that his opinions as to age were based on 
the statements of other geologists and on 
lithological correspondence, and can be 
considered only as more or less well founded 
surmises. 

1855. Dr. Newberry, as geologist of 
Williamson and Abbott’s expedition from 
San Francisco to the Columbia River in the 
summer of 1855, noted the occurrence of 
Carboniferous and Cretaceous rocks in 
northern California, as evidenced by: fos- 
sils collected by Dr. Trask, and that the 
Oregon coals of Coos Bay, Bellingham Bay 
and Vancouver Bay, probably of Tertiary 
(Miocene) age, rest on Cretaceous rocks, 
thus resembling the coals of the upper 
Missouri. He noted ‘the existence of an- 
cient glaciers at various points along the 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 105- 


mountains, but gave no hints of active 
ones. He regarded the Sierras as of earlier 
upheaval than the Coast Ranges. 

The contributions to the geology of the 
West in the period from 1855 to the Civil 
War had best be noted, not in strict chrono- 
logical order, but geographically, taking 
first the southern region, next the interior, 
and finally the geology of the Great Plains. 

1855-6. On the expedition to fix the 
boundary between Mexico and the United 
States under the treaty of 1854, which was. 
conducted by Maj. W. H. Emory, Dr. C. C. 
Parry was geologist and botanist, and 
Arthur Schott, assistant geological observer. 

In Maj. Emory’s quarto report, first vol- 
ume, are geological sketches of the country 
by Parry and Schott, with description of 
fossils by Hall and Conrad, and a general 
discussion of the geology of the region by 
James Hall. The report also contains a col- 
ored geological map of the Mississippi Val- 
ley and country to the west, which is the 
earliest colored geological map of the 
country west of the Mississippi published by 
the government. 

The fossils described are mostly Tertiary 
and Cretaceous, and come in great measure 
from Texas. Upper Carboniferous lime- 
stones were identified at various points, and 
the presence of Silurian is suggested by 
Hall from a single fossil whose locality is. 
not given. Hall discusses Marcou’s section 
in northern Texas and New Mexico, and 
comes to the conclusion that the existence of 
any Mesozoic rocks in this region below the 
No. 1 Cretaceous, as determined by himself 
and Meek and Hayden, is not confirmed. 
The geological map prepared by him and 
Lesley is mainly interesting now as rep- 
resenting the blanks in the then geologi- 
cal knowledge of the interior of the Rocky 
Mountains. On the Great Plains his No. 1 
Cretaceous included all that is now known 
as Trias, Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous, 
and was succeeded to the north by Upper 


JANUARY 1, 1897.] 


Cretaceous and Tertiary. Along a great 
part of the front of the Rocky Mountains 
and around the Black Hills was a strip of 
Upper Carboniferous and Upper Silurian 
separating the Cretaceous from the meta- 
morphic nucleus. Likewise, along the face 
of several New Mexican ranges, in spots 
around Salt Lake and in the neighborhood 
of San Francisco’ Mountain, the Upper Car- 
boniferous was represented. With this ex- 
ception all the Western mountain region 
was indicated as metamorphic or unknown, 
as far as the Pacific Ocean, except for large 
areas of igneous and Quarternary in 
northern California and Oregon. 

1857. To the expedition of Lieutenant J. 
C. Ives, sent out in the autumn of 1857 to 
explore the Colorado River from its mouth 
up to the head of navigation, Dr. J.S. 
Newberry was attached as geologist. A 
quarto report of this expedition was pub- 
lished by the government in 1861. 

In this report Dr. Newberry summarizes 
the work that had been previously done in 
California, and makes the uplift of the 
Coast Ranges post-Miocene and probably 
later than the Sierra Nevada. His obser- 
vations on the region of the Canyon of 
the Colorado are those of a trained geol- 
ogist, and show a grasp of the broad con- 
ditions of structure of the Rocky Moun- 
tains much in advance of any previous ob- 
servers. His published section of the rocks 
of the Grand Canyon, though not based in 
every instance upon direct lithological evi- 
dence, has not been essentially modified or 
improved by later observers up to the time 
of Walcott’s investiation under the present 
Survey. The Algonkian formations be- 
tween the Silurian and Archean do not 
occur in the region examined by him. 

His general views on the structure of the 
mountains are seen in the following quota- 
tion (Ives Report, p. 47) : 

“This much we can fairly infer from the 
observations already made on the geolog- 


SCIENCE. 


13 


ical structure of the far West, namely, that 
the outlines of the western part ofthe North 
American continent were approximately 
marked out from the earliest Paleozic times; 
not simply by areas of shallower water in an 
almost boundless ocean, but by groups of 
islands and broad continental surfaces of 
of dry land.” 

This remark was in opposition to the then 
generally received theory that the area of 
the Rocky and California mountains was 
till the Tertiary period occupied by an open 
sea. 

1859. As geologist of the Macomb ex- 
ploring expedition to the junction of the 
Grand and Green Rivers, Dr. Newberry col- 
lected much additional data on the geology 
of the plateau country. His report on the 
geology of the country, accompanied by a 
beautifully shaded topographical map made 
by Baron F. W. von Hggloffstein, was de- 
layed by the confusion attending the Civil 
War, and was not published until 1876. It 
contains the following important additions 
to the geological knowledge of the region: 

First, the determination of the Triassic 
age of the red sandstone by plant remains 
found at the copper mines of Abiquiu, New 
Mexico (Marcou’s determination had been 
based on lithological evidence alone) ; 
second, the tracing of Upper and Middle 
Cretaceous formations along the south 
flanks of the San Juan into the upper Col- 
orado Basin, and making a section of 6,000 
feet of rocks from the Carboniferous to 
Cretaceous, inclusive; third, the finding of 
Saurian remains in the Canyon Pintado in 
the beds below the No. 1 Cretaceous, which, 
doubtless, represent the Atlantosaurus beds, 
since made famous by Marsh. Finally, al- 
though he only skirted around the isolated 
laccolitic mountains of that region, he 
shows a remarkable prescience in his re- 


-mark upon the Sierra Abajo, that it has the 


appearance of a trachytic core pushed up 
through and uplifting Cretaceous strata. 


14 


In 1859 Capt. J. H. Simpson, of the 
Topographical Engineers, was commis- 
sioned by Gen. Albert Sydney Johnson, 
then stationed at Camp Floyd, Utah, to 
explore a new wagon road from Salt Lake 
Valley to the base of the Sierra Nevada, 
near Carson, and also eastward as far as 
Fort Bridger, in Wyoming. Henry Hngel- 
mann, of St. Louis, was appointed geologist 
of this expedition. 

He showed unusual industry in collecting 
fossils and minerals, but his observations 
are those of a mineralogist rather than those 
of a stratigraphic geologist. From the de- 
termination of his fossils by Meek, it ap- 
pears that he obtained Devonian forms in 
central Nevada, and lower Carboniferous 
in the Oquirrh Mountains of Utah, near 
Camp Floyd, thus determining lower hori- 
zons than had hitherto been known to exist 
west of the Missouri River. 

Fossil-bearing Jurassic limestones were 
observed on the La Bonté Creek, near Fort 
Laramie, and on the western slope of the 
Wasatch, and a collection of fresh water 
fossils was made at the locality on Bear 
river, which for so many years puzzled 
paleontologists and geologists. 

The probable Cretaceous age of the coal 
beds of the Weber Valley, and the San-Pete 
fields to the south was determined. He 
notes the widespread occurrence of erup- 
tive rocks, especially through Nevada, but 
his lithological determinati#ns, such for 
instance as that of phonolite, have to be ac- 
cepted with some reservation, though they 
show more careful and intelligent study of 
their mineralogical composition than have 
been given by earlier geologists. 

As his report was not published until 
1875 (16 years after the observations were 
made), the facts determined were not avail- 
able for the guidance of later explorers in 
in that region. 

1853-6. The geology of the Great Plains 
is inseparably connected with the names of 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 105. 


Meek and Hayden. They were first sent to 
the Bad Lands of Missouri by Prof. James 
Hall, in 1853. Hayden spent the summers 
of the two following years traveling with 
parties of the American Fur Trading Com- 
pany, thus exploring geologically the Mis- 
souri Basin. He wrote a brief sketch on 
the geology of this region for Lieutenant 
Warren’s ‘ Report on Explorations in the 
Dacota Country.’ In this he mentions the 
Tertiary basin of White River, in which 
the great discoveries of vertebrate remains 
were then being made, the Bad Lands of 
the Judith River, and the great lignite 
basin extending from the mouth of the 
Cannon Ball River to that of the Muscle- 
shell River. 

1857. In 1857 he accompanied Lieuten- 
ant Warren to the Black Hills of Dakota, 
and submitted a report in November, 1858. 
(Reprinted in 1875, in Lieutenant Warren’s 
‘Preliminary report on explorations in Ne- 
braska and Dakota.’) In this he gives a 
complete column of geological formations, as 
known in Kansas and Nebraska Territories, 
from the Potsdam upwards. The Potsdam 
had been detected by lower Silurian forms 
in the Black Hills. This and the discovery 
of the marine Jura, well represented by 
fossil forms, with fresh water beds just 
above them, which he was doubtful whether 
to place with the Jura or Cretaceous, and 
the discovery of vertebrates near the mouth 
of Judith River, which Dr. Leidy thought 
might be Wealden, constitute the important 
discoveries outlined in this report. The 
assumed existence of Devonian beds is evi- 
dently based on a mere conjecture which 
has not been substantiated. 

1858. The summer of 1858 was spent by 
Meek and Hayden in making collections of 
fossils in Kansas Territory, and in 1859-60 
Dr. Hayden served as geologist to the expe- 
dition of Captain W. F. Raynolds to the 
headwaters of the Missouri and Yellow- 
stone Rivers. His geological work was in- 


JANUARY 1, 1897.] 


terrupted by the war, in which he served 
as surgeon in the army, and his report was 
submitted in 1867, but not printed until 
1869. With this was a geological coloring 
of Raynold’s topographical map, which 
gives in a very generalized form the current 
ideas: with regard to the geology of the 
country east of the mountains. It shows 
the anticlinal structure observed in the 
Black Hills extended to all the ranges 
facing the plains. In the interior, granites, 
igneous and metamorphic rocks are all 
grouped under one color, and no formation 
between Carboniferous and Potsdam is 
recognized. The age of the coal-bearing 
beds is given as Tertiary. 

1867. I will mention here the contri- 
butions of John LeConte in 1867, though 
not strictly in chronological order, nor 
under government auspices, yet they were 
part of the general scheme of exploration 
of the country for the projected Pacific 
railroad. He was attached to the party of 
Gen. W. W. Wright, of the eastern division 
of the Union Pacific Railroad, which was 
exploring various routes from Fort Lyon, 
Kansas, to Fort Craig, New Mexico. He 
made a more careful study of the coal- 
bearing rocks than had yet been made, 
and maintained his belief in spite of the 
evidence of fossil plants as interpreted 
by Lesquereux, that they were Cretaceous 
rather than Tertiary, a belief founded 
mainly on Molluscan fossils of Cretaceoug 
age found by him in association with the 
coal beds, but in part also on a reason- 
ing that the development of plant life in 
this country had not been strictly contem- 
poraneous with that of Europe. On this 
point he says: ‘The difference between the 
plants of our early Cretaceous and those of 
the Middle Tertiary could be ascertained 
only by the aid of the stratigraphy of the 
region, and we have no right from a few 
resemblances in vegetables to infer the 
synchronism either of the Western lignite 


SCIENCE. 


15 


beds with each other, or any of them with 
the European Eocene and Miocene, except 
when supported by lithological evidence 
from animal remains. 

“It would therefore appear plausible, in 
the absence of more direct evidence, to be- 
lieve that since the introduction of dicoty- 
ledons in large numbers in our early Creta- 
ceous there has not been any great change 
in the types of structure ; and that such 
changes, while following in general plan 
those introduced on the eastern’ continent 
during this period, have not been synchron- 
ous with them.” 

He noted several unconformities in the 
beds, and presented a history of the oro- 
graphic growth of the Great Plains in 
Mesozoic time, which shows a remarkably 
philosophical interpretation of the facts then 
known. His idea was that the region grew, 
by a series of gradual elevations connecting 
Paleozoic islands, into one landmass; that 
a great peninsula was developed running 


eastward from the Rocky Mountains and 


contracting the intercontinental Cretaceous 
ocean. Thus by the end of the Middle 
Cretaceous this ocean was divided into two 
gulfs, a northern and a southern, in which 
toward the end of that period the faunas 
became quite different. Finally, independ- 
ent shallow basins were formed in which 
conditions for coal accumulation prevailed. 
S. F. Emmons. 


U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 


(To be concluded. ) 


PHASES IN JAMAICAN NATURAL HISTORY. 

Pror. J. E. Durnrpen,* Curator of the 
Museum of the Institute of Jamaica, has re- 
cently published an article which gives new 
and interesting data concerning the results 
of the introduction of the Mongoose to the 
Island. 

* Contributions to the Natural History of Jamaica. 


By J. E. Duerden, Curator of the Museum of the In- 
stitute of Jamaica. Kingston, November, 1896. 


16 


The story of how the Mongoose was 
brought into Jamaica from India in 1872 
for the purpose of destroying the imported 
European black and brown rats which were 
devouring the crops of the sugar-cane and 
other vegetal products, and how it in- 
creased until it became a veritable pest, is 
well known to history. The Mongoose 
thrived and exterminated the rats, and hav- 
ing enjoyed this diet, he began a series of 
food experiments upon all small domestic 
animals, especially poultry. In some in- 
stances, he even killed small pigs, kids, 
lambs, newly dropped calves, puppies, kit- 
tens. All kinds of game, such as part- 
ridges, quail, guinea-fowl, snipe, lapwing, 
ground doves, young buzzards, and all 
birds which nest on or near the ground, 
and their eggs were much to his taste, and 
he has been known to catch fish. He like- 
wise, developed a special fondness for 
snakes, ground lizards, frogs, turtle and 
turtle’s eggs, land crabs and other of the 
more humble creatures. Not only did his 
appetite crave the above animal diet, but it 
was rapacious in its assaults upon ripe ba- 
nanas, pineapples, young corn, avocado 
pears, sweet potatoes, cocoas, yams, peas, 
and certain fruits. He even competed with 
his former enemy, the rat, in eating the 
sugar-cane, and did not hesitate in attack- 
ing salt meat. 

As a consequence of the fecundity and 
omnivorous appetite of the Mongoose, Ja- 
maica was soon rid not only of its rats, but of 
all the game and birds, except such, like the 
ground dove,as had the discretion to trans- 
fer their breeding places upon his advent, 
from the ground to the tops of the high 
prickly cacti. As a result of the Mongoose’s 
tastes for reptiles, the twenty-two species 
of lizards and five species of harmless 
snakes, which had hitherto proved an ines- 
timable blessing to the island in keeping 
down small insect pests such as the tick, 
fell victims to its depredations. Notwith- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8S. Von. V. No. 105. 


standing the humble sphere which the tick 
and chigor occupy in the scale of life, they 
were not so stupid as to fail to take advan- 
tage of this destruction of their hereditary 
enemies, and proceeded to thrive as they 
had never thriven before. These minute 
forms of life, which had previously con- 
fined their attention to cattle, increased so 
rapidly that they became a pest to man- 
kind. One could not brush against the 
bushes or put his foot down in the grass 
without being covered by the small ‘ seed- 
ticks,’ as the young are called. 

As a final result of this series of wars be- 
tween the various kinds of lower animals, 
the tick and Mongoose remained as the vic- 
torious survivors. So different were their 
spheres in life that it was generally con- 
eluded that their rule would continue un- 
disputed for years. 

Within the past few years, according to 
Prof. Duerden, another phase of the ques- 
tion appears to have been entered upon. 
He says: ‘‘It is reported from practically 
all parts of the island that the Mongoose is 
not nearly so plentiful as formerly. Some 
of those caught are found to be suffering 
from the attacks of ticks. The results of 
the diminution are shown in the appearance 
and marked increase of certain species of 
reptiles and birds; some already alluded 
to as supposed to have been exterminated. 
Amongst the snakes there is a very notice- 
able increase. During the past year sevy- 
eral examples of the yellow snake have 
been received at the Museum, as well as 
notices of others. Specimens of the spotted- 
chinned snake are obtained almost weekly, 
especially from the vicinity of Kingston ; 
and, occasionally, an example of the two- 
headed snake. During the last fifteen 
months, however, I have never heard of the 
occurrence in the island of an undoubted 
black snake nor of the pardaline snake. 
Perhaps the most obvious change, remarked 
by everyone, is the abundance of the ground 


JANUARY 1, 1897. ] 


lizard, previously recorded as extinct. Hun- 
dreds are now to be met with on the out- 
skirts of Kingston, where only a few years 
ago not one was to be seen. The wood- 
slave is not rarely seen. Crocodiles are 
certainly more in evidence, especially on 
the south side ; numerous eggs, young and 
adult forms being now brought to the 
Museum. There is not nearly the same out- 
ery against the loss of poultry and domestic 
animals, particularly around the towns. 
Correspondents from the country state that 
bevies of quail are to be occasionally seen; 
and that the various pigeons and black- 
birds are more numerous. 

The attorney in charge of the largest 
sugar estate in the island gives information 
that lately more of his canes are being de- 
stroyed, due to an increase in the number 
of rats, and that ticks are not nearly so prev- 


alent. There seems not the slightest doubt _ 


therefore but that the maximum influence, 
both for good and for evil, of the Mongoose, 
is passing away in Jamaica; first from the 
vicinity of towns, but not less surely from 
the country districts. Of the cause we can 
do little more than speculate at present. 
The animals now returning in greater 
abundance were evidently never extermi- 
nated, but only extremely rare; so that, as 
their destroyer in the past is becoming less 
important, they are increasing towards their 
original proportions. New balances of life 
are being struck in the island, and further 
developments will be watched with inter- 
est.” Rost. T. Hitt. 
U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 


THE INTERNATIONAL METEOROLOGICAL AND 
HYDROLOGICAL MEETINGS. 

THESE were held last autumn in France, 
the first and more important being the 
International Meteorological Conference, 
which met at Paris, in the Hotel de la 
Societé d’Encouragement, September 17th 
to 23d, inclusive. It had the same official 


SCIENCE. 


We 


character as the similar conference at Mu- 
nich in 1891, to which representatives of 
the principal meteorological services and 
observatories of the world were invited. 
There were at Paris about forty such rep- 
resentatives, besides several specialists 
who were invited to participate in the dis- 
cussions. At Munich the United States 
Weather Bureau had two representatives, 
but at Paris, unfortunately, there was not 
one. Mr. J. Page represented unofficially 
the United States Hydrographic Office, and 
the writer represented the Harvard College 
and Blue Hill Observatories. No one came 
from either Spain or Brazil, as was the case 
at Munich, but Belgium, Canada and Mex- 
ico each sent a delegate to Paris, the two 
latter countries participating for the first 
time in an international meeting. 

The meeting was called to order by Mr. 
R. H. Scott, secretary of the Permanent 
International Committee, and M. Mascart, 
director of the French Meteorological 
Office, was chosen president of the meeting. 
The programme of questions proposed for 
discussion was shortened by excluding ques- 
tions which had been considered at previous 
Congresses or which were beyond the scope 
of this Conference. Action on some propo- 
sitions was deferred and there was an un- 
willingness to aid anyone to influence his 
government. The postponed proposition for 
double thermometric stations was decided by 
recommending that a standard thermometer 
shelter be adopted in each country and that 
comparisons be instituted between it and 
other shelters, and especially the Assmann 
aspiration thermometer. Most of the ques- 
tions were considered by sub-committees on 
meteorological telegraphy, instruments and 
methods of observations, cloud observa- 
tions, terrestrial magnetism and atmospheric 
electricity, whose reports were substantially 
adopted by the Conference. Among the most 
important opinions expressed was a general 
recommendation by the first-named com- 


18 


mittee that the daily international dis- 
patches to Paris be accelerated, so that they 
should be more useful in forecasting, pend- 
ing the possible adoption of the American 
‘ circuit system ’ in the European countries; 
the second committee refused to adopt 
either a standard anemometer or a uniform 
exposure for anemometers ; and the third 
committee, after considering the delays 
which had occurred in commencing the in- 
ternational’system of cloud observations in 
some countries, requested, when possible, 
that both nephoscope observations and the- 
odolite measurements of clouds be con- 
tinued throughout the year 1897, in order 
to obtain one whole year of observations 
for synoptic comparison. Probably the 
most noteworthy feature of the Conference 
was the attempt of the last named of the 
sub-committees to secure uniformity in mag- 
netic surveys, and as regards instruments 
and methods of reduction both in the field 
and at the permanent stations. Resolutions 
were adopted favoring the use of captive bal- 
loons, free balloons, and unmanned, or pilot 
balloons for obtaining meteorological data 
in the upper air. Simultaneous ascents in 
the different countries and the prompt pub- 
lication of the original observations were 
recommended. The success of kites at 
Blue Hill Observatory for elevating self-re- 
cording meteorological instruments led to 
the expressed desire that similar experi- 
ments should be made elsewhere. 

The Conference reappointed the Interna- 
tional Meteorological Committee, which was 
elected at Munich, except that three vacan- 
cies caused by resignations were filled. This 
committee of 17 is thus constituted: von 
Bezold, of Prussia; Billwiller, of Switzer- 
land; de Brito-Capello, of Portugal ; Davis, 
of Argentine Republic; Eliot, of India; 
Hann, of Austria; Hepites, of Roumania; 
Hildebrandsson, of Sweden; Mascart, of 
France; Mohn, of Norway; Moore, of the 
United States; Paulsen, of Denmark; Rus- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 105. 


sell, of New South Wales; Rykatcheff,of Rus- 
sia; Scott, of Great Britain; Snellen, of the 
Netherlands; Tacchini, of Italy. M. Mas- 
eart is the President, and Mr. Scott retains 
the position of Secretary to the Committee, 
which he has held for many years. The 
Committee appointed commissions to deal 
with problems relating to solar radiation, 
terrestrial magnetism and atmospheric elec- 
tricity, cloud observations and meteorologi- 
cal aeronautics. The United States is rep- 
resented in the two last-named commis- 
sions by the writer. French, English and 
German reports of the Conference will be 
published, respectively, by Messrs. Mas- 
cart, Scott and von Bezold. The date of 
the next conference was fixed five years 
hence, the place of meeting to be named by 
the International Committee. 

During the Conference the meteorological 


institutions of Paris and its suburbs were 


visited. These included the Central Me- 
teorological Office with its station on the 
Hiffel Tower and its meteorological and 
magnetical observatory at the Pare Saint 
Maur, the municipal observatories of the 
Tour Saint Jacques and Montsouris, and 
the new private observatory of M. Teisserence 
de Bort at Trappes, which is devoted to 
dynamic meteorology and at present chiefly 
to the measurement of cloud heights by 
photography. The pleasantest feature of 
the Conference was the cordial relations 
which existed between all the members, 
and these were especially noticeable in the 
case of the French and Germans. At a 
breakfast given by M. Mascart on the Eiffel 
Tower, M. Rambaud, the Minister of Pub- 
lic Instruction, under whose patronage the 
Conference was placed, spoke of the inter- 
national character of all science, but espec- 
ially meteorology, since the air which we 
breathe belongs to no country and can be 
monopolized by no one. 

The Fourth International Congress of 
Hydrology, Climatology and Geology, 


JANUARY 1, 1897.] 


which has been noticed already in ScrENcE, 
met at Clermont-Ferrand, in the Depart- 
ment of the Puy de Déme, between Septem- 
ber 28th and October 2d, inclusive. The 
first session was at Biarritz in 1886, but 
the geological section was added this year. 
The present Congress, open to anyone on 
payment of a fee, was attended by about 
two hundred persons, of whom more than 
half were French physicians, but its inter- 
national title was sustained by the pres- 
ence of official delegates and representa- 
tives of eleven other countries. The Con- 
gress was under the patronage of the Minis- 
ter of the Interior who delegated Prof. 
Proust, general inspector of the Sanitary 
Services. Dr. de Ranse and Dr. Fredet, 
president and general secretary, respec- 
tively, of the Committee of Organization, 
retained these offices for the meeting. The 
foreign honorary president, chosen by ac- 
clamation, was Dr. Berthenson, of Russia, 
the foreign honorary vice-presidents being 
Prof. Ludwig, of Austria, Prof. Kuborn, of 
Belgium, and Mr. Rotch, of the United 
States. 

The Congress met in three sections, but, 
as might be expected, the chief interest was 
in the hydrological section. The Committee 
of Organization had prepared printed re- 
ports upon questions pertaining to each 
section, which were read and discussed. 
The majority of the papers presented after- 
wards treated of the therapeutic properties 
of thermal and climatic stations, but there 
were three conferences on the history of 
hydrology, the geology and the climate of 
the region. The proceedings will be pub- 
lished under the direction of the Committee. 

Outside the University, where the meet- 
ings were held, there was much to be seen, 
and in a volume specially prepared for the 
occasion the historical and physical features 
of the province of Auvergne were described. 
Unfortunately, the cold, rainy weather 
proved a drawback to sight-seeing. The 


SCIENCE. 


fg 


climatological conference was given on the 
Puy de Dome, at the observatory, which, 
built twenty years ago, was the first well- 
equipped mountain meteorological station 
in Hurope. During the Congress, an exhi- 
bition of objects illustrating the neighbor- 
ing thermal stations was open at Clermont. 
Entertainments were given by this munici- 
pality, and at a banquet offered by the man- 
agement of the Thermal Establishment at 
Royat some international courtesies were 
exchanged. After the close of the Congress 
the more distant thermal stations were vis- 
ited. The next session is intended to take 
place at Brussels in 1898. 
A. LAwRENCcE Rotcu. 


A PROPOSED BUREAU OF PLANT REGISTRA- 
TION. 

Tue question of establishing a bureau for 
the registration of plants, in connection 
with the present Division of Pomology, was 
brought before the Section of Botany and 
Horticulture at the recent meeting of the 
Association of American Agricultural Col- 
leges and Experiment Stations, by Prof. L. 
C. Corbett, of the West Virginia Univer- 
sity. After a careful consideration of the 
matter, the Section appointed a committee 
to report upon the feasibility of the scheme, 
and to suggest the outline of a plan to be 
presented to Congress at an early date. 
The committee consisted of L. C. Corbett, 
Morgantown, W. Va., Chairman; W. A. 
Taylor, United States Department of Agri- 
culture, Washington, D. C.; Prof L. H. 
Bailey, Ithaca, N. Y.; F.S. Earle, Auburn, 
Ala., and C. H. Shinn, Berkeley, Cal. 

The idea is to have some one place in the 
United States where all plants placed upon 
the market can be officially registered, num- 
bered, and a description, together with 
specimens of the bloom, seed, foliage and 
fruit, placed on record. When it is not 
practicable to preserve the original, colored 
casts are to be prepared, as in the case of 


20 


citrons, drupaceous and pomaceous fruit, 
as well as vegetables. 

In all cases where plants are sent for 
registration, specimens of flowers, foliage, 
fruit, root, tuber or seed must accompany 
the application. All vegetables must be 
accompanied by a given amount of seed (to 
be determined) to be preserved for purposes 
of noting the duration of cultural varieties, 
the influence of climate during any series 
of years or inany locality. A further pur- 
pose of the seed shall be to grow plants for 
purposes of identifying the sort. 


ENDS SOUGHT. 


1. To discourage the duplication of 
names, and the re-naming of old sorts for 
commercial purposes. 

2. To form a National herbarium of eco- 
nomic plants, which shall be made up 
largely of type specimens. 

3. To simplify the matter of nomencla- 
ture. 

4. To aid the student of varieties as well 
as of variation of plants under culture. 

5. To secure the originator of a truly 
valuable variety some reward for his labor, 
the same as is now accorded the inventor. 

The incorporation of such a clause (No. 
5) will undoubtedly secure the hearty co- 
operation of all plant breeders, nurserymen 
and seedsmen, and this cooperation we 
must have in order to advance the scientific 
ends sought. 

It is further proposed that this central 
bureau be made a part and parcel of the 
present Division of Pomology of the United 
States Department of Agriculture. A very 
valuable nucleus for the beginning of such 
work is had in the fruit models now in the 
museum of that department. 

Each person interested in this matter 
will kindly formulate his ideas on the sub- 
ject and send to some member of the com- 
mittee who will put them in such form that 
a bill may be drafted at an early date and 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 105. 


presented before Congress. The idea in 
having the members of the committee so 
scattered is to get the needs of the several 
sections of the United States as well repre- 
sented as practicable. Itis hoped that each 
one interested will lend hearty cooperation 
in the matter. 


CURRENI NOTES ON PHYSIOGRA PHY. 
PHYSICAL FEATURES OF MISSOURI. 


THE current annual volume of the report 
of the Missouri Geological Survey contains 
an essay on the physical features of that 
State by C. F. Marbut( Vol. X. 1896, 14— 
109). The general upland of the State, 
bevelled obliquely across the nearly hori- 
zontal strata, is explained as a peneplain 
produced by subaerial erosion that con- 
tinued into Tertiary time; the peneplain 
now being dissected in consequence of a 
warping uplift of middle or late Tertiary 
date. Apart from the narrow valleys by 
which much of the upland is dissected, the 
most notable features of the State are the 
escarpments that are formed on the retreat- 
ing edges of the harder strata. A number 
of these are described, mapped and figured. 
The most important are the Bethany escarp- 
ment, formed on the resistant members of 
the upper coal measures in the northwest 
corner of the State; the Burlington escarp- 
ment, on the Burlington limestone in the 
southwest ; and the Avon, Crystal and Bur- 
lington escarpments on a series of hard 
strata near the confluence of the Missouri 
and the Mississippi, below St. Louis. The 
lower ground that spreads out in front 
of an escarpment is called a platform; the 
upland, to which the escarpment rises, 
descends again in a back-slope or structural 
plain. The relief form included by the back- 
slope and the escarpment is called a ridge ; 
the special term, cwesta, might be introduced 
to advantage. The drainage system of the 
State is discussed at some length, with 
special reference to the origin of incised 


- JANUARY 1, 1897.] 


meanders. A brief and elementary presen- 
tation of the problems here discussed elabor- 
ately would be very serviceable to the 
schools of Missouri. 

THE GLACIERS OF NORWAY. 

Two previous notes on Norwegian essays 
by Richter, of Graz, have been given in these 
eolumns. His latest article concerns the 
Norwegian glaciers (Hettner’s Geogr. Zeit- 
sehr. II., 1896, 305-319), a subject on which 
he is particularly well qualified to write 
after his minute studies of the glaciers of 
the eastern Alps. The Folgefond highlands 
have about a sixth of their area ice-covered ; 
this part being comparatively smooth, while 
the rest is much more dissected. Hence it 
is argued that the inactive ice sheet has 
been protective of the highland surface. 
Richter places the snow line hereat 1,450 
met., dissenting from the estimate of 1,025 
by Sexe. The descending glacial branches 
from the highland ice sheet vary in shape 
according as they form broad ice paws in 
the high-level, shallow, upland valleys, or 
long, steep, slender ice tongues in the deep 
fiord valleys. The Folgefond has only two 
or three glaciers of the second class, and 
twenty or thirty of the first. These two 
classes should not be paralleled with glaciers 
of the first and second order in the Alps. 
The highland from which the Jostedals 
glacier descends, for which Richter suggests 
the name Jostefjeld, possesses a number of 
round and peaked summits (1,900 met.) 
that rise above its general level (1,600). 
While the latter is ice-covered, the former 
are bare; and this difference is ascribed to 
wind action. The snow line here stands at 
1,600-1,650 met. Langefjeldand Jotunfjeld 
are also described. 

LANDSLIPS IN SWITZERLAND. 

One of the frequent landslips and torrent 
washes of the Alps occurred last May on 
the south slope of the Rothorn ridge, near 
the east end of Lake Brienz. It is de- 


SCIENCE. 


21 


seribed by H. V. Steiger (Mitth. Naturf. 
Gesellsch., Bern, 1896, with illustrations). 
The Lammbach has here built a large 
alluvial fan between the villages of Kien- 
holz and Hofstetten, on which it from time 
to time spreads floods of stone and gravel, 
fed by landslips in its headwater ravines, 
where rifts in the upper ground show that a 
repetition of such disasters may be expected 
for yearstocome. The length of the recent 
stony torrent from its source to the lake is 
33 k.; its breadth where widest near the 
lake, 120 m.; its thickness at the same 
place, 23-3 m., increasing up stream to 4 m. 
The advance of the wash was at a variable 
rate, sometimes so slow that the grass in 
front of it was saved by mowing. On es- 
caping from the incised upper valley, the 
torrent turned sharply to the right on the 
lateral slope of the fan. Its spreading lower 
course is well shown in a large photo-print. 
Although even these small slips are of 
economic importance in a closely occupied 
country like Switzerland, they are insignifi- 
cant compared to the colossal Topinish and 
Simcoe landslides in Washington, described 
by Russell (Bull. 108. U. 8. G.S.). 


HEILPRIN’S EARTH AND ITS STORY. 


‘THE HKarth and its Story,’ by Prof. Heil- 
prin, of the Academy of Natural Sciences 
of Philadelphia, is a ‘first book of geology ’ 
(Silver, Burdett and Co., Boston, 1896, 266 
pp-), in which there is a decided physio- 
graphic flavor, thus giving much support to 
the contention of the report of the ‘ Com- 
mittee of Ten’ that geology proper— the 
study of the Earth in relation to time—may 
be well left over to collegiate years, while 
physiography supplies the natural prelimi- 
nary training in the high school. The book 
is simply written, and its chapters follow a 
well-chosen order. The illustrations are as 
a rule good, but in some cases there is here, 
asin many recent books, an example of the 
too great confidence in ‘ process ’ reproduc- 


22 


tion of photographs. The upper half of 
Plate 20 reduces Holmes’ drawing of the 
shore lines of Lake Bonneville, from Gil- 
bert’s monograph ; the lower half represents 
the floor of an extinct lake in the Swiss 
valley of Engelberg, from a photograph ; 
and the first is distinctly more educative 
than thesecond. The Delaware and Grand 
Rivers, Plate 16, are not successful repro- 
ductions ; good drawings would be more in- 
structive, even if less accurate than the 
original photograph; but good drawings 
cost too much nowadays. Brevity of treat- 
ment ina number of passages calls for the 
aid of a good teacher before the student 
will understand the problems discussed. 
W.M. Davis. 


HARVARD UNIVERSITY 


CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 
AMERICAN GAMES AS EVIDENCE OF ASIATIC 
INTERCOURSE. 

In the Internationales Archiv fir Ethnog- 
raphie (Bd. IX., Supp.), Dr. E. B. Tylor 
returns with fresh zeal to his ancient con- 
tention that the presence of two games so 
much alike as parcheesi in India and patoll? 
in Mexico shows intercourse between the 
continents before the time of Columbus. 

This betrays a regretable misconception 
of the principles of ethnology as now 
adopted by its foremost students. Games 
are alike because men are alike the world 
over. The same similarity extends to 
myths, social constructions, laws and arts. 
That Lewis F. Morgan, forty years ago, 
should insist that the Iroquois of New 
York learned their totemic system from 
East Indians was pardonable in that day. 
Now it scarcely would be. 

Dr Tylor should also study his ethnog- 
raphy closer. The Tarahumaras are not 

a distant people of an alien language’ to 
the Aztecs, but closely related and speaking 
a tongue of the same Uto-Aztecan stock. 
That is why they call the game patole. 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 105. 


RACIAL STUDIES IN SWITZERLAND. 


In the first number of the new Swiss 
‘Archiv fiir Volkskunde,’ Dr. Rudolph Mar- 
tin, of Zurich, urges a complete and careful 
study of the living adult population of 
Switzerland, ‘“‘in order to determine what 
types represent pure varieties, and what 
others indicate hybrid forms.”’ 

He proposes that the observer should use 
only a few simple implements, an anthro- 
pometer and a calliper, costing together 
about 85 franes. These, he suggests, could 
be provided by a society and loaned to ob- 
servers who would find it inconvenient to 
purchase them. 

His paper is supplemented with blank 
forms, showing what observations are desi- 
rable. These give the individual’s name, 
age, birthplace, etc.; then his measure- 
ments, 28 in all; and his descriptive cri- 
teria, color of hair, eyes and complexion, 
shape of head, face, nose, ete. These items 
he believes would be ample for the purpose. 

D. G. Brinton. 

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 

Dr. Emit Herne. DuBoIs-REYMOND, pro- 
fessor of physiology in the University of Berlin, 
died on December 26th, at the age of seventy- 
eight years. 

THE Emperor of Germany has conferred upon 
Dr. Roux the Royal Order of the Prussian 
Crown of the second class, which is said to be 
the highest decoration in his gift. It will be 
remembered that this order was conferred upon 
Pasteur some two years ago and declined by 
him. The German Emperor has in this case 
shown tact in conferring the order on one who 
in many ways is Pasteur’s successor, and who 
it is understood will accept it. Dr. Behring, 
the discoverer, with Dr. Roux, of the anti- 
diphtheretic serum, has had the Grand Order 
of the Crown of Italy conferred on him. 

THE Czar of Russia has conferred on M. 
Gérard, director of the Municipal Laboratory, 


JANUARY 1, 1897.] 


Paris, the Cross of the Commander of the Order 
of St. Anne; the Cross of St. Stanislas on Dr. 


Bordas, sub-director of the laboratory, and on — 


Dr. Bertillon, director of the anthropometric 
service. 

Pror. E. ABBE, of Jena; Prof. R. Fittig, of 
Strasburg, and Prof. J. Wislicenus, of Leipzig, 
have been elected corresponding members of 
the Berlin Academy of Sciences. 

Mr. RIcHARD RaTHBUN has been appointed 
assistant in charge of the Smithsonian Institu- 
tion to succeed the late Mr. W. C. Winlock. 


M. PrRROTIN has resigned from the direc- 
torship of the Observatory in Nice to accept a 
position in the Astro-physical Observatory at 
Meuden. 

NINE works are placed in competition for the 
Lobachévski Prize at Kazan, Russia, of which 
three are from America. It is probable that the 
prize will be awarded to the Third Volume of 
the ‘ Theorie der Transformationsgruppen,’ by 
Sophus Lie. 

Ir is stated in Natural Science that the Geo- 
logical Society of Stockholm has completed 
twenty-five years of active life, and the fact is 
commemorated in a special number of its For- 
handlingar. 

Mr. F. W. STOKES, an artist who accompanied 
the Peary expedition of 1892 and the North 
Greenland expedition of 1893-4, is now exhibit- 
ing at the Fifth Avenue Art Galleries, New 
York, paintings of Arctic scenery. 

Lapy PRESTWICH has given to the British 
Museum the collection of fossils of the late Sir 
Joseph Prestwich. 


Tue Arctic Club held its annual dinner in 
New York on December 26th, Prof. W. H. 
Brewer presiding. Dr. Frederick A. Cook stated 
that he was beginning the work of organizing 
an expedition to the Antarctic regions. 

WE are asked to state that the time for the 
sending in of essays for the Welby prize is ex- 
tended to January, 1898. Prof. Emil Boviac 
has been added to the committee of award. 

THE Biological Society of Washington has 
elected officers for the ensuing year as follows : 
President, L. O. Howard; Vice-Presidents, 
Richard Rathbun, C. D. Walcott, B. E. Fernow,, 


SCIENCE. 


23 


F. V. Coville; Recording Secretary, Charles L. 
Pollard; Corresponding Secretary, F. A. Lucas; 
Treasurer F. H. Knowlton. 


Pror. CHARLES R. Cross, of the Massachu- 
setts’ Institute of Technology, began on Decem- 
ber 29th a course of eight lectures at the Lowell 
Institute, on the X-rays of ROntgen and related 
Phenomena of Electric Discharge. 


THE Texas Academy of Sciences have sent 
out a preliminary program for the formal meet- 
ing in San Antonio on December 31st. Papers 
were promised by Mr. Thomas Fitz-Hugh, Dr. 
C. F. Francis and Mr. W. W. Norman, and ad- 
dresses by Maj. C. HE. Dutton and Dr. G. B. 
Halsted, the President of the Academy. 


AN international exhibition for hygiene, 
alimentation and industrial art will be held at 
Lille during the months of March and April, 
1897. 


FOLLOWING the explosion of acetylene in M. 
Pictet’s laboratory at Paris, another serious ex- 
plosion has occurred in Berlin, kiling Mr. G. 
Isaac and three assistants, who were experi- 
menting with acetylene. 


THE anthropometric system for the identifica- 
tion of habitual criminals has been extended to 
Ireland, so that it is now in operation through- 
out the United Kingdom. 

Dr. 8. C. CHANDLER states in the last num- 
ber of the Astronomical Journal that, feeling the 
desirability of counsel and collaboration in the 
conduct of the Journal, he has invited Prof. 
Asaph Hall and Prof. Lewis Boss to share in 
its editorship, and they have accepted. 


Harper’s Magazine for January contains an 
illustrated series of articles on the progress of 
science during the century, by Dr. Henry Smith 
Williams. 

WitTH its issue of last week the New York 
Medical Record completed its fiftieth volume. 
Since its foundation it has been edited by Dr. 
George F. Schrady and published by William 
Wood & Co. The Journal has grown with the 
advance of medical science, to which it has in 
no small share itself contributed. 

THE New York Board of Education has ap- 
pointed 150 physicians to act as medical in- 
spectors, one for each school district in the city. 


24 


This action will undoubtedly lead to a diminu- 
tion of contagious diseases among children. 


ACCORDING to the British Medical Journal 
the Italian General Medical Council has pre- 
sented a request to the government to the effect 
that all foreign doctors should be prohibited 
from practicing in Italy. 

AN exhibition will be held early next year at 
the Imperial Institute, London, illustrating 
progress in sea-fishing, yachting and life-saving 
appliances. 

THE Secretary of the Interior has recom- 
mended, through the Treasury Department, an 
increase in the salaries of the Commissioner of 
Education and of some other officers of the 
Bureau. The present Commissioner, Dr. W. 
T. Harris, to whom education and philosophy 
in America is so greatly indebted, receives an 
annual salary of $3,000 only, which is no more 
than that of some of the principals in the New 
York City public schools. There seems no 
reason why the Commissioner of Education 
should not receive as high a salary as the Com- 
missioners of Indian Affairs or of Railroads, for 
as Mr. Francis, the Secretary of the Interior, 
writes: ‘‘The dignity of the Bureau of Educa- 
tion is certainly equal to that of other Bureaus 
of the Department, and the character of the 
work done therein is certainly of no less impor- 
tance.’’ 

A CASE of alleged telegony was exhibited by 
Mr. Chalmers Mitchell at a recent meeting of the 
London Zoological Society. Sir Everett Millais, 
who has had much experience in the breeding 
of dogs, believed it to be a case of reversion, 
and so explained all cases of reputed telegony. 
Mr. Tegetmeier, who has also had much experi- 
ence in breeding, concurred in this conclusion. 
At the same meeting Mr. Leonard Hill reported 
that he was unable to confirm Brown Séquard’s 
results on the Inheritance of Aquired Charac- 
teristics following division of the cervical sym- 
pathetic nerve. ‘ 

A RECENT issue of the Washington Star con- 
tains an account, by Mr. Frank G. Carpenter, of 
a trial of Prof. Langley’s Aerodrome witnessed 
by him on November 28th, together with an 
interesting interview with Prof. Langley on his 
researches. On the day in question the aero- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 105. 


drome was launched from a boat in the Potomac 
River about 30 miles below Washington, and 
flew nearly a mile in 1% minutes, when it gently 
rested on the water. Its flight was only limited 
by the exhaustion of the water, less being used 
than the machine could carry. Prof. Langley is 
reported to have said: ‘‘I have proved both 
theoretically and practically that machines can 
be made which will travel throngh the air. 
The question of the development of the fact is 
one of the future. My motive and interest in 
the work up to this time have been purely 
scientific ones, but if I had the time and money 
to spend upon the construction of a large ma- 
chine I believe I could make one on a scale 
such as would demonstrate to the world that a 
large passenger-carrying flying machine can be 
a commercial as well as a scientific success. 
There are many things yet to be learned con- 
cerning it, but I have no doubt that they will 
be discovered in the future. The moment that 
men see that such machines are not only prac- 
ticable, but that they may be made commercially 
profitable, there will be a thousand inventors 
working upon the problem where there is now 
one. I believe, however, that the flying ma- 
chine will first come into national use in the arts 
of war rather than those of peace. In an event 
of a great war by means of an aerial machine 
the armies of one nation will be able to know 
exactly what those of the enemy are doing, thus 
radically changing present military strategy 
and tactics, to say nothing of their power of 
dropping down bombs out of the sky. I believe, 
however, that such inventions will finally be of 
even greater advantage in the arts of peace. I 
have faith that the swiftest, and perhaps the 
most luxurious, if not the safest, traveling in 
the future may be through the air.”’ 

WE recently noted the transfer of the pub- 
lication of the Botanical Gazette to the Univer- 
sity of Chicago, where it is printed in an en- 
larged form and with the highest degree of 
typographical excellence. In the current num- 
ber of the American Naturalist Dr. Bessey 
gives some interesting details in regard to the 
evolution of the journal. It first appeared 
twenty-one years ago, in November, 1875, under 
the name of the Botanical Bulletin, edited by 
John M. Coulter, then professor of Natural 


JANUARY 1, 1897.] 


science in Hanover College, Ind. It consisted 
of four pages and the first volume contained 
only 52 pages of short and mostly local notes. 
The name of the journal was changed to the 
Botanical Gazette at the end of the second 
volume, and M. 8. Coulter become one of the 
editors. In 1883 the editorship was under- 
taken by the present editors, John M. Coulter, 
Charles R. Barnes and J. C. Arthur, under whose 
contro] the journal has steadily improved up to 
the present time, when the name of G. F. Atkin- 
son, V. M. Spalding, Roland Thaxter and Wil- 
liam Trelease have been added as associate edi- 
tors. As Dr. Bessey says, the Gazette ‘‘ has thus 
been a growth, and it represents to-day much 
more than so many pages of printed matter. 
It has grown and developed as the science of 
botany has grown and developed in this coun- 
try. When we look over the earlier volumes 
with surprise at the little notes which fill the 
pages we must not forget that American botany 
had not then generally risen above such contri- 
butions. It is true that we had a few masters 
in the science, with Dr. Gray still in his prime, 
but these masters wrote little for general reading, 
and their technically systematic contributions 
were mostly published in the proceedings of 
learned societies. The one thing which stands 
out to-day in sharp contrast with the botany of 
two decades ago is the very great increase in 
the number of masters in the science who are 
making liberal contributions from many differ- 
ent departments. The many-paged Gazette of 
to-day, with its rich variety of matter, differs 
no more from the four-page Bulletin of 1876 
than does the botany of the two periods.”’ 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 

Ir is reported by cablegram that Alfred Nobel, 
the Swedish engineer and chemist, who died at 
San Remo, Italy, on December 9th, left a will 
bequeathing his entire fortune, amounting to 
about $10,000,000, to the Stockholm University. 

THE will of the late Henry L. Pierce, dis- 
tributes about three and a-quarter million dol- 
lars in public bequests, which include $50,000 
to Harvard University and $50,000 to Massachu- 
setts Institute of Technology. 


Dr. Joun J. McNuuty has been appointed 


SCIENCE. 


25 


professor of moral and intellectual philosophy 
in the College of the City of New York. 

THE new catalogue of Harvard University 
shows a registration of 3,674 students, an in- 
crease of 74 over last year. There has been a 
slight decrease in the College, but a gain in the 
Lawrence Scientific School, in the Graduate 
School and in the Medical School. There has 
been an increase of 4 professors and 17 instruc- 
tors. 


At Cambridge University the report of the 
General Board of Studies, recommending that 
steps be taken for the immediate appointment 
of a professor of mental philosophy and logic, 
was opposed upon financial grounds and be- 
cause the establishment of the professorship 
was not urgent. The report was, however, 
adopted, by 120 votes to 70. The offer of Prof. 
Sidgwick to reduce his stipend as professor of 
moral philosophy from £700 to £500 per annum 
from the time of the appointment of the pro- 
fessor of mental philosophy and logic until 
midsummer, 1902, or until his chair be vacated, 
if that should occur before midsummer, 1902, 
was accepted. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 


VAN BENEDEN AND THE ORIGIN OF THE CEN- 
TROSOME.—A CORRECTION. 


I wisH to correct an error in my recent book 
on ‘The Cell,’ which misrepresents Van Bene- 
den’s early views regarding the origin of the 
centrosomes in the fertilized egg. At page 157 
the view, or rather surmise, is attributed to 
him that, in the fertilization of Ascaris, one cen- 
trosome of the first cleavage-amphiaster is de- 
rived from the egg, the other from the sperma- 
tozoon. I am indebted to my friend, Prof. 
Conklin, for pointing out that through a mis- 
apprehension of Van Beneden’s meaning I am 
in error on this point. Van Beneden did not, 
in fact, commit himself to any positive conclu- 
sion, but at page 272 of his paper of 1887 ex- 
pressed the opinion that both attraction-spheres, 
and hence by implication both centrosomes, were 
derived from the egg, i. e., from the second 
pseudo-karyokinetic (maturation) figure. Later 
researches, it is true, have almost conclusively 
shown that this opinion cannot be sustained ; 


26 


but this does not lessen my regret at having 
unintentionally misrepresented the views of the 
distinguished leader of cell-research for whose 
splendid discoveries every investigator must 


feel such admiration. 
EpMUND B. WILSON. 


CoLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 
NeEw YORK, December 19, 1896. 


THE VELOCITY OF A FLIGHT OF DUCKS OB- 
TAINED BY TRIANGULATION. 


MEASUREMENTS of the heights and the veloci- 
ties of clouds are now being made at the Blue 
Hill Meteorological Observatory by Mr. Rotch 
as a part of an international scheme for such 
work. The measurements are made with spe- 
cially constructed theodolites in which a large 
conical tube, with crossed wires at one end and 
an eye-piece at the other, replaces the ordinary 
telescope. 

On the morning of December 8th, while Mr. 
S. P. Fergusson and I were engaged in measur- 
ing clouds, a flock of ducks passed across our 
base-line, which is 2590.3 metres (8496 feet) in 
length. We succeeded in getting one simultan- 
eous set of measurements on the apex of the 
flock from which its height was calculated, and 
one or two independent subsequent observa- 
tions, from which the velocity was calculated. 
The height was 958 feet above the lower station, 
which is situated in the valley of the Neponset 
river, above which the ducks were flying. 

The velocity of flight calculated from this 
measurement of height, and from the angular 
velocity measured at one end of the base-line 
is 47.9 miles in an hour, and from the angular 
measurements made at the other end of the 
base-line is 47.7 miles an hour, making a mean 
of 47.8 miles. The wind was very light, hav- 
ing a velocity of only two miles an hour ac- 
cording to the automatic record made at Blue 
Hill Observatory, 615 feet above the valley 
station. The direction of the wind was from 
the north, and the ducks were flying from the 
northeast. These observations were not in our 
program, but they may prove of interest to 
ornithologists and students of aéronautics. 

H. Heim CLAyron. 

BLUE HILL METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATORY, 

READVILLE, Mass., December 21, 1896. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 105. 


A TEST ON DIVERSITY OF OPINION. 


To THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: It is always 
interesting to test diversity of opinion, particu- 
larly on questions of exact reasoning. It is 
quite difficult to obtain a test which is at once 
significant and general. I should be very much 
indebted to those of your readers who would 
be willing to send me answers to the following 
request. 

Here is a piece of reasoning which is certainly 
capable of arousing criticism : 


Granted that A is B, to prove that B is A. 
B (like everything else) is either A or not A. 
If B is not ‘A, then by our first premise, 
we have the syllogism : 
A is B; 
B is not A; 
.. A is not A; which is absurd. 


Therefore, Bis A. 

Is this reasoning correct or isit not? If re- 
garded as correct, my request is to have the 
reasons for its correctness given as explicitly as 
possible. If it is regarded as incorrect, I wish 
in the same way a very explicit statement of the 
nature of the error. Answers are requested 
from all who are interested in the matter. I 
am particularly desirous of receiving replies 
from those whose interest in thought is a phil- 
osophical one, as well as from those who are 
more specially devoted to scientific pursuits. 


JOSEPH JASTROW. 
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN, 


MADISON, WIs., December 5, 1896. 


SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 

A Geographical History of Mammals. R. Ly- 
DEKKER. Cambridge Geographical Series, 
Cambridge (England) University Press. 8° 
pp. 400, col. map and figures in text. Septem- 
ber, 1896. For sale by The Macmillan Com- 
pany, 66 Fifth Ave., New York City. Price, 
$2.60. i 
The subject of the geographic distribution of 

animals is not one to be mastered in a few weeks 

or months, and many are the pitfalls that lie in 
wait for the author who seeks to illumine its 

difficult problems. It is rare, indeed, that a 

writer in his first essay on this theme suddenly 

leaps to a position of authority, yet this is pre- 
cisely what Mr. Lydekker has done. He has 
approached the subject from a new direction— 


JANUARY 1, 1897.] 


that of the extinct ancestors of existing faunas 
—and has brought together a multitude of sig- 
nificant facts which no one but a paleontologist 
could safely venture to attack. The result is a 
volume which, in spite of the imperfections and 
errors incident to so great an undertaking, will 
rank among the standard works on Geographic 
Distribution for many years to come. 

The influence of man on the dispersion of an- 
imals is excellently told. Mr. Lydekker says : 
‘Probably ever since man has existed in any 
numbers on the globe he has been exerting a 
more or less strongly-marked influence on the 
distribution of animals, either by destroying 
them or by conveying them to countries or dis- 
tricts which are not their natural home. By the 
involuntary aid of man the common rat and 
mouse, which belong to a genus unknown in the 
New World, have been conveyed to every coun- 
try in the globe; while the rabbit has been car- 
ried to the antipodes, where it has flourished 
and increased in an unprecedented manner. 
Cattle and horses have been introduced into 
South America, Australia and other countries 
where they were naturally unknown, and by 
their rapid increase have shown that the ab- 
sence of particular animals from particular dis- 
tricts is not necessarily due to their being un- 
suited to live there, but rather to the fact that 
they have been unable to find their way thither. 
The fallow-deer, again, has been imported from 
its Mediterranean home into England and other 
countries of northern Europe; while goats and 
pigs have been carried toa number of oceanic 
islands, where they have done irreparable harm 
in exterminating the native fauna and flora.”’ 
Sheep also might have been mentioned among 
the potent destroyers of native floras. ‘‘In all 
these instances,’’ Mr, Lydekker continues, ‘‘ the 
fact of the introduction has always been more 
or less clearly known, and therefore no diffi- 
culty arises as to what are native and what are 
introduced forms. Very different, however, is 
the case with the Islands of the Malay Archi- 
pelago, where the natives, who haye a wonder- 
ful facility for taming animals, have carried a 
species peculiar to one district or island to local- 
ites where it is quite unknown as a native; and 
in consequence of this transportation and accli- 
matisation it is probable that several mammals 


SCIENCE. 


27 


have been given a habitat to which they have 
not the most remote right. ‘T’o the Malays is 
due the introduction of the small civet known 
as the rasse into Madagascar. Whether the 
dingo, or native dog of Australia, was intro- 
duced at an exceedingly remote era by the 
original colonizers of that island, or whether it 
is truly indigenous, is a question that will prob- 
ably never be decisively answered. It is like- 
wise quite impossible to say what part man may 
have played in the extermination of the large 
mammals that inhabited Europe about the close 
of the glacial period, but it seems quite probable 
that he may have had a considerable share in 
their destruction. Be this as it may, the do- 
mestication of certain mammals, has undoubt- 
edly had the effect of destroying the wild race, 
as is remarkably exemplified by the two exist- 
ing species of camel, of neither of which do we 
know the original habitat.’’? (pp. 16-17.) 

In treating of barriers to dispersion Mr. 
Lydekker revives the fallacy that ‘‘ high moun- 
tain ranges form an effectual barrier to the mi- 
gration of mammals,’’ but he cites no examples. 
It is true that in many instances, as in the 
Himalaya, mammals inhabiting the lands on 
opposite sides of the mountains are widely dif- 
ferent. But this is due to a radical difference 
in the climates or physical features of the 
countries themselves, and not to the presence 
of the intervening mountains. Does any one 
know of the existence of a mountain range in 
the whole world which is continuously high 
enough and long enough to keep mammals 
from crossing it or passing around it if the 
country on both sides is suitable to their needs? 
Mountains are barriers to distribution only so 
far as their own mass is concerned. 

While expressing his general adherence to 
the view that after mechanical barriers, such as 
oceans, temperature is the chief factor in fixing 
the limits beyond which species and genera do 
not pass, he cites as exceptions the time-worn 
cases of the puma and tiger, using these names 
in the sense of species. He says; ‘‘There are 
several species, more especially among the car- 
nivorous mammals, which seem quite indepen- 
dent of both station and temperature, the New 
World puma ranging from Patagonia to Canada, 
while the tiger inhabits alike the burning jun- 


28 


gles of India and Burma, and the Arctic tun- 
dras of Siberia.’’ It may be poetic license, but 
hardly scientific truth, to speak of the tiger as 
an inhabitant of ‘ Arctic tundras.’? And Mr. 
Liydekker must be aware that the northern 
tiger differs so markedly from the southern that 
it isregarded by some naturalists asa distinct 
species and has received a distinctive name. 
Our American puma also is a composite beast, 
differing widely in different parts of its range. 

Other cases of the same sort that have been 
often cited are those of the wolf and ermine 
weasel. In discussing this subject five years 
ago I said: ‘‘ With the possible exception of 
the gray wolf, not a single species of mammal 
ranges throughout the Sonoran and Boreal 
Zones, though a number are common to the 
Upper Sonoran and Lower Boreal (Canadian) ; 
and in the case of the wolf it is almost certain 
that comparison of specimens will show the 
animal of the southern United States and 
Mexico to be perfectly distinct from that of 
Arctic America. The ermine is another species 
of phenomenal though less extensive range, if 
it is really true that the weasel inhabiting the 
shores and islands of the Polar Sea is specifially 
identical with that found in the more elevated 
parts of the Southern States—an assumption I 
cannot for a moment entertain.’’* 

Since this was written it has been found that 
the northern and southern wolves are very 
different, and that the weasels inhabiting North 
America from the Arctic barren grounds to 
Mexico belong to no less than five different 
species, each characteristic of a particular cli- 
matic belt ! 

That Mr. Lydekker is a ‘lumper’ of species 
is well known, and is exemplified by his state- 
ment that in North America we have only a 
single species of porcupine (Hrethizon) and only 
one of little spotted skunk (Spilogale)! The 
way he unites European and American mam- 
mals has been pointed out in this JOURNAL in re_ 
views of his earlier works.+ In the present 
volume he maintains his reputation in this di- 
rection, stating or implying that Eurasian and 
American wolverines, martens, wolves, foxes, 

*Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, VII., 48, April, 1892. 

{See ScreNcE, April 5, 1895, pp. 387-389 ; July 5, 
1895, pp. 18-21. 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 105. 


bears, lynxes, moose, reindeer and sheep are 
not specifically separable. With respect to the 
sheephe says: ‘‘ The Kamschatkan wild sheep 
is so closely related to one race of the big-horn, 
or Rocky Mountain sheep that it is very ques- 
tionable whether the two are really entitled to 
specific distinction.”” If Mr. Lydekker will 
take the trouble to glance at the skulls of these 
two animals, or even at the rather crude figures 
published by Guillemard in the Proceedings of 
the Zoological Society of London for 1885 (pp. 
676-677), I do not think his faith in their dis- 
tinctness will ever again be shaken. 

Of the lesson to be learned from cases of dis- 
continuous distribution, Mr. Lydekker states: 
“Examples of ‘discontinuous distribution ’ 
among genera are of the very highest import 
to the science, since they clearly indicate that 
some of the lands lying between its present dis- 
connected distributional areas must have for- 
merly been the habitat of the genus, and thus 
enable important conclusions to be drawn as to 
the former land connections between such 
areas.’’ But at the end of the book he implies 
his belief in the dual origin of both species and 
genera. He says: ‘‘Thesuggestion that Equus 
has thus been independently evolved in the 
two areas has been already mentioned, and 
this idea receives support from some very re- 
markable observations recently made on the in- 
vertebrates inhabiting certain European and 
North American caves * * * if animals which 
appear to belong to one and the same species 
can be proved to have had a dual origin in the 
one case, it can scarcely be considered impos- 
sible that similar instances may occur in the 
other. And if such dual origins exist among 
species, there is surely no reason why they 
should not occasionally occur in the case of 
genera. It would, therefore, seem by no means 
improbable that the species of the genus Equus, 
which inhabited the eastern and western halves 
of the northern hemisphere during the close of 
the Tertiary period, may have been evolved 
from the closely allied but separate ancestral 
equine stocks.’’ 

Respecting the geographic origin of types, 
the author holds the extreme view that ‘‘at least 
a very large proportion of the animals that have 
populated the globe in the later geological 


JANUARY 1, 1897. ] 


epochs originated high up in the northern hemis- 
phere, if not, indeed, in the neighborhood of 
the pole itself.”’ 

In some instances Mr. Lydekker calls par- 
ticular attention to the widely different cli- 
matic conditions prevailing in Tertiary times 
from those of the same areas in our times, with 
consequent dissimilarities in past and present 
faunas; in other cases he assumes that the 
boundaries of existing faunas coincide essen- 
tially with those of the antecedent fossil faunas 
of the same area. Thus while explaining the 
great differences in the past and present life of 
the Arctic region on the ground of changes of 
climate, he would have us believe that the 
Sonoran region has maintained essentially its 
present boundaries since the days when it was 
inhabited by the remarkable extinct mammals 
known as Creodont Carnivora, Oreodont Un- 
gulates, Protoceras, Camels, Titanotheriums, 
Coryphodons and others, all of which he re- 
gards as of Sonoran origin. While of much 
interest to know what types originated in this 
geographic area, does anyone imagine that its 
climate, when these extraordinary animals 
lived there, was the same as to-day ? 

But all this is preliminary. Coming to the 
real subject of the book Mr. Lydekker parcels 
off the globe into the following primary and 
secondary divisions : 

I. Notogeic Realm.—1. Australian Region. 

2. Polynesian Region. 

3. Hawaiian Region. 

4, Austro-Malayan Region. 
II. Neogeeic Realm.—Neotropical Region. 
III. Arctogeeic Realm.—1. Malagasy Region. 

2. Ethiopian Region. 

3. Oriental Region. 

4. Holarctic Region. 

5. Sonoran Region. 


To discuss this scheme with the fullness its im- 
portance deserves would require far too much 
space for the limits of the present review. The 
primary regions, or ‘realms,’ may be passed 
without comment, inasmuch as few writers agree 
on their numbers or boundaries ; and little will 
be said of the paleontological side of the book 
or of the facts of present distribution outside of 
the Americas. 

Mr. Lydekker accords to South America the 


SCIENCE. 


29 


high distinction of primary rank, making it one 
of the three great ‘realms’ into which he divides 
the whole world. But he fails to see in its 
diversified faunas more than a single division of 
secondary rank—the ‘Neotropical region’— 
whose boundaries he conceives to be coincident 
with those of the ‘ Neogzeic realm ;’ and it is not 
until we come to divisions of the third rank, or 
‘sub-regions,’ that he finds it necessary to take 
into account the widely different faunas that 
characterize the tropical forests, the grassy 
pampas and the lofty Andes. This seems scant 
justice, particularly by contrast with North 
America, where three full ‘regions’ are admitted. 
The number of Neotropical ‘sub-regions’ re- 
cognized is four, two of which—the Mexican 
and the Antillean—are northern outliers, leay- 
ing only two for the whole continent of South 
America. Of these, the first, or ‘ Brazilian sub- 
region,’ ‘‘is essentially an area of dense tropical 
forests, locally interspersed with open pastures 
or ‘campos.’ The second is the Chilian sub- 
region, comprising Chili, Argentina proper, 
Uruguay, Patagonia and such portions of Peru 
and Bolivia as are not included in the preceding. 
It is chiefly an area of open plains and pampas, 
although including the high Andes.”’ 

If it could be assumed that Mr. Lydekker was 
unacquainted with the mammal faunas of South 
America, such a classification might be attri- 
buted to an imperfect knowledge of the facts, 
but his own enumeration of the characteristic 
genera and families of the different areas pre- 
cludes this view and shows that the difficulty is 
mainly one of interpretation. 

In speaking of the Mexican extension of the 
Tropical fauna, Mr. Lydekker makes the shock- 
ing statement: ‘‘Dr. Hart Merriam has pro- 
posed to unite Central America with the West 
Indies to form a separate zoological region—the 
Tropical—of equal rank with the Sonoran ; but, 
however much may be urged in favor of this 
view, the multiplication of regions is much to 
be deprecated.’’ It ishard to understand how 
any contortion of the imagination could give 
birth to such an overwhelming misconception. 
As a matter of fact, I simply remarked, after 
defining the Sonoran region, that the lowlands 
of Mexico, Central America and the West In- 
dies belong to the American Tropical region— 


30 


without attempting any subdivision whatever— 
and using the term ‘ Tropical’ in precisely the 
sense in which ‘ Neotropical’ is commonly em- 
ployed. 

Another case of unintentional misrepresenta- 
tion occurs on page 364 with reference to the 
peninsula of Lower California. At the end of 
a quotation from my Presidential Address on 
the Geographic Distribution of Life in North 
America he says: ‘The proposal to form a 
separate region for such an insignificant area as 
the southern extremity of California seems un- 
necessary, although its fauna may differ con- 
siderably from that of the typical Sonoran ’’?— 
implying that I suggested its erection as a 
‘separate region,’ whereas the rank I really 
gave it is the trivial one of a ‘subdivision’ of 
a ‘zone.’ I said: ‘The peninsula of Lower 
California is a subdivision of the arid Lower 
Sonoran Zone. Not a single genus of land 
mammal or bird is restricted to it and but two 
peculiar species of mammals have been de- 
seribed.’’* ‘ 

In the same connection it might be men- 
tioned that the only one of my papers on the 
life areas of North America quoted by Mr. 
Lydekker was published in the spring of 1892. 
Subsequent papers, containing certain modifi- 
cations of the views expressed in 1892, together 
with much additional matter, are not referred to. 

The part of the book which is probably of 
greatest importance is that which treats of the 
fossil vertebrates of South America. Mr. Ly- 
dekker has himself visited Argentina, and 
therefore should speak with authority. The 
paleontological discoveries of Ameghino in 
southern South America are of surpassing in- 
terest. Ameghino unearthed the fossil bones of 
a fauna which was not only previously unknown, 
but whose ancestry could not be clearly pointed 
to in any part of the world. The subsequent 
study of this fauna has developed some of the 
most interesting and far-reaching problems with 
which naturalists and geologists have had to 
grapple. These problems relate to the ancient 
land connections of South America and to the 
origin and lines of evolution of important 
groups of mammals and birds. 

*Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, VII., p. 29, April, 
1892. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Voz. V. No. 105. 


Our own distinguished paleontologist, Prof. 
W. B. Scott, in an address delivered a year ago 
before the Society of American Naturalists, 
stated that the earlier Miocene mammals of 
South America ‘‘are totally different from those 
of the northern Jand-masses, so much so that 
the correlation of horizons becomes a matter of 
extreme difficulty. The hoofed animals all be- 
long to orders unknown in the north—Tozo- 
dontia, Typotheria, Litopterna—and the princi- 
pal constituents of the fauna are immense 
numbers of Hdentates, Marsupials and Rodents, 
with several platyrrhine monkeys. No artio- 
dactyls, perissodactyls, proboscidians, Condy- 
larthra or Amblypoda, neither Insectivora, 
Cheiroptera, Carnivora or Creodonta are known. 
The Edentates are all of the specifically South 
American type, sloths, armadillos and the like. 
The Rodents also are very much like those 
which still characterize the region, though 
most of the genera are distinct; they are all 
Hystricomorpha, neither squirrels, marmots, 
beavers, rats or mice, hares or rabbits occur- 
ring among them.’’ (ScIENCE, February 28, 
1896, 308.) 

The total absence of the early South Ameri- 
can types from the rich deposits of vertebrate 
fossils in the United States, and the correspond- 
ing absence of North American types from all 
but the later fossil beds of South America, prove 
clearly, as Mr. Lydekker says, that ‘‘ there 
must have been a barrier between North and 
South America during the Oligocene and a por- 
tion or the whole of the Miocene.’’ Scott has 
already told us that ‘‘in the Pliocene (Monte 
Hermoso) appear the first traces of the union 
with North America, in the presence of masto- 
dons, horses, tapirs, deer, llamas and true car- 
nivores, and from that time till far into the 
Pleistocene the intermigrations between the two 
continents kept up until a large number of com- 
mon types had been established.’? Lydekker, 
speaking of the same event, says: ‘‘ The pres- 
ence of a glyptodont in the Nebraska stage of 
the Loup-Fork group in North America, and of 
northern forms in the Monte Hermoso horizon 
of South America, marks, then, the first com- 
mingling of the original faunas of the two halves 
of the New World. For the first time in the 
history of the southern continent this connec- 


JANUARY 1, 1897.] 


tion allowed of the immigration from the north 
of the true Carnivora, such as the existing cats 
(Felis), the extinct sabre-toothed tigers (Machx- 
rodus), dogs and foxes (Canidx), bears (Ursus 
and Arctotherium), raccoons (Procyonidx), skunks 
and their allies (Mustelidx), together with va- 
rious ungulates belonging to suborders pre- 
viously unknown in the realm. These latter 
include the guanaco and vicuiia (Lama), of 
which ancestral forms are abundant in the North 
American Tertiaries, New World deer (Cari- 
acus), horses (Hquidz) of various genera, tapirs 
(Tapiridx), peccaries (Dicotylide) and masto- 
dons. Among the rodents, squirrels, the various 
genera of Muride and the hares, likewise at 
this epoch made their first appearance on the 
scene. Opossums also at this time effected an 
entrance into the land which has now become 
their chief home.’’ (Pp. 119-120.) 

Having arrived at the conclusion that the 
Pliocene and present mammal faunas of South 
America came from North America, and that 
the earlier faunas could not have been derived 
from the same source, Mr. Lydekker seeks to 
account for the origin of the latter. This, he 
freely admits, ‘‘ is a difficult and perplexing sub- 
ject which it is scarcely possible to explain fully 
in the present imperfect state of paleontologi- 
cal knowledge.’’ Still, he agrees with Scott, 
Neumyr and others in the belief that the evi- 
dence points strongly to an early land connec- 
tion with Africa and also with Australia. In 
the case of certain Patagonian marsupials he 
finds it difficult to come to any conclusion other 
than that their ancestors ‘‘ reached the country 
from Australia, either by way of the Antarctic 
continent or by a land bridge in a more north- 
ern part of the Pacific.’’? Continuing, he ob- 
serves: ‘‘If this be correct, and likewise the 
supposition that the opossums originated from 
the ancestral stock in southeastern Asia, it 
will be evident that Didelphys and Cznolestes 
met in South America after their ancestors had 
travelled half around the world in opposite 
hemispheres.”’ ; 

Mr. Lydekker is evidently disturbed by his 
inability to define to his own satisfaction the 
Mediterranean region—the analogue of our 
Sonoran. Hespeaks of it again and again, but 
not always in the same way. Thusis one place 


SCIENCE. 


ol 


(p. 310) he says: ‘‘ Could a Mediterranean re- 
gion be satisfactorily defined, the homogeneity 
of the mammalian Holarctic fauna would be 
still more apparent; but this, from the great 
mingling of northern and southern types which 
has taken place in the Old World, is, I think, 
impracticable.’”?’ Again: ‘‘The Mediterranean 
or Tyrrhenian sub-region has strong claims to 
be regarded as representing a region by itself”’ 
(857). I have no doubt that sooner or later 
some enterprising naturalist will make a de- 
tailed study of this region, tabulate its distinc- 
tive genera and define its tortuous boundaries. 

While it is not the purpose of the present re- 
view to criticise technical points in classifica- 
tion, one cannot help wondering on what char- 
acters the statement is based that the sewellels 
(Aplodontia) are ‘ closely allied to the squirrels.’ 
On the other hand, it is pleasing to note that the 
aard-varks and pangolins are separated from 
the Edentates proper and given independent 
ordinal rank, under the name Effodientia. The 
lemurs are retained among the Primates—the 
usual and conservative course. Prof. Hubrecht 
has recently shown that the embryology and 
placentation of the Lemuroidea indicate that 
these animals are entitled to rank as an inde- 
pendent order, and that Tarsius is not a Lemu- 
roid at all, but the earliest known Primate. He 
finds that the fossil genus Anaptomorphus of 
Cope is intermediate between Tarsius and the 
higher Primates, while Tarsius itself looks back 
to an ancestry suggesting the genus Hrinaceus 
of the heterogeneous order Insectivora. Prof. 
Wilhelm Leche, from a study of the teeth, ar- 
rives at somewhat different conclusions. 

The interesting and highly important subject 
of the geographic ‘centers of evolution’ is dis- 
missed with a single page, where it is handled 
gingerly and in general terms only. In view of 
the standpoint from which the book is written 
—that of the paleontologist—it seems as if a 
chapter had been omitted—a chapter on the 
centers of origin, in time and space, of the dif- 
ferent groups of mammals. Much information 
of this kind is scattered through the book, but 
it would be exceedingly convenient to have it 
epitomized by groups. 

Evidences of haste in the preparation of Mr. 
Lydekker’s book crop out here and there, par- 


32 


ticularly in the case of contradictory statements 
on different pages. For instance, on page 87 itis 
said that the Sonoran family Geomyidx has only 
two genera (inferentially Geomys and Thomomys), 
while on the same page the genus Heteromys is 
added, and on a later page (866-7) no less than 
seven genera are enumerated as included within 
the family! Again, on page 342 it is stated 
that no member of the family Geomyidz is found 
within the limits of the Holarctic region, while 
on page 366 weare told that the genus Thomomys 
of this family ‘penetrates into the Canadian 
sub-region of the Holarctie.’ 

Lack of personal familiarity with the geo- 
graphic distribution of living mammals in North 
America, and carelessness in examining current 
literature, have led to a number of additional 
errors. For instance, the genus Spermophilus 
is said to be restricted to the ‘ Holarctic’ (= Bo- 
real circumpolar) region, whereas we have one 
Tropical and at least a dozen Sonoran species, 
and two well marked Sonoran sub-genera. 
Again, the lynxes are said to be ‘absolutely 
confined’ to the Holarctic, while in the United 
States they range throughout the Sonoran and 
south into Mexico. Zapus also is said to be 
‘solely Holarctic,’ although it is common as far 
south as the city of Washington. In the case 
of the rabbits it is stated that the greater num- 
ber of species are Holarctic. In America the 
contrary is true, the greater number being Aus- 
tral or Sonoran. We are told that Notiosorex, a 
genus of shrews, ranges south to Central Amer- 
ica, but itis unknown from any point south of 
Mazatlan, in Mexico. Similarly the raccoons 
(genus Procyon) are said to occur ‘over most 
parts of North and South America,’ but in North 
America they are absent from the northern half 
of the continent. 

The book is well printed and some of the 
illustrations are good ; others, as, for instance, 
that of the tree-shrew (Fig. 61), look as if they 
might have been exhumed from the tombs of 
the ancients. 

The work deserves a critical review from the 
paleontological side by some one competent to 
speak from the American standpoint. Then a 
revised and corrected edition should be brought 
out, for in spite of its imperfections, the book 
is probably the most useful contribution ever 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 105. 


made, at least in the English language, to the 
subject of the distribution of the Mammalia, 
living and extinct. C. Hart MERRIAM. 


The Elements of Electrochemistry. By Max LE 
Buanc. Translated by W. R. WHITNEY. ° 
Pp. x+284. New York, The Macmillan 
Company. 1896. Price, $1.50. 

This volume is the English version of Le 
Blane’s Lehrbuch der Elektrochemie, which was 
published at Leipzig in the early part of this 
year. 

The original met with a cordial reception, 
and this translation certainly deserves a warm — 
welcome at the hands of those who are inter- 
ested in the subject of which this book treats, 
but who are unable to consult it in the language 
in which it was written. 

It has been the author’s intention, averred in 
his preface, to ‘ write as clearly and simply as 
possible.’ In this he has certainly succeeded. 

The opening chapter brings an introduction 
to the fundamental principles of energy in 
general, and electricity in particular, which is 
most logically and lucidly written. 

Next comes a chapter containing a brief but 
well balanced history of the development of 
electrochemistry up to the present time, and 
then follow able presentations of the Arrhenius 
theory of dissociation, the migration of the ions, 
the conductivity of electrolytes, electromotive 
force; a discussion of galvanic elements and 
accumulators forms the concluding chapter. 

A careful persual of this treatise will certain- 
ly place its reader in possession of a clear and 
comprehensive view of the present state of this 
important subject—electrochemistry. 

Comparison with the original shows the trans- 
lation to be well done and fluent ; the translator 
having wisely avoided too close an adherence to 
the author’s style, which at times is a little 
ponderous. 

Omission, in the English book, of the plus 
and minus signs, used by Le Blanc to specify 
the two kinds of ions, is to be regretted. On 
the other hand, valuable features introduced by 
the translator are the subject-index and the list 
of authors’ names. 

FERDINAND G. WIECHMANN. 

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. 


JANUARY 1, 1897.] 


SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS. 
THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 

Tue January number, beginning Volume 
III. of the Fourth Series, opens with an arti- 
cle on the Worship of Meteorites, by the late 
Prof. Newton. ‘This article was delivered as a 
lecture in New Haven some eight years since, 
but has not before been published. In it the 
author has brought together a large number of 
facts showing the superstitious regard attached 
to meteorites from the very earliest times. The 
first case mentioned is that of the iron from an 
altar of an Indian mound in Ohio, which was 
preserved with other articles evidently regarded 
as of peculiar value. By some this iron is re- 
garded as probably the same as that of whicha 
number of masses were found about 1886 in 
Kiowa county, Kansas. Another case spoken 
of is that of the stone which fell at Ensisheim, in 
Alsace, in 1492, which was preserved in a church 
at that place. A fall of stones some nineteen 
years later near Milan, in Italy, is also alluded 
to as having probably been the occurrence re- 
corded by Raphael by the fireball in his picture 
of the Foligno Madonna now in-the Vatican. 
The sacred stone of the Monammedans pre- 
served in the Kaaba of the mosque at Mecca is 
also mentioned as perhaps a case in which a 
meteorite has been selected for long continued 
worship. The author then goes on to discuss a 
number of instances recorded in classical litera- 
ture, and, although it is impossible to say that 
in each case a meteorite was the object described, 
in many cases it seems highly probable. The 
Palladium of Troy, the Needle of Cybele, the 
original image of the Ephesian Artemis, are 
some of the cases which the author describes in 
detail with quotations from the original authori- 
ties. On a later page of the same number a 
description is given by Warren M. Foote, of a 
new meteoric iron from the Sacramento Moun- 
tains, in New Mexico. Thisisa typical siderite 
and weighed, as found, 237 kilograms (521 
pounds). It shows the common octahedral 
structure with unusual distinctness. Two plates 
accompany the article, one showing the appear- 
ance of the iron itself, one-eighth the natural 
size, the other the Widmannstatten figures prin- 
ted directly from an etched slab. As further 
bearing on the same subject is to be mentioned 


SCIENCE. 


33 


a catalogue of the meteorites in the Yale Uni- 
versity collection, which forms an appendix to 
the number. 

Thesecond article is by John Trowbridge and 
and T. M. Richards, on the Spectra of Argon. 
The authors have studied these spectra, the 
first one of which is characterized by red lines, 
and the other by blue, by means of a high ten- 
sion accumulator giving an electromotive force 
of over 10,000 volts. The advantages of such 
a source of electricity of high potential as con- 
trasted with the ordinary induction coil the 
authors found to be very great. By means of 
it they were able to study minutely the condi- 
tions under which each of the spectra mentioned 
was obtained. The argon employed was a sample 
of exceptional purity obtained from Lord Ray- 
leigh, and the tube containing it was prepared 
with special reference to the work in hand. The 
authors found that the red glow in the tube was 
due to a unidirectional discharge, while the blue 
glow was due to an oscillatory discharge; the 
conditions determining the change of the red to 
the blue glow are described in detail. Itappears 
that an argon tube is extremely sensitive to os- 
cillatory discharges, and itis suggested that it is 
likely to be of great use, on this account, in the 
study of wave motions of electricity. 

George F. Becker discusses at length the 
hypotheses which have been advanced to ex- 
plain the differentiation of rock magmas. The 
segregation of a homogeneous fluid into dis- 
tinguishable portions has been regarded as due 
to molecular flow, as is shown in ordinary dif- 
fusion or in osmosis. All the processes of mo- 
lecular flow are shown to be reducible to the 
movements which are due to differences of os- 
motic pressure. The most important case of 
molecular flow as regards the subject under 
discussion (studied by Soret) is that due to the 
heating of the solution at the top; this, how- 
ever, requires a very improbable decrease of 
temperature with the depth. Furthermore, 
when the rate of diffusion in two miscible 
liquids in contact is discussed quantitatively, 
assuming a rate of diffusion such as that al- 
ready determined for copper sulphate, it is 
shown that this rate is extremely slow. Thus, 
in the case of copper sulphate and water in 
contact, at the expiration of a million years the 


34 


water would be sensibly discolored at a distance 
of 350 meters, while semi-saturation would 
have been reached only at a distance of 84 
meters. When the relatively high viscosity of 
lava is taken into account, assumed by the 
author as more than 50 times greater than that 
of water, the rate is found to be still slower; 
and consequently a sensible impregnation of 
the lava would extend in a million years to 
only about 49 meters from the surface of con- 
tact. Further than this, it has been shown 
that convection would be to some extent un- 
avoidable, and, so far as it acted, it would tend 
to destroy this action of diffusion. Segregation 
by the separation of the magma into immiscible 
portions is regarded as the least objectionable 
method, ‘‘but this seems to involve a super- 
heated, very fluid magma, while the law of 
fusion and the distribution of phenocrysts in 
rocks indicate that magmas prior to eruption 
are not superheated to any considerable extent 
and are very viscous.’’ The author concludes 
that ‘‘the homogeneity of vast subterranean 
masses called for by the hypothesis of differen- 
tiation is unproved and improbable. The dif- 
ferences between well-defined rock types are 
more probably due to original and persistent 
heterogeneity in the composition of the globe. 
Hypogeal fusion and eruption tend rather to 
mingling than to segregation, and transitional 
rock yarieties are not improbably mere fortui- 
tous mixtures of the diverse primitive, rela- 
tively small masses of which the lithoid shell 
of the earth was built up.’’ 

H.S. Washington describes a series of igneous 
rocks from Asia Minor. These include some 
augite-andesites from Smyrna and a biotite- 
dacite from Pergamon. The microscopic char- 
acters are given in full, and also a number of 
analyses. M. Carey Lea mentions an experi- 
ment obtained from a solution of chloride of 
gold, containing 1 gram to 10 ce., combined with 
a10% solution of sodium hypophosphite. The 
result is a solution of deep green color, which 
is shown to be due to the presence of a small 
quantity of gold in its blue form, in a state of 
very fine diffusion, which, together with an un- 
decomposed solution, gives the effect of green. 
A. E. Verrill and Katherine J. Bush discuss at 
length a revision of the genera of Ledide and Nu- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vox. V. No. 105. 


culidée of the Atlantic Coast of the United States. 
The authors state that a somewhat extended 
study of the series of deep-sea bivalves belong- 
ing to these families, dredged off our coast by 
the U. S. Fish Commission, from 1872 to 1887, 
has compelled them to revise the known genera 
and subgenera and to propose several new 
groups. In view of an unexpected delay in the 
publication of the report upon these families, 
which had been completed and fully illustrated, 
it has seemed desirable to them to publish a 
brief preliminary account of the classification 
adopted. The present article is the result. 
Two plates with twenty-two figures show typi- 
cal forms with details of the hinge structure. 
The number closes with the usual abstracts, 
book notices, an obituary notice of Dr. B. A. 
Gould, etc.; a note is given to the remarkable 
meteor of December 4th; also a brief account of 
a gigantic squid formed on the coast of Florida. 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 
BOSTON SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY, 
_ BOSTON, MASS. 

A GENERAL meeting was held Wednesday, 
November 18th, 290 persons being present. An 
account of the work of the Boston party accom- 
panying the sixth Peary expedition to Greenland 
was given by Messrs. Barton, Burton and Porter. 

Prof. G. H. Barton gave a narrative of the 
line of travel and of the general points of in- 
terest noted during the exploration, describing 
with some detail the character of the inland 
ice and the structure and work of the glaciers 
in the Umanak district. 

Prof. A. E. Burton described the topo- 
graphic barrenness of the Umanak district ; the 
abundance of boulders and the stunted growth 
of the trees was everywhere apparent. With 
the aid of maps thrown on the screen he showed 
the stations where magnetic observations were 
needed, and described at length the results of 
the magnetic and pendulum work done on 
the coast of Labrador, on the north shore of 
Hudson Straits, and in the Umanak district. 
Prof. Burton gave a detailed account of his 
study of the Karajak glacier; the motion of 
this and of other glaciers was carefully mea- 
sured. An average of 19 feet in seven days 
was noted and an interesting observation con- 


J ANUARY 1, 1897.] 


nected with the flow of a glacier up stream was 
explained by the action of a strong return 
eddy. The temperature of the air, water and 
ice in glacial crevices was also carefully re- 
corded. Never to follow streams and never to 
return except by the way of coming, were given 
by Prof. Burton as two axioms for travelers in 
Greenland. 

Mr. R. W. Porter gave an account of his 
sketches of ice structure and of his water colors 
of the natives. 

Stereopticon views illustrated the remarks of 
all the speakers. SAMUEL HENSHAW, 

Secretary. 


ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 


THE 255th regular meeting of the Anthropo- 
logical Society was held Tuesday evening, De- 
cember 15, 1896. A paper read by Mr. George 
R. Stetson under the title ‘The Eye, the Kar, 
and the Common Weal of Whites and Blacks,’ 
was a résumé of the literature of eye and ear 
examinations, including the one made in the 
Washington schools last winter by Drs. Belt, 
ophthalmologist, and Eliot, otologist, of 500 
white and 500 black children in the 4th and 5th 
grades of the average ages of 11 and 12.56 years. 

The points emphasized in Mr. Stetson’s paper 
were: the prevailing ignorance of the normal 
power of these organs and their consequent ne- 
glect by the ‘intelligent’ and ‘ignorant? 
classes alike; the gross carelessness of both 
these classes, even when the defects are known; 
the importance of systematic and accurate 
school examinations in discovering defects im- 
possible to remedy in later life, in correcting 
erroneous and disastrous opinions as to the in- 
tellectual capacity of children who have de- 
fective eyes or ears, in detecting eye strain or 
abnormal innervation of the eye muscles, etc., 
etc., and in the determination of the future oc- 
cupations of those seriously affected; the 
great economic value of these tests in the pre- 
vention of pauperism and in reducing the 
number of expensive public institutions. 

Mr. Stetson asserted that not a single one of 
our State Boards of Health or Education had 
ordered systematic observations, which have 
been thoroughly made in Germany and else- 
where for several years, also that while the 


SCIENCE. 


30 


data obtained serve the admirable purpose of 
pointing out the general neglect of these organs, 
and of showing the importance and necessity of 
greater attention to their defects, they failed to 
be of any great value for general or compar- 
ative purposes, because of the absence of uni- 
formity in the methods employed in testing, of 
periodical examinations and in the ages of those 
examined, etc. Perhaps most important and 
convincing evidence of the humanitarian and 
economic value of such examinations, the writer 
thought is found in the ignorance and indiffer- 
ence developed by the Washington inquiry, es- 
pecially in the lower classes. Among the 
Blacks, of all eyes classed as ‘Extremely de- 
fective,’ ‘ Very defective’ and ‘ Defective,’ 43% 
were unknown either to parent, teacher or 
scholar. Of the ‘Extremely defectives,’ or 
those with less than one-tenth normal vision, 
22.50% were equally unknown. Of the ears of 
the Blacks, 57% were similarily unknown, and 
of those having but one third normal hearing, 
55%. Among the whites the record is better. 

Of all ‘defective’ eyes, 34.28% were un- 
known to all, and of all ‘defective’ ears, 2% 
wereunknown. The examination also disclosed 
the fact that, with the knowledge of the existing 
defects, the instances were veryrare in either 
race or social condition in which the persons 
were under treatment. Otologists and ophthal- 
mologists were shown to be in accord in the 
opinion that even a partial defect in hearing or 
in sight will find expression somehow in the 
mental development, or, put in a different way, 
that the diminution in mental development 
will correspond closely to the degree of the 
visual or aural defect. They are also in accord 
in the belief that the eye and the ear can be 
trained and educated to a much higher power 
than they now possess, or allowed to become 
atrophied by neglect or lost by abuse. The de- 
tails of the Washington examination show very 
slight racial differences. The visual defects 
were 3.46% greater in the Blacks, the aural de- 
fects being equally divided. The difference in 
the sight and hearing of the right and left eye 
and ear was very slight in either race, while the 
maximum percentage of defective eyes of both 
races was found in the white female. In the 
Whites the female eye and ear are both the 


36 


most defective; in the Blacks the female has 
the most defective eye and the male the most 
defective ear. The result of Mr. Stetson’s 
memory test of the same number is reserved for 
another paper. 

A paper by Surgeon-General Geo. M. Stern- 
berg was read, entitled ‘Science and Pseudo- 
science in Medicine,’ in which he noted the 
difference between the truly scientific investiga- 
tions, with special reference to preventive med- 
icine, in contagious and infectious diseases, and 
the great service such investigations had been 
in stamping out epidemics such as cholera, 
yellow fever, etc., and the so-called science of 
pretenders and frauds for the sake of gain. He 
then dwelt at some length on the arrant 
quackery, charlatanism and fraud practiced by 
the promoters of numerous well advertised cure- 
alls which, by plausibly used scientific terms 
and facts, were calculated by their pretended 
science to mislead and deceive. This gave rise 
to an interesting discussion upon the desirability 
of government supervision and interference in 
the publication in the press and the sale of such 
preparations. Messrs. McCormick, Ward, Stet- 
son, Pierce, Farquhar, Blodgett and others took 


part in the discussion. 
J. H. McCormicx, 


Secretary. 


TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB. 


AT the meeting of Tuesday evening, Decem- 
ber 8th., thirty persons were present and one 
new active, and seven corresponding mem- 
bers were elected. The death of Mr. Wm. H. 
Rudkin, one of the oldest members of the club, 
was announced by Dr. Britton and a committee 
was appointed to take suitable action. It was 
resolved that a complete list of the correspond- 
ing members should be printed in the December 
number of the Bulletin. A contribution by Dr. 
T. F. Allen, entitled ‘Descriptions of New 
Species of Nitella from North America and 
Japan’ was read by title by Dr. Britton, in the 
absence of the author. Mrs. Elizabeth G. Brit- 
ton presented a ‘ Contribution to the Bryology 
of Bolivia.’ It reviewed the more important 
collections of Bolivian mosses, the treatment 
which they had received and the present work 
in progress on this subject, and enumerated the 


SCIENCE. 


r 


[N. S. Voz. V. No. 105. 


bryological collections made by Dr. Rusby in 
Bolivia in the years 1885 and 1886. This col- 
lection contained 96 species, in 39 genera, 42 of 
the species being hitherto undescribed. Dr. 
H. H. Rusby spoke of ‘Botany at the Pan- 
American Medical Congress held in the City of 
Mexico, November, 1896.’ This paper con- 
tained brief references to the character of the 
flora observed on the journey to Mexico, an ac- 
count of the scientific progress in the city, 
especially pertaining to applied botany and re- 
ferred to the botanical work organized by the 
Pan-American Medical Congress. It was supple- 
mented by remarks upon the same subject by 
Mrs. Britton, who also attended the Congress. 
A number of important publications by the In- 
stituto Medico Nacional were exhibited. Dr. 
N. L. Britton described a new species of Gera- 
nium hitherto confounded with G. Carolinianum. 
The papers by Dr. Allen and Dr. and Mrs. Brit- 
ton will be published in the Bulletin, that by Dr. 
Rusby in the Druggists’ Circular. On motion 
the Club adjourned to meet on the second Tues- 


day in January. 
H. H. RusBy, 


Recording Secretary. 


THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE OF ST. LOUIS. 

AT the meeting of the Academy of St. Louis 
on the evening of December 21, 1896, Mr. H. 
von Schrenk made some remarks on the para- 
sitism of lichens, illustrated especially by the 
long hanging forms of Usnea barbata, common 
on Juniperus, etc., on Long Island, N. Y. It 
was shown that these lichens do not penetrate 
below the outer periderm of the host, and con- 
sequently are not to be regarded as true para- 
sites, but that they frequently cause the death 
of the latter by suffocation. As Schimper has 
noted for the long moss of the South, Tillandsia 
usneoides, the plant is capable of dissemination 
by wind and birds, and of growing in new sta- 
tions without attachment. 

Officers for 1897 were nominated. 

Wm. TRELEASE, 
Recording Secretary. 

Erratum: Prof. H. A. Hazen calls our attention to 
the fact in our letter from M. W. de Fonvielle on 
page 762, Hersuite should be Hermite and 60,000 m. 
should be 15,000 m. 


SCIENCE 


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SCIENCE 


EDITORIAL ComMITTEE: S. NeEwcoms, Mathematics; R. S. WooDWARD, Mechanics; E. C. PICKERING, 
Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THURSTON, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry; 
J. LE ContE, Geology; W. M. DAvis, Physiography; O. C. MARsH, Paleontology; W. K. 
Brooks, C. HART MERRIAM, Zoology; S. H. ScuDDER, Entomology; N. L. BRITTON, 
Botany; HmENRY F. OsBoRN, General Biology; H. P. BowbircH, Physiology; 
J. S. Bintines, Hygiene; J. MCKEEN CATTELL, Psychology ; 
DANIEL G. BRINTON, J. W. POWELL, Anthropology. 


FRIDAY, JANUARY 8, 1897. 


CONTENTS : 


The Smithsonian Institution and the National Mu- 
SCUM. ..20ec0e0e BOO RICOSEU RG DED ODE OC CRED OACESCOS BAUR aCHRCE SG 37 


The Geology of Government Explorations (concluded): 
SAPP EINGVEON Steemenlenttesiarisen iarlacecsrsteeer=tasieere== ee 42 


Professor Eugen Baumann: LAFAYETTE B. MEN- 
TDINT) 95.205 prego grongonodooonognnononosoNaoSboNGDSuNDG08R5O00 51 


PAT red eT resco cpp hay Els) Wn tensecoesnesera encore cascasncess 53 


Current Notes on Anthropology :— 
Ancient Mayan History; Primitive Drills and 
Drilling ; The State and its Soil: D.G. BRINTON.. 53 
Scientific Notes and News :— 
The Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory ; The Ma- 
rine Biology of Great Britain ; General.............. 54 
University and Educational News. ..........0..ssceesene 59 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 
Clouds over a Fire: R. DEC. WARD. Compli- 
ment or Plagiarism: BEMAN AND SMITH. Vol- 
canic Dust in Southwestern Nebraska and in South 
LDAHIGS A 18%, 403090) connnocondoonSonooopeqose6e0Go5055 60 


. Scientific Literature :— 
Beal’s Grasses of North America: F. LAMSON- 
SCRIBNER. Hoffmann on Race Traits and Ten- 
dencies of the American Negro: W J McGEE. De 
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THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION AND THE 
NATIONAL MUSEUM. 

THE great loss to science in the death of 
George Brown Goode is becoming every 
day more apparent and especially in view 
of the difficulties by which the Regents of 
of the Smithsonian Institution must find 
themselves confronted in the selection of 
his successor as Assistant Secretary. 

Under the existing relations of the Insti- 
tution and the National Museum, and the ac- 
cepted traditions relating to succession, the 
task must seem well-nigh impossible. 
While the present situation may not be 
considered as a crisis in the affairs of the 
Smithsonian Institution, it cannot be im- 
proper for Scr=nceE to invite the attention of 
its readers, and especially of the Regents, 
to a feeling on the part of a large number 
of its friends that the time has come for a 
more or less complete separation of the two 
organizations and that such separation in 
the near future ought to be assumed in se- 
lecting a successor to Goode. 

The reasons for this are so numerous and 
so convincing, when once the Smithson be- 
quest and its interpretation by Joseph 
Henry are considered, that argument seems 
unnecessary. It may be well, however, to 
refer to a few of the more important points, 


38 


and especially to show that the existing 
condition was not approved by those who 
guided the Institution through the dangers 
by which it was beset during its earlier 
years and to whom we are indebted, more 
than to all others, for the splendid work 
which it has accomplished during the first 
half century of its existence. 

The origin of the Smithsonian Institution 
was singular, its organization is unique and 
In 1796 
Washington recommended as of primary 


its success has been unparalleled. 


importance the promotion of ‘institutions 
for the increase and diffusion of knowledge.’ 
In 1826 James Smithson, an Englishman 
about whom America knew nothing and 
who knew practically nothing of America, 
wrote in his will: ‘‘I bequeath the whole of 
my property to the United States of 
America, to found at Washington an 
establishment for ‘the increase and diffusion 
In 1846 John 
Quincy Adams wrote: ‘ Let the trust of 
James Smithson to the United States of 
America be faithfully executed by their 


of knowledge among men.’”’ 


Representatives in Congress; let this result 
accomplish his object—the increase and dif- 
fusion of knowledge among men.”’ 

As soon as the funds resulting from the 
bequest of Smithson were in the treasury 
of the United States a multitude of plans 
were suggested for the realization of the 
intention of the donor. Some were reason- 
able, many were unreasonable, and it is 
now universally conceded that the scheme 
of organization proposed by Joseph Henry 
and adopted by the Board of Regents was 
the best that could have been selected. The 
essence of that scheme is most clearly ex- 
hibited in the words of Prof. Asa Gray, who 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8S. Vou. V. No. 106. 


wrote: ‘‘ Henry took his stand on the broad 
and ample terms of the bequest, “for the 
increase and diffusion of knowledge among 
men,’ and he never narrowed his mind and 
to locality gave what was meant for man- 
kind. 
wisdom and necessity, that in view of the 


He proposed only one restriction, of 


limited means of the institution, it ought 
not to undertake anything which could be 
done, and well done, by other existing in- 
strumentalities. So, as occasion arose, he 
lightened its load and saved its energies 
by giving over to other energies some of its 
cherished work.” It is through this policy 

that the Institution has enjoyed a career of 
usefulness unequalled by that of any simi- 

lar organization, and in Prof. Gray’s words 

will be found the strongest arguments 

against a continuation of its existing rela- 

tions to the National Museum. By the 

terms of Smithson’s will the Institution is 

charged with two functions: The increase of 
knowledge, and its diffusion among men. 

To both of these should be applied the 

principle of restriction so wisely adopted by 

its first Secretary, that it ought not to 

undertake anything that could be done, 

and well done, by existing instrumentalities. ~ 
It has, therefore, under each of its distin- 

guished directors, increased knowledge by 

aiding original investigators, who were other- 

wise unable to carry on their researches, 

and it has diffused knowledge among men 

by publishing many important memoirs, 

translations, summaries, ete., which would 

hardly have been made available without 

such assistance. Its extensive system of 
international exchanges has been in the 
same line, and in all this its position has 
been unique. 


JANUARY 8, 1897.] 


In the earlier years of the Institution its 
collections were such as related purely to 
research and were made in the course of 
various original investigations to which it 
was giving aid. These naturally increased 
in number and covered an increasingly 
large field, though mostly pertaining to the 
biological sciences. Although no special 
effort was made to arrange them for public 
display, they constituted an interesting col- 
lection, and a visit to the ‘Smithsonian’ 
was accounted an essential incident in a 
It then 
came to be considered as in some sense a 
What is known as the ‘ Na- 
tional Museum’ was established by the 


pilgrimage to the Nation’s capital. 
‘museum.’ 


Government in 1842, being made up largely 
of specimens collected by the Wilkes expe- 
dition. It was housed in the Patent Office, 
but in 1858 it was transfered to the Smith- 
sonian Institution, being largely increased 
at that time by additions from other 
government departments. Its acceptance 
then by the Institution was undoubtedly in 
furtherance of the idea that it ought to 
undertake what evidently could not have 
been accomplished by any other organiza- 
tion, namely, the consolidation of the 
numerous collections that had separately 
grown up in the several departments. 
That it was not expected that the Institu- 
tion should permanently load itself with 
museum management is clear from the 
attitude of its authorities twenty years ago. 
In his Report to the Regents for the year 
1876, Prof. Henry puts the whole matter so 
clearly that his words may well be quoted 
in part. He says: “I may further be 
allowed to remark that the experience of 
the last year has strengthened my opinion 


SCIENCE. 


39 


as to the propriety of a separation of the 
Institution from the National Museum. 
* > > Smithson gave his own name to the 
establishment which he founded, thereby 
indicating that he intended it as a monu- 
ment to his memory, and, in strict regard to 
this item of his will, the endowment of 
his bequest should be administered separate 
from all other funds, and the results achieved by 
The 
Institution should not, therefore, be merged 


it should be accredited to his name alone. 


in an establishment of the government, 
but should stand alone, free to the unob- 
structed observation of the whole world, 
and keep in perpetual remembrance the 
name of its generous founder. * * * Hvery 
civilized government of the world has its 
museum, which it supports with a liberality 
commensurate with its intelligence and 
financial ability, while there is but one 
Smithsonian Institution—that is, an establish- 
ment having expressly for its object ‘the 
increase and diffusion of knowledge among 
men.’ The conception of such an institu- 
tion—not a local establishment intended to 
improve the intellectual condition of any 
single city or any single nation, but that of 
mankind in general—was worthy of the 
mind of Smithson, and the intelligence and 
integrity of the United States are both in- 
volved in the proper administration of the 
trust, since the terms in which it was con- 
veyed must be truly interpreted and the in- 
tention expressed rigidly carried out.” 
Prof. Henry continues in reply to the as- 
sumption sometimes made that the Institu- 
tion was benefited by increased popularity 
due to its connection with the Museum, de- 
elaring that, on the contrary, this connec- 
tion has proved a serious obstacle in the 


40 


way of the full development of the plan of 
the Institution, and naming as the most 
objectionable result the necessity for con- 
stant appeals to Congress for appropria- 
tions, which would be quite unnecessary if 
its energies were confined to their legitimate 
channels. 

In his Report for 1887 Prof. Henry said: 
“Tn the preceding reports I have called 
the attention of the Board of Regents to the 
propriety of a final separation of the Insti- 
tution from the National Museum, and 
nothing has occurred during the past year 
to change my opinion on this point. * * * 
The functions of the Institution and the 
Museum are entirely different.’ 

In a report of a special committee sub- 
mitted in 1887 by Prof. Asa Gray, then a 
Regent of the Institution, the question is 
seriously considered and the dangers by 
which the Smithsonian Institution is men- 
aced through its relations to the National 
Museum are set forth, in part, as follows: 

“We are therefore bound to conclude that the 
Board of Regents, as respects these National collec- 


Under this 
state of things, and in view of the ever-increasing 


tions, acts as the trustee of Congress. 


magnitude and interest of these collections, the rela- 
tion of this Institution to the National Museum be- 
comes a matter for grave consideration. * * * 

“Our Secretary, in his annual report submitted on 
the 26th of January, 1876, has now raised the grave 
question whether the well-being of the Institution 
would not favor or even require the adoption of a 
similar policy as regards the National Museum. He 
declares that it is most ‘ desirable that a more definite 
distinction between the two establishments, if not an 
entire separation, should be made,’ and he urges the 
subject upon our attention by considerations which 
cannot be disregarded. Your committee was ap- 
The vast 
increase of museum objects in natural history, eth- 


pointed to take thought upon this subject. 


nology, and materials of industrial art, consequent 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Voz. V. No. 106. 


upon the Centennial Exposition, an increase far be- 
yond the largest anticipations, gives new importance 
and urgency to this question. * * * Now the propor- 
tion which the Museum bears to the Institution proper 
is already large, and it threatens to be predominant. 
We have no desire to check its immense development, 
and we contemplate with satisfaction its sure popu- 
larity ; but asrespects the burden which the Museum 
throws upon our Secretary, we may say that it is al- 
ready heavy, and that it threatens to be injuriously 
large. If not provided against, the time seems sure 
to come when the Museum will mainly absorb the 
working energies of the Institution. * * * 

““No present action is proposed by this committee 
beyond the recommendation that the distinction be- 
tween the Institution itself and the Museum under its 
charge should be made as prominent as possible. The 
very great development which the Museum is now 
undergoing may soon bring the whole subject before 
the board in a practical form * * * if the Museum is 
to develop to its full size and importance upon the 
present site, according to the plans laid before the 
board, and by it recommended to Congress this will, 
as 1t seems to us, almost necessarily involve the acqui- 
sition by the government of our present edifice, and 
that will pave the way for an entire separation of ad- 
ministration, or to such other adjustment as the Board 
of Regents may then think best, or be able to accom- 


plish.”’ [Signed] 


ASA GRAY, 

A. A. SARGENT, 

HIESTER CLYMER, 
Committee. 


Although Prof. Baird was naturally more 
interested than his predecessor in the de- 
velopment of the Museum, of which he was, 
indeed, for many years Curator, his recog- 
nition of its independence of any real rela- 
tion to the Institution was shown in his. 
first report to the Regents, being that for 
the year 1878. 
existing between the Smithsonian Institu- 


He says: ‘‘ The relations 


tion and the National Museum have been 
so frequently referred to by my predecessor 
that it is only necessary to mention briefly 


JANUARY 8, 1897. ] 


that the Museum constitutes no organic 
part of the Institution, and that, whenever 
Congress so directs, it may be transferred 
to any designated supervision without af- 
fecting the general plans and operations 
connected with the ‘incfease and diffusion 
of knowledge among men.’ ”’ 

There is another and most serious objec- 
tion to the present organization which is, in 
a degree, personal in its nature. There is 
an approved tradition that the Assistant 
Secretary shall, on the occurrence of a va- 
eanecy, succeed to the Secretaryship, and 
the latter should, in the best interests of 
science, be held alternately by representa- 
tives of the two great divisions of science, 
physical and biological. It will almost in- 
variably happen that the naturalist only 
will have any special taste or fitness for 
museum work, and upon him, then, both as 
Assistant Secretary and Secretary, this bur- 
den will fall. 
rience and skill as a museum director, he 


If he is chosen for his expe- 


may fail as a Secretary of the Institution 
if he should in time succeed to this high 
office, for we may not expect to find many 
such men as Goode, who, ina remarkable 
degree, combined the qualities necessary to 
a successful administration of both func- 
tions. On the other hand, one selected with 
a view to his eventually being a worthy suc- 
cessor to the distinguished men who have 
thus far guided the destinies of the Insti- 
tution may not be a good museum admin- 
istrator. 

Finally, the whole may be put in two or 
three simple propositions. There is no 
logical connection between the Smithsonian 
Institution and the National Museum. The 
Museum is a most important institution, 


SCIENCE. 


41 


it is now well established, its maintainance 
is demanded by the people, and it will thrive 
under a competent director, responsible only 
to Congress or to the head of some depart- 
ment under which it could properly be placed. 
The usefulness of the Smithsonian Institu- 
tion will be increased by the diminution of 
burdensome administrative duties which 
were never contemplated in its original 
scheme, and for the existence of which there 
can be no reasonable excuse. Its legitimate 
work is too important to be interfered with 
by demands which can be met in ordinary 
channels, and if such wide departures from 
its early policy continue to be forced upon it 
by ill-considered legislation, there is reason 
to fear that its splendid career during its 
first half century will not be repeated in the 
second. 

In conelusion it ought to be said that in 
the above it is not intended to reflect the 
views of the present distinguished head of 
the Institution or of any of its officers. We 
are quite ignorant as to what these views 
may be, nor do we wish to be understood 
as criticising, in the slightest degree, the 
present admirable administration of the 
Institution or of the Museum. ‘There are 
doubtless valid arguments, such as the dan- 
ger that the Museum might fall among politi- 
cians, which could be urged for the contin- 
Still 
we believe that, for the reasons recorded, the 


uation of the present arrangement. 


interests of both institutions and the interest 
of science throughout the world would be 
furthered by a separation of the two organ- 
izations. Ifthe regents are strongly of the 
Opinion that the danger of political inter- 
meddling is too great to justify a complete 


severance of existing relations at this time, 


42 


it is at least possible to select an Assistant 
Seeretary in accordance with the theory 
outlined above, and a Director of the Mu- 
seum possessed of special qualifications for 
that work, and who shall, of course, be sub- 
ordinate to the Secretary of the Institution. 
This might lead the way to what is cer- 
tainly still more to be desired. 


THE GEOLOGY OF GOVERNMENT EX PLORA- 
TIONS.* 


GEOLOGICAL EXPLORATION. 

Durine the Civil War all scientific ex- 
ploration in the West under the auspices 
of the government was suspended, and it 
was not until the summer of 1867 that it 
wasresumed. By this time far-sighted men 
had come to appreciate the political im- 
portance of a more exact geological knowl- 
edge of the region between the Mississippi 
Valley and the Sierra Nevada. During the 
war there had been no little danger that the 
States of the Pacific slope might secede from 
the Union and form a republic of their own, 
isolated as they were from the other States 
by a barrier of 1,000 to 1,500 miles of 
comparatively uninhabited mountains and 
desert valleys. The lending of government 
aid to the building of a trans-continental 
railroad, which had already been decided 
on, was the first step toward removing this 
barrier and drawing the peoples of the Kast 
and the West into closer connection. The 
second step was to encourage the settlement 
of this intermediate region by making 
known to the public its rich and varied 
mineral resources. Hence, Congress showed 
itself ready to lend an ear to geologists 
who were desirous of getting government 
aid to carry on geological researches in the 
comparatively unknown region beyond the 
mountains. 

Now, for the first time, explorations be- 


* Concluded from the issue of January 1st. 


SCIENCE. 


LN. S. Voz. V. No. 106. 


yond the Missouri river, or surveys, as they 
soon came to be called, were fitted out 
avowedly for the purpose of geological in- 
vestigation, instead of being primarily or- 
ganized for geographic or military purposes 
and admitting researches into geologic and 
other branches of natural history as a sort 
of ornamental appendage of their work. 
For the first time also were they under 
civilian control instead of military disci- 
pline and command. During the twelve 
years previous to the organization of the 
present Geological Survey the principal 
geological work in the West was done un- 
der four district organizations, popularly 
known from the names of their leaders as 
as the King, Hayden, Powell and Wheeler 
Surveys. The official control of the first 
and last was under the Chief of Engineers 
of the United States army, but only the 
last was commanded in the field by military 
officers. The other two were under the In- 
terior Department and their official titles 
changed somewhat with the development 
of their work. 

During this period geologists were also 
attached from time to time to military 
reconnaissances, but with one exception— 
that of Newton and Jenny in the Black 
Hills, where the geological information had 
a political bearing—the march was so rapid 
that the opportunities of geological research 
were very limited, and the results of rela- 
tively little importance. Therefore, in 
view of the limited time at my disposal, I 
shall confine myself mainly to the principal 
surveys above mentioned. 

Before commencing an account of their 
methods and work accomplished it will be 
well to pass in review the condition of geo- 
logical knowledge of the country west of 
the Mississippi Valley at the commence- 
ment of this period in 1867. 

No areal work, in the sense in which it is 
understood to-day, had been commenced or 
hardly thought of. The only maps that 


JANUARY 8, 1897. ] 


existed were those giving the general fea- 
tures of the larger drainage systems on 
which was no connected or systematic rep- 
resentation of the surface features ; in cer- 
tain limited areas the relief was sketched 
in by hachures, or, as in Egglofstein’s maps, 
by delicate shading. 

On the Great Plains it was known that 
Mesozoic and Tertiary formations formed 
the greater part of the surface, and the 
Cretaceous rocks had been divided by Meek 
and Hayden into five subdivisions. Around 
the Black Hills, Lower Silurian and Car- 
boniferous rocks had been identified. Car- 
boniferous limestones were known to have 
a considerable extension in the interior re- 
gion in middle and southern latitudes, and 
to have been seen in the northern part of 
the Sierra Nevada. The age of the up- 
heaval of the latter range had been deter- 
mined to be post-Jurassic, by the discovery 
by Clarence King, of the State Geological 
Survey of California, of Jurassic fossils in 
the auriferous slates. It was conjectured, 
reasoning from their association in the 
Black Hills, that Silurian beds would ulti- 
mately be found associated with the Car- 
boniferous, but the discovery of Devonian 
fossils in central Nevada by Engelmann in 
1859 had not yet been made public. It 
was known in a general way that igneous 
rocks, granites and metamorphic rocks 
were widely distributed throughout the in- 
terior, but of their mutual relations, or 
the actual structure of the mountain ranges, 
there was little but surmise, and not very 
much of that. 

As regards the physical conditions of the 
interior, although the region east of Salt 
Lake was known to be well watered, in the 
desert region of the Great Basin to the 
westward, it was not supposed that cam- 
paigning was possible, except along certain 
lines of emigrant travel, and on these it 
was known that there were inconveniently 
long stretches without water. 


SCIENCE. 


43 


King Survey. The Geological Explo- 
ration of the 40th Parallel, as it was offi- 
cially known, was entirely the creation of 
its chief, Clarence King. The first concep- 
tion of the feasibility of making a geologi- 
cal cross section of this, the longest moun- 
tain system in the world, at its widest part, 
had come to him during his long three 
months’ journey with an emigrant train 
from Missouri to the Sierra Nevada, which 
he undertook in the summer of 1861. His 
personal influence had, during the winter 
of 1866-7, secured the passage of a bill 
through Congress creating the 40th Parallel 
Survey, whose duty it was to examine into 
and report upon the geology and mineral 
resources of the country to be opened up 
by the Pacific railroads. At his suggestion 
it was placed under the official direction of 
Gen. A. A. Humphreys, Chief of Engineers, 
in whose scientific ability he had the great- 
est confidence. 

His plan of work contained much that 
was novel and startling, especially in con- 
sideration of the desert character of the re- 
gion in which it was to be carried out. 
This plan contemplated making a topo- 
graphical map of the region surveyed, not 
simply a map of meander lines, with 
sketches in hachures of the hillsides, which 
was the only form of relief map known at 
that time, but a contour map on the same 
general plan with the Survey maps of the 
present day, controlled by systems of pri- 
mary and secondary triangulations, the 
relative elevations to be determined by fre- 
quent observations of cistern barometers. 
The scale adopted was four miles to the inch. 
Besides the usual botanical and zoological 
assistants, an excellent photographer was 
attached to the party. The area to be sur- 
veyed, which was always to include the 
line of the projected railroad, was divided 
into rectangular blocks or atlas sheets, about 
165 miles in length by over 100 miles in 
width. The original plan contemplated 


44 


three, but ultimately five of such blocks 
were surveyed. 

The party rendezvoused in California in 
the early part of the summer of 1867, and 
commenced work at the east base of the 
Sierra Nevada in August of that year, with 
J. D. Hague, Arnold Hague and §. F. 
Emmons as geological assistants to Mr. 
King. The following winter was spent in 
Virginia City in a study of the Comstock 
lode, where the mines, then about 1,000 feet 
deep, had already produced 100 millions of 
dollars. In the following year the work 
had become more systematized, and, by 
parcelling it out in several parties each 
consisting of a geologist and topographer, 
by the close of an unusually long season it 
had been carried entirely across the Great 
Basin to the western shore of Great Salt 
Lake. In 1869 the remaining desert ranges 
of Utah, the great Wasatch Range and 
the western end of the Uinta Mountains 
were surveyed. This completed the work 
of the Survey as originally planned, and the 
party was then located at New Haven for 
the purposes of working up their large col- 
lections of rocks and fossils and platting 
their notes both geologic and topographic. 

Mr. James D. Hague had detached him- 
self from the field parties in 1868 to make 
a special study of the mining districts, and 
the result of his work, with some contribu- 
tions from other members of the party, was 
published in 1870 as Vol. III. of the Sur- 
vey reports, entitled ‘Mining Industry.’ 
The most important part of this volume is 
the elaborate study of the great Comstock 
lode, which has served as a model for all 
subsequent monographic studies of min- 
ing districts in this country, the only 
country in which such work has _ been 
done. In Chapter VII. of this volume, 
on the Green River coal basin, Mr. King 
defined the stratigraphical position of the 
coal-bearing rocks as undoubtedly Creta- 
ceous, and gave a brief preliminary sketch 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vout. V. No. 106. 


of the general geological column as de= 
veloped in the Wasatch Mountains, which 
he estimated as 56,000 feet in thickness 
below the Cretaceous. 

Stratigraphical work in Nevada and Utah 
among the isolated mountain ranges, subse- 
quently designated by Gilbert as the Basin 
Range system, was exceptionally difficult 
because these ranges were separated from 
each other by valleys 10 to 15 miles in 
width covered with an unknown depth of 
Quaternary detritus. Thus no stratigraph- 
ical sequence of rocks could be carried from 
one range to the other, and until the Wasatch 
Range was reached there was practically 
no starting point for the geological column, 
for most of the fossils collected were of new 
species, and their horizons could only be 
finally determined after a long comparative 
study. 

Work at New Haven was abruptly inter- 
rupted in midsummer of 1870 by telegraphic 
orders from Gen. Humphreys to take the 
field at once, as Congress, without solicita- 
tion from any one, had passed the usual 
appropriation to continue the field work. 
As it was then too late to get together the 
necessary outfit for a campaign in the high 
mountain regions to the east of the Wasatch, 
the work of that season was devoted to a 
study of the extinct volcanoes of the Pacific 
Coast, which were apportioned, Mt. Shasta 
to Mr. King, Mt. Hood to Mr. Arnold 
Hague, and Mt. Rainier to myself. This 
work was interrupted by the winter snows, _ 
and, as Gen. Humphreys decided that the 
connection of these mountains with the 
40th parallel was too remote to admit of its 
being taken up again, the only immediate 
fruit of the summer’s geological campaign 
was a paper in the American Journal of 
Science (June, 1871), announeing the dis- 
covery of active glaciers on their slopes, 
the first then known within the boundaries 
of the United States. 

In the summers of 1871 and 1872 the 


JANUARY 8, 1897. ] 


work of the survey was carried eastward to 
the Great Plains, taking in the great Eocene 
beds of the Green River basin; the Uinta 
Range, unique on account of its east and 
west trend and its anticlinal structure; the 
Elkhead Mountains with their remarkable 
development of rare varieties of igneous 
rocks; the inclosed Mesozoic and Tertiary 
valleys of the North Park and the Laramie 
Plains; the Medicine Bow Range, with its 
series of Algonkian rocks, then classed as 
Huronian; and finally the northern exten- 
sion of the Front or Colorado Range, with 
its granite core flanked by upturned Paleo- 
zoic rocks, which had thinned from 30,000 
feet in the Wasatch section to less than 
2,000 feet, and were only visible at a few 
points, being overlapped by Mesozoic or 
Tertiary beds, as the case might be. 

The thorough study and discussion of the 
material gathered during these years of 
field exploration necessarily occupied much 
time, but the then-existing conditions pro- 
tracted the work much more than would be 
the case at the present day. The topo- 
graphical base of the five large atlas sheets 
was not completed until 1874. In the 
summer of that year a member of the Sur- 
vey visited Europe and conferred with the 
directors of the leading Geological Surveys 
there on methods of treatment and of publi- 
cation. 

Microscopical petrography was then an 
unknown science in this country, and one 
result of this visit was that Prof. Ferd. 
Zirkel, of Leipzig, then the highest authority 
in this branch of geology, was induced to 
visit this country to examine the collections 
of igneous and crystalline rocks and take 
notes on their field habits. Chips for mak- 
ing thin sections were taken back by him 
on his return to Germany for systematic 
microscopical study, and his report (Vol. 
VI.) published in 1876 was the first work 
of this kind on American rocks. 

The final determination of the fossils 


SCIENCE. 


45 


collected was confided to F. B. Meek, James 
Hall and R. P. Whitfield, at that time the 


_ only paleontologists competent to undertake 


so important a work, but they could only 
devote to this task moments of leisure from 
other and to them more pressing work, 
consequently it was nearly four years after 
the completion of field work before the 
geological material was finally ready for 
publication. The volume on Descriptive 
Geology by A. Hague and S. F..-Emmons 
with the final sheets of the geological atlas 
went to press in 1876, and in the following 
year was written Mr. King’s masterly 
summary of the whole work, designated 
‘Systematic Geology,’ which discussed not 
only the general history and structure of 
the Cordilleran system, but also such sub- 
jects of general theoretical interest as the 
‘Genesis of granite and crystalline schists,’ 
the ‘fusion, genesis and classification of 
voleanie rocks,’ ete. 

The distinguishing character of this Sur- 
vey, aS compared with the other organiza- 
tions, was that its work was founded on a 
complete and comprehensive plan adopted 
before taking the field, which in all its es- 
sential features was systematically followed 
out during the ten years of its existence. 

Hayden Survey. The names of Hayden 
and Meek had long been identified with the 
geology of the Missouri Valley and the 
Great Plains, and when it was found in 
1867 that of the appropriation for legisla- 
tive expenses of the Territory of Nebraska 
there remained an unexpected balance of 
$5,000 it was very wisely given to Dr. 
Hayden to expend in geological researches 
in that territory. From this modest be- 
ginning grew, by a process of gradual evo- 
lution, what became finally known as the 
United States Geological and Geographical 
Survey of the Territories, the catalogue of 
whose reports constitutes a pamphlet of 
fifty pages. F. B. Meek and Dr. C. A. 
White assisted Dr. Hayden during the first 


46 


two years. In 1869 James Stevenson was 
appointed executive officer, a position which 
he continued to fill with credit until the 
end. In this year Persifor Frazer, jr., was 
attached to the party as mining geologist, 
and the line of geological travel, for such 
was the character of their work during the 
early years, led along the foothills of the 
Rocky Mountains from Cheyenne to Santa 
Fé. In 1870 it ran westward from Chey- 
enne through the South Pass to Fort 
Bridger, and back along the north slope of 
the Uinta Mountains. 

In 1871, for the first time, two topo- 
graphical assistants were attached to the 
party, and Dr. A. C. Peale made his first 
field season as mineralogist. The line of 
travel this year led from Ogden, Utah, via. 
Fort Hall, Idaho, to Fort Ellis (Bozeman), 
Montana. From there an excursion was 
made into the geyser region of the Upper 
Yellowstone, and the enthusiasm aroused 
by the view of these wonders of nature, and 
the representations of Dr. Hayden on his 
return, induced Congress to set the region 
apart as a National Park. 

In 1872 the force was greatly aug- 
mented, the names of Holmes as artist 
and Gannett as astronomer first appeared 
upon the rolls of the Survey, and F. H. 
Bradley did a season’s work as geologist 
and paleontologist. Work was conducted 
in two parties in the same general region 
that was visited in the previous year. 

In the spring of 1873 James T. Gard- 
ner, who had been chief topographer 
of the 40th Parallel Exploration, was en- 
gaged as chief geographer, and the areal 
survey of Colorado was commenced. Work 
was carried on in three or more parties, 
each in charge of a geologist or of a topo- 
grapher, as the case might be; but, as on the 
40th Parallel Survey, geologist and topo- 
grapher worked side by side, and the one 
had to suit his work to the exigencies of 
that of the other. This system had cer- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 106. 


tain disadvantages, and on the 40th par- 
allel it was sometimes found necessary to 
go back to study key points. Such a trip 
was made by Mr. King and the speaker to 
the Wasatch Mountains in 1873. 

A. D. Wilson, who had also been topog- 
rapher on the King Survey, joined the 
Hayden Survey in 1874. The areal survey 
of Colorado under the Hayden Survey was 
continued for four years, and finally com- 
pleted in 1876. 

Among the geologists, Marvine, who early 
showed great ability, had charge of the 
northern division for two seasons, but died 
before he had written up his second season’s 
work. Dr. F. M. Endlich, who had studied 
in Germany, where he served on the Geo- 
logical Survey of Baden, joined the Hay- 
den Survey in 1874, and continued to the 
end in 1878. InColorado he worked mostly 
in the southern part of the area mapped, 
as he was supposed to have a better knowl- 
edge of igneous rocks than the others, but 
in later years the practical test of his work 
by other geologists in the field has proved 
it to be less reliable than that of any of 
the other geologists. 

Dr. A. C. Peale worked mostly in the 
central part of the State, and as he gained 
in experience proved himself a careful and 
intelligent worker. The genius of the party 
was W. H. Holmes, who, starting as an ar- 
tist without previous geological training, 
gradually developed, as a result of his study 
of nature, a remarkable aptitude for struc- 
tural geology. His drawings of mountains 
have never been equalled by any other artist 
in their combination of fidelity to nature, 
with artistic effect and keen insight into 
geological structure. The paleontologists, 
C. A. White, F. B. Meek, KE. D. Cope and Leo 
Lesquereux, contributed in their special 
lines to the work in Colorado, the first also 
doing considerable field work. Other spec- 
ialists were attached to the parties at dif- 
ferent times, and the sons of many promi- 


JANUARY 8, 1897. ] 


nent men in the Hast were temporarily at- 
tached to the various parties. W.H. Jack- 
son, the eminent photographer, was also a 
member of the Survey. 

Dr. Hayden’s plan was to make the Sur- 
vey as widely popular as possible, and one 
method of accomplishing this result was to 
publish a volume every year, abounding in 
excellent illustrations from the pen of 
Holmes, which were gratuitiously distribu- 
ted in very largenumbers. One consequence 
of this method was that the geologists did 
not have time to thoroughly digest their 
material, or correlate and compare it one 
with another. It is much to be regretted 
that in consequence no summary like the 
‘Systematic Geology’ of King has ever 
been written of the Hayden work. The 
beautifully colored maps in the atlas of 
Colorado, which were compiled and drawn 
by Holmes, answer in one sense as such a 
summary, for they indicate graphically 
many general conclusions that are not to be 
found in the annual reports. The latter, 
on the other hand, often have a different 
system of geographical nomenclature from 
that given on the map, which renders them 
sometimes almost unintelligible. 

The Colorado areal work joined that of 
the 40th parallel onthesouth. In the years 
1877 and 1878 the areal work was trans- 
ferred to Wyoming and carried northward 
from the northern limit of the 40th parellel 
maps northward to the Yellowstone Park. 
On this work St. John served one season in 
the Wind River country and in 1878 Holmes 
and Peale made an extensive study of the 
phenomena of the Yellowstone Park. Even 
photography has not accomplished, in all 
the time that has elapsed since, any im- 
provement on the admirable illustrations 
drawn by Holmes of the geological wonders 
of this region. 

Powell Survey. In the summer of 1869 
Maj. J. W. Powell made, under the auspices 
of the Smithsonian, his famous boat explo- 


SCIENCE. 


AT 


ration of the mysterious depths of the can- 
yons of the Colorado River, starting from 
Green River City, on the Union Pacific 
Railroad, in May, and emerging from the 
mouth of the dark canyon nearly 900 miles 
below, three months later, a journey that 
is unequalled for its courage and daring in 
the annals of geographical exploration. 

Already in the two preceding summers 
he had visited the valleys of many of the 
streams tributary to the Green River, and 
during 1870 and 1871 his explorations of 
the canyons were continued, still under the 
same auspices. With the narrative report 
of these explorations, published in 1875, ap- 
peared an admirable discussion of erosion 
and land sculpture in its relation to geologi- 
eal structure, defining for the first time 
base-levels of erosion. This, with the similar 
discussions of Gilbert, based on his studies 
of the Colorado Plateau region in 1871-2, 
have formed the starting point of modern 
physical geography. 

In no part of the world can there be 
found so admirable a region to study the 
elementary processes of stratigraphical ge- 
ology as in that traversed by Powell’s ex- 
ploration. It is, so to speak, nature’s text 
book of geology, whose pages lie open to 
the inspection of any one who possesses the 
physical courage and endurance to reach 
the depths of its canyons. Hence, Powell’s 
geographical exploration was at the same 
time a valuable contribution to geology, in 
that it opened the road to so important a 
field that had hitherto been supposed to be 
inaccessible except to the birds of the air. 

The Powell organization soon became a 
geological exploration, receiving its appro- 
priations directly from Congress, and as- 
suming the title of Second Division of the 
United States Geological and Geographical 
Survey of the Territories. It did not at- 
tempt to make an areal survey of this in- 
teresting region, but devoted itself to mono- 
graphic studies of some of the most novel 


48 


and striking features of its geology. In 
1873 and ’74 Powell himself, assisted by 
Dr. C. A. White, extended the geological 
observations made along the banks of the 
upper Green River into the surrounding 
country, and in 1876 published his report 
upon the geology of the eastern Uinta 
Mountains. 

Under this organization also Mr. Gilbert 
made, in the summer of 1775, his classic 
study of the Henry Mountains, the most 
prominent among the laccolitic groups that 
project above the Colorado Plateau, and in- 
troduced for the first time the term laccolite 
into geological literature. This effectually 
refuted Scrope’s dictum, which at one time 
was almost an axiom among Europe geol- 
ogists, that igneous eruptions do not exert 
any elevatory force upon the surrounding 
sedimentary beds through which they have 
been extruded. 

The final work of the Powell Survey was 
the study, in 1875-6 and 7, of the High 

plateaus of Utah by Captain C. E. Dutton, 
an officer of the Ordinance Corps of the 
United States, on detached duty; he also 
made the petrographical examination of the 
igneous rocks brought in by Gilbert from 
the Henry Mountains. To thisreport, which 
was published in 1880, there was appended 
a prefatory note by Major Powell, giving a 
general sketch of the orographic movements 
recorded by him during his investigations 
in the Plateau region. 

Wheeler Survey. I hayvereserved my men- 
tion of the work of the Wheeler Survey to 
the last, although chronologically its geo- 
logical work antedates much that has al- 
ready been mentioned, for the reason that 
as an organization, as indicated by its title 
(United States Geographical Surveys West 
of the 100th Meridian), it did not recognize 
geology as an essential part of its work. 

The Wheeler Survey was indirectly an 
outcome of the 40th Parellel. When two 
seasons’ campaigning of the latter organiza- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 106.: 


tion had proved the practical feasibility of 
conducting such work in the Western moun- 
tains, Lieutenant G. M. Wheeler, of the 
United States Engineers, secured the con- 
sent of his chief to undertake, in the sum- 
mer of 1869,a military reconnaissance for 
topographical purposes in southwest Nevada 
and western Utah. Although no geologist 
was attached to this first expedition, visits 
were made to various mining districts, but 
the reports thereon, like the ordinary min- 
ing reports of the time, were of little or no 
geological value. From this gradually 
grew up an important organization sup- 
ported by direct appropriations from Con- 
gress, which contemplated the making of a 
topographical map of the whole area of the 
United States west of the 100th meridian, 
and which in point of numbers finally far 
exceeded any of the other organizations. 

Its work was carried on continuously 
from 1871 to 1879, and produced a large 
number of topographical maps of the west- 
ern country, a few of which were afterwards 
colored geologically. 

Wheeler did not approve of the system 
of topographical survey adopted by the 40th 
Parallel and subsequent surveys, but con- 
ducted his work after the manner of earlier 
military expeditions, by making meander 
lines along the valleys, instead of triangula- 
tions from the summits of the ridges, the 
principal basis of his details of topograph- 
ical structure. His maps, morever, were 
drawn in hachures instead of in contour 
lines. 

In spite of the somewhat discouraging 
peculiarities of organization, the geological 
work done under this survey reached a 
high standard of excellence, owing to the 
ability of the men to whom it was entrusted. 
First among these was Gilbert, who as chief 
geologist, worked in the Great Basin of Ne- 
vada, in eastern California and southwestern 
Utah in the summers of 1871 and ’72, visit- 
ing the plateau region around the mouth of 


JANUARY 8, 1897.] 


the Canyon of the Colorado in the former 
year; he had A. R. Marvine as his assist- 
ant in 1871, and HE. E. Howell in 1872. In 
1873-74 he extended his investigations 
further south into New Mexico and Arizona, 
and in the following year left to join the 
Powell Survey. 

Gilbert in his reports on the work of these 
years (published 1875) did not pursue the 
descriptive method in presenting the results 
of his geological observations, but discussed 
them at once as a whole under general 
heads. 

In this way he first characterized what 
he designated the ‘ Basin Range’ system of 
mountain uplift, as brought about mainly 
by faulting, in contrast to the structure of 
the Appalachian Mountains, which is pro- 
duced mainly by plication. The geologists 
of the 40th Parallel regarded the uplift of the 
narrow ranges of Nevada, from which the 
term was derived, to be produced primarily 
by folding, and that the faulting was a later 
phase in Tertiary or post-Tertiary time, in 
contradistinction to the more modern inter- 
pretation of Basin Range structure as a 
system of tilted beds without plication. 

His volume also contains able discussions 
on land sculpture and erosion, on the Gla- 
cial period, and the conditions attending 
the drying up of the ancient lake which 
once filled the Utah basin, and to which he 
gave the name of Lake Bonneville, from 
the explorer who first determined that the 
basin has no exterior drainage. He also 
had a chapter on recent volcanic manifesta- 
tions and a section of the rocks shown in 
the Canyon of the Colorado. 

In 1878 Prof. J. J. Stevenson was also 
employed on the Survey and made a rapid 
reconnaissance through the greater part of 
‘Colorado. Hurried as this work necessarily 
was, his report shows the grasp of mind of 
the trained geologist, but his results were 
soon superseded by the more detailed areal 
work of the Hayden Survey. 


SCIENCE. 


49 


In 1874 E. D. Cope did some field work 
as vertebrate paleontologist, and in 1875 
Jules Marcou was attached to one of the 
Californian parties and determined the 
Tertiary age of the Tejon beds. In 1876 
A. R. Conkling was attached to the Survey 
as geological observer, and 1877 J. A. 
Church made a second study of the Com- 
stock lode, the results of which appeared 
in a private publication. 

J. J. Stevenson was again attached to 
the Survey in 1878 and 1879, with I. C. 
Russell as assistant, during which time he 
had an independent party under his own 
charge, and he was making valuable con- 
tributions to the geology of southeastern 
Colorado and northern New Mexico, when 
by legislative enactments the Survey came 
to an end. 

From a geological point of view the sys- 
tem pursued on the Wheeler Survey was 
less advantageous and, in proportion to the 
expense, less productive of permanent ad- 
ditions to geological knowledge of the 
country involved than either of the other 
organizations. The parties as a rule were 
under the charge of a military officer, who 
might have ideas of military discipline not 
always consonant with the best interests of 
geological work. at 

Black Hills Surveys. Among military re- 
connaissances the more important from the 
geological point of view were those uuder- 
taken as a result of the mining excitement 
in the Black Hills, of the attacks upon 
miners by the Sioux Indians, within whose 
reservation they lay, and their consequent 
appeals for government aid and for the 
opening of the reservation for white settle- 
ment. 

The reconnaissance across the southern 
end of the hills, returning around their 
northern flanks, which was under the com- 
mand of Capt. Wm. Ludlow, in the sum- 
mer of 1874, was accompanied by N. H. 
Winchell and Geo. B. Grinnell as geolo- 


50 


gists. It was their first experience among 
Western geological formations, and consid- 
ering the rapidity of the march it is not 
surprising that no considerable additions 
were made to the geological knowledge of 
the region. 

In the summer of 1875 and 1876, how- 
ever, Wm. P. Jenney and Henry Newton 
were sent out under military escort to in- 
vestigate the mineral resources and geology 
of the Hills, in order to determine whether 
the reports of the great mineral wealth 
were well founded. The untimely death 
of Mr. Newton, who was a most promising 
young geologist, delayed the publication of 
the scientific results of this investigation, 
which was finally accomplished in 1880, 
under the editorial supervision of Mr. G. 
K. Gilbert, who kindly undertook the very 
delicate task of putting in form the field 
notes of Mr. Newton. 

Among other reconnaissances to which 
geologists were attached may be mentioned 
those in 1873, of Capt. W. A. Jones, in 
northwestern Wyoming, with T. B. Com- 
stock as geologist, and that of Lieut. H. 
H. Ruffner, into the Ute county around the 
San Juan Mountains, on which Prof. H. 
Hawn and L. Hawn served in geological 
capacities. 

In the year 1875 E. S. Dana and G. B. 
Grinnell accompanied the party of Capt. 
Wm. Ludlow on a reconnaissance from 
Carroll, Montana, to the Yellowstone Park. 
On this trip they got glimpses of the iso- 
lated groups of mountains rising out of the 
plains, such as Little Rockies, Crazy Moun- 
tain, ete., that have yielded such interest- 
ing petrographical data of later years. 
They collected Saurian remains in beds 
overlying the Fox Hills Cretaceous at the 
mouth of the Judith River and made many 
interesting observations on probable uncon- 
formities in the Bridger Mountains and 
elsewhere. 

The eagerness with which geologists have 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 106. 


pursued their investigations into the new 
fields of geological observation, opened up 
by these various explorations, may be com- 
pared in a certain sense with that which 
takes possession of prospectors and miners 
upon the discovery of some new and extra- 
ordinarily rich mining district. 

In their emulations to obtain possession 
of some of the stores of scientific wealth 
which nature has exposed to view, and to. 
gain the reward of scientific reputation 
which is accorded to the first discoverer, 
they are sometimes inclined to neglect the 
rights of priority which scientific courtesy 
accords to the first occupant of a new field. 

Thus the publication of Powell’s geo- 
logical report was, in so far as it related to 
the Uinta Mountains, in contravention of 
a more or less definite agreement among 
the heads of the various surveys not to en- 
croach upon the areas covered by the maps 
of the 40th Parallel Survey, since the work 
of this Survey was strictly confined within 
previously prescribed limits, while the whole 
West lay open to the others. Powell’s re- 
port was published in 1876, and the topo- 
graphic base of the 40th Parallel map of the 
Uinta Mountain region had been used, by 
permission but without acknowledgment, 
in the preparation of the map which accom- 
panied that report. Furthermore, during 
the summer of 1875 the geologically colored 
map of the same region, prepared by the 
geologists of the 40th Parallel, was in press 
in the cartographic publishing house of 
Julius Bien, and upon its final completion 
on November 12, 1875, Mr. King sent out 
to the leading geologists of the country 12 
copies of these maps signed and dated by 
the authors, in the hope of securing to them 
the priority of record which was their due. 

Already in 1873 friction had sprung up 
between the Hayden and Wheeler Surveys. 
Neither was willing to accord to the other 
the exclusive right to survey any particular 
part of the geologically unexplored regions, 


JANUARY 8, 1897. ] 


and each claimed the privilege of stretching 
its work over the whole unsurveyed area 
of the West. ‘Thus in this year each party 
had geological and topographical parties 
covering the same ground in Colorado, 
which was a deplorable dissipation of en- 
ergy when so much ground was untouched 
by either party. As time went on, this 
friction increased to such an extent that the 
influence of one party with Congress was 
used to curtail the appropriations allotted 
to the other. 

At first glance it would seem that such 
disagreement among men, whose sole ob- 
ject was avowedly the advancement of 
science, was most unfortunate, but here 
again the truth of the old saying about an 
‘ill wind’ was again proved, for Congress, 
unable to decide of itself on the merits of 
the contending parties, referred the matter 
to a committee of the National Academy of 
Sciences, and, acting on their report, passed 
a bill terminating all the previously exist- 
isting explorations and creating the United 
States Geological Survey. Thus, instead 
of a number of rival organizations with no 
necessity of concordant action between 
them, and each liable to pass out of exist- 
ance at any time by the failure of Congress 
to pass its annual appropriation, there has 
resulted the present organization, which 
forms a constituent part of the Department 
of the Interior, and has thereby acquired a 
permanence which invites the best scientific 
talent of the country to take part in its 
work. 8. F. Emmons. 

U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 


PROFESSOR EUGEN BAUMANN. 

On the 2d of November, 1896, occurred 
the death of Dr. Eugen Baumann, professor 
of chemistry in the medical faculty of the 
University of Freiburg, in Baden. The de- 
ceased was born in Wurtemberg, in 1846, 
and obtained his early education at Stutt- 
gart. After studying chemistry, physics 


SCIENCE. 51 


and natural sciences, at the Stuttgart Poly- 
technicum, where he worked under Fehling, 
he served an apprenticeship as apothecary 
in his father’s employment, and in 1870 
passed the pharmacists’ examination at 
Tubingen. This was the occasion of his 
first meeting with Hoppe-Seyler, to whose 
encouragement and inspiration his career 
as an investigator owed its beginning. A 
life-long friendship was formed between the 
two men, and only a few months before his 
death Baumann paid fitting tribute to his 
great teacher in an obituary published with 
Kossel.* 

Already an assistant to Hoppe-Seyler, 
Baumann obtained his doctor’s degree at 
Tubingen, in 1872, with a dissertation on 
vinyl compounds. When Hoppe-Seyler 
was called to take charge of the instruction 
in physiological chemistry in the newly 
opened German university at Strassburg, 
Baumann accompanied him thither as his 
first assistant, and in 1876 became ‘ Privat- 
docent’ in chemistry. At the opening of 
DuBois Reymond’s new physiological insti- 
tute at Berlin, in 1877, Baumann was ap- 
pointed to have charge of the chemical 
laboratory ; upon his departure from Strass- 
burg the medical faculty honored him by 
conferring the degree of doctor medic. 
honoris causa. In 1882 Baumann was ap- 
pointed professor extraordinarius in the 
Berlin medical faculty, and in October, 
1883, he accepted a call as successor to v. 
Babo at Freiburg, where he labored with- 
out interruption until his death. He de- 
clined the call to succeed Hoppe-Seyler at 
Strassburg and only recently the title of 
‘ Hofrat ’ was bestowed upon him. 

Baumann’s earliest researches were in- 
tended to throw light upon the behavior of 
sarcosin in the organism. ‘To this period 
belong the beginnings of the researches on 
the aromatic substances of the body—a 


* Zeitschrift fiir Physiologische Chemie, Band 21. 
ft Ann. Chem. Pharm. Band 163. S. 308. 


52 


field of work which occupied Baumann’s 
attention during his entire life. The ob- 
servation that phenol bodies constantly 
present in the urine are not derived from 
the aromatic substances in the vegetable 
foods was followed by the important discov- 
ery that these bodies are excreted combined 
with sulphuric acid in the form of ethereal 
sulphates. With the isolation of these 
compounds (¢. g., phenyl- and cresylsul- 
phates) there was introduced into physiol- 
ogy the knowledge of a new class of syn- 
theses in the organism, comparable to the 
well known synthesis of hippuric acid. 
The finding of phenol as a putrefaction prod- 
uct of proteids led to the announcement 
that the aromatic substances of the urine 
largely owe their origin to the putrefactive 
decomposition taking place in the alimen- 
tary tract. The products, many of them 
strongly toxic, are absorbed and reappear 
in relatively harmless combination with 
sulphuric acid. Ethereal sulphates were 
shown to be absent in the urine when in- 
testinal putrefaction is totally suppressed, 
and physiologists have come to look upon 
the quantity of combined sulphuric acid ex- 
ereted as the best indication of the inten- 
sity of the decomposition in the intestine. 
The so-called ‘indican’ of the urine was 
also drawn within the scope of these inves- 
tigations and was shown to be quite distinct 
from the vegetable glucoside indican, al- 
though yielding indigo on oxidation. After 
Jaffé had demonstrated that the chromogen 
of the urineis derived from indol, Baumann 
and Brieger proved that it is in reality an 
ethereal compound of indoxyl with sul- 
phurie acid, analogous to those already 
mentioned. It is scarcely necessary to re- 
mark that these discoveries have had a far- 
reaching influence on practical medicine. 
The behavior of sulphur compounds in 
the animal organism was another favorite 
theme to which Baumann and his pupils 
contributed extensively. The study of the 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No. 106. 


compounds of mercapturic acid which can 
be obtained under appropriate conditions 
in the urine, yielded the proof that there 
is formed in intermediary proteid metabol- 
ism an atom-complex closely related to the 
organic sulphur compound cystin, excreted 
as such in the rare cases of so-called cysti- 
nuria. It was shown that the cystin is ac- 
companied under these circumstances by 
at least two diamines (putrescine and ca- 
daverine) which are found in both urine 
and feces. The peculiar perversion of 
metabolism known as alcaptonuria was 
also shown to owe its peculiarities in many 
instances to a dioxyphenylacetic acid, the 
synthesis of which was accomplished in the 
Freiburg laboratory. 

Among Baumann’s pharmacological in- 
vestigations may be mentioned in par- 
ticular his researches on the sulfones, which 
led to the discovery of several widely used 
hypnotics : sulfonal, trional, etc. Together 
with Kast and others he studied their 
physiological action and demonstrated that 
only those are effective which are trans- 
formed in the body, the intensity of their 
action being dependent upon the number of 
ethyl groups present. 

Scarcely more than a year ago the finding 
of iodine as a normal constituent of the 
animal body and the isolation of thyroiodin 
(iodothyrin), the physiologically active _ 
substance of the thyroid glands, aroused 
the interest and admiration of the medical 
world. Baumann was actively engaged in 
the solution of many problems suggested 
by this last great discovery when, after an 
illness of only two days, death put an end 
to a brief but brilliant career. 

It is impossible in a brief sketch to give 
more than an outline of some of Baumann’s 
contributions to physiological chemistry. 
His loss will be felt not alone by chemists, 
but also in the broader circle of investiga- 
tors in scientific medicine; for Baumann 
exercised a wide influence as a teacher, as 


JANUARY 8, 1897.] 


well as through his permanent researches. 
Among those who benefited by his guid- 
ance may be mentioned the names of 
Brieger, Goldmann, Herter, Hurthle, Kast, 
C. Th. Morner, Preusse, ROhmann, Schotten 
vy. Udranszky, N. Wedenski. One who 
came into personal contact with the man 
could not fail to admire his untiring devo- 
tion to science, and to feel grateful for the 
inspiration derived from him. 
LAFAYETTE B. MENDEL. 
YALE UNIVERSITY. 


ALFRED TRESCA. 

THE session of November 27, 1896, of the 
‘Société d’Encouragement pour I Industrie 
nationale,’ under the presidency of M. 
Mascart, was devoted mainly to ceremonies 
in memory of the late M. Alfred Tresca, re- 
cently deceased. The discourse pronounced 
by M. Haton de la Goupilliére was the main 
feature of the evening programme. 

Monsieur A. Tresca was the son of the 
distinguished investigator, Henri Tresca, 
who was the successor of General Morin as 
the head of the Conservatoire des Arts et 
Métiers, and who followed and improved 
upon the methods of the latter in the prose- 
cution of researches of importance in the 
field of applied science, and especially in the 
investigation of the characteristics of the 
materials of construction and of the most 
important classes of prime movers and other 
machines. The younger Tresca followed in 
the same path and gave his life to similarly 
valuable work. The three men have lead 
rather than followed in all developments in 
their department of work during the cen- 
tury. The work of Morin on the properties 
of the materials of engineering and his ex- 
tensive introduction, in original ways, o¢ 
graphical methods of illustration, the exten- 
sive study by the elder Tresca of the heat- 
motors, and the researches of the younger 
Tresca in applied physics and engineering, 
have been the principal contributions of the 


SCIENCE. 


53 


Conservatoire, for many years past, to their 
department of science. It is an interesting 
case of ‘intellectual heredity,’ as the writer 
has called it. A personal acquaintance, 
slight, but quite sufficient to confirm the 
conclusions here reached, impressed the 
writer also with the fact that the influence 
of each upon his successor, in this respect, 
was deep and most effective of result. The 
three men, talented, industrious and per- 
sistent, by similar methods accomplished 
similarly useful work. ‘ 

As M. Haton says: “Inheritor of a name 
illustrious in science and honored also for 
services rendered our society, he has firmly 
upheld its prestige. Trained in the school 
of his father, Henri Tresca, he learned the 
traditions of industrial science, that difficult 
science, and, at the same time, traditions of 
honor and of labor to which he was always 
faithful.” He was always inclined to avoid 
public notice, “but his colleagues, his 
students, unanimously render just tribute 
both to the extent of his work and to its 
value in instruction.” The address closes 
with an affectionate and graceful tribute of 
esteem and admiration, of grief and of eu- 
logy. R. H. T. 


CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 
ANCIENT MAYAN HISTORY. 


A YucatTecan author, Don Juan Fran- 
cisco Molina Solis, has recently written a 
meritorious history of Yucatan (Historia 
del Descubrimento y Conquista de Yucatan, 
pp. 911. Merida, 1896). By way of intro- 
duction it has a sketch of the ancient his- 
story of the peninsula, covering sixty pages 

This discusses the early immigrations, 
the foundation of the great cities, the estab- 
lishment of the confederation which for 
some generations appears to have controlled 
the peninsula and allowed a peaceful de- 
velopment of its culture, and its unfortunate 
violent dissolution leading to the destruc- 
tion of the former mart of Chichen Itza 


54 


and the capital, Mayapan. This break- 
down took place in the first half of the fi 
teenth century, probably about 1420. 

The author presents the surviving frag- 
ments of this story in clear and attractive 
language, basing his statements on the 
the best authorities and some unpublished 
documents. His work as a whole is of 
high character, and will take a worthy 
rank in the historical literature of Spanish 
America. 


PRIMITIVE DRILLS AND DRILLING. 


To bore a hole seems a simple affair, 
but it took mana long time to learn how 
to doit. Mr. J. D. McGuire, in the Report 
of the United States National Museum for 
1894 (just issued), devotes a hundred and 
twenty-five pages to the subject. He claims, 
indeed, in his opening sentence that ‘‘ The 
earliest remains of man are found associated 
with implements of his manufacture in 
which holies have been artificially perfo- 
rated.”’ This is incorrect, as the remains of 
the Chellean period are not perforated, and 
he himself offers no evidence to that effect. 
Nor does he give the right explanation for 
the ‘batons of command’ of the cave 
period. They are arrow-straighteners and 
are still used by the Eskimo. 

These are small matters. The article in 
all its leading features is clear, profound 
and convincing. He surveys all the forms 
of drills and hole-making implements of 
primitive times—pins, bodkins, needles, 
awls, ete.—and illustrates how they were 
used and for what purpose. Fire-drills are 
abundantly represented, and the theory 
that the Egyptian Sam is a drill is ably de- 
fended. Numerous cuts render the text 
easily comprehended, where mechanical de- 
vices are discussed. 


THE STATE AND ITS SOIL. 


Pror. FREDERICK RATZEL is one of the 
best known students of the relations of 
earth to man. His prize essay, ‘ Der Staat 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vox. V. No. 106. 


und sein Boden, geographisch betrachtet’ 
(Leipzig, 1896, pp. 127), is a careful dis- 
cussion of the influence which the soil and 
its accessories bear upon the character and 
development of the inhabitants. It con- 
siders the state as a ‘territorial organism,’ 
explains the connection between the nat- 
ural and political areas, traces the develop- 
ment of this connection, and maintains the 
nigh inseparable association of the two. 

Prof. Ratzel is always a clear, agreeable 
writer. His learning is adequate to his 
subject. To many readers, however, this 
and his other works will seem to be a little 
arid and incomplete, from the absence of 
warmth of touch, of psychical sympathy, 
or, perhaps, want of consideration for the 
predominance of the will and the emotions 
in the affairs and the evolution of mankind. 

D. G. Brinton. 

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 
THE DAVY-FARADAY RESEARCH LABORATORY. 


THE Davyy-Faraday Research Laboratory, 
which we have already described, was opened 
by the Prince of Wales on December 21st. The 
laboratory, which Dr. Ludwig Mond has pre- 
sented to the Royal Institution, has cost for its 
building, equipment and endowment about 
$500,000. The laboratory is to be devoted to 
research work in physics and chemistry, and 
Lord Rayleigh and Prof. Dewar have consented 
to undertake the directorship. Dr. Mond made 
an address in the course of which, according to 
the report in the London Times, he said that 
psrsons of either sex or any nationality would 
be welcome within its walls who could satisfy 
the laboratory commmittee that they were fully 
qualified to undertake original scientific re- 
search in pure and physical chemistry, and pre- 
ference would naturally be given to those who 
had already published original work. If this 
country had distinguished itself in one way 
more than another in that glorious rivalry with 
other nations for extending our knowledge of 
natural phenomena and our power over the 
forces of nature it had been by the large num- 


JANUARY 8, 1897. ] 


ber of contributors to our knowledge, who on 
the Continent would be called amateurs in 
science—men who devoted their lives to the 
study and advancement of science from pure 
love for the subject. He need only instance 
the names of Cavendish, Joule and Darwin to 
show that they included men of the very highest 
rank. In giving this laboratory to the English 
nation he had done so in the firm conviction 
that this country would continue to bring forth 
in the future, as it had done in the past, men 
of the same rank and of the same devotion to 
science for its own sake, and it was a fond hope 
of his that such men would find there all the 
facilities and all the necessary appliances for 
carrying out their researches. The further we 
advanced in the study of nature the more accu- 
rate and elaborate was the apparatus required, 
and the more difficult it became to carry on 
delicate work in a private laboratory. He had 
placed that laboratory in the center of London 
because he believed that this great city would 
continue to be the intellectual center of the 
civilized world, where the brightest minds 
would congregate. He had intrusted it to the 
Royal Institution so as to insure its being open 
to men and women of all schools and of all 
views on scientific questions. 


THE MARINE BIOLOGY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 


THE committee of the British Association on 
the marine zoology, botany and geology of the 
Trish Sea presented, at the Liverpool meeting, 
its fourth and final report. The committee con- 
sisted of ten members, with Prof. W. A. Herd- 
Man as chairman and reporter. The report 
reviews the earlier work by the Liverpool Ma- 
rine Biology Committee and the investigations 
carried out in the Puffin Island station since 
1887. That committee, in addition to annual 
reports, has published three volumes of the 
fauna, recording 2,133 species. In 1892 the 
committee relinquished Puffin Island and built 
the new biological station at a very much more 
convenient and richer locality, Port Erin, at 
the southwest end of the Isle of Man. In the 
following year a second building—the Aqua- 
rium—was added, and since then the institu- 
tion has been constantly in use and has proved 
increasingly useful each season, both to mem- 


SCIENCE. 55 


bers of the committee and to other naturalists. 
Since the opening of the Port Erin station, in 
1892, 56 biologists have paid over 200 longer or 
shorter visits for the purpose of working at the 
marine fauna and flora. The British Associa- 
tion Committee for the investigation of the Ma- 
rine Zoology, Botany and Geology of the Irish 
Sea was appointed in 1892, and three previous 
reports haye been submitted. The first, laid 
before the Nottingham meeting in 1893, gave 
an account of the limits and more prominent 
physical conditions.of the area under investi- 
gation, with a brief interim notice of the dredg- 
ing expeditions undertaken during the year. 
The second report, at the Oxford meeting in 
1894, gave a fuller description of the methods 
of work on one of the dredging expeditions, 
and also included an account of the distribution 
of the submarine deposits of the area and a 
notice of the chief results of the year’s work, 
including some new species. The third report, 
given at Ipswich, dealt chiefly with the subma- 
rine deposits, the investigation of the surface 
currents, and with the distribution of animals 
as shown from dredging statistics. In the pres- 
ent final report the committee gives for the first 
time a complete list of all the species recorded 
from the area of the Irish Sea investigated. 
This list fills 28 pages. The greater part of the 
work of the committee has been zoological ; 
botany, however, has been represented by sev- 
eral investigators, and lists are given of the 
marine alge, including diatoms. 


DuRING the last fifty years, says Nature, much 
work has been done by marine naturalists all 
round the British coasts, with a view to deter- 
mining the distribution of those animals which 
live on the floor of the sea. It has been fully 
recognized that the localities frequented by 
many marine species are very definite and ex- 
tremely limited in extent, and that both the 
nature of the sea bottom and the creatures 
which live there exhibit as much variety as we 
are accustomed to find on land. The Marine 
Biological Association, with the assistance of a 
grant made for the purpose by the Royal So- 
ciety, has recently been engaged in an attempt 
to place our knowledge of this subject upon a 
sounder basis by investigating in detail some of 


56 SCIENCE. 


the grounds in the neighborhood of Plymouth, 
including important fishing grounds, with refer- 
ence to the nature of the sea bottom at each 
locality, and the whole assemblage of animals 
found there. Detailed charts are being pre- 
pared to exhibit the variations which take place 
from point to point. No attempt has previously 
been made to study fishing grounds with such 
thoroughness, having regard not only to the 
fishes, but to the whole collection of animal 
life which forms the basis of the food upon 
which the fishes exist. The investigation, which 
has involved a large amount of dredging and 
trawling, as well as the identification of the 
numerous species captured, has been carried 
out by Mr. BE. J. Allen, the Director of the 
Plymouth Laboratory. 


GENERAL. 


THE remains of Pasteur were removed, on 
December 26th, from the Cathedral of Notre 
Dame to the Pasteur Institute, where the 
cortége was met by members of the Academy, 
representatives of the government and delegates 
from learned societies and foreign countries. 
Speeches were made by M. Rambaud, M. 
Bodin ; Sir John Evans, representing the British 
Association ; Sir Dyce Duckworth, represent- 
ing the Royal College of Physicians, and others. 
A mausoleum, to be decorated with designs il- 
lustrating Pasteur’s contributions to science and 
industry, has been built at the Institute. 

Dr. THEODORE G. WORMLEY, since 1877 pro- 
fessor of chemistry and toxicology in the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania and the author of im- 
portant contributions to these sciences, died at 
Philadelphia on January 3d, aged seventy years. 

THE death is announced, in his eightieth year, 
of Mr. Horatio Hale, of Clinton, Ontario, well 
known for his contributions to our knowledge 
of the languages and customs of the North 
American Indians. 

Dr. F. BuxkA, professor of geometry in the 
University of Berlin, died on December 4th, at 
the age of forty-five years. 

Mr. EDWARD FALKENER, the English archee- 
ologist, died on December 17th, in his eighty- 
third year. 


Str Henry MANCE has been elected Presi- 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 106. 


dent of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, 
London. 

M. Liarp, the head of the University De- 
partment of the French Ministry of Education, 
has been elected a member of the Academy of 
Moral Sciences in the place of the late M. Jules 
Simon. 

THE tercentenary of the birth of Descartes 
has been celebrated at Tours by the local 
archeological society, two addresses being 
delivered and verses composed by M. Sully 
Prudhomme being recited. A pilgrimage has 
also been made to the house at La Haye in 
which Descartes was born. 


THE jubilee of the entrance into professional 
life of Dr. Roussel, of Paris, has been celebrated 
at the Sorbonne. Mr. Barthou, Minister of the 
Interior, presented him with a gold medal, and 
his bust was unveiled. In 1874 Dr. Roussel, 
who has been a Deputy and is now a Senator, 
carried a bill for the protection of infants placed 
out at nurse. This measure checked the abuses 
of baby farming. Dr. Roussel has also effected 
legislation against drunkenness, for the protec- 
tion of foundlings, and for gratuitous medical 
aid for the poor. 

Mr. FREDERICK IVES gave a lecture, on De- 
cember 16th, at the Fine Arts Societies Galleries 
in London, on his method of photography in 
natural colors, and exhibited photographs so 
taken. 

AT the annual business meeting of the Geo- 
logical Society of Washington, held December 
23, 1896, officers for the ensuing year were 
elected as follows: President, Arnold Hague; 
Vice-Presidents, J. S. Diller and Whitman 
Cross (re-elected); Treasurer, M. R. Campbell; 
Secretaries, C. Willard Hayes and T. W. Stan- 
ton (re-elected) ; Members-at-Large of Council, 
S. F. Emmons, G. K. Gilbert, R. T. Hill, G. P. 
Merrill and Chas. D. Walcott. Mr. Walcott 
subsequently tendered his resignation from the 
Council, leaving a vacancy. 

Tur American Economic Association held a 
successful meeting at Baltimore, ending De- 
cember 31st. The following officers were 
elected: President, Henry C. Adams, Ph. D., 
Michigan; Vice-Presidents, Franklin H. Gid- 
dings, M. A., Columbia, EB. R. L. Gould, Ph D., 


JANUARY 8, 1897. ] 


Johns Hopkins, Roland P. Falkner, Ph. D., 
Pennsylvania; Secretary, Walter F. Wilcox, 
Ph. D., Cornell; Treasurer, Charles H. Hull, 
Ph. D., Cornell. 

THE Swedish Consul-General at Shanghai has 
telegraphed to Stockholm that Dr. Sven Hedin, 
the Scandinavian traveller, has arrived at 
Liang-chau-fu, in Kansu, to the northeast of 


Lake Koko Nor, after a successful journey 


through the unknown regions of northern 
Tibet by way of Tsaidam and Koto Nor. Dr. 
Sven Hedin hopes to reach Peking in two 
months’ time. 

Dr. ANDREE proposes to repeat his attempt 
to reach the North Pole by balloon this year. 
Dr. Knut Frankel expects to accompany him as 
meteorologist in place of Dr. Ekholm. It is 
also reported that MM. Godard and Surcouf, 
two French aéronauts, propose making a similar 
attempt in 1898. 


THE Lancet states that some interesting 
‘Druidical’ remains on and around Dartmoor 
have been destroyed by the contractors of the 
Newton Royal District Council, who have broken 
up the stones for repairing the surface of the 
roads. The remains known as the Stone- 
avenue, at Bel Tor corner on Sherberton-com- 
mon, have been demolished, and several ‘hut 
circles’ and ‘ mainhir’ have completely disap- 
peared. Fortunately the work of destruction 
has been now stopped by the energetic action of 
Exeter antiquaries, but the loss of these inter- 
esting relics is much to be deplored. 


ACCORDING to the report of the Board of 
Health of New York City the death rate for 
1896 was 21.54 as compared with 23.105 in 
1895, and an average of 26.63 for the five pre- 
ceding years. The total number of deaths dur- 
ing 1896 was 41,652, and of births 55,723. The 
estimated population of New York City on 
July Ist was 1,934,077. 


THE Common Council of Brooklyn voted No- 
vember 30th to establish a public library for 
that city, in the interest of which a public 
meeting will be held at the Brooklyn Academy 
of Music, January 14, 1897, in connection with 
the joint meeting of the New York Library 
Association and New York Library Club which 
occurs the same day at the Art Institute. 


SCIENCE. 


57 


THE New York Evening Post reports that in 
the Berlin Museum of Ethnology the large and 
valuable collections of Gustav Nachtigal have 
now been placed. These collections date from 
1884-85 and comprise all sorts of objects from 
the west coast of Africa, beginning on the 
Orange River south and ending on the Volta 
north. All the objects are flawless, and among 
them are full native equipment in weapons, 
tools, apparel, religious rites, household utensils, 
etc., the finest pieces coming from Borneo, 
Wadai, Darfoor, Kordofan, and from the dis- 
tricts along the Niger and in the Sudan. Some 
of the native garbs are exquisitely woven and 
ornamented, silk and gold. 


THE William Gossage Laboratory and the 
extension of the chemical laboratories of Uni- 
versity College, Liverpool were opened on 
December 12th, by the Harl of Derby. The 
former includes a large laboratory with accom- 
modations for 44 advanced students, and in the 
basement is an additional lecture room to seat 
70 or 80, a preparation room and a gas-analysis 
room. The other new buildings comprise a 
metallurgical laboratory, with furnaces and 
other equipments, an important addition to the 
research laboratory, store-room for apparatus 
and chemicals, a dynamo room, electric-accumu- 
lator room, and a heating chamber. The William 
Gossage Laboratory was built by Mr. F. H. 
Gossage and Mr. T. Sutton Timmons, at a cost 
of £7,000, and presented to University College. 
To connect the laboratory with the old build- 
ing, other buildings are being provided by 
public subscription, and the cost will be about 
£4,000. The opening address was delivered by 
Prof. W.. Ramsay. 


Ir is reported that patents for inventions 
which relate to the production of electrical 
energy, or in which electricity is in any way 
employed, are refused in Turkey. There is 
nothing in the law to warrant any such refusal, 
and the only explanation afforded by the 
Turkish authorities is that orders have been re- 
ceived ‘from the Palace’ forbidding the grant 
of patents for such inventions. The fees paid 
on application are not returned. 


Mr. FRANCIS GALTON recently contributed to 
the Fortnightly Review an article describing 


58 


how a system similar to that of the Morse code 
might be used in signalling to the planets. We 
now find in a leading daily paper an article 
with the headline ‘ Mars is Signalling Us,’ in- 
cluding an account of the method by which the 
signals are recorded in ‘one of the great 
European observatories.’ 

Ir is probable that but few people realize the 
number of ‘scientific’ journals published in 
America. One of these which has now con- 
cluded its tenth volume is devoted to ‘ Kore- 
shanity,’ founded on ‘‘ Koreshan astronomy, the 
basis of which makes the sun the center and the 
earth the circumference of the universe, from 
which it is conclusive that the earth is a 
hollow sphere, with its habitable surface con- 
eave, forming an integral, alchemico-organic 
structure, which, as demonstrated in the cellu- 
lar cosmogonic system, perpetuates itself 
through the eternal and causative forces and 
functions operating within it.’’ 

A PETITION has been received asking sub- 
scriptions in aid of those who suffered from the 
effects of a waterspout on the island of St. 
Michael, in the Azores. It is stated in the 
petition that on November 25th a great water- 
spout broke over the city of Povoacao, of about 
twenty-five thousand inhabitants. Almost in 
an instant the deluge mounted above the roofs 
of the houses, after tearing up the pavement of 
the streets in its course, and digging trenches in 
them, in some places fifteen feet below their 
ordinary level. It was in the night that the 
waterspout broke, and the great torrent, rush- 
ing down the slopes to the sea, tore a wide 
channel through nine miles of country, bearing 
away the homes of thousands of people and 
causing great destruction of life. 


A SERIOUS landslide has occurred near Rath- 
more, County Kerry, Ireland. Part of the earth 
composing a bog, carrying with it rocks, trees, 
houses and animals, has been swept into the 
river Flesk and the lakes of Kilarny. 


GIANT’s CAUSEWAY, in the north of Ireland, 
from the early part of the last century down to 
the present day, has been visited by a largely 
increasing number of persons without let or 
hindrance, and it is now annually visited by 
about 80,000 persons. A small limited liability 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 106. 


company was formed in June last for the pur- 
pose of enclosing the causeway and making a 
profit out of it by charging a toll for admission. 
A few months ago they began to put up an iron 
fence, and they have brought an action against 
three gentlemen who persisted in walking over 
the causeway. To defend the public right of 
access to it, the National Footpath Preservation 
Society has issued an appeal for funds to defend 
the case. 


ACCORDING to cablegrams to the London 
Times, vigorous measures are being taken in 
South Africa to stop the spread of the rinder- 
pest. The Premier of Cape Colony has stated 
that the disease had not advanced towards the 
colony in the past two months. The govern- 
ment were utilizing the peculiar geographical 
advantages of the country, which would enable 
the border to be fenced from the Atlantic on one 
side to the Indian Ocean on the other, and they 
entertained distinct hopes of saving the colony 
and Pondoland from the ravages of the epidemic. 
The government, Sir Gordon Sprigg added, 
were doing everything that was humanly pos- 
sible to that end, and the farmers and natives, 
to whom he had fully explained the situation, 
were anxiously assisting the efforts of the goy- 
ernment by every meansin their power. Major 
Leutwein, Governor of German Southwest 
Africa, took measures at the beginning of Oc- 
tober to prevent the introduction of rinderpest 
into the colony. The southern border has been 
entirely closed by means of patrols between the 
existing stations, and in the Simon Kopper terri- 
tory, near the Kalahari desert, an additional 
station has been erected. The eastern frontier 
is guarded by stations and patrols which, though 
sufficient to prevent men or cattle from crossing 
the border, are unable to hinder the movements 
of game or wild animals. To the north and 
northeast similar measures are being taken to 
prevent the introduction of the disease from the 
neighborhood of Lake Ngami. It is to be hoped 
that the praiseworthy efforts of the German 
authorities to prevent the spread of the rinder- 
pest may be crowded with success. 


THE New York Academy of Medicine will 
celebrate the semi-centennial of its foundation 
on January 29th. There will be exercises in 


JANUARY 8, 1897. ] 


Carnegie Hall at which addresses will be made 
by President Cleveland, Prof. Jacobi and others, 
and afterwards there will be a reception at the 
building of the Academy, the corner stone of 
which was laid by President Cleveland in 1889. 


BRANCHES of the British Medical Association 
are being formed in the leading cities of Canada 
as a preliminary of the visit of the Association 
next year. Montreal, Ottawa, Halifax and 
Winnipeg have already strong local branches. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 


THE cablegram report that Alfred Nobel 
had left his fortune to Stockholm University is 
now said to be incorrect. A cablegram from 
Stockholm, dated December 31st, states that the 
fortune, valued at $10,000,000, is almost en- 
tirely bequeathed for the foundation of an inter- 
national fund for the advancement of scientific 
research. 


THE Stevens Institute of Technology, Hobo- 
ken, N. J., will celebrate its twenty-fifth anni- 
versary on February 18th and 19th. 


PRESIDENT HARPER, of the University of 
Chicago, has announced a deficit for the year of 
$48,000, and that retrenchment will be neces- 
sary especially in the direction of scholarships 
and assistance to students. 


GEN. G. W. C. LrEe has resigned from the 
presidency of Washington and Lee University, 
to take effect at the end of the academic year. 


ArT the inauguration of the Lyons University, 
the rector, M. Compayré, announced a dona- 
tion to the University of £4,000. The British 
Medical Journal states that the donor is M. 
Auguste Falcouz, a Lyons banker. The interest 
of this sum is to be disposed of as follows: 
Every two years a prize of £40 sterling will be 
given to the students of each of the four facul- 
ties—literature, science, law and medicine— 
who write the best essay on a current subject. 
All French students under 80 years of age can 
compete. The subject of the essay will be 
chosen by the Council of the Lyons University 
a year in advance. Every two years instru- 
ments for the science and medical faculties will 
also be bought. When fifty years have elapsed, 


SCIENCE. 


59 


the Lyons University will have entire control 
over the capital in order to be able to meet the 
demands of scientific progress. 


THE Austrian government has brought in a 
bill on the salaries of university professors. 
The present salary of a professor is now about 
$1,200, and he receives in addition the fees 
from students attending his courses. It is now 
proposed to raise somewhat the fixed salaries 
and let the fees of students go to the state. 
This would equalize the salaries of professors, 
but is being opposed especially by professors in 
the medical school whose required courses are 
attended by a large number of students. 


WE recently referred to the action of the 
regents of the University of the State of New 
York making it illegal for colleges of the State 
to give the degrees A. B. and Ph. D. causa 
honoris. When colleges in other states either 
voluntarily or by compulsion cease giving the 
Ph. D. degree causa honoris and for study in 
absentia, those who wish to possess this.‘ honor’ 
without the education it represents will need to 
go to the newly founded ‘ university’ at Buenos 
Ayres. It appears that they can there receive 
the degree by a course of study in extent (in- 
formation regarding its thoroughness is lacking) 
about equal to that in an American college as 
far as the end of the sophomore year. The 
candidates for the doctorate, it appears, need 
not know any mathematics, but they must study 
one science—geography, and that of both the 
‘old and new continents.’ 


A SECOND university will be opened in Japan 
during the present year. It will be at Kyoto 
and will for the present only include profes- 
sional schools. It is also reported that a Dutch 
university will be established in Pretoria. An 
English university at Cape Town seems to be 
much needed. 


Pror. B. HATSHECK, of Prague, has been 
called to the chair of zoology in the University 
of Vienna, vacant by the resignation of Prof. 
K. Claus. Prof. Th. Curtius, of Kiel, has been 
called to the chair of chemistry at Bonn, va- 
cant through the death of Kekulé. Dr. P. E. 
Study, associate professor of mathematics at 
Bonn, has been called to the chair of mathe- 
matics at Greifswald. Dr. Schitsler, of the 


60 


Polytechnic Institute of Graz, has been pro- 
moted to an assistant professorship of Geom- 
etry and Dr. W. Felix, of the University of Zu- 
rich, to an assistant professorship of anatomy. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
CLOUDS OVER A FIRE. 


On Tuesday, December 1st, I had an excel- 
lent opportunity to observe the formation of 
cumulus clouds over the smoke from a large 
fire. The morning was clear, with the excep- 
tion of a few scattered strato-cumulus and 
cumulus clouds near the horizon. The wind 
was northwest and blowing at about 12-15 
milesan hour. The fire was in the coal pockets 
of the Boston and Maine Railroad, in Charles- 
town, and burned fiercely for some hours, send- 
ing up immense volumes of smoke which were 
blown off to sea across the city of Boston. The 
cloud, as I observed it, looking from the south- 
west and thus obtaining a view at right angles 
to the smoke, was formed at some little distance 
to the southeast of the fire, and over a part of 
the smoke, which rose up higher than the rest, 
as is shown in Fig. 1. It was distinctly a 
cumulus, but its base and a good deal of its 
main portion were often obscured by the smoke. 
Fig. 2 is intended to give some idea of what was 
observed as the second stage in the phenom- 
enon. The whole body of the cloud has been 
carried to the southeast, further away from the 
fire, and the effect of the stronger upper winds 
is seen in the blowing forward of the top of the 
cloud. At this stage the cloud could plainly be 
seen to be dissolving as it descended to lower 
levels. 

In Fig. 3 we have represented, to the right, 
the third stage of the cloud, which is now rap- 
idly diminishing in size and being carried away 
by the wind, while nearer the fire a new cumu- 
lus has been formed. It was noted that the 
formation of the cumulus in its first position, as 
shown in Fig. 1 and at the left of Fig. 3, was in- 
termittent. There was not always a cloud at 
that point, but one grew whenever there was 
an especially active ascent of the smoke, and 
the position of this first cloud, at its beginning, 
was always the same with reference to the fire 
and the trail of smoke. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 106.: 


mes 
Ahyp3 


A pais * 
Cit 
ee, Bees 


Fig. 4. 


Fig. 2 


& JOS SD e 
a ees Set I 
Fig 3. 


ee ee ee ea vhs, Vo N as ee 
Fég. 4 GcCunris, 


There seems little need of comment on this 
simple but interesting phenomenon. The con- 
ditions for cloud formation were not reached 
vertically over the fire, for the smoke was 
blown to leeward at once, and the warmed air 
did not rise high enough to reach its dew-point 
until it had been blown a-quarter or a-half of a 
mile to the southeast. For this reason Figs. 1, 
2 and 3 show the cloud to the right of the fire. 
Looked at down the wind, 7. e., from the north- 
west, the appearance of smoke and cloud were 
as shown in Fig. 4 

It may be interesting to note in this connec- 
tion the case of cloud formation over a fire 
mentioned by Espy in his Fourth Meteorological 
Report. The observer quoted by Espy was on 
the top of Mt. Monadnock, N. H., and saw the 
growth of a cumulus cloud over a fire of brush 
on the lowland. The cloud increased in size, 
and finally gave a shower of rain over a limited 
area. 

The accompanying figures were drawn by 


—~ 


JANUARY 8, 1897. ] 


Mr. G. ©. Curtis, Assistant in the Physical 
Geography Laboratory of Harvard University, 
‘from his own observations and after sketches 
made by the writer. R. DEC. WARD. 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 
December 19, 1896. 


COMPLIMENT OR PLAGIARISM ? 


Our attention has been called to a communi- 
cation from Professor George Bruce Halsted in a 
recent number of SCIENCE in which he says that 
we ‘took’ a whole block of problems and a long 
note from Halsted’s Elements of Geometry. 

If Professor Halsted had only printed in 
parallel columns extracts from Halsted’s Ele- 
ments of Geometry and the corresponding 
paragraphs in Beman and Smith’s Plane and 
Solid Geometry, his charge of plagiarism would 
have fallen to the ground. For those, however, 
who have not the two books at hand, it may be 
worth while to make a few comments upon his 
accusation. 

The order of the problems: To bisect a peri- 
gon; to trisect a perigon ; to divide a perigon 
into five equal angles; to divide a perigon into fif- 
teen equal angles, etc., isso natural that for this 
Professor Halsted will surely claim no original- 
ity. Thesame order may be found in Newcomb’s 
Elements of Geometry, an earlier book than 
Halsted’s. 

Does Professor Halsted claim that we ‘took’ 
our solutions from his book? A comparison will 
show only such resemblances as are inevitable 
when two authors are dealing with the same 
material. 

It must then be the terminology, and especially 
the word ‘perigon,’ which we have been guilty 
of appropriating. A modern treatment of the 
subject of angles requires the use of single terms 
for the angle formed by a half revolution of the 
moving arm and the angle formed by a com- 
plete revolution. To designate the former the 
term straight angle is now fully established ; 
for the latter we had a choice among such terms 
as round angle, circum-angle, perigon, full 
angle, closed angle. After due consideration 
we chose ‘perigon,’ a word given in both the 
Century and Standard Dictionaries, and found 
in several geometries, among them Faifofer’s 
(perigano). 


SCIENCE. 


61 


Finally Professor Halsted lays especial empha- 
sis upon the long note which we ‘took’ from his 


Elements. 


HALSTED. 


REMARK.—From the time 
of Euclid, about 300 B. C., 
no advance was made in the 
inscription of regular poly- 
gons until Gauss, in 1796, 
found that aregular polygon 
of 17 sides was inscriptible, 
and in his abstruse Arith- 
metic, published in 1801, 
gave the following: 

In order that the geomet- 
rie division of the circle in- 
to n parts may be possible 
m must be 2, or a higher 
power of 2, or else a prime 
number of the form 2m +1, or 
a product of two or more 
different prime numbers of 
that form, or else the pro- 
duct of a power of 2 by one 
or more different prime num- 
bers of that form. 

In other words, it is neces- 
sary that 2 should contain 
no odd divisor not of the 
form 2m+1, nor contain the 
same divisor of that form 
more than once. 

Below 300 the following 38 
are the only possible values 
of n: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 
16, 17, 20, 24, 30, 32, 34, 40, 48, 
51, 60, 64, 68, 80, 85, 96, 102, 
120, 128, 136, 160, 170, 192; 204, 
240, 255, 256, 257, 272. 


We quote the two notes in full. .j 


BEMAN AND SMITH. 


Note.—That a perigon 
could be divided into 2n, 
3:2n, 5:2n, 15°2n equal angles 
was known as early as Eu- 
clid’s time. By the use of 
the compasses and straight 
edge, no other partitions 
were deemed possible. In 
1796 Gauss found, and pub- 
lished in 1801, that a perigon 
could be divided into 17 and 
hence into 17:25 equal angles; 
furthermore, that it could be 
divided into 2m+1 equal an- 
gles if 2m+1 was a prime 
number; and, in general, 
that it could be divided into 
a number of equal angles 
represented by the product 
of different prime numbers 
of the form 2m+1. Hence 
it follows that a perigon can 
be divided into a number of 
equal angles represented by 
the product of 20 and one or 
more different prime num- 
bers of the form 2m+1. Itis 
shown in the Theory of Num- 
bers that if 2m+1 is prime m 
must equal 22p; hence the 
general form for the prime 
numbers mentioned is 22p+1. 
Gauss’s proof is only semi- 
geometric, and is not adap- 
ted to elementary geometry, 


Of course Professor Halsted is aware that from 
the days of Young, possibly earlier, in his Ele- 
ments of Geometry, 1827, up to the present the 
substance of Halsted’s ‘long note’ has been 
given in the better geometries, as witness 
Baltzer, Henrici and Treutlein, Chauvenet, 
Newcomb. 

Professor Halsted’s motive in making his 
charges we leave for others to determine. 


BEMAN AND SMITH. 


VOLCANIC DUST IN SOUTHWESTERN NEBRASKA 
AND IN SOUTH DAKOTA. 


Apropos of Prof. Salisbury’s note on the sub- 
ject in ScrENcE of December 4th, I would call 
attention to the fact that the occurrence of 
volcanic ashes in southwestern Nebraska has 
long been known. At the same time, notices of 
present exposures are of value. The deposit 
was at first called ‘geyserite’ by Prof. S. 
Aughey before 1880. References to the subject 
will be found as follows: ‘Sketches of Physical 
Geography and Geology of Nebraska,’ 1880, 
by S. Aughey: American Geologist, Vol. I., p. 
877, and Vol. IL., pp. 64 and 487; Proceedings 


62 


U.S. National Museum, Vol. VII., p. 99; Am. 
Journal of Science, Sept., 1886. These refer 
to the region in question. Closely similar de- 
posits have been found as far east as Omaha, 
and as far north as the Missouri River in Knox 
Co., Neb. 

An interesting and important question which 
should be kept in mind by those observing these 
deposits is whether there is more than one 
horizon shown at any one locality. Thus far 
I think no one has reported more than one, 
and it may be that all are to be referred to one 
eruption. If so the deposit becomes a most 
important reference horizon. 

As arelated item of intelligence I may add 
that this last summer I discovered a deposit of 
somewhat similar character extending a dozen 
miles or so along the South Fork of White 
River, in Lugenbeel Co., 8. D., showing a thick- 
ness in places of more than 10 feet. This 
deposit is, however, of a light green color, 
coarser than that of Nebraska and more con- 
solidated than I have seen there. Moreover it 
seems to mark the transition from the White 
River epoch to the Loup Fork. 

J. E. Topp. 

STATE UNIVERSITY, 

VERMILION, 8. D. 


SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 
GRASSES OF NORTH AMERICA.* 


THE botanists of this country have been look- 
ing forward with interest for several years to 
the publication of the second volume of Dr. 
Beal’s ‘Grasses of North America.’ Single- 
handed and alone, away from the larger libra- 
ries and collections, Dr. Beal has patiently and 
persistently carried forward the work which 
he has finally brought to completion and pre- 
sented to the public in the volume before us. 
Much interest attaches to the work, for we have 
here presented, for the first time, in a single 
volume, descriptions of all the grasses of the 
United States and northward, which the writer 


*Grasses of North America, by W. J. Beal, M. A., 
M. 8., Ph.D., Professor of Botany in the Michigan 
Agricultural College, Vol. II. The grasses classified, 
described, and each genus illustrated, with chapters 
on their geographical distribution and their bibliog- 
raphy. Henry Holt & Company, New York. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 106. 


was able to obtain, together with those which 
have in recent years been collected in Mexico 
by Mr. C. G. Pringle and Dr. E. Palmer. No 
work of similar character has before been pub- 
lished, and those wishing to find descriptions of 
our grasses, excepting for limited areas, have 
been obliged to consult numerous publications 
through which the descriptions were scattered. 
The total number of species described in the 
work, including introduced species and those 
cultivated for use or ornament, is 912, covering 
659 pages. With few exceptions, these descrip- 
tions, which are very full, have been originally 
drawn up by the author. The nomenclature 
adopted is that of the so-called ‘Rochester code,’ 
and in every case full citations of authorities 
are given, considerable space being devoted to 
synonymy. 

The author states in his preface that ‘‘it has 
required some courage and persistence to ad- 
here to the work so long, realizing fully that 
it must contain many defects, and that per- 
haps its chief use would be to serve as a basis 
for others to enlarge in the future, correct and 
otherwise improve.’’ This is very often the fate 
of scientific publications, and no one can hope 
to produce a work of any considerable extent 
which shall be beyond criticism or entirely free 
from errors. The work before us is no excep- 
tion to this statement, and the criticisms or cor- 
rections here given are made in the kindliest 
spirit, with the intent of calling attention to 
some of the more important mistakes, hoping 
thereby to enhance the usefulness of the work, 
rather than discredit its value. 

Collectors in preparing their labels occasion- 
ally overlook the importance of carefully noting 
the locality and station of the specimens gath- 
ered, and more often still they fail to note the 
date of collection or altitude. It is almost dis- 
couraging, and even annoying sometimes, to 
look over a dozen or more sheets of specimens 
and find nothing more definite in regard to 
these particulars than the name of the State— 
it may be ‘Texas,’ or again, the ‘ Rocky Moun- 
tains.’ The author meets here a condition of 
things which places him at a disadvantage—by 
rendering his work incomplete—with the reader 
or student of biology, a position which might 
have been avoided by a trifling effort on the 


JANUARY 8, 1897.] 


part of the collector. The effect of this want of 
care in preparing labels is manifest in the work 
under consideration, in which the geographical 
distribution of the species is given, but the 
range is often limited to the material examined 
by the author. Errors in the recorded distri- 
bution of plants may, and often do, arise from 
incorrect determinations of species. There is 
an example of this given under Danthonia seri- 
cea Nutt., the range of which is recorded as 
‘New England to Florida, Colorado and Cali- 
fornia.’ This species does not occur west of 
the Mississippi, the Western grasses referred to 
it belonging to other species. The occurrence 


of Alopecurus alpinus within the limits of the - 


United States is doubtful. The specimens from 
the Rocky Mountains in the National Herbarium 
referred to that species are all A. occidentalis 
Seribn. Sporobolus beevifolius (Nutt.) Scribn. 
(Vilfa cuspidata Torr.) does not occur east of 
Ohio ; there are no specimens in the National 
Herbarium from east of Missouri and Minne- 
sota. The grass from Northern Maine referred 
to this species is a slender form of Sporobolus 
depauperatus named by Trinius Vilfa richard- 
sonis. This form extends westward to the 
Rocky Mountains. 

The scientific author employs figures to illus- 
trate facts or to more clearly demonstrate his 
written statements. The author and not the 
artist is held responsible for their correctness. 
The reader has little interest in the artist unless 
his work possesses some special merit for which 
he has received general recognition, such as ac- 
curacy gained through a knowledge of the sub- 
ject illustrated. This matter is here referred 
to because of the constant citation by the au- 
thor of ‘Grasses of North America,’ of the 
draughtsmen who executed the figures used by 
him, and because of a few mistakes which these 
citations apparently render the present writer 
in some degree responsible. 

Fig. 11, on page 35, is Blepharidachne kingii (8. 
Wats.) Hackel (Hremochloe kingii S. Wats.) 
and not Hremochloa leersioides (Munro) Hack. 
Blepharidachne is a genus of two species closely 
related to Triodia, and is omitted from the work. 

Fig. 20 on page 77 is not Arundinella palmeri 
as stated. A, in the figure, is.a spikelet of 
A. brasiliensis; a, is the floret of the same. B, 


SCIENCE. 


63 


is a spikelet of A. deppeana, and b, a floret of 
the same. 

Fig. 22, on page 96, does not illustrate Pas- 
palum floridanum, but is the reproduction of a 
drawing copied in part from Trinius and de- 
signed to illustrate P. setaceum Michx. 

Fig. 37, on page 178, is incorrectly explained. 
A, is a spikelet of Homalocenchrus oryzoides, and 
a, is a spikelet of H. monandrus, and not a floret 
of H. oryzoides, as stated. 

Fig. 41, page 229, illustrates a spikelet of 
Stipa richardson Link, and not- Oryzopsis 
macounti (Scribn.) Beal. Stipa richardsonii Link 
appears to have been omitted from the work. 

Fig. 53, on page 316, is said to be ‘ Epicampes 
macroura.’ The drawing was made to illus- 
trate a spikelet of a grass (No. 3335 Pringle) 
which was doubtfully referred to Epicampes 
bourgaet Fourn., described on page 310. 

Fig. 109, on page 525, was drawn by Scrib- 
ner, but figure 81, on page 440, designed to il- 
lustrate Opizia stolonifera, was not. 

Fig. 76, on page 527, is not ‘ Bouteloua 
texana,’ but Bouteloua trizna Scribn. in Proc. 
Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila. (1891), p. 307. 

Fig. 117, on page 627, illustrates parts of a 
spikelet of Brachypodium pinnatum var. ces- 
pitosum (No. 3443 Pringle), deseribed in Proc. 
Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila. (1891) p. 305, and not 
B. mexicanum, as stated. 

Fig. 118, page 632, illustrates some parts of 
Jouvea pilosa (Presl) Scribn., and not Jouvea 
straminea Fourn., which is figured in Bull. Torr. 
Bot. Club, 23: pl., 266. 

There are in the work about 160 new names, 
specific and varietal, arising partly from the 
system of nomenclature adopted, partly from 
the shifting of species from one genus to an- 
other and the reduction of species to varieties, 
or the elevation of varieties to species, and 
partly from the publication of new species. 
There are about forty species named and de- 
seribed, which have heretofore been unpub- 
lished, or at least unidentified, and are pre- 
sumably new species.. These are chiefly Mexi- 
can grasses, and, for the most part, occur in the 
collections of Mr. C. G. Pringle, the names in 
nearly all cases being those under which the 
species were distributed. Among the species 
described as new are the following : 


64 


Andropogon geminata Hackel ined. 

Arundinella palmeri Vasey ined. 

Paspalum pittiert Hackel MS. = Pringle 2359. 

Panicum sonorum Beal. 

Panicum vaseyanwm Scribn. ined. = 1435 Pringle. 

Pennisetum durum Beal. = 498 and 817 Pringle. 

Stipa multinode Scribn. ined. = 385 Pringle. 

Oryzopsis pringlei Scribn. ined. = 4759 Pringle. 

Muhlenbergia pulcherrima Seribn. ined. =1416 
Pringle. 

Muhlenbergia firma Beal. = 4914 Pringle. 

Muhlenbergia nebulosa Scribn. ined. = 2366 Pringle. 

Muhlenbergia elongata Scribn. ined. == 398 and 3477 
Pringle. 

Muhlenbergia brevifolia Scribn. ined. = 4736 Pringle. 

Muhlenbergia laxiflora Seribn. ined. = 1412 Pringle. 

Muhlenbergia strictior (Scribn. ) = 1418 Pringle. 

Sporobolus macrospermus Scribn. ined. = 2447 
Pringle. 

Epicampes anomata Scribn. ined. = 1423 Pringle. 

Calamagrostis erecta Beal (Calamagrostis plwmosa 
Scribn. ined. ) = 4726 Pringle. 

Calamagrostis pringlei (Scribn. ). 

Calamagrostis lactea Beal. = 1022 Suksdorf. 

Trisetum filifolium Scribn. ined. = 1431 Pringle. 

Trisetwm sandbergii Beal. sp. nov. 

Eragrostis pusillus Scribn. ined. = 2327 Pringle. 

Eragrostis erosa Scribn. ined. = 415 Pringle. 

Eragrostis plumbea Scribn. ined. = 2311 Pringle. 

Melica parishii Vasey ined. 

Poa vaseyana Scribn. ined. Too near P. wheeleri 
Vasey. 

Poa subaristata Scribn. ined. (Macoun’s Catalogue, 
without description) = 633 Tweedy. 

Poa acuminata Scribn. ined. 

Colpodiwm mucronatum (Hackel). 

Graphephorum pringlei Scribn. ined. = 4765 Pringle. 

Festuca howellii Hackel in herb. 

Festuca vaseyana Hack. ined. 

Festuca dasyclada Hack. ined. 

Bromus laciniatus Beal. = 4897 Pringle. 

Brachypodium pringlei Scribn. ined. 

Hordeum montanense Scribn. ined. 

Elymus innovatus Beal. 

Several species described are presented in a 
manner that might lead one to infer they were 
published here for the first time. Among these 
are: Paspalum inops Vasey, published in 1893 
(Contr. U. S. Nat’l. Herb. 1. 65); Atropis uni- 
aterale, published and figured in 1893 under Poa 
(Vasey in Grasses of the Pacific Slope, t. 85); 
Agrostis inflata Scribu., published in 1894 in the 
Canadian Record of Science, where also was 
published Poa trivialis var. filiculmis Scribn. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 106. 


Andropogon floridanus was published in a Bul- 
letin of the Torrey Botanical Olub, 23: 145 
(1896). It is unfortunate that unpublished 
names should in any case have been cited as 
synonyms, as the citation has no significance, 
and the publication here prevents their possible 
future use. The grasses cited under Panicum 
indicum are P. phleiforme Presl, a species very 
closely allied, to and perhaps not distinct from, 
P. indicum. Chamzraphis is taken up for Setaria, 
and made to include Panicum sulcatum Aubl., 
which belongs to the section Ptychophyllum of 
Panicum, while Panicum palmeri and P. rever- 
choni, the first a species of Izvophorus, the latter 
a Setaria, are described under Panicum, and 
classed in the section Ptychophyllum. Panicum 
schiedeanum, described on page 119, is also an 
Ixophorus, closely related to the species de- 
scribed as Panicum palmert. Chameraphis lati- 
glumis, described on page 152, is not a Setaria, 
but belongs toa distinct genus, named Setari- 
opsis (see Scribn. Pub. Field Col. Mus., Bot. 
Ser., I.: 288 (1896)). ‘Chamzraphis caudata var. 
paucifiora Vasey ined.,’ for which 191 E. Palmer 
is cited, is a small form of S. Liebmanni Fourn. 
The synonyms cited under Chameraphis uniseta 
are incorrect for No. 381 EK. Palmer, the grass 
referred to. Setaria wniseta Fourn. and Uro- 
chloa uniseta Pres] are Ixophorus wunisetus 
Schlecht., the species described under Panicum 
palmert on page 120. ‘ Muhlenbergia lycuroides 
Vasey ined.,’ described on page 239, for which 
489 KE. Palmer is cited, is again described on 
page 271, under the name Lycurus phleoides 
var. brevifolius (Scribn.). Pereilema Presl, de- 
scribed on page 271, is cited as a synonym 
under Agrostis on page 320. Sporobolus de- 
pauperatus var. filiformis Beal, on page 296, 
characterized as having ‘the culm 10 to 
12 cm. long, exserted for more than half 
its length ; panicle much reduced, 2 em. long,’ 
is Sporobolus gracillimus (Thurb.). Sporobolus 
ovatus Beal, for which Sporobolus minor Vasey 
is sited as a synonym, simply adds another 
synonym to Sporobolus vagineflorus (Torr.). 
Calamagrostis vaseyi Beal, page 344, is certainly 
Calamagrostis purpurascens R. Br., a species 
quite distinct from C. sylvatica of Europe. 
Calamagrostis sylvatica var. americana Vasey, 
described on p. 347, is the same. Spartina 


JANUARY 8, 1897.] 


densiflora, described on p. 397, is the same 
as S. junciformis Engelm. & Gray, described on 
page 400. Boutelowa ramosa Scribn. is described 
on page 416, and again on page 418 it appears as 
a variety of Bouteloua oligostachya. Leptochola 
polygama (Fourn.), described on page 487, is the 
same as Gouinia polygama Fourn., a species 
identical with Bromus virgatus Presl. Gouinia 
appears to be a well established genus, and the 
grass in question should be named Gowinia vir- 
gata (Presl). Eragrostis pallida Vasey, de- 
scribed on page 479, is not distinct from £. 
glomerata (Walt.), E. conferta Trin., described on 
page 481, but it is very unlike Hrgroastis alba 
Presl, the type of which has been seen by the 
writer. Under Atropis fendleriana (Steud.) is in- 
cluded under Poa arida Vasey, which is a distinct 
and well marked species, as are Poa eatoni 8. 
Wats. and Poa lucida Vasey, also cited as syno- 
nyms, although the latter is very close to Poa 
buckleyana Nash. Atropis levis (Vasey) is, as 
stated, Poa levis Vasey, but that name should be 
changed to Poa levigata. ‘ Festuca rubra var. 
pubescens Vasey ined.’ is the same as Bromus 
secundus Presl, and Festuca richardsonii Hook.., 
Bromus barbatoides Beal, page 614, is Bromus 
trintiDesy. Ramaley, and not R. Pound, ought 
to be cited after Agropyron violacescens on page 
635, and after Agropyron caninoides on page 
640. <Agropyron violacescens is Agropyron rich- 
ardsoni Schrad. ‘ Agropyron glaucum (Desf.),’ 
page 637, is Agropyron spicatum (Pursh). Poa 
brandeget Scribn. in herb.,’ page 544, is the 
same as Poa lettermani Vasey, described under 
Atropis on page 579. Under Atropis pringlei 
(Seribn.), page 578, Poa pattersoni Vasey is er- 
roneously cited as a synonym. 

There are keys to the genera under all the 
tribes with the exception of Horde, and there 
are also keys to the species under the genera. 
The difficulty of making keys is appreciated by 
all who have undertaken them, and the value 
of good keys is at once appreciated by those 
haying occasion to use them. A clear concep- 
tion of all the species of a genus, and a suffi- 
cient knowledge of their characters to be able 
to express briefly their most obvious points of 
difference or resemblance, is essential to the 
compilation of a good key. The test of a key 
of analysis is in its use. The writer has not 


SCIENCE. 


65 


attempted to use the keys in the work under 
notice, but it is evident that they have been 
prepared with much labor and painstaking care. 
In glancing them over one is struck by the very 
frequent use of measurements of glumes, awns 
or ligules, the dimensions of which are often 
too slight or too inconstant to be of much value 
in a diagnosis. 

On page 237, under Muhlenbergia, in a con- 
siderable series of ‘g,’ there are: 


long, awn 1 mm. JONG..................seceeeeeenee ees 23 
g. Floral glume 2-2.7 mm. long, ligule 2-3 mm. 
long, [awn] 1-3 mm. long..............:0eeeeeeeeee 24 


Lower down on the same page, in a series 
‘h,’ appears: 


h. Floral glume 3.5 mm. long, ligule 1 mm. long, 


AWD 10-15 mM. ONG. .............0ceeeeceeeseeeeeeenee 33 
h. Floral glume 3.5-2.5 mm. long, ligule 1 mm. 
long, awn 10-15 mm. long................ceeeeeeene 28 


These distinctions are too slight to be of 
much assistance to the student in running down 
a species. 

Considering the extent of the work and the 
conditions under which the author labored, it 
is remarkable that more errors have not occur- 
red. In spite of the faults to which attention 
has been called, and others not noted, due, 
chiefly, to imperfect proof-reading—the difficul- 
ties of which in such publications few appre- 
ciate—the work is one of much value to syste- 
matic botanists, and indispensable to those en- 
gaged in the study of the large and very inter- 
esting family of plants treated. 

F. LAMSON-SCRIBNER. 


Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro. 
By FREDERICK L. HorrMan (Publications of 
the American Economic Association, Vol. XI., 
Nos. 1,2 and 3. August, 1896. Pp. 1-329). 
The Macmillan Company. Paper, $1.25; 
cloth, $2.00. 

This work is a mine of statistical information 
relating to the population, viability, anthropo- 
metry, and the racial, social and economic con- 
ditions of the negro in the United States and 
incidentally in the West Indies; and the figures, 
culled with evident care from the most trust- 
worthy sources and collected through personal 


66 


effort, are intelligently and impartially com- 
bined and discussed in a clear and attractive 
manner, so that, despite the scores of statistical 
tables, the book is easy reading from preface to 
conclusion. 

In the first chapter, which relates to the 
growth and movements of the black and mulatto 
population, it is shown that the negro has failed 
to gain a foothold in any of the Northern States 
as an agricultural laborer; that in general he 
has remained in the South, contrary to the 
many predictions of wholesale migration; and 
that he does not readily lend himself to schemes 
of colonization, and has failed miserably in the 
most recent experiment of the kind (in Durango, 
Mexico). At the same time it is shown that the 
negro displays a tendency to segregate in cer- 
tain sections in the South, while in the North, 
and to a less extent in the South, there is a 
tendency toward congregation in the cities. 

To students of the negro problem the second 
chapter, ‘ Vital Statistics,’ is of paramount in- 
terest. Here the author tabulates and discusses 
the rates of birth and death under various con- 
ditions among the blacks and compares them 
with the corresponding rates among the whites, 
calculates the expectation of life for blacks and 
whites, and examines fully the causes of mor- 
tality in both races. Summarizing the facts, it 
is pointed out (1) that the excess of births over 
deaths is greater for the whites than for the 
blacks in the: Southern States; (2) that in the 
Northern States the blacks do not hold their 
own, since the deaths outnumber the births, 
the apparent increase in population being due 
to migration; (3) that for ten representative 
Southern cities the death rate for five years 
(189094) was 20.12 per thousand for the 
whites, and 32.61 for the blacks, indicating a 
steady and apparently irresistible vital decline, 
both relative and absolute, on the part of the 
latter; (4) that the excess of negro mortality is 
greatest in the age period under 15 years, cul- 
minating among infants, and (5) that hence the 
number surviving to productive and reproduc- 
tive ages is considerably less for the blacks 
than for the whites ; (6) that the expectation of 
life among the blacks is from 12.5 to 17.11 
years less than among the whites in the 
cities giving most reliable statistics; (7) that 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 106. 


the rates of mortality among blacks and 
whites are not materially affected by other 
conditions than those of race and heredity ; 
and (8) that since emancipation, mortality 
among the blacks has steadily increased, 
while the white death rate has diminished. 
It is shown that the chief causes of excessive 
mortality among the blacks are (1) diseases of 
infants, including premature and still births; 
(2) consumption, which is increasing among the 
blacks and decreasing among the whites; (8) 
pneumonia; (4) scrofula and venereal diseases, 
which are much more prevalent among the 
blacks and which are increasing; (5) malarial 
fevers (contrary to general opinion); and (6) 
typhoid fever at the earlier ages. The observa- 
tions collated indicate that smallpox is more 
prevalent among the blacks, chiefly through 
greater neglects of vaccination; that scarlet 
fever, yellow fever, appendicitis and carcinoma 
uteri, from all of which the negro is generally 
supposed exempt, occur, but less frequently than 
among the whites, as is the case also with in- 
sanity, suicide, measles, diphtheria, tumor- 
cancer and alcholism; while the mortality from 
childbirth and puerperal fever is greater among 
the blacks by reason of ignorance and mal- 
treatment. ‘‘The general conclusion is that 
the negro is subject to a higher mortality at all 
ages, but especially so at the early age periods. 
This is largely the result of an inordinate mor- 
tality from constitutional and respiratory dis- 
eases. Moreover, the mortality from these 
diseases is on the increase among the colored, 
and on the decrease among the whites. In 
consequence, the natural increase in the colored 


‘population will be less from decade to decade, 


and in the end a decrease must take place. It 
is sufficient to know that in the struggle for 
race supremacy the black race is not holding 
its own; and this fact once recognized, all 
danger from a possible numerical supremacy of 
the race vanishes’’ (page 148). 

The third chapter is devoted to anthropo- 
metric facts, figures and opinions derived from 
various sourees. The figures indicate that the 
weight of the black is somewhat greater and his 
stature somewhat less than the weight and stat- 
ure of the white of the same class; that the 
lung capacity in the black is considerably less and 


JANUARY 8, 1897.] 


the frequency of respiration somewhat greater 
than in the white; that the lifting strength of the 
white is the greater, and that the vision of the 
black is inferior, though he is less liable to dis- 
ease of the eye. The impressions and opinions 
of various students appear to indicate that dur- 
ing slavery the black was ‘ physically the equal 
if not the superior of the white, and this view 
has been fully sustained by the statistics of 
mortality, which also ranked him the equal if 
not the superior of the white thirty years ago’ 
(pages 175-6); but that since emancipation the 
black has deteriorated materially, both in phy- 
sical. development and in viability. ‘‘And the 
opinion is warranted that * * * the tendency 
of the race has been downward. This tendency, 
if unchecked, must in the end lead to a still 
greater mortality, a lesser degree of economic 
and social efficiency, a lower standard of nur- 
ture and a diminishing excess of births over 
deaths. A combination of these traits and 
tendencies must in the end cause the extinction 
of the race’’ (page 176). 

The fourth chapter deals with ‘Race Amalga- 
mation’ in a statistical way, so far as the avail- 
able data permit, but with abundant references 
to the opinions of students. It is recognized 
that the American negro ‘is largely a cross be- 
tween the African and the white male’ (page 
177), and that very little pure African blood 
remains; it is also recognized that, since the 
emancipation, the admixture of the races has 
been materially checked and is constantly di- 
minishing, with a concomitant tendency toward 
the development of a distinctive race of mixed 
blood, to which the foregoing facts and figures 
apply, and of which the before-mentioned fea- 
tures and tendencies are characteristic. It is 
shown that the roseate dreams of radical Aboli- 
tionists thirty years ago concerning the absorp- 
tion of the blacks, with attendant improvement 
in the whites, have faded as time has widened 
the chasm between the races; the shocking im- 
morality of the blacks, as indicated by illegiti- 
mate births in Washington and elsewhere, is 
set forth in the records; and the physical de- 
terioration of the black race is, at least impli- 
citly, ascribed to the moral inferiority. 

Under ‘Social Conditions and Tendencies’ it 
is shown that the blacks take kindly to religious 


SCIENCE. 


67 


institutions, though education pervades their 
ranks more slowly, and that neither counteracts 
criminal tendencies so completely as has been 
hoped; it is also shown from ample statistics 
that crime is nearly thrice as prevalent among 
the blacks as among the whites, this relation 
holding even when the negro is compared with 
the most criminal nationalities. The statistics 
for different cities and sections appear to indi- 
eate also that crime is increasing among the 
blacks, though decreasing among the whites. 
A considerable body of data relating to lynch- 
ing has been brought together, which seems to 
indicate that neither this summary mode of 
punishment nor the crimes for which it is the 
penalty.are decreasing. Hfforts are made also 
to tabulate the statistics of pauperism, and the 
tables indicate the great preponderance of pau- 
perism among the blacks, though it is evident 
that the figures do charitable justice to this 
phase of the character of the alien race. Un- 
der ‘Economic Conditions and Tendencies’ the 
negro is considered as an agricultural laborer 
and as an industrial factor, and it isshown that 
he profits little, and, according to many opin- 
ions, suffers from education, and displays a 
lamentable lack of thrift and public spirit as a 
citizen, though filling fairly well a subordinate 
position in industrial society. 

In the final chapter (a ‘Conclusion’ in name 
and in the fact that it ends the book, though 
not at all as a summary of the investigation) 
comparisons are instituted between the Ameri- 
can negro and various other races, including 
the American Indians, the Maoris, etc.; the 
author not only concurring in, but adding 
weight to, the general opinion concerning the 
decadence of the lower races when brought in 
contact with the higher. 


From a sociologic point of view, if not from 
that of the statician or economist concerned with 
great masses rather than inconspicuous (albeit 
important) principles, a criticism may be lodged 
against the book; and it may be stated the 
more starkly, first, because.all or nearly all cur- 
rent statistical discussions of the subject are 
open to the same criticism, and second, because 
another Federal census is in contemplation, and 
it would seem especially timely to direct atten- 


68 


tion toward a little-considered factor in the negro 
problem. The authorjustly points out that dur- 
ingthe days of slavery the amalgamation between 
the whites and blacks was illicit, and that the 
mulattoes and other mixed bloods were almost 
exclusively the progeny of white fathers and 
black or mixed-blood mothers, and his discus- 
sion of the vital and other characteristics: of 
the American negro is based on these conspicu- 
ous facts ; and he justly observes that, with the 
abolition of slavery, illicit amalgamation de 
creased enormously, and, so far as fruitful 
unions are concerned, has practically disap- 
peared. He also gives slight recognition to the 
fact that amalgamation is proceeding slowly 
through intermarriage ; yet he does not notice 
(although his statistics clearly indicate as much) 
that by far the greater part of the legitimate 
and productive unions are between black men 
and white women, rather than between white 
men and black women, as during slavery. Thus 
in Michigan, during the 20 years 1874-1898, 111 
out of the 14,151 marriages were interracial, 
and of these 93 were between black or mulatto 
males and white females, leaving only 18 unions 
of the slavery type (page 198); and in Rhode 
Island, during the 13 years 1881-1893, there 
were 51 white females and only 7 white males 
in the 58 interracial marriages (page 199). So 
too, in the 23 cases of interracial marriage (ex- 
cluding the sporadic unions) studied by the au- 
thor, there were 19 white women to 4 white 
men (page 204). These ratios are in accordance 
with the casual observations of the reviewer, 
who has noted in addition (again leaving out 
of account sporadic and irregular unions) that 
many of the blacks who marry white women 
are among the leading representatives of their 
race, one being the most illustrious in Ameri- 
can history, while in some cases at least the 
white wives are fairly representative of their 
race and sex. Nowa question at once arises 
concerning the characteristics of the progeny of 
such-unions, who may not be numerous but who 
represent a distinct class of our population ; a 
question arises also as to whether these legiti- 
mate interracial unions are increasing, as the 
meager figures appear to indicate; and there 
are half a dozen collateral inquiries which will 
occur to sociologists, and perhaps to those sta- 


SCIENCE. 


LN. S. Von. V. No. 106. 


ticians who, like the author of the memoir 
under notice, are given to considering the 
meanings expressed by figures as well as the 
figures themselves. This criticism, it will be 
observed, is of the constructive rather than the 
destructive sort; it does not tend to invalidate 
any of the results of Mr. Hoffman’s excellent 
work, but, if well founded, indicates a direction 
in which the work might have been carried 


further advantageously. 
W J McGee. 


Les Aryens au Nord et aw Sud del Hindou-Kouch. 
Par CHARLES DE UJFALVY. pp. 488. G. 
Masson, Paris. 1896. 

M. Ujfalvy is known as a diligent student of 
anthropology and an earnest disciple of Broca. 
He has the same implicit faith in the perman- 
ence of the physical type and its superiority 
over all other human traits for the purposes of 
classification and tracing descent. The feature 
beyond others, which he considers ranks in 
significance, is the cranial index. A nation, 
he observes, may lose its language, alter its 
social condition and deeply modify its blood 
by crossings; but it will always preserve the 
traces of its primitive physical type. Only 
through a long process of transformation, by 
which the encephalon is materially altered in 
its lines of growth, and thus changes the shape 
of its bony envelope, can a brachycephalic peo- 
ple, for instance, become dolichocephalic. 

These are the leading principles of investiga- 
tion which the author proceeds to apply to the 
Aryan tribes of Central Asia. The main topic 
is preceded by two introductions, the first geo- 
graphic and historic, the second ‘ ethnologic, 
ethnogenic and biologic.’ The former not only 
describes the geographic features of the region 
and its trade routes, but lays especial stress on 
the great loess formations and their bearings on 
human character and distribution. The primi- 
tive Aryan Iranians, he argues, were immediate 
neighbors to the ancestors of the Chinese. 

The second introduction is largely historical. 
The author points out the wide variance in the 
skull-types of the modern Asian Aryans and 
seeks to explain it by various invasions and 
interminglings in ancient times, and biologic 
laws—ever faithful to his motto: ‘Il existe 


JANUARY 8, 1897. ] 


dans chaque race un type cranien qu ’il s’agit 
de retrouver.”’ 

The remainder of the work is divided into 
three parts. The first is devoted to the Aryans 
north of the Hindu Kusch range. These in- 
elude the Galtchas, the Tadjiks of the moun- 
tains and the plains, the Iranians of the Pamir, 
and various lesser conglomerations, as the 
Kashgars, the Darvasis and the Karatheghins. 
Each of these is conscientiously studied, not 
merely from the physical side, but including 
their dialects, religions, governments, history 
and civilization. Free use is made of other 
writers, and it must not be forgotten that the 
author has extensive sources of personal obser- 
vation, his wide travels in Central Asia having 
provided him with abundant material. 

The second part takes up the tribes of Dar- 
distan, Baltistan and Kafiristan, with similar 
thoroughness. Especial attention is paid to 
their religions and castes, the influence of Maz- 
deism and Buddhism, their sociologic customs 
and the differences between the Aryan dialects 
north and south of the Hindu Kusch. Inci- 
dentally, many other questions of anthropology 
are mentioned. For instance, he assigns to the 
Dravidas of India a ‘half-mongolic’ origin (page 
240), which thus explains their agelutinative 
languages. (This overlooks the quite different 
system of their agglutination.) In this part 
much use is made of the observations of Leitner 
and Risley, and the researches of Ratzel and 
Biddulph. 

The third part is an epitome of his conclu- 
sions. A careful statement is presented of the 
physical traits, especially those of the crania. 
His inference is positive that the Homo Europus 
never had his birthplace in Central Asia, as his 
corporeal type is nowhere found there. The 
Hindoo, of Hindustan, may be a homologue of 
the Mediterranean type. 

A. first appendix follows on the early Bactrian 
and Scythic coinage, of great interest to the his- 
torian and numismatist, and a second on the 
anthropologic terminology adopted by the au- 
thor. A moderately well drawn and not very 
clear ethnographic map is appended. 

The work deserves high recommendation. It 
is learned and fair, rich in information not 
easily accessible. Some will find it in a too ex- 


SCIENCE. 


69 


clusive adherence to physical standards of ethnic 
comparison; but that is the author’s avowed 
position. D. G. BRINTON. 


SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS. 
THE MONIST. 

THE bulk of the contents of the January 
Monist is occupied by three long and exhaus- 
tive articles : (1) ‘The Logic of Relatives,’ by C. 
8. Peirce ; (2) ‘ Animal Societies,’ by Paul Topi- 
nard; (8) ‘The Philosophy of Buddhism,’ by 
Paul Carus. : 

Mr. Peirce’s article is his first publication on 
the subject of the logic of relatives since 1884, 
and while devoting much space to a critical 
analysis of parts of Schroder’s new volume is 
still comprehensive enough to embrace an inde- 
pendent exposition of the theory of graphs, of 
dyadic relatives, and offers for the first time Mr. 
Peirce’s rules for working with the ‘General 
Algebra of Logic.’ New diagrams and im- 
provements of characters are introduced, and 
finally certain important mathematical develop- 
ments in the combinatorial analysis are given. 

Dr. Topinard examines at considerable length 
the causes and forms of the various social as- 
semblages met with in the animal world, and 
his conclusions touch the important questions 
of the function of the various instincts, the réle 
of the family, ete., in the formation of animal 
society, as well as directly develop a distinction 
between ‘colonies’ and societies, profoundly 
affecting that doctrine which bases sociology 
on biology. 

Finally, in The Philosophy of Buddhism, Dr. 
P. Carus seeks to reveal the scientific kernel of 
ancient Buddhistic thought, compares its results 
to the doctrines of modern psychology, ani- 
madverts upon Oldenberg’s philosophical inter- 
pretation of Buddha’s doctrines, and closes with 
a psychological elucidation of the doctrine of 
Nirvana. 

Prof. J. M. Tyler discusses Cope’s Primary 
Factors of Organic Evolution; the usual French 
correspondence, and reviews of Ostwald’s scien- 
tific classics and of works by Cantor, Griesbach, 
Freycinet, etc., appear; while in Discussions we 
have remarks upon Panlogism, by EK. Douglas 
Faweett, and a mention of the proposed new 
scientific catalogue. 


70 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 
NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES.—SECTION OF 
ASTRONOMY AND PHYSICS, DECEMBER 
7, 1896. 
Pror. J. K. REES gave a very interesting re- 
view of the work of Newton, Evans and others 


upon the probable orbit and period of the great 


shower of meteors which were seen in 1833 and 
1866, and which are soon due again. Attention 
was also called to the work of Leverrier, and 
Opholtzer in finally settling the period of this 
swarm at about 334 years. At the request of 
Prof. Stone observations were made at all the 
large observatories, on the night in November, to 
see if by chance an unusual number of meteors 
should be observed, thus indicating that the 
swarm had so scattered out that some of the 
advanced guard would appear even three years 
ahead of the general mass. The number ob- 
served by Prof. Rees was no greater than normal 
and the results were rather negative. 

H. C. Parker, upon a universal method of 
measuring current, showed how it is possible 
and convenient to measure currents varying 
from a fraction of a microampere to a megalam- 
pere, 7. e., from, say a hundred millionth, toa 
million amperes, simply using a voltmeter, or a 
delicate galvanometer, in connection with a 
series of shunts. He exhibited a series of such 
shunts ranging from 0.1 ohm to 0.00005 ohm 
which had been determined with the double 
bridge with an error not to exceed 0.1%. 

W. Hallock then exhibited some mechanical 
devices by means of which it is possible to illus- 
trate the interference of two beams of light with 
any desired phase difference, and another show- 
ing how a beam of plane polarized light is re- 
solved into two beams at right angles to each 
other on entering a double-refracting medium. 

Dr. T. A. Humason reported upon the me- 
teors'seen on December 4th, asfollows: While 
riding in Central Park opposite West Seventy- 
second Street, at twenty minutes to five, on the 
afternoon of December 4th, I saw a meteor so 
brilliant as to be plainly visible, though it was 
then about sunset and quite light. The meteor 
caught my attention at an altitude of fifty de- 
grees, a little south of east, and descended al- 
most vertically and with rapid motion, until it 
reached an altitude of fifteen degrees, when it 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No. 106. 


disappeared. The head had a diameter of about 
fifteen minutes and was very clearly defined. A 
train, two or three degrees in length, was also 
visible. The eastern sky was almost covered 
with clouds and the meteor seemed to be be- 
tween them and myself, though it is probable 
that it was above the clouds and was seen 
through them. The meteor vanished in mid- 
air, without passing behind any intervening 
object, and as meteors are usually extinguished 
within five or ten miles of the earth it seems 
probable that this was near the end of its jour- 
ney and not far above the city. 

At the same time people on Brooklyn bridge 
observed a meteor in the northeastern sky. It 
is possible that these were one and the same ; 
and if so, owing to the difference of direction 
from the two points of observation, the meteor 
must have been very near. But it is quite pos- 
sible that the observers on Brooklyn bridge 
were looking at a different meteor, for an- 
other was seen at the same time from Fordham, 
and directly east of that place, which would 
have been visible in the northeastern sky from 
Brooklyn bridge. 

At the time these meteors were seen, another 
was observed passing over Passaic, N. J., and 
moving eastward; another over Irvington-on- 
the-Hudson, moving northeastward, and one 
over Danbury, Conn., also traveling in a north- 
easterly direction. It is evident that this was not 
a single meteor seen from these several places, 
but that there were several meteors traveling in 
slightly different directions. As large meteors 
seldom or never travel in groups and as they 
are usually shattered near the end of their 
course, it is probable that this came into the at- 
mosphere a single, large meteor and that it 
burst not far from here, the fragments taking 
slightly different directions. All of these ob- 
servations would be satisfied by the following 
hypothesis: Passaic, Irvington and Danbury 
are almost in a straight line. It is probable 
that the meteor approached this neighborhood, 
passing over Passaic and moving eastward ; that 
immediately after passing Passaic it separated 
into three or more parts, one turning slightly to 
the north and passing over Irvington and Dan- 
bury, another continuing in a straight line and 
passing over Fordham, and a third turning 


JANUARY 8, 1897. ] 


slightly south and passing over New York. 
Another report states that a meteor was also 
seen over Rahway, N. J., which burst and came 
to the ground in four parts. This was probably 
another offshoot from the same original, and 
must have left it, if this hypothesis is correct, 
before it reached Passaic. 
W. HALLOCK, 
Secretary of Section. 


SECTION OF BIOLOGY, DECEMBER 14, 1896. 


Pror. J. G. Curtis, Chairman, in the chair. 

Dr. Arnold Graf made a preliminary report 
on ‘Some New Fixing Fluids.’ 

Mr. J. H. McGregor read a paper entitled 
‘An Embryo of Cryptobranchus.’ The embryo 
described is about 16 millimetres long, and is 
the first to be recorded of this species. Prom- 
inent among its external features are the 
excessive amount of yolk, the marked ventral 
flexure in the cervical region and the very 
early and almost simultaneous appearance of 
the two pairs of limbs. The dorsal surface is 
pigmented, the pigment cells being arranged in 
transverse bands, one band over each metamere 
of the body. Lateral line sense-organs can be 
distinguished. Among the most striking inter- 
nal characters may be mentioned the dorso- 
ventral flattening of the notochord, the late ap- 
pearance of entoderm and alimentary organs 
generally, due doubtless to the great mass of 
the yolk. The primordial skull is unusually 
well developed. The auditory vesicle has an en- 
dolymphatic duct ending blindly immediately 
under the skin on the top of the head. Along 
the sides of the body a system of organs occurs 
which are probably homologous with the em- 
bryonic sense-organs described by Beard in the 
sharks. 

Dr. J. L. Wortman spoke of the Ganodonta, 
a new and primative suborder of the Edentata 
from the Eocene of North America. One sec- 
tion or family of the suborder, viz: the Stylino- 
dontide, is composed of Hemiganus, Psittaco- 
therium, Ectoganus and Stylinodon, and forms a 
closely connected and consecutive phylum, 
reaching from the base of the Puerco to the 
Bridger formation and leading directly to the 
Gravigrada or ground sloths. A second family, 
viz: the Conoryctidz, composed of Conoryctes 


SCIENCE. 


ee 


and Onychodectes, may be regarded as ancestral 
to the Armadillos. The character and origin 
of the Edentate fauna of South America was 
discussed at length and the conclusion reached 
that its original home was in’ North America. 
It was further held that there was a migration 
to the southward before the close of the Hocene 
and that there must have then been an early 
land connection between the two continents. 
C. L. Briston, 
Secretary. 


THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY. 


THE regular meeting of the New York Sec- 
tion of the American Chemical Society was 
held, by invitation of Drs. Morton and Leeds, 
at the Stevens Institute of Technology, Ho- 
boken, on the 11th inst. 

An unusually large representation from the 
Society’s membership gave attention to the 
proceedings. 

Dr. Leeds described the development of 
methods for the quantitative estimation of 
micro-organisms in waters with especial refer- 
ence to the study and control of discolorations 
and offensive odors in water supplies, such as 
afflicted the city of Brooklyn in the summer 
just passed ; a matter entirely distinct from the 
bacteriolagy of water in a pathogenic sense, 
and, therefore, in nowise at issue with work of 
that character. 

Dr. Leeds recommended that engineers in 

charge of water supplies should familiarize 
themselves with thé simple apparatus and ma- 
nipulation necessary to enable them to foresee 
the approach of conditions favorable to the 
growth of these micro-organisms productive of 
color and odor, and thus be enabled to take such 
steps as may be applicable to the hindrance or 
prevention of their development. 
' After the reading of Dr. Leeds’ paper the 
Society was invited to adjourn to Dr. Morton’s. 
lecture room, where all preparations were com- 
plete for the very interesting and beautiful ex- 
periments which followed. 

The causes of the phenomena of fluorescence 
were explained, and many illustrations given 
by the aid of solutions, colored screens and 
monochromatic light. Particularly striking 
were the effects produced by the substance 


72 


‘Thallene,’ isolated from petroleum residues 
some years ago by Dr. Morton. 

Another adjournment to Dr. Morton’s house, 
where the meeting was brought to a close with 
an informal reception. 

The members present were united in their 
appreciation of Dr. Morton’s hospitality, and 
the meeting must be recorded as one of the 
most enjoyable held by the New York Section. 

DURAND WOODMAN, 
Secretary. 


BOSTON SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 


A GENERAL meeting was held Wednesday, 
December 2d, forty-eight persons present. The 
evening was devoted to a commemoration of 
the life and services of Thomas Tracy Bouvé, 
who had died on June 8, 1896. 

Dr. James C. White read a letter from Mr. 
‘Charles J. Sprague, recalling some of the promi- 
nent characteristics of Mr. Bouvé as a man, and 
of his business abilities and scientific attain- 
ments. Dr. White then read an appreciative 
review of Mr. Bouvé’s long and important ser- 
vices to the Society and to science. Prof. Al- 
pheus Hyatt spoke of Mr. Bouvé’s work in the 
Society since 1870, and Prof. W. O. Crosby gave 
an account of Mr. Bouvé’s contributions to 
scientific literature, and of his work in connec- 
tion with the Society’s collections of minerals, 
rocks and fossils. 

A letter from Prof. James Hall, reminiscent 
of the early days of the Society and of the ser- 
vices rendered to science by Mr. Bouvé and sev- 
eral of his associates, was read ; also letters from 
Profs. Goodale and Putnam. 

SAMUEL HENSHAW, 
Secretary. 


THE ALABAMA INDUSTRIAL AND SCIENTIFIC 
SOCIETY. 

THE regular winter meeting of the Society 
was held in the city of Birmingham on Tuesday, 
December 15, 1896. Mr. Fred. M. Jackson, 
President of the Society, wasin the chair, and ten 
members were present. A committee appointed 
at the last meeting to arrange for the collection, 
monthly, of statistics of the iron ores, coal, coke, 
limestone and Other mineral resources and 
products of the State, reported by recommending 
a plan by which the collection of these statis- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 106. 


ties would be undertaken by Mr. W. M. Brewer, 
under the auspices of the Society and of the 
State Geological Survey. The plan recom- 
mended by the committee was adopted, and it 
is the intention to prepare monthly tables of 
statistics, to be furnished to such of the technical 
journals as may wish to publish them, and to 
be kept on file in the offices of the Secretary of 
the Society and of the State Geologist. 

Two papers were presented, viz.: On Gold 
Milling in Clay County, Alabama, in the Idaho 
district, by Joshua Franklin, and on the Man- 
ganese Deposits of Georgia, by Wm. M. Brewer. 

Mr Franklin gave the details of his recent 
experience in treating with profit the low-grade 
gold ores of Clay County with a Huntington 
mill, shaking coppers, blanket sluices and 
amalgam traps. The paper of Mr. Brewer was 
read by title only, being delayed in the mail. 

After the reading of the papers there followed 
an instructive discussion of the subject of coke- 
making, Dr. Phillips, Mr. Jackson, Mr. Erskine 
Ramsay, Col. A. J. Montgomery and others 
taking part therein. The great importance of 
the recovery of the by-products of the coking 
ovens was particularly dwelt upon. This sub- 
ject has often been discussed at previous meet- 
ings, and a number of experiments have been 
made at several points near Birmingham with a 
view to utilizing some, at least, of these now 
generally wasted products. 

The next meeting, at which the officers for 
the ensuing year will be elected, will be held 
some time about the beginning of the summer 
months. EUGENE A. SMITH, 

Secretary. 


NEW BOOKS. 

Habit and Instinct. C. Lioyp Morgan. Ed- 
win Arnold, London and New York. 1896. 
Pp. 351. 

Outlines of Psychology. WILHELM WUNDT. 
Translated by Charles Hubbard Judd. Leip- 
zig, Wilhelm Engelmann. Pp. xviii+842. 

Outlines of Electricity and Magnetism. CHARLES 
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NEW SERIES. 
Vou. V. No. 107. 


Fripay, JANUARY 15, 1897. 


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SCIENCE 


EDITORIAL COMMITTEE: S. NEwcomsB, Mathematics; R. S. WooDWARD, Mechanics; E. C. PICKERING, 
Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THURSTON, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry ; 
J. LE ContE, Geology; W. M. Davis, Physiography; O. C. MARsH, Paleontology; W. K. 
Brooks, C. HART MERRIAM, Zoology; S. H. ScuDDER, Entomology; N. L. BRITTON, 
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FripAy, JANUARY 15, 1897. : 
CONTENTS : 
A National Department of Science: CHAS. W. 
DANE NUE W eae JiR ee ierccis soe cieiscss seasienicea(ssio'e sete eSsocie desis 73 


Geological Society of America: Ninth Annual Meet- 
ing, Washington, December 29-31, 1896: J. ¥. 
TESBINEP) pasoocosonasoncdobo0oo540000: Boao ODNToDNHDENTEqHOHOGNO 

American Mathematical Society: EF. N. CoLE 

Current Notes on Anthropology :— 

Divinatory and Calendrical Diagrams ; The Racial 
Geography of Europe: D. G. BRINTON............ 100 

Notes on Inorganic Chemistry: J. L. H... 

Astronomical Notes: HH. J. ..........ecee0es 

Scientific Notes and News ............. 02 

University and Educational News.......+.+csesesseeereee 107 

Discussion and Correspondence :— 

On Certain Problems of Vertebrate Embryology: 
J. BEARD, CHARLES S. MINOT..............:0000000- 107 

Scientific Literature :— 

Bailey’s Survival of the Unlike: CHARLES E. 
BrssEy. WNuttall’s Popular Handbook of the Or- 
nithology of Eastern North America: C. H. M. 
Hertwig and Wilson on The Cell: C. B. DAVEN- 
PORT. Physiological Papers by H. Newell Martin: 
S. F. Locke. Behrens’ Anleitung zur Mikro- 
Chemische Analyse: WW. R....-...0.--0----oeeesstosense 109 

Societies and Academies :— 

Chemical Society of Washington: A. C. PEALE. 
The Texas Academy of Science: FREDERIC W. 
[STUNIOINTIDS -ancnohaosonsoansadoconscosdatiasesancoNn SaoopaBe36 115 

INGEN) DBT ES coon aeneesoonoo950s waDsezazoNROAD.oOdeSo6 300000006 116 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended 
for review should be sent to the responsible editor, Prof. J. 
McKeen Cattell, Garrison-on-Hudson, N. Y. 


_ A NATIONAL DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE. 


THE PRESENT ORGANIZATION OF THE SCIENTIFIC 
WORK OF THE GOVERNMENT, ESPECIALLY THAT 
DESIGNED TO DISCOVER AND DEVELOP THE 
RESOURCES OF THE COUNTRY, CONSID- 

ERED WITH REFERENCE TO THE 
UPBUILDING OF SUCH A DE- 
PARTMENT. 


THE United States Government is doing 
more to discover the resources of its terri- 


tory and to teach its people to develop 
them than any other government in the 
world. Our many noble establishments for 
the promotion of science, both pure and 
applied, are the admiration of all. For- 
eigners regard these institutions as the most 
unique feature of our government. They 
represent the true American idea. It is 
the more to be regretted, therefore, that this 
grand idea, so well established in our laws, 
is not adequately represented in the organi- 
zation of the government. 

The scientific work of the government is 
carried on by many agencies scattered 
through the various departments, the more 
important ones, however, being connected 
with the Treasury Department, the Navy 
Department, the Department of the In- 
terior and the Department of Agriculture. 
Some of them are not connected with any 
department. 

The majority of these bureaus have no 
logical connection with the departments to 
which they belong, and an investigation of 
their origin is necessary in order to find 
out how they became attached to the sev- 
eral departments. It usually came about 
in this way. Some government official be- 
came deeply interested in a certain line of 
scientific work bearing upon the develop- 
ment of the country. After agitating the 
matter for several years he finally secured 
an appropriation from Congress authoriz- 
ing the investigation to be made in the de- 


74 


partment with which he was connected. 
Hither the originator or some other friend 
of the scheme was put in charge of the 
work, and if it proved beneficial it re- 
ceived increased appropriations from year 
to year, and finally grew to be a great 
bureau. This method has led to some 
strange connections. It was in this way 
that the Coast Survey, the Commissioner of 
Navigation, the Marine Hospital Service 
and the Life Saving Service came to. be 
placed under the Treasury Department, 
while the Navy Department controls the 
National Observatory, the Hydrographic 
Office and the Nautical Almanac. These 
accidental connections, once established, 
have usually been kept up, and so far, 
although they are often as disadvantageous 
as they are illogical, a majority of the 
bureaus have remained in the departments 
where they originated. 

The time has arrived when the successful 
prosecution of the scientific work of the 
government requires that these various 
bureaus should be organized in accordance 
with a logical plan. A general coordina- 
tion of all such investigations must be the 
next step in their development. It is pro- 
posed in this paper to suggest a plan which, 
it is believed, will, without injuring the 
work of any of them, lead to a reorganiza- 
tion of these bureaus and effect the neces- 
sary coordination of their researches. 

The scientific agencies connected with the 
execution of the laws, with the construction 
of naval and military equipment, and with 
the government schools, are, of course, not 
included in this plan. A chemical labora- 
tory will, for example, probably always be 
needed in connection with the revenue office 
of the Treasury Department, for the pur- 
pose of analyzing sugars, alcoholic liquors, 
ete. The War and Navy Departments will 
always need their own testing laboratories, 
and both the naval and military academies 
their extensive teaching equipments. The 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 107. 


present discussion applies only to those 
agencies of the government which are de- 
signed to promote pure science or its appli- 
cations to the discovery, conservation and 
development of the resources of the country 
in the broadest sense of these terms. 

A rational classification of these govern- 
ment scientific agencies would begin with 
the National Observatory and the Nautical 
Almanac, which locate our planet in space 
and our country upon the globe, and supply 
our mariners with the data by which to 
sail. Next would come the Coast and Geo- 
detic Survey, which determines the coast 
and boundary lines of the country and its 
chief heights and geographical positions. 
Following this would come the Geological 
Survey, which is charged with ‘the classifi- 
cation of the public lands and the examina- 
tion of the geological structure and resources 
of the national domain.’ The Weather 
Bureau, whose duty it is to investigate our 
climate, and especially its relations to agri- 
culture and other industries, would naturally 
come next. This would be followed by vari- 
ous agencies for studying the fauna and 
flora and determining the life zones, such 
as the Biological Survey, the Divisions of 
Entomology and of Botany, and the Na- 
tional Museum, including the National Her- 
barium. 

The great economic applications of the 
principles elucidated by these surveys 
would be carried out by another group of 
bureaus, like the Forestry Bureau, the 
Agricultural and Horticultural Bureaus, 
and the Fish Commission. ‘These, in turn, 
would be followed by other agencies organ- 
ized for the purpose of investigating great 
economic problems, such as the forage in- 
terests of the country, the irrigation ques- 
tion, the industries of the arid region, and 
so on. Finally, the new department should 
include a great statistical agency, such as 
the proposed permanent census bureau. 
Statistics, showing the products of natural 


JANUARY 15, 1897.] 


forces and the results of the people’s work 
along all lines of endeavor, form the basis 
of all economic science, and would be 
needed, therefore, in connection with the 
work of the bureaus above mentioned. 
Many of them would have to assist in col- 
lecting these data. There must, therefore, 
be the most intimate cooperation between 
the agencies of the government for the 
exploitation of resources and the promotion 
of industries, and the census bureau which 
measures the one and counts the results of 
the other. 

The list appended to this paper includes 
the chief government scientific agencies 
having these, or similar objects, as distin- 
guished from the purely executive agencies 
of the government. It shows that the 
United States government now employs 
5,225 persons in this scientific and economic 
work, not including the census, and expends 
for it annually nearly eight million dollars. 

A glance at this magnificent array of 
forces is all that is necessary to impress 
one, not merely with the grand initiative of 
the American people which has called them 
forth, but with their sadly divided and 
scattered condition ; for the appended list 
also shows that our government is now 
supporting twenty-eight separate scientific 
bureaus, surveys, divisions or investiga- 
tions, distributed among six different de- 
partments, not including fifty-four agricul- 
tural experiment stations and many other 
outlying agencies. Science is conducting 
in America a grand campaign for the ad- 
vancement of civilization, but its forces are 
divided into so many camps that it does 
not win half the victories it should. What 
we want is an organized army, with a gen- 
eral staff and a commander-in-chief. 


DUPLICATION OF WORK. 

Scattered, as our scientific agencies are, 
through all the departments, organized un- 
der broad and often very indefinite laws, 


SCIENCE. 


75 


supervised and directed, when they receive 
any attention at all, by different Secretaries, 
usually not scientific men and always over- 
run with other work, there is ample oppor- 
tunity for confusion and duplication of 
work, and consequent waste of time and 
money. A few illustrations will show how 
this works. 

The government has three separate and 
distinct agencies for measuring the land of 
the country: namely, the General Land 
Office and the Geological Survey, both in 
the Interior Department, and the Coast 
and Geodetic Survey, in the Treasury De- 
partment. In addition to these, the Hn- 
gineer Corps of the Army makes military, 
boundary and geographic explorations and 
surveys. 

There are four hydrographic offices in as 
many departments, viz, the Hydrographic 
Office of the Navy, a similar office in the 
Coast Survey of the Treasury Department, 
the Division of Hydrography in the Geo- 
logical Survey (Interior Department), 
which measures the rivers of the arid re- 
gions, and the Weather Bureau, which 
measures rivers and studies lake currents. 
These agencies are supposed to have dif- 
ferent fields of labor, but all are liable to 
meet in the navigable rivers of the country. 

In addition, the Fish Commission meas- 
ures the waters of fishing grounds and 
rivers, the Engineer Corps of the Army 
measures the Mississippi River, the lakes 
and harbors. Four or five of these agen- 
cies have actually been engaged in making 
measurements and studies in the navigable 
rivers and the Great Lakes within the last 
few years. 

The Coast Survey, the Naval Observatory 
and the Weather Bureau have all been en- 
gaged in recent years in studying the mag- 
netism of the earth. 

The government has at least five sepa- 
rate and distinet chemical laboratories in 
the city of Washington alone. 


76 


There are many other scientific agencies 
similar to those in Washington scattered 
throughout the country in mints, govern- 
ment schools, hospitals, ete., which receive 
appropriations for general work. 

The Secretary of the Interior and the 
Secretary of Agriculture some time ago ap- 
pointed a board to compile the laws on irri- 
gation, and find out what each bureau of 
each department should do. It took this 
board a year to inform these two Secretaries 
what the law required of each of them. Its 
report shows that eight bureaus in the two 
departments must cooperate in order to: ac- 
complish any thorough work on the great 
problems of irrigation. Three distinct 
branches of the Interior Department alone 
are engaged in irrigation work, viz, the 
General Land Office, the Office of Indian 
Affairs and the Geological Survey. The 
last Census also prepared a report on this 
subject. The Weather Bureau and the 
Divisions of Soils and Vegetable Physiology 
of the Department of Agriculture should 
assist in these irrigation investigations. 
It is needless to say that, with so many 
agencies to promote irrigation, very little 
has been done by any of them. The Hydro- 
graphic Division of the Geological Survey 
deserves the credit of having done most 
of what has been accomplished. 

Although the agricultural experiment 
stations receive an annual appropriation of 
$720,000 through the Department of Agri- 
culture, which has an Office of Experiment 
Stations for compiling the results of their 
work, advising and assisting them, the 
management of their affairs is vested en- 
tirely in independent State Boards, and the 
supervision of the Department of Agricul- 
ture is limited at present to the reports of 
expenditures submitted by the station offi- 
cers. Their plans of work are usually for- 
mulated by local boards or executive com- 
mittees, and cover nearly all conceivable 
subjects connected with agriculture, horti- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 107. 


culture and the animal industry. Only a 
few feeble efforts have so far been made to 
correlate and coordinate the investigations 
of these stations for the purpose of preyent- 
ing duplication. 

The statistics of the natural resources 
and the products of the country, of exports 
and imports, of population, schools, ete., 
are, in like unfortunate manner, collected 
and compiled by eight or ten different 
agencies in five or six different Departments. 
Besides the Census, which has collected and 
discussed nearly all conceivable classes of 
statistics, we have these agencies regularly 
at work: Meteorological statistics are ecol- 
lected by the Weather Bureau ; statistics of 
‘mineral resources and natural products of 
the national domain’ by the Geological 
Survey; agricultural statistics are collected 
by the Department of Agriculture; sta- 
tistics of exports, imports, etc., by the 
Treasury Department ; statistics of wages, 
cost of living, and industrial statistics of 
all kinds, are collected by the Department 
of Labor; statistics of transportation are 
collected by the Interstate Commerce Com- 
mission ; statistics of fisheries are collected 
by the Fish Commission; and statistics of 
schools, colleges and universities are col- 
lected by the Bureau of Education in the 
Interior Department. 

The same confusion exists in the practice 
pertaining to other lines of work. Illus- 
trations might be almost indefinitely mul- 
plied. But the reader must be referred to 
the appended list and the reports. 

This duplication is the necessary result 
of the lack of efficient organization. Bu- 
reaus for doing the same or closely related 
things have been attached to many of the 
Departments and have remained there. 
Congress has been liberal to them, and they 
have extended their work until many of 
them now overlap each other. This over- 
lapping of work is not so bad, however, as 
the almost total absence of cooperation. 


JANUARY 15, 1897.] 


Since the different bureaus are under differ- 
ent Secretaries, there is no way to enforce 
cooperation. 


THE REMEDY. 


What is needed is a general coordination 
of the scientific work of the government. 
The question is how to accomplish this. It 
is probable that a commission of Congress 
or of scientific men, while perhaps not 
able to reconcile all the conflicting interests 
involved in a general plan of reorganiza- 
tion, would still be productive of much 
good. But the first thing is for Congress 
to decide upon a program. 

An important step was taken when the 
officers and employees of the scientific 
bureaus were put in the classified service. 
This renders it almost impossible to use 
patronage in getting appropriations or 
promoting legislation, and puts every man 
on his mettle to maintain his place by good 
work instead of political influence, which 
signifies a great deal. It is not believed, 
however, that much further progress can be 
made toward the reorganization of these 
bureaus and the coordination of their work 
until they have first been brought together 
under one executive head. However good 
their intentions and earnest their desires to 
do so, it is not likely that the several heads 
of Departments can ever agree as to the 
planus of scientific work which shall elimi- 
nate all duplication. Each would consult 
his chiefs of bureaus and be influenced by 
their advice, and naturally each chief will 
want to retain his hold upon all his former 
work. It is evident, therefore, that the 
only way to avoid duplication and waste of 
time and money, and to secure the proper 
coordination and cooperation, is to first 
bring all these bureaus together in one of 
the existing departments or in a new de- 
partment. 

When these bureaus have been thus 
brought together under the direction of one 


SCIENCE. 


77 


Secretary or executive head, the reorganiza- 
tion will be comparatively easy. It should 
take place naturally and gradually in the 
course of ordinary business. The details 
of this reorganization can not be considered 
until the new department has been formed. 
When this has been done the plans for the 
reorganization might well be left to a board 
composed of our leading scientific men or 
of the chiefs of the bureaus involved, pre- 
sided over by the Secretary or some emi- 
nent scientist, appointed by him, who would 
act as arbitrator. 

No revolutionary proceedings are adyvo- 
cated. The policy should be to transfer the 
different scientific bureaus or surveys to 
one department, as opportunity offers, or 
as the Secretaries now having charge of 
them find it expedient to recommend it. 
Let Congress once adopt a fixed policy with 
regard to this matter and establish it in 
the good opinion of the people of the 
country, and the rest would follow in good 
time. A great new department of science 
would thus be the result of natural devel- 
opment rather than of revolution, and the 
reorganization and coordination of the 
work would in the end be accomplished 
without injury to any scientific investiga- 
tions now in progress. 

It is really a wonder that our govern- 
ment has accomplished so much excellent 
scientific work through the agency of so 
unscientific an organization. With enor- 
mous expenditure of brain and money, it 
has done a vast deal for the advance- 
ment of science, but it is deplorable that 
so much has been wasted in doing this. 
We garner the golden grain of truth, to 
be sure, but we cut our wheat with the 
old-fashioned sickle, bind it with straw, 
thresh it with the flail, and then wait 
for a favorable wind to blow away the 
chaff. Harvested by these antiquated meth- 
ods, our product costs us a great deal more 
than it should, and, what is worse, we lose 


78 


a large part of the grain. Shall our govern- 


ment not use the most improved machinery — 


for its work? Is it not time that we had a 
complete scientific department for harvest- 
ing scientific truth? Such a perfect ma- 
chine would garner—and garner at much 
less cost—a far larger harvest than the 
varied cumbrous appliances now in use. 
Cuas. W. Dasney, JR. 


A LIST OF THE SCIENTIFIC AGENCIES OF THE UNI- 
TED STATES GOVERNMENT, ENGAGED EITHER 
IN THE PROMOTION OF PURE SCIENCE OR 
IN THE DISCOVERY AND DEVELOP- 
MENT OF THE RESOURCES 
OF THE COUNTRY. 


They are arrranged under the Departments 
with which they are at present connected. Only 
their chief duties, compiled from the statutes 
and reports, are enumerated. The amounts of 
money appropriated for their expenses for the 
fiscal year ending June 30, 1897, and thé 
total number of employees connected with 
each, are added. 


IN THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 

Naval Observatory: The National Observatory: 
Makes astronomical observations, corrects chronom- 
eters, ete. Appropriation, $51,660. 

Total number of employees, 48. 

Nautical Almanac: Preparesthe American Ephem- 
eris and Nautical Almanac, collects and disseminates 
information on navigation. Appropriation, $22,480. 

Total number of employees, 20. Does not include 
detailed officers. 

Hydrographic Office: Collects information and pub- 
lishes charts with regard to direction and force of 
winds; set and strength of currents; feeding grounds 
of whales and seals; regions of storm, fogs and ice; 
the position of derelicts and floating obstructions; 
the best routes to be followed by steam and sail; also 
general hydrographic and marine meteorological in- 
formation, weather warnings, ete. Appropriation, 
$103,940. 

Total number of employees, 79, exclusive of 
those in twelve branch offices. 


IN THE TREASURY DEPARTMENT. 

The Coast and Geodetic Survey: General location of 
the National domain ; latitudes and longitudes ; sur- 
veys of coasts, rivers, lakes, inland waters, and deep 
seas adjacent to our coasts ; magnetic and gravity re- 
search ; general survey of the country ; heights, 
geographical positions, etc., $401,370. 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 107. 


Total number of employees, 163. 


The War Department also surveys military 
reservations, and runs boundary lines, such as 
the boundary line between the United States 
and Mexico, when called upon to do so. 


IN THE INTERIOR DEPARTMENT. 


The General Land Office: Is charged with the sur- 
vey, sale and general management of the public lands 
and the issuing of titles therefor. It classifies mineral 
and swamp lands, protects the public domain from 
depredations, ete. Appropriation, $1,651,940. 

Total number of employees: In Washington, 380 ; 
outside Washington, 789—1169. 

The Geological Survey: By the original act this sur- 
vey is charged with ‘the classification of the public 
lands and the examination of the geological structure, 
mineral resources and products of the national do- 
main.’ This was first considered as limiting its work 
to the Territories, but in 1882 authority was granted 
to continue the work upon the geological map of the 
United States. Under this law the words ‘national 
domain’ are construed as including the entire 
country, and the provision for studying the ‘ products 
of the national domain’ is understood to give the 
Geological Survey broad authority for many kinds of 
scientific work. At the present time the Survey is 
engaged on no work not specifically provided for by 
statute. 

As at present organized, the Geological Survey has, 
beside two administrative branches, two scientific 
branches, viz, a geologic branch and a topographic 
branch. 

The operations of the geologic branch include the 
preparation of a geologic atlas of the entire United 
States, and special geologic researches. ‘The paleon- 
tologic work is subsidiary to the geologic work, and 
is conducted by a division under this branch. The 
other divisions of this branch are : A chemical labora- 
tory, which analyzes minerals and ores ; a lithologic 
laboratory, in which thin sections of rock are pre- 
pared for study ; a division of mineral resources, 
which collects and compiles mineral statistics, and a 
division of hydrography, which studies the under- 
ground and surface water supplies of the country 
with special reference to applications thereof in irri- 
gation. 

The topographic branch has a division of triangu- 
lation and a division of topography, the latter divi- 
ded into five sectlons. 

Total appropriation for the Geological Survey, 
$774,862.38. 

Total number of employees: 335 permanent, 265 
temporary field men—600. 


JANUARY 15, 1897.] 


The Geological Survey, in addition to the 
above, is now engaged in making, under special 
enactment, a land sub-division survey in the 
Indian Territory. 


Bureau of Education: Collects facts and statistics 
showing the condition and progress of education in 
the States and Territories and supplies information re- 
specting the organization and management of schools, 
school systems and methods of teaching ; promotes 
education. Appropriation, $57,520. 

Total number of employees, 44. 

The Decennial Census: Collects statistics covering 
population, mortality, manufacturing, railroad, fish- 
ing, mining and other industries ; statistics of tele- 
graph, express and insurance companies, and of 
churches ; and other subjects according as Congress 
directs in the special law for each Census. These 
laws are usually drawn to include every reasonable 
suggestion that is made to the Committee on the 
Census, and vary more or less for each Census. 

The result is that the Census is made to duplicate, 
to a large extent, the work of the permanent bureaus 
of the government. It is supplied with large sums 
of money, and reports are often made by it which 

_ ought, in the nature of things, to be made by other 
government bureaus. This leads to further duplica- 
tion and great waste of time and money. Much work 
is expended upon ill-advised or poorly organized 
schemes. 

The Permanent Census now proposed will consoli- 
date much of this scattered work and prevent dupli- 
cation almost entirely. It should take charge of 
several other statistical agencies and do, on a system- 
atic plan through ten years, the work hitherto done 
in a haphazard way at intervals. It is a move in the 
same direction as that here adyocated for the other 
scientific bureaus. 

The average expense of the Census alone, not in- 
cluding the existing bureaus mentioned herein under 
their own Departments, is estimated at, $1,000,000 
per annum. 


THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 


This Department is wholly devoted to the 
development of the natural resources of the 
country. It is not restricted to agriculture, 
but aims to promote all of our industries, for 
which reason it might be better named ‘The 
Department of Public Works.’ 

Its organization is as follows: The adminis- 
trative and business officers are: Secretary’s 
Office; Division of Accounts and Disburse- 
ments ; Division of Publications with a Docu- 


SCIENCE. 79 


ment Section; Gardens and Grounds; Seed 
Division. 
Its scientific and technical agencies are : 


Weather Bureau: Has charge of the forecasting of 
weather ; the issuing of storm and other weather sig- 
nals ; the gauging of rivers ; the reporting of tempera- 
ture and rainfall conditions for the cotton, rice, sugar 
and other interests ; the taking of meteorological obser- 
vations to establish and record the climatic conditions 
of the United States, and the distribution of meteoro- 
logical information. It includes: Five, investiga- 
tors, meteorological data division, forecast division, 
climate and crop service, instrument laboratory, 
monthly weather review and has one hundred and 
fifty-four weather observing stations, etc. 

Bureau of Animal Industry: Inspects meat for in- 
terstate and export trade ; is charged with the control 
and eradication of contagious diseases, and the inspec- 
tion of imported and exported animals ; investigates 
diseases of animals ; prepares tuberculin and mallein 
for distribution to the States ; studies animal para- 
sites of domesticated animals, etc.; collects and dis- 
tributes information in regard to the dairy industry, 
ete. Itincludes: Division of animal pathology, zoo- 
logical laboratory, biochemic laboratory, inspection 
division, field investigations, dairy division, experi- 
ment station, and has, in addition, one hundred meat 
inspecting stations in the country ; twenty-one quar- 
antine stations on coast, Canadian and Mexican 
borders ; nine stations for inspecting exported stock ; 
nineteen Texas fever inspection places, etc. 

Division of Statistics: Collects information as to 
the principal crop and farm animals ; collects and co- 
ordinates statistics of agricultural production, distri- 
bution and consumption ; publishes a monthly crop 
report for the information of producers and consumers 
and for their protection against combination. It 
supervises twenty outside statistical agents and has 
a section of foreign markets. 

Biological Survey: Studies the geographic distri- 
bution of animals and plants ; maps the natural life 
zones of the country ; investigates the economic rela- 
tions of birds and mammals, and promotes the preser- 
vation of beneficial and the destruction of injurious 
species. 

Division of Botany: Maintains the National Her- 
barium (under the Smithsonian !), publishes informa- 
tion on the treatment of weeds, experiments with poi- 
sonous and medicinal plants, and tests seeds with a 
view to their increased purity and commercial value. 

Division of Forestry: Experiments, investigates 
and reports upon the subject of forestry, and dissemi- 
nates information upon forestry matters. 

Division of Agrostology: Investigates the natural 


80 


history, geographical distribution and uses of grasses 
and forage plants, their adaptation to special soils and 
climates, and the introduction of promising native 
and foreign kinds. 

Division of Vegetable Pathology and Physiology: 
Seeks, by investigations in the field and experiments 
in the laboratory, to determine the causes of disease 
and the best means of preventing them ; studies plant 
physiology in its bearing on pathology. 

Division of Entomology: Obtains and disseminates 
information regarding insects in their relation to 
vegetation ; investigates insects sent to the division 
in order to give appropriate remedies ; studies insect 
life in relation to agriculture in different parts of the 
country ; conducts an insectary for studying the habits 
of insects, ete. 

Division of Pomology: Collects and distributes in- 
formation in regard to the fruit interests of the United 
States ; investigates the habits and peculiar qualities 
of fruits; their adaptability to various soils and 
climates and conditions of culture, and introduces 
new and untried varieties. 

Division of Chemistry: Investigates the methods 
proposed for the analyses of soils and fertilizers, and 
agricultural products; investigates and reports on 
adulteration of foods and on special subjects as or- 
dered by Congress or the Secretary, conducts chemical 
investigations for other bureaus of the Department of 
Agriculture. 

Division of Agricultural Soils: Investigates the tex- 
ture and other physical properties of soils and their 
relations to crop production. 

Office of Experiment Stations: Represents the De- 
partment in its relations to the experiment stations 
in all the States and Territories, for which the gov- 
ernment appropriates $750,000 annually; collects and 
disseminates general information regarding the col- 
leges and stations; publishes accounts of agricultural 
investigations at home and abroad; indicates lines of 
inquiry; aids in arranging for cooperative experi- 
ments; reports upon the expenditures and work of 
the stations. 

Office of Fiber Investigations: Collects and dissemi- 
nates information regarding the cultivation of textile 
plants, including new and hitherto unused kinds ; 
investigates the merits of new machines and pro- 
cesses for preparing them for manufacture. 

Office of Road Inquiry: Collects and distributes in- 
formation concerning the systems of road manage- 
ment in the United States and the best methods of 
road-making. 

The total appropriation for the Department of Agri- 
culture is $2,448,532. 

Total number of employees, 2,043. 

Agricultwral Experiment Stations : In addition to the 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 107. 


above the government appropriates annually, for 54 
Agricultural Experiment Stations in the States and 
Territories, $720,000. 

Total number of employees in stations, 575. 

The work of this Department is very closely 
related to that ofthe others. That of the Divi- 
sion of Soils, for example, depends upon the 
work of the Geological Survey. The work of 
the Weather Bureau is also very closely asso- 
ciated with that of the Hydrographic Office 
of the Navy and of the Coast Survey. These 
various Departments, Bureaus, and Divisions 
overlap and cross each other everywhere, caus- 
ing many duplications and difficulties. 


UNDER THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 


Bureau of Ethnology: Collects, compiles and pub- 
lishes information with regard to the native races of 
America. Appropriation $45,000. 

Total number of employees, 21. 

U. S. National Museum: ‘* The authorized place of 
deposit for all objects of art, archeology, ethnology, 
natural history, mineralogy, geology, etc., belonging 
tothe United States or collected by any agency what- 
soever for the government of the United States, when 
no longer needed for investigations in progress. The 
collections in the Museum are intended to exhibit the 
natural and industrial resources, primarily of the 
United States and secondarily of other parts of the 
world, for purposes of comparison.’’ 

Total appropriation, $187,725. 

Total number of persons employed, 197. 


COMMISSION OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 


Formerly connected with the Smithsonian Institu- 
tion. Not now connected with any department. 
Studies the rivers, lakes, bays and fishing grounds 
along the coast for the purpose of determining their 
food resources and of promoting the development of 
the commercial fisheries ; collects and compiles statis- 
tics of fisheries ; propagates and distributes fish and 
conducts laboratories for studying marine life, ete. 
Total appropriation $347,360. 

Total number of employees, 172. 


DEPARTMENT OF LABOR. 


Not connected with any of the Executive Depart- 
ments. Collects and publishes useful information on 
subjects connected with labor ; itsrelations to capital ; 
hours of labor ; earnings of laboring men and women; 
means of promoting all their interests ; investigates 
strikes and controversies between labor and capital ; 
cost of production in competing countries, including 
wages, etc. Total appropriation $172,170. 

Total number of employees, 94. 


JANUARY 15, 1897. ] 


There are many other minor agencies scat- 
tered through the Departments which contrib- 
ute much to the development of the country’s 
resources. 

The total appropriations for 1897 to the De- 
partments and Bureaus above described as en- 
gaged in promoting science and the develop- 
ment of the country amount to $7,984,559.38. 

The total number of employees in the above 
Departments and Bureaus is, not including the 
Census, 5,225. 


GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA: NINTH 
ANNUAL MEETING, WASHINGTON, 
DECEMBER 29-31, 1896. 

Tue Geological Society of America was 
called to order for its ninth annual meet- 
ing in the lecture room of the National 
Museum at 10 a. m., December 29th; Pres- 
ident Joseph LeConte, of Berkeley, Cal., 
in the chair. An address of welcome was 
delivered by Mr. Charles D. Walcott, Direc- 
tor of the United States Geological Survey, 
to which a response was given by President 
LeConte. The local reception committee, 
through its chairman, Mr. 8S. F. Emmons, 
stated the arrangements that had been made 
for the entertainment of the Society, which 
included a daily lunch in the museum, a 
trip through the new Congressional Library 
with Capt. Green, the Superintendent, and 
the privileges of the Cosmos club to the 
fellows and their friends. 

The Council presented its printed report, 
which was laid on the table for one day. 
Messrs. Hague and Kemp were appointed 
a committee to audit the accounts of the 
the Treasurer. The result of the election 
of officers for the ensuing year was then 
announced as follows: President, Edward 
Orton; First Vice-President, J. J. Steven- 
son; Second Vice-President, B. K. Emer- 
son ; Secretary, H. L. Fairchild; Treasurer, 
I. C. White; Editor, J. Stanley-Brown; 
Councilors, J. S. Diller, W. B. Scott. 

The following fellows were also elected : 
Rufus Mather Bagg, Assistant in Geology 


SCIENCE. 


81 


at Johns Hopkins University and on the 

Maryland Geological Survey ; Erwin Hink- 

ley Barbour, Professor of Geology in the 

University of Nebraska; Samuel Walker 

Beyer, Assistant Professor of Geology, Iowa 

Agricultural College, Ames, Ia.; Arthur 

P. Coleman, Professor of Geology, Toronto 

University ; Henry Stewart Gane, Assistant 

Geologist, U. S. Geological Survey ; John 

Bonsall Porter, Professor of Mining, Mc- 

Gill University, Montreal; Arthur Coe 

Spencer, Assistant Geologist, U.S. Geolog- 

ical Survey. 

A memorial of Robert Hay was then read 
by R. I. Hill, and one of Charles Wachs- 
muth, written by Samuel Calvin, was read 
by J. Stanley-Brown. A memorial of N. 
J. Giroux was postponed until the following 
meeting, as the manuscript was not at the 
moment available. 

The reading of papers was then imme- 
diately taken up. 

Crater Lake. 
D. C. 
Crater Lake is deeply set in the summit of 

the Cascade Range, of Southern Oregon. It 

is remarkable for its beauty and depth, the 
grandeur of its encircling cliffs and its geo- 
logical history. During the glacial period 
the site of the lake was occupied by a huge 
volcano comparable in size with Shasta or 
Rainier. Since then the upper third has 
disappeared and a pit has formed in its 
base 4,000 feet deep. The pit is half filled 
with water forming Crater Lake. The paper 
was illustrated by lantern slides, and in the 
course of its presentation the crater lakes 
of Europe were briefly reviewed and com- 
pared with the one in Oregon. The lava 
flows were described and the peculiar radi- 
ating and glaciated valleys that pass out 
from the cone downwards, but that end in 
the air upwards. All the phenomena indi- 
cated a sinking in, absorption and with- 
drawal of the cone, leaving the present 
depression. In discussion President Le 


J. 8S. Driter, Washington, 


82 SCIENCE. 


Conte described his own visit to the lake in 
earlier years with Capt. Dutton, and H. F. 
Reid inquired as to the amount of erosion 
visible in the cliffs surrounding the water, 
to which Mr. Diller replied that there were 
no beaches to indicate it. On this line 
Prof. Shaler remarked the great increase in 
size that had been brought about in the 
Italian lakes by wave action and the need 
of caution in estimating the amount of rock 
that had been engulfed. He also cited the 
complex character of certain of the Italian 
ones. Mr. Diller replied that Crater Lake 
was a unit and gave reasons for thinking 
that it had not been much enlarged. Mr. 
Turner cited the vast tuff deposits of the 
Sierras, which he attributed to mud-flows 
of tuffs on a grand scale and suggested the 
applicability of the idea to some of the 
earlier phenomena in the history of Crater 
Lake. 


The Leucite Hills, Wyoming. 

New York, N. Y. 

After a brief review of the occurrence 
of leucite the world over and especially 
in North America, the lantern was used 
to show the geographical situation and 
distribution of the Leucite Hills. Three 
of the outcrops, viz: the Leucite Hills 
proper, Orenda Butte and Black Rock 
Butte were described with photographs. 
Photomicrographs were next used to illus- 
trate the rocks. It was shown that while 
leucite was as rich in some parts of the 
southern mesa as described by Zirkel, yet 
in other places and in the buttes to the 
north it became more rare and sanidine 
came in in much greateramount. Hauyne, 
large augite phenocrysts with rims of bio- 
tite and inclusions of limestone and sand- 
stone, were also described. Zirkel’s descrip- 
tion was quoted in extenso and corroborated 
for the portions of the flows visited by the 
geologist of the Fortieth Parallel Survey, 
but the fuller field work has indicated con- 


J. F. Kemp, 


[N. S. Vox. V. No. 107. 


siderable variability. The cones which look 
like craters were shown to be solid and were 
explained as portions which were viscous 
when intruded so that they remained over 
the old vents. Pilot Butte, north of Rock 
Springs, was also described, and the rock 
was shown to consist of augites and biotite 
in an isotropic base, regarded as glass. The 
determination of it as trachyte in Volume II. 
of the Fortieth Parallel Survey was there- 
fore questioned. 

Mr. Cross in discussion spoke of his own 
visit to the Hills twelve years before, and 
of the general parallelism of his observations 
with those of the speaker. Mr. Kemp ex- 
pressed the hope that Mr. Cross would pub- 
lish his observations and analyses at the 
earliest convenient date. 


The Solution of Quartz under Atmospheric Con- 
ditions. C. WiLtarp Hayes, Washing- 
ton, D. C. 

The projecting portions of quartz pebbles 
in conglomerates at a number of localities in 
the South have been found deeply etched, 
and chalecedonic quartz nodules partially 
dissolved. The chemical conditions under 
which the solution may have been effected 
were considered, and the bearing of the facts 
observed on the problems of erosion briefly 
pointed out. The latter point was more 
fully discussed in Mr. Campbell’s paper on 
‘ Hrosion at Baselevel,’ which followed. Mr. 
Hayes described the solution of the silica as 
occurring in a region of heavy forest where 
fires are frequent. In this way both or- 
ganic acids and alkaline salts are afforded 
which effect the solution. Specimens were 
passed around in illustration which were 
very significant. Mr. Kemp, in discussion, 
called attention to the parallel conclusions 
reached by Dr. A. A. Julien in his study of 
the talus of the Palisades some years before. 
Mr. Gilbert cited the recent cementation 
of sands with silica in the arid regions of 
the West, and remarked the varying be- 


JANUARY 15, 1897. ] 


havior of different forms of silica under 
solvents, some being easily attacked, others 
very resistant. Prof. Shaler raised the point 
that it was a reaction taking place on or near 
the surface and notindepth. Prof. Emerson 
described his observations on the schists 
and traps of the Connecticut Valley, where 
quartz and silicates on the surface were 
resistant, but where exposed in crevices 
to the drip of mosses and lichens they were 
deeply affected. Prof. Stevenson cited the 
sandstones of central Pennsylvania, where 
some were greatly corroded on the outcrops, 
whereas others, such as the White Medina, 
were very smooth. I. C. White corrobo- 
rated the last speaker, and cited the change 
of flint to chalcedony in the lower Car- 
boniferous limestones. M. R. Campbell de- 
scribed the smooth character of the Medina 
in Virginia at the surface, but its pitting 
under cliffs where exposed to dripping 
water. As the following paper was on the 
same general subject, practically the same 
discussion continued in connection with it. 


Erosion at Baselevel. 
Washington, D.C. 
Many local baselevel plains in the Ap- 

palachian coal field show a sharp line 
of demarcation between the level floor 
of the basin and the surrounding slopes. 
Since the streams are too sluggish to me- 
chanically transport the waste of the land, 
this condition can be explained only by 
supposing that most, if not all, of the ma- 
terial which is swept in from the surround- 
ing slopes is removed by solution when it 
reaches the floor of the basin. 

Etched quartz pebbles and geodes are 
evidence that under favorable conditions 
silica may be dissolved ; therefore it remains 
to determine whether such conditions are 
liable to be present on a baselevel plain. 
The solution of the quartz appears to take 
place only in the presence of decaying vege- 
tation, consequently the swampy character 


Martius R. CAMPBELL, 


SCIENCE. 83 


of such a plain would offer almost ideal 
conditions for the removal of the silica as 
fast as it is washed in from the surrounding 
slopes. The alumina is still unaccounted 
for, but the question was raised that some 
Similar reaction may take place, which re- 
moves this compound also. 

Mr. Turner, in discussion, emphasized the 
preeminent insolubility of the quartz that 
forms the veins of the Sierras, as shown by 
its occurrence in the prevailing boulders of 
the local conglomerates. He stated that the 
pitting of chaleedony may be due to the 
solution and removal of limestone. Mr. 
Keith also supported the insolubility of the 
quartz and cited the baselevel superficial 
soils and gravels near Washington. The 
residual pebbles are derived from the quartz 
veins, whereas the other minerals of the 
gneisses are only represented by a red clay. 
Mr. Hayes, in support of Mr. Campbell’s 
position, mentioned the ponds in the plateau 
of the Coal Measures of the South, which 
plateau is deeply dissected bystreams. He 
stated that much silica might be removed 
and yet no pitting result to indicate it. Dr. 
Wadsworth mentioned his own observations 
on the Potsdam and St. Peter’s sandstones 
of Wisconsin, made many years ago. An 
outer shell of hardened rock forms by re- 
deposition of silica, and may even be ap- 
preciable within a year’s time. He also 
mentioned the well recognized removal of 
silica in the formation of the soft hematites 
of Lake Superior, and emphasized its ready 
and great solubility under favorable condi- 
tions. Professor LeConte laid stress on the 
solubility of different forms of silica, and 
Mr. Hayes, in closing the discussion, ad- 
mitted freely the frequent insolubility of 
quartz, but still urged the significance of the 
observations of Mr. Campbell and himself, 
which, indeed, were unassailable. 


The Origin of Certain Topographie Forms. 
Marius R. Camppety, Washington, D. C. 


84 


This paper consisted of a study of the 
various conditions affecting erosion for the 
purpose of determining the origin of cer- 
tain exceptional surface features which have 
not hitherto been satisfactorily explained. 
The writer reaches the conclusion that local 
radial movements of the crust of the earth 
are largely responsible for the exceptional 
physiographic features. 

This theory was then applied to the North 
Carolina section of the Blue Ridge, and it 
was shown that the striking features of that 
region can be explained by supposing a 
monoclinal uplift to have occurred along 
the eastern front of the Ridge while the 
main body of the Piedmont plain remained 
at sea level. On this assumption the various 
remnants of peneplains in the Blue Ridge 
region correspond to halts in the general 
uplift, and they collectively represent the 
same, or a portion of the same time inter- 
val which is marked by the Piedmont plain 
to the eastward of the uplift. 

Since local uplifts are liable to occur at 
any time and in any place, the resulting 
forms may be found in other localities than 
the Appalachians, and physiographers 
should learn to distinguish them, for they 
constitute a record of exceptional condi- 
tions. 

The paper was illustrated by a large map 
which brought out the position of the Ap- 
palachians south of Roanoke, Va., to which 
the hypothesis especially applied, but the 
region of the Black Hills was also cited as 
a promising place in which to test it. 

Mr. Keith, in discussion, spoke in opposi- 
tion to Mr. Campbell’s view and sketched 
a district on the Nahantahala and Hiwassee 
rivers in support of his contention. It was 
later shown that the district, however, was 
not in the region described by Mr. Campbell 
and had but limited bearings on his thesis. 


Homology of Joints and Artificial Fractures. 
J. B. Woopwortn, Cambridge, Mass. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vor. V. No. 107. 


A synopsis of the structure of the typical 
joint was given from a previous paper (Proc. 
Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., Vol. XXXIV, 1896, 
pp. 163-183). A series of specimens show- 
ing the relations between joints and artifi- 
cially fractured surfaces was exhibited. Ob- 
liquity of the biplanes in the margin of frac- 
tures is found of value in determining the 
axis of breaking tension arising from ten- 
sion, contraction or shearing force. Inci- 
dentally, a map symbol for joints was pro- 
posed. 

The paper was illustrated by an excellent 
and striking series of lantern slides which 
made the matter clear. 


Physiographie Development of the District of 
Columbia Region. N. H. Darton, Wash- 
ington, D. C. 

An outline of the physiographic condi- 
tions which have characterized each of the 
earlier stages in the Coastal Plain history 
of the region and a description of the de- 
velopment of the present topography was 
presented in a very interesting manner. 
By means of lantern slides from maps and 
photographs, the ups and downs of the old 
shore-lines were shown and the formation 
of the terraces. In this way the develop- 
ment of the Potomac, Magothy, Severn, 
Chesapeake, Lafayette and lower and upper 
Columbia formations were traced. 


Dikes in Appalachian Virgiua. N. H. Dar- 

ton, Washington, D. C. 

An announcement of further discoveries 
of diabase dikes and of interesting dikes of 
acidic eruptives among the Paleozoic rocks 
of central Appalachian Virginia. When 
the specimens were passed around, the acidic 
intrusions, containing, as they did, quartz, 
feldspar, mica and hornblende phenocrysts 
in a white ground mass, excited extreme 
interest, and, as remarked by J. E. Wolff, 
were very similar to the quartz-mica-por- 
phyrite in the Cortlandt series, near Mont- 
rose, N. Y. 


JANUARY 15, 1897.] 


On the Changes of Drainage in the Ohio River 
Basin. Frank Lryerert, Denmark, 
Iowa. 

A brief outline of the results of earlier 
observations on the Ohio and tributaries was 
followed by a presentation of the results of 
the writer’s studies the past season. The 
principal topics discussed wére as follows: 
1. The extent and probable date of deposi- 
tion of marine deposits found on the lower 
Ohio, in Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois. 
2. Comparison of the probable early drainage 
systems withthe presentsystem. 3. Factors 
leading to changes of drainage. 4. An in- 
terpretation of the relative influence of the 
several factors in producing the changes of 
drainage which have occurred in the Ohio 
River basin. In developing this general 
plan the writer described, by means of a 
map, the present drainage systems of western 
Pennsylvania and their probable discharge, 
through northerly outlets, now indicated 
by present streams, into Lake Erie. The 
former limit of the northerly drainage was 
probably along the Panhandle of West 
Virginia. The old drainage lines were 
detected by following up the remnants of 
the fluvial plains. Of the three possible 
eauses of change in drainage systems, 
viz, uplift, stream piracy and glaciation, 
the last named was regarded as most 
probable. Prof. G. F. Wright opened 
the discussion by objecting to some of the 
proposed northerly outlets as of insufficient 
size to carry the volume of water. H. P. 
Cushing later on supported this objection 
strongly in the case of the Cuyahoga river. 
Mr. Leverett replied that the gorge was as 
large as that of the present Ohio below 
Louisville. M.R. Campbell endeavored, by 
means of the changes suggested by Mr. Ley- 
erett, to account for the puzzling phenome- 
non of Teazes Valley and its boulders from 
the New River Basin; but I. C. White, who 
originally discovered and described Teazes 
Valley, stated that it could be satisfactorily 


SCIENCE. 


85 


explained by the Mud and Guyandotte 
rivers, which now partially traverse it. 
Prof. Orton remarked the depth of the 
drift in northwestern Ohio, and the debt 
that geology owed to the drillers who had 
shown many buried channels in prospecting 
for oil. The depth is over 500 feet in 
some channels. The peculiar relations of 
the Mercer reservoir and the difficulty of 
explaining it were also touched on. Prof. 
Shaler emphasized the stability and lack 
of change in the drainage lines of Ken- 
tucky and his disbelief that ice had ever 
crossed the Ohio river, on the ground that 
water would satisfactorily explain the ob- 
served phenomena in Kentucky. 

The Society then adjourned until the fol- 
lowing day at 10 a.m. The fellows were 
very generally entertained by the resident 
geologists of Washington during the early 
evening, and at 8:30 reassembled in the 
large hall of the Columbian University to 
listen to the Presidential address of the re- 
tiring President, Prof. Le Conte, upon 
the title, ‘The Different Kinds of Earth 
Crust Movements and Their Causes.’ 


DECEMBER 30, 1896. 


The Council met at 9 a. m., and the So- 
ciety at 10. The report of the Council as 
previously printed and distributed was 
adopted. A memorial of N. J. Giroux, 
written by Mr. R. W. Hlls, was read by 
Prof. F. D. Adams. The photograph com- 
mittee then reported through its chair- 
man, Mr. G. P. Merrill. 179 views were re- 
ceived during the year, bringing the total 
up to 1429. The auditing committee re- 
ported favorably regarding the Treasurer’s 
accounts. The Secretary announced that 
the Council recommended a change in 
the constitution so as to add the Editor to 
the Council, and some other verbal changes, 
all of which will be acted on one year 
hence. The reading of papers was then re- 
sumed. 


86 


Notes on the Structure of the Cranberry District 
in North Carolina. Arraur Kerra, Wash- 
ington, D. C. 

The paper opened with a sketch of the 
topography, drainage and geology of the 
district. The latter involves seven mem- 
bers below the Siluro-Cambrian limestones. 
They are in general schists and gneisses 
and Pre-Cambrian volcanics. A sketch 
map was used to illustrate the faults of the 
region. Great foldsalsointervene. Faults 
Occasionally show breccias and _ slicken- 
sides, but these are not marked. Pressure 
has caused metamorphism and schistosity. 
Remarkable cases of sheared conglomerates 
of quartz porphyry and granite pebbles 
were exhibited. The phenomena gave 
accurate data for determining the depths of 
zones of crushing and flowage. A great shear 
zone in an east and west line, with a pas- 
sage of the southern part beyond the north- 
ern, was described. The curious behavior 
of sediments regarding the hard crystallines, 
and their strange relations to them, if we 
assume a simple case of compressive stress, 
transmitted by the sediments, leads the au- 
thor to believe in the upthrust of the crys- 
tallines through and over the sediments. 


Note on the Stratigraphy of Certain Homogenous 
Rocks. C.H. Hircucockx, Hanover, N. H. 
The object of the note was to call atten- 

tion to recent discoveries of obscure planes 

of stratification cutting the cleavage at large 
angles, as noted in two formations in the 
upper Connecticut Valley. These discov- 
eries will make it necessary to question the 
reliability of many of the observations hith- 
erto made as to the positions of the strata. 

The speaker described an argillite and a 
quartzite at Thetford, near Hanover, whose 
true bedding he had been unable to dis- 
cover until lately. Finally the true strati- 
fication was identified in many lines nearly 
at right angles with the cleavage and as in- 
dicated by little quartz veins. Quartzite in 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 107. 


another locality was also shown to have 
suffered so much change that its stratifica- 
tion was obliterated. Various examples 
were further cited to bring out the rela- 
tions of cleavage and stratification. In 
discussion, Mr. Lane asked if the observa- 
tions of Prof. Hitchcock and Mr. Keith 
carried out Van Hise’s rule that cleavages 
cutting stratification at right angles indi- 
cated the presence of synclines and anti- 
clines. Messrs. Hitchcock and Keith re- 
plied that so far as their observations went 
they did. 


Unconformities in Martha’s Vineyard and Block 
Island. J. B. Woopworrtn, Cambridge, 
Mass. 

Beginning below, plant-bearing beds of 
Cretaceous age appear in both islands with- 
out their base being exposed. On Martha’s 
Vineyard marine Cretaceous strata overlie 
the plant beds; but contact has not been 
worked out. Above the Cretaceous and on 
an eroded surface rests the Miocene of Lyell 
and Dall, composed of (a) the osseous con- 
glomerate, (6) the green sand, (c) the yel- 
lowish green sand. There was erosion in 
the area between (a) and (6), probably 
also between (6) and (c). Fragments of a 
Pliocene formation have been detected at 
Gay Head, but little is known regarding 
it. A marked unconformity now appears 
on Gay Head and Block Island at the base 
of the lowest Pleistocene boulder formation. 
The Miocene has been locally swept away 
at Gay Head. On Block Island this early 
Pleistocene rests upon the surface of the 
Cretaceous white clays, the Miocene being 
entirely unknown. There was probably 
some folding of strata at Gay Head before 
the deposition of this boulder bed. After 
the deposition of from 25 to 50 feet of com- 
pound gravels and sands, more folding took 
place over Martha’s Vineyard and Block 
Island. The Mohegan Bluff beds on Block 
Island and the Tisbury beds on Martha’s 


JANUARY 15, 1897. ] 


Vineyard, of glacial origin, were now laid 
down on eroded surface of folded older 
strata. Inthe Vineyard subepoch of erosion 
the islands were deeply denuded;. then fol- 
lowed the last glacial epoch with deposition 
of moraines and sand plains. 

W. B. Clark, in discussion, called attention 
to the parallelism of the Cretaceous and 
Miocene on these islands and in New Jersey 
and Maryland. David White on paleo- 
botanic evidence of age stated that the plant- 
bearing clays belonged with the Amboy clays. 
He also commented on the interest attach- 
ing to the subdivision of the Tertiary beds. 
G. K. Gilbert remarked the complexity of 
the later Pliocene and glacial deposits, in- 
volving, as they do, very coarse and fine 
components, and coinciding with Chamber- 
lin’s observations in the West. David White 
inquired about the correlation of the beds 
of the Elizabeth Islands with those of the 
Vineyard. Mr. Woodworth replied that it 
could at present be but roughly carried out. 


The Oementing Materials of the Tertiary Sands 
and Giravels of Western Kansas. EZRASMUS 
Haworts. 

In the absence of the author an abstract 
was given by G. K. Gilbert, who stated that 
the cementing material proved to be arag- 
onite with subordinate calcite, and sketched 
the relation of the deposition of the cement 
to the conditions of aridity in earlier times. 


The Work of the United States Geological Sur- 
vey in the Sierra Nevada. H.W. Turner. 
The speaker had a series of geological at- 

las sheets of the work in the Sierras and, 

using these as illustrations, outlined the 
large features of the geology. 

President LeConte remarked the com- 
plexity of the geology of the Sierras. In 
reply to a question of J. HE. Wolff regarding 
the age of the granodiorites, Mr. Turner re- 
plied that they were late Jurassic or early 
Tertiary and that they exhibited remarkable 
examples of contact metamorphism on the 


SCIENCE. 


87 


Jurassic slate. Mr. Walcott remarked the 
completion of the work on the Gold Belt 
and the plans for the future work of the 
Survey in the Sierras. 


The Cornell Glacier, Greenland. Ra.px §. 

Tarr, Ithaca, N. Y. 

The speaker outlined the old view of the 
continuous ice sheet from Greenland to 
North America, and the later views of 
Chamberlin and Salisbury regarding the 
limited and strictly insular character of 
it. He described the angular topography 
of the highlands in the interior, and the 
more rounded, glaciated slopes termipa- 
ting in cliffs near the coast, interpret- 
ing even the jagged mountains as compat- 
ible with glaciation. The location of last 
summer’s work was shown and the Cornell 
glacier was described. The local rocks are 
gneiss and schists with diabase dikes. The 
hills are rounded toward the ice, but are an- 
gular toward sea. The ice has covered in 
recent times Wilcox Peninsula and Duck Is- 
lands, showing an extension 30 or 40 miles 
beyond its present position and from 3,000 to 
over 7,000 feet thick. The ice is now re- 
treating. Reference points were established 
from which to measure future movements. 
All the nunataks have been glaciated, 
though now bare. 

G. F. Wright remarked the parallelism 
between these observations and his own 
on the edge of the Arctic circle. 

Prof. Heilprin also corroborated the con- 
clusions given about the former larger ex- 
tent of the ice from his own observations 
in the region and especially on the Island 
of Disco. The coast was outlined and the 
character described from Disco to Robert- 
son Bay. The observations of all these 
speakers, as well as the important paper of 
Mr. Barton which followed, flatly contro- 
verted the views which have recently been 
expressed regarding the former extent of 
the ice and certain of its local phenomena. 


88 


Shore-lines of Lake Warren, and of a Lower 
Water-level, in Western Central New York. 
H. Li. Farrcuitp, Rochester, N. Y. 

The beach of the glacial Lake Warren 
has been traced with practical continuity 
from Crittenden, N. Y., where long known, 
eastward to beyond the meridian of Roches- 
ter, with an altitude of about 880 feet. A 
lower beach, with an altitude of 700 feet 
and of good development, has been detected 
for a considerable distance, and other evi- 
dences of static water at this level extend 
over a wide area. 

The paper was illustrated by a colored 
map of New. York State showing the out- 
lines of Lakes Warren and Iroquois. The 
speaker sketched the recent views of Lake 
Warren’s restricted area, and of its outlet 
into the lake formerly in the basin of Lake 
Michigan, called Lake Chicago. The tra- 
cing of another strong beach above Geneva 
was also shown, and presumably a continu- 
ation of the beach at Chittenden followed. 
The reading of the next paper took place 
before discussion. 


Old Tracks of Hrian Drainage in Western New 
York. G. K. GitBERT, Washington, D. C. 
The last stage of Lake Warren was ended 

by the shifting of the outlet from Michigan 

to New York. Between that date and the 
establishment of the Niagara River the dis- 
charge from the Erie basin crossed western 

New York on lines determined by the re- 

lations of the shifting ice margin to the 

topography. 

Attention was called to Lake Warren, 
which stood 500 feet above Lake Iroquois, 
and to the areal distribution of both. The 
spillways were described that were scoured 
out, when, on the removal of the ice barrier 
that held back Lake Warren, the water fell to 
the level of Warren. These old lines of 
drainage were described with their boulder 
pavements, cataracts and one-sided chan- 
nels, formed when the ice presented the 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 107. 


other side. The speaker showed these at 
various points, of which those between 
Rochester and Niagara Falls are of especial 
interest. Inference about the east and 
west alignment of the: ice front were also. 
drawn. 

G. F. Wright inquired about the rela- 
tions of the lakes with the Horseheads out- 
let and later remarked the fresh topog- 
raphy of the spillways. R. 8. Tarr also. 
asked about the correlation of the beaches 
with the Cayuga Lake terraces. Mr. Gil- 
bert replied that Horseheads was at that 
time higher than the water plane and that 
he had attempted no correlation with the- 
terraces of Cayuga Lake 


The Assumed Glaciation of the Atlas Mountains, 
Africa. ANGELO Heriprin, Philadelphia, 
Pa. 

Vast boulder and pebble deposits cover a 
large part of the region of North Africa, 
both at sea-level and on the inland plateaus. 
(and mountain slopes) to 3,000 feet eleva- 
tion and more. These have in places much 
the appearance of morainic and true drift 
material, and as such have been described 
by some geologists and geographers. But 
their relations are with oceanic and torren- 
tial modelling of the land surface and they 
give no basis for the supposition that ice 
action was involved in their making. 
Neither on the highest points of the Atlas- 
Mountains in Algeria nor on their slopes 
were any evidences of glaciation met 
with. 

The observations were gathered during a 
trip across the Atlas Mountains the past 
summer, through Tunis and Morocco into 
the Sahara. A resumé was given of pre- 
vious observations on the supposed glacia- 
tion of some of these summits. With a 
sketch map of northern Africa the speaker 
remarked the general character of the moun- 
tains and their Alpine character. He then 
described the supposed glacial moraines at 


JANUARY 15, 1897.] 


various points and interpreted them as 
formed by water. No striation, polishing 
or glacial topography were seen. All 
seemed due to great accumulations in a 
westward arm of the Mediterranean that 
set in from Tunis and ran far up into the 
mountainous country to the westward. 


The Relation of an Abandoned River Channel 
in Eastern Iowa to the Western Edge of the 
Iitinois Icelobe. Frank Liyererr, Den- 
mark, Iowa. 

The extension of the Illinois icelobe into 
southeastern Iowa, discussed by the writer 
at the Philadelphia meeting, is found to 
have so blocked the drainage along the Mis- 
sissippi that the line of discharge was tem- 
porarily thrown across the plains of east- 
ern Iowa. The several rivers of eastern 
Iowa that now lead southeastward into the 
Mississippi entered this temporary line of 
drainage and followed it southward. A 
description of the channel formed by this 
temporary river was given, and the history 
of the discovery of its several sections was 
outlined. Inferences were drawn from it 
concerning the drainage conditions at the 
time of the culmination of the Illinois ice- 
lobe. The paper was illustrated by a sketch 
map of Iowa. 

F. B. Taylor asked about the channel 
used by the river during its short cut into 
its present channel between Cedar river and 
Iowa river. Mr. Leverett replied that it 
followed the present channel of the Iowa 
river. Other remarks regarding the ancient 
gradients of the river. were made by Prof. 
Reid. 


Glacial Observations in the Umanak District, 
Greenland. GrorcE H. Barton, Boston, 
Mass. 

The result of studies upon the margin ofthe 
inland ice for a distance of about fifteen miles 
from the nearest land was given. And the 
character of the surface, of the marginal edges 


SCIENCE. 


89 


of very steep or vertical slope, of the dust holes 
area, of the billowy area, and of the smooth, 
level expanse beyond were described. Ice- 
walled lakes, with small tributary streams, 
and large streams were met. Studies upon 
the Great Karajak glacier, its rate of mo- 
tion, character of surface and margin, 
movement phenomena as seen along edge, 
entrance into waters of fiord, its source in 
the ice cap with crevasses for miles inland, 
proved of the greatest interest. “ Smaller 
glacial tongues along the Karajak fiord, 
coming from the local ice cap of the Nug- 
suak peninsula, were described, together 
with studies upon the glaciers entering 
Itivdliarsuk fiord and observations on the 
former greater extension of the ice cap and 
the distribution of drift and the transpor- 
tation of material by icebergs. The paper 
was graphically illustrated by a beautiful 
and significant series of lantern slides. C. 
H. Hitchcock asked about marine deposits, 
such as Champlain clays. Mr. Barton re- 
plied that none were met. As Mr. Barton 
had stated that the survey of the party had 
indicated a slight movement of the ice up 
stream near the shore, and down stream at 
the outer stakes in the glacier, in each case 
of but a fraction of a foot, Prof. Reid in- 
quired about the accuracy of the instru- 
ments, and cited the need of readings closer 
than a minute. Mr. Barton replied that 
they had been made with a high-grade sur- 
veying transit, but as that part of the work 
was directed by a colleague he could not 
give further particulars. A. Heilprin stated 
the occurrence of marine deposits with 
shells in northwest Greenland. Mr. Bar- 
ton’s paper was one of the most interesting 
and important of the meeting and coincided 
with the observations of Prof. Tarr further 
north as earlier cited. The British Admi- 
ralty charts, for not using which Prof. Wright 
has been criticised, were found quite unre- 
liable by Mr. Barton and were rejected in 
favor of Danish maps. 


90 


The Nipissing-Mattawa River, the Outlet of the 
Nipissing Great Lakes. F. B. Taytor, 
Fort Wayne, Ind. 

When the waters of Lakes Superior, 
Michigan and Huron were making the Nip- 
issing beach, their outlet was eastward 
over the Nipissing pass at North Bay, On- 
tario, to the Ottawa valley. This outlet 
river is called the Nipissing-Mattawa River 
and the three upper great lakes of that 
time are called the Nipissing Great Lakes. 
During the autumn just passed the course 
of the outlet river was explored. The Nip- 
issing beach is well developed at North 
Bay at an altitude of about 700 feet above 
sea-level. On the swampy col between 
Lake Nipissing and Trout Lake it was a 
little over a mile wide with a maximum 
depth of about thirty feet and an average 
of from ten to fifteen feet. The beach is 
faintly but clearly marked to the foot of 
Trout Lake and the shore mark of the river 
in expanded portions and at some of its 
rapids was found at several points below. 
The best evidence of the existence of the 
ancient river was found where it crosses 
the course of a bouldery morainic deposit. 
The boulders in such rapids were scoured 
by the sand and pebbles moved along by 
the current into peculiar forms readily rec- 
ognized. These rapids were located at mo- 
raine crossings. Others were less certainly 
determined. The place of one cataract was 
also found. In one of its rapids the ancient 
river was between 600 and 700 feet wide, 
with an average depth of 35 to 40 feet. 
This corresponds very closely, in a general 
way, with the size of the modern St. Clair 
and Detroit rivers. The remains of the 
ancient river agree with the Nipissing beach 
in indicating that this arrangement of the 
upper Great Lakes endured for a relatively 
long period of time. 

The paper was preceded by a review of 
the works of previous observers. In discus- 
sion G. F. Wright remarked the interest 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8S. Vou: V. No. 107. 


all must feel in the establishment of this 
thesis and G. K. Gilbert discussed its rela- 
tions to Niagara Falls {as a chronometer. 
Increasing knowledge brings increasing 
complexity. 


Moraines of Recession and their Significance in 
Glacial Theory. F. B. Tayuor, Fort 
Wayne, Ind. 

A summary of facts presented last sum- 
mer at Buffalo was first given regarding 
moraines between Cincinnati and the Straits 
of Mackinaw, there being 15 in all, whose 
differences depend on the topography of the 
land. The oscillations of the ice front and 
the moraines is so regular in period that 
ups and downs of the earth’s surface cannot 
be utilized in explaining them. We are 
forced to refer to.astronomical causes and 
their effects on climate. Precession of the 
equinoxes, modified by the revolution of the 
apsides, was cited as the best cause, with 
intervals of 21,000 years. This time seems 
long, but it is corroborated by the large 
amount of clay in the moraines. The ef- 
fects of the precessions of the equinoxes 
were analyzed. The oscillation was corrob- 
orated by the relations of the boulder belts 
in three moraines near Fort Wayne, Ind., 
to the line of drainage apparently taken by 
the river that drained the glacier. 

In discussion G. K. Gilbert emphasized 
the interest of the ideas and spoke of them 
as supplying, if true, the clue for the corre- 
lation of the moraines in various regions. 
Frank Leverett spoke of the importance of 
the estimates of time and significance of the 
boulder belts. G. F. Wright remarked that 
moraines of recession with halts, still im- 
plied forward movement of the rear ice con- 
tinually during halts. Mr. Taylor, in reply 
to the last speaker, described the moraines 
as having steep outer slopes and gradual 
slopes inward, which is only explicable by 
an advance of ice up to a point and then its 
accelerated retreat. Mr. Heilprin raised 


JANUARY 15, 1897.] 


the point that moraines in existing glaciers 
are steepest toward the ice and that they 
were the best illustration of what took place 
in the ice period. Inferences, therefore, re- 
garding the relations of the old moraines to 
the ice should always be drawn with this 
in mind. 

Variations of Glaciers. HARRY FIELDING 

Rep, Baltimore, Md. 

The paper gave asummary of the first an- 
nual report of the International Committee 
on Glaciers. Information received relating 
to the variations of American glaciers dur- 
ing the past year, as wellas of those in 
other parts of the world, indicated a general 
recession, although there were some minor 
exceptions. Illustrations were given and 
an earnest appeal was made that all geolo- 
gists and travelers visiting glaciers estab- 
lish permanent bench marks and directions 
from which photographs can be taken, as 
other visitors may reach such regions. 
Very complete records can thus be made. 

The reading of this paper closed the 
work of the day. At 7:30 p. m. the So- 
ciety reassembled for the annual dinner at 
the Hotel Raleigh. All felt great satisfac- 
tion to see Prof. Emerson in his familiar 
place as toastmaster, and the presence of 
about fifteen ladies, mostly wives of the 
Fellows of the Society, started an innova- 
tion that it is to be hoped will be continued, 
for it improves greatly the social side of 
meetings. The banquet was most enjoya- 
ble from all points of view, especially in that 
the Society had an opportunity to extend 
its congratulations to the retiring President 
upon the approaching celebration of his 
golden wedding anniversary. 

On Thursday morning at nine o’clock 
nearly all the visiting Fellows assembled 
at the office of Captain Green, at the new 
Congressional Library, and were most cour- 
teously conducted over the building. All 
viewed its magnificant halls and frescoes 


SCIENCE. 91 


almost with astonishment, and certainly 
with great satisfaction that a building so 
long needed had at last been worthily con- 
structed. 

At 10a. m. the regular sessions were re- 
sumed with a slim attendance, which, how- 
ever, rapidly grew as the members who had 
been at the Library returned. It was voted 
that two sections be organized after the 
reading of the first two papers, inasmuch 
as it would be otherwise impossible to finish 
the programme. A letter was also read 
from Lieut. Peary outlining a plan for 
another expedition to Greenland next sum- 
mer, in which it was hoped that various 
institutions would combine and locate sta- 
tions for the observation and study of the 
ice sheet at various points along the coast 
and in cooperation. The Society gave its 
approval of the plan in a general way. The 
reading of papers was then resumed as fol- 
lows : 


Mechanics of Glaciers—Moraines and Stratifica- 
tion. Harry Frecpine Ret, Baltimore, 
Md. 

Observations were made on the Forno 
Glacier last summer to test the ideas pre- 
sented to the Society at the Philadelphia 
meeting. Measures of the movement were 
begun but not finished. What is usually 
called the ‘ribboned structure’ is probably 
the outcrop of the strata, as Agassiz con- 
tended. 

Moraines require a new classification in- 
to: 1st, those which have their origin be- 
low the névé line; and 2d, those which 
have there their origin above it. The latter 
present characteristics which have not hith- 
erto been carefully described. It was shown 
that the débris above the névé line proceeds 
diagonally downward into the body of the 
glacier itself as it becomes buried by the 
successive annual snowfalls that cause the 
general stratification. The paper was beau- 
tifully illustrated by lantern slides. Presi- 


92 


dent LeConte inquired about the relations 
of the phenomena of the dirt bands described 
by Agassiz yearsago. Mr. Reid stated that 
he was uncertain exactly what was meant 
by them, but he believed them to be the 
same as the lines of stratification and to 
originate as he had described, by the an- 
nual burial of fine débris above the névé 
line. 


The Pre-Cambrian Topography of the Eastern 
Adirondacks. J. F. Kemp, New York, 
Ie We 
The discovery of outliers of Paleozoic 

strata, oftentimes of very small area, far 
within the Archean (perhaps in part Al- 
gonkian) complex of the Adirondacks, has 
made possible the tracing out of some of the 
Pre-Cambrian topographical features. The 
recent completion of the topographical 
sheets of the U. 8S. Geological Survey has 
enabled us to illustrate the matter quite 
fully and with comparisons of present 
altitudes. It was shown that the early 
Paleozoic sea apparently set up into nar- 
row embayments in what were doubtless 
old submerged valleys, which being now 
indicated by the outliers, reproduce, in a 
general way, some features of the old 
topography. The abundance of Potsdam 
boulders in the drift far in the hills leads 
to the conclusion that the Potsdam was 
probably more abundant in the interior be- 
fore the ice invasion than now. 

After a brief introduction which cited the 
older Cambrian deposits of Vermont and 
the presumptive evidence that the Adiron- 
dack erystallines were a land area, carved 
by erosion during Cambrian time, slides of 
topographic maps colored hypsometrically 
as well as geologically were thrown on the 
sereen and the facts on which the conclu- 
sions were based were thus illustrated, due 
allowance being made for faulting. Crystal- 
line limestones have largely determined the 
valleys. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No. 107. 


In discussion M. R. Campbell inquired 
if any variety in the basal Potsdam had 
been noted in different regions, to which the 
speaker replied that on the east and south- 
east almost none were apparent. R.S. Tarr 
remarked the parallel conditions in New 
Jersey, where, however, folding has super- 
vened. H. P. Cushing described similar 
phenomena on the north side of the Adiron- 
dacks, and especially outliers of erystal- 
lines entirely surrounded by Potsdam, and 
the projection of the latter into the moun- 
tains where limestone occurred. F. D. 
Adams instanced the same relations in 
Canada around the old Laurentian protaxis, 
and in particular referred to the observa- 
tions of Mr. Low in Labrador, showing very 
strikingly the gradual encroachment of 
Cambrian and Ordovician sediments into 
embayments in the old erystallines. A. C. 
Lane remarked the parallel phenomena in 
Michigan. H. F. Reid inquired about the 
amount to which the strata were tilted, to 
which the speaker replied that the Paleo- 
zoics were all notably flat and seldom 
reached 15 degrees. 

The Society then divided into two sec- 
tions. The one in which the petrographic 
papers and those dealing with the crystal- 
line rocks were presented assembled in the 
rooms of Dr. G. P. Merrill of the Museum, 
the others remaining in the original hall. 
In the latter the first paper presented was 
the following, the report for which and the 
following is based on notes kindly taken by - 
Prof. H. S. Williams and from the abstracts 
furnished by several authors. 


On. the Southern Devonian Formations. 
Henry §S. Wittrams, New Haven, Conn. 
The remarkable contrast between the 

northern and southern Devonian formations 

was shown. The former consists of a con- 
siderable number of separate formations, of 
differing kinds of sediments, and holding 
separate and distinct faunas and together 


JANUARY 15, 1897.] 


making a series of rocks several thousand 
feet in thickness, while the southern repre- 
sentations of the Paleozoic series in Ten- 
nessee and Alabama is a single formation 
composed of a single kind of sediment, the 
Black Shale, and holding, when pure, only 
one fauna of very few species. It occupies 
the whole interval between the Silurian 
and Carboniferous strata. In order to ac- 
count for the differences the principles of 
(a) difference of origin for rock: (viz. (1) 
organic and (2) fragmental), and (b) the 
sorting power of moving waters were found 
applicable to most of the cases, but not to 
account for the origin of the black shales 
or of the Oriskany. 

For the explanation of the Black Shale 
an origin of the sediments was found in the 
decay of Lower Silurian limestones compos- 
ing the surface of the Cincinnati plateau, 
which occupied the center of the great in- 
terior continental basin. The distribution 
of these black shale muds was accounted 
for by oceanic currents. Their absence from 
central Tennessee and neighboring tracts 
was referred to the scouring of the shallows 
and to lack of sedimentation ; the absence 
of other faunas to the fatal effects of the fine 
mud upon marine life. The time of begin- 
ning of the sediments was placed at the 
close of the crisis which brought in the 
Oriskany sediment; the black color was ex- 
plained by Sargasso-sea vegetation. The 
Oriskany formation and its distribution 
from a center in eastern New York, along 
the northern shores of the intercontinental 
basin and along the eastern shores, decreas- 
ing in force with extension southward, and 
its absence west of the Cincinnati plateau, 
were explained as the result of sinking of 
the northeast rim of the basin in the Lake 
Champlain region sufficient to open com- 
munication through the St. Lawrence val- 
ley, past Montreal, with the eastern sea, 
and allowing of extensive wash by tidal 
flows through the estuary or channel, thus 


SCIENCE. 


93 


bringing into the basin great quantities of 
coarse sand and the new Oriskany fauna. 

Tn the discussion that followed Mr. Hayes 
called attention to the thickening of the 
black shale at its extreme extension south- 
ward in Alabama, thus confirming the prob- 
ability that there was land elevation in 
that direction during Devonian time. 


A Complete Oil Well Record in the McDonald 
Field between the Pittsburg Coal and the Fifth 
Oil Sand. I. C. Wurte. 

The speaker stated that a new well had 
been sunk at Pittsburg from the Pittsburg 
coal seam, 5,800 feet to or below the Carbo- 
niferous. Samples had been preserved every 
five feet, and the well is to go 500-600 feet 
deeper, making it the deepest well in 
America and second only to one in Ger- 
many. 


Structure of the Newark Formation of Western 
New Jersey. Henry B. Ktmue., Chi- 
cago, Ill. 

The sedimentary rocks of the Newark 
formation in western New Jersey are divis- 
ible into three subdivisions to which the 
geographical names Stockton, Lockatong 
and Brunswick have been given provision- 
ally. The Stockton beds are the lowest 
and consist of arkose conglomerates and 
sandstones, freestones and red shales, in- 
terbedded and many times repeated. The 
arkose beds are characteristic of this subdi- 
vision. The Lockatong beds are next and 
consist of hard, black and dark green argil- 
lites and shales with some red flagstones. 
The black argillites are characteristic of 
this division. The Brunswick beds consist 
in the main of soft red shales with a few 
sandy layers. Along the northwest bound- 
ary all three divisions lose their type char- 
acter and grade along the strike into coarse 
sandstones or massive conglomerates. Two 
profound faults traverse the formation 
and repeat the series twice. Faults of a 
few feet are not uncommon. Although the 


94 


monoclinal structure prevails, low folds, 
particularly in the Brunswick beds, are 
common. A total thickness of 20,000 feet 
for the Newark system across New Jersey 
was given as the nearest estimate of the 
writer. 


The Upper Cretaceous Formations of the North- 
ern Atlantic Coastal Plain. Witu1aAm B. 
Cuark, Baltimore, Md. 

This paper was prepared in cooperation 
with Messrs. R. M. Bagg and George B. 
Shattuck, who had been Prof. Clark’s geo- 
logical assistants for several years. The 
areal distribution of the five Post-Potomac 
Cretaceous formations was represented upon 
a map on the scale of one mile to the inch, 
which embraced the area between New 
York Bay and the Potomac River. The 
variations in sedimentation and structural 
relations presented throughout this distance 
of over two hundred miles were described, 
as well as the faunal characteristics of the 
several formations. 

The Matawan-Monmouth formations were 
shown to be equivalent of the Cretaceous 
Eutaw—Rotten Limestone—Ripley groups 
of Alabama ; and the Pamunkey equivalent 
of the Eocene Lignitic—Claiborne group of 
the same area, so that the Rancocas-Manas- 
quan-Shark River formations represent the 
interval between the Ripley and Lignitic, 
the first two being of Cretaceous age, the 
last of Hocene age. 

It was also shown that the Upper Cre- 
taceous formations of the Atlantic coast are 
the approximate equivalents of the Senonian 
and Danian, of Europe. 


Notes on the Stratigraphy and Paleontology of 
the Laramie and Related Formations in Wyo- 
ming. T. W.Sranron and F. H. Know1- 
ton, Washington, D. C. 

I. The Ceratops Beds of Converse County. 
II. The coal-bearing series of the Laramie 
Plains. III. Localities in Bitter Creek 
Valley—Block Buttes, Point of Rocks, 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 107. 


Rock Springs. IV. Hvanston and Hodges 
Pass. V. Other localities considered— 
Carbon, Wyo.; Crow Creek, Colo.; Coalville, 
Utah. VI. Résumé. 

(The undersigned (J. F. K.) learned 
with regret, when it was too late to remedy 
the matter, that no further abstract of the 
above paper had been obtained. He had 
thought it was read by title.) 
Geology of Northeastern Washington. I. C. 

RUSSELL. 

The speaker described the remarkable 
eafion of the Snake River and said it 
equalled in grandeur the Grand Cafion of 
the Colorado. There are walls 4,000 feet 
high and a valley 15 miles across. 4,500— 
5,000 feet of lavas have been cut through. 
In the lavas secondary columnar fracturing 
can be detected radiating from the centers 
of primary columns and at right angles to 
the faces of the latter. 


A Study of the Nature, Structure and Phylogeny 
of Demonelix. E. H. Barsour, Lincoln, 
Neb. 

The new fossil Demonelix is a fresh-water 
fibrous alga aggregated together into vari- 
ous forms, the chief of which are large 
regular upright spirals, sometimes with, 
sometimes without an axis. These fossils 
occur in every exposure in the Loup Fork 
Tertiary on Pine Ridge, Sioux County, Neb. 
They stand invariably upright in fairly co- 
herent sand rock. Area about 500 square 
miles. Vertical range about 200 feet. 
Structurally Deemonelix is cellular but not 
vascular. It consists of simple parenchy- 
matous tissue without trace of fibro-vascu- 
lar bundles. 

In its phylogenetic relations we can trace 
apparent development from the simple 
Deemonelix ‘fibre’ in the lowest beds, suc- 
cessively through the Demonlix ‘cakes,’ 
Demonelix ‘balls,’ Deemonelix ‘ cigars’ or 
‘fingers,’ and the Dzemonelix ‘irregular’ to 


JANUARY 15, 1897.] | 


the Demonelix ‘regular’ of the topmost 
beds. Though the development is too sud- 
den and startling, nevertheless this is in 
the order of occurrence. 

The paper was illustrated by a superb 
and demonstrative series of lantern slides 
and was listened to with the greatest in- 
terest. The writer incidentally reviewed 
the various, more or less absurd, explana- 
tions of the ‘ Devil’s corkscrews,’ that had 
been advanced, but in the end he estab- 
lished his own views to the entire satis- 
faction of those present. 

The Society at the conclusion of the paper 
and after being joined by the other section 
adjourned until the summer meeting. 

The separate section having in hand the 
papers relating to petrography and crystal- 
line rocks organized with Prof. Emerson as 
Chairman and Mr. Turner as Secretary. 
The first paper was the following : : 


Notes on the Pre-Cambrian Volcanies of the 
South Mountain District. FLORENCE BaAs- 
com, Bryn Mawr, Pa. 

By means of a map of the district and a 
new and beautifully preserved series of 
specimens, the textures of the old volcanic 
rocks, such as spherulites, flow-lines, litho- 
physe, etc., were illustrated. In certain 
sections micropoikilitic textures were found 
which are secondary as contrasted with the 
views of Clements and Harker, who, in 
other localities, regard them as primary. 
Specimens of lithophyse were exhibited, 
charged with piedmontite. 

Mr. Lane corroborated the interpretation 
of the micropoikilitic texture as secondary 
in many cases on Lake Superior and the 
micropegmatitie as original. He empha- 
sized the need of care in distinguishing 
them. Mr. Iddings remarked that some 
micropoikilitic textures were original and 
some secondary beyond question, and Mr. 
Cross, from his study of spherulites, corrob- 
orated the same view. 


SCIENCE. 


95 


Notes on Rock Weathering. 
RILL, Washington, D. C. 
The paper began with a discussion of the 

changes, both chemical and physical, which 
have taken place during the decomposition 
incidental to the reduction of a gray, mica- 
ceous gneiss to the condition of a red, clayey 
soil. The facts brought out by analysis 
lead to a discussion of the possible forma- 
tion of zeolitic minerals during the process 
of decomposition and their efficacy as con- 
servators of potash, as suggested by Lem- 
berg and Hilgard. 

A series of analyses formed the basis of 
the remarks and showed the great loss in 
silica, alkalies and alkaline earths which 
the process had caused, while the alumina 
and iron oxides had largely remained. Alu- 
mina was assumed as the constant mem- 
ber and calculations were based on its per- 
manence. The analyses, when recast on this 
basis, furnished the ground for very inter- 
esting deductions. The speaker had been 
led by his investigations to question the ef- 
ficacy of zeolites as conservators of alkalies. 
A series of specimens in tubes were passed 
around which had been obtained by wash- 
ing a sample of a given weight and settling 
it so as to separate the constituents accord- 
ing to sizes. The chief red coloring ingre- 
dient was found in the finest sediment of 
all. The altered Medford diabase, as well 
as the rock specially the subject of the pa- 
per, were illustrated in this way. The 
sorting had been done by Prof. Whitney, of 
the Department of Agriculture. In discus- 
sion J. F. Kemp remarked the permanence 
of iron oxide in process of alteration, which 
was surprising, as iron is a characteristic- 
ally restless migrator, and also that phos- 
phoric acid remained constant, whereas in 
stock piles of Lake Superior hematite, it 
may be largely leached from the upper por- 
tions to the lower ina single season. L. 
VY. Pirsson emphasized the care that is 
necessary in determining alumina and mag- 


GrorGE P. Mrr- 


96 


nesia, the latter being often weighed with 
the former. He cited cases of such error, 
especially in German analyses. Mr. Mer- 
rill, in reply, regarding migrating iron ox- 
ide, stated that where air has free access, 
iron is permanent, but that below the sur- 
face it is a very restless member. As for 
phosphoric acid its quantity is small and it 
is a peculiar ingredient, not always acting 
the same in different suites of analyses. 

Mr. Merrill’s paper was a suggestive and 
important one and has a close bearing on 
the origin of soils. 


The Age of the White Limestone of Sussex Co., 
N. J. J. E. Wourr, Cambridge, Mass., 
and A. H. Brooxs, Washington, D. C. 
After a brief review of previous work 

and opinions regarding this question, the 

authors gave the results of their own 
detailed work which led them to believe 
that the limestone is of pre-Cambrian age. 

By means of a map the areas throughout 

Sussex county, N. J., were outlined and 

the location of crucial sections indicated. 

These were separately plotted and inter- 

preted as indicating fault lines along which 

the blue and white crystalline limestones 
had become mixed up together, affording 
apparent transitions. The thin bed of 
quartzite that lies below the blue Cambrian 
limestone was found extremely serviceable 
as an aid in stratigraphic work. The out- 
crop of it that dipped into the white lime- 
stone east of the Buckwheat mine had 
been shown by a recent quarry to run 
down into the latter, to be tapering off and 
to contain limestone boulders. It was re- 
garded as produced by the filling of a crey- 
ice by the advancing sediments. The ore 
body was interpreted as interstratified in 
the limestones because its elongation con- 
formed to the pitch of the foliation of the 
the metamorphic rocks. Eruptive granites 
eut all the latter, although not the Cam- 
brian limestone. In discussion J. F. Kemp 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vor. V. No. 107. 


spoke of the difficulties of the problem and 
the gratification all must feel to have the 
relations so well explained. Although the 
evidence at Mt. Adam and Mt. Eve had 
seemed to him to favor the metamorphism 
of the blue limestone there, he had felt able 
to go no further than probability in the 
matter. He also commented on the very 
puzzling nature of the ore bodies and the 
strong probability that they were replace- 
ments. 

The section then adjourned for lunch. 

When the section reassembled after lunch 
the first paper read was the following pre- 
sented by F. D. Adams. 


Origin and Relations of the Grenville- Hastings 
Series in the Canadian Laurentian. F. D. 
Apams and A. E. BArsour, with an added 
note by R. W. ELts. 

The paper sketched the distribution of 
the fundamental gneisses in Canada. In 
the field recently covered in Ontario the 
rocks were described in detail and as con- 
stituting plutonic members of various acid 
and basic types, now stretched and gneissoid. 
A map was used to show the areal distribu- 
tion. The contact of the Grenville series 
and the fundamental gneiss is an igneous 
one. The carrying of the work over the 
intervening belt to the Hastings areas gives 
ground for thinking that the Grenville con- 
sists of portions of the Hastings which have 
become involved in the fundamental gneiss 
during the intrusions of the latter. There 
has been more or less absorption by infu- 
sion of the Grenville into the gneissic 
magma. An added paper by R. W. Ells 
described an area to the westward where 
similar conclusions have been reached. 

In discussion C. H. Smyth, Jr., remarked 
the coincidence of the views expressed with 
his conclusions in the western Adirondacks. 
J. E. Wolff asked for further particulars re- 
garding the field evidence of the intrusion 
of the fundamental gneiss into the lime- 


JANUARY 15, 1897.] 


stone. He also spoke of the enrichment of 
metamorphic rocks in the Hoosick region 
with albite, and therefore with soda, necessi- 
tating caution in the interpretation of analy- 
sis. Mr. Adams, inreply, described the Gren- 
ville series as made up of closely involved 
limestones and gneisses, the latter exactly 
like the fundamental ones. He stated that 
pegmatite dikes cut the limestones in every 
direction. He also said that his analyses, 
on which the conclusions regarding the 
sedimentary origin of certain of the later 
gneisses were based, had shown such low 
alkalies and high alumina as to warrant it. 
There could, therefore, have been no enrich- 
ment with soda. Mr. Cross cited, in com- 
parison, the granites and gneisses of the 
Rocky Mountains. Mr. Iddings questioned 
the fact of the fundamental gneisses being 
the original crust. Dr. Adams replied urg- 
ing its world-wide extent and fairly uniform 
acid character despite some more basic 
members. Prof. Emerson remarked on the 
distinction that was made between intruded 
fundamental gneiss regarded as older than 
the limestones and intruded lavas that 
would be called later. He raised the point 
that both were practically the same and 
that if an intruded lava were called a later 
rock, although it had existed in the interior, 
perhaps from very early time, then gneisses 
now found intruded should also be regarded 
as later. Dr. Adams, in reply, urged the 
conception of the original crust, and in- 
sisted that, even if after the Grenville-Hast- 
ings series had been laid down on it the 
great batholite softened and penetrated 
them, it was still to be considered older. 
The section evidently held diverging views 
on this point. 


The Crystalline and Metamorphic Rocks of 
Northwest Georgia. C.WiILLARD Hays and 
ALFRED H. Brooxs, Washington, D. C. 
The region discussed in the paper extends 

southward one hundred miles from the 


SCIENCE. 


97 


Tennessee line and westward twenty to 
eighty miles from the Atlanta meridian. 
It embraces about 4,000 square miles, form- 
ing a belt to the east and south of the 
Georgia-Alabama Paleozoic area. The 
rocks described consist of (1) the slates 
and conglomerates of the Ocoee series, (2) 
the granites, gneiss and crystalline schists 
of the Piedmont basal complex, and (3) a 
series of intrusives including granite, 
diorite, gabbro. 

By means of maps colored to show the 
distribution of the rocks, their areal rela- 
tions were outlined and many interesting 
points were adduced, not the least of which 
were those connected with the intrusive 
granites, so prominent east of Atlanta at 
Stone Mountain. 

Dr. A. C. Lane asked about the intruded 
rocks and if there were contact zones. Mr. 
Brooks replied that there were zones of 
ottrelite and andalusite schist around both 
granites and diorites. Mr. Keith also 
inquired about certain stratigraphical rela- 
tions. 


The Grain of Rocks. 
Houghton, Mich. 
The grain of rocks is dependent on the 

chemical composition and the causes that 
produce solidification, cooling, gas diffusion, 
etc., the general law being, the more rapid 
the action the finer the grain. The paper 
discussed the grain from the threefold stand- 
point of theory, observation upon the Kewee- 
nawan rocks and experiment. 

In regard to chemical composition, the 
augite of the melaphyres shows plainly the 
empirical law that the less there is of it 
the finer is the grain, other things being 
equal. 

The mathematical laws of cooling were 
applied to an indefinite sheet and the fol- 
lowing laws deduced and tested: 

(a) The case where we consider the ad- 
jacent rock symmetrically heated by the 


ALFRED C. LANE, 


98 


sheet can be solved by aid of a solution 
for the case wherein the walls are kept at 
- a fixed temperature. For the temperature 
at any point of the affected zone is the 
same aS an average temperature obtained 
from two points as follows: If we imagine 
a hypothetical dike of the same breadth as 
the zone affected in the original sheet, and 
conceive of its walls being kept at a con- 
stant temperature, and if we imagine the 
two points situated at the same distance 
from the walls of the dike as was the 
original point whose temperature was 
sought in the original sheet, the average of 
the temperatures of the two points will 
be the value sought. The sum will be 
used when the original point lies within 
the hypothetical dike, and the difference if 
it lies without. We need, therefore, to 
consider in detail only the case where the 
sides of the sheet are kept at a fixed tem- 
perature. 

(b) Taking therefore this case of a sheet 
originally of a uniform temperature we can 
divide the cooling into three periods : 

1. Before the center has cooled appreci- 
ably. During this time the time of cooling 
is as the square of the distance of the mar- 
gin, and is otherwise independent of the 
sheet. 

The augite of the Keweenawan ophites 
follows in its grain this law, the average 
area of cross sections being proportional to 
the square of the distance from the margin 
and independent of the size of flow. Con- 
solidation in this period may be expected 
to be especially characteristic of effusive 
rocks. 

2. While the center is cooling down one- 
fourth of original difference in temperature 
between sheet and margin. This period is 
about four times as long as the first. 

3. Thereafter the rate of cooling when a 
given temperature is reached will be inde- 
pendent of the position of a point. Hence 
the grain will be uniform and the same for 


SCIENCE. 


LN. S. Von. V. No. 107. 


all parts of the sheet that consolidate in 
this period. The solidification will tend to 
to fall into this period for high initial tem- 
peratures of the magma and hot walls, com- 
pared with the temperature of solidification 
and broad contact zones. Hence solidifica- 
tion in this period may be taken as typical 
for abyssal rocks. 

Dikes of the Keweenawan in the Huro- 
nian show a marginal zone where the grain 
appears to have been formed in the first 
period of solidification, and a central belt 
where the solidification appears to have 
been in the third period. Throughout, the 
augite follows the theoretical laws most 
sharply, while porphyritically formed com- 
ponents are less tractable. 

In illustration the speaker showed the 
results of experiments with sulphur and 
with candy, and found that they corre- 
sponded to his propositions. Slides were 
passed around, made from luster-mottled 
melaphyrs to bring the points out. (The 
abstract of Dr. Lane’s paper is somewhat 
obscurely worded under (a), and it is possi- 
ble that the undersigned has not accurately 
expressed it. The direct application lies 
in this: If we can measure in a diabasic 
dike or sheet the distance of the zone of 
even grain from the walls, then, knowing 
as we do the fusing point of augite, we can 
calculate the initial temperature of the dike 
or sheet at time of intrusion. ) 

In the concluding paper of the session 
Prof. Emerson described some peculiar phe- 
nomena that he had observed in the trap 
sheets of the Connecticut Valley. In cer- 
tain flows, mud in streams and chunks had 
become so involved that it had made the 
trap a mass of glass and sediments. Steam, 
supposed to have been evolved from wet 
rocks under the lava flow by its heat, had 
boiled up through the lava and made other 
curious mixtures. These and the altera- 
tions resulting were described and illus- 
trated by thin sections. 


JANUARY 15, 1897.] 


The Section then adjourned and joined 
the rest of the Society. 

The following titles were also announced, 
but were not read, chiefly because of the 
absence of their authors. In several in- 
stances they were read by title: 


Evidences of Northeasterly Differential Rising 
of the Land along Bell River. Roperr 
Bex, Ottawa, Canada. 

Surface Tension of Water as a Cause of Ge- 
ological Phenomena. GrorcEe H. Lapp. 
Geomorphy of Jamaica as Evidence of Changes 

of Level. J. W. Spencer, Washington, 
D.C. (By title.) 
Preliminary Note on the Pleistocene History of 


Puget Sound. Battey Wiis, Washing- 
ton, D. C. 


Modified Drift in St. Paul, Minn. WARREN 
UpuHam, St. Paul, Minn. 
Note on Plasticity of Glacial Ice. I. C. Rus- 


SELL. 


Physical Basis for General Geological Correla- 
tion. CHARLES R. Keyes, Jefferson City, 
Mo. 


Notes on the Potsdam and Lower Magnesian 
Formations of Wisconsin and Minnesota. 
JosnpH F. James, Hingham, Mass. 


The Age of the Lower Coals of Henry County, 
Missourt. Davin WHITE. 


New Evidence on the Origin of Some Trap 
Sheets of New Jersey. Henry B. KUMMEL, 
Chicago, Ill. 


The Origin and Age of the Gypsum Deposits of 
Kansas. G. Perry Grimstry, Topeka, 
Kansas. Read by title. 

On the whole the meeting was a most en- 
joyable one, and the 75 to 100 Fellows who 
were in attendance returned to their homes 
with appreciative and grateful feelings to 
the geologists of Washington, by whom they 
had been so hospitably entertained. 

J. F. Kemp. 


SCIENCE. 


99 
AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY. 

THE annual meeting of the American 
Mathematical Society was held in Hamilton 
Hall, Columbia University, on Wednesday 
afternoon, December 30,1896. The Presi- 
dent, Dr. George W. Hill, occupied the 
chair, and there were twenty-four members 
in attendance. Profs. T. W. Edmondson 
and J. Li. Patterson were elected to mem- 
bership. The Secretary’s report showed a 
total membership of 279, being a net gain 
of 12 for the year. Reports were also re- 
ceived from the Librarian and the Treasurer. 
The Bulletin of the Society has appeared 
regularly through the year, being at present 
in the sixth annual volume. The last com- 
plete volume is a substantial octavo of 354 
pages. 

The annual election was held at this 
meeting, the following ticket being adopted : 
President, Prof. Simon Newcomb; Vice- 
President, Prof. R. S. Woodward; Secre- 
tary, Prof. F. N. Cole; Treasurer, Prof. 
Harold Jacoby; Librarian, Prof. Pomeroy 
Ladue; Committee of Publication, Prof. T. 
§. Fiske, Prof. Alexander Ziwet, Prof. Frank 
Morley ; Members of the Council to serve 
until December, 1899, Prof. Alfred Baker, 
Dr. George W. Hill, Dr. Emory McClin- . 
tock. 

Three papers were presented, abstracts of 
which are given below. 

Prof. Morley, of Haverford College, read 
a paper on the construction of a single 
point covariant with five given points. 
Taking the five points 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 on a 
conic, U, and taking Gundelfinger’s conic 
for any four, let the intersection of the 
polars of the fifth point with respect to the 
two conics be found; the 5 points so obtained 
lie on a line which strikes U at the zeros of 
a quadratic covariant, Salmon’s S. By 
taking the polar of the five points with re- 
gard to this covariant pair, counted thrice, 
we obtain a covariant point, readily identi- 
fied as the second of Salmon’s list. For 


100 


this a geometric construction was given. 
The constructions involve the ruler alone, 
as is proper when a single point is to be 
found. 

Prof. Alexander 8. Chessin, of the Johns 
Hopkins University, gave a brief ac- 
count of his investigations on the motion 
of a physical pendulum, taking into ac- 
count the rotation of the earth about its 
axis. He showed that when the relative 
velocity of the pendulum is zero, as in the 
famous experiment of Foucault, the motion 
of the axis of the pendulum can be repre- 
sented as composed of two simultaneous 
motions: (1) of the motion on a very flat 
closed conic surface, this surface having a 
plane of symmetry which would be the 
plane of oscillations of the pendulum, but 
for the disturbance due to the rotation of 
the earth ; and (2) of the rotation of this 
conic surface about the vertical of the 
‘point of suspension.* The conic surface 
being very flat, it will seem to an observer 
as if the axis of the pendulum oscillated 
in the plane of the vertical of the point of 
‘suspension, while at the same time this 
apparent plane of oscillations rotated about 
the vertical. In Foucault’s experiment the 
rotation of the apparent plane of oscilla- 
tions took place clock-wise. Prof. Chessin 
showed that this rotation depended on 
the construction of the pendulum; namely, 
if the pendulum be properly constructed 
and the amplitude of oscillations be suf- 
ficiently great, then the rotation of the 
apparent plane of oscillations could take 
place as well clock-wise as contra clock- 
wise or even not take place at all. This in- 
teresting phenomenon could be observed 
best at places near the equator, because the 
angular velocity of rotation of the apparent 
plane of oscillations is composed of two 
terms, one proportional to the sin, the other 


* See American Journal of Mathematics, Vol. XVIL., 
p. 86; Johns Hopkins University Circulars, Vol. 
XIV., No. 118, p. 64. 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 107. 


to the cos of the latitude of the place of 
observation. The contra clock-wise rota- 
tion is due to the presence of the cosine 
term and is maximum on the equator. In 
concluding, Prof. Chessin emphatically 
urged experiments which would verify his 
calculations. 

Prof. E. W. Brown, of Haverford Col- 
lege, made a brief statement of the prog- 
ress of his calculation of the solar in- 
equalities in the lunar theory. The mo- 
tion of the node was compared with Han- 
sen’s result and with that given by ob- 
servation. An explanation was also given 
of the slow convergence of the series which 
represents the principal part of the secular 
acceleration of the moon’s mean motion. 

Following a pleasant custom of previous 
years, several of the members dined together 
after the meeting. F. N. Cot, 

Secretary. 


CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 
DIVINATORY AND CALENDRICAL DIAGRAMS. 


Av the American folk-lore meeting Mr. 
Stewart Culin exhibited and explained 
several divinatory diagrams from Thibet, 
China and Corea, and called attention to 
their close similarity to the so-called ‘ cal- 
endar-wheels’ and the tonalamatl, or book 
of days, of ancient Mexico. He pointed out 
that the fundamental conceptions of both 
are identical, and that both developed in- 
to games, such as parcheesi in India and 
patolli in Mexico, the Chinese game of ‘ pro- 
motion,’ and the European ‘ game of goose.’ 

These all begin with the numerical con- 
cept of the four, expressed in four arms, 
like a cross, or four ‘ houses’ or squares, 
which latter, by multiplication, may be 12, 
16, 64, ete. This primary concept ex- 
pressed the original notion of the ‘four 
quarters,’ 7. e., of the world, and, by exten- 
sion of the cosmos, time as well as space. 
The relation of each individual to the All 
was the notion which imparted the divina- 


JANUARY 15, 1897. ] 


tory character to the diagram, and was as 
common in Central America, where it gave 
rise to the sacred ‘ year’ of 260 days, as in 
many parts of the Old World. Such calen- 
dars were not originally time-measurers, 
but divining schemes, as Sahagun expressly 
states. 


THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 

THE complex and historically important 
subject of the geographical distribution of 
racial types in Europe has been closely 
studied by Prof. W. Z. Ripley, and will be 
made the theme of a series of articles in 
the Popular Science Monthly, beginning with 
the February number. The articles will 
be amply illustrated by maps, diagrams and 
some fifty hitherto unpublished portraits of 
race types reproduced from original pho- 
tographs. Having had the advantage of 
looking through Prof. Ripley’s collections 
upon this branch of anthropology, I feel 
sure his articles will add much new material 
and many valuable suggestions to a com- 
prehension of the racial questions of modern 
Europe. Such points as the cephalic in- 
dices, the distribution of blonds and bru- 
nettes, the comparison of stature and 
weight, etc., when studied from hundreds 
of thousands of individual measurements, 
must lead to results more secure, and per- 
haps quite differing from those hitherto 
published. D. G. Brinton. 


UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


NOTES ON INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 

In the last number of the Chemical News, 
Prof. John Waddell, of the Canadian Royal 
Military College, describes a large number 
of experiments on the permeability of vari- 
ous elements to the Rontgen rays. He 
concludes “‘that the elements may be di- 
vided into two classes, those of low atomic 
weight and those of higher atomic weight, 
the transition taking place between the 
atomic weights of 30 and 40. Among the 


SCIENCE. 


101 


higher elements the opacity is probably not 
far from being proportional to density, but 
with elements of low atomic weight the 
same law does not hold; sodium, for in- 
stance, is decidedly more permeable than 
aluminum; lithium and sodium are more 
nearly alike. Metals and non-metals cannot 
be differentiated from each other; boron 
is less permeable than sodium, and sodium 
is less permeable than oxygen.” 


THE cause of poisoning from wall papers 
containing arsenic has often been ascribed 
to the formation of arsin (arsenetted 
hydrogen) by the action of mould on the 
paper. An account is given in the last 
Berichte of a number of experiments carried 
out by O. Emmerling bearing on this sub- 
ject. Several different kinds of bacteria 
were grown in cultures containing arsenic, 
and in no case was arsin present in the 
gases evolved. The same was true when 
several different species of moulds were 
used. A moist arsenical paper was exposed 
in a tube in a current of air till it had on it 
numerous colonies of moulds, yeasts and 
bacteria. The air was drawn through a 
silver nitrate solution and no trace of arsin 
was present. Hence it would seem that 
danger from arsenical wall papers is not 
from the formation of arsin, but from parti- 
cles of dust given off from the paper. Hap- 
pily, few wall papers are at present manu- 
factured containing arsenic. 


In a letter to Nature (Nov. 26), on the 
subject of osmotic pressure and ionic disso- 
ciation, Prof. Henry E. Armstrong uses 
these words: ‘‘ There can be-no doubt that 
in so far as weak solutions are concerned, a 
law has been discovered which is broadly 
true in mathematical form; yet I have no 
hesitation in asserting that the fundamen- 
tal premises on which it is based are desti- 
tute of common sense, in the opinion of 
those who look at these matters without 
leaving chemical experience out of ac- 


102 


count.” ‘Tama determined opponent of 
what I think may fairly be termed the non- 
sensical hypothesis of ionic dissociation (italics 
ours), for there is no other appropriate 
term for a view which asserts that hydro- 
gen chloride and a few other compounds 
are so loosely strung together that they fall 
to pieces when dissolved in water; out of 
sheer fright, it would seem, as no valid mo- 
tive is suggested for such self-sacrifice; and 
no such charge of unprincipled levity of 
conduct is brought against the vast major- 
ity of compounds other than a few acids and 
alkalies.””? If there are others who oppose 
the theory as strongly as Prof. Armstrong, 
they at least have not the temerity to at- 
tack it so boldly in the face of its tacit gen- 
eral acceptance in the chemical world. 

In the December Journal of the Amer- 
ican Chemical Society, George F. Payne 
discusses the mineral constituents of the 
watermelon. He finds in the ash over 
sixty per cent. of potash and ten per cent. 
of phosphoric acid; hence the need of fertil- 
izers containing a large quantity of potash. 

J. L. H. 


ASTRONOMICAL NOTES. 

WE have received a new book on the de- 
termination of planet and comet orbits by 
Dr. Karl Zelbr. It contains 125 octavo 
pages, and is reprinted from the first vol- 
ume of Valentiner’s Handworterbuch der As- 
tronomie. It will doubtless be found a very 
useful text-book of the subject. 

THE Astronomical Journal of December 
10th contains a series of observations of 
the companion of Sirius made at Washing- 
ton last March by Prof. Stimson J. Brown. 
At the time of making these observations 
Prof. Brown did not consider them entitled 
to very much confidence, on account of the 
extreme difficulty experienced in seeing the 
companion so near the principal star. It 
is now evident, however, from the later ob- 
servations at the Lick Observatory, that 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 107. 


the Washington observations are correct, 
and that the object seen by Prof. Brown 
was really the companion. 


In the Astronomische Nachrichten of De- 
cember 14th Prof. E. C. Pickering has a 
note on a method of determining the rela- 
tive motions of stars in the line of sight by 
means of spectra photographed through an 
objective prism. The plan consists of 
making a pair of photographs of the same 
region near the meridian in reversed po- 
sitions of the telescope. As the reversal of 
the telescope turns the spectra 180°, we 
can measure on the photographs twice the 
linear displacement due to the relative mo- 
tions of any two stars in the line of sight. 
The second photograph is made through the 
glass plate, so that the plates may be placed 
with their films in contact for making the 
comparisons. ; 


Amone recent series of meridian circle 
observations of which preliminary accounts 
have appeared in the astronomical period- 
icals, we notice the following: In the Astro- 
nomical Journal of December 23rd _ Prof. 
Tucker gives a summary of the results of 
his determinations of fundamental stars 
contained in the astronomical ephemerides 
other than the Berlin Jahrbuch. In the As- 
tronomische Nachrichten of December 22d 
Prof. Kustner gives his determinations of 
the Zusatzsterne of the Berlin Jahrbuch list, 
made with the meridian circle of the Berlin 
observatory in the years 1886 to 1891. 

H. J. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 

GEN. FRANcIS A. WALKER, President of the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and 
Vice-President of the National Academy of 
Sciences, died suddenly on January 5th. He 
was born on July 2, 1840, and graduated from 
Amherst College in 1860. He had filled many 
important positions, having been professor of 
political economy in the Sheffield Scientific 
School of Yale University, Chief of the Bureau 


JANUARY 15, 1897.] 


of Statistics, Superintendent of the Census and 
Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Gen. Walker 
made numerous and valuable contributions to 
statistics, sociology and political economy. 

WE regret also to announce the deaths of Dr. 
Joseph vy. Gerlach, formerly professor of anat- 
omy in the University at Erlangen; of Dr. 
Charles Heitzmann, the distinguished New 
York histologist ; of Prof. Wm. H. Pancoast, 
an eminent Philadelphia surgeon ; of the Count 
de Mas-Latre, the author of numerous contribu- 
tions to paleography ; of Mr. W. H. Ward, of 
Newark, N. J., a student of horticulture ; of 
Mr. Vivian S. Martin, the geographer, and of 
Sir John Brown, who made important improve- 
ments in the manufacture of armor plates and 
railway supplies. 

QUEEN VICTORIA has conferred an honor on 
the English peerage by making Sir Joseph Lis- 
ter a lord. 

Pror. FRANCIS DARWIN is preparing to pub- 
lish a supplementary series of Charles Darwin’s 
letters. His projected volume will include a 
full selection from those letters of a purely sci- 
entific interest which he was unable to print in 
the ‘Life and Letters,’ as well as from any fresh 
material that may now be intrusted to him. 
Those of Darwin’s correspondents who have not 
already done so are requested to allow him to 
make copies of any letters of his which they 
possess, even though they are apparently of only 
slight or restricted interest. 

Mr. HERBERT SPENCER has consented, in re- 
sponse to a letter signed by a large number of 
eminent Englishmen, to allow his portrait to 
-be painted and presented to the nation. Mr. 
Hubert Herkomer has been selected as the 
artist. 


Tue Arago medal, so seldom given by the 
Academy, was this year awarded both to Lord 
Kelvin and to M. Antoine d’ Abbadie. 


THE public meeting of the Paris Academy of 
Sciences on December 21st was of special im- 
portance. An address was made by the Presi- 
dent, M. A. Cornu, and the prizes of the 
Academy were awarded. ‘These prizes are very 
numerous and yaluable, and the issue of the 
Comptes Rendus containing the account of their 
award is of much interest. The grounds of 


SCIENCE. 


103 


each award is given in detail by an eminent 
authority, and the hundred pages of the number 
thus give a valuable summary of the advances 
in certain departments of science. 

THE Royal Geographical Society of London 
has awarded a special gold medal to Dr. Fr. 
Nansen and special silver medals to Cap- 
tain Sverdrup, Lieutenants Scott-Hansen and 
Johannsen and to Dr. Blessing. The other 
members of the recent Polar expedition were 
each awarded bronze medals. 


Ir is now reported that the large fortune left 
by Alfred Nobel will be used to endow five in- 
ternational prizes to be awarded annually, one 
of these for the most important advance in 
physics, one in chemistry, one in physiology or 
medicine, one for the best compilation in physi- 
ology or medicine, and one for the most impor- 
tant contribution towards the promotion of 
peace. 

Mr. JoHN LeicHTon will present to the 
Royal Institution, London, his collection of 
letters and papers by Faraday, which consist 
chiefly of letters written to Frederick Magrath. 
Faraday left his personal papers to the Royal 
Institution, and they now are contained in a 
special cabinet. 

THE trustees of the British Museum have 
secured the important collection of woodpeckers 
and other birds formed by the late Mr. Edward 
Hargitt. The number of specimens of wood- 
pecker alone is nearly 3,600, including all the 
valuable types described by Mr. Hargitt in 
his ‘Catalogue of the Woodpeckers,’ and 
there are also 2,000 miscellaneous birds. 


Mrs. Coxr has presented the scientific 
library of the late Eckley B. Coxe to Lehigh 
University. The collection is rich in complete 
sets of scientific periodicals and in the transac- 
tions of learned societies. 


THE foreign papers contain detailed accounts 
of the interment of Pasteur at the Pasteur In- 
stitute on December 26th. His remains had 
for fifteen months been lying at Notre Dame, 
where a religious ceremony was held before 
removing them to the Institute. The crypt, 
planned by M. Giraud, following the tomb of 
Galla Placadia at Ravenna, is inscribed with 
a sentence from Pasteur’s reception speech. at 


104 


the Academy : ‘‘ Hereux celui qui porte en soi 
un dieu, un idéal de beauté, et qui lui obéit— 
idéal de Vart, idéal de la science, idéal de la 
patrie, idéal des vertus de l’évangile.’’ Brief re- 
marks were made by M. J. B. Pasteur; M. Ber- 
trand, President of the Council; M. Rambaud, 
Minister of Education ; M. Bodin, President of 
the Municipality ; Sir Joseph Lister, represent- 


ing the Royal Society; Sir Dyce Duckworth, . 


Sir John Evans, Prof. Crookshank, Sir. W. 
Priestley, representing the Universities of Edin- 
- burgh and St. Andrews; M. Cornu, for the 
Academy of Sciences; M. Bergeron, for the 
Academy of Medicine ; M. Perrot, for the Nor- 
mal Schoo!; M. Louis Passy, for the Agricul- 
tural Society; M. Tissier, for the medical stu- 
dents, and M. Duclaux, Director of the Pasteur 
Institute. 


THE British Medical Journal states that the 
question of the appointment to the chair of 
physiology in Geneva, vacant by the death of 
Prof. Moritz Schiff, is exciting some attention 
in Paris. Amongst the candidates are stated to 
be Prof. Herzen, of Lausanne; Prof. J. R. 
Ewald, of Strassburg, son-in-law of Prof. 
Schiff; Dr. Langlois, assistant in the Phy- 
siological Department of the Medical Faculty 
in Paris under Prof. Richet, and well known 
for his researches on heat and the suprarenal 
capsule; Dr. Contjean, one of the staff at the 
Museum, under Prof. Chauyeau, known for his 
researches on secretory nerves and his other 
contributions to physiology. Other names are 
mentioned, but it is evident that with Prevost 
as a possible successor, and the candidates al- 
ready mentioned, a worthy successor to Schiff 
will readily be found. 

Dr. CHARLES WARDELL STILES has been ap- 
pointed by the State Department aspecial com- 
missioner to report on the parasitic diseases of 
seal life. 

THE government of Western Australia de- 
cided about a year ago to erect an observatory 
at Perth at a cost of $25,000. Mr. Ernest 
Cooke, the government astronomer, has re- 
cently been in England purchasing the neces- 
sary instruments. 

A REMARKABLY violent cyclone has practi- 
cally demolished the town of Nevertire in New 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vor. V. No. 107. 


South Wales. The casualties were numerous, 
but are not fully known, as the telegraph line 
has been destroyed. 


A LANDSLIDE has occurred at the village of 
Stanna, in the province of Modena, Italy, de- 
stroying a large number of buildings. 


A SERIES of lectures and conferences upon the 
educational value of science in the common 
schools will be held at Teachers’ College, New 
York, as follows: 

The educational value of biological science (botany, 
zoology and physiology). Prof. Henry F. Osborn, of 
Columbia University. January 14th, 3 p. m. 

The educational value of physical science (physics 
and chemistry). Prof. Ira Remsen, of Johns Hopkins 
University. Thursday, January 21st, 3 p. m. 

The educational value of geological science. Prof. 
B. K. Emerson, of Amherst College. Thursday, Janu- 
ary 28th, 3 p. m. 

The Curriculum. Pres. J. G. Shurman, of Cornell 
University. Friday, January 29th, 3 p. m. (This 
date is liable to be changed. ) 

The lecture in each case will be one hour in 
length, followed by a conference lasting, perhaps, 
one hour. The purpose of these lectures and 
conferences is (1) to arouse due appreciation of 
the study of science, (2) to give helpful sugges- 
tions to those who are engaged in teaching 
science, and (8) to aid in determining the rela- 
tive importance of these subjects in courses of 
study. 


Pror. DANIEL G. Brinton will deliver a 
course of six lectures on ‘The Religions of 
Primitive Peoples,’ at New York University, 
on successive Tuesday evenings, beginning 
January 12th, at8 p.m. The lectures will be 
published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, as Volume 
II. of the Series of American Lectures on the 
History of Religions. 

Natural Science expects to publish next month 
an account of flints discovered by Mr. J. Lewis 
Albert and exhibited at a recent informal smok- 
ing evening of the London Geological Society. 
They are said to be the work of man, though ob- 
tained from the Cromer Forest bed at Runton, 
regarded as forming the top of the Pliocene 
Series. No one has hitherto professed to find 
in Great Britain the remains of man at so lowa 
horizon. 


THE article entitled ‘Biographical Notes on 


JANUARY 15, 1897.] 


Pasteur’ by Dr. Jules Marcou, published in the 
issue of this JouRNAL for December 6, 1895, has 
been translated into French and Spanish and 
has been distributed by order of the govern- 
ment of Nicaragua to all schools and public in- 
stitutions of that state. 


Pror. HoLpEN will contribute to an early 
number of Harper’s Weekly an illustrated ar- 
ticle on the Lick Observatory. 

Mr. J. E. HArtTING has resigned from the 
editorship of the Zoologist, which he has con- 
ducted for twenty years, and is succeeded by 
Mr. W. L. Distant. 


AT the beginning of the new year the Natur- 
wissenschaftliche Rundschau, edited by Dr. W. 
Scklarek and published by Friedrich Vieweg & 
Sohn, Brunswick, announces as cooperating 
editors Dr. J. Bernstein, professor of physiol- 
ogy at Halle; Dr. W. Ebstein, professor of 
pathology at Gottingen; Dr. A. v. Koenen, 
professor of paleontology at Gottingen; Dr. 
Victor Meyer, professor of chemistry at Heidel- 
berg, and Dr. B. Schwalbe, professor of anat- 
omy at Berlin. The new volume is printed on 
improved paper, presenting a much more pleas- 
ing appearance than is usual in German publica- 
tions. The Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau 
usually contains one scientific paper, but is 
chiefly made up of reviews of scientific litera- 
ture, written with care and impartiality and 
giving an excellent survey of the progress of 
science. 

Tue British government will send,in January, 
a commission, consisting of General Sir Henry 
Wylie Norman (Chairman), Sir Edward Grey, 
Bart., and Sir Dayid Barbour, to inquire into 
the conditions and prospects of the West India 
sugar-growing colonies. Mr. Daniel Morris, 
Assistant Director of the Royal Gardens, Kew, 
will accompany the commission as expert ad- 
viser in botanical and agricultural questions. 
Nature calls attention to the fact that the ap- 
pointment of Mr. Daniel Morris as scientific ad- 
viser is a proof that Kew has been working for 
the last quarter of a century on the right lines 
and that its policy is a sound one. Of all the 
colonies in the West Indies, Jamaica is said to 
be the only one in a fairly prosperous condition. 
This has been brought about mainly by the 


SCIENCE. 


105 


work of the Botanical Department and the en- 
couragement given by it to improve agricul- 
tural methods and introduce new industries. 


Pror. R1cHARD HE. DopGE, Teachers’ College, 
New York, will edit a Journal of School Geog- 
raphy, the first number of which will appear 
during the present month. Prof. Dodge willbe 
assisted by a board of editors consisting of 
William M. Davis, professor of geography at 
Harvard University; Dr. C. W. Hayes, 
geologist of the U. 8. Geological Survey ; 
Dr. H. B. Kimmell, Lewis Institute, Chicago, 
Tll.; Dr. F. M. McMurry, of the School of 
Pedagogy at Buffalo, and Mr. R. DeC. Ward, 
instructor in climatology at Harvard Univer- 
sity. The journal will be issued monthly, with 
the exception of July and August, and each 
issue will contain about thirty-two pages of 
reading matter. Specimen copies will be sent, 
so far as the edition will allow, on application 
to Prof. Dodge. 


THE current number of Natural Science gives 
the following news concerning recent scientific 
expeditions: Prof. Penzig, of Genoa, editor of 
Malpighia, has undertaken a botanical expedi- 
tion to Buitenzorg, Singapore and Ceylon. Dr. 
Grinling, Curator of the Mineralogical Collec- 
tion in Munich, has gone to Ceylon on an ex- 
ploring expedition. Mr. Bastard, who is ex- 
ploring in Africa, has been prevented by the 
trouble in Madagascar from penetrating into 
the interior or that island. He has, however, 
made good collections of fossils, also anthropo- 
logical measurements and photographs. Mr. 
Voillot has returned from a voyage to Haute 
Mamberé ; he brings with him ten Baya skulls 
and an interesting ethnographic collection. 
Another yaluable anthropological collection is 
that brought back from Russian Asia by Mr. 
BE. Blane. Of Mr. Alexander Whyte’s explora- 
tions in the Karonga Mountains in Central 
Africa, the results include 6,000 dried speci- 
mens of plants, 5,000 land shells, 3,000 in- 
sects, numerous mammals, reptiles, geological 
collections, and so on. 


FrLix ALCAN, Paris, has begun the publica- 
tion of a Bibliographia Physiologica, compiled by 
Prof. Ch. Richet and several assistants. The 
bibliographies for 1895 and for the first half of 


106 


1896 have been issued nearly simultaneously, 
and it is proposed not only to continue their 
- publication, but also to cover preceding years. 
Prof. Richet is a zealous advocate of the Dewey 
decimal system of classification and applies it 
systematically in the new bibliography. It is 
printed on one side of the paper only, and the 
index numbers, sometimes extending to six 
decimals, are prefixed to each entry. A special 
volume has been issued giving the classification 
for physiology, which is somewhat bewildering, 
as the fifteen hundred publications indexed for 
a year may be divided among one million 
classes. When the entries are cut up and made 
into a card catalogue different years may be 
combined conveniently, but the separate vol- 
umes lose half of their usefulness in that they 
have no alphabetical index of authors’ names. 
The Bibliography is confined to physiology in its 
narrower sense, excluding subjects such as 
embryology, histology and bacteriology. There 
are naturally omissions and errors, but the 
Bibliography will serve a most useful purpose 
pending the establishment of an international 
bibliography of the sciences. 


AT a meeting of the Boston Society for Med- 
ical Sciences on December 15th Dr. C. 8. Minot 
described an improved microtome, made for him 
bythe Bausch and Lomb Optical Company, which 
is entirely novel in its construction and works 
with great precision. The model adopted has 
been chosen: Ist. To secure the utmost steadi- 
ness and precision of movement, together with 
the minimum of errors. To this end, the knife 
is rigidly clamped at both ends upon a heavy 
metal frame above the object, and it can be 
placed in any position and at any desired an- 
gle. The object holder is supported under the 
the knife in such a way that the knife exerts 
no leverage upon the object. Every part is 
heavily built and the ways are planed and 
ground to the greatest possible accuracy. 2d. 
To secure convenience of use, the micrometer 
screw bears two toothed wheels, one for auto- 
matic movement, each tooth equaling five mi- 
erons, and one for hand movement by lever, 
with automatic adjustment, each tooth equal- 
ing two microns. The object holder is adjust- 
able by rack and pinion in three places, and has 
clamping devices for clamping each of the axes 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Voz. V. No. 107. 


and is adjustable for height also. 3d. To make 
a microtome to work equally well for either 
parafline cutting or with alcohol (celloidin, etc.). 
By a simple device, alcohol falling on the ob- 
ject is drained off without coming in contact 
with the ways or micrometer screw. The knife 
possesses the following advantages due to the 
handles, being of the same cross-section as the 
blade; the edge is true and, being made by 
polishing and not by grinding, is much finer 
than can be ordinarily produced. Every part 
of the edge can be actually used for cutting in 
the microtome. The edge may be kept always 
perfect by rubbing the blade on a piece of plate- 
glass with Diamatine powder. 


AT the annual public meeting of the Paris 
Académie de Médecine held on December 15, 
1896, the prizes offered for competition during 
the past year were awarded. The Saint Paul 
prize ($5,000), as we have already stated, was 
divided between Drs. Roux and Behring. The 
British Medical Journal states further that the 
Academy prize (£40) for an essay on the part 
played by heredity and contagion respectively 
in the propagation of tuberculosis was divided 
between M. Georges Kuss and Dr. Aussett. 
The Capuron prize (£56) for an essay on the in- 
fluence of diseases of the lungs in the mother 
upon the health of the foetus was awarded to 
Dr. Chambrelent, of Bordeaux ; the Civrieux 
prize (£40) for an essay on hallucinationin men- 
tal diseases to Dr. Paul Sérieux ; the Daudet 
prize (£40) for an essay on membranous non- 
diphtheritic anginz to Dr. Jacquemart. The 
Falret prize (£36) for an essay on morphinism 
and morphinomania was divided between MM. 
Jacquemart, Paul Rodet, André Antheaume 
and R. Leroy. The Ortila Prize (£80) for a 
paper on the etiology of dysentery was awarded 
to Surgeon-Major M. O. Arnaud. The Portal 
prize (£30) for an essay on the lymphatic system 
in its relation to malignant neoplasms was di- 
vided between M. et Mme. Christiani, of 
Geneva, and MM. F. Barjon and C. Regaud, 
of Lyons. The Pourat prize (£40) for an essay 
on the relations between thermogenesis and the 
respiratory exchanges was awarded to M. F. 
Laulanié. The Laborie prize (£200) was di- 
vided between MM. Delorme, Mignon and 
Mauclaire. Other prizes, to the amount of 


JANUARY 15, 1897.] 


about £1,600, were distributed among various 
competitors, almost exclusively of French na- 
tionality. 


THE following table gives the mumber of stu- 
dents from the different medical schools who 
passed the licensing examinations now required 
in the State of New York for the year ending in 
1896: 


i : 
RS ~ a] "S) 
Schools. 3 x si 5 = 
us) = LS) 
pq 4 oS) 
Z, & es 
University of the State of New 
WO cconnasensnnnqcasocodeacecaeods0503 2 1, 100 
New York Medical College and 
hospital for women................. 7 | 0 | 100 
College of Physicians and Sur- 
geons, Columbia University....; 142 | 11 | 92.9 
Syracuse University .................. 24) 0} 91.6 
Bellevue Hospital Medical College! 47 | 3 89.3 
University of Buffalo................. 36 | 0} 89.2 
Long Island College Hospital..... 64} 0} 87.5 
Niagara University..................+: 15 | 0} 86.6 
Woman’s Medical College of the 
New York Infirmary............... G || Bi Sbe7 
Albany Medical College.............. 47} 0} 85.1 
Eclectic Medical College............ 20 3 | 85 
New York Homeopathic Medical 
Cia E72 seoacossoccdessnengansaanacsoaned 27 | 3] 81.4 
New York University................. @ | 2) 7 


THE report of the special commission ap- 
pointed by the Dutch government to discuss the 
scheme of draining the Zuyder Zee has been 
submitted. According to the Railway Review it 
states that such an undertaking is quite possi- 
ble. The work would take 31 years for com- 
pletion, and every year 10,000 hectares of land 
would be restored to cultivation. A dike 30 
miles in length would have to be constructed, 
extending from the extreme end of South Hol- 
land to the eastern coast of Friesland. The build- 
ing of this dike, 35 meters wide at the base and 
six meters high, will take nine years. The 
total cost of the work is estimated at £26,000,- 
000, which includes the amount to be paid in 
indemnities to the fishermen of the Zuyder Zee. 
The total value of the land thus reclaimed from 
the ocean is estimated at £27,000,000, so that 
the Dutch treasury net a profit of £1,000,000, 
without reckoning the substantial gain to the 


SCIENCE. 


107 


public wealth and a corresponding increase in 
the annual revenues from duties and taxes. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 

THE Rey. Thomas J. Conaty will be installed 
as Rector of the Catholic University, Washing- 
ton, on January 19th. It is expected that Dr. 
Conaty and Cardinal Gibbons will make impor- 
tant speeches outlining the policy of the Uni- 
versity. 

EX-SENATOR SAWYER, of Wisconsin, has add- 
ed $5,000 to his recent gift of $25,000 to the 
endowment fund of Lawrence University, in 
Appleton, Wis. 

Pror. CHARLES F. CHANDLER has retired 
from the professorship of chemistry and med- 
ical jurisprudence in the College of Physicians 
and Surgeons, but retains the professorship 
of chemistry in Columbia University. Prof. 
Thomas Egleston has retired from the chair of 
mineralogy and metallurgy in Columbia Uni- 
versity, and has been made professor emeritus. 

Dr. Kurps, the German pathologist, has 
been made professor in the Rush Medical Col- 
lege, Chicago, and will also occupy a position 
in the post-graduate medical school of the Uni- 
versity of Chicago. 

A SCHOOL of science, with twenty-seven pro- 
fessorships, has been founded at Madrid. 

THE following appointments are announced: 
Dr. G. H. Bryan to be professor of pure and 
applied mathematics in the University College 
of North Wales, Bangor; Prof. E. Pringsheim 
to be professor of physics and Dr. Karl Fried- 
heim to be professor of chemistry in Berlin 
University ; Prof. Paul Staeckel, of Kénigs- 
berg, to be professor of mathematics in the 
University of Kiel; Dr. Franz Nissl to be do- 
cent in anatomy in the University of Heidel- 
berg. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
ON CERTAIN PROBLEMS OF VERTEBRATE 
EMBRYOLOGY. 

I CRAVE your permission to rectify certain 
mistakes into which the reviewer of my recent 
work has fallen in his notice in SCIENCE of 
November 20th (p. 763). Your reviewer makes 
the following statements: 


108 


(1) ‘‘So far as has yet appeared, this theory 
(of antithetic alternation of generations in 
Metazoan development) rests upon the author’s 
observation that the epidermis contributes, in 
early embryonic stages, to the production of 
nerye cells. The transformations of these cells 
he has not followed,’’ etc., (2) ‘‘ hence the whole 
embryo is a transient structure,’’ etc. 

(8) ‘‘The author discourses at length upon 
the well-known fact that in all vertebrates 
there is an embryonic period, at the close of 
which the anlages of all the principal organs 
are present, but not yet differentiated.” 

(4) ‘‘We have been unable to see that the 
elementary facts, which the author has collated, 
are anything more than what is commonly 
taught beginners in embryology, (5) nor to 
recognize that they afford any arguments to 
support the author’s theory of ‘antithetic 
alternation.’ ”’ 

As regards the heading 1, the reviewer is 
apparently unaware of the existence of the 
completed part of my work published in April, 
1896, in the Zool. Jahrb. under the title, ‘The 
history of a transient nervous apparatus in 
certain Ichthyopsida—an account of the de- 
velopment and degeneration of ganglion cells 
and nerve-fibres.’ 

The work contains some of the results of six 
years’ investigation of the matter ; it was carried 
out on upwards of 120 embryos (out of a collec- 
tion of 500 or more), whose sizes ranged from 
5 mm. to 19 cm., and it is illustrated by 8 
double plates containing more than 131 figures. 
I assert, and challenge your reviewer to prove 
the contrary, that in the work in question the 
whole of the transformations of these cells to their 
complete degeneration are described, illustrated 
and established. I have asked many compe- 
tent embryologists what was their opinion on 
this point, and not one of them expressed any- 
thing but the conviction that I had completely 
established the transient nature of the ganglion 
cells. Hence I conclude that the reviewer 
must have been dreaming when he wrote ‘‘it 
may be questioned whether a failure to study 
the fate of certain cells in an embryo is a sufli- 
cient basis to construct a revolutionary theory 
upon.’’? When I wrote my work upon them I 
had only studied them for six years ! 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 107. 


(2) No such foolish idea as that mentioned 
in the review, to wit, that ‘the whole embryo is 
a transient structure,’ has ever entered my head 
as any time. What I believe, and what I have 
written more than once, is that there is in the 
development of every vertebrate a more or less 
reduced larva or ‘phorozoon’ of a transient 
nature, that an embryo or sexual generation 
could be transient has never yet occurred to 
myself, or to anyone else, so far as I am aware. 

(8) This is supposed to be a criticism on what 
I have discribed as the ‘critical stage’ or phase. 
The reviewer considers that there is no new dis- 
covery in this, but he adduces no evidence for 
his belief, that it is ‘a well known fact,’ and 
that what I have brought forward is nothing 
more than what is taught beginners in embry- 
ology. = 

If it be a well-known fact, this existence of a 
corresponding period in the development of 
vertebrates, and (4) if the facts I have described 
be such as are usually taught beginners in em- 
bryology, surely there must be evidence of it in 
some of the text-books of embryology. There 
is certainly no evidence of this ‘well-known 
fact’ in the literature of embryology, beyond the 
few lines I have cited from His regarding the 
human embryo, and, although I am pretty well 
acquainted with the more important current 
text-books, I have never been able to find any- 
thing in any of them, not excluding Minot’s 
volume, bearing on the matter. 

Why, moreover, within the past few years, 
should Keibel and Oppel, who are well versed 
and skilled, working and teaching embryolo- 
gists, have spent so much time and labor in 
searching for corresponding phases in embryos 
of different vertebrates, and why should they 
have failed to find my critical phase, if it were 
already known to exist? Founding on these 
researches and my own, I state that there is 
only one such corresponding phase in the de- 
velopment and that it was first described in the 
pamphlet under consideration. If your re- 
viewer questions the truth of this, let. him pro- 
duce his evidence. I believe, and the contrary 
has still to be proved, that my pamphlet con- 
tains the following novelties, fate of the yolk, 
yolk-sac and merocytes, discovery of a corre- 
sponding critical phase in the development of 


JANUARY 15, 1897.] 


yarious vertebrates, explanation of the prema- 
ture birth of the opossum, the main outlines of 
the history of the mammary glands and pla- 
centa and a number of other items. 

It was published and appeared as a separate 
work, because it was felt that the facts described 
were sufficiently novel and important to war- 
rant such a course, and not merely ‘to secure 
attention’ to my theory. The ‘note of per- 
sonal exultation’ is no such theory; it is in- 
tended to be an invitation and challenge to 
scientific men to examine and, if possible, to 
refute my arguments. The latter is something 
the reviewer has carefully avoided to attempt. 

The last paragraph cited (5) is merely the 
expression of the critic’s personal opinion and, 
unless supported by argument, can carry no 
conviction. The reviewer offers no reasons for 
his adverse judgment; until he does so, it is out 
of question to consider, or even to understand, 
what standpoint he takes up. A mere denial 
of the truth of my theory is not argument, but 
dogmatism. J. BEARD. 

UNIVERSITY Or EDINBURGH. 


Mr. BEARD’s paper on the transient nervous 
system was well known to me, and I consider 
my statements correct, and I made them de- 
liberately. There are two methods, and only 
two, that enable the investigator to trace the 
forms and connections of nerve-cells, the Golgi 
method and the methylen-blue method. Mr. 
Beard employed neither of these, and, as a 
matter of fact, has not traced, and was neces- 
sarily unable to follow, all the essential trans- 
formations of these cells. His research is an 
extremely interesting one, and, in my opinion, 
important, but the results are not available in 
support of the ‘Phorozoon’ theory. The num- 
ber of embryos and of years devoted to the re- 
search do not make up for the exclusive use of 
an insufficient method. 

The facts referring to the condition of the 
organs at the ‘ critical stage’ are given more or 
less fully in all embryological text-books. The 
occurrence of the critical stage is not specially 
mentioned, because no embryologist, except 
Beard, has heretofore regarded it as more or 
less important than preceding and subsequent 
stages. The error of Mr. Beard’s, which I 


SCIENCE. 


109 


note, is the assumption that this stage is 
‘critical,’ for stages before it and after it could 
equally well be selected and traced through the 
vertebrate series as accurately as the ‘critical’ 
stage. If Mr. Beard knows the contrary of 
this he must haye compiled the characters of 
various classes of vertebrates at other stages 
and found that they do not agree. The de- 
tailed publication of such a compilation must 
precede a claim for serious attention to his 
hypothesis. As stated in the notice of Beard’s 
work, the compilation of characteristics in ver- 
tebrate embryos of various classes and all ap- 
proximately at the same stage is useful, and if 
corresponding tables of other stages were also 
compiled they would also be useful. It would 
be interesting to know what proof establishes 
the ‘critical’ nature of the stage selected by 
Mr. Beard. He has not as yet published any 
such proof, although the onus probandi is his. 
He calls for disproof, but proof from him must 
come first. Mr. Beard states that he compiled 
the facts, yet complains that I say the facts are 
well known. Does he mean that the facts he 
quotes from various authors were unknown? 
My review is a protest against two tendencies: 
first, to solve, embryologically, morphological 
problems without sufficient regard to histogen- 
esis; second, to push speculation indefinitely 
beyond observation. Both tendencies have 
been marked in Mr. Beard’s previous papers, as 
well as in the one under discussion. 

I regret that my criticism cannot be more 
favorable. CHARLES S. Minor. 


SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 


The Survival of the Unlike. A collection of Kvolu- 
tion Essays suggested by the study of domes- 


tic plants. By L. H. BaiLey. New York, 
The Macmillan Company. 1896. 515 pp. 
8vo. 


Whatever Professor Bailey writes is interest- 
ing reading. He has the rare gift of an enter- 
taining style, and what he writes people want 
to read. All his previous books have been 
widely read, and this will prove to be no ex- 
ception to the well-established rule. The se- 
eret of this popularity, if there be any secret 
about it, is that when he writes he has some- 


110 


thing new to say, something based upon experi- 
ences and observations. These are by no means 
all his own, for he has the ability to see with 
the eyes of other people, as well as with his 
own. He is thus able to bring into his pages a 
rich mass of new matter which gives them ad- 
ditional interest and value. 

This new book consists of essays and papers, 
all of which have been presented elsewhere and 
are now brought together in accordance with 
the author’s plan. Thus, while a collection of 
essays, it is not without unity. ‘‘In making 
these essays,’’ the author says in his preface, 
“T have constantly had in mind their collection 
and publication, and have therefore endeavored 
to discuss the leading problems associated with 
the variation and evolution of cultivated plants, 
in order that the final collection should be 
somewhat consecutive.’’ 

The following sentences from the preface will 
give the reader a general idea of the author’s 
position. ‘‘The underlying motive of the col- 
lection is the emphasis which is placed upon 
unlikenesses, and of their survival because they 
are unlike. The author also denies the common 
assumption that organic matter was originally 
endowed with the power of reproducing all its 
corporeal attributes, or that, in the constitution 
of things, like produces like. He conceives 
that heredity is an acquired force, and that, 
normally or originally, unlike produces unlike.’’ 
The author’s a priori reasons for belief in the 
hypothesis of evolution are ‘‘ the two facts that 
there must be struggle for existence from the 
mere mathematics of propagation, and that 
there have been mighty changes in the physical 
character of the earth, which argue that organ- 
isms must either have changed or perished.’’ 
On the other hand, ‘‘the chief demonstrative 
reason for belief in evolution is the fact that 
plants and animals can be and are modified 
profoundly by the care of man.”’ 

The body of the book is in three ‘parts,’ the 
first including essays touching the general fact 
and philosophy of evolution; second, those ex- 
pounding the fact and causes of variation, and 
third, those tracing the evolution of particu- 
lar types of plants. The first essay gives name 
to the book. In it the author discusses (1) the 
nature of the divergences of plants and animals, 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No. 107. 


suggesting the Mycetozoa as the point of diver- 
gence; (2) the origin of differences, holding 
that all plants and animals came from one 
original life-plasma which had the power of 
perpetuating its physiological but not its struc- 
tural identity; no two organisms ever being 
exactly alike, it follows that unlike produces 
unlike; (3) the survival of the unlike, this being 
an extension of our notion of the meaning of 
the phrase ‘ the survival of the fittest,’ by show- 
ing that the fittest are the unlike. 

The author gives us some interesting pages 
on the species dogma, in which he pointedly 
shows the inconsistency of those who demand 
experimental evidence of the evolution of a 
species, and yet reject ‘horticultural species’ 
because they have been produced under cultiva- 
tion. Many examples are given of the origina- 
tion of well-marked ‘ varieties,’ which are more 
different from the species from which they 
sprung than are the recognized species from one 
another. Here Professor Bailey’s experience 
as a horticulturist enables him to cite striking 
examples of what the candid reader must admit 
are good species evolved through man’s selec- 
tion. Thus we seem to have made species of 
of beans (Phaseolus), tomato (Lycopersicum), 
maize (Zea), soy-beans (Glycine), ete. The 
horticulturist who is familiar with the plasticity 
of plants, and who is accustomed to see new 
and persistent forms arise, cannot help being 
an evolutionist, nor can he help being impatient 
with the botanist who refuses to accept such 
forms as true varieties or species, as much en- 
titled to recognition as those whose origin we 
do not happen to know. 

CHARLES E. BESSEY. 

THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA, 


A Popular Handbook of the Ornithology of Eastern 
North America. By THoMAS NUTTALL. 2d 
Revised and Annotated Edition, by Mon- 
TAGUE CHAMBERLAIN. With additions and 
110 illustrations in colors. Vol. I., The Land 
Birds. Vol. Il., Game and Water Birds. 
Boston, Little, Brown & Company. October, 
1896. 

For more than half a century students of 

North American ornithology have had three 

works which by common consent came to be 


JANUARY 15, 1897. ] 


regarded as classics. To lovers of birds the 
names of their authors, Audubon, Wilson and 
Nuttall, are as familiar as those of Milton, 
Dante and Shakespeare. Nuttall’s book was 
the less pretentious of the three, having no 
colored plates and selling at a price which 
brought it within reach of a large constituency. 

Nuttall was primarily a botanist, and not a 
few of his admirers who know him only from 
the excellence of his ornithological writings 
will be surprised to learn that for about ten 
years (1825-1834) he was Curator of the Botanic 
Garden and lecturer on natural history at Har- 
vard, being Asa Gray’s predecessor; and that 
the high character of his work placed him in 
the front rank of early American botanists. 

In seeking new plants he made an expedition 
into Arkansas, and afterward, in company with 
Capt. Wyeth and J. K. Townsend, crossed the 
continent from Atlantic to Pacific, following 
the difficult overland route later known as ‘ The 
Oregon Trail.’ His field work led him into all 
sorts of out-of-the-way places where he was 
constantly meeting strange and interesting 
birds. That he took an affectionate interest in 
their doings is shown by his biographies, which 
are original, faithful and entertaining and show 
an intimate personal familiarity with the species 
of which he wrote. Besides, they furnished 
what was then so much needed, a brief narra- 
tive of the life history, breeding habits and dis- 
tribution of each as at that time known. In 
speaking of the book a modern writer has said: 
“Nuttall, like good wine, does not deteriorate 
with age.’’ The original edition was long ago 
exhausted and for many years has commanded 
a relatively high price—the two volumes com- 
monly selling for $25, or even $30. 

In order to keep this execellent work within 
reach of the ever-increasing number of students 
and lovers of birds, Mr. Montague Chamberlain 
brought out, in 1891, anew and revised edition. 
The new edition differed from the original in sey- 
eral important respects: While the text and 
squence of the biographies were in the main un- 
changed, the birds were given their modern 
names, Western species were omitted, the de- 
scriptions of species were rewritten, a paragraph 
was added giving the geographic range as at 
present known, and additional species were in- 


SCIENCE. 


Inu 


cluded so as to embrace all the birds now 
known from the eastern United States and 
Canada. In all cases, the additional matter 
was printed in different type from the body of 
the work, so that Nuttall’s original text was 
clearly set off from the matter contributed by 
the editor. The title page was misleading, as it 
failed to indicate the fact that the Western 
species had been left out, but in the new edi- 
tion (1896) this is corrected, the new title page 
reading: ‘A Popular Handbook of the Or- 
nithology of Eastern North America.’ The 
book is printed from the same plates as the 
previous edition, but corrections and additions 
have been made in the matter contributed by 
the editor. It is illustrated by text figures and 
colored plates. The latter might better have 
been omitted, although it is true that the ma- 
jority of them may be recognized if looked at 
through a veil or smoked glass to deaden the 
unnaturally brilliant colors so characteristic of 
cheap chromolithographs. It is only fair to the 
author to state that he isin no way responsible 
for these plates ; they were introduced by the 
publishers against his desire. The text figures 
are much better. They are of two kinds: (1) 
cuts borrowed from Baird, Brewer and Ridg- 
way’s History of North American Birds and 
mostly of high excellence; and (2) figures 
drawn for the book and mostly unsatisfactory. 
The latter have a coarse look and evidently 
were intended for greater reduction; they 
suffer by contrast with the more finished draw- 
ings among which they are scattered. 

Mr. Chamberlain has done a public service 
in enabling the younger generation of bird stu- 
dents to add this classic to their libraries. This 
will be especially appreciated by those who 
care more for a bird in the bush than a bird in 
the hand—who love birds for what they are 
and what they do in life—for Nuttall’s bio- 
graphies possess a freshness and charm which 
time can never efface. Cc. H. M. 


The Cell. Outlines of General Anatomy and Phys- 
iology. By Dr. OscAR HeErrwic. ‘Trans- 
lated by M. CAMPBELL and edited by H. J. 
CAMPBELL, M. D. London, Swan, Sonnen- 
schein & Co.; New York, Macmillan & Co. 
1895. S8vo., cloth, 368 pp., 168 figs. $8.00. 


112 


The Cell in Development and Inheritance. By 
Epmunp B. Wixson, Pu. D., Professor of 
Invertebrate Zoology, Columbia University. 
New York and London, Macmillan. 1896. 
8vo, cloth, 371 pp., 142 figs. $3.00. 

These two recent books on the same subject 
by well known investigators, the one in Ger- 
many, the other in America, serve to mark a 
new stage in the differentiation of the biological 
sciences—the separation of cytology from his- 
tology as an independent science. Although, 
as their titles indicate, they attempt to cover 
much the same ground, they show a marked 
dissimilarity in several respects—a dissimilarity 
which it is worth while to emphasize. 

First, however, a word as to the common 
ground covered. Both consider especially the 
structure and chemical composition of cytoplasm 
and nucleus, the phenomena of cell-division, 
the germ cells in their development and union, 
and the theories of inheritance from the cyto- 
logical standpoint. Both works give full biblio- 
graphical references. 

The most important difference between them 
arises from the fact that Wilson’s work was 
written three and a-half years after Hertwig’s. 
Wilson is thus able to use the results of the 
extraordinary activity in cytological research 
which has characterized the last third of a dec- 
ade. Aside from this, the standpoint of the 
authors is slightly different, for Hertwig devotes 
nearly a third of his book to the results of ex- 
perimental physiological study on the cell, 
while these are only incidentally considered by 
Wilson. Thus only in Hertwig’s book do we 
find a systematic discussion of protoplasmic 
movement and the phenomena of irritability, 
metabolism and formative activity. Wilson, 
on the other hand, discusses more fully certain 
matters of recent observational study, such as 
the origin of the tetrads and reduction of the 
chromosomes. Thus while the scope of Hert- 
wig’s work is broader, Wilson’s is more recent 
and more thorough as concerns cell morphol- 
ogy. 

The general method of presentation of the 
subject in Wilson’s work is in the highest de- 
gree pleasing. It retains the impress of its ori- 
gin in a semi-popular course of lectures, which 
makes it easy reading, while the style is clear 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No. 107. 


and interesting—qualities too rarely found in 
technical works. Each topic is usually begun 
with a general outline of our present knowl- 
edge of the matter, and this is followed by a 
more detailed and critical presentation of the 
facts. The historical method of developing the 
subject is not usually adopted, for this does not 
lend itself well to the needs of a text-book on 
a descriptive science. 

Hertwig, on the other hand, has a rather 
heavy, colorless style, and in the translation all 
of the faults of the original are exaggerated. 
Indeed, the work has suffered terribly in the 
attempt to dress it in a new language. An ex- 
ample or two must be given. Thus Hertwig 
says, very truly, that the latent properties of the 
cell which become evident only during develop- 
ment ‘‘nennt man [in Germany] Anlagen.’’ 
What, on the other hand, will be the astonish- 
ment of the cytological reader of the transla- 
tion to learn (page 335) that [presumably by 
the English-speaking cytologists] they are called 
fundamental constituent attributes! In other 
places the translator appears as ignorant of Ger- 
man as of biology. Thus in one place Hertwig 
says: ‘‘ Hine tiefere Bedeutung gewannen diese 
Thatsachen aber erst, als am Ende des 18. 
Jahrhunderts sich eine mehr philosophische 
Betrachtungsweise der Natur Bahn brach.’’ 
This might be translated thus : These facts [of 
the cell] did not acquire a deeper significance, 
however, until the end of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, when a more philosophical manner of re- 
garding nature began to predominate. The 
translator makes it read (page 2): ‘‘ Much 
greater importance, however, was attached to 
these facts after the investigations, which 
were carried on in a more philosophical spirit 
by Bahn [!] towards the end of the eighteenth 
century, were published.’’ It is unnecessary to 
state that the philosophic ‘Bahn’ does not fig- 
ure in Engelmann’s Bibliotheca. Numerous 
other instances might be given of sentences in 
which the original meaning is wholly distorted 
and which are eyen, in themselves, meaning- 
less, and scores of others in which the greatest 
liberties have been taken with the original, 
causing the author to say what he certainly 
would haye avoided saying. The translation 
is, on the whole, wretchedly done, and bad and 


JANUARY 15, 1897. ] 


good are so intermingled that the uninitiated 
reader cannot know what is reliable and what 
is false. 

While Wilson’s book leaves little to be 
desired in respect to careful statement, there 
is one ground for serious regret, namely, the 
omission of reference to certain important 
American papers. We may excuse this in a 
foreigner, but not in an author in Prof. Wilson’s 
position. Thus, Kofoid’s papers upon cleavage 
in Limax are not referred to in the whole book, 
yet he first called attention to the failure of 
Balfour’s law referred to on page 273. Also 
his contributions to the laws of spiral cleavage 
are of the first importance. 

A comparison of the press work of the two 
books reveals as great a difference as the mat- 
ter. Forin the translation of Hertwig the type 
is small and worn and the numerous half- 
tone reproductions are frequently muddy—like 
the translation. On the other hand, the type 
in Wilson’s book is beautifully clear and the 
figures, which are nearly all new to text-books, 
are all that could be desired. The work is in- 
deed a model in the beauty of its illustrations. 

While it is impossible to summarize such a 
book as Wilson’s, yet a few of its salient fea- 
tures and conclusions on debated questions may 
be mentioned. Especially noteworthy are the 
Table showing the number of chromosomes in 
germ and somatic nuclei of various animals, 
and the Glossary, which gives the authors and 
dates of introduction of each term. Although 
treating fully Bitschli’s view of the honey- 
comb structure of protoplasm, the author be- 
lieves (page 19) that the fibrillar structure is the 
more typical. All the organs of cell-division— 
centrosome, spindle and chromosomes—are to 
be regarded as differentiations of the primitive 
nuclear structure (page 67). His conclusions 
concerning the factors determining develop- 
ment are clearly stated on page 328 as follows: 
“‘Development may thus be conceived as a pro- 
gressive transformation of the egg-substance 
primarily incited by the nucleus, first manifest- 
ing itself by specific changes in the cytoplasm, 
but sooner or later involving in some measure 
the nuclear substance itself. * * * Cell-divi- 
sion is an accompaniment, but not a direct 
cause of differentiation. The cell is no more 


SCIENCE. 


113 


than a particular area of the germinal substance 
comprising a certain quantity of cytoplasm and 
a mass of idioplasm in its nucleus.’’ These 
quotations may serve to show that the book is 
written on broad lines. It certainly takes rank 
at once among the most important biological 
works of the period, and it is a book of which 
its publishers and all Americans may well be 
proud. C. B. DAVENPORT. 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


Physiological Papers. By H. NEWELL MARTIN. 
Dr. Sci., University of London; A. M., 
University of Cambridge; M. B., London 
University; M. D. (Hon.), University of 
Georgia; late Fellow and Lecturer in Christ 
College, Cambridge; Fellow of University 
College, London; Fellow of the Royal 
Society ; Professor of Biology, Director of 
the Biological Laboratory and Editor of the 
Studies from the Biological Laboratory, 
Johns Hopkins University, 1876-1894, and 
Professor of Physiology in the Medical Fac- 
ulty of the same. Memoirs from the Biolog- 
ical Laboratory of the Johns Hopkins Univer- 
sity III. Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins 
Press. 1895. 

The book before us is intended to commem- 
orate the connection of Prof. Newell Martin 
with the Johns Hopkins University. In it 
are reprinted his physiological papers pub- 
lished from the Biological Laboratory created 
by him there, and some of the public addresses 
delivered by him on various occasions in this 
country. The whole forms a handsome quarto 
volume, valuable not only from its commemora- 
tive significance, but also as uniting conven- 
iently for study and reference a series of im- 
portant and interesting contributions to medical 
and biological science. 

From the physiological point of view, espe- 
cially at the present time when the investiga- 
tion of the isolated mammalian heart is being 
actively renewed, most interest attaches to 
the papers in which Prof. Martin described 
the evolution of what he himself termed the 
Baltimore method for the isolation of the 
mammalian heart, and many of the most im- 
portant results obtained with it. The mutual 
influence exercised on one another by the dif- 


114 


ferent parts of the mechanism by which the 
mammalian circulation is carried on, and the 
functional connection of all of these by means of 
the nervous system with all the other organs 
of the body, often render difficult, sometimes 
impossible, the drawing of reliable conclusions 
as to the direct effect of any agency on the heart 
itself from experiments on the whole organism. 
Here, therefore, was especially a case for the 
application of the physiological method of isola- 
tion: the separation of a given organ from all 
its functional, if not anatomical, connections ; 
and keeping it alive, in spite of this separation, 
by the artificial maintenance of the necessary 
conditions of continued vital activity in the case 
of warm-blooded animals—a suitable tempera- 
ture and a sufficient and constant supply of 
arterial blood. With an organ thus isolated the 
determination of the direct influence upon it of 
various factors can relatively easily be certainly 
determined. 

The isolation of the mammalian heart, which 
Carl Ludwig and Alexander Schmidt had found 
impossible in 1868, was first accomplished by 
Newell Martin in 1881. In order to secure 
arterialization of the blood sustaining the nutri- 
tion of the heart, the lungs, rhythmical infla- 
tion of which was artificially kept up, were left 
in functional connection with it. The remain- 
ing organs of the body, deprived of their nor- 
mal blood supply soon die, the heart, however, 
continuing to beat in a perfectly normal manner 
for so long as five hours and more, although 
deprived of all influence of the central nervous 
system. The pressure under which venous 
blood flows into its right side can be varied by 
changing the height of the reservoir containing 
this, as can also be the pressure under which 
the left ventricle empties itself by alterations in 
the height of the outlet connected with it. 

With the aid of this method, modified in details 
as circumstances required, various important 
fundamental questions in the physiology of the 
mammalian heart were attacked and solved in 
the Baltimore laboratory. Most of the com- 
munications describing the results of these re- 
searches are contained in the present volume, 
Prof. Martin haying been author or joint au- 
thor of them. 

Their titles are: ‘A New Method of Study- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 107. 


ing the Mammalian Heart;’ ‘The Influence 
upon the Pulse Rate of Variations of Arterial 
Pressure, of Veinous Pressure, and of Tempera- 
ture ;’ ‘Observations on the Direct Influence of 
Variations of Arterial Pressure upon the Rate 
of Beat of the Mammalian Heart;’ ‘The Direct 
Influence of Gradual Variations - Tempera- 
ture upon the Rate o Beat of the Dog’s 
Heart’ (this formed the Croonian Lecture of 
the Royal Society for 1883); ‘The Action of 
Ethyl Alcohol upon the Dog’s Heart;’ ‘Ex- 
periments in Regard to the Supposed Suction 
Pump Action of the Mammalian Heart,’ and 
‘On the Temperature Limits of the Vitality 
of the Mammalian Heart.’ It is of distinct 
historical importance that in this last inves- 
tigation, in which EH. C. Applegarth took part, 
it was found possible to isolate the heart 
and keep it alive independently of the lungs, 
the blood being aerated simply by air bubbling 
through it. The recent work of Langendorff in 
Rostock on the isolation of the cat’s heart with- 
out the aid of the lungs was thus essentially 
anticipated. 

The other original investigations described in 
the volume are mostly concerned with the res- 
piration. They include Martin’s elaborate 
research on of the respiratory movements of 
the frog and their nervous mechanism, and 
the study of ‘The Influence of Stimulation 
of the Mid-Brain upon the Respiratory Rhythm 
of the Mammal,’ in which W. D. Booker was 
collaborator, the results obtained being later 
confirmed by Christiani in Berlin. Martin’s 
valuable contribution to the question whether 
the internal intercostal muscles are to be re- 
garded as inspiratory or expiratory in function, 
his decision being in favor of the latter alterna- 
tive, is, of course, also given. 

Those of Newell Martin’s public addresses 
on more or less general subjects included in 
this volume well deserved to be so. They are 
all admirably written and are most stimulating 
reading. Martin was a strenuous advocate of 
the justifiability of vivisection, and in several 
of his addresses made most powerful pleas for 
it. A passage such as the following is perhaps 
more worth quoting in America at the present 
time than when it was first written : 

“Yt is not mere physical suffering that we 


JANUARY 15, 1897. ] 


labor to diminish. We labor to save life— 
human life with all its ties. Were I to seea 
man tortured with facial neuralgia, and knew 
that I could relieve him by inflicting equal 
pain on a dog or horse, I hardly know what my 
decision would be. I suppose I should decide 
in favor of the man. But that is not the ques- 
tion which faces our profession in regard to 
experiments on animals; it is how we may 
better our knowledge and increase our power 
to save the life of husband and father—of wife 
or mother—of the child in whose life the hearts 
and hopes of its parents are bound. 

“Certain of our opponents have their sym- 
pathies greatly excited by the occasional cry of 
a dog enduring pain from pharmacological ex- 
periment. Have they listened to the wail of 
the new-made widow? Some of them use their 
fiercest invective to calumniate those who have 
kept animals alive a few days after an experi- 
ment, that the causation of disease may be 
better understood and its prevention made 
possible. Have they realized the years of 
penury and misery too often the lot of the or- 
phan? They have not felt personal responsi- 
bility for the life of the bread winner, or they 
would surely say with us, kill a hundred, kill 
a thousand animals if you have any reasonable 
hope of thereby preserving to one wife her hus- 
band, to one child its mother.’’ (p. 254.) 

Since the greater part of the above was writ- 
ten, the unexpected news of Newell Martin’s 
death hascome from England Our consolation 
for the relatively early loss of so brilliant a phy- 
siologist can only be that in the time given to him 
for scientific work he obeyed his own exhorta- 
tion at the close of the lecture inaugurating the 
biological work of the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity: ‘‘ Let us, then, each work loyally, 
earnestly, truthfully, so that when the time 
comes, as it will come sooner or later, in one 
way or another, to each of us, to depart hence, 
we may carry withus a good conscience, and 
be able to say that in our time noslipshod piece 
of work ever left the laboratory ; that no error we 
knew of was persisted in; that our only desire 
was to know the truth. Let us leave a re- 
cord which, if it perchance contain the history 
of no great feat in the memory of which our 
successors will glory, will at least contain not 


SCIENCE. 


115 


one jot or one tittle of which they can be 
ashamed.’’ 

The isolation of the mammalian heart will 
always remain one of the triumphs of experi- 
mental physiology. F. 8. Locke. 

HARVARD MEDICAL ScHOOL. 


Anleitung zur Mikrochemischen Analyse der 
wichtigsten Organischen Verbindungen. Von 
H. BEHRENS, Professor an der Polytechni- 
schen Schule zu Delft. Zweites Heft. Leo- 
pold Voss, Hamburg und Leipzig. 1896. 
106 pp. 

The second part of Behrens’ text-book of 
microchemical organic analysis deals with the 
important fibres: those of woven goods ; wool, 
silk, cotton, linen, hemp, jute and others; and 
those of paper; the cellular fibres of straw, 
alfalfa and wood. The microchemical study of 
these substances with reagents and in polarized 
light, and methods for examining woven goods 
and paper, complete the book. Itis well printed 
and illustrated and a complete work in itself. 
Besides the illustrations in the text, three beau- 
tifully colored plates reproduce the appearance 
of the different fibres in polarized light and 
when stained with different dyes. It is well to 
remember that Prof. Behrens is not only an au- 
thority on this subject, but is the only authority 
for the student, as he has written the only text- 
books. The organic analysis is a worthy con- 
tinuation of the author’s inorganic analysis. 

E. R. 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 
CHEMICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 


THE 91st meeting of the Society was held 
Thursday evening, December 10, 1896. The 
President, Dr. de Schweinitz was in the chair, 
with thirty members and several guests pres- 
ent. 

The first paper of the evening was by Prof. 
H. W. Wiley on ‘The Mechanical Analyses of 
Phosphatic Slags.’ 

The second paper was by Prof. Charles 
E. Munroe, entitled ‘An Early Specimen 
of Gun Cotton.’ Prof. Munroe called atten- 
tion to a sample of gun cotton which he had 
received from Dr. W. A. Hedrick, some two 
years ago, and which had been for many years 


116 


in the possession of Dr. B. 8. Hedrick, for- 
merly Hxaminer in the U.S. Patent Office. The 
specimen was in the form of a cartridge, con- 
sisting of long staple gun cotton, and although 
the paper was torn somewhat it was still pos- 
sible to read that it was labeled ‘cotton for 
shooting,’ and that it was made by ‘ Lennig, of 
Philadelphia, under patent of October 6, 1846.’ 

The gun cotton isin a complete state of pres- 
ervation and, as it apparently dates from 
shortly after Schoenbein’s patent was filed, it is 
probably the oldest specimen in this country 
and shows that properly made gun cotton is a 
stable product. Prof. Munroe then offered in 
the same connection a copy of Schoenbein’s 
original United States patent, and discussed his 
claim to being the original discoverer of gun cot- 
ton, holding that although he had much improved 
the process of manufacture, and made it prac- 
ticable, that Braconot Pelouze and Dumas, had 
all preceded him in producing an explosive, 
cellulose nitrate. There was some discussion, 
especially as to.a discrepancy between the dates 
of the patent and that on the specimen pre- 
sented by Prof. Munroe. 

Dr. W. J. Hedrick referred to the connection 
of his father with the Patent Office, and said 
that formerly the laboratory of the Agricultural 
Department, which was then under the Interior 
Department, was connected with the Patent 
Office, and that the specimen might have come 
from this laboratory. Dr. Littlewood said that 
he had tried to obtain further data, but had found 
no explosives in the office as old as this speci- 
men. He further stated that few would be 
handed down by him to his successor, as his 
policy was to remove all explosives as soon as 
possible. Mr. Dewey said that he would not 
put much faith in the date on the specimen. 
Lennig may have made a mistake in the date. 
He was sceptical as to its age. Prof. Munroe 
said that if it dated back only to 1860 it was 
old. After further discussion by Dr. Fireman 
and Prof. Munroe, Mr. W. D. Bigelow gave a 
description of a ‘ Convenient Apparatus for the 
Estimation of Urea in Urine by the Hypobro- 
mite Method.’ The apparatus consisted of a 
burette so bent that the graduated part forms 
the arc of a circle, the center of which is a lip 
at the end farthest from the stop cock. Above 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 107: 
the stop cock is a thistle-tube top for the intro- 
duction of the reagents. A. C. PEALE, 

Secretary. 


TEXAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 


THE mid-year meeting of the Texas Academy 
of Science was held in San Antonio, December 
31, 1896. 

At the afternoon session the following papers 
were read: ‘Notes on the Physiology of the 
Central Nervous System of some of the Lower 
Amimals,’ by W. W. Norman, professor .of 
biology in the University of Texas. ‘The 
Evolution of Culture,’ by Thomas Fitzhugh, 
professor of Latin, University of Texas. ‘ Ver- 
tical Curves for Railways,’ by J. C. Nagle, 
professor of engineering, Agricultural and Me- 
chanical College of Texas. ‘Notes on Indian 
Corn and some of its Uses Among Modern and 
Ancient Mexicans,’ by Dr. David Cerna, Med- 
ical Department of the University of Texas. 

The chief event of the evening session was 
the address of Maj. C. E. Dutton, U. S. A., on 
‘The Economics of Concentrated Capital.’ 
Dr. George Bruce Halsted, President of the 
Academy, also spoke briefly on ‘The Greatest 
Foundling House of the World, a Personal Study 
in Russian Sociology.’ 

Dr. Cerna had the pleasure of presenting to 
the Academy, Mrs. Frances Long Taylor, a 
daughter of Dr. Crawford W. Long, of Georgia, 
the well known discoverer of the anesthetic 
properties of ether. 

At the close of the meeting the members of 
the Academy were entertained by Major Dut- 


ton at his residence. 
FREDERIC W. SIMONDS. 


NEW BOOKS. 

Catalogue des bibliographies géologiques. EMM. 
DE MARgorIE. Paris, Gauthier-Villars et 
fils. 1896. Pp. xx+738. A 

Life and Letters of William Barton Rogers. Ed- 
ited by his wife, with the assistance of Wm. 
T. Sep@wick. Boston and New York, 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1896. Vol. L., 
viii +427; Vol. II., vit+451. $4.00. 

Problems of Biology. GEORGE SANDEMAN. Lon- 
don, Swann, Sonnenschein & Co.; New York, 
The Macmillan Co. Pp. 218. $2.00. 


p SCIENCE 


SINGLE Copiss, 15 crs. 
Vou. V. No. 108. FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, 1897. ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION, $5.00, 


The NEW YORK HERALD in its issue of January 3, 1897, devoted nearly a whole page to a notice 
of the undermentioned work which it described as being “‘A REMARKABLE SCIENTIFIC MEMORIAL.” 
It also stated that ‘‘Nothing more revolutionary than Dr. Emmens’ memorial has been advanced in the name of 
science since the day when Sir Isaac Newton presented to the Royal Society his doctrine of universal gravitation.?? 


The Argentaurum Papers, 


No. 1. 
Some Remarks concerning Gravitation, 


ADDRESSED TO 


THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, THE ACADEMIE DES SCIENCES, THE ROYAL SOCIETY 
AND ALL OTHER LEARNED BODIES, 


STEPHEN H. EMMENS, 


Member of the American Institute of Mining Engineers ; Member of the American Chemical Society ; Membre Fon- 
dateur of the Societe Internationale des Hlectriciens ; Sometime Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of 
Great Britain and Ireland ; Member of the United States Naval Institute ; Member 
of the Military Service Institution of the United States; Etc. 


CONTENTS : 


The Newtonian Doctrine. The Defect of Newton’s Proof respecting the Centre of Force of a Spherical 
Shell. The Newtonian Demonstration respecting the Attraction exerted by Spheres upon External Bodies. 
An Inquiry as to the Reason of the Defect in the Newtonian Doctrine of Attracting Spheres having remained. 
undiscovered until now. The Newtonian Doctrine of Internal Attractions. The Doctrine of Gravitating 
Centres as distinguished from Centres of Gravity. The Calculus of Gravitating Centres. The Gravitating 
Centre of a solid, homogenéous Sphere with relation to external bodies. The case of a Spheroid. The Pre- 
cession of the Equinoxes. The Density of the Earth. The Internal Attractive Force of a Spherical Shell. 
The Internal Attractive Force of a Solid Sphere. The status of a Solid Sphere with regard to Internal Pres- 
sure. The Centrifugal Theory of Cosmical Bodies. The Variation of Density as regards the Earth’s Crust. 
The Significance of Earthquakes. The Temperature of the Earth. The Source of Terrestrial Heat. The 
Source of Solar Heat. Saturn and Jupiter. The Volcanic Character and Quiescent Status of the Moon. The 
Obliquity of the Ecliptic. Elevation, Subsidence and Glacial Epochs. The Cooling and Shrinking of the 
Earth’s Crust. The Arch Theory of the Earth’s Crust. The Cause of Ocean-Beds and Mountains. Terrestrial 
Magnetism and Electricity. The Presence of Gold in the Ocean. The Verification of the Centrifugal Theory. 
Universal Gravitation. E pursimuove. The Error of the Dyne. The Variation of Products. The Infinite 
Concomitant of Newtonian Particles. The self-lifting Power of the Newtonian Particles. How two equally- 
heavy Newtonian Particles, taken togethe., weigh less than the sum of their separate Weights. The self- 
contradictory character of the Newtonian Law. The superior limits of Newtonian Gravitation. The Corre- 
lation of Space and Energy. The outline of a system of Universal Physics. 


Price, Cloth Bound, $2.00 post-free to any address. 


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Prof. A. C. ABBorT, Director of the Laboratory of Hygiene, 
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NEW CATALOGUE, 
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SCIENCE 


EDITORIAL ComMMITTEE: S. NeEwcoms, Mathematics; R. 8S. WooDWARD, Mechanics; E. C. PICKERING, 
Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THURSTON, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry; 
J. LE ContE, Geology; W. M. Davis, Physiography; O. C. MARSH, Paleontology; W. K. 
Brooks, C. HART MERRIAM, Zoology; 8S. H. ScuDDER, Entomology; N. L. BRITTON, 
Botany; HENRY F. OsBoRN, General Biology; H. P. Bowpitcu, Physiology ; 
J. S. Bintrnes, Hygiene ; J. McKEEN CATTELL, Psychology ; 
DANIEL G. BRINTON, J. W. POWELL, Anthropology. 


FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, 1897. 


CONTENTS : 


Chemistry in the United States: F. W. CLARKE....117 

The American Physiological Society: FREDERIC 8. 
ILE sonanocosoonnn age ston to cen ecanspspDOsDBUnoaEOvONIONGI0O00 129 

Electrification of Air by Rontgen Rays: LORD KEL- 
VIN, J. G. BEATTIE, M. SMOLUCHOWSKI DE 
SICILY IT cas onsaccnpanaennobonsonpdcdocosoaocascsconsdeoueDND 139 


Current Notes on Anthropology :— 
Origin of Rock Paintings ; The Meaning of Mourn- 


ing; Primitive Travel and Transportation: OD. G. 

TETRIS EKO Foc oocosscassoooasonoconcosendecoooo5scos0n5¢u000005 141 
Scientific Notes and News :— 

Modern Army Rifles; General. ..........1.ssceeeeeeeens 142 
University and Educational News...........0+-+sss0se-00 146 


Discussion and. Correspondence :-— 
A National Department of Science: W ASHINGTO- 
NIAN. The Jurassic Wealden ( Tithonian) of Eng- 
land: JULES MARCcOU. Compliment or Plagiar- 
ism: GEORGE BRUCE HALSTED. <A Meteorologi- 
cal Conference at Paris: A. LAWRENCE RoTcH. 
The Study of Fear: WESLEY Minus. Glosso- 
phaga truei: HARRISON ALLEN...........0000-.005 147 


Scientific Literature:— , 
Dwelshawvers-Dery’s Etude de Huwit Essais de 


Machine & Vapeur: R. H. THurston. Hutch- 
imson on Prehistoric Man and Beast: D.G. BRIN- 
TON. Hart’s Chemistry for Beginners. JAS. 
Lewis Hown. Lassar Cohn on Die Chemie im 
Taglichen Leben: W. R. O.....-.0..---cseoncsencevere 153 
Scientific Journals :— 
The American Chemical Journal: J. ELLIOTT 
GOMIRDEING ve Sante anispine an Sestiscastes vicadoeeeacheoesceacses ees 157 


Societies and Academies :— 
Nebraska Academy of Sciences: G. D. SWEZEY. 
Biological Society of Washington: F. A. LucAs. 
The Academy of Science of St. Lowis: WILLIAM 
TRELEASE. Northwestern University Science Club : 
A. R. Crook. University of Wisconsin Science 
Club: Wit: |S: MARSHIATI........2-0cececcrercreeerss 158 


MSS. intended for publication and books, ete., intended 
for review should be sent to the responsible editor, Prof. J. 
McKeen Cattell, Garrison-on-Hudson, N. Y. 


CHEMISTRY IN THE UNITED STATES.* 

In the history of science, from whatever 
point of view we may consider it, the sev- 
eral branches develop according toa natural 
order. The more obvious things attract 
attention first; the less obvious are recog- 
nized later. Plants, animals, stones and 
stars are studied even by savages; but the 
hidden forces of nature, governed by laws 
which can be utilized for man’s benefit, 
escape discovery until civilization is far ad- 
vanced, and even then are revealed but 
slowly. At first each department of 
knowledge is purely empirical, a mass of 
facts without philosophical connection; but 
sooner or later speculation begins, the scat- 
tered evidence is generalized, and an organ- 
ized science is born. The study of concrete 
facts, the recognition of our surroundings, 
precedes the study of relations. 

Among the sciences, chemistry is one of 
the youngest. As an organized branch of 
systematic knowledge it has little more 
than completed its first century. Before 
the time of Robert Boyle it was hardly 


’ better than empiricism. At first a few scat- 


tered facts were recognized, involving trans- 
formations of matter. Some of these were 
applied in the arts, as in metallurgy and in 
medicine; and their generalization led 
simply and naturally into alchemy, with its 
search for the philosopher’s stone, the uni- 


* Presidential address, Philosophical Society, Wash- 
ington, December 12, 1896. 


118 


versal solvent and the elixir of life. There 
was no chemistry in the modern sense of 
the term, but only a group of visionary 
speculations which foredoomed their dev- 
otees to failure. In these failures, how- 
ever, truth revealed herself, discoveries 
were made other than those which were 
expected, and the foundations of a new 
science were laid. It was more than forty 
years after the landing of the Pilgrims at 
Plymouth when Boyle announced the true 
definition of a chemical element, and the 
discovery of oxygen was not made until 
over a century later. The history of 
modern chemistry and the history of the 
United States begin at nearly the same 
time. 

In America, as in the world at large, the 
development of science followed along the 
natural lines. A new country had no time 
for abstractions, such as chemical studies 
were in the early days, and only the more 
obvious branches of investigation received 
much notice. Botany and zoology flour- 
ished to some extent, and even mineralogy 
had able students ; for the resources of an 
unexplored continent could not be ignored. 
Astronomy, too, was somewhat cultivated, 
but because of its usefulness in the meas- 
urement of time and navigation, rather than 
for its interest as an intellectual pursuit. 
The practical side of science was necessarily 
and properly foremost ; and this fact is no- 
where more apparent than in the physical 
researches of men like Franklin and Rum- 
ford. The obvious and useful came first; 
philosophy, theory, might wait until men 
had more leisure. So, while chemical dis- 
coveries were rapidly multiplied in Europe, 
little advancement could be recognized 
here. Even that little was utilitarian, and 
chemistry in this country was first brought 
into general notice through its relations to 
medicine and pharmacy, and through the 
agency of medical schools. 

Prior to the year 1769 chemistry had no 


SCLENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 108. 


independent existence in the work of 
American colleges. It was taught, if in- 
deed it was taught at all, only as a subor- 
dinate branch of natural philosophy. But 
in the year just named, Dr. Benjamin Rush 
was appointed to a chair of chemistry in the 
medical department of the University of 
Pennsylvania—an event which marks the 
first recognition of the science in the Uni- 
ted States by any institution of learning. 
Other medical schools soon followed the ex- 
ample thus set, and chemistry took its 
place as a regular subject for study. Rush, 
however, was not specifically a chemist ; 
he had, indeed, been a pupil of Black, in 
Edinburgh ; but he carried out no chemical 
investigations and added nothing to the 
sum of chemical knowledge. His high 
reputation was won in other fields; but as 
the first professor of chemistry in America 
he occupies a historical position. 

In 1795 the trustees of Nassau Hall, now 
Princeton University, elected Dr. John 
Maclean professor of chemistry. Other col- 
leges soon followed the lead of Princeton, 
and within a very few years chemical sci- 
ence was well established as a distinct 
branch of study in many American institu- 
tions. The teaching, however, was wholly 
by text-books and lectures, the laboratory 
method was unknown, and the teacher 
commonly divided his attention between 
chemistry and other themes. There were 
professors of chemistry and natural phi- 
losophy, of chemistry and natural history, 
but rarely, if ever, professors of chemistry 
alone. Moreover, little time was given to 
the subject; the classics and mathematics 
overshadowed all other studies, and the 
pupil learned hardly more than a few scat- 
tered facts and the barest outline of chemi- 
cal theory. When we note that to-day 
Harvard University employs twenty-two 
persons, professors, assistant professors, in- 
structors and assistants in chemistry alone, 
we begin to realize the great advance which 


JANUARY 22, 1897. ] 


has been made in the teaching of science 
since the days of Maclean, Hare and the 
elder Silliman. 

In 1794 Joseph Priestley, the famous 
discoverer of oxygen, driven from his Eng- 
lish home by religious persecution, sought 
refuge in America. He took up his abode 
at Northumberland, in Pennsylvania, where 
he died in 1804, and where his remains lie 
buried. His coming greatly stimulated the 
growing interest in chemistry upon this side 
of the Atlantic, for Priestley entered at once 
upon close relations with many American 
scholars, and took an active part in the 
work of the American Philosophical Society 
at Philadelphia. At Northumberland he 
completed his discovery of carbon monoxide, 
and made some of the earliest experiments 
upon gaseous diffusion; but unfortunately 
much of his time was devoted to theory, 
and to defending against the attacks of 
Lavoisier’s followers, the moribund doctrine 
of phlogiston. Priestley’s discovery of oxy- 
gen was the corner stone of chemical sci- 
ence; but the discoverer, great as an ex- 
perimentalist, was not successful as a phi- 
losopher, and he never realized the logical 
consequences of his achievement. To the 
day of his death he opposed the new chemi- 
eal philosophy and clung to the obsolete 
ideas of an earlier generation. 

During the first quarter of the present 
century the progress of chemistry in the 
United States was slow. It is not my pur- 
pose to discuss in this address the details 
of its advancement, for that work has al- 
ready been exhaustively done by another;* 
still several events happened which deserve 
notice here. First, Robert Hare, in 1802, 
invented the oxyhydrogen blowpipe. With 
that instrument, in following years, he suc- 
ceeded in fusing platinum, silica and about 


*Benjamin Sillman, Jr. ‘ American contributions to 
Chemistry.’ American Chemist, August, September 
and December, 1874. An address at the ‘Centennial 
of Chemistry.’ 


SCIENCE. 


WG 


thirty other refractory substances which 
had hitherto resisted all attempts at lique- 
faction. But few men have given a greater 
extension to our experimental resources. 
The calcium light and the metallurgy of 
platinum are among the direct consequences 
of Dr. Hare’s invention. Secondly, in 1808 
Professors Silliman and Kingsley, of Yale 
College, published their account of the mete- 
orite which fell at Weston, Connecticut, the 
year previous. This paper attracted wide- 
spread attention, and drew from Thomas 
Jefferson the oft-quoted remark “ that it 
was easier to believe that two Yankee pro- 
fessors could lie than to admit that stones 
could fall from heaven.” The analysis of 
the meteorite was the work of Silliman, 
and was among the earliest of its kind. It 
was done with appliances such as a modern 
high school would despise, and without the 
aid of any manual of analytical chemistry; 
and its merit is due partly to the fact 
that it was well done, and partly to the 
way in which great difficulties were over- 
come. In weighing the work of the early 
investigators we must remember that they 
lacked the resources which are so easily 
commanded nowadays, and that the methods 
of research had not been reduced to system. 
Their success was in spite of disadvantages 
which would baffle most men; there was 
less encouragement than now in the way of 
popular applause, and their efforts are 
therefore all the more praiseworthy. To- 
day scientific investigation is an established 
art, its ways are well worn and well trodden; 
and, although the highest achievements 
are as difficult of attainment as ever, even 
a beginner may hope to accomplish some- 
thing. 

During these early years much attention 
was paid by American chemists to the study 
of minerals, for rich new fields were open ; 
and in 1810 Archibald Bruce began the 
publication of The American Minerological 
Journal, of which four numbers were issued. 


120 


This was probably the first attempt to pub- 
lish in this country a magazine devoted 
entirely to science and supported wholly 
by native contributions. As early as 1811 
there was a Columbian Chemical Society in 
Philadelphia, and in 1813 a volume of its 
‘Memoirs’ appeared. In 1817 the Journal 
of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadel- 
phia was started ; and the next year saw 
the birth of Silliman’s American Journal of 
Science. The last named periodical, a classic 
among scientific serials, was for sixty years 
the chief organ of American chemistry ; 
and even yet, despite the rivalry of more 
specialized journals, it contains a fair pro- 
portion of chemical contributions. The» 
first American to publish a systematic 
treatise on chemistry was Prof. John Gor- 
ham, of Harvard College, whose ‘ Elements 
of Chemical Science,’ in two octavo volumes, 
appeared in 1819. The work was well re- 
ceived and was an excellent one for its day. 

The period from 1820 to the outbreak of 
the Civil War was one of steady progress in 
America, both as regards scientifie research 
and in the development of institutions. 
Colleges were founded, societies were organ- 
ized, there were better facilities for work, 
and the general appreciation of science be- 
came greater. But, for the reasons which 
were stated at the beginning of this address, 
the so-called natural sciences rather took 
the lead, and there was more activity 
among geologists and zoologists than in the 
field of chemistry. Many States organized 
surveys; the general government sent out 
exploring expeditions ; and so geology and 
natural history received a patronage in 
which chemistry had little or no share. 
The chemists were mainly dependent upon 
their own resources, and got along as best 
they could. Still, their number increased, 
their published investigations became more 
numerous, and their services were in greater 
demand, both commercially and in the work 
of instruction. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 108. 


At first the would-be chemist had to 
make his own pathway. Chemistry was 
taught in the colleges, not as a profession 
to be followed, but as a minor item 
in that ill-defined agglomeration of knowl- 
edge which in those days was called ‘a 
liberal education.’ In 1824, however, the 
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, at Troy, 
was founded, and a new era in scientific 
education began. In 1836 Dr. James C. 
Booth opened a laboratory in Philadelphia 
for instruction in practical and analytical 
chemistry, and in 1838 Prof. Charles T. 
Jackson did the same thing in Boston. 
Chemistry could now be studied in some- 
thing like a systematic manner, but the 
students who were able to do so went 
abroad, at first to London, Edinburgh and 
Paris, and later to the famous laboratory of 
Liebig in Germany. The impulse toward 
foreign study continues to our own day; 
even though American facilities have in- 
creased enormously, and a good chemical 
training can now be obtained at home. 

The decade from 1840 to 1850 was a 
period of great advancement in American 
Science, and several events of the utmost 
importance occurred. In 1829 James 
Smithson, an Englishmen, bequeathed his 
property to the United States, to found in 
Washington ‘ an institution for the increase 
and diffusion of knowledge among men ;’ 
and in 1846 his project was realized. The 
Smithsonian Institution was established, 
and under the direction of Joseph Henry it 
became at once a center of scientific influ- 
ence and activity. Smithson, it will be re- 
membered, was a chemist and mineralogist, 
and it was, therefore, eminently proper that 
the Institution which bore his name should, 
from the very beginning, maintain a chem- 
ical laboratory. Furthermore, in the earlier 
years of its history, the Institution provided 
courses of popular lectures upon chemistry ; 
it has subsidized some chemical investiga- 
tions, has published original researches, 


JANUARY 22, 1897.] 


and it has issued a number of useful works 
in the way of special reports, volumes of 
physical constants and bibliographies. A1- 
though its energies have been more con- 
spicuously exerted in the fields of zoology, 
anthropology and meteorology, it has done 
much for chemical science; the subjects 
which interested its founder have never 
been neglected. In the history of Ameri- 
ean chemistry the Smithsonian Institution 
plays an honorable part. 

In 1847 and 1848 the Sheffield and Law- 
rence Scientific Schools were founded, the 
-one at New Haven, the other under the 
protecting shelter of Harvard College. In 
the one, chemistry was taught by J. P. 
Norton and the younger Silliman; while 
Horsford conducted the laboratory at Cam- 
‘bridge. The much older Polytechnic Insti- 
tute at Troy had developed mainly as a 
school of engineering, so that the two new 


institutions practically stood by themselves, © 


as the only higher schools of chemistry— 
schools in which professional chemists could 
receive a thorough training—within the 
limits of the United States. Their influence 
‘soon began to be felt, their graduates went 
forth to take important positions, the stimu- 
lus to scientific studies spread to the col- 
leges, and the chemist became recognized 
as the representative of a new learned pro- 
fession. Law, medicine and divinity no 
longer formed a class by themselves; other 
branches of scholarship were to take rank 
with them. 

In 1846 Agassiz came to America, bring- 
ing with him the research method as a 
method of education. Himself a zoologist, 
his influence as a teacher was evident in all 
-directions, and chemistry shared in the new 
impulse. There were many pupils of Lie- 
big and Wohler in the United States, men 
well imbued with the spirit of the new edu- 
cation; and to them the coming of Agassiz 
was a reinforcement and an inspiration. 
‘The old college curriculum was compelled 


SCIENCE. 


121 


to expand, and the true conception of a 
university began to be recognized on this 
side of the Atlantic. In 1848 the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science 
was organized, and science received a na- 
tional standing which the local academies 
and societies could never have given it. 
The influence of the Association upon 
chemistry will be considered later. 

In 1850 Josiah P. Cooke was elected pro- 
fessor of chemistry in Harvard College. He 
had received his bachelor’s degree only two 
years earlier, but during his student days 
no chemistry had been taught to the 
Harvard undergraduates. Practically self- 
taught, and largely through the medium of 
experiments, he realized the value of the 
laboratory method of instruction and, in 
spite of conservative opposition, he set to 
work to bring about its adoption. He was 
allowed at first the use of one basement 
room for his purposes, but was compelled to 
pay all or nearly all of the laboratory ex- 
penses out of his own pocket, for the college 
funds could not be wasted on strange inno- 
vations, and the recitation method still 
reigned supreme. Prof. Cooke, however, 
understood how to be patient and per- 
sistent at the same time; year by year his 
courses of study were extended, by slow de- 
grees his resources increased, and in 1858 
Boyleton Hall, the present laboratory build- 
ing, was completed. At first, part of the 
building only was assigned to chemistry ; 
now all of it is devoted to the teaching of 
that science. It is truly a monument to 
Prof. Cooke, whose energy and persistence 
caused it to be erected, and to whom, more 
than to any other one man, the full recog- 
nition of the laboratory method in Amer- 
ican colleges is due. The initiative was 
taken by the scientific schools, but the col- 
leges were compelled to follow; and to-day 
even the high schools, the feeders of the 
colleges, have their chemical laboratories 
in which elementary practice and qualita- 


122 


tive analysis are taught. Chemistry is 
now seen to be one of the best disciplinary 
studies, and it fails in educational value 
only when the teaching of it is entrusted to 
improperly trained pedagogues of the ob- 
solete text-book school. The teacher who 
is a slave of text-books is as bad as no 
teacher at all. To teach chemistry one 
must think chemistry ; a mere memory for 
‘facts is not a sufficient qualification. 
Leaving out of consideration the names 
of many American chemists who published 
important researches during this period of 
our history, for personal details would not 
be in place here, we come down to the date 
of the Civil War, which marks an epoch 
in more senses than one. In science, as 
well as in politics, the war divides Ameri- 
can history into two periods—the one a 
period of preparation and slow growth, the 
other a period of swift advances and frui- 
tion. 
ceived a sharp stimulus, and the re-estab- 
lishment of peace was followed by wonderful 
progress in many directions. Population 
and wealth increased with great rapidity, 
and in due time that wealth began to flow 
into educational channels. The Nation it- 
self embarked in many new enterprises; 
these demanded the aid of science, and so 
the latter received encouragement which its 
students had hardly dreamed of before. 
Even during the war the land-grant col- 
lege bill was passed by Congress, and soon 
every State was provided with new facilities 
for scientific instruction, and the demand 
for trained teachers was greatly increased. 
The foundation of Cornell University, which 
opened its doors to students in 1868, was 
one of the consequences of this bill. In 
1864 the School of Mines of Columbia Col- 
lege began its work; in 1865 the Massachu- 
setts Institute of Technology was started ; 
and these were followed by the Polytech- 
nic School at Worcester in 1868, and the 
Stevens Institute at Hoboken in 1870. 


SCIENCE. 


Through the war the Nation had re-- 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 108. 


Even the older schools of science developed 
more rapidly, and in the Lawrence Scien- 
tific School particularly the research method 
of instruction was pushed into great prom- 
inence by Wolcott Gibbs. Hitherto our 
professors of chemistry had been commonly 
content with teaching what was already 
known, but under Gibbs the student was 
taught to think and to discover. Training 
in the art of solving unsolved problems. 
became a part of the school curriculum. 
This phase of chemical education was. 
brought into still greater prominence some 
years later, in the laboratory of the Johns 
Hopkins University, and now it is well nigh 
universal. Original research, once an occa- 
sional feature of American college work, is. 
now emphasized in all of our better univer- 
sities,and the student’s thesis outweighs. 
his examinations in importance. At first,. 
as was but natural, our educational system 
was modeled after that of England, with 
Oxford and Cambridge as the shining ex- 
amples to follow. Here, as there, the pass- 
ing of examinations was the one supreme 
test of scholarship; but the growth of 
science in Germany attracted our better 
students thither, and they returned full of 
the modern doctrines. The German graft 
upon our English stock has made our uni- 
versities what they are to-day, and now 
the man who can increase knowledge is. 
more highly esteemed than him who merely 
knows. The knowledge which is fruitful 
outranks the sterile culture whose end is. 
in itself. In all departments of learning, 
education has become more vital, more of a 
living force; and in this great movement 
forward the chemist has been a leader and 
a pioneer. 

For many, many years the chemists of 
America were unorganized, a thousand 
seattered units, each doing what he could 
as an individual, but with no bond of union 
other than that of common interest. Here 
and there chemical societies were founded, 


JANUARY 22, 1897. ] 


to last for a year or two and then perish 
for lack of proper support. They were 
local experiments, nothing more ; and no list 
of them could be made. In the more gen- 
eral societies, like the American Academy 
in Boston and the Academy of Natural 
Sciences in Philadelphia, the chemists had 
a part, but it was one of minor importance— 
an item among many. 

In the American Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Science there were some 
chemists who attended the meetings from 
time to time, and occasionally presented 
papers. They were overshadowed, how- 
ever, by the more active representatives of 
other sciences, and their share in the pro- 
ceedings was rarely conspicuous. The As- 
sociation was divided, at the time of which 
I speak, into two sections—A and B, and in 
the first of these chemistry, physics, mathe- 
matics and astronomy were crowded to- 
gether, with chemistry the least prominent 
of all. 

In 1878 the Association met at Portland; 
and a handful of chemists, most of them 
young and unknown, but enthusiastic, were 
present. The time was ripe for a step for- 
ward, and that step, a very short one, was 
taken. The Association was requested to 
allow the formation of a sub-section of 
chemistry; a year later, at Hartford, the 
request was granted, and the sub-section 
began its career. 

Some two weeks before the meeting at 
Hartford, on August 1, 1874, about seventy- 
five chemists met at Northumberland, in 
Pennsylvania, to celebrate, at the grave of 
Priestley, the centennial of the discovery 
of oxygen. It was now proposed to or- 
ganize an American Chemical Society, 
modelled after the already flourishing so- 
cieties of London, Paris and Berlin; but 
action was deferred, in order that the new 
experiment in the American Association 
might have a fair trial, and that the danger 
of undue competition, with its attendant 


SCIENCE. 


123 


division of forces, might be*avoided. The 
new sub-section received general support, 
it grew and flourished ; and when, in 1881, 
the American Association was reorganized, 
it became the full Section C of the present 
body. To-day the chemical section is one 
of the strongest and most vigorous in the 
Association, with a large and faithful mem- 
bership which has been built up in great 
measure by the efforts of the men who 
started it twenty-three years ago. 

In 1876 the project for an American 
Chemical Society was revived, and an or- 
ganization bearing that name was estab- 
lished in New York. It obtained a fair 
membership and published a journal; but 
as all the meetings were held in one city it 
did not command the support of the country 
at large, and it became essentially a local 
body in spite of its claims to national scope. 
It was national in theory, and also in pur- 
pose, but it failed to receive general recog- 
nition; and it exerted no wide-spread in- 
fluence until, after sixteen years of existence, 
it became a potent factor in the development 
of a larger enterprise. 

In 1884 the Chemical Society of Wash- 
inton was formed. This was professedly 
local in its character, and so too were sev- 
eral other bodies of chemists which were 
organized within a year or two of this time. 
There was no concentration of effort among 
the chemists of America, except in the 
American Association, and that, unfortu- 
nately, met but once a year. There were 
nuclei enough, however, for crystallization 
to begin, and in 1888 another step was 
taken. The chemical section of the Amer- 
ican Association appointed a committee to 
confer with like committees from other so- 
cieties, and to report upon the question of 
a national organization. Conference after 
conference was held; report after report 
was presented ; there was opposition, of 
course, from various quarters, and indiffer- 
ence to be overcome; there were conflicts 


124 


of interest and the inevitable rivalries. 
But the movement was started; it was 
finally endorsed in due form by the old 
chemical section, and in time success was 
won. In 1891 and 1892 a plan was agreed 
upon, and the present American Chemical 
Society was established. 

The two principal factors in the problem, 
apart from the American Association, were 
the American Chemical Society in New 
York and the Chemical Society of Wash- 
ington. The former had the name and a 
charter, and, with some reason, claimed to 
oceupy the field. The other made no 
claims, but would not concede primacy to 
the first. Professional interests and good 
feeling, however, carried the day; there 
were concessions from all sides, and the fol- 
lowing plan was adopted: The existing 
name and charter were accepted. The New 
York body became a local section of the 
reorganized Society, and the Washington 
organization did thesame. The old journal 
of the Society was consolidated with the 
flourishing Journal of Analytical and Applied 
Chemistry, with the editor of the latter, 
Prof. Hart, in charge. Other local sections 
were provided for, and it was agreed that 
the Society should hold two general meet- 
ings a year—one in winter, the other in 
codperation with the American Association. 
Thus all interests were reconciled, and the 
Sseattered forces of the chemists began to 
converge toward a single point. A strong 
Society was created, with a good monthly 
journal; and to-day it numbers over a 
thousand members, with nine local sections 
in various parts of the country, carrying 
on continuous work. Hereafter the sum- 
mer meeting will be held jointly with that 
of Section C in the American Association, 
making both bodies stronger and more effi- 
cient; all opposition has been overcome, 
the membership of the Society is rapidly 
growing, and the future seems bright. The 
example which has been set by the chemists 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vox. V. No. 108. 


may be a good one for others to follow. 
“In union there is strength.” In New 
York there is also a section of the British 
‘Society for Chemical Industry ;’ and, in 
addition to the journal already mentioned, 
there is the well-established American Chemi- 
cal Journal, managed by Prof. Remsen, at: 
Baltimore, and a new periodical devoted 
to physical chemistry, which has just been 
started by Professors Trevor and Bancroft, at 
Cornell University. Our chemists are now 
well provided with means for publication, 
and there seems to be no dearth of material 
with which to fill the pages of the three 
separate journals. The American Journal 
of Science, the ‘proceedings’ of some local 
academies, and the foreign chemical peri- 
odicals also receive a share of our output. 
The facilities for publication seem to in- 
crease no faster than the activity of the 
American chemists. 

On the purely scientific side the govern- 
ment of the United States has as yet done 
little for the advancement of chemical re- 
search. But indirectly, for economic rea- 
sons, it has done much, especially since 
1876. So, too, have the governments of va- 
rious States and cities, especially with re- 
gard to the analysis of fertilizers, and in 
the direction of sanitary chemistry. Some 
investigations concerning the water supply 
of cities have been carried out by local 
Boards of Health, and among these the re- 
searches instituted by the Massachusetts 
Board have been of the highest scientific 
quality. No better work of its kind has 
been done anywhere; and its results, in- 
tended for local benefit, are of far more than 
local value. On the part of the general 
government the patronage of chemistry 
has covered a wider range, and many bu- 
reaux have been provided with laboratories. 
In the Department of Agriculture a consid- 
erable force of chemists has long been em- 
ployed, dealing with questions of the most 
varied character. The United States Geo- 


JANUARY 22, 1897.] 


logical Survey maintains another important 
laboratory, and still others are connected 
with the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the 
Mint, the Army and the Navy. In the 
Torpedo Station at Newport investigations 
are carried out relative to explosives, and 
at the custom house in New York a num- 
ber of chemists are engaged in the valuation 
of imported articles with reference to the 
assessment of duties. In short, the gov- 
ernment calls upon the chemist for aid in 
many directions, and the appreciation of 
his usefulness increases year by year. In 
all this work, however, chemistry is rated 
as a convenience only, and valued for what 
it can give; its advancement as a science 
is not considered, and such growth as it 
gains through governmental encouragement 
is purely incidental. Good researches of a 
strictly scientific character, real enlarge- 
ments of scientific knowledge, have come 
from laboratories maintained by the govern- 
ment; but they represent, the rare leisure 
of the investigator and not the essential 
object of his work. He is sometimes 
permitted to investigate for the sake of 
chemistry alone ; but such labor is extra- 
official, and forms no part of his regular 
duties. The chemist is compelled to serve 
other interests, other sciences it may be; 
and only the time which they fail to de- 
mand is his own. Considering the enor- 
mous importance of chemical research to 
all the greater industries of the world, it 
should receive fuller recognition by the 
National government, and be encouraged 
most liberally. 

I have already referred to the Land-grant 
College Act of 1862, under which so many 
agricultural and technical schools came into 
existence. In 1887 Congress passed another 
act, intimately related to the former, by 
which the States and Territories were each 
granted the annual sum of fifteen thousand 
dollars for the maintenance of agricultural 
experiment stations. These stations, some 


SCIENCE. 


125 


of which have other resources also, are 
actively at work, and they receive some co- 
ordination under a bureau of the Federal 
Department of Agriculture. Chemistry re- 
ceives a part of their attention, and in 
1894 one hundred and twenty-four chem- 
ists were employed in them. These chem- 
ists, and those connected with the Washing- 
ton laboratory, are bound together in the 
Association of Official Agricultural Chem- 
ists, which meets annually. A prime ob- 
ject of that association is the improvement, 
definition and standardizing of analytical 
methods; and along this line it has done 
admirable work. The data obtained in the 
different experiment stations are thus ren- 
dered strictly comparable, and a higher de- 
gree of accuracy is reached than would 
have been attained under conditions of ab- 
solute individualism. The Association fills 
a distinct place of its own and is in no sense 
a rival of the American Chemical Society. 
Indeed, the members of the official body are 
nearly all members of the other. 

In the industrial field, as well as in the 
domain of pure science, the chemists of 
the United States have made rapid advances 
during the past thirty years. In manufac- 
turing chemistry the growth has been only 
moderate, at least in comparison with the 
growth of other industries, but still it is 
evident. We still import heavily, and de- 
pend upon Europe for many chemical prod- 
ucts which ought to be manufactured here. 
In some special lines our goods are among 
the best; in others we are wofully back- 
ward. Tosome extent our tariff and rev- 
enue legislation has had a bad effect upon 
our chemical manufacturers ; as, for exam- 
ple, in increasing the cost of alcohol; and 
certain defects in our methods of scientific 
teaching have also been to blame. To this 
subject I shall recur presently. In metal- 
lurgical processes the United States can 
hold its own, however, and especially in 
those which involve the applications of 


126 


electricity. The electrical furnace, for in- 
stance, as it is used in the manufacture of 
aluminum, is distinctly an American in- 
vention, and the electrolytic ‘refining of 
copper is carried out in this country on a 
scale unknown elsewhere. 

If we consider the subject of applied 
chemistry at all broadly, we shall at once 
see that it has several distinct aims; such 
as the discovery of new products, the im- 
provement of processes and the utilization 
of waste materials. It seeks also to increase 
the accuracy of methods; to make industrial 
enterprises more precise, and therefore more 
certainly fruitful; in short, to replace em- 
piricism by science. It is, perhaps, in this 
direction that chemistry has made its most 
notable advances in America, and that 
within comparatively recent years. Three 
decades ago, even our greatest manufactur- 
ing establishments employed chemists only 
in a sporadic fashion, sending occasional 
jobs to private laboratories, and then only 
after counting the cost most parsimoniously. 
Except in a few dyehouses and calico prin- 
teries, the chemist was not fully appreciated; 
great losses were often sustained for lack of 
the services which he could have rendered, 
and the cost of goods was therefore higher 
than was necessary. By degrees, however, 
a change was brought about ; one effect of in- 
dustrial competition was to narrow margins 
and to render greater accuracy of manip- 
ulation imperative; and so the chemist was 
brought upon the scene. To-day it is almost 
the universal custom among manufacturers 
to maintain chemical laboratories in con- 
nection with their works; and this is espe- 
cially true with regard to metallurgical 
establishments, oil refineries, soap, candle 
and glass works, in the making of paints, 
varnishes and chemicals, and so on in many 
directions. Even the great firms whose in- 
dustries are connected with the Chicago 
stockyards, with their artificial refrigeration 
and their manufacture of lard, lard and 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 108 


butter substitutes, meat extracts, pepsin 
and fertilizers, all employ skilled chemists 
and provide well-equipped laboratories. In 
the making of steel and iron the processes 
are followed by analyses from start to finish, 
from ore, fuel and flux to the completed 
billets; and the chemists who are thus occu- 
pied have gained marvellous dexterity. The 
analytical methods have been reduced to 
great precision, and are extraordinary as 
regards speed; work which once required 
a day to perform being now executed in less 
than twenty minutes. Exact measurement 
has replaced rule of thumb; certainty has 
supplanted probability; industry has be- 
come less wasteful and surer of a fair re- 
turn; and to all this the chemist has been ~ 
a chief contributor. Without his aid the 
manufactures of the world could never have 
been developed to their present magnitude 
and efficiency. His influence reaches even 
beyond the furnace or the factory and 
touches the greatest economic questions. 
Take, for example, the financial agitation 
through which our country has so recently 
passed, with its discussion of monetary. 
ratios. Chemical processes have profoundly 
modified the metallurgy of gold and silver, 
cheapening the production of both metals, 
and changing the commercial ratio of their 
values. Can the bi-metallic question be 
intelligently investigated with the chemical 
factor left out? Furthermore, chemistry 
has created new industries in which both 
gold and silver are employed; and so, af- 
fecting both supply and demand, touches 
their ratios still more deeply. When poli- 
tics becomes true to its definition, when it is 
really ‘the science and art of government,’ 
then we may expect politicians to consider 
questions like these and to study the evi- 
dence which chemistry has to offer. 

One other phase of applied chemistry, 
chiefly developed in this country, remains 
to be mentioned. In 1875 the Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad opened a laboratory at Al- 


JANUARY 22, 1897. ] 


toona, in charge of Dr. C. B. Dudley ; and 
eight or nine other great railroads have 
since followed its lead. In these railroad 
laboratories, which employ many men, all 
sorts of supplies are tested, and large con- 
tracts for purchases depend upon the results 
of analysis. Among the articles regularly 
examined, preliminary to buying, are iron, 
steel, various alloys, paints, varnishes, 
soaps, wood preservatives, disinfectants, 
et cetera. Onthe Pennsylvania system alone 
the purchases controlled by these tests 
amount to from two to three millions of 
dollars annually, and the saving to the 
company is undoubtedly very great. In 
many cases other purchasers adopt the 
specifications of the railroad and base their 
contracts upon the same standards, the 
analyses to be made in the same way. 
Adulteration is thus discouraged and pre- 
vented, aud the moral effect upon the 
seller, who must be honest, is most salu- 
tary. When detection is certain the temp- 
tation to commit fraud vanishes. To the 
improvement of analytical methods the 
railroad laboratories have contributed ma- 
terially, so that their work has true scien- 
tific significance as well as practical value. 

Now, although we may properly take 
pleasure in the advances which American 
chemists have made, we have no right as 
yet to be fully satisfied. We have done 
much, but others have done more; and until 
we stand in the front rank we should not 
slacken our efforts. The competition of 
research is fully as keen as the competition 
of trade, and even if we may win the lead 
we must work hard to keep it. In spite of 
all that I have said of its growth, industrial 
chemistry in the United Statesis still in its 
infaney, and comparison with other coun- 
tries is in some respects wholesomely hu- 
miliating. England and France have built 
up chemical industries vastly greater than 
ours, and in certain directions Germany 
leads them both. Moreover, the German 


SCIENCE. 127 


industries and the trade depending upon 
them are increasing at a marvelous rate, 
and in England the chemists at least have 
taken serious alarm at the growing compe- 
tition. Branches of manufacturing which 
were once almost wholly English are now 
mainly German ; discoveries which were 
made in England have been developed in 
Germany, and now the British economists 
are seeking for the reason. 2 

To the chemist the reason is plain, and 
is to be found by a study of two systems of 
education. The English universities and 
schools have clung to obsolete methods, 
and have attached great importance to ex- 
aminations and the winning of honors. ‘To 
the honor men positions and preferment are 
open, but the honors are awarded in the 
wrong way. In Germany, on the other 
hand, the pathway to success lies through 
research ; honors are given to the men who 
have increased knowledge; and the effect 
of this policy is felt by every manufacturer 
upon German soil. Take, for example, the 
great chemical works at Elberfeld, in which 
about one hundred scientific chemists are 
employed in addition to a great force of 
laborers. Every one of these chemists re- 
ceived a training in research ; every one is 
expected to make discoveries; and the re- 
sults of their investigations are immediately 
applied in the manufacture of new prepara- 
tions and the improvement of processes. 
The German employer does not ask the 
chemist to do for him what he can do al- 
ready, but rather to supply the greater for- 
ces by which he can rise above his competi- 
tors and command the custom of the world. 
To that policy we have not yet fully risen 
in America; our technical schools have 
thought too much of routine drill and disci- 
pline; and until we profit by the example 
of Germany more thoroughly than we have 
done we cannot hope to rival her in 
chemical industries. Our practical men 
value science for what it can do directly 


128 


in their interest, and rarely look deeper 
into the possibilities of abstract investiga- 
tion. In reality, pure science and applied 
science are one at the root; the first renders 
the second possible, and the latter furnishes 
incentives for the first. Where science is 
most encouraged for its own sake there its 
applications are most speedily realized. 
This is a lesson which America has yet to 
learn, at least to the point of full and com- 
plete appreciation. 

What, now, have we done, and what 
should we do? We have made a great be- 
ginning; we have built up good laboratories, 
backed by richly endowed institutions of 
learning; millions of dollars have gone in- 
to the teaching of chemistry, and the 
stream of research flows on with ever-in- 
creasing volume. American investigations 
and investigators are known throughout 
the civilized world; their creditable stand- 
ing is fully recognized; our analysts are 
among the best; and yet—and yet—some- 
thing is wanting. <A great mass of good 
work has been done, beyond question; but 
no epoch-making generalization, fundamen- 
tal to chemistry, has originated in the 
United States, nor has any brilliant dis- 
covery of the first magnitude been made 
here. The researches of American chem- 
ists have been of high quality, but not 
yet of the highest; there is solidity, thor- 
oughness, originality; but with all that we 
cannot be satisfied. The field is not ex- 
hausted; there aré great laws and princi- 
ples still to be discovered; the statical con- 
ceptions of to-day are to be merged in 
wider dynamical theories; for every stu- 
dent there are opportunities now waiting. 
Shall we do our share of the great work of 
the future, or shall it be left to others? 
Shall we follow as gleaners or lead as pio- 
neers? He who has faith in his own coun- 
try can answer these questions only in one 
way.: 

At present, American chemists labor un- 


SCIENCE. 


» [N.S. Von. V. No. 108. 


der some disadvantages which have not 
been fully out-grown. Research, with most 
of them, is at best encouraged, but not ex- 
pected as an important professional duty. 
The teacher must first teach, and in too 
many cases the routine of instruction takes 
all his strength and time. The resources 
available for education have been scattered 
by sectarian rivalry; several schools are 
planted where only one is necessary; and 
the teachers, duplicating one another’s 
work, and furnished with slender means, 
cannot specialize. Two chemists dividing 
the work of one institution can do more 
than four who labor separately. The field 
is too large for one man to cover alone, and 
yet most of our men are expected to do it. 
This evil, however, is growing less and less, 
and in time it may cease to operate. With 
the increase of true post-graduate institu- 
tions the work of American chemists will 
improve, for in that part of the educational 
domain research is an essential feature. 
Give our men the best opportunities, the 
best environment, and they will do their 
share of the best work. 

In one direction, perhaps, the possibility 
of advancement is greatest, and that is in 
the institution of laboratories for research. 
At present the labor of investigation is un- 
organized, unsystematic, a little here, a 
little there, but no coordination ; and con- 
sequently our knowledge is after all a thing 
of shreds and patches. In making this 
statement I do not exaggerate. Take any 
class of scientific data, examine any series 
of chemical compounds, and note the gaps 
which exist in it. A chemist in Berlin has 
studied one of the compounds, another in 
Paris has prepared a second, many bits of 
information have been gathered by many 
individuals, and so knowledge slowly accu- 
mulates. The organization of research is 
to be one of the great works of the future, 
when discovery shall become a profession, 
and groups of students shall cooperate to- 


JANUARY 22, 1897. ] 


ward the attainment of clearly specified 
ends. To some extent this work has already 
been done for astronomy, and more than 
one observatory could exemplify what I 
mean. In a fully manned and equipped 
observatory great investigations, too large 
for one astronomer to handle alone, can be 
carried out systematically ; and this is ac- 
tually done. In mapping the heavens, 
even, several observatories can combine 
their forces, each one covering a definite 
part of the field ; but in chemistry no policy 
of this kind has yet been possible. The ex- 
tension of the observatory method to other 
departments of science is the advance for 
which I plead. 

Suppose now we had a great laboratory, 
fitted up for chemical and physical work 
together, well endowed and well manned. 
What might we not expect from it? Great 
problems could be taken up in the most 
thorough and orderly fashion, methods of 
work might be standardized and groups of 
physical constants determined ; the results 
would aid and stimulate individual stu- 
dents everywhere, and applied science, too, 
would receive its share of the benefit. There 


is to-day a growing commercial demand for 


accurately determined constants, and no 
institution in which the demand may be 
adequately supplied. At Charlottenburg, in 
Germany, there is a beginning ; in London 
the munificence of Ludwig Mond has made 
possible a similar start; but nowhere is 
such a plan as I propose in full and perfect 
operation. The United States has great 
observatories, fine museums of natural his- 
tory and flourishing universities; why 
should it not have institutions for physics 
and chemistry also? These sciences touch 
many industries at many points; their ap- 
plications have created wealth beyond all 
possibility of computation; now let that 
wealth do something for them in return. 
Half the sum that the Nation spends in 
building one battleship would erect, equip 


SCIENCE. 


129 


and endow a laboratory more complete than 
any now existing, whose influence would be 
felt throughout all civilized lands and en- 
dure as long as humanity. In this the 
United States might take the lead and set 
a great example to all other nations. The 
United States has long been a follower in 
science; may she soon take a higher place 


as teacher. 
EF. W. CLARKE. 


U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 


THE AMERICAN PHYSIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 

THE ninth annual meeting of the Ameri- 
can Physiological Society was held in Bos- 
ton and Cambridge on December 29 and 
30, 1896. The sessions of the first day 
were held at the Harvard Medical School, 
those of the second day at the University 
Museum, Cambridge. The following com- 
munications were presented and discussed : 


Studies in the. physiology of the mammalian 
heart. W.'T. PortEr. 

Cannulas were placed in the aorta and 
the innominate and pulmonary arteries of 
the cat. A thermometer was inserted in 
the right auricle through the superior vena 
cava. All other heart vessels were ligated, 
except the coronary arteries. Warm defi- 
brinated cat’s blood flowed into the aorta 
under pressure, passed through the coronary 
vessels and escaped, in drops as a rule, from 
the pulmonary cannula. A mercury manom- 
eter connecting with the innominate artery 
recorded the pressure at the mouths of the 
the coronary arteries. A Hurthle mem- 
brane manometer, coupled with a tube that 
was passed into the left ventricle through 
the left auricular appendix, registered the 
force and frequency of ventricular contrac- 
tion. Variations in the temperature of the 
blood and the volume of the escaping drops 
were too slight to affect the correctness of 
the conclusions. 

Intraventricular pressure curves were 
presented to demonstrate the following 


130 


facts: A fall in the volume of the coronary 
circulation, e. g., 73 %, caused a fall in the 
force of the heart beat of 49 %, while the 
frequency was altered but 9 %. Restoring 
the volume of the coronary circulation re- 
stores the force and frequency of the heart 
beat. The change in force follows the 
change in blood supply immediately. These 
and other related observations are about to 
be published in the Journal of Experimental 
Medicine, by J. B. Magrath and H. Kennedy. 

Miss Hyde has studied by the same 
method the effect of distention of the heart 
on the volume of the coronary circulation. 
Distension of the left ventricle, 7. e., mak- 
ing a constant pressure in the ventricle 
through a side branch of the membrane 
manometer tube, diminishes per se the vol- 
ume of the coronary circulation. Disten- 
tion acts further asa stimulus to the cardiac 
muscle, causing the ventricle to beat more 
strongly. Strong contractions of the ven- 
tricle cause an increase in the volume of the 
coronary circulation. If the ventricle, hav- 
ing been distended, is placed again at at- 
mospheric pressure, the force of contraction 
is much diminished. 

Dr. Porter also showed curves recording 
the diminution in coronary flow occasioned 
by stimulation of the peripheral end of the 
vagus nerve. Increase in coronary circula- 
tion follows stimulation of the cervical 
sympathetic. These results indicate vaso- 
constrictor fibres in the vagus and vaso- 
dilator fibres in the sympathetic. 

Later Dr. Porter demonstrated his method 
of isolating the cat’s heart for purposes of 
physiological investigation. 


On the duration of cardiac standstill with dif- 
ferent strengths of vagus stimulation. T. 
Hove. 

A stimulus of uniform strength was ob- 
tained by the use of a storage battery in 
the primary circuit, which was interrupted 
by the revolutions of a small electric motor 


SCIENCE. 


LN. S. Vou. V. No. 108- 


run at a constant rate of speed; the strength 
of stimulus was varied by changing the re- 
sistance in a German silver rheochord 
placed in the primary circuit. It was 
found that when the inhibitory impulses, 
obtained by stimulation of the vagus nerve, 
are just strong enough to bring the heart 
of the dog to rest, the duration of stand- 
still is not so long as with stronger stimuli ; 
but that a very slight increase of stimulus 
above this point produces a stand-still 
which is not lengthened by any further 
strengthening of the inhibitory impulses. 
The conclusions drawn from previous work 
on the same subject (Journal of Physiol- 
ogy, XVIII., 190) are, therefore, correct. 


Some experiments on the relation of the inhibi- 
tory to the accelerator nerves of the heart. 
R. Hunt. 

Some of the effects of stimulating the two 
nerves separately were first described; then 
the result of stimulating the nerves simul- 
taneously. The experiments show that, 
contrary to the commonly accepted opinion 
of Baxt, the inhibitory and accelerator 
nerves are to be regarded as purely antag- 
onistic; that the result of stimulating the 
two together is approximately the algebraic 
sum of the effects produced by stimulating 
them separately. In no case did one nerve 
completely overcome the effect of the other, 
though the two were stimulated for periods 
as long as twelve minutes. The experi- 
ments were performed upon dogs and cats. 


Exhibition of plethysmographic curves obtained 
during sleep, with remarks. W. H. How- 
ELL. 

Prof. Howell exhibited plethysmographic 
curves showing the changes in volume of 
the hand and wrist during the period of 
normal sleep. The apparatus was so ar- 
ranged as to register the actual changes in 
volume without altering the pressure upon 
the parts under observation. The curves 
showed that from the beginning of the at- 


JANUARY 22, 1897. ] 


tempt to go to sleep a gradual increase in 
volume took place, the unconsciousness of 
sleep appearing at some point during this 
increase. The volume reached its maxi- 
mum within one or two hours after the be- 
ginning of sleep, and then for an hour or 
two remained practically constant. Fol- 
lowing upon this there appeared a gradual 
constriction, which at first was very grad- 
ual, but increased more rapidly during the 
last half or three-quarters of an hour of 
sleep, and brought the volume curve at the 
time of awakening nearly or quite to the 
point shown at the beginning of sleep. 
The curves exhibited also throughout the 
‘sleeping period long periodic waves of con- 
striction and expansion, lasting for an hour 
or more, and numerous shorter rapid con- 
strictions and expansions, which were con- 
nected with the movements of the sleeping 
subject or with external stimuli such as 
noises in the street. 

’ Upon the assumption that the increased 
volume was owing to a vascular dilatation, 
particularly in the skin, the author pointed 
out that upon the accepted view of the 
regulation of blood supply in the brain, the 
volume of circulation and the pressure with- 
in this organ during sleep must stand in 
reciprocal relations to the volume changes 
exhibited by the limbs, that is, during the 
period of sleep the blood supply to the 
brain and intracerebral pressure gradually 
diminish to a minimum which is reached 
within the first one or two hours; this con- 
‘dition remains practically constant for the 
following hour or two, and is then succeeded 
by a gradual increase in blood flow and in- 
tracerebral pressure, which may be said to 

reach the normal condition at the time of 
awakening. The author explained the vas- 
cular changes by a fatigue and subsequent 
resumption of tone in the vaso-motor cen- 
ter, especially in that part controlling the 
skin circulation. He pointed out the want 
of parallelism between the curves of inten- 


SCIENCE. 


131 


sity of sleep and the curves showing the 
vascular changes, and developed a theory 
of sleep which referred the immediate cause 
of sleep and of spontaneous awakening to 
the conditions of blood supply and pressure 
in the brain, which are indirectly controlled 
by the state of the vaso-motor center. 


The relation between height, weight and age im 
growing children. H. P. Bowprrcn. 
Prof. Bowditch showed curves derived 

from his own observations on Boston school 

children, and those of Dr. Porter on St. 

Louis children, showing that the relation 

between height and weight varies with the 

age in such a way that older children are 
heavier in proportion to their height than 
younger children. 


On the contraction of the stomach produced by 
direct stimulation and by stimulation of the 
vagiwith the faradic current. S. J. Merrzmr. 
1. Bipolar faradie stimulation with a 

current strong enough to produce a maxi- 

mal contraction when applied to the serosa 
usually fails to produce any local or peri- 
staltie contraction of the muscularis of the 
stomach, when applied to the mucous mem- 
brane of any part of the stomach. 2. When 
the faradic stimulus is applied to the serosa 
the effect varies according to the part of 
the stomach which is stimulated. As re- 
gards contractility, the stomach possesses 

a negative and a positive pole ; the extreme 

end of the fundus does not even with very 

strong stimuli contract, while the pyloric 
end responds to a moderate stimulus with 

a strong contraction. The parts lying be- 

tween the poles show a gradual transition 

from one extreme into the other; the 
further from the left end of the stomach, 
the walls contract more readily and more 
strongly. 3. Stimulation of the pneumo- 
gastric nerves causes a distinct contraction, 
which is strongest after the cessation of 
the stimulation. This contraction is also 


132 


mainly limited to the right part of the 
stomach. 

Later Dr. Meltzer demonstrated the above 
stated results on the stomach of a well an- 
eesthetized dog. 


An experimental investigation of some of the con- 
ditions influencing the secretion and composi- 
tion of bile. (With Mr. A. Balch.) Fr. 
PFAFF. 

The subject of the investigation was a 
female patient of the Massachusetts General 
Hospital. Dr. H. H. A. Beach had operated 
on the patient for distention of the gall 
bladder. As a result of the operation a 
fistula remained, through which all the bile 
secreted was discharged. The jaundice, 
which existed before,disappeared completely 
in the course of a few weeks, the urine be- 
coming bile free. The feces remained 
completely clay-colored. At the time the 
investigation was begun by Dr. Pfaff and 
Mr. A. Balch, a student in the Harvard 
Medical School, the patient felt perfectly 
well. The bile escaping through the fistu- 
lous opening was collected in graduated 
jars, measured and analyzed every six hours. 
The specific gravity, the total amount of 
solids, and the ash of each sample of bile 
were determined. 

The influence of human bile, ox bile, 
salol, sublimate, calomel and a mixture of 
pure bile salts on the daily excretion and 
the composition of the bile was studied. 
Human bile, ox bile and the mixture of the 
pure bile salts, dried and made into pills, 
increased the daily secretion and the amount 
of solids. Salol had scarcely any effect. 
Sublimate and calomel, if anything, slightly 
decreased the daily secretion. During the 
time of observation, ninety-seven days, the 
patient remained perfectly well, and has in- 
creased in weight from 1134 to 127 pounds. 


The production of sugar from gelatine in 
G. Lusk. 
Experiments described at the last meet- 


metabolism. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 108: 


ing showed that subcutaneous injection of 

phlorhizin every eight hours into starving 

rabbits produced, after the first day, the 

removal of dextrese through the urine in a 

constant ratio to the nitrogen eliminated at 

the same time. The ratio may be repre- 
sented thus: D: N::2.8:1. This condi- 
tion the author terms ‘total phlorhizin 
diabetes,’ since the ratio is the same as 
obtained by Minkowski after the extirpation 
of the pancreas in dogs, in ‘ total pancreas: 
diabetes.’ If rabbits with total phlorhizin 
diabetes be fed with 5 grams of gelatine, 
there is a simultaneous rise in both sugar 
and nitrogen in the urine of thecorrespond- 
ing day, showing respectively the absorption 
of the gelatine and the production of sugar 
from it. The proportion between dextrose 
and nitrogen is represented in one case by 

2.5:1. Further experiments upon dogs, 

to whom gelatine is obviously a more 

natural food than to rabbits, are in progress. 
in the author’s laboratory. According to 

Kulz ‘phloridzin’ and ‘phlorizin’ are 

false orthography. 

Demonstration of a convenient form of apparatus 
to avoid explosions in gas analysis. G. T. 
Kemp. 

The apparatus is a new and simple form 
of grisoumeter for use with mercury. The 
gas mixture, instead of being exploded by 
the electric spark, is subjected to the action 
of a platinum spiral heated white hot by an 
electric current. This causes the complete 
combustion of gases in non-explosive pro- 
portions, obviates the addition of explosive 
mixtures, and allows the gases that are to 
be analyzed, when present in small amount, 
to be diluted with a neutral gas to a volume 
convenient for handling in the different 
steps of the analysis. 


The structure of the sympathetic ganglia of ver- 
tebrates, with demonstration of preparations. 


G. C. Huser. 
Sympathetic ganglia taken from various. 


JANUARY 22, 1897. ] 


fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mam- 
mals were studied by means of methylene 
blue and alum carmine as in the subsequent 
paper. The cells of the sympathetic sys- 
tem are multipolar, except in the amphi- 
bians, where large unipolar cells are found. 
The multipolar neurons have several pro- 
toplasmic branches (dendrites) and one 
axis cylinder (neuraxis); the unipolar cells 
have the neuraxis only. The cell body of 
the neurons is enclosed within a nucleated 
capsule. The dendrites break up into a 
system of finer branches which terminate 
between the ganglion cells; the plexus is 
extracapsular. Large medullated fibres 
and sympathetic fibres end in the ganglion. 

The large medullated fibres branch re- 
peatedly in the ganglion, ultimately termi- 
minating in pericellular end-baskets, which 
enclose the bodies of the sympathetic cells. 
These end-baskets are always intracapsu- 
lar, and show different degrees of complex- 
ity in the various classes of vertebrates. In 
fishes they may be either very simple, com- 
posed only of a few fibrillze, or very complex; 
in the latter case some of the fibrils of the 
end-basket enclose the cell body ofthe neuron 
in question, while others seem to end be- 
tween small cells, the nature of which has 
not yet been determined, but which are also 
within the capsule of the cell. In am- 
phibians the medullated fibres are twisted 
spirally about the axis cylinders of the uni- 
polar cells here found, before terminating 
in the end-baskets enclosing the bodies of 
the cells. In reptiles the appearances vary 
greatly in different ganglia and in different 
parts of the same ganglion. Here, also, 
very simple end-baskets may be found ; 
again the medullated fibre may make one, 
two, three or four turns around the axis 
cylinder of a sympathetic cell before break- 
ing up into the finer branches of its end- 
basket, and finally very complicated end- 
ings may be observed, where one or several 
medullated fibres are wound separately 


SCIENCE. 


133 


around the axis cylinder and the adjacent 
portion of a sympathetic neuron before ter- 
minating in a very complex intracapsular ~ 
end-basket. In birds and mammals the 
medullated fibres terminate in end-baskets 
which, as a rule, are rather simple, being 
composed of terminal fibrille, more or less 
loosely interwoven and always found be- 
tween the body of a sympathetic ganglion 
cell and its capsule. 

Sympathetic nerves ending in a ganglion 
break up into fine branches, which would 
seem to terminate in free endings on the 
protoplasmic branches of the sympathetic 
cells of the ganglion without forming end- 
baskets. 

This conclusion has been drawn: The 
large medullated fibres ending in pericellular 
baskets come from the cerebro-spinal sys- 
tem and place the sympathetic ganglia in 
connection with the brain and cord, while 
the sympathetic fibres with free endings 
come from other sympathetic ganglia. 


Remarks on the ending of nerves in muscle 
tissue, with demonstrations. G.C. HuBER. 
The methods used in preparing the sec- 

tions was the following: A 2 per cent. 

solution of methylene blue in normal salt 
solution was injected into a vein. Some 
time after the injection the tissues were ex- 
posed and developed in the air. Assoon as the 
motor endings were recognized in the fresh 
muscle, the tissues were fixed in ammonium 
molybdate (Bethe), dehydrated in alcohol, 
embedded in paraffine, and sectioned. The 
sections were then fixed to a slide, stained 
in alum carmine and mounted in balsam. 

In order to determine with some degree of 

certainty the relation of the end-organs to 

the muscle fibres, the latter were cut in 


both horizontal and cross-sections. The 
conclusions are as follows: 
A. Voluntary muscle (rabbit). The 


granular sole is an accumulation of sarco- 
plasma at the point of entrance of the nerve ; 


154 


the nuclei of the sole are nuclei of the sar- 
coplasma. The axis cylinder of the motor 
nerve ends in an end-brush in the sar- 
coplasma. The neurilemma becomes con- 
tinuous with the sarcoplasma. 

B. Heart muscle (cat and dog). Axis 
cylinders of sympathetic ganglion cells ter- 
minate on the heart muscle cells either as 
very simple endings, namely, one or two 
very fine end-branches which terminate in 
small granules or bulbs, or in somewhat 
more complicated end-organs composed of 
several small twigs, these usually ending 
also in the buibous enlargement. 

C. Involuntary muscle (cat, rabbit and 
tortoise). The ending here is very simple. 
The terminal branches of the axis cylinders 
course along between the involuntary muscle 
cells, giving off in their course very fine 
side branches which end on the cells often 
near the nucleus. 


The functional development of the cerebral cortex 
in different groups of animals. W. Mitts. 
The dog, cat, rabbit, guinea pig, rat and 

mouse were studied. Only those animals 
were used whose exact age was known, and 
ether was the anesthetic invariably em- 
ployed. The research was carried on in 
connection with investigations on the psy- 
chic development of the same animals. The 
following are among the most important 
conclusions drawn : 

In the dog, cat, rabbit (and, in so far as 
the author’s experiments go, in the rat and 
mouse) neither the brain cortex nor the un- 
derlying white matter is excitable by elec- 
trical stimulation at birth or for some days 
afterwards. The cortex is usually not ex- 
citable till about the period when the eyes 
open, though there are exceptions to this 
rule, most frequently in the author’s ex- 
perience in the cat, in favor of an earlier 
date. The white matter of the brain just 
beneath the cortex is generally excitable 
either at an earlier date than the cortex or 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 108. 


with a weaker stimulus. The reaction for 
the limb movements is obtainable invari- 
ably somewhat earlier in the dog and the 
cat, and generally so in the rabbit, than 
those for the neck, face, ete. Localization 
for the cortex, and still more for the white 
matter, is at first ill defined, but gradu- 
ally, though rapidly, becomes more definite: 
In the cavy (guinea pig) the cortex and the 
white matter beneath are electrically ex- 
citable either at birth or a few hours after- 
wards, and perfection of reaction and locali- 
zation is reached in a few days. Before 
the brain cortex responds to electrical ex- 
citation, ablation of the motor area (cen- 
ters) leads. to no appreciable interference 
with movements. The younger the animal, 
the stronger the current required to pro- 
duce reaction up to the time that localiza- 
tion is well established, 7. ¢., the weakness 
of the current required to cause a move- 
ment is an indication of the degree of de- 
velopment of the center in question. Dif- 
ferences for breeds and individuals exist 
and constitute to some extent exceptions to 
the above general statements. 

In the above, ‘ cortex’ refers to the gray 
matter in or near the motor area, and ‘ white 
matter’ tothe brain substance immediately 
beneath. 


The restoration of coordinate power after nerve 
crossing. KR. H. CunnrneHan. 


Read by title. 


The proteolytic action of papain. R. H. Curr- 


TENDEN. 

The exact relationship of the vegetable 
proteolytic enzymes to the corresponding 
enzymes of animal origin has never been 
quite clear. The conditions governing the 
action of both papain and bromelin indicate 
a closer relationship to trypsin than to pep- 
sin. The products found, however, appear 
to differ somewhat both chemically and 
physiologically from the corresponding 
products formed by animal enzymes. Brom- 


JANUARY 22, 1897. ] 


elin, the ferment of pineapple juice, like 
trypsin, is unquestionably a typical peptone- 
forming enzyme. Quite recently, however, 
a number of investigators have stated that 
papain is unable to form peptone, 7. e., that 
its digestive action is limited to the forma- 
tion of proteoses. The present experiments 
made mainly by Mr. McDermott, on the 
other hand, clearly show that papain is 
able to form true peptone quite readily from 
coagulated egg albumin, from blood fibrin 
and from the coagulated proteids of muscu- 
lar tissue. This peptone-forming power is 
manifested in a few hours at 40° C., and in 
the presence of one per cent. sodium 
fluoride, thymol or chloroform water. 


Experiments on the physiological influence of al- 
cohol. C. F. Hones. 

The experiments reported have been con- 
ducted during the past three years for the 
Committee of Fifty, the purpose being to 
collect impartial data in the general physi- 
ology of the subject. Attention has been 
directed chiefly along three lines, namely, 
the influence of alcohol : Ist, upon growth, 
including reproduction; 2d, upon psychic 
development; 3d, upon animal activity and 
ability. 

' Experiments, already reported, upon the 
growth of yeast proved that in fresh cul- 
tures an addition of 5, of one per cent. 
of pure alcohol retarded growth materially 
proportionately much more than larger 
amounts. 

Experiments upon kittens and puppies 
were made as follows: Two pairs of kittens 
as much alike as possible, the males from 
one litter, the females from another, were 
selected. Alcohol in moderate doses was 
given to one pair, the other pair being kept 
on normal diet for comparison. At the end 
of ten days’ administration of alcohol the 
alcoholic pair had contracted severe colds, 
and alcohol was discontinued until recov- 
ery should take place. ‘This, however, did 


SCIENCE. 


135 


not occur, so that the administration of 
alcohol was permanently discontinued. 
Curves of weight showed that the alcoholic 
pair had been dwarfed, the male and female 
attaining only 39 % and 63 % respectively 
of the weight of their controls. From later 
developments in the course of the experi- 
ment, it is probable that this stunting effect 
is to be ascribed chiefly to the disease rather 
than to the alcohol. The alcoholic kittens 
became very quiet, various psychic charac- 
teristics, notably playfulness, purring, fear 
of dogs and game instincts, dropping out 
with great abruptness. Disease becoming 
thus intercurrent, however, renders any 
definite interpretation of the experiment 
impossible. 

Similarly two pairs of cocker spaniel 
puppies were carefully selected, the males 
brothers, the females sisters. Great care 
was taken to avoid pathological complica- 
tions and to keep the experiment as strictly 
as possible on physiological lines. Accord- 
ingly non-intoxicant doses were used and 
were increased as the puppies grew. These 
now amount to 35 and 38 ce. of absolute al- 
cohol for the female and male respectively; 
that is, about 4 ec. per kilo of body weight 
has been given daily since the puppies were 
nine weeks old. Growth has been practi- 
cally normal, the alcoholic pair even grow- 
ing a little faster than their controls at first. 
Possibly four dogs could hardly be found to 
grow more uniformly under normal treat- 
ment. Each normal animal is, however, 
about 5 % heavier than its alcoholic brother 
or sister. On the side of the reproductive 
functions, too, the puppies of the alcoholic 
pair are not inferior to those of the normals. 

The chief difference is on the psychic side. 
Both the alcoholic animals are much quieter 
than their controls and both are abnormally 
timid. As tested by the pedometer method 
the alcoholic male was found to develop 71% 
of the daily activity of his brother, the fe- 
male only 57% of her sister. Much severer 


156 


tests of ability were made by throwing a 
ball, the dogs competing on equal terms for 
its possession and for the privilege of bring- 
ing it back. In two series of tests made in 
this way, 1,400 and 1,000 balls being shown, 
the alcoholic male has shown an efficiency 
of only 82% and 44% as compared with 
that of his brother. On account of differ- 
ences in condition, no satisfactory test has 
been possible as yet with the females. 

A series of photographs taken at intervals 
during the research was exhibited. 


G.T. 


The physiological action of nitrous oxide. 

Kemp. 

It has been claimed that the supposed 
anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide are 
due to its asphyxiating power. A careful 
comparison of its physiological action with 
that of a neutral gas, such as nitrogen, 
shows that in nitrous oxide separate anes- 
thetizing and asphyxiating powers may be 
demonstrated. Tosupplement this, a series 
of analyses of the blood gases of animals 
asphyxiated by nitrous oxide shows that 
anesthesia may be obtained with this gas 
while the blood is still carrying sufficient 
oxygen to meet the demands of the system. 
Work with nitrous oxide and oxygen indi- 
cates that soon an anesthetic may be rec- 
ommended, which will be effective and yet 
avoid the objections applying to chloroform 
and ether. 


On bactericidal effects of lymph from the thoracic 
duct. (With Dr. Charles Norris.) S. J. 
MELTZER. 


In contrast to the surprising statements 
of Max Neisser that the lymph coming 
from the thoracic duct does not contain 
bactericidal properties, the authors find the 
lymph coming from the thoracic duct of 
dogs to be distinctly germicidal for the 
typhoid bacillus. The bactericidal power 
of the lymph differs from that of the blood 
in not becoming exhausted even after days. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 108. 


Neisser apparently employed unreliable 
methods. 


On the interpretation of the so-called latent 
period of the motor nerve-endings, and on the 
supposed demonstration of their exhaustibility. 
F. 8. Locke. 

The replacement by mere contact of the 
continuity formerly believed generally to 
exist between irritable structures would 
seem to necessitate more attention being 
given to the ‘discharge hypothesis,’ on 
which Kuhne has especially insisted— 
namely, that the motor nerve-fibre stimu- 
lates the muscle-fibre by means of its ac- 
tion current, which acts as an electric stim- 
ulus. The author’s experimental results 
favor the view that the so-called latent 
period of the motor nerve-endings, which 
has been held by Bernstein and others to 
be crucial against the hypothesis, may be 
due to the nature of the electric stimula- 
tion by the action current. It was found 
that the secondary stimulation of one frog’s 
sartorius muscle by the action current of 
another is associated with a measurably 
longer latent period than is stimulation 
with an induction shock. 

Another argument against the ‘ discharge 
hypothesis’ might conceivably be founded 
on the supposed exhaustibility of the motor 
nerve-endings. It was found, however, that 
if the curarised sartorius be continuously 
tetanised by make and break shocks through 
one pair of electrodes, till ‘exhaustion’ is 
complete or nearly so, then sending the 
tetanising shocks through another pair of 
electrodes situated on different points of 
the muscles gives again good tetanus. ‘ Hx- 
haustion’ in consequence of electric tetani- 
sation is, therefore, primarily polar, and the 
results that have been supposed to demon- 
strate the exhaustibility of motor nerve- 
endings are readily reconcilable with the 
‘discharge hypothesis,’ local ‘ exhaustion ° 
of the muscle substance immediately in 


JANUARY 22, 1897. ] 


contact with the nerve-endings replacing 
fatigue of these themselves. 

The ‘ discharge hypothesis’ affords a new 
conception of the real nature of inhibition 
and accounts for the actual properties of 
inhibited muscle. The anelectrotonus of 
the muscle substance, which must neces- 
sarily accompany the more active kate- 
lectrotonus even in the case of the action 
current of the motor nerve-ending, may not 
inconceivably become by greater anodic 
current density the more active in the case 
of the action current of inhibitory nerve- 
endings, and be the essential factor in the 
production of inhibition. 


Gum arabic and the frog’s heart. F. 8. 

Locke. 

The author has again found, in contra- 
diction to M. Albanese’s recent statement, 
that sodium arabate, unlike gum arabic 
(from which it differs by containing sodium 
in place of calcium, magnesium and potas- 
sium), confers no special sustaining power 
on 6 per cent. sodium chloride solution, 
weakly alkalinized with sodium carbonate 
and saturated with oxygen. 


The measurement of the output of the heart. G. 

N. STEWART. 

A solution of a substance (e. g., sodium 
chloride), which can be easily recognized 
and quantitatively estimated in the blood, 
is allowed to flow at a known rate for a 
measured time through the external jugu- 
lar vein into the heart. When the mixture 
of blood and injection liquid has reached a 
convenient point of the arterial system be- 
yond the heart, e. g., the femoral artery, a 
sample is drawn off during its passage. 
From the composition of this sample, the 
amount of blood with which the injection 
liquid must have been mixed in the heart, 
that is, the outflow (or inflow) of the heart 
during the time of injection, is determined. 
The electrical resistance of the mixed fluid 
being different from that of the blood, a 


SCIENCE. 157 


telephone is employed to announce the 
time of arrival at the point of observation. 
So far the results seem to show that the 
more recent measurements of Tigerstedt, 
Stolnikow, ete., are too low, while those of 
the older observers (Volkmann, etc.) are 
too high. 

As a preliminary to this investigation the 
author shows that when the time of injec- 
tion is not too short it is approximately 
equal to the time of passage of the altered 
blood through a given cross-section of the 
carotid or femoral artery. The circulation 
time of the lungs, as determined by the in- 
jection of methylene blue in rabbits and of 
NaCl by the telephone method in dogs, is 
approximately the mean pulmonary circu- 
lation time and not the minimum. This is 
also the case for such artificial schemes as 
approach the condition of a vascular capil- 
lary tract. 

G. W. Frrz. 

1. A spring cylinder chronograph for 
spark records. 

2. A lever system to illustrate the action 
of muscles in relation to joints. 

3. A form of student’s myograph. 

4. A modification of the location reaction 
apparatus. 


Demonstrations of apparatus. 


Demonstration of preparations of the nerve cell 
under acute alcoholic poisoning. COC. F. 
Hopee (for C. C. Stewart). 

Specimens to illustrate Mr. Stewart’s re- 
cent paper (Journal of Experimental Medi- 
cine, Vol. I., No. 4, 1896) were demon- 
strated to the Society. In the experiment 
cats were used, one being held in alcoholic 
stupor for 544 hours, a second 50 minutes, 
death being caused by alcoholic poisoning 
in both eases, and a third being killed by 
decapitation. From the three animals, 
thus dead at the same time, corresponding 
portions of the nervous systems were re- 
moved and immediately placed in the same 
dishes of the several fixing and hardening 


138 


reagents employed. The sections demon- 
strated were those obtained from the cere- 
brum, cerebellum and spinal cord by the 
aleohol-methylene-blue method. It was 
easily observable, even by the unaided eye, 
that the sections from the normal animal 
stained much more deeply than those from 
either of the animals killed with alcohol. 
Material from the animal killed in 50 
minutes was also easily seen to be stained 
somewhat more deeply than that from the 
animal killed in 544 hours. Methylene 
blue, as thus applied, has been found to be 
especially good for staining the granules in 
the cell protoplasm. Absence of stain in 
the alcoholic material would thus seem to 
indicate that alcohol, as above applied, had 
either destroyed the characteristic granula- 
tion of the cell protoplasm or so changed 
the cell contents that it is no longer able to 
hold the stain. 

Prof. W. H. Howell proposed the follow- 
ing resolutions regarding the work of the 
late Prof. H. Newell Martin: ‘The mem- 
bers of the American Physiological Society 
have heard, with profound regret, of the 
death of Prof. H. Newell Martin. In com- 
memoration of his distinguished services 
the Society adopts and places upon its offi- 
cial record the following expression of its 
appreciation and esteem. In the death of 
Prof. Martin the Society has lost a member 
to whom it owes an especial debt of grati- 
tude. He was actively concerned in its 
foundation and organization, and during 
the critical period of its early history he 
gave much time and thought to its interests. 
He served for six years as its Secretary and 
Treasurer, and strove always with enthusi- 
asm to make a successful beginning of an 
enterprise which he believed would foster 
the spirit of scientific research in physiology 
and bring its active workers into stimulating 
fellowship. For its present prosperous con- 
dition and its prospects of future useful- 
ness the Society feels that it is largely in- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 108. 


debted to his wisdom and energy. In a 
broader field his influence upon the science 
of physiology has been deeply felt. His 
own splendid contributions to experimental 
physiology will have an enduring value, 
while the stimulus given by him to others has. 
been, and will continue to be, an influential 
factor in the development of physiological 
instruction and research in this country. 
As an investigator and teacher he was dis- 
tinguished not only by his originality and 
ability, but by many noble traits of char- 
acter. His modesty, his genuine interest 
in all kinds of biological work, his steady 
insistence upon the highest ideals of scien- 
tific inquiry, his chivalrous conception of 
the credit due to his fellow-workers, and 
the generous sympathy and appreciation 
always felt and shown by him for the work 
of younger investigators, are some of the 
qualities which will endear his memory to: 
those who were so fortunate as to be brought 
into intimate association with him as teacher 
or as friend.” 

Prof. H. P. Bowditch, in seconding the 
resolution, said: ‘‘ Probably few of the 
younger members of the Society are aware 
of the great debt which we owe to Dr. 
Martin for establishing the high standard 
which the Society has always maintained 
with regard to the qualifications of the 
members. It was always Dr. Martin’s con- 
tention that a candidate for admission to 
our ranks should be required to demon- 
strate his power to enlarge the bounds of 
our chosen science, and not merely to dis- 
play an interest in the subject and an abil- 
ity to teach text-book physiology to medical 
students. To his wise counsel in this mat- 
ter the present prosperity of the Society is, 
I think, largely to be attributed. I trust 
that the resolution will be adopted and 
spread upon the records of the Society.” 

The resolution was unanimously adopted. 

A cordial invitation to the members of 
the Society to join the British Association 


JANUARY 22, 1897.] 


for the Advancement of Science at its 
Toronto meeting in August, 1897, was re- 
ceived and accepted with thanks. 

The following gentlemen were elected to 
membership: Prof. A. B. Macallum, M. B., 
Ph.D., Toronto University ; Prof. W. S. 
Carter, M. D., University of Pennsylvania ; 
L. B. Mendel, Ph.D., Yale University. 

The following officers were elected : Coun- 
cil: R. H. Chittenden, Yale, President; F. 
§. Lee, Columbia, Secretary and Treasurer ; 
H. P. Bowditch, Harvard ; W. H. Howell, 
Johns Hopkins; W. P. Lombard, Michigan. 

Freperic S. Les, 
Secretary. 
CoLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. 


ELECTRIFICATION OF AIR BY RONTGEN 
RAYS.* 
To test whether or not the Rontgen rays 
have any electrifying effect on air, the fol- 
lowing arrangement was made. 


A lead cylinder 76 em. long, 23 em. di- 
ameter, was constructed; and both ends 
were closed with paraflined cardboard, 
transparent to the Rontgen rays. Outside 
the end distant from the electrometer (see 
diagram ) a Rontgen lampy was placed. In 


*Read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 
Monday, December 21, 1896. From proof-sheets 
of Nature, contributed by Lord Kelvin. 

} The Rontgen lamp was a vacuum vessel with an 
oblique platinum plate (Jackson pattern). 


SCIENCE. 


139 


the other end two holes were made, one in 
the middle, through which passed a glass 
tube (referred to below as suction pipe) 
of sufficient length to allow the end in the 
lead cylinder to be put into any desired 
place in the cylinder. By means of this, 
air was drawn through an electric filter* by 
an air pump. The other hole, at a little 
distance from the center, contained a second 
glass tube by which air was drawn through 
india rubber tubing from the open-air quad- 
rangle outside the laboratory. 

In one series of experiments the end of 
the suction pipe was kept in the axial line 
of the lead cylinder at various points 10 
em. apart, beginning with a point close to 
the end distant from the Rontgen lamp. 

In every case the air drawn through the 
filter was found to be negatively electrified 
when no screen or an aluminium screen 
was interposed between the Rontgen lamp 
and the near end of the lead cylinder. The 


air was found not electrified at all, or very 
slightly negative, when a lead screen was 
interposed. 

When the Rontgen lamp was removed 
or stopped, and air was still pumped 
through the filter, no deflection was ob- 
served on the electrometer. This proved 
that the air of the quadrangle was not 
electrified sufficiently to show any deflec- 


* Kelvin, Maclean, Galt, Proc. R. S., London, 
March 14, 1895. 


140 


tion when thus tested by filter and elec- 
trometer. 

Similar results were obtained with the 
end of the suction pipe placed so as to 
touch the floor of the lead cylinder, or the 
roof, or the sides. Whether the air was 
pumped away from a place in the cylinder 
permeated, or from a place not permeated, 
by the Rontgen rays, it was in all cases 
found to be negatively electrified. 

The following are some of the results ob- 
tained on December 16th and 17th. The 
electrometer was so arranged as to give 140 
scale divisions per volt. 

Conditions.—Large lead cylinder metal- 
lically connected with sheath of electrom- 
eter. Rontgen lamp surrounded by a 
lead sheath, which latter was also con- 
nected to electrometer sheath. There was 
a window in this lamp sheath 2.5 em. broad 
and 5 em. high. This window could be 
screened by aluminium or by lead. These 
screens were always connected metallically 
to sheaths. During all the experiments a 
Bunsen lamp was kept constantly burning, 
with its flame about 30 cm. below the 
Rontgen lamp. 

Results.—Rontgen lamp in action; air 
drawn from lowest point of end of lead 
cylinder next to the R. lamp. 


December 16, 3.55 p. m. 
—61 scale divisionsin 2 mins. with aluminium screen. 


—63 ‘ o ate tt “no screen. 
—14 “ Me ret tS ‘¢ lead screen. 
4.20 p.m. Air drawn from point on lower line of lead 


cylinder 26 cms. distant from R. L. end. 
—14 scale divisions in 2 mins. with lead screen. 


—78 ‘* Hh GB"), 00 ‘« “no screen. 
—24 “* sf G8 a)! GG ‘¢ lead screen. 
—s3 ‘ ff SOEs ‘¢ alumin. screen. 
—13 ‘“ es eu Ree ‘« lead screen. 


December 17. 
R. L. acting, and air drawn through filter. 


End of suction pipe kept 
in axial line of cylinder. 


10.47 a. m. ems. 

—44in 2mins. with alumin. screen, 68 from R. L. end. 
0 ce ce lead ce 68 ce ce 

—28 (a3 73 no ce 58 eo “ 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8S. Vou. V. No. 108. 


—24 in 2mins. with no screen, 48from R. L. end. 


0 “ce ce lead ce 48 “ “ec 
—23 a [o alumins 2) 48 ge ue 
—26 es “ alumin. ‘‘ 38 ef “4 
—= 6) ce cc lead (98 tt “ 
— F 73 (73 lead (x3 98 (73 ce 
ao inating we 
—36 ue OY alumin. ‘ 18 es a 
—21 ce alin, 8  & se fs 


We had previously made experiments 
with a sheet-iron funnel 1 metre long, 14.5 
ems. diameter; and with a glass tube 150 
ems. long, 3.5 cms. diameter; and with an 
aluminium tube 60 ems. long, 4.5 ems. di- 
ameter. Air was pumped from different 
parts while the Rontgen rays were shining 
along the tubes from one end, which was 
closed by paraffined paper stretched across 
it. In every case the air was found to be 
negatively electrified. 

In those earlier experiments the air 
drawn away was replaced by air coming in 
from the laboratory at the open end of the 
tube. We found evidence of disturbance 
due to electrification of air of the labora- 
tory by brush discharges from electrodes 
between the induction coil and Rontgen 
lamp, and perhaps from circuit-break spark 
of induction coil. These sources of disturb- 
ance are eliminated by our later arrange- 
ment of lead cylinder covered with card- 
board at both ends, as described above, and 
air drawn into it from open air outside the 
laboratory. 

We have also found a very decided elec- 
trification of air—sometimes negative,some- 
times positive—when the Réntgen rays are 
directed across a glass tube or an aluminium 
tube, through which air was drawn from 
the quadrangle outside the laboratory, to the 
filter. ; 

A primary object of our experiments was 
to test whether air electrified positively or 
negatively lost its charge by the passage of 
Rontgen rays through it. We soon ob- 
tained an affirmative answer to this ques- 
tion, both for negative and positive elec- 


JANUARY 22, 1897.] 


tricity. We found that positively electri- 
fied air lost its positive electricity, and in 
some eases acquired negative electricity, 
under the influence of Réntgen rays; and 
we were thus led to investigate the effect 
of Réntgen rays on air unelectrified to be- 
gin with. 

Note on diagram.—For the sake of sim- 
plicity, the screening of the electrometer is 
not shown in the diagram. In carrying 
out the above experiments, however, we 
have found it absolutely necessary not only 
to surround the electrometer with wire 
gauze in the usual manner, but we have 
had also to place a sheet of lead below it, 
and to screen also the side next the Ront- 
gen lamp by a lead screen. In some cases 
it was even necessary to cover up the whole 
with paper to prevent the electrified air of 
the room from disturbing the instrument. 

KELVIN, 
J. C. BEATTIE, 
M. SmoLucHOWSKI DE SMOLAN. 

PHYSICAL LABORATORY, 


UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, 
December 19, 1896. 


CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 
ORIGIN OF ROCK PAINTINGS. 

A VALUABLE article is published in the 
Bulletin of the American Museum, Vol. 
VIII., by James Teit, on a rock painting 
of the Thompson River Indians, British 
‘Columbia. 

It appears that young girls, on reaching 
maturity, retire for a season of solitude, 
meditation and purification. At its close 
‘they paint on some rock, with red ochre, 
their psychical experiences and the rites 
they have performed. An example is given 
with its interpretation. 

This origin of pictographs is not men- 
tioned, I think, in Col. Garrick Mallery’s 
extensive work. The figures are curious 
-and suggestive. They appear to be conven- 
‘tional and can be read by any woman of 


SCIENCE. 


141 


the tribe. This shows that they are taught 
to the young girls, and we thus find a rec- 
ognized graphic system prevailing in this 
rude tribe. 


THE MEANING OF MOURNING. 


Various ethnologists have claimed that 
the laments, the mutilations and howls of 
the survivors around the corpse in primi- 
tive nations are chiefly for their own bene- 
fit, to keep away the ghost, as that-is usually 
considered malevolent. 

The subject is discussed by K. T. Preuss, 
in the Globus, November, 1896, in an article 
‘Die Totenklage im alten Amerika.’ Some 
instances, he believes, justiy the above as- 
sertion, but the majority do not. The 
wailing and weeping, often continued for 
months, he regards as generally indications 
of personal sorrow at the loss sustained. 

This natural and satisfactory explanation 
is supported by the most intelligent officers 
of our regular army who have seen inti- 
mately the home life of our western In- 
dians. For instance, the late Captain W. 
P. Clark, ‘the white chief with the talking 
hand,’ expresses himself positively to this 
effect, in his Indian Sign Language, p. 263. 


PRIMITIVE TRAVEL AND TRANSPORTATION. 


Aw essay with this title, by Prof. O. T. 
Mason, occupies more than 350 pages of the 
last Report of the United States National 
Museum. In completeness of presentation 
and wealth of material it far surpasses any 
other study of the subject, and leaves little 
to be desired until we have materially ex- 
tended our collections of early objects. 
There are 260 figures inserted in the text, 
illustrating all sorts of native conveyances 
—cradles, baskets, shoes, sandals, staffs, 
carrying gear, tree-climbing devices, snow 
goggles, etc.—and the mode in which they 
were used. Roads, bridges, journeys, camp- 
ing grounds and other matters pertaining 
to primitive travel claim a part of the 
author’s attention. 


142 


Prof. Mason intends to follow up this ex- 
cellent piece of work with a primitive trade- 
route map of the United States and Can- 
ada, including trails and portages. He will 
be gratified to receive information on these 
points from travelers and explorers, or ref- 
erences to where such may be found. His 
address is the National Museum, Washing- 
ton, D.C. 

D. G. Brinton. 


UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 
MODERN ARMY RIFLES. 

THE portions of the Governor’s message of 
January, 1895, to the Legislature of the State 
of New York referring to the re-arming of 
the State troops; the Law passed May 10th, in 
compliance with its suggestions, and the rules of 
procedure of the New York State Board ap- 
pointed to select improved arms for the militia 
of the State ; the report of that Board, Septem- 
ber, 1895, and the Governor’s message of Oc- 
tober 22d, relating to the report, are just pub- 
lished in pamphlet form by the Savage Arms 
Co., of Utica, N. Y., the makers of the gun se- 
lected by the Board. This makes a convenient 
compendium for those interested in the subject. 
A table is also included showing the dimensions 
and character of the rifles adopted for military 
purposes by the governments of the world; 
substantially all of which have adopted a small 
calibre, usually about 0.30 inches, and smoke- 
less powder. The United States has accepted 
this specification for its army rifle, but the 
navy gun is of but 0.286 inchés bore. Curi- 
ously enough, all of the States of the Union 
have armed their troops with the U. S. Spring- 
field gun, except New York, which has the 
most antiquated of rifles, of large calibre; and 
all the militia of all the States are using black 
powder. 

The N. Y. State Board reported in favor of a 
‘lever action,’ in preference to the ‘bolt action’ 
adopted by all the nations of Europe, as being 
in all respects superior to the latter and as 
having the further advantage of being a gen- 
erally used American invention, and hence 
familiar, already, to all habitual users of the rifle 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 108. 


in the United States. A stronger metal for barrels. 
than heretofore employed is specified, and the 
study of nickel steel as a material for such guns 
is advised. That alloy is already adopted by 
the United States Navy, both for small arms 
and for ordnance and armor. The Board sug- 
gests the attempt to secure at least an elastic 
limit of 75,000 pounds per square inch, tenacity. 
of 110,000 or 120,000 pounds, and at the same 
time a ductility of at least 20 per cent. in eight 
inches. It is thought possible to secure these 
figures, which would insure an extremely strong, 
yet light and very safe, barrel. The United 
States Army regulation bore, chamber and rifling 
are advised, in order to secure uniformity of am- 
munition. The Board seems doubtful whether 
the higher velocity, approximating 2,300 feet 
per second, greater range, attaining something 
like two miles, and higher penetrative power of 
the small bores used by our own navy, and by 
several foreign nations, is not, on the whole, 
compensated by more serious disadvantages in 
loss of ‘stopping power’ and difficulties of 
manufacture and manipulation. The gun se- 
lected has a muzzle velocity of 1,950 feet and a 
range of about a mile and a-half. 

The use of the ‘clip’ for holding cartridges 
is not found desirable, with a satisfactory form 
of magazine and mechanism. The use of the 
gun as a single loader, with a reserve in the 
magazine, is thought likely to prove, in action, 
the usually desirable arrangement. 

Twelve guns were entered for examination 
and report. Their behavior under test, accord- 
ing to the statement of the Board, ‘‘is believed 
to have been the most wonderful performance 
of new magazine rifles of different patterns of 
which a record is known. It was a splendid 
exhibition of American skill and genius in the 
invention of effective military magazine arms.’’ 

The report is unanimous and is signed by 
Messrs. Albert D. Shaw, of Watertown; E. W. 
Bliss, of Brooklyn, and R. H. Thurstou, of 
Ithaca, N. Y. 


GENERAL. 

THE cable dispatch (see page 103 in the last 
number of this JouRNAL) regarding the disposi- 
tion of the fortune of the late Alfred Nobel is 
confirmed by later adyices. The annual income 


JANUARY 22, 1897.]. 


will amount to about $300,000, and four-fifths 
of this sum is to be spent in four prizes for ad- 
vances in science. The competition will be 
open to Scandinavians and foreigners on equal 
terms. All men of science will look forward 
with great interest to learning the details of this 
bequest—probably the most noteworthy ever 
made for public purposes—and the methods to 
be followed in awarding these great prizes. 
THE widow of Baron Maurice Hirsch, of 
Vienna, has resolved to present about $400,000 
to the Pasteur Institute as a memorial of her 
husband. Part of this sum will be used for 
building chemical and biological laboratories. 


THE will of the late Robert H. Lamborn, 
which bequeathes about $200,000 to the Acad- 
emy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, has 
been admitted to probate. 


Ir was reported at the Frankfort meeting of 
the German naturalists and physicians that 
255,000 Marks had been collected for the me- 
morial to the eminent chemist yon Hoffmann. 
This will be used for the erection of a building 
to be known as the ‘Hoffmann Hausa,’ to be 
used as the headquarters of the German Chemi- 
cal Society. It is proposed to establish in it a 
laboratory and a library, which latter includes 
the books left by von Hoffmann. 

THE late General Cullum left $100,000 to the 
American Geographical Society, New York, for 
a building, and also bequeathed a further sum, 
to be known as the Cullum Geographical Medal 
Fund, for a gold medal to be given to those who 
should render most distinguished services to 
geographical science, and particularly to Ameri- 
can citizens. The first medal has been awarded 
to Mr. R. E. Peary, U. S. N., for having estab- 
lished the insularity of Greenland. 


PROFESSOR BEHRING has been awarded the 
Rinecker prize consisting of a gold medal and 
1000 Marks by the University of Wurzburg, for 
his discovery of the Anti-toxin treatment of 
diptheria. 

THE British Institute of Public Health has 
awarded the Harben medal for 1897 to Pro- 
fessor M. von Pettenkofer, emeritus professor 
of hygiene in the University of Munich. 

THE Bressa prize of the Reale Accademie 
delle Scienze, of Turin, will be awarded for the 


SCIENCE. ; 


148 


eleventh time in 1899, Theprize, which is of 
the value of nearly $2,000, is given for the most 
important scientific work produced during the 
years 1895-98. Competitors must send their 
contributions in print before the end of the pres- 
ent year. The academy reserves the right to 
award the prize to one who has not entered his 
name among the competitors. 


A STATUE of the late Samuel Gross, the emi- 
nent Philadelphia surgeon, will be unveiled at 
the Triennial Congress of American Physicians, 
to be held in Washington in May. The statue 
will be in the grounds of the Smithsonian In- 
stitution, near the Army Medical Museum. 

THE deaths are announced of Mr. G. F. 
Schacht, who made improvements in the appli- 
eation of certain drugs to the treatment of dis- 
ease, at the age of seventy-three years; of Dr. 
Liugi Calori, professor of anatomy at Bologna, 
at the age of eighty-nine years, and of Mr. R. 
Warner, an English horticulturalist, at the age 
of eighty-two. 

THE Chemical Society of Washington, at its 
thirteenth annual meeting, elected the following 
officers: President, W. D. Bigelow; Vice- 
Presidents, H. N. Stokes and Peter Fireman; 
Secretary, V. K. Chesnut; Treasurer, W. P. 
Cutter, and Executive Committee, C. E. Munroe, 
HK. A. de Schweinitz, Wirt Tassin and W. G. 
King. 

COLONEL CARROLL D. Wricut, United States 
Commissioner of Labor, has been chosen Presi- 
dent of the American Statistical Association, at 
its annual meeting. The position was left vacant 
by the death of General F. A. Walker, who had 
filled it for fourteen years. 

Dr. G. H. SAVAGE has been elected President 
of the Neurological Society of London. The 
subject of his inaugural address, which was to 
have been given on January 14th, is ‘ Heredity 
in the Neuroses.’ 

THE London correspondent of Garden and 
Forest states that the Royal Horticultural So- 
ciety continues to provide lectures for its bi- 
monthly meetings at the Drill Hall, and that the 
bulk of them are a success. Next year’s pro- 
gram contains some items of more than usual 
interest, namely: ‘Microscopic Gardening,’ by 
Prof. Marshall Ward, of Cambridge ; ‘Artificial 


144 


Manures,’ by Mr. J. J. Willis; ‘Diseases of 
Orchids,’ by Mr. G. Massee, F.L.S., of Kew; 
‘Physiology of Plants,’ by Prof. S. H. Vines, 
of Cambridge; ‘Mutual Accommodation be- 
tween Plant Organs,’ by Prof. G. Henslow; 
‘Roots,’ by Prof. F. W. Oliver, and ‘Sporting 
in Chrysanthemums,’ by Prof. Henslow. In 
addition to these scientific lectures by eminent 
specialists, there will also be lectures upon 
practical subjects by leading practitioners. 
These lectures are all published afterwards in 
the Society’s journal. The great exhibition at 
the Temple is announced for May 26th, 27th, 
28th, and the exhibition of fruit at the Crystal 
Palace for Sept. 30th and Oct. 1st and 2d. 


AT the close of the thirtieth volume of The 
American Naturalist Prof. J. S. Kingsley, of 
Tufts College, and Prof. C. O. Whitman, of the 
University of Chicago, withdrew from the board 
of editors. Dr. F. C. Kenyon, of Philadelphia, 
takes the place of Prof. Kingsley as manag- 
ing editor, with Prof. E. D. Cope. The Natu- 
ralist has, in its long history, witnessed un- 
paralleled advances in the biological sciences, 
and will continue to be an important factor in 
the further progress that is assured. 


Die Umschau is the title of a new weekly jour- 
nal, devoted to pure and applied science, litera- 
ture and art, published at Frankfort by Bech- 
hold, and edited by Dr. J. H. Bechhold. The 
journal proposes to give a complete and reliable 
review in plain language of the advances in all 
the sciences. The first number includes articles 
by William Huggins on the physics of celestial 
bodies ; by T. H. Achilles, Max Buchner and 
J. W. Bruinier on anthropological subjects, and 
by Prof. Eulenberg on the treatment of neuras- 
thenia. 

THE Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, 
New York, will hereafter be edited by a board 
consisting of Dr. Charles L. Dana, Dr. F. X. 
Dercum, Dr. Philip Coombs Knapp, Dr. Chas. 
K. Mills, Dr. Jas. J. Putnam, Dr. B. Sachs and 
Dr. M. Allen Starr, with Dr. Ph. Meirowitz and 
Dr. Wm. G. Spiller as associate editors and 
Dr. Charles Henry Brown as managing editor. 

THE Macmillan Company announces as in 
preparation an Encyclopxdia of American Horti- 
culture, to be edited by Professor L. H. Bailey. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 108. 


THE Agricultural Appropriation Bill was pre- 
sented to the House of Representatives on 
January 13th, by Mr. Wadsworth, Chairman of 
the Committee on Agriculture. The total ap- 
propriation recommended is $3,152,752, an in- 
crease of $102,780 over the amount appro- 
priated for the current year. The increase is 
chiefly for the Bureau of Animal Industry, to 
be used in the inspection of meat. $120,000 is 
appropriated for the purchase and distribution of 
seeds, and the Secretary is directed to expend 
the appropriation. It is well known that Sec- 
retary Morton is opposed to this expenditure, 
and the item has been inserted in the bill with- 
out his sanction. 


Mr. CuaAs. D. WAtcort, Director of the 
U. 8. Geological Survey, has asked for an im- 
mediate appropriation of $25,000 for the prepa- 
ration of a map of the gold and coal areas of 
Alaska. 


THE Massachusetts Board of Agriculture has 
submitted to the General Court the report of the 
Gypsy Moth Commission. Mr. C. H. Fernald, 
the entomologist of the Board, recommends that 
$200,000 be granted for the work, and holds 
that if this appropriation be given for five 
years, with a smaller appropriation for ten 
years more, the pest can be exterminated. It 
can be held in check for $100,000 annually. 
If nothing is done the moth will spread rapidly 
in Massachusetts and elsewhere, and will cause 
great destruction. 


BoTANIstTs and zoologists will learn with in- 
terest that a Biological Survey of Alabama has 
been organized and put into operation. The 
survey will be carried on under the auspices 
of the Alabama Polytechnic Institute, and will 
be manned by the specialists engaged at that 
institution in the various lines of biological in- 
vestigation. It will have for its object the 
study in field and laboratory of all plants and 
animals occurring in the State, and of the vari- 
ous conditions affecting them. The work will 
be done sytematically and thoroughly and all 
results published. In a region so interesting 
and little known as this portion of the Southern 
United States, careful and extended research 
will be sure to yield results of great value. 


JANUARY 22, 1897.] 


Large quantities of material in all groups of 
plants, and animals (especially insects), will be 
collected and properly prepared. In connec- 
tion with the survey there has been founded an 
Exchange Bureau, from which will be distrib- 
uted all duplicate material. Those desiring 
to correspond relative to specimens, literature, 
or the work of the survey, should address: 
Alabama Biological Survey, Auburn, Alabama. 


REUTER’s Agency is informed that Mr. Moore, 
of the Royal Society, has returned from Tan- 
ganyika. Mr. Moore was sent out by the So- 
ciety early in 1895 to examine the fauna of 
Lakes Nyasa and Tanganyika. On account of 
the remarkable specimens of jelly-fish which 
have been sent home at different times by Mr. 
A. J. Swann and Captain Hore, the idea was 
formed that Lake Tanganyika must have once 
had some connection with the sea and still re- 
tained its partially marine fauna. Mr. Moore’s 
researches completely confirm this view. The 
explorer is stated to have found not only re- 
markable marine jelly-fish and deep-sea fish, 
but also sponges in Lake Tanganyika. Mr. 
Moore will remain for about three weeks at 
Naples, in order to repack his collection before 
going on to London. 


THE report of the Pasteur Institute for the 
quarter ending June 30th states that the total 
number of persons under treatment was 316, of 
which six died. Only twenty-three of the 
patients were foreigners. 


A CHEMICAL laboratory has been fitted up in 
_the top floor of the extension of the Boston 
State House, to be used by the State Board of 
Health for the analysis of water and other pur- 
poses. 


THE London Times states that the Trustees 
of the British Museum have recently acquired, 
by purchase, a remarkable specimen, nearly 
10ft. high, of the great extinct wingless bird, the 
moa (Dinornis maximus), from New Zealand. 
The intrinsic interest of this particular speci- 
men rests on the ground that the skeleton is 
that of a single individual, unmixed with the 
bones of any other bird of the species. In this 
respect it is, indeed, extremely rare, not more 
than three, or at least four, similar examples 
being known. There are, of course, several 


SCIENCE. 


145 


other specimens of Dinornis maximus to be seen 
in the British and other museums, but these 
have all been reconstructed from bones belong- 
ing to more than one individual. The skeleton 
now at South Kensington was discovered by 
Captain F. W. Hutton, F.R.S., Curator of the 
Canterbury Museum, New Zealand, who, in 
conducting some excavations at Invercargill, 
Southland, came across the largest and most 
varied collection of moa bones ever obtained 
from one place, representing probably not fewer 
than 800 birds, none of them belonging to still 
living species. 


It is reported that motor carriages are to be 
introduced into New York in April by the New 
York Cab Company, compressed air being used 
to drive the carriages. The Hackney Vestry, 
London, is considering the use of motor vans 
and carts for watering the streets, collecting: 
garbage, etc. 


ELABORATE arrangements are being made 
for the International Horticultural Exhibition 
which will be held in Hamburg from May 1 to. 
September 30, 1897. Besides a general perma- 
nent exhibition, outdoor and indoor, open 
throughout the summer, arrangements have. 
been made for special exhibitions of plants, etc., 
at different seasons. The permanent exhibi- 
tion will consist of various classes of trees, 
shrubs, herbaceous plants, groups of plants, 
technical appliances, garden plants, preserved 
fruits, wines and dried flowers and grasses. 
The dates of the special exhibitions are as fol- 
lows: (1) Spring exhibition from May 1 to 7, 
1897, for plants in season; (2) First special ex- 
hibition, May 30th to June 3d, for pelargoniums, 
floral arrangements, early vegetables; (3) 
Second special exhibition, July 2d to 6th, for 
gloxinias and other bulbous plants, roses (cut 
flowers), cut flowers or twigs of trees and 
shrubs, floral arrangements (to consist chiefly 
of roses; (4) Third special exhibition, July 30th 
to August 3d, for begonias, carnations, cut 
flowers (dahlias, gladioli and carnations), fruit 
trees in pots; (5) Autumn exhibition, August 
27th to September 5th, for plants in season in 
pots (groups, single plants, novelties, etc.), 
floral arrangements, vegetables; (6) Fruit exhi- 
bition, September 17th to 30th. 


146 


Mr. JoHN MILNE has recently advocated an 
earthquake survey of the world. He states that 
for $5,000 twenty observatories willing to co- 
operate can be provided with the necessary in- 
struments, and calls attention to the important 
theoretical and practical problems that can thus 
be solved. One of the recent earthquakes in 
Japan was recorded about 16 minutes after its 
occurrence in Mr. Milne’s observatory on the 
Isle of Wight, and showed that there had been 
an error in telegraphic transmission to the news- 
papers of two days, whilst another gave an ac- 
curate account of a catastrophe the details of 
which were not known until mails arrived some 
three weeks later. An absence of records from 
the Isle of Wight seismographs has on more than 
one occasion shown that telegrams have exag- 
gerated seismic effects, and in one instance at 
least—referring to a recently reported disaster 
in Kobe—indicated that the sender, regardless 
of the alarm he might create, was without 
foundation for his widely-published “message. 
The immediate benefits derived by observatories 
at which instruments were installed, over and 
above the speedy announcement of great catas- 
trophes in distant places, would be that the 
records of earth movements would throw light 
upon some of the otherwise unaccountable de- 
flections shown in diagrams from magneto- 
graphs, barographs and other instruments 
sensible to slight displacements, whilst diurnal 
and other changes in level affecting astronomical 
observations would be countinuously recorded. 

Mr. BENNETT, who is acting as British Con- 
sul-General at Galatz, has prepared, says the 
London Times, a report on the petroleum in- 
dustry in Rumania, where, he thinks, it is 
likely to play an important part in future com- 
mercial development. Petroleum exists in 
abundance in Rumania, in the zone stretching 
from Turn-Severin, on the western frontier, 
along the foot of the Carpathians, towards Bu- 
kowina and Galicia. It is found throughout 
the whole of this region, but especially in the 
Olt, Dimbovyitza, Prahova, Buzeu and Tazlan 
valleys. It is said also to be found in the 
whole of the plains down to the Danube. 
There are about fifty borings and eight hundred 
wells dug by hand in the five districts above 
mentioned; but these are all shallow, and 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 108, 


the output in 1894-95 reached 800,000 tons. 
Although petroleum has been worked in Ru- 
mania for 25 years, the industry is evidently in 
its infancy still. The greater part of the land 
is owned by the state and large holders who 
reside in the towns and will not invest money 
in industrial enterprise ; grain has monopolized 
the energy and capital of the Rumanians, and 
the forests and mineral wealth of the country 
are neglected. Thus it was not until 1895 that 
a mining law was passed, and up to that date 
the ownership of land below the surface had 
never been determined. Nor is there a body 
of native mining engineers. About a third of 
the crude oil is taken from the wells of four 
firms, while the remainder comes from the 
workings of numerous small proprietors, who 
heve not the capital necessary for proper de- 
velopment of the deposits. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 

THE Johns Hopkins University has published 
the. twenty-first annual report of President 
Gilman. The report itself, presented to the 
trustees on November 21st, extends to sixteen 
pages only, but there are two appendices. One 
of these contains the reports on the chief 
branches of study prepared by the principal in- 
structors in the several departments, together 
with statements regarding the library, the 
press, the State Weather Service, The State 
Geological Survey and the marine laboratory. 
In conclusion there is given an interesting ret- 
rospect of the twenty years now completed by 
the University. The important service per- 
formed by the Johns Hopkins University for 
education and science in America is adequately 
witnessed by the fact that nearly half of its 
students have become teachers. The following 
institutions have on their staff more than ten 
students from the University: Johns Hopkins 
University (67), Chicago (23), Wisconsin (19), 
Bryn Mawr (18), Leland Stanford, Jr. (17), 
Michigan (17), Pennsylvania (16), Cornell (14), 
Columbia (13), Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
nology (11), Nebraska (11), Northwestern (11), 
Haryard (10), Woman’s College of Baltimore 
(10). 


THE faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of 


JANUARY 22, 1897.] 


Technology, on January 13th, elected Professor 
James M. Crafts, of the chemistry department, 
chairman pro tem. of the faculty, pending the 
election of a successer to the late Gen. F. A. 
Walker as President. 

Mr. G. A. Hopart, Vice-President elect, has 
given $5,000 to Rutgers, of which he is a 
graduate. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 


A NATIONAL DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE. 

To THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: I have just 
seen in the current number of ScrENcE Dr. 
Dabney’s discussion of this subject, and, feeling 
that the natural inferences most persons un- 
acquainted with government work would draw 
from it, must be not only inaccurate but mis- 
chievous, I feel obliged to point out that there 
are at least two sides to the question, and it is 
extremely doubtful whether the establishment 
of such a department would be beneficial to 
science, economical or efficient to a degree war- 
ranting the change. 

With much that Dr. Dabney has written Iam 
in accord; itis his conclusions, and the inferences 
to be drawn from his manner of presenting the 
facts, that demand further examination. 

It is nothing new for people to assume that 
the proposal of a new set of well chosen names, 
a new classification of well known facts, or a 
cleverly drawn scheme of organization of pre- 
viously distinct agencies, has in itself added 
something to knowledge, or possesses an in- 
herent power of some undefined sort to make 
things easier, cheaper or better. Such assump- 
tions are at the basis of nearly all cranky 
theories, as well as occasional good ones. No 
scientific man should accept such hypotheses 
without a thorough investigation of the facts. 

I take it that the object of a scientific bureau 
is to gather, digest and disseminate facts in re- 
gard to matters with which it is officially 
charged. If this work is done promptly, effi- 
ciently and accurately, at a reasonable cost, the 
bureau justifies its existence, and not otherwise. 
It is of no consequence, whatever, to the bureau 
and its work whether it is attached to one de- 
partment or another, or to none, if the bureau 
is conducted by a competent person on scientific 
principles, and with a view simply to getting 


SCIENCE. 


147 


the best possible results. The origin and suc- 
cess of our scientific bureaus has been due, as 
Dr. Dabney points out, to the fact that they are, 
in the main, the crystallized result of individual 
effort exerted in a particular field and with 
the object of attaining certain definite ends. 

The men to whom we owe our best scientific 
agencies under government, worked, and often 
gave their lives prematurely, not to get offices, 
or titles, or salaries, or to add a new name to. 
the lists of bureaus in the blue books, but to 
promote research and benefit the nation by its 
results. This, too, has been the object of their 
successors in conscientious devotion. The 
danger and difficulty which has threatened the 
bureaus, and never more than at the present 
time, has been the intrusion of politics or per- 
sonal interest in appointments, and the stifling 
of individual initiative by an excess of red tape, 
imposed generally in good faith by Congress. 
with the idea of preventing abuses. 

From Dr. Dabney’s account it might be sup- 
posed that a number of bureaus were, to a greater 
or less extent, duplicating each other’s work, 
and the inference is direct from his argument 
that this duplication might and should be pre- 
vented by a consolidation of the various bureaus. 
The supposition is, I believe, quite erroneous and 
the inference wholly fallacious. 

The bureaus exist to do work, and the advis- 
ability of any change in organization must be 
measured by its capacity for increasing results, 
improving efficiency, and promoting economy 
without lessening the product measured in re- 
sults. If consolidation would diminish results, 
impair efficiency, and do away with individual 
responsibility to any marked degree, it would 
be dearly bought. That this would be the case, 
under present conditions, there can be hardly 
any doubt; and the coolness with which the 
proposition, which is by no means new, has 
been met in Congress is, I am convinced, due 
to the fact that the more influential members, 
as good business men, recognize that the hy- 
pothesis is without the essentials of a workable 
scheme. 

At present most of the bureaus are attached 
to some department. The head of that depart- 
ment has many divisions to supervise. In gen- 
eral, even if not specially interested in science 


148 


he is a man of broad views and good executive 
capacity. After satisfying himself that the 
proper official safeguards are observed in the 
bureau and that the head of it is competent and 
of good report, the Secretary rarely meddles 
with details—in fact, has no time to waste upon 
them. 

The Director of the bureau can devote his 
energies to carrying on its work and maintaining 
proper supervision of details. If it is abureau 
in which, say, chemical work is required, the 
laboratory occupies part of the quarters of the 
bureau, its operations are immediately adjacent 
to the offices of men whose work is being sup- 
plemented by chemical research, the supplies 
for the chemist are only those required for the 
work he is doing, and the latter is prometed by 
the constant opportunity of conference between 
the people interested. An experiment can be 
ordered, immediately taken up, the process al- 
tered or the scope enlarged while actually in 
progress, or it can be stopped to take up some- 
thing of instant importance ; in short, the labo- 
ratory is a tool in the hands of the bureau, 
which can be directed to exactly the work which 
is required without delay, interruption or inter- 
ference. This promotes efficiency and the prog- 
ress of science. 

It is true that an unfriendly Secretary might 
wreck the scientific work of a bureau by getting 
rid of a competent and installing an incompe- 
tent Director. But this danger is not obviated 
by the suggested consolidation, and cannot be 
by anything short of a cordial acceptance of the 
merit principle of civil service reform by the 
whole executive body of the government. We 
are all agreed that that will be a happy day, 
but also that it has not yet dawned. 

The head of the proposed department is to 
be a Cabinet officer, and hence necessarily 
changed with the changes of administration. 
It follows that he will be more or less of a poli- 
tician and his appointment obtained by politi- 
cal methods. Having no other executive duties, 
and it being impossible that he should have a 
working knowledge of all of the scientific 
branches under his control, the tendency to 
meddle and modify would be almost irresistible. 
The Directors of the several bureaus, instead of 
attending to their business, would have to oc- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vox. V. No. 108. 


cupy themselves in protecting it against ill-ad- 
vised interference. 

The chemical laboratories being consolidated,- 
the chief chemist would be a greater man than 
any of his colleagues. No Director of a bureau 
could control his own chemical work. With 
demands for particular jobs from several bu- 
reaus on hand it would be wholly uncertain 
when any of them would be finished. Com- 
plaints would be met by playing one off against 
another. Responsibility, and, to a large extent, 
efficiency, would be lost. Meanwhile no fewer 
men could do the chemical work than were re- 
quired before. Instead of the quarters being 
included in the rent of the several bureaus, as 
now, a large and separate building would be 
called for and required. That a dollar would 
be saved by such a proceeding is doubtful. 
That delays and inefficiency would be inevitable 
is certain. It may be said that the above is a 
pessimistic view, but we have in the govern- 
ment printing office a brilliant example of the 
effects of consolidation, where it takes six 
months to a year to get a scientific book print- 
ed, and there is no responsibility whatever to 
the Department, whose work is entirely at the 
mercy of the public printer, who knows no su- 
perior and does as he likes. Those who have 
had experience with his office do not desire 
any further consolidations of the same kind. 

Of course, the chemical laboratory has been 
merely taken as an illustration. The writer 
has nothing to do with such laboratories, but 
the principle holds good throughout. 

Dr. Dabney has spoken of other instances of 
supposed duplication of work, or rather two 
parties doing the same kind of work. Any 
genuine duplication could be cured at once if 
pointed out, but, as before stated, the duplica- 
tion is not real but nominal. Different sorts of 
work are called by the same name. There is 
no point of contact between the hydrology of 
the Geological Survey and the hydrography of 
the Navy Department. Methods which would 
disgrace the Coast Survey work have always 
been regarded as entirely sufficient in the Land 
Office. One kind costs twelve cents a mile, the 
other two hundred dollars. These are not 
duplications. 

I do not for a moment claim that our govern- 


JANUARY 22, 1897.] 


mental methods are perfect, or that well con- 
sidered changes may not in some cases be 
wholly desirable. All I desire to do is to point 
out that the nostrum now offered is by no 
means a cure-all, and that the attainment of 
ideal conditions depends almost wholly on an 
honest recognition by the whole country, as 
represented by Congress and the executive, of 
merit, fitness and resulting permanency of ten- 
ure in the staff of the scientific bureaus. 
W ASHINGTONIAN. 
WASHINGTON, January 16, 1897. 


THE JURASSIC WEALDEN (LTITHONIAN) OF ENG- 
LAND. 


Pror. O. C. MArsu has called again atten- 
tion to the Wealden formation of England—an 
abnormal deposit, rather puzzling. Every ob- 
server working at geographical geology and 


general classification has been struck by an |. 


enigma in the otherwise classical classification 
of the strata of England. Between the Port- 
land stone at the island of Portland and at 
Durstone bay, and the Lower Greensand of 
the Middle Cretaceous, we have a series of 
beds, mainly sands and clays, with some lime- 
stone and dirt in the inferior part, which has 
been called a fluvio-marine and fresh-water 
formation, of a thickness of about 1,500 or 2,000 
feet, designated generally by the name of Weal- 
den. The name of ‘Weald formation, or 
Wealden,’ was first introduced in the English 
classification by P. I. Martin in 1828 (A Geolog- 
ical Memoir on a Part of Western Sussex, p. 40, 
4to, London). 

Dr. William H. Fitton accepted it, and in his 
celebrated memoir, Observations on some of the 
-strata between the Chalk and the Oxford oolite in 
the Southeast of England, Trans. Geol. Soc. Lon- 
don, second series, Vol. IV., p. 103, London, 
1836, gives a detailed account, dividing the 
Wealden into three great groups, called the 
Purbeck strata, Hastings sand and Weald clay 
proper. 

Dr. Gideon A. Mantell is generally credited 
-asthe author of the stratigraphic position in 
English classification of the Wealden formation 
(Iilustrations of the Geology of Sussex, 4to, Lon- 
don, 1827, and A sketch of the Geological structure 
-of the Southeastern part of Sussex, Lewes, 1818). 


SCIENCE. 


149 


He puts it as the lowest part of the Cretaceous 
formation. 

The classification of Mantell was generally 
accepted until November, 1849, when Edward 
Forbes observed at Portland and Swanage that 
Fitton and Mantell made mistakes, especially 
in regard to the Purbeck marble series, and, 
after some close and excellent observations, 
recognized that the Purbeck was Jurassic and 
not Cretaceous. As he humorously says in a 
letter to Ramsay: ‘‘ The ‘geology of England’ 
may be ‘done’ by the old fellows, but it is not 
overdone yet.’? (Memoirs of Edward Forbes, p. 
461, London, 1861.) Edward Forbes was the 
man to correct errors of classification in regard 
to the Mesozoic and Tertiary. He has no 
equal for sharp observations and correct con- 
clusions. Unhappily he was not able to finish his 
work; his premature death in 1854 arrested 
completely the researches he inaugurated so 
well in Dorset and the Isle of Wight. Even 
his work, as he has entitled it, ‘ A Description 
of the Purbeck and Wealden fresh-water and 
fluvio-marine strata of Dorsetshire and the Isle 
of Wight, with comparative remarks on syn- 
chronous strata elsewhere’ (Preface, p. vii., 
On the Tertiary fluvio-marine formation of the Isle 
of Wight, London, 1856), was never published ; 
only a short notice was given to the public in 
the British Association Report for 1850, under 
the title ‘On the succession of organic remains 
in the Dorsetshire Purbecks.’ However, short 
as it is, the notice of Forbes brought the age of 
the Wealden once more before the English 
geologists, and one of them who knew best the 
Secondary or Mesozoic formations, the nephew 
of the celebrated ‘Strata Smith,’ Prof. John 
Phillips, of the University of Oxford, in his re- 
markable Manual of Geology,* pp. 282-818, 

* Extract from a letter of Prof. John Phillips to 
Jules Marcou. * * * ‘As to the propriety of 
placing the Wealden in the Cretaceous I have my 
doubts. Certainly the fresh-water fossil remains, 
which otherwise are not characteristic of the age of 
strata, are not in favor of uniting the upper part of 
the Wealden with the Cretaceous, while the Megalo- 
saurus and other Saurians, as well as the fishes and 
plants found in the Middle (Hastings Sands), protest 
loudly against the separation of the Wealden from 
the Oolites.”’ JOHN PHILLIPS. 

Sr. Mary’s LODGE, YorK, July 23, 1887. 


150 


London, 1885, has placed the Wealden forma- 
tion with its three groups—Purbeck beds, Hast- 
ings sand and Weald Clay—into his Oolitic 
(Jurassic) system. 

This classification of John Phillips was not 
accepted by the Geological Survey of England 
and the Director-General, the late Sir Andrew 
C. Ramsay, in his excellent book, ‘ The Phys- 
ical Geology of Great Britain,’ fifth edition, pp. 
201-212, London, 1878, classifies the ‘Purbeck 
and Wealden strata,’ as Lower Cretaceous, say- 
ing that the Hastings sands and Weald clay are 
the fresh-water equivalents in time of the lower 
and middle part of the Neocomian of Switzer- 
land; adding, ‘an assumption’ which ‘is un- 
doubtedly correct.’ Such correlation is inac- 
ceptable, for ‘paleontology, lithology and even 
stratigraphy are wanting entirely, and an ‘as- 
sumption’ cannot replace principles and rules 
of classification. 

Meantime, the true Neocomian has been found 
in Yorkshire, northwest of Flamborough Head, 
near Speeton, and described with details and 
exact correlations by Prof. J. W. Judd in 1868 
and 1870, and more recently by Mr. G. W. 
Lamplugh in 1889 and 1892. Prof. A. P. Pav- 
low, of the University of Moscow, first in col- 
laboration with Mr. Lamplugh in 1892, and 
afterward alone in his paper, On the Classification 
of the Strata between the Kimmeridgian and 
Aptian (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., London, 
Vol. 52, pp. 542-554, London, April, 1896), 
has given correlations of the Wealden with the 
Speeton clay and Neocomian of western Europe 
and Russia. Prof. Pavlow places the Purbeck 
beds in the Jurassic formations and regards 
them as the equivalent of the Tithonian of south- 
eastern France. 

Now comes the paper of Prof. O. C. Marsh, 
first read in 1895 at the British Association at 
Ipswich, and afterward at the National Academy 
of Science, New York, meeting November, 
1896, in which he says that on the vertebrate 
fauna the Wealden is Jurassic and not Cre- 
taceous. 

Many years ago Louis Agassiz had referred 
some fossil fishes from the Purbeck of England 
to species of the upper Jura of Switzerland and 
France. Lately Mr. Smith Woodward, accord- 
ng to Prof. Marsh, has found that the fossil 


SCIENCE. [N. S. 


Vou. VY. No. 108. 


fishes of the Wealden are of Jurassic types; 
and finally the paleobotanist, Mr. A. C. 
Seward, after a review of the Wealden plants, 
says that the evidence is in favor of ‘ the inclu- 
sion of the Wealden rocks in the Jurassic 
series.’ Accordingly, the opinion of Prof. John 
Phillips, expressed as far back as 1855, is now 
indorsed by the reptilian fauna, by the fishes 
and by the fossil plants. Such a concourse of — 
paleontological proofs must correspond with 
some geographic and stratigraphic facts in the 
districts of eastern England extending from the 
island of Portland to Speeton and Filey Bay, in 
Yorkshire. 

During a prolonged visit at Weymouth, in 
1870, I was surprised at the small thickness of 
the Portland stone (only 8 feet) in the cele- 
brated Portland quarries, and at the great de- 
velopment of the Purbeck beds covering the 
whole Island. As far back as 1858 (Sur le 
Néocomien dans le Jura, etc., Genéve) I called 
attention to the correlation of the Purbeck 
beds with what was called in France ‘ Calcaires 
Portlandiens,’ or ‘Caleaires de Salins’ of 
Franche-Comté. Since those Portlandian lime- 
stones of the Jura have been studied with more 
detail and exactness in regard to their thick- 
ness and the fossils found in them, it is now 
certain that they constitute a group of strata 
all younger than the Portland stone of the isle 
of Portland. The latter are correlated and 
identical in every way with the ‘Marnes Port- 
landiennes’ or ‘ Marnes de Salins,’ containing 
exactly the same fauna with its most character- 
istic fossil, the Exogyra virgula; and we have 
now an indisputable horizon, common to south- 
eastern England and France, the Portland stone 
and the ‘Marnes Portlandiennes,’ or ‘Marnes 
de Salins,’ or zone of the Exogyra virgula. 

In England before reaching the Speeton clay, 
undoubtedly Neocomian or Lower Cretaceous, 
we have above the Portland stone, the three: 
groups of the Purbeck beds, the Hastings sand 
and the Weald clay. In the Jura Mountains, 
above the ‘Marnes de Salins’ with EHxogyra 
virgula, we have the ‘Calcaires de Salins,’ or 
Portlandian limestones, composed of two 
groups; the inferior called: ‘ Portlandien in- 
férieur,’ containing a rich fauna, such as > 
Nerinea Salinensis, Nerinea grandis, Natica Mar- 


JANUARY 22, 1897. ] 


cousana, Natica Athleta, Trigonia Barrensis, Tri- 
gonia Boloniensis, Mytilus portlandicus, Mytilus 
Tombecki; and finally the Hemicidaris Purbeck- 
ensis of Forbes. ‘The second group at the very 
top of the Jurassic formation, called in Franche- 
Comté ‘Dolomies portlandiennes’ of Marcou 
(Etudes géologiques sur la Franche-Comté septen- 
trional, Le systéme oolitique, par Albert Girardot, 
p. 369, Paris, 1896), contains also a special 
fauna, indicating at some places a brackish for- 
mation, such as: Corbula, Anisocardia, Cyrena, 
Protocardia, Lucina, Corbicella and Gervilliana. 
However, at Gray (Haute Sadne) the fauna is 
entirely marine, and Prof. Etallon, who has 
given a detailed description of that portion of 
Franche-Comté, has called it ‘Diceras Port- 
landian beds.’ In both divisions, or groups, 
corals are common round Gray, Morteau, Pon- 
tarlier and Salins. The thickness of the two 
groups varies between 150 and 600 feet, accord- 
ing to the more or less denudation of the upper 
portion of the strata. 

Prof. Albert Oppel, of Munich, had created, 
in 1865, his Tithonic, or Tithonian formation 
(Die Tithonische Etage, Zeitschr. deutschen geo- 
logischen Gessellschaft, Jahrg, 1865, pp. 535- 
558, Berlin) to designate a special form of the 
divisions of the upper Jura, such as the Pur- 
beck strata, the Solenhofer Schiefer and the 
Portland kalk, of the Alpine area and of the 
Mediterranean basin; it was a happy name, 
meaning that the groups of beds containing 
paleontological precursor forms of the Creta- 
ceous fauna can be considered as a forerunner 
formation, announcing the arrival of another 
great system. Many papers have been pub- 
lished since the premature death of Oppel, in 
November, 1865, on that important question, 
the most remarkable being by Colonel A. Tou- 
cas, entitled ‘Htude de la fawne des couches titho- 
niques de l’ Ardéche’ (Bull. Soc. Géol. France, 3d 
series, Vol. XVIII., pp. 560-629, Paris, 1890), 
in which he showed the existence of three dif- 
ferent faunas, called Lower Tithonic or Diphy- 
akalk, Middle Tithonic or Ardescian, and 
Upper Tithonic or Berriasian-Puberkian. 

In England nothing can be correlated 
with those six hundred feet of limestone de- 
posited in the Jurassic sea of southeastern 
France, of the Swiss Alps, of the Tyrol, of 


SCIENCE. 


151 


Stramberg (Carpathes), of Andalusia (Spain), 
but the brackish and fresh-water deposits of the 
Wealden formation. At Speeton there is noth- 
ing like it. The Portland stone is lacking 
there, very likely destroyed by denudation, 
and the series of Speeton clay is decidedly Neo- 
comian, as it has been amply proved by Messrs. 
Judd, Lamplugh and Paylow. If we consult 
the geological map of England, we see that 
directly over the small Portland beds, only eight 
or ten feet thick, we have brackish and fresh- 
water deposits, at first containing a few marine 
beds with the Hemicidaris Purbeckensis of 
Forbes, then becoming exclusively fluviatile, ex- 
tending southward of Dorsetshire and the Isle 
of Wight, turning northward in the English 
Channel, reaching again the terra firma at Hast- 
ings and its environs, covering in the form of a 
cut ellipse all the country of the Weald, be- 
tween the North Downs and South Downs 
(Kent and Sussex counties). We have there a 
sort of gigantic fossil mound, the remnant of a 
great delta or estuary deposit, like those actually 
going on at the mouth of the Ganges or of the 
Amazon. Farther west than the Weald region 
that formation lies directly over the Portland 
stone in the vale of Wardour, and very likely 
it extended northward. At the end of the Jura 
epoch the dislocation which has emerged the 
Jura formation in England and on the conti- 
nent of EKurope put a stop to those fresh-water 
deposits, and, being emerged as dry land, denu- 
dation began to remove easily such loose mate- 
rials as clay and sands, leaving only the large 
semi-elliptical patches of southeastern England. 
The denudation lasted as long as the Neo- 
comian or Lower Cretaceous deposits were going 
on at Speeton and in France and Switzerland ; 
then by a general subsidence, affecting the whole 
coast of eastern England, the sea of the York- 
shire coast invaded the whole country south, 
depositing on the beds of the Wealden forma- 
tion, and in some parts over the beds of the 
Portland stone and Kimmeridge clay, the strata 
called Lower Green Sand, Gault, Upper Green 
Sand and Chalk. The proof that the green 
sand sea came after the denudation, and even 
complete removal in some places of the Weal- 
den, is shown by the existence of Lower Green 
Sand west of Hastings, lying directly on the 


152 


Hastings sand, when generally it lay always on 
the Weald clay. 

The change effected on land and sea areas at 
the end of the Jura period was on a very grand 
scale in Europe as well as in America; and the 
Neocomian or Lower Cretaceous was not de- 
posited in many portions of central Europe, 
especially in England, except at the little corner 
of Speeton, on the Yorkshire coast; and in the 
United States the Neocomian, even more limited 
than in Europe, was confined to Texas, the 
Indian Territory and southern Kansas. 

One word of explanation on the use in France 
and Switzerland of the name ‘ Puberckian,’ to 
designate the upper Tithonic or Berriasian. 
From the beginning, in 1848 and 1859, I showed 
that the name was wrongly applied to strata 
much younger than the Purbeck beds of Eng- 
land. The position of the Hemicidaris Purbeck- 
ensis, found in the first beds of the Salins lime- 
stone, authorize the correlation of the Puberck- 
ian of England with the base of the calcaires 
porlandiens or Lower Tithonic of the Jura. 
And the Purbeckian of the Jura Mountains, 
so well described by Gustave Maillard in his 
well known monograph (Mém. Soc. Paléont. 
Suisse, Vol. XI., Genéve, 1884), correspond 
and is the equivalent of the lower portion 
of the Spilsby sandstone of Lamplugh and Pay- 
low; it is to say, it represents in the Jura the 
base of the Speeton clay of England, instead of 
being correlated to the Purbeck beds of the 
Island of Portland. 


CORRELATION OF THE ENGLISH AND EAST 
FRENCH FORMATIONS. 


England. Eastern France. 

_ | Tealby limestone. Urgonian or d 
8 | Tealby clay. Upper Neocomian. = 
3 Claxby ironstone ESRI Oe +8 
& ; : Middle Neocomian. 8 

eaieDy sandstone.) generat a 


Jura—Portlandian limestone. 
Ardéche—Upper, Middle and 
Lower Tithonic. 


Weald clay. 
Hastings sands. 
Purbeck beds. 


Portlandian marls or 
HExogyra virgula zone. 


Portland stone or 
HBxogyra virgula zone. 
The correlation of the Wealden of England 
with the Tithonic of Franche-Comté, Switzer- 
land, Savoy, Dauphiné, ete., is a beautiful 
work awaiting the careful researches of English 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. Vou. V. No. 108. 


geologists, and it is to be hoped that Mr. George 
William Lamplugh, now on the staff of the Geo- 
logical Survey, who has done such good service 
at the geology of Speeton, will continue the 
work so well begun forty-eight years ago by 
Edward Forbes, so well traced in 1855 by John 
Phillips, and now so well advocated by Prof. 


O. C. Marsh. 
JULES MARCcOU. 


CAMBRIDGE, January 1, 1897. 


COMPLIMENT OR PLAGIARISM. 


THE carefully prepared reply of Professors 
Beman and Smith (ScIENCE, p. 61) is disingen- 
uous. Professor Halsted would gladly have 
printed in parallel columns the whole of his sec- 
tion, Partition of a Perigon (Elements,151), which 
reappears in Beman and Smith, p. 179, as ‘ Par- 
tition of the Perigon.’ As I made this section 
myself, I feel safe in asserting that it never be- 
fore occurred in any geometry in the English 
language ; but how could I ask the editor of 
SCIENCE to reprint it simply because Professors 
Beman and Smith had reprinted it? They de- 
liberately say, ‘‘ the order of the problems : To 
bisect a perigon, to trisect a perigon, to cut a 
perigon into five equal parts, to cut a perigon 
into fifteen equal parts,’’ etc., ‘‘may be found 
in Newcomb’s Geometry.’’ (SCIENCE, p. 61.) 

With Newcomb’s book now in my hand, I 
assert that not one of these problems occurs 
therein. Next they assert that the word ‘ peri- 
gon’ is ‘found in several geometries.’ If, in 
English, they mean Halsted’s Metrical Geom- 
etry, 1881; Halsted’s Elements, 1885; Hal- 
sted’s Elementary Synthetic, 1892; Beman and 
Smith, 1895. The statement is disingenuous. 
If they knew of any other they would have 


named it. 
GEORGE BRUCE HALSTED. 


THE METEOROLOGICAL CONFERENCE AT PARIS, 
A CORRECTION, 

ON page 17 the last sentence of the first para- 
graph of my report should read as follows: 
“No one came from either Spain or Brazil, as 
was not the case at Munich, but Italy, Belgium, 
Canada and Mexico each sent a delegate to 
Paris, the two latter countries participating 
for the first time in an international meeting.”’ 


JANUARY 22, 1897.] 


I desired to state briefly the principal countries 
which were represented at Munich and not at 
Paris, and vice versd, but I might add that, al- 
though representatives from both Austria and 
Russia came to Paris, yet there was much re- 
gret at the absence of Prof. Hann, the eminent 
director of the Austrian Meteorological Bureau, 
and of Prof. Wild, late director of the Physical 
Central Observatory at St. Petersburg, both of 
whom had taken an active part in these inter- 
national meetings since the first conference at 


Leipzig in 1872. 
A. LAWRENCE RotcH. 


BLUE HinL METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATORY, Jan- 
uary 6, 1897. 


THE STUDY OF FEAR. 


EDITOR OF SCIENCE: One sentence in your 
account of Prof. Stanley Hall’s study of fear 
has especially attracted my attention: ‘‘The 
fear of high places, President Hall thinks, is a 
vestigial trace, like the gill slits under the skin 
of our necks, antedating limbs and inherited 
from our swimming ancestors.’’? A study of 
fear by the comparative and genetic method 
seems called for if results are to rest on a sure 
and broad foundation. In my own investiga- 
tions on the psychic development of animals 
the subject has not been overlooked. I have 
called attention to a peculiar manifestation 
when even the youngest mammals and birds are 
placed near the edge of a surface that is ele- 
vated ; but I have also pointed out that a turtle 
will walk off any such elevated support again 
and again, and, as is well known, a frog will 
jump almost anywhere, so that, if I understand 
Dr. Hall aright in the above sentence, these 
facts seem to present a difficulty in the accept- 
ance of this part of his theory. 

WESLEY MILLs. 

McGILL UNIVERSITY, MONTREAL. 


GLOSSOPHAGA TRUEI. 


To THE EprIToR OF SCIENCE: In the Proce. U. 
S. National Museum, Vol. XVII., No. 1100, Ide- 
scribed a new species of bat under the name Glos- 
sophaga villosa. But a Glossophaga villosa was 
described by Rengger (Naturgesch. der Saugeth. 
yon Paraguay 1830, 80). I, therefore, rename 
the new species. I propose the following: 
Glossophaga truei, after Mr. Frederick W. True, 


SCIENCE. 


153 


the accomplished curator of Mammals at the 

Museum. HARRISON ALLEN. 
PHILADELPHIA, PA., January 13, 1897. 

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 

Etude de Huit Essais de Machine Vapeur. Par 
V. DWELSHAUVERS-DERY. Extrait de la 
Revue Universelle des Mines, t. xxxvi., 1896. 
Mon. Dwelshauvers-Dery has published re- 

cently a report on the work of his laboratory, 
on his experimental engine, relative to the effi- 
ciency of the machine under various conditions, 
mainly affecting the quality of steam supplied.* 
He supplements that report, in the article here 
referred to, by a more complete study of these 
effects, and with extended illustration of his 
methods of conducting the work and of giving 
instruction in this department. He describes 
the conduct and computation of eight engine- 
trials, four with saturated and four with super- 
heated steam. His conclusions from the pre- 
liminary study have already been given.+ 

Dwelshauvers is a consistent follower of 
Hirn, whose ‘practical’ or applied theory of 
the steam-engine he has developed, giving it 
algebraic expression and establishing seven 
principal equations by means of which he is en- | 
abled to compute essential data from the re- 
sults of observation during an engine-trial. 
These expressions and their derivation are 
given in the report here under review. His 
graphical illustrations of the method of distribu- 
tion and of variation of thermal and of dynamic 
energies in the cycle studied, and their inter- 
conversion, afford a means of bringing clearly 
before the investigator and the student the es- 
sential facts of engine-operation, in each case, 
and throw into high relief the most important 
phenomena. 

They show clearly how great is the quantity 
of heat-energy exchanged between steam and 
cylinder-wall, and bring out plainly the fact 
that this waste is enormously less with super- 
heated than with saturated steam. They show 
that the use of the steam-jacket is ‘but a pal- 
liative, not a radical and complete remedy ’ for 
this waste. The steam-jacket, while almost 
invariably reducing wastes, nevertheless itself 

* Revue Universelle des Mines, t. xxxiv., 1896. 

{Scrmnon, N. S., Vol. IV., No. 89, p. 654. 


154 


wastes a large part of the heat which it trans- 
mits to the working charge; transmitting. it 
through the cylinder-wall too late in the stroke 
to be of much service, or even so late as to be 
absolutely lost by passage into the cylinder 
during the period of exhaust, instead of, as 
necessary for best results, early in the induction 
period. Both in using the steam-jacket and in 
superheating, the reduction of the waste by 
initial condensation fails to give commensurate 
gain in work performed by the unit weight of 
steam. In one instance, for example, a reduc- 
tion of initial condensation by ten per cent. 
only gave increase of work to the extent of two 
and a-half per cent. In another instance a 
reduction of wastes by twelve per cent. gave a 
gain of work of only three per cent. The action 
of superheated steam is more favorable, and 
the gain in work done and increased efficiency 
amounts to more nearly one-half the percentage 
of reduction of wastes by initial condensation. 

The steam was condensed in a surface-con- 
denser. The mean quantity of steam condensed 
per hour and per square meter was 18 kgs. 
The mean quantity of heat abstracted per kg. 
of steam was 567.7 calories. The mean quantity 
of heat traversing the condensing surfaces was 
7,402 calories per hour and per square meter. 
The cylinder-heads transmitted nearly twice 
this quantity from their jackets into the cylin- 
der, and the cylindrical jacket of the cylinder 
proper about one-fifth as much as the trans- 
mission into the condenser. 

“Cylinder condensation,’ during the brief 
period of its action on this engine, occurred at 
the enormous rate of 494,600 calories per hour 
hour and per square meter—seventy times as 
rapidly as in the surface condenser—and illus- 
trates the most rapid transfer of heat known to 
the engineer or the man of science. Mon. 
Dwelshauvers is probably the first to measure 
this figure with any degree of accuracy, though 
Cotteril, long ago, gave us the general facts 
and approximate computations. 

A very important and, to the experimenter, 
an unexpected, development was, as stated by 
him, the following: ‘‘ With steam superheated 
to 166° C. at its entrance into the engine, and 
with saturated steam at 155° C. stagnant in the 
jackets, the use of the jacket gave an economy 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Voz. V. No. 108. 


of 20 per cent. and over by reducing the initial 
condensation.’’* 

The fact is now incontestable and it is easily 
seen that, so long as the action of the su- 
perheated steam is not such as to completely 
extinguish initial condensation by bringing the 
temperature of the cylinder wall fully up to 
that of the saturated boiler steam, the jacket may 
still find opportunity to reinforce the action of 
the superheated steam by doing some work in 
the interval between the instant of closing of 
the induction valve and that of its reopening in 
the succeeding cycle. 

These contributions to our knowledge of the 
interior workings of heat and steam in the en- 
gine will undoubtedly be received as among 
the most important yet placed on record in the 
history of the experimental investigation of 
the steam-engine, and M. Dwelshauvers-Dery, 
through these researches, as an earnest and 
worthy disciple and successor to Hirn, will earn 
an enviable distinction. R. H. THURSTON. 

CORNELL UNIVERSITY. 


Prehistoric Man and Beast. By Rev. H. N. 
Hurcuinson, B. A., etc. Illustrated. D, 
Appleton & Co. 1897. pp. 298. 

Mr. Hutchinson, already known to the read- 
ers of general literature by his works, ‘ Ex- 
tinct Monsters,’ etc., has endeavored, in the 
present volume, to present, in equally popular 
style, some of the latest results of geology and 
archaeology with regard to primitive man. 

He distinctly disclaims writing for special 
students in either of these branches, and also 
offers himself solely as an interpreter of the 
opinions of others, and ‘not as a Brahmin.’ 
Nevertheless, he espouses very warmly, and 
claims as quite decided, various opinions which 
the ‘specialist,’ if he is fair-minded, considers 
still undetermined. For example, he heads one 
chapter ‘The Myth of the Great Ice Sheet,’ and 
assumes as incontrovertible Sir Henry Ho- 
worth’s contention that the ice sheet of glacial 

*This fact was asserted by the writer some years 
ago and was challenged by various authorities, 
including M. Dwelshauvers, who has since given us 
these facts and has frankly reversed his position. 
Vide Manual of the Steam Engine (R. HW. T.), Vol. I.; 
Sees. 145, 153, pp. 598, 697; and Trans. A. S. M. E., 
Nov., 1889 ; Journal Franklin Inst., Dec., 1889. 


JANUARY 22, 1897. ] 


times did not exist; which is very far from se- 
curing unanimous consent among geologists. 

In the same manner Mr. Hutchinson knows 
a great deal more about the antiquity of man 
than most geologists. He knows that the 
human species is at the most not more than 
25,000 years old. Surely he has with him in 
that calculation the decided minority of scien- 
tific students. To most, such a period seems 
quite inadequate to account for known facts in 
human history, apart from geologic questions. 

His book has ten quite pretty full-page fanci- 
ful illustrations, designed by Cecil Alden, of the 
Illustrated London News. They represent a 
courtship of a warrior of the bronze age, the 
building of Stonehenge by the dwarfs, etc. The 
dozen chapters into which his subject is divided 
take up the cave-dwellers and reindeer hunters 
of the stone age, the ‘myth’ of the great ice 
sheet, changes of climate, the antiquity of man, 
the men of the bronze age, the dwarfs and the 
stone monuments, as dolmens, ete. 

In the line of popularizing science these chap- 
ters are moderately meritorious. The leading 
English works have been consulted, and es- 
pecial respect is paid to such as do not oppose 
received and conventional opinions, or do so 
the least. Their writers are preferred by the 
author as the correct exponents of modern re- 
search. He makes considerable business out 
the seeming contradictions of testimony and 
the disagreements of specialists, when the facts 
do not suit him (e. g., the Spy Man and the 
Pithecanthropus). His reports, therefore, while 
apparently judicial in tone, are not really so in 
spirit. They are probably tinged by his avoca- 
tion, as is almost inevitably the case. 

D. G. BRINTON. 

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


Chemistry for Beginners. By EDWARD Hart, 
Ph.D. Third Edition. Revised and greatly 
enlarged. With 62 Illustrations and 2 plates. 
Easton, Pa., Chemical Publishing Company. 
1896. Small square 8yo. 245pages. Price, 
$1.50. 

In text-books of elementary chemistry we 
have one of the most prolific fields of scientific 
literature, and, so far from deprecating this fact, 
each new book is to be welcomed as a contribu- 


SCIENCE. 


155 


tion{toward the solution of the difficult prob- 
lem how best to teach chemistry to beginners. 
This problem is as yet far from solution ; still, 
comparing the text-books of to-day with those 
of twenty, or even ten years back, it is appar- 
ent that a distinct advance has been made. 
This at least may be considered settled, that a 
prominent place must be given to experimenta- 
tion on the part of the student. What shall 
be the relative order of theory and description 
and the order of the elements in descriptive 
chemistry is as far as ever from a final word, 
nor will the latter point, in the opinion of the 
writer, be settled until a natural order depend- 
ent on the periodic system is reached. As 
regards the former point, it must be kept in 
mind that there are two classes of beginners— 
those studying in secondary schools and those 
of maturer minds in colleges; a method of 
treatment suitable for one would quite possibly 
not be best suited for the other. 

The book before us is from the pen of an ex- 
perienced teacher, and of this it gives abundant 
internal evidence, and while written for begin- 
ners in colleges is equally well suited for use 
in high schools and academies. Ostensibly a 
third edition, it is so completely revised and so 
much enlarged that it is virtually a new book. 
The order of treatment is as follows: Introduc- 
tion on ‘rusting’ of metals, oxygen, hydrogen, 
water (with potability, purification, etc.), con- 
stitution of matter, atmosphere, compounds of 
nitrogen, carbon and its compounds, halogens, 
sulfur, silicon, boron, phosphorus, arsenic, the 
metals, the carbon compounds (sixty-six pages 
on organic chemistry). 

The theoretical portion of the subject is taken 
up from time to time, under appropriate com- 
pounds or elements. While the elements are 
considered, for the most part in the usual groups, 
little or no regard is paid to the periodic law in 
theirarrangement. Equations for reactions are 
very sparingly used, and the word valence 
seems not to occur at all, although graphic 
formule are used, especially in the portion on 
organic chemistry. 

The strong feature of the book is in experi- 
mentation. Over two hundred experiments are 
described, and it would be difficult to find a book 
containing as many pertinent, well selected, 


156 


clearly described experiments, so well fitted to 
elucidate the text. Even experienced teachers 
can gain many useful points from this book, 
The introduction of quantitative experiments 
near the beginning is a great advantage, and 
one could wish that Prof. Hart had increased 
their number, were it not for the great practical 
difficulty of supervising a large class of novices 
in quantitative manipulation. 

To another feature of the book attention is 
called in the opening paragraph of the preface: 
“Tn compiling the following pages I have tried 
to bear constantly in mind the fact that a large 
majority of those studying chemistry are not 
likely to become professional chemists, and 
have therefore taken pains to enlarge upon 
those topics which all educated persons should 
understand, such as water purification, fertili- 
zers, the concentration of ores, the roasting of 
ores, assaying, the iron blast furnace, steel 
manufacture, etc.’? In these descriptions as 
well as in most other cases the book is up to 
date, and is remarkably free from portrayals of 
antiquated processes handed down from author 
to author, and so often found in modern text- 
books. 

The book offers occasional opportunity for 
criticism. NO is so universally called nitric 
oxid or nitrogen monoxid that it is confusing to 
name it nitrogen dioxid; one can hardly say 
that ‘chloric acid is contained in chlorates;’ but 
points of this kind are few. 

The book is attractively gotten up and the 
proof has been very carefully read. It should 
find entrance into many laboratories outside of 
that of its author. 

JAs. Lewis Howe. 

WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY. 


Die Chemie im taglichen Leben. Gemeinverstind- 
lichen Vortraige von Dr. LAssar-Coun, Uni- 
versitats professor zu KOnigsberg in Preussen. 
Verlag von Leopold Voss, Hamburg und Leip- 
zig. 1896. 

This book consists of twelve popular lectures 
on chemistry delivered by the author before the 
‘Verein fiir fortbildende Vortrige’ in Kénigs- 
berg. The lectures cover a wide range of 
topics of interest to a popular audience and are 
presented in a very clear and forcible manner. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 108. 


Among the many subjects considered may be 
mentioned breathing, the weight and analysis 
of the air, the barometer, argon and ozone, 
combustion, matches, yellow and red phos- 
phorus, the nature of flame, candles, oils and 
petroleum, the elements, chemical formulas, 
atoms and molecules, distillation, petroleum 
ether, paraffin and vaseline, the manufacture 
of illuminating gas and its by-products, the in- 
candescent gas-burner and cooking with gas; 
artificial fertilizers, bones, superphosphates, 
potassium salts, acids, bases and salts, food- 
stuffs, digestion and fermentation, albumen, 
fats and carbohydrates, alcoholic beverages, 
vinegar, milk, cheese and butter, gunpowder, 
gun cotton, dynamite, collodion, wool, cotton 
and silk; leather and tanning, bleaching and 
dyeing, ink and paper; the manufacture of 
soda, potash, sulphuric acid, bleaching powder, 
soap, caustic soda and potash, glass and porce- 
lain; photography in its various forms includ- 
ing color-photography, the metallurgy of some 
of the most important metals, alloys, alkaloids, 
chloral, ether, chloroform, antiseptics, iodo- 
form, carbolic acid, salicylic acid, etc. 

The book is illustrated with some fourteen 
wood-cuts, which add much to the interest in 
the reading matter and serve to explain much 
that otherwise might not be so clear to the 
reader. 

The most recent views on the subjects con- 
sidered are given, and the book is up to date in 
every particular, and yet the language is so 
simple and the explanations so clear that any 
person of average intelligence can readily un- 
derstand them. 

The book is extremely interesting and in- 
structive and will fully repay careful reading. 
Even the experienced chemist will find here 
much information not found in the ordinary 
text-books. 

The publication of such a series of popular 
lectures, which all can understand, must have 
a very beneficial influence on the study of 
chemistry and will show the uninitiated, as 
nothing else can, what the chemist has done 
and is doing. An English translation of the 
book by M. M. Pattison-Muir, published by J. 
B. Lippincott & Co., has recently appeared. © 

W. R. O. 


JANUARY 22, 1897. ] 


SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS. 

AMERICAN CHEMICAL JOURNAL, JANUARY. 

On Parabromdimetanitrotoluol and some of its 
derivatives: By C. L. JAcKson and M. H. Itr- 
NER. This work was undertaken to study the 
behavior of a bromine atom, in the ortho posi- 
tion to two nitro groups, but not exposed to a 
third negative group in the para position. The 
substances studied were the benzene and tol- 
uene bromdinitro compounds. The toluene com- 
pound was found to be poorly suited for the re- 
search on account of its stability. Several of 
its derivatives were made and studied ; but in 
some cases the methyl group seemed to exert a 
protective action, préventing the formation of 
compounds whose analogues in the benzene 
series were easily formed. The bromdinitro- 
benzoic acid was found to be more reactive than 
the toluic acid. A number of related acids and 
their salts were made, and attempts were made 
to greatly increase the complexity of the mole- 
‘cules; but it was found that the substances lost 
their tendency to crystallize as the complexity 
increased, and pure substances could not be ob- 
tained. 3 

Aluminum Ethylate: By N. H. HILLYER and 
‘O. E. Crooxer. In preparing amalgamated 
aluminum for reduction in neutral solution 
the authors found that contact with the air 
was injurious, and they therefore attempted to 
prepare it in alcohol without allowing it to 
come in contact with the air. To their surprise, 
and contrary to the statements of others who 
had worked on these substances, quite a reac- 
tion took place between the amalgamated 
aluminum and absolute alcohol, the final prod- 
uct being a white solid. This product was 
distilled, and a mixture of aluminum ethylate 
and aluminum chloride was obtained. 

On the conditions affecting the Volumetric De- 
termination of Starch by means of a solution of 
Jodine: By F.T. Lirrteton. The author has 
studied the accuracy of volumetric determina- 
tions depending upon the starch iodide reaction. 
She found that not only was the reaction af- 
fected by the temperature, but that starch from 
different sources gave different results. She 
reached the same conclusion that has been 
reached by others, namely, that the so-called 
dodide of starch is probably not a definite chem- 


SCIENCE. 


157 


ical compound and that it is very easily dis- 
sociated. 

Silver Hydride: By E. J. BARTLETT and W. 
F. Rick. The authors succeeded in preparing 
silver hydride by precipitating a dilute solution 
of silver nitrate with dilute hypophosphorus 
acid. The product is filtered off rapidly and 
washed. It forms black spongy flakes and is 
not decomposed by water. 

On the Volatility of Ferric Chloride: By H. P. 
TALBOT. Conflicting reports are found as to 
the volatility of ferric chloride, and the author 
undertook this investigation to determine the 
accuracy of these statements. He found that 
ferric chloride is not volatilized by boiling its 
solutions, and that no loss ensues on heating 
the dried residue to 130°. In the presence of 
aqua regia or when overheated with ammonium 
chloride there is, however, a slight loss. 

Concerning properties belonging to the Alcohol- 
soluble Proteid of Wheat and of certain other 
Cereal Grains: By G. lu. TELLER. The author 
found that the method of separation of the 
gluten and non-gluten compounds in wheat, by 
means of dilute salt solutions, was inaccurate, 
on account of the fact that the same nitrogen 
compounds were soluble both in the dilute salt 
solutions and in 75 per cent. alcohol. He 
separated the part precipitated by the salt solu- 
tion, and then added a solution of phosphotungs- 
tic acid to the filtrate. By this process he 
separated the amides from the proteids soluble 
in salt solution. The part precipitated by the 
salt solution consisted of edestin and leucosin, 
and the sum of the nitrogen in these substances 
and that in the amides subtracted from the 
total nitrogen gives that in the alcohol-soluble 
proteid, which is gliadin. 

Silicide of Chromium: By G. DE CHALMOT. 
This investigation shows that not only does 
chromium form a silicide of the formula SiCr., 
the compound obtained by Moissan ; but also a 
compound Si,Cr, formed by heating chromium 
sesquioxide, charcoal and silica in an electric 
are furnace. 

Paraisobutylphenoxyacetic Acid: By W. P. 
BRADLEY and F. KNiIrren. This acid was pre- 
pared by the same methods used in the forma- 
tion of its homologue phenoxyacetic acid. A 
number of its salts were prepared and studied. 


7% Py 
: ‘ ®» | 
an 


158 it 

On a simpl&automatic Sprengel Pump: By B. 
B. Bottwogp. The author describes a form of 
pump can be easily made and which he 
recom S as very satisfactory. 

The following books are reviewed in this 
number of the Journal: The Practical Methods 
of Organic Chemistry, L. Gattemann (trans- 
lated by W. B. Shober); Notes on Qualitative 
Analysis, W. P. Mason; Chemistry for Begin- 
ners, E. Hart; Manual of Determinative Min- 
eralogy, Geo. J. Brush; Chemistry in Daily 
Life, Dr. Lassar-Cohn ; Handbook for the Bio- 
Chemical Laboratory, J. A. Mandel. 

J. ELLIOTT GILPIN. 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 


NEBRASKA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, DECEMBER 
30, 1896. 

THE seventh annual meeting of the Nebraska 
Academy of Sciences was held December 29th 
at Lincoln and the following papers were pre- 
sented: 

Annual address of the retiring President, 
Prof. E. H. Barbour, on the ‘Economie and 
Educational Value of Academies;’ a comparison 
of the methods of various academies, with rec- 
ommendations for the betterment of our own. 

‘A new Plankton Pump,’ Prof. H. B. Ward 
and Prof. Chas. Fordyce, a device for collect- 
ing aquatic organisms by pumping from any 
desired depth; followed by remarks by Prof. 
Ward on the importance of continued biological 
observations. 

‘Report of Progress in the Study of the 
Fauna of the State,’ Prof. L. Bruner, showing 
how few species have been reported from Ne- 
braska in most groups, although our number of 
species is undoubtedly very large. 

‘Some Methods of Collecting, Preserving and 
Studying Fossils,’ Miss Carrie Barbour, illustra- 
ting the fact that forms apparently hopelessly 
disintegrated may be collected and preserved. 

‘Nomenclature of Nebraska Forest Trees,’ 
Dr. Chas. E. Bessey, giving the history of 
changes in names of our trees with the names 
now adopted. 

‘Reflections on the Genus Ribes,’ Prof. F. W. 
Card, urging the validity of species developed 
by cultivation as well as those found wild 
whose genealogy is not known. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 108. 


“Chalcedony-lime Nuts of the Genus Hickora 
from the Bad Lands of Nebraska,’ Prof. H. H. 
Barbour. 

‘Comparison of Nebraska Diatomaceous. 
Earth from Nebraska and adjacent States,’ 
C. J. Elmore. : 

‘What is Mathematics?’ Dr. E. W. Dayis, 
showing how mathematics is designed to co- 
ordinate other sciences. 

‘A Family of Quartic Surfaces,’ the sum of 
the distances of whose locus from two given 
surfaces is constant, Prof. R. Moritz. 

‘A Form of Weir Notch,’ the flow of water 
through which varies directly as the head in- 
stead of following the more complicated law of 
the ordinary notch, Prof. O. VY. P. Stout. 

‘An Observation upon annual Rings in Tree 
Growth,’ Prof. F. W. Card, in which complete: 
defoliation did not cause the formation of a 
second annual ring. F 

‘Internal Temperature of Trees,’ R. A. 
Emerson. Temperatures as high as 110° 
reached at a depth of one-half inch below the 
bark of trunks exposed to the sunshine ; daily 
fluctuations greater in dead limbs than in live 
ones. 

Owing to the late hour the following papers: 
were read by title only: ‘Notice of two Im- 
portant Books on Systematic Botany,’ Chas. E.. 
Bessey ; ‘ The Barites of Eastern Nebraska and 
the Bad Lands,’ Erwin H. Barbour; ‘Some Data 
as to Wind distribution of Seeds,’ Ed. M. Hus- 
song; ‘ Parasites of Nebraska Dogs,’ Henry B- 
Ward; ‘Discovery of the first Meteorite in 
Nebraska,’ Erwin H. Barbour; ‘ Notes on 
Phyllopod Crustacea,’ H. A. Lafler and A. 8S. 
Pearse; ‘The Study of Botany in the School for 
the Blind,’ Dr. C. E. Bessey. 

The following officers for the ensuing year were: 
elected: President, Dr. A. 8. yon Mansfelde ; 
Vice-President, Dr. E. H. Barbour ; Secretary 
and Treasurer, Prof. G. D. Swezey ; Custodian, 
Prof. Lawrence Bruner; Directors, Dr. H. B. 
Ward, Prof. H. B. Duncanson, Mr. C. J. 
Elmore and Dr. H. Hapeman. 

The next annual meeting will be held on the 
day following Thanksgiving. The volume of 
proceedings for 1894-95 is just issued. Price, 
50 cents. G. D. SwEzeEy, 

Secretary. 


4 


JANUARY 22, 1897. ] 
BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 269TH 
MEETING. SATURDAY, JANUARY 3. 


Mr. F. A. Lucas exhibited the skull of a 
Sea Lion, Humetopias, in which one ramus of 
the jaw had been broken when the animal was 
quite young. The fracture had not united and, 
in consequence, only one side of the jaw was 
functional, the result being that this side had 
developed more than the other, making the 
cranium asymmetrical. 

Mr. E. W. Nelson spoke on ‘ New Birds from 
Mexico,’ stating that he had quite recently col- 
lected forty-four new species and subspecies, 
including one new genus, from a comparatively 
limited area in Mexico and western Guatemala. 

Mr. F. A. Lucas read a paper on the ‘ Natural 
Mortality among Fur Seals’ giving the results of 
the observations made during the summer of 
1896, by the Commissioners of the United 
States, Great Britain and Canada. It was 
stated that there was a considerable mortality 
among very young seals, due to their being 
trampled on by the adult seals in the harems. 
This great loss took place only on ground free 
from obstructions, where the quarrelsome bulls 
and startled cows could move readily about. 
Some small number of seals starved from 
natural causes, a few were drowned, and some 
died from accidents and diseases, such as in- 
flammation of the bowels, inflammation of the 
kidneys, ete. The known causes of death 
among the adults were few, principally fighting 
among the bulls and consequent injury to the 
females, but it was evident that for some reason 
the mortality among cows was great. 

F. A. Lucas, 
Secretary. 


THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE OF ST. LOUIS. 


Ar the meeting of the Academy of Science of 
St. Louis of January 4, 1897, Dr. Amand Ra- 
yold gave a microscopic demonstration of Wi- 
dal’s test for typhoid fever, demonstrating that 
after the disease has existed for four days or 
more the blood of typhoid patients, probably 
because of some contained anti-toxine, possesses 
the power of inhibiting the motion of typhoid 
bacilli from a pure culture introduced into it 
within a period of one hour or less, whereas in 
normal blood similar bacilli retain their power 


SCIENCE. 


od 


159 


of locomotion for an indefinite length of time. 
It was stated that typhoid blood possesses this 
property even after having been d for a 
period of four weeks or more, so that a few 
drops obtained from a person suspected of hay- 
ing the disease may be sent to suitable places 
for applying the test, thus rendering compara- 
tively easy the early diagnosis of a disease 
which in its early stages presents many clinical 
difficulties. 

Prof. F. E. Nipher gave preliminary results 
of partially completed experiments, made 
through the courtesy of the Burlington and Il- 
linois Central Railroads, to determine the fric- 
tional effect of trains of cars on the air near 
them. His apparatus consists of a cup collec- 
tor supported on a bar capable of sliding in 
guides on a clamp attached to the window sill 
of the car. The bar is thrust out to varying 
distances up to 30 inches. The mouth of the 
collector is turned in the direction of motion of 
the train. The pressure due to the motion is 
conveyed through a rubber tube attached to the 
rear of the collector and passing lengthwise 
through the bar to a water manometer. The 
manometer has a tube with arise of 4 or 5 in 
100 and is provided with a pivotal mounting 
and a level. 

The pressure near the train is comparatively 
small and increases as the collector is thrust 
further out. It approaches a limit correspond- 
ing to the train velocity at the instant. Prof. 
Nipher finds the relation between the limiting 
pressure and velocity to agree exactly with the 
formula 


ey) 2 
1 oy) 


where v is the train velocity in centimeters per 
second, P is the pressure in dynes to the square 
centimeter, and 4 is the density of air in C.G. 
units at the temperature and pressure of the 
observations. He finds the pressure a maxi- 
mum when the axis of the collector is parallel 
to the direction of motion with the mouth to the 
wind. Turning the collector until its axis 
makes an angle of about 60° with this position, 
the pressure reduces to zero. At greater angles 
the pressure becomes less than atmospheric 
pressure by an amount which reaches a maxi- 
mum at an angle of 90°, and passes through a 


160 


minimum at an angle of 180°, when the collec- 
tor is in a trailing position. The sum of the 
coefficients for the two positions of maximum 
compression and minimum exhaust is almost 
exactly the same as Langley obtained with a 
pressure board when exposed normally to the 
wind. 

The result shows that a large amount of air 
is dragged along with the train, the motion 
being communicated to air many feet away. 
This air is a source of danger to one standing 
too near the train when at full speed. One is 
likely to be toppled over, and the blow of the 
air communicates a motion of rotation which 
may cause one to roll under the train if the 
nature of the ground does not prevent such re- 
sult. It was remarked, however, that where 
trains have a right to run at any speed no pru- 
dent person would stand so near to a train as is 
necessary in order to be in danger from this 
source. 

The following officers were declared elected 
for the year 1897: President, M. L. Gray; 
First Vice-President, E. A. Engler; Second 
Vice-President, Charles R. Sanger; Record- 
ing Secretary, William Trelease ; Correspond- 
ing Secretary, EK. C. Runge; Treasurer, Enno 
Sander; Librarian, G. Hambach; Curators, 
Julius Hurter, J. H. Kinealy, E. Evers; Di- 
rectors, M. H. Post, Joseph Grindon. 

One person was elected to active member- 
ship. 

WILLIAM TRELEASE, 
Recording Secretary. 


NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY SCIENCE CLUB. 


At the December meeting, Dr. Marcy in the 
chair, Prof. Crook presented ‘Some Geological 
Causes of the Scenery of the Yellowstone 
National Park’ asa report upon a trip to that 
region. The nature of the scenery is due: 
1, to the fact that the country is geologically 
young, having begun to take its present form 
at the close of the Cretaceous ; 2, to the fact 
that it is composed of volcanic materials 
which were erupted in this order, viz: Ande- 
site, rhyolite, basalt; 3, to the fact that the 
rhyolite is not yet cooled ; and 4, to the fact 
that the topography of the country causes pre- 
cipitation of meteoric waters unusually great 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vox. V. No. 108. 


for that region and, consequently, low tem- 
perature and powerful erosion. The difference 
in chemical composition of the spring waters is 
accounted for on petrographical grounds. 

Geyser action is satisfactorily explained in 
accordance with Bunsen’s theory. The unique 
coloring in the region is due to biological and 
to mineralogical causes. Twenty hand speci- 
mens and thin sections and fifty lantern slide 
views illustrated points considered. 


EVANSTON, ILL. A. R. Crook, 
Secretary. 


UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN SCIENCE CLUB, 
DECEMBER 16, 1896. 


Pror. C. R. VAN HIss, in his paper, ‘The 
Deformation of Rocks,’ discussed the subject in 
general. It was shown that, in order to ade-- 
quately understand the phenomena of deforma- 
tion, the position of rocks with reference to the 
surface must be considered. Observations in 
the field show that there are three somewhat 
distinct zones—an outer zone of fracture, a 
middle zone of combined fracture and folding, 
and a deeper seated zone of folding. However, 
whether folding or fracturing occurs depends 
largely upon the rapidity of deformation and 
upon the strength of the rock in question, as 
well as the superincumbent load. Therefore 
at the same depth may be found all the phe- 
nomena of the zones of fracture and flowage ; 
but, broadly stated, the outer zone is particu- 
larly characterized by joints, faults and breccia- 
tion; the deep seated zone is particularly char- 
acterized by folding and cleavage; and the 
middle zone shows all of these phenomena with 
various complex relations. 

Mr. L. 8. Cheyney, in his paper, ‘ Résumé of 
Work done on the Flora of Wisconsin,’ dis- 
cussed briefly the history of systematic botan- 
ical investigation upon the vegetation of the 
territory now included in the limits of the State, 
from the journeys of the Jesuit missionaries to 
the present time. 

Mr. C. H. Ford, in his paper, ‘The Modern 
Telephone Transmitter,’ gave an account of 
some original work done to test the compara- 
tive worth of modern transmitters. 

Wm. 8. MARSHALL, 
Secretary. 


‘“ 


SCIENCE 


NEw SERIES. SINGLE Coptres, 15 cts. 
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A GREAT SCIENTIST. 


Life and Letters of William Barton Rogers. 


Edited by his Wife, with the assistance of WILLIAM T. SEDGWICK, Professor in 
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 


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life as student and professor at William and Mary College, his labors as head of the Geo- 
logical Survey of Virginia, his engagement as Professor and Chairman of the Faculty in 
the University of Virginia, and—as the culmination of his great career—his years of fruitful 
service as the first President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

This biography, by Mrs. Rogers, is a judicious and noble tribute to Professor Rogers. 
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in literary and professional life. 


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SCIENCE 


EprrorrAL Committre: §. NeEwcoms, Mathematics; R. S. WooDWARD, Mechanics; E. C. PICKERING, 
Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THURSTON, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry; 
J. LE ContTE, Geology; W. M. Davis, Physiography; O. C. MARsH, Paleontology; W. K. 
Brooks, C. HART MERRIAM, Zoology; S. H. SCUDDER, Entomology; N. L. BRITTON, 
Botany; HENRY F. OSBORN, General Biology; H. P. BowbDitcH, Physiology; 
J. S. Bintines, Hygiene ; J. MCKEEN CATTELL, Psychology ; 
DANIEL G. BRINTON, J. W. POWELL, Anthropology. 


FRIDAY, JANUARY 29, 1897. 


CONTENTS : 


Cycle in the Life of the Individual ( Ontogeny) and in 
the Evolution of its own Group (Phylogeny) : 


ALPHEUS HY ATT ........00.s0cccsssscsecees-sasenssennees 161 
The Blackboard Treatment of Physical Vectors: C. 
TEUAIBTR ososnnonennonenoanacascoaposonosnnccocneosen9c0ND 40009 171 


Zoological Notes :— 
Nansen’s Discovery of the Breeding Grounds of the 
Rosy Gull: T.S. PALMER. Origin of Parasi- 
tism in the Cowbird: O. WIDMANN........-02++00- 175 
Current Notes on Physiography :— 
Branch Streams of the Schuylkill; Hann’s Allge- 
meine Erdkunde ; The Topographical Association ; 
INOS \Wo Wile LDA Rando sconcocm oscoonnsascas50ceDs0 177 
Current Notes on Anthropology :— 
The Game of Mancala; Oriental Items of Ethno- 
logic Interest: D. G. BRINTON............00seese0e0e 178 
Notes on Inorganic Chemistry : 
Astronomical Notes: H. J. ....... 
Scientific Notes and News ...........+++ 00 
University and Educational News..........+++.+++s0++-+0 185 
Discussion and Correspondence :— 
Simplified Spelling: G. K. GILBERT. An Ex- 
planation of the so-called Pseudo-aurora: J. PAUL 
(GC ODIccososscenconososcac sno sccobanp;009¢E0baRaR00N00003 185 
Scientific Literature :— 
Catalogues des bibliographies geologiques: G. K. 
GILBERT. Johonnot’s Principles and Practice of 
Teaching; Jackman’s Nature Study: CHARLES 
WRIGHT Dope. Papers presented to the World’s 
Congress on Ornithology: C. F. BATCHELDER...187 
Scientific Journals :— 
Journal of Geology: H.F.B. Terrestrial Mag- 
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CYCLE IN THE LIFE OF THE INDIVIDUAL 
(ONTOGENY) AND IN THE EVOLUTION 
OF ITS OWN GROUP (PHYLOGENY).* 

THE organic cycle, as generally under- 
stood both by laymen and scientists, and 
as usually described in literature, is, as a 
rule, considered from a physiological rather 
than structural point of view. The devel- 
opment of the young, and the attainment 
of the adult or comparatively permanent, 
stage completes the progressive stages. 
Old age, accompanied by losses of charac- 
teristics and functions and consequent 
weakening of the body, is retrogressive and 
brings on second childhood, thus complet- 
ing the cycle in the ontogeny. 

My purpose to-night is to show that the 
cycle is also represented in the life history 
of the individual by definite structural 
changes, and that these have direct correla- 
tions with the history of the changes in the 
forms of the group while evolving in time.f 

The fundamental discoveries that are 


*This paper was in large part read as a general 
summary of the phenomena of cycles, before the 
American Academy in Boston, but does not assume 
to be an exhaustive or even complete account of the 
literature or theoretical views treated of. 

+ These correlations have been more fully stated in 
a number of publications by the author, especially 
‘Genesis of the Arietide,’ Smithsonian Contribu- 
tion, 673, and Mem. of Mus. of Comp. Zoology, Vol. 
XVI.; ‘Bioplastology and the Related Branches of 
Scientific Research,’ Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist., 
XXVI.; and ‘Phylogeny of an Acquired Character- 
istic,’ Proc. Am. Phil. Soc., XXXII., No. 143. 


162 


more than any other directly useful in the 
study of the phenomena of the cycle, both 
in ontogeny and phylogeny, may be briefly 
noticed as follows: 

The opinion that the higher animals are 
complex, colonial aggregates of cells, which 
in structure are equivalents to the lowest 
and minutest adult forms of the animal 
kingdom, the unicellular bodies of Protozoa, 
has been steadily gaining in probability 
since it was first announced by Oken in 
1805, in ‘Die Zeugung,’ Frankfurt bei 
Wesche, 8vo. This work we have not yet 
seen, but in the first edition of the Natur- 
philosophie, Jena, 1809, II., XII. Buch, 
Zoogenie, he describes protoplasm as 
‘ Punktsubstanz’ and as giving rise to the 
‘Blasenform or Zellform’ in both animals 
and plants. Oken considered the lower 
animals ‘ Polypen, Medusen, Beroen, kurz 
alle Gallertthiere’ to be composed of 
Punktsubstanz.’ The nerves, the cartilage, 
bones of higher animals, were considered as 
modifications of this form of ‘ protoplasm,’ 
but the skin and fleshy parts, including the 
viscera, were described as cellular, ‘dem 
Fleisch liegt die Blaschenform zu Grunde;’ 
again on p. 30, ‘ die Eingeweide welche am 
meisten aus Zellengewebe bestehen.’ Oken 
in XII., VIII. Buch, treats of the subject 
we are more immediately interested in 
and writes as follows: ‘“ Pflanzen and 
Thiere konnen nur Metamorphosen von 
Infusorien sein,’’ ‘‘im kleinsten sind sie nur 
infusoriale Blaschen die durch verschiedene 
Combinationen sich verschieden gestalten 
and zu hoheren Organismen aufwachsen,”’ 
and also adds on p. 29, in anticipation of 
one of the points advanced by the author 
in his ‘ Larval Theory of the Origin of 
Cellular Tissues,’* ‘ auch besteht der Samen 
aller Thiere aus Infusorien.’ 

This author directly compares his cystic 
or intestinal animals, Infusoria, with ova, 


* Proc. of the B. S. N. H., Vol. X XIII., March 5, 
1884. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No. 109. 


and speaks of them as oozoa, and in the 
preface to the English edition of his 
Physiophilosophy, Lond. 1847, Roy. So- 
ciety, he writes that all organic beings 
originate from and consist of vesicles or 
cells. ‘Their production is nothing else 
than a regular agglomeration of Infusoria ; 
not, of course, of species previously elaborated or 
perfect, but of mucous vesicles or points in general 
which first form themselves by their wnion or 
combination into particular species.”? Oken’s 
view was based on the resemblances exist- 
ing between the Protozoa and the cells 
in the tissues of the Metazoa, and it is evi- 
dent he is entitled to be considered the first 
teacher of the unicellular doctrine, an honor 
now universally given to von Siebold. 

However imperfect and imaginative the 
results as compared with the more objective 
statements of later observers, the author 
who wrote such sentences as these had as 
clear ideas as the knowledge of his time per- 
mitted and was the Haeckel of the early 
part of this century, and like him a great 
and successful leader, making many errors 
but also many discoveries and ‘ blazing out’ 
some of the paths that we are still fol- 
lowing. 

Meckel* seems to have been the first au- 
thor who brought together and stated in a 
clear way the scattered observations and 
ideas with regard to the correlations exist- 
ing between the transient stages of devel- 
opment of the individual and the so-called 
permanent modifications represented by 
the similar characters in the adult stages 
of similar forms. 

Meckel says: ‘‘ Es giebt keinen guten Phy- 
siologen, den nicht die Bemerkung frappirt 
hatte, dass die ursprtingliche Form aller 
Organismen eine und dieselbe ist, und dass 

* Meckel. ‘Entw. e. Darstellung der Embryonal- 
zustinde d. héheren Thiere u. d. Perman. d. zu d. 
niedern stattfindenden Parallele.’ Beitr. z. vergeich. 
Anat., II., Leipzig, 1811, pp. 1-148; Meckel speaks 


of his publications as only preparatory to more ex- 
tended researches. : 


JANUARY 29, 1897. ] 


aus dieser einen Form sich alle, die niedrig- 
sten wie die héchsten so entwickelu, dass 
diese die permanenten Formen der ersten 
nur als vortbergehende Perioden durch- 
laufen. Aristoteles, Haller, Harvey, Kiel- 
meyer, Autenrieth und mehrere andere 
haben diese Bemerkung entweder im Vor- 
ubergehen gemacht oder, besonders die 
letzen, hervorgehoben und fur die Physio- 
logie ewig denkwirdige Resultate daraus 
abgeleitet. 

“Von diesen niedrigsten Wirbelthieren 
an bis zu den hochsten Geschlechtern lasst 
sich die Vergleichung zwischen dem Embryo 
der héhern Thiere und den niedern im 
vollkommenen Zustande vollstandiger und 
treffender durchfthren. 

“Tn der That giebt es ja eine Periode wo 
der Embryo des héchsten Thieres, wie 
schon Aristoteles sagt, nur die Gestalt einer 
Made hat, wo er ohne ausere und innere 
Organisation, bloss ein kaum geformtes 
Klimpschen von Polypensubstanz ist. Un- 
geachtet des Hervortretens von Organen 
bleibt es doch noch wegen des ganzlichen 
Mangels eines innern Knochengerustes 
eine Zeitlang Wurm und Mollusk und tritt 
erst spater in die Reihe der Wirbelthiere, 
wenngleich Spuren der Wirbelsaule schon 
in den frihesten Perioden seinen Anspruch 
auf diese Stelle in der Reihe der Thiere 
beglaubigten.”’ 

It is very obvious, from these statements 
of Meckel’s, that the correlations of embry- 
ology and the epembryonic stages of the 
individual with the permanent modifica- 
tions of animals of simpler construction 
was understood, as far as was possible with 
existing knowledge, from the time of Aris- 
totle and that it was, to a greater or less 
extent, a working hypothesis at that time 
and, as declared by him, had been helpful 
in giving a clearer understanding of the 
development of the individual and of the 
relations of the individual to the whole 
animal kingdom. 


SCIENCE. 


163 


The next step was taken by von Baer, in 
dividing the animal kingdom into four 
types and in limiting this general statement 
to animals occurring within each of these 
types. He also considered it highly prob- 
able (not barely possible, as it is quoted by 
some writers) that the earliest stages of the 
embryo resemble in aspect the adult stages 
of the lowest grade of forms in the animal 
kingdom. He had in mind in this state- 
ment the modern view of the affinities of the 
earliest stages of the embryo or its repeti- 
tions of the characteristics of Protozoa,* so 
far as the knowledge of his time permitted. 

Von Baer endeavored to prove that each 
of the four types had similar embryos and 
that the type characters were determinable 
at early stages in the ontogeny. Both von 
Baer and Louis Agassiz were pupils of 
Ignatius Dollinger, an embryologist who 
published nothing. Both of these eminent 
men have recognized him as their master in 
embryology, but have given no definite 
statement of what they were taught by him. 
Louis Agassiz accepted von Baer’s opinions 
and subsequently enlarged them, when he 
published on his fossil fishes by the intro- 
duction of the element of succession in time 
and thus laid the basis for all more recent 
work. 

Agassiz gave the fullest expression of his 
views in ‘ Twelve Lectures on Comparative 
Embryology,’ Lowell Institute, Boston, 1848 
—49, subsequently published in pamphlet 
form. One wonders as he reads how any 
man holding such views could have held 
his mind closed to the conclusion that 
animals were evolved from simpler or more 
primitive forms. The effect of theoretical 
preconceptions in closing the mind to the 
reception of new‘ideas never had a stronger 
illustration. Louis Agassiz, in 1849, had 
all the facts essential for building up a 
hypothesis of evolution that would have 

* Entwickelungsgesch. d. Thiere, Scholion V., p. 
199, p. 120, ete. 


164 


placed him in the history of science on the 
same line with Lamarck and Darwin. 

He states four lectures, p. 26, as follows: 
“The results thus far obtained in the lec- 
tures which I have delivered can be ex- 
pressed as follows: There is a gradation of 
type in the class of Echinoderms, and in- 
deed in every class of the animal kingdom, 
which, in its general outlines, can be satis- 
factorily ascertained by anatomical investi- 
gation ; but it is possible to arrive at a more 
precise illustration of this gradation by em- 
bryological data. The gradation of struc- 
ture in the animal kingdom does not only 
agree with the general outlines of the em- 
bryonic changes. The most special com- 
parison of these metamorphoses with full 
grown animals of the same type leads to 
the fullest agreement between both, and 
hence to the establishment of a more defi- 
nite progressive series than can be ob- 
tained by. the investigation of the internal 
structure. These phases of the individual 
development are the new foundations upon 
which I intend to rebuild the system of 
zoology. These metamorphoses correspond, 
indeed, in a double sense, to the natural 
series established in the animal kingdom: 
first, by the correspondence of the external 
forms, and secondly, by the successive 
changes of structure, so that we are here 
guided by the double evidence upon which 
the progress in zoology has, up to this time, 
generally been based. 

“Their natural series again correspond 
with the order of succession of animals in 
former geological ages, so that it is equally 
as true to say that the oldest animals of any 
class correspond to their lower types in the 
present day as to institute a comparison 
with the embryonic changes, and to say 
that the most ancient animals correspond 
with the earlier stages of growth of the 
types which live in the present period. In 
whatever point of view we consider the 
animal kingdom, we find its natural series 


%. 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 109. 


agree with each other ; its embryonic phases 
of growth correspond to its order of suc- 
cession in time, and its structural grada- 
tion, both to the embryonic development 
and the geological succession, corresponds 
to its structure; and if the investigations 
had been sufficiently matured upon this 
point, I might add that all these series 
agree also in a general way with the geo- 
graphical distribution of animals upon the 
surface of our globe, but this is a point upon 
which I am not yet prepared to give full 
and satisfactory evidence. So much for 
the views referring to embryology in its 
bearing upon zoological classification.” 

And again on p. 27: 

““ However, another step had to be made 
to show a real agreement between the 
earlier types of animals and the gradual 
development of the animal kingdom, which 
has been the last progress in our science of 
fossils: namely, to show that these earlier 
types are embryonic in their character— 
that is to say, that they are not only lower 
in their structure when compared with the ' 
animals now living upon the surface of our 
globe, but that they actually correspond to 
the changes which embryos of the same 
classes undergo during their growth. This 
was first discovered among fishes, which I 
have shown to present, in their earlier 
types, characters which agree in many re- 
spects with the changes which young fishes 
undergo within the egg. Without entering ’ 
into all the details of these researches, I” 
will conclude by saying it can now be 
generally maintained that earlier animals 
correspond not only to lower types of their 
respective classes, but that their chief pe-’ 
culiarities have reference to the modifica- 
tions which are successively introduced 
during the embryonic life of their corre- 
sponding representatives in the present cre- 
ation. To carry out these results in detail 
must now be, for years to come, the task of 
paleontological investigations.” : 


JANUARY 29, 1897.] 


_ Perhaps, in consequence of pressure of 
other work or of his theoretical views, 
Louis Agassiz seemed to have lost sight of 
the great importance of continuing his re- 
searches upon the meaning and correlations 
of the epembryonic stages. These were re- 
ferred to in his publications, but were not 
made as prominent as they deserved after 
the lectures at the Lowell Institute in 1849, 
and in his personal talks with his students 
or in his lectures I cannot remember that 
they were ever treated directly by anything 
more. than incidental references, although 
embryology was very often the principal 
theme. 

Nevertheless, I must have got directly 
from him, subsequently to 1858, the princi- 
ples of this branch of research, and through 
this and the abundant materials furnished 
by the collections he had purchased and 
placed so freely at my disposal, I soon be- 
gan to find that the correlations of the 
epembryonic stages and their use in study- 
ing the natural affinities of animals was 
practically: an infinite field for work and 
discovery. 

Although within a year after the begin- 
ming of my life as a student under Louis 
Agassiz I had become an evolutionist, this 
theoretical change of position altered in no 
essential way the conceptions I had at first 
received from him, nor the use we both 
made of them in classifying and arranging 
forms. This experience demonstrated to 
my mind the absurdity of disputing the 
claims of any author to the discovery of a 
series of facts and their correlations because 
of his misinterpretation of their more re- 
mote relations or general meaning. It is of 
some importance to notice this because it is 
the rule now to attribute von Baer’s and 
his predecessors’ and Louis Agassiz’s dis- 
eoveries in this line to Haeckel. This emi- 
nent author has, indeed, given one of the 
most modern definitions of this law and has 
mamed it the ‘ law of biogenesis.’ Haeckel’s 


SCIENCE. 


165 


discoveries in embryology are sufficiently 
great without swelling the list with false 
entries, but it will probably be a long time 
before naturalists realize and acknowledge 
this error. Some of the most eminent em- 
bryologists in this country have adopted the 
Haeckelian nomenclature without sufficient. 
critical examination of the term under dis- 
cussion. The so-called Haeckelian (‘law of 
biogenesis’) is really Agassiz’s law of em- 
bryological recapitulation restated. in the 
terms of evolution. 

It has surprised me that serious objec- 
tions to the use of the word ‘ biogenesis ’ in 
this connection have not been made. This 
word has been long employed in another 
sense as antithetical to ‘abiogenesis.’ The 
latter has been for many years applied to 
the theory of the generation of living from 
inorganic matter, and the former to the 
theory asserting that living matter can 
originate only from living matter; the use 
of the phrase ‘the law of biogenesis’ is 
consequently inappropriate, since neither 
did Agassiz’s nor Haeckel’s discoveries 
cover so much ground. The former gave 
us a law for the correlations of the earlier 
stages of ontogeny with phylogeny. This 
cannot be called ‘the law of biogenesis,’ 
since that has been long ago stated as the 
law of the origin and continuity of organism, 
or in other words, the genesis and continu- 
ity of life from and through living matter 
only. There are two different manifesta- 
tions of Agassiz’s law, which Haeckel de- 
fined and named ‘ palingenesis ’ and ‘ conoe- 
genesis,’ the former referring to the ordinary 
as regular mode in which the characteristics 
of ancestors are repeated in the develop- 
ment of the individual and the other to 
what is frequently called the abbreviated 
mode, etc. 

These two modes are by no means all, 
but at present only the first or simplest 
manifestations of the phenomena need be 
treated of. This, or what Haeckel very 


166 


appropriately calls ‘ palingenesis,’ was what 
Louis Agassiz had studied and, so far as all 
the essential facts were concerned, thor- 
oughly understood, and it was this that he 
taught his students, so that it became, at 
any rate in my own case, the foundation 
of all my subsequent work in determining 
the mutual relations of forms. If then, as 
I have proposed in former publications, the 
term ‘law of palingenesis’ be adopted this 
expressly states just what Louis Agassiz 
discovered. 

Observations upon this ground made 
especially upon Cephalopoda have led to 
the discovery of correlations between the 
latter or epembryonic stages and the adult 
stages of extinct ancestors which have 
greatly enlarged the field of application of 
Agassiz’s law of palingenesis and given it 
an exactitude that has made it of surpass- 
ing importance in the study of evolution. 
Beecher has been able to point out the 
single species of Brachiopod from which 
the whole of the vast number of distinct 
forms of this great group have originated. 
He has established this fact not only by 
showing that the young of the existing and 
fossil forms all repeat more or less at one 
stage the form of the adult of the initial 
species, but has also found a very near 
affinity of this single ancestral species as a 
fossil appearing in one of the earliest of 
the fossil-bearing formations. 

Dr. R. T. Jackson has done the same 
work for the Pelecypoda, tracing all to one 
genus, Nucula, and has treated the Echino- 
dermata in the same way, tracing them by 
the use of Agassiz’s law to the genus Both- 
riocidaris. 

Although the evidence is perhaps less 
conclusive with reference to the ancestor of 
Cephalopoda as a whole, this class has fur- 
nished the means of showing the action of 
this law in smaller groups with great accu- 
racy. It hasbeen possible to trace the origin 
of a number of smaller groups to single an- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 109. 


cestors within the class by carefully studying 
the correlations of the epembryonic stages 
with the adults of the same group that have 
preceded them in time, and this study has. 
also led to further discoveries. It has been 
found that the new characters were first 
introduced in the later stages of ontogeny, 
usually in the full-grown stage; then, as old 
age approached, certain losses of the charac- 
ters of the adult took the place, or, if addi- 
tional growths were acquired, these were of 
a peculiar kind. These senile stages had 
been noticed by D’Orbigny and Quenstedt, 
but these authors did not attempt to show 
that any correlations existed between any 
stages of the ontogeny and the gradations. 
occurring in the full-grown forms during 
their evolution in time, or what is called 
phylogeny. The oldest stage of the shell in 
Cephalopoda, Brachiopoda and Pelecypoda 
is commonly marked by a series of retro- 
gressive changes, which have been fully 
described elsewhere. These changes havea 
similar nature to those found in the old age 
of man, but they are more noticeable because 
they are recorded in the permanent charac- 
ters of the hardened shell. The old man 
returns to second childhood in mind and 
body, and the shell of the cephalopod has 
in old age, however distinct and highly 
ornamented the adult, very close resem- 
blance to its own young. This resemblance 
is a matter of form and aspect only, since 
there can be no close comparison in minute. 
structure, nor functions between organs and 
parts at these two different ends of life. 
Such analogies, however, have their own 
meaning and are of great importance when 
properly translated. 

In the first place they show that the 
cycle of life as manifested in man is found 
also in the ontogeny of other animals and 
more pefectly in proportion to the perfec- 
tion of the record. They are consequently 
among shell-bearing animals, especially 
those that carry their embryonic shells and 


JANUARY 29, 1897. ] 


all their subsequent stages of development 
throughout their lives, more perfect, more 
decisive, as well as more obvious, than in 
animals, like the vertebrata, which carry no 
such burden of hard, dead parts upon, and 
in which their stages of development are 
recorded. The cycle of the ontogeny is, 
therefore, not only physiological, but it is 
also a definite series of structural changes 
and is often accompanied by transforma- 
tions of remarkable and sometimes startling 
character. 

These retrogressive transformations in 
old age of the shells of Cephalopoda, Brach- 
iopoda and Pelecypoda have been found 
to have decided correlations with the adult 
characters of species that appear simul- 
taneously or later in time. If one traces 
any group through its evolution in time it 
has, as stated by many authors, a period of 
rise called the epacme, a second period of 
greatest expansion in numbers of forms and 
species called the acme, and then usually a 
movement towards contraction called the 
paracme. All three of these terms were 
first proposed by Haeckel, who used them 
largely in a physiological or dynamical 


TERMS OF BIOPLASTOLOGY 


SCIENCE. 


167 


The paracme is the decline, and this takes 
place through the reduction and actual loss 
of structures and characteristics that have 
been built up by evolution during the 
epacme. This is no ideal picture, but a 
simple statement of the experiences of those 
paleontologists who have patiently traced 
the history of groups through geologic 
time. Agassiz’s law enables one to follow 
the epacme of the evolution of a species, or 
genus, or order, or larger group, but further 
correlations between the cycle of individual 
life and those in the evolution of its own 
genetic group must be sought in the corre- 
lations existing between the older retrogres- 
sive stages of the ontogeny and the paracme 
of each group. ; 

The importance and peculiar nature of 
these corelations led me, in one of my papers, 
to introduce, for this branch of research, the 
term Bioplastology, which will be found 
convenient by those interested in this class 
of work. 

The following table of terms is useful 
here to explain the relations of the cycle of 
development in the individual to that of the 
group to which it belongs. 


EXPLAINING THE CORRELATIONS BETWEEN STAGES OF THE ONTOGENY AND 


THOSE OF PHYLOGENY. 


Ontogeny or Development 
Structural 


Conditions Stages 
Embryonic. .......... Embryo or Foetal 
Anaplasis | Neniome soDOobOOGRoES Baby 
GRMN, 6ocnccsccaccor Adolescent 
Metaplasis Ephebic.............. Adult 
Paraplasis Gerontic. ............ Senile 


sense. The epacme of any group, large or 
small, is usually a process of evolution by 
addition of new structures or characteris- 
tics based on older structures and thus lead- 
ing to greater and greater complication of 
the primitive organization. The acme rep- 
resents the time of greatest complication in 
structure and greatest expansion in num- 
bers of forms for any group, large or small. 


Phylogeny or Evolution of the Phylum 
Structural 


Conditions Stages Dynamical 
Phylembryonic 
Phylanaplasis Phylonepionic Epacme 
Phyloneanic 
Phylometaplasis Phylephebic Acme 
Phyloparaplasis Phylogerontic ~Paracme 


The dynamical terms are quoted from 
Haeckel and were used by him to designate 
the phenomena of the rise and decline of 
types, and also the terms anaplasis and 
metaplesis. He, however, used ‘ cataplasis ’ 
in place of paraplasis, which is here pre- 
ferred on account of the faulty derivation of 
cataplasis. 
| He realized the importance of these phe- 


168 


nomena and also the significance of the 
structural characteristics of decline, but did 
not trace out the distinct correlations which 
are claimed as fundamentals in bioplas- 
tology. 

The terms anaplasis, etc., and their cor- 
respondence, phylanaplasis, are the struc- 
tural correlatives of dynamical terms, ep- 
acme, etc., and will be found useful when 
the statical phenomena or structures are 
mentioned or contrasted with the dynamical 
phenomena, or with periods of time in 
which they occur, since the terms epacme, 
acme and paracme also refer to time. 
Terms of the ontogeny are placed opposite 
to their correlatives in the column of phy- 
logenetic terms, but in reading the table it 
should be clearly understood that the in- 
dividual whose life history is represented 
by the first three columns is supposed to 
have been taken from the midst of those 
that lived during the acme of the phylum 
and belonged to a phylephebic species. In 
studying the development of such an in- 
dividual it has been repeatedly observed 
that the embryo repeated the adult char- 
acters of the most ancient representatives 
of the phylum, which are here called in 
accordance with this evidence, phylem- 
bryonic. 

It has also been ascertained that there 
are full-grown types in the epacme and 
acme of groups which correspond to the 
transient nepionic or baby stage of those 
that occur later in time; these are the 
phylonepionic; others have similar corre- 
spondences with the neanic stages and are 
properly designated as phyloneanic types 
or forms. The structures of the ephebic 
(adult) stage are essentially the differ- 
entials of the time and fauna in which they 
occur, and necessarily have no correlations 
with the past. Their relations are obviously 
and wholly with the present, except in so 
far as they represent the consummations 
of evolution in structures. The structural 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Voz. V. No. 109. 


changes in the gerontic stage of the indi- 
vidual are repeated with sufficient accuracy 
in the adult, and often even in the neanic 
stages of types that occur in the paracme of 
the evolution of a phylum, so that one is 
forced to consider seriously whether they 
may not have been inherited from types 
that occur at the acme of the same group. 
The fact that these changes occur first in 
the ontogeny during the gerontic stage does 
not necessarily imply that they first make 
their appearance after the reproductive 
period. No gerontic limit is known to the 
reproductive time in the lower animals, and 
it may well be that the continual recur- 
rence of gerontic stages in individuals dur- 
ing the epacme of groups may lead to their 
finally becoming fixed tendencies of the 
stock or hereditary in the phylum, and thus 
established as one of the factors that .oc- 
casion the retrogression or paracme of 
groups. The paracme may also be con- 
sidered as occasioned by changes in the sur- 
roundings from favorable, as they must 
have been up to acmatie time to unfa- 
vorable during the succeeding paracmatic 
period in evolution. Still a third supposi- 
tion is also possible, viz., that the type, like 
the individual, has only a limited store of 
vitality, and both must progress and retro- 
gress, complete a cycle and finally die out, 
in obedience to the same law. 

All of these views can be well supported, 
but, whatever may be the true explanation, 
it is obvious that there are plenty of parac- 
matic types, which, in their full-grown and 
even in their neanic stages, correlate in 
characters and structures with the charac- 
ters and structures that one first finds in 
the transient gerontic stages of acmatic 
forms of the same type. ‘These can, there- 
fore, be truthfully and accurately described 
as phylogerontic in the phylum. 

In other words, one is able to apply 
gerontic changes in the ontogeny to the 
deciphering of the true relations, the ar- 


JANUARY 29, 1897.] . 


rangement and classification forms occur- 
ring in the paracme, just as Agassiz’s law of 
palingenesis can be used to explain the re- 
lations of the links in the chain of being 
forming the epacme of groups. 

The cycle of the ontogeny is, therefore, 
the individual expression and abbreviated 
recapitulation of the cycle that occurs in 
the phylogeny of the same stock, and, while 
the embryonic, nepionie and neanic stages 
give us, in abbreviated shape, the record of 
the epacme, the gerontic stages give, in a 
similar manner, the history of the paracme. 

The difference between the nature of the 
two records is, however, necessarily as 
great as between the beginnings and the 
endings of existence. The successive stages 
of the individual are derived from the past, 
and simply point backwards along the 
track traversed by the phylum ; the suc- 
cessive changes of the gerontic stage on 
the other point to the future, and are pro- 
phetie of what is to come in the decline of 
the type. The retrogressive decline of the 
individual and of its type are along par- 
allel lines and the two are in direct correla- 
tion, so that the former becomes an abbrevi- 
ated index of the latter. 

One of the most useful results of these 
studies has been the method of work de- 
veloped, the mode of study by series. To 
follow it out successfully one must trace 
the terms of series from the first, or most 
primitive, grade to the last, through per- 
haps long periods of time and, if upon the 
same level, through many gradations of 
structure. 

The histologist and embryologist picks 
out a convenient form here and there for 
thorough investigation, but does not seem 
as yet to see the importance of the point of 
view here insisted upon, viz., that the only 
method of getting at the correlations of 
ontogeny and phylogeny is by following 
out the history of representative series of 
genetically connected embryos, and the 


SCIENCE. 


169 


same is true of the experimentalist. While, 
consequently, their results have been in the 
highest degree instructive and progressive 
along other lines of research, they throw no 
very strong light on the laws of evolution, 
and the best modern works on embryology, 
zoology and experimentation neglect the 
only proper and efficient mode of studying 
one very important side of their subject. 

One of the results of this mode of study 
has been the discovery of the law of ac- 
celeration in the inheritance of characters, 
or tachygenesis. Thus it has been found 
that characteristics are inherited in succes- 
sive species or forms in a given stock at 
earlier and earlier stages in the ontogeny of 
each member of the series. These charac- 
teristics, as a rule, disappear from the ontog- 
eny altogether in the terminal, or last-oc- 
curring, members of a series, and terminal 
forms thus become very distinct in their de- 
velopment. This law I habitually illustrate 
as the crawling, walking, hopping, skipping 
and jumping law. 

Another result of this mode of study is 
the discovery that, in most genetic series, 
primitive forms exhibit much greater in- 
difference to geologic changes, persist 
with comparatively unchanged structures 
through longer periods of time than those 
that occur at the acme of groups, and par- 
acmatic forms, if widely distributed, are 
apt to be particularly short lived, and are 
very often narrowly localized in origin and 
duration. Primitive forms are also less 
changeable in their ontogeny ; the adult dif- 
fers less from either the young or the old 
than in acmatic forms. The same is true 
of phylogerontic forms; their old age and 
youth are less distinct as stages from each 
other than in acmatic forms. Primitive 
forms are less affected by gerontic changes 
in their ontogeny, 7. ¢., they have shorter 
old-age stages than acmatic forms. Par- 
acmatic forms have much longer old-age or 
gerontic stages than acmatic forms. 


170 


Lastly, it has been found that at the be- 
ginning of the evolution of any stock the 
progress was not only very rapid, but the 
departures in structures much more marked 
between the diverging lines of different 
species, genera or families, and so on, than 
those that subsequently occurred in any 
one of these. This rapidity of expansion 
is also marvellously sudden in every series 
near its point of origin, and it is equally so 
in the whole animal kingdom, which ap- 
pears with the larger proportion of all its 
principal divisions in the earliest known 
fossil-bearing rocks. Each series or type 
appears to have had a more or less free field, 
and its first steps in evolution were obviously 
not affected by natural selection. Subse- 
quently, in the acme of the same series or 
type, the departures became less marked, 
and the divergences took place in less im- 
portant structures ; in other words, as stated 
above, the evolution is slower. 

On the other hand, after the acme is 
passed and the paracme sets in, there is a 
sensible quickening of evolution during de- 
cline. 

Phylogerontic forms become more and 
more numerous, and there are wider de- 
partures in the structures from the acmatic 
forms than any of the divergences that oc- 
cur within the acmatic forms themselves. 

The hopping, skipping and, at last, the 
jumping begins in the extremes of the series, 
so thatit becomes difficult, as has been shown 
by the author in a number of series and by 
Cope when giving illustrations of the action 
of the law of tachygenesis, to connect one of 
these extreme forms with its nearest con- 
geners. 

The characters of the cycle in the ontog- 
eny are here again similar to those of the 
phylogeny ; thus the final substages of the 
gerontic stage are wider departures from the 
ephebic substages than these are among 
themselves and when compared with each 
other. The analogy of the old with the 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8S. Vou. V. No. 109. 


young shows this most conclusively and 
with the similarity of phylogerontic forms 
in the same stock occurs a parallelism in 
the phylogeny. 

In fact, there is no end to the homological 
and analogical similarities and parallelisms 
of ontogeny and phylogeny wherever both 
are found complete. 

There are types in which the ontogeny is 
incomplete, as among insects and other 
purely seasonal animals, and in these it 
becomes difficult, if not impracticable, to 
study the gerontic stages, and thus translate 
the phylogerontic types if they occur. 
These same types, and others also, present 
difficulties in their larval stages, owing to 
their indirect modes of development, which 
have been discussed by the author in In- 
secta and other publications, and need only 
be referred to here. 

One of the bearings of these researches 
is of interest on account of the discussions 
between biologists, geologists and mathe- 
maticians with regard to the length of time 
that life has existed on this planet and the 
bearing of this upon calculations with re- 
gard to the age of the earth. It cannot be 
assumed that the time ratio was the same 
during the eozoic or pre-Paleozoic as during 
the Paleozoic or the Mesozoic, so far as the 
evolution of forms is concerned. The evi- 
dence is very strong that great structural 
differences were evolved much more quickly 
in these early times, and the probabilities 
are that the progressive steps of the eyolu- 
tion of the primitive types of organisms 
took place with a rapidity unexampled in 
later ages. If the laws of bioplastology 
are true the evolution of these forms must 
have occurred more quickly than those of 
their descendants, except perhaps some iso- 
lated phylogerontic types and phylopathic 
forms.** 

* The phrase ‘evolution by saltation’ has been used 


for the sudden appearance of divergent types by sev- 
eral authors, first by Dr. W. H. Dall; but this seems 


JANUARY 29, 1897. ] 


The author in other publications has 
claimed that this must have been the law, 
and explained the phenomena as parallel 
with that which takes place at the begin- 
ning of every series arising in the Paleozoic 
and Mesozoic, and also according to Minot’s 
law of growth and other phenomena of the 
earlier stages in the ontogeny of every 
animal 

All inferences with reference to the length 
of time that life has existed upon the earth 
are consequently defective, since, as far as 
known tothe author, they do not take into 
consideration the differing rates of evolu- 
tion at different times in the history of or- 


ganisms. ; 
ApHEus Hyatt. 


THE BLACKBOARD TREATMENT OF PHYS- 
ICAL VECTORS. 

Tue tedious part of geometrical reading 
is the need of searching for the letters which 
designate the lines. Frequently this is the 
chief difficulty in the demonstration. Ina 
measure, the same is also true when a ge- 
ometrical proof is to be written down, par- 
ticularly where special vector symbols (e. g., 
the [AB] of Mceebius) are employed. There 
is, perhaps, no remedy for this in printed 
work; but in the classroom, with a black- 
board available, coplanar vectors may be 
drawn in great variety at pleasure. I will 
therefore describe the following method of 
elementary treatment which, though it con- 
tains no essential novelty, is new, I think, 
from a pedagogic point of view, and for 
this reason not without value. 

Of the four specifications which charac- 
terize a vector—position, quantity, direc- 
tion, sign—the first three usually come 
within the range of indulgence of the aver- 
age student ; but with the sign he will have 
nothing to do. Thus it becomes necessary 
to the author to be simply a mode of expressing a gen- 
eral fact, or series of facts, that occur everywhere, and 


in all series more or less through the action of the 
law of tachygenesis. 


SCIENCE. 


171 


to especially emphasize the latter, and this 
is done by putting an arrowhead on the 
proper end of it. A physical vector is thus 
fully given by an arrow of definite length, 
originating in a definite point and pointing 
in a definite direction. With this laid down 
insistently, the principle of vector summa- 
tion is next developed* in the usual way. 
Here, again, the sign quality needs to be 
accentuated. The origin of the first arrow 
is the given point of application. The 
origin of every other arrow is the point of 
the preceding, beginning with the first 
arrow already placed. If two vector sys- 
tems are equivalent, this implies that if 
the free tail of each begins at a common 
point, then the free tip of each system must 
terminate in the same final point. 

It is simpler to begin with the first kine- 
matic vector, velocity, rather than with dis- 
placement. The inherent importance of the 
space relations is easily pomted out in the 
course of the development. 

With these customary introductions it is 
my plan to write down vector equations on 
the blackboard just like algebraic equations, 
using for my terms definitely specified ar- 
rows. Thus I obtain consecutively : 


Sum: The equation reads, for instance, 


D jsoa 7 
To change the direction of an arrow is to 
change the sign of the term. Hence (1) is 
identical with (2). 
Difference : 


4 = 
or by transposing, 
® f= +7 
which may be tested by construction. 
Again from (3) 
: Biel ale Z 


* By supposing one of the vectors to be forming on 
a blackboard moving as specified by the other vector. 


172 


and by transposing 
Oi aia 


which is the triangle of rest. 

Change of velocity: If in the following 
equation (5) the second term of the first 
member is given as having changed into the 
first, then the change of velocity is 


DS) Roa, 


Polygon of velocity: If any number of ve- 
locities are given to be added, 


) + [+ —=K> 


which is the polygon of velocities, and all 
possible constructions are equivalent to a 
mere change in the order of the terms. If 
we change the sign and direction of the 
arrow in the second member of (6) and 
then transpose the term to the first mem- 
ber 


@ Hot|+—+N=0> 


which is the polygon of rest. 

Acceleration: That accelerations may be 
compounded like velocities students assert 
readily enough, but few really understand 
the assertion. Defining acceleration in the 
usual way, the product of a time factor and 
a vector is here encountered. But the time 
factor is scalar and can be fully given by 
an ordinary number. Let ¢ bea sufficiently 
small interval of time. Then, for the case 
of linear acceleration, the equation reads 


4(H)=#(1H = Z(t): 


where the quantity in parenthesis is the ob- 
served change of velocity in the time t. 
The result merely calls for an increase in 
the length of the reduced vector, 1/¢ times. 
The more general case corresponding to (5) 
may be taken at once, whence, 


#(I- = Ht J=H\) 


Two accelerations of the general kind 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 109. 


may be compounded (using a common time 
t for brevity), as follows : 


@ t-+t- = ot} O-0: 

The quantities really compounded are 
thus the velocities (ultimately displace- 
ments) and the effect of the scalar factor is. 
a mere change of the length of the arrow 
produced. 

The case of a finite acceleration and van- 
ishing ¢ is particularly remarkable. 

Momentum: If m denote mass, we again 
have the product of a scalar and a vector, in 
which, therefore, m is fully given by a num- 
ber.. To compound 


@ — m(()smf—-}-m( 


we virtually reproduce (1). If the mo- 
menta are referred to different masses, as in 


@ m+n), 


it will be necessary to change the length of 
each arrow before compounding. The 
proposition may be extended to the polygon 
of moments, etc., as already shown. 

Force: If the interval ¢ is sufficiently 
small, force is defined, in a general way, by 


® BEM I=), 


where in the first member the second term 
(vector) is changed to the first term in the 
time ¢ for each particle of the mass m. The 
quantity compounded is again the product. 
of a vector (velocity) and a scaler m / t. 
To compound forces we thus virtually com- 
pound velocities and increase the length 
of the arrow resulting m /¢ times. If two 
forces actuate m we have in the most gen- 
eral case 


@® B- + M-=()- 


These forces might have been rated in terms 
of different masses, m and m’, and times, ¢ 
and ¢. In such cases the first resultant 
would be multiplied m /¢ times and the 


JANUARY 29, 1897. ] 


second m’ /¢t times and the new vectors 
then compounded. 

Center of Mass: To complete the subject 
of translational motion for an extended 
body the customary reference is made to 
the center of mass. 


ROTATION. 


The case of rotation is treated throughout 
in complete analogy with the foregoing. 
What was linear velocity constant through- 
out the body in the above is now angular 
velocity also constant throughout the body ; 
what was mass m has become moment of 
inertia n, and what was force F has become 
torque Y—formally speaking, of course. 
The results are reached in the usual ele- 
mentary way. 

The first proposition to be laid down is 
Lagrange’s well-known elementary proof 
for the composition and resolution of angu- 
lar velocities. This must be most carefully 
done; for if students growl at the sign of a 
translational velocity they break out in 
open mutiny at the sign of an angular 
velocity. Obviously the arrow is again 
necessary for the complete specification, and 
I am in the habit of using the sign of Mars 
(¢) for angular velocities, measuring the 
arrow from the center of the circle. As a 
rule, only one of a group of velocities need 
be so marked. If right-handed relations be 
postulated (the reverse is the rule in dynam- 
ics) then an eye looking in the direction 
of the arrow sees clockwise rotation around 
it as an axis, with a speed given by the 
length of the arrow. 

Thus one obtains in succession : 


Angular velocity : 


Oe Mies 


reproducing all the propositions (1) to (6) 
above. Stress must be laid on proposition 
(5). 

Angular acceleration: Essentially like (8) 
and (9) above. 


SCIENCE. 


173 


Angular momentum, moment of momentum : 
If n and n’ be the moments of inertia the 
quantities to be compounded are, for in- 
stance, 


@ n({)+ne—), 


reproducing (10) and (11') above. 

Torque, couple, moment of rotation: If t 
be sufficiently small, torque is defined in 
in the most general way by 

© MM =), 

where in the first member of the equation 
the second vectorial term (angular veloc- 
ity) changes into the first term in the time 
t for every particle of the mass implied in 
n. Thus the propositions (12) and (13) 
are formally reproduced for rotations. In 
other words, torques, couples, moments are 
compounded just like forces, and the con- 
vention involved is the convention made 
in representing angular velocities. 

I will conelude by giving a few examples, 
the first of which, Foucault's Pendulum, is 
cited merely as a concrete case of (1’). 

Let » be the earth’s angular velocity. 
Let ¢ be the latitude of the place of obser- 


vation. Resolve » as shown in figure. 
74 
wo” 
®, 


Then o’ rotates the plane of the pendulum 
around a line in this plane, horizontal for 
the place. Hence w” produces no deviation. 
Obviously ’, the deviating component is 
w sin ¢g. f 

In physical meteorology the same result 
enters fundamentally into the theory of 
cyclones. For if 2m Vw be the deviating 
component of the earth’s rotation for a 
circumpolar body of mass mand velocity V, 
then the corresponding component for any 


174 


latitude ¢ is 2m Vwsin g, quite independ- 
ent of the azimuth of V. 

Again, if in figure (15) » and », be re- 
placed by linear velocities, one easily ob- 
tains by (8) the expression for accleration 
towards a center, etc. 

Precession: In instruments like tops, gyro- 
scopes, ete., the mechanism (supposed fric- 
tionless) is such as to exclude all interference 
from without, with the magnitude of the 
angular velocity » of the top around its 
axis. This constructive condition is essen- 
tial. Hence, if the axis changes position, and 


@® - 
if for brevity we suppose the tail of the ar- 
row » to remain frictionlessly at CO, then the 
locus of the point of the arrow must be the 
surface of asphere of radius w. Let w change 
in position to o,, let the axis to which the 
change of angular velocity w’ (in figure 15) 
corresponds, pass through Cand necessarily 
rotate around it in a horizontal plane. This 
is clearly the case with the axis of gravita- 
tional torque in the precessional motion of 
‘a top or gyroscope. Then must w’ also lie 
in a horizontal plane, and the locus of is 
the surface of a circular cone with its axis 
vertical and its vertex at C. If’ is im- 
parted in unit of time o’ is the mean an- 
gular acceleration due to the gravitational 
torque and therefore equal to 7T'/n by (12’). 
But the inclination of » to the horizontal 
has just been shown to be constant (cone), 
wherefore gravitational torque is constant 
and w’ is constant. Hence the precessional 
motion is uniform rotation around the ver- 
tical axis of the fixed cone; for from one 
point of view ’ is the total change of an- 
gular velocity due to gravitational torque, 
and from another point of view, ’/w, con- 
stant for the reasons specified, is propor- 
tional to the uniform angular velocity of 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 109. 


precession (see figure). If gravitational 
torque is withdrawn, as in a balanced gyro- 
scope, o’/w—0 and precession ceases. If 
» gradually decreases (friction), »’ will 
subtend a relatively greater angle, or pre- 
cessional motion will be accelerated, even 
when the axis of » is not lowered. In the 
latter case the result is accentuated, for 
gravitational torque is increased. 

Again, suppose gimbals of a gyroscope 
forcibly rotated around a vertical axis. In 
Figure 16 let the angular velocity w be thus 


imparted in unit of time. Let , and », 
be the positions of the top axis and its an- 
gular velocities before and after the inter- 
ference. Resolve w into components o’ and 
w'’ respectively at right angles and parallel 
to w,. Then ” would rotate the top axis 
if it were not frictionlessly mounted. It 
actually rotates the gimbals only. There- 
fore v, = », in length,as is otherwise evi- 
dent. Thus o’ is the total effective change 
of angular velocity, and in virtue of this o, 
passes to w, and the extremity of the top 
axis rises, describing a circle in a vertical 
plane. If » is imparted in a contrary di- 
rection the motion of w, will be reversed. 
The top rolling on a blunt point belongs 
here. 

Finally, if the top axis is forcibly rotated 
back and forth over a small angle around 
the horizontal axis of gravitational torque, 
similar considerations will lead to a better 
explanation of the curves drawn by a top 
on an inclined plane than I gave in a pre- 
ceding article. The periodic changes of 
torque correspond to the rolling of the top 
up and down the inclined plane. 

I have been tempted to enter somewhat 
at length into this most important subject, 


JANUARY 29, 1897. ] 


because I failed to find an adequate account 
in such standard elementary text-books as 
came to my hands. Thus the explanation 
given in Daniell’s physics is empiric and 
about within the limits of Perry’s little 
book on tops. Ganot and Deschanel, Bar- 
ker and Carhart, avoid the matter alto- 
gether. Kelvin and Tait’s ‘elementary’ 
treatise has a single paragraph, intelligible 
at once, no doubt, to the authors. Peddie 
puts a slight expansion of this paragraph 
into his book. Even Violle’s large new 
work says nothing about tops. In the Ger- 
man books, like Muller-Pouillet, Wullner 
and the excellent treatise of Mousson, the 
phenomena are interpreted by aid of a sug- 
gestion of Poggendorff’s, the very object of 
which is to dodge the principles of rotation 
involved under cover of a reference (‘nur 
durch hohere Rechnung’) to Huler. Yet 
gyrostats of diverse forms usually abound in 
physical cabinets. Supposing an instructor 
is not on the outlook for special entertain- 
ment for his children, of what use is such 
apparatus, I ask, if it be not to furnish the 
most striking tests imaginable of the truth 
of the above fundamental doctrines of rota- 


tion. 
C. Barvus. 
BROWN UNIVERSITY, 
PROVIDENCE, R. I. 


ZOOLOGICAL NOTES. 
NANSEN’S DISCOVERY OF THE BREEDING 
GROUNDS OF THE ROSY GULL. 


OF the result of Nansen’s Expedition thus 
far announced one of the most interesting, 
at least to ornithologists, is the reported 
discovery of the breeding grounds of Ross’ 
Gull, also known as the Wedge-tailed or 
Rosy Gull (Rhodostethia rosea). In a letter 
published in the London Daily Chronicle last 
November, Dr. Nansen stated that he found 
flocks of Rosy Gulls on August 6th, in lati- 
tude 81° 38’, east longitude 63°. The birds 
were seen near four small islands called 


SCIENCE. 


175 


‘Hirtenland’ by Nansen, a little northeast 
of Franz Josef Land. While Nansen did 
not actually find nests, he found the birds 
abundant, and concluded that their nests 
were probably near by. Every item of in- 
formation regarding this rare bird is of 
interest, and in the December number of 
the Ornithologische Monatsberichte (pp. 193- 
196), Dr. Herman Schalow calls attention 
to the importance of Nansen’s announce- 
ment and takes occasion to review briefly 
the history of the species. 

There seems to be no reason to question 
the correctness of Nansen’s determination 
of the birds or his surmise that they were 
breeding not far away. The wedge-shaped 
tail and the rosy tinge of the plumage 
(both noted by Nansen) are unmistakable 
characters of the species, and the presence 
of the gulls in such numbers in that high 
latitude renders it very probable that they 
were breeding. The Rosy Gull has long 
remained one of the rarest gulls. It was 
described from a specimen collected by Sir 
James Clark Rossin 1823,0n Melville Penin- 
sula, but in the next half century only a 
few individuals were taken and these in 
widely separated localities. In theautumn of 
1881 Murdoch observed large numbers at 
Point Barrow, Alaska, apparently migra- 
ting from the west to the northeast. Al- 
though he secured a good series of speci- 
mens, he could add little to the life history 
of the species, and no other naturalist in 
Alaska has had the good fortune to meet 
with it in such numbers. This gull has 
also been taken in North America at St. 
Michael’s, Alaska, and Disco Bay, Green- 
land, but it was not seen by the Lady Frank- 
lin Bay expedition. It was met with off the 
Siberian coast by the Jeannette Expedition, 
and was recorded by Payer between Nova 
Zembla and Franz Josef Land, only a few 
degrees to the south of the islands where 
Nansen found it. 

The Rosy Gullis a typical arctic circum- 


176 


polar bird, reaching a latitude attained by 
few other species, and specimens taken out- 
sidethe Arctic circle (at St. Michael’s, Kam- 
chatka, the Fzeroe Islands, Heligoland, and 
Yorkshire, England) can only be regarded 
as stragglers. No one has yet been able 
to explain what becomes of the thousands 
which pass Point Barrow in the autumn, 
and less is known of the winter home of 
this gull than of the region where it breeds. 
Murdoch supposed thatits breeding grounds 
were somewhere north of Wrangel Island. 
Nansen’s observations seem to indicate that 
they are much farther to the west, but, as 
Schalow remarks, ‘‘ when will man’s foot 
again tread the dreary wastes of those high 
latitudes where one of the greatest rarities 
of northern oology is to be found ?” 


T. S. PALMER. 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 


ORIGIN OF PARASITISM IN THE COWBIRD. 


REPRODUCTIVE parasitism, as we find it in 
our Cowbirds, is such a rare exception to 
the rule among higher animals, where pa- 
rental affection is highly developed, that it 
never ceases to be an object of speculation 
as to its origin. 

There are two peculiarities for which our 
Cowbird is renowned: The one which gives 
him his scientific name, Molothrus, a para- 
site; the other, which causes him to be 
ealled Cowbird, his strong attachment to 
grazing animals, especially horses and 
cattle. 

Now, should there not be a connection 
between these two traits? Nobody would 
think that the habit of following horses 
and cattle has been formed since the intro- 
duction of these animals by the white man. 
Its Indian name, ‘ Buffalo-bird,’ was cer- 
tainly no misnomer, and it can hardly be 
questioned that for ages the buffalo, or 
American bison, was the animal which, in 
the economy of our cowbird, played the 
part now taken by the domestic animals. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No. 109. 


The distribution of the one coincides in the 
main with that of the other, except that in 
recent years the Cowbird has extended its 
range to follow domesticated cattle. A few 
years ago the bison roamed over the greater 
part of eastern North America from the 
Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains, in suit- 
able places, and it was not until the last 
century that it became exterminated in the 
territory east of the Mississippi river. 

But the habits of the Cowbird were prob- 
ably formed before the bison and the Red 
Man were on the scene, since some species 
in southern South America have similar 
traits. 

The Cowbirds, like all other Icteride, 
have their origin in South America, and of 
the twelve species and subspecies known 
only three enter the United States. Not 
all the species are parasitic ; of some we do 
not know the mode of reproduction, but 
Molothrus badius, of Argentina, Paraguay 
and Bolivia, builds its nest and rears its 
young like other birds, and there was un- 
doubtedly a time when Molothrus ater did 
the same. 

We know that fossil remains of horses, 
not much unlike ours, are found abundantly 
in the deposits of the most recent geological 
age in many parts of America from Alaska 
to Patagonia. It was probably at that 
period that the Cowbirds acquired the habit 
of accompanying the grazing herds, which 
were wandering continually in search of 
good pasture, water and shelter, and in 
their seasonal migrations and movements 
to escape their enemies. 

As the pastoral habit of the bird became 
stronger, it gave rise to the parasitic habit, 
simply because, in following the roving ani- 
mals, the birds often strayed from home too 
far to reach their nests in time for the dep- 
osition of the egg, and, being hard pressed, 
had to look about for another bird’s nest 
wherein to lay the ege. 

After the acquisition of the roving habit, 


JANUARY 29, 1897. ] 


it is not difficult to imagine that such cases 
occurred quite often, especially when, with 
the change of the climate, both birds and 
mammals spread more and more into the 
temperate regions where the spring move- 
ments of the grazing animals fell together 
with the bird’s breeding time. 

By a combination of favorable circum- 
stances this new way of reproduction proved 
successful, and the parasitic offspring be- 
came more and more numerous. In the 
course of time the art of building nests was 
lost, the desire to incubate entirely gone, 
paternal and conjugal affection deadened, 
and parasitism had become a fixed habit. 


O. WIDMANN. 


CURRENT NOTES ON PHYSIOGRAPHY. 
THE BRANCH STREAMS OF THE SCHUYLKILL. 


Miss F. Bascom recently discussed ‘the 
relation of the streams in the neighbor- 
hood of Philadelphia to the Bryn Mawr 
gravel’ (American Geologist, XIX., 1897, 
50-57), with the object of determining the 
disputed age of the gravels from the amount 
of work done by the branches of the Schuyl- 
kill since the gravels were laid down. Wis- 
sahickon, Valley and Gulf creeks are ex- 
plained as of superposed origin, because 
they flow at certain points transversely 
through narrow gorges in resistant strata. 
‘This conclusion tacitly postulates the oc- 
currence of only longitudinal (subsequent) 
branch streams in the Schuylkill district 
before the gravels were spread over the re- 
gion; it remains to be proved whether so 
perfect an adjustment of branch streams to 
structures is necessary. It is entirely con- 
ceivable that, before the gravels were de- 
posited, the Cretaceous peneplain had some 
transverse streams, although most of its 
drainage may have well become longitudi- 
nal. Whether the Wissahickon could have 
maintained a transverse course so near the 
Schuylkill through both the Cretaceous and 


SCIENCE. 


iG 


Tertiary cycles of denudation is certainly 
doubtful, but it has not been proved impos- 
sible. Gulf creek and its neighbors are so 
distinctly rectangular in pattern that ad- 
justment and re-adjustment suffice to ex- 
plain them without superposition. The 
elements of doubt and certainty are here 
so blended as to illustrate the dangers as 
well as the values of river analysis as a 
means of deciphering geological history. 


HANN’S ALLGEMEINE ERDKUNDE. 

Tur Allgemeine HErdkunde of Hann, 
Hochsetter and Pokorny now reaches its 
fifth edition. The first part, treating the 
earth as a whole, the atmosphere and the 
hydrosphere being still prepared by Dr. 
Julius Hann (Vienna, Tempsky, 1896, 336 
p., 24 colored plates and 92 figures), while 
volumes on the earth’s crust and its forms 
by Bruckner, and on the distribution of 
plants and animals by Kirchhoff, are prom- 
ised for 1897. Hann’s revised volume im- 
presses one as a thorough work by a compe- 
tent author, useful asa text for anadvanced 
collegiate course, or as a reference book for 
advanced students. It is questionable 
whether various elementary facts, such as 
the obliquity of the ecliptic, the variation 
of the length of the day and its cause, and 
the weather-map facts as to cyclonic circu- 
lation, deserve a place in such a work; for 
any one who is competent to use the rest of 
the book should have been for some years 
familiar with these fundamentals. The 
more serious subjects may be inferred from 
a rapid review of the contents; the size 
and shape of the earth, and their conse- 
quences in the variation of gravity and 
the determination of positions ; terrestrial 
magnetism and auroras; the atmosphere, 
its temperature, pressure, winds, moisture, 
rain and weather—with less attention to 
the origin of cyclones than would be wel- 
come; the ocean, its depth, composition, 
temperature—this treated in much detail— 


178 


currents, waves and tides. The book may 
be strongly recommended for a professor’s 
library. 


THE GEOGRAPHICAL ASSOCIATION. 


A NUMBER of English schoolmasters have 
formed a Geographical Association, ‘to im- 
prove the teaching of Geography in second- 
ary schools by adopting any methods that 
tend to the comprehension of geographical 
principles rather than the accumulation of 
isolated facts.’ The prevalent backward 
condition of the study in England can be 
inferred from the publication of an essay on 
‘Geography as a school subject,’ by the 
Hon. Secretary, B. B. Dickinson (Lawrence, 
Rugby, 1896), ‘an attempt to show that 
geography can be taught as a training of 
the mind.’ It is curious to note that the 
element of training, as far as itis illustrated 
in this essay, is almost entirely derived 
from a consideration of climate, and that no 
disciplinary value is assigned to the study 
of land forms themselves. The treatment 
of the winds, under climate, is unsatisfac- 
tory ; forexample: ‘It can be explained in 
simple language that one effect of [the 
earth’s] rotation will cause the atmosphere 
to be heaped up relatively high over the 
equatorial regions and low over the poles, 
and that this would lead to a gradual in- 
crease in the atmospheric pressure on the 
surface of the earth as we proceed from the 
poles to the equator.” Again: ‘ The pupils 
should carefully note how gradual is the 
falling-off of the heat received in the first 
45° [from the equator], and how rapid it be- 
comes with greater obliquities.”” Both 
quotations contain errors of statement that 
are inconsistent with good training. On the 
other hand, the attempt to connect human 
conditions with physical conditions is 
admirable; so admirable, indeed, that it 
should be uniformly extended all through 
the study of geography with as much care 
as is here given to the chapter on climate. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 109. 


NOTES. 


‘THE Missouri river and its utmost 
source’ is the title of a book by J. V. 
Brower (St. Paul, 1896), already known 
by his studies of the source of the Missis- 
sippi. This newer volume contains a little 
in the way of observation on the ground, 
but it is confused with a quantity of irrele- 
vant matter, both in text and illustration. 
The text has less of physiographic matter 
than might be inferred from the title. 


Proressor A. A. WricuHt, of Oberlin, has 
recently addressed the Ohio Academy of 
Science on the importance of establishing a 
topographic survey of that State. The edu- 
cational, as well as the technical, value of 
the survey is emphasized, and a joint un- 
dertaking with the U. S. Geological Survey 
is recommended. The Academy approved 
the plan and appointed a committee of 
three to secure favorable action by the 


next Legislature. 
W. M. Davis. 


HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 
THE GAME OF MANCALA. 

THe value of games, both as marking 
distribution within certain areas and as 
illustrating analogous lines of independent. 
development, has been a fruitful study in 
the hands of Mr. Stewart Culin, of the 
Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. 

His latest contribution is entitled ‘ Man- 
cala, the national game of Africa,’ and ap- 
pears in the last Report of the United States 
National Museum (pp. 10, with illustra- 
tions). He believes that ‘it marks the 
limits of Arab culture,” or, rather influence, 
and was historically disseminated by the 
extension of this Semitic people. He de- 
scribes the modes of playing it and com- 
ments on its historical spread. It seems to 
have been known for some years in the 
United States under the name ‘ chuba.’ 


JANUARY 29, 1897.] 


ORIENTAL ITEMS OF ETHNOLOGIC INTEREST. 


THE seventeenth volume of the Journal 
of the American Oriental Society contains 
several articles of ethnologic interest. One 
is the date of Zoroaster, which fixes the 
definite form of the Mazdeistic cult. This is 
placed by Prof. A. V. W. Jackson, in a very 
erudite analysis of the testimony, ‘ between 
the latter half of the seventh century and 
the middle of the sixth century B. C.’ 

Dr. John P. Peters defends with strong 
arguments the opinion that ‘the original 
home of civilization in Babylonia was the 
strip of land from Nippur southward to the 
neighborhood of Ur,” and tbe founding of 
the city of Nippur ‘‘ considerably antedated 
6,000 B. C. and perhaps 7,000 B.C.” That 
there were city builders among men that 
long ago is a most interesting result. 

Prof. Haupt, in a critical analysis of the 
Judaic account of creation, adds to the evi- 
dence that it is ‘ specifically Babylonian’ in 
origin. 

Dr. C. P. G. Scott has some remarks on 
the ‘ universal’ qualities of language, apro- 
pos of Malayan, a subject of the greatest 
anthropologic interest. 

D. G. Briton. 

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


NOTES ON INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 

In a recent number of the Zeitschrift fur 
physikalische Chemie, Debus criticises some 
of the conclusions of Roscoe and Har- 
den in the ‘ New Views of Dalton’s Atomic 
Theory.’ He holds that in 1801 Dalton 
was led to the hypothesis that equal vol- 
umes of gases under normal conditions con- 
tain equal numbers of molecules, and that 
this hypothesis and his study of the oxids 
of nitrogen led him to formulate his atomic 
theory. In 1805 he abandoned his earlier 
views as to the equal number of molecules. 
Avogadro was probably aware of Dalton’s 
views and borrowed his hypothesis, which 
js now known as Avogadro’s law. 


SCIENCE. 


179 


To the number of metallic carbids pro- 
duced in his electric furnace by Moissan 
must now be added lanthanum carbid, C, La. 
It is, like most of the other carbids, decom- 
posed by water and yields chiefly (71%) 
acetylene with 27% methane, a little ethy- 
lene and small quantities of liquid and solid 
hydrocarbons, thus closely resembling the 
earbid of cerium. 

THE last Proceedings of the Chemical So- 
ciety (London) contain accounts of experi- 
ments of E. Sonstadt on sea water. As long 
ago as 1872 Sonstadt showed that the 
iodin in sea water is in the form of calcium 
iodate, four parts per million. His experi- 
ments not haying been repeated by others, 
he now shows that an oxidizing substance 
must be present in sea water. He compares 
the oxidizing action of sea water on ferrous 
sulfate with that of sea water which has 
been deprived of iodates and similar com- 
pounds by evaporation and heating with 
mercury. He finds that the oxidizing qual- 
ity of sea water is far greater than would 
be due to the presence of the iodate, and 
infers that other oxidizing substances are 
present. It seems ordinarily to be taken 
for granted that iodin is present in sea 
water as sodium iodid, analogous to chlorin 
and bromin, but, aside from Sonstadt, Balard 
and Pfaff are the only observers who have 
been able to even detect the presence of 
iodin in any form in sea water. 

Sonstadt also shows that silver and gold 
can be detected in as small quantities as 
two liters of sea water, by continued agi- 
tation with mercury. The mercury on 
evaporation leaves a film partly soluble in 
nitric acid showing silver, while the insolu- 
ble portion dissolves in aqua regia and on 
cupellation gives a very minute bead of 
gold. Sonstadt concludes that, inasmuch 
as silver chloride is not decomposed by 
mercury, the silver may be considered to 
be present practically as metallic silver, 
and the gold probably in a similar condition. 


180 


H. N. Warren contributes a short article 
to the Chemical News on calcium carbid as a 
new reducing agent. He finds that when 
itis heated with many metallic oxids they 
are reduced, forming generally alloys of the 
metal with a small amount of calcium. 
Even the oxids of chromium, molybdenum 
and uranium are readily reduced. Calcium 
carbid, which is so cheap, may come to re- 
place for reduction the more expensive 
sodium or potassium. 

M. Gunz, to whom has just been awarded 
the Saintour prize of the French Academy 
of Sciences, shows in a recent Comptes 
Rendues that the lithium nitrid obtained 
by him is not pure. Lithium combines 
directly with nitrogen, but the nitrid on 
formation dissolves a portion of the sub- 
stance of the vessel in which the lithium is 
contained. Iron is least readily attacked ; 
silver, platinum, quartz and graphite-carbon 
are readily acted upon, and cannot be used ; 
hence all of the lithium nitrid formed is 
more or less contaminated by foreign mat- 
ter. Mo IW, JEL. 


ASTRONOMICAL NO TES. 


Tue Nichols Press, of Lynn., Mass., has 
published a large quarto volume of 258 
pages by Dr. T. J. J. See, entitled ‘ Re- 
searches on the Evolution of the Stellar 
Systems.’ Dr. See gives a comprehensive 
account of the present state of our knowl- 
edge of the binary systems, and, while he 
includes but little matter which has not 
already appeared in print, he has produced 
a book which will certainly be of great in- 
terest to students of the subject. 

The volume contains excellent accounts 
of the methods in use for the determination 
of binary star orbits, as well as reprints of 
Dr. See’s own recent articles published in 
the Astronomische Nachrichten. These arti- 
eles relate to the use of spectroscopic ob- 
servations for the study of the binary stars 
and for the application of a rigorous test 


SCIENCE. 


LN. S. Von. V. No. 109. 


of the universality of the law of gravita- 
tion. They have been criticised in the 
same journal in which they appeared, but 
in the present volume no notice is taken of 
these criticisms. Following the theoretical 
introduction, Dr. See gives his determina- 
tions of the orbits of forty stars, together 
with the observations on which they are 
based. We have not space to enter into a 
detailed criticism of this part of the book, 
but we are not sure that Dr. Sée’s methods 
will meet with the complete approval of 
astronomers in general. ‘Thus in the case 
of Zeta Sagittarii, Dr. See says: ‘‘ While in 
Virginia recently I took occasion to meas- 
ure this star, and, although the object was 
seen with difficulty, owing to its low alti- 
tude, I could discover a distinct elongation 
in the direction 194°.7 ; the distance could 
not be fixed with much confidence, but my 
settings of the micrometer gave 0.35. The 
estimates of distance were substantially 
the same, but I am now convinced, from 
my distinct recollection’ of the appearance 
of the object, that both the measure and 
the estimate were too large.” We doubt 
whether recollections of the appearance of 
a double star should have any place in 
the discussion of an orbit. Another thing 
which students might expect in the present 
work is a series of extended ephemerides 
computed from the orbits given by the 
author. But the ephemerides usually ex- 
tend for a year or two only, and this cir- 
cumstance will diminish somewhat the 
practical usefulness of the work. 

Tue observatory of Karlsruhe has issued 
the fifth volume of its publications. We 
find in it observations of stars south of the 
equator, made during the years 1892 to 
1894, together with a catalogue derived 
from them. This volume is the last which 
will be issued from Karlsruhe, as the observ- 
atory has been moved to Heidelberg, where: 
new buildings have been erected on one of 
the hills overlooking the Neckar valley. 


JANUARY 29, 1897. ] 


' We have received the Annuaire du Bureau 
des Longitudes for 1897. It contains the 
usual mass of interesting statistical matter 
and a series of ‘ Notices’ of more than usual 
interest. Three of the latter are by the late 
Professor Tisserand. They are entitled : 

1. On the proper motion of the Solar 
System. 

2. On the fourth meeting of the Interna- 
tional Committee for the photographic chart 
of the heavens. 

3. On the meeting of the International 
Committee for fundamental stars. 

These notices by Tisserand have a sad as 
well as scientific interest, for they are fol- 
lowed by the orations delivered at his grave 
by Poincaré, Janssen and Loewy. 

There is also a notice by Poincaré on the 
Réntgen rays, and one by Janssen on 
“Epochsin the Astronomical History of the 
Planets.’ These notices are not technical in 
character, and all are very interesting. The 
volume can be obtained for 30 cents, and 
should be in the hands of all persons inter- 
ested in any department of astronomy. 

WE note the appearance of the British 
Nautical Almanac for the year 1900. It is 
in all respects similar to the volume for the 
preceding year. In glancing over the 
preface of the work one cannot help no- 
ticing how small has been the use made 
of the theoretical researches of British as- 
tronomers. Probably not one formula or 
constant of importance is taken from a 
published research of English origin. And 
where results depend on observational series 
made in England these results are generally 
taken from discussions of the English obser- 
vations by foreign astronomers. It is a 
truism that science is international, but 
truisms do not always penetrate govern- 
ment offices. The course of the British 
authorities must be highly commended, for 
they have used what they thought was best 
for science, without regard to the nationality 
of its origin. 1c ae ee 


SCIENCE. 


181 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 
PROFESSOR Simon NEwcoms and Lord Kel- 
vin have been elected honorary members of the 
St. Petersburg Academy of Science. Lord Ray- 
leigh and M. Callandreau have been elected 
corresponding members. 


Dr. ARTHUR AUWERS, the Berlin astronomer, 
has been awarded a gold medal by the German 
Emperor. 


~ PROFESSOR JOSEPH LE Contzs, after attending 

the meetings of the American and British Asso- 
ciations for the Advancement of Science, and the 
autumn meeting of the National Academy of 
Sciences, and presiding over the annual meet- 
ing of the Geological Society of America, went 
to Milledgeville, Ga., and, at the place where 
he was married fifty years ago, surrounded by 
friends and relatives, including Professor W. Le 
Conte Stevens, he celebrated, on January 14th, 
his golden wedding. Professor Le Conte has now 
returned to the University of California. A1- 
though seventy-four years of age, Professor Le 
Conte retains all the energy and originality in 
research, publication and teaching which, during 
the past fifty years, have accomplished so much 
for the advancement of science. 


HEINRICH GATKE, the veteran ornithologist, 
of Heligoland, died on January Ist, at the ripe 
age of 83. He is best known from his great 
work on Bird Migration, which contains the 
results of more than half a century of close ob- 
servation at a single point—the rocky islet of 
Heligoland, inthe North Sea. This small island 
is situated at a point where two great lines of 
migration meet, and is the most favorable spot 
known in the world for studying the periodic 
movements of a very large number of birds. 
Giitke’s work is chiefly valuable as a record of 
facts of observation ; his deductions are not ac- 
cepted by most American students of migration. 


THE deaths are announced of Isidore Strauss, 
professor of experimental pathology, at Paris, 
and known for his important contributions to 
our knowledge of contagious diseases and bac- 
teriology ; of Jean Hubert Thiry, formerly pro- 
fessor of surgical pathology in the University 
of Brussels ; of Dr. George Weyer, professor of 
mathematics and astronomy at the University 


182 


of Kiel, and of T. P. Morawitz, the entomologist 
of St. Petersburg. 


WE are glad to learn that Sir Joseph Lister, 
on being raised to the peerage, has selected the 
title of Lord Lister and will thus retain the 
name which he has made eminent. 


THE German Emperor has conferred an order 
of the crown on Professor Linde, of the Poly- 
technic Institute at Charlottenberg. 


THE Kansas Academy of Science, at its recent 
annual meeting at Topeka, placed the name of 
Chaplain John D. Parker on the roll of life 
members, as a recognition of his effective ser- 
vices in organizing science in the West. Dur- 
ing the past thirty years he has been one of the 
founders of the Kansas Academy of Science, 
Kansas City Academy of Science, Nebraska 
Academy of Sciences and California Science 
Association. 

THE budget of the Prussian government ap- 
propriates 50,000 Marks for investigation on the 
Rontgen rays. The money is to be used for ap- 
paratus to be divided into a number of special 
appropriations. 

THE New York Aquarium at Castle Garden 
is visited daily by 7,000 people. This large at- 
tendance demonstrates the usefulness of such 
institutions for purposes of instruction and 
healthful amusement. It is understood that 
Mayor Strong is in favor of setting aside the 
land at Bronx Park for the Zoological Park, 
and it is much to be hoped that arrangements 
may be carried out without too great delay. 

A DISPATCH from Teheran says that 2,500 
persons perished as a result of the earthquake 
which occurred on Kishm Island, in the 
the Persian Gulf, January 11th. 

THE Friday evening meetings of the members 
of the Royal Institution are announced to open 
on January 22d, with a lecture by Professor 
Dewar, on ‘Properties of Liquid Oxygen,’ to 
be followed on the 29th by a discourse on ‘The 
Polarization of the Electric Ray,’ by Professor 
J. C. Bose, of Presidency College, Calcutta. 

THE Geological Society of London will, this 
year, award its medals and funds as follows: 
The Wollaston Medal to Mr. W. H. Hudleston; 
the Murchison Medal and part of the fund to 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 109. 


_Mr. Horace B. Woodward; the Lyell Medal 


and part of the fund to Dr. G. J. Hinde; the 
Bigsby Medal to Mr. Clement Reid; the pro- 
ceeds of the Wollaston fund to Mr. F. A. 
Bather; the balance of the proceeds of the 
Murchison fund to Mr. 8. S. Buckman; and the 
balance of the proceeds of the Lyell fund to 
Mr. W. J. Lewis Abbott and Mr. J. Lomas. 


THE forty-fourth annual meeting of the 
American Society of Civil Engineers was opened 
in New York on January 20th, under the presi- 
dency of Mr. T. C. Clarke. The Norman 
Medal was awarded to Mr. J. EK. Greiner for a 
paper entitled ‘What is the Life of an Iron 
Railroad Bridge?’ and the Rowland Prize to 
Mr. H. S. Coppee for a paper entitled ‘Bank 
Revetment on the Lower Mississippi.’ Mr. B-. 
M. Harrod was elected President of the Society 
for the ensuing year. 

THE building of the Bellevue Hospital Medi- 
cal College, New York, was injured by fire on 
January 20th. The damage to the building is 
estimated at $15,000, and much apparatus has 
been destroyed. 


THE United States Civil Service Commission 
will hold an examination in Washington and in 
other cities where there are applicants, com- 
mencing on February 10th, to fill a vacancy in 
the position of expert horticulturist, office of ex- 
periment stations, Department of Agriculture, 
the salary of which is $1,400 per annum. 

PROFESSOR GIUSEPPE SANARELLI, Director of 
the Uruguayan National Institute of Experi- 
mental Hygiene, has reported, to the Academy 
of Medicine in Rome, the discovery of the 
bacillus of yellow fever. He will shortly pub- 
lish the result of his experiments. 

THE New York Board of Health has declared 
pulmonary tuberculosis, or consumption, an in- 
fectious and communicable disease, dangerous. 
to public health. The resolution adopted by 
the Board ranks consumption with diphtheria. 
and measles. The resolution makes it the duty 
of every physician to report minutely within 
one week to the sanitary bureau of the Board, 
concerning everyone sick with consumption 
whom he attends or who comes under his ob- 
servation. Further, it orders every consump- 
tive in the city, and every person attending a 


JANUARY 29, 1897.] 


consumptive ‘to observe and enforce all the 
sanitary rules and regulations of the Board of 
Health for preventing the spread of consump- 
tion.’ 

RECORDER Gorr, of New York, in speaking 
recently before the Medico-Legal Society, called 
attention to the very unsatisfactory condition of 
expert testimony before courts of justice. He had 
observed that juries were universally sceptical 
in regard to such testimony. He said that he 
would favor the establishment of a board which 
would select men who would be qualified to 
serve as experts. 


A NEw quarterly journal, Archives d’ anatomie 
microscopique, is announced by Masson et Cie. 
It will be under the direction of MM. Balbiani 
and Ranvier, and M. Henneguy will act as 
managing editor. 


WE have already announced the new journal, 
Monatschrift fiir Psychiatrie und Neurologie, edited 
by Professors Wernicke and Ziehen. The first 
number has now been published at Berlin. 


La Nature, the French weekly journal of pop- 
ular science, will hereafter be edited by M. H. 
Parvil in place of M. Gaston Tissandier, who for 
twenty-five years has been its editor. 


PROFESSOR JAMES SETH has become one of 
the editors of the Philosophical Review, published 
by Ginn & Co. for Cornell University, 


REUTER’S agency states that two Danish offi- 
cers, MM. Oloufsen and Philipsen, have just ar- 
rived in St. Petersburg on their return from a 
journey of exploration to the Pamir country, 
where they reached places hitherto untrodden 
by Europeans. They have brought back with 
them over 300 photographs of places they have 
visited and types they have met. During their 
travels they met, among others, tribes who are 
still fire-worshippers and totally uncivilized in 
their mode of life. The men of these tribes, 
and even their animals, are of very small size, 
the bulls and cows being no larger than a Euro- 
pean foal, the donkeys about the size of a large 
dog, and the sheep about as large as a small 
poodle. The use of money is unknown to them, 
and their only trade consists in the bartering of 
furs. Women are bought at the rate of five or 
six cows or fifteen sheep apiece. These natives 


SCIENCE. 


183 


are very timid, and on the approach of strangers 
take to flight. MM. Philipsen and Oloufsen 
have secured numerous scientific collections, 
which they intend presenting to the Natural 
History Museum in Copenhagen, and have also 
made interesting meteorological observations. 
In the course of their voyage they occasionally 
reached a height of 14,000 ft. above the level of 
the sea. 


ACCORDING to the London Times an electric 
omnibus, belonging to the London Electric 
Omnibus Company and propelled by electricity 
on the Radcliffe Ward system, has made a suc- 
cessful trial trip. Starting from Northumber- 
land Avenue, it was able to ascend the com- 
paratively steep slope of St. Martin’s lane with- 
out any difficulty, although it was loaded with 
all but the full number of passengers it is con- 
structed to carry and the streets were far from 
being in a good condition. In the crowded 
traffic of Oxford street it showed itself to be per- 
fectly under the control of the driver as regards 
both steering and speed. It easily threaded its 
way among other vehicles and its pace could 
be regulated at will to pass almost everything 
else on the road or to crawl along with the 
slowest, while its powerful brakes enabled it 
to be pulled up dead within a yard or two. 
The pneumatic cushions interposed between the 
frame and the car do much to diminish vibra- 
tion, and the smoothness and easiness of the 
running are in marked contrast to the uneasy 
rumble which usually accompanies London 
omnibuses. 


THE results of the quinquennial census of 
France, taken on March 29, 1896, show a 
population of 38,518,975, an increase of 125,- 
027 during the five years. The towns hav- 
ing more than 30,000 inhabitants show an in- 
crease of 320,000. Most of the agricultural dis- 
tricts, with the exception of Brittany, show a 
decrease. 

THE London Times reports that the Council 
of the Royal Colonial Institute, for themselves 
and on behalf of about 4,000 Fellows of the In- 
stitute residing in all parts of her Majesty’s 
dominions, have forwarded to the Prime Minister 
a memorial urging on the government the ad- 
visability of taking early steps for the unification 


184 


of time at sea, a question which has been 
brought under the consideration of the Council 
by the Royal Society of Canada. The memorial- 
ists say that the various points connected with 
civil, nautical and astronomical time at sea 
appear to have been fully gone into during the 
past twelve years by various societies and au- 
thorities in different countries, and to have 
been eventually resolved into the simple ques- 
tion of the desirability of advancing astronomi- 
cal time by twelve hours so as to harmonize it 
with civil time, for nautical time has in general 
practice long been assimilated to civil time, and 
is no longer a matter giving rise to difficulty or 
discussion. It is believed by the memorialists 
that the proposed change can be easily intro- 
duced with decided advantage to observers, 
and that the general principle of the unification 
of time at sea has now an almost universal con- 
sensus of opinion in its favor. The advance- 
ment of astronomical time by twelve hours so 
as to assimilate it to civil time, in order that 
both may be in agreement and begin every- 
where at midnight, would require the adapta- 
tion of the ‘ Nautical Almanack,’ to the change, 
and as the ‘ Nautical Almanack’ is of necessity 
prepared some years in advance, it is submitted 
that a decision should be arrived at by her 
Majesty’s government with as little delay as 
possible, in order that the change may take 
effect at the date indicated by astronomers— 
viz.; the first day of the new century. 

THE general report on the operations of the 
survey of India during the year ending with 
September, 1895, according to Nature, shows 
that in this period the aggregate area surveyed 
on all scales amounts to 125,384 miles, exclusive 
of 5,018 square miles embraced by traverse op- 
erations in the central provinces and the north- 
western provinces and Oude. In the trigono- 
metrical surveys the Upper Burma principal 
triangulation was carried northwards as well as 
westwards through Manipur and Assam. Inad- 
dition to the topographical work accomplished 
during the year, a detachment with the Pamir 
commission surveyed 250 square miles, and one 
with the Chitral relief force surveyed in detail 
450 square miles on the 1-inch scale, 215 square 
miles on the 34-inch scale, and, approximately, 
1,900 square miles on the }-inch scale. The re- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vor. V. No. 109. 


sults of the operations of the latter surveyors is 
that considerable knowledge of the topography 
has been gained of an area of 3,600 square miles 
of a country previously practically unknown, 
and much credit is due to Captain Bythell and 
the men who served under him for such a satis- 
factory record of work. Two views, represent- 
ing the Malakand Pass and the Chitral bridge 
and fort, have been reproduced by heliogravure 
to illustrate Captain Bythell’s report. A mass 
of information on the forest survey operations, 
cadastral surveys, traverse surveys, longitude 
observations, geographical surveys and recon- 
naissances, carried out by the survey depart- 
ment under the direction of Colonel C. Strahan, 
R.E., Surveyor-General of India, is included in 
the general report. 

Mr. GrorGE F. Kunz, in his report to the 
United States Geological Survey on the produc- 
tions of precious stones in 1895, states that 
among the more interesting occurrences and 
changes in precious stones for the year 1895 
may be mentioned: (1) the finding of a 6-carat 
diamond at a new locality, Saukville, Ozaukee 
County, Wis.; (2) the diligent search made for 
monazite in North Carolina and Georgia, re- 
sulting in the finding ofa number of interesting 
gems; (8) continued finding of rubies near 
Franklin, Macon County, N. C.; (4) the discov- 
ery of true blue sapphires near Utica, Fergus 
County, Mont.; (5) the discovery of some re- 
markable gem tourmaline of extraordinary size 
and wonderful perfection at the historic Paris 
Hill locality, Oxford County, Me.; (6) the find- 
ing of a large quantity of fine chrysoprase in 
Tulare County, Cal.; (7) the discovery of an 
enormous crystal of tourmaline on New York 
Island ; (8) the interesting exhibition of South- 
ern gems at the Cotton States and International 
Exposition, at Atlanta, Ga., and the presenta- 
tion of this collection to the Lea collection at 
the United States National Museum; and (9) the 
opening of the Golden Gate Park Museum, at 
San Francisco, with an interesting collection of 
gems. Among foreign occurrences may be 
noted: (1) the increased yield of the South 
African diamond fields and the absorption of 
the entire yield by the gem markets of the 
world; (2) the occurrence of rubies of good 
color and in some abundance in various fields 


JANUARY 29, 1897.] 


in Siam; these are very rarely equal to the 
Burmese, yet they are fine stones, and, although 
generally much lower in price, a single stone 
sold for more than $1,000; (8) the great profu- 
sion and beauty of the opal and the large de- 
mand for these stones, which were produced in 
greater quantity, finer quality and at a some- 
what lower cost than ever before from the 
fields at Fermoy, Queensland, and in the new 
locality at White Cliff, in New South Wales. 


THE article by Dr. Dabney in the issue of this 
JOURNAL for January 15th, pointing out the ad- 
vantages of a National Department of Science, 
was prepared at the suggestion of Hon. Gardi- 
ner G. Hubbard, who wrote to Dr. Dabney as 
follows: 

1328 CoNNECTICUT AVE., 
WASHINGTON, D. C., January 3, 1897. 
DR. CHARLES A. DABNEY, JR., Washington, D. C.: 

DEAR Sir: My attention has been called at differ- 
ent times during the past year to the great number 
of scientists employed by the government and the 
large amount ofappropriations. I have also observed 
that the same subject seemed to be treated often un- 
der two and sometimes under three departments, 
' thus leading to needless duplication of labor. 

I know that your attention has been somewhat 
called to this subject. I, therefore, venture to ask 
you, if your time will permit, to prepare an article 
for publication, which shall bring out fully all these 
facts, and also suggest a remedy which would seem 
to be the placing all this scientific work under one 
department. I know of no one better fitted than 
yourself to perform this work and am sure that it will 
be carefully and correctly done. 

Very truly yours, 
GARDINER G. HUBBARD. 
Hon. CHARLES W. DABNEY, JR., ; 
Assistant Secretary of Agriculture. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 


THE New York Court of Appeals has decided 
the Fayerweather will case by affirming the 
judgment of the lower conrt. The residuary 
estate, now amounting to more than $3,000,000, 
will consequently be divided equally among the 
twenty colleges named in the will. The follow- 
ing institutions will each receive more than 
$150,000: Amherst, Bowdoin, Dartmouth, Wil- 
liams, Yale, Columbia, Hamilton, Lafayette, Lin- 
coln, Maryville, Marietta, Adelbert, Wabash, 


SCIENCE. 


185 


Park, Wesleyan, Rochester, Cornell, Virginia, 
Hampton, and the Union Theological Seminary. 

A NUMBER of professors of the University of 
Berlin have asked permission from the Senate 
to inaugurate a system of university extension 
lectures. It appears, however, that there is 
considerable opposition to the plan in Germany, 
in part because it is supposed that many univer- 
sity professors might favor the views of social 
democracy. 

ACCORDING to the new Prussian Budget pro- 
fessors in the University at Berlin will re- 
ceive an increase of salary of $500 Marks, and 
smaller increases in salary are granted to pro- 
fessors in the other Prussian universities and to 
teachers in the schools. 


Mr. HARotp HEATH has been appointed fel- 
low in biology and Mr. J. M. Mathews fellow 
in chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania. 

Dr. E. WIECHERT, docent at the University 
of Konigsberg, has been promoted to a pro- 
fessorship. Dr. Willstatter, of Karlsruhe, has 
qualified as docent in chemistry in the Univer- 
sity at Berlin. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
SIMPLIFIED SPELLING. 


To THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: In a book no- 
tice sent to you to-day you will observe two in- 
stances of the innovation in spelling proposed 
by Funk & Wagnalls. Instead of ‘ grouped’ 
and ‘addressed,’ I have written ‘groupt’ and 
‘addrest.’ Unless special instructions are 
given, your compositor and proof-reader will 
ignore my attempt at reform and print these 
words according to the prevalent fashion. Of 
this I cannot complain, for it is certainly the 
privilege of a journal to unify its pages in the 
matter of spelling. Neither am I disposed to 
criticize SCIENCE for not joining in the spelling- 
reform movement, for it would be unwise for a 
journal with its own battles to fight to incur the 
odium which attaches to rational spelling. The 
prejudices in favor of irrational spelling are so 
strong and prevalent that they cannot be op- 
posed without a certain measure of sacrifice on 
the part of the opponent. Nevertheless, it 
seems to me that SclENCE may, without harm 
to itself, allow such of its contributors as have 


186 


joined in the Funk & Wagnalls’ movement to 
reform their participles in signed articles, and 
I, therefore, submit a request for permission. 


G. K. GILBERT. 
WASHINGTON, D. C., 
January 18, 1897. 


AN EXPLANATION OF THE SO-CALLED PSEUDO- 
AURORA. 


OcCASIONALLY, during the winter season, 
dwellers of our Northern cities have noticed by 
night a strange optical phenomenon, which some 
one has called the ‘pseudo-aurora,’ and which, so 

far as I know, has not been heretofore ex- 
plained.* My attention was first called to it 
some years ago, in Moorhead, Minn. Over 
each are lamp, used in street lighting, appears 
a strange column of pure white light, seeming 
to extend vertically toa great height ; a peculiar 
transparent shaft, like the brightest bars of 
the aurora borealis, yet standing very still, and 
always vertical over the lamp from whatever 
point viewed. When each arc lamp in the whole 
town is thus attended by its vivid shaft the 
display is magnificent and, seen against the 
northern sky, might easily suggest the ‘ pseudo’ 
name. Onan evening of special beauty these 
columns seem to reach almost to the zeinth, and 
other sources of light add their shafts to the 
display. The evening star gives a shaft below 
as well as above, and the late rising moon stands 
right in a broad column of light. 

Looking about for causes, and noticing from 
time to time the conditions under which this 
meteor appeared, the following facts were ob- 
served: The temperature is always below the 
freezing point, oftenest about zero. The sky is 
cloudless, air still or barely moving, and more 
or less full of frost crystals. The display is 
finer, completer, when most crystals are present, 
though by no means does the mere presence of 
crystals in the air furnish the spectacle. The 
shafts of light are most sharply defined and ap- 
parently higher when the air is stillest. With 
more wind the shafts spread out, diffuse, be- 
coming indistinct, and with a gentle breeze the 
light seems to be more or less evenly distributed 
through the entire upper air, like a fine luminous 
dust suspended there. 

* See Loomis’s Meteorology, p. 224. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 109. 


Having noticed these conditions, itis apparent 
that the crystals are the important factor, and 
reflection of light from their facets is suggested 
at once. Of course to get a vertical shaft of 
light by reflection necessitates a constant hori- 
zontal position of the crystal faces, and I 
searched long and arduously for a ballasted 
crystal, floating like a parachute, but found 
none. What I did find in each case was a 
minute hexagonal plate of solid ice, in no case 
more than one millimeter in diameter, ex- 
tremely thin, and of glassy smoothness. 

I experimented with this idea: Making some 
hexagonal plates an inch across, of the lightest 
glazed bond paper, and letting them fall in still 
air from a height, the whole storyis told. Each 
plate floats gently down, at times making a 
rapid chute edgewise, but quickly recovering a 
horizontal position, so that of all the time in- 
volved in falling, the larger part is taken up 
while the plate is in a position approximately 
horizontal. We have seen the same thing in 
autumn when the great basswood leaves let go 
and float slowly down. ; 

Now, filling the air with such plates, each o 
which is a perfect mirror, we have in the ver- 
tical plane, between our eye and the light, in- 
numerable crystals, from the lower surface of 
which rays of light from the lamp are reflected 
to our eye, and seen by the eye as though lo- 
cated in the straight line in which they enter 
the eye, and at a distance equal to the distance 
traveled from the lamp. This gives the vertical 
column, the location of any single point in it 
being shown by construction, the same as an 
image in a plane mirror. 

The little crystal plate adjusts itself, like a 
flat stone at the bottom of the torrent, or a 
cake of ice at the top of the sea, with its broad 
surface normal to the force acting upon it. So 
long as this force is gravity only, the position of 
the crystal is horizontal. But if the wind be 
blowing this adds a horizontal component, giv- 
ing with gravity a resultant no longer vertical, 
to which the plate becomes normal. With the 
departure of the crystal from the horizontal 
position the vertical shafts of light disperse. 


J. PAUL GOODE. 


UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. 


JANUARY 29, 1897. ] 


SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 

Catalogue des bibliographies géologiques. Rédigé, 
avec le concours des membres de la Commis- 
sion bibliographique du Congrés. Par Emm. 
DE MARGERIE. Paris, Gauthier-Villars et 
Fils. 1896. Pp. xx + 733. 

The International Geological Congress, at its 
Washington meeting in 1891, appointed astand- 
ing committee on bibliography. The original 
membership was ten, but provision was made for 
enlargement by the committee itself, and there 
were eventually fourteen members, representing 
the principal countries or regions having geo- 
logic literature. North America was represented 
by Mr. Gilbert, and South America by Dr. Stein- 
mann, of Freiburg, Baden. The duties of the 
committee, as instructed by the Congress, were : 
(1) to prepare and publish a list of existing par- 
tial bibliographies of geology ; (2) to promote the 
preparation by geologic societies and surveys of 
bibliography pertaining to their respective terri- 
tories, and (8) to study the problem of the sys- 
tematic centralized publication of the current 
bibliography of geology. The first of these 
works was immediately undertaken and has 
resulted in an imposing volume of 750 pages. 

When a cooperative work of such magnitude 
is carried to a successful conclusion there is 
usually some one individual to whose skill and 
energy the success is due, and in this instance 
that person was M. Emm. de Margerie, of Paris, 
the Secretary of the Committee. Under his 
guidance the other members of the committee 
gathered material from their respective coun- 
tries or districts, but the whole was classified, 
unified, and eventually in large part verified 
through comparison with original sources by 
him. He, moreover, made a systematic search 
of libraries and was thereby enabled to make 
large additions to the list. 

The whole number of entries is 3,918 and these 
are groupt under two ‘parts’ and many head- 
ings. The first part, with various subdivisions, 
includes bibliographies whose geographic scope 
is either the whole earth or one of its greater 
divisions. The second part includes the bibli- 
ographies of regions or countries, arranged 
alphabetically by regions. The regional en- 
tries are also classified according to scope and 
subject, and there are abundant of cross refer- 


SCIENCE. 


187 


ences. This elaborate classification adds greatly 
to the convenience of the book, enabling the user 
to find in one place, or at most in two or three 
places, all references to any special subject of in- 
quiry. His convenience is further consulted by 
the addition of three indexes, referring sever- 
ally to authors, places and topics. Thescope and 
method of each work listed, when not described 
in its title, are explained in the annotation. 

A summary of the part pertaining to North 
America (United States and Canada) will at 
once illustrate the scope of the list and its mode 
of classification. General bibliographies afford 
12 titles; catalogues of publications of official 
surveys, 33; general indexes of transactions 
and journals, 10; annual bibliographies, 9; 
library catalogues, 3; personal bibliographies 
and biographic notices, 51; bibliographies of 
special districts, 61 ; subject bibliographies, 70, 
of which 52 pertain to special formations, 1 to 
paleontology and 9 to petrography. 

While the primary purpose of the committee 
was to take an account of stock in the field of 
geologic bibliography, and thus pave the way for 
the most intelligent undertaking of systematic 
and comprehensive work for the future, their 
catalogue has an immediate value to the inves- 
tigator as a directory to the places where the 
literature he wishes to examine is listed. 

The chief cost of publication was met by the 
local committees of the Washington and Zu- 
rich Congresses, and copies of the volume have 
been forwarded to the geologists who attended 
those meetings. This distribution has not en- 
tirely exhausted the edition, and the remaining 
volumes are placed on sale, the price for the 
United States and Canada being $5.00. The 
Secretary of the Washington Congress permits 
me to add that the Compte Rendu of that meet- 
ing will be forwarded without cost to the 
American purchasers of the Catalogue. Cor- 


| respondence should be addrest to 


GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, G. K. GILBERT. 


WASHINGTON, D. C. 


The Principles and Practice of Teaching. JAMES 
JOHONNOT. Revised by SARAH EVANS JoHON- 
not. International Education Series, Vol. 
XXXIX., 12mo., pp. xx+334. D. Appleton 
& Co., New York, 1896. 


188 


Nature Study and Related Subjects for the Common 
Schools. WILBUR S. JACKMAN, A. B. Part I. 
Charts, 4to, pp. 23; Part II., Notes, 12mo., 
pp. 167. The Author, Chicago. 1896. 
These two books are of especial interest to 

teachers of science, for, even though the first 

is concerned with teaching in general, the 
author, nevertheless, lays especial stress upon 
the proper methods of science teaching. Al- 
though Johonnot’s book originally appeared 
nearly twenty years ago, this revised edi- 
tion seems fresh and new, not because there 
is much new matter incorporated in it, nor 
yet because the subject-matter has been ma- 
terially changed, but rather because the origi- 
nal work contained so much that was true 
in principle and clear in expression. The 
system is based upon sound psychological prin- 
ciples and the book is a clear exposition of the 
scientific method of teaching. It contains 
chapters upon the general objects of education, 
the mental powers, objective and subjective 
courses of instruction, relative value of differ- 
ent branches of instruction, Pestalozzi, Froebel, 

Agassiz, systems of education compared, phys- 

ical, esthetic and moral culture, general course 

of study, country schools and their organiza- 
tion. 

The most noticeable changes made by the 
reviser are in relation to manual training, moral 
culture and general courses of study, and are 
all in the direction of recent pedagogical opin- 
ion on these subjects. An appendix is added, 
giving an account of a school conducted upon 
the principles advocated by the author. Of 
his success we may judge from the following 
extract: 

‘Our experiment came to an end. Of the 
various innovations made upon custom each 
had justified itself. The effort to make char- 
acter the end of education had more than ful- 
filled expectation. During the last year not a 
single case of misconduct was reported to me, 
nor was the behavior of one of our students 
criticised by the citizens. We had a reign of 
influence. The forces that govern conduct 
came from a growth within of just and kindly 
impulses. A watchful supervision had always 
been maintained, but into this had entered no 
element of espionage. The peculiar character 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8S. Vox. V. No. 109. 


which the school attained, both on its mental 
and moral side, was due to the several factors 
of influence—scientific methods in study, phil- 
osophic succession of subjects and a neyer- 
ceasing but an apparently incidental attention 
to moral training.’’ 

Prof. Jackman’s work consists of two parts, 
the first being a set of ten charts presenting a 
conspectus of nature study for the school year, 
and the second a series of notes and directions 
for the guidance of the teacher. The charts 
outline the subjects of study appropriate for 
each month of the school year from September 
to June inclusive, the subjects themselves being 
mineralogy, geology, astronomy, meteorology, 
chemistry, physics, geography, botany and 
zoology. Hach subject is considered in the 
two aspects of thought work and form work. 
Under the former are included the subject, 
both general and special; the concept, to be 
considered from the study of the subject; col- 
lections illustrating the subject; apparatus re- 
quired; reading from certain designated books 
containing selections for school use; literary 
treatment of the topic by recognized writers; 
the moral and esthetic culture derived from 
the study. Under the head of form work the 
pupil’s training is directed along the lines of 
the study of the geometrical form exhibited by 
the object; number, consisting mainly of statis- 
tics gathered by examining a large series of 
objects and bearing on various points; making 
or modeling the object or the piece of apparatus 
used; drawing the same; color, as shown in 
nature; writing upon some topic suggested by 
the thought work; language, including the 
study of descriptive phrases, figures of speech, 
technical terms, etc.; music, as illustrated by 
the appropriate school songs; references to 
standard scientific literature. 

This plan of study as outlined above will at 
once be recognized as that of a teacher who has 
had long experience and has been guided by 
correct principles; of one who evidently be- 
lieves that nature study develops something 
more than the powers of. observation, and if 
properly conducted may be the means of culti- 
vating all the mental faculties. The plan itself 
is exceedingly comprehensive and varied. In 
the hands of a conscientious and well-trained 


JANUARY 29, 1897. ] 


teacher it ought to give admirable results. Each 
subject is considered from so many points of 
view that it seems scarcely possible that the 
pupil could lose interest in the work or fail to 
see the intimate relation between the great 
number of natural phenomena and the daily 
affairs of life. The pupil’s attention is held 
throughout the course of study by interesting 
him in some aspect of nature especially notice- 
able during the different seasons. To illustrate, 
the plan contemplates the following subjects 
for study during the month of October: In zo- 
ology, the migration of animals; in botany, the 
distribution of seeds; in geography, areas of 
erops sown in the autumn; in physics, evapora- 
tion and condensation; in chemistry, ash, or- 
ganic matter, fluid and dry solid in common 
fruits; in meteorology, rainfall and humidity ; 
in astronomy, distribution of sunshine; in geol- 
ogy, erosion and sedimentation, the transport- 
ing power of water; in mineralogy, evapora- 
tion of water from the soils, and sand and 
granite. 

The notes composing Part Two of the work, 
though, perhaps, rather too rhetorical in treat- 
ment, present to the teacher directions for the 
construction and use of apparatus, descriptions 
of experiments and suggestive examples illus- 
trating the tremendous scale upon which the 
operations of nature are conducted. While in 
most cases the directions are sufficiently explicit, 
much is left, and properly, too, to the indi- 
vidual teacher to plan and execute as circum- 
stances may require. 

Few teachers realize how much can be made 
of nature study if properly conducted, and, as 
Prof. Jackman’s plan does not require for its 
éxecution that the teacher shall be specially 
trained in the sciences, it is hoped that it may 
be widely adopted. 

CHARLES WRIGHT DopeE. 

UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER. 


Papers presented to the World’s Congress on Or- 
nithology. Edited by Mrs. E. IRENE Roop, 
under the direction of Dr. ELLIoTT Cours. 
Chicago. 1896. 8vo. Pp. 208. $5.00. 
The ‘ Congress’ at which were presented the 

twenty-seven papers printed in this volume 

took place in Chicago in October, 1893. Invi- 


SCIENCE: 


189 


tations to it had been widely distributed, signed 
by a committee of nearly a dozen persons, of 
whom Dr. Coues is the only one well known as 
an ornithologist. In the invitation it was an- 
nounced that the congress was to ‘treat of 
birds from the standpoint of the scientist, the 
economist and the humanitarian,’ and the sci- 
entist was warned that the audiences would be 
characterized by ‘ zsthetic feelings and humane 
sympathy rather than intellectual apprehen- 
sion.’ Under these circumstances it is not 
surprising that the papers show a very wide 
range of merit, nor that among their writers 
there are but few ornithologists of much promi- 
nence. 

Several of the articles are deserving of cor- 
dial praise. Mr. D. P. Ingraham, for instance, 
gives a very interesting account of the Amer- 
ican Flamingo, a bird that few other naturalists 
have seen within the limits of the United 
States, where to-day it is restricted to the inac- 
cessible, shallow bays of the extreme southern 
coast of Florida. Another valuable contribu- 
tion is that on the changes of habits of some 
birds in Maine, by Manly Hardy, whose many 
years of exceptionally careful observation have 
enabled him to narrate a number of instances 
of adaptation to changed conditions. Some- 
what comparable with Mr. Hardy’s notes are 
those of Mr. J. H. Bowles, upon instinct in 
birds, though of less importance, for the reason 
that reliable facts of this sort are far more read- 
ily attainable than such as Mr. Hardy’s, which, 
from the nature of the case, are seldom af- 
forded save by the life-long experience of a sin- 
gle observer. 

The late John S. Cairns contributed a short 
sketch, giving a good account of the breeding 
haunts of the Black-throated Blue Warblers on 
the mountains of western North Carolina. In 
mentioning the fact that in the spring these 
birds are already engaged in nest-building at a 
time when- northern-bound individuals of the 
species are still migrating through the valleys 
below, he incidentally referred to them as a 
‘local race.’ This calls forth the following 
editorial foot-note: ‘‘As this subspecies does 
not appear to have been named, it may be 
called Dendreca cerulescens cairnsi.—K. C.”’ 
Readers of the book may be interested to learn 


190 


that this has proved to be one of Dr. Coues’s 
happy intuitions, and that his nomen nudum only 
awaits a description to take a secure place in 
ornithological nomenclature. 

Dr. Emil Holub’s brilliant description of a 
winter roosting place of Hirundo rustica must 
not pass unnoticed, nor must Mr. J. A. Allen’s 
article on ‘the migration of birds.’ The latter 
is an exposition of the subject excellently suited 
to the unscientific reader, for whom, doubtless, 
it was intended, but it contains one or two 
statements that the field ornithologist of large 
experience might not assent to. Among the 
rest of the papers there are some, of which there 
is nothing especial to be said ; others might bet- 
ter never have been written. 

C. F. BATCHELDER. 


SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS. 
JOURNAL OF GEOLOGY, NOVEMBER—DECEM- 
BER, 1896. 


Age of the Auriferous gravels of the Sierra 
Nevada: By WALDEMAR LINDGREN ; witha Re- 
port on the flora of Independence Hill: By ¥. H. 
Knowiton. An attempt is made to definitely 
fix the age of the auriferous detrital rocks of the 
Sierra Nevada, resting uncomformably upon the 
bed rocks at high elevations and covered by 
volcanic flows. The beds include the deep 
gravels, the bench gravels, rhyolitic tuffs, 
gravels of the rhyolitic period, gravels of 
the inter-voleanic erosion period and ande- 
sitic tuffs and tuffaceous breccias. No fossils 
have been found in the deep gravels. They 
are older than the bench grayels, and may be 
as old as the Eocene. At Independence Hill 
leaves occur in a whitish or bluish clay inter- 
bedded with the uppermost gravels of the ante- 
volcanic period. These plant forms point very 
clearly to the Miocene age of the deposit. The 
Ione formation, correlated with the bench gray- 
els, is also shown to be Miocene by the presence 
of characteristic shells. These gravels are prob- 
ably Upper Miocene. The gravels of the inter- 
volcanic period and the andesitic tuffs are prob- 
ably Lower Pliocene or Upper Miocene. In 
early Cretaceous the Mariposa and earlier beds 
were folded and eruptions were continued from 
the Jurassic. Shortly before the Chico the 


SOIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No.-109. 


Sierra Nevada became separated from the Great 
Basin. In Chico time the sea advanced east- 
ward. In late Chico and Tejon time the 
Sierra Nevada was being eroded, the greater 
part of the Chico sandstone being cut away. 
In early Miocene the sea retreated westward. 
The Sierra assumed the topography since pre- 
served. The relation of the two eroded sur- 
faces, Cretaceous and Miocene, is clearly dis- 
cernible from the lower foot hills. In late Mio- 
cene (Ione) the sea moved eastward and gravels 
were formed. The gravel period was closed by 
rhyolitic and andesitic eruptions with Pliocene 
elevation. The andesitic flows are supposed to 
mark the close of the Pliocene. The Pleisto- 
cene was a period of erosion, with minor basaltic 
eruptions in the earlier and middle portions, and 
glaciation later. 

Anorthosites of the RainyLake Region: By A. 
P. CoLEMAN. Lawson has described eruptive 
masses through the Keewatin of the Rainy Lake 
region. The basic eruptions were identified 
as anorthosites, the larger area enclosing the 
southern arm of Bad Vermilion Lake. The 
rock presents some differences from typical 
anorthosites, an analysis showing that it is one 
of the most basic rocks. Lawson thought the 
area represented the truncated base of a Kee- 
watin volcano. In this he was probably not 
correct, as apparently a long interval separated 
the anorthosite eruption from that of the 
granite. 

Mechanic of Glaciers I: By HARRY FIELD- 
ING REeIp. The greatest flow occurs through a 
section at the névé line, and diminishes as we go 
up or down the glacier from here; the diminu- 
tion increasing with the distance from the névé 
line. In glaciers with beds of uniform slope the 
velocity and flow imerease and decrease to- 
gether, though not in the same proportion. 
In a glacier of indefinite length and uniform 
section the direction of the flow would be par- 
allel to the slope, and the velocity parallel with 
the axis would not vary along the direction of 
flow. The velocity of a point under such cir- 
cumstances would be the normal velocity cor- 
responding to that form and size of cross-section. 
A glacier of uniform section could not exist if 
there was any melting ; the slope of the glacier 
being uniform, wherever there is melting, the 


JANUARY 29, 1897.] 


cross-section must change to produce a smaller 
flow as we descend the glacier. The ice near 
the lower end of the glacier is under greater 
pressure than the normal pressure and would 
therefore have a tendency torise. Stratifica- 
tion is not easy to recognize, but certain obser- 
vations support the view that this potential ris- 
ing becomes actual, which accounts for many of 
the phenomena observed. The surface at any 
point depends on velocity and rate of melting, 
and varies inversely with them. The larger 
the glacier the greater will be the differential 
motion. For small glaciers the differential 
motion is small and the slope steep. If any- 
thing cause an abnormal melting of the lower 
layers the upper ones will advance but over 
them, which is thought to be the explanation of 
certain facts observed in Greenland by Cham- 
berlin and Salisbury. Although the sloping 
surface of Alpine glaciers is a surface of equi- 
librium it is unstable. If the surface be in 
equilibrium it will respond quickly to climatic 
variation. If it be widely removed from equi- 
librium it will respond more slowly, an explana- 
tion of the variation of glaciers differing from 
both that of Forel and Richter. 

Loess in the Wisconsin Drift Formation: By R. 
D. SALispuRY. Loess has long been known to 
cover the glacier drift of the earlier epochs at 
various points. At least two loess sheets are 
known, one of which is correlated with Iowan 
ice and passes beneath the Wisconsin. Hereto- 
fore loess has not been known to occur in or 
above the Wisconsin drift, but during the past 
summer it has been found in connection with 
this formation at several points in Wisconsin, 
namely, Green Lake, Devil’s Lake and Able- 
mans. 

Geology of Chiapas, Tabasco and the Peninsula 
of Yucatan: By Carios SAppPErR, translated 
by C. JoaAguina Maury and G. D. Harris. 
Southeastern Mexico shows three series of 
formations: an ancient complex of Palzozoic 
beds and eruptives in southern Chiapas ; a more 
modern belt of Mesozoic and Tertiary forma- 
tions in the middle and northern regions; and 
a third zone of great plains at the foot of the 
other belts, only slightly elevated above sea 
level, and of Quarternary age. In the penin- 
sula of Yucatan there is less diversity and the 


SCIENCE. 


191 


beds are undisturbed, in which regard they are 
contrasted with those of Chiapas. Descriptions 
of the various formations, with lists of fossils, 
are appended. \ 
Studies for Students—Stratified Drift: By R. 
D. SALISBURY. Water must have been an im- 
portant factor in the deposition of the drift, par- 
ticularly along the margin of the ice. A much 
larger amount of drift is stratified than is com- 
monly thought. These deposits include extragla- 
cial, supermorainic, submorainic and intermo- 
rainic stratified drift. The deposits made during 
the advance, maximum extension and retreat 
of an ice sheet show certain differences. During 
maximum extension there was a chance for the 
development of the following forms: (1) kames 
and kame belts at the edge of the ice; (2) flu- 
vial plains and valley trains in virtual contact 
with the ice at their heads; (8) border plains 
or overwash plains in virtual contact with the 
ice at their upper edges; (4) ill-defined patches 
of stratified drift, coarse or fine, near the ice; 
(5) subaqueous overwash plains or deltas 
formed either in the sea or lakes at or near the 
edge of the ice; (6) lacustrine and marine de- 
posits of other sorts, the material being fur- 
nished by waters arising from the ice. The 
same deposits might be formed during the ad- 
vance of the ice, but would be subject to de- 
struction by the overriding of the latter. They 
might be formed during the retreat, but in the 
latter case the formations dependent upon ice 
edge would not be so sharply formed. Super- 
glacial streams are believed to be of only slight 
importance in this connection, because of their 
high velocity and the small amount of material 
upon the surface of the ice. Subglacial streams 
are considered to be the most probable means of 
the formation of eskers. H. F. B. 


TERRESTRIAL MAGNETISM, OCTOBER. 


In the first article, by Lieutenant-General de 
Tillo, entitled Jsanomales et Variations Sécu- 
laires des Composantes Y et X dela Force Mag- 
nétique Horizontale pour U Epoque 1857, the au- 
thor concludes his series of charts of ‘ isanomo- 
lous lines’ and of ‘lines of equal annual 
secular variation.’ As the title implies, the 
accompanying four colored plates apply to the 
westerly component (Y) and the northerly com- 


192 


ponent (X) of the earth’s magnetic force, and 
to their secular variations, A Yand A X. After 
obtaining the mean value of Y, for example, 
for a given parallel of latitude, he subtracts 
this from the values at selected points on that 
parallel. After proceeding thus for various 
latitudes he joins the places by lines where the 
residual Y has the same value, these lines being 
his ‘isanomolous lines.’ He finds that the X 
isanomolous lines present the same general 
characteristics as those of H (horizontal compo- 
nent), the Y as those of D (declination), and 
the Z (vertical force) as those of I (inclination). 
The same applies with regard to the secular 
variation of the components and elements. 
There is, furthermore, a strong resemblance 
between the respective isanomolous lines and 
lines of equal secular variation. 

On the Distribution and the Secular Variation 
of Terrestrial Magnetism. No. IV.: On the 
Component Fields of the Earth’s Magnetism. 
By L. A. Bauer. This paper is a continuation 
of the author’s researches to localize the cen- 
ters of disturbance in the earth’s permanent 
magnetic field. He resolves the total field into 
three components, as follows: 

I. A homogeneous magnetization about the 
rotation axis. 

II. A homogeneous magnetization about an 
equatorial diameter. 

Ill. The residual magnetization, 7. e., that 
which remains after deducting I. and II. 

A striking graphical representation of No. III. 
is given. It is found, among other things, that 
the residual field and Schuster’s diurnal varia- 
tion field exhibit a strong resemblance. 

Dr. Borgen, of Wilhelmshaven, contributes a 
valuable article in which he develops the most 
general expression for the coefficients in the 
formula giving the angular deflection of a mag- 
netic needle produced by a deflecting magnet 
arbitrarily placed. After discussing the general 
ease he takes up special cases ordinarily met 
with in practice. 

Mr. Baracchi, the director of the Melbourne 
Observatory, gives an interesting account of 
‘Magnetic Work in Australia.’ It seems un- 
fortunate that no means have been found thus 
far to reduce and discuss the observations ex- 
tending over thirty years. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vox. V. No. 109. 


Next follow editorial notes, reviews by Schott, 
Littlehales, Solander and P. W., and a list of 
current publications. This number concludes 
volume I. 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 


THE SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION OF THE JOHNS 
HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 


THE one hundred and twenty-ninth regular 
meeting, President Remsen in the chair. The 
following papers were presented and read : 

“Recent Researches on Metallic Carbides and 
Allied Compounds,’ by Edward Renouf. 

The recent application of the electric are as 
a means of obtaining very high temperatures 
has stimulated research on metallic compounds 
formed at high heat and unstable in contact 
with water, hence not foundin nature. Weowe 
knowledge of the carbides or compounds of 
metals with carbon, principally to Moissan. 
Most metallic carbides are made by heating ox- 
ides with carbon at temperatures varying from 
3500° to 5000°. They are metallic substitution 
products of hydrocarbons, and as a rule yield 
hydrocarbon and metallic hydroxide in contact 
with water. Some are acetylides yielding pure 
acetylene, as is the well-known calcium carbide 
used for the technical preparation of acetylene. 
Aluminium and beryllium carbides are methides 
yielding pure methane. Many other carbides, 
notably those of uranium and iron yield com- 
plex mixtures of saturated and unsaturated, 
gaseous liquid and solid hydrocarbons. Moissan 
thinks that natural gas and petroleum are formed 
by action of water on carbides contained in the 
earth’s crust. Considering the evidence, this is 
the most acceptable solution of the problem of 
the formation of petroleum and natural gas yet 
offered. Metallic nitrides, compounds of metals , 
with nitrogen, are mostly made by contact of 
nitrogen with metals at high temperatures; 
some by the action of ammonia on metals at 
high temperatures, when hydrogen escapes and 
the metallic nitrides are formed. They are de- 
composed by water into ammonia and metallic 
hydroxides, hence must be regarded as substi- 
tuted ammonias. 

Metallic silicides, compounds of metals with 
silicon, are formed by heating metals with sili- 


JANUARY 29, 1897. ] 


con, and yield, on treatment with water, me- 
tallic hydroxides and silicon hydride. Metallic 
borides are made in the same way and behave 
similarly with water, excepting that boron hy- 
dride is itself decomposed by water forming 
boric acid. 

The metallic hydrides, or compounds of metals 
with hydrogen, are but little known. The hy- 
dride of lithium has been carefully studied by 
Guntz, the hydrides of calcium, strontium and 
barium and of some rarer metals by Winkler. 
The hydrides are all stable at very high tem- 
peratures, but are decomposed violently by 
water, yielding metallic hydroxides and hydro- 
gen. 

Spectrum analysis proves the existence of 
hydrogen, carbon, and many metals, in the stars 
and in the atmosphere of the sun, at tempera- 
tures too high for water, ammonia and most 
metal oxides to exist. Itis highly probable that 
the metals exist in the heavenly bodies at the 
present time and formerly existed on the earth 
when the earth was hot enough, in combination 
with the elements mentioned above. A study 
of the decomposition of these compounds with 
water and with air, throws light on the chemical 
changes and rearrangements occurring on the 
cooling of a world; for example, metallic hy- 
drides cooled to a sufficient temperature in pres- 
ence of oxygen take fire and burn, forming me- 
tallic oxides and water vapor; the oxides form 
hydroxides with the water. Carbides are broken 
down by the water into hydroxides and hydro- 
carbons. The hydrocarbons burn in oxygen to 
form water and carbonic acid, which last com- 
bines with the hydroxides to form water and 
metallic carbonates. The ammonia necessary 
for the beginnings of plant life could be fur- 
nished by action of water on the nitrides. The 
formation of silicates and borates would neces- 
sarily occur in the same way as that of the car- 
bonates. Thus we can by laboratory study form 
a clear picture of the genesis of the metallic 
compounds now existing on the earth. 

“A Recently Discovered Property of the 
Blood Serum in Animals immune from Certain 
Diseases and its Application to the Diagnosis of 
these Diseases in Human Beings,’ by Dr. Simon 
Flexner. 

A significant advance has just been made in 


SCIENCE. 


193 


regard to the diagnosis of typhoid fever. The 
basis of this advance is the so-called cholera re- 
action of Pfeiffer which, it may be recalled, was 
introduced for the purpose of discriminating 
between the vibrio of Asiatic cholera and certain 
allied bacterial forms. Pfeiffer found that the 
blood serum of an animal rendered immune 
from the cholera germ would, if admixed with 
a pure culture of this germ and introduced into 
the peritoneal cavity of a guinea pig, cause a 
rapid dissolution of the micro-organisms, while 
no effect was exerted upon other,- although 
closely allied, species. The same reaction can 
be obtained with various other bacterial forms, 
such as the diphtheria bacillus, typhoid bacillus, 
cholera bacillus, etc., provided the serum of ani- 
mals immune from these organisms be substi- 
stuted for the cholera serum. Thus it was 
shown that the action of the immunized sera is 
specific for a particular kind of bacterial proto- 
plasm. The changes which are induced in 
animals by exposing them to experimental in- 
fection with the bacteria mentioned take place, 
in a similar manner, in human beings who suffer 
from the diseases caused by these micro-organ- 
isms. In the course of typhoid fever, cholera 
and diphtheria immunizing substances, before 
absent, now appear in the blood and other fluids 
of the body. 

It seems very natural to reverse the order of 
applying the reaction mentioned and, instead of 
using a specific immunized blood serum to de- 
tect a particular’ kind of bacterium, to employ 
a specific micro-organism in order to discover 
the presence of the immunizing substances. 
Proceeding upon this idea Widal, and after 
him Grtinbaum, suggested that in doubtful cases 
of typhoid fever the blood of the patient might 
be utilized for the purposes of diagnosis. The 
method of making the tests are simple and 
readily carried out. Widal recommends ad- 
ding to a bouillon culture of the bacillus 
typhosus about 1-10th of its volume of the blood 
serum from the suspicious case. If it is one of 
typhoid fever the bacteria soon begin to run 
together, form clumps and gradually sink to 
the bottom of the test tube in the form of a 
sediment. <A slight modification of this method 
consists in using a mixture of blood serum and 
bouillon in the proportions mentioned, which 


194 


is inoculated with typhoid bacilli from a pure 
culture. The growth of the bacilli, instead of 
taking place in a diffuse manner throughout 
the fluid, is in the form of clumps, which fall to 
the bottom of the tube. In the simplest form 
the reaction may be obtained from a drop of 
blood taken from the finger tip or lobule of the 
ear and which has been allowed to dry upon a 
glass slide. The dried blood is moistened with a 
drop or two of water in order to cause a solution 
of the serum, anda small amount of this solution 
is added to a drop of a living culture of the 
typhoid bacillus. If this mixture is now ob- 
served under the microscope the bacilli are 
seen to quickly lose their motility, and in a short 
while (within 30 minutes) to run together to 
form clumps, or, as these have been called, ‘ag- 
glutinates.’ This reaction has been obtained as 
early as the third or fourth day of the disease 
and as late as the ninetieth, and promises to 
be fairly constant. It may persist for a con- 
siderable period—limit unknown—after recov- 
ery; for the blood of persons still shows the 
reaction two years after the disease. As far as 
we are informed at present the reaction is to be 
relied upon as diagnostic. It has grown out of 
the Pfeiffer cholera reaction ; but it differs from 
this in dispensing with an animal for the ex- 
periment, and also because in it the bacteria do 
do not proceed to disintegration but merely to 
agglutination. 

The papers presented and read by title were: 

‘On Singularities of Single Valued and Gen- 
erally Analytic Functions,’ by A. S. Chessin. 

‘On the Analytic Theory of Circular Func- 
tions,’ by A. S. Chessin. 

Adjourned. CAs. LANE Poor, 

Secretary. 


THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHING- 
TON. 

THE 256th regular meeting of the Society was 
held Tuesday evening, January 5, 1897. The 
program for the evening consisted of a Review 
of Anthropological Progress during 1896, in ten 
minute papers. 

Dr. Thomas Wilson, in his review of Pre- 
historic Anthropology during the year 1896, 
considered : 1. Pithecanthropus erectus, in which 
he noted the decision of this Society, that the 


SCIENCE. 


_ [N. 8. Vox. V. No. 109. 


specimens found by Dr. DuBois in the Island of 
Java were human remains, and that naturalists 
concurred in this view ; that they belonged to 
the Pliocene age, and the associated fossil verte- 
brate fauna resembles that of the Siwalik hills 
of India. Personally he (Dr. Wilson) refused 
his adhesion to this theory and proposed to 
await further developments. 2. Prehistoric 
Man in Egypt. Late explorations and exca- 
vations made in Chaldea, by a party from the 
University of Pennsylvania, pointed to the dis- 
covery of written characters, said to date about 
5000 B. C., that of Egypt about 1000 years 
less. He had seen the last will or testament of 
an Egyptian, from Kahin, dated about 2650 
B.C. and has a copy of its translation, which 
could be admitted to probate in our Orphans’ 
Court. 

The discoveries by General Pitt-rivers and 
Prof. H. W. Haynes did much toward estab- 
lishing the existence of a Paleolithic age in 
that country. The latest researches were made 
by Mr. de Morgan, and prehistoric settlements 
were found scattered from Cairo to Thebes, a 
distance of nearly 500 miles, and a collection 
from these places was exhibited by Dr. Wilson, 
which indicated human occupancy of the Nile 
valley by a people in the Neolithic stage of cul- 
ture and, consequently, much earlier than any 
of those belonging to any Egyptian stage here- 
tofore known. 

Prof. Otis T. Mason then spoke ‘On the 
Mato Grosso, South America, as a Mingling 
Ground of Stocks,’ and called attention to the; 
investigations of Paul Ehrenreich, Carl yon den 
Steinen and Herman Meyer. In the region of 
the Xingu, Tocantins and Maderia rivers are 
mingled people speaking the same stock lan- 
guages, Carib, Arawak, Gés or Tapuya, as. 
when Columbus made his first voyage of dis- 
covery, and using implements found among the 
inhabitants of the head waters of the Amazon 
in western Brazil and eastern Peru, and also 
those in use in eastern Brazil; thus were the 
cultures of the east and west parts, both dis- 
similar, found associated in the Mato Grosso. 

There are two kinds of bows found in South 
America: the long, black palm-wood bow, of 
rectangular shape, of the western country; and 
the broad, wide blade of red mimosa wood, of 


JANUARY 29, 1897]. 


eastern Brazil, and monkey bone lashed at an 
angle, used as harpoon and arrow combined in 
the west and pointed reed in the east. 

In the west, wood-skin or bark boats ; in the 
east, raft of logs or reeds; but in this region 
the Mato Grosso, both varieties of bows, arrows, 
rafts and boats were used, showing how the two 
dissimilar cultures were united in a common 


locality. Discussed by Messrs. Pierce and 
Lamb. 
Mr. Geo. R. Stetson gave the results of 


‘Memory Tests of Whites and Blacks,’ in 
which he gave the details of tests made upon 
white and black school children. In some 
tests the range of percentage varied quite 
largely and in others they were remarkably 
equal between the two classes of subjects. Dis- 
cussed by Prof. Lester F. Ward. 

‘Aboriginal Habitations of Maine,’ by Mr. 
F. H. Cushing, was omitted owing to his ab- 
sence. 

Prof. W J McGee spoke upon Zooculture, 
in which he described the three stages of the 
relation of birds and animals to man, as in- 
dividuals and as acommunity: 1. Toleration. 
2. Domestication. 3. Artificialization. Discus- 
sed by Messrs. Flint and Stetson. 

Dr. J. W. Fewkes read a paper on ‘Types 
of Pueblo Pottery.’ He noted the fact that 
pottery was found in the most ancient ruins 
and that the art of pottery making was still 
practiced by modern Pueblo people, but it had 
degenerated as to texture, finish and adorn- 
ment. 

More care was taken by the ancient potters 
in the fineness of paste, in the symbolic decora- 
tion and general finish. In classifying pot- 
tery the classification of Holmes seemed the 
best. 1st. Coiled ware. 2d. Plain ware. 3d. 
Painted ware, and to this he would add a 4th, 
glazed ware. 

The principal fact brought out in his studies 
for 1896 was the collection of material illustra- 
ting the extension of Tusyan people southward. 
The one point he wished to emphasize, relative 
to the different types of Pueblo pottery, was 
homogeneity of ancient Pueblo culture. Dis- 
cussed by Prof. Thos. Wilson. 

Dr. J. H. McCormick reviewed the principal 
events in the field of Folk-Lore for 1896. The 


SCIENCE. 


195 


memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society 
were by Mrs. Fanny D. Bergen, on ‘ Current 
Superstitions,’ in which she has collected a 
great variety of superstitions of English-speak- 
ing people in the United States, embracing 
every phrase of life, from birth to death; and 
‘Navajo Myths,’ by Dr. Washington Matthews. 
No one is better qualified than this author to 
tell us the mythology of this tribe, and it con- 
stituted the most valuable contribution yet pub- 
lished concerning this interesting people. 

The speaker also paid deserved tribute to the 


memory of Capt. J. G. Bourke, who had died 


during the summer of 1896, and who was at 
the time President of the Folk-Lore Society. 
These two publications, together with Mr. 
Cushing’s paper on ‘Outlines of Zuni Creation 
Myths,’ in 13th Annual Report of Bureau of 
Ethnology, constituted the most important 
contributions to Folk-Lore during 1896. The 
work of the Society was discussed at some 
length, and the establishment of a Local Branch 
at Cincinnati, under the presidency of Prof. 
Chas. L. Edwards, of the University of Cin- 
cinnati, as a result of a visit by the speaker to 
that city, and the excellent work done by the 
Local Branch in Baltimore, were noted. 

The 8th annual meeting, in New York, was 
then considered in some detail. 

‘Developments of Education during the year’ 
was the subject of Mr. J. H. Blodgett, and it 
was noted that expansion and modification of 
ideas rather than distinct steps or discoveries 
had been the rule. 

The most notable events were the continued 
agitation of the art and manual training studies 
in schools, child study and its bearing on psy- 
chology, and the teaching of religion in schools. 
The latter had been discussed more in other 
countries than our own. Considerable atten- 
tion had been given to the methods of teaching 
and the principles which underlie them. 


The 257th regular meeting of the Anthropo- 
logical Society was held Tuesday evening, Jan- 
uary 19, 1897. 

This being the annual meeting, the reports 
of the Secretary, Secretary of the Board of 
Managers, Treasurer and Curator were sub- 
mitted. 


196 


The election resulted in the selection of the 
following officers for 1897: President, Dr. 
Frank Baker; 1st Vice-President, Prof. W J 
McGee (re-elected) ; 2d Vice-President, Mr. 
Geo. R. Stetson (re-elected) ; 3d Vice-Presi- 
dent, General Geo. M. Sternberg (re-elected) ; 
4th Vice-President, Dr. Cyrus Adler; General 
Secretary, Dr. J. H. McCormick (re-elected) ; 
Secretary to Board, Mr. Weston Flint (re- 
elected) ; Treasurer, Mr. P. B. Pierce (re- 
elected); Curator, Mr. F. W. Hodge (re-elected); 
Councils (additional members of): Mr. J. H. 
Blodgett, Mr. J. W. Fewkes, Dr. Geo. M. 
Kober, Mr. J. D. McGuire, Mr. J. O. Wilson, 
Dr. Thomas Wilson. 

No papers were read. 

J. H. McCormick, M. D., 
Secretary. 


SECTION OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY, 
92D MEETING, JANUARY 14. 


At this the 13th annual meeting of the 
Society the following officers were elected for 
the ensuing year; viz: 

President, W. D. Bigelow ; Vice-Presidents, 
H. N. Stokes, Peter Fireman; Secretary, V. 
K. Chesnut; Treasurer, W. P. Cutter; Ex- 
ecutive Committee, the foregoing officers and 
BE. A. de Schweinitz, Chas. E. Monroe, W. H. 
Krug, Wirt Tassin. 

Dr. E. A. de Schweinitz, the retiring Presi- 
dent, announced the date of his annual address 
as February 25th, the subject to be ‘The War 
with the Microbe.’ V. K. CHESNUT, 

Secretary. 


BOSTON SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 


A GENERAL meeting was held December 16, 
1896, twenty-eight persons present. 

Prof. F. W. Putnam prefaced his statement 
concerning some recent work at Trenton, N. J., 
bearing upon the early presence of man in the 
Delaware Valley, with a detailed description of 
the discovery, in 1879, in the undisturbed 
gravel, of a stone implement near a boulder. 
Explorations in the Trenton gravels have been 
carried on systematically since 1891, by Mr. 
Ernest Volk, under the direction of Prof. Put- 
nam ; and a section at the place recently exam- 
ined shows three distinct upper layers, namely : 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 109, 


(1) black soil, (2) glacial sand, and (8) white 
glacial sand. Implements of chert, jasper, and 
quartz, as well as of argillite and of pottery, 
characterize the black soil, while chipped argil- 
lite, with occasionally a quartzite, are found in 
the glacial sand. All but four specimens thus 
far found in the glacial sand are of chipped argil- 
lite ; there are no jaspers or cherts. The dis- 
tinctive implements and the layers are sharply 
correlated, and the accuracy of Abbott’s early 
work is emphasized by the later work of Volk. 

Prof. G. Frederick Wright discussed the ex- 
tent of preglacial erosion in the United States 
and its bearing on the question of the length 
and date of the Glacial period. The new evi- 
dence as to the age of the deposit of the Tren- 
ton gravels confirms the results first announced 
by Lewis and Wright. The Philadelphia brick 
clays are older than the Trenton clays, and the 
work of E. H. Williams proves that the rock 
erosion was earlier than the Philadelphia brick 
clays. Prof. Wright reviewed the work of 
Salisbury in New Jersey, of White in the de- 
posits of the Monongahela River, the evidence 
obtained in Iowa, and Claypole’s discovery in 
the glacial till of Ohio, and showed that the 
necessary data for more accurate conclusions 
were accumulating. 

Prof. Putnam spoke of the rude knife found 
at Steubenville as the most highly finished of 
all the specimens yet found, and said that being 
chipped was favorable to its greater antiquity 
than if it had been flaked. The patina on the 
implement is very decided. 

SAMUEL HENSHAW, 
Secretary. 


THE GEOLOGICAL CLUB OF THE UNIVERSITY OF 
MINNESOTA. 


AT the weekly meeting, held Saturday, Jan- 
uary 16th, a paper was read by Arthur H. Elft- 
man, on the use of certain terms prominent in 
petrology. Incidentally the terms granitic and 
pegmatitic were noted. The growth of the 
terms ophitic and poikilitic in geologic litera- 
ture was then outlined and an attempt made to 
define them more rigidly than had hitherto 
been done by petrologists. 

CHARLES P. BERKEY, 
Secretary. 


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li SCIENCE.—AD VERTISEMENTS. 


The NEW YORK HERALD in its issue of January 8, 1897, 
devoted nearly a whole page to a notice of the undermen- 
tioned work which it described as being ‘‘A REMARKABLE 
SCIENTIFIC MEMORIAL.” It also stated that ‘‘ Nothing 
more revolutionary than Dr. Emmens’ memorial has been 
advanced in the name of science since the day when Sir 
Isaac Newton presented to the Royal Society his doctrine 
of universal gravitation.” 


The 


Argentaurum Papers, 


No. 7. 
Some Remarks Concerning Gravitation, 


Addressed to 


The Smithsonian Institute, The Académie des 
Sciences, The Royal Society and 
all other learned bodies, 


By 
STEPHEN H. EMMENs, 


Member of the American Institute of Mining Engineers ‘ 
Member of the American Chemical Society ; Membre 
Fondateur of the Societe Internationale des Electri- 
ciens ; Sometime Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of 
Great Britain and Ireland; Member of the United 
States Naval Institute ; Member of the Military Service 
Institution of the United States, etc. 


CONTENTS: 


The Newtonian Doctrine. The Defect of Newton’s Proot 
respecting the Centre of Force of a Spherical Shell. The 
Newtonian Demonstration respecting the attraction exerted 
by Spheres upon External Bodies. An Inquiry as to the 
Reason of the Defect in the Newtonian Doctrine of Attract- 
ing Spheres haying remained undiscovered until now. The 
Newtonian Doctrine of Internal Attractions. The Doctrine 
of Gravitating Centres as distinguished from Centres of 
Gravity. The Calculus of Gravitating Centres. The Gravi- 
tating Centre of a solid, homogeneous Sphere with relation 
to external bodies. Thecase of aSpheroid. The brecession 
of the Equinoxes. The Density of the Earth. The Internal 
Attractive force of a Spherical Shell. The Internal Attrac- 
tive Force of a Solid Sphere. The status of a Solid Sphere 
with regard to Internal Pressure. The Centrifugal Theory 
of Cosmical Bodies. The Variation of Density as regards the 
Earth’s Crust. The Significance of Earthquakes. The Tem- 
perature of the Earth. TheSource of Terrestrial Heat. The 
Source of Solar Heat. Saturn and Jupiter. The Volcanic 
Character and Quiescent Status of the Moon. The Obliquity 
of the Ecliptic. Elevation, Subsidence and Glacial Epochs. 
The Cooling and Shrinking of the Earth’s Crust. The Arch 
Theory of the Earth’s Crust. The cause of Ocean Beds and 
Mountains. Terrestrial Magnetism and Electricity. The 
Presence of Gold in the Ocean. The Verification of the 
Centrifugal Theory. UniversalGravitation. E pursi muove. 
The Error of the Dyne. The Variation of Products. The 
Infinite Concomitant of Newtonian Particles. The self-lift- 
ing Power of the Newtonian Particles. How two equally- 
heavy Newtonian Particles, taken together, weigh less than 
the sum of their separate Weights. The self-contradictory 
character of the Newtonian Law. ‘The superior limits of 
Newtonian Gravitation. The Correlation of Space and 
Energy. The outline of a system of Universal Physics. 


Price, Cloth Bound, $2.00 post-free to any address. 


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SCIENCE 


EpIToRIAL CommitrEE: S. NEwcoms, Mathematics; R. S. WooDWARD, Mechanics; E. C. PICKERING, 
Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THURSTON, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry; 
J. LE ContE, Geology; W. M. Davis, Physiography; O. C. MarsH, Paleontology; W.K. 
Brooks, C. HART MERRIAM, Zoology; S. H. SCUDDER, Entomology; N. L. BRITTON, 
Botany; HENRY F. OSBORN, General Biology; H. P. BowpitcH, Physiology; 
J. S. Brntines, Hygiene ; J. MCKEEN CATTELL, Psychology ; 
DANIEL G. BRINTON, J. W. POWELL, Anthropology. 


Fripay, Frepruary 5, 1897. 


CONTENTS : 

A National University ...........0+ SbudsesoKaHAEgcHaadodod 197 
Science and Pseudo-science in Medicine: GEORGE 

M. STERNBERG ........00ccccsccnssccneescessecraccnsenses 199 
The American Psychological Association: LIVING- 

SILON PEPARIRAIN D sisenoe bones enoeeinsestesteentiesceeneris-riear 206 
The American Folk-lore Society: HARLAN I. SMITH..215 
Horatio Hale: D. G. BRINTON ..........02-ccescenveee 216 
Emil du Bois-Reymond: §. F. MELTZER............ 217 


Current Notes on Meteorology :— 
The Plague and Climatic Conditions; Chinook 
Winds in the Northwest: R. DEC. WARD......... 219 


Current Notes on Anthropology :— 
Ethnologie Medicine; Sacred Secret Societies: D. 
Gee BRUNTON Gr censesseseeetercansareciees=== osopenocececnaos 220 


Notes on Inorganic Chemistry: J. L. H............... 221 
Astronomical Notes: TH. J. ....sessseescsceecsceneeseeeee 222 
Scientific Notes and News ............sscecssscesessecceceees 
University and Educational News.........1..1..0sese00e0 


Discussion and Correspondence :— ; 
Nomenclature of Metamorphic Lavas: H. W. 
TURNER. The Law of Size-weight Suggestion : 

E. W. SCRIPTURE.........00002cc0eeeere ecoconononans000 226 

Scientific Literature :— 
Miall’s Round the Year. E.S. Morse. fKe- 
searches on Mimicry: VERNON L. KELLOGG.....227 

Scientific Journals :— 

American Journal of Science; The American 
(C.EMUNT AS oorcoranccacotoococnoodmoconcuapSoonsboosaNcHonaEoNod 228 
Societies and Academies :— 
Zoological Club of the University of Chicago: S. 
_ WATASE, KATHERINE Foot, C. M. CHILD, A. 
D. MEAD, C. O. WHITMAN. Biological Society 
of Washington: F. A. Lucas. Entomological 
Society of Washington: L.O. HOWARD. Geo- 
logical Society of Washington: W. ¥. MORSELL. 
New York Academy of Sciences: J. F. KEMP. 
The New York Section of the American Chemical 


Society: DURAND WooDMAN. The Academy 
of Science of St. Louis: WM. TRELEASE. ....... 230 


New Books.......0scececsevees eee err Leet Nenecseneseet ees 240 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended 
for review should be sent to the responsible editor, Prof. J. 
McKeen Cattell, Garrison-on-Hudson, N. Y. 


A NATIONAL UNIVERSITY. 


Tue reconstruction of the University of 
Paris, the efforts in and out of the British 
Parliament to make a University of Lon- 
don, the great success of the University 
of Berlin, and the renewed advocacy of a 
National University at Washington, indi- 
cate a movement which, we believe, makes 
for the progress of education and science. 
There are dangers in centralization, but 
these are small in comparison with the | 
promise of great centers, where specializa- 
tion and cooperation can be carried forward 
to the degree demanded by the present 
state of learning and science. 

It is not necessary to take up space in 
this JourNaAt to set forth in detail facts on 
which we are all agreed—that universities. 
are necessary for the progress and even the 
preservation of our present civilization; 
that America should have universities equal 
to those of any other country; that the 
founding of new universities, such as Johns 
Hopkins, Chicago and Stanford has been 
productive of good; that the establishment 
by gifts or bequests of a university at Wash- 
ington greater than any other would be re- 
ceived with universal satisfaction. It is, 
however, desirable to consider the objec- 


198 


tions that have been urged against the 
establishment, by the government, of a 
These 
may be reduced to three: the cost of main- 


national university at Washington. 


tenance, the risk of political intermeddling 
and the alleged interference with existing 
institutions. 

A national university should be sup- 
ported by liberal appropriations, but the 
cost is not as great as is sometimes sup- 
posed. The annual salaries paid at Berlin 
amount to less than $200,000. The United 
States spends about $175,000,000 annually 
on its common schools. No one grudges 
this large sum, and yet it is spent chiefly 
for the benefit of the individual, whereas 
the higher education is chiefly for the bene- 
fit of the state. 
universities since the first beginnings at 


All the money spent on 


Paris and Salerno has been paid back by 
the results of the education of one man 
Higher edu- 
cation in America has been liberally en- 


such as Faraday or Pasteur. 


dowed by rich men, but if it is desirable to 
have these endowments it seems needless 
to be dependent on individual initiative. 
Whether the money come from endowments 
or from taxation it must be taken from the 
wealth of the country. It may represent 
a part of the extra price paid for each gal- 
lon of kerosene oil, or it might result from a 
tax paid on the $10,000,000 worth of preci- 
ous stones annually imported and used 
We 
might as well wait for rich men to give our 


chiefly for purposes of ostentation. 


government ships of war as to be dependent 
on them for our educational institutions. A 
university supported directly by the people 
would have peculiar influence and special 
dignity. 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 110. 


There is, perhaps, a more serious question 
as to whether the representatives of the 
people at Washington are competent to 
Might they not re- 
gard it as part of the spoils of victory ? We 
The 
Smithsonian Institution and the Military 


manage a university. 
think the risk is slight and transient. 


Academy at West Point have not become 
involved in practical politics, and the State 
universities have in nearly all cases not 
only remained non-partisan, but have set a 
salutary example to other departments. A 
national university should not offer patron- 
age and high salaries, but permanency of 
office, the most perfect facilities for research 
and publication, the ablest students to teach 
and the best intellectual environment. It 
would by its own nature be self-conserva- 
tive. A national university would not only 
be, in all probability, itself free from po- 
litical influences, but would tend to preserve 
the scientific bureaus from these and to 
purify and elevate all offices under the gov- 
ernment. 

It may be said that our existing universi- 
ties supply the need and that a new uni- 


versity would interfere with these. This 


‘was not the opinion of the heads of Cornell, 


Pennsylvania and Stanford Universities, 
who have been among the ablest and wisest 
advocates of a national university. The 
growth of the University of Berlin has not 
weakened the other German universities. 
A great national university would be the 
head of our educational system. It would 
not interfere with existing universities any 
more than these. interfere with our colleges 
or our colleges with our schools. Our pres- 
ent universities consist chiefly of profes- 
sional schools, on the one hand, and of col- 


FERRUARY 5, 1897. ] 


leges for the instruction of boys, on the 
other. They are, indeed, developing to- 
ward true universities, but nothing could 
better hasten and direct this development 
than a national university. 

From a theoretical point of view it would 
seem that all the arguments which have 
been urged against the establishment of a 
national university turn out to be in its 
favor. The cost, the incompetence of goy- 
ernment and the claim that existing uni- 
versities suffice are, however, practical dif- 
ficulties which we do not underestimate. 
Indeed, these are so evident that we should 
regard it as useless to advocate the im- 
mediate establishment of a great national 
university. Werather hope for a gradual 
growth from the national institutions al- 
ready existing at Washington. 

We have there great libraries, museums 
and laboratories, able investigators engaged 
in advancing pure and applied science, and 
younger men learning from them the meth- 
ods of research. These are the essentials 
of auniversity. No university in the world 
includes so many or such able investigators, 
teachers and students of geology as the U.S. 
Geological Survey, ‘and in many depart- 
ments the work at Washington surpasses 
any American university in the amount of 
investigation accomplished and in the num- 
ber of investigators trained. 

We should recommend the development 
of the Bureau of Education somewhat in the 
direction of the University of the State of 
New York. Let it have power to regulate 
academic degrees and to confer them. De- 
grees may belong to an immature civiliza- 
tion, but this is just the kind of civilization 


of which we must make the best. Workers 


SCIENCE. 


199 


in the different government divisions and 
others having the proper preliminary edu- 
cation could, on presenting a thesis showing 
original work and passing an examination, 
receive the doctorate of philosophy, and this 
would qualify them as a civil service ex- 
amination for promotion. The present Com- 
missioner of Education, and perhaps the re- 
gents of the Smithsonian Institution, could 
govern the university. Examiners could 
be appointed from leading representatives 
of science and learning who would meet 
yearly for a week of convocation in Wash- 
We believe that, without radical 
changes and with nominal expense, there 


ington. 


could be established at Washington a na- 
tional university likely to become the 
world’s greatest university. 


SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE IN MEDI- 
CINE.* 

One of the definitions given by Webster 
for the term ‘science’ is: ‘Truth ascer- 
tained ; that which is known. Hence, spe- 
cifically, knowledge duly arranged, and re- 
ferred to general truths and principles upon 
which it is founded and from which it is 
derived ; a branch of learning considered as 
having a certain completeness.”” Having 
this definition in view I think we are justi- 
fied in speaking of medicine as a science. 
No doubt it is incomplete in many direc- 
tions, but by the application of scientific 
methods of research such rapid progress has 
been made during the past fifty years that 
to-day medicine stands upon a substantial 
basis of ‘ truth ascertained’ in all of its de- 
partments, and when we consider the 
breadth of the field covered by these vari- 
ous departments the lacune, in our knowl- 
edge, are no greater than in many other 


*Read before the Anthropological Society of Wash- 
ington, December 15, 1896. 


200 


branches of science, e.g., in physics or in 
geology. 

Evidently scientific medicine must be 
founded upon an exact knowledge of the 
structure (anatomy) and functions (physi- 
ology) of the human body in a healthy con- 
dition and of the changes in structure and 
function (pathology) which result from va- 
rious disease processes; of the causes (eti- 
ology) natural history (clinical medicine) 
and regional distribution (medical geo- 
graphy) of the diseases which afflict man- 
kind and the lower animals (comparative 
pathology); of the toxic action of various 
substances from the animal and vegetable 
kingdom (toxicology) and of the use of 
these and of other nontoxic substances, phys- 
ical agents, etc., in the treatment of dis- 
ease (therapeutics). For the illiterate and 
even for many of the so-called educated 
class the whole of medicine consists in the 
cure of disease by medicines, or by some 
agency, natural or supernatural, and a fail- 
ure to cure is evidence that medicine is not 
ascience. We readily admit that the cure 
of disease is one of the principal objects 
which medical science has in view and that 
from a scientific standpoint therapeutics is 
very much behind some of the other 
branches of medicine. This is shown by 
the diversity of remedies prescribed for cer- 
tain diseases and the failure of any one of 
these remedies to effect a cure in many cases. 
But, on the other hand, therapeutics has 
made great advances during recent years 
and by the application of scientific methods 
of research the exact value of alleged reme- 
dies and of various methods of treatment is 
now determined with far greater precision 
than formerly. 

A few years ago the intelligent and honest 
physician did not claim to have any con- 
siderable number of specific remedies at his 
command ; but his scientific knowledge re- 
lating to the cause, symptoms and pathology 
of disease enabled him to conduct many 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 110. 


cases to a successful termination’ which 
without his assistance would have proved 
fatal. By the use of scientific instruments 
and methods of investigation he was able 
to make an early diagnosis and to give ad- 
vice which might stay the progress of a 
disease which in its more advanced stages 
it would have been beyond his skill to 
arrest. Recently several additions have 
been made to the list of specific therapeutic 
agents and there is good reason to believe 
that further discoveries in this direction 
will be made as a result of investigations 
now being conducted in pathological labora- 
tories in various parts of the world. Among 
the most important recent discoveries in 
this department of scientific medicine we 
may mention the use of thyroid extract for 
the cure of myxcedema, the antitoxin of 
diphtheria and the antitoxin of tetanus. 
The wonderful triumphs of modern surgery, 
the scientific precision of the methods em- 
ployed by the skilled ophthalmologist and 
the achievements of the scientific obstetri- 
cian can only be referred to en passant in 
support of the statement that we are to- 
day justified in speaking of medicine as a 
science. 

While, as we have said, the cure of dis- 
ease is one of the principal objects which 
medical science has in view, this is by no 
means the sole object. Sanitary science is 
a branch of medicine based upon chemical 
and physiological knowledge which has been 
gained by the painstaking researches of a 
host of investigators who have determined 
the constituent elements of the air we 
breathe, the water we drink, the food we 
eat, and the nature of the harmful impuri- 
ties which are found in these ; it teaches us 
the difference between healthful indulgence 
in food, exercise, mental activity, etc., and 
those excesses which lower the vital resist- 
ing power and establish a predisposition to 
disease. Preventive medicine, which is a 
broader term, if we regard the beneficent 


FEBRUARY 5, 1897. ] 


results accomplished, must be placed in 
advance of therapeutics. Where thousands 
have been saved by the timely administra- 
tion of suitable medicines, or by the skill- 
fully performed operation of the surgeon, 
tens of thousands have been saved by pre- 
ventive medicine. And preventive medicine 
isto-day established upon a strictly scientific 
foundation. If our practice was pari passu 
with our knowledge infectious diseases 
should be almost unknown in civilized 
countries and those degenerative changes 
‘of vital organs which result from excesses 
of various kinds would cease to play a 
leading part in our mortuary statistics. 
But while our knowledge is still incomplete 
in some directions, and while individuals 
and communities constantly fail to act in 
accordance with the well-established laws 
of health and the scientific data which 
furnish the basis of preventive medicine, 
the saving of life directly traceable to this 
knowledge is enormous. 

Small-pox no longer claims its victims in 
any considerable numbers except in com- 
munities where vaccination is neglected ; 
the last extended yellow fever epidemic in 
the United States occurred nearly twenty 
years ago; cholera has been excluded from 
our country during the last two widespread 
epidemics in Europe and its ravages have 
been greatly restricted in all civilized 
countries into which it has been intro- 
duced; the deadly plague of the 17th and 
18th centuries is no longer known in Eu- 
rope, and the prevalence of typhus (so- 
called ‘spotted’ or ‘ship fever’) has been 
greately limited. Typhoid fever, tubercu- 
losis and diphtheria are still with us and 
claim numerous victims, but we know the 
Specific cause of each of these diseases ; we 
know where to find the bacteria which 
cause them and the channels by which 
they gain access to the human body; we 
know how to destroy them by the use of 
disinfecting agents (‘antiseptics’); and in 


SCIENCE. 


201 


the case of diphtheria we have recently dis- 
covered a specific mode of treatment which 
when promptly applied reduces the mortal- 
ity from this dread disease to a compara- 
tively small figure. 

The brilliant success which has attended 
the carrying out of modern antiseptic and 
aseptic methods in surgical and obstetrical 
practice are too well known to call for ex- 
tended remark. 

Sir Edwin Arnold in an address deliv- 
ered in 1895 at St. Thomas’ Hospital, upon 
“Medicine, its past and future,’ says: 

“One of the high authorities already quoted has 
furnished a calculation of the salvage of life effected 
even during the early years of the present reign by 
the commencing improvements in preventive and 
curative medicine. In the five years from 1838 to 
1842, London with an average population of 1,840,- 
865 persons, had an average annual mortality of 2,557 
in every 100,000. In the five years from 1880 to 1884 
the average metropolitan population was 3,894,261, 
and the average annual death-rate 2,101 in each 100,- 
000. A calculation will show that these figures rep- 
resent a saving or prolonging of lives during that lus- 
trum to the number of 96,640. The mean annual 
death-rate has now been reduced toa point lower than 
shown in these figures. It was 22.16 per 1,000 for 
England and Wales at the commencement of the reign, 
and it is to-day better than 19.0 per 1,000, while in 
Her Majesty’s army and navy the diminution of 
mortality apart from deaths from warfare has proved 
even more remarkable, and in India, where we used. 
to lose 69 per 1,000 yearly, this has been reduced to 
16 per 1,000.” 

Having thus briefly referred to the pres- 
ent status of scientific medicine I shall de- 
vote the remainder of my time to a consid- 
eration of the second theme included in the 
title of this paper, viz.: Pseudo-science in 
medicine. 

History shows us that the development 
of each branch of science has been accom- 
panied by unfounded inferences, based 
upon partial knowledge, which have been 
abandoned by the learned as the science 
has become established upon a basis of 
ascertained facts, but which have continued 
to pass current among the ignorant, often 


202 


for centuries after they have been aban- 
doned by the well-informed. Thus, astrol- 
ogy, alchemy, phrenology, homeopathy and 
‘Christian Science’ have met with accept- 
ance not only by the ignorant, but by 
many of the so-called educated class. As 
a matter of fact, a scholastic and classical 
education does not greatly aid in the dif- 
ferentiation between science and pseudo- 
science ; and at the present day many per- 
sons who belong to the ‘ educated class’ 
and even to the learned professions are led 
astray by claims made upon what appears 
to them to be a scientific basis. Unless the 
spirit of scientific scepticism, which de- 
mands absolute demonstration before final 
acceptance, has been cultivated by special 
training, there is always a liability to be 
misled by the specious claims of pseudo- 
scientific pretenders, or of the still more 
dangerous charlatans who believe in them- 
selves and their pseudo-discoveries. And 
even among those who have had a more 
or less complete scientific training it often 
happens that there is a natural tendency to 
generalize from insufficient data and to 
jump at conclusions in advance of the ex- 
perimental evidence which alone could jus- 
tify them. Such men are even more dan- 
gerous in the ranks of scientific workers 
than they would be as theorists who ignored 
the value of scientific research; and many 
pseudo-scientific discoveries which have 
passed current for a time, and the refuta- 
tion of which has been held to show the 
uncertainty of scientific deductions, have 
been made by men of this class, whose 
mental characteristics entirely unfit them 
for scientific research. 

Hand in hand with the progress of med- 
ical science we see an army of pseudo-scien- 
tific quacks who trade upon the imperfect 
knowledge of the masses, and by plausibly 
written advertisements convince many, 
even of the educated classes, that their par- 
ticular method of treatment is based upon 


SCIENCE. 


LN. S. Vou. V. No. 110. 


the latest scientific discoveries. A. Priest- 
ley discovers oxygen; the physiologists 
show that this gas is essential to life and 
that the maintenance of a full degree of vi- 
tal activity depends upon the possession of 
healthy lungs of ample capacity and the 
respiration of pure air; the scientific physi- 
cian discovers defects in the respiratory ap- 
paratus and under certain circumstances 
prescribes oxygen for the relief of symp- 
toms resulting from a deficient supply of 
this life-sustaining gas. But the pseudo- 
scientist extols oxygen as a cure-all for 
pulmonary complaints, or invents an appa- 
ratus which may be held in the hand or 
carried in the pocket, by which oxygen will 
be absorbed in some mysterious way, and 
without difficulty obtains numerous certifi- 
cates as to the marvelous cures effected by 
his method. A Franklin draws lightning 
from the clouds ; a Galvani shows that an 
electric current may be developed by the 
contact of metals and that such a current 
causes muscular contraction; and innumer- 
able patient investigators add to our knowl- 
edge of electricity. The scientific physi- 
cian avails himself of this potent agent for 
the treatment of certain ailments in which 
it appears to be indicated, but admits that 
he meets with many disappointments in his 
clinical experiments. The pseudo-scientific 
quack writes, or has written, advertise- 
ments in which fact and fiction are so com- 
mingled that even educated persons may be 
deceived, and having aroused interest in 
the alleged therapeutic value of this mys- 
terious agent, offers his electric belt, or 
finger ring made of two metals, or pocket 
battery, as a sure cure for certain specified 
ailments, or, if less modest and more cer- 
tain of the credulity of the public, as a cure 
for all of the diseases to which man is sub- 
ject. 

Again, a Pasteur proves that the disease 
of sheep and cattle known as anthrax is 
due to a microscopic organism found in 


FEBRUARY 5, 1897.] 


the blood; an Obermeyer discovers a differ- 
ent microorganism in the blood of relapsing 
feyer patients, and numerous patient work- 
ers in laboratories rapidly add to our 
knowledge of pathogenic bacteria. Then 
comes the man with the microbe killer. 
He tells you that all diseases are due to 
germs in the blood and that his fluid kills 
them without fail. Science has demon- 
strated that comparatively few of the in- 
fectious diseases of man are due to the 
presence of pathogenic bacteria in the blood, 
and that the microbe killer has compara- 
tively little germicidal value; but a cred- 
ulous public accepts the interested state- 
ments which appear to have a scientific 
basis, and swallows the microbe killer with 
impunity, if not with benefit. And so it 
goes. Science establishes the value of thy- 
roid extract for the cure of myxedema, and 
immediately the public are called upon to 
swallow extracts of brain for cerebral 
trouble, of heart for cardiac disease, etc. 
Eyen the Chinese pulse-doctors obtain a 
large clientele on the Pacific coast. Their 
solemn looks and pretentious claims impose 
upon the ignorant, and it is said that edu- 
eated people not infrequently consult them. 

One of the most successful pseudo-scien- 
tific quacks of the present day has written 
a, book in which he gives a history of the 
alleged discovery of his cure-all and from 
which I désire to make two or three quota- 
tions. One of these shows the author to 
haye been a close observer of the genus 
homo. He says: 

“People should not be led away by every charlatan 
who jumps up before them and talks; but as long as 
the world lasts there will probably be fools in it, and 
fools are a godsend to rogues. Thereis a fascina- 
tion in being humbugged. Make it known to the 
world that you are going to do some impossible thing, 
and the world will pay money to come in and see you 
do it, although well understanding all the while that 
the thing cannot be done.”’ 

The financial success of ‘ the microbe 
killer’ indicates that the discoverer of this 


SCIENCE. 


203 


alleged cure-all has substantial proof of the 
truth of the frank statements above quoted: 
The author’s personal experience with mi- 
crobes is given on another page as follows: 


‘(When I drove to my seed store I knew that I 
could sit only on the edge of my buggy, because the 
microbes would not let me sit in any other way, and 
when I stepped to the ground I knew that it took me 
several minutes before I could move, the microbes 
that produced sciatica and rheumatism objecting to 
being disturbed, and so preventing me. Every at- 
tempt to move had to be slow and deliberate, until 
they should get accustomed to the change. Iwasa | 
living barometer. Whenever the weather altered, 
and especially if it became cooler, my collection of mi- 
crobes could anticipate it two or three days, and when 
the storm came they would freeze and force me to 
take refuge by a red-hot stove to get them quieted.”’ 


On another page the author states his 
theory with reference to disease and its 
treatment as follows: ‘‘ But I knew that 
his symptoms were of secondary impor- 
tance. They were interesting to have, but 
not essential, because all disease is due to 
the same cause and requires but one cure.”’ 
Of course that one cure is the microbe 
killer and you must beware of imitations. 
The author describes his unsuccessful at- 
tempt to obtain relief from the advertising 
quacks, as follows : 


‘(Good friends were generous with their advice. I 
was told to try first one thing then another, but I 
had become wearied with what I had come to believe 
was so much humbug, and I determined to swallow 
no more medicine. LIagain studied advertisements. 
There I saw commended electric belts, porous plasters, 
liniments, lotions and salves, and all sorts of external 
applications that would cure everything, purify the 
blood, strengthen the nerves, stimulate the functions 
of the organs, kill the microbes, and rejuvenate the 
individual in mind and body. Well, this was some- 
thing. Whatever such things would or would not 
do, there was no medicine in them—nothing to 
swallow, no poison, so, if they did no good, I could 
not see that they would do harm. The end of my 
thinking was that I sent off ten dollars to Chicago 
for an electric belt. Some of the advertising firms 
fail to respond, as they promise, to money remit- 
tances, but my belt came, and I lost no time in fix- 
ingiton. Itreminded me of former days when I 
was a soldier, with belt and sabre, in the German 


204 


army. ‘Then I jumped ditches eight feet wide, and 
sang and laughed when others fell into the water, 
but now things were changed. Then I had health 
and youth, now I was far older in health than in 
years, but I concluded that, being but forty-three, if 
the belt did all that was promised for it, there should 
be no reason why I might not live forty years or 
more yet. So I gave the belt a good chance. I 
wore it faithfully for three months, and tried to help 
it by covering myself in every likely spot with porous 
plasters. In that condition I went about my busi- 
ness, clad in a kind of coat armor to fight microbes. 
I tried to persuade myself that I was doing exactly 
the right thing, and set to work to find enjoyment 
among my roses and to forget my troubles. 

“But it was of no use. 
that much enjoyment. The microbes were unhappy, 
and would not be appeased. They gave me no rest; 
they tortured me unceasingly, and finally they drove 
me back in despair and desperation to my bed.’’ 

These unhappy microbes were finally ap- 
peased or destroyed by the ‘ microbe killer,’ 
and having generously determined to allow 
his fellow-men to share in the benefits of 
his wonderful discovery the Texas seeds- 
man soon became rich and famous. His 
book is illustrated by photomicrographs 
which are supposed to show the microbes 
of various diseases. The writer is unable 
to recognize any known disease germ in 
these photomicrographs, some of which 
show, more or less distinctly, epithelial 
cells, granular débris of the various tissues, 
yeast cells, pencillium spores, etc. 

Another pseudo-scientific ‘discovery ’ 
which is largely advertised in the monthly 
journals is the ‘ Klectropoise,’ which is de- 
scribed as ‘a little instrument which en- 
ables the system to take on oxygen freely 
from the atmosphere. This addition of 
nature’s own tonic increases vitality, tones 
up the nervous system, purifies the blood, 
and by expelling the morbid matter and 
diseased tissues restores the body to its 
normal condition—health.’ The modus op- 
erandi of this wonderful instrument is more 
fully explained in the following published 
certificate (advertisement in McClure’s 
Magazine): 


SCIENCE. 


My limbs did not consider’ 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 110 


“We are slow to commend new discoveries of any” 
kind, for thereason that so many of them prove to be 
worthless. But we commend the ‘ Electropoise’ as a. 
safe and effective health restorer. We do not pretend 
to explain the philosophy of its workings, but having” 
realized its beneficial effects we can speak of its re- 
sults. One might conclude, from its name, that it 
was an electric battery. But it does not generate elec- 
tricity and is in no sense a battery, belt, sole, or any- 
thing kindred to them. I¢ consists of a small cylinder 
called a ‘ polarizer,’ which is used in connection with: 
the patient’s body by means of a common electric 
cord. ‘This polarizer causes oxygen from the atmos-- 
phere to be absorbed by the entire surface of the body 
with great rapidity, the strength of the absorption: 
being regulated according to the ability of the patient 
to receive. 

“« After a year’s use we have this to say in its favor: 
(1) We have taken no medicine for the year. (2) 
All traces of la grippe and an old sunstroke trouble: 
have disappeared and no symptoms of either remain. 
Once or twice, from severe overwork, we have found! 
it necessary to hold up for a few days, but in no time- 
for fifteen years have we been better than during the 
past year. Much of this we attribute to the use of 
the ‘ Electropoise.’ 

“This notice of the ‘Electropoise’ is without solici- 
tation and entirely gratuitous. We do itfor the good: 
of the afflicted. We have no personal interest in it 
and are not paid for what we say in its favor. Per- 
sons desiring further information can address the 
agent.’’—REV. WM. McDONALD in Boston Christian 
Witness. 


We would suggest to the Rev. Wm. Me- 
Donald that he try the following simple ex- 
periment: Having connected the ‘ polari- 
zer’ with his leg by means of the ‘common 
electric cord,’ let him place his one hand 
over his mouth and nose, thus shutting off 
oxygen of the atmosphere from the lungs, 
which have been provided by nature to- 
furnish the necessary supply of this gas. 
Now let him note by a watch how long the: 
supply of oxygen ‘absorbed from the entire: 
surface of the body’ will answer as a sub- 
stitute for nature’s method of supplying 
this gas. We venture also to suggest to. 
the Rev. Wm. McDonald that ‘all traces. 
of la grippe and of an old sunstroke 
trouble’ might have disappeared during: 


_ FEBRUARY 5, 1897.] 


the year if he had not used the Electro- 
poise. Assuming that this certificate is 
genuine, it answers very well to illustrate 
the fact that educated men, who have not 
been trained in the methods of scientific in- 
vestigation, often arrive at conclusions en- 
tirely unjustified by the evidence before 
them by the dangerous use of the post hoc 
ergo propter hoc method of argument. 

The fact that a considerable proportion 
of those who are sick from various acute or 
chronic ailments recover after a time, inde- 
pendently of the use of medicinal agents or 
methods of treatment, taken in connection 
with this tendency to ascribe recovery to 
the treatment employed, makes it an easy 
matter to obtain certificates of cure for any 
nostrum which an unprincipled money- 
seeker may see fit to offer to a credulous 
public. If ten in a thousand of those who 
have used the alleged remedy believe them- 
selves to have been benefited, their certifi- 
eates will answer all purposes of exploita- 
tion and the 990 will not be heard from by 
the general public. 

As was to have been expected, the X-ray 
has already been made a source of revenue 
by more than one pseudo-scientist. The 
following account of the modus operandi of 
its supposed therapeutic action has recently 
been published in the newspapers : 

“After the Crookes tube is excited by the coil the 
Magnetic lines of force are projected down in the 
Same manner as they pass off from a magnet, and 
traversing the intervening space, pass through the 
body down to the floor, and back to the coil and tube 
again, completing the circuit. 

“The X-ray is electrostatic in character and of a 
very high potential. With every discharge from the 
Crookes tube oxygen is liberated in the body, as well 
as the surrounding atmosphere, which, combining 
with nascent oxygen, forms ozone. 

“It is due to the electrolysis produced in the body 
that we are able to destroy the bacilli in contagious 
disease, ozone being the most powerful germicide 
Enown.”’ 

We remark, first, that we do not fully un- 
derstand why ‘the magnetic lines of force’ 


SCIENCE. 


205 


are reflected back by the floor, ‘ completing 
the circuit.’ Inasmuch as the X-rays pass 
through wood, this mysterious action of the 
floor appears to call for some further expla- 
nation. 

We will pass by the ingenious explana- 
tion of the formation of ozone, as a result 
of the action of the X-ray, to call attention 
to the mistaken statement that ozone is 
‘the most powerful germicide known.’ 

Upon this point I take the liberty of 
quoting from the Manual of Bacteriology: 

“The experiments of Frankel show that 
the aerobic bacteria grow abundantly in the 
presence of pure oxygen, and some species 
even more so than in ordinary air. 

““ Ozone—It was formerly supposed that 
ozone would prove to be a most valuable 
agent for disinfecting purposes, but recent 
experiments show that it is not so active a 
germicide as was anticipated, and that from 
a practical point of view it has compara- 
tively little value. 

“Lukaschewitsch found that one gramme 
in the space of a cubic metre failed to kill 
anthrax spores in twenty-four hours. The 
cholera spirillum in a moist state was killed 
in this time by the same amount, but fifteen 
hours’ exposure failed to destroy it. Ozone 
for these experiments was developed by 
means of electricity. 

““Wyssokowicz found that the presence 
of ozone in a culture medium restrained the 
development of the anthrax bacillus, the 
bacillus of typhoid fever, and others tested, 
but concludes that this is rather due to the 
oxidation of bases contained in the nutrient 
medium than to a direct action upon the 
pathogenic bacteria. 

“Sonntag, in his carefully conducted ex- 
periments, in which a current of ozonized 
air was made to pass over silk threads to 
which were attached anthrax spores, had an 
entirely negative result. The anthrax ba- 
cillus from the spleen of a mouse, and free 
from spores, was then tested, also with a 


206 


negative result, even after exposure to the 
oxonized air for twenty minutes at a time 
on four successive days. In another expe- 
riment several test organisms (Bacillus an- 
thracis, Bacillus pneumonie of Friedlander, 
Staphylococcus pyogenes aureus, Staphylo- 
coccus pyogenes albus, Bacillus murisepti- 
icus, Bacillus crassus sputigenus) were ex- 
posed on silk threads for twenty-four hours 
in an atmosphere containing 4.1 milli- 
grammes of ozone to the litre of air (0.19 
volumes per cent.). The result was entirely 
negative. When the amount was increased 
to 13.53 milligrammes per litre the anthrax 
bacillus and Staphylococcus pyogenes albus 
failed to grow after twenty-four hours’ ex- 
posure. The conclusion reached by Nissen, 
from his own experiments and a careful 
consideration of those previously made by 
others, is that ozone is of no practical value 
as a germicide in therapeutics or disinfec- 
tion.” 

From a practical point of view the use of 
the X-ray in the practice of the Chicago 
doctor, to whom the above quoted explana- 
tion of its therapeutic action is attributed, 
appears to have been quite successful. He 
says: 

‘For the last eight months I have had patients un- 
der the X-ray in my laboratory from 9 a. m. to 6 
p. m., duration of treatment varying from a-half to 
four hours at each treatment, and not once with any 
bad result in any case.’’, 

Now it is evident that a physician who 
has patients coming to his office from 9 a.m. 
to 6 p. m. every day is in the enjoyment of a 
very handsome professional income. And 
if, as I imagine, many of these patients 
are well-dressed ladies with more leisure 
than judgment, they are no doubt satisfied 
to pay well for the opportunity of having 
the latest scientific treatment applied to their 
cases and to await their turn in the ante- 
room of this distinguished ‘professor of 
electro-therapeutics.’ 

The article from which we have quoted, 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 110. 


and which appears to answer all the pur- 
poses of a free advertisement, concludes as 
follows: 

“Tt must not be forgotten that electric phenomena 
are very powerful, and not every man who can buy a 
machine is capable of applying it. The electric ma- 
chine must be as skillfully adjusted to each indi- 
vidual as the microscope to a specimen submitted to 
it. Itisa treatment full of danger if ignorantly or 
rashly handled, but beyond price in value to the 
skilled and careful electro-therapeutist.’’ 

We do not propose to prejudge the ques- 
tion of the possible therapeutic value of the 
X-ray, but we think it safe to predict that 
it will not be found of any value for the 
destruction of pathogenic bacteria in the 
tissues, inasmuch as it has been shown by 
several competent observers to have very 
little, if any, germicidal action; and be- 
cause there is no experimental evidence 
which justifies the belief that these low 
vegetable organisms can be destroyed by 
any physical or chemical agents which 
would not at the same time destroy the 
vitality of the less resistant cellular elements 
of the tissues. 

If time permitted I might further illus- 
trate the temporary successes of recent 
pseudo-scientific discoveries by referring to 
the ‘eryptococous xanthogenicus’ of Do- 
mingos Freire, of Brazil, the Bacillus ma- 
larize of Klebs and Tomasi Crudelli, ete., ete. 

The spectacle of a learned clergyman, 
supplied by nature with a brain and a pair 
of lungs, sitting day after day with an 
“electropoise’ attached to his leg for the 
purpose of ‘taking on oxygen freely from 
the atmosphere’ recalls the ‘blue grass 
craze’ of twenty-five years ago. 

GzrorcE M. STERNBERG. 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 


THE AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIA- 
TION. 

TuE fifth annual meeting of the American 

Psychological Association was held in Bos- 

ton, Tuesday and Wednesday, December 


FEBRUARY 5, 1897.] 


29 and 30, 1896, under the presidency of 
Professor G.S. Fullerton, of the University 
of Pennsylvania. There were three formal 
sessions of the Association, one on the 
morning of the 29th, held at the Harvard 
Medical School, and twosessions on the 30th, 
held at the Peabody Museum of Archz- 
ology in Cambridge. The members of 
the Association very generally attended the 
discussion on ‘ The Inheritance of Acquired 
Characteristics’ before the American Na- 
turalists on the afternoon of the 29th, 
psychology being represented in the discus- 
sion by Professor James, of Harvard. To- 
gether with the other affiliated societies, the 
Psychologists were present at Mr. Agassiz’s 
lecture and reception on Tuesday evening, 
at the luncheon given by the President and 
Fellows of Harvard College on Wednesday, 
and at the formal dinner of the societies at 
the Hotel Brunswick in Boston, on Wednes- 
day evening. There were forty-five mem- 
bers in attendance, the largest meeting 
since the organization of the Association. 
Owing to the number of distinctly philo- 
sophical papers, one session of the Associa- 
tion was given up to papers of that char- 
acter. The scientific program was as fol- 
lows : 


1. The Physiology of Sensation. By HB. A. Sry- 
GER, of the University of Pennsylvania. 
States the fundamental’ question as: 

What would be an ideally complete phys- 

iology of sensation? The method employed 

im answering the question would establish 

an analogy between what has been regarded 

as progress in the past and what should be 
sought by a progressive psychology of the 
future. The result of such an analogy is 
stated in the following form: Wherever we 
know anything about the psychology of 
sensation we find that the correlate ofa 
mental difference is a structural physio- 
logical difference. Where we are yet in 
ignorance as to the physiological counter- 


SCIENCE. 


207 


part of a mental difference we should as- 
sume it to be a difference in structure rather 
than a difference in functioning of the 
same structure. This view is to be con- 
trasted with such opinions as would regard 
the physiological counterpart of intensity 
as the greater or less activity of the same 
nervous structure; feeling tone as the 
greater or less disintegration, or as depend- 
ent upon conditions of greater or less nutri- 
tion of the same structure, ete. Some at- 
tempt is made, rather by way of illustration 
than as framing a completely tenable hy- 
pothesis, to suggest a physiology of these 
so-called properties of sensation that would 
relate them to quality of sensation. Thus 
the physiological basis of intensity differ- 
ences is sought in part in the different end 
organs affected in greater or less reaction 
to a stimulus; in part also in special ap- 
paratus suggested by the allied nature of 
intensity and saturation in color sensations. 
Feeling tone is distinguished from pleasure 
and pain; the physiology of the former be- 
ing related to that of the emotion, the phys- 
jology of the latter to that of the special 
senses. Local sign presents the inverse 
problem as to how sensations conditioned 
by confessedly different nervous structures 
should come to be classed together. The 
answer suggested is that the classing to- 
gether of locally different sensations and 
qualitatively similar is conditioned by the 
formal likeness of the end organs affected, 
they determining a likeness in the adequate 
stimuli and in the general way of behaving 
of the sensation. Recognized likeness and 
difference of sensations are found to involve 
psycho-physical reflection. 


2. Intensity of Sensation. By James EH. 
Loves, of Harvard University. 
Sensations forming an intensity series 

have this characteristic which distinguishes 

them from a qualitative series, namely, that 
the intensity series goes towards or from 


208 


zero—the vanishing point—while a purely 
qualitative change leads neither to or from 
the zero point of sensations. Theories of 
intensity of sensations may be classed in 
general under two heads: (a) that the 
stronger sensation is the weaker sensation 
plus more of the same sensation—following 
an analogy from the physical world which 
may prove dangerous, and exposing psy- 
chology to the troublesome presupposition 
that our psychic elements (sensations) are 
compounds ; (0) that the intensity series is 
merely a qualitative series, but ordered ina 
series towards or from zero by the presence 
of a second series of sensations, e. g., bright- 
ness sensations or muscular sensations. It 
would seem much more satisfactory to dis- 
cover in the nature of the psycho-physical 
process itself that which shall give to sensa- 
tions the characteristic of an intensity 
series. Accordingly this hypothesis is of- 
fered: Any sensation of a given quality 
and intensity that may arise depends upon 
a certain physiological condition which is 
reached only after passing successively 
through a series of other physiological con- 
ditions, each of which is but differing in 
degree from zero to the given sensation. 
That is, any sensation depends upon the 
physiological basis which contains, in a 
temporal series, the bases of all the weaker 
sensations of this particular quality. The 
final neural condition, after passing through 
all the intermediate steps, may be called the 
‘maximum effect’ of the stimulus. By a 
study of the intensity of sensations pro- 
duced by a stimulus of a known intensity 
acting for a time less than that necessary 
to produce its maximum effect, it is found 
that this intensity is exactly proportional 
to the duration of the stimulation. Con- 
cerning the nature of the psycho-physical 
process, nothing is postulated save that the 
basis of the stronger sensation contains that 
of the weaker in the time series as stated 
above. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vox. V. No. 110. 


3. Report of Experiments on the Reduction of 
the Tactual Double-Point Threshold by Prac- 
tice and on the ‘ Vemirfehler.’ By G. A. 
Tawney, of Beloit University. 

The first object of the experiments was 
to examine the view of Volkmann and Fech- 
ner that, by daily practicing some one spot 
of skin in the perception of two points, the 
threshold for this perception is reduced, 
not only for the spot actually practiced, but 
also for the symmetrically opposite spot on 
the other side of the body. A number of 
threshold determinations were made on dif- 
ferent parts of the body varying in number 
from six to thirty-two for each subject. 
One of these spots was chosen for special 
practice, which continued for a period vary- 
ing trom two weeks toa month. At the 
end of this time the threshold determina- 
tions on the six to thirty-two different parts 
of the body were repeated in order to com- 
pare them with those made at the begin- 
ning of the practice series. The instrument 
used was a simple pair of compasses. The 
results show unmistakably that where any 
reduction of the threshold occurs as a re- 
sult of practice it occurs over the entire 
surface of the body; it demands, therefore, 
a central explanation. The paper further 
discussed the nature of the ‘ Vexirfehler ’ 
(double-point illusion). It was assumed 
that the double-point illusion is the result 
of suggestion and it was sought to free a 
subject whose threshold formerly could not 
be determined from the suggestion involved. 
The experiments seemed to show that the 
reduction of the threshold by practice is, 
to a great extent at least, a result of sug- 
gestion. Several series were carried out 
for the purpose of studying the psychosis 
underlying the ‘ Vexirfehler.’ The results 
seem to show that this illusion is mainly 
due to auto-suggestion, although physio- 
logical factors may play a subordinate part. 


4. Comparison of the Times of Simple Reactions 


FEBRUARY 5, 1897.] 


and of Free-Arm Movements in Different 

Classes of persons. By ALBERT L. Lewis. 

This paper gave the results of nearly 
‘9,000 experiments on American men and 
women and on male negroes and Indians. 
The relative order of these four classes in 
reacting to sound was found to be arranged 
from shortest to longest, Indians, American 
men, Negroes and American women; to 
light; American men, Indians, American 
women, Negroes; to touch; Indians and 
American men the same, Negroes third, 
American women fourth. With regard to 
the mean variations of the average reac- 
tion times, the order was: in sound ; Amer- 
ican men, Indians, American women; in 
light, American men, Indians, Negroes, 
American women; in touch; Indians, 
American men, American women, Ne- 
groes. The conclusion is drawn that there 
are characteristic variations in the reac- 
tion time and rate of movement of classes 
of persons; that a close relation exists be- 
tween reaction time and rate of movement; 
that a number of reactions is necessary to 
give a characteristic result in each indi- 
vidual case. 


5. Researches in Progress in the Psychological 
Laboratory of Columbia University. By J. 
McKrrn Catte.t. 

Among the subjects in course of investi- 
gation the following were mentioned as 
likely to be completed soon. Mr. W. Lay, 
lately Fellow in Philosophy, has, for several 
years, been studying mental imagery by 
various methods. In addition to questions 
such as those proposed by Mr. Galton, 
others have been set more independent of 
immediate introspection and extending to 
auditory and motor imagery. Among 
others, including musicians, 100 leading 
artists have, in letters and interviews, de- 
scribed their imagery. Imagery has been 
investigated by its effects on memory, and 
in the compositions of poets and other 


SCIENCE. 


209 


writers. Mr. Lay has, finally, given special 
attention to his own imagery and associa- 
tions. Mr. §. I. Franz, Fellow in Psy- 
chology, is investigating after-images. He 
has already published experiments on the 
threshold for after-images, and is now 
studying the duration and nature of the 
after-image as dependent on the intensity, 
duration and area of stimulation. He is 
able to correlate the effects of these magni- 
tudes for consciousness and to analyze phys- 
iological and mental factors. The indi- 
vidual differences are of interest, for, with 
the same stimulus, the image differs greatly 
with different persons. Mr. L. B. Mc- 
Whood, Fellow in Psychology, is studying 
the motor accompaniments of the percep- 
tion and emotional results of music. The 
movements are a series of taps made as 
rapidly as possible and a pressure not a 
maximum, but kept as nearly as may be 
constant. The subject decides on his pref- 
erences, ete., for the tones and combinations 
used, and these are compared with the mo- 
tor effects. Mr. H. E. Houston, Scholar in 
Psychology, is studying color nomenclature 
with special reference to children. The 
growth in accuracy and extent of the color 
vocabulary in schools has been determined, 
and the attempt will be made to find and 
set a normal nomenclature for colors and 
other classes of sensations. Other re- 
searches were mentioned but not described. 


6. The Psychic Development of Young Animals 
and its Somatic Correlation with special ref- 
erence to the Brain. By WersLEY MILLs, 
McGill University, Montreal. 

This paper was based on researches on 
psychic development and on the develop- 
ment of the cerebral cortex in the same 
groups of animals. As somatic correlation 
other than that of the brain has been con- 
sidered in other papers, this phase of the 
subject was not especially treated in this 
paper. The main conclusions are as fol- 


210 


lows: In the dog and the cat there is a 
period extending from birth to about the 
time of the opening of the eyes character- 
ized by reflex movements, the sway of in- 
stincts and the absence of intelligence. 
The advance in movement, first of the limbs 
and later of the head and face parts, together 
with the psychic progress associated with 
this, is correlated with rapid development 
of the cortical centers for the limbs in the 
first instance, and later for the head and 
face in the period immediately following 
the blind stage. This is more rapid and 
more pronounced in the cat than in the 
dog, and is correlated with greater control 
in the cat over the forelimbs and with cer- 
tain physiological and psychic developments 
characteristic of the cat; similar observa- 
tions were made upon rabbits and cavies. 
The psychic manifestations of the pigeon 
and fowl have not the same sort of cere- 
bral cortical correlates as the animals re- 
ferred to above. 


7. The Organization of Practical Work in 
Psychology. By Lightner WitTmMeERr, of the 
University of Pennsylvania. 

Under the designation of practical work 
in psychology was included: (1) The direct 
application, whether by professional psy- 
chologists, practicing physicians or teachers, 
of psychological principles to therapeutics 
and to education. (2) Such psycho-physi- 
cal investigation of mental conditions and 
processes as may serve to throw light upon 
the problems that confront humanity in the 
practice of medicine or teaching. (3) The 
offering of instruction in psychology to the 
students of medicine or to teachers that 
contains a promise of future usefulness to 
them in their respective professions. Thus 
the plan has a view to the professional prac- 
tice of psychalogy, to research and to in- 
struction as these stand related to the two 
professions of medicine and teaching. In 
order that psychology may become a useful 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vox. V. No. 110. 


possession of the medical man, details of 
organization must be perfected that will 
bring about a union of the department of 
psychology with the professional depart- 
ments of the medical school. Professor 
Witmer then went on to suggest details of 
organization as part of a plan for the de- 
velopment of research work and instruction 
useful to the community and to the teacher. 


8. Psycho-physical Tests on Normal School and 
Kindergarten Pupils. By Miss Mary P. 
Harmon. 


These tests form part of a general scheme 
which proposes the development of a series 
of tests which shall be applicable alike to 
the oldest and youngest pupils in all grades 
from the kindergarten to the normal school. 
The intention is to repeat, from year to year, 
a series of experiments of which a few are 
included in this preliminary report, as the 
children now in the kindergarten pass 
through the various grades. The tests re- 
ported upon included family statistics, age, 
height, weight, lung capacity, simple reac- 
tion time to sound and rate of free-arm 
movement. 


9. Personal Experiences under Ether. By 
Wester Mitts, of McGill University, 
Montreal. 

This paper related the experiences of the 
writer during and immediately subsequent 
to the adminstration of ether, together with 
a later experience that seemed to produce a 
profound impression. 

Brother Chrysostom, of the Manhattan 
College, presented an informal paper, en- 
titled A Preliminary Study of Memory; and 
Professor E. C. Sanford, of Clark Univer- 
sity, gave a Demonstration of an Eye Plethys- 
mograph. 

A paper by Mrs. C. Ladd Franklin, on 
Color Blindness and Willem Pole: A Study in 
Logic, was read by title. 

The titles of the philosophical papers 


FEBRUARY 5, 1897.] 


read on Wednesday morning were as fol- 

lows : 

1. Philosophy in the American Colleges. A.C. 
Armstrone Jr., Wesleyan University. 
2. Tests of Current Theory Touching Mind and 

Body. Dickinson 8. Mritter, Bryn Mawr 

College. 

3. The Relation of Mind and Body. C. A. 
Srrone, Columbia University. 

4. Is the ‘ Transcendental Ego’ an Unmeaning 
Conception? J. EH. CreicHton, Cornell 
University. 

5. The Relation of Pessimism to Ultimate Phil- 
osophy. EK. C. 8. ScuitiER, Cornell Uni- 
versity. 

6. The Standpoint and Method of Ethics. 
James SetuH, Cornell University. 

7. A Generalization of Immediate Inferences. 
J. G. Hrszen, Princeton University. 

8. The Negative in Logic. A. T. Ormonp, 
Princeton University. 

The afternoon session on the 30th was 
opened by the address of the President, 
Professor Fullerton, of the University of 
Pennsylvania, entitled The ‘ Knower’ in 
Psychology. It was an examination of the 
nature of knowledge from the standpoint of 
the psychologist, and the criticism of the 
‘self’ in its knowing function, as it is famil- 
iar to readers of philosophy and psychology. 
Professor Fullerton criticised the Neo- 
Hegelian doctrine of the ‘self’ as a unifying 
activity in consciousness, and also the view 
of the self that regards it as a noumenon or 
metaphysical entity lying behind conscious- 
ness and accounting for it. The positive 
views advanced by the speaker were as 
follows : The idea that there must be a self 
distinct from the contents of consciousness 
to explain consciousness arises out of a 
mere misconception, and is to be regarded 
as a survival from an unreflective past. 
The primary uncritical notion of the self 
identifies it with the body. In animism 
we have a duplicate of the body regarded 
as the self, the knower and doer. In the 


SCIENCE. 


211 


history of philosophy this notion is made 
more abstract and unintelligible with the 
progress of reflection, and in successive 
systems the function of the self as knower 
becomes more and more unmeaning. But 
knowledge is a psychosis like any other 
psychosis, and it is the duty of the psy- 
chologist to analyze and describe it. He 
must, moreover, use the same psychological 
method which he uses in treating of sensa- 
tions or of any other mental elements, 
and must not try to find an explanation 
of knowledge by having recourse to a 
something which lies beyond the realm of 
psychology as science. 

Following the President’s address there 
was held a business meeting of the Associa- 
tion, and a report from the Committee on 
Physical and Mental Tests, appointed the 
year before, was presented and accepted. 
This report is reproduced, as the elabora- 
tion of such tests is a matter that concerns 
several sciences. 


PRELIMINARY REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON 
PHYSICAL AND MENTAL TESTS. 


The Committee on Physical and Mental 
Tests appointed at the last annual meeting 
of this Association submits the following 
report : 

The committee has drawn up a series of 
physical and mental tests which is regarded 
as especially appropriate for college stu- 
dents tested in a psychological laboratory. 
The same series would also be suitable for 
the general public and, with some omissions 
and slight modifications, for school children. 
The committee has had in view a series of 
tests requiring not more than one hour for 
the record of one subject. In selecting the 
tests and methods the committee regarded 
as most important those which seemed 
likely to reveal individual differences and 
development, but also took into account 
ease and quickness in making the tests and 
in interpreting and collating the results. 


212 


Each member of the committee selected 
a complete series of tests. The report in- 
cludes these selections, together with brief 
descriptions of methods. After each test and 
method are placed the initials of the mem- 
bers of the committee recommending it.* 


Preliminary Data: B. C. J. S. W. 

Date of birth; birthplace; birthplace of father; 
birthplace of mother; occupation (including class in 
college, or, if not a student, the last educational in- 
stitution attended); occupation of father; any mea- 
surements previously made. B.C. J. 8. W. 

Color of eyes; color of hair; right or left-handed. 
B.C. J. S. 

Mother’s maiden name; number of brothers; sisters; 
order of birth; age of parents at birth; birthplace and 
occupation of grandparents. W. 

Two schedules of observations and records to be 
filled in, one by the recorder and one by the subject, 
as in the Columbia tests, with such modifications as 
experience shall make desirable. C. 

A blank to be filled in by the recorder, noting 
asymmetry of head or body, color of eyes and hair, 
complexion, degenerative or other stigmata of head, 
eyes, ears, mouth, teeth, hands or feet, posture, gait, 
manner, coordination and speech, indications of in- 
tellectual, emotional and moral characteristics. W. 


Physical Measurements: C. J. S. B. W. 
Height, weight and size of head. C. J. S. B. W. 
Breathing capacity. C.J. S. W. 
Height sitting. C. W. 


* We refer especially to two publications for de- 
scriptions of some of the tests: Official Catalogue of 
Exhibits, Department M., World’s Columbian Expo- 
sition; Section of Psychology, Joseph Jastrow in 
charge, 1893; and Physical and Mental Measurements 
of the Students of Columbia University, J. McKeen 
Cattell and Livingston Farrand, Psychological Re- 
view, Nov., 1896. The following papers on the sub- 
ject may also be mentioned: ‘Mental Tests and 
Measurements,’ J. McK. Cattell, with an appendix 
by Francis Galton, Mind, 1890; Zur Individual Psy- 
chologie, Hugo Miinsterberg, Centralblatt f. Nerven- 
heilkunde und Psychiatrie, 1891. Researches on the 
Mental and Physical Development of School Chil- 
dren, J. A. Gilbert, Studies from the Yale Laboratory, 
1895; reported also by E. W. Scripture, Zeitschrift f. 
Psychologie, etc., X., 1896, and The Psychological Re- 
view, III., 1896; Der Psychologische Versuch in der 
Psychiatrie, Emil Kraepelin, Psychologische Arbeiten, 
1895; La Psychologie Individuelle, A. Binet et V. 
Henri, L’ Année psychologique, 1896. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Voz. V. No. 110: 


The measurements should be made in the metric- 
system. The weight should be taken in ordinary 
indoor clothing. The height should have the height 
of the heel subtracted. At least the length and 
breadth of the head should be measured. B. C.S.. 


Keenness of Vision: B. C. J. S. W. 

The maximum distance at which diamond (4% 
point) numerals can be read with each eye singly. 
B. C. J. 8. 

The illumination should be in the neighborhood of” 
100 candle-meters; about eight out of ten numerals 
should be read correctly at the rate of about 2 per: 
second. The minimum distance should also be de- 
termined, if possible. B. C. 

In addition or as a substitute, drawing a series of” 
forms as recommended. J. 

Use Snellen Test-types. S. 

Some other substitute for these tests, to be sug-- 
gested after satisfactory trial. W. 


Color Vision: B. C. J. S. W. 

Select as quickly as possible four greens from a 
series of wools; measure the time; if long, make fur- 
ther tests. C. 

Combine with test of rate of perception by requir- 
ing subject to name, as rapidly as possible, a series - 
of colors, either wools or papers. B. W. 

Use the chart exhibited at the World’s Fair. J. 


Keenness of Hearing: B. C. J. S. W. 

The distance at which a continuous sound can be- 
heard with each ear singly. C. B. W. 

Use some artificial external meatus if the test is to - 
show small differences in sensibility. W. 

The sound should be from a watch reduced to a. 
standard. An arrangement should be used, by which 
it can be periodically cut off without the knowledge - 
of the subject. C.S. B. 

Use for this a stop-watch. J. 8. 

I endorse the stop-watch; it can be manipulated, 
so that the time is recorded, showing how long it. 
took the subject to decide that the watch has stop-- 
ped. J. 


Perception of Pitch : B. C. J. S. 

Adjust one monochord or pipe to another, the tones - 
not to be sounded simultaneously. C. J. 

Select a match from a set of forks, making a fixed 
number of vibrations per second more or less than a. 
standard, e. g, standard 500 v. per second; other forks, 
497, 497.5, 498, 498.5, ete. ; 500, 500.5, 501, etc. B.S. 

I prefer the adjustment to the selection method. 
The test can be made with two Gilbert tone-testers. J. 


Fineness of Touch: C. J. S. W. 
The sesthesiometer is unsatisfactory; the discrim-- 


FrpRuaky 5, 1897]. 


ination of roughness of surfaces and touching a spot 
previously touched should be tried. C.J. W. 


Sensitiveness to Pain: B. C. J. 8. W. 

The gradually increasing pressure that will just 
cause pain. The point or points in the body to be 
used to be agreed upon. B.C. J. W. 


Perception of Weight or of Force of Movement: B. C. 
da Ss Wie 
Arrange a series of weights. B. J. W. 
Make movements of equal force and determine the 
error. C. 


The best method still to be developed. J. 


Dynameter Pressure of Right and Left Hands : 

S. W. 

Dynamometer. B. 

In place of or in addition to the ordinary dyna- 
mometer test make movements of the thumb and fore- 
finger and continue as rapidly as possible for fifteen 
seconds. C. 

Use mechanical counter for this and take reading at 
end of every minute. S. 

Thumb and finger dynamometer. 
worst of five trials. W. 


B. C. J. 


Record best and 


Rate of Movement: W. 

Distance of 35 cm. One preliminary trial with 
right hand in extension, then two trials in succession 
of R. E., L. F., L. E., R. F. Collate shortest of two 
trials under each typical movement. W. 


Fatigue: B. C. W. 
Muscular exertion. B. W. As described above. C. 
Intellectual exertion. B. W. 


Will Power : W. 

The ability of the subject to respond after fatigue 
has set in to a suggestion of the experimenter with an 
extra effort of will. W. 


Voluntary Attention: 

Test by simple mental operations under distrac- 
tion. B. 

Coincident variations in Psycho-physical process. 
W. 
The modifiability of the knee jerk, or of a sus- 
tained bodily process, such as rate of breathing or 
pulsation of a volitional muscular or intellectual pro- 
cess, when the subject’s attention is engaged by some 
mental content. W. 

Measure at the same time concentration or distrac- 
tion of attention. W. 


Right and Left Movements: J. W. 
The accuracy with which movements are made to 
the right and left. J. W. 


SCIENCE. 


213 


Some such test as this for indication of right and 
left-handedness. W. 

I do not insist on this test as one of great impor- 
tance. J. 


Rapidity of Movements: C. J. S. W. 
Taps on a telegraph key. J. W. 
Movements requiring force, as described above. C. 
Make short marks as rapidly as possible for twenty 
or thirty seconds, e.g., | | | | |. S. 
Trilling with two fingers and with five. W. 


Accuracy of Aim: B. J. 8S. W. 

Throwing amarbleatatarget. J. | 

Or striking a point upon the table with a pencil 
point. W. 

Touch an insulated spot, as proposed by Scripture. 
S. B. Also forsteadiness of hand. B. 


Reaction-time on Sound: B. C. J. S. W. 

The reaction to be made with the right hand with 
a signal about two seconds before the stimulus. B. 
Cc. J. W. : 

Five reactions to be made without preliminary 
practice; after the reactions have been made, the ob- 
server to be asked whether the direction of the atten- 
tion was motor or sensory. B. C. 

It is not much use to ask for direction of attention 
with most subjects. W. 

Sensory and motor reaction with instruction, after 
the above test. B. 


Reaction-time with Choice: B. J. W. 
Use card sorting. B.J.S. 


Rate of Discrimination and Movement: B. C. J. 8. W. 

100 A’s in 500 letters to be marked or as many as 
can be marked in one minute. B. C. 

One out of a number of geometrical forms to be 
marked : determine the number marked in 90 sec- 
onds. J. W. 

Or colors, or pictures of objects. W. 


Quickness of Distinction and Movement: B. J. 8. 

Rate at which cards are sorted. B. J.S. 

Combine with reaction with choice. B. 

With the effects of practice, etc., as proposed by 
Bergstrom. S. 


Perception of Size: C. J. S. W. 

Draw a line equal to a model line 5 em. in length, 
bisect ‘it, erect a perpendicular of the same length 
and bisect the right-hand angle. C. J. 


Perception of Time: B. C. J. S. W. 

The accuracy with which a standard interval of 
time, say ten or twenty seconds, can be reproduced. 
Cc. W. 

Thirty seconds or one minute. W. 


214 


Memory: B. C. J. S. W. 

The accuracy with which eight numerals heard 
once can be reproduced and the accuracy with which 
a line drawn by the observer at the beginning of the 
hour can be reproduced at the end of the hour. 
Cc. W. 

Line to be identified. Ten numerals tobe used. B. 

Nine numerals. S8. 

A combined test of memory, association and find- 
ing-time as described in the catalogue of the Colum- 
bian Exposition. J. W. 

Accuracy of observation and recollection as pro- 
posed by Cattell and by Bolton. J. W. 


Memory-type: B. 
Variations in use of 10 numerals; method as fol- 
lows: 
1. Show numerals in chance order and have sub- 
_ ject write them from memory after an interval. 
. Speak numerals in chance order and have sub- 
ject write them from memory after an interval. 
. Show and speak in chance order and have sub- 
ject write them from memory after an interval. 
4. Show and have the subject speak them and then 
write them from memory after an interval. 
Compare the results for indications of memory 
type and kind of imagery preferred. Question the 
subject as to his mental material in each case. B. 


Apperception test of Ebbinghaus. B. 


Imagery: B. C. J. 8. W. 

Questions proposed in the Columbia tests. C. 

Methods should be worked out more fully. C. 
J. W. B. 

Cf. Method under preceding head. B. 

Make memory span tests, showing and speaking the 
digits at the same time, and ask the subject which 
sense (sight or hearing) he found himself using, and 
if either seemed to him a distraction. S. 


The committee urges that such tests be 
made, so far as possible, in all psychological 
laboratories. It does not recommend that 
the same tests be made everywhere, but, on 
the contrary, advises that, at the present 
time, a variety of tests be tried, so that the 
best ones may be determined. Those who 
make tests which they regard as desirable 
are requested to send these with sufficient 
descriptions to the committee. 

The committee hopes that the tests pro- 
posed may be discussed fully at the present 
meeting of the Association, and asks that 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vox. V. No. 110. 
the present committee be continued for 
another year. 
(Signed,) 

J. Marx Batpwin, 

JOSEPH JASTROW, 

E. C. SANForD, 

LiGHTNER WITMER, 

J. McKreEn Carrety, Chairman. 


At the business session the following 
officers were elected : President, Professor J. 
Mark Baldwin, of Princeton University ; 
Secretary and Treasurer, Dr. Livingston 
Farrand, of Columbia University; new 
members of the Council, Professor Josiah 
Royce, of Harvard University ; Professor 
Joseph Jastrow, of the University of Wis- 
consin. The following new members were 
elected : Professor G. H. Palmer, Harvard 
University ; Professor J. G. Hibben, Prince- 
ton University ; Professor R. B. Johnson, 
Miami University ; Professor F.C. French, 
Vassar College; Dr. E. F. Buchner, Yale 
University; Dr. Ernest Albee, Cornell Uni- 
versity ; Dr. C. H. Judd, Wesleyan Uni- 
versity; Dr. Alice J. Hamlin, Mt. Holyoke 
College; Dr. G. A. Tawney, Beloit Uni- 
versity ; Mr. F. C. S. Schiller, Cornell Uni- 
versity ; Dr. C. W. Hodge, Princeton Uni- 
versity ; Mr. J. F. Crawford, Princeton Uni- 
versity; Dr. C. F. Bakewell, Harvard Uni- 
versity; Dr. David Irons, University of 
Vermont; Dr. Robert McDougall, Western 
Reserve Uuiversity; Mr. A. F. Buck, 
Union College. 

An invitation was received from the Brit- 
ish Association for the Advancement of 
Science to attend the next annual meeting 
to be held at Toronto, Canada, as members 
of the Section of Physiology. Upon the rec- 
ommendation of the Council, it was moved 
and carried that such members of the Coun- 
cil as are able to attend be official dele- 
gates of the Association to the meeting and 
that such members of the Association as 
may be able, accept the invitation to attend 


FEBRUARY 5, 1897. ] 


as members. An invitation was also re- 
ceived from the American Association for 
the Advancement of Science to join that 
Association. The Council recommended 
that all members who might feel so disposed 
present their names for election to that As- 
sociation. 

The time and place of the next meeting 
of the Association was left to the President 
to be decided in consultation with the 
Presidents of the affiliated societies. 

After a vote of thanks for the hospitality 
extended to the Association the meeting 


journed. 
peioeecned Livineston FARRAND, 


Secretary. 
CoLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. 


THE AMERICAN FOLK-LORE SOCIETY. 

TuE eighth annual meeting of the Amer- 
ican Folk-lore Society was held at Colum- 
bia University on December 29th. 

During the past year the Society has lost 
two of its most esteemed members—its 
President, Capt. John G. Bourke, and Pro- 
fessor Francis J. Child, one of its founders 
and its first President. 

The Society elected Professor Sidney A. 
Hartland and Dr. H. Steinthal honorary 
members. 

The officers elected for 1897 were as fol- 
lows: 

President, Mr. Stewart Culin, of the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania; Ist Vice-Presi- 
dent, Dr. Henry Wood, of Johns Hopkins 
University ; 2d Vice-President, Dr. Franz 
Boas, of Columbia University ; Permanent 
Secretary, Mr. W. W. Newell, Cambridge, 
Mass; Treasurer, Dr. John H. Hinton, of 
New York City. 

To facilitate closer cooperation with other 
scientific societies and to afford individuals 
greater opportunities to receive benefit from 
kindred organizations, the Permanent Sec- 
retary was authorized to arrange the time 
and place of the annual meeting and was 
instructed to give preference to the time 


SCIENCE. 


215 


and place of meetings of the American Psy- 
chologists and Society of Naturalists. The 
Permanent Secretary was further author- 
ized to calla summer meeting at the time 
and place of the meeting of the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science. 

The Society has recently published a vol- 
ume of Current Superstitions, by Mrs. 
Fanny D. Bergen, and it has now in press a 
volume entitled Navaho Tae by Dr. 
Washington Matthews. 

A full programme of papers was pre - 
sented, of which only a part can be here 
mentioned. 

Miss Alice C. Fletcher’s ‘ Notes on Certain 
Early Forms of Ceremonial Expression’ de- 
veloped the idea that among savage peoples 
the burden of the song is, to a greater ex- 
tent than heretofore recognized, correlated 
with the emotion which the song is desired 
to express. Miss Fletcher has investigated 
this subject specially among the Omahas, 
and her studies in this direction are still in 
progress. Incidentally, the accuracy of 
repetition and pure preservation of native 
songs was mentioned; an example being an 
Omaha song, recorded by means of the pho- 
nograph, which agreed in every detail with 
the same song as collected twelve years 
prior. 

‘Ceremonial Hair-Cutting among the 
Omahas’ was treated by the same speaker. 
The hair has been associated with strength 
in the lore of many peoples and has been 
treated as of close connection with the life 
and reality of the individual. Thus some 
peoples when giving a name and thus ad- 
ding an important part to the personality of 
an individual think it necessary to counter- 
balance this act by cutting off a portion of 
the hair. 

Mr. W. W. Newell’s paper on ‘The Le- 
gend of the Holy Grail’ was intended to 
suggest that literary productions, under 
certain circumstances, may develop. into 
folk-tales. 


216 


Dr. Robert M. Lawrence spoke of the 
many superstitions connected with common 
salt even among our own people. 

Mr. Stewart Culin exhibited a number of 
Divinatory Diagrams from Tibet, China, 
Mexico, etc., and called attention to their 
similarity as well as to the fact that they, 
being arranged on a plan of four quarters, 
might be developed from the idea of the 
four cardinal points. 

‘An Ojibwa Myth,’ by Harlan I. Smith, 
referred to the white-dog sacrifice and ideas 
common to several of the neighboring 
tribes. 

‘The Psychic Origin of Myth,’ by Dr. D. 
G. Brinton, was an inquiry into how far the 
psychic unity of man satisfactorily accounts 
for similarities in myths found among widely 
separated peoples. Dr. Brinton’s position 
that it accounted for even minor details was 
vigorously contested by several present. 

Mr. Stansbury Hagar contributed from 
his store of Micmac mythology such parts 
as related to weather and the seasons. 

Miss Whitney, Secretary of the Balti- 
more Branch of the Society, contributed a 
paper on the lore of ‘The Sword and Belt 
of Orion or De Los Ell an Yard.’ It seems 
that this group of stars in the constellation of 
Orion holds an important place in the folk- 
lore of the negroes. 

Dr. Franz Boas related ‘ A Star Legend 
from the Interior of Alaska and its Ana- 
logues from the other parts of America.’ 
While holding to the idea generally ac- 
cepted among scientists, that the same 
fundamental concept may arise independ- 
ently among widely separated peoples hay- 
ing no contact, and due purely to the same 
psychic phenomena common to man; yet 
he held that similarity in a long series of 
minor details, especially in cases where 
contact was possible, could not be positively 
accounted for in that way and that historic 
influence must be considered as well as 
psychic unity. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 110. 


Mr. W.S. Scarborrough’s paper on ‘ Ne- 
gro Songs’ was an interesting contribution 
on the play songs of negro children. 

“The True Story of Blue Beard,’ by Pro- 
fessor Thomas Wilson, illustrated the mak- 
ing of folk-lore, the changing of a historic 
story to a legend by continual repeating 
with slight change, in a way exactly oppo- 
site to the accurate repetition of the Omaha 
song. 

A public lecture was given in the evening 
by Mr. Heli Chatelain, on ‘ African Life 
Illustrated.’ Mr. Chatelain, who was late 
United States Commercial Agent in Angola, 
spoke very feelingly against the existing 
Arab slave trade, while his main subject 
was the ethnology of the Negroes of An- 
gola, from whom he collected the volume 
of folk-tales recently published by the So- 
ciety. 

The meeting concluded with the annual 
dinner. In this the Society was joined by 
the Section of Anthropology of the Ameri- 
can Association for the Advancement of 
Science, with which it is closely affiliated. 

Haruan IJ. Surru. 

AMERICAN MUSEUM oF NATURAL HISTORY. 


HORATIO HALE. 

In the death of Mr. Horatio Hale, which 
took place at Clinton, Ontario, December 
28th, science in America has lost an earnest 
worker and student, who for more than 
half a century has been prominent in lin- 
guistic and ethnographic literature. Indeed, 
it is sixty-three years since his first contri- 
bution to science was printed—a small 
pamphlet on an Algonquian dialect. He 
was born May 3, 1817, at Newport, N. H., 
and was at the time of that publication a 
student in Harvard College. 

He graduated in 1837 and was them adh 
ately appointed as ‘philologist and eth- 
nographer’ to the United States exploring 
expedition under Captain Charles Wilkes. 
His report constituted the seventh volume 


‘FEBRARUY 5, 1897.] 


of the series published by the expedition 
and makes a stately volume of 666 pages. 
It is filled with extremely valuable ma- 
terial relating to the ethnology and dia- 
lects of the various tribes encountered by 
the expedition, especially in Patagonia, 
Polynesia, Australia, South Africa and the 
northwest coast of North America. The 
grammar and comparative vocabulary of 
‘the Polynesian dialects are especially cred- 
itable, and Mr. Hale’s studies of the mi- 
grations of the Polynesians and the peo- 
pling of the islands of the Pacific ocean 
may be justly said to have laid the founda- 
tion for all subsequent researches in that 
field. In their main outlines they have 
stood the test of later inquiry, and are ac- 
cepted to-day by the soundest anthropolo- 
gists. 

Ten years after the publication of this 
volume (1846-1856), he removed to Clin- 
ton, Ontario, Canada, where he resided the 
remainder of his life, practicing law, but 
always in touch with the progress of his 
favorite scientific studies. His contribu- 
tions to these, though not very numerous, 
were ever marked by an intimate knowl- 
edge of facts and deep and original reflec- 
tion. 

One of the most important of his works 
was the translation and editing of ‘The 
Iroquois Book of Rites,’ forming the second 
volume (pp. 222) of the ‘ Library of Abo- 
riginal American Literature.’ This valua- 
ble native document was printed in the 
original text, with a learned introduction 
and notes. 

Mr. Hale was the first to discover the 
presence of the Siouan stock on the Atlan- 
tic coast by identifying the Tutelo of Virginia 
as a dialect of the Dakotan family. In 
two essays, one on ‘The Origin of Lan- 
guages’ and the other on ‘The Develop- 
ment of Language’ (1886 and 1888), he 
brought forward and ably supported a 
reasonable and probable theory for the rise 


SCIENCE. 217 


and extension of independent linguistic 
stocks, many of which are often found in 
limited areas. It is enough to say of these 
papers that their argument is masterly and 
that no other theory more acceptable has 
yet been presented to the scientific world. 

In a later essay (1893), on ‘ Language as 
a Test of Mental Capacity,’ he defended the 
value of linguistics as a criterion for ethnic 
classification ; though in the development 
of this argument, he was somewhat ham- 
pered by his opinions as to the relations of 
savage to civilized conditions. In the same 
year a paper by him, on ‘ The Fall of Hoch- 
elaga,’ set forth for the first time the early 
history of the Huron-Iroquois tribes. 

Mr. Hale was an active member of the 
American and British Associations for the 
Advancement of Science, and was one of 
the founders of the Anthropological Sec- 
tions in both. In 1886 he was Vice-Presi- 
dent of the former and Chairman of the 
Section on Anthropology. He was also a 
President of the American Folk-lore So- 
ciety, and an honorary or corresponding 
member of many learned associations. 

In his village home he was constantly 
active in educational plans and in those 
tending to the development of the best in- 
terests of the community. Personally he 
was affable and considerate, and in the 
warmth of scientific discussions never for- 
got the courtesies of life, several times in 
this respect setting a much-needed example 
to his opponents. D. G. Brinton. 

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


EMIL DU BOIS-REYMOND. 

Emit pu Bots-Rreymonp, the eminent 
physiologist and philosopher, died in Ber- 
lin on December 26, 1896, at the age of 78. 
He was the last of those four bright stars 
which illuminated the horizon of natural 
sciences for more than half a century. 
They are all gone now. Bricke died first 
(1892); then Helmholtz (1894); then Carl 


218 


Ludwig; and now du Bois-Reymond, last 
but not least, has passed away. These four 
eminent men who made everlasting marks 
in science have been life-long friends. All 
four were pupils of that grand master 
Johannes Muller. All four started out on 
their phenomenal scientific careers in the 
beginning of the forties and, though each 
one worked in a different line of research, 
they all had one object in common, which 
was paramount to them, and that was the 
liberation of the biological sciences from 
the deadening grasp of the obscure natural 
philosophy of those days, and the building 
up of physiology on a scientific rational 
basis. In combating the paralyzing idea 
of a ‘vital force,’ none was as energetic, 
none as perseverant as du Bois-Reymond. 
Only recently the old warrior in service of 
rational science again entered the arena 
to fight the old enemy in disguise, the 
‘neovitalism’ of a Bunge, a Rindfleisch 
and others. Du Bois-Reymond and the 
other great physiologists are no more, and 
there is at present no one to fill their 
places. Who will protect physiology against 
the onward course of these new ‘ vital forces.’ 

E. du Bois-Reymond was born on Novem- 
ber 7, 1818, in Berlin. He received there 
his general education at the College Fran- 
cais, and in 1837 he entered the University 
of Berlin, where he registered at first in the 
philosophical faculty, attending various lec- 
tures on philosophy, history and even the- 
ology. An accidental attendance at one of 
the lectures of Mitscherlich on experimental 
chemistry, however, had a deciding influ- 
ence upon du Bois-Reymond’s future. He 
began to study mathematics and the natural 
sciences, and went over later to the study 
of medicine, thus coming in contact with 
Johannes Muller, who was at that time the 
professor of physiology and anatomy at the 
University of Berlin. Du Bois-Reymond 
became first the ‘famulus,’ and later on the 
assistant, of Johannes Miller. In 1846 he 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 110. 


established himself as ‘ privat-docent’ at 
the University, and in 1855 he was made 
‘professor extraordinarius.’ In 1858, after 
Miller’s death, the chair of physiology was 
separated from that of anatomy,and du Bois- 
Reymond was made professor of physiology 
and director of the physiological laboratory 
in the University of Berlin, a position which 
he held to the last day ofhis life. In 1851, 
at the proposition of Alexander von Hum- 
boldt and Johannes Miller, du Bois-Rey- 
mond was elected to the Berliner Academie 
der Wissenschaft, a very high honor for a 
young man of only 33 years, and since 1867 
he was the permanent secretary of the acad- 
emy. Du Bois-Reymond was an honorary 
member of numerous scientific societies alk 
over the Old and the New World. 

The brilliant scientific carer of du Bois- 
Reymond was again determined by a single 
accident. In 1841 Johannes Muller handed 
to his amanuensis Matteucci’s paper (Essai 
sur les phénoménes électriques des Ani- 
maux, Paris, 1841) for the verification of the 
experiments on the so-called frog current of 
Nobili. It became the task of du Bois- 
Reymond’s life, and he solved it by creating 
a new science, the science of animal elec- 
tricity. Already, a year later, appeared his 
first short paper on this subject (Ueber den 
sogenannten Froschstrom und die electro- 
motorischen Fische, Poggendorff’s Analen 
der Physik, Vol. 58), and was followed by 
his thesis (Que apud veteres de piscibus 
electricis extant argumenta, 1843). Then 
years of silence followed, years of hard 
labor, of seclusion in his small private lab- 
oratory, where ‘the frog and the multiplicator 
were the whole world’ to that most ener- 
getic of all investigators. The problems, 
the methods, the instruments, were thor- 
oughly worked out with unparalled energy,. 
ingenuity, precision and self-criticism, be- 
fore they were communicated to the world. 
Butthen, when his book on animal electricity 
came out, it was a revelation, it marked an 


FEBRUARY 5, 1897. ] 


epoch in physiology. In 1848 appeared the 
first volume of that book, ‘ Untersuchungen 
ueber thierische Elektricitat.’ In 1849 
followed the first part, and in 1860 the 
second part, of the second volume. It was 
not simply a communication of new striking 
facts and new methods; it was an exhaus- 
tive statement of the creation and comple- 
tion of a new science, presented in a brilliant 
style and ina language unusually clear and 
full of life and force. His later contri- 
butions to the physics of nerve and muscle 
appeared mostly in the reports of the Berlin 
Academy of Sciences, or in the Archiv fur 
Physiologie, of which du Bois-Reymond was 
the editor. Among the fundamental facts 
which were added by du Bois-Reymond to 
physiology we have to mention, in first 
place, the establishment and development 
of the laws of the muscle current, the dis- 
covery of the nerve current, the discovery 
of the so-called negative variations in 
muscle and in nerve, the discovery of the 
electrotonus, etc., etc. Du Bois-Reymond 
has devised and invented numerous impor- 
tant scientific apparatus, many of which 
are to be found in all well-equipped physio- 
logical laboratories; for instance, the in- 
duction coil, the electric key, the non- 
polarizable electrodes, etc., ete. Du Bois- 
Reymond’s name will live forever in the 
science of physiology. 

Aside from his special scientific work, we 
should not omit to mention the public 
speeches (Reden) delivered by du Bois-Rey- 
mond on many special occasions. In those 
speeches, as a rule, an important subject 
was treated in a classical style. ‘They were 
models of clearness and brillianecy, and 
nearly every one of his speeches has been 
an event in its time, and many of them 
have been translated into all civilized lan- 
guages. We need only to mention here the 
following: ‘Darwin versus Galiani,’ ‘Die 
Lebenskraft,’ ‘Ueber die Grenzen des Na- 
turerkennens,’ with his ignorabimus, and 


SCIENCE. 


219 


‘Die Sieben Weltrathsel.’ He was as 
forcible a speaker as a writer. And both 
his pen and his speech have been employed 
only for a fearless propagation of high 
ideals and in defence of the rational princi- 
ples underlying modern sciences. 

His last work was one of love. Shortly 
before he died he finished reading the 
proofs of his carefully prepared memorial 
of his friend Helmholtz. 

S. J. MeLrzer. 


CURRENT NOTES ON METEOROLOGY. 
THE PLAGUE AND CLIMATIC CONDITIONS. 
THE present outbreak of the plague in 

India suggests certain considerations with 
reference to the possible connection of its 
occurrence with climatic conditions. While 
it used to be thought that the plague could 
not occur in the Torrid Zone, itis now known, 
in view of outbreaks of the disease within the 
tropics in Arabia and India, that this rule 
does not hold rigidly. In Egypt the au- 
tumn seems to be the season in which the 
plague appears, and June the month in 
which it dies out. In Hurope, outside of 
Turkey, the plague season has been sum- 
mer and autumn. In India no direct con- 
nection with the seasons could be detected 
in the epidemics of 1815-21, the first out- 
break concerning which we have trust- 
worthy information, and of 1836-38. From 
all the data at hand, the general conclusion 
is that a moderately high temperature fa- 
vors the development and extension of the 
plague, but extremes of heat and cold are 
unfavorable to its breaking out. Hxcep- 
tions to this rule are many. For instance, 
in the epidemic at Smyrna in 1735 the heat 
was so excessive during the plague that 
many of the people who left the town for 
neighboring villages died of sunstroke on 
the way, while in Roumelia, in 1737-38, the 
plague continued in many places in which 
the temperature fell at times to 3° Fahr. 
Regarding the effect of atmospheric mois- 


220 


ture there is also some doubt. Some au- 
thorities hold that a high degree of humid- 
ity is necessary for the epidemic extension 
of the plague, while others maintain the op- 
posite view. Certainly the occurrence of 
many outbreaks at high altitudes in Kur- 
distan, Arabia, China and India makes it 
clear that a moist atmosphere is not always 
an essential in the spread of the epidemic. 
The present outbreak in India, coming at a 
time when medical men in that country and 
all over the world are thoroughly alive to 
the importance of studying the climatic re- 
lations of the disease, will undoubtedly re- 
sult in giving us much additional informa- 
tion jn this connection. The occurrence of 
this outbreak in India at a time of famine 
recalls the fact that the plague 1815-21 
Broke out in the island of Cutch in a dis- 
trict where there had been a famine a short 
time before. 


CHINOOK WINDS IN THE NORTHWEST. 

THe conditions under which chinook 
winds occur in the Northwestern States is 
well illustrated on the Portland, Ore., 
weather map for December 3d, last. At5 
a.m., Pacific time, on that day an area of 
low pressure was central over the ocean 
northwest of Washington, extending over 
British Columbia and northern Washing- 
ton, while an anticyclone was central near 
Salt Lake City. This distribution of pres- 
sure naturally resulted in a flow of air from 
the south and southwest over the States of 
Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. 
The temperatures were from 46° to 50° 
west of the Cascade mountains, and from 
24° to 32° east of them. The effect of the 
mountain ranges in causing an adiabatic 
warming of the descending air is well shown 
in the course of the isotherms of 40° and 
50°, which run north and south parallel 
with the mountains in Washington and 
Oregon, and in the direction of the 30° 
isotherm, which turns eastward across 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 110. 


northern Idaho, running south of Helena, 
Mont., where the wind was south and came 
across the Rockies, and then turning north- 
ward east of Havre. Our chinook winds 
are similar to the well-known foehn winds 
of Switzerland. In both cases they appear 
as warm and dry winds, blowing down from 
mountain ranges, and when they occur in 
winter have the habit of rapidly evapora- 
ting the snow which may be on the ground 
at the time. In Switzerland this habit has 
gained for the foehn the characteristic name 
of Schneefresser. In the United States the 
snow-eating quality of the chinook is well 
known, and is an extremely important fac- 
tor in clearing away the snow blockades on 
railroads and in removing the snow from 


the stock ranges. : 
R. DEC. Warp. 


HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 
ETHNOLOGIC MEDICINE. 

THE principles of the general develop- 
ment of the arts applied to medicine is the 
subject of an article by Dr. J. H. McCor- 
mick in the American Antiquarian for August 
last. He points out that in many tribes, 
geographically remote, at the same stage of 
culture, similar ideas and methods in refer- 
ence to the practice of medicine and the 
power of drugs prevailed. Magical formu- 
las were adopted for the cure of disease, 
and mysterious and eccentric remedies were 
in vogue, all quite analogous in like stages 
of culture everywhere. The conjurations 
of the ancient Egyptians, mutatis mutandis, 
would pass for those of the Cherokees or 
Nahuas. 

The author draws the just inference that 
those who assert that such similarities are 
evidences of historic unity, and that they 
should be explained by some ancient com- 
munity of culture, do not correctly appre- 
hend modern psychology. This teaches, as 
its basic principle, that like conditions lead 


FEBRUARY 5, 1897.] 


to similar trains of thought and those to 
analogous results. 


SACRED SECRET SOCIETIES. 


In L’ Anthropologie for October there are 
accounts of two sacred secret societies 
which illustrate the curious aberrations of 
religious doctrines, unrestrained by reason. 

The society of ‘ Leopards’ exists in Sierra 
Leone. Their god is represented by a manioc 
root, stuffed with various holy objects. 
They are cannibalistic, and the price of initi- 
ation is to induce some member of the appli- 
eant’s family to wander into the midst of 
the assembly, there to be slain and eaten. 
The reward is to receive this fetish, which 
will bring good luck. 

The other society, already mentioned by 
some writers, is that of the Aioi, of Tahiti 
and some other Polynesian islands. It is 
composed of both men and women, some 
belonging to the highest castes. It is de- 
voted to the genesiac cult in its most ab- 
normal forms, and one of its laws is that the 
members must scrupulously avoid the re- 
production of their kind. 

The incredibly obscene groups in pottery 
and metal excavated from the tombs of the 
Yuneas in Peru can probably be explained 
by the existence among them of some such 


religious society. 
D. G. Brinton. 
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


NOTES ON INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 

SEVERAL years ago Professor Dunnington, 
of the University of Virginia, showed that 
the element titanium was much more widely 
distributed in nature than had been sup- 
posed. Indeed, not only all rock masses, 
but even all soils, examined by him were 
found to contain considerable quantities. 
More recently Professor Charles E. Wait, 
of the University of Tennessee, has had oc- 
easion to analyze the ashes of various vege- 
table substances for titanium and finds it 


- SCIENCE. 


221 


to be an invariable constituent. The ash 
of oak contains 0.31 per cent., of apple wood 
0.11 per cent., and of cotton-seed meal 0.02 
per cent. In coals titanium was found 
present to the extent of from nearly one 
per cent. in bituminous coals to over two 
and a-half per cent. in Pennsylvania an- 
thracite. Titanium thus appears to be one 
of the most widely distributed elements and 
it is not improbable that analyses will show 
that it is also found in animals. 


In the last Nature Professor Spencer Pick- 
ering comes to the support of Professor 
Armstrong in his attack upon the theory of 
electrolytic dissociation of salts in solution. 
In the course of his article he says: “‘ For 
a theory to be acceptable it should, at the 
very least, be reasonably probable, and 
should not violate any fundamental and 
well established facts ; it should stand the 
test of any apparently crucial experiments 
* *& %& and, I think we may add, it should 
give some explanation, not simply of the 
behavior of matter in the condition in ques- 
tion, but also of why matter ever assumes 
such a condition. The theories of osmotic 
pressure and ionic dissociation, I believe, 
have not done this.” 


THE opening of the Davy-Faraday Re- 
search Laboratory in London should mark 
an epoch in chemical science in Great 
Britain. This laboratory has been estab- 
lished by Dr. Ludwig Mond at a cost of 
half a million dollars. $170,000 has been 
expended in the building and its equip- 
ment, while $330,000 remains as an endow- 
ment fund. The laboratory is furnished 
with the most modern instruments and 
appliances for researches in pure and phys- 
ical chemistry. In opening the laboratory 
Dr. Mond said he had named it the Davy- 
Faraday Research Laboratory, in perpetual 
memory of those two great pioneers of sci- 
ence who carried out their world-famed 
and epoch-making researches almost on 


222 


that spot, and whose example, he hoped, 
would stimulate and inspire every one who 
came to work under that roof. The labo- 
ratory is open to persons of either sex and 
of any nationality who can satisfy the 
laboratory committee that they are fully 
qualified to undertake original scientific 
research in pure or physical chemistry, 
preference being given to those who have 
already published original work. The di- 
rectors of the laboratory are Lord Rayleigh 
and Professor Dewar. 

In the Comptes Rendus for December 2d 
Stanislas Meunier recorded observations on 
some asphaltic rocks and on the origin of 
asphalt. From the behavior of bitumenous 
rocks towards solvents the conclusion is 
drawn that bitumen is the result of purely 
mineral reactions, as of the double decom- 
position of metallic carbids and water. 

Vo Ip Jel 


ASTRONOMICAL NOTES. 

THE Astronomische Nachrichten of January 
4th contains a description by Professor Deich- 
muller, of a new instrument devised by him 
for fixing the position of the zenith with a 
meridian circle. The telescope is pointed 
approximately at the zenith, and the new 
instrument is mounted above the object 
glass. It consists of a circular disc of 
parallel surfaced glass floating in mer- 
eury. The vessel containing the mercury 
is so shaped that the glass is supported at 
its edges only, so that it is possible to get 
an unobstructed view of the sky through 
the middle portion of the glass. It is thus 
possible to observe the reflected image of 
the wires, and then to transfer the position 
of the zenith to the sky without the use of 
any graduated circle. The instrument is 
ingenious, and the principle is novel. Prof. 
Deichmuller gives some very accordant 
observations made with it. As in the case 
of all the floating collimators, however, it 
will be necessary to make sure that the 


SCIENCE... 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 110. 


opposite sides of the mercury do not differ 
in temperature. 


THE December Monthly Notices of the 
Royal Astronomical Society contains an in- 
teresting article by Prof. Rambaut, of Dub- 
lin, on a method of correcting the rate of an 
equatorial clock, so as to make the tele- 
scope follow very nearly the motion of the 
stars for the purposes of photography. 
Professor Rambaut gives formule for cal- 
culating the effect of refraction upon the 
apparent rate of diurnal motion of the stars, 
and shows how this effect can be very 
nearly compensated by varying the clock 
rate. In this way the work of the ob- 
server can be made much easier. 


Tue Wasburn Observatory of the Univer- 
sity of Wisconsin has issued Vol. X., Part 
I., of its Publications. It contains a series 
of double-star observations by Professor 
Geo. C. Comstock. 


Tue director’s report of the Harvard Col- 
lege Observatory for the year 1896 has 
appeared. From it we learn that the 
new Bruce photographic telescope has 
been transported to Peru, and successfully 
mounted at Arequipa. Jel, J 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 

Mr. CHARLES D. WALCcoTT, the Director of 
the United States Geological Survey, has been 
appointed Acting Assistant Secretary of the 
Smithsonian Institution, with duties confined to 
the charge of the National Museum. It is 
understood that Mr. Walcott has not taken the 
new office permanently and that he does not ex- 
pect to give his full time to the duties of adminis- 
tration of the affairs of the Museum, these being 
left largely to the present permanent staff of 
that institution. He will exercise a general 
supervision and direction of the affairs of 
the Museum in addition to his present duties 
as Director of the Geological Survey. Mr. 
Walcott is well acquainted with the adminis- 
tration of the National Museum. For the 
past twelve years he has held the position of 
Honorary Curator in the Museum and for 


FEBRUARY 5, 1897.] 


eight years had his laboratory as paleontolo- 
gist of the Geological Survey in the Museum 
building. The interests of the Museum and of 
the Geological Survey are very closely con- 
nected. Mr. Walcott’s selection for this post 
seems an eminently fitting one in view of the 
unusual executive abilities which he has shown 
himself to possess since he assumed the Director- 
ship of the Geological Survey in 1894. Mr. 
Walcott is a native of New York State and has 
been connected with the Geological Survey 
since 1879. 

It is reported in The British Medical Journal 
that the sum received by the Huxley Memorial 
Committee now amounts to nearly £3,000. 
Mr. Onslow Ford, R. A., has nearly completed 
the full-size model of the statue which is to be 
placed in the central hall of the Museum of 
Natural History at South Kensington. The 
dies for the Royal College of Science medal are 
now being prepared by Mr. L. Bowcher. z 


THE funeral ceremonies of du Bois-Reymond 
took place on December 29th in the lecture hall 
of the physiological laboratory, Berlin. Dr. 
Bosse, the Prussian Minister of Education, repre- 
sented the government, and there were dele- 
gates from many scientific and learned socie- 
ties. 'The Reverend Professor Scholz made the 
chief address; and other speeches were made by 
Professors Warburg, Munk, Rosenthal, Fritsch 
and Pictet. 


WE regret to notice the deaths of Dr. Aug. 
Streng, professor of mineralogy at the Univer- 
sity of Giessen; of Professor Saccardo, of the 
Analino School of Viticulture, Italy, and of 
Frederic John Mouat, who had made contribu- 
tions to medical and statistical science. 


THE following further corresponding mem- 
bers have been elected to the St. Petersburg 
Academy: Sophus Lie, professor of mathemat- 
ics in Leipzig; W. Ostwald, professor of 
chemistry in Leipzig; M. Landolt, professor of 
chemistry in Berlin; Karl Zittel, professor of 
paleontology in Munich. 


PROFESSOR PAUL HARZER, director of the ob- 
servatory near Gotha, Saxony, has been ap- 
pointed director of the observatory at Kiel and 
professor of astronomy in the University in the 
place of the late Professor Kriger. 


SCIENCE. 


223 


PROFESSOR VIRCHOW has been reelected Pres- 
ident of the Berlin Medical Society. 

LEOPOLD Voss, of Hamburg, announces as in 
preparation yon Helmholtz’s Vorlesungen wber 
theoretische Physik, edited by Arthur Konig, 
Otto Krigar-Menzel and Carl Runge, to be pub- 
lished in six volumes. 

FRANcIs P. HARPER will publish the journals 
of Alexander Henry the younger and David 
Thompson, the former a fur trader and the lat- 
ter a geographer, edited by Dr. Elliott Coues. 

SECRETARY Morton, in his recent report, calls 
attention to the inadequacy of the salaries paid 
to higher officials in the Department of Agri- 
culture. The salary of a chief is now $2,500, 
and that of an assistant $1,800. The Secretary 
has recommended, in the estimates for the next 
fiscal year, that the salaries of chiefs of divi- 
sions be increased to $8,000 and those of 
assistant chiefs to $2,000. He calls attention 
to the fact that on account of the low salaries 
paid for scientific and skilled services, the De- 
partment is constantly losing some of its ablest 
and best workers. The universities, colleges, 
and experiment stations, paying better salaries 
and offering equal opportunities for useful 
work and the acquirement of national reputa- 
tion, are frequently taking the best men. 
Thirty-two leading scientific experts have left 
the Department during the last few years to 
take positions in other institutions, at a rate of 
remuneration averaging fully 50 per cent. more 
than they received from the government of the 
United States. 


THE reports regarding the bequest of Alfred 
Nobel have been meager and conflicting. The 
London Times and other journals stated that the 
fourth prize was for a compilation in physiology 
or medicine, but the foreign journals now state 
that this prize is for a work of literary art. The 
prizes in physics and chemistry will be awarded 
by the Academy of Sciences of Sweden; the 
one for work in physiology or medicine by the 
Carolus Institute of Stockholm; the literary 
prize by the Swedish Academy, and the one for 
the furtherance of peace by a committee of five 
members chosen by the Norwegian Storthing. 

We have published an account of the 
report of the Committee of the British Asso- 


224 


ciation for the Advancement of Science on the 
establishment of a national physical laboratory. 
It is reported that the Council of the Association 
will take steps to bring the matter before the 
government, and to invite the cooperation of 
the Royal Society of London, the Royal Society 
of Edinburgh, the Royal Astronomical Society, 
the Physical Society, and other cognate associa- 
tions, in securing the foundation of the labora- 
tory. 

Mr. C. G. PRINGLE, says the Botanical Gazette, 
has returned from his annual trip to the more 
unknown regions of Mexico with 20,000 speci- 
mens. 

Dr. DAHL, says Die Natur, has sent from 
Ralum, in the Bismarck Archipelago, a collec- 
tion made from the fauna and flora of that little- 
known region to the Museum in Berlin. 


THERE is, it appears, in San Francisco, an 
incorporated Atlantic and Pacific Aerial Navi- 
gation Co., which proposes to build a large air- 
ship and has, at all events, purchased from the 
Pittsburg Reduction Company a quantity of 
aluminium. : 


Prometheus, in the issues of January, 1897, is 
publishing illustrated articles on German indus- 
tries (Die Heimstdtten der modernen Industrie), 
which have considerable interest to our own 
manufacturers, especially in departments in 
which exportation is a matter of actual or po- 
tential importance. 


THE estimates of the Russian Minister of Fi- 
nance include about 64,500,000 roubles for the 
construction of the Siberian Railway and over 
33,500,000 roubles for the construction of other 
railways. It also appears from the statement 
of the Minister that the manufactured products 
of Russia greatly exceed in value those of 
agriculture. 


ACCORDING to the official report issued on 
January 28th, there have been 4,396 cases of 
the plague in Bombay, and 3,275 deaths from 
that disease. At Kurrachee 694 cases and 644 
deaths have been recorded. At Poonah there 


have been 65 cases and 60 deaths, and a few 
cases have occurred at Surat, Baroda, Ahma- 


dabad, Kathiawar and Cutch. 


ACCORDING to Industries the trials of H. M. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No. 110. 


S. ‘ Terrible’ has resulted in proving her to be 
the fastest cruiser afloat. Admirable as were 
the trials of the ‘Powerful,’ those of the ‘Ter- 
rible’ are even more satisfactory, a mean speed 
of no less than 22.41 knots being obtained under 
very adverse circumstances, the sea being rough 
and the wind having a velocity of 26 miles an 
hour, with an indicated horse-power of 25,572. 
With an indicated horse-power of 25,069 a speed 
of 22.24 knots was obtained against the wind ; 
with the wind the 23 knots of the course was 
accomplished in just over the hour, the actual 
figures obtained being 22.873 knots. The coal 
consumption, with partially untrained stokers, 
was 1.71ib. per indicated horse-power per hour. 


THE leading article in the current number of 
Appleton’s Popular Science Monthly is entitled 
‘Herbert Spencer, the Man and his Work,’ and 
is by Professor W. H. Hudson, of Stanford 
University, who was at one time closely asso- 
ciated with Mr. Spencer in his work. Dr. E. 
L. Youmans and the Popular Science Monthly ac- 
complished much to establish Mr. Spencer’s 
reputation, and it is fitting that the completion 
of the system of Synthetic Philosophy, should be 
signalized by the publication of this article. 
The series of articles by Professor W. R. New- 
bold concludes with one on the interpretation 
of automatism, and Professor W. Z. Ripley be- 
gins a series of articles on the Racial Geography 
of Europe, which were delivered as Lowell In- 
stitute lectures, in 1892. In the first article the 
relation of language to race and nationality is 
especially considered. There are also articles 
by the late Horatio Hale on Indian Wampum 
Belts ; on Some Primitive Californians, by Mary 
Sheldon Barnes; on How Plants and Animals 
Spend the Winter, by W. S. Blatchley, and Con- 
demnation of Criminals not Punishment, by 
Edward F. Brush. There are biographical 
sketches of W. D. Gunning and Maria Mitchell, 
both with portraits 


ACCORDING to the present law scientific 
books and periodicals devoted to scientific re- 
search are admitted free of duty. The New 
York Medical Record states that the Treasury 
Department has recently issued a circular to the 
Collectors of Customs in which it is said that 
certain books have been admitted under a too 


FEBRUARY 5, 1897. ] 


liberal construction of the law, and the cus- 
toms officers are notified that the words ‘scien- 
tific books and periodicals devoted to original 
scientific research’ relate to new discoveries 
in the field of science, and do not include text- 
books, compilations, and discussions of scien- 
tific subjects already understood. It is still 
uncertain how much original matter will 
entitle a book to free entry as one ‘devoted to 
original research,’ but a case which has come 
up recently in Philadelphia concerning the 
importation of a medical work has been ap- 
pealed to the Circuit Court and may bring about 
a settlement of the question. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 

THE annual report of the Provost of the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania, with the appended 
documents, makes a volume extending to 248 
pages. It covers, however, a period of more 
than two years, from June 9, 1894, when Mr. 
Harrison assumed the duties of acting Provost, 
to September 1, 1896. This will probably al- 
ways be regarded as one of the most important 
periods in the history of the University. The 
preceding Provost, Dr. Pepper, had used his 
great energy and abilities to expand the Univer- 
sity in every direction. Mr. Harrison has 
placed the external and internal affairs of the 
university on a firm basis. He has supple- 
mented his own executive ability by a Vice- 
Provost, Professor Fullerton, whose knowledge 
of educational matters has greatly aided the re- 
organization of the University. This work has 
extended to every school and department, the 
standards having been raised throughout and the 
correlations improved. The chief losses to the 
scientific departments have been the death of 
Professor J. A. Ryder, and the resignations of 
Dr. John §. Billings and Dr. Harrison Allen; the 
chief gains have been the appointments of Pro- 
fessor C. A- Doolittle, in astronomy ; Professor 
E. G. Conklin, in comparative embryology, 
and Professor A. C. Abbott, in hygiene. Of 
advances in the University the next noteworthy 
has been the gift of $500,000 by the Provost for 
the encouragement of liberal studies and the 
advancement of knowledge. Of nearly equal 
importance has been the erection of dormitories, 
and of Houston Hall, an admirable club house 


SCIENCE. 


225 


for students. In the scientific departments at- 
tention should be called especially to the work 
of the Wistar Institute and of the department of 
archeology and paleontology, and to the es- 
tablishment of the Flower Astronomical Obsery- 
atory and the Botanic Garden. 


GENERAL J. WATTS DE PEYSTER will erect 
for Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, 
Pa., a library building with a capacity for 75,- 
000 volumes. 

PRESIDENT GILMAN, of John Hopkins Uni- 
versity, has accepted the presidency of the Bal- 
timore School Board. 


Francis E. Luoyp, professor of biology in 
the Pacific University, Forest Grove, Oregon, 
has been appointed professor of biological 
science in the Teachers’ College, New York. 

Dr. ALEXANDER P. ANDERSON has been ap- 
pointed professor of botany at Clemson College, 
S. C. 


Dr. JAMES WARD, fellow and one of the tutors 
of Trinity College, Cambridge, has been ap- 
pointed to the newly established chair of men- 
tal philosophy and logic. The new University 
statutes passed in 1881 provided that professor- 
ships should be established in physiology, in 
pathology and in mental philosophy and logic 
as soon as sufficient funds could be provided 
from the common University fund and other 
sources. Accordingly a professor in phy siology 
was appointed in 1883 and a professor in pathol- 
ogy in 1884. Owing to the decrease in the 
college revenues, the common University fund 
was found insufficient to justify the annual 
charge of £700, the stipend of the professor of 
mental philosophy and logic. As we have al- 
ready reported that the chair was at last estab- 
lished by the Senate on December 10th with 
the assistance of a subscription from Professor 
Sidgwick. 

PROFESSOR ALFRED HUGHES has resigned the 
chair of anatomy in the University College, 
Cardiff. He has granted to the College the 
free use of his anatomical collections, on which 
he has spent large sums of money and many 
years of labor. In the event of his wishing to 
remove these at some future period, he has 
placed at the disposal of the College a sum of 
money sufficient to replace them. 


226 


Dr. von BucHKA has been appointed the 
successor of Dr. Eugen Zell in the Imperial 
Board of Health, Berlin, and has qualified him- 
self as privat-docent in the University of Berlin. 
The subject of his inaugural lecture being ‘ The 
scientific basis of the newer development of 
analytic chemistry.’ 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
NOMENCLATURE OF METAMORPHIC LAVAS. 


In the gold belt of the Sierra Nevada there 
are two very distinct sets of lavas. One of these 
is Juratrias in age or older, and is separated by 
a marked unconformity from a later set of lavas, 
chiefly of Tertiary age. The older set of lavas 
has been metamorphosed in varying degrees, so 
that at some points their original nature is not 
evident. Even where little altered they almost 
universally contain secondary minerals, such as 
epidote, zoisite, chlorite, uralite and calcite. 
The general appearance of these rocks and their 
mineral composition is, therefore, very different 
from the correspondng set of Tertiary lavas. 

It is, therefore, very confusing to the general 
public to use the same set of names for the two 
sets of rocks. In the gold-belt region the older 
series of lavas has been compressed and infolded 
with the Juratrias and older sediments, which 
are called the auriferous slate series, since they 
contain by far the larger portion of the gold- 
quartz veins of the Sierra Nevada. 

In many other parts of the world there are 
similar broad distinctions to be made between 
an older and younger set of lavas. It is very 
important that some method should be devised 
by which one may designate the fact that any 
given lava originally corresponded to a given 
type and at the same time express the fact that 
it has undergone metamorphism. This has 
been done in specific cases in various parts of 
the world. Thus Dr. Bascom, with the rhyo- 
lites expresses by the prefix apo- the fact that 
the rock, originally a glassy rhyolite, has under- 
gone devitrification. The prefix epi- has also 
been used in some cases to express alteration. 
Thus the rocks called the epidiorite have been 
shown in many cases to have resulted from the 
alteration of diabase. The term metadiorite 
was used by Dana, and lately has been used by 
Cross and the writer, for diorites formed by the 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 110. 


alteration of other rocks, without reference to 
their original character. None of these terms 
has thus far been used in a general way to ex- 
press alteration in all of the altered lavas. 

Dr. Bascom writes concerning the three pre- 
fixes that have been mentioned, as follows :* 

‘The prepositions meta, epi and apo, as pre- 
fixes, all indicate some sort of an alteration. 
Their exact force has been thus defined by 
Professor Gildersleeve: ‘ Meta indicates change 
of any sort, the nature of the change not speci- 
fied.’ This accords with the use of the prefix 
by Dana in such terms as ‘metadiorite’ and 
‘metadiabase.’ These terms have been re- 
cently revived to designate rocks ‘now similar 
in mineralogical composition and structure to 
certain igneous rocks, but derived by meta- 
morphism from something else.’ Epi signifies 
the production of one mineral out of and upon 
another. This prefix has not been much used. 
We find it in such terms as epidiorite, epigenetic 
hornblende and epistilbite. Apo may prop- 
erly be used to indicate the derivation of one 
rock from another by some specific alteration.”’ 

It is evident that Professor Gildersleeve’s 
definition, that the prefix meta is the most log- 
ical one to use to express, in a general way, the 
metamorphic condition of altered rocks. Prob- 
ably if the term had not already been used in 
certain specific senses there would be no objec- 
tion to its adoption for this purpose, and speak- 
ing of meta-andesites instead of porphyrites ; of 
meta-basalts instead of melaphyres, of meta- 
rhyolites instead of quartz-porphyries, and of 
meta-trachytes instead of orthophyres. This 
would express not only at once the fact that the 
rock was originally an andesite, basalt, rhyolite 
or trachyte, but also of the fact that it had 
undergone a metamorphism which would sug- 
gest the presence of the various secondary min- 
erals which are almost always found in such 
altered lavas. 

The adoption of this system of nomenclature 
is urged by the writer as a means of simplify- 
ing the very burdensome and unphilosophical 
series of names in use at the present time. 


H. W. TURNER. 
U. 8. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, 
January, 1897. 


* Journal of Geology, Vol. I., p. 827. 


FEBRUARY 5, 1897. ] 


THE LAW OF SIZE-WEIGHT SUGGESTION. 


In 1893 Dr. J. Allen Gilbert, working under 
my direction, obtained measurements on the 
size-weight illusion. A cylindrical block of 82 
mm. diameter and of 55 g. weight was com- 
pared with a series of blocks of 85 mm. di- 
ameter but of various weights. The subject 
first lifted the large block, and then picked out, 
by lifting, that block of the series which ap- 
peared to be equal in weight to the larger one. 
The error in weight thus made was due to the 
suggestive effect of the difference in size. 

These were the first measurements made on 
the size-weight illusion (‘Studies from the 
Yale Psychological Laboratory,’ 1894, II., 
43).* 

The problem was then investigated in detail 
by Dr. C. E. Seashore (‘Studies from the Yale 
Psychological Laboratory,’ 1895, III., 1). Two 
sets of cylindrical blocks were made. Set A 
varied in diameter, but had a uniform weight 
of 80 grams. Set B varied in weight, but were 
of a uniform size of 43mm. The subject, lift- 
ing the block between thumb and finger, was 
requested to select for each block in A a block 
of equal weight in B. In this way the effect of 
size on apparent weight was determined. 

In the ‘Studies’ for 1894 I had already pointed 
out the possibility of establishing the law of 
suggestion in such experiments. I now find it 
possible to do so on the basis of Dr. Seashore’s 
work, 


The curve conforms closely to the form y = i 
x 


which is the equation of a hyperbola referred to 
its asymptotes as axes with the constant k de- 
pending on the nature of the experiment. The 
actual measurements differ from the values re- 
quired for this formula only by a small quan- 
tity =f (a), which expresses the apparent in- 


* Professor Binet has called attention to the fact 
that he anticipated Gilbert by one month in measur- 
ing suggestion by his experiments on the length of 
lines. This, however, was quite a different form of 
suggestion. If the question is to be raised as to the 
first measurements of suggestion in any form, I am 
justified in claiming priority over Binet by the ex- 
periments briefly indicated in the Educational Review, 
1893, V., 61. 


SCIENCE. 


227 


crease in the diameter of the block due to the 
contrast with the constant length.* 

If the blocks of the B series be made of the 
constant diameter c and those of the A series of 
the constant weight d, and if we denote by s 
the difference in size acting as a suggestion, by 
i the resulting illusion and by ka constant de- 
pending on the nature of the experiment, then 
we have the general law 

— semeea d, 
which can be called the law of size-weight sug- 
gestion. Thus, in the first set of experiments c 
was 43 mm., d was 80 g., and k was determined 
by the facts: that the blocks were looked at 
while lifted; that the subjects were ignorant 
of the illusion, ete. In the other sets of ex- 
periments by Dr. Seashore & took other values. 


HE. W. SCRIPTURE. 
YALE UNIVERSITY, 


January 1, 1897. 
SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 

Round the Year: A Series of Short Nature-Studies. 
PROFESSOR L. C. Mranu, F. R. S. Pp. 290. 
Macmillan & Co. Price, $1.50. 

The book is precisely what its title promises. 
Its author is a cultivated and observant scholar 
who loves nature and records her various 
phases after the manner of the old-time natur- 
alist, though rectified by new-time science. It 
reminds one of White’s Natural History of 
Selborne, and the author’s familiarity with that 
classic has unconsciously led him into the ami- 
able and homelike style of White, and this isto 
the merit of the book. He evidently has little 
sympathy for much that goes for modern nat- 
ural history to-day. He says ‘‘natural history 
is being choked by unassimilated facts mechan- 
ically compiled by men who have apparently 
ceased to think about Nature. Hence a profuse 
and growing literature of the most melancholy 
description, dry, marrowless, useless. We re- 
cord and record till our catalogues grow too 
voluminous for storage and too stodgy for the 
toughest appetite.’ The subjects discussed 
cover a wide range; we are led from Insects 

* The exact values of z have not yet been determined 
experimentally. The results of a special investiga- 
tion will appear in the ‘Studies from the Yale Psycho- 
logical Laboratory.’ 


228 


and Plants in Mid-winter to Snow Flakes, 
Birds in Mid-winter, Animals with and without 
Combs, The Moon, the Oil Beetle, Buds, 
Dutch-weed, Flower-Haunting Insects and 
twenty-seven other equally diversified subjects. 
It is interesting to learn that ‘‘ Jenner, the dis- 
coverer of vaccination, was accomplished in 
music, and studied natural history with dili- 
gence and success.’’? He it was who made 
most valuable contributions on the habits of 
the cuckoo, the hibernation of the Hedge-Hog, 
and other subjects. 

A curious mistatement is made on p. 53, 
where the author speaks of the pearl-forming 
Avicula as the shell which the Chinese utilize 
in making artificial pearl images. Any local 
shell collector would have told him that it was 
Hyria, a fresh water mussel, and not the 
marine Avicula, which the Chinese use for this 
purpose. 

The illustrations are well chosen and clearly 
drawn. For teachers of elementary science 
and as a reading book for the higher grammar 
and even High Schools it may well be com- 
mended. E. S. Morse. 


Researches on Mimicry on the basis of a Natural 
Classification of the Papilionide. By Dr. 
ErRIcH HAASE; translated by C. M. CurLp, 
Ph. D. 1896. Pp. 154, plates 8, colored, 
4to. Nagele, Stuttgart. 

It should interest entomologists, and general 
zoologists also, to know that an English trans- 
lation of a part of Dr. Erich Haase’s elaborate 
study of mimicry among the Papilionide has 
been published. The results of Dr. Haase’s 
researches were originally published in two 
parts in Leuckart and Chun’s Bibliotheca 
Zoologica. 

The portion issued in English translation is 
Part II. of the study, and makes a quarto 
volume of one hundred and fifty pages with 
eight colored plates. The translator, Dr. C. 
M. Child, now of the University of Chicago, 
undertook his work at the suggestion of Dr. 
Leuckart, of the University of Leipzig, and has 
made a conscientious and idiomatic translation 
of this important contribution to the knowledge 
of mimicry. Dr. Child, though not a professed 
special student of insects, is known to ento- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 110. 


mologists through his excellent study of Johns- 
ton’s antennal organ of hearing. 

So much of our knowledge of mimicry has 
come through the study of ‘the mimetic phe- 
nomena exhibited among insects, and especially 
among the butterflies, that it was to be ex- 
pected that the first serious attempt to com- 
bine a study of phylogeny with a study of 
mimicry should have butterflies for its subject. 
Systematists have certainly not yet taken much 
into account the influence of mimicry in making 
forms of wide phyletic divergence superficially 
alike, or in making closely related forms super- 
ficially dissimilar. Yet mimicry produces ex- 
actly these conditions; and where so many 
members of a group, as Dr. Haase shows is true 
of the butterflies, owe the chief features of their 
habitus to the influence of mimicry, systematists 
have got to take this matter into account. And 
this will be good for us, for it will hold up very 
plainly to us one of the most interesting and 
instructive phases of the biological study of 
organisms. It may broaden some of us; it can 
narrow no one of us. 

As much for its suggestiveness as for its light 
on the origin and development of mimetic 
coloration among the butterflies, entomologists 
should become acquainted with Dr. Haase’s 
work. VERNON L. KELLOGG. 

STANFORD UNIVERSITY, 

CALIFORNIA. 


SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS. 
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 


THE February number opens with an article 
by C. E. Beecher, giving an ‘outline of a nat- 
ural classification of the trilobites.’ This is the 
opening portion of a memoir which will be com- 
pleted in the numbers immediately following. 
The author’s extended study of this group has 
enabled him to reach definite conclusions, not 
only in regard to the position that the trilobites 
properly occupy as a group of the Crustacea, 
but also to give a systematic and minute classi- 
fication of the families and genera. The sub- 
ject is too special to allow of being developed 
here, but attention may be called to the plate 
in which certain typical forms are taken to 
show the principles adopted as the basis of 
classification. 


FEBRUARY 5, 1897. ] 


Carl Barus describes a form of interferential 
induction balance and details some experiments 
to show what may be accomplished with it. 
This apparatus involves the principles of Mich- 
elson’s interferential refractor, the iron cores of 
two like helices at right angles to each other 
being fastened at one end and free to move in 
the direction of the axes at the other. The in- 
terference fringes are visible whenever the ex- 
cursions of the free ends of the cores are either 
zero or vibrating in the same phase, amplitude 
and period to and from the point of conver- 
gence; for other phases the fringes vanish 
more or less fully. In the course of one series 
of experiments to test the speed of transmission 
of electric impulses from one helix to another, 
the author concludes that an arrangement 
could be made which would indicate the retar- 
dation along something over a single knot of 
wire of high capacity inserted between the 
helices. This retardation would be exhibited 
by the passage of one yellow interference 
fringe across the spider lines of the telescope. 

John Trowbridge and Theodore M. Richards 
discuss the multiple spectra of gases, as a con- 
tinuation of their work on the spectra of argon 
described in the January number. They have 
experimented upon the spectra of nitrogen, 
hydrogen and other substances, with the re- 
sult of confirming their former conclusion that 
the electrical conditions of the circuit have an 
essential influence in determining the character 
of the spectra obtained. 

Theo. Holm gives the third paper of his 
studies of the Cyperacez. This is devoted toa 
morphological and anatomical study of Carex 
Fraseri and is illustrated by a plate. 

T. A. Jaggar, Jr., describes°a simple me- 
chanical device for inclining a preparation in 
the microscope in petrographical study. It 
allows, for example, of a rapid determination 
of the optical orientation in feldspar sections 
and similar cases. 

A. E. Verrill has two papers; the first on the 
nocturnal protective coloration in mammals, 
birds, fishes and insects as developed by nat- 
ural selection. In this he calls attention to the 
fact that the coger of many animals is such as to 
give them protection at night at the time when 
it is most called for. This is illustrated by a 


SCIENCE. 229 


number of interesting examples. The second 
paper discusses the nocturnal diurnal changes 
in the color of certain fishes and of the squid 
(Loligo), with notes on their sleeping habits. 
When at Wood’s Holl, Massachusetts, in the 
laboratory of the United States Fish Commis- 
sion, in 1885-1887, the author had an opportu- 
nity to make observations on the marine ani- 
mals in the aquaria between midnight and two 
o’clock a. m. Some remarkable cases of 
change of color were then noted. It is re- 
marked that most fishes sleep very: lightly and 
are aroused by almost imperceptible vibrations 
of air or water. Some of the fishes take re- 
markable attitudes while asleep. 

The same author gives additional notes in re- 
gard to an enormous octopus, as it was sup- 
posed to be, which was thrown up on the 
Florida coast some weeks since. The body as 
preserved is some 21 feet long and is esti- 
mated to weigh between six and seven tons. 
The name Octopus giganteus is proposed for it. 

O. C. Marsh has an article on the Stylinodon- 
tia, a sub-order of Eocene Edentates, in which 
a description is given, with numerous figures, of 
Stylinodon mirus, the type specimen as described 
in May, 1874. In regard to the origin of the 
Kdentates the author repeats his remarks of 
August, 1877. He concludes by saying that 
the work of the past two decades has served to 
confirm the opinion that this group of mammals 
originated in North America and migrated from 
there to other parts of the earth where their 
remains have been found or living representa- 
tives are in existence. 

The number closes with the usual chemical, 
physical and geological abstracts and notices. 


AMERICAN GEOLOGIST, JANUARY. 

SKETCH of W. W. Martin, accompanied by a 
list of official and professional positions held by 
him and a bibliography, by C. H. Hitchcock. 

‘The study of natural Palimpsests,’ by G. P. 
Grimsley, gives a brief historical account of the 
discoveries in archzan and metamorphic rocks, 
and the methods employed in their study. 

F. W. Sardeson continues his discussions on 
the Galena and Maquoketa series begun in the 
December number. Under the Galena series he 
recognizes the Beloit and Galena formations, 


230 


both of which are further subdivided into beds 
characterized by certain leading fossils. The 
Maquoketa series is divided into the Transition, 
Maquoketa and Wykoff formations, which also 
comprise beds marked by the presence of cer- 
tain genera. 

Jules Marcou has the first installment of a 
paper on ‘Rules and Misrules in Stratigraphic 
Classification.’ The early history of geologic 
correlation is sketched, and the independent 
discoveries of Giraud-Soulavie, William Smith, 
Cuvier and Brongniart are reviewed. Direct 
application is then made to American geolog- 
ical correlation, with special reference to the 
Taconic and Champlain systems. 

‘The relation of the streams in the neighbor- 
borhood of Philadelphia to the Bryn Mawr 
gravel,’ by F. Bascom. With the exception of 
the large rivers, the streams of this region are 
shown to be of superimposed origin, having 
begun ona surface covered with gravel deposits, 
underlying which were older crystalline and 
paleozoic rocks. This has made their valleys 
quite independent of the strike or hardness of 
the rocks through which they are now cutting. 
The age of the Bryn Mawr gravels has been 
uncertain, and they have been referred to the 
Mesozoic, the Tertiary and the Quaternary by 
various observers. The author shows that they 
eannot belong to the Quaternary and inclines 
to the belief that they are a member of the 
Potomac formation, though the data obtained 
from the study of the drainage system may not 
be sufficiently exact to precisely determine their 
geologic relations. 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 


ZOOLOGICAL CLUB, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, 
MEETING OF JANUARY 6, 1897. 


ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS PRESENTED. 


I. MICROSOMES AND THEIR RELATION TO THE 
CENTROSOME. 


THE problem of the centrosome presents it- 
self under five heads: 

1. The centrosome in caryokinesis of tissue 
cells. 

2. The centrosome in the maturation of the 
ovum. 

3. The centrosome in fecundation, or, more 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 110. 


strictly, the problem of the origin of the centro- 
somes which take part in the first caryokinetic di- 
vision of the fertilized egg-cell. 

4, The centrosome in cells in which locomo- 
tor function is more or less well developed, as 
in leucocytes, pigment-cells, and some unicel- 
lular organisms. 

5. The centrosome in some cells which un- 
dergo periodic growth, as in the sperm-mother- 
cell, the ovarian ovum, and some tissue cells. 
The centrosome in some ganglion cells probably 
belongs to this group of phenomena. 

It was pointed out that these are co- © 
ordinate features of one and the same problem. 
The different forms of the centrosome and their 
mode of origin, their variations under patho- 
logical conditions, their behavior during fer- 
tilization of the ovum in different forms, were 
examined in reference to two fundamentally 
opposed theories now current among cytolo- 
gists. 

In this connection a historical review of our 
knowledge of the microsomes (cytomicrosomes), 
as found in the observations of Hanstein, 
Schmitz, Schwartz, Strasburger, van Beneden, 
Boveri, Heidenhain, together with the author’s 
observations on the ovarian ovum of an as- 
cidian, was presented, and the bearing of the 
microsome question on the problem of the cen- 
trosome, pointing to the existence of homol- 
ogy between microsome and centrosome, was 
indicated. 

The main conclusion of the paper was as fol- 
lows: The living substance of the cell-body 
is to be regarded as composed of an element. 
capable of dimorphic existence, with perfect 
freedom of transition from one to the other, 
under some definite condition. It can exist in 
the form of cytomicrosomes, or it can assume 
the appearance of clear, hyaline filaments, net- 
work, or vesicular structure, as the case may be. 
At one stage, the cell-body of a given cell, say 
an ovarian ovum of some organism, may be 
composed almost wholly of microsomes ; at the 
next these microsomes may be transformed 
into hyaline cytoplasmic substance, with cor- 
responding increase in the bulk of the cell. 

In the phenomena of caryokinesis, fecunda- 
tion, motion, periodic growth of the cell re- 
ferred to at the beginning of the paper, both of 


FEBRUARY 5, 1897. ] 


these cytoplasmic elements arranged in defi- 
nite ways, come into play, and in the power of 
more or less rapid transition from one to the 
other is to be found an explanation of the main 
features of the phenomena, so far as the share 
of the cytoplasm, as such, is directly concerned 
in each process. 

The results of these examinations, together 
with the author’s unpublished work on Ascaris, 
in which it was shown that the centrosome in 
the Ascaris egg not only undergoes some peri- 
odic changes in its bulk, but totally disappears 
at a certain stage, were urged against the theory 
that the centrosome is a permanent organ of 
the cell. 

S. WATASE. 


II. CENTROSOME AND ARCHOPLASM. 4 


A SUMMARY of the conclusions reached in 
my work on the egg of the earthworm (Allolo- 
bophora feetida) follows : 

1. The attraction spheres, both male and fe- 
male, are of cytoplasmic origin. 

2. The archoplasm is a specific substance, 
and not a mere thickening of the cytoplasmic 
network. 

8. The microsomes are morphological ele- 
ments and not merely varicosities of the cyto- 
plasmic threads. They vary greatly in size, 
and many of them are unmistakably independ- 
ent of the cytoplasmic reticulum. 

4. Five observations were urged as evidence 
that the archoplasm is a specific substance and 
of a fluid nature. These observations were: 
(1) the relatively rapid movement of the sub- 
stance, (2) the changes in its distribution caused 
by fixatives, (8) its transparent appearance in 
the living egg, (4) the cytoplasmic reticulum is 
not lessened by its aggregations, nor (5) dis- 
turbed by its migration. 

KATHARINE Foor. 


III. CENTROSOME AND SPHERE IN THE OVARIAN 
STROMA OF MAMMALS. 


THE cells of the ovarian stroma of some 
mammals (dog, rabbit) appear to undergo a 
peculiar change during pregnancy. The small, 
indistinctly defined, elongated or polyhedral 
cells are no longer seen, but their place is occu- 
pied by polyhedral cells of many times their 


SCIENCE. 


231 


size. The nucleus of these cells is regular in 
shape and contains numerous clumps of chro- 
matin irregularly distributed. It does not 
usually lie in the center of the cell, but is dis- 
placed more or less toward one side. Around 
the central region of the cell is observed a dis- 
tinct condensation of the cytoplasm, which is 
very conspicuous after double staining. It is 
not sharply limited from the remainder of the 
cytoplasm, but shades gradually into it. The 
whole cytoplasmic network, especially around 
the denser part of the condensation, shows a 
more or less distinctly radiate structure, though 
there are no distinct fibres. This structure 
can often be traced almost to the periphery of 
the cell. Within the condensed portion of the 
cytoplasm, at or very near a point forming the 
center of the radiate arrangement, lies a small, 
deeply staining granule or, in some cases, two. 
This granule is very clearly shown by the use 
of Heidenhain’s iron-hematoxylin, after which 
it differs from all other extra-nuclear structures 
in the cell in retaining the dark blue or black. 
This body is undoubtedly a centrosome, and 
the condensation of cytoplasm around it un- 
doubtedly represents a ‘sphere.’ 

Now these cells are not preparing for mitosis, 
and, as far as has been found, there is no evi- 
dence of any future division. Whether the cells 
are in process of degeneration and are replaced 
by new cells after the period of gestation is 
ended, it has been as yet impossible to ascertain, 
but it is probable that they are not. Moreover, 
the steps in the appearance of the centrosome 
and sphere in these cells have not been observed, 
so that it is not known just when or how they 
first become visible. No trace of them has 
been found, however, in the stroma of ovaries 
from animals which are not pregnant or have 
not recently borne young, nor has any evidence 
of mitosis been seen in the stroma proper. 
Mitotic figures are occasionally seen in the cells 
of young corpora lutea. The functions of these 
structures under these conditions is not clear. 
The relation of the histological changes in the 
ovarian stroma to pregnancy also needs further 
study. 

The presence of the centrosome and sphere 
in cells which are not undergoing mitosis pre- 
sents a problem which is at present rather ob- 


232 


secure. They have been recently found and 
studied in the cells of the spinal and sym- 
pathetic ganglia of the frog (Lenhossék, Deh- 
ler), in the neurochord cells of an annelid 
(Miss Lewis) and in ganglion cells of a snail 
(McClure). They have also been found in con- 
nective tissue cells, pigment cells, resting 
leucocytes, etc. In the great majority of non- 
dividing cells, however, they have not been 
demonstrated. 

It would appear, from the observations given 
above, that the centrosome and sphere may 
have some other function in the economy of the 
cell, in addition to their important réle in the 
process of caryokinesis. In the case of the 
ovarian stroma the facts presented appear to 
favor the view that the centrosome, as such, is 
not a permanent organ of the cell, but may ap- 
pear and disappear according to the conditions 
which prevail in the life of the cell. 

C. M. CHILD. 


Iv. THE CENTROSOMES IN THE ANNELID EGG. 


My observations have been made on the ma- 
rine annelid Chextopterus in the endeavor to 
throw light on the following open questions : 

1. Is there in the egg a definite structure— 
centrosome—not an artifact, and not identical 
with the ‘centrosphere’ or ‘astrosphere’ ? 

2. Is the centrosome ‘a derivative structure 
arising by a modification of some pre-existing 
element in the cell,’ or is it ‘a permanent and 
ultimate organ of the cell, an organ sui gene- 
ris, and coexistent with other ultimate organs 
of the cell, as the nucleus and the cytoplasm’ ? 

3. Do the centrosomes grow, multiply by self- 
division, and persist from one cell generation to 
another, or are they formed anew in each cell 
in anticipation of caryokinesis ? 

4. What réle does the centrosome play in 
fecundation—‘ its bearing on the phenomena 
of inheritance’? Is there a union of male and 
female centrosomes during fecundation similar 
to that of the male and female pronuclei—a 
‘quadrille of the centers’ ? 

5. Whence come the centrosomes of the first 
and succeeding cleavage spindles ? 

6. What is the relation of the centrosome to 
the centrosphere (astrosphere) ? To the cytoplas- 
mic rays and network ? To the Zwischenkorper ? 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 110. 


If the eggs are kept in sea water for half an 
hour or more and not fertilized, all except the 
smaller ovarian eggs are found to have the first 
maturation spindle well formed, in its definitive 
position, and always in the same stage of de- 
velopment, 7. e., the metaphase or equatorial- 
plate stage. But if the eggs are preserved 
after having remained only a few minutes in 
sea water they are all, so far as my experience 
goes, found to contain the germinal vesicle and 
no spindle. I infer from this that sea water in 
some way stimulates the egg to the production 
of maturation spindles. 

The smallest ovarian eggs are characterized 
by their relatively large nuclei and by their 
compact cytoplasm, which, devoid of yolk, 
stains a deep purple with our method—iron- 
alum hematoxylin and orange G. I can find 
in such eggs nothing resembling or indicating a 
centrosome. 

Yolk granules which stain yellow soon begin 
to accumulate in the cytoplasm and the eggs 
grow larger. The yolk, however, is not at first 
distributed uniformly throughout the cyto- 
plasm, but is most abundant near the periphery 
of the egg and frequently also immediately 
outside the nucleus. Where the yolk is present 
one can readily distinguish a cytoplasmic net- 
work, in the meshes of which yolk is held. 
The threads of the network have the appear- 
ance of minute granules arranged in linear 
order. They form a sort of membrane at the 
periphery of the egg, and are continuous with 
the nuclear membrane. 

But up to the time when the egg has attained 
about two-thirds its full size there remain 
masses of cytoplasm containing no yolk and 
consisting of a network closely compact and 
staining dark purple. The component threads 
of these cytoplasmic masses are evident enough, 
and are continuous with the rest of the cyto-re- 
ticulum. These masses I consider to be equiva- 
lent to the nebenkerne or paranuclei of authors. 
They vary in shape and number in different 
eggs and at different stages of development, 
now appearing as one or two crescentic masses 
about the nucleus, and now broken up into 
many pieces. Their fate is always the same; 
they gradually fray out and become resolved 
into the general cyto-reticulum. 


FEBRUARY 5, 1897.] 


When the last traces of the paranucleus have 
vanished the cytoplasm presents a nearly uni- 
form appearance throughout. The reticulum 
is characterized at this stage by the decidedly 
granular composition of the fibrils and the 
circular appearance of the meshes as seen in 
section, and also by the uniform distribution of 
yolk throughout the egg. 

Although the structure of the reticulum, the 
peripheral egg membrane (pellicle) and nuclear 
membrane are beautifully clear and easily 
demonstrable, there is as yet no trace of anything 
suggesting a centrosome. 

Soon after this, as the egg grows larger, the 
cytoplasmic threads show a tendency to an 
arrangement in straight lines rather than curves, 
so that the outlines of the meshes are polygonal 
rather than circular. Eggs which have reached 
this stage in development, when placed in sea 
water, continue to develop as far as the forma- 
tion of the first maturation spindle. The 
tendency of the fibrils of the network toward 
straightening out becomes accentuated, so that 
many of them extend in straight lines for a dis- 
tance several times the diameter of the single 
meshes. Moreover, these longer fibrils radiate 
from common centres, and in this way there 
arises in the cytoplasm a number of miniature 
asters. At first only two or three rays may be 
seen ; then they increase in number and length 
at the direct expense of the remaining network. 
The aster formation continues until a climax is 
reached, when one can count no less than seventy- 
five distinct asters scattered about through the 
eytoplasm in the vicinity of the meshes. (Many 
of them are half way between nucleus and 
periphery of the egg.) These asters repel the 
yolk as do those of the caryokinetic spindle. 

The period of development characterized by . 
multiple asters is not of long duration. Two of 
the asters gain predominance over the others 
im point of size, and continue to grow larger, 
while the others gradually evanesce. The two | 
larger asters I will call primary, and the others 
secondary asters, following Reinke, who has de- 
scribed a similar aster formation in the perito- 
neal cells of the larval salamander. 

Whether the primary asters are formed di- 
rectly by an actual union and evanescence of 
several of the secondary asters, I am not pre- 


SCIENCE. 


233 


pared to say at present. Many things indicate 
that thisis the case. At any rate, the two pri- 
mary asters continue to grow; a minute dark 
brown sphere, the centrosome, appears in the 
center of each, itself surrounded by a lighter 
brown area, astrosphere, or centrosphere, from 
which the purplish rays diverge in every direc- 
tion. I am convinced that these two asters 
and their centrosome are formed by a modifica- 
tion of cytoplasmic structures. They usually 
arise at a considerable distance from each other 
and from the germinal vesicle, and while the 
nuclear membrane and the nucleolus are still 
intact. They are the asters and centrosomes of 
the first maturation spindle. 

After the spindle is formed, it remains for a 
little while near the germinal vesicle. Each 
centrosome divides into two; the nuclear mem- 
brane disappears; the chromosomes and the 
nucleoli are drawn up to the region of the equa- 
tor of the spindles, and the whole spindle 
swings around to its definitive position at the 
periphery of the egg, and perpendicular to the 
surface. The light brown astrospheres at the 
poles of the spindle contain each a pair of cen- 
trosomes. The spindle remains in this condi- 
tion until the egg is fertilized. 

I have artificially fertilized the eggs of Che- 
topterus after they had been in sea water an 
hour and twenty minutes, yet they developed 
normally. Immediately after the entrance of 
the sperm the maturation processes are re- 
sumed. The first maturation spindle, which 
has remained up to this time in the equatorial- 
plate stage, now passes through the succeeding 
phases of mitosis, which result in the formation 
of the first polar globule. During these pro- 
cesses the two centrosomes in the aster at the 
inner pole of the spindle move apart, and a 
small central spindle is formed between them. 
The centrosphere fades away and the rays of 
protoplasm converge to the two centrosomes. 
The centrosomes at the outer pole of the spin- 
dle are carried into the polar globule and there 
degenerate. A delicate Zwischenkorper is 
formed at the junction of the polar globule and 
egg, but it soon vanishes and has nothing to do 
with the formation of the second maturation 
spindle. (Compare Mathews, Jour. Morph. 
X., No. 1, p. 334.) The small spindle before 


234 


mentioned becomes the second maturation 
spindle by means of which the second polar 
globule is extruded. 

The two centrosomes, which, as we have 
seen, are identical with those in the inner aster 
of the first maturation spindle, move still fur- 
ther apart and, with spindles between them, 
take a position on either side of the group of 
chromosomes left in the egg after the first divi- 
sion. Tho chromosomes are arranged in the 
equatorial plate, and the whole spindle swings 
around to an approximately vertical position 
directly under the first polar globule. The 
radiations from both ends of this spindle are 
long and conspicuous. The centrosome at the 
inner end usually, perhaps always, divides into 
two. It issurrounded by a small centrosphere. 

The second polar globule is formed by the 
usual process of mitosis. In the second polar 
globule, as in the first, there can be seen for a 
time the degenerating centrosome of the outer 
pole of the spindle. A Zwischenkorper is 
formed, consisting at first of a circle of small 
dots, like the middle plate of plants, with 
rays extending in both directions. Later it 
becomes constricted to a single center with 
diverging rays, and in this condition it is distin- 
guishable until the pronuclei have nearly united. 
The chromosomes left in the egg at the inner 
end of the spindle group themselves so as 
nearly to surround the centrosome and its 
astrosphere. The rays of the latter are numer- 
ous and long, extending through half the diame- 
ter of the egg. 

The nine chromosomes swell up into as many 
vesicles which migrate toward the middle of 
the ege, and as they do so unite to form one large 
female pronucleus. The aster and centrosome 
are carried along with the vesicles for a cer- 
tain distance, but degenerate before the vesi- 
cles have united. The rays of this aster, which 
were very strongly developed when the vesicles 
were first formed, become weaker and weaker, 
and finally disappear entirely. While they 
are still present they converge to the center of 
the group of vesicles and indicate the position 
of the centrosome. 

While the processes of maturation have been 
going on, the entrance of the sperm has wrought 
profound changes in other parts of the egg. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 110. 


The sperm may apparently enter the egg any- 
where. Soon after it has entered we find near 
it a minute aster with two centrosomes close 
together. They lie in a minute astrosphere 
from which a few short rays diverge. 

These two centrosomes are known as the 
‘male centrosomes,’ though in Chetopterus I 
am not sure that they are actually carried in by 
the spermatozoodn. A strong presumption is 
created in favor of this view by the fact that 
the sperm has in the middle piece two bodies re- 
sembling centrosomes. However this may be, 
the male centrosomes separate as the head of 
the spermatozoOn enlarges, to form the male 
pronucleus, and as they separate, the rays di- 
verging from them become more and more 
extensive. A 

Besides moving apart, the centrosomes mi- 
grate toward the center of the egg, the male 
pronucleus accompanying them, sometimes on 
one side and sometimes on another, but always 
near at hand. They finally take a definite po- 
sition a little to one side of the center of the egg 
and toward the polar globules. The central 
spindle which has developed between them lies 
at right angles to the egg axis. At this time 
nearly all the cytoplasm of the egg appears in 
the form of varicose fibrils, radiating directly 
from the two male centrosomes. 

These enormous male asters are the poles of 
the first cleavage spindle. They are already 
connected by a central spindle. The pronuclei 
come together between the poles and elongate 
slightly. The nuclear membrane disappears ; 
the chromosomes arrange themselves in the 
equatorial plate usually in two distinct groups, 
and we have the first cleavage spindle in the 
metaphase. : 

During the formation of the cleavage spindle 
a centrosphere develops about each centrosome, 
and the rays become very much shorter, for 
their distal portions break up to form again a 
cytoreticulum. 

While the chromosomes are undergoing the : 
longitudinal splitting, each centrosome divides 
into two in anticipation of the next cleavage. 
The two: daughter centrosomes move apart in 
each astrosphere without disturbing the spher- 
ical shape of the latter, until the beginning of 
the telaphase, when the chromosomes at either 


FEBRUARY 5, 1897. ] 


pole of the spindle commence to swell up into 
vesicles in preparation for the reconstitution of 
the nuclei. Then the centrospheres fade away 
and the centrosomes with the central spindle 
between them move further apart to opposite 
sides of the new nucleus. At this stage we find 
once more the enormous radiation directly from 
the centrosomes which involves nearly all the 
cytoplasm in the egg. 

When the new nuclei have reached the so- 
called resting stage the centrospheres develop 
again, the distal part of the rays break up into 
the network, the centrosomes divide, and the 
processes just described are repeated. 

With each cleavage a beautiful Zwischen- 
korper is developed. It consists at first of a 
circle of small dark bodies staining like the cen- 
trosomes, each with a brush of fibrils diverging 
toward the newly formed nuclei. At a later 
stage these bodies all become compressed into a 
single mass and lose their individuality. 

The phenomena exhibited in the egg of Ohe- 
topterus lead me to the following conclusions: 

1. That there is in the egg a definite body— 
the centrosome—which is not an artifact nor a 
myth, and which is not identical with the cen- 
trosphere or astrosphere, though the latter is 
sometimes present. 

2. That in the oocyte of the first order, 7. e., 
the unmaturated egg, the centrosome arises by 
a modification of pre-existing cytoplasmic struc- 
tures. 

3. That the centrosomes, whatever their 
origin, are capable of growth and multiplica- 
tion and persist through at least several cell 
generations. 

4, That there is no union of male and female 
centrosomes during fecundation—no quadrille 
of the centers. The female centrosomes, on 
the contrary, entirely degenerate, and there- 
fore the centrosomes cannot be considered a 
special means for conveyance of hereditary 
qualities. 

5. The centrosomes of the first and succeeding 
cleavage spindles are identical with, or derived 
directly from, the male centrosomes, which are 
probably brought into the egg with the middle- 
piece of the spermatozoon. 

6. The centrosphere, a differentiated region 
about the centrosome, gives a different reaction 


SCIENCE. 


235 


from the centrosomes, on the one hand, and the 
rest of the cytoplasm on the other, both in 
point of color and resistance to certain re- 
agents. 

Corrosive, acetic and other reagents will 
sometimes completely destroy the centrosphere, 
though the rays and other structures are fairly 
well preserved. 

The centrospheres, unlike the centrosomes, 
come and go with each succeeding caryokinesis. 
When they are present, the cytoplasmic rays of 
the aster are less strongly developed then when 
they have disappeared, and the rays diverge 
directly from the centrosomes themselves. 

The centrosomes divide and move apart 
within the centrosphere for a considerable dis- 
tance without altering the shape of the latter. 

A. D. MEap. 


Vv. THE CENTROSOME PROBLEM AND AN EXPERI- 
MENTAL TEST. 


Ir is now generally supposed that the centro- 
some represents ‘the especial organ of cell 
division,’ ‘the dynamic center of the cell.’ 
The outcome of investigation as generally un- 
derstood is well stated by Dr. Wilson in his 
recent work on ‘ The Cell’ (p. 171): 

“From the father comes the centrosome to 
organize the machinery of mitotic division by 
which the egg splits up into the elements of 
the tissues, and by which each of these ele- 
ments receives its quota of the common her- 
itage of chromatin. Huxley hit the mark two 
score years ago, when, in the words that head 
this chapter, he compared an organism to a web 
of which the warp is derived from the female 
and the woof from the male. What has since 
been gained is the knowledge that this web is to 
be sought in the chromatic substance of the 
nuclei, and that the centrosome is the weaver at 
the loom.’’ 

The evidence as to the origin and function of 
the centrosome is not all in yet, and some of 
what is in cannot be easily reconciled with 
these generalizations. How very difficult it 
is to reach certainty in observations on this 
structure, no one knows by his own experience 
better than Dr. Wilson himself. That the cen- 
trosome comes from the mother in parthenos 
genetic eggs is one fact about which no doubt 


236 


can be raised. Two cases are now known in 
which the same thing is claimed for fertilized 
eggs (Myzostoma, Unio), and the work of Miss 
Foot on the egg of Allolobophora fetida suggest 
that the so-called sperm-aster may not, after all, 
be a derivative from the sperm. Mead’s dis- 
‘covery of numerous asters in the unfertilized 
egg of Chetopterus suggests that these struc- 
tures and the centrosome as well are but tran- 
sient figures of the cytoplasmic network—figures 
that may appear at any number of points of the 
cell body on occasion. In that case their dis- 
appearance would not indicate degeneration, 
but merely a return to the reticular condition, 
a resolution of figure rather than of substance. 
This view would accord with the theory of the 
centrosome advanced by Dr. Watase. 

The question as to which sex determines the 
pace of development, or whether both sexes 
share in this determination, is one for which it 
is possible to find a crucial, experimental test. 
My experiments are not yet concluded, but 
they already furnish a decided answer to the 
main question. The experiments are made by 
crossing different species of pigeons having 
different incubation periods. The crosses first 
made, and the only ones thus far fruitful, were 
between the common dove $ and the ring- 
dove 2 (Turtur risorius), The incubation period 
of the male species is from 18 to 20 days, while 
that of the female species is from 14 to 15 days. 
If the male furnishes the centrosome we should 
expect to have the rate of development retarded 
and the incubation possibly prolonged to the 
time of his species. In the reverse experiment, 
with a male 7. risorius and a female common 
dove (experiment now in progress), the rate 
of development would be accelerated, and the 
time of incubation correspondingly shortened. 
One pair have hatched young three times, each 
time in the period of the mother. A second 
pair (¢=a fantail) have hatched once, also in 
the regular time of the mother. The young 
birds were perfectly formed. 

These experiments show that the rate of cell- 
formation and embryonic development up to 
the time of hatching is determined by the sex 
that furnishes the egg. Some marks of paternal 
derivation are already visible in the newly 
hatched hybrid, e. g., color of the beak and 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Voz. V. No. 110. 


character of the down. The male influence is 
most predominantly marked in the later de- 
velopment and color of the plumage. 

C. O. WHITMAN. 


BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON, 270TH 
MEETING, SATURDAY, JANUARY 16. 


THEO. Hotm showed the: Society a botanical 
work printed in the year 1549, in which bino- 
mial nomenclature was in use. This book was 
Leonhart Fuchs’ Historie des Plantes, and it 
was surprising to see that several of our com- 
mon plant-names used to-day were also known 
at that very early date, for instance: Vitis 
vinifera, Aconitum lycoctonum, Angelica silves- 
tris, Digitalis purpurea, etc. 

Mr. Holm also showed the first and the last 
volume of the famous work ‘Flora Danica,’ 
which contains illustrations of 3,240 plants 
from Denmark, Norway, Sleswic, Fre islands, 
Iceland and Greenland engraved on copper. 
This work was begun in the year 1761, the ex- 
pense being paid by the Danish king until 
1883, when the publication was brought to a 
close. The botanical editors of the work were 
Oeder, O. F. Mueller, M. and I. Vahl, Horne- 
mann, Drejer, Schouw, Leibmann, Japetus 
Steenstrup and Lange, while six Danish kings 
contributed the funds necessary for the publi- 
cation of this voluminous opus. 

Mr. Holm thereupon showed a specimen of 
the interesting Draba hyperborea, which had 
lately been collected by Mr. Macoun on the 
Pribilof Islands. This species is not only of 
gigantic size in proportion to the other species 
of Draba, but it is also most characteristic in 
having a monopodial ramification. The species 
of Draba are generally annual, biennial or per- 
ennial, but have constantly a terminal inflores- 
cence. In Draba hyperborea, on the contrary, the 
bud is terminal, but purely vegetative and lasts 
for several years, while the inflorescences are 
all lateral. A similar case was known to the 
speaker to exist in Arabis dentata, which, in this 
respect, showed a difference from most of, if not 
all, the other species of Arabis. 

W. T. Swingle exhibited specimens of two 
simple algze from the Gulf of Naples, remark- 
able for the great size of the apicial cells. Al- 
though very similar in appearance, these two 


FEBRUARY 5, 1897. ] 


species differed fundamentally in the manner of 
their growth. : 

Specimens of two poisonous plants were ex- 
hibited by V. K. Chesnut. The first was a new 
species of Water-Hemlock (Cicuta vagans 
Greene), the rhizome of which is poisoning 
cattle in Oregon and Washington. The second 
was the oleander or Laurier Rose (Nerium ole- 
ander L.). This plant was recently mistaken at 
Jesus Maria, Chihuahua, Mexico, for the moun- 
tain, or rose, laurel (Kalmia latifolia L.). An ex- 
tract was made from the leaves, which was added 
to honey and fed to some bees at that place. They 
were not poisoned by it, but the honey deposited 
by them proved to be very deleterious to two 
persons who ate from it. The mistake in the 


identity of the species was revealed by speci- - 


mens obtained from the experimenter. 

Under the title ‘Unity or Plurality of Type 
Specimens in Paleontology,’ Mr. David White 
called attention to the difference of opinion and 
usage between botanists or zoologists and pa- 
leontologists, particularly paleobotanists, re- 
specting the application of the word ‘Type,’ 
such differences arising largely from the disper- 
sion of the parts of plants and the conditions of 
preservation. Owing to the conditions of fos- 
silization, most species of fossil plants are origi- 
nally based on several specimens, each of which 
contributes characters not seen in the others. 
Such are coordinate or ‘Co-types.’ For speci- 
mens, such as fruits, leaves, preserved tissue, 
etc., serving as the source of additional specific 
characters, subsequently described or illus- 
trated, the name ‘Supplementary Type,’ was 
advocated. Mr. White urged that any paleonto- 
logical specimen that has furnished new specific 


characters for incorporation in the diagnosis, or - 


for illustration, is thereby removed from the level 
of other specimens in the collection, and there- 
fore deserves an appropriate designation, ac- 
cording to circumstances. Preferring for such 
purpose some qualification of the word ‘ Type,’ 
he tentatively suggested for certain presented 
cases the terms ‘Subsidiary Type,’ ‘ Continental 
type,’ etc. 

Mr. White also exhibited specimens of ‘A New 
Lycopodineous Cone from the Coal Measures of 
Missouri,’ at Clinton, together with its bracts, 
presented to the National Museum by Dr. J. H. 


SCIENCE. 


237 


Britts. These illustrated his previous remarks, 
the former belonging to the genus Lepidostrobus, 
the latter of the genus Lepidophyllum. 

Mr. Edward L. Greene spoke of the ‘ Develop- 
ment of the Idea of a Genus,’ as shown in the 
works of the earlier herbalists and botanists. 

Mr. M. A. Carleton presented a paper on the 
‘Ontogenetic Separation of Puccinea graminis 
Avene from P. graminis Tritici.’ 

The forms of Puccinia graminis, or stem rust, 
on wheat is quite distinct from the one occurring 
on oats, though until recently they have been 
considered identical. The distinction is founded 
mainly upon this behavior in artificial inocu- 
lations, though there are probably other rea- 

“sons for separating them. The form on oats 
can not be transferred to any other cereal. The 
form on wheat is readily transferred to barley, 
and probably occurs on rye, and, with still less 
certainty, on oats. In inoculation experiments 
the form Avene infects 21 species of Graminz 
in 18 genera. Similar experiments with the 
form Tritici are not yet completed. Eriksson 
has obtained like results, as a rule, in Sweden. 

F, A. Lucas, Secretary. 


ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON, 
JANUARY 7, 1897. 

Mr. ASHMBEAD exhibited an agamous female 
of Belenocnema treate Mayr, The true sexual 
generation consists of winged males and females 
issuing from galls on the roots of live oak, while 
the agamous generation consists of subapterous 
females issuing from a gall which occurs on the 
leaves. Mr. Ashmead has connected the two 
galls simply from a study of structural charac- 
ters of the adult insects. 

Professor J. B. Smith, a corresponding mem- 
ber, gave a brief review of a classification of 
the orders of insects, as a result of a series of 
studies made during the past few years. He 
proposes to divide the true ‘Insecta’ primarily 
into two series upon the character of the 
mouth-parts, making one a suctorial type to 
contain the orders Thysanura and Rhyngota. 
All the others are mandibulate in some stage 
of their existence. These mandibulata he 
divides into three other series, according to the 
development of the prothorax. In one case 
the prothorax is entirely free in the adult, and 


238 


this series contains the Dermaptera and Coleop- 
tera, in which the hind wings are transversely 
folded, and the Plecoptera, Platyptera and Or- 
thoptera, in which the hind wings are longitudi- 
nally folded beneath the primaries. The second 
series is that in which the prothorax is fairly 
well developed, but is quite closely attached at 
its base to the other segments, and is not freely 
movable, as in the case of the first series. In 
this branch, which was terrestrial from the 
start, are included the Isoptera, Mallophaga, 
Corrodentia and Neuroptera. The third series 
had the prothorax reduced in size from the be- 
ginning, and always united to the other thoracic 
segments, the general tendency being towards 
a complete loss of function of all save the legs 
in this part. All the members of this series 
are from an aquatic form, and they include the 
Odonata, Ephemerida, Trichoptera, Lepidop- 
tera, Mecoptera, Siphonaptera, Diptera and 
Hymenoptera. From the Neuroptera, as gen- 
erally understood, he separates the Sialide, 
which he makes, with its relatives, an order 
under the term Platyptera. 

This paper was actively discussed by Messrs. 
Banks, Gill and Ashmead, who criticised de- 
tails rather than the general ideas expressed. 

Dr. A. D. Hopkins, a corresponding member 
of the Society, presented some notes on Scoly- 
tide, with descriptions of four new species, viz.: 
Pityophthorus frontalis, a species which infests 
dead oak twigs; P. fagi, which infests peach 
twigs; Thysanoes querciperda, infesting oak, and 
T. obscurus, reared from hickory twigs. 

L. O. Howarp, 
Secretary. 


GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 


ArT the 56th meeting of this Society, held in 
Washington, D. C., January 13, 1897, com- 
munications were presesented as follows : 

The Measurement of Faults: J. E. Spurr, 
U. S. Geological Survey. Faults are simple 
movements in the rocks of the earth’s crust 
along fracture planes, and, since these planes 
may stand in any attitude, there is no rule by 
which the nature of a fault may be judged be- 
forehand. The existence of a fault can be de- 
termined by the evidences of friction along the 
plane of motion, such as fault breccia, polished 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 110. 


and striated rock faces and so.on; the amount 
of movement, however, can be completely as- 
certained only by the aid of independent and 
accidental phenomena. In homogenous rock 
masses the amount of movement cannot be 
ascertained ; in heterogeneous rocks it may ordi- 
narily be ascertained with greater or less ac- 
curacy, and the variations in rock masses must 
be used as criteria. The commonest variations 
which are constant enough to be reliable as 
data are sedimentary beds, and hence it is easy 
to fall into the error of considering faults simply 
as dislocations of strata. In careful geological 
work, however, any available criterion must be 
regarded as of as much value asany other; in 
mining geology the most valuable are, besides 
sedimentary beds, igneous bodies (such as 
dikes), bodies of ore, striz on the fault plane, 
showing direction of movement, and the com- 
position of the fault breccia, which may show 
in some degree, the amount of movement. 

In seeking to measure a fault it is necessary 
to have clearly in mind some of the principal 
functions of fault movement. Among these 
functions certain which are of greatest impor- 
tance are adopted and defined. These are: 
Total displacement, lateral separation, perpendicu- 
lar separation, throw, vertical separation and offset. 
The number may be increased indefinitely, yet 
ordinarily this is undesirable. 

Glaciation of Puget Sound Region: BAILEY WI1L- 
Lis. During the past season the drift deposits 
about the southeastern edge of Puget Sound 
have been studied in some detail. They are 
found to consist of several beds of till, separated 
by stratified deposits of clay, sand and coarse 
gravel, together with widely distributed lignite 
beds. The character and extent of the glacia- 
tion of the Puget Sound region are indicated in 
these deposits, and it is found that the principal 
flow of the ice was rather from the north than 
from the mountains on the southeast. Two 
problems are presented by the phenomena: 
(1) the sequence of glacial advance and retreat, 
and the extent and duration of climatic changes. 
indicated by the presence of lignites; (2) the 
bearing of the peculiar conditions of glacial de- 
velopment upon the physiography of the sound. 
Either the deeper valleys of the sound have 
been eroded during a period of high level from 


FEBRUARY 5, 1897. ] 


the once more extensive sheets of drift, or, as 
suggested by Russell, the channels represent the 
beds repeatedly occupied by glaciers which, in 
their advance and retreat, built up the plateau- 
like eminences of the region, probably upon the 
divides of the pre-existing topography. The 
past condition of Puget Sound under confluent 
glaciation is probably now represented by the 
Malaspina glacier and its attendant phenom- 


ena. 
W. F. MorsE.LL. 


U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 


NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 


TuE Geological Section met January 18th, and 
listened to the papers of which abstracts are 
given below. Both will appear in full in the 
Transactions. 

The first paper was ‘ Notes on the Geology of 
the Bermudas,’ by J. J. Stevenson. 

After describing the several types of rock de- 
posits and their relations, as well as the surface 
features of the area, Professor Stevenson of- 
fered the following conclusions respecting the 
successive conditions: 

First : The Limestone or ‘base rock’ of the 
island was formed by accumulations of dune 
sand. During a prolonged period of quiet, this 
rock underwent great erosion, both surface and 
subterranean; the collapsing of cavern roofs 
caused great ‘sinks,’ some of which, no doubt, 
still exist as such, though to distinguish them 
from those of later origin would be difficult. 

Second: A period of subsidence followed, 
during which the land sank 120 feet or more ; 
marine deposits encroached upon the land, ex- 
tending through valleys, thus giving beach rock 
at widely separated localities and in somewhat 
anomalous positions. 

Third: Succeeding this was a period of quiet, 
during which the Sandstone was formed, as the 
Limestone had been, by accumulations of dune 
sand and the great ‘sinks’ were filled up, as 
the basins of Castle harbor are now filling. 

Fourth: A period of elevation followed, dur- 
ing which the land must have risen to at least 
its former level. The old subterranean drain- 
age system must have been re-established in 
Many instances and the former depression 
cleaned out; while near systems may have 


SCIENCE. 


239 


been formed, causing new groups of depres- 
sions. 

Fifth: This was succeeded by a period of 
subsidence, during which the land sank to very 
nearly the same position as at the maximum of 
subsidence in the previous period, the highest 
marine beds being now only a few feet above 
the water’s edge. The more important bodies 
of water began in the deeper depressions early 
in this period, but they assumed their present 
forms, due to shore erosion, only in the later 
portion, when the subsidence was very slow 
and evidently interrupted more than once by 
prolonged periods of quiet. 

The paper was well illustrated by the lantern. 

The second paper was ‘The Geological Sec- 
tion at Cliffwood, N. J.’ by Arthur Hollick. 

Mr. Hollick described the Cretaceous clay 
marl in the vicinity of Cliffwood, New Jersey, 
one of the localities where the fauna of the 
horizon has been collected and the only one at 
which any fossil plants have been found. 

The strata in question are the equivalent of 
the Matawan formation of Professor W. B. 
Clark, which represents the transition from the 
plastic clays of the Raritan formation below to 
the greensand marl above, and, as may be ex- 
pected, shows a commingling of fresh-water, 
land and marine conditions. The specimens 
collected consist of crustaceans, leaves, fruit 
and twigs of trees and masses of lignite. The 
crustaceans are too fragmentary for exact de- 
termination. About 15 species of mollusks were 
identified and 26 species of plants, the majority 
of the latter belonging to the Conifer. Of 
these, nine are here described as new species. 
The paper was illustrated by maps of the re- 
gion, by drawings of the specimens and by the 
specimens themselves. J. F. Kemp, 

Secretary. 


THE NEW YORK SECTION OF THE AMERICAN 
CHEMICAL SOCIETY. 


By invitation the New York Section of the 
American Chemical Society held an informal 
dinner at the Knickerbocker Athletic Club, 
Friday evening, January 8th, after which the 
regular monthly meeting was convened in one 
of the assembly rooms of the club, about fifty- 
five members being present. 


240 


The chair was taken by Dr. McMurtrie at 
8.15, and, after routine business had been dis- 
posed of, the reading of papers was then taken 
up as follows: 

‘Note on an Improved Specific Gravity 
Bottle for Liquids,’ by Dr. E. R. Squibb; 
‘Note on the Determination of Caffeine,’ by 
G. L. Spencer; ‘ Variations in the Composition 
of Commercial Red Lead,’ by Durand Wood- 
man; ‘The Methods for Determination of 
Tannin,’ by J. H. Yocum; ‘Modern Metal- 
lurgy of Copper,’ by J. B. F. Herreshoff. 

Mr. Spencer reviewed the precautions neces- 
sary in the determination of caffeine by both 
Gromberg’s and the gravimetric method, and 
concludes that the Gromberg method gives the 
most satisfactory results, and admits of wider 
application than the gravimetric method, par- 
ticularly as by the latter it is difficult to obtain 
absolutely pure caffeine. ; 

Dr. Woodman gave the results of a series of 
factory tests on commercial red leads, taking 
the position that the litharge removed by di- 
gestion in solution of lead acetate is simply that 
portion which has escaped oxidation, and is 
therefore a diluent merely, and a measure of 
the incompleteness and imperfection of the 
roasting process. He finds no uniformity in 
the amounts of the uncombined or free litharge, 
either in the samples which are the subject of 
his paper or as reported by other analysts. Ac- 
cording to his determinations the following 
variations are shown: 


Red 15 BW.L. 64 C. LB. B.W.L. L.B. 
lead...51.0 41.0 60.0 28.058.090.0 73.5 87.5 
Free 
lith- 
arge...49.0 59.0 40.0 72.042.010.0 26.5 12.5 


For present purposes the few per cent. of im- 
purities were not determined, and are included, 
some in the red lead figures, and others in the 
litharge. 

Mr. J. B. F. Herreshoff made an address on 
‘Modern Metallurgy of Copper,’ reviewing 
briefly the historical side of the development of 
the copper industry in this country and point- 
ing out the remarkable increase in its con- 
sumption, due to the advance in the appli- 
cations of electricity. While the iron industry 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 110. 


of this country is always spoken of as so enor- 
mous, and is indeed of great magnitude, it is 
only known to those who follow the subject 
very closely that the production of copper 
amounts to over one-half of the value of pig 
iron annually produced. 

In 1895 the United States consumed 62.6 per 
cent. of its production, but in 1896 the home 
consumption was only about 37.5 per cent., 
62.5 per cent. being exported. In the same time 
there was also a large increase in production. 

Mr. Yocum reviewed the methods (and diffi- 
culties inherent in them) of determining tannin 
in barks and extracts. He considers a com- 
plete extraction of tannin at low temperatures 
as an impossibility, regardless of the amount 


of water used. 
DURAND WOODMAN, 


Secretary. 


THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE OF ST. LOUIS. 


AT the meeting of the Academy of Science 
of St. Louis on the evening of January 18, 
1897, Professor H. S. Pritchett presented some 
results of observations on the recent sun-spots, 
prefacing his remarks by a general account of 
our present knowledge of the constitution of 
the surface of the sun, and of sun-spots in gen- 
eral, and illustrating his remarks by the use of 
lantern slides. 

Two persons were elected to active mem- 


bership. 
Wm. TRELEASE, 


Recording Secretary. 


NEW BOOKS. 5 

Problems and Questions in Physics. CHARLES 
P. MATTHEWS and JoHN SHEARER. New 
York and London, The Macmillan Company. 
Pp. vii+247. $1.60. 

The Mechanics of Pumping Machinery. JuLIuS 
WEISBACH and GusTAV HERRMAN. Author- 
ized translation from the second German 
Edition by Kart P. DAHLSTROM. London 
and New York, The Macmillan Company. 
1897. Pp. 300. 

The Story of Extinct Civilizations. RoBErtT E. 
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DANIEL G. BRINTON, J. W. POWELL, Anthropology. 
vs 


Fripay, Fesruary 12, 1897. 


; CONTENTS: 
Some Present Possibilities in the Analysis of Iron and 
SieGIG (Oh 18s ID UDI ON eae sccaneucoseseBocac a eetoHpancee 241 


Toronto Meeting of the British Association: A. B. 
IW OANGYATELUTINY Ip sagosqobnasunsqososenaboneopENSdanooHooEococKsG 251 


Geology at the British Association: W.W.WATTS..252 
Relations of Tarsius to the Lemurs and Apes: 


CHARLES WAR TU 3. oo ccecoceqesectecctessmeacecescesusasse 258 
The Primary Segmentation of the Brain: C.F. W. 

IEG (LURE occ aecea sv eneo bic ateveasceyatecattevceesnee oes 260 
Charles E. Bendire: C. HART MERRIAM............. 261 


Current Notes on Physiography :— 

Northwestern Oregon ; Glacial Deposits of Indiana ; 

Scientific Geography of Italy ; Notes on Ashanti: 

W. M. D. 
Current Notes on Meteorology :— 

Cloud Heights; Fog Possibilities ; International 

Balloon Meteorology: KR. DEC. WARD..............264 
Current Notes on Anthropology :— 

The Shell Gorgets of North America ; The Red Race 

of Madagascar; Glacial Man in Ohio: D. G. 

LST RISTO ‘Sep aaenosa-oonannsdosqocesoecapaseSenodsaaasodaGund 265 
Notes on Inorganic Chemistry : 
Scientific Notes and News : — 

A Director of Scientific Work for the Department 


of Agriculture; Young’s ‘ Reversing Layer ;’ 
Motor Carriages ; General. ........s.ceceecececsececesors 267 
University and Educational News. ........1-..csceceeeeees 274 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 
“Compliment or Plagiarism?? BEMAN AND 
SMITH. Professor Jastrow’s Test on Diversity of 
Opinion: J. H. HYSLOP...........0.:.cescecceseecoees 275 
Scientific Literature :— 
Higher Mathematics: ALEXANDER ZIWET. Ven- 
able on the Development of the Periodic Law, 
Mason’s Notes on Quantitative Analysis, Cairns’ 
Manual of Quantitative Chemical Analysis: W. 
A.N 


The Auk; The Journal of Geology: H. F. B...... 281 
Societies and Academies :— 
The New York Academy of Sciences—Subsection of 


Anthropology and Psychology: LivINGSToN 

FARRAND. Torrey Botanical Club: EDWARD 

S. BURGESS........ sadennaceeacnonopdagsonqdanueaccrasecodace 283 
New Books.........00scc0008 BanocaustcRacsecECOS Tatvivesuevsees 284 


SOME PRESENT POSSIBILITIES IN THE 
ANALYSIS OF IRON AND STEEL.* 


To the analytical chemist there are few 
substances in nature more interesting than 
a piece of pig iron, few substances which 
have received more study, and few which 
present chemical problems more difficult-of 
solution. The amount of work which has 
already been done in connection with this 
very common but very complex substance 
is something enormous. Indeed, if we add 
to the study which has already been put on 
pig iron itself the work which has been 
done on what may perhaps fairly be called 
its progenitors, viz., the ores, the fuel, 
the flux and the refractory materials 
used in its production, and then consider 
still further the labor already expended in 
the analysis of what we may call the prog- 
eny of pig iron, viz., castings, wrought iron, 
malleable iron and the numerous grades 
and kinds of steel, made by the various 
processes of the present day, we shall surely 
be safe in saying that more chemical work 
has been done in connection with pig iron 
than with any other substance in nature. 
Is it too much to affirm that at the present 
time one-third, possibly one-half, of all the 
chemical work done in the world is in con- 
nection with the iron industry, either in 
the solution of unworked-out problems, the 

* Presidential address delivered at the Troy meet- 


ing of the American Chemical Society, December 29, 
1896. 


242 


development of new methods of analysis, 
or in the routine analyses affecting the in- 
terests of producer and consumer. 

But the amount of work already done 
and in daily progress in connection with 
this substance is not all that may be said in 
regard to it. The complexity of pig iron is 
very great, and consequently the analytical 
problems presented are far from being easy 
of solution. It may not be uninteresting to 
enumerate some of the substances which 
have already been found in pig iron. We 
find, besides the element iron, carbon, 
phosphorus, silicon, sulphur, manganese, 
copper, chromium, tungsten, titanium, 
vanadium, nickel, cobalt, aluminum, potas- 
sium, sodium, magnesium, calcium and 
lithium. It is fair to say that there is ap- 
parently well grounded belief that the last 
five are characteristic of intermingled slag, 
rather than of the metal itself. It is not 
intended that it should be understood that 
all of these substances have been found in 
any one sample of pig iron, but that all 
these substances have actually been de- 
tected in the analysis of this alloy. Indeed, 
there seems no reason why any_ element 
which either occurs in the metallic condi- 
tion in nature or which is reducible to that 
condition by carbon, and which is not vola- 
tile at the temperature of the blast furnace, 
may not occur in pig iron, provided, of 
course, it will alloy withthe metal. Quite 
a large number of other substances besides 
those mentioned above have actually been 
alloyed with some form of iron or steel. 
Among these may be mentioned zine, tin, 
lead, antimony, bismuth, molybdenum, sil- 
ver, platinum, rhodium, irridium, palladium 
and gold. Nor is this all that may confront 
theanalyst who devotes himself to the chem- 
istry of iron and steel. Not less than three 
elements which usually exist in nature in 
the gaseous form occur in these metals, and 
“are believed to have important influences 
on their physical properties. These are 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. Von. V. No. 111. 


oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen ; while the 
numerous analyses show that the presence 
of carbon monoxide in both cast iron, 
wrought iron and steel. It seems quite 
evident that the chemist who hopes to cope 
successfully with the problems which are 
involved in even the ultimate analysis of 
iron and steel in their various forms must 
be well equipped with a liberal share of the 
methods and processes known to mineral 
chemistry, and, on the other hand, if he at- 
tempt the proximate analysis of these sub- 
stances, or theseparation and determination 
of the various compounds of the elements 
present, with iron or with each other, he 
will, at least, be brought on the border 
ground of organic chemistry. Some of the 
carbon compounds which are characteristic 
of the brilliant work of the present Presi- 
dent of the French Chemical Society are 
known to occur in or have already been 
isolated from pig-iron. 

It would lead us too far from our present 
purpose to do anything more than enumer- 
ate the largest number of the elements given 
above. Sufficeit to say that in what follows 
we shall confine ourselves to the five first 
mentioned; viz., carbon, phosphorus, silicon, 
sulphurand manganese. And the question 
which we shall ask ourselves is, ‘ What is 
the present condition of a portion of the 
analytical methods for the determination of 
these substances, considering these methods 
both in regard to their accuracy and speed ?’ 
One word of precaution. Itwould be man- 
ifestly impossible to comment on all the 
methods in use for determining these con- 
stituents. ‘To enumerate them alone would 
weary your patience. Weshall confine our- 
selves, therefore, principally to methods 
which may be or are used when the diverse 
interests of producer and consumer are in- 
volved. 

Beginning, then, with total carbon in pig 
iron, wrought iron and steel, we deem it 
safe to say that the method by combustion 


FEBRUARY 12, 1897.] 


in oxygen gas, as at present known and 
worked in many laboratories, leaves very 
little to be desired, so far as accuracy is 
concerned, and is sufficiently rapid for most 
commercial uses. The modification intro- 
duced some years ago, of using a solution 
of the double chloride of copper and am- 
monium, instead of simple chloride of cop- 
per,* to release the carbon from the iron, 
took away from the combustion method one 
of its greatest difficulties ; viz., the long time 
required to dissolve the metal. The modi- 
fication, as many will doubtless remember, 
reduced the time required for solution, from 
two or three days to an hour or less. In- 
deed, at the present time, if a good stirring 
machine is used, it is quite possible to dis- 
solve three grams of fairly fine borings of 
pig iron, wrought iron or steel, in 200 ce. 
of the proper solvent in from ten to forty 
minutes. 

Still further the studies of the Com- 
mittee of International Standards for the 
Analysis of Iron and Steel have further 
modified the method, and it is believed ren- 
dered it much more accurate. Among these 
modifications may be mentioned the use of 
an acid instead of a neutral or basic so- 
lution of the double salt to dissolve the 
metal This point was thoroughly worked 
out by Blair. Following this came the 
work done in the laboratory of the Pennsy]l- 
vania Railroad Company,{ demonstrating 

* Tt is difficult to say positively who first suggested 
this modification. The first mention in literature 
that we are able to find is in the Zransactions of the 
American Institute of Mining Engineers, 4, 157, by J. 
B. Pearse. But a private communication from An- 
drew S. McCreath states that he made the suggestion 
while working under Pearse, and that Professor Rich- 
ter, in the Leoben Jahrbuch, had previously suggested 
the use of potassium or sodium chloride with copper 
chloride, which led him to try the ammonium salt. 
McCreath’s description of the method as used by him- 
self is published in the Transactions of the American 
Institute of Mining Engineers, 5, 575. 

fTrans. Am. Inst. Mining Eng., 19, 614. 

tTrans. Am. Inst. Mining Eng., 20, 242. 


SCIENCE. 


243 


the unreliability of the use of the double 
chloride of copper and ammonia asa solvent, 
owing, as appeared later, to the probable 
presence in all ammonia and its salts, ob- 
tainable in the market, even those marked 
“C. P.’, of some carbonaceous material, pos- 
sibly pyridine, derived from the gas liquor 
used in making the ammonia. 

The substitution of the potassium * for 
the ammonium salt has apparently com- 
pletely overcome this difficulty, and this 
with the use of oxygen gas instead of lead 
chromate, in which to burn the carbon, and 
some modifications of the absorbing and 
purifying train, have seemingly placed the 
dry combustion method for determining 
carbon in the front rank of successful and 
accurate analytical processes. The prin- 
cipal known source of error in the method 
at the present time appears to be in con- 
nection with the weighing. The potash 
bulbs and small calcium chloride tube used 
in absorbing the carbon dioxide weigh, alto- 
gether, some fifty to sixty grams, and pre- 
sent considerable surface. If now, between 
the weighing before the combustion and the 
weighing after the combustion, the interval 
being an hour, or a little more, there is con- 
siderable change in the hygroscopic con- 
dition of the atmosphere, an error of 0.01 
per cent. may be easily introduced. If we 
may trust our experience, it is difficult to 
make closely agreeing duplicate combus- 
tions in showery weather. Blair suggests 
a method of overcoming this difficulty, con- 
sisting in having a second potash bulb and 
chloride of calcium tube of, as near as pos- 
sible, the same size on the opposite end of 
the balance when weighing. 

In regard to the accuracy of the method 
as at present understood, it may be said 
that, undoubtedly, the best test of the accu- 
racy of a method is the recovery of a known 
amount of any substance added to the ma- 
terial to be analyzed. This procedure 

*J. Am. Chem. Soc., 15, 448. 


244 


being manifestly impossible in the case of 
iron and steel, we are compelled to judge 
of the accuracy of the combustion method, as 
applied to these metals, in some other way. 
For this purpose, however, we have at hand 
the results obtained by different chemists, 
using different methods, but working on the 
same samples. In the course of the work done 
by the Committee on International Stand- 
ards for the Analysis of Iron and Steel, the 
carbon in four samples of steel was deter- 
mined : First, by using acid double chloride 
of copper and potassium as solvent and 
burning in oxygen gas; Second, by using 
the same solvent and burning in chromic 
acid solution; and Third, by treating the 
borings direct with bisulphate of potash and 
heat, conducting the carbon monoxide and 
sulphur dioxide formed over hot solid chro- 
mic acid, which oxidized both gases and 
retained the sulphur trioxide formed, and 
finally measuring the volumes of the re- 
sulting carbon dioxide in an eudiometer 
tube. Each method was used by a different 
chemist. The results obtained are as fol- 
lows: the letters at the side representing 
the four samples of steel, the figures at the 
top representing the chemists, and the 
figures in the columns the percentages of 
carbon in the steel samples : 


1. 2. 3. 
INecoacosand 1.455* 1.440* 1.450+ 
IB noocg0e00s 0.815 0.800 0.815 
Cl soccagacoe 0.450 0.450 0.448 
Wesissoudocs 0.152 0.185 0.168 


The agreement of the results on the first 
three samples is quite marked. The dis- 
crepancy on the fourth sample has not been 
explained. The matter is discussed in con- 
siderable detail in reference 1, but we think 
it safe to conclude that, so far as method 
goes, the determination of total carbon in 
pig or cast iron, wrought iron and steel, is 
reasonably accurate. 


*Proc Eng of Western Penna.; 9 [9], 35. 
{Ztschr. anorg. Chem., 4 [3],'und [4], 505. 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 111. 


The speed of the combustion method as 
at present worked in good laboratories, is 
quite remarkable, compared with the pos- 
sibilities twenty-five years ago. A suffi- 
cient supply of sample borings being at 
hand, one operator using two furnaces may 
readily make from fourteen to sixteen com- 
bustions in a day of eight hours, it being 
understood that the bulbs are weighed with 
oxygen gas in them instead of air, and that 
the last weight of each combustion, except 
the last one at night, is taken as the first 
weight of the succeeding one. It is, of 
course, assumed that, when turning out the 
amount of work above described, the fur- 
naces and apparatus are all in good order, 
and everything working well. Accidents, 
an occasional overhauling of the apparatus, 
blank combustions from time to time for 
testing purposes, and once in a while an 
obstinate steel that refuses to dissolve in 
time or gives trouble in filtration, will all 
tend to diminish output. The results ob- 
tained with this rapid work show, when 
duplicates are made, occasional discrepan- 
cies as high as three hundredths of a per 
cent. in a steel containing one per cent. of 
carbon, but we have seen very large num- 
bers of duplicates, made as above described, 
which did not disagree one one-hundredth. 

Again, when work is not so plentiful as 
to admit of the procedure described above, 
the method still permits satisfactory speed. 
Starting with a fresh sample of borings and 
everything in good order, but cold, it is not 
difficult to get two closely agreeing deter- 
minations on the same sample in two hours 
and a half. Of course, in investigation or 
referee work more time would, undoubt- 
edly, be used, especially if the interests in- 
volved are very great. But we have many 
times been astonished, in our own labora- 
tory, at the close agreement between the 
results obtained in the rapid manner de- 
scribed above, and the duplicate analysis 
made on the same sample for confirmatory 


FEBRUARY 12, 1897.] 


purposes, but using much more time and 
pains. 

Turning now to the determination of 
combined carbon and graphite, we do not 
find the state of affairs so satisfactory. As 
is well known, these two constituents are 
usually found by first determining total 
earbon, then dissolving another portion of 
the sample in hydrochloric acid, filtering 
and washing with caustic potash, alcohol 
and ether, and then burning the residue, 
collecting and weighing the carbon dioxide 
formed, as in an ordinary combustion. The 
result is called graphite, and the combined 
¢arbon is the difference between the total 
carbon and the graphite. But as Shimer* 
has so well shown, what we actually get by 
this procedure is not necessarily the graph- 
ite and the total combined carbon in the 
sample, but only the combined carbon 
which exists in the metal as a carbide 
soluble in hydrochloric acid. If the sample 
contains carbides not soluble in that acid, 
nor in the materials used in washing, the 
carbon of these carbides appears with and 
is counted as graphite. Shimer shows that 
titanium, and possibly vanadium carbide, 
are apparently not infrequently thus 
counted. The use of sulphuric instead of 
hydrochloric acid leads to the same error, 
while the employment of nitric acid as sol- 
vent apparently gives the graphite much 
more definitely, but leaves us in doubt as 
to whether the combined carbon is really 
the combined carbon which we want, in 
order to have light on the quality of the 
metal we are dealing with. It is obvious 
that the difficulty here is in our lack of 
knowledge as to what carbides actually ex- 
ist in pig and cast iron, and, if there are 
several of them, which one or ones do we 
actually want to know the carbon content 
of. If we knew positively that the com- 
bined carbon wanted was that which exists 
in the metal as carbides of iron and manga- 

* Trans. Am. Inst. Min. Eng., 25, 395. 


SCIENCE. 


245 


nese, and that these carbides were soluble 
in hydrochloric or sulpburic acid, while all 
other carbides present were not soluble in 
these acids, obviously we should use these ~ 
acids when determining combined carbon. 
On the other hand, if we want to know 
only graphite, and care little about the 
combined carbon, apparently nitric acid is 
the solvent to use. It is clear that much 
more work is needed on this subject, a 
state of affairs which, as we progress, we 
shall find is characteristic of other constit- 
uents of the metals we are considering. 

Much might be said in regard to the 
color test for determining carbon in steel. 
It is difficult to over-estimate the value and 
importance of this method, especially in 
the daily operation of steel works, and 
there seems little doubt but that, if proper 
precautions are employed, the method, in 
skillful hands, will give results that are 
fairly reliable to within three or four hun- 
dreths of a per cent. It would hardly be 
possible in this paper to discuss all the pre- 
cautions which are deemed essential by 
those best informed. A chemist of wide 
experience with the method has enumer- 
ated twenty-four points that must be ob- 
served if reliable results are to be ex- 
pected. Let it suffice for us to say that 
even approximate accuracy cannot be ex- 
pected : 

1. If the steel whose carbon is to be deter- 
mined and the standard steel do not have 
their carbon in the same condition. For 
example, if the standard steel has been 
annealed, and the sample to be tested has 
been tempered, the results will be worth- 
less. 

2. If the attempt is made to determine 
the carbon in any steel by using a standard 
widely different from it in carbon content. 
Using a 0.20 per cent. carbon standard, 
with a steel containing 0.50 or 0.60 per 
cent., is apt to lead to very fallacious re- 
sults. 


246 


The best results seem to be obtained by 
having the carbon in all steels, both stand- 
ards and tests, in the condition given by 
annealing, by having a number of standards 
which differ little from each other in car- 
bon content, and by not attempting to use 
the method on steels containing very little 
or very large amounts of carbon. It may 
not be amiss to add here that the practice, 
so prevalent in many of the steel works, of 
using this method for all carbon determina- 
tions, including those where contracts are 
involved, is reprehensible and should be 
discontinued. The chemist at the works 
does the best he can with the method he is 
using, and the amount of work required of 
him, as well as the facilities furnished, do 
not admit of the use of a better method. 
On the other hand, when a dispute arises, 
and it is ultimately shown that the works 
are in error, the chemist is blamed and 
analytical chemistry brought into disrepute, 
not because either is really at fault, but be- 
cause more is expected of the color test 
method than it is really able to give. To 
the steel makers we say, ‘Do not ex- 
pect your chemist to render you the bricks 
of good chemical analyses, unless you give 
him the requisite straw of time and appli- 
ances to do good chemical work.”’ 

Few of the constituents of iron and steel 
have more important influences on their 
valuable qualties than phosphorus, and upen 
few has more chemical work been done, 
The present condition of the methods for de- 
termining this constituent seems fairly sat- 
isfactory, provided we are willing to take 
time enough to do the work. In confirmation 
of this statement, the work* done by the 
Sub-committee on Methods of the Inter- 
national Committee on Standards for the 
Analysis of Iron and Steel may be cited. 
This sub-committee consisted of five mem- 
bers, each of whom analyzed five samples of 
steel, and each used his own method, with- 

*Proc. Am. Soc. Civil Eng., 21, 59. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 111. 


out any attempt at consultation or agree- 
ment with each other before the work was 
done. The methods employed may be 
briefly indicated as follows, those interested 
being referred to the report of the committee 
published as per the reference given for the 
details. Mr. Blair used what is known as. 
the acetate method. Mr. Shimer used the 
molybdate-magnesia method. Your speaker 
used a combination of the acetate and 
molybdate-magnesia method. Dr. Drown 
used a combination of certain features of 
the modern rapid methods of the molybdate- 
magnesia method. And Mr. Barba on one 
sample used the acetate method as de- 
scribed by Blair, and on the other four 
samples employed certain features of the 
molybdate method to separate the phos- 
phorous from the iron, and then used the 
reductor to get the amount of phosphorus, 
instead of weighing as magnesium pyro- 
phosphate. It will be evident, to any one 
carefully reading the report referred to, 
that the methods employed differed widely 
in principle, in strength of solutions and in 
manipulation, and yet these methods gave 
the following percentages of phosphorus in 
the five samples : 
1. 2. 3. 4, 5. 

Mr. W. P. Barba, 0.041 0.015 0.095 0.091 0.041 
Mr. A. A. Blair, 0.040 0.016 0.098 0.091 0.041 
Dr. T. M. Drown, 0.042 0.016 0.104 0.090 0.042 
Dr. C. B. Dudley, 0.040 0.016 0.099 0.097 0.039 
Mr. P.W. Shimer, 0.041 0.017 0.098 0.096 0.039: 

In explanation of the results, we quote 
from the report of the sub-committee: 

“Sample No.1 is an ordinary open- 
hearth steel. Sample No. 2 is a crucible 
steel. Sample No. 3 is an open-hearth 
steel to which metallic arsenic was added 
while in the molten condition in a crucible. 
Sample No. 4 is an ordinary Bessemer rail 
steel. Sample No. 5 is the No. 5 sample 
of the Committee on International Stand- 
ards, and is an open-hearth steel. 

“Tt will be observed that the agreement. 
in the results on phosphorus obtained by 


FEBRUARY 12, 1897. ] 


the different chemists is very good. The 
exceptions are the No. 3 steel, which con- 
tains arsenic in considerable amount, and 
where the discrepancy is 0.009 per cent., 
and in the No. 4 steel, where the discrep- 
ancy is 0.007 per cent. Considerable work 
was done on the No. 4 sample, in an ef- 
fort to reconcile discrepancies, and it was 
found that the turnings from this sample 
were irregular, and that two different bot- 
tles of the sample gave different results. 
The average of six determinations from one 
bottle was 0.1057, and the average of five 
determinations from another bottle was 
0.0964 per cent. Furthermore, siftings 
from quite an amount of the turnings gave 
0.140 per cent.” 
But these methods are long and laborious. 
It would be impossible with the most rapid 
-of them to get a result in much less than a 
day, while two days would certainly be re- 
quired for some of the others. Accordingly, 
since the demand for rapid phosphorus de- 
terminations during the last ten or fifteen 
years has been very great, an enormous 
amount of work has been done in trying to 
‘ meetthisdemand. Modification after mod- 
ification has been introduced, and paper 
after paper published on the subject. It is, 
perhaps, not too much to say that few chem- 
ical journals that publish any original work 
at all have escaped three or four articles 
per year, on the determination of phosphorus 
in iron and steel, or on some phase of a 
rapid method for such determination. The 
result of all this work has apparently been 
constantly increased rapidity, with con- 
stantly greater approximations to accuracy. 
The present state of the matter is, perhaps, 
best shown by Thackray* in his paper, ‘A 
Comparison of Recent Phosphorus Determi- 
nations in Steel.’ This writer sent to some 
twenty-three different chemists borings from 
two different samples of steel, with a request 
to have the phosphorus determined in each 
* Trans. Am. Inst. Min. Eng., 25, 370. 


SCIENCE. 


247 


sample, and a description of the method 
used sent with the results. Hach chemist 
was told that samples had been sent to 
others, but no attempt was made to have 
any special method used. The chemists 
embraced a professor in a technical school, 
the chemist of a large consumer, a number 
of commercial chemists, and a number of 
chemists employed by steel and iron works. 
Onne sample thirty-six different results 
were sent in, and on the other thirty-eight. 
Twenty-seven different methods were em- 
ployed, some of the chemists sending in re- 
sults by two and even three methods, and 
some sending duplicate determinations. The 
results obtained were obtained as follows, 
the figures being percentages of phosphorus 
in the steels : 


Sample. 1. 2. 
Average of all determinations ...............- 0.0496 0.0835 
Highest result ..........00.ccccecevcccececsenes 0.055 0.091 
Lowest result ©. ccc ce geccascncncsecceecnccccs 0.045 0.076 
Maximum difference ..........ccescceccesesees 0.010 0.015 


The methods employed may be divided 
on the basis of time required into three 
classes: 

1st. Those which may be called rapid, 
and which give a result in two hours or 
less. 

2d. Those which may be called slow, 
and which require considerably more than 
two hours, but still give a result the same 
day. 

3d. Those which may be called very 
slow, and which do not give a result until 
the second day or later. 

Thirteen results on each sample were 
given by ‘rapid’ methods, eleven on the 
No. 1 sample and twelve on the No. 2 
sample by ‘slow’ methods, and twelve on 
the No. 1 and thirteen on the No. 2 by 
‘very slow’ methods. Arranging the re- 
sults in accordance with this classification 
of the methods, we have some very inter- 
esting data, the figures being as before, 
the percentages of phosphorus in the two 
steels: 


248 


R. method. S. method. V’y S. Method 
1. 2 1. 2. 1. 2. 
Average of all deter- 


minations............ 0.0499 0.0840 0.0490 0.0826 0.0496 0.0837 
Highest result.......... 0.054 0.091 0.052 0.086 0.055 0.089 
Lowest result .......... 0.045 0.078 0.046 0.076 0.046 0.078 


Maximum difference...0.009 0.018 0.006 0.010 0.009 0.011 


To our minds these figures are very im- 
pressive. It is worthy of note: 

ist. That the average results given by 
the ‘rapid’ methods only differ on either 
steel from the averages given by the ‘slow’ 
or ‘very slow’ methods, by a little over 
0.001 of a per cent. 

2d. That the maximum difference be- 
tween the highest and lowest results given 
by the ‘rapid’ methods on either steel is 
but a trifle greater than is shown by the 
‘slow’ or ‘very slow’ methods. 

In other words, if we interpret these 
results correctly they show that the rapid 
methods for determining phosphorus in 
steel now known and used in many labora- 
tories give results that are well-nigh as ac- 
curate and reliable as those yielded by the 
longer and more laborious methods, and it 
must not be forgotten that, although we 
have placed two hours as the time char- 
acterizing a rapid method, a number of the 
results given above were obtained by the 
use of methods which give a single de- 
termination in forty-five minutes, and en- 
able one operator to make twenty phos- 
phorus determinations in a day. We are 
free to say we do not believe such a show- 
ing would have been possible five years 
ago. 

But these results still leave something to 
be desired. The discrepancy between the 
highest and the lowest result is still too 
great. It is, perhaps, a little hazardous to 
place limits, but we do not think the chem- 
ists of the country should be satisfied until 
they are in possession of a method or 
methods which are so carefully worked 
out and so well described that in the hands 
of different chemists of fair ability and 
experience results will be obtained by all, 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8S. Vou. V. No. 111.. 


when working on the same steel, that will 
not differ from each other more than 0.003 
per cent. The Sub-Committee on Methods of 
the International Committee on Standards. 
for the Analysis of Iron and Steel, before re- 
ferred to, have had in hand, now for some 
two years, studies on a rapid and accurate 
method for the determination of phospho- 
rus in steel. It has been the hope of the 
Sub-Committee that the ideal above given 
would be attainable by this method. In 
reality, the work of the Sub-Committee has. 
embraced an examination of almost every 
chemical point involved, taking very little, 
if anything, for granted, and checking and 
proving every step. The work is not yet 
quite ready for publication, one or two 
points remaining which are not entirely 
settled, and it has been deemed advisable to 
withhold the method until these are com- 
pletely cleared up. 

Some years ago, with the publication* of 
what is commonly known as Ford’s method, 
the determination of manganese took a de- 
cided step forward, at least in this country, 
so far as speed is concerned. Previous to- 
that time the long and laborious acetate 
method, which involved the separation of 
the iron from the manganese as basic ace- 
tate and subsequent precipitation of the’ 
manganese by means of bromine or as py- 
rophosphate, had held full sway. Ford’s. 
contribution consisted, as is well known, in 
separating the manganese from hot nitric 
acid solution of the iron or steel, by means- 
of potassium chlorate, and Williams} added 
the modification, now in common use, of 
determining the separated oxide of manga- 
nese, by its action on a standard solution 
of ferrous sulphate or oxalic acid. This. 
method, as now worked in many laborato- 
ries, gives a single result in forty minutes. 
and two in an hour, and enables one opera- 
tor to turn out twenty to twenty-five deter- 


* Trans. Am. Inst. Mining Eng., 9, 397. 
t Trans. Am. Inst. Mining Eng., 10, 100. 


FEBRUARY 12, 1897. ] 


minations ina day. The accuracy of this 
method has been questioned. We are not 
aware of any recent symposium on manga- 
nese where different chemists using differ- 
ent methods have worked on the same 
steels. In our hands this method gives re- 
sults closely agreeing with check work done 
by the more laborious and generally ac- 
cepted accurate methods, provided the sam- 
ple contains not more than three-fourths of 
a per cent. On samples containing over 
one per cent. of manganese the results are 
apt to be low, owing probably to the fact 
that the manganese does not separate from 
the nitric acid solution as manganese diox- 
ide, but as some other oxide whose compo- 
sition is not positively known. In the 
calculation it is customary to regard the 
separated oxide as manganese dioxide, and 
this leads to perceptible error on large 
amounts. Producers and consumers rarely 
contend much over manganese in steel, and 
methods for its determination have, perhaps, 
not received, on that account, all the atten- 
tion they deserve. There is evident need 
of more work on this subject. 

The methods for the determination of 
silicon can hardly be regarded as in a per- 
fectly satisfactory condition. If evapora- 
tion to dryness, to render silica insoluble, is 
employed, the time required is considerable. 
If dehydration by means of sulphuric acid 
and heat, as suggested by Drown,* is em- 
ployed, there are difficulties which interfere 
somewhat with accuracy. There seems 
little doubt but that in skilled hands, with 
sufficient care taken in the manipulation, 
a couple of determinations may be made on 
the same sample, using Drown’s method, 
that will agree closely with each other and 
with results given by the longer and more 
laborious methods. On the other hand,where 
one operator is making a number of deter- 
minations at the same time there is much 
danger of error due either to failure to dehy- 

* Trans. Am, Inst. Min. Eng.,.7, 346. 


SCIENCE. 


249 


drate sufficiently or to over-heating resulting 
in the formation of insoluble iron salts. Our 
experience indicates that the margin between 
these two extremes is not very wide, and 
that it is fully as frequent to have duplicates 
on the same sample disagree as to agree. 
Our observations point to the view that the 
difficulty of insufficient dehydration is due 
to the separation of iron salts as the sul- 
phuric acid concentrates. These salts en- 
close gelatinous silica and prevent the 
dehydrating acid from getting at it. Unless 
great pains are taken, therefore, to secure 
this contact by sufficient stirring, the results 
will be low. If, by some modification, the 
iron salts could be kept in solution until 
the silica is rendered quite insoluble it 
would apparently be a decided step forward 
with this method. It may not be amiss 
here to call attention to the fact first 
noticed in the laboratory of the Pennsylva- 
nia Railroad Company,* that after the de- 
hydration and subsequent dilution are 
finished, if an interval of a few hours is 
allowed to elapse before filtration, the silica 
will redissolve and the results be low. Ap- 
parently, as we are able to work the method, 
the silica is not completely dehydrated, but 
only sufficiently so that, if filtered at once, 
fairly accurate results will be obtained. 

It is difficult to say anything positive 
about the speed and output of Drown’s 
method. It is probably safe to say that a 
couple of determinations could be made in 
an hour and a half, but, on account of the 
difficulty mentioned above, the method does. 
not lend itself well to working on a large 
number of samples at once, and conse- 
quently a large daily output is somewhat 
interfered with. : 

It must also be said of the methods for 
the determination of sulphur in iron and 


* Address to the members of the Chemical Section 
of the Engineers’ Society, at Pittsburg, September 
27, 1892, by C. B. Dudley, on ‘ Discrepancy in Chem- 
ical Work by Different Workers.’ 


250 


steel that those most in use are hardly as 
satisfactory as could be desired. The stud- 
ies of Phillips* conclusively show that when 
using the evolution method the whole of 
the sulphur content is not given off in such 
a form as to be retained by the usual means 
employed to catch the gas. It seems not 
too much not to say that it is hazardous to 
use the evolution method on pig or cast 
iron, even when fusion of the residue is em- 
ployed. 

The formation of unoxidizable gases con- 
taining sulphur in the application of the 
evolution method to steel has not, so far as 
our knowledge goes, yet been demonstrated, 
and accordingly the evolution method is 
still used largely on steels. But on pig and 
cast irons the oxidation method seems the 
only one applicable, and some recent studies 
of Blair, described in a paper at this 
meeting, indicate that on certain pig irons 
all the sulphur is not given even by this 
method, unless the graphitic residue is 
fused with sodium carbonate and niter. 
Both methods are somewhat slow, and there 
is need of further study. If some means 
could be found by which barium sulphate 
could be readily and accurately converted 
into sulphide, so that a volumetric method 
could be applied to this sulphide, it would 
be a decided step forward. The necessity 
in accurate work for purifying barium sul- 
phate, as first obtained from almost any 
solution, by fusion and reprecipitation, adds 
quite considerably to the time required. 
With steels and two sets of evolution ap- 
paratus, using bromine for oxidation, two 
determinations may be made in two hours. 
With four sets of evolution apparatus one 
operator can make twelve determinations in 
a day. In these cases purification by fusion 
is not attempted. By the oxidation method 
on pig or cast iron two determinations re- 
quire about five hours, while one operator, 

* The Journal of the American Chemical Society, 17, 
891. 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 111. 


with a supply of borings ahead and suffi- 
cient appliances, can get from ten to twelve 
results in a day. With this output purifi- 
cation by fusion is not attempted. If this 
is done, the time for a pair of determina- 
tions must be extended an hour and a half, 
and the daily output would be cut down at 
least a third. 

From what has preceded in this hasty 
and necessarily imperfect survey of a por- 
tion only of the analytical methods in use 
in the iron and steel industry, it is clearly 
evident that there still remains an enor- 
mous amount of work to be done in connec- 
tion with methods. We have touched upon 
only five of the fifteen or twenty constit- 
uents occurring in and affecting the quality 
of iron and steel, and find the methods for 
determining even these more or less imper- 
fect and needing more work. What will 
be our condition as chemists if, as seems 
probable, nickel, chromium, aluminum, 
tungsten, and the gases, oxygen, hydrogen 
and nitrogen, either free or combined, with- 
in the next few years, come into promi- 
nence as constituents of iron and steel, and 
are made elements in important commercial 
contracts? Still further thus far our meth- 
ods are concerned almost entirely with the 
total content of the various constituents 
we are determining. We know very little 
about the compounds of the various con- 
stituents occurring in iron and steel, with 
the metal or with each other. Is the 
phosphorus present as phosphide or phos- 
phate, or both? How besides as sulphide 
does the sulphur occur? Do the various 
carbides which are revealed by the micro- 
scope, and which are believed to be so 
closely dependent on the heat treatment 
which steel receives, and which are so inti- 
mately related to the value of the metal, 
differ from each other in carbon content, or 
only in crystalline form ? Who will be the 
first to isolate any of these carbides? Who 
will first give us a practicable, accurate and 


FEBRUARY 12, 1897.] 


sufficiently rapid method for determining 
oxides in steel? Who will first completely 
investigate the relation between the chemis- 
try and the chilling properties of cast iron ? 
And who will first give us a study on the 
form in which nitrogen occurs in this metal, 
and a sufficiently rapid and accurate method 
for its determination? Truly the harvest 
of chemical work before us in connection 
with iron and steel is bounteous. Will 
the laborers be forthcoming to gather the 


harvest ? 
C. B. DuDLEY. 
ALTOONA, PA. 


TORONTO MEETING OF THE BRITISH ASSO- 
CIATION. 

TuE local preparations for the meeting of 
the British Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science to be held this year in 
Toronto, commencing Wednesday, August 
18th, have now after a year’s work on the 
part of the various local committees reached 
a very advanced stage. The finance com- 
mittee have been promised $27,500 to meet 
the expenses of the occasion. The sectional 
meetings are to take place in the buildings 
of the University of Toronto, which are 
centrally situated and which may be 
reached from all points of the city by means 
of the electric car system. As the Univer- 
sity grounds are adjacent to the Queen’s 
park and in the residential portion of the 
city, this arrangement will thus be a most 
agreeable one for the visitors. The Presi- 
dential addresses and the evening lectures 
will be delivered in Massey Hall, which has 
been recently erected and is capable of 
holding about four thousand auditors. . 

Perhaps the most difficult of all the 
arrangements have been those pertaining 
to the matter of steamship and railway 
rates, but in these also very satisfactory 
progress may be reported. The British 
visitors will have reduced rates by the 
Canadian lines from Liverpool. The Ca- 


SCIENCE. 


251 


nadian railways have made very important 
reductions to members of the Association 
who will travel in Canada between July 
ist and September 30th. The Canadian 
Pacific Railway will give special rates also 
to members who wish to visit the North- 
west, British Columbia and the Pacific 
coast. A large number of special excur- 
sions have been organized, some of them 
to take place during the meeting, others 
immediately after its close. They will last 
from two days to three weeks, and as the 
weather will be cool, no doubt these trips 
will be exceedingly pleasant for the mem- 
bers. 

The retiring President is Lord Lister, 
President of the Royal Society. The Presi- 
dent-elect is Sir John Eyans, K. C. B., 
Treasurer of the Royal Society, who will 
deliver the Presidential address on the 
evening of the opening day. The Council 
of the Association have chosen Presidents 
for the majority of the Sections. Those 
already appointed are: Mathematics and 
Physics, Professor A. R. Forsyth, M. A. 
D. Se., F. R. S.; Chemistry, Professor Wil- 
liam Ramsay, Ph. D., F. R.S.; Geology, G. 
M. Dawson, LL. D., F. R. S.; Zoology, 
Professor Louis C. Miall, F. L. 8., F. B.S.; 
Economic Science and Statistics, Professor 
E. C. K. Gonner, M. A., F. S. §8.; Anthro- 
pology, Professor Sir William Turner, 
LL. D., D. C. L., F. BR. §8.; Physiology, 
Professor Michael Foster, LL. D., Sec. 
R. §.; Botany, Professor H. Marshall 
Ward, D. Sc., F. R. 8. Professor James 
Dewar, LL. D., F. R. S., and Mr. J. Milne, 
F. R. S. (late professor in the Imperial 
University of Tokyo) have been appointed 
to deliver the evening lectures. 

Amongst those who have promised to at- 
tend are Lord Kelvin, Lord Lister, Sir 
Henry Roscoe, F. R.S.; Sir Robert Ball, 
Professors Viriamu Jones, LL. D., F. R. 8.; 
G. Carey Foster, F. R.S.; J. 8. Burdon- 
Sanderson, LL. D., F. R.S.; A. W. Ricker, 


252 


Sec. R. S., J. R. Green, F. R. S.; F. O. 
Bower, F. R.8.; A. C. Haddon, D. Sc., C.; 
S. Sherrington, F. R. S.; A. H. Miers, 
F. R. 8.; W. A. Herdman, F. R.5S.; S. P. 
Thompson, F. R. S.;S. H. Vines, F. R.S.; 
A. G. Vernon Harcourt, F. R. §.; C. Le- 
Neve Foster, F. R. 8.; Mr. J. Scott Keltie, 
W. H. Preece, F. R. S.; W} H. Gaskell, 
F. R.S. a 

It is the intention of the Local Secre- 
taries to issue invitations to a large number 
of representative foreign men of science to 
attend the meeting, and it is hoped that a 
number of these will accept. The presence 
of foreign scientific men has been a special 
feature of many of the meetings in recent 
years, and this has greatly increased the in- 
terest of the members and public in the As- 
sociation, while it has given the latter a 
semi-international character. The Local 
Committee desire that the Toronto meeting 
shall be largely an international one, and 
they have welcomed the provision made by 
the Council of the Association whereby the 
fellows and the members of the American 
Association are given for 1897 the same 
standing as old members of the British As- 
sociation, that is, they will on joining be 
required to pay $5 only, instead of $10, the 
amount exacted for new members. The 
officers of the American Association also 
have been made Honorary Members of the 
British Association. The presence of these 
and the attendence of from forty to fifty 
Continental (European) men of science will 
doubtless do much to realize the hopes of 
those who advocate the formation of an 
International Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science. In any case it will serve 
to widen the sympathies of the scientific 
men of the British Empire and of the 
Anglo-Saxon Republic. The local commit- 
tee on the other hand will endeavor to 
make the meeting an extremely pleasant 
one for all the visitors. 

The provisional program of the daily 


SCIENCK. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 111. 


agenda of the meeting will be published in 
SCIENCE in a few weeks. 
A. B. Macatium. 


GEOLOGY AT THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 

Tuer address of the President, Mr. J. E. 
Marr, was an eloquent and powerful appeal 
for the systematic pursuit of minute strati- 
graphical investigation. While petrology 
may be largely claimed by the Germans, 
paleontology by the French, and physical 
geology by the Americans, detailed stra- 
tigraphy has been much followed in Britain 
from the days of William Smith to the 
time of its present exponents, amongst 
whom we reckon Lapworth, Buckman, 
and, he might have added, himself. 

Apart from the accurate unravelling of 
physical structure and the consequent cor- 
rect knowledge of earth history which thus 
becomes possible, the President referred to 
a number of almost unforeseen results, 
which could only have been obtained when 
the succession of strata was studied in 
minute detail and the minor divisions of 
the rocks laid down on maps of sufficient 
scale. The detection of small faults and 
their relation to physical features and to 
denudation, the identity of ancient rocks 
and modern deposits, the history of coral 
reefs, the origin of coal seams, the geog- 
raphy of former periods, the distribution of 
ancient climates, the direction and nature 
of earth movement and its effect on the 
position and structure* of igneous rocks, 
even the history of the crystalline schists 
—all these branches had received or 
might be expected to receive help from 
this line of enquiry. Dealing with the 
more immediate bearing of stratigraphical 
research on earth history and evolution 
and the phylogeny of organisms, he referred 
especially to the work of Barrande, Wal- 
cott, and Matthew on trilobites, of Lap- 
worth on _ graptolities, of Beecher on 


FEBRUARY 12, 1897]. 


brachiopods, and of Jackson on echinids 
and lamellibranchs. In conclusion he ap- 
pealed for a consideration of evolutionary 
geology against both catastrophism and 
uniformitarianism. 

Sir W. Dawson’s paper on ‘ Pre-Cambrian 
Fossils,’ was of so much interest that we 
give his own abstract in full; the paper 
was illustrated by a very beautiful series of 
lantern slides. 

_ The author stated that it was his object 
merely to introduce the specimens he pro- 
posed to exhibit, by a few remarks ren- 
dered necessary by the present confusion in 
the classification of pre-Cambrian rocks. 
He would take those of Canada and New- 
foundland as at present best known, and 
locally connected with the specimens in 
‘question. 

He referred first to the ‘ Olenellus Zone,’ 
and its equivalent in New Brunswick, the 
‘Protolenus Fauna’ of Matthew, as at 
present constituting the base of the Cam- 
brian and terminating downward in barren 
sandstone. This Lower Cambrian had in 
North America, according to Walcott, af- 
forded 165 species, including all the leading 
types of the marine invertebrates. 

Below the Olenellus Zone, Matthew had 
found in New Brunswick a thick series of 
red and greenish slates, with conglomerate 
atthe base. It has afforded no Trilobites, 
but contains a few fossils referable with 
some doubt to Worms, Mollusks, Ostracods, 
Brachiopods, Cytideans and Protozoa. Itis 
regarded as equivalent to the Signal Hill 
and Random Sound Series of Murray and 
Howley in Newfoundland, and to the 
Kewenian, and the Chuar and Colorado 
Canyon Series of Walcott inthe West. The 
latter contains laminated forms apparently 
similar to Cryptozoon of the Cambrian and 
Archeozoon of the Upper Laurentian. 

The Htcheminian rests unconformably on 
the Huronian, a system for the most part 
of coarse clastic rocks with some igneous 


SCIENCE. 


253 


beds, but including slates, iron ores and 
limestones, which contain worm-burrows, 
sponge-spicules, and laminated forms com- 
parable with Cryptozoon and Eozoon. The 
Huronian, first defined by Logan and Mur- 
ray in the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron, 
has been recognized in many other locali- 
ties, both in the west and east of Canada 
and the United States; but has been desig- 
nated by many other local names, and has 
been by some writers included, with the 
Etcheminian and sometimes with part of 
the Laurentian, in the scarcely defined 
‘Algonkian’ group of the United States 
Geological Survey. 

Below the Huronian is the Upper Lau- 
rentian or Grenville system, consisting of 
gneisses and schists (some of which, as 
Adams has shown, have the chemical com- 


position of Paleozoic slates), along with 


iron ore, graphite and apatite, and great 
bands of limestone, the whole evidently 
representing a long period of marine depo- 
sition, in an ocean whose bed was broken 


up and in part elevated before the produc- 


tion of the littoral clastics of the Huronian 
age. Itis in one of the limestones of this 
system that, along with other possible fos- 
sils, the forms known as EHozoon Canadense 
have been found. The author did not pro- 
pose to describe these remains, but merely 
to exhibit some microphotographs and slices 
illustrating their structure, referring to 


previous publications for details as to their 


characters and mode of occurrence. 

Below the Grenyillian is the great thick- 
ness of Orthoclase gneiss of various tex- 
tures, and alternating with bands of horn- 
blende schist, constituting the Ottawa gneiss 
or Lower Laurentian of the Geological Sur- 
vey. No limestones or indications of fossil 
remains have yet been found in this funda- 
mental gneiss, which may be a truly primi- 
tive rock produced by aqueo-igneous or 
‘erenitic’ action, before the commencement 
of regular sedimentation. 


254 


The author proposed, with Matthew, to 
regard the Etcheminian series and its equiv- 
alents as Pre-Cambrian, but still Paleo- 
zoic; and, as suggested by himself many 
years ago, to classify the Huronian and 
Grenvillian as Eozoic, leaving the term Arch- 
zean to be applied to the Lower Laurentian 
gneiss, until it also shall have afforded 
some indications of the presence of life. 

He insisted on the duty of paleontolo- 
gists to give more attention to the Pre- 
Cambrian rocks, in the hope of discovering 
connecting links with the Cambrian, and 
of finding the oceanic members of the 
Huronian, and less metamorphosed equiva- 
lents of the Upper Laurentian, and so of 
reaching backward to the actual beginning 
of life on our planet, should this prove to 
be attainable. 

An extremely interesting paper by Dr. 
Matthew dealing with a kindred subject 
and entitled ‘Some Features of the early 
Cambrian Faunas.’ 

The paper referred chiefly to the larval 
features of the early Cambrian Trilobites, 
because in them we may look for points of 
structure which will appear in the adult 
condition of their predecessors. But allu- 
sion was also made to the early Cambrian 
Brachiopoda and Ostracoda. 

Trilobites.—Except in Olenellus and its al- 
lies the larval forms of the earliest trilobites 
are little known, but in those of the Para- 
doxides beds a number of series of the 
larval forms are known belonging to differ- 
ent genera, so that in these we have fuller 
data for comparison. 

Cambrian time has been called the ‘ Age 
of Trilobites,’ and their abundance and va- 
riety is truly remarkable. The flexibility 
of the type is indicated by the numerous 
genera that appeared successively in that 
early age. They thus become valuable in 
marking the divisions of the Cambrian rocks 
as the vertebrates do those of the Tertiary. 

The utility of their remains is manifest in 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 111. 


the ease and certainty with which different 
parts of the Cambrian System can be recog- 
nized in all the regions around the Atlantic 
Ocean, where rocks of this age have been 
found. This being the case, it may be prof- 
itable to examine the forms of the earliest 
Cambrian trilobites and note how they com- 
pare with the larve of those of the Para- 
dowxides beds. The law of development would 
lead us to expect that in the pre-Paradoxides 
faunas of the Cambrian certain features of 
the larval forms of the trilobites of the Par- 
adoxides beds should appear as permanent 
adult features in their predecessors. Letus 
see if such is the case. 

In 1892 Dr. J. Bergeron summed up the 
evidence on this point, derivable from the 
trilobites of the Paradoxides and Olenellus 
faunas in his article ‘Is the Primordial the 
most Ancient Fauna ?’* He used the studies 
of Barrande, Walcott, Ford and others for 
this purpose, and his conclusion was that 
there must have been a more ancient fauna. 

Discoveries of other faunas beside that of 
Olenellus have been made since Bergeron 
wrote upon this subject, and we may now 
place his theory against some additional 
facts which bear upon it. 

To make the application clearer some of 
the characteristics of the earliest larval 
stages of the trilobites of the Paradowides 
beds as shown in the young of Paradozides, 
Piychoparia, Conocoryphe, Microdiscus and Ag- 
nostus may be presented. Among them are 
the following: 

1. Predominance of the cephalic over the 
caudal shield. 

2. A long, narrow glabella, with nearly 
parallel sides. In these early moults the 
posterior lobes of the axial rachis (which 
includes the glabella) are short and weak 
compared with the anterior and especially 
the first.+ 

* Revue generale des sciences, Paris, 1892. 


+ Paradoxides is apparently an exception to this 
rule, but we do not know its earliest stages. 


FEBRARUY 12, 1897.] 


3. The eyes are absent; when they first 
appear they are near the lateral margin, 
and in several genera are elongated. 

4. There are no movable cheeks; when 
these first appear they are narrow and mar- 
ginal. 

5. There is no thorax; this region begins 
with one segment, and in some genera never 
exceeds the number of 2 or 4. The pleure 
at first are short. 

6. The pygidium at first is quite short 
and of one segment. 

Three local faunas, al] older than Para- 
doxides, have been made known since Ber- 
geron wrote his paper referred to above. 
They all show more or less the increasing 
prevalence of larval features in the trilo- 
bites as we go back in time. J.C. Moberg 
has described a number of species from 
Sweden (including two species of Olenellus) 
in which some of the above larval charac- 
ters are shown. 

J. F. Pompeckz has just described a pre- 
Paradoxides fauna from Bohemia, in which 
are a few trilobites that carry larval char- 
acters. Thus his Péychoparia is referred to 
the subgenus Conocephalites, probably be- 
eause it has a long eye-lobe. It is a primi- 
tive form with short pleure, if we may 
judge from the short posterior extension of 
the dorsal suture. His Solenopleura also 
differs from that genus in its long eye-lobe 
and long glabella, but these also are larval 
features.* Another species of Solenopleura, 
however, cited by Pompeckz has shorter 
eye-lobes. 

It is the Protolenus fauna of the St. John’s 
group (Cambrian), however, which shows 
most decidedly larval traits in its adult 
trilobites. 

Among these trilobites all (so far as their 
remains show it) have prolonged eye-lobes, 
a peculiarity which marks the early Olen- 

*In the larval forms of Ptychoparia and Soleno- 


pleura of the Paradoxides beds, however, the eye-lobe 
is short. 


SCIENCE. 


205 


ide. Many of them have longitudinal gla- 
belle, also a larval character. Many havea 
short posterior extension of the dorsal su- 
ture, indicating the primitive feature of 
short pleuree. Many have small and weak 
pygidia; this is inferred from the rarity of 
this part of the organism in the collections 
preserved. 

Protolenus (typical), which has a general 
resemblance to Paradozxides, differs from it 
in the absence of a clavate glabella, and 
the small anterior lobe of this part of the 
head-shield, but these are characters found 
in the larval stages of Paradoxides. 

A genus of this fauna, almost as common 
as Protolenus, is Ellipsocephalus; this genus 
also abounds with Protaspian peculiarities. 

Lastly, we may refer to the genus Mic- 
macca, which has the following larval fea- 
tures, longitudinal glabella, long eye-lobe 
and short posterior extension of the dorsal 
suture. If Zacanthoides of the Middle Cam- 
brian were shorn of the long posterior ex- 
tension of this suture and its long pleure 
it would not differ greatly from Miemacca. 

In the Olenellus fauna also are genera, 
such as Olenellus, Protypus, Avalonia and 
Olenelloides, which retain marked larval 
characters. 

Brachiopoda.—If we turn our attention to 
the Brachiopoda we note that they show a 
special development in the early Cambrian 
different from that of the Paradoxides beds 
and the later members of the Cambrian 
System. 

The most notable feature is the large 
percentage of Obolide (including Siphono- 
treta). The older Cambrian holds, in com- 
mon with the Paradoxides beds, the small 
shells of Acrothele, Acrotreta and Linnars- 
sonia; but it also has a series of larger 
forms peculiar to it. Such are Obolus Bots- 
fordia, Trematobolus and Stphonotreta of the 
Protolenus fauna, and Schizambon and Mic- 
witzia of the Olenellus fauna. This great 
development of oboloid shells is not re- 


256 


peated in most countries until Ordovician 
time. 

Not only are these old Cambrian faunas 
remarkable for the peculiar types of 
Brachiopods which they possess, but they 
are also remarkable for those they lack. A 
Lingula has not been found, though Lin- 
gulella is a common genus. 

The larval growths of Ordovician and 
Silurian Lingule carry us back to a form 
which is oboloid.. Thus in L. quadrata, L. 
Howley, ete., the shell is first circular as in 
Obolus, then oval as in L. quebecensis, etc., 
and finally takes on the sub-quadrate form 
of the adult shell. But there is a more 
elementary form of the Brachiopod shell 
than the circular shell of Obolus; this is 
seen in Paterina and the young shell of 
Botsfordia, which is nearly semicircular. 
Both these shells come from beds which are 
older than Paradoxides. 

Ostracoda.—The Ostracoda also gives us 
definite forms peculiar to the early Cam- 
brian beds. Such are the types represented 
in Beyrichonia and Hipparicharion ; such al- 
so are those with flexible tests represented 
by Aluta. Other Ostracods are present in 
more yaried forms than in the Paradozides 
beds. 

The distinctive features of the animals 
of the earliest Cambrian faunas may be 
summed up as follows: 

1. The trilobites retain larval character- 
istics to an unusual degree. 

2. The Brachiopods have a large per- 
centage of oboloids. 

3. The Ostracoda are plentiful and varied 
and present some peculiar types. 

Another paper which will probably be of 
considerable interest in America is Dr. H. 
J. Johnston-Lavis’ criticism on the work of 
Messrs. Weed and Pirsson on the High- 
wood Mountains. These writers describe 
Square Butte as a laccolite formed in Creta- 
ceous sandstones and composed of an outer 
and upper layer of a basic rock that they 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 111. 


name shonkinite, with a core of syenite. The 
shonkinite shows a laminated structure 
parallel to the roof, as was likewise the case 
with the upper part of the syenite. They 
consider this variation in the rock to show 
differentiation by diffusion and separation 
of the two magmas and that the lamination 
was due to the isotherms in the cooling 
mass. Dr. Johnston-Lavis showed that 
these interpretations were not in accord 
with the facts; if such differentiation had 
occurred, the line of junction of the two. 
rocks should be roughly horizontal and not 
parallel to the roof, and he suggested that. 
the lamination was due to shearing planes. 
His view was that the shonkinite had been 
delayed in the volcanic conduit and had 
been basified by osmotic action between the: 
paste and the limestone or other basic rock- 
walls. This first filled the laccolite and was. 
followed by the less basic or unaltered syen- 
ite from below. The white, dyke-like mass 
was an insuperable difficulty to the views of 
Messrs. Weed and Pirsson and only expli- 
cable by the theory of the present author. 

Sir Archibald Geikie read a very inter- 
esting paper in which he recognized that: 
some rocks previously described as volcanic: 
agglomerates in Anglesey were in reality 
crush rocks, but a great deal of volcanic 
material had contributed to their original 
formation. Mr. Greenly also attributed 
the quartzite lenticles of the same island 
to a similar action upon beds of grit and. 
sandstone. In a second paper he described 
the occurrence of Sillimanite-Gneisses in 
Anglesey. The curious mass of ancient. 
rocks which is half submerged under the 
Trias of eastern England, at Charnwood. 
Forest, was described in some detail by 
Mr. Watts, who attributed to it a Pre-Cam- 
brian age. He further pointed out that a 
landscape at least as old as the Trias was. 
here being gradually exposed to-day by the 
slow removal of the New Red Sandstone 
in which it was embeded. 


FEBRUARY 12, 1897. ] 


A number of papers on subjects of local 
interest were read by Mr. Morton, Mr. 
Mellard Reade, Mr. Beasley and others, on 
the Trias and its footprints, the boulder 
clays, submerged forests, and on the ad- 
vance of the sea upon the coast. Excur- 
sions were organized to most of the places 
mentioned in these papers and a long ex- 
eursion to the Isle of Man conducted by 
Mr. Lamplugh and Prof. Boyd Dawkins, 
the ‘latter of whom read a paper on the 
geology of the Island in which he described 
its Ordovician, Carboniferous, Permian, 
Triassic and Pleistocene deposits, together 
with the igneous rocks. 

Messrs. Howard and Small made a com- 
munication on the nodular and felsites and 
other igneous rocks of Skomer Island,which 
they had determined to be interbedded 
lavas, associated with tuffs of Bala or 
Llandovery age. Mr. Garwood presented 
a report on the progress of his work on 
the zoning of the Lower Carboniferous 
rocks by means of their fossils, in which he 
showed that considerable progress had 
been made, but the inquiry was hampered 
by the variable character of what are at 
present regarded as species in the brachio- 
pods and other organisms. 

Mr. Wethered gave an illustrated lec- 
ture on the organisms characteristic of the 
chief limestones in our scale, and dwelt 
much on the evidence which tended to 
prove that oolitic structure was of organic 
origin. 

Prof. Hull proposed a new theory to 
account for the glacial period. If the West 
Indian Islands were much upheaved at that 
period, as appears from Spencer’s observa- 
tions to have been the case, the Gulf 
Stream would no longer accumulate in the 
Gulf of Mexico and would in consequence 
reach the North Atlantic about ten degrees 
colder than it is at present. The amount 
of high land in the northern hemisphere at 
this time would also bea contributing cause. 


SCIENCE. 


257 


Mr. Clement Reid gave an account of his 
excavations at the classic locality of Hoxne, 
in Suffolk, directed towards ascertaining the 
age of the Paleolithic implements discov- 
ered there. Under the top layer, which has 
yielded the implements, comes a series of 
lacustrine deposits, including a bed of lig- 
nite; these strata rest in a hollow denuded 
out of the boulder-clay, which in turn rests 
on sands and gravels. The estuarine beds 
indicate that the glacial climate of the 
boulder-clay was succeeded by a temperate 
climate and that by a second arctic climate 
before the implement-bearing beds were 
laid down. These determinations depend 
on the evidence derived from the relics of 
fossil plants, mostly seeds, found in the 
estuarine beds. 

Mr. Kendall read a paper on the changes 
which many Yorkshire rivers had under- 
gone in their courses since the glacial pe- 
riod. Both the Wharfe and the Nidd have 
been diverted from their old channels,which 
are still traceable, and now flow through 
gorges in the lower part of their courses. 
Similarly the Swale and the Wishe were 
once tributary to the Tees, though they 
now drain into the Derwent, which itself 
flows west from Scarborough, instead of 
east and straight to the sea. A vast amount 
of water has thus been brought to the 
Humber which did not originally belong to 
it. The usual discussions as to the origin 
of various glacial deposits between the ad- 
vocates of marine action and those of land- 
ice work were rife on the day devoted to 
Pleistocene subjects, the battle ground 
shifting from the Isle of Man to the Vale 
of Clwyd and back again to Ayrshire and 
Kintyre. 

Mr. Cornish gave the results of his work 
with the sand-blast and on ripple marks, in 
which he endeavored to distinguish be- 
tween the forms caused by waves from 
those due to streams and wind. Prof. 
Milne described his seismographic work in 


258 


the Isle of Wight, where earth-tremors ap- 
pear to be of constant occurrence, and 
stated that he had been able to feel 
certain tremors at a distance of several 
thousands of miles. Indeed, he went fur- 
ther and, calculating that one shock had 
reached his instruments from a distance of 
not less than 6,000 miles, he stated the ex- 
treme probability that a shock had occurred 
in Japan on August 31st, a prediction 
which was verified at the close of the meet- 
ing. 

The Coral Reef Committee had to an- 
nounce that so far as the boring at Funa- 
futi went it was practically a failure, but 
that the results brought back by the scien- 
tifie officers of the ship and by the three 
naturalists engaged in the investigation, 
were of very great importance from the 
points of view of anthropology, zoology, 
botany, geology and hydrography. The Ge- 
ological Photographs Committee reported 
that a large part of Britain was now pho- 
tographically registered in the collection of 
1,400 prints which had been amassed, but 
there were many areas ill-represented and 
others almost as yet untouched. In con- 
clusion, a discovery by Prof. Busz must not 
be omitted. Amongst some remarkable 
rocks produced by contact metamorphism 
round the Dartmoor granite mass he had 
found and isolated corundum in a felsite 
which had enclosed and metamorphosed a 


fragment of slate. 
W. W. Warts. 


LONDON. 


RELATIONS OF TARSIUS TO THE LEMURS 
AND APES, 

THE systematic position of the Lemu- 
roidea has for years puzzled the most emi- 
nent naturalists. The French zoologists, 
including Alphonse Milne-Edwards, Gervais 
and Filhol,consider the Lemurs as occupying 
a position entirely apart from the Apes, and 
moreover some of these observers find in 
the anatomy of the soft parts of the Lemurs 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 111. 


close resemblances structurally to the same 
parts in the Ungulates. The conclusions 
of Filhol in regard to the position of the 
fossil Lemurs have not been generally ac- 
cepted by paleontologists, and there is no 
doubt that certain characters of the denti- 
tion of Adapis which are like those of the 
perissodactyle Ungulates must be consid- 
ered as cases of parallelism. 

Years ago Mivart ably contended for the 
close affinity between the Apes and Lemurs, 
and Cope saw in Anaptomorphus the most 
simian lemur yet discovered. Schlosser, on 
paleontological grounds, derives the An- 
thropoids and Lemuroids from the same 
stem form. 

Up to the present time the genus Tarsius 
has been considered to be a member of the 
Lemuroidea, but the recent investigations 
of Hubrecht on the placentation of Tarsius 
go to show that this genus has the same 
type of placenta as in the Apes. Accord- 
ingly Hubrecht would transfer Tarsius from 
the Lemuroid to the Anthropoid division 
of the Primates. In this removal of 
Tarsius to the Anthropoids, he proposes to 
include Anaptomorphus, and if the latter 
genus is placed among the Apes, why not 
place Necrolemur there too, as it has prob- 
ably the same dental formula as Tarsius, 
and the modification of the anterior part of 
the dentition in Necrolemur resembles that 
of Tarsus. 

It appears to me if this change in the 
classification of the Primates takes place 
we shall be little benefited and that it will 
be exceedingly difficult to discover any 
characters of the skeleton by which we can 
separate the Apes from the Lemurs. I hold 
that the summation of the osteological char- 
acters of Tarsius brings this form nearer 
the Lemurs than the Apes, and, moreover, I 
know of only one Anthropoid character in 
the skeleton of Tarsius; this is the partial 
closure inferiorly of the orbital fossa, by a 
lamina of bone extending from the alisphe- 


FEBRUARY 12, 1897.] 


noid to the malar. I admit this character 
occurs in no other known Lemuroid. How- 
ever, in the fossil genera related to Tarsius, 
that is in Anapiomorphus and Necrolemur, 
this sphenoidal lamina in the skull is not 
present. 

In support of the view that Tursius is a 
generalized member of the Lemuroidea, I 
wish to enumerate a number of its most 
important dental and osteological charac- 
ters: the lower incisors and canines are 
normal in form as in the extinct ancestral 
Lemurs, the lachrymal fossa is exposed as 
in the Lemurs, the fourth digit of the 
pes is longer than the third, the second 
digit of the pes is provided with a claw, 
and, lastly, the caleaneum and navicular are 
elongated as in Galago and Cheirogaleus. 
These characters are all those of the true 
Lemurs, and I believe they are essential. 
In regard to the presence of a claw on the 
second digit of the pes, that may be consid- 
ered a primitive character, as in my opinion 
the Lemurs have been derived from an un- 
guiculate form, and not from an ungulate 
type ( Condylarthra). 

I do not see that the characters of the 
dentition of Tarsius bear directly on the 
question as to its close relationship with 
the Apes. The upper molars of Tarsius 
are of the primitive tritubercular type, and 
the lower are tuberculo-sectorial. These 
types of teeth would be the primitive ones 
from which those of both the Apes and Le- 
murs were derived. 

The form of the incisors and canines in 
Anaptomorphus is not known, but from the 
resemblance of the skull of Anaptomorphus 
to that of Necrolemur and Tarsius one might 
conclude that the anterior part of the denti- 
tion would be like that of Yarsius. In 
Anaptomorphus homunculus, as shown by Os- 
born and Wortman, there are three lower 
premolars, but in A. aemulus there are said 
to be only two. In other words, the last- 
named species is supposed to have the true 


SCIENCE. 


2959 


simian dental formula, namely : I,, C,, Pm,, 
M,. I believe, however, that we may in- 
terpret the arrangement of the teeth in 
Anaptomorphus aemulus differently, and in 
that case the lower dental formula would 
read@ I,, C,, Pm,, M,, or the same as in 
Tarsius. 

The structure of the skull in Necrolemur, 
Anaptomorphus and Tarsius is very simi- 
lar. In all we have greatly enlarged or- 
bits and huge auditory bulle. In.compar- 
ing the teeth of these genera, we find that 
Anaptomorphus and Tarsius have retained 
the primitive tritubercular structure in 
their true molars, whereas in Necrolemur 
the superior molars are of the quadrituber- 
cular type, and the lower true molars have 
lost the antero-internal cusp. One charac- 
ter of the dentition of Anaptomorphus, as 
shown by Cope, relates this genus more 
closely to the Anthropoids than any other 
known Lemur; this is, that the third upper 
premolar has an internal cusp as in the 
Apes. With the exception of this special 
dental character, Anaptomorphus is a true 
Lemur. 

In Adapis of the Upper Eocene of Europe 
the general structure of the Molars closely 
resembles that of the recent Lemurs, espe- 
cially the genera Lemur and Lepidolemur. 
In Adapis however, the pattern of the last 
lower and upper premolar is nearly like 
that of the true molars; and on account of 
the complex structure of this tooth, Adapis 
has been excluded from the line leading to 
any of the recent Lemurs. This objection 
as to the Adapide being ancestral forms 
can now be removed, as there is a beauti- 
fully preserved skull in the collection of 
the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, from the Phos- 
phorites,which represents anew genus of this 
family, and the last premolar in both jaws of 
this new type is perfectly simple in structure 
and of the same form as in the majority of 
recent Lemurs. This cranium is essentially 
that of a living Lemur, closely allied to 


260 


Hapalemur, but with one important excep- 
tion, namely, the incisors and canines, are 
normal in form, and not proclivous, as in re- 
cent Lemurs. This is exactly what we 
should expect to find in an ancestral Lemur, 
as that peculiar modernization in the form 
of the lower incisors and canines in the 
Lemurs probably occurred at a very late 
geological epoch. In the jaw of Megaladapis, 
of the late Tertiary or Pleistocene epoch of 
Madagascar, the incisors are not preserved, 
but, from the extreme massiveness of the 
jaw symphysis and its upward bend, I 
think further discovery will show that in 
this form the lower anterior teeth were up- 
right in position as in the Eocene Lemurs. 

As already mentioned, the teeth of the 
Old World Adapide closely resemble those 
of the recent Lemuroidea, especially the 
forms included in the subfamily Lemurine. 
The American forms which are supposed 
to be related to Adapis cannot be con- 
sidered as ancestral to any of the existing 
Lemurs, on account of the sexitubercu- 
lar structure of their superior molars. 
The question is: Are these American genera 
monkeys? As before stated, it is very 
probable that the ancestral Lemur had a 
generalized type of dentition in that the in- 
cisors and canines were of the normal form, 
as in the Apes. The Hyopsodontide then can 
hardly be designated as monkeys, simply 
because they have retained, in the shape of 
their anterior teeth, the form common to 
to the ancestors of both monkeys and 
Lemurs. The term Pseudolemurs, which 
Schlosser has proposed to apply to fossil 
Lemurs, with the full number of premo- 
lars, is appropriate especially for the A meri- 
can fossil lemurines. Moreover, this name 
has the advantage of showing that these 
forms are not directly ancestral to the true 
Lemurs, but that they developed parallel 
with the latter. 

Mivart, in discussing the relations of the 
Lemurs to the Ungulates, came to the con- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 111. 


clusion, that merely on account of the simi- 
lar structure of the placenta in these two 
groups, as a result, they cannot be consid- 
ered as closely related. For we know that 
in the order Hdentata there are several well 
marked types of placentz, as the zonary of 
Orycteropus, (2) the diffuse Manis and the 
discoidal deciduate of the Armadillos and 
Sloths. Again, as Balfour remarks, ‘‘ The 
presence of zonary placentz in Hyrax and 
Elephas does not necessarily afford any proof 
of affinity of these types with the Carnivora.”’ 
He further states that the resemblance be- 
tween the metadiscoidal placenta of man 
and of the Cheiroptera, Insectivora and Ro- 
dentia is rather physiological than morpho- 
logical. Balfour considers that, although 
the placenta is capable of being used to some 
extent in classification, it does not warrant 
its being employed except in conjunction 
with other characters. 

In conclusion, from a study of the oste- 
ology of the recent and extinct Lemuroidea, 
I believe that this suborder of the Primates 
is related genetically to the Apes, that 
Tarsius is a true synthetic type, connecting 
the Lemuroids with the Anthropoids, finally 
Tarsius shows that both Apes and Lemurs 
have arisen from a common ancestral form. 

CHARLES EARLE. 

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY. 


THE PRIMARY SEGMENTATION OF THE BRAIN. 

In a recent paper on the ‘Segmentation 
of the Nervous System of Squalus acanthias,’ 
Dr. H. V. Neal of Harvard University, 
entirely sets aside the ‘Metameres,’ or 
‘Neural Segments’ observed by Locy in the 
neural folds, as not having any phylogenetic 
significance whatever. This conclusion is 
particularly interesting when it is taken in- 
to account that Locy claims to have traced 
these ‘“‘ Neural Segments onward in an un- 
broken continuity until they become the 
‘neuromeres’ of other observers. ”’ 

In addition to the above, the chief con- 


FEBRUARY 12, 1897. ] 


elusions arrived at by Neal may be briefly 
summed up as follows: He finds that six 
neuromeres are included in the cephalic 
plate at the time of its closure, but states 
that a seventh neuromere is subsequently 
added to this number, making seven in all 
which enter into the formation of the en- 
cephalon, in which they are distributed as 
follows—the first and second form the fore- 
and mid-brains respectively, the remaining 
five (three to seven inclusive) the hind brain. 

The evidence which he advances as to 
the metameric value of the hind brain 
neuromeres concerns their correspondence 
with somites (Van Wijhe’s somites, 2-6 in- 
elusive), motor nerves and visceral arches. 
This correspondence he finds complete for 
all the hind-brain neuromeres, with the ex- 
ception of the fourth, which however on 
hypothetical grounds he regards as pos- 
sessing a metameric value equivelant to the 
others, and thus concludes “ that these five 
hind-brain neuromeres are good criteria of 
the number of primitive segments in this 
region of the head.” 

The first two neuromeres (I. and II.) he 
regards as morphologically equivalent to 
the hind brain neuromeres, and considers 
that the absence of a motor nerve in the 
first is correlated with the loss of muscu- 
lature of that segment, while the relation 
of a ventral motor root, the oceulomotorius, 
and Van Wijhe’s first somite to the second 
neuromere (mid-brain expansion), justifies 
the opinion that these structures are com- 
ponents of a single metamere only. 

So far as can beseen by the writer, Neal’s 
conclusions add little to our previous knowl- 
edge of the hind-brain neuromeres. One 
fact, however, in connection with his con- 
clusions which is most gratifying, is that 
they confirm, wholly or in part, the observa- 
tions of former investigators, a circum- 
stance which he has apparently overlooked. 

C. F. W. McCrore. 

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY. 


SCIENCE. 


261 


CHARLES E. BENDIRE. 

Masor Cuartes E. Benpire, U. S. A., 
Honorary Curator of the Department of 
Oology in the U. S. Natural Museum, died 
at Jacksonville, Florida, February 4, 1897, 
of Bright’s disease. Weary of confinement 
indoors he went to Florida in hope of find- 
ing a milder climate where he might sit out- 
side to enjoy the fresh air and watch the 
trees and birds—a hope that was not rea- 
lized, for he died five days after leaving 
Washington. 

Major Bendire was born in Hesse Darm- 
stadt, Germany, April 27, 1836. He was a 
relative of Weyprecht and Payer, the Aus- 
trian Arctic explorers who discovered and 
named Franz Josef Land. 

He came to this country in 1852, and in 
June, 1854, enlisted as a private in Com- 
pany D of the Ist Dragoons, U.S. Army. 
During the next 10 years he was promoted 
to Sergeant, and served as Hospital Steward 
in the 4th Cavalry. In 1864 he was trans- 
ferred to the 1st Cavalry and promoted to 
2d, and soon after to Ist Lieutenant. In 
February, 1873, he attained the rank of 
Captain, and in April, 1886, was retired on 
account of an injury to the knee. In Feb- 
ruary, 1890, he was breveted Major for gal- 
lant services rendered on September 13, 
1877, in fighting the Indians at Cafion Creek, 
Montana—an illustration of the subsequent- 
ness of glory in the army! 

During his long period of service as an 
army officer he was stationed at a number 
of the most remote and inaccessible posts in 
the West, among which may be mentioned 
Cantonment Burgwyn, in New Mexico; 
Forts Bowie, McDowell, Wallen, Lowell and 
Whipple, in Arizona; Bidwell and Inde- 
pendence (the latter in Owens Valley), in 
California ; Harney and Klamath, in Ore- 
gon; Vancouver and Walla Walla, in Wash- 
ington ; Boise and Lapwai, in Idaho, and 
Custer, in Montana. And it should be re- 
membered that his service at most of these 


262 


posts antedated the construction of the 
transcontinental railroads which now tray- 
erse the States and Territories in which 
most of them are located. 

Bendire was a man of energy, persever- 
ance and courage, and in our Indian wars 
naturally took a prominent part. This part 
was sometimes that of a dreaded foe who 
followed them relentlessly over mountain 
and desert and penetrated their most dis- 
tant retreats; sometimes that of a peace- 
maker, as when in the midst of the bloody 
Apache war he boldly visited the camp of 
Cochise, the celebrated Apache chief, and 
induced him to abandon the war path. He 
treated the Indians, as he did everyone 
else, with perfect frankness and fairness, 
and never deceived them. They were not 
long in learning that they could rely abso- 
lutely on his word, which gave him a posi- 
tive advantage in all his dealings with them, 
for they always respected him and when 
not at war liked him. 

Aside from his movements in the field in 
connection with Indian wars, he led a num- 
ber of expeditions for other purposes, such 
as laying out roads, surveying routes for 
telegraph lines, and exploring unknown 
country—as when he crossed Death Valley 
in 1867, and explored the deserts of south- 
central Nevada as far east as Pahranagat 
Valley. No other American naturalist in 
modern times has spent half so much time 
in the field as Bendire, and his voluminous 
note books attest the accuracy and range of 
his observations. 

It is hard to say just when Bendire’s 


scientific work began, or even exactly when’ 


he commenced making his famous collec- 
tion of birds’ eggs, though it is certain that 
he was collecting in 1870. Like many 
other army officers stationed in the West, 
he sent Professor Baird from time to time 
natural history specimens and notes. When 
stationed at St. Louis he became an inti- 
mate friend of the eminent botanist, Dr. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 111. 


George Engelmann, to whose herbarium he 
was a valued contributor. 

His earliest published writings are in 
the form of letters to well-known natur- 
alists, chiefly Allen, Baird and Brewer. 
The first volume of the Bulletin of the Nutt- 
all Ornithological Club (1876) contains 
several such letters, published by J. A. Al- 
len. 

In 1877 he published an important paper 
on the Birds of Southeastern Oregon, based 
on three years’ field work in the region 
around Fort Harney. In all, he has 
written about fifty papers, most of which 
relate to birds and their eggs, though sev- 
eral treat of mammals and fishes. But the 
work which will carry his name and fame 
to future generations is his ‘ Life Histories 
of North American Birds,’ of which the 
second volume was reviewed in ScrENcE not 
long ago (N.S. Vol. IV, No. 96, October 
30, 1896, pp. 657-658). It is a calamity to 
the science of ornithology, for which he 
was in no way responsible, that the remain- 
ing volumes of this great work, which con- 
tains more original information on the 
habits of our birds than any other since the 
time of Audubon, Wilson and Nuttall, were 
not made ready for publication. 

In his personal life Bendire was a man of 
simple habits and unusual frankness. He 
had an inborn aversion for all kinds of cir- 
cumlocution and insincerity, and was him- 
self a model of directness and truthfulness. 
He was generous, kind hearted and ever 
ready to help others, no matter at how 
much personal inconvenience, if he believed 
them worthy. He had a large number of 
correspondents in all parts of the country 
who considered it a privilege to contribute 
notes and specimens for his use. These 
and many others will mourn his loss, but 
none so deeply as the small coterie who 
were so fortunate as to be numbered among 
his intimate personal friends. 

C. Harr MERRIAM. 


FEBRUARY 12, 1897. ] 


CURRENT NOTES ON PHYSIOGRAPHY. 
NORTHWESTERN OREGON. 

A GEOLOGICAL reconnoissance in north- 
western Oregon by J. S. Diller (17th Ann. 
Rep. U.S. Geol. Survey, 1896, 1-80) gives 
new examples of mountains resulting from 
the dissection of peneplains. The Coast 
range in this district, consisting of inclined 
Miocene and older formations, shows up- 
lands, bevelled across the tilted strata in 
gently sloping plains at various altitudes, 
as if the product of erosion at successive 
levels. A number of small monadnocks 
rise above the upper plain, and the narrow 
valleys of the streams are incised beneath 
the lowest. The relations of the different 
peneplains are not fully worked out. Dur- 
ing the lower stand of the region, when the 
peneplanation was accomplished, Willa- 
mette valley of to-day was a drowned val- 
ley, like the existing Puget sound; and it 
is now floored with the sediments of that 
submergence. The sediments contain ice- 
rafted boulders, thought to be derived from 
the glaciers of the neighboring Cascade 
range on the east, then more extensive than 
now, in spite of the lower stand of the land. 
During emergence two of the stronger riv- 
ers seem to have maintained transverse 
courses across the rising peneplain (the 
Coast range), so that they now gather 
headwaters in Willamette valley. Old sea 
cliffs and beaches at various levels on the 
western slope of the Coast range record 
pauses during emergence; similar pauses 
are indicated by terraces along the river 
valleys. The movement of elevation con- 
tinued until a five-mile belt of the existing 
sea bottom was added to the land ; the evi- 
dence of this being found in the extension 
of river channels seaward from their pres- 
ent mouths, as determined by Coast Survey 
soundings under Davidson. Subsidence to 
the present altitude has drowned the rivers 
a number of miles up stream, letting the 
tide far inland. The present shore line is 


SCIENCE. 


263 


sub-mature ; alternating between bold rocky 
headlands not yet cut back to a graded out- 
line, and long, smoothly curved beaches of 
concaye outline towards the sea. 


GLACIAL DEPOSITS OF INDIANA. 

Unver the above title, Frank Leverett, 
who has for some years past carried on field 
studies of the drift under the direction of 
Professor Chamberlain, gives a summary of 
his results for a central state (Inland Edu- 
cator, August, 1896, 24-32); the essay being 
one of a series designed by Professor Chas. 
Dryer, of the State Normal School at Terre 
Haute, for the edification of local teachers. 
Leverett states that the border of the drift, 
as indicated on his outline map, needs cor- 
rection, for repeated observations have con- 
vinced him that it extends further south- 
ward than is indicated on Wright’s map of 
the glacial boundary (Bull. 58, U. S. Geol. 
Surv.). The succession of glacial deposits 
and associated loess beds, with interglacial 
soils, is briefly described and the chief mo- 
raines are mapped. ‘The terminal moraine 
of the Wisconsin (third) stage of glaciation 
is a broad ridge generally twenty feet high. 
Within the space of half a dozen steps one 
may pass from loess-covered tracts of earlier 
drift to the bouldery drift of this later inva- 
sion. There is an accompanying change of 
soil color and composition, from ashy (loess) 
to black (drift), of a great agricultural 
importance. Certain prominent moraines 
near the western boundary (Benton and 
Warren counties) are overridden by trans- 
verse or unconformable bouldery moraines. 
A temporary lake, apparently enclosed by 
ice on the east and north, explains the 
sands spread over the northwestern coun- 
ties. 

If the geographical aspects of the drift, 
both as to form and occupation, could be 
more fully stated by Mr. Leverett in an- 
other article, better work by local teachers 
would be still further promoted. 


264 


SCIENTIFIC GEOGRAPHY IN ITALY. 

AN encouraging sign of progress in geo- 
graphical instruction is found in a note on 
the Scientific Systematization of the Study 
of Military Geography, by Lieut.-Col. C. 
Porro (Rev. Mil. Ital., 1896, 30 p.). After 
reviewing the various methods of geograph- 
ical study for some time back, he adopts the 
guidance of Lapparent in emphasizing the 
importance of a rational understanding of 
the origin of topographic forms as a means 
of better perceiving the forms themselves, 
and urges such study as a basis of special- 
ization in military geography. The Italians 
already being well advanced in the produc- 
tion of elaborate maps and reliefs, they are 
prepared to profit greatly by exchanging the 
earlier empirical methods for more mod- 
ern scientific and systematic study. Geo- 
morphology, as recognized in this country, 
has hitherto had no place in Italy, in spite 
of the beautiful variety of topographic forms 
on which its methods might be exercised. 


NOTES ON ASHANTI. 


Masor C. BARTER gives some Notes on 
Ashanti, taken while on the (British) 
Ashanti expedition of 1896 (Scott, Geogr. 
Mag., xii., 1898, 441-458). He says, in his 
preface, that the most he could offer, out- 
side the military features of the campaign, 
would be a record of general impressions 
and of local accounts and traditions which 
his memory had retained. His interesting 
narrative is largely concerned with other 
than physiographic matters. Landing in 
surf boats, a fatiguing march followed across 
twenty miles of sandy undulating country, 
covered with low bushes, gradually merg- 
ing in the primeval forest, of which an im- 
pressive description is given. The forest 
belt is about 300 miles broad, and beyond its 
northern border, which limits Ashanti, come 
rich prairie plains, with healty climate and 
an abundance of big game, under the Sultan 
Samory. The forest country is undulating, 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 111. 


except in isolated hilly districts of small 
area; the water courses are broad and 
swampy. The clearings about villages are 
connectad by paths, on which from one to 
four men can walk abreast. The excessive 
dampness is relieved by the Harmattan, or 
‘Doctor,’ a steady cool breeze which blows 
from a northerly direction during the winter 
months, apparently a local manifestation of 
the normal northeast trade. 

This note is offered not so much for its 
physiographic value as for a sample of the 
gleanings that may be gathered from the 
usual observations of the military explorer. 
If British military training were based on 
the recommendations of Porro, above, the 
geographical harvest of foreign expeditions 
would be richer ; but those in charge of the 
program of British military schools might 
plausibly say that they are so well satisfied 
with the success thus far attendant on their 
graduates that they find no reason for alter- 


ing their curriculum. 
W. M. Davis. 


HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


CURRENT NOTES ON METEOROLOGY. 
CLOUD HEIGHTS. 


In a recent number of Nature (Dec. 31) 
Clayton makes some important suggestions 
concerning possible errors in calculating the 
heights of certain forms of clouds by means 
of theodolites and photogrammeters. At 
Blue Hill Observatory the average height 
of nimbus obtained by theodolite measure- 
ments is 6,814 feet, while the height of the 
base of the same kind of cloud as shown 
by sending kites into it is usually less 
than 1,640 feet. There is seen to be a con- 
siderable discrepancy here. Evidently the 
kite measurements are the most accurate, 
and there can be no doubt that the nimbus 
cloud belongs lower down in the cloud 
classification than the position it now occu- 
pies in the International Nomenclature, as 
given in the new Cloud Atlas. In the 


FEBRUARY 12, 1897.] 


Atlas the nimbus and the strato-cumulus 
are placed together under the heading 
Lower Clouds, and their average height is 
given as about 6,600 feet, or considerably 
over a mile, while the Blue Hill measure- 
ments make the height of the nimbus less 
than half a mile. The more the future 
of kite meteorology is considered, the more 
numerous do the opportunities seem to be- 
come in which kites will be of great ser- 
vice. This measurement of cloud heights 
by means of kites is certainly one of the 
most important uses to which they have 
yet been put. 


FOG POSSIBILITIES. 


In a short article under the title Fog Pos- 
sibilities, in Harper’s Monthly Magazine for 
January, McAdie regards it as a possibility 
of the future that fogs will be dispelled by 
artificial means. Lodge has shown by his 
experiments that the dust in the air, which 
is of such importance in fog and cloud for- 
mation, can be removed by electrification. 
The fog may be dissipated by gentle elec- 
trification, which increases the size of the 
dust particles until they settle, or by strong 
electrical discharges, which scatter and pre- 
eipitate the particles. McAdie believes 
that “‘ fog dispellers might be placed upon 
war ships, ferry boats and at all terminal 
depots and crowded thoroughfares.” ‘‘ We 
eart away,’’ he says, ‘from our busiest 
streets the snow or solidified vapor of the 
air. Is it not better economy to attempt 
the conquest of the water vapor in another 
form ?”’ 


INTERNATIONAL BALLOON METEOROLOGY. 


CoMMENTING on the subject of balloon 
meteorology, M. de Fonvielle, in a recent 
letter to the editor of ScreNcE, says: ‘It 
should be deeply regretted if your great 
nation should not join in these experiments, 
which are executed in a friendly spirit by 
three fractions of the European family 


SCIENCE. 


265 


which are not always in harmony on the 
surface of the earth. * * * One important 
fact seems to result from all the experiments 
tried in France. When the balloon reaches 
a high altitude, 30,000 feet, at least, it is 
sure to be discovered in some locality east- 
ward from the Paris meridian. This obser- 
vation, which is * * sufficiently well estab- 
lished, gives a warning against the execution 
of these experiments from the eastern coast 
of the Atlantic. Neither New York, Phila- 
delphia nor Washington are to be selected 
as a proper starting point. St. Louis should 
be eligible and a lot of other cities. The 
same might be said of any place west of the 
Rocky Mountains, especially of any place 
selected in California, as the Mt. Hamilton 


Observatory.” 
R. DEC. Warp. 


HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 

THE SHELL GORGETS OF NORTH AMERICA. 

THE study of this interesting class of an- 
tiquities is aided by the description of one 
from Mexico by Professor Frederick Starr 
in the ‘Proceedings’ of the Davenport 
Academy, Vol. VI. It was found in the 
State of Michoacan, and a cut of it is in- 
serted. Many points of similarity are noted 
between it and those from Tennessee, Geor- 
gia and Missouri, described by Holmes and 
Thruston. These are sufficient, in Professor 
Starr’s opinion, to affiliate the Mexican 
example to those of the Mississippi Valley as 
members of one and the same art-develop- 
ment. 

The possibility that these objects might 
have been carried as articles of trade from 
one region to another is considerable. The 
finding of one or several in a spot does not 
of necessity infer the identity of culture. 
The motives are Aztecan, but, unless sup- 
ported by other indications of that peculiar 
school of design, it is more likely they were 
‘intrusive’ objects. 


266 


THE RED RACE OF MADAGASCAR. 


Ir is a curious fact that the older navi- 
gators who visited Madagascar describe a 
red race there, which now seems to be ex- 
tinct. In the ‘Bull. dela Soc. d’Anthro- 
pologie,’ of Paris (Tome VII., fase. 5), 
Dr. Bloch collects a number of extracts 
bearing upon this. The red people are de- 
scribed as tall, without beards, nose promi- 
nent, hair straight and long, the features of 
the European rather than Mongolian type, 
and the color of the skin red or reddish. 
This race, the description of which corre- 
sponds singularly with that of the North 
American Indian of the Algonquian or 
Troquoian stock, appears to have passed 
out of existence about the middle of the last 
eentury. It is to be hoped that at least 
some ancient cemeteries may supply their 
osseous remains. One writer, Flacourt, be- 
lieves them to have been the ancestors of 
the Hovas, but the physical traits do not 
correspond. 


GLACIAL MAN IN OHIO. 

EspECIAL interest attaches to an article 
in the American Geologist for November, 1896, 
by Professor E. W.Claypole, on ‘Human 
Relics in the Drift of Ohio.’ 

It is principally taken up withthe de- 
scription of a polished slate axe disinterred 
in 1886 from the bottom of a well, 22 feet 
deep, near New London, Ohio. It was 
neatly and symmetrically carved, and 
deeply weathered. The stratum was a late 
glacial deposit, lying directly upon the 
boulder clay. 

Professor Claypole used all practicable pre- 
cautions in examining the well digger who 
found the specimen (ten years before), and 
in confirming his statements. He presents 
the evidences of authenticity with as much 
conclusiveness as they will bear; and he 
meets the various objections which will arise 
from the length of time, from the artistic 
finish of the specimen and from the veracity 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 111. 


of the witness. His article is excellently 
studied, and if it fails to convince, it will 
be from the weakness of the case, not from 
deficiencies in presenting it. 

D. G. Brinton. 


UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


NOTES ON INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 


THE question as to whether illuminating 
gas or fuel gas is completely consumed in 
an ordinary burner possesses a considerable 
interest, not only from an economic, but 
also from a hygienic standpoint, since even 
small quantities of carbonic oxid are dan- 
gerous to health. Investigations have 
shown that in free burning flames, as well 
as in the Welsbach burner, practically no 
unconsumed gas is given off, but doubt has 
been thrown by the experiments of Vivian 
B. Lewes on flames which impinge on cold 
surfaces, as in gas stoves for cooking and 
under water baths in the laboratory. This 
point has been carefully studied at the 
Technische Hochschule at Karlsruhe by F- 
Haber and A. Weber, and their results 
show that with a sufficient supply of air, 
even under cold surfaces, the gas is com- 
pletely burned, but if the air supply is in- 
sufficient decided quantities of carbonic 
oxid may be formed. Thus with the labor- 
atory Bunsen no danger is to be appre- 
hended, but with gas stoves care is neces- 
sary to see that there is a plentiful air 
supply. 

In continuing his work upon metallic 
lithium M. Guntz finds that it has a strong 
affinity for carbon, forming a carbid Li,C,, 
which is decomposed by water with the 
formation of acetylene. When lithium is. 
heated in contact with carbon it unites with 
it directly. When compounds which give 
lithium by dissociation, as lithium hydrid 
or lithium nitrid, are heated with carbon, 
the carbid is formed, in the latter case ac- 
companied by large quantities of lithium 
eyanid. Carbonic oxid and carbon dioxid 


FEBRUARY 12, 1897.] 


are both absorbed by lithium with forma- 
tion of the carbid. Heated in an atmos- 
phere of acetylene or of ethylene, the gas 
is completely absorbed and a definite mix- 
ture of lithium carbid and lithium hydrid 
formed. Lithium seems, however, to be 
almost without action upon methane. 

M. Perit has carried out a series of ex- 
periments at the University of Nancy on 
the action of waters containing dissolved 
salts upon iron. He was led to the work 
by the fact that the waters of the Moselle 
(and the same is true of many other waters) 
attack iron pipes and reservoirs, often pene- 
trating them, while large quantities of iron 
oxid are deposited. The action is due, he 
finds, chiefly to the action of carbonic acid, 
free or in the state of combination in cal- 
cium bicarbonate. Such water rapidly at- 
tacks the iron with liberation of hydrogen. 
The iron is at first present in solution as 
ferrous carbonate, but is rapidly oxidized 
by dissolved oxygen and deposited as ferric 
oxid. If other salts are present the action 
is increased. Thus alkaline sulfates are re- 
duced by the iron to alkaline sulfids, and 
these are changed by the carbonic acid to 
alkaline carbonates, while the liberated 
sulfur forms, with the iron, ferrous sulfid. 


Common salt acts most energetically, here 


also sodium bicarbonate being formed. 
This action of iron upon calcium bicarbon- 
ate and on carbonic acid explains the action 
of such waters on iron pipes, and also the 
purification of water by spongy iron. 

The action of certain hard waters on 
brass (faucets, etc.), may possibly be simi- 
larly explained, the carbonic acid acting 
upon the zine and leaving the brass in an 
almost porous condition. J. Li. Hi. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 
A DIRECTOR OF SCIENTIFIC WORK FOR THE 
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 


THE Secretary of Agriculture, in his fourth 
annual report to the President, calls special at- 


SCIENCE. 


267 


tention to the benefit that has resulted from the 
use of the classified civil service in the Depart- 
ment, and urges that this system should be 
completed by the appointment of a permanent 
director of scientific work. We have already 
urged this step, but it may be well to repeat 
the arguments of the Secretary of Agriculture. 

The Secretary, being a Cabinet officer, must 
be changed with each new administration, and 
the Assistant Secretary is subject to the same 
conditions. These executive officers are neces- 
sary, but another officer is needed to direct 
the work of the various scientific bureaus 


‘of the Department, under the general author- 


ity of the Secretary, and to give perma- 
nence to the policy of the Department. In 
order to accomplish the best results, the 
Department must have a settled policy 
with regard to all its scientific work. This 
Department has less relation to the general 
executive business of the government, and 
less connection with what is usually called 
politics, than any other Department of the 
government. In fact, the scientific work of 
the great bureaus, divisions and surveys 
should be kept free from politics to be effi- 
cient and impartial. The numerous bureaus 
and divisions do not have under the present 
organization, in fact cannot have, the attention 
and direction which the interests involved de- 
mand. After a change of administration the 
Department is practically headless, and to a 
great extent helpless, until the new Secretaries 
have had time to master the details of the tech- 
nical work. A director of scientific divisions is 
needed, therefore, if for nothing else, to carry 
on the scientific work of the Department from 
one administration to the next. Further, the 
Secretary of Agriculture cannot be expected in 
all cases to unite the necessary executive abil- 
ity with adequate scientific training, and his 
duties are already onerous, a large part of the 
work of the Department extending over the 
whole country. 

The Senate Committee on Agriculture and 
Forestry last year recommended the passage of 
the bill establishing the office of ‘Director in 
charge of scientific bureaus and investigations 
for the Department of Agriculture,’ but the bill 
was introduced too late for consideration dur- 


268 


ing the last session of Congress. The estimates 
for the next fiscal year contain, however, a 
recommendation for an appropriation of $6,000 
per annum for this office, in the expectation that 
it will be created by Congress. 


YOUNG’S ‘REVERSING LAYER.’ 


In a careful review of the progress of astron- 
omy during the year 1896, published in the 
London Times of January 14th, the author 
writes: ‘‘ At Novaya Zemlya, Mr. Shackelton, 
using a spectroscope without a slit—since the 
extremely narrow sickle of light at the moon’s 


limb made a slit unnecessary—and timing the 


exposure of his plate to the precise moment of 
the progressing eclipse which corresponded to 
that at which Professor Young made his classi- 
cal observation by eye in 1870,. was fortunate 
enough, with an exposure of half a second, to 
secure a permanent record of Young’s revers- 
ing layer. It consists of a very narrow, spec- 
trum of bright lines, which are, indeed, the 
Fraunhofer lines reversed. A plate exposed 
two seconds later showed a comparatively sim- 
ple chromosphere spectrum. The congratula- 
tions of astronomers are due to Professor 
Young upon this complete, though late, con- 
firmation of his observation of 1870 and of his 
views, speaking broadly, of solar absorption 
founded upon it. Professor Young, after a 
careful comparison of the Novaya Zemlya 
photograph with a Fraunhofer spectrum taken 
with the same prisms, but with a collimator 
and slit before the prisms, writes : 

‘¢¢ With very few exceptions every Fraunhofer line 
finds its correlative in the ‘flash spectrum.’ I do 
not see but that the evidence as to the origin of the 
great majority of the Fraunhofer lines within a very 
short distance from the photosphere is practically 
complete. Very possibly some of the absorption 
occurs at higher levels ; but it seems to me clear that 
most of the absorbing metallic vapours are at the 
base of the chromosphere, in a thin stratum or layer, 
if one chooses to call it so; not that I suppose it to 
be a quiescent sheet ora stratum in any different 
sense from the chromosphere itself.’ 

‘Professor Young further points out that it 
would be absurd to compare the number of 
bright lines of this ‘flash’ spectrum, taken 
with two prisms only, a lens of 10-in. focus and 
no slit, with the number of dark lines in Row- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 111. 


land’s great solar map, photographed with a 
large concave grating, a fine slit, and every 
possible refinement of adjustment.’’ 


MOTOR CARRIAGES. 


In view of the scientific and practical im- 
portance of motor carriages, we give the report 
made by the jurors in connection with the re- 
cent exhibition at the Crystal Palace, London : 

“‘ Although none of the vehicles exhibited ap- 
proached that degree of perfection which would 
place them beyond the adverse criticism which 
condemns any evidence of an unrealized at- 
tempt, they are of opinion that several of the 
vehicles shown and worked in the Crystal 
Palace grounds have reached a degree of prac- 
tical sufficiency meriting some distinctive mark 
of appreciation. Most of the vehicles, which 
have withstood the test of considerably hard 
daily work, were propelled by motors actuated 
by the internal combustion of light oils, such 
as benzoline. The use of these light oils in this 
country has been discouraged, although the 
cause of this is probably due more to fiscal and 
to other restrictive regulations than to any real 
evidence of danger attaching toit. Most of the 
carriages exhibited and worked in the grounds 
have motors supplied with hydrocarbon vapor, 
produced by the passage of air through some 
form of carburetter containing benzoline. This 
vapor, mixed with air, and compressed and 
heated by the incoming stroke of the motor 
piston, was, with one exception, ignited by an 
electric spark, obtained by means of a secondary 
battery and induction coil. The one exception 
was the carriage of Peugeot, fitted with a Daim- 
ler motor, and lent by Sir David Salomons. 
This vehicle, however, did not come within our 
cognizance at the time of our visit with respect 
to the merits and awards. 

‘(We have carefully considered the various 
points in the construction, detail and working 
of the several vehicles and their motors, and 
we are very strongly of opinion that these ben- 
zoline motor carriages do, even in their present 
state of advance towards sufficiency, show that 
such motors may be practically employed for 
propelling vehicles of various kinds and for vari- 
ous purposes. The carriage of M. Delahaye 
showed a distinct step in advance upon the 


FEBRUARY 12, 1897.] 


other benzoline motor-vehicles; its double 
small horizontal cylinders, with opposite cranks 
and other details, including a very satisfactory 
tubular water cooler, with simple force pump 
circulator, secures steadier motion, freedom 
from escaping steam or water vapor, and more 
power in a given space. He has placed before 
us a carriage which only needs the develop- 
ment to which experience will point the way. 

‘These latter remarks pertain equally with 
regard to the steam vehicles exhibited and 
worked. The steam vehicles undoubtedly 
showed the greatest power and the greatest 
flexibility or range of power. The ability to 
stop the motor and start without manual as- 
sistance was seen to be a noteworthy advan- 
tage, not only as a matter of convenience, but 
as a means of avoiding an otherwise very per- 
sistent vibration of the vehicle when standing. 


The steam carriage exhibited by M. Serpollet, : 


although not of the maker’s most recent form, 
is one which merits particular notice for its 
originality, its value as an indication of the pos- 
sibilities with a steam boiler and engine of the 
types used, its superiority with regard to range 
of power, and its exemplification of the advan- 
tages already referred to as to convenience in 
several respects. 

‘The steam van exhibited by the Thornycroft 
Steam Carriage and Wagon Company we also 
recognize as a very meritorious illustration of 
the most useful lines upon which arrangement 
and development of a most important class of 
motor-vehicles may proceed. The jurors con- 
sidered it matter for regret that no electri- 
cally propelled vehicle had been submitted 
for trial.”’ 


GENERAL. 


Hon. JAMES WILSON, of Iowa, will be Secre- 
tary of Agriculture under the next administra- 
tion. He is director of the Iowa Agricultural 
Station and professor of agriculture in the Iowa 
Agricultural College. He was for many years 
a teacher in the country schools and has been 
since a practical farmer, having earned the 
money for the purchase of the farm of 1,200 
acres, said to be one of the best equipped and 
best managed in the State, which he now culti- 
vates. Professor Wilson has served three terms 


SCIENCE. 


269 


in Congress. He was born August 16, 1835, in 
Ayrshire, Scotland. 

Ir is reported that Judge Joseph McKenna, 
of California, will be the next Secretary of the 
Interior. 


THE St. Petersburg Academy of Science has 
elected M. Joseph Bertrand, the permanent 
secretary of the Paris Academy of Sciences, an 
honorary member. 

PROFESSOR HE. E. BARNARD, of the Yerkes 
Observatory, University of Chicago, has sailed 
from New York for Southampton, on his way 
to London. He will attend the meeting of the 
Royal Astronomical Society on February 12th, 
to receive the gold medal awarded to him for 
distinguished service to the cause of astronomi- 
cal science. 

A SANITARY conference on the Bubonic 
Plague opens at Venice to-day. The represent- 
atives of Great Britain will not favor quaran- 
tine regulations, but the Continental govern- 
ments seem apprehensive lest the plague may 
spread to Europe. Dr. Koch has been sum- 
moned by the German government from South 
Africa, where he has been studying the rinder- 
pest, to head a special commission which will 
be sent to Bombay to investigate the plague and 
report on measures that should be taken to pre- 
vent its introduction into Europe. Similar 
steps are being taken by the governments of 
Russia and of Italy. The plague has not ap- 
peared in eastern Europe since 1721 and not 
in England since 1665, when upwards of 100,- 
000 persons died from the disease. The Black 
Death of the fourteenth century, which in three 
years destroyed 24,000,000 Europeans, was per- 
haps the bubonic plague. The plague is essen- 
tially a miseri# morbus and the present sani- 
tary conditions are such as to make an epidemic 
unlikely. Still aman who is so little an alarm- 
ist as Lord Lister said in a recent address in 
Belfast that the plague might be easily carried 
from Bombay in ships. ‘‘ Rats were liable to 
contract it, and a rat making its escape from a 
ship coming from Bombay—say, to the Thames 
or to Belfast Lough—might carry the plague 
ashore and, entering any of their slums, might 
affect human beings with this dreadful disease.”’ 


Mr. AconcacuA, in the Andes, over 24,000 


270 


feet in height, has been ascended by the Swiss 
guide, Zurbriggen. He was in the company of 
Mr. Fitzgerald, who was unable to reach the 
summit. 


AT the International Exhibition at Brussels 
in 1897 special efforts will be made to secure an 
adequate representation of the sciences. Space 
for scientific exhibits will be given free of charge 
and a considerable number of prizes are offered. 


THE King of Belgium has offered a prize of 
about $5,000 for an essay on the sanitary con- 
ditions of equatorial Africa. Papers for com- 
petition should be presented by July 1st of the 
present year. 

A PUBLIC library and museum will be founded 
at Cettigne, Montenegro. The antiquities found 
in the principality itself will be deposited in 
the museum. The excavations recently made 
at Dukla have produced satisfactory results. 


WE regret to record the deaths of Baron von 
Ettingshausen, professor of botany at the Uni- 
versity of Gratz, at the age of 71 years; of Dr. 
Edward Ballard, F. R. S., the author of works 
on public health and other medical subjects, 
aged 66; of M. Martini, the inventor of the 
Martini rifle ; of Dr. Wilhelm Deeke, the Ger- 
man archeologist, at the age of 66; of Kristian 
Bahnson, the Danish ethnologist; of Joseph D. 
Weeks, editor of the American Manufacturer, at 
Pittsburg, Pa., and known for his contributions 
to economic geology ; and of Giuseppe Proto- 
notari. 

ACCORDING to Nature, the scientific expedi- 
tion organized by the German government to 
study the economic and industrial conditions 
and possibilities in the Far East intended to 
start from Bremen on January 27th, on board the 
North German Lloyd steamer Sachsen. The 
nature and scope of the investigations to be un- 
dertaken were discussed and settled at a recent 
meeting at the Ministry of the Interior. 

Natural Science, quoting from the Daily News, 
reports that the Imperial Natural History So- 
ciety of St. Petersburg, intends to publish a 
Flora, first of European Russia and afterwards 
of Russia in Asia and the Caucasus. 


SENATOR GALLINGER has presented, by re- 
quest, in the Senate, a bill for a department of 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 111. 


health proposed by the Pan-American Medical 
Congress. 

A BILL introduced into the Wisconsin Legis- 
lature provides for a State bee inspector to sup- 
press foul brood among bees. The wholesale 
valuation of the honey and beeswax produced 
annually in Wisconsin is $160,000. 

AT a meeting of the Fellows of the Royal 
Botanical Society, on January 30th, it was 
agreed that the use of the gardens should be 
offered to the Lord Mayor, the Chairmen of 
the London County Council and the London 
School Board, and the secretaries of societies 
desirous of holding receptions. 


Mr. MAcARTNEY stated recently in the Brit- 
ish House of Commons that the question of the 
unification of time, which is a very debatable 
one, has received long and careful consideration 
for many years. The alteration of the astro- 
nomical day cannot be effected for the sea alone, 
as it affects astronomers even more closely than 
sailors, and it must also be carried out by inter- 
national agreement. Foreign powers publish- 
ing astronomical ephemerides were consulted 
in 1894, and when it was found, from the re- 
plies received in 1895, that the change would 
not be accepted by all these the Foreign Office 
was requested to inform the powers in question 
that no further steps would be taken by the 
British Admiralty. The Nautical Almanac for 
1901 has therefore been calculated on the exist- 
ing system. 

AN Italian Electro-technical Society has been 
formed in Milan, with Professor G. Ferraris, of 
Turin, as its first president. 

Mr. UrtAn A. Boypen, of Boston, has of- 
fered, through the Franklin Institute of Phila- 
delphia, a prize of $1,000 to ‘any resident of 
North America—including Mexico and the 
West Indies—who shall determine by experi- 
ment whether all rays are or are not transmitted 
with the same velocity.’ The papers must be 
submitted before January 1, 1898. 

WE learn from Nature that the University of 
Catana has been presented with the Island 
of Cyclops, off the coast of Sicily, by Signor 
Gravina. The island is only a kilometer in cir- 
cumference, but its configuration is peculiar, 
and the center is about one hundred meters 


FERRUARY 12, 1897.] 


above sea level. It is proposed to construct 
upon the island a laboratory for investigations 
in zoology and pisciculture. 


THE Boston Society of Medical Sciences has 
begun the publication of a journal, which is 
issued, for the present, for free gistribution. It 
contains authors’ abstracts of papers presented 
at the meetings of the Society, and is published 
promptly after each meeting. A vote of the 
faculty of the Harvard Medical School requests 
‘each head of department to have, at least, 
‘a summary of the scientific investigations made 
in his department presented at a meeting of 
the Boston Society of Medical Sciences for 
preservation in its journal,’ so that the journal 
will contain a summary of what work of this 
nature is done in this school. Similar action 
has been taken by the biological and physio- 
logical departments of the Massachusetts Insti- 
tute of Technology, and contributions of the 
same nature are promised from Clark Univer- 
sity and from the experimental laboratories of 
the Massachusetts General and the Boston City 
Hospitals. Papers, or abstracts of papers, upon 
subjects connected with the medical sciences 
will be welcomed from persons who are not 
members, and, if approved by the Council, will 
be presented at these meetings, and abstracts 
will be given a place in the Journal of the So- 
ciety. All communications should be addressed 
to the Secretary of the Boston Society of Med- 
ical Sciences, Harvard Medical School Boston, 
Mass. 


THE general dissatisfaction with the position 
of geography in secondary schools, and the 
strong efforts made on every hand for its im- 
provement, are the justification of adding one 
more to the list of educational journals; the 
Journal of School Geography having just made 
its appearance. Professor R. B. Dodge, of the 
Teachers’ College, New York, is the résponsible 
editor, with five associate editors, Messrs. Davis, 
Hayes, Kimmel, McMurry and Ward. The 
first number contains an introductory statement 
by the editor; Home Geography, by W. M. 
Davis; Some Things about Africa, by C. C. 
Adams; Geographic Instruction in Germany, 
by Will S. Monroe; Suggestions Regarding 
Geography in Grade Schools, by R. E. Dodge, 


SCIENCE. 


201 


and a variety of notes and reviews. Readers 
of SCIENCE, as possible writers for this journal, 
should address the editor, Teachers’ College, 
120th St. West, New York City; as subscrib- 
ers, they should send a dollar for ten yearly 
numbers to the publishers, 41 N. Queen St., 
Lancaster, Pa. 


THE lecture on Variation of Latitude, by 
Professor J. K. Rees, before the New York 
Academy of Sciences, April 29, 1895, has been 
reprinted by the Smithsonian Institution from 
the report in SCIENCE, New Series, Vol: I., No. 
21. The paper is made part of the Smithsonian 
Report for 1894, pp. 271-279, and is also print- 
ed as a separate pamphlet. 


Nature states that following the example of 
the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Society 
of Civil Engineers of France has built itself a 
magnificent house, which was opened with 
great ceremony, on January 14th, by the Presi- 
dent of the French Republic. A large number 
of guests were present at the soirée, including 
representatives of the various French technical 
societies. The only English society represented 
was the Iron and Steel Institute, who sent Pro- 
fessor Roberts-Austen. The new building, 
which is situated in the Rue Blanche, Paris, 
was designed by M. F’. Delmas, and was erected 
in 262 days. It comprises in the basement en- 
gine-rooms and store-rooms, on the ground floor 
the meeting-room, on the first floor reception- 
rooms for the members, on the second floor the 
secretary’s office and the council-room, and on 
the third floor the library. Access to the various 
floors is obtained by means of an electric lift. 
The meeting-room contains seats for 500 per- 
sons, and the floor is so arranged that it may be 
horizontal for receptions, or inclined so as to 


_conyert the room into an amphitheatre for the 


meetings. The floor weighs thirty tons, and its 
transformation from a horizontal to an inclined 
position is effected with great rapidity by means 
of hydraulic machinery. 


Natural Science reports that the Committee of 
the International Geographical Congress, held 
in London in 1895, has recently sent to the 
various geographical societies, resolutions, urg- 
ing the importance and desirability of: (1) Ant- 
arctic exploration; (2) a geographical bibliog- 


272 


raphy, compiled by various states; (3) a topo- 
graphical survey of Africa; (4) a map of the 
earth on a scale of 1:1,000,000, with the 
meridian of Greenwich and metric measure- 
ments ; (5) the continuance of physical investi- 
gations lately made in the Baltic, North Sea and 
North Atlantic ; (6) an international system of 
seismographic stations ; (7) agreement between 
the various geographical societies at to the spell- 
ing of foreign names; (8) the printing on all 
geographical maps henceforward the date of 
their publication. Further, they request the 
opinion of the societies as to the application of 
the decimal system to the measurement of time 
and of angles. 


A CORONER’S jury at Jamestown, N. Y., has 
rendered a verdict to the effect that Spurgeon 
Young came to his death on January 24th from 
diabetes and nervous exhaustion caused by hyp- 
notice practices performed by persons who are 
specified. It is said to be probable that the 
matter will be carried to the courts. 


ACCORDING to the British Medical Journal, M. 
Julien Dumas has announced his intention to 
interrogate the French government on the abuse 
of the Bertillon system of measurement. M. 
Dumas asserts that the calculations made by M. 
Bertillon are far from correct. He has had in 
his possession measurements taken of the same 
person at an interval of tenyears. There were 
not two alike. M. Dumas expressed his desire 
to visit the anthropometric service. The Min- 
ister of the Interior and the Police Prefect asked 
him to name his day. M. Bertillon, with great 
courtesy, explained his system. He sent for a 
woman who had refused to give her name. She 
then said her name was Garcias, her birthplace 
Bordeaux. Measurements were taken. M. 
Dumas, being initiated, found without assist- 
ance the photograph of this woman, whose real 
name was Tosas, and her birthplace was not 
Bordeaux. Much astonished he warmly praised 
anthropometry. He carried away with him 
four or five books on the subject. In one of 
them he found three photographs typical of the 
criminals most often met with. One of these 
was of the woman measured that morning, kept 
on the premises, according to M. Dumas, to 
illustrate the system. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8S. Vou. V. No. 111. 


Tue Russian National Health Society has 
celebrated, in the manner proposed, the Jen- 
ner Centenary. Addresses were made by the 
Grand Duke Paul, Dr. Kudrin and Dr. 
Cormillo. Gold medals for the best works on 
vaccination were awarded to Dr. Layer, of Bor- 
deaux ; Dr. Miller, of Moscow, and Dr. Glagolef. 
The exhibition in connection with the celebra- 
tion is said to be very full and interesting. 

THE Baroness de Hirsch: has given $300,000 
to found a hospital on the Mediterranean coast 
for English consumptive children. 

THE Botanical Gazette states that $6,000 has 
been appropriated for the erection of a research 
laboratory at Buitenzorg. 

Ir is stated in the British Medical Journal 
that the Society of Neurologists and Psycholo- 
gists of Moscow has appointed a special com- 
mittee (1) to report upon the present state of 
inebriety in that city, and (2) to draw upa 
scheme for the erection of a hospital for 
inebriates. 

TuHE Secretary of Agriculture, in his report to 
the President, calls attention to the fact that 
during the fiscal year just ended the exported 
products of American farms aggregated a value 
of $570,000,000. That is a gain of $17,000,000 
over the preceding year. During the fiscal 
year 1896 agricultural products make up only 
66 per cent. of the total exports of the United 
States, as against 70 per cent. in 1895, 72 per 
cent. in 1894, and 74 per cent. in 1893. But 
the reason of a relatively decreased value of 4 
per cent., with an increase in the absolute 
valuation of agricultural products shipped in 
the year 1896, amounting to $17,000,000 more 
than those of the preceding year, 1895, is solely 
due to the unprecedented sale abroad of Ameri- 
can manufactured goods and commodities, the 
exports of which from the United States jumped 
from a valuation of $184,000,000 in 1895 to 
$228, 000,000 in 1896. 

THE Lancet states that, at a recent meeting 
of the Plymouth Borough Council, the ques- 
tion of the acquisition of Dartmoor by the 
County of Devon, in order to prevent further 
encroachments, was discussed. This scheme, 
which was submitted by the Dartmoor Pres- 
eryation Association, was unanimously ap- 


FEBRUARY 12, 1897.] 


proved of, and the Council pledged itself to 
bear its fair share of the cost of purchasing 
130,000 acres of Dartmoor from the Duchy of 
Cornwall, provided that the county authorities 
have power to preserve all objects of archzo- 
logical and antiquarian interest and the indige- 
nous plants and animals. The other Devonshire 
authorities have also promised their support to 
the scheme. 

THE correspondent of the British Medical 
Journal at the Cape of Good Hope writes that 
Professor Koch joined Dr. Edington, the bac- 
teriologist, to Cape Colony, early in December, 
and that a number of post-mortem examinations 
of animals were made by them together. In 
the beginning of October, when the disease had 
passed well within the lines of railway so as to 
be easily accessible, Dr. Edington converted a 
saloon car to serve as a laboratory, and went 
with a veterinary assistant, Mr. W. Robertson, 
and his secretary, Mr. Guthrie, to the infected 
area. Some difficulty was at first experienced 
in getting the assistance of the chief of the 
Kaffirs there, but eventually, with the assist- 
ance of some Fingoes, a camp was established, 
and bacteriological and pathological investiga- 
tions were begun. It was at this camp that 
Professor Koch studied the post-mortem appear- 
ances, and the virus obtained from these ani- 
mals is now being investigated at Kimberley in 
a laboratory which has been just set up by the 
bacteriological department, and it is probable 
that Dr. Koch and Dr. Edington will shortly 
work there together. The inoculation experi- 
ments with blood made at the camp by Dr. 
Edington and his assistants showed that a rise 
of temperature was thus produced usually after 
about four days, but not always, as the rise was 
sometimes delayed. The blood examined 
showed the presence, in most cases, of bacillary 
forms and some irregularly spherical organisms. 
In some instances scarcely anything was to be 
seen, but if care were used the bacillary forms 
could be recognized. A short bacillus about 
2 long and 0.5 broad has been isolated, which 
has been used for inoculation with positive re- 
sults. As, however, within the past six weeks 
20,000 cattle have died in the country in which 
the rinderpest camp is situated, it is evident 
that no definite statements can be made until 


SCIENCE. 


273 


the cultures have been tested in an area free 
from the disease. 


TuE following notes on French explorations 
are taken by Natural Science from Anthropologie. 
Mr. Clozel, Administrator of the French Pos- 
sessions on the Ivory Coast, is endeavoring to 
make valuable ethnographic and geological col- 
lections. Important results are expected from 
two such enthusiastic explorers as Messrs. Bon- 
nel de Méziéres and de Béhagle, who are start- 
ing for Central Africa. Mr. Bonin has returned 
to Tonkin from the south-western . provinces of 
China, whence he brings much material and 
many facts of an ethnographical and anthropo- 
logicalnature. On their way from Turkestan to 
Siberia, Mr. Chaffanjon and his party have 
gathered large collections of the fauna and flora, 
and accumulated much information regarding 
ethnography and geography. In Siberia, too, 
Baron de Baye has been carrying on his arche- 
ological and ethnographical studies. Mr. E. 
Blane, who has been to Nijni-Novgorod, is 
bringing back rich scientific collections. Mr. 
Raoul, Official Colonial Chemist, is starting on 
government business for Borneo, where he 
hopes to carry on scientific studies. The Hourst 
expedition, whose return, which has been al- 
ready noted, has proved the navigability of the 
Niger from Bammako to the sea. 


ACCORDING to the London Times, the Colonial 
Office, the Natal and Cape governments and the 
Board of Agriculture have been in communica- 
tion for the past month as to the best means of 
preventing the cattle plague in South Africa 
from spreading into either Natal or the Cape 
Colony. Various inquiries have been made as 
to what steps should be taken, and recently at 
the Board of Agriculture, a special conference 
of heads of departments concerned was held to 
consult together on the subject. The chief of- 
ficials concerned of the Board of Agriculture 
and the Colonial Office met the Agents-Gen- 
eral of Natal and the Cape Colony and other 
Cape authorities. Further meetings will be 
held on the subject, and it is contemplated that 
the government will sanction every effort to 
save the colonies of Natal and the Cape from 
rinderpest. 


AccoRDING to Industries, the Parliamentary 


274 


return as to street and road tramways during 
the year ending June 30, 1896, signed by 
Mr. Francis J. 8S. Hopwood, is just issued. It 
shows that the total capital expended in Eng- 
land and Wales during the year was £11,742,204, 
as compared with £11,685,355 in the preceding 
year. The total for the United Kingdom was 
£15,195,993, against £14,956,348. The length 
of line open for public traffic in the United 
Kingdom was 1,009 miles, an increase of 27 
_ mniles on the preceding year. While the horses 
used by the companies increased from 32,273 in 
1894-95 to 35,621 in the succeeding year, the 
number of locomotive engines belonging to the 
companies decreased by two. The engines num- 
bered 568 in 1895, as compared with 452 in 
1896 and only 14 in 1878. The total number of 
passengers carried on the tramways in the 
United Kingdom during the year was 759,466, - 
047, against 661,760,461 in the preceding year ; 
the working expenses £3,105,511, against £2- 
878,490; and the net receipts £1,046,505, 
against £855,200. There were 37 tramways be- 
longing to local authorities, with a total mileage 
of 335 as compared with 116 belonging to other 
than local authorities with a mileage of 673. 


THE Annual General Meeting of the Royal 
Meteorological Society was held on January 
20th, Mr. E. Mawley, President, in the chair. 
The Secretary read the report of the Coun- 
cil, which showed that the Society had made 
steady progress during the past year, there 
being an increase of seventeen in the number 
of Fellows. The President then delivered an 
address on ‘Shade Temperatures,’ in which 
he stated that of all meteorological observa- 
tions there were none approaching in impor- 
tance those made of the temperature of the 
air, generally known as ‘Shade Temperature.’ 
Indeed, the first question invariably asked in 
regard to almost any climate was as to its tem- 
perature. Mr. Mawley traced the history of 
the different methods of exposing thermometers 
since the time that regular observations of the 
weather had been made in this country. For 
many years open screens were most favored by 
meteorologists, that devised by Mr. J. Glaisher, 
F.R.S., and the late Astronomer Royal (Sir G. 
B. Airy) being the pattern principally used. In 
1864 Mr. T. Stevenson, C.E., invented an ad- 


SCIENCE. 


N.S. Von. V. No. 111. 


mirable form of closed screen with lowered 
sides, which was considered preferable to the 
open type of screen, and has now almost en- 
tirely superseded the Glaisher Stand. In 1883 
the Stevenson screen was considerably improved 
by a committee of the Royal Meteorological 
Society. Mr. Mawley then described his own 
experiments at Croydon and Berkhamsted, as 
regards this improved screen, known as the 
Royal Meteorological Society’s pattern. He 
showed that the only two defects which had 
been attributed to this form of thermometer 
exposure were virtually non-existent, and there- 
fore advised its general adoption both in this 
country and on the Continent. Mr. Mawley 
had recently made observations in the Steven- 
son screen, and also in the screens used in 
France and Germany, and the conclusion he 
had come to was that the results obtained in 
the Stevenson screen were not only the nearest 
to the true air temperatures, but also more 
likely to be strictly comparable with tempera- 
tures taken in a similar screen but with differ- 
ent surroundings elsewhere. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 

THE will of the late Mrs. Horatio Lyon, of 
Springfield, Mass., gives, among other public 
bequests, $10,000 to Monson Academy, $10,000 
to Pomona College and $10,000 to Menden 
Free Library. 

HARVARD UNIVERSITY has received from Mr. 
J. Howard Nichols $5,000, to be used for the 
founding of a new,scholarship, preference be- 
ing given toa student from the State of Ala- 
bama. 

THE will of tho late Charles Willard, of 
Battle Creek, Mich., leaves $40,000 to the Bap- 
tist College at Kalamazoo, Mich., and $40,000 
for a library building for the city schools at 
Battle Creek, Mich. 

THE new physiological and pathological la- 
boratories of Queen’s College, Belfast, were 
formally declared open on January 19th, and 
on the following day an address was made by 
Lord Lister. The building contains two floors 
about 80x40 feet in size, the lower one being 
devoted to physiological and the upper to 
pathological laboratories. 


FEBRUARY 12, 1897. ] 


Dr. L. A. BAUER has been appointed assist- 
ant professor of mathematics and mathematical 
physics at the University of Cincinnati. He 
will not enter on his new duties before Sep- 
tember. 

Dr. R. W. T. GUNTHER has been elected fel- 
low of Magdalen College, Oxford, and tutor of 
natural science. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
COMPLIMENT OR PLAGIARISM. 


WE have no occasion to withdraw any of our 
previous statements by reason of Professor Hal- 
sted’s second communication. 

We still maintain that ‘‘the same order may 
be found in Newcomb’s Elements of Geometry.’’ 
After proving that by dividing the arc we divide 
the angle and, conversely, by dividing the angle we 
divide the arc, Newcomb gives the following 
problems, which we compare with Halsted’s: 


SCIENCE. 


275 


Quantity, Cambridge [England], Deighton Bell 
and Co., 1868, which Professor Halsted might 
have seen in the Princeton University li- 
brary, or in the Peabody Institute library at 
Baltimore, we read (page 304): ‘‘A PERIGON is 
the angle without any overlapping bounded by 
two straight lines lying in the same straight 
line upon the same side of their common end. 

“CA straight line being everywise alike upon all 
sides everywhere throughout is in any plane 
through it anglewise alike upon both sides at 
any point in it, and hence half a perigon or 
a HEMIPERIGON is the unoverlapping angle 
bounded by two straight lines lying in the same 
straight line upon opposite sides of their common 
end. A right angle is both one-half of a hemi- 
perigon or a HEMISEMIPERIGON and one-fourth 
of a perigon.”’ 

That this same book was in the hands of In- 
structor Lefevre of the University of Texas, 
when he wrote his Number and its Algebra is 


NEWCOMB. 


PROBLEM I. To divide a 
given circle into 2, 4, 8, 16, 
ete., equal parts. 

PROBLEM II. Yo divide the 
circle into 3, 6, 12, 24, ete., 
equal paris. 

PROBLEM III. To divide a 
circle into 5, 10, 20, ete., equal 
parts, 

PROBLEM IV. To divide a 
circle into fifteen, etc., equal 
parts. 


HALSTED. 


PROBLEM I. Jo bisect a 
perigon. 


PROBLEM II. Yo trisect a 
perigon. 


PROBLEM III. Yo cut a 
perigon into five equal 
parts. 


PROBLEM IV. To cut a peri- 
gon into fifteen equal parts. 


fairly obvious from the following extract : 


PELICOTETICS. 


“Driven to the * * * out- 
rageously overtowering ex- 
travagance and absurdity of 
finding and raising high asa 
principle that a chain of 
reasoning to be strong and 
good need not have meaning 
in every link; that, in other 
words, the conclusiveness of 
an argument has nothing to 
do with the intelligibility of 


NUMBER AND ITS ALGEBRA. 


“Accept the outrageous 
extravagance that a concate- 
nation of deductions to be 
valid need not have meaning 
in every link; that a com- 
pulsory conclusion of an ar- 
gument does not require in- 
telligibility of its several 
steps; or that results may be 
thoroughly made out true 
for reasons nowise under- 


Professor Halsted must think us very childish, 
indeed, if we assert that the word perigon is 
found in several geometries when the word is 
found in only Halsted’s books and our own. 
He will find the word in Smith’s Introductory 
Modern Geometry of Point, Ray and Circle, in 
Dupuis’s Elementary Synthetic Geometry, in the 
later editions of Newcomb’s Elements of Geom- 
etry, in Faifofer’s Elementi di Geometria. But, 
perhaps, Professor Halsted will say, ‘‘All these 
books appeared after my Metrical Geometry in 
1881, and these authors took the word from 
me.’’ We have reason to believe that W. B. 
Smith, Newcomb and Faifofer all did see the 
word for the first time in Halsted’s books. 

The question then remains: ‘‘Where did Pro- 
fessor Halsted get it? Did he invent it, as he 
substantially asserts, or did he find it ready 
made?’’? This we cannot answer. Wecan only 
say we know where he might have found it. 

In Sandeman’s Pelicotetics, or the Science of 


its several steps, or that | stood.’ 
things may be thoroughly 
made out true for reasons 


nowise to be understood.” 


To us it seems well-nigh incredible that the 
man who made the important discovery in 1879 
“that Princeton possesses * * * the identical 
volume from which the first translation of 
Euclid into English was made by Sir Henry 
Billingsley,’? and who, in 1896, ‘‘for four 
months * * * was buried in the uttermost parts 
of Hungary, Russia and Siberia,’’ where he 
“made many important finds,’’ could have failed 
to discover such an excellent word as ‘ perigon’ 
in a book almost daily before his eyes. 

BEMAN AND SMITH. . 


PROFESSOR JASTROW’S TEST ON DIVERSITY 
OF OPINION. 
A DIVERSITY of answers is possible to Pro- 
fessor Jastrow’s case of reasoning without being 
false in any one of them. Answers may de- 


276 


pend upon different assumptions regarding dif- 
ferent parts of the argument. 

Without going to the syllogistic part of the 
argument, it can be said at the outset that it is 
impossible to prove that Bis Aif dis B. Such 
a conclusion would violate the law of Conver- 
sion, unless the proposition A is B is a defini- 
tion or exclusive. In the latter two alterna- 
tives it could be proved by the law of conversion. 
But Professor Jastrow gives an attempt to prove 
it syllogistically, that is, by mediate instead of 
immediate reasoning. As it is stated mediate 
reasoning is not applicable, because no middle 
term is given. Moreover, even immediate in- 
ference can do nothing until we know what 
kind of a proposition A is B is supposed to be. 
If it is the ordinary universal we cannot prove 
that B is A, for the reason mentioned. If it is 
a particular affirmative, a definition, or an ex- 
clusive proposition, it can be proved that B is A 
by immediate inference, and the error in the 
argument would be that it is an attempt at 
syllogistic or mediate reasoning where there is 
no middle term and where the attempt to sup- 
ply it may be a petitio principii. 

But, taking the syllogistic argument as it is 
given, it is intended as a case of prosyllogism 
and episyllogism connected with the disjunction 
that B is either A or not A. It is supposed, 
therefore, that the absurdity of the conclusion 
in the prosyllogism justifies the conclusion in 
the episyllogism, because that absurdity is as- 
sumed to show the absurdity of the first term 
of the disjunction, and hence the second would 
follow. But we must raise the question first 
whether the reasoning is formal or material. 

In the prosyllogism the formal reasoning is 
perfectly correct. It isa case either of HE A E 
of the First Figure or 4 EE of the Fourth Figure 
and is formally correct in either case. That is 
to say, with the premises given, the conclusion 
A isnot A does follow, and there is no right to 
call it absurd, as Professor Jastrow does. It is 
an illustration of the fact that we must either 
impeach the premise or accept the conclusion. 
We cannot accept the premises and deny this 
conclusion at the same time. Hence, we may 
say either that one of the premises is a petitio 
principii, or the statement ‘which is absurd’ is 
a petitio principii. 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 111. 


There is only one way to establish a formal 
fallacy in this syllogism, and it is to assume 
that the major premises (major if the First Fig- 
ure and minor if the Fourth Figure) is O, a par- 
ticular negative. This will give O A O of the 
First Figure, or A O O of the Fourth Figure, in 
both a case of undistributed middle. But then, 
so far from making the conclusion absurd, as 
assumed here, it cannot be drawn at all. No 
conclusion whatever can be drawn under such 
conditions. Hence, if the propositions that A 
is not A be considered absurd it must be on 
other grounds than the formal reasoning, 
whether correct or incorrect. In fact, it is a 
manifest contradiction, but is not so because of 
the reasoning, but because the premise B is not 
A contradicts A is B. Technically it is the 
contradictory of the converse of A is B, and 
this makes the second premise a contradictio in 
adjecto of the first and, therefore, a petitio prin- 
cipit, a material fallacy. 

Again, granting, on any grounds, that the 
conclusion of the prosyllogism is absurd, it is a 
non sequitur to infer from this fact that Bis A, 
a material fallacy also. The temptation to ac- 
cept it comes from the reflex influence of the 
assumed absurdity of the conclusion in the 
prosyllogism A is not A, upon the absurdity of 
the premise B is not A, the proposition that 
A is B not being questioned. But this only 
throws us back to a disjunctive syllogism as the 
only proper one in the case from which to at- 
tempt to draw the conclusion B is A, and thus 
nullifies the whole syllogistic procedure in the 
prosyllogism, as an ignoratio elenchi. The argu- 
ment should proceed disjunctively, with the 
proposition Bis not A as the minor premise of 
a disjunctive syllogism, and it would appear as 
follows: 


B is either A or not A. 
Bis not A 
.. Bis A. 


But in this reasoning we have a violation of 
the principle in disjunctive reasoning ; namely, 
the modus tollendo ponens. If we deny one term 
we must affirm the other. We deny the first 
term in the minor premise, and, as the second 
term is ‘not A’ (instead of A), when we affirm 
it, the conclusion must be B is not A, the same 


FEBRUARY 12, 1897.] 


as the minor premise, of course. But Bis A is 
a non sequitur, both a formal and a material 
fallacy in the case. In fact, the instance is 
simply the common one for puzzling school 
boys. 


It either rains or it does not rain. 
It rains 
.*. It does not rain. 


The illusion is created by the failure to see that 
the principle of disjunction is not fulfilled by 
merely using the word ‘not’ before rains in the 
conclusion, when an additional negative is re- 
quired by the dictum of this form of reasoning. 
The ‘not’ in this case is a part of the second 
term in the disjunction ‘not rains,’ and hence, 
when we follow the law of disjunctive inference, 
we should get ‘It does not not rain,’ or by 
double negatives ‘It rains,’ which is the true con- 
elusion. Soin Professor Jastrow’s case. The 
modus tollendo ponens requires us to affirm the 
second term, which is ‘not A,’ and we get as 
the true conclusion B is not A, instead of B is 
A, which is a nonsequitur, as indicated. 

But now, that I find that the conclusion is the 
same as the minor premise in the disjunctive 
reasoning, I may raise the further question 
whether there is not another material fallacy 
somewhere, since disjunctively I might get Bis 
not A. Inthe instance before us this can be done, 
and in disjunctive inference the only fallacy 
that is most likely to occur is the petitio principii. 
The non sequitur will occur only when there is 
also a formal fallacy in it. Now, after assuming 
that A is B, it violates conversion to suppose 
that B is A, and it is a contradiction to suppose 
that B is not A. Hence with Ais Bas our 
premise, and B is either A or not A as the 
other; we have a petitio principii in the latter 
case. We might say that the disjunction is in- 
complete, which is possible if we assume that 
A is B, and which would only result in making 
the third alternative a particular proposition, 
I or O, with the formal fallacy mentioned in the 
prosyllogism, a petitio principii in the disjunctive 
syllogism, and a non sequitur in supposing that 
Bis A. 

: JAMES H. Hystop. 

CoLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 

NEw YORK, January 15, 1897. 


SCIENCE. 277 


SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 

Higher Mathematics. A text-book for classical 
and engineering colleges. Edited by MANs- 
FIELD MERRIMAN, Professor of Civil Engi- 
neering in Lehigh University, and RoBERT 
S. Woopwarp, Professor of Mechanics in 
Columbia University. New York, John 
Wiley & Sons. 1896. 8vo. Pp. xi+576. 
The appearance of this rather unique yolume. 

is significant as a proof of the rapid develop- 

ment of mathematical instruction in this coun- 
try. It is designed for undergraduates who. 
have mastered the elements of the differential 
and integral calculus. After referring to the 
danger of excessive specialization and to the 
desirability of guiding the student to ‘a com- 
prehensive view of the mathematics of the: 
present day,’ the preface sets forth the general 
scope of this work in the following passage, 
which, for several reasons, is worth quoting in. 
full: ‘‘ During the past twenty years a marked 
change of opinion has occurred as to the aims. 
and methods of mathematical instruction. The 
old ideas that mathematical studies should be 
pursued to discipline the mind, and that such 
studies were ended when an elementary course: 
in the calculus had been covered, have for the 
most part disappeared. In our best classical 
and engineering colleges the elementary course: 
in calculus is now given in the sophomore year, 
while lectures and seminary work in pure 
mathematics are continued during the junior 
and senior years. It is with the hope of meet- 
ing the existing demand for a suitable text to. 
be used in such upper-class work that the edi- 
tors enlisted the cooperation of the authors in 
the task of bringing together the chapters of the 
book.’’ The following synopsis of the chapters 
will give some idea of the contents of ‘ Higher 

Mathematics:’ I. ‘The solution of equations,’ 

by Mansfield Merriman (82 pp.); II. ‘Deter- 

minants,’ by Lenas Gifford Weld (87 pp.); 

III. ‘Projective geometry,’ by George Bruce 

Halsted (37 pp.); IV. ‘Hyperbolic functions,’ 

by James McMahon (62 pp.); V. ‘Harmonic 

functions,’ by William E. Byerly (57 pp.); VI. 

‘Functions of a complex variable,’ by Thomas. 

S. Fiske (77 pp.); VII. ‘Differential equa- 

tions,’ by W. Woolsey Johnson (71 pp.) ; VIII. 

‘Grassmann’s space analysis,’ by Edward W. 


278 


Hyde (51 pp.); IX. ‘Vector analysis and 
quaternions,’ by Alexander Macfarlane (42 pp.); 
X. ‘Probability and theory of errors,’ by Rob- 
ert'S. Woodward (40pp.); XI. ‘ History of mod- 
ern mathematics,’ by David Eugene Smith 
(63 pp.). 

That this collection of comparatively brief 
and disconnected chapters, however well they 
may be written, could be used successfully as a 
text-book may appear doubtful. Most of the 
chapters are too short to serve as a satisfactory 
text for a college course. Nevertheless, the 
work is an exceedingly valuable one. The ad- 
vantage to be gained by putting into the hands 
of the student a work covering so wide a range, 
in a form so attractive and easily accessible even 
without the assistance of a teacher, can hardly 
be overestimated. Both as an incentive to 
further study and as a book of reference, the 
volume will be of great service. 

The proper selection and apportionment of 
subjects for such a general introduction to 
higher mathematics is a matter of great diffi- 
culty; on the whole, the selection has been 
made with excellent judgment. It is certainly 
to be regretted that the proposed chapter on 
elliptic functions had to be omitted; the sub- 
jects treated in chapters I., II., IV., VIII. and 
IX. would have been missed far less. Modern 
analytic geometry, the theory of substitutions 
and groups with its applications, non-Euclidean 
geometry, quantics and theoretical mechanics 
were probably excluded as too advanced or as 
not allowing of brief presentation. 

From the point of view of pure mathematics 
the most interesting chapters in the book are 
Professor Fiske’s ‘Functions of a Complex 
Variable’ and Professor Halsted’s ‘ Projective 
Geometry.’ The geometric mode of treatment 
which characterizes the first third of Professor 
Fiske’s chapter will arouse the interest and self- 
activity of the student and thus prepare him for 
the more arduous analytical investigation of the 
critical points of the simplest monogenic func- 
tions which occupies the remainder of the 
chapter. The whole is written with the great- 
est care, and although this isthe longest chap- 
ter in the book one cannot help regretting that 
it is not longer. In but one or two cases con- 
ciseness seems to be carried so far as to en- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 111. 


danger clearness—for instance, in the definition 
of uniform convergence (p. 274); but in general 
the presentation is as clear as it is precise. 

Professor Halsted gives us a carefully worked- 
out exposition of von Staudt’s system of syn- 
thetic geometry. The logical development, as 
was to be expected, is admirable; the form of 
presentation is exceedingly concise and neat. 
A mathematician familiar with the subject and 
with von Staudt’s terminology may read this 
chapter with pleasure. But the beginner, for 
whom this volume is intended, will be sorely 
perplexed. Even if he has energy and patience 
enough to learn the new language here spoken, 
and comes to understand such phrases as ‘“‘A 
tetrastim with dots in a conic has each pair of 
codots costraight with a pair of fanpoints of the 
tetragram of tangents at the dots’’ (Art. 91, 
p. 85), or ‘‘ Two correlated polystims whose 
paired dots and codots have their joins copunc- 
tal are called ‘coplanar’ ’’ (Art. 51, p. 76), of 
what use is this to him? Few persons will 
understand him, and he himself will be unable 
to understand the masters who have written, 
and are still writing, on the science of projective 
geometry. But, even apart from this passion 
for coining new words, it seems to the writer 
that the rigid formality and exclusiveness of 
the treatment here adopted tends to make a 
naturally easy and attractive subject unneces- 
sarily difficult and almost forbidding to the be- 
ginner, and to give him a one-sided idea of 
what is now meant by projective geometry. To 
mention a minor point, a reference to von 
Staudt’s ‘Geometrie der Lage,’ which, by a 
curious oversight, is nowhere mentioned, would 
have been in place in connection with the ‘ fun- 
damental theorem’ of Art. 59 (p. 77), which 
corresponds to von Staudt’s Art. 88. The 
printer is probably responsible for assigning | 
Pappus to the age of Plato (p. 104). 

To the student of applied mathematics the 
chapters on ‘Harmonic Functions’ and on. 
‘Probability and Theory of Errors’ will prove 
of most value. The first half of Professor 
Woodward’s chapter treats of the theory of 
probability proper, beginning with permuta-— 
tions and leading up to Bernoulli’s theorem ; 
the latter half, on ‘laws of error,’ is par- 
ticularly valuable as embodying the results 


FEBRUARY 12, 1897. ] 


of the author’s own investigations on the errors 
ofinterpolated values. This chapter will form an 
excellent supplement to a course on the method 
of least squares. 

Professor Byerly’s chapter on harmonic func- 
tions is a model of clear and attractive exposi- 
tion, in asubject by no means easy of approach 
to the beginner. It is, of course, largely based 
on the author’s more extensive text-book. After 
showing on three particular examples how the 
attempt to solve certain physical problems 
naturally leads to Fourier series, to zonal and 
cylindrical harmonics, the author discusses each 
of these three subjects in some detail, illus- 
trating every method by numerical examples, 
some of which are worked out even to the 
arrangement of the logarithmic work. Nothing 
could be more useful to the student of applied 
mathematics, while the pure mathematician 
may regret that the constant occupation with 
methods of solving certain problems leaves no 
room for inquiring into the real nature and 
characteristics of the functions under discussion. 
But, in a brief chapter, more than is here given 
could hardly be expected. 

The introduction of numerous applications 
and exercises, which is a general feature of 
this volume, is also very prominent in Professor 
MeMahon’s chapter on hyperbolic functions. 
This chapter is perhaps more complete in itself 
than any other chapter inthe book. It givesa 
very satisfactory exposition of the theory, with 
graphical representations, seven pages of tables 
and weli-chosen applied problems. 

Professor Johnson’s excellent chapter on dif- 
ferential equations is naturally one of the longest 
in the book and also attains a certain degree of 
completeness. 

On the other hand, Professor Merriman’s 
chapter on ‘the solution of equations’ appears 
rather meagre, perhaps, beeause the author, as 
one of the editors, felt bound to keep strictly 
within the prescribed limits of space. A some- 
what remarkable statement about the impos- 
sibility of the algebraic solution of the general 
quintic appears at the bottom of p. 22. After 
referring briefly to the researches of Abel and 
Galois, the author says: ‘‘ Although these dis- 
cussions are complex and not devoid of doubt,’’ 
(a foot-note gives an inaccurate reference to 


SCIENCE. 


279 


Kronecker and a reference to Cockle), ‘‘ they 
have been generally accepted as conclusive. 
Moreover, the fact that the quintic is still un- 
solved, in spite of the enormous amount of work 
done upon it during the past two centuries, is 
strong evidence that the problem is an impos- 
sible one.’’?’ Comment is unnecessary. 

The chapter on determinants contains more 
than might be expected from its brevity. Pro- 
fessor Weld’s modesty in not referring anywhere 
to his text-book on the subject is worthy of men- 
tion. } 

The geometrical calculus is represented by 
two interesting chapters. The elements of 
Grassmann’s methods as applied to plane and 
solid geometry are set forth at some length by 
Professor Hyde, while Professor Macfarlane 
treats of vector addition and multiplication, 
with particular reference to their application 
in mathematical physics. The quaternion 
proper, although it figures in the title of Chap- 
ter IX., receives but slight attention. Both 
chapters are far too brief to show the real 
power of these methods, which appears espe- 
cially when geometrical differentiation and in- 
tegration are introduced. The present writer 
cannot help regretting that Professor Hyde has 
not adopted the remarkably elegant and simple 
treatment of Grassmann’s fundamental ideas 
proposed by Peano. From the point of view of 
pure mathematics Peano’s method of laying the 
foundation for a geometrical calculus can hardly 
be improved upon. The physicist, however, 
will probably, for some time to come, prefer to 
become acquainted with vector analysis in close 
connection with the development of his physical 
and mechanical notions, in a manner similar 
to that pursued by Oliver Heaviside in his 
‘Electro-magnetic Theory,’ Vol. I. (1893). For- 
tunately, Professor Macfarlane’s methods and 
notations do not seem to differ now very much 
from Mr. Heaviside’s. The peculiarly cum- 
brous notation for what might be called the po- 
lar coordinates of a vector is an exception. 

In the last chapter Professor D. E. Smith 
gives a rapid survey of the historical develop- 
ment of the various branches of mathematics 
during the nineteenth century. This rather 
difficult task seems to be accomplished in a very 
satisfactory way, the chapter being evidently 


280 


based upon the best sources and made with 
great care. The chapter adds much to the value 
of this volume as a book of reference. 
ALEXANDER ZIWET. 
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN. 


The Development of the Periodic Law. By F. P. 
VENABLE, Ph. D., Professor in the Univer- 
versity of North Carolina. Easton, Pa., 
Chemical Publishing Company. 1896. Pp. 
viii+321. Price, $2.50. 

The purpose of this book cannot be better 
given than in the author’s own words: ‘‘ This 
work * * * is to be used for purposes of refer- 
ence and of study, and not as a mere history of 
the subject. The errors and repetitions of the 
writers upon this subject in the past few years 
have abundantly proved the necessity for some 
such gathering and systematizing the work of 
former years.”’ 

Professor Venable’s work in writing his re- 
cently published History of Chemistry has given 


him an excellent preparation for the critical - 


study of the discovery and development of the 
periodic law, which is given in this volume. As 
stated by the author, much of the literature of 
the subject is in hidden and out-of-the-way 
places and a very real service is rendered to 
chemical science in thus coordinating it and 
making it more easily accessible. The scope of 
the book includes an account of the numerous 
attempts which have been made to discover 
numerical and other relations between the 
atomic weights and also an account of specula- 
tions as to the origin of the elements and their 
relation to some fundamental form of matter. 

Caleulations and speculations of this kind 
have had a fatal fascination for a great many 
chemists, and as we look over the literature and 
see how much has been written that is fanciful, 
and how much that in the light of better knowl- 
edge has been found erroneous and worthless, 
we are almost tempted to turn from the whole 
subject in disgust. And there is no doubt that 
many of these speculations have been worthless 
and the time of their authors has been nearly 
or quite wasted, for they have led to no ac- 
cepted conclusions and they have given no in- 
centive to useful work. But the periodic sys- 
tem stands on quite a different plane, for it 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vox. V. No. 111. 


furnishes us the best means at present available 
for coordinating our knowledge of the chemical 
elements, and it has furnished the incentive for 
a large amount of most excellent experimental 
work. That there are some imperfections in 
the system and that it does not, at present, give 
any accurate mathematical expression for our 
chemical knowledge must be admitted. It is 
tantalizing in its suggestiveness, and most chem- 
ists believe that it half reveals facts which will 
be of profound importance when fully under- 
stood. If the present work turns the attention 
of chemists in that direction it may prove very 
useful. 

A quite full bibliography and an excellent 
index add to the usefulness of the work. 

W.A.N. 


Notes on Qualitative Analysis, arranged for the 
use of students of the Rensselaer Polytechnic 
Institute. By W. P. MAson, Professor of 
Chemistry. Third Edition. Easton, : Pa., 
Chemical Publishing Company. 1896. Pp. 
56. Price, 80 cents. 

This book gives a concise statement of the 
more important qualitative tests for metals and 
acids, those for the metals being arranged in the 
order of Fresenius. Then follow tables for an- 
alysis of metals, and five pages giving very 
short directions for the analysis of alloys, in- 
soluble substances and alkaline solutions. 

The selection of tests is satisfactory and the 
book will, doubtless, furnish a basis for a good 
short course in the subject. It would seem, 
however, that even an elementary work should 
give directions which are reliable for cases of 
very common occurrence. For instance, am- 
monia often fails to separate small quantities of 
silver chloride from mercurous chloride; and 
ammonia will not separate zinc from chromium 
unless the zine is in excess. Neither case is 
provided for in the directions given. 

Books of this character may furnish students 
with excellent drill in scientific methods’ of 
work and, in the hands of a good teacher, are 
satisfactory from that standpoint, but the stu- 
dent should understand that he is liable to fall 
into very serious mistakes if he attempts to use 
the directions for practical work. ' 

The references to Watts’ dictionary and the 


FEBRUARY 12, 1897. ] 


chemical journals form an excellent feature of 
the book. The habit of going to proper sources 
for fuller information cannot be formed too 
early and is of fundamental importance to any 


one hoping to do scientific work. 
W.A.N. 


A Manual of Quantitative Chemical Analysis, for 
the use of Students. By FREDERICK A. CAIRNS, 
A.M., Late Instructor in Analytical Chem- 
istry in School of Mines, Columbia College. 
Third edition. Revised and Enlarged by EL- 
WYN WALLER, Ph.D., formerly Professor of 
Analytical Chemistry in School of Mines, 
Columbia College. New York, Henry Holt 
& Co. 1896. Pp. xii+417. 

This work was first published in 1880. In 
the thorough revision, which has become neces- 
sary, a considerable portion has been rewritten 
and additional chapters have been inserted, 
while the portion upon organic proximate an- 
alysis has been omitted. 

The book is evidently intended for use in 
training those who intend to use their knowl- 
edge of analytical chemistry along commercial 
lines. After an introduction of twenty-two 
pages, ten chapters are given which contain 
directions for the complete analysis of a series 
of pure salts, including directions for the deter- 
mination of seventeen elements. ‘Then follows 
the main portion of the book, with chapters 
giving detailed directions for the analysis of 
limestones, clay, ores, metals and alloys as 
found in commerce, potable and mineral waters, 
acids and alkalies, bleaching powder, fertilizers, 
coal and commercial nitrates. 

The selection of topics is such as to meet very 
satisfactorily the need of the practical chemist, 
and the directions given are clear and suffi- 
ciently full for beginners. The appendix, by 
Professor Waller, giving the properties of pre- 
cipitates is an especially valuable feature of the 
book. 

It would be impossible for any one to write a 
book covering such an multitude of details as 
are required in quantitative analysis and give 
directions which accord, in every case, with the 
best knowledge of the subject. Two cases 
which may be criticized on this ground are 
worthy of notice because of their importance. 


SCIENCE. 281 


Gladding has shown (J. Am. Ch. Soc., 17, 398) 
that barium chloride should be added very 
slowly to secure a pure precipitate of barium 
sulphate, and Jannasch and Richards (J. Prak. 
Ch., 39, 321) and Schneider (Z. f. Phys. Ch., 10, 
425) have shown that the barium sulphate pre- 
cipitated in presence of ferric salts. contains 
ferric sulphate, which loses sulphuric acid on 
ignition and renders a subsequent purification 
by fusion inaccurate. The other case is that 
of the Lindo-Gladding method for the determi- 
nation of potassium. It has been shown that 
the method is inaccurate because the potassium 
of the chloro-platinate is partly replaced by am- 
monium on washing with ammoniums chloride. 

Since Ostwald has pointed out so clearly the 
value of the new theories of physical chemistry 
for the practical discussion of many topics in 
analytical chemistry, it is to be hoped that some 
discussion of that sort may soon find its way 
into our text-books. The present book is 
neither better nor worse than others in that re- 


gard. 
W. A. N. 


SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS. 
THE AUK, JANUARY, 1897. 

THE number contains articles of varied inter- 
est. Mr. E. W. Nelson describes some forty 
new species and subspecies and one new genus 
of birds from Mexico and Guatemala, collected 
by himself and Mr. E. A. Goldman during ex- 
plorations conducted for the Biological Survey 
of the United States Department of Agriculture 
during the last five years. These collections 
include between four and five thousand speci- 
mens, many of them collected in districts never 
before visited by an ornithologist. Dr. A. P. 
Chadbourne concludes his paper, begun in the 
October number, on ‘ Evidence suggestive of 
the Occurrence of Individual Dichromatism in 
Megascops asio.’ This paper is illustrated with 
a colored plate. Two captive individuals of 
this species, fed on an exclusive diet of liver, 
were observed to change from the gray to the 
red phase without any evidence of molting. 
Other technical papers treat of various ques- 
tions of nomenclature and include descriptions 
of a new subspecies each of the Yellow and 
Black-throated Blue Warblers. 


282 


Papers of a more popular character include 
‘Notes on a Captive Hermit Thrush,’ by Daniel 
E. Owen; ‘Recent Investigations of the Food 
of European Birds,’ by F. E. L. Beal; ‘Some 
Notes on the Nesting Habits of the White- 
tailed Kite,’ by Chester Barlow; ‘ Report of the 
A. O. U. Committee on Protection of North 
American Birds,’ by William Dutcher, and an 
account of the ‘Fourteenth Congress of the 
American Ornithologists’ Union,’ by the Sec- 
retary, John H. Sage. Mr. Owen’s experi- 
ments with the Hermit Thrush go to show that 
its digestion is extremely active, blueberries 
being found to traverse the digestive tract in 
one hour and a-half; also that its capacity for 
food was enormous, it being capable of digest- 
ing its own weight of raw meat daily. The 
report of the Committee on Bird Protection 
shows that much work is being done in behalf 
of the preservation of wild birds, with, in many 
eases, highly encouraging results. The protec- 
tion of the colonies of Terns at Muskeget 
Island, Massachusetts, and Great Gull Island, 
New York, has been continued, and both 
colonies give evidence of considerable 
crease. 

Under ‘General Notes’ is the usual variety 
of short communications giving items of inter- 
est respecting various rare species or the cap- 
ture of species at unusual localities; under 
‘Recent Literature’ a dozen pages are devoted 
to reviews of recent ornithological publications. 
The number closes with the ‘Eighth Supple- 
ment to the American Ornithologists’ Union 
Check List of North American Birds,’ oceupy- 
ing twenty pages, and adding several newly 
recognized genera and subgenera and some 
twenty species and subspecies to the Check 
List. Also two subgenera are raised to the 
rank of genera, and three generic names are 
changed, involving changes in the names of 
nine species ; while the names of twenty other 
species and subspecies are also changed, mainly 
through the discovery of earlier names than those 
previously adopted in the Check List. The addi- 
tions and mutations thus number nearly seventy. 
Besides this, six recently described species and 
subspecies, and nine proposed changes of nomen- 
clature, are treated as not entitled to adop- 
tion; while nearly a dozen other cases are de- 


in- 


SCIENCE. 


LN. S. Von. V. No. 111. 


ferred for final action later. Thus, within the 
two years that have elapsed since the publica- 
tion of the Seventh Supplement to the Check 
List, it appears that nearly one hundred cases 
have arisen requiring action by the A. O. U. 
Committee on Nomenclature ; showing, for one 
thing at least, no lack of activity on the part of 
workers in North American ornithology. 


JOURNAL OF GEOLOGY, JANUARY-—FEBRU- 
ARY, 1897. 


Comparison of the Carboniferous and Permian 
Formations of Nebraska and Kansas : By CHARLES. 
S. Prosser. The classification of the Carbonif- 
erous and Permian worked out in Kansas by 
the author is extended to cover the correspond- 
ing beds of Nebraska. In this opening paper 
the details of the formations as they occur in 
Nemaha, Johnson, Gage and Otoe counties are 
given, with many facts of historical and local 
interest. 

Ewidences of Recent Elevation of the Southern 
Coast of Baffin Land: By THomas L. WATSON. 
The author, a member of the Cornell Green- 
land expedition, concludes: (1) There is con- 
clusive evidence of a recent elevation of 270 to 
800 feet along the south and southeast coast of 
Baffin Land, asindicated by raised beaches, dif; 
ferential weathering and remains of living 
genera and species in beds associated with the 
beaches. The movement seems not to have 
been everywhere alike, but was only in part 
slow and gradual. (2) Conditions strongly favor 
a permanent movement on Big Island and in 
Cumberland Sound. (8) The Baffin Land uplift 
was probably coextensive with that described 
by Bell and Tyrrell in the Hudson Bay region. 
The paper includes a partial bibliography. 

Italian Petrological Sketches, IIT: By HENRY 
S. WasHInNGron. The author continues his 
discussion of Italian volcanics, treating the 
Bracciano, Cerveteri and Tolfa regions. Tos- 
conite, an acid effusive characterized miner- 
alogically by the presence of basic plagioclase. 
as well as orthoclase with occasional quartz and 
chemically by high silica and alkalies and (for 
the acidity) high lime and low alumina, is de- 
fined. The rock isthe equivalent of Brogger’s. 
quartz-trachyte-andesite and approaches his del- 
lenite. The accompanying rocks are described 


FEBRUARY 12, 1897.] 


in detail and the paper includes seven excellent 
analyses. 

Mode of Formation of Till as Illustrated by the 
Kansan Drift of Northern Illinois: by Oscar H. 
HersHey. The following stages are distin- 
guished : (1) The residuary clay is crushed and 
kneaded, perhaps moved a short distance, but 
remains free from foreign material. (2) The 
process is continued, foreign material is added, 
and there is greater, probably sub-glacial, trans- 
formation. This is believed to be represented 
by most of the till of Stephenson County. (8) 
Calcareous material is deposited in the till from 
solution. (4). The horizontal rock caps of the 
preglacial hills are pushed forward and titled. 
(5) These rock masses become fractured and 
are rolled and kneaded together. (6) By a 
continuation of the process a very stony till 
relatively free from foreign rocks is formed. 
(7) The angular limestone débris becomes com- 
mingled with 10 per cent. to 50 per cent. of 
rounded Canadian pebbles. (8) The red clay, 
stage 2, may become mixed with the angular 
limestone, stage 6. (9) Preglacial and marginal 
lake-bed silts become mixed with the till form- 
ing the yellow clay frequently considered to 
be englacial. Deposition is considered to be 
largely marginal and mainly subglacial. 

The Geology of the San Francisco. Peninsula : 
by HaAro~tp W. FAIRBANKS. Lawson’s* re- 
port upon the geology of the peninsula is criti- 
cised, the author taking exception to the use of 
the term chert and the reference to the siliceous 
bands in the foraminiferal limestone as veins. 
He dissents from the reference of the origin of 
the jaspers to siliceous springs on the bottom 
of the ocean and urges that they were formed 
from radiolarian and other siliceous remains 
dissolved in sea water. The ‘silica-carbonate 
sinter’ deposits are held to be of recent ori- 
gin and hence of no value as a base for the cor- 
relation of the Knoxville and Franciscan series 
(Golden Gate Series of Fairbank). It is be- 
lieved that Professor Lawson has unduly min- 
imized the importance of the disturbances which 
the older uncrystalline rocks show. Attention 
is called to the absence of any new evidence for 
continuing to place the Series in the Cretaceous, 

“Fifteenth Ann. Rept., U. S. Geol. Surv., pp. 405- 
A476. : 


SCIENCE. 


283 


and the use of the term laccolith in describing 
the intrusives is deplored. The granite of the 
Golden Gate Series is held to be older than those 
of the Sierra Nevada rather than of the same 
age. Jef, IN, 15}, 


SOCIETIES 4ND ACADEMIES. 
NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES.—SUB-SEC- 
TION OF ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY. 


THE Academy met at Columbia University on 
Monday evening, January 25th, with President 
Stevenson in the chair. The Sub-section of An- 
thropology and Psychology immediately organ- 
ized under the chairmanship of Professor F. H. 
Giddings and proceeded to the regular program, 
which consisted of reports upon the winter 
meetings of the various scientific associations 
represented in the Section. The first report 
was by Professor Giddings, upon the meeting of 
the American Economic Association in Balti- 
more. The speaker paid particular attention 
to the presidential address of Professor Henry 
C. Adams, on ‘The Relation of Economics to 
Jurisprudence ;’ to the paper of ex-Secretary 
of the Treasury Charles 8. Fairchild on ‘What 
is the Present Direction of Acquisitive Invest- 
ments? What are the Economic Effects of 
Such Investments?’ and to Professor Arthur T. 
Hadley’s paper on ‘The Duty of the Govern- 
ment towards the Investor.’ 

Dr. Livingston Farrand presented brief ab- 
stracts of the more important psychological 
papers read at the meeting of the American 
Psychological Association in Boston, December 
29 and 30, 1896, and was followed by Dr. Franz 
Boas, who spoke of the meeting of Section H 
(Anthropology) of the American Association for 
the Advancement of Science, in New York, ap- 
proving the action of the Section in recom- 
mending a regular winter meeting, to be held, 
if possible, at the same time and place as the 
American Psychological Association and the 
American Society of Naturalists, and reviewing 
briefly some of the papers presented at the 
meeting. : 

Mr. Harlan I. Smith reported on the Ameri- 
can Folk-Lore Society’s meeting in New York, 
on December 20th, dwelling particularly on 
Miss Fletcher’s paper, ‘Certain Early Forms of 
Ceremonial Expression,’ and on the discussion 


284 


following Dr. Brinton’s and Dr. Boas’ papers, 
as to the validity of the theory of the psychic 
unity of man in accounting for details of simi- 
larities in the mythologies of widely separated 


peoples. 
LIVINGSTON FARRAND, 


Secretary of Sub-Section. 


TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB, TUESDAY, JANUARY 
12, 1897. 


THIS was the annual meeting. Six new ac- 
tive and two corresponding members were 
elected. Resolutions of sorrow were adopted 
regarding the death of Mr. William H. 
Rudkin, one of the oldest members, the dis- 
coverer of the hybrid oak Quercus Rudkini. 
Annual reports were presented by the standing 
committees and officers. It was resolved to 
print a list of the desiderata of the herbarium 
of plants growing within 100 miles of the city. 
The Treasurer reported a cash balance of $56.89 
in the regular fund and $514.14 in the Buchanan 
fund. 

The Recording Secretary, Dr. Rusby, re- 
ported an average attendance of 31 persons at 
the 15 meetings held during the year, two 
deaths, a net gain in active membership of 28, 
a present active membership of 219, correspond- 
ing membership 150, honorary membership 4, 
scientific papers presented 37, of which 22 had 
been published. Several hundred new species 
and a number of new genera had been commu- 
nicated, and there had been a marked increase 
in the attention given to anatomical and crypto- 
gamic subjects. 

The editor reported that Vol. 23 of the Bul- 
letin had aggregated 548 pages and 384 full-page 
plates, and that two numbers of the Memoirs, 
aggregating 206 pages, had been issued. There 
was a cash balance from publications of $48.09 
in addition to the balance already reported by 
the Treasurer. 

The officers for 1897 were elected as follows : 
President, Addison Brown; Vice-Presidents, 
T. H. Allen, H. H. Rusby; Treasurer, Henry 
Ogden ; Recording Secretary, Edward S. Bur- 
gess ; Corresponding Secretary, John K. Small ; 
Editor, N. L. Britton ; Associate Editors, Emily 
L. Gregory, Arthur Hollick, Anna M. Vail, B. 
D. Halsted, Lucien M. Underwood; Curator, 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No. 111. 


Helen M. Ingersoll; 
Wheelock. 

The scientific programme of the evening was 
then taken up as follows: 

By Mr. A. J. Grout, 
American Brachythecia.’ 

By Dr. N. L. Britton, Linum Virginianum 
and its Relatives.’ 

Mr. Grout compared the principles of clas- 
sification employed by the two prominent 
bryologists, Schimper and Lindberg, and 
stated his reasons for preferring those of the 
latter to those of the former. He then ex- 
hibited and remarked upon four American spe- 
cies of Brachythecium and expressed the opinion 
that they represent a genus distinct from 
Brachythecium. The paper will be published 
in full in the Bulletin. 

Dr. Britton illustrated the leading distin- 
guishing characteristics between the species of 
Linum, of the Virginianum group, and dwelt 
particularly upon the claims to specific rank of 
L. Virginianum medium, Walter. 

EDWARD S. BURGESS, 
Secretary. 


Librarian, William E. 


‘Notes on Some 


NEW BOOKS. 


A Dictionary of Birds. ALFRED NEWTON, as- 
sisted by Hans GADow. With contributions 
from RICHARD LYDEKKER, CHARLES S. Roy 
and RoBERT W. SHUFELDT. Part IV., Sheath- 
bill-Zygodactyli. London, Adam and Charles 
Black; New York, The Macmillan Company. 
1897. Pp. 833-1088 + viii+ 124. $2.60. 

Experimental Morphology. Part I., Effect of 
Chemical and Physical Agents upon Proto- 
plasm. CHARLES BENEDICT DAVENPORT. 
New York, The Macmillan Company. 1897. 
Pp. xiv + 280. 

Travels in West Africa, Congo Frangais, Corsica 
and Cameroons. MAry H. KinesLtEy. New 
York, The Macmillan Company. 1897. Pp. 
xvi-+ 748. 

Elementary Geology. RALPH S. TARR. New 
York, The Macmillan Company. 1897. Pp. 
xxx + 499. $1.40. 

Catalogus Mammalium. E.L. TRovESSART. Fas- 
ciculus I. Berlin, R. Friedlander & Sohn. 
1897. Pp.v +218. M. 10. 


SCIENCE 


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VoL. V. No. 112. FRIpAy, FEBRUARY 19, 1897. ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION, $5.00 


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Dec. 1, 1896. Just Published. Sixth Edition of 
AND MICROSCOPI-. 


THE MICROSCOP CAL METHODS, 


By SIMON HENRY GAGE, Professor of Microscopy, His- 
tology and Embryology in Cornell University and the 
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Popular Lectures on Astronomy 
MISS MARY PROCTOR 


(Daughter of the late Richard A. Proctor). 


11» SUBJECTS ... 


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FLOWERS OF THE SKY. - - 

AN ECLIPSE EXPEDITION. - 
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SCIENCE 


EDITORIAL ComMMITTEE: S. NEwcoms, Mathematics; R. S. WooDWARD, Mechanics; E. C. PICKERING, 
Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THURSTON, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry; 
J. LE ContE, Geology; W. M. Davis, Physiography; O. C. MARSH, Paleontology; W.K. 
Brooks, C. HART MERRIAM, Zoology; S. H. ScuppER, Entomology; N. L. BRITTON, 
Botany; Hmnry F. OsBorN, General Biology; H. P. Bowpircu, Physiology; 
J. S. Bin~inas, Hygiene ; J. MCKEEN CATTELL, Psychology ; 
DANIEL G. BRINTON, J. W. POWELL, Anthropology. 


Fripay, Fepruary 19, 1897. 


CONTENTS: 
Louis Agassiz: WILLIAM JAMES...........0.ceeeeeeee 285 
On the Effects of Disease and Senility as Illustrated 


in the Bones and Teeth of Mammals: HARRISON 

JMUIBIIN nocosbanqnoanqoceageososnqn0se9 boos RDeR9Ne00NI900050000 289 
American Metrological Society ..........+..seseereeeseeeees 295 
The Apprenticeship Question: R. H. THuRSTON.299 
SCTE WV Uting is) MN sccccccecvasccessecswecstmceses coe 300 
Zoological Notes :— 

The Generic Names Ictis, Arctogale and Arctoga- 

hidia:) (CHART) MERRIAM ...2...2..ceccneseesecetses 302 


Current Notes on Anthropology :— 
The Woman SPIES Ancient Man in ere 


The Chaco Idioms: D. G. BRINTON .-302 
Astronomical Notes” Ts Ji. ...ccccssecsececeossavctesecees 303 
Scientific Notes and News ...........csscccssccsecneseeeees 303 
University and Educational News...........c0.c.ceceeeees 307 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 
Lieutenant Peary’s Expedition: Gro. H. BAR- 
TON. Color-blindness and William Pole: A Study 
in Logic: CHRISTINE LADD FRANKELIN......... 308 


Scientific Literature :— 
Non-Euclidean Geometry : 
Waldo’s Elementary Meteorology : 
WARD. Wiechmann’s Lecture Notes on Theo- 
retical Chemistry: JAS. LEWIS Howe. The 
Argentaurum Papers: W_..--.---.cc.escse-.ecenneeoee 311 


A. 8. HATHAWAY. 
R. DEC. 


Scientific Journals :— 
The Pihnysteal REvvew. .........--.-.cocscscocceecrorsseveees 315 


Societies and Academies :— 
Eleventh Annual Session of the Iowa Academy of 
Sciences: HERBERT OSBORN. The _ Scientific 
Association of the Johns Hopkins University: 
CHAS. LANE Poor. Biological Society of Wash- 


ington: F. A. Lucas. The New York Academy 
of Sciences—Biological Section: C. L. BRISTOL..317 
EN Et BOUKS ceeeevsncecnaeensececess seneresaaeesetesee Gaectone +320 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended 
for review should be sent to the responsible editor, Prof. J. 
McKeen Cattell, Garrison-on-Hudson, N. Y. 


LOUIS AGASSIZ.* 


Ir would be unnatural to have such an 
assemblage as this meet in the Museum and 
Faculty Room of this University and yet 
have no public word spoken in honor of a 
name which must be silently present to the 
minds of all our visitors. 

At some near future day it is to be hoped 
some one of you whois well acquainted with 
Agassiz’s scientific career will discourse here 
concerning it. I could not now, even if I 
would, speak to you of that of which you have 
far more intimate knowledge than I. On 
this social occasion it has seemed that what 
Agassiz stood for in the way of character’ 
and influence is the more fitting thing to 
commemorate, and to that agreeable task I 
have been called. He made an impression 
that was unrivalled. He left a sort of pop- 
ular myth—the Agassiz legend, as one 
might say—behind him in the air about us; 
and life comes kindlier to all of us; we get 
more recognition from the world because we 
call ourselves naturalists—and that was the 
class to which he also belonged. 

The secret of such an extraordinarily 
effective influence lay in the equally extra- 
ordinary mixture of the animal and social 
gifts, the intellectual powers and the de- 
sires and passions of the man. From his’ 


* Words spoken at the reception of the American 
Society of Naturalists given by the President and 
Fellows of Harvard College at Cambridge on Decem- 
ber 30, 1896. 


286 


boyhood he looked on the world as if it 
and he were made for each other, and on 
the vast diversity of living things as if he 
were there with authority to take mental 
possession of them all. His habit of col- 
lecting began in childhood, and during his 
long life knew no bounds save those that 
separate the things of nature from those of 
human art. Already in his student years, 
in spite of the most stringent poverty, his 
whole scheme of existence was that of one 
predestined to greatness, who takes that 
fact for granted, and stands forth immedi- 
ately as a scientific leader of men. 

His passion for knowing living things 
was combined with a rapidity of observa- 
tion and a capacity to recognize them again 
and remember everything about them, 
which all his life it seemed an easy tri- 
umph and delight for him to exercise, and 
which never allowed him to waste a mo- 
ment in doubts about the commensurability 
of his powers with his tasks. If ever a 
person lived by faith, he did. Whena boy 
of twenty, with an allowance of two hun- 
dred and fifty dollars a year, he maintained 
an artist attached to his employ, a cus- 
tom which never afterwards was departed 
from, except when, he maintained two or 
three. He lectured from the very outset 
to all those who would hear him. “TI 
feel within myself the strength of a whole 
generation,” he wrote to his father at that 
time, and launched himself upon the publi- 
cation of his costly ‘ Poissons Fossiles’ with 
no clear vision of the quarter from whence 
the payment might be expected to come. 

At Neuchatel (where between the ages 
of twenty-five and thirty he enjoyed a 
stipend that varied from four hundred to 
six hundred dollars) he organized a regular 
academy of natural history, with its mu- 
seum, managing by one expedient or an- 
other to employ artists, secretaries and 
assistants, and to keep a lithographic and 
printing establishment of his own employed 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 112. 


with the work that he put forth. Fishes, 
fossil and living, echinoderms and glaciers, 
transfigured themselves under his hand, 
and at thirty he was already at the zenith 
of his reputation, recognized by all as one 
of those naturalists in the unlimited sense, 
one of those folio copies of mankind, like 
Linneeus and Cuvier, who aim at nothing 
less than an acquaintance with the whole 
of animated nature. His genius for classify- 
ing was simply marvellous; and, as his 
latest biographer says, nowhere had a single 
person ever given so decisive an impulse to 
natural history. 

Such was the human being who on an 
October morning fifty years ago disembarked. 
at our port, bringing his hungry heart along 
with him, his confidence in his destiny, and 
his imagination full of plans. The only 
particular resource he was assured of was 
one course of Lowell Lectures. But of one 
general resource he always was assured, 
having always counted on it and never 
found it to fail—and that was the good will 
of every fellow-creature in whose presence 
he could find an opportunity to describe 
hisaims. His belief in these was so intense 
and unqualified that he could not conceive 
of others not feeling the furtherance of 
them to be a duty binding also upon them. 
Velle non discitur, as Seneca says,—Strength 
of desire must be born with a man; it can’t 
be taught. And Agassiz came before one 
with such enthusiasm glowing in his coun- 
tenance—such a persuasion radiating from 
his person that his projects were the sole 
things really fit to interest man as man— 
that he was absolutely irresistible. He 
came, in Byron’s words, with victory beam- 
ing from his breast, and every one went 
down before him, some yielding him money, 
some time, some specimens and some labor, 
but all contributing their applause and their 
godspeed. And so, living among us from 
month to month and from year to year, 
with no relation to prudence except his 


FEBRARUY 19, 1897. ] 


pertinacious violation of all her usual laws, 
he on the whole achieved the compass of 
his desires, studied the geology and fauna 
of a continent, trained a generation of zo- 
ologists, founded one of the chief museums 
of the world, gave a new impulse to scientific 
education in America, and died the idol of 
the public, as well as of his circle of im- 
mediate pupils and friends. 

The secret of it all was that, while his 
scientific ideals were an integral part of his 
being, something that he never forgot or 
laid aside, so that wherever he went he 
came forward as ‘ the Professor,’ and {talked 
‘shop’ to every person, young or old, great 
or little, learned or unlearned, with whom 
he was thrown, he was at the same time so 
commanding a presence, so curious and in- 
quiring, so responsive and expansive, and 
so generous and reckless of himself and of 
his own, that every one said immediately, 
“Here is no musty savant, but a man, a 
great man, a man on the heroic scale, not 
to serve whom is avarice and sin.” He ele- 
vated the popular notion of what a student 
of Nature could be. Since Benjamin Frank- 
lin we had never had among usa person of 
more popularly impressive type. He did 
not wait for students to come to him; he 
made inquiry for promising youthful col- 
lectors, and when he heard of one he 
wrote, inviting and urging him to come. 
Thus there is hardly one now of the Ameri- 
can naturalists of my generation whom 
Agassiz did not train. Nay, more; he 
said to every one that a year or two of 
natural history, studied as he understood 
it, would give the best training for any 
kind of mental work. Sometimes he was 
amusingly naif in this regard, as when he 
offered to put his whole museum at the dis- 
position of the Emperor of Brazil if he 
would but come and labor there. And I 
well remember how certain officials of the 
Brazilian Empire smiled at the cordiality 
with which he pressed upon them a similar 


SCIENCE. 


287 


invitation. But it had a great effect. 
Natural history must, indeed, be a godlike 
pursuit, if such a man as this can so adore 
it, people said; and the very definition 
and meaning of the word naturalist under- 
went a favorable alteration in the common 
mind. 

Certain sayings of Agassiz’s, as the 
famous one that he ‘had no time for mak- 
ing money,’ and his habit of naming his 
occupation simply as that of ‘ teacher,’ have 
caught the public fancy and are permanent 
benefactions. We all enjoy more consider- 
ation for the fact that he manifested himself 
here thus before us in his day. 

He was a splendid example of the tem- 
perament that looks forward and not back- 
ward, and never wastes a moment in regrets 
for the irrevocable. I had the privilege of 
admission to his society during the Thayer 
expedition to Brazil. I well remember at 
night, as we all swung in our hammocks in 
the fairy-like moonlight, on the deck of the 
steamer that throbbed its way up the Ama- 
zon between the forests guarding the stream 
on either side, how he turned and whis- 
pered, ‘‘ James, are you awake?” and con- 
tinued, “ J cannot sleep ; I am too happy; 
I keep thinking of these glorious plans.” 
The plans contemplated following the Ama- 
zon to its head-waters, and penetrating the 
Andes in Peru. And yet, when he arrived 
at the Peruvian frontier and learned that 
that county had broken into revolution, 
that his letters to officials would be useless, 
and that that part of the project must be 
given up, although he was indeed bitterly 
chagrined and excited for part of an hour, 
when the hour had passed over it seemed 
as if he had quite forgotten the disappoint- 
ment, so enthusiastically was he occupied 
already with the new scheme substituted 
by his active mind. 

Agassiz’s influence on methods of teach- 
ing in our community was prompt and de- 
cisive—all the more so that it struck 


288 


people’s imagination by its very excess. 
The good old way of committing printed 
abstractions to memory seems never to 
have received such a shock as it encoun- 
tered at his hands. There is probably no 
public school teacher now in New England 
who will not tell you how Agassiz used to 
lock a student up in a room full of turtle 
shells, or lobster shells or oyster shells, 
without a book or word to help him, and 
not let him out till he had discovered all 
the truths which the objects contained. 
Some found the truths after weeks and 
months of lonely sorrow; others never 
found them. Those who found them were 
already made into naturalists thereby; the 
failures were blotted from the book of 
honor and of life. “Go to nature; take 
the facts into your own hands; look and 
see for yourself !’’ These were the max- 
ims which Agassiz preached wherever he 
went, and their effect on pedagogy was 
electric. The extreme vigor of his devotion 
to this concrete method of learning was the 
natural consequence of his own peculiar 
type of intellect, in which the capacity for 
abstraction and causal reasoning and tra- 
cing chains of consequences from hypotheses 
was so much less developed than the genius 
for acquaintance with vast volumes of de- 
tail and for seizing upon analogies and re- 
lations of the more proximate and concrete 
kind. While on the Thayer expedition I 
remember that I often put questions to him 
about the facts of our new tropical habitat, 
but I doubt if he ever answered one of these 
questions of mine outright. He always 
said: ‘There, you see you have a definite 
problem ; go and look and find the answer 
for yourself.’’ His severity in this line was 
a living rebuke to all abstractionists and 
would-be biological philosophers. More 
than once have I heard him quote with 
deep feeling the lines from Faust: 


“Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie, 
Und griin des Lebens goldner Baum.’’ 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 112. 


The only man he really loved and had 
use for was the man who could bring him 
facts. To see facts, not to argue or raison- 
niren, was what life meant for him; and I 
think he often positively loathed the ratio- 
cinating type of mind. ‘Mr. Blank, you 
are totally uneducated!” I heard him once 
say to a student who proponded to him 
some glittering theoretic generality. And 
on a similar occasion he gave an admoni- 
tion that must have sunk deep into the 
heart of him to whom it was addressed: 
““Mr. X., some people perhaps now con- 
sider you a bright young man; but when 
you are fifty years old, if they ever speak of 
you then, what they say will be this: 
‘That X.—oh, yes, I know him; he used 
to be a very bright young man!’” Happy 
is the conceited youth who at the proper 
moment receives such salutary cold water 
therapeutics as this from one who, in other 
respects, is a kind friend. We cannot all 
escape from being abstractionists. I my- 
self, for instance, have never been able to 
escape; but the hours I spent with Agassiz 
so taught me the difference between all 
possible abstractionists and all livers in the 
light of the world’s concrete fulness, that I 
have never been able to forget it. Both 
kinds of mind have their place in the 
infinite design, but there can be no question 
as to which kind lies the nearer to the 
divine type of thinking. 

Agassiz’s view of Nature was saturated 
with simple religious feeling, and for this 
deep but unconventional religiosity he found 
at Harvard the most sympathetic possible 
environment. In the fifty years that have 
sped since he arrived here our knowledge 
of Nature has penetrated into joints and re- 
cesses which his vision never pierced. The 
causal elements and not the totals are what 
we are now most passionately concerned 
to understand; and naked and poverty- 
stricken enough do the stripped-out ele- 
ments and forces occasionally appear to us 


FEBRUARY 19, 1897.] 


to be. But the truth of things is after all 
their living fulness, and some day, from a 
more commanding point of view than was 
possible to any one in Agassiz’s generation, 
our descendants, enriched with the spoils of 
all our analyticinvestigations, will get round 
again to that higher and simpler way of 
looking at Nature. Meanwhile, as we look 
back upon Agassiz, there floats up a breath 
as of life’s morning, that makes the world 
seem young and fresh once more. May we 
all, and especially may those younger mem- 
bers of our association who never knew 
him, give a grateful thought to his memory 
as we wander through that Museum which 
he founded, and through this University, 
whose ideals he did so much to elevate and 


define. 
WILLIAM JAMES. 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


ON THE EFFECTS OF DISEASE AND SENIL- 
ITY AS ILLUSTRATED IN THE BONES 
AND TEETH OF MAMMALS.* 

I was very glad to respond to the invita- 
tion of your commitee to address you, for 
the reason that I have been for a long time 
interested in studying the effects of dis- 
eased action and senility, I hold that they 
are closely related and capable of being 
compared in precise ways with other mor- 
phological processes. 

Am J right in assuming that to no other or- 
ganization is it so appropriate to present 
the results of my investigation as to your 
own? 

In a scientific sense the use of the words 
‘morbid’ and ‘ pathological’ cannot be sus- 
tained, for it assumes the existence of 
morbific principles. One might speak as 
reasonably of the use of the words ‘ dirt’ or 
‘weeds’ being warranted in treating of ex- 
act conceptions. 

Disease tends to interfere with efficiency 

*A lecture delivered before the Graduate Club of 


the Biological Department of the University of Penn- 
Sylvania, December 7, 1896. 


SCIENCE. 


289 


—in whole or in part—of the organism in 
which it is manifested. But this statement, 
you will observe, in no way relates to eti- 
ology. The difference between disease and 
senilty is apparent rather than real; for 
senility, like disease, isa condition tending 
to inefficiency. Many senile states resemble 
diseased states and include calcification, 
absorption, fatty degeneration, ete. Butif 
these processes help the organism by pre- 
paring it for its work they cannot be called 
perversions, since all of them are present in 
early and confessedly normal states of the 
economy. Calcification is a normal process, 
whether we see it in the perpendicular plate 
of the ethmoid bone in the young adult or 
in the walls of blood vessels in the aged; 
absorption is a normal process, whether it 
is seen in the roots of the deciduous teeth 
in the young or in the orbito-temporal sep- 
tum of the aged; fatty degeneration is a 
normal process, whether it takes place in 
the mature placenta and prepares the way 
to parturition or occurs in the form of an 
arcus senitlis. But the results of these pro- 
cesses are enormously divergent, one main- 
taining physiological activities, the other 
hastening to decay and death. 

Senility is of no definite period and, there- 
fore, is without accurate limitation. The 
postulate that ‘wear and tear’ on tissues or 
organs which cannot be replaced occur in 
direct ratio to use is accepted. In low forms 
of life large portions of the economy, and 
some tissues even in the highest forms, are 
discarded and new ones take their place. 
Hpithelial elements are constantly being 
thrown off, and in many animals teeth are 
lost when no longer of service and others 
are developed to supplant them. But in 
old age of high grade organisms we witness 
loss, rather than gain, both in organs, like 
the teeth and hair, and in tissues, as mus- 
ele fibres in the capillary blood vessels. So 
far as man is concerned, this period is, on the 
whole, included in the time when he is no 


290 


longer virile. I venture to call it the post- 
genetic period. The term senility, in addi- 
tion to the usual ontogenetic sense, will be 
employed to express the changes that go on 
in a given group of animals on the decline 
from its acme of evolution, and attempts 
will be made to correlate these states with 
those occurring in the individual. (A. 
Hyatt.) 

I propose to submit a number of facts 
which, for convenience, I have placed under 
the head of propositions, the number and 
variety of which give a clue to the intricacy 
of the subject. 

It will be taken for granted throughout 
that the subject of variations of structure as 
usually limited has been carefully considered 
and set aside, for these do not invalidate 
any of the propositions. 

I. Reversion to lower types is sometimes wit- 
nessed in the senile human skull. 

Outside of Primates no mammal exhibits 
an orbitotemporal septum. In the senile 
human skull thinning, and often notable ab- 
sorption of the septum is almost constantly 
exhibited.* 

» II. Complex bones are sometimes analyzed in 
part by the manner in which absorptive processes 
occur in them. 

Many examples can be cited to illustrate 
the fact that bones originally separate tend to 
localize effects of diseased action even when 
the lines of separation between primal parts 
disappear. It is not expected that when 
the precoracoid bone of the cod is hyperos- 
tosed—a condition which has been often 
detected—that other portions of the suspen- 
sorium should participate. Neither do we 
find that when one-half of the lower jaw of 
a kangaroo is diseased that the other sepa- 
rate half should be involved. In the do- 
mestic cat the halves of the lower jaw are 
disposed to unite in old age, but even in 
this animal effects of inflammatory pro- 


*T described this in Am. Journ. Med. Sci., 1870, 
405. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 112. 


cesses may be confined to one-half of the 
bone. Ina specimen of an old cat in the 
Cornell collection the symphysis was united, 
the entire mentum thickened ; but the right 
side of the jaw was without incisor teeth 
and was much larger and thicker than the 
left, which was provided with teeth. 

The center for the premaxilla in the so- 
ealled superior maxilla of the human sub- 
ject is sometimes absorbed after the suture 
lines between the bone and the maxilla 
proper have been obliterated.* In the 
malar bone of the human subject the lower 
half is sometimes separated from the upper 
by a suture. The bone when thus marked 
is said to be bipartite. The skull of a 
syphilitic subject in my possession exhibits 
absorption of the lower half of the left 
malar bone. Since the bipartite bone 
is exceedingly rare, it is probable that 
the specimen had not possessed the su- 
ture and that the absorptive process had 
stopped when the area corresponding to a 
distinet center of ossification had been 
covered. Even if the bone had been bi- 
partite the circumscription of an absorp- 
tive process to an individual bone would 
have been none the less striking. In 
old age the peripheral venous openings on 
the bones tend to become enlarged. The 
arrangement of these openings sometimes 
defines the regions occupied by epiphyses 
which have long since disappeared. In the 
femur of the senile dog, for example, the 
line of separation of the distal epiphysis. 
from the shaft is indicated by the venous 
foramina being enlarged on the periphery. 
I have never observed such disposition to 
manifest itself in vigorous adults. 

III. Bone processes are sometimes increased 
in size in senility, or appear in places where they 
are not seen in antecedent stages, though occur- 
ring normally in the species of related groups. 

In the aged human subject the styloid 
process is sometimes longer than in younger 

* Ibid, p. 403. 


FEBRUARY 19, 1897. ] 


adults. This is caused by ossification of 
the stylo-hyoid ligament, which is often 
represented by a separate bone in lower 
animals. 

The domestic cat exhibits, as a rule, no 
tubercle on the lachrymal bone. In the 
senile skull of this species the tubercle is 
present. It is of interest to note that 
among the following skulls of Felis in the 
Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, 
and the National Museum, Washington, 
four only (F. eyra and F. yaguarundi, F. 
catus and F’. caracal) exhibited the lachrymal 
bone as it is in the vigorous adult of F. 
domesticus. In the following species the 
tubercle was present, though small: Ff. 
pardus,* F. rufus, F. canadensis, F. pardalis,+ 
F. leo. In the following it was large and 
formed precisely as in the old examples of 
the domestic cat, F. caligata, F. onca, F. 
concolor, F. tigris. Thus the form of the 
lachrymal bone in the old cat reverts to 
that of the prevalent type, not by absorp- 
tion, as in Proposition I., but by the crea- 
tion of a conspicuous process of bone. 

The senile cat again exhibits hyperosto- 
sis of the lateral process of the frontal bone 
(post-orbital process) as well as of the as- 
cending process of the malar bone. Thus 
these processes approach each other and in- 
dicate the tendency to union shown in re- 
lated efficient forms of the clawed mam- 
mals in which such union actually takes 
place. 

IV. Both the upper and the lower jaws of 
certain mammals tend to elongate in old age. 

The animals already named possessing 
long jaws have the intervals between some 
of the premolars widened in senility. The 
vigorous greyhound has the third lower 
premolar almost in contact with the fourth, 
while in the jaw of an old mongrel it is 
widely separated therefrom. In a general 

* A small tubercle may occur in this species as a 
variation. : 

f Absence of tubercles may be noted as variations, 


SCIENCE. 


291 


way, it may.be said that the last three pre- 
molars are all more widely separated from 
one another than in younger individuals. 
The cause appears to lie in the disposition 
for the jaw to extend forward somewhere 
in front of the region of the molar teeth; 
for the extraordinary wear that sometimes 
takes place between the lower canine and 
the upper outer incisor can be explained in 
no other way. In an old dog (No. 22,563; 
U. S. Nat. Mus.) the lower canine had 
pressed against the upper second and third 
incisors and had worn away the teeth. 
The permanent premolars always lie close 
together when recently erupted. This dis- 
position appears to be a coroliary to the 
law of the vertical succession of these teeth. 

The large permanent teeth following the 
small deciduous teeth in exact infra-posi- 
tion compel the former to lie close together. 
But they tend to separate afterward, espe- 
cially for the first and second to separate 
from the third and fourth. In the domestic 
cat the interval between the second and 
third teeth is more variable than between 
the others. Asarule, it is but 2 mm. in 
front of the third tooth, though it may be 
as much as5mm. These proportions are 
maintained throughout life in this species, 
so far as I know. 

In the dog we have a much greater va- 
riety, since in the different breeds the face 
axis is modified. In the short-faced types 
the premolars retain their early crowded 
condition, or this may even be exaggerated; 
while in the long-faced types they tend to 
be separated, excepting the third and fourth 
teeth, which remain, at least in an exam- 
ple of the greyhound above noted, close 
together. 

Putting aside the pug dogs and bull dogs, 
the variations in the intervals between the 
premolars are marked and appear to be inde- 
pendent of the relative length of the face to 
the brain case. In the St. Bernard the 
first lower premolar (counting it as a: re- 


292 


tained deciduous tooth) is nearer the canine 
than in any other variety. The interval 
between the third and fourth upper premo- 
lars is conspicuous in the rather short-faced 
Esquimaux dog and the St. Bernard. 

Since in the domestic dog the increase in 
the length of the lower jaw occurs in phyl- 
logeny (artificially in breeding) and in 
ontogeny the form is of exceptional value in 
the philosophic study of senility and dis- 
eased action. But the subject is corre- 
spondingly complex. So far as I know, no 
collections are available for its satisfactory 
study. 

In old examples of Glossophaga soricina and 
Pteropus poliocephalus the intervals between 
the premolars is much greater than in 
younger individuals. 

V. Senile forms of one species may resemble in 
essential characters the typical forms of an allied 
species. 

The appearances forming the basis of this 
proposition may be found not only in aged 
animals, but in the vigorous stages of an al- 
lied species as well. Thus, an old example 
of G. soricina resembles the typical form of 
a closely allied species, G. truet.* 

VI. Gross variations in the forms of teeth in 
closely related and highly specialized animals in- 
dicate that the types have become exhausted of 
their capacity to precise adaptation and are de- 
generating. The forms that degenerated teeth 
assume are those that simulate senile changes in 
animals less highly specialized than themselves. 

One of the most familiar changes incident 
to long use is the wear of the teeth. It 
would appear that the height of the tooth 
is in some degree proportional to the work 
that. is expected of it ; that the crown repre- 
sents the accumulation of a definite amount 
of material to be used up in grinding. 
We have often occasion to note the effects, 
upon the jaws themselves, of the lowering of 
the height of the crowns of the teeth. 

The fox bats, which are frugivorous, are 

* Proc, U.S. National Museum, 1896, 779. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 112. 


composed of fifteen genera. With a single 
exception (Pteralopex), they retain molars 
whose cusps have almost disappeared. The 
fact can be otherwise expressed as follows: 
The departure from the habit of the con- 
sumption of animal food to that of fruit leads 
to rather abrupt changes in the tooth form, 
by which the cusps are rapidly worn away, 
one insular genus alone maintaining its an- 
cestral cuspidation. 


. Inthe New World fruit-eating bats we have 


examples of similar abrupt changes, though 
carried out in a less uniform manner. The 
forms do not constitute in themselves a fam- 
ily, but are grouped irregularly within the 
family, most of the members of which re- 
tain carnivorous habits, and at best the 
lines between the carnivorous and the fru- 
givorous types are not sharply defined. In 
the Vampyri out of thirteen genera the 
molars of one genus only (Hemiderma) have 
lost their cusps, while in the Glossophagina 
out of six genera the teeth of one doubtful 
member of the group (Phyllonycteris) have 
lost their cusps. But in the Stenodermina, 
of thirteen genera, all the cusps have been 
lost, or are retained in the shape of the 
merest rudiments of the carnivorous plan. 
In two remote genera ( Cephalotes and Ecto- 
phylla), one in the Old World and the other 
in the New, the concave depressed molar 
crown has been so worn away as to bring 
the grinding surface of the enamel cap near 
the alveolus and apparently to create a new 
system of cusps, as if the tooth were a slate 
on which had been placed a problem which 
demanded that an older problem previously 
recorded on the same surface should be re- 
moved before the terms of the newer one 
could be stated. In the senile form of 
every bunodont mammal the molar teeth 
tend to have the crowns diminish by wear 
and all traces of cuspidation to belost. To 
my mind there is no difference between 
the loss of all cusps in the last premolar 
and the molars of an old dog, and the way 


FEBRUARY 19, 1897. ] 


in which cusps are lost in bats in passing 
from an insect-eating to a fruit-eating habit. 
The fruit-eating bats might be called senile 
forms, because they lost their cusps, just as 
reasonably as we may use similar language 
in describing an old dog. Both forms ex- 
hibit degeneration effects ; in one it is phyl- 
logenetic; in the other it is ontogenetic. 

VII. Entire loss of teeth in the human sub- 
ject from old age will often be followed by hyper- 
ostosis which presents three kinds nearly answer- 
ing im position to the three series of teeth, the 
ineisors, the premolars and the molars. 

The same law which created the differen- 
tiation of the teeth continues to operate 
after the loss of teeth. This is modified 
by the characters of chronic rheumatism 
and syphillis. The best examples in illus- 
tration of the proposition are met with in 
the jaws of savages.** 

VIII. The manner of obliteration of sutures 
im the skull of mammals may be definitive. 

The parieto-squamosal and the sphenoido- 
squamosal sutures rarely disappear in the 
human skull, no matter how old the indi- 
vidual. The suture last named disappears 
in the dog in the early stages of senility. 
The two forms are thus distinguished as 
readily as by the employment of other 
characters. We do not hesitate to distin- 
guish by rates of disappearance of cranial 
suture lines the Ophidia from other reptilian 
orders. 

IX. Muscles modify the shapes of long bones 
im proportion to the length of time they have 
been exercised. 

The power of the flexor muscles of the 
limbs, on the whole, is greater than that of 
the extensors. It is the flexors that hold 
the extensor tendons firmly against the 
long bones, even, indeed, if they do not 
create grooves for the accommodation of 
their tendons. The longer the time the 
extensors are thus held against the bones 
the deeper become the grooves. Hence the 

* Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., 1893, 11. 


SCIENCE. 


293 


relatively deep grooves on the extensor sur- 
faces of long bones, as in the patellar notch 
and the grooves on the distal end of the 
radius, tibia and fibula in old animals. In 
an old cat in the collection of Professor 
Wilder at Cornell University the groove 
for the Tibials posticus was converted into 
a bony canal. 

Proposition IX. is also illustrated in the 
groove for the Extensor longus pollicis of the 
common brown bat (Adelonycteris fusca) be- 
coming deeper in old individuals. At times 
the sides of the groove become enormously 
thickened by hyperostosis. 

X. In ontogeny a senile form of an annually 
recurrent structure may resemble the juvenile 
form and recall in phyllogeny the primitive form. 

The horn in an old specimen of Cervus 
canadensis tends to reassume the form of the 
spiked horn of young specimens, which at 
the same time recall the shape of the primi- 
tive horn in Pecora generally. 

XI. Inflammation of bone modifies the shape 
in places which exhibit the greatest physiological 
activities, and these prepare the way to senile 
changes in the sume regions.* 

The deepening of extensor muscle grooves 
when carried far will, we assume, develop 
friction and with the friction excess of 
heat and with the heat inflammation and 
resulted hyperostosis. But excess of heat 
may arise from undue exaltation of func- 
tions of any kind. In the following in- 
stances it has been productive of grave re- 
sults from the conjunction of restrained 
growth force in the halves of the lower jaw 
and the eruption of the incisor teeth. 

In the lower jaw of the domestic cat 
whose permanent premolars are just being 
erupted the symphysal articular surfaces 
are nearly smooth; in that of an animal 


* In studying the jaws of the domestic cat I have 
been struck by the frequency of effects of traumatism, 
especially of fractures of the teeth. It will be as- 
sumed that in the above statement all instances of 
disease following injuries have been excluded. 


294 


whose premolars are erupted the surfaces 
are uneven by the processes interlocking to 
fix the symphysis securely. At the same 
time that this change is announced the in- 
cisors are coming in place. The second tooth 
lies at first back of the first and third, so 
the alveolar region is twice as broad as 
when a little later all three teeth are in 
line. Thus great activities of the symphysal 
and alveolar regions are coincident. It 
is at this stage that the cat is prone to 
disease at the mentum. In forty-eight 
examples of adult lower jaws examined 
from your cabinet, thirty-three showed hy- 
perostosis of the alveolar region for the 
incisors, the antero-posterior diameter being 
5 mm. (a measurement twice that which is 
normal), with loss of at least one incisor, at 
a time when the sectorials were but slightly 
worn, while the jaw in other respects showed 
fully adult characters. In studying senility 
we are prepared to find the mentum ex- 
hibiting frequent changes from the normal. 
The entire region is often hyperostosed or 
carious ; the incisors in part or entirely lost, 
and even the canines loosened or lifted 
by filling up of the bottoms of their sockets. 
In this manner a slightly plus physiological 
activity in the young has prepared the way 
to variation in adult life and to character- 
istic changes in old age. In the collection 
I found seven examples of these changes in 
very old bones. Iam informed by Dr. Burk 
that, since the greater number of cats used 
for dissection are not over two years old, the 
number of senile examples in the collection 
is probably much less than would be found 
to be the case if data could be collated from 
life histories of the species secured under 
average circumstances. 

It is impossible to say which of the char- 
acters outlined in the above propositions 
(save alone Prop. VI.) can be transmitted. 
It is safe to assert that many of them are 
sporadic in character, though I do not be- 
lieve them to be adventitious. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 112. 


As the individual nears the time of 
its own extinction it experiences changes 
in the composition of its tissues and gross 
variation in characters. Groups of ani- 
mals which are also approaching extinc- 
tion behave in a similar manner. Onto- 
genetic comparison in the first case should 
be made with the phyllogenetic comparison 
in the second as well as with the more effi- 
cient of their own types. Theaged individ- 
uals of the domesticated Bovide, for ex- 
ample, should be compared with all the 
younger adult individuals of the Aurochs.* 

The senile horse should, in like manner, 
be studied with the phyllogeny of the group 
to which it belongs. Since our knowledge 
of this is relatively precise, I have long 
thought the comparison would be of ex- 
ceptional interest. 

The difficulty in procuring material for 
studies in senility is very great and prob- 
ably accounts for the slight attention which 
has been given the subject. I wish in this 
connection to gratefully acknowledge re- 
ceipt of specimens from Professor Burt 
G. Wilder, Cornell University, from Dr. 
Charles Burk, University of Pennsylvania, 
and from Messrs. F. W. True and F. A. 
Lucas, of the U. S. National Museum. 
I respectfully solicit additional material 
from those who do not object to having 
their cats, dogs and other animals used for 
scientific study after they have ended hon- 
orable careers as household pets. 


Harrison ALLEN. 
PHILADELPHIA, PA. 


*G.S. Miller, Jr. (ScIENCE, November 20, 1896, 
744), in abridging Biichner’s account of the degen- 
erate and lingering European bison herd, speaks of 
the prevalence of abnormal conditions in parts of the 
skeleton. According to the tenets of the above essay, 
these conditions will yield, when studied, the best 
results when compared with those found in other 
vigorous groups of genera of the Bovide, as also with 
effects of age and disease in the life history of an in- 
dividual of any one of the species. 


FEBRUARY 19, 1897.] 


AMERICAN METROLOGICAL SOCIETY. 


AT the call of the Council the Society held 
its annual meeting at Columbia University 
on Monday, December 21, 1896, Professor 
Egleston presiding. The Society was offi- 
cially informed by the Secretary, J. K. Rees, 
of the deaths of their President, Dr. B. A. 
Gould, of Cambridge, Mass., and of their 
Councillor, Professor H. A. Newton of New 
Haven. 

The following minutes were adopted and 
ordered printed in the daily papers: 


The American Metrological Society has heard with 
profound sorrow of the death of their honored Presi- 
dent on November 26th. Dr. Gould was President of 
the Society from 1889 to the time of his death, suc- 
ceeding the late President, F. A. P. Barnard. By 
his ability, learning and enthusiasm he did much to 
further the objects of the Society, and as a member 
of the National Academy of Sciences and of the Inter- 
national Bureau of Weights and Measures his influ- 
ence in metrology was world-wide. 

Of late years he was especially interested in throw- 
ing the whole strength of the Society in favor of the 
early adoption of the metric system. It was his 
earnest wish and hope that before he passed away he 
would see the metric system adopted by the govern- 
ment and the people of this country. 

Professor Hubert Anson Newton, of Yale College, 
was a member of the American Metrological Society 
from its organization to the day of his death, August 
12th, and was for many years a Councillor. His in- 
terest in the work of the Society was great and con- 
tinuous. He was especially active and conspicuous 
in the agitation of thirty years ago, which resulted in 
the enactment of the law of 1866 legalizing the use of 
the metric system. He prepared the table of metric 
equivalents, of customary weights and measures, 
which was incorporated in this act, and by which the 
relation of fundamental units was defined. Professor 
Newton’s high rank as a man of science, his excellent 
judgment, and his clear, practical insight in matters 
relating to administration, made him an especially 
valuable member of the Society. 


The Treasurer reported receipts for the 


Wear UE Os oogacanddadagduauDoDbOoCOOD $460.50 
Balance from 1895.............---++.00. 686.54 
Mota yetreseyetetsre violeiciatsiciseteversiaiaiererers $1,147.04 
Expenditures for 1896................-- 705.89 
Balance on hand................200- $441.15 


The Secretary reported on the work of 


SCIENCE. : 


295 


the year 1896. This report showed that 
some 50,000 documents relating to the 
metric system had been sent throughout 
the United States. 

The latest paper issued by the Society 
was Dr. T. C. Mendenhall’s reply to Her- 
bert Spencer. This reply was printed in 
the Popular Science Monthly for October, 
1896. The Society obtained 10,000 reprints. 
5,000 copies of this reprint had been ordered 
by the New Decimal Association of London. 

Professor Rees presented his resignation 
as Secretary and Treasurer. He stated that 
he could no longer spare the time for the 
onerous duties connected with the two 
offices. 

The following officers were then elected : 

President, T. C. Mendenhall, of Worcester, 
Mass. Vice-Presidents, Wolcott Gibbs, of 
Newport, R. I.; IT. R. Pynchon, Hartford, 
Conn.; A. A. Michelson, Chicago, Ill.; T. 
Egleston, New York City; H. A. Rowland, 
Baltimore, Md.; J. H. Van Amringe, New 
York City; J. K. Rees, New York City. 
Treasurer and Recording Secretary, W. Le 
Conte Stevens, Troy, N. Y. Corresponding 
Secretary, O. H. Tittmann, Washington, 
D.C. Members of the Council, Cleveland 
Abbe, Washington, D.C.; R. H. Thurston, 
Ithaca, N. Y.; A. M. Mayer, Hoboken, N. 
J.; Henry Holt, New York City; Simon 
Newcomb, Washington, D. C.; W. F. Allen, 
New York City; S. P. Langley, Washing- 
ton, D. C.; George Eastburn, Philadelphia, 
Pa.; C. A. Schott, Washington, D.C.; H. 
Jacoby, New York City. 

On motion of Professor Van Amringe the 
following minute was recorded: ‘ In yield- 
ing to the earnest request of Professor J. 
K. Rees to be allowed to retire from the 
offices of Treasurer and Recording Secre- 
tary, the Society expresses its sincere regret 
and its high appreciation of his laborious 
and effective services for fifteen years in 
conducting its business and in furthering 
the purposes for which it is organized.” 


296 


Dr. Mendenhall remarked : 

“Mr. CHarrman: In seconding the reso- 
lution offered by Professor Van Amringe, I 
beg to offer very briefly my own testimony 
as to the great efficiency of our Secretary, 
who now insists upon retiring from that 
important office. It will be remembered 
that a year ago Professor Rees urged upon 
the Society the acceptance of his resigna- 
tion, but finally yielded to the urgent de- 
sire of our lamented President, Dr. Gould, 
and to that of every member of the So- 
ciety, that he might continue at least for 
another year, as it was believed that the 
affairs of metrological reform in this coun- 
try were in rather a critical condition and 
no one so well as he could direct the affairs 
of the Society during that period. His en- 
ergy and industry in the administration of 
the laborious duties of his office are well 
known to us all. The Metrological Society, 
although not large in numbers, is great in 
its performances, and we all recognize the 
fact that in a large measure the success of 
these performances is due to the Secretary. 
If I may be permitted to refer to this ac- 
tion of Professor Rees in connection with 
the fact that I have been by your partiality 
elected to the Presidency of the Society, I 
desire to express my personal regret that in 
the performance of my duties during the 
coming year I shall be deprived of the ad- 
vice and cooperation of Professor Rees in 
an official capacity. 

‘“‘T may be permitted to remark at this 
point that I fully appreciate the high honor 
which has been conferred upon me by your 
choosing me to succeed the two distin- 
guished men who have before been Presi- 
dents of this Society, and, while fully 
appreciating my own inability to discharge 
the duties which will come to me as I would 
like, I at the same time wish to express the 
sense of loss which I feel in the resignation 
of Professor Rees, upon whom the most in- 
experienced might lean with confidence. It 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 112. 


is a consolation for us to know, however, 
that we shall not in any degree lose the in- 
terest and activity of our late Secretary in 
his separating himself from the onerous 
duties of the office.” 

The Secretary reported that, at the An- 
nual Convention of the Colleges and Pre- 
paratory Schools of the Middle States and 
Maryland, at Philadelphia, November 28, 
1896, a resolution favoring the adoption of 
the Metric System was introduced by S. 
A. Farrand and was adopted with one dis-, 
senting vote. This association comprises 
about fifty colleges and universities and also. 
eighty preparatory schools. 

The Secretary reported that the Commit- 
tee on Weights and Measures of the Boston 
Society of Civil Engineers had obtained 
the opinions of a majority of its members. 
on the proposed action of Congress with re- 
lation to the use of the Metric System. 

Postal cards reading as follows were sent to each 
member : 

“Tam in favor of the passage by the present. 
Congress of an Act requiring the metric weights and 
measures to be in use by the government departments. 
generally by the beginning of the Twentieth Century, 
January 1, 1901.” 

“T should be willing to have people gener- 
ally of their own accord adopt metric weights and 
measures for their ordinary business transactions, and 
especially for those in which I am myself concerned, 


at the same time at which the government depart- 
ments as a whole actually do adopt them.’’ 


The total number of cards sent out was.......... 404 
The total number of cards returned was......... 229) 
Number in favor of both clauses of the card ..... 193. 
Number against both clauses of the card......... 21 
Number for first clause and against second....... 2 
Number against first clause and for second....... 11 
Members in favor of a decimal system........... 2. 


The following interesting letter was read : 


Picton HousE, THAMES DITTON, 
SURREY, ENGLAND, December 11, 1896. 
J. K. RreEs, Secretary—Dear Sir: We beg to ac- 
knowledge your letter of the 28th ult., and are pro- 
curing a copy of the Blue Book containing the Report. 
of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on 
Weights and Measures, before which evidence was 
given by one of our Directors, Captain H. R. Sankey, 


FEBRUARY 19, 1897.] 


R. E. We will send this to you as soon as possible, 
with the portion relating to our experience marked. 
Meanwhile, in case it does not reach you to be in time 
for use, we will state here that our reasons for adopt- 
ing the metric linear measures were mainly two, both 
commercial: (1) To enable us to continue the inter- 
changeable system, on which we work with our Con- 
tinental licenses, and (2) to promote the sale of our 
engines in countries using the metric system. 

It was considered possible that, although a specialty, 
the fact of our engines being figured in inches might 
tell against them when competing with others figured 
in millimetres. The results have been most satis- 
factory in all departments. Im the drawing office it 
has been found that the change makes it easier to de- 
sign, calculate, plot dimensions, check and read 
drawings. No mistakes have been made that can be 
traced to the change. In the works, where we chiefly 
work to gauges, there has been no difficulty in mark- 
ing the latter, and marking off is easier. In a short 
time the men preferred metric measurements, and the 
change has involved no difficulty whatever. Trusting 
this may be of service to you, weare, sir, 

Yours faithfully, 
(Signed ) WILLANS & ROBINSON. 


THERE were also presented the following 
extracts from British Consular Reports col- 
lected by the New Decimal Association 
established to Promote the Adoption of a 
Decimal System of Weights, Measures and 
Coinage in the United Kingdom : 


ROTTERDAM, October 22, 1894.—‘‘ The simplicity 
of the Decimal System is so obvious that its adoption 
in England cannot fail to be of great advantage to all 
interested in the trade with those counties where it 
already is in vogue.’’ 

MILAN, ITALY, October 18, 1894.—“‘ As an engi- 
neer of some 20 years’ residence upon the Continent, 
I have no hesitation whatever in stating that the 
present system of English weights and measures is 
detrimental to British commercial interests in coun- 
tries like this, where the Decimal and Metrical System 
is in force. 

“The sooner the Decimal System is adopted by 
Great Britain the more advantageous for her commer- 
cial interests when trading with the Continent in par- 
ticular, as also to facilitate home calculations, espe- 
cially in engineering departments, where excessive 
accuracy is an absolute necessity.’’ 

VARNA, October 23, 1894.—“‘ If the quotations and 
specifications in Trade Lists are made out in English 
Standards of Weights and Measures, intending pur- 
chasers here generally throw them aside and consult 


SCIENCE. 


297 


others which give the required information in metres, 
kilogrammes, etc. 

“In the Varna Trade Report for 1892 it is men- 
tioned thatitis especially in hardware and machinery 
that the non-adoption of the Metrical System acts 
most prejudicially against British manufactured 
goods. 

““Commission agents here have repeatedly told me 
that though they represent British firmsalso they have, 
when a customer requires precise data as to the work- 
ing and capabilities of a machine, to refer to some 
rival foreign maker’s catalogue, with the result that 
the order is often placed with the latter. 

“Not long ago a man came to me with the 
price list of a British machinery maker, and I con- 
verted for him the specifications into their metrical 
equivalents. He then said that the machine in ques- 
tion seemed just what he wanted, and that he would 
order one for trial, and give repeat orders if it turned 
out satisfactory. Meeting him againsome time after, 
he told me that, although he would have preferred 
buying the English machine, he had imported one of 
German make, firstly, because he could not be 
bothered with recurring calculations based on an un- 
familiar system, and secondly, because the measure- 
ments did not properly coincide with his existing 
machinery plant of Continental make.”’ 


CONSTANTINOPLE, October 22, 1894.—‘‘ There is 
no doubt that the complicated and puzzling system of 
weights and measures still obtaining in England is 
long out of date, and has become more and more of 
an anachronism as England has increased her foreign 
trade. 

“Personally I have, during my long official career, 
seen so frequently the inconvenience of the old system 
that I have for very many years been a convert to the 
ideas of your Association.”’ 

RovuEN, October 24, 1894.—‘‘ Within the past 16 
years I have served as H. M.’s Consul in three coun- 
tries using the Metric and Decimal Systems, and I 
have not unfrequently had occasion to observe the 
maze into which an English trade prospectus or cir- 
cular, if drawn up only on the British system, throws 
a foreigner accustomed from childhood to the perfect 
simplicity of the Metric System. And there is no 
doubt in my mind that the uncertainty and confusion 
thus created at times leads to the rejection by a would- 
be purchaser of a British manufacturer’s circular or 
offers of sale. 

“‘The British customs tariff is a model of brief 
simplicity, and yet we are often called upon to ex- 
plain it. Within the past month I have been asked 
to explain ‘ what a duty of 14/6 a gallon means and 
what is 7/- a cwt. for dried fruit?’ Thatis to say, 
what are their equivalents in metric weights and 


298 


measures and decimal currency? Foreign exporters 
to the United Kingdon would be thankful for asimple 
table of the British customs tariff in which the equiv- 
alent duties and units of Continental Metric Systems 
were shown in parallel columns beside our own.”’ 

FLUSHING, October 20, 1894.—‘‘ The adoption of 
the Metric System of Weights and Measures in Great 
Britain and her dependencies would, to my convic- 
tion, greatly benefit English manufacturers and 
tradesmen, and would certainly contribute to facili- 
tate and extend business with this country.’’ 

MARSEILLES, October 23, 1894.—‘‘ Very often 
French merchants have complained of the great diffi- 
culty they had in reducing English weights or meas- 
ures into those of the Metric System, and I have not 
the slightest doubt that if the said system was 
adopted in England it would greatly facilitate trade 
with this country.’’ 

LisBon, October 24, 1894.—‘‘I am of opinion that 
our industries are materially handicapped in the 
competition with foreign manufacturers by the isola- 
tion of our system of weights and measures. 

“The small tradesmen are, therefore, the real rep- 
resentatives of trade abroad, or at all events are fast 
becoming so. Weshould, therefore, cater to their re- 
quirements and cultivate their custom, for their 
friendship, to the full extent of the word, is of 
‘value’ to us. 

“In this regard I think I may safely say that to 
the tradesmen of foreign countries our system of 
weights and measures is a constant stumbling-block 
and acts asa deterrent. Not one ina thousand un- 
derstands it, and rather than suffer the perplexity of 
it, or risk the loss that an erroneous computation 
would entail, pass on to our neighbors, who speak and 
write to him, in his native language, of Metres and 
Kilos. He thereby knows what he buys, knows what 
he has to clear through the custom house without 
risk of fine or forfeiture, and knows the length and 
cube which leaves him a profit when he sells. 

“‘For these reasons I doubt not but that we lose in 
the aggregate much valuable trade.’’ 

ALGIERS, October 24, 1894.—‘‘I have no doubt 
whatever that our antiquated and most irrational sys- 
tem has had an injurious effect wherever it has been 
employed.’’ 

VIENNA, October 26, 1894.—‘‘I believe the adop- 
tion of the Metric System of Weights and Measures 
in Great Britain and her dependencies would highly 
benefit English importers and exporters.”’ 

MALAGA, October 23, 1894.—‘‘I have heard pur- 
chasers here say that they bought German goods in 
preference to English ones because German merchants 
sent out their price lists made out with the prices in 
Spanish currency and weights according’to the Metric 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 112 


System, whereas the British merchant always sent 
his made out according to English weights and cur- 
rency. 

“T consider that British trade with Spain would 
increase if we adopted the Metric System.’’ 

CHERBOURG, October 27, 1894.—‘‘I am convinced 
that if a metrical system of measurement and a deci- 
mal system of coinage were established in England 
it would materially benefit British trade, especially 
with those countries, such as France, where those sys- 
tems are adopted.”’ 

BORDEAUX, October 20, 1896.—‘‘If the views of 
the New Decimal Association were adopted by the 
legislative authorities they would, I believe, greatly 
contribute towards facilitating, and consequently to- 
wards extending, British commercial relations with 
foreign countries.”’ 

MADRID, October 25, 1896.—‘‘ You have my sin- 
cerest sympathy in your endeavors to make the Metric 
System compulsory in England. The numerous ad- 
vantages of such a system are obvious and, moreover, 
its adoption would greatly facilitate the commercial 
relations of Great Britain with the rest of Europe.’’ 

BERN, October 21, 1896.—‘‘In transacting my offi- 
cial business I have frequently observed that the 
present English system of weights and measures is 
certainly detrimental to British trade in my consular 
district. I should, therefore, strongly urge and ad- 
vocate the compulsory adoption of the metric weights 
and measures in Great Britain and Ireland.”’ 

Rostock, October 20, 1896.—‘‘TI can only say that 
if such a measure as the metric weights and measures 
bill be adopted compulsorily it would be greatly 
beneficial to all who have to do business with Great 
Britain and also to all British subjects who have todo 
business with the Continent.”’ 

Kirt, November 12, 1896.—‘‘ The inconvenience 
which was felt when the change was made in this 
country was soon overcome and the reform met with 
universal appreciation.”’ 

Brest, October 19, 1896.—‘‘ The advantages of the 
Metric System are recognized by all, and were it 
adopted in England the British tradesmen would 
greatly benefit by it in his transactions with France, 
as at present a Frenchman will not take the trouble 
to calculate the value of English weights and meas- 
ures into French equivalments ; hence no business is 
done.”’ 

SEVILLE, October 30, 1896.—‘‘I heartily sympa- 
thise with the objects of your association, and in 
many commercial reports have drawn attention to the 
loss of British trade through tendering in British 
weights and measures and in sterling.” 

TENERIFEE, September 10, 1896.—‘‘ The customer, 
instead of seeking British firms to whom to give his 


FEBRUARY 19, 1897.] 


orders, now has the goods of other countries brought 
daily and cleverly to his immediate notice, by adroit 
commercial travelers or by extensive catalogues, in 
the language which he understands, which give him 
every particular of the article he wants in the weights 
and measures and currency of hisown country. What 
English firms carry a commercial enterprise to this 
extent? Some doubtless do; the majority do not. 
But these things must now be done, and many others, 
unless weare willing to give up without a struggle 
our well earned commercial and industrial su- 
premacy.’’ 

Sorra, October 14, 1896.—‘‘T have several times 
referred, in previous reports, tothe difficulties which 
arise to hindrance of commerce in consequence of the 
obstinacy of Great Britain in adhering to its anti- 
quated system of weightsand measures and money.’’ 

VERA CRUZ, December 3, 1896.—‘‘ The compulsory 
use of metric weights and measures with regard to 
British goods exported to foreign countries and their 
use in quotations and advertisements of such goods, 
in lieu of Imperial weights and measures, would 
greatly tend to the benefit of the British export 
trade.”’ 

Amoy, November 17, 1896.—‘‘ For many years I 
have been convinced that the introduction of the 
Decimal System into our weights, measures and money 
would effect an immense saving of labor and would 
vastly increase the wealth of our country, and that it 
would greatly facilitate the sale of our commodities 
to foreign countries. I am very much rejoiced thatan 
association has been formed to educate public opinion 
at home as to the advantages of the Decimal System 
and to bring the matter to the cognizance of the 
government.’’ 

FOREIGN OFFICE, LONDON, November 17, 1896.— 
“*Tam directed by the Marquis of Salisbury to in- 
form you that a dispatch has been received from Her 
Majesty’s Agent and Consul-General at Cairo. Lord 
Cromer considers that a very general opinion un- 
doubtedly exists in Egypt that British trade with that 
country would benefit by the adoption of the Metric 
System of Weights and Measures.”’ 


It was voted that the next meeting of the 
Society be held at such time as the Council 
shall direct. 


THE APPRENTICESHIP QUESTION. 

THE American Machinist has been doing a 
work of great interest and importance to 
the sociologist and the political economist, 
in the collection of facts relating to the ap- 
prenticeship question. Its editors have 


SCIENCE. 


299 


sent out to a large number of employers 
and managers of manufacturing establish- 
ments, and also to representative men 
among the trades-unions, a circular letter, 
calling for their experience and opinions 
relative to the desirability of maintaining 
the old methods of apprenticeship, and of 
thus insuring a supply of skilled labor in 
the coming generation. The summary of 
this, which is probably the first, attempt to 
secure reliable information at first hand, in 
this manner, is published in the issue of 
December 24th, which is substantially all 
devoted to the subject. It makes a mass 
of material which will well repay study and 
serious consideration. 

A discussion in which this matter was 
made prominent took place at the Detroit 
Meeting of the American Society of Mechan- 
ical Engineers, which showed that the great 
leaders in the manufacturing industries of 
the country were very much alive to the 
importance of this question, and some inter- 
esting facts and opinions were there given, 
for which the transactions of that Society 
may be consulted. Articles appearing in 
the Century Magazine in 1893 also bear di- 
rectly upon the subject. In the latter dis- 
cussion, however, it is assumed that ap- 
prenticeship is abandoned, and that trade 
schools only can be expected to replace the 
older system in the supply of skilled labor. 
This assumption is proved to be without as 
much foundation as had probably been 
generally supposed. Of the 116 establish- 
ments contributing to this later discussion, 
85 take apprentices—73 per cent. of the 
whole number—and 92 per cent. of these 
express themselves as satisfied that the 
system is a good one, even for our time. 
Forty-seven per cent. of all those taking 
apprentices have written agreements and 
contracts with them. The general trend 
of testimony seems to be in favor of taking 
a boy for a probationary period, to ascer- 
tain his capabilities and disposition, and 


300 


then, if approved, binding him by contract 
for a definite time, retaining a part of his 
wages in the earlier period to insure his re- 
maining the full time agreed upon; one of 
the difficulties met with being the fact that 
the average boy has little idea of the bind- 
ing force of a contract. 

The trades-unions apparently exert no 
important influence either for or against 
the system. Where they do seek to con- 
trol at all, it is by restricting the number 
of apprentices to that proportion which, 
in their opinion, will give a sufficient number 
without flooding the trade with unemployed 
young men or displacing older workmen 
by their youthful rivals. According to the 
editors of The American Machinist, no founda- 
tion has been by them discovered for the 
sweeping conclusions of the Century arti- 
cles. In so far as the system, once universal, 
of taking apprenticeship has been given up, 
the fact is probably due, not to adverse ac- 
tion of trades-unions, but to the fact that 
modern methods of manufacturing, in 
many cases, do not well lend themselves to 
this older way of providing workmen. But 
“nothing like a complete or general aban- 
donment of apprenticeship has taken place 
in machine shops, and apprentices can be, 
and are, taught the trades of machinist, 
molder, pattern-maker, etc., with entire 
success and with satisfaction to all con- 
cerned, even in shops where modern methods 
of working and management have been 
most highly developed.” 

One of the most important deductions 
from all this valuable testimony is that it 
is essential to success that, first of all, boys 
should be admitted to the privileges of ap- 
prenticeship only when good natural me- 
chanics, when evidently intended by nature 
for the work, and when earnest and ambi- 
tious, honest and frank and reliable. 

These communications and the editor’s 
comments will well repay deliberate study. 

R. H. TuHurston. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 112. 


HENRY L. WHITING. 

Mr. Henry L. Warrtine, Assistant U.S. 
Coast and Geodetic Survey and Chairman 
of the Massachusetts Topograpical Survey 
Commission, died at his residence in West 
Tisbury, Martha’s Vineyard, on Thursday, 
February 4th, the last day of the seventy- 
sixth year of his life. Mr. Whiting’s posi- 
tion as a public officer was in many ways 
unique ; his services in the corps to which 
he belonged were noteworthy, and he had, 
in addition, filled many positions of re- 
sponsibility and dignity, which came to him 
in recognition of his high character and 
professional accomplishments. A brief ac- 
count of a career so remarkable will be of 
interest to the many who knew him, either 
personally or through his work, and to all 
who appreciate a life full of useful activi- 
ties in faithful and efficient public service. 

In the length of that service it is doubtful 
if his equal is now living. Had Mr. Whiting 
lived a few weeks longer he would have 
entered his sixtieth year of continued public 
service, all as an officer of the Coast and 
Geodetic Survey, which he entered at an 
early age. He served some time under 
Hassler, the first Superintendent, and for 
many years he stood alone as the only mem- 
ber of the corps who had served under 
every Superintendent of the Survey. 

Mr. Whiting was born at Albany, New 
York. His father was a Judge of the Court 
of Common Pleas at Troy. His grandfather 
was William Bradford Whiting, a colonel 
in the Revolutionary War and a lineal 
descendant of Governor William Bradford, 
of the Plymouth Colony. One of his brothers 
was a classmate of General Grant at West 
Point and held high rank in the army 
at the time of his death; another was 
graduated at the Naval Academy, was one 
of Commodore Perry’s officer’s in the Japan 
Expedition, himself holding the rank of 
Commodore at the time of his death. Others 
of the family were distinguished, but Henry 


FEBRUARY 19, 1897. ] 


Lawrence, the youngest, survived them all, 
except a sister, now residing in Philadel- 
phia. 

In the Coast Survey his great work was 
the development of the topographical op- 
erations of thatbureau. He was regarded 
as the father of the system so long and 
so successfully in use, and every topogra- 
pher in the service has at some time been 
under his direction and instruction. He 
did, indeed, direct at one time the main 
triangulation of the coast of Florida, but 
his tastes and instincts were so strong in 
the direction of topography that he was at 
an early day given entire charge of that de- 
partment of the Survey. Besides being ac- 
tively engaged in field work, he continued 
throughout most of his life to serve as gen- 
eral topographical inspector. 

Of the general conference of the topogra- 
phers of the Survey held in Washington in 
1892 he was chairman, and, although then 
over seventy years of age, one of its most 
active and useful members. By detail of 
the Superintendent, Professor Peirce, Mr. 
Whiting inaugurated the instruction in land 
and harbor surveys at Annapolis, and under 
a similar detail he served for two years as 
professor of topographical engineering at 
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 
He was consulting engineer for the Massa- 
chusetts Harbor Commission for twelve 
years and a member of the Commission for 
three years. He was actively related to 
and a member of other harbor surveys and 
commissions at various points along the 
New England coast. With the approval of 
the Superintendent he was appointed, in 
1884, a member of the Massachusetts State 
Topographical Survey Commission, serving 
as chairman after the resignation of General 
Francis A. Walker, in 1892. In 1890 he 
was appointed a member of the Mississippi 
River Commission by President Harrison, 
whose grandfather’s inaugural address he 
had heard from the east front of the Capitol 


SCIENCE. 


301 


while temporarily at the office of the Coast 
Survey after a long period of field duty. 
He continued to serve on this Commission 
until his death. 

In common with a number of his col- 
leagues in the Survey, Mr. Whiting did im- 
portant service during the Civil War. Of 
those officers absent in the field at the time 
of its beginning he was the first to report 
in Washington for volunteer service, reach- 
ing there by way of Annapolis, after Balti- 
more was cut off, at the same time with the 
New York 7th Regiment. During the war 
he made many topographical surveys for 
military purposes. On the laying of the 
French cable it was on his recommendation, 
the question having been referred to him, 
that Dembury was selected as the terminal 
station, his excellent judgment being fully 
proved by the remark subsequently made 
by Sir Charles Hartley that it was the most 
successful ocean cable landing in his expe- 
rience. 

Personally Mr. Whiting was most agree- 
able and charming. He had the dignity of 
manners which is usually associated with 
‘a gentleman of the old school,’ along with 
a simplicity of character and openness of 
heart that made him beloved by all who 
came in contact with him. He was a man 
of splendid physique, as his long and un- 
interrupted service shows, and even after 
passing the allotted threescore and ten 
he never shrank from any duty, however 
arduous it might be. His activity in the 
field ceased only with his death, and in 1894 
he was, by direction of the Superintendent, 
in general charge of the resurveys of Boston 
Harbor, the field work of which was done 
by a half dozen of his younger colleagues. 

During some months before his death the 
unusually excellent condition of his health 
and his ever youthful spirit excited com- 
ment among his friends; the end of his life 
had not for several years seemed more re- 
mote than on the day and within the hour 


LA 


302 


in which it came. In his nearly sixty years 
of continuous public service he achieved a 
distinction in his profession of which his 
corps may well be proud, and all who have 
enjoyed personal relations with him will 
hold him in loving remembrance. M. 


ZOOLOGICAL NOTES. 
THE GENERIC NAMES ICTIS, ARCTOGALE AND 
ARCTOGALIDIA. 

In my Synopsis of the Weasels of North 
America, published in North American 
Fauna, No. 11, June, 1896, I adopted the 
subgenus Ictis of Kaup, 1829, for the ordi- 
nary weasels. This name, however, is un- 
tenable for the weasels, being antedated by 
Ictis Schinz, 1824. Schinz, in his ‘ Natur- 
geschichte und Abbildungen der Sauge- 
thiere,’ published at Zurich in 1824 (p. 110), 
gave the name Jctis to the Binturong (ctis 
albifrons), which of course renders it subse- 
quent use for a different group impossible. 

The subgenus of weasels to which I ap- 
plied the name IJctis Kaup takes the name 
Arctogale Kaup, 1829, with Putorius erminea 
as the type species. This use of Arctogale 
by Kaup, as stated in my Synopsis of the 
Weasels already referred to (p. 9), precludes 
its subsequent use by Peters and Gray 
(1864), and later authors for the Palm 
Civets, a genus of the family Viverride, for 
which latter genus I propose the new name 
Arctogalidia, the type species as before being 
A. trivirgata. 

C. Hart MERRIAM. 


CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 
WOMAN IN SOCIOLOGY. 

Tur Revue de Sociologie for 1896 (No. 7) 
has a detailed report of the ‘Congres fémi- 
niste’ held at Paris last summer, well worth 
reading by those interested in the sociologi- 
cal aspect of the ‘woman question,’ as pre- 
sented by women themselves. 

The crucial question of marriage was dis- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vor. V. No. 112. 


cussed amply, the general tendency being 
to discard it altogether in favor of free 
unions, which, it was argued, would gener- 
ally be monogamie and lasting, in aripened 
society. 

The closely related question of prostitu- 
tion was actively debated. Its legal regu- 
lation was condemned for many reasons, 
especially that men have no right to legis- 
late as to what a woman shall do in that 
respect. The prevailing view was “that a. 
woman should be absolutely free to sell her- 
self or not, as she may choose,’’ to quote the: 
words of one of the (female) speakers. 

Co-education proved a stumbling block, 
strange as that may seem to us. It was 
considered dangerous and likely to develop 
mannish women. All agreed that full civil 
and political rights should be given to wo- 
men. 

ANCIENT MAN IN ENGLAND. 

Tue President of the Anthropological In- 
stitute of Great Britain, Mr. E. W. Bra- 
brook, published an article in The Archeolog- 
ical Journal for September last, touching 
upon the antiquity of the remains of man in 
Kent. It will be remembered that the 
stone relics from the chalk plateau of that 
region were closely studied by the late Sir 
Joseph Prestwich and others. They are 
very rude and geologically apparently very 
ancient, some claiming that they must be 
pre-glacial. Mr. Brabrook is of opinion 
that whenever it was that man first discov- 
ered the art of chipping stone, it certainly 
originated in Kent, ‘and by all that we 
can judge from, as early in Kent as any- 
where.’ 

This assertion is none too bold. It does 
not mean that from Kent this simple art 
spread over the world, but that in that 
locality we can trace a real beginning of 
human culture. Whether it can be fol- 
lowed in an uninterrupted development 
down to historic times, he considers more 
doubtful. 


FEBRUARY 19, 1897.] 


THE CHACO IDIOMS. 

SrupEents of American languages are laid 
under further obligations to Mr. Samuel A. 
Lafone Quevedo by his recent publications 
on the Mbaya dialect, and those of the 
Matacos and Mataguayos. They are pub- 
lished in the Boletin del Instituto Geo- 
grafico Argentino, Tom. XVII. The last 
mentioned is drawn from the vocabularies 
of the traveler d’Orbigny, and is prefaced 
with a valuable introduction. The Mbayas 
are the Guaycurus of the older writers. 

The tribes of the Gran Chaco have re- 
mained in the utmost entanglement and 
doubt until the numerous and careful 
studies of Lafone Quevedo have enabled us 
to classify them with a close approach to 
correctness. Here, as elsewhere, when it 
becomes possible to compare in detail a 
number of tongues, we find that many of 
their dissimilarities disappear, and the sup- 
posed diverse stocks melt into related 


groups of dialects. 
D. G. Brinton. 


UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


ASTRONOMICAL NOTES. 

We learn from the February number of 
Popular Astronomy that Dr. See and Mr. Cog- 
shall have discovered a number of new 
southern double stars at the Lowell observ- 
atory in the city of Mexico. Five objects 
are enumerated. Strange to say, three of 
these objects are bright stars with very faint 
companions of about the 13th magnitude, 
all situated at pretty nearly the same dis- 
tance and position angle with respect to 
the principal star. The a priori probability 
of such a triple discovery is so small that 
we suspect the possibility of the observer’s 
having been misled by a ‘ghost.’ We shall 
look with interest for a confirmation of these 
discoveries, if there is any other large tele- 
scope far enough south to examine these 
objects with any hope of success. Possibly 
the new McLean telescope, soon to be 


SCIENCE. 


303 


mounted at the Cape of Good Hope, will be 
able to show these double stars. 


THE Astronomische Nachrichten of January 
15th contains an article by Dr. F. Cohn, in 
which he gives a new explanation of the 
systematic errors of heliometer measures. 
It has been found by various astronomers 
that measures of small distances made with 
this instrument require positive corrections. 
Dr. Cohn now points out that these pecu- 
liarities can be explained if we assume that 
all distances, both large and small, require 
the same systematic correction. This idea. 
leads to the simplest explanation of these 
puzzling systematic errors that we have yet. 
seen. 

In the January 26th issue of the same 
journal Dr. Wilsing considers the question 
of the absorption of light in astronomical 
objectives, and shows that, if the size of ob- 
jectives be continually increased, a point is 
soon reached where the absorption more 
than counterbalances the increase in the 
light-gathering power. If the size of the 
objective be increased beyond this point 
the quantity of light reaching the focal 
plane will diminish. 

WE have received a Doctor’s dissertation 
by W. Ebert, in which the author deals 
with the possible disruption of the Solar 
System by the passage through it of a star 
having very great velocity. He comes to 
the conclusion that such an event would 
probably not produce disturbances of any 
great importance, unless one of the planets 
should happen to lie very near the course 


of the passing star. 
18h de 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 

M. A. CHATIN has been elected President of 
the Paris Academy of Sciences in succession to 
M. A. Cornu. M. M. Cornu has been elected 
President of the Botanical Society of France. 

M. FAyr, the eminent astronomer and 
meteorologist, who is now eighty-three years 


304 


of age, was elected a member of the Paris 
Academy of Sciences fifty years ago. This 
jubilee was celebrated by the Academy on 
January 24th, a speech being made by the 
President and a gold medal being presented to 
M. Faye. In the evening a dinner was given 
to M. Faye, at which he was presented with the 
insignia of the Grand Cross of the Legion of 
Honor. 


THE Matteucci Medal of the Italian Society 
of Sciences has been awarded to Professor 
Rowland, in recognition of his work in spec- 
trometry. 

THE London Society of Engineers has 
awarded the following premiums for papers 
read during the year: The President’s gold 
medal to Mr. George Thudichum for his paper 
on ‘The Ultimate Purification of Sewage ;’ 
the ‘Bessemer Premium’ to Mr. D. B. Butler 
for his paper on ‘The Effect of Admixtures of 
Kentish Ragstone, etc., upon Portland Ce- 
ment;’ the ‘Rawlinson Premium’ to Mr. 
W. G. Wales for his paper on ‘Discharging 
and Storing Grain,’ and a ‘ Society’s Premium’ 
to Mr. M. A. Pollard-Urquhart for his paper on 
‘Examples of Railway Bridges for Branch 
Lines.’ 

THE lectures at the Johns Hopkins Univer- 
sity by Sir Archibald Geikie on the principles of 
geology, which we have already announced, 
willbe given daily, beginning Wednesday, April 
21st. In addition to the six lectures which 
compose this course, strictly intended for geol- 
ogists, Sir Archibald Geikie will give one public 
lecture during his stay in Baltimore. 


Dr. ALEXANDER C. ABBOTT, professor of 
hygiene in the University of Pennsylvania, has 
been appointed chief of the bacteriological divi- 
sion of the Philadelphia bureau of health. 


M. FILHOL has been elected a member of the 
section of anatomy and zoology of the Paris 
Academy, in the room of the late M. Sappey. 


Mr. MIppDLETON WAKE, the Sandars reader 
in bibliography at Cambridge, will deliver four 
lectures on ‘The Invention of Printing,’ with 
special reference to book illustration. 

TuE Berlin Academy of Sciences has made a 
grant of 600 marks to Professor H. EK. Ziegler, 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 112. 


of Freiburg, for his studies in the mechanics of 
development. 


ACCORDING to the British Medical Journal the 
subscriptions in France and other countries for 
a statue to Pasteur now amount to more than 
£10,000. M. Paul Dubois has been selected as 
the sculptor, and the site for the statue will 
probably be the space between the Rue de 
Médicis and the Luxembourg Gardens. More 
than £20,000 has already been spent in the 
erection of statues of Pasteur in various parts 
of France. 


THE city of Mexico has given the name of 
Pasteur to the gardens situated in front of the 
National School of Medicine in that city. 


Tue following resolutions were adopted by 
the staff of the United States National Museum, 
February 6th: 

“WHEREAS, Major Charles E. Bendire, of 
the United States Army, Honorary Curator of 
the Department of Oology in the United States 


‘National Museum, has been removed by death, 


“¢ Resolved: That in Major Bendire’s death 


‘the National Museum suffers the loss of an 


officer who took the keenest interest in his 
special branch of work; whose constant aim 
was to improve and develop the department 
under his charge; and to whose unfailing in- 
terest the present admirable condition of the 
oological collection is due. 

“Resolved: That in his death the National 
Museum has lost a valued member of its scien- 
tific staff whose place it will be difficult to fill, 
and American ornithology has been robbed of 
one of its most earnest workers.”’ 


PROFESSOR GALILEO FERRARIS died at Rome 
on February 7th, aged fifty years. He was 
principal and professor of applied physics of 
the Museo Industriale of Turin and a member 
of the Italian Senate. He made important con- 
tributions to electrical science, especially to the 
phenomena of alternating currents. 


WE regret to record the deaths of Professor 
Satherberg, of Stockholm, the pioneer in the 
Swedish system of curative gymnastics, aged 84; 
of Dr. David Kirnaldy, an engineer, on Jan- 
uary 25th, at the age of 76, and of Dr. Her- 
mann von Nordlinger, formerly professor of 


‘FEBRUARY 19, 1897. ] 


forestry at Tiibingen, on January 19th, at the 
age of 79. 

A RESOLUTION recently adopted by Congress 
provides for the distribution of the topographic 
maps and geologic atlases of the United States 
‘Geological Survey, to the extent of 500 of each, 
gratuitously among foreign governments and 
the departments of our own government, to 
literary and scientific bodies and educational 
institutions. The measure is designed to rem- 
edy a defect in an act passed a year ago which 
provides for the selling of the maps and folios 
at cost, with 10 per cent. added. As con- 
strued, the original act did not warrant the 
free distribution mentioned. The geological 
folios have been disposed of by sale since the 
first folio was issued, two years ago, but the 
sale of the topographic maps has only recently 
been begun. They are soldat 5cents. On the 
‘back of each sheet is now printed an explana- 
tory text, an innovation which will doubtless 
be of advantage. 

THE Senate has passed the agricultural ap- 
propriation bill calling for $3,212,902. This is 
an increase of $50,200 over the bill as passed 
‘by the House, $30,000 of which is for the free 
distribution of seeds. 


Lorp LISTER, in a communication to the 
British Medical Journal, announces that he has 
the profound satisfaction of being able to state, 
-on the authority of the India office, that the 
Bombay government intend to make use of the 
services of M. Yersin in the treatment of per- 
sons suffering from plague. M. Yersin is now 
on his way to the stricken region to give a full 
trial to his method, and Lord Lister has learned 
through another channel that before the middle 
of February the serum treatment will probably 
have begun in Bombay. 


Knowledge, the English monthly journal of 
popular science, is publishing a series of articles 
on ‘The Science of the Queen’s Reign.’ The 
current number contains an interesting survey 
of ‘Sixty Years of Astronomical Research’ by 
Miss Agnes M. Clerke. The same number in- 
«cludes a paper by Dr. Isaac Roberts on ‘ Eyi- 
dence of the Evolution of Stellar Systems,’ with 
reproductions of photographs of spiral nebulee. 
Astronomy, under the direction of Mr. E. 


SCIENCE. 


305 


Walter Maunder, is always well represented 
in Knowledge. 

SURGEON-GENERAL GEORGE M. STERNBERG 
will review our knowledge of ‘The Malarial 
Parasite and other Pathogenic Protozoa’ in 
Appletons’ Popular Science Monthly for March, 
telling how they were discovered and upon 
what grounds they are accepted as specific in- 
fectious agents. Other articles are promised 
by Professor D. W. Hering on ‘The Present 
State of our Knowledge of the X-rays’ and by 
President Jordan on ‘The Stability of Truth.’ 

THE following items of news are from the 
current number of Nature: At the last meeting 
of the Chemical Society it was announced that 
Mr. J. J. Tustin had made a donation of one 
thousand guineas to the research fund of the 
Society. The annual meeting of the German 
Botanical Association will be held this year in 
Frankfurt a. Main, commencing on September 
22d. A botanical museum has been established 
at Weimar, at the sole cost of Professor Hauss- 
knecht. It is designed to be ‘a Central Institu- 
tion fer investigations in systematic botany,’ 
and it will be under the control of the Thurin- 
gian Botanical Union. 

THE new Prussian budget includes $40,000 
as the first appropriation for a chemical labora- 
tory for the University of Berlin, the estimated 
cost of which is $250,000. It will be situated 
on the Hannover’schen Strasse and will contain 
tables for 275 students and a lecture room seat- 
ing about 400. 

THE establishment of a National Patent Mu- 
seum is being urged in Great Britain. The fees 
received by the Patent Office are much greater 
than the expenses, and the government will 
shortly be asked to use part of the surplus for 
the establishment of a museum. 

JoHN NicHo~as Brown has given to the 
Providence Public Library Association, for the 
erection of a library building in that city, the 
sum of $200,000. 

ACCORDING to an official notification of the 
trustees of the ‘Schwestern Frohlich Stiftung’ 
in Vienna, certain donations and pensions will 
be granted from the funds of this charity this 
year in accordance with the will of the testatrix, 
Miss Anna Frohlich, to deserving persons of 


306 


talent who have distinguished themselves in 
any of the branches of science, art and litera- 
ture, who may be in want of pecuniary support, 
either through accident, illness or infirmity 
consequent upon old age. 

THE will of the late Professor William H. 
Pancoast leaves his anatomical and surgical 
collections and $600 per annum to the Medico- 
Chirurgical College of Philadelphia. 

A BILL has been introduced in the Pennsyl- 
vania Legislature appropriating $25,000 to fur- 
nish test standards for the inspectors of weights, 
measures and scales in Philadelphia. 


THE botanical department of Cornell Uni- 
versity is in receipt of a collection of 750 speci- 
mens of the flora of the North Carolina moun- 
tain region, presented by the Biltmore Herba- 
rium in return for a collection of Arctic plants 
presented by the department. 

THE Royal Geographical Society gave a re- 
ception on February 8th, in Albert Hall, Lon- 
don, in honor of Dr. Nansen. Sir Clements 
Markham, the President of the Society, presided 
and the special gold medal of the Society was 
presented to Dr. Nansen. Dr. Nansen delivered 
a lecture describing the voyage of the Fram and 
his adventures, but it appears from the cable dis- 
patches that the scientific results of the expedi- 
tion were not enlarged upon. A Reuter despatch 
of January 29th says that during his visit to 
Great Britain Dr. Nansen will deliver forty- 
seven lectures. The explorer will then go to 
Germany, and at the end of March will be present 
at a great demonstration of the Geographical So- 
ciety in Berlin, organized in his honor. It is 
stated that Dr. Nansen declined an offer of 
100,000 marks for 100 lectures in Germany. 
On leaving Berlin Dr. Nansen will go to St. 
Petersburg, where he will have an official re- 
ception. Subsequently he will visit Paris in re- 
' sponse to an invitation conveyed to him by the 
French Consul-General in Christiania, and will 
again be the object of an official reception. 
During the summer months Dr. Nansen will 
rest in Norway, and will superintend the erec- 
tion of his new villa on the higher lands of 
Lysaker, Christiania Fiord, on ground origi- 
nally belonging to his grandfather. Early in 
October, accompanied by his wife, Dr. Nansen 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 112. 


will leave for New York in order to deliver a. 
course of fifty lectures in various cities of the 
United States. Dr. Nansen has contracted with 
a Boston and Chicago lecturing agency for fifty 
lectures, but it is probable that the explorer’s. 
tour in the United States will be considerably 
extended. 

In addition to the methods of color photog- 
raphy devised by Lippmann, Ives and Joly, a 
new invention is claimed by MM. Chassagne: 
and Dansac. For the present the method must 
be regarded as pseudo-scientific, as the process 
is kept secret. It has, however, been exhibited 
before men of science in London, and is re- 
ported in the Society of Arts Journal and the 
Times. The process is said to be simple and 
inexpensive. A negative is taken on a gelatine 
plate, which has been treated with a solution of 
certain salts (the nature of the solutions used is 
for the present kept). The negative is developed 
and fixed in the ordinary way, and when fin- 
ished looks like any other negative. From it 
a positive is printed on sensitized paper or on a 
gelatine film (if a transparency is desired), 
plate or paper having previously been treated 
with the unknown solution. The positive looks 
exactly like an ordinary photographic print or- 
transparency, and shows no trace of color. It 
is then washed over with three colored solu- 
tions, blue, green and red, and it takes up in 
succession the appropriate color in the appro- 
priate parts, the combinations of the colors giv- 
ing all varieties of tint. Thus, in a landscape: 
the trees take on various hues of green, the sky 
becomes blue, the flowers show their proper 
colors, the bricks and tiles of the houses are 
red, and so on. In a portrait the flesh tints. 
come out well, and the different colors of the 
costumes are accurately given. The general 
appearance of the picture is that of a colored 
photograph. Looked at from a distance it 
would be taken for one. Inspected under a 
high magnifying power it is seen that the colors 
follow the details in a manner hardly possible 
for hand work. 

THE State Geological Survey of New Jersey 
has proposed a plan for draining the meadows 
adjacent to Jersey City. According to the report 
in the Scientific American, State Geologist Smock 
recently visited Holland and investigated the: 


PEBRUARY 19, 1897.] 


vast drainage systems in that country. En- 
gineer C. C. Vermuele has made a report sta- 
ting that underlying the 27,000 acres of marsh 
is a mass of alluvium mixed with peat, wood 
and other vegetable matter, more or less de- 
eayed. The depth of this accumulation ranges 
generally from seven to fifteen feet. The na- 
tural level of the surface is three to four inches 
above mean high tide, but the whole is fre- 
quently overflowed, and such extreme tides as 
that of the second week of last November cover 
it to an average depth of eighteen inches. 
Lately an unhealthy and undesirable population 
is beginning to be crowded upon them. It is 
stated that of the two systems of reclamation, 
filling and diking, the latter is the better and, 
indeed, the only one feasible in this case. The 
area can be embanked and pumping works in- 
stalled for about $1,000,000, or less than $40 
per acre. The interest charges and operating 
expenses are estimated at $6 to $7 per acre, 
and it is predicted that in a few years this 
charge could be entirely covered by assessments 
on the property itself, any deficiencies in the in- 
terim being met by the surrounding districts 
that are benefited by the undertaking. 

ACCORDING to Natural Science a new depar- 
ture has been made this winter at the Science 
and Art Museum, Dublin, in a series of Museum 
demonstrations, undertaken by members of the 
staff and other helpers. Two demonstrations a 
week have been given through December and 
January, natural history alternating with art 
subjects. The difficulty of exhibiting small 
Museum specimens to a large audience led to a 
restriction of the number of tickets issued for 
each occasion to thirty, or at most fifty. It is 
satisfactory to record that there was a large 
demand for tickets, and that the audiences 
seemed thoroughly interested with the expla- 
nations of the objects. 

THE Tree-Planting Association of New York 
has beeniincorporated, Mayor Strong being Presi- 
dent; Cornelius B. Mitchell, Vice-President; 
James Macnaughtan, Treasurer, and W. A. 
Styles, Secretary. The Association supplies to its 
members the fullest information as to the kind 
of trees most suitable for city planting, together 
with the names of responsible nurserymen and 
the prices they charge for the completed work. 


SCIENCE. 


307 


Applications for membership may be made to 
the Tree-Planting Association office, Nos. 64 
and 66 White Street. 

In the current number of the American 
Naturalist, Dr. Bessey suggests that the re- 
cent appearance of two important works on 
North American botany, in which the English 
units and measurements are less used through- 
out, calls attention to the need of some mis- 
sionary work among American botanists. 
‘“We take part, from time to time, in the ac- 
tion of the American Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Science, in which, in vigorous 
and logical sentences, we express our admira- 
tion for the metric system and our conviction 
that the United States Congress is derelict to- 
ward this important matter. We urge Congress 
to make the use of this system compulsory, and 
yet we go on calmly writing books in which we 
use the most antiquated of measuring units. 
Not content with using feet and inches, we ex- 
press fractions of inches in lines! We vote en- 
thusiastically that mechanics, surveyors, farm- 
ers, statisticians and schoolmasters shall use 
the metric system exclusively, and yet we, the 
botanists, who, of course, are ‘the salt of the 
earth,’ are slow in doing what we so urgently 
recommend others to do.’’ 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 

THE last number of the Academische Revue 
contains details regarding the salaries and fees 
of university professors in the Prussian univer- 
sities which are of interest in view of the pro- 
posed plan to equalize the salaries. Of 492 full 
professors in the eleven universities 40 per cent. 
receive less than $1,200, and 40 per cent. re- 
ceive $2,000 or more in salaries. The addi- 
tional amount received in fees is on the average 
about $400, though there 'are four cases in 
which the fees amount to $5,000 or more. The 
salaries of associate professors are about half 
those of ordinary professors. 

Iv is reported that Professor Munk, of Berlin, 
or Professor Kitihne, of Heidelberg, will be ap- 
pointed to the chair of physiology at Berlin, 
vacant by the death of Du Bois-Reymond. 

Ir is understood that the presidency of 
Washington and Lee University, Lexington, 


308 


Va., has been tendered informally to Post- 
master-General William L. Wilson and that 
he will accept the office. 


THE students of the University of Athens 
have again been engaged in rioting. The 
trouble originated in a rebuke addressed by 
Dr. Galvani, professor of medicine, to some 
students who interrupted him while he was 
performing a critical operation. The Univer- 
sity was closed, but the students refused to 
leave the building and were blockaded in it. 
According to the latest reports quiet has been 
restored, but in the riots one student was killed 
and a number of persons were injured. 

THE Yale Alumni Weekly has published fig- 
ures showing the relative amount of time spent 
by undergraduate students of the academic de- 
partments of Yale and Harvard Universities. 
The percentages for the more important groups 
of studies are as follows: 


Yale. Harvard. 
(QIEKETES Gccandos oocococdococenoq00d 24.2 8.7 
European languages............ 14.5 22.8 
Political science................+ 11.2 959) 
TANI D.cocoosonccooasceoconons oan 10.9 16.8 
TERI sooncoscbopsaboopso6Do0N0000 10.4 14.3 
Mathematics............-.ss0.e+0» 9.6 4.4 
Philosophy..........scseeeseseeeee 8.9 6.1 
Natural sciences 8.1 10.2 


It thus appears that under the elective system 
at Harvard only one-third as much time is 
given to the classics and one-half as much time 
is given to mathematics as is given at Yale, 
where these studies are prescribed. The time 
taken from the classics seems to be given chiefly 
to modern languages, English and history, but 
there is a slight increase in the sciences. The 
same facts would be shown by a comparison of 
the courses now taken at Yale under a partial 
elective system, as compared with the courses 
taken ten years ago. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
LIEUTENANT PEARY’S EXPEDITION. 


To THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: At the Wash- 
ington meeting of the Geological Society of 
America in December, 1896, a letter from 
Lieutenant R. E. Peary was read, in which the 
writer stated that a ship would be sent to 
northern Greenland in the summer of 1897 for 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 112. 


the purpose of obtaining the large meteorite 
there and that this ship would offer means of 
transportation for other parties who might like 
to avail themselves of the opportunity. He 
further stated that the coast of Greenland 
furnishes exceptional facilities for the study of 
glacial phenomena and suggested the feasibility 
of several parties being formed to take part in 
work there during next summer. After a 
slight discussion of the subject the following 
resolutions were drawn up and adopted by the 
Society without opposition: 

‘ Resolved, That the Geological Society of 
America endorse Lieutenant Peary’s sugges- 
tion that the coast of Greenland presents an 
exceptionally fine field for the investigation 
of glacial phenomena as well as in a more 
limited degree of the other natural sciences, 
and recommend that the various universities, 
colleges and other scientific organizations of 
the country consider the matter of coopera- 
tion with Lieutenant Peary’s expedition in the 
summer of 1897, by sending independent par- 
ties to be placed at various localities along the 
Greenland coast to carry on synchronous work 
for a period of five or six weeks. 

“¢ Resolved , That the thanks of the Geological 
Society of America be tendered to Lieutenant 
Peary for having brought the matter of this 
form of Arctic work to the attention of the Fel- 
lows of the Society.’’ 

In the summer of 1896 two parties of six 
members each, one from Cornell University 
under the direction of Professor Ralph 8. Tarr, 
and from Boston under the direction of Pro- 
fessor Alfred E. Burton, of the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology, availed themselves of 
the means of transportation offered by the 
Sixth Peary Expedition to Greenland. The 
former party was landed in the vicinity of the 
Devil’s Thumb, in the southern portion of Mel- 
ville Bay, latitude 74° 7’. A brief statement of 
this work has been published in this journal by 
Professor Tarr*. 

The latter party, of which the present writer 
was a member, was landed at Umanak, latitude 
70° 35’, and spent five weeks in making obser- 
vations upon the numerous glaciers and the 
marginal area of the inland ice along the region 


*ScrEncE, N. 8. IV., 520-523. 


FEBRUARY 19, 1897.] 


of the Umanak, Great and Little Karajak and 
Itivdliarsuk fiords. A brief statement of a por- 
tion of the work accomplished has been pub- 
lished by the writer*. Papers by Professor 
Tarr and the writers were presented at the 
Washington meeting of the Geological Society 
of America. The results of the summer’s work 
will be published in detail at a later date. Be- 
side the main work in glaciology, each party 
paid some attention to the general geology and 
to the fauna and flora. In addition, one mem- 
ber of the Boston party, Mr. G. R. Putnam, of 
the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, 
made a valuable series of magnetic and pendu- 
lum observations. 

On the voyage home the members of the 
various parties discussed the results of the 
summer’s work, and all agreed with Lieutenant 
Peary that exceptional opportunities are offered 
for the study of glacial geology on the coast of 
Greenland, and also that this coast is easily ac- 
cessible from the United States or Canada. 
The inland ice covers the entire continent of 
Greenland, except a narrow marginal area along 
the coast line. Its depth, according to the 
reports of Nansen and Peary, is sufficient to 
cover the highest peaks that may rise in the 
interior, but is so far undeterminable. The 
marginal uncovered area has a width varying 
from that of a few miles in southern Greenland 
and in Melville Bay to sixty or more miles in 
the vicinity of Disko Island and the greater 
Nugsuak Peninsula. 

It presents a bold face of cliffs to the waters 
of Davis Strait and Baffin’s Bay seldom below 
2,000 feet in general elevation, with summits 
often reaching to 6,000 feetand above. Through 
this plateau margin numerous fiords cut back- 
ward from the sea, many of them reaching the 
ice front and nearly all furnishing accessible 
routes to it. So numerous are the fiords just 
south of Melville Bay that the marginal area 
consists almost entirely of detached islands. 
Those that reach the ice front are occupied by 
glaciers that descend from it, presenting the 
general features of Alpine glaciers, except that 
they are fed from the inland ice instead ofa 
névé region, and presenting in addition a water 
front with the discharge of bergs. 

* American Geologist, XVIII., 1896, 379-384. 


SCIENCE. 


309 


Here, then, is presented an interesting field for 
study, extending over hundreds of miles, of 
the phenomena of the ice front as it lies upon 
the plateau surface between the fiords; of the 
marginal area of the ice itself upon which 
journeys of a week or ten days inland can 
easily be made, and of the glaciers descending 
from the ice margin. These latter present a 
multiplicity of form and variety. 

The Danish government has made a general 
survey of the coast southward from Melville 
Bay, but very much remains to be done, and 
the whole coast is but slightly known to the 
English or American geologist and glacialist. 

If several parties could visit Greenland next 
summer and carry on synchronous work a great 
deal might be accomplished that would be of 
very great value. As Cornell University and 
the Institute of Technology sent parties last 
summer, so might other universities, colleges 
and scientific organizations send parties in the 
summer of 1897. Each party could select its 
own location and carry on its own work entirely 
independent of the others. The correlation of 
the data obtained by the various parties would 
make a valuable addition to our knowledge of 
living ice phenomena. 

Lieutenant Peary’s ship will probably ap- 
proach the Greenland coast near Cape Desola- 
tion, between latitude 60° and 61°. In this 
immediate vicinity is the Julianshaab glacier, 
easy of access and an interesting field for one 
party. Other places that can be chosen for 
parties are Frederickshaab, Godhaab, Sukker- 
toppen, Disko Bay, with the Jacobshaven and 
Torsukatak glaciers, Umanak Fiord, Swarten- 
kuk Peninsula, Uppernavik Fiord, ete. Parties 
landed at these various places would have from 
at least four to six weeks for investigation during 
the absence of the ship farther north, those at 
the more southern points having a longer time. 
At ali of these places Eskimo boats can be ob- 
tained to furnish means of transportation in the 
fiords, and their crews can be utilized to carry 
packs of provisions, clothing or camping gear 
when on land. Could each party be furnished 
with a steam or naptha launch, travel would be 
much more rapid and a larger extent of coast 
could be visited. ~ 

The important work of each party should be 


310 


the investigation of glacial phenomena both 
present and past. In connection with the latter 
especial attention should be paid to evidences 
of glaciation on the highest peaks and to the 
outermost points of land. Also attention should 
be paid to evidences of past subsidence or ele- 
vation of the coast. Other branches of science, 
however, should not be ignored. The make-up 
of each party should be about as follows: a 
glacialist, as director in charge ; a general geolo- 
gist; a zoologist; a botanist; a meteorologist 
and an ethnologist. If possible, a physician 
should be obtained for each party, who could 
also act in one of the above capacities. So far 
as possible each member of a party should be a 
trained observer. In anexpedition of this kind 
there should be no members that are not enthu- 
silastic in the work, and each should be prepared 
to make the best of the opportunities offered in 
the necessarily limited time. The necessary 
expense, considering the circumstances, is not 
large, and it ought to be possible for each party 
to have sufficient funds to allow the director to 
select the other members. 

Finally, although one summer’s observations 
would amply repay the time spent and ex- 
pense incurred, provision could be made to 
secure greater results through each party ar- 
ranging to have its observations carried on by 
parties in succeeding seasons. It seems pos- 
sible now that Greenland may be visited nearly 
every year by expeditions from the United 
States; certainly the six Peary expeditions 
have shown this to be practicable. In such 
case the return of a single member of a party 
to the position of the preceding year would 
enable a valuable series of observations to be 
made upon the edge of the inland ice and upon 
the motion of the glaciers by means of datum 
points established by the parties. Such datum 
points could be so located as to be found and 
used by one not a member of the original 
party. 

The writer hopes to return himself to 
Greenland during the coming summer and 
continue the observations begun by the Boston 
party last summer. 

A word may be necessary to call attention to 
the summer climate of Greenland. For camp- 
ing during that season there is no serious ex- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 112. 


posure involved. The very long days with the 
sun above or only slightly below the horizon 
for the full twenty-four hours prevents the 
temperature ever becoming very low, and the 
continual daylight affords facilities for work or 
travel at all hours. 

During the last summer the Boston party en- 
countered no serious cold, the lowest recorded 
with a minimum thermometer being 26° above 
zero, F. As farasclimateis concerned there is 
no reason why Greenland should not be a 
pleasant resort for the summer. 

Gro. H. BARTON. 

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF 

TECHNOLOGY, Boston, Mass. 


COLOR-BLINDNESS AND WILLIAM POLE: A STUDY 
IN LOGIC. 


Ir has long been matter of common knowl- 
edge among psychologists that the color-sensa- 
tions which persist, in the ordinary cases of 
partial color-blindness, are blue and yellow. 
This was a requisite consequence of Hering’s 
theory and was predicted by him; it was proved 
by the first case of monocular color-blindness 
which was observed—that of v. Hippel in 1880 
—and this proof has been abundantly confirmed 
by the cases which have been discovered since. 
But the theory of Young and Helmholtz ap- 
parently required that, when two color-sensa- 
tions only persisted, if one was blue the other 
must be either red or green. Now, the physi- 
cists (and most physiologists.as well) too hastily- 
took the Young-Helmholtz view as expressing 
fact and not theory, and they continued to infer 
(although Helmholtz himself had recognized 
the true state of the case) from the circum- 
stance that the partially color-blind had two 
sensations only, that these sensations were, in 
the ordinary cases, blue and red, or blue and 
green; and in accordance with this deduction 
they classified most cases of color-blindness as 
red-blindness or green-blindness (without ex- 
pressly stating that, in their view, in both 
cases, blindness to yellow was involved as 
well). There was absolutely no reason except 
the theory for affirming that the warm color of 
the defective person was either red or green; 
all that was known was that it occupied that 
portion of the spectrum which, for the normal 


FEBRUARY 19, 1897.] 


person, is occupied by red, yellow and green. 
Nevertheless, it is stated in twenty text-books 
that the sensations of the color-blind furnish 
exceedingly strong, if not convincing, evidence 
of the truth of the Young-Helmholtz theory. 
Moreover, the belief that the warm color is 
either red or green has become so ingrained 
that the cases by which it has been shown be- 
yond question that it is in fact yellow have 
failed to produce any effect whatever. There 
is hardly a physicist, and there are very few 
physiologists, in the English-speaking world 
who do not still hold to this belief; as recent 
instances, we may cite the Century Dictionary 
and Johnson’s Cyclopedia (both of which are, 
in general, of good authority in scientific mat- 
ters), and the recent extensive memoir on color- 
blindness by Abney and Festing in the Philo- 
sophical Transactions. These last authors say 
that the examination of color-blind persons is 
of prime importance for testing any theory of 
color vision, and, nevertheless, they are con- 
tent, like so many others, to infer the sensa- 
tions of the color-blind from a theory which 
they have already adopted. 

But as early as 1856 there was one man who, 
himself color-blind, had convinced himself that 
his own sensations were blue and yellow, and 
he should have convinced all the world as well 
if the world had been open to reason—if it had 
not been preoccupied with a theory. This man 
was William Pole, F. R. 8., professor of civil 
engineering in University College. His papers 
on the subject were published in the Philosoph- 
ical Transactions; his argument is exceedingly 
ingenious and it is little to the credit of the 
reasoning public that it did not make headway. 
Had it appeared a few years earlier than it did, 
it is probable that the Young-Helmholtz com- 
bination would never have been formed. Pro- 
fessor Pole preserves the interest in the theory 
of color visions which he felt forty years ago, 
and he is the one person, so far as I know, who 
has discussed Helmholtz’s late profound mathe- 
matical contributions to the subject. 

The history of opinion regarding color-blind- 
ness presents, therefore, this series of occur- 
rences : 

1. A deduction from a theory was taken for 
a fact. 


SCIENCE. 


311 


2. That supposed fact was taken as confirm- 
ing the theory. 

3. The same supposed fact was held so 
strongly that the highly ingenious reasoning 
by which Professor William Pole showed it to 
be erroneous forty years ago failed to awaken 
attention. 

4, Moreover, the cases of monocular color- 
blindness, by which it is absolutely contra- 
dicted, and which date from fifteen years ago, 
are without effect upon it, with most people, 
even at the present day. 

CHRISTINE LADD FRANKLIN. 

BALTIMORE, Mp. 


SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 


Non-Euclidean Geometry, or The Science of Abso- 
lute Space. By JoHN BoLyAt. Translated 
from the Latin by Dr. GrorGE BrucE HAL- 
sTED. Austin, Texas, the Neomon. 

This book of John Bolyai was published in 
an appendix to a work of his father’s in 1832— 
within the memory of many men now living. 
The same date marks the publication of Fara- 
day’s experiments in the science of electricity, 
which revolutionized the whole theory of elec- 
tricity and gave to the world the dynamo. 
Faraday’s conception of electricity as an action 
that pervades all space like that of light and 
heat, and the later identification by Herz of all 
three phenomena as very probably different 
phases of one and the same action, is not more 
strange, new, or revolutionary, than Bolyai’s 
science of absolute space. We are indebted for 
this English translation to the zeal, energy and 
ability of Dr. Halsted, who has long labored in 
this field of mathematics. 

What is this science of absolute space? Those 
who wish to know in detail should get the book 
and read it carefully. The translator’s intro- 
duction contains a complete historical summary, 
and the earlier portions of the work are within 
the comprehension of every student of elemen- 
tary geometry. In general, Bolyai has shown 
that the geometry of Euclid is an hypothesis ; 
that there are an infinite number of geometries 
equally probable with Euclid’s, and that which 
of these coincides with the true properties of 
the space in which we live can be determined 


312 


only by measurements of absolute exactness. 
Just as we are content to accept a small piece 
of smooth water as level, although we know 
from measurements of large surfaces of it that 
it is curved, so we must be content to take 
Euclid’s geometry as true within the limits of 
error of ordinary measurements. It may be 
that we shall be able to arrive at such a pre- 
eision of measurement of the very large or the 
very small as to prove Euclid’s geometry false ; 
we can only prove it true by arriving at infinite 
precision of measurement, which can never be. 

It is interesting to note the effect of this dis- 
covery upon the position of Euclid as a math- 
ematician of ability. It has raised him to a posi- 
tion higher than it had ever been supposed 
possible to place him, for his work shows that 
he knew something of this science of absolute 
space—how much may never appear, but cer- 
tainly enough to make him the original pro- 
genitor of it. Certain portions of Euclid have 
long been considered as blemishes in an other- 
wise remarkable book. His treatment of pro- 
portion has been discarded in modern geome- 
tries as too prolix and heavy. His treatment 
of parallels has been regarded as unscientific, 
and would-be authors, bent on showing their 
ingenuity and superiority to Euclid, have ad- 
opted other methods which they claimed were 
more satisfactory. But when a man like Bolyai 
appears, whose genius is comparable with that 
of Euclid, he brushes the dust of ages from 
these blots, and behold, they shine as gems of 
purest thought, whose brightness and depth 
confound and dazzle his would-be improvers! 
After all, it takes a long time for scientific 
knowledge to spread, and doubtless there will 
continue to be many authors who will write 
geometries with so-called modern improvements 
that proclaim simply their authors’ ignorance 
of the elements of Euclid and the science of 
space. 

Many editions and different points of view of 
Non-Euclidean gometry have been presented 
by modern authors, such as Cayley, Clifford, 
Riemann and others. Of American workers 
on the subject we have Dr. Halsted who has 
been interested on the historical side, dating 
probably from his Bibliography of the subject 
prepared for the American Journal of Mathe- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 112. 


matics, while a Fellow of the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity. We may expect much more new and yal- 
uable material from him in this line. Dr. Story, of 
Clark University, has also written for the same 
journal in line with the labors of Cayley, Clif- 
ford and other European mathematicians. One 
remarkable feature of the later developments is 
that the various non-Euclidean geometries may 
be interpreted as the forms in which Euclidean 
geometry itself would appear, depending upon 
the meaning of those vexatious quantities ‘ dis- 
tances,’ ‘angular measurements,’ etc. 


A. S. HATHAWAY. 
RosE POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE, 
TERRE HAUTE, IND. 


Elementary Meteorology for High Schools and Col- 
leges. By FRANK WALDO, Ph.D. New York, 
Cincinnati and Chicago, The American Book 
Company. 1896. Pp. 372. 

Another Elementary Meteorology is added to 
the list of recent works under that same title. 
This one is by Dr. Frank Waldo, of Princeton, 
N. J. Dr. Waldo was formerly connected with 
our Signal Service (the predecessor of the pres- 
ent Weather Bureau) as Junior Professor of 
Meteorology, and in that capacity gave instruc- 
tion in meteorology to the officers and men of 
the Service. His experience then gained, and 
his intimate acquaintance with the modern 
German writings in this science, should have 
qualified him well for the preparation of a text- 
book of meteorology. This volume is designed, 
as is stated on the title-page, ‘for High Schools 
and Colleges,’ and, as appears in the preface, 
‘is intended to serve as a text-book of the ele- 
ments of the science for general students, and 
must not be considered as a manual for practis- 
ing meteorologists.’ The book will doubtless 
have a large sale. It gives a good general view 
of the science; it is of convenient size, well 
printed, fairly well illustrated and, a very im- 
portant matter, it is published at a moderate 
price. The general plan of the book is similar 
to that of most of the other text-books, so that 
there is no occasion for comment on this score, 
but the chapter on the general circulation of 
the atmosphere is more complete than usual. 
Dr. Waldo has succeeded in putting Ferrel’s 
ideas on this subject into tolerably simple lan- 


FEBRUARY 19, 1897.] 


guage, which is by no means an easy task. The 
last chapter, on the climate of the United States, 
is also quite extended, and will prove useful. 

We might state our opinion of the volume in 
the following words: It is good, but it isnot an 
elementary meteorology. Our author has suc- 
ceeded in condensing avery great deal of infor- 
mation into his 372 pages, but for our part, we 
do not consider the book adapted’ for use in 
high schools. Some of the chapters can be easily 
understood, but certainly many of them would 
be difficult for anyone to appreciate thoroughly 
unless a pretty careful study of meteorology 
had preceded. Take, for instance, the chapter 
on the general circulation of the atmosphere, 
which, as already stated, is well done. We 
wish we could believe that our high school stu- 
dents, or even many of our college students, 
could thoroughly master that. We think our 
author has made a mistake in attempting to put 
so much information into this one volume, if his 
intention is to give an elementary presentation 
of the subject. It would be better to treat fewer 
matters, and to take each up at some length, 
than to attempt to include so many topics and 
necessarily dismiss many of them with a few 
words only. An elementary meteorology adap- 
ted to school use still remains to be written. 
Such a book, according to our way of thinking, 
should not attempt to cover nearly so much 
ground as has hitherto been the practice of 
writers of ‘elementary’ text-books of meteor- 
ology. It should devote far more attention to 
the instrumental side, to the study of weather 
maps, and to individual observations, both with 
and without instruments. Only after some such 
truly elementary knowledge concerning local 
phenomena has been gained can the student 
fully appreciate the larger facts which the gen- 
eral temperature, pressure, wind and rainfall 
conditions of the globe present. 

What has been said regarding the non-ele- 
mentary character of Dr. Waldo’s book should 
not operate in the mind of the reader to de- 
tract from any of its merits as a text-book for 
the use of more advanced students. It will un- 
doubtedly be widely read, and do a good work 
in disseminating sound meteorological learning. 

R. DE C. WARD. 

HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


SCIENCE. 


313 


Lecture Notes on Theoretical Chemistry. By FER- 
DINAND G. WIECHMANN, Ph. D., Columbia 
College. Second edition. Revised and en- 
larged. New York, John Wiley & Sons. 
1895. 8°, pp. xviii--288. 

The apparently growing tendency to divorce 
practical and theoretical chemistry is probably 
unfortunate for the training of the next genera- 
tion of chemists. To study chemical phenomena 
without studying the principles of chemistry is 
much like relegating the student to the days 
when these principles were unknown; yet, in 
many of our modern text-books, every effort 
seems made to eliminate theory, as far as pos- 
sible, and carry chemistry back to where botany 
was a few years ago, the study of a sufficient 
number of plant forms to enable the student to 
‘analyze’ a flower. True, when one has ac- 
quired a good knowledge of general chemistry 
by several terms of study, it is desirable to go 
over the theoretical ground again and more ex- 
tensively than it can be done in an elementary 
course, and for this purpose there are a number 
of excellent works not only in German, but also 
in English, and one at least by an American. 
Professor Wiechmann’s work, however, covers a 
more elementary ground and is well fitted to 
accompany, rather than to succeed, college work 
on general chemistry. While it consists of 
‘Lecture Notes,’ it is fuller than this title 
would indicate and might well be called an Ele- 
mentary Treatise on Theoretical Chemistry. 
Undoubtedly, it would be a great advantage 
for a student to have before him the original 
lectures of which this book gives the notes; 
nevertheless the subject is set forth so clearly 
that the book has an independent value even as 
a text-book. It would be very helpful for all 
teachers of chemistry in secondary schools to 
have a good knowledge of its contents, and 
would be a great advantage to their teach- 
ing. 

Chapter I. treats of matter and its forms, in- 
cluding solutions and change of state ; chapter 
II. of the measurement of matter and specific 
gravity. The various methods of taking specific 
gravity and density are well classified and 
briefly described. Chapter III., the science of 
chemistry, is a brief introduction. Chapter 
TY., on chemical nomenclature and notation, is 


314 


an excellent historical resumé, quite full and 
very interesting to every student. Of the next 
chapter, on chemical formule and equations, 
less can be said ; the writing of chemical equa- 
tions cannot readily be reduced torules. Atoms, 
atomic mass and valence are next taken up, 
and well epitomized ; the periodic law is then 
briefly described, and the author well says: 
‘Although the periodic law cannot as yet give 
a logical explanation of all these phenomena, 
still it stands unquestioned, that it is one of the 
most far-reaching, if it be not the most impor- 
tant law of chemistry.’’ These two chapters, 
which condense the whole of Lothar Meyer’s 
Moderne Theorie der Chemie, might have 
been wisely expanded to several times their 
volume without being disproportionate to the 
rest of the book. Molecules, molecular mass 
(including osmotic pressure), and the structure 
of molecules follow, and then a long chapter is 
devoted to stoichometrical calculations. Chem- 
ical arithmetic should certainly be thoroughly 
studied in ‘practical’ chemistry, yet the very 
fact of its being included in this book reflects a 
felt need. The concluding chapters are on 
energy : chemical energy (in which there is an 
excellent summary on measurement of chem- 
ical affinity) and photo-chemistry, thermal 
energy and thermo-chemistry, and electrical 
energy and electro-chemistry. The book closes 
with a quite complete bibliography of over 
two hundred titles of works relating to the ma- 
terial considered in the book, more than one- 
half published within the last decade. 

The book is very free from typographical er- 
rors as wellas from errors of statement. It is 
unfortunate that the terms specific gravity and 
density of gases should be used interchange- 
ably ; specific gravity is best used for air as the 
standard, and density confined to those cases 
where the unit is hydrogen. 


JAS. LEwis Hower. 
WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY. 


The Argentawrum Papers. No. 1. Some Remarks 
Concerning Gravitation. Addressed to the 
Smithsonian Institution, the American Asso- 
ciation for the Advancement of Science, * * * 
and all learned bodies. By STEPHEN H. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 112. 


EMMENS, member of the American Institute 
of Mining Engineers, etc. The Plain Citizen 
Publishing Co., New York. 

It is not generally worth while for any one 
other than a psychologist or an alienist to look 
beyond the title page of so pretentious a work 
as this first installment of the Argentaurwm 
Papers. But the author of this pamphlet of 
150 octavo pages has contrived to exploit him- 
self so extensively in the advertising columns 
of respectable journals, including SclENCcE,* that 
his work demands a brief notice. 

The only part of the paper of any value is 
the ‘Envoy,’ which occupies the last twenty 
pages and gives the author’s biography along 
with a list of his numerous publications. From 
this envoy it appears that in his academic days 
he was a prize man in chemistry, physics, logic 
and other subjects; that he has published 
treatises on pure and applied logic, Locke on 
the conduct of the human understanding, the 
philosophy and practice of punctuation, etc.; 
and also that he has published ‘ well-received’ 
work in the domain of fiction. We learn with re- 
gret that he is at presenta paralytic. ‘‘I havefor 
the last nineteen years been paralyzed,’’ he says, 
“by an injury to my spine, and am unable to 
move about with freedom.’’ This might make 
us charitable, but he is too vigorous and clever 
a paralytic to implore any lenity; for he adds, 
stoically, ‘‘I do not say this by way of any 
excuse. No physical disability is a valid apol- 
ogy for bad work. Cripples must not inflict 
themselves upon other people.”’ 

As to the fate of his work he is fully resigned. 
He says: ‘‘I am prepared to be told, in the 
first place, that I am ignorant and foolish; that 

* The insertion in SCIENCE of an advertisement of 
a book which we review so unfavorably may seem to 
need an explanation. In the contract with The Mac- 
millan Co. the right is given to the responsible editor 
to veto any advertisement, but it is not desirable to 
use this power unless necessary. The author of the 
present book is said to have done good scientific 
work, and it would doubtless seem to him and to 
others like persecution not to permit him to bring his 
book to the attention of men of science. It is our 
duty to condemn the book according to our judg- 
ment, but the history of thought demonstrates that 
it is wrong to suppress freedom of speech or of publi- 
cation. J. McK. C. 


FEBRUARY 19, 1897.] 


I have ventured into a field without even a 
decent equipment of knowledge, and that I 
have altogether failed to understand the real 
meaning and bearing of the accepted teachings 
of modern science.’’ We beg to state gently 
but firmly that this indictment is strictly cor- 
rect in all particulars. The author of this 
sereed on gravitation demonstrates conclu- 
sively: first, that he does not understand the 
fundamental concept of Newton’s law of at- 
traction; secondly, that he does not know 
enough of elementary mathematics to apply 
this law to the simple case of a homogeneous 
sphere; and, thirdly, that he possesses little of 
the caution which is born of a knowledge of 
things physical. He illustrates well the colos- 
sal impudence of those pseudo-scientists whose 
equipment consists of formal logic and a facile 
pen. W. 


SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS. 
PHYSICAL REVIEW, VOL. IV., NO. 4, JANUARY— 
FEBRUARY, 1897. 


The Freezing Points of Dilute Aqueous Solu- 
tions, III.: By E. H. Loomis. This paper is 
devoted to a continuation of Dr. Loomis’ ex- 
periments on the lowering of the freezing point 
by dissolved substances. The method is the 
same as that previously employed. In the 
present series of experiments the substances 
tested were chiefly chlorides and phosphates, 
though several of the more important organic 
acids were also used. 

Since the substances employed were electro- 
lytes, Dr. Loomis’ results afford a check upon 
the theory of electrolytic dissociation, osmotic 
pressure, etc. As in the case of his earlier 
measurements, the agreement is entirely satis- 
factory only in few cases. It is well known, 
however, that the ordinary formula for the low- 
ing of the freezing point depends upon several 
assumptions and approximations of a very 
doubtful character. So that it seems not im- 
probable that the apparent discrepancies that 
are brought out by Dr. Loomis’ measurements 
may lead to an improvement in the whole 
theory. 

A Method for Energy Measurements in the In- 
fra-red, and the Properties of the Ordinary Ray in 


SCIENCE. 


315 


Quartz for Waves of Great Wave-Length: By E. 
F. Nicnous. This article contains two impor- 
tant features: first, the description of a new 
type of instrument for the measurement of infra- 
red radiation ; and second, the account of meas- 
urements made with it by which the optical 
properties of quartz were investigated in the 
extreme infra-red. 

The instrument used by Professor Nichols is 
a modified form of the Crookes radiometer. It 
consists essentially of two excessively small 
vanes mounted upon a fine quartz fibre and sus- 
pended in vacuo. The rays to be measured are 
allowed to fall upon one of the vanes, and a de- 
flection of the system results. The deflection 
is measured by means of a light mirror. This. 
form of instrument is found to be much more 
sensitive than any bolometer heretofore used. 
More important than its increased sensitiveness. 
is, however, its freedom from the various dis- 
turbances to which a sensitive bolometer is sub- 
ject. The radiometer does not depend in its. 
action upon any electric or magnetic forces, and 
is therefore free from the irregularities which 
are always present when a sensitive galvanom- 
eter is used. The instrument is also capable of 
being more thoroughly protected against outside 
temperature disturbances. It can hardly be 
questioned that this instrument will make a 
considerable advance in our knowledge of infra- 
red spectra. 

This new type of radiometer was employed 
in connection with a mirror spectrometer to 
investigate the reflection and absorption of 
quartz. For wave-lengths in excess of 4 » quartz 
becomes practically opaque with layers of ordi- 
nary thickness. To investigate the absorption 
a very thin layer was prepared, the thickness 
being not more than18. Sufficient energy was 
transmitted through this film of quartz to be 
detected, and measurements of absorption were 
extended to about 8y. At that point even this 
extremely thin layer failed to transmit a meas- 
urable amount. Numerous well-defined absorp- 
tion bands were detected between 4 and 8/. 
The reflecting power of quartz was measured 
throughout the same range of wave-lengths by 
comparison with silver. Making use of the 
Cauchy formula, the index of refraction was 
then computed from the observed values of the 


316 


reflection and absorption. The results indicate 
distinctly the presence of anomalous dispersion, 
the critical wave-length being that where the 
absorption of the quartz becomes complete. 
The article is an important one in its bearing 
upon the theories of dispersion and absorption. 

Heat Rays of Great Wave-Length: By H. Ru- 
BENS and E. F. NicHots. Experiments are de- 
scribed in this paper by which infra-red rays 
were detected of greater wave-length than any 
heretofore observed. The longest wave-lengths 
in the infra-red which had previously been 
measured were those studied by Paschen in 
connection with the dispersion of fluorite. 
These rays had a wave-length of a little less 
than 10. Messrs. Rubens and Nichols have suc- 
ceeded in obtaining and measuring rays whose 
length is 25, these rays being obtained by 
successive reflection from fluorite. It appears 
that this substance possesses an absorption band 
in the neighborhood of 25, which is so intense 
as to suggest metallic absorption. There re- 
sults a great increase in the reflecting power of 
the material in the neighborhood of this wave- 
length, so that after successive reflection from 
three surfaces of fluorite the rays that remain 
are found to consist almost wholly of waves 
corresponding to this absorption band. The 
wave-length was determined by means of a 
wire grating. Similar experiments with quartz 
led to the detection of waves of about 6.5 1. 
Experiments were also tried with rock salt, but 
the bolometer was not sufficiently sensitive to 
enable the resulting waves to be measured. 
The authors intend to continue this work, us- 
ing the improved radiometer described by Pro- 
fessor Nichols in the previous paper. 

On the Formation of Lead Sulphate in Alterna- 
ting Current Electrolysis with Lead Electrodes: 
By 8S. SHELDON and M. B. WATERMAN. The 
work described in this paper is in part a con- 
tinuation of the authors’ experiments on the 
capacity of electrolytic condensers (Physical 
Review, II., p. 401). Attempts to find con- 
densers of this type which should be efficient 
and free from ‘hysteresis’ led to the trial of 
lead electrodes in sulphuric acid. As a con- 
denser this form of cell was no improvement 
over those first used. But when placed in an 
alternating current circuit a curious instance of 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. Von. V. No. 112. 


alternating current electrolysis was observed, 
namely, the development of insoluble lead sul- 
phate at both electrodes. Experiments were 
then made to determine the dependence of the 
amount of electrolytic action upon current 
density, frequency of alternation, temperature, 
etc. The results, both in tabular and graphic 
form, are contained in the present article. 

Polarization and Internal Resistance of a Gal- 
vanic Cell: By B. E. Moore and H. VY. CAr- 
PENTER. This article is devoted to an experi- 
mental study of the ‘diamond’ carbon cell, the 
object of the authors being to localize the 
changes in polarization and resistance which 
occur on opening and closing the circuit. 
Their chief conclusions are: (1) that polarization 
occurs at both electrodes, but is more marked 
at the carbon electrode; (2) on closing the cir- 
cuit the rapid fall of E. M. F. is due prin- 
cipally to the polarization at the carbon elec- 
trode; (8) the rapid rise in E. M. F., whena 
cell is first thrown upon open circuit, is largely 
due to recovery from polarization at the zinc 
electrode. 

The Trace of the Gyroscopic Pendulum: By 
ERNEST MERRITT. In this article the motion of 
the gyroscopic pendulum is first briefly discussed 
from a theoretical standpoint. A number of 
photographic traces are then shown, which 
were made by reflecting a beam of light from 
a mirror attached to the lower end of the 
pendulum. Several different types of curves 
are represented corresponding to different start- 
ing conditions and to different lengths of pen- 
dulum. These curves are of interest in afford- 
ing a concrete illustration and confirmation of 
the theory of gyroscopic motion. They also 
bring outa curious effect due to friction, which 
is exactly opposite in its result to what would 
be at first expected. 

Note on Different Forms of the Entropy 
Function: By W. F. DuRrAnp. Professor 
Durand discusses, in this article, the general 
form of the integrating factor which must 
be used in order that the integral of dQ 
shall vanish for any reversible cycle. It 
has generally been recognized for some time 
that the absolute temperature represents only 
one of the infinite number of possible integra- 
ting factors. If some other of these factors 


FEBRUARY 19, 1897. ] 


were used we might get something analogous 
to entropy, and which, nevertheless, would pos- 
sess different and possibly interesting proper- 
ties. Professor Durand has discussed two spe- 
ial forms which the integrating factor might 
take for a perfect gas. One of these is where 
it is a function of the pressure only, and the 
other in which it is a function of the volume 
only. 

Books Reviewed: Frick, Physikalische Tech- 
nik; Wilkinson, Submarine Cable Laying; 
‘Griesbach, Physikalische Propadeutik,; Weldon, 
Physical Measurements. 


SOCIETIES 4ND ACADEMIES. 


ELEVENTH ANNUAL SESSION OF THE IOWA 
ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 


THE Iowa Academy of Sciences held its 
eleventh annual session in Des Moines Decem- 
ber 29 and 30, 1896. In the absence of the 
President, Professor T. P. Hall, Professor W. 
‘S. Franklin, First Vice-President, occupied the 
chair. The following papers were presented : 

‘The State Quarry Limestone,’ by Professor 
S. Calvin, describes a series of limestone ledges 
of Devonian age consisting of comminuted parts 
ef brachiopods, crinoids, ete., some of which de- 
serve to rank as a brachiopod coquina. Asnow 
known, limited to a few local deposits in John- 
‘son county. It appears to be unconformable on 
the Cedar Valley limestone and laid down 
after an erosion period of considerable length. 
No such erosion period in the Devonian has 
hitherto been suspected. The fauna, in some 
respects unique, contains a remarkable fish bed 
including the common Devonian type Ptycto- 
dus, but also the Carboniferous Psephodus. 
Some of the brachiopods also have Carbonifer- 
ous affinities. It is probable the beds represent 
the closing stage of the Devonian. 

‘Stages of the Des Moines, or chief Coal-bear- 
ing Series of Kansas and Southwest Missouri 
and their equivalents in Iowa,’ by C. R. Keyes. 

‘Natural Gas in the Drift of Iowa,’ by A. 
‘G. Leonard, enumerates the different local- 
ities where natural gas has been noted and re- 
lation of these to drift sheets. The gas has 
two possible sources, the underlying coal-meas- 
ure shales and the vegetable accumulations in 


SCIENCE. 


o17 


the drift. The latter are supposed to be the 
source of the natural gas in Iowa. 

‘Results of Recent Geological Work in Madi- 
son County,’ by J. L. Tilton, included discus- 
sion of the geological formations of the county, 
distribution of the loess, drift and alluvium, re- 
lation of present to preglacial drainage, and 
other features. 

‘A Drift Section at Oelwein,’ by G. EH. Finch; 
‘Evidence of a sub-Aftonian Drift in North- 
eastern Iowa,’ by S. W. Beyer, and ‘The Bot- 
any of a Pre-Kansan Peat-Bed,’ by T. H 
MacBride, all dealt with some exposures re- 
cently studied in the northeastern part of the 
State which are of special interest as showing 
very clearly a distinct separation of glacial 
periods, at least five of which are now known 
to be well marked by deposits in Iowa. . 

‘ Additional Observations on the Surface De- 
posits of Iowa,’ by B. Shimek, detailed results 
of aseries of borings and evidence in support 
of the author’s view that the loess deposits in 
western Iowa are of olian origin. 

‘The Flora of the Sioux Quartzite,’ in lowa, 
by B. Shimek, included an annotated list of the 
plants observed by the author on the quartzite 
exposure in Iowa, with a discussion of its rela- 
tion to the remaining flora of the State. 

‘Notes on the Aquatic Plants of Northern 
Iowa,’ by the same author, included mention 
particularly of the flowering plants occurrirg in 
lakes and ponds. 

‘Spermaphyta of the Fayette, Iowa, Flora,’ 
by Bruce Fink; a list including about 700 
species of plants collected at or near Fayette. 

‘Notes on the Flora of Iowa,’ by T. Z. Fitz- 
patrick; a short list of species new or little 
known to Iowa flora. 

‘The Mechanism for Securing Cross-fertiliza- 
tion in Salvia lanceolata,’ by G. W. Newton; a 
description of the structure of blossom and 
means of pollination. 

‘Notes on some Introduced Plants in Iowa,’ 
by L. H. Pammel; covering introduction, dis- 
tribution and economic importance of a number 
of species. 

‘A Study of the Leaf Anatomy of some 
Species of the Genus Bromus,’ by Emma Sir- 
rine; giving details of the epidermis, especially 
the bulliform cells, stereome and mestome. 


318 


‘A Comparative Study of the Leaves of Lo- 
lium, Festuca and Bromus,’ by Emma Pammel. 
In Festuca tenella the bulliform cells are want- 
ing, while well developed in Loliwm perenne 
and but slightly in Bromus racemosus. 

‘Anatomical Study of the Leaves of Certain 
Species of the Genus Andropogon,’ by C. B. 
Weaver. In the species studied there appeared 
to be characters of specific value. 

‘Some Anatomical Studies of the Leaves of 
Eragrostis,’ by C. R. Ball. In this genus the 
anatomical characters appear to be insufficient 
for specific characterizations. 

‘The Uses of Formaldehyde in Animal Mor- 
phology,’ by Gilbert L. Houser, discussed the 
peculiar properties of this reagent, its disad- 
vantages and the advantages in its use in cer- 
tain fixing agents and its value in neurological 
work. 

‘The Nerve Cells of the Shark’s Brain,’ by 
Gilbert L. Houser. Morphological value, gen- 
eral features of structure and results attained 
by use of the Golgi method. 

‘Some Manitoba Cladocera,’ with description 
of one new species, by L. 8S. Ross, included 
notes on the author’s collecting and the de- 
scription of a new species of Ceriodaphnia. 

The same author presented papers on ‘A 
New Species of Daphnia and Notes on Other 
Cladocera of Iowa,’ and a description of ‘The 
Illinois Biological Station.’ 

Mr. Charles Carter remarked upon ‘The 
Odonata of Iowa,’ and requested specimens and 
correspondence relating to the insects of this 
order, with a view to presenting a complete 
catalogue of the species of the State. 

‘Notes on the Orthopterous Fauna of Iowa,’ 
by E. D. Ball, lists the known species of the 
State and includes remarks on distribution and 
life histories. 

‘The Ophidia of Iowa,’ by A. H. Conrad, 
calls attention to the desirability of a study of 
the State fauna before many of the species be- 
come entirely extinct. The author desires ma- 
terial for study. 

‘Contributions to the Hemipterous Fauna of 
Iowa,’ by Herbert Osborn, gives a list of about 
100 species not hitherto recorded for the State, 
and notes on the life histories of certain spe- 
cies. 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 112. 


The following papers were read by title: ‘Ver- 
tical Range of Fossils at Louisiana,’ by C. R. 
Keyes and R. R. Rowley, and ‘The Probable. 
Life History of Crepidodera cucumeris, by F. A. 
Sirrine. 

In business sessions the Academy adopted 
strong resolutions against the passage of anti- 
vivisection laws for the District of Columbia, 
voted a contribution to the Pasteur Monu- 
ment Fund and elected the following officers for 
the ensuing year: President, W. 8. Franklin ; 
First Vice-President, T. H. MacBride; Second 
Vice-President, B. Fink; Secretary-Treasurer, 
Herbert Osborn; Elective Members of Execu- 
tive Committee, L. S. Ross, J. L. Tilton and 


C. O. Bates. 
HERBERT OSBORN, 


Secretary. 


THE SCIENTIFC ASSOCIATION OF THE JOHNS 
HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 


THE one hundred and thirtieth regular meet- 
ing was held January 21, 1897, Vice-President. 
Howell in the chair. 

The papers presented and read were: 

The Stratification of Glaciers and the Origin of 
Some Moraines: By HARRY FIELDING REID. 
Observations were begun last summer to deter- 
mine the actual direction of the motion of the- 
ice of the Forno glacier in Switzerland. They 
will be completed next summer. ‘The vertical 
as well as the horizontal components of the mo- 
tion in different parts of the glacier will be deter- 
mined. This is to test a theory published in the 
Journal of Geology, Vol. IV., p. 918, in which. 
it is shown that the vertical component of the 
movement should be downward above the névé- 
line and upward below it. If this is true, then 
material dropped from the cliffs in the reser- 
voir of the glacier should disappear and emerge 
again at the surface below the névé-line. Such 
moraines were found and were seen to be inti- 
mately connected with the stratification. AII 
the observations on the Forno glacier indi-~ 
cate that what Forbes called the ‘ribboned 
structure’ is, as Agassiz contended, the out- 
crop of the strata. The very bad weather last. 
summer interfered so much with the work that. 
this conclusion could not be finally confirmed: 
or disproved. 


FEBRUARY 19, 1897.] 


Some Recent Advances in Spectrum Analysis : 
By Josrpu 8. Ames. Attention was called to 
the fact that the supposed discovery of oxygen 
in the sun was disproved by observations of 
Mr. Jewell; that as yet there was no spectro- 
scopic evidence of the presence of two elemen- 
tary gases in clevite gas; that for the formula 
connecting lines in the series so often observed 
in spectra Balmer has recently suggested 


Be Oe 

J n? + ¢ 
where n—83, 4, 5, etc.; that series of this kind 
have been discovered in the spectrum of oxygen; 
that a most important mathematical relation 
has been found to exist between the series ob- 
served in the spectrum of any one element. 
The importance of the study of these series 
with reference to molecular theories was 


touched upon. 
CHAS. LANE Poor, 


Secretary. 


BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON.—271ST 
MEETING, SATURDAY, JANUARY 30. 


Dr. C. HART MERRIAM spoke of ‘ The Pribi- 
lof Island Hair Seal,’ stating that it differed 
from the Eastern Harbor seal, Phoca vitulina, 
in its greater size, in the simpler character of 
the true molars and in the greater extent of the 
articulation of the premaxillaries with the 
nasals. As specimens were lacking between 
Greenland and Bering Sea, it was uncertain 
whether the Pribilof seal was a species or sub- 
species, although it was probably thes latter. 
Several names had been applied to hair seals 
from the North Pacific, but the one which would 
probably stand was Phoca larga. 

Mr. C. H. Townsend presented a paper on 
‘The Origin of the Alaskan Live Mammoth 
Story,’ saying that of late years many reports had 
appeared in newspapers to the effect that Indians 
declared that the mammoth was still living in 
Alaska. The speaker stated that in 1885 he 
visited Cape Prince of Walesin the Corwin, and, 
in reply to questions of the natives concerning 
the bones of the mammoth with which they 
were familiar, showed them figures of the skele- 
ton and drew a restoration of the animal. 
These figures were copied by the natives, and, 


SCIENCE. 


o19 


as the natives of widely separated regions have 
communication with each other by canoes and 
dog teams, he had no doubt that in this manner 
the figure and information had become widely 
spread. Being subsequently related and shown 
to visitors these had given rise to the reports of 
living mammoths. 

Mr. Frank Benton spoke at some length on 
‘The Giant Bee of India,’ saying that apiarians 
were much interested in introducing this spe- 
cies into the United States, owing to the increas- 
ing demand for wax in the arts. The species 
built a large comb on the under side of a limb 
or overhanging rock, and was much sought for 
by the natives of the regions where it is found. 
Mr. Benton described his efforts to obtain speci- 
mens and bring them to the United States and 
said that, although these first attempts had not 
succeeded, he thought that the bee could be 
successfully introduced into the southern United 
States. 

Mr. L. O. Howard presented a communica- 
tion entitled ‘ Parasites of Shade-tree Insects in 
Washington,’ in which he showed the exact de- 
tails of the reduction of Orgyia leucostigma, 
which appeared in extraordinary numbers in 
the District of Columbia in the summer of 1895, 
to perfect harmlessness in the summer of 1896. 
Thirty-seven species of parasitic insects were 
engaged in this work ; 17 species were primary 
Hymenopterous parasites, 6 primary Dipterous 
parasites and 14 Hymenopterous hyperpara- 
sites. Among the hyperparasites 12 were sec- 
ondary, 2 tertiary and one of the latter probably 
also quaternary. ‘The speaker generalized at 
some length on the subject of insect parasitism 
as illustrated by this rather striking instance. 

F. A. Lucas, 
Secretary. 


NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, BIOLOGICAL 
SECTION, JANUARY 11, 1897. 


Dr. G. S. HunTINGTON read a paper entitled 
‘A Contribution to the Myology of Lemur 
bruneus.’ 

The paper deals with some of the ventral 
trunk muscles and the appendicular muscles of 
the forelimb and pectoral girdle. A comparison 
of the structure of these muscles with the cor- 
responding parts in other members of the sub- 


320 


order shows L. bruneus to possess marked 
primate characters in the arrangement of the 
pectoral girdle muscles and the muscles of the 
proximal segment of the anterior limb. This 
is especially evident in the lateral recession of 
the pectorales ; the compound character of the 
ectopectoral insertion, the junctions of a pec- 
toralis abdominalis with the typical entopectoral 
insertion, and the presence of an axillary mus- 
cular arch, derived from the tendons of the 
Latissimus, dorsi and connected with the deep 
plane of insertion of the ectopectoral tendon. 

The presence of a third or inferior portion of 
the coraco-brachialis is noted in addition to the 
upper and middle portion usually present in 
Lemuroidia. 

The ventral trunk muscles present a distinct 
carnivore type in their arrangement, instanced 
by the high thoracic extension of the rectus 
abdominalis, the occurrence of a well-developed 
supra costalis, the union of levator scapule 
and serratus magnus, the thoracic extension of 
the scalenus group ; interlocking both with the 
serratus magnus and obliquus externus. 

The aponeurosis of the obliquus externuus 
presents a well-developed division of the in- 
ternal pillar of the external abdominal ring, 
dove-tailing with the one from the opposite 
side and forming the triangular ligament of the 
same. 

Mr. H. E. Crampton, Jr., reported some of 
his ‘ Observations upon Fertilization in Gastero- 
pods.’ 

The observations were made upon the eggs 
of a species of Doris, collected last summer on 
the Pacific Coast by Mr. Calkins, and upon a 
species of Bulla which deposited eggs at Woods 
Holl during the months of August and Septem- 
ber. The results may best be summarized by 
stating that a complete confirmation was ob- 
tained of the accounts of fertilization given by 
Wilson and Mathews, Boveri, Hill for sea- 
urchins, Meade on Chetopterus Kostanecki and 
Wiejyewski upon Physa, ete. The sperm nu- 
cleus is preceded by the divided centrosome, 
an aster, however, not being found till the union 
of the germ-nuclei. The first polar spindle lies 
at each pole a double centrosome, the second 
maturation spindle but one. Theseare of great 
size, however, and the one remaining in the egg 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 112. 


finally disintegrates, the centrosomes of the first 
cleavage spindle being derived from the sperm. 
The germ-nuclei do not fuse, but lie very close 
to one another, in contact. 

Mr. N. R. Harrrington gave an account of 
the life history of Entoconcha, a mollusc para- 
sitic in a Holothurian. His paper was illus- 
trated by photographs. 

The following paper was read by title: 

N. R. Harrington and B. B. Griffin: ‘Notes 
on the Distribution, Habits and Habitat of some 
Puget Sound Invertebrates.’ 

C. L. BristTou, 
Secretary. 


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Traité élémentaire de méchanique chemique. P. 
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A Laboratory Note-Book of Elementary Practical 


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JUST READY. 


A Treatise on Rocks, — 
Rock=Weathering and Soils. 


By GEORGE P. MERRILL, 


Curator of Geology in the United States National Museum; Professor of Geology in the Corcoran Scientific School 
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Building and Decoration,’’ etc. 


CLOTH. 8VO. FULLY ILLUSTRATED. 


..»CONTENTS.... 


Part I. THE CONSTITUENTS, Physical and III. AZolian Rocks. 
Chemical Properties, and Mode IV. Metamorphic Rocks. 


Of Cees Oe eae Part Il. THE WEATHERING of Rocks. 
. Introductory. Rocks defined. I. The Principles involved in Rock- 
Il. The Chemical Elements constitu= weathering. 
ting Rocks. Il. Consideration of Special Cases. 
Ill. The Minerals constituting Rocks. Ill. The Physical Manifestations of 
IV. The Physical and Chemical Prop= Weathering. 
erties of Rocks. IV. Time Considerations. 


V. The Mode of Occurrence of Rocks. Part IV. TRANSPOSITION AND REDEPOSI- 


Part Il. THE KINDS of Rocks. TION of Rock Debris. 
and Classification. I. Action of Gravity. 


I. Igneous Rocks; Origin of and v aries ot wee Buel 
Classification=Relationship be- sere OT O RRs 


= 


Generalities 


tween Plutonic and Effusive 
Rocks. 
II. Aqueous Rocks. 


Part V. THE REGOLITH. Classification and 
General Description, etc. Con=- 
clusion. 


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ALL ILLUSTRATED 
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SCIENCE 


EDITORIAL Commitrre: S. NEwcoms, Mathematics; R. 8S. WooDWARD, Mechanics; E. C. PICKERING 
Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THuRsTon, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry; 
J. Le ContE, Geology; W. M. DAvis, Physiography; O. C. MARsH, Paleontology; W.K. 
Brooxks, C. HART MERRIAM, Zoology; S. H. SCUDDER, Entomology; N. L. BRITTON, 
Botany; HENRY F. OSBORN, General Biology; H. P. Bowpitcu, Physiology ; 
J. 8. Brntines, Hygiene ; J. McKEEN CATTELL, Psychology ; 
DANIEL G. BRINTON, J. W. POWELL, Anthropology. 


Fripay, Fresruary 26, 1897. 


CONTENTS : 


Earth-crust Movements and their Causes: JOSEPH 
TER CONDE ecacomehenatea sees sete ce-sesevecisc dexcemecseesent 321 


Notes on Certain Beliefs concerning Will Power 
among the Siowan Tribes: ALICE C. FLETCHER..331 


The Sand-plains of Truro, Wellfleet and Eastham : 


AMADEUS W. GRABAU .......c.cescssecseceecececeeeeee 334 
A New Method of Driving an Induction Coil: CHAS. 
L. Norton, RALPH R. LAWRENCE..............65 335 


Current Notes on Physiography :— 

The Colorado Plains; The Pre-glacial Kanawha ; 

The Rivers.of Saginaw Bay: W.M. DAVIS...... 336 
Current Notes on Meteorology :— 

Chalk-plate Weather Maps ; Prizes for School Work 

im Meteorology ; Some Interesting Reprints: R. 

IOWA CH: Vi/AUP TD) csecoocnotoacoscagssancocoacoonda0on caDnodHo063 337 
Current Notes on Anthropology :-— 

The Age of Man; On Smail Chipped Flints: D. 


GOBRINTON: --nccs-seccstsecess gesnossgansoscbonsnnosasacce 339 
Scientific Notes and News ...........ceccccceeeeeeceneeseeees 339 
University and Educational News........00000-.s0.00000- 343 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 
The Argentaurum Papers: C. A. YOUNG. Former 
Extension of Greenland Glaciers: RALPH §. 
TARR. Compliment or Plagiarism: GEORGE 
Bruce Haustep. Zhe National University—A 
Suggestion: WILLIAM TRELEASE..................343 


Scientific Literature :— 
Groos on Die Spiele der Thiere: J. MARK BALD- 
WIN. Ball’s History of Mathematics; Cajori?s 
History of Elementary Mathematics: FE. M. 
BLAKE. Klebs on Die Bedingungen der Fort- 
pflanzung bei einigen Algen und Pilzen: GEO. F. 
ATKINSON. Codice Messicano Vaticano: D. G. 
HB RIND ONWloos accion sec cuncelsenc ess cackee uecceeeecce mite 347 
Scientific Journals :— 
American Chemical Journal: J. ELLIOTT GiL- 
PIN. The Journal of Comparative Neurology ; 
ZN REED, (CLEOING TS ono-onneciaccoocooeonanoescaconoceoaccoce 356 
Societies and Academies :— 
The New York Academy of Sciences—Section of 
Astronomy and Physics: WM. HALLOCK ; Sec- 
tion of Geology: J. F. Kemp. New York Sec- 
tion of the American Chemical Society: DURAND 


WOODMAN. Geological Society of Washington: 
W.F. MorRsELL. Boston Society of Natural His- 
tory: SAMUEL HENSHAW. The Academy of Sci- 
ence of St. Lowis: WM. TRELEASE. The Texas 
Academy of Science: FREDERIC W. SIMONDS. 
The Geological Club of the University of Minnesota : 
CHARLES) PS BERKEW) -e.ccececoncse-cctneneerenemsccere 359 
ANGOD TED So coca0cenoneaabsoonacoonNosooNcooocOaNDSaTeOoNHo0K00S 364 
MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended 


for review should be sent to the responsible editor, Prof. J. 
McKeen Cattell, Garrison-on-Hudson, N. Y. 


EARTH-CRUST MOVEMENTS AND THEIR 
CAUSES. * 


INTRODUCTION.—SOURCES OF ENERGY. 
NEARLy all the processes of nature visible 
to us—well-nigh the whole drama of nature 
enacted here on the surface of the earth— 
derive their forces from the sun. Currents 
of air and water in their eternally recur- 
ring cycles are a circulation driven by the 
sun. Plants derive their forces directly, 
and those of animals indirectly through 
plants, from it. All our machinery, 
whether wind-driven, or water-driven, or 
steam-driven, or electricity-driven, and even 
all the phenomena of intellectual, moral 
and social activity, have still this same 
source. There is one, and but one, ex- 
ception to this almost universal law, namely, 
that class of phenomena which geologists 
group under the general head of igneous 
agencies, comprising volcanoes, earthquakes, 
and more gradual movements of the earth’s 
crust. 


* Annual address by the President, Joseph Le 
Conte, read before the Geological Society of America, 
December 29, 1896. 


322 


Thus, then, all geological agencies are 
primarily divided into two groups. In the 
one group came atmospheric, aqueous and 
organic agencies, together with all other 
terrestrial phenomena which constitute the 
material of science; in the other group, 
igneous agencies and their phenomena 
alone. The forces in the group are exterior ; 
in the other, interior; in the one, sun-de- 
rived; in the other, earth-derived. The 
one forms, the other sculptures, the earth’s 
features; the one rough-hews, the other 
shapes. The general effect of the one is to 
increase the inequalities of the earth’s sur- 
face, the other to decrease and finally to 
destroy them. The configuration of the 
earth’s surface, the distribution of land and 
water—in a word, all that constitutes 
physical geography at any geological time— 
is determined by the state of balance be- 
tween these two eternally antagonistic 
forces. 


PHENOMENA TO BE STUDIED. 


Now the phenomena of the first group, 
lying, as they do, on the surface and subject 
to direct observation, are comparatively 
well understood as to their laws and their 
causes. While the causes of the phenomena 
of the second group, hidden forever from 
direct observation in the inaccessible depths 
of the earth’s interior, are still very obscure; 
and yet partly on account of this very ob- 
security, but mainly on account of their 
fundamental importance, it is just these 
which are the most fascinating to the geol- 
ogist. The former group, constituting, as it 
does, the terrestrial drama enacted by the 
sun, its interest is shared by geology equally 
with other departments of science, such as 
physics, chemistry and biology. The phe- 
nomena of the second group are more dis- 
tinctively the field of geology. 

If we compare the earth with an organ- 
ism then these interior forces constitute its 
life-force, while the other group may be 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 113. 


likened to the physical environments against 
which it eternally struggles, and the out- 
come of this struggle determines the course 
of the evolution of the whole. Now in 
biological science nearly the whole advance 
has heretofore been by study of the ex- 
ternal and more easily understood phenom- 
ena, thus clearing the ground and gather- 
ing material for attack on the interior 
fortress, and the next great advance must 
be through better knowledge of the vital 
forces themselves. The same is true of 
geology. Nearly all the progress has here- 
tofore been by the study of the exterior 
phenomena, such as erosion, transportation, 
sedimentation, stratification, distribution 
of organic forms in space and their succes- 
sion in time, ete. Many of the laws of 
these phenomena have already been out- 
lined, and progress to-day is mainly in fill- 
ing in and completing this outline; but the 
next great step must be through a better 
knowledge of the interior forces. This is 
just what geological science is waiting for 
to-day. Now the first step in this direction 
is a clear statement of the problems to be 
solved. The object of this address is to 
contribute something, however small, to 
such clear statement. 


EFFECTS OF INTERIOR FORCES. 

As the interior of the earth is inaccessible 
to direct observation, we can reason con- 
cerning interior forces only by observation 
of their effects on the surface. Now these 
effects, as usually treated, are of three main 
kinds: (1) Volcanoes, including all erup- 
tions of material from the interior; (2) 
Earthquakes, including all sensible move- 
ments, great and small; (3) Gradual small 
movements effecting large areas, imper- 
ceptible to the senses, but accumulating 
through indefinite time. 

It is certain that of these three the last is 
by far the most fundamental and important, 
being, indeed, the cause of the other two. 


FEBRUARY 26, 1897.] 


Volcanoes and earthquakes, although so 
striking and conspicuous, are probably but 
occasional accidents in the slow march of 
these grander movements. It is only of 
these last, therefore, that we shall now 
speak. 


KINDS AND GRADES OF EARTH-CRUST MOVE- 
MENTS. 

The movements of the earth’s crust deter- 
mined by interior forces are of four orders 
of greatness: (1) Those greatest, most ex- 
tensive, and probably primitive movements 
by which oceanic basins and continental 
masses were first differentiated and after- 
ward developed to their present condition ; 
(2) those movements by lateral thrust by 
which mountain ranges were formed and 
continued to grow until balanced by exterior 
erosive forces; (3) certain movements, 
often over large areas, but not continuous 
in one direction, and therefore not indefi- 
nitely cumulative like the two preceding, 
but oscillatory, first in one direction, then 
in another, now upward and then down- 
ward; (4) movements by gravitative read- 
justment, determined by transfer of load 
from one place to another. Perhaps this 
last does not belong strictly to pure interior 
or earth-derived forces, since the transfer of 
load is probably always by exterior or sun- 
derived forces. Nevertheless they are so 
important as modifying the effects of other 
movements and have so important a bearing 
on the interior condition of the earth that 
they cannot be omitted in this connection. 

Now of these four kinds and grades of 
movement the first two are primary and 
continuous in the same direction, and there- 
fore cumulative, until balanced by leveling 
agencies. The other two, on the contrary, 
are not necessarily continuous in the same 
direction, but oscillatory. They are, more- 
over, secondary and are imposed on the 
other two or primary movements as modi- 
fying, obscuring, and often even completely 


SCIENCE. 


323 


masking their effects. This important point 
will be brought out as we proceed. We will 
take up these movements successively in 
the order indicated above. 

1. Ocean Basin-making Movements. 

Ihave already given my views on this most 
fundamental question very briefly in my 
‘Elements of Geology,’ a little more fully in 
my first paper, ‘ Origin of Earth Features,’* 
and in my memoir of Dana.+ I give it still 
more fully now. 

We may assume that the earth was at 
one time an incandescent, fused spheroid of 
much greater dimensions than now, and 
that it gradually cooled, solidified, and con- 
tracted to its present form, condition and 
size. Nowif atthe time of its solidification 
it had been perfectly homogeneous in com- 
position, in density and in conductivity in 
every part, then the cooling and contraction 
would have been equal on every radius, 
and it would have retained its perfect, 
evenly spheroidal form; but such absolute 
homogeneity in all parts of so large a body 
would be in the last degree improbable. 
If, then, over some large areas the matter 
of the earth were denser and more conduc- 
tive than over other large areas, the former 
areas, by reason of their greater density 
alone, would sink below the mean level and 
form hollows; for even in a solid—much 
more in a semi-liquid, as the earth was at 
that time—there must have been static 
equilibrium (isostasy) between such large 
areas. This would be the beginning of 
oceanic basins; but the inequalities from 
this cause alone would probably be very 
small but for the concurrence of another 
and much greater cause, viz, the greater 
conductivity of the same areas. Con- 
ductivity is not, indeed, strictly propor- 
tional to destiny ; but in a general way it 
isso. It is certain, therefore, that the den- 
ser areas would be also the more conduc- 


*Am. Jour. Sci., 1872. 
} Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., Vol. 7, 1895, pp. 461-474. 


324 


tive, and therefore the more rapidly cooling 
and contracting areas. This would again 
increase, and in this case progressively in- 
crease, the depression of these areas. The 
two causes—destiny and conductivity, 


isostasy and contraction—would concur, 


but the latter would be far the greater, be- 
cause indefinitely cumulative. The origi- 
nally evenly spheroidal lithosphere would 
thus be deformed or distorted, and the dis- 
tortion, fixed by solidification, would. be 
continually increased until now. When 
the earth cooled sufficiently to precipitate 
atmospheric vapor the watery envelope 
thus formed would accumulate in the basins 
of the lithosphere and form the oceans. It 
is possible, and even probable, that the de- 
pressions were at first so shallow that the 
primeval ocean may have been universal, 
but the process of greater downward con- 
traction continuing, the ocean basins would 
become deeper and the less contracted por- 
tions of the lithosphere would appear as 
land. The process still continuing, the 
land would grow higher and more exten- 
sive and the ocean basins deeper and less 
extended throughout all geological time. 
On the whole, in spite of many oscillations, 
with increase and decrease of land, to be 
spoken of later, andin spite, too, of exterior 
agencies by erosion and sedimentation tend- 
ing constantly to counteract these effects, 
such has been, I believe, the fact through- 
out all geological history. 

It is evident, also, that on this view, since 
the same causes which originally formed the 
ocean basins have continued to operate in 
the same places, the positions of these 
greatest inequalities of the lithosphere have 
not substantially changed. This is the 
doctrine of the permanency of oceanic basins 
and continental masses, first announced by 
Dana. Some modification of this idea will 
come up under another head. 

The objection which may be—which has 
been—raised against this view is that such 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 113. 


heterogeneity as is here supposed, in a fused 
mass and therefore in a mass solidified 
from a state of fusion, is highly improbable, 
not to say impossible. This objection, I 
believe, will disappear when we remember 
the very small differences in conductivity, 
and therefore in contraction, that we are 
here dealing with; small, I mean, in com- 
parison with the size of the earth. This is 
evident when we consider the inequalities 
of the earth’s surface. The mean depth of 
the ocean is about two and one-half miles; 
the mean height of the land, about one- 
third of a mile. The mean inequality of 
the lithosphere, therefore, is less than three 
miles. This is ,5, of the radius of the 
earth—less than =}, of an inch (an almost 
imperceptible quantity) in a globe two feet 
in diameter. I believe that a perfectly 
spheriodal ball of plastic clay allowed to dry, 
or even a spheriodal ball of red-hot copper 
allowed to cool, would show more deforma- 
tion by contraction than the lithosphere of 
the earth in its present condition. Itis true 
the inequalities are more accentuated in 
some places, especially on the margins of 
the continental areas; but this is due to an- 
other cause, mountain-making, to be taken 
up later. 

Another objection will doubtless occur to 
the thoughtful geologist. It would seem at 
first sight on this view that ocean areas 
cooling most rapidly ought to be the first to 
form a solid crust, and the crust (if there 
be any interior liquid still remaining) ought 
to be thickest, and therefore least subject to 
voleanic activity, there; but, on the con- 
trary, we find that it is just in these areas 
that volcanoes are most abundant and ac- 
tive. It is for this reason that Dana be- 
lieved that land areas were the first and 
ocean areas the last to crust over. This is 
probably true; but a little reflection will 
show that these two facts, namely, the 
earlier crusting of the land areas and the 
more rapid cooling and contraction of the 


FEBRUARY 26, 1897. ] 


ocean areas, are not inconsistent with one 
another; for the more conductive and 
rapidly cooling areas would really be the 
last to crust, because surface solidification 
would be delayed by the easy transference 
of heat from below, while the less conduc- 
tive land areas would certainly be the first 
to crust, because the non-conductivity of 
these areas would prevent the access of heat 
from below. Observation of lavas proves 
this. The most vesicular and non-conduc- 
tive lavas are the soonest to crust, but for 
that very reason the slowest to cool to great 
depths. 

No doubt many other objections may be 
raised, especially if we attempt to carry out 
the idea into detail; for the physical princi- 
ples involved, and especially the conditions 
under which they acted, are far too com- 
plex and imperfectly understood to admit 
of such detail. It is safest, therefore, to 
confine ourselves to the most general state- 
ment. 

It may be well to stop a moment to com- 
pare with the above view that of Dana, as 
interpreted and clearly presented by Gilbert 
in 1893.* (1) According to this view the 
earth is supposed to have first solidified at 
the center. This, on the whole, seems most 
probable. (2) The investing liquid, say 
from 50 to 100 miles thick, might well be 
supposed to arrange itself in layers of in- 
creasing density from the surface to the 
solidnucleus. Now suppose for any cause, 
less conductivity or other, certain areas 
erusted on the surface. These crusts would, 
of course, consist of the lighter superficial 
portions; but since rocks contract in the 
act of solidification,+ these solidified crusts 
would sink to the nucleus and be replaced 
by similar lighter material flowing in from 
the surrounding surface, which in turn 
would solidify and sink. Thus would be 

* Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., Vol. 4, 1893, p. 179. 

} King and Barus. Am. Jour. Sci., Vol. 45, 1893, 
p. 1. 


SCIENCE. 


325 


built up from the nucleus below a solid mass 
consisting only of the superficial, lighter 
material to form the land, while the denser 
and less rapidly crusting material would 
form the ocean areas. As in my view, 
therefore, the oceanic areas are the denser 
and the land areas the lighter material. 

It is evident that, according to either 
view, but especially according to mine, the 
material of the ocean basin areas down to 
the center of the earth must be as much 
denser than the material of the land areas 
down to the center as the subocean radii 
are shorter than the subcontinental radii, 
and therefore that the two areas must be 
in perfect static equilibrium with one an- 
other. Thus in the formation of continents 
the claims of isostasy are completely satis- 
fied. I say completely because this is not 
a partial equilibrium resisted by rigidity 
but enforced by pressure; it is original and 
without stress. 

2. Mountain-making Movements. 

I have so recently discussed this subject** 
that Ishall have little more to say now. 
Mountain ranges are of two types, namely, 
the anticlinal or typical and the monoclinal 
or exceptional. The one are mountains of 
folded structure, determined by lateral 
thrust, the other of simpler structure and 
determined by unequal settling of great crust 
blocks. Itis only of the former that I shall 
speak now. The other or monoclinal type 
will come up under another head. 

It will not be questioned that mountain 
ranges of the first type are formed by lateral 
thrust, however much we may differ as to 
the cause of such thrust; nor will it be 
questioned that they are permanent features 
determined by continuous movement, how- 
ever much they may be modified by other 
kinds of movement or reduced or even de- 
stroyed by subsequent erosion. JI have 
placed them, therefore, among the effects of 


* President’s address, Am. Asso. Adv. Sci., Madi- 
son meeting, 1893. 


326 


primary movements—that is, movements 
determined by causes affecting the whole 
earth. I have done so because until some 
more rational view shall be proposed I shall 
continue to hold that they are the effects of 
interior contraction concentrated upon cer- 
tain lines of weakness of the crust and, 
therefore, of yielding to the lateral thrust 
thus generated. The reason for, as well as 
the objections to, this view I have already, 
on a previous occasion, fully discussed. I 
wish now only to supplement what I have 
before said by some further criticisms of 
the most recent and, some think, the most 
potent objection to this contractional theory, 
namely, that derived from the supposed 
position of the ‘level of no strain.’ 

It is admitted that the whole force of this 
objection is based on the extreme super- 
ficiality of this level, and that this, in its 
turn, depends on the initial temperature of 
the incandescent earth and the time elapsed 
since it began to cool. Both these are ad- 
mitted to be very uncertain. I havealready 
discussed these in my previous paper and 
shall not repeat here; but, as recently 
shown by Davison,* there are still other 
elements, entirely left out of accountin pre- 
vious calculations, which must greatly affect 
the result, and these new elements all concur 
to place the level of no strain much deeper 
than previous calculations would make it. 

These neglected elements are the follow- 
ing: (1) The earth increases in tempera- 
ture as we go down. Now the coefficient 
of contraction increases with temperature. 
This would increase the depth of the level 
of no strain, and also, of course, the amount 
of interior contraction and, therefore, the 
lateral thrust. (2) The conductivity in- 
creases with the temperature. This also 
would increase the rate of cooling and, 
therefore, of interior contraction. (3) The 
interior of the earth is more conductive not 


*Am. Jour. Sci., Vol. 47, 1894, p. 480. Phil. 
Mag., Vol. 41, 1896, p. 133. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 113. 


only on account of its greater temperature, 
but also on account of its greater density ; 
and this would be true whether the greater 
density be due to increased pressure or to 
difference of material, as, for example, to 
greater abundance of unoxidized metals. 
(4) The materials of the interior, aside from 
greater temperature and density, have a 
higher coefficient of contraction. (5) The 
usual calculations go on the assumption 
that the initial temperature was uniform 
for all depths. It probably increased with 
the depth then as now. This would again 
increase in an important degree both the 
depth of the level of no strain and the 
amount of lateral thrust. 

The final result reached by Davison is, 
that while according to the usual calculations 
the level of no strain may be only a little 
over two miles (2.17) below the surface, yet, 
taking into account only the first element 
mentioned above, the depth of that level 
would be increased to nearly eight miles 
(7.79), and taking into account all the ele- 
ments it would come out many times greater 
still. The general conclusion arrived at is 
that the objections to the contractional 
theory, based on the depth of the level of 
no strain, must be regarded as invalid. 

3. Oscillatory Movements. 

The movements thus far considered 
are continuously progressive in one direc- 
tion as long as they last. The resulting 
features are therefore permanent, except 
in so far as they may be modified by 
other movements or by degrading influ- 
ences; but nothing is more certain than 
that besides these more steady movements 
there have been others of a more oscil- 
latory character—that is, upward and 
downward—in the same place, affecting 
now smaller, now larger areas, and often 
many times repeated. These are the most 
common of all crust movements, and are 
shown everywhere and in all periods of the 
earth’s history by unconformities of the 


FEBRUARY 26, 1897. ] 


stratified series. Every line of uncon- 
formity marks an old eroded land surface, 
and every conformable series of strata a 
sea bottom receiving sediments. We give 
but two striking examples of such oscilla- 
tions. 

The Colorado plateau was a sea bottom, 
continuously or nearly so, from the begin- 
ning of the Carboniferous to the end of the 
Cretaceous, and during that time received 
about 12,000 or 15,000 feet in thickness of 
sediments. During the whole of this time 
the area of the earth’s crust was slowly sink- 
ing and thus continually renewing the con- 
ditions of sedimentation. Why did it sub- 
side? At the end of the Cretaceous the 
same area began to rise. What change of 
conditions caused it now to rise? It has 
continued to rise until the present time, 
and is still rismg. The whole amount of 
rise cannot be less than 20,000 feet; for if 
all the strata which have been removed by 
erosion were again restored, the highest 
portion of the arch which was sea bottom 
at the end of the Cretaceous would now be 
20,000 feet high. This, however, is only 
the last oscillation of this area, for beneath 
the Carboniferous there are several uncon- 
formities showing several oscillations of the 
same kind in earlier periods. During the 
Deyonian the area was land, for the Car- 
boniferous rests unconformably on the 
Silurian. During the Silurian it was sea 
bottom, receiving sediments of that time. 
Beneath the Silurian there are two other 
unconformities showing similar oscillations. 
These earlier oscillations were probably as 
great as the one now going on, but we can- 
not measure them as we can the last. 

Another striking example, still more re- 
cent and widespread, is the enormous oscil- 
lations of the Glacial period. It cannot be 
doubted that over very wide areas—several 
millions of square miles—there were at 
that time upward and downward move- 
ments of several thousand feet, and there- 


SCIENCE. 


327 


fore producing enormous changes in physical 
geography and climate. What was the 
cause of these movements? They were 
doubtless modified, as will be shown later, 
by other movements superimposed on them; 
but the causes of the latter must not be 
confounded with that of the former. 

We have given only two striking ex- 
amples, but they are really the commonest 
of all crust movements. They are every- 
where marked by unconformities of the 
strata; they are everywhere going on at 
the present time. In some places the sea 
is advancing on a subsiding land; in others 
a rising land is advancing on the sea. 
These movements are more conspicuous 
along coastlines, because the sea is a datum 
level by which to measure them, but they 
affect equally the interior of continents, as 
shown by the behavior of the rivers, which 
seek their base level by erosion in a rising 
and by sedimentation in a sinking country. 

Many theories have been advanced to 
explain these movements, especially of cer- 
tain very local shoreline movements. In 
volcanic regions they have been attributed 
to rise or recession of the volcanic heat and 
consequent columnar expansion or contrac- 
tion of the crust. On non-voleanic sedi- 
mentary shorelines elevation has been at- 
tributed by some to the rise of the interior 
heat of the earth and conseqent expansion 
of the crust produced by the blanketing 
effect of sedimentary deposit; while others, 
with more reason, think that regions of 
heavy sedimentation sink under the in- 
creasing load of accumulating sediments ; 
but it is evident that, while such theories 
may explain some local examples in vol- 
canic regions and along some shorelines, 
they cannot explain subsidences in the in- 
terior of continents, much less the wider 
and more extensive movements spoken of 
above. We must look for some more gen- 
eral cause. What is it? 

It must be confessed that the cause of 


328 


these oscillatory movements is the most in- 
explicable problem in geology. Not the 
slightest glimmer of light has yet been shed 
on it. JI bring forward the problem here, 
not to solve it, for I confess my inability, 
but to differentiate it from other problems, 
and especially to draw attention to these 
movements as modifying the effects of move- 
ments of the first kind, and often so greatly 
modifying them as to obscure the principle 
of the permanency of oceanic basins and 
continental areas, and even to cause many 
to deny its truth. Nearly all the changes 
in physical geography in geological times, 
with their consequent changes in climate and 
in the character and distribution of organic 
forms—in fact, nearly all the details of the 
history of the earth—have been determined 
by these oscillatory movements; but amid 
all these oscillatory changes, sometimes of 
enormous amount and extent, it is believed 
that the places of the deep oceanic basins 
and of the continental masses, being de- 
termined by other and more primary causes, 
have remained substantially the same. 

4, Movements by Gravitative Readjustments— 

Isostasy. 

This very important principle which, 
though partially recognized by Herschell, 
was first clearly enunciated by Major 
Dutton under the name isostasy.* The 
principle may be briefly stated thus: In 
so large a mass as the earth, whether liquid 
within or solid throughout it matters not, 
excess or deficit of weight over large areas 
cannot exist permanently. The earth must 
gradually yield fluidally or plastically until 
static equilibrium is established or nearly 
so. Thus continuous transfer of material 
from one place to another by erosion and 
sedimentation must be attended with sink- 
ing of the crust in the loaded and rising-of 
the crust in the unloaded area. In this 
way we may account for the sinking of the 
crust at the mouths of great rivers and the 

* Phil. Society of Washington, 1892. 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 113. 


correlative rising of interior plateaus and 
nearly all great mountain regions observa- 
ble at the present time. The same seems 
to have been true in all geological times, 
for it is obviously impossible that 40,000 
feet of sediments could have accumulated 
in the Appalachian region in preparation 
for the Appalachian’s birth unless there 
were continuous pari passu subsidence ever 
renewing the conditions of sedimenta- 
tion. 

Now there can be no doubt as to the 
value of this principle, but there is much 
doubt as to the extent of its application. 
The operation of exterior causes, such as 
transfer of load by erosion and sedimenta- 
tion, are so comparatively simple and their 
effects so easily understood that we are 
tempted to push them beyond their legiti- 
mate domain, which in this case is to sup- 
plement and modify the more fundamental 
movements derived from interior causes. 
We are thus tempted to generalize too 
hastily and to conclude that all subsidence 
is due to weighting and all elevation to re- 
moval of weight. Probably this is a true 
cause, but not the main cause of such 
movements. Doubtless the proposition is 
true, but its converse is even much more 
so. It is certain that thick sediments 
may cause subsidence, but it is much more 
certain that subsidence, however deter- 
mined, will cause continuous sedimentation 
by ever renewing the conditions of sedi- 
mentation. It is true that removal of 
weight by erosion will cause elevation, but 
it is more certain that elevation is the cause 
of removal of matter by erosion. 

Take again the Plateau region as an ex- 
ample. We have seen that during the 
whole Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, 
Jurassic and Cretaceous times this region 
was subsiding, until at the end of the Creta- 
ceous the earth’s crust here had bent down- 
ward 12,000 or 15,000 feet. Shall we say 
it went down under the increasing load of 


FEBRUARY 26, 1897.] 


sediments? Why, then, did it, from a pre- 
vious land condition, ever commence to sub- 
side? And why, when the load was great- 
est, namely, at the end of the Cretaceous, 
did it begin to rise? Again, from that time 
to this it has risen 20,000 feet? Of this 
about 12,000 feet have been removed by 
erosion, leaving still 8,000 feet of elevation 
remaining. Now if this elevation be the re- 
sult of removal of weight by erosion, how 
is it that a removal of 12,000 feet has caused 
an elevation of 20,000 feet? This result is 
natural enough, however, if elevation was 
the cause and erosion the effect, for the ef- 
fect ought to lag behind the cause. It is 
evident, then, that we must look elsewhere 
—that is, in the interior of the earth—for 
the fundamental cause, although, indeed, 
the effects of this interior cause may be in- 
creased and continued by the addition and 
removal of weight. 

But perhaps the best illustration of the 
distinctness of the two kinds of causes of 
these movements is found in the oscillations 
of the Quaternary period. I say best be- 
cause in this case the effects of the two may 
be disentangled and viewed separately, and 
this in its turn is possible because the load- 
ing in this case is not by mere transfer from 
one place to another, and therefore is not 
correlated with unloading. In fact, the 
elevation in this case is associated with, 
and in spite of, loading. The elevation, as 
we all know, commenced in late Tertiary 
and culminated in early Glacial. This ele- 
vation was, at least, one cause, probably the 
main cause, of the cold and the ice accumu- 
lation, but the elevation continued in spite of 
the accumulating load of ice. Finally, how- 
ever, the accumulating load prevailed over 
the elevating force and the previously ris- 
ing area began tosink, but only because the 
interior elevatory forces had commenced to 
die out. Then with the sinking commenced 
a moderation of the climate, melting of the 
ice, removal of load, and consequent rising 


SCLENCE. 


329 


of the crust to the present condition, but 
far below the previous elevated condition, 
because the elevating forces, whatever these 
were, had in the meantime exhausted them- 
selves. If it had not been for the inter- 
ference of the ice load, I suppose that in- 
stead of the double oscillation which actually 
occurred there would have been a simple 
curve of elevation coming down again to 
the present condition, but culminating a 
little later and rising a little higher than 
we actually find it did. ; 

The question arises as to how great an 
area is necessary for the operation of the 
principle of isostasy? What extent and 
degree of inequality of surface may be up- 
held by earth rigidity alone? 

The recent transcontinental gravitation 
determinations by Putnam and their inter- 
pretation by Gilbert** seem to show a de- 
gree of rigidity greater than previously sup- 
posed. They seem to show that while the 
whole continental arch is certainly sus- 
tained by isostasy—that is, by deficiency 
of density below the sea level in that part, 
the continental area being lighter in pro- 
portion as it is higher—yet great mountain 
ranges like the Appalachian, Colorado and 
Wasatch mountains show no such means of 
support, but are bodily upheld by earth rigid- 
ity ; and even great plateaus, like the Colo- 
rado plateau, 275 miles across, are largely, 
though not entirely, sustained in the same 
way. 

Monoclinal Mountain Ranges. 

Until recently, mountain ranges were sup- 
posed to be all made in one way, namely, by 
lateral crushing and strata-folding and bulg- 
ing along the line of yielding. To Gilbert is 
due the credit of having first drawn atten- 
tion to another type, conspicuously repre- 
sented only in the Plateau and Basin region, 
especially the latter—that is, those pro- 

* Gilbert: Phil. Soc. Washington, Vol. 13, 1895, p. 


31. Gilbert: Jour. Geology, Vol. 3, 1895, p. 331. 
O. Fisher: Nature, Vol. 52, 1895, p. 433. 


330 


duced by tilting and irregular settling of 
the crust blocks between great fissures. 
The two types of mountains are com- 
pletely contrasted in all respects. As to 
form, the one is anticlinal, the other 
monoclinal. As to cause, the one is formed 
by lateral squeezing and strata-folding, 
the other by lateral stretching, fractur- 
ing, block-tilting and unequal settling. 
As to place of birth, the one is born of 
marginal sea bottoms, the other is formed in 
the land crust. Classified by form, we may 
regard the two types as belonging to the 
same grade of earth features, namely, moun- 
tain ranges ; but classified by their gener- 
ating forces, they belong to entirely different 
groups of earth movement. The one be- 
longs to the second group mentioned above, 
the other to the third and fourth groups; 
for the plateau-lifting, crust-arching and 
consequent tension and fracturing belong 
to the third group or oscillatory movements, 
but the mountain-making proper—that is, 
the subsequent block-tilting and unequal 
settling—belongs to the fourth group or 
isostasy, for that is wholly the result of 
isostatic readjustment and is one of the best 
illustrations of this principle. lt shows 
on what comparatively small scale under 
favorable conditions (probably unstable 
foundation) the principle of isostasy may 
act. Itis evident, then, that itis impossible 
to exaggerate the distinction between these 
two types of mountains. They belong, as 
we have seen, to entirely different categories 
of interior forces, and, indeed, are not both 
mountains in the same sense ati all. It was 
for this reason that, in my paper on moun- 
tain structure,* I put these latter in the 
category of mountain 
mountain ranges—of modification, not of 
formation. I now think it better to divide 
mountain ranges into two types, not for- 
getting, however, the very great distinction 
between them. 


Am. Jour. Sci., Vol. 16, 1878, p. 95. 


SCIENCE. 


ridges instead of ° 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 113. 


Conclusions. 

To sum up, then, in a few words: 
There are two primary and permanent 
kinds of crust movements, namely: (a) 
those which give rise to those greatest ine- 
qualities of the earth’s surface—oceanic 
basins and continental surfaces; and (b) 
those which by interior contraction deter- 
mine mountains of folded structure. These 
two are wholly determined by interior forces 
affecting the earth as a whole, the one by un- 
equal radial contraction, the other by un- 
equal concentric contraction—that is, con- 
traction of the interior more than the ex- 
terior. ‘There are also two secondary kinds 
of movement, which modify and often mask 
the effects of the other two and confuse our 
interpretation of them. These are: (¢) those 
oscillatory movements, often affecting large 
areas, which have been the commonest and 
most conspicuous of all movements in 
every geological period, and are, indeed, 
the only ones distinctly observable and 
measurable at the present time, but for 
which no adequate cause has been assigned 
and no tenable theory proposed; and (d) 
isostatic movements or gravitative readjust- 
ments, by transfer of load from place to 
place, by erosion and sedimentation, or else 
loading and unloading by ice accumulation 
and removal, and also by readjustment of 
great crust blocks. Ifthe previous one (c) 
or oscillatory movements have masked and 
so obscured the effects of (a) continent and 
ocean basin-making, this last (d), isostasy, 
has concealed the effects and obscured the 
interpretation of all the others, but espe- 
cially of (6 and ¢) mountain-making forces 
and the forces of oscillatory movements. 
In fact, in the minds of some recent writers 
it has well-nigh monopolized the whole 
field of crust movements. We shall not 
make secure progress until we keep these 
several kinds of movements .and their 
causes distinct in our minds. 

JosEePH Lr Conte. 


FEBRUARY 26, 1897. ] 


NOTES ON CERTAIN BELIEFS CONCERNING 
WILL POWER AMONG THE SIOUAN 
TRIBES. 

WiLHeLtm yon HumsBoxpt, in his memoir 
upon ‘The American Verb,’ in summing 
up the results of his profound study, makes 
the following statement (I quote from the 
translation of Dr. Daniel G. Brinton): ‘“‘ The 
leading and governing part of speech in 
them [the American languages under con- 
sideration] is the Pronoun; every subject 
of discourse is connected with the idea of 

Personality.” 

The Siouan linguistic group was not in- 
cluded in the number of languages con- 
cerning which the learned author made this 
statement, but, as the group presents no 
evidence to controyert his general conclu- 
sion, it may be considered as forming no 
exception to this characteristic of the 
American tongues. 

It is not the purpose of this brief paper 
to discuss linguistic questions, but to call 
your attention to certain words, customs 
and ceremonies in which we seem to trace 
the operation of that psychic peculiarity 
which has left so marked an impress upon 
the languages of the American people—the 
dominance of ‘the idea of Personality.’ 

In considering the emblematic use of the 
tree in the Dakotan group, the Siouan In- 
dian’s anthropomorphic conception of na- 
ture was pointed out, and the fundamental 
reason of this conception was indicated as 
lying in his predicating of the permeating 
life of the universe, that peculiar quality 
or power of which he as aman was con- 
scious within himself, to wit, the power by 


which he directed his own acts, or willed a . 


course by which to bring about certain re- 
sults. This quality or power he may be 
said to have deified under the term Wa- 
kan-da (using the Omaha and Ponka 
tongue), the hidden and mysterious power 
which brings to pass. 

The name of that by which a man thinks, 


SCIENCE. 


dol 


feels and wills, is called in the Omaha 
language Wa-zhin’. A glance at some of 
the terms in which Wa-zhin’ is used will 
illustrate the mental conception of which 
the word is an expression. 

Wi'-e-wa-zhin means, to do a thing of 
one’s own accord, of one’s free will, un- 
biased or uninfluenced by another. (Wi, 
I; e, the sign of objective ; wa-zhin’, direc- 
tive energy or will power. ) 

When the Omaha first saw a railroad 
train, and watched it moving along without 
any visible aid from man or animal, they 
gave it the name which it bears in their 
language to-day, E’-wa-zhin-non-ge, liter- 
ally translated, ‘‘it of its own accord runs.”’ 
(Hi, it; wa-zhin’, will power ; non-ge, runs. ) 
The childlike simplicity of this descriptive 
term throws light upon the meaning of wa- 
zhin’, and helps us to understand other 
words whereof it forms a part. 

Anger is called Wa-zhin’-pi-a-zhi. Pi-a- 
zhi signifies bad, evil. Wa-zhin/-pi-a zhi 
indicates that in anger the will power of 
the man is charged with evil, and he be- 
comes dangerous to himself and to others. 

A very different condition of mind is 
represented by the Word Wa-zhin’-tha-be, 
which denotes kindness, and also hospital- 
ity. Tha-be’ is to be guarded, circumspect 
in one’s words and acts; so we learn that 
the idea of kindness is to use one’s will 
power to guard one’s speech and conduct, 
so as not to injure any one. In the em- 
ployment of this word to express the idea 
of hospitality we discern the broadening 
of the social feeling through the growth of 
the higher sentiments. 

Wa-zhin/-thne-de, the word for patience, 
presents another aspect of the idea of self- 
control. Thne-de means long. To be pa- 
tient, therefore, demands that the energy 
of the Ego shall be held for a length of 
time to a given course. 

Examples could be multiplied showing 
the use of wa-zhin' in compounding words, 


332 


but I will mention only three more in- 
stances—three words which are used in 
connection with certain rites and customs, 
where, while they serve to explain the cer- 
emonies, the ceremonies themselves throw 
light upon the psychic phenomena which 
the words are intended to portray. These 
three words are, Wa-zhin/-dhe-dhe, Wa- 
zhin’-a-gdhe and Wa-zhin'-ska. 

There is hardly an equivalent in Eng- 
lish for the word Wa-zhin-dhe-dhe, unless 
it is ‘telepathy.’ Dhe’-dhe is to send, and 
the word wa-zhin'-dhe-dhe signifies to send 
forth one’s thought and will power toward 
another in order to supplement his strength 
and thereby to affect his action. For in- 
stance, when a race is taking place, a man 
may bend his thought and his will upon 
one of the contestants, a friend or rela- 
tive, in the belief that this act of his, this 
‘sending his mind,’ will help his friend 
to win. Again, among the Omahas, when 
a man is on the war path, a group of 
women often of the poorer class, will 
gather at the tent of the absent warrior, and 
sing certain songs, called We-ton-wa-ain. 
These songs are the medium by which 
strength is conveyed to the man facing 
danger ; the act is Wa-zhin'-dhe-dhe. The 
words of these songs do not reveal the pur- 
pose for which they are sung; they some- 
times refer to the difficult task that con- 
fronts the warrior, or they predict the 
bravery of the absent man when he shall 
meet the enemy, but the omission of any 
reference in them to the specific act of 
which the songs are a part is in keeping 
with the Indian’s habit never to dilate 
upon that which is to him apparent. The 
family of the absent warrior, to whose tent 
the women have come to sing these We- 
ton-wa-an, know what the songs are for, 
and so do all the people within reach of 
the sound of them. These songs, used 
solely for the purpose of Wa-zhin’-dhe-dhe, 
are well known and form a class by them- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vout. V. No. 113. 


selves, and the belief in their power is un- 
questioned. 

Other tribes in the Siouan group have 
similar methods to effect the same purpose, 
all bearing witness to the common belief 
among these Indians that will power can 
be projected to produce definite results. 

Although a literal translation of Wa- 
zhin’-a-gdhe (a/-ghde, to place upon) might 
seem at the first glance to indicate that the 
word had the same meaning as Wa-zhin/- 
dhe-dhe (which, as we have just seen, is to 
send will power), the word really presents a 
very different phase of the belief we are con- 
sidering. Wa-zhin/-a-gdhe is the will power 
placed upon, that is the full consequence of 
a certain line of conduct are willed to fall 
upon the person who, of his own accord, 
has determined on that line of conduct. 
In ordinary speech the word is used when 
one abandons another to the natural out- 
come of unwise behavior, and ceases all ef- 
forts to arrest the consequent disastrous re- 
sults. 

This word is used to define a rite peculiar 
to the MHam’-he-wa-chi. Han’-he-wa-chi 
means literally, ‘in the night dance,’ but 
the word refers to the dream or vision of 
the members. The Han'-he-wa-chi is a so- 
ciety composed of men who have achieved 
the right to put the Mark of Honor ona 
maiden. ‘To do this, a man must be able 
to count one hundred or more deeds called 
Wa-dhin’-e-dhe. When an Omaha reached 
that point he could look back over years 
of patient effort, of self-denial and dangers 
overcome ; so long a time did it require for 
a man to arrive at this Honor that its ac- 
quisition was esteemed equal to the receiv- 
ing of a vision.- It was argued that the 
man must have had supernatural favor 
granted him or he could not have finally 
accomplished his purpose. This society 
was therefore regarded as composed of men 
possessing great power of mind and will, 
and they were accordingly looked up to in 


FEBRUARY 26, 1897. ] 


the tribe. Each member had his own song 
or songs, and when they met together a 
part of the ceremony observed by them was 
the singing of these songs. If at such a 
time they fixed their minds upon a certain 
person whose conduct was displeasing to 
them they thus, by the act of Wa-zhin’-a- 
gdhe, placed upon the offender the conse- 
quences of his acts, so that misfortune would 
befall him, and even death. It willbe noted 
that this act of the society implied the exer- 
tion of a will power by its members which 
it was believed could isolate the object of 
their thought—their victim, we may say— 
and this isolation was effected in some way 
by thrusting him out of all helpful relations 
with men and animals, and in the end caus- 
ing him to die. 

Time forbids dwelling upon this curious 
and interesting belief, or noting the cumu- 
lative influence it exerted upon the indi- 
vidual, and upon the social conditions of 
the community that entertained it; all that 
can be pointed out at this time is the fact 
that such a belief was genuinely accepted 
by these Indians. 

Wa-zhin’-ska means intelligence, discern- 
ment, wisdom. Ska is white, or clear. 
The word has a broad significance, based 
upon the natural experience of seeing. 
When the atmosphere is clear a man can 
distinguish objects, note their pecularities, 
and their relation to each other; so, when 
the mind is clear, it is said the man’s abil- 
ity to know is not checked by dimness of 
apprehension, but because of the clear white 
light within his mind he is able to exercise 
the power of discrimination, and to discern 
that which will be conducive to the best in- 
terests of himself and others, and thus at- 
tain to wisdom. 

Waz-zhin’-ska is the word which desig- 
nates the time when a youth, having passed 
the period of childhood, bas reached the 
stage where he can enter upon a season of 
fasting and prayer in order to secure a vis- 


SCIENCE. 


309 


ion. The mind of the child is said to be 
dark; he is like one in the night, unable to 
distinguish objects ; as he grows older, light 
begins to dawn, and when he can distinctly 
remember and can place in order the se- 
quence of events of which he has been cog- 
nizant, then his mind is said to be becom- 
ing ‘ white,’ and he is approaching the suit- 
able mental condition to enter upon the rite 
which may bring him into personal rela- 
tions with Wa-kan/-da, as manifested in 
concrete form through the medium of the 
vision. The use of the word Wa-zhin’- 
ska to indicate this period in the life of a 
man is significant in view of the meaning 
of the word itself, and of the importance to 
the man of the rite he is about to practise. 

The potentiality of the vision and its for- 
mative influence, as revealed in the develop- 
ment of the tribe, we have already dis- 
cussed; the point to be emphasized just now 
is that in the rite by which the Indian seeks 
the potent vision the idea of his personal- 
ity is kept intact. 

It is of importance to observe in this 
connection that this rite, which is supposed 
to open to man the means by which his 
Own powers may be supernaturally aug- 
mented, is not under the control of any 
priesthood or dependent upon any esoteric 
teaching ; nor does it require that the indi- 
vidual merge himself in a society and have 
only a common right in the supernatural 
manifestation ; nor does he through this 
rite come under the domination of any set 
of men. On the contrary, the rite is free 
and open to every individual who may 
elect to enter upon the seclusion and fast- 
ing and prayer incident to the seeking of a 
vision, and the securing of the sign that 
shall ever after be a credential with Wa- 
kan-da. This sign is always the man’s 
personal and sacred possession; it is some- 
thing that no one can tamper with, nor can 
any one deprive him of its benefits. 

This rite of the vision, which there is 


304 


reason to think is a very ancient one, bears 
testimony to the Indian’s intense feeling of 
personality, a personality that to a degree 
was supposed to control the very vision it- 
self; for the potency of the manifestation 
vouchsafed to a man, in his vision was 
judged by the quality of the man’s acts in 
after life. It was believed that a man of 
weak will and mind could not be the re- 
cipient of a vision that would give him 
great power, because such a man would not 
be capable of receiving such a manifesta- 
tion from Wa-kan-da. Thus the quality of 
a man’s vision, which was to supplement 
his natural strength by supernatural power, 
depended upon the character of the man’s 
Wa-zhin’, his mind, will-power and en- 
ergy, or, in other words, his personality. 

This estimate of a man’s will-power could 
be traced in other words, customs and 
ceremonies of the Omahas, and in other 
tribes belonging to the Siouan group, for 
this belief was not only connected with 
sacred rites and social ceremonies, but it 
was also intermingled with homely customs 
and offices that were shared in by both old 
and young. In view of this wealth of tes- 
timony from tke daily life of these Indians, 
it is not surprising that the languages of 
the people should betray the dominance of 
‘the idea of Personality.’ 


Auicr C, FLETCHER. 
PEABODY MusEvM, 
CAMBRIDGE, M Ass. 


THE SAND-PLAINS OF TRURO, WELLFLEET, 
AND EASTHAM.* 

Lower Carr Cop exclusive of Province- 
town, or that portion of the Cape comprised 
within the townships of Truro, Wellfleet, 
and Eastham, is made up of a succession of 
sand-plains, of the type so prevalent in 
eastern Massachusetts. The plains are nu- 
merous, nevertheless they can all be re- 


* Abstract of a paper read before the Boston Society 
of Natural History, January 6, 1897. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 113. 


ferred to three distinct series, differing from 
each other in elevation and direction of 
extent. The northernmost of these are the 
Truro Plains, with an average elevation of 
eighty feet above sea level. These stretch 
from High Head southward to about half a 
mile below North Truro village and east- 
ward to Highland Light. Transverse de- 
pressions, with a general northeast and 
southwest trend, separate the individual 
plains of this series on the west, while de- 
pressions with a north and south ora north- 
west and southeast trend limit them on the 
east. The slopes bounding these depres- 
sions have all the appearance of old con- 
structional slopes, no indications of subse- 
quent erosion having been observed. As 
an exception to this, however, the slopes 
bordering Salt Meadow and Moon Pond 
Meadow on both sides of High Head should 
be mentioned, these having all the appear- 
ance of ancient erosion scarps. The most 
typical of the northeast and southwest de- 
pressions is the one occupied by the road 
leading from North Truro station to High- 
land Light. Here the northern slope has 
all the characters of a southward descending 
delta front of an ordinary sand-plain, while 
the slope to the south of the road resem- 
blesa northward descending ice-contact slope. 
This difference in angle of slope is well 
shown by the fact that the village of North 
Truro is built wholly upon the gentler 
delta (?) slope north of the road. This re- 
lation of slopes holds for all the northeast 
and southwest depressions, while in the 
north and south and in the northwest and 
southeast depressions the steeper ice-contact 
(?) slope is invariably on the west, and the 
gentler delta (?) slope on the east. Kettle 
holes are common. 

The Wellfleet Plains stretch southward 
from Highland Light to Wellfleet village, 
with an average elevation of 140 feet above 
sea level. Highland Light plain is a typical 
example. For the main part, a depression 


FEBRUARY 26, 1897. ] 


exists between the Truro and Wellfleet 
plains, the latter presenting steep ice-con- 
tact (?) slopes towards the northwest. 

South of North Truro village, however, 
the lower plain joins on directly to the 
higher. Kettle holes are common. Standing 
upon the high ground a mile north of Truro 
station and looking east, the whole series 
of plains seems to descend by a gentle delta 
(?) slope toward the west, leaving a deep 
and irregular depression occupied by the 
Provincetown turnpike. In the vicinity of 
Small’s Hill a number of profound north- 
east and southwest depressions dissect the 
plain. These are occupied by the roads 
leading to the east shore. The slopes on 
both sides of these depressions are steep, 
and although they probably have been 
modified by wind the indications are that 
they are due to former lobes of ice dissect- 
ing the growing delta. Pamet River com- 
pletely divides this series of plains, the 
southern portion being much more irregular 
and hummocky than the northern and 
also containing a number of kettle ponds. 

The Eastham Plains are typically devel- 
oped about North Eastham village. This 
series may be better regarded as one con- 
tinuous plain uniform along the eastern 
shore from Wellfleet to the ‘Three Lights,’ 
where the elevation is about seventy-five 
feet above the sea, and the whole plain 
gently sloping westward. The northern 
half of this large plain is dissected by dis- 
continuous east and west, and northwest 
and southeast depressions, with steep ice- 
contact (?) slopes on the south and lobate 
delta (?) slopes on the north. In the southern 
half of the plain the depressions have a 
north and south trend, with the steep ice- 
contact (?) slopes on the west and the delta 
(?) slopes on the east. South of Eastham 
Centre the plain joins on to the moraine. 
This plain was probably formed while the 
Truro Plains were accumulating and after 
the Wellfleet Plains had been formed. The 


SCIENCE. 


335 


latter seem to have been built by streams 
from the north and east. The Truro 
plains were built by streams from the 
northwest and northeast, while the East- 
ham Plain was being built by streams 
from the east. The terminology is applied 
to the slopes with some reservation, as al- 
most the only criterion by which to judge 
of their character is the relative steepness 
and the general outline. Cuttings are very 
rare, and hence the relative coarseness of 
the material, and its disposition within the 
plains cannot be ascertained. The sections 
along the shore exhibit horizontal stratifi- 
cation where not covered by talus. 

It seems difficult to believe that these 
plains have not accumulated in static water 
at the front of the much-dissected ice sheet. 
Submarine accumulation seems improb- 
able, as erosion scarps would have been 
formed on the higher plains during the 
formation of the lower. On the other hand, 
if a body of fresh water was held up against 
the moraine, in an embayment in the ice 
front, it would be necessary to suppose that 
the ice held on to the moraine from Barn- 
stable eastward, and that a residuary plug 
of ice filled the valley of Buzzard’s Bay. 
This latter necessity is probably the most 
serious defect of the glacial lake theory. 


AmApDrEuS W. GRABAU. 


A NEW METHOD OF DRIVING AN INDUCTION 
COIL. 

Srnce the induction coil has come into 
prominence through the discovery of the 
X-rays of Rontgen considerable attention 
has been turned toward devising some means 
which is applicable to long runs, on a volt- 
age such as is furnished by electric light 
mains, 110 or 220 volts. The more recent 
forms of break work well with storage bat- 
teries, but these are troublesome, and a 
break which will work satisfactorily on the 
voltage of ordinary electric-light mains is 


306 


yet to be supplied. The following method 
has been devised to meet these difficulties : 

A condenser of considerable capacity is 
first connected to the lighting mains and 
charged at 220 volts. It is then discon- 
nected and discharged through the primary 
coil. The charging and discharging of the 
condensers is effected by means of a com- 
mutator. In this way the only current 
passing through the coil is from the conden- 
ser. The commutator is on the shaft of a 
small fan motor. 

A six-inch Ritchie coil connected in this 
way with a condenser of 25 microfarads, 
its own condenser being disconnected, gives 
a thick fuzzy spark about two inches long. 
Removing the primary of the coil and re- 
placing it by about seventy turns of rather 
heavy wire, number 8 or 6 B. &S§., we get 
a multitude of fine zig-zag sparks about six 
inches long, the discharge being identical 
in appearance with that from an induction 
worked in the ordinary manner under the 
best conditions. The introduction of iron, 
unless finely laminated, cuts down the dis- 
charge to about one-tenth its value. In- 
creasing the speed of the charge and dis- 
charge of the condenser up to about 2,000 
per minute, which is the limit of the very 
crude commutator at present employed, im- 
proves the discharge of the coil in quantity 
and voltage. The sparking on the commu- 
tator is very slight, and the amount of 
power taken from the mains is small. 

The discharge obtained in this way, so 
far as we can now judge, seems well suited 
for driving X-ray tubes. Tubes so driven 
give a brilliant fluorescent screen with 
strong sharp shadows. An exposure of 
twenty seconds gives a good photograph of 
the hand. 

Cuas. L. Norton, 
Rape R. LAWRENCE. 
ROGERS LABORATORY OF PHYSICS, 


Mass. INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, 
Boston, February 17, 1897. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Voz. V. No. 113. 


CURRENT NOTES ON PHYSIOGRAPHY. 
THE COLORADO PLAINS. 

Aw essay by Gilbert on the ‘ Underground 
Water of the Arkansas Valley in Eastern 
Colorado’ (17th Ann. Rep. U. S. Geol. 
Surv.) affords more specific information as 
to the topographic features of the plains 
and their origin than is usually obtainable 
from older reports. The general surface of 
the plains does not accord with the surface 
of their uppermost stratum, but bevels 
across the strata at a faint angle. The 
plains are therefore not in topographic 
youth, but in topographic old age, the re- 
sult of a cycle of denudation during a 
lower stand of the land. On the peneplain 
thus formed there are now strewn the 
“upland sands,’ pebbly, cross-bedded, 50 to 
200 feet thick; the pebbles being derived 
from the mountains on the west. This im- 
plies a period of aggradation, after the long 
preceding degradation. In explanation of 
the change it is suggested that the region 
may have been raised in the east or de- 
pressed in the west so as to lessen the slope 
of the rivers; to this there may be added 
a possible uplift of the mountains alone by 
which the load of the rivers would have 
been increased. To-day the sand-strewn 
peneplain is trenched by broad valleys, 
that of the Arkansas being fifteen or more 
miles wide and 400 to 800 feet deep. Suc- 
cessive pauses in the work of valley-cutting 
produced broad straths at lower and lower 
levels, whose remnants are now seen in 
gravel-covered terraces, the seat of much 
irrigated land. The eastward slope of the 
terraces is greater than that of the present 
grade of the river; hence a progressive up- 
lift is argued during the excavation of the 
valley. The upland sands and the stream 
beds at low water supply sand to the north- 
west winds and extensive patches of dunes 
are thus formed, a system of hills and 
hollows without drainage by streams. The 
relation of Cretaceous strata, upland sands 


FEBRUARY 26, 1897.] 


and dunes to ground and underground 
water is fully discussed. 


THE PREGLACIAL KANAWHA. 

Tue effect of drift obstructions in alter- 
ing the courses of rivers in western Pennsyl- 
vania and eastern Ohio has been recognized 
for a number of years, the northward dis- 
charge to Lake Erie haying been thereby 
greatly decreased. The diversion of the 
Missouri from a northward discharge to its 
present membership in the Mississippi sys- 
tem is also credited to glacial obstruction, 
and the important service of the great 
western river as a guide to western explo- 
ration, early and late, on our side of the 
Canadian boundary may, therefore, be 
credited, along with the water powers of 
New England, to the glacial period. Still 
another example of this kind is noted in the 
17th Annual Report of the Geological Sur- 
vey, in which the Director mentions a dis- 
covery by F. Leverett, with reference to 
the ancient drainage of the Virginias. The 
Kanawha, uniting with other streams in 
the western part of West Virginia and east- 
ern Kentucky, ran in preglacial time 
northward towards Lake Erie, along a line 
partly coincident with the course of the 
south-flowing Scioto of to-day. This makes 
the preglacial drainage of the St. Lawrence 
include headwaters in North Carolina. The 
existing Ohio can, therefore, no longer be 
interpretated as of ancient origin, as if still 
flowing along a consequent course between 
paleozoic uplifts on the north and south- 
east. It is a composite stream of post- 
glacial date. As a glacial product, it has 
been of even greater service than the 
Missouri, for our early settlers in its fertile 
lower valley took great advantage of its 
well-graded course, along which their ad- 
vance was much easier than if they had 
had to go up and down hill, across the 
grain of various north-flowing rivers.* 


*Some of my correspondents have pointed out that 


SCIENCE. De 


eS) 
~] 


THE RIVERS OF SAGINAW BAY. 

A NUMBER of years ago Gilbert described 
the course of the Maumee river in northern 
Ohio, showing that its peculiar back-handed 
branches were consequent upon the faint 
relief determined by moraines and glacial 
lake beaches. A recent essay by Taylor 
(Correlation of Erie-Huron beaches with 
outlets and moraines in southeastern 
Michigan, Bull. Geol. Soc. Amer., VIII., 
1897, 31-58) now gives another example of 
a very similar kind and warrants the rec- 
ognition of these back-handed branches 
under some appropriate name, ready for 
convenient use when still other members of 
the class shall be discovered. Saginaw 
river, with its Cass and Tittibawasee arms, 
and swampy head opposite the upper 
course of Grand river, repeats the essen- 
tial features of the Maumee to a nicety. 

Back-handed branches resulting from 
the migration of divides quite independ- 
ently of glacial constraint are easily distin- 
guished from the class here considered. 
The barbed arrangement of the upper 
branches of the Maira recently diverted 
from the Inn on the watershed of the Alps 


are of this second class. 
W. M. Davis. 


HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


CURRENT NOTES ON METEOROLOGY. 
CHALK-PLATE WEATHER MAPS. 


One of the recent improvements in the 
methods used by our Weather Bureau de- 
serves mention in these Notes. Asis gen- 
erally known, the daily weather maps issued 
from the various Weather Bureau stations 
over the country have for some years been 
reproduced by a stencil process which, al- 
though a good method, when carefully ex- 
a suggestion regarding the origin of Teay valley 
(ScIENcE, II., 1895, 40) independent of the Kanawha, 
is inadmissible ; for the valley contains gravels that 
could only have come from the upper Kanawha. Its 
origin by Big Coal river, therefore, seems out of the 
question. 


338 


ecuted, for a limited number of maps, be- 
comes inadequate when several hundred 
copies have to be struck off. As a result 
of experiments, Mr. J. W. Smith, local 
forecast official of the Weather Bureau at 
Boston, Mass., suggested what is known as 
the chalk-plate printing process. It is as 
follows: A thin covering of specially pre- 
pared chalk (4 in. in thickness) is spread 
upon a steel plate of the size of the prospec- 
tive weathermap. On this chalk are en- 
graved, by means of suitable instruments, 
the various weather symbols, the isobaric 
and isothermal lines, etc. The plate is then 
stereotyped in the ordinary way. In addi- 
tion to the weather map proper, there is, of 
course, a considerable amount of printed 
matter, such as the forecast, summary, the 
table of instrumental readings, ete. This 
textual portion is made up by the use of 
logotypes, consisting of words, figures and 
phrases in which the different letters and 
figures are joined together in one solid piece 
of type to facilitate the work of setting up. 
Thus, when the word ‘fair’ or ‘ cloudy’ 
has to be used, it is not necessary to set up 
the individual letters forming the word, but 
only to select the logotype which prints the 
word. After the text of the map is set up 
in logotypes, it is locked up with the stereo- 
type map plate, and the whole is printed at 
one impression on a sheet prepared for the 
purpose, which has a blank outline map of 
the United States at the top, on which the 
weather map is printed, and space in the 
lower half of the sheet for the text and ta- 
bles. The chalk-plate process map is in 
every way a great improvement on the sten- 
cil map which it has superseded. It is 
smaller, more convenient to handle, more 
legible and more attractive. A minute study 
of our daily weather maps is now a distinet 
pleasure, whereas formerly it was often a 
difficult task to attempt to puzzle out the 
faint lines, words and figures, which were 
too frequently barely legible. The size of 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 113. 


the chalk-plate map itself is 10 x 64 inches, 
and of the whole sheet, which includes also 
the text and tables, 16x11 inches. The 
first map made by this process issued from 
any Weather Bureau station was sent out 
from Boston on February 29, 1896. Since 
then the system has been extended as rap- 
idly as possible to the other stations, and 
at the present time 21 stations issue chalk- 
plate maps. These areas follows: Boston, 
Mass.; Cleveland and Columbus, O.; In- 
dianapolis, Ind.; Raleigh, N. C.; Nashville, 
Tenn.; Chicago, Ill.; Baltimore, Md.; Phila- 
delphia, Pa.; New York and Buffalo, N. Y.; 
Milwaukee, Wis.; Galveston, Tex.; Louis- 
ville, Ky.; Little Rock, Ark.; Montgomery, 
Ala.; New Orleans, La.; Denver, Colo.; Lin- 
coln, Neb.; Minneapolis, Minn. 
PRIZES FOR SCHOOL WORK IN METEOROLOGY. 
Ir is worthy of note in these columns 
that a definite step has been taken towards 
encouraging and systematizing school work 
in meteorology in the New England States. 
On the dissolution of the New England Me- 
teorological Society, in 1896, a sum of 
money was left in the hands of a commit- 
tee, to be used ‘for some meteorological 
purposes.’ The committee now offers three 
annual prizes, of twelve, ten and eight dol- 
lars, for the best work on weather and cli- 
mate in any New England school below 
the high school, under certain conditions. 
The papers and record books sent in, in 
competition for the prizes, are to be wholly 
the work of the pupils whose names they 
bear, and all records are to be the result of 
the pupils’ own observations. The com- 
mittee suggests the following topics as ap- 
propriate subjects for such work: (1) 
Observation and record of simple weather 
elements. (2) Preparation of weather 
maps based on data supplied by the 
teacher. (3) The use of weather maps 
and of local observations in simple weather 
predictions. (4) Special observation and 
study of the elements that control the cli- 


FEBRUARY 26, 1897. ] 


mate of New England. A circular giving 
full details has been issued, and may be 
procured from the undersigned. 


SOME INTERESTING REPRINTS. 
PROFESSOR HELLMANN, of Berlin, has re- 
cently issued three more of his Neudrucke 
von Schriften und Karten iiber Meteorologie und 
Erdmagnetismus. These are: No. 7. Evan- 
GELISTA TORRICELLI: Hsperienza dell ?Ar- 
gento Vivo. ACCADEMIA DEL Cimento: Istru- 
menti per conoscer V Alterazioni dell ’Aria, con- 
taining the most important papers relating 
to the discovery of the barometer, thermom- 


eter and hygrometer, some of them in © 


facsimile. No.8. HALLEY, von HumBo.pr, 
Loomis, LeVerrier and ReEnovu, Meteoro- 
logische Karten, being the earliest synoptic 
weather charts with wind, isotherms and 
isobars drawn between 1688 and 1864. No. 
9. Henry GELLIBRAND: A Discourse Mathe- 
matical on the Variation of the Magnetical 
Needle, containing the discovery of the secu- 
lar variation of magnetic declination. This 
is a facsimile of the very rare work published 
in London in 1635. A few copies of these 
pamphlets may be had of A. L. Rotch, Blue 
Hill Observatory, Readville, Mass., at the 
publisher’s price of 3 marks, or 75 cents 


each, postpaid. 
R. DEC. Warp. 


HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 
THE AGE OF MAN. 


In his recently published ‘ Handbuch der 
Palzontologie,’ Professor Zittel, of Munich, 
reviews the alleged instances of the dis- 
covery of human remains in strata older 
than the alluvial period. His general con- 
clusion is that ‘‘ prehistoric researches do 
not yield positive information or definite 
results as to the antiquity of the human 
species.” He follows Virchow in rejecting 
the high antiquity of the Neanderthal skull 
and denies that any discovery of glacial 
man in America has yet been made, He 


SCIENCE. 


339 


accepts, however, as probably ‘fossil or 
quaternary,’ the skull of Eguisheim, the jaw 
of Naulette and that of the Schipka cave, 
and the skull of Olmo in Tuscany. 
Professor Morselli, who reviews Zittel’s 
conclusions in the ‘ Archivio per l’Antro- 
pologia,’ doubts the skull of Olmo, but 
argues that Zittel is generally too sceptical. 
He also adds the statement that the fossil 
human skeleton from the Pampean forma- 
tion of the Argentine Republic, said by 
Zittel to be in the Museum of Milan, is not 
there. 
ON SMALL CHIPPED FLINTS. 


THERE is a class of small chipped flint 
objects, with a general similarity of shape 
and finish, found in England, France, 
Egypt, India, North Africa and elsewhere. 
In the Revue de Ecole d’ Anthropologie for 
November, A. de Mortillet offers a careful 
study of their forms, geographical distribu- 
tion, use and antiquity. 

They are generally rudely triangular, 
rhomboidal, or like the segment of a circle. 
One edge is neatly dressed with secondary 
chipping, while another is left with the 
natural cleavage. The length varies from 
15 to 35 millimeters. They may have been 
used as arrow points, as scarificators, as 
tools, or, in some instances, as fish hooks. 
In age, they appear to belong to the earliest 
neolithic period. Their singular similarity 
does not entail the proof of transmission, 
but rather of independent development. 

While in America there are many speci- 
mens generally akin to these described by 
Mortillet, they cannot be said to represent 
any distinct culture area or period. 

D. G. Brinton. 

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 

Dr. THomAs M. Drown, President of Lehigh 
University, has been elected President of the 
American Institute of Mining Engineers. 

THE students of the Massachusetts Institute 


340 


of Techology will place, as a memorial, a bust 
of the late President Walker in the corridor of 
the Rogers Building. The memorial will be 
designed by Mr. D. C. French. 


AT the regular January meeting of the Re- 
gents of the Smithsonian Institution, Mr. Charles 
D. Walcott was, as already noted, appointed 
Assistant Secretary of the Institution, and 
placed in charge of the U.S. National Museum, 
his official designation being ‘Acting Assistant 
Secretary in Charge of the National Museum.’ 
At an adjourned meeting of the Regents, Mr. 
Richard Rathbun was appointed Assistant Secre- 
tary ‘with duties connected with the bureaus 
of the institution other than the National 
Museum,’ and was placed in charge of the office 
and exchanges. By these appointments the 
position and duties of the late Dr. Goode are 
divided between two officials, of whom the last 
appointed performs certain additional duties. 


Ir is stated in Nature that Lady Prestwich is 
collecting material for a biography of the late 
Sir Joseph Prestwich, and will be grateful to 
friends if they will forward to her any letters 
they possess, addressing to Shoreham, near 
Sevenoaks. They will be at once copied and 
carefully returned. 


OnE of the silver medals of the Veitch me- 
morial fund of London has been awarded to 
Professor L. H. Bailey for distinguished ser- 
vices to horticulture. 

Tuer Chanute prize of $100 for the best mono- 
graph on kites has been awarded by the Aero- 
nautical Society to Professor C. F. Marvin, of 
the United States Weather Bureau. 

THE Royal Society of New South Wales has 
awarded its bronze medal and a money prize of 
£25 to J. Milne Curran for a paper on the oc- 
currence of precious stones in New South 
Wales, with a description of the deposits in 
which they are found. 

THE University of Cambridge will confer the 
degree of LL. D. on Dr. Fridjof Nansen. 

Dr. JuLIAN APARICIO has been appointed 
Director of the Meteorological and Astronomi- 
cal Observatory of San Salvador in the room of 
the late Dr. Don Alberto Sanchez. 


PROFESSOR J. FRANZ, astronomer at the K6n- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No. 113. 


igsberg Observatory, has been appointed Direc- 
tor of the Observatory at Breslau and professor 
at the University in the place of Professor T. 
Galle, who has retired. 


Dr. F. Four has retired from the Directorship 
of the Royal Observatory, Brussels. 


M. JEAN PERRIN has been nominated by the 
Paris Academy of Sciences to the Joule Scholar- 
ship of the Royal Society, which is awarded al- 
ternately in England and in other countries. 


WE regret to record the deaths of Professor 
W. Wallace, professor of moral philosophy in 
the University of Oxford, who was killed on 
February 19th by a fall from a bicycle, and of 
Professor Charles Tomlinson, F. R. S., a writer 
and lecturer on scientific subjects, who died at 
Highgate, England, on February 15th. 


PROFESSOR A VON KOLLIKER, professor of 
anatomy in the University of Wurzburg, will 
celebrate his eightieth birthday and the fifteenth 
anniversary of the commencement of his career 
of a teacher on July 6th. 


AmMonG the lectures given at the Royal Institu- 
tion, London, during the present month were the 
following: February 11th, Dr. J. W. Gregory, 
of the British Museum (Natural History), the 
first of a course of three lectures on ‘The 
Problems of Arctic Geology.’ Friday evening 
discourse, February 12th, by Professor John 
Milne, F. R. S., on ‘Recent Advances in Seis- 
mology.’ February 19th, Mr. G. Johnstone 
Stoney, on ‘The approaching return of the 
great swarm of November Meteors.’ 


PROFESSOR J. J. STEVENSON, President of the 
New York Academy of Sciences, will give a 
public lecture before the Academy at Columbia 
University thisevening. The subject is ‘A Talk 
on Coal,’ and the lecture will be illustrated. 


THE department of paleontology of the 
University of Kansas will send to the coming 
international exposition at Brussels copies of 
large restorations of seven extinct animals, 
based upon the material in the museum and 
prepared by or under the direction of Dr. Wil- 
liston. 


WE learn from Nature that a German ant- 
arctic meteorological station will be established 


FEBRUARY 26, 1897.] 


shortly in Victoria Land, under the direction of 
Dr. Rudolph Mewes. The station will be in 
connection with the German South Polar ex- 
pedition, and will have for its object the de- 
termination of meteorological conditions dur- 
ing the anarctic winter. 

Tue library of the late Professor du Bois- 
Reymond is offered for sale by Gustay Fock, 
Leipzig. It contains 14,000 books and pam- 
phlets, including many valuable sets of period- 
icals. The heirs wish it to be sold as a unit 
and offer it for 22,000 Marks. It would be an 
unusually desirable acquisition for an American 
university library. * ; 

Ir is reported that Mme. Larapidie has given 
money for a meteorological and astronomical 
observatory and a museum at Jerusalem. 


THE Academy of Sciences of Vienna has sent 
to Bombay a commission, composed of Dr. 
Hermann Muller, Dr. Ghon, Dr. Albrecht and 
Dr. Péch, to investigate the nature of the 
plague. The expenses are defrayed by the Treitl 
cund, left to the Academy by the late Herr 
Treitl, and amounting to $500,000. 


A BILL has been introduced into the New 
York Legislature, authorizing New York City 
to spend $2,500,000 in the erection of a library 
building on the site of the reservoir adjoining 
Bryant Square. The income of the Astor, 
Lennox and Tilden foundations is about $160,- 
000 annually, and if the building were pro- 
vided this would be sufficient to maintain an 
adequate reference and circulating library in 
New York City. 

THE fourth Annual Exhibit and Reception of 
the New York Academy of Sciences will be held 
at the American Museum of Natural History 
on Monday and Tuesday, April 5th and 6th, 
and will be open from eight to ten in the eve- 
ning, and on April 6th from three to five in the 
afternoon. Arrangements are in progress for 
having a demonstration and lecture of about 
half an hour in length in the lecture hall each 
evening. Exhibits of newly invented apparatus 
will be welcomed from men of science, not resi- 
dent in New York, who should address the 
Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements, 


Professor R. E. Dodge, Teachers’ College, New 


York. 


SCIENCE. 


341 


THE second annual convention of the Ameri 
can Association of Manufacturers met at Phila- 
delphia on January 26th, 27th and 28th. The 
membership of this Association has during the 
past year increased from 300 to 900 and the 
revenue for the year amounted to $40,000. The 
Association has sent commissions to South 
America, Mexico and Japan to study manu- 
factures and commerce, and the reports of 
these commissions and the results of the dis- 
cussions on these and other subjects have a 
certain amount of scientific interest. It was 
recommended that a Department of Commerce 
and Manufacture be established under the gov- 
ernment and that the consular service be placed 
under this proposed department. 


AS we reported sometime since, the sum of 
$60,000 left by the late Sir William Macleay, 
for the establishment of a lectureship in bac- 
teriology in Sydney, was not accepted by the 
University, and reverted to the Linnean Society 
of New South Wales. The Society is now pre- 
pared to equip a laboratory and wishes to receive 
applications for the lectureship, the duties of 
which are chiefly research. The salary is £350. 

D. APPLETON & Co. announce for early publi- 
cation ‘Pioneers of Evolution,’ from Thales to 
Huxley, by Edward Clodd; ‘The Aurora Bore- 
alis,’ by Alfred Angot; and new editions of 
‘Dynamic Sociology,’ by Professor Lester F. 
Ward, and ‘Sight,’ by Professor Joseph LeConte. 

Dr. JOHN W. HARSHBERGER, of the Univer- 
sity of Pennsylvania, has now in manuscript a 
book entitled ‘The Botanists of Philadelphia and 
their Work.’ It will contain about 500 pages 
of printed matter and 50 full-page plates. 

THE British Balneological and Climatological 
Society has published the first number of a new 
quarterly journal edited by Dr. Samuel Clyde, 
Chairman of the Council of the Society. 

THE Foreign Affairs Committee of the House 
of Representatives will report favorably a bill 
for the reorganization of the Consular service. 
According to this bill a commission would be 
appointed by the President: which would reor- 
ganize the service by a system of civil service 
examinations for admission, the abolition of the 
fee system and the rating of Consular offices in 
grades at stated salaries and tenure of office 


342 


during good behavior, with removals only by 
the action of a board after a trial on charges. 
A reform in the American Consular service might 
contribute to scientific progress, as it certainly 
would to economic and commercial interests. 
It is doubtful whether United States Consuls 
would be competent to write reports such as 
those of the British Consuls on the advantages 
of the metric system published in the last num- 
ber of this JoURNAL. 


KOLLIKER’S well-known and esteemed shorter 
treatise on embryology entitled ‘Grundriss der 
Entwickelungsgeschichte’ is now being reissued. 
The preparation of the new edition (the third) 
has been entrusted to Professor Oscar Schultze. 
The first part has been issued by Engelmann, 
at Leipzig, and follows closely in typography 
and so forth the previous editions, which means 
that the illustrations are superior to what is 
usual in American and English scientific books. 
The present part deals with the early stages, the 
development of the external form and the feetal 
envelopes and placenta. Thescope of the text 
has been extended so as to make the book 
really a manual of mammalian embryology, 
and this has involved rewriting so extensive 
that we have practically a new work. It is one 
of very great merit; the difficult descriptions 
are both clear and concise, and the author dis- 
plays a broad and accurate knowledge of his 
subject. We hope to give a fuller notice of the 
work upon its completion. 


Ur to February 18th the returns of the health 
authorities of the plague report that since its 
outbreak there have been 6,853 cases and 5,447 
deaths from the disease in Bombay, and in the 
entire Presidency 9,911 cases and 8,006 deaths. 
The mortality attributed to other sources has 
also been excessive. 75 per cent. of the inhabit- 
ants have left Bombay. The conference on the 
plague now meeting in Venice has been divided 
into two bodies, but details regarding its work 
are lacking. It may, however, be well to quote 
from the Times some facts regarding this and 
preceding conferences: It will be practically 
the fourth of a series of international sanitary 
conferences, and will, it is expected, complete a 
system of efficacious measures for the preven- 
tion of the spread of epidemics. Now, as in 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. Voz. V. No. 113. 


the three preceding instances, the initiative is 
due to Austria-Hungary and has been taken ex- 
clusively for the general welfare. The upshot 
of the first sanitary conference, held at Venice 
in 1891, was to close the door in Egypt to the 
spread of epidemics to Europe. The result 
of the second conference, which was held at 
Dresden in 1893, was to adopt a maximum 
of protection accomplished by a minumum of 
hindrances to international traffic. On the 
basis of the Dresden Conference almost all the 
Powers concluded territorial conventions with 
their neighbors on very broad lines. The third 
conference, which met in Paris in 1894, sup- 
plemented the work of the two previous con- 
ferences with regard to the pilgrimages from 
India to the sanctuaries of the Sunnite Mahom- 
edans at Mecca and Medina. 


AN editorial article in the current number of 
the Journal of Geology recommends that the 
winter meetings of the Geological Society of 
America be held regularly in Washington. It 
is argued that the success of the recent meeting 
of the Geological Society was undoubtedly due 
to the fact that it was held in Washington. No 
other city in the country offers so many attrac- 
tions to geologists in the winter time as the 
National capital. Containing, as it does, the 
largest body of geological investigators to be 
found in any one place in the world, it has be- 
come a center of geological activity and the re- 
pository of many valuable collections. Lo- 
eated within easy reach of the universities of 
the East and South and of the Middle West, it 
has become a favorite rendezvous for geologists 
scattered throughout these parts of the country. 
For these reasons the writer of the article holds 
that the suggestians made by Mr. Walcott, Di- 
rector of the U. 8. Geological Survey, that the 
Society hold all its winter meetings in Wash- 
ington and its summer meetings elsewhere is 
an excellent one. It was heartily endorsed by 
the retiring President, Professor Le Conte. 


Dr. R. ELtsworrH CALL has directed our 
attention to a report in the Indianapolis Journal 
of perhaps the most extraordinary piece of 
legislation ever undertaken. A bill has been 
passed by the Indiana Legislature, part of 
which reads as follows : 


FEBRUARY 26, 1897.] 


“tis impossible to compute the area of a circle 
on the diameter as the linear unit without trespassing 
upon the area outside of the circle to the extent of in- 
cluding one-fifth more area than is contained within 
the circle’s circumference, because the square on the 
diameter produces the side of a square which equals 
nine when the are of ninety degrees equals eight. By 
taking the quadrant of the circle’s circumference for 
the linear unit we fulfill the requirements of both 
quadrature and rectification of the circle’s circumfer- 
ence. Furthermore, it has revealed the ratio of the 
chord and are of ninety degrees, which is as seven to 
eight, and also the ratio of the diagonal and one side 
of a square, which is as ten to seven, disclosing the 
fourth important fact, that the ratio of the diameter 
and circumference is as five-fourths to four, and be- 
cause of these facts and the further fact that the rule 
in present use fails to work both ways mathematically 
it should be discarded as wholly wanting and mis- 
leading in its practical applications. 3s te ut 
And be it remembered that these noted problems had 
been long since given up by scientific bodies as un- 
solvable mysteries and above man’s ability to com- 
prehend.”’ 


WE have received from the Australian 
Museum at Sydney, N. S. W., a memoir which 
is the first of a series giving an account of the 
Atoll of Funafuti by Mr. Charles Hedley, con- 
chologist. We learn from an introductory note 
by the curator, Mr. R. Etheridge, Jr., that the 
local committee of the Funafuti Coral Reef 
Boring Expedition, of the Royal Society, in 
charge of Professor Sollas, having suggested to 
the Trustees of the Australian Museum that one 
of their officers Should be deputed to accom- 
pany the expedition, Mr. Charles Hedley was 
selected for the purpose. Mr. Hedley left 
Sydney in H. M. S. ‘ Penguin,’ under the com- 
mand of Captain Mervyn Field, R. N., on May 
Ist, arriving at Funafuti on May 21st. He re- 
mained on the island for twoand a half months, 
leaving in the same vessel. On the return 
voyage to Fiji, the Island of Nukulailai was 
touched at, where scientific investigations were 
renewed for two days. Mr. Hedley finally 
reached Sydney on August 22d. During his 
stay on Funafuti, Mr. Hedley succeeded in 
amassing an interesting collection, particularly 
of invertebrate and ethnological objects, to- 
gether with much valuable scientific informa- 
tion. The collections are now in process of de- 


SCIENCE. 


543 


scription by the Scientific Staff of the Museum, 
and the results are being published in the order 
in which the study of the various groups is 
completed. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 

THE late Mr. William Lampson, of LeRoy, 
New York, has bequeathed his fortune, with 
the exception of a few small bequests, to Yale 
University. The bequest is said to amount to 
about $500,000. $150,000 is to be used for an 
auditorium and the rest for the endowment of 
professorships. : 


THE Stevens Institute of Technology, cele- 
brated the 25th anniversary of its foundation 
on February 18th and 19th. There was a din- 
ner at the Hotel Waldorf, a reception by Mrs. 
E. A. Stevens and a meeting at which addresses 
were made by Bishop Potter and President 
Morton, who described the achievements of the 
institution, its present condition and its future 
aims. Mr. Dod read a letter from President 
Morton, in which the President gave 1,000 
shares of stock of the Texas Pacific Railroad to 
the board of trustees, ‘to be held until their 
appreciated value with such other funds as may 
be devoted to the purpose, may be adequate 
for the erection and maintenance of the pro- 
posed new building generally referred to as the 
alumni building.’ 

THE Marquis of Bute, the present Lord 
Rector of the University of St. Andrews, will 
erect for the University four laboratories, in- 
cluding lecture rooms and museums, for the de- 
partments of anatomy, physiology, 
medica and botany. 


materia 


Miss UMPHERSTON has been appointed lec- 
turer in physiology at St. Andrews University. 
DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
‘THE ARGENTAURUM PAPERS.’ 

To THE EpIroR oF Science: I thinkI ought 
not to pass unnoticed a statement and an un- 
authorized use of my name, made by Mr. 8. H. 
Emmens in an advertisement just published in 
ScIENCE. He says: ‘‘The author has received 
many communications from eminent authorities 
explicitly approving of his work; while others 
haye written in such a manner as to show that 


344 


they regard his arguments and mathematical 
demonstrations as incapable of refutation. 
Among these authorities may be named the fol- 
lowing:’’ In the list of names there given my 
own appears. 

The fact is that I regard the points he attacks 
as being beyond debate, and simply decline to 
discuss the matter with him, telling him as 
plainly as the forms of courtesy permit, that I 
consider his work of no value. I know person- 
ally that substantially the same is true of at 
least two others whose names are on the list, 
and have no doubt it is true of all. Comment 


is unnecessary. 
C. A. Youne. 
FEBRUARY 20, 1897. 


[The responsible editor of this JouRNAL did 
not know of the insertion of the advertisement 
claiming the endorsement by Professor Young 
and others of Mr. Emmens’ absurd book. He 
has written to the Macmillan Co. requesting that 
no further advertisement of the book be in- 
serted. Ep.] 


FORMER EXTENSION OF GREENLAND GLACIERS. 


I sHOULD be exceedingly sorry to misstate 
the views of a fellow worker, as Professor 
Chamberlin* infers that I have done, from a 
a short abstract} of a recent paper read before 
the Geological Society of America, but not yet 
published. His editorial places quite a differ- 
ent interpretation upon his views from that 
which I had gained from a reading of his arti- 
cles. After a journey of a thousand miles along 
the Greenland coast, he says:{ ‘‘The inference 
was drawn that the ice formerly so extended 
itself as to reach the present coast over about 
half of its extent, while in the remaining por- 
tion the ice fell short.’? Professor Salisbury? 
states that the phenomena indicate that the ice 
has not recently overridden the ‘islands of the 
coast of Greenland,’ and moreover that it isa 
question if this is a possibility. 

In his editorial Professor Chamberlin states: 
‘*Tn its bearings upon these general problems, an 
advance of a few miles, more or less, an inef- 

* Editorial, Journ. Geol., V., 1897, 81. 

{ Journ. Geol., V., 1897, 95. 

t Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., 1895, VI., 219. 

2 Jour. Geol., IV., 1896, 774. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 113. 


fectual overtopping of a few heights, more or 
less, are relatively inconsequential. Our lan- 
guage is to be interpreted in the light of the 
major question whose solution we sought.’’ 
These ‘major questions’ are: (1) whether the 
Greenland ice was the source of the American 
ice sheet, which I did not suppose that anyone 
seriously believed at present; and (2) whether 
the Greenland ice ever reached ‘out into the 
heart of Baffin’s Bay.’ 

It would not be profitable to restate any of 
the arguments in my paper, which is soon to be 
published ; but if this proves what it attempts 
to prove, namely, that angular peaks have been 
glaciated, and yet have remained angular, 
largely because they projected into the ice, and 
that, in one place, in spite of rugged, unsub- 
dued peaks, there is perfect evidence that the 
ice reached beyond the present land margin, it 
must overthrow any conclusion concerning 
former ice extension that is based upon angular 
topography alone. 

A careful detailed study of a single region 
proves that a land of rugged peaks has been 
glaciated. Is it then a safe conclusion to draw 
that the ‘ice fell short’ 0: ] + f the coast, upon 
the basis of evidence from angular topography, 
mainly seen from a ship from five to twenty 
miles distant? I would go further and ask if, 
upon such evidence, the conclusion is warranted 
that the ice did not extend ‘out into the heart 
of Baffin’s Bay?’ Personally, I draw no conclu- 
sion concerning how much of the Greenland 
coast has been glaciated, nor how far the ice 
extended; but I do know that ice can over- 
ride peaks for a long enough time to scour 
valleys and hillslopes well, and yet leave the 
peaks rugged and angular in outline; and I 
also know that the ice in the Upper Nugsuak 
peninsula region once reached 30 or 35 miles 
beyond its present margin, which is as far as 
any evidence can be found in this region. For 
the larger question, how far it extended, and how 
much coast it covered, I believe it is well to 
wait until further evidence is at hand. 

RALPH S, TARR. 


COMPLIMENT OR PLAGIARISM. 


THE second carefully prepared plea of Pro- 
fessors Beman and Smith is simply a conscious 


FEBRUARY 26, 1897. ] 


dodging. The case against them is very plain 
and may be put thus: [I offer to pay a year’s 
subscription to ScrENCE for any man, woman or 
child who will inform the editor of any book in 
any language where can be found a Section, 
Partition of a Perigon, or, as Beman and Smith 
reprint it, Partition of the Perigon, and the 
problems: Problem I., to bisect a perigon ; 
problem II., to trisect a perigon ; problem III., 
to cut (divide) a perigon into five equal parts 
(angles) ; problem IV., to cut (divide) a perigon 
into fifteen equal parts (angles), excepting Hal- 
sted’s Elements (1885) and Beman and Smith 
(1895). The question about the word perigon 
is an issue introduced by Beman and Smith to 
distract attention from their ‘take.’ 

But their laborious researches on this matter 
turn out highly complimentary to me. They 
find that not a single geometry can be found in 
any language that ever used this word until 
after mine. They find, by actual laborious cor- 
respondence that W. B. Smith, Newcomb, and 
even the Italian Faifofer, saw the word for the 
first time in Halsted’s books. 

They say, SCIENCE, p. 275: ‘‘We have reason 
to believe that W. B. Smith, Newcomb and Fai- 
Sofer all did see the word for the first time in 
Halsted’s books.’’ This is all that I have ever 
claimed about this word, and surely it does me 
great honor. As to whether I first coined this 
word, I gave the facts to Cajori (see his ‘ The 
Teaching and History of Mathematics in the 
United States,’ 1890, p. 237); but the question 
for Beman and Smith is whether, like the other 
geometers, they first saw the word in the only 
place where any man, before their plagiarism, 
ever saw the phrase Partition of a Perigon. 


GEORGE BRUCE HALSTED. 


THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY: A SUGGESTION. 


On the birthday of Washington this year it 
has been proposed to bring before as many per- 
sons as possible the thought of a National Uni- 
versity, with portions of Washington’s addresses 
to Congress, and the clause of his will relating 
to the subject, in order, to use his own words, 
“to set the people ruminating on the importance 
of the measure as the most likely means of 
bringing it to pass.’ 


SCIENCE. 


345 


Relatively few people know that in this docu- 
ment the far-sighted man whom we love to 
call the Father of his Country bequeathed to 
the Nation the equivalent of $25,000, in trust as 
the nucleus for the endowment of such an in- 
stitution. To-day such an endowment would 
appear small, but neither principle nor earnings 
of this sum have ever been applied to the purpose 
for which it was intended, and had it been kept 
invested at six per cent. during the century 
that has all but passed since the testator’s death 
this modest gift would be worth to-day over 
$12,000,000. { 

Some sentiment is, no doubt, behind the earn- 
est movement that is now making toward the 
realization of Washington’s hopes, and popular 
sentiment in a popularly governed country is 
far from powerless. But the establishment of 
an educational institution, especially of a uni- 
versity in the proper sense, and above all of a 
university which is expected to be in fact as 
well asin name a National University, should 
depend upon more than popular feeling that 
the hopes of the broad-minded Washington de- 
serve, even at this late day, to be realized. 

When these hopes were formed the country 
had, in fact, not one university which to-day 
could justify its use of the name. To-day, 
among the hundreds of nominal universities, 
there are scores which offer post-graduate facili- 
ties in one or more departments sufficient to 
justify them in offering advanced degrees, and 
a few possess an equipment for work whereby 
the doctor’s degree may be earned in either of 
the principal departments recognized as neces- 
sary or desirable for post-graduate work, or 
university work as contrasted with that which 
is purely collegiate. Surely these institutions 
may properly lay claim to the name of univer- 
sity. 

Yet, if we possess universities worthy of the 
name, can it be urged that these are sufficiently 
numerous, or even sufficiently strong individ- 
ually, to preclude the desirability of adding to 
their number one which may hope to do in its 
every department work equal to that done in 
the best departments of the best existing insti- 
tutions? The president* of one of the most 

*Jordan, The urgent need of a National Univer- 
sity. The Forum, 22: 600, January, 1897. 


346 


amply endowed of our colleges does not hesi- 
tate to declare for the advisability of the pro- 
posed action. He opens his appeal with the 
statement that ‘the most important event in 
the history of modern Germany has been the 
foundation of the University of Berlin ’—its 
National University ; and he even tells us that 
the place at the head of our own American 
educational system is now held by the universi- 
ties of a foreign land. 

True it is that the real scholar who has 
earned his baccalaureate degree turns to a 
stronger center than his alma mater, if pos- 
sible, when he enters upon the struggle for the 
doctorate ; and having taken this, if he deserve 
it he may sometimes hope for a fellowship 
from the university that has stamped its official 
seal on him as a scholar and an investigator, 
which enables him to pursue his studies still 
further—not at home, but in foreign universities. 

Doubtless, this will always be so. Men, if 
suitably supported, and not places, make uni- 
versities; and, with all respect for the learned 
men who compose the faculty of the Berlin 
University, it may be said that even the gradu- 
ate of that great institution finds profit in trayv- 
eling elsewhere, for help and skill not to be 
found in Berlin. The practical questionis: Are 
Americans in search of opportunity for ad- 
vanced study which is not afforded by our 
existing universities? Are these not increasing 
in efficiency and capacity in proportion to the 
growing demand for the best that they can 
offer? Are there local obstacles in the way 
of their fullest utilization ? Willa National Uni- 
versity attract men who need some special in- 
ducement to advanced study not now offered ? 
And can it be made to replace the foreign uni- 
versity as the Mecca of our graduate students ? 
Let the university catalogues themselves and 
the annually collected government statistics 
answer this in part, nor fear, as some do, that 
petty ambition and petty jealousy can bias the 
utterances, on this point, of the officers of any 
university worthy of the name. Yet, it may 
well be asked, whatever the answer, who can 
venture to say that the opening of a National 
University may not in some real, if not clearly 
definable, manner appeal to enough men who 
now stop at the completion of a collegiate 


SCIENCE. 


[N. §. Vou. V. No. 113. 


course, to justify in the most satisfactory man- 
ner its establishment ? 

If, in my own mind, after trying to view the 
question impartially, I am not perfectly con- 
vinced that there is a real need for a National 
University, as a center of advanced instruction, 
I must admit that there may be other more 
cogent reasons for the attempt now being made 
to carry Washington’s idea into effect; and if, 
as I cannot help believing, the reasons that in- 
fluenced his judgment are less weighty to-day 
than they were a century ago, other reasons, 
not then revealed, may, perhaps, stand out to- 
day with greater force than the original reasons 
ever possessed. 

Frequent comment is made, in the scientific 
press of other nations, on the wonderful liber- 
ality of the American government in support- 
ing scientific investigation of our great natural 
resources. No branch of applied science, or 
science capable of economic application, is 
without representation under government aus- 
pices. It has been shown recently that no less 
than 5,225 persons are employed on this scien- 
tific and economical work, on which is expended 
annually nearly $8,000,000. 

For some years observing and thinking per- 
sons have realized that, great as the value of 
this work is, it is carried on in too irresponsible 
and disjointed a fashion to permit of the reali- 
zation of the greatest possible results, and sey- 
eral more or less successful attempts have been 
made to secure its partial unification. Quite 
recently one well fitted to grasp and analyze 
the situation* has distinctly stated that the 
time has now arrived when the successful prose- 
cution of the scientific work of the government 
requires that the various bureaus should be or- 
ganized in accordance with a logical plan, 
either under one of the existing governmental 
departments or in anew department, under the 
direction of one secretary or executive head. 

The scientific bureaus now constitute true 
university departments in this fundamental re- 
spect that they are primarily and preeminently 
centers of research, manned by investigators. 


* Dabney, A national department of science neces- 
sary for the coordination of the scientific work of the 
United States government. SCIENCE N. 8. 5: 73, 15 
January, 1897. 


FEBRUARY 26, 1897. ] 


Nowhere else in the country are men as free to 
delve into the unsolved mysteries and work out 
the practical application of discoveries as here. 
If, as President Jordan asserts,* and as, I think, 
no one will deny, ‘‘The National University 
should not be an institution of general educa- 
tion, with its rules and regulations, college 
classes, good-fellowship, and football team ; it 
should be the place for the training of investi- 
gators and men of action,’’ cana more favorable 
plan be formulated, for at once realizing the 
popular idea of a truly National University 
and meeting the need for a reorganization and 
centralization of the National Scientific Depart- 
ments, than to reorganize the latter as the 
former, charged with the twofold duty of 
prosecuting all needful investigation and of 
training all competent students desirous of de- 
voting their lives to a like purpose? To this 
scientific foundation, history, literature and 
the arts would be readily added, without waste- 


ful duplication. 
WILLIAM TRELEASE. 


SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 

Die Spiele der Thiere. By KARL GRoos, Profes- 
sor of Philosophy in the University of Gies- 
sen. Jena, Gustay Fischer. 1896. Pp. xvi 
+359. 

In this volume Professor Groos makes a con- 
tribution to three distinct but cognate depart- 
ments of enquiry: philosophical biology, animal 
psychology, and the genetic study of art. Those 
who have followed the beginnings of enquiry 
into the nature and functions of play in the 
animal world and in children will see at once 
how much light is to be expected from a thor- 
ough-going examination of all the facts and ob- 
servations recorded in the literature of animal 
life. This sort of examination Professor Groos 
makes with great care and thoroughness, and 
the result is a book which, in my opinion, 
is destined to have wide influence in all these 
departments of enquiry. 

I cannot take space for a detailed report of 
Professor Groos’ positions. It may be well, 
therefore, before speaking of certain conclu- 
sions which are to me of especial interest, to 
give a résumé of the contents of the book by 


*T1. c. 603. 


SCIENCE. 


347 


chapters. Chapter I. is an examination of Mr. 
Spencer’s ‘surplus energy’ theory of Play; the 
result of which is, it seems, to put this theory 
permanently out of court. The author’s main 
contention is that play, so far from being ‘by- 
play,’ if I may so speak, is a matter of serious 
business to the creature. Play is a veritable 
instinct, true to the canons of instinctive action. 
This view is expanded in Chapter II., where we 
find a fine treatment in detail of such interest- 
ing topics as imitation in its relation to play, 
the inheritance of acquired characters apropos 
of the rise of instincts, the place and function 
of intelligence in the origin of these primary 
animal activities. This chapter, dealing with 
the biological theory of play, is correlated with 
Chapter V., later on in the book, in which the 
‘Psychology of Animal Play’ is treated. To- 
gether they furnish the philosophical and theo- 
retical basis of the book, as the chapters in be- 
tween furnish the detailed data of fact. I shall 
return to the biological matter below. Chapters 
III. and IV. go into the actual ‘Plays of Ani- 
mals’ with a wealth of detail, richness of liter- 
ary information and soundness of critical in- 
terpretation, which are most heartily to be com- 
mended. Indeed, the fact that the first book 
on this subject is, at the same time, one of such 
unusual value, both as science and as theory, 
should be a matter of congratulation to workers 
in biology and in psychology. The collected 
cases, the classification of animal plays, as well 
as the setting of interpretation in which Pro- 
fessor Groos has placed them—all are likely to 
remain, I think, as a piece of pioneer work of 
excellent quality in a new but most important 
field of enquiry. 

As to the plays which animals indulge in, 
Professor Groos classifies them as follows: ‘Ex- 
perimenting,’ ‘Plays of Movement,’ ‘Play- 
Hunting’ (‘with real living booty,’ ‘with play 
living booty,’ ‘with inanimate play booty’), 
‘Play-fighting’ (‘ teasing, scuffling among young 
animals,’ ‘ play-fighting among adult animals’), 
so-called ‘Building Art,’ ‘Nursing’ plays, Imi- 
tation’ plays, ‘Curiosity,’ ‘Pairing’ plays, 
‘Courting by Means of Play of Movements,’ 
‘Courting by the Exhibition of Colors and 
Forms,’ ‘Courting by Noises and Tones,’ ‘ Co- 
quetry on the part of the Female.’ 


348 


With this general and inadequate notice of 
the divisions and scope of the book, I may throw 
together in a few sentences the main theoretical 
positions to which the author’s study brings 
him. He holds play to be an instinct developed 
by natural selection (for he does not accept the 
inheritance of acquired characters), and to be 
on a level exactly with the other instincts 
which are developed for their utility. It is very 
near, in its origin and function, to the instinct 
of imitation, but yet they are distinct (a word 
more below on the relation between play and 
imitation). Its utility is, in the main, two-fold : 
First, it enables the young animal to exercise 
himself beforehand in the strenuous and neces- 
sary functions of its life and so to be ready for 
their onset; and second, it enables the animal 
by a general instinct to do many things in a 
playful way, and so to learn for itself much 
that would otherwise have to be inherited in 
the form of special instincts ; this puts a premium 
on intelligence, which thus comes to replace 
instinct (65f.). Hither of these utilities, Professor 
Groos thinks, would insure and justify the play 
instinct; so important are they that he suggests 
that the real meaning of infancy is that there 
may be time for play.* 

It is especially in connection with this latter 
function of play that the instinct to imitate 
comes in to aid it. Imitation is a real instinct, 
but it is not always playful; play is a real in- 
stinct, but itis not always imitative. Professor 
Groos does not suggest, I think, closer relations 
between these two instincts. There is likely, 
however, to be a great deal of imitation in play, 
since the occasion on which a particular play 
instinet develops is often that which also de- 
velops the imitative tendency as well, 7. e., the 
actual sight or hearing of the acts and sounds 
of other animals. Moreover, the acquisition of 
a muscular or vocal action through imitation 
makes it possible to repeat the same action 
afterwards in play. 

It is only a step, therefore, to find that imita- 
tion, as an instinct, has to have ascribed to it, 


* “Tie Thiere spielen nicht weil sie jung sind, son- 
dern sie haben eine Jugend, weil sie spielen miissen ”’ 
(68). Other capital utilities which might be added 
are (1) the exercise of the intelligence itself and (2) 
direct social utility as such. 


SCIENCE. 


LN. S. Vou. V. No. 113. 


in a measure, the same race utility as play—that 
of going before the intelligence and preparing 
the way for it, by rendering a great number of 
specialized instincts unnecessary. It is inter- 
esting to contrast this view with that which 
the present writer has recently developed in 
these pages (SCIENCE, March 20, 1896), 7. e., 
the view that imitation supplements inadequate 
congenital variations in the direction of an in- 
stinct and so, by keeping the creature alive, 
sets the trend of further variations in the same 
direction until the instinct is fully organized 
and congenital. If both these two views be 
true, as there seems reason to believe, then 
imitation holds a remarkable position in rela- 
tion to intelligence and instinct. It stands mid- 
way between them and aids them both. In 
some functions it keeps the performance going, 
and so allows of its perfection as an instinct ; in 
others it puts a stress on intelligence, and so 
allows the instinct to fall away if it have no in- 
dependent utility in addition to that served by 
intelligence.* In other words, it is through 
imitation that instincts both arise and decay— 
that is, some instincts are furthered and some 
suppressed, by imitation. And all this is ac- 
complished with no appeal to the inheritance of 
acquired characters, Professor Groos agreeing 
with Weismann that the operation of natural se- 
lection as generally recognized is sufficient. 
The difficulty which I see to this conception 
of play as a pure instinct is that which is some- 
times urged also against considering imitation 
an instinct, 7. e., that it has no definite motor 
coordinations, but has all the variety which the 
different play forms show. If the definite con- 
genital plays are considered each for itself, then 
we have a great many instincts, instead of a 
general play instinct. But that will not do, for 
it is one of Professor Groos’ main contentions, 
in the chapter on the psychology of animal 
plays, that they have a common general char- 


* Tn a private communication Professor Groos sug- 
gests to me that the two views might be held to 
supplement each other. ‘The case is very much like 
that of early intelligence, in the form of association; 
where it fully accomplishes the utility also subserved 
by an instinct, it tends to supersede the instinct ; oth- 
erwise, it tends to the development of the instinct 
(Groos, p. 64). 


FEBRUARY 26, 1897. ] 


acter which distinguishes them from other 
specialized instinctive actions. They are dis- 
tinguished as play actions, not simply as ac- 
tions. This difficulty really touches the kernel 
of the matter, and serves to raise the question 
of the relation of imitation to play ; for imita- 
tion presents exactly the same conditions—a 
general instinct to imitate, which is not ex- 
hausted in the particular actions which are per- 
formed by the imitation. I shall remark on the 
solution of it below, in speaking of Professor 
Groos’ psychology of play. It will be interesting 
to see how he treats this problem in his prom- 
ised work on the Spiele der Menschen; for the 
imitative element is very marked in children’s 
plays. 

Other points of great interest in this biological 
part are the great emphasis which Groos finds 
it necessary to put on ‘tradition,’ instruction, 
imitation, etc., in young animals, even in en- 
abling them to come into possession of their 
natural instincts ; in this the book tends in the 
same direction as the new volume of Professor 
C. Lloyd Morgan. Again, there is a remarkably 
acute discussion of Darwin’s Sexual Selection, 
which the author finally accepts in a modified 
form by saying that the female’s selection is not 
necessarily conscious, but that she has an in- 
herited susceptibility to certain stimulating 
colors, movements, ete., in the male. It is not 
so much intelligence on her part as increased 
irritability in the presence of certain visual and 
other stimulations. *Over against the charms 
of the male he sets the reserve or reluctance 
(Sprodigkeit) of the female, which has to be 
overcome and which is an important check and 
regulator at the mating time. Again, the im- 
perfect character of most instincts is empha- 
sized, and the interaction with imitation and 
intelligence. He finds a basis for the inverse 
ratio between intelligence and instinct is an 
animal’s equipment on natural selection princi- 
ples, 7. e., the more intelligence develops the 
less does natural selection bear on special in- 
stincts, and so they become broken up. 


* ‘Sexual’ is thus referred back to ‘natural’ selec- 
tion (p. 274), although the direct results of such prefer- 
ential mating would still seem to give very ‘ determi- 
nate’ variations for natural selection to work upon 
(Cf. SCIENCE, Novy. 23, 1896, p. 726). 


SCIENCE. 


349 


Finally, I should like to suggest that a possible 
category of ‘Social Plays’ might be added to 
Groos’ classification—plays in which the utility 
of the play instinct seems to have reference 
to social life as such. Possibly in such a 
category it might be possible to place certain of 
the animals’ performances, which seem a little 
strained under the other heads—for example, 
those performances in which the social function 
of communication is exercised early in life. A 
good deal might be said also in question of the 
author’s treatment of ‘Curiosity’ (Neugier). 
He makes curiosity a function of the attention, 
and finds the restless activity of the attention a 
play function, which brings the animal into 
possession of the details of knowledge before 
they are pressed in upon him by harsh experi- 
ence. My criticism would be that attention 
does not fulfil the requirements of the author’s 
psychological theory of play, as indicated 
below. 

Turning now to the interesting question of 
the psychological theory, we find it developed, 
as it would have to be, in a much more theo- 
retical way. The play consciousness is funda- 
mentally a form of ‘ conscious self-illusion’ (811 
ff)\—bewusste Selbsttiuschung. It is just the dif- 
ference between play activity and strenuous 
activity that the animal knows, in the former 
case, that the situation is not real, and still 
allows it to pass, submitting to a pleasant sense 
of illusion. It is only fair to say, however, that 
Herr Groos admits that in certain definite in- 
stinctive forms of play this criterion does not 
hold ; it would be difficult to assume any consci- 
ousness of self-illusion in the fixed courting and 
pairing plays of birds, for example. The same 
is seen in the very intense reality which a 
child’s game takes on sometimes for an hour at 
atime. Indeed, the author distinguishes four 
stages in the transition from instincts in which 
the conscious illusion is absent, to the forms of 
play to which we can apply the phrase ‘Play ac- 
tivity’ in its true sense, 7. e., that of Scheinthdtig- 
keit (298 f). The only way to reconcile these po- 
sitions that I see isto hold that there are two dif- 
ferent kinds of play: that which is not psycho- 
logical at all, 7. e., does not show the psycho- 
logical eriterion at all, and that which is psy- 
chological as Scheinthdtigkeit. Herr Groos does 


300 


distinguish between ‘ objective’ and ‘subjective’ 
Scheinthatigkeit (312). The biological criterion 
of definite instinctive character might be in- 
voked in the former class, and the psychologi- 
eal criterion in the other. And we would then 
have a situation which is exemplified in many 
other functions of animal and human life—func- 
tions which are both biological and instinctive, 
and also psychological and intelligent, as sym- 
pathy, fear, bashfulness. Then, of course, the 
further question comes up as to which of these 
forms is primary, again the old question as to 
whether intelligence arose out of reflexes or the 
reverse. : 

I think some light falls on this time-honored 


question from the statement of it in connection ° 


with this new question of play, and especially 
when we remember Herr Groos’ theory of the 
function of imitation and the extension of his 
view suggested above. If imitation stands 
midway between instinct and intelligence, both 
furthering the growth of instinct, and also 
leading to its decay in the presence of intelli- 
gence, then we might hold something like this: 
In proportion as an action loses its consciously 
imitative and volitional character, to that de- 
gree it loses its Schein character, and becomes 
real in consciousness and instinctive in perform- 
ance (and this applies to the cases in which imita- 
tion has itself become habitual and instinctive); 
and on the contrary, in proportion as an instine- 
tive action is modified and adapted through imi- 
tation and intelligence, to that degree it becomes 
capable of assuming the Schein character and is 
indulged in as conscious play. I cannot enlarge 
upon this here, but it seems to square with a 
good many of the facts, both those which Groos 
cites as showing that imitation opens the way 
for the decay of instinct with the growth of in- 
telligence, and those which Morgan and I have 
cited as showing that imitation keeps congenital 
variations alive and so allows them to accumu- 
late into instincts. And I think it so far con- 
firms the view that imitation is a sort of meet- 
ing point of race habit, represented by instinct, 
and race accommodation, represented by intel- 
ligence—just the double function which imita- 
tion serves also in the development of the in- 
dividual (Cf. My volume on Mental Develop- 
ment, in loc.). 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 113. 


Going into the analysis of the play psychosis, 
Herr Groos finds several sources of pleasure to 
the animal in it (203 ff): pleasure of satisfying 
an instinct, pleasure of movement and ener- 
getic action, but, most of all, ‘pleasure in being 
a cause.’ This last, together with the ‘ pleasure 
in experimenting,’ which characterizes many 
play activities, is urged with great insistence. 
Even the imitative function is said to produce 
the joy of ‘victory over obstacles.’ Yet, here 
again, the author is compelled to draw the dis- 
tinction between the play which is psycholog- 
ical enough to have a represented object, and 
the instinctive sort in which the pleasure is 
only that of the instinct’s own performance. 
The pleasure of overcoming friction of move- 
ment, also, is very doubtful, since in any but 
the instinctive games which are cited (Chapter 
I.) to prove that the animal is not using up 
surplus energy (seeing that he plays after he is 
tired)—in other games we stop playing when 
the friction and inertia of the muscles become 
conscious as fatigue. Much more, however, is 
to be said for the pleasure of rivalry, or of 
overcoming an opponent, in the higher types 
of play; but Herr Groos scarcely does this 
justice. 

Returning to the element of illusion in play, 
we find two ingredients in it (313 ff): a divis- 
ion of consciousness (Spaltung des Bewusstseins), 
2. e., a division between the activity treated as 
real and the sense that it is unreal. There is 
considerable oscillation between these two poles. 
This ability to treat representations as realities 
is, according to Herr Groos, the essential of all 
imagination. In play it is akin to the division 
of consciousness found in certain pathological 
eases of double personality. It is a sort of 
hypnotization by the stream of representa- 
tions, but with the sense that it is all an illu- 
sion and may be pierced through by a return 
to reality at any moment. This seems to me a 
true and valuable characterization of the play 
consciousness (it is taken from K. Lange), but 
Professor Groos’ extension of it to all imagina- 
tion does not seem to hold. In his criticisms 
of others (as the present writer) he fails to 
honor the current distinction between ‘fancy ’ 
and ‘constructive imagination.’ In fancy we 
do yield ourselves up to a play of images, but 


FEBRUARY 26, 1897. ] 


in the imagination of scientific thinking or of 
artistic creation are not both the goal and the 
process strenuous enough? This, indeed, leads 
Professor Groos to a view of art which allies it 
closely with the play function, but to that I re- 
turn below. 

The second element in the play or ‘Schein’ 
consciousness is the feeling of freedom (Frei- 
heitsgefiihl) (831f). In play there is a sense, 
so to speak, of ‘don’t-have-to,’ which is con- 
trasted both with the necessity of sense and 
with the imperative of thought and conscience. 
This idea seems to be part of Schiller’s theory 
of play. So Groos thinks the general feel- 
ing of freedom holds in consciousness only 
while there is a play of motives to which the 
agent may put an end at any moment—a sense 
of ‘don’t-have-to’ in the life of choice. This 
sense of freedom keeps the Schein conscious- 
ness pure and prevents our confusing the play 
content with the possible real contents of life. 
This is very interesting and suggestive. The 
sense of freedom is certainly prominent in play. 
Whether it should be identified with the sense 
of control which has been used by some writers 
as a criterion (both in a negative and in a posi- 
tive sense) of the belief in realities already ex- 
perienced, or again with the freedom with 
which choice is pregnant, is more questionable. 
Without caring to make a criticism of Professor 
Groos’ position, I may yet point out the dis- 
tinction already made above between the two 
sorts of imagination, one of which has the 
‘don’t-have-to’ feeling and the other of which 
does not. So also in our choices there are 
those which are free with a ‘don’t-have-to’ 
freedom, but there are choices—and these are 
the momentous ones, the ones to which free- 
dom that men value attaches—which are strenu- 
ous and real in the extreme. Indeed, it seems 
paradoxical to liken the moral life, with its 
sense of freedom, to a ‘game of play,’ and to 
allow the hard-pressed sailor on the ethical sea 
to rest on his oars behind a screen of Schein 
and plead, ‘I shan’t play.’ Seriously, this is 
something like the result, and it comes out 
again in the author’s extremely interesting 
sections on art, of which I may speak in con- 
clusion. 

Those who have read Professor Groos’ former 


SCIENCE. 301 


stimulating book, Hinleitung in die Aisthetik, 
will anticipate the connection which he finds 
between play and art. The art consciousness 
is a consciousness of Schein; itis also a play 
consciousness, inasmuch as it is the work of 
imagination—both the creative and the appre- 
ciative art consciousness—and the meaning of 
imagination is just that it takes Schein for 
reality. The ‘self-conscious’ illusion of the 
play consciousness is felt in extreme form in 
the theatre, and the pleasure of it is felt even 
when we play with painful situations, as in 
tragedy. Inart the desire to make an impression 
on others shows the ‘pleasure of being cause.’ 
This intent to work on others is a necessary in- 
gredient in the art impulse (3812f). Groos differs 
from K. Lange, who holds a similar view of the 
necessary division of consciousness between 
reality and Schein in the sesthetic psychosis, in 
that Lange thinks there must be a continual 
oscillation between the two poles of the divided 
consciousness, while Groos thinks there is rather 
a settling down in the state of illusion (as in an 
artist’s preoccupation with his creations, a 
novelist with his characters, and a child with 
her doll (823). In art the other great motive 
of play, ‘experimenting,’ is also prominent, 
and is even more fundamental from a genetic 
point of view ; of that a word below. 

Here, again, the question left in my mind is 
this: whether the play motive is really the 
same as the art motive. Do we not really dis- 
tinguish between the drama (to take the case 
most favorable to the theory) as amusement 
and the drama as art. And does the dramatist 
who is really an artist write to bring on self- 
illusion in the spectator by presenting to him 
a Schein scene: Possibly, art theorists would 
divide here; the realists taking more stock in 
Schein, since realistic art is more nearly ex- 
hausted by imitation. This sort-of illusion un- 
doubtedly gives pleasure, and it is undoubt- 
edly part of art pleasure. Yet there does seem 
to be, in a work of fine art, a strenuous out- 
reach toward truth, which is additional to the 
instrument of appearance used by the artist— 
both in the production and also in the enjoy- 
ment. It may be that we should distinguish 
between truth which comes to us didactically 
and truth which comes artistically, and make 


302 


the method of the latter, and that alone, the 
source of esthetic impression. In any case 
the theory of Groos, which has its roots in the 
views of Lange and v. Hartmann, is extremely 
interesting and valuable, especially as con- 
trasted with the recent psychological theory of 
Mr. H. R. Marshall. In the present theory, the 
‘self-exhibition’ of which Mr. Marshall makes 
so much, enters as the need of impressing others 
with the play illusion. As to the hedonic ele- 
ment and its ground, however, the two theories 
are in sharp contrast, and that of Groos seems 
to me, on the whole, more adequate. In the 
wealth of literary reference in his book Mr. 
Marshall pays singularly little attention to the 
authors from whom Groos draws, and none to 
the earlier work of Professor Groos himself, 
but treats the play theory only in the form of 
Mr. Spencer’s surplus energy construction. As 
to Groos’ theory musical art would present dif- 
ficulties and so would lower sensuous esthetic 
effects generally. 

Genetically art rests upon play, according to 
Herr Groos, in that the three great motives of 
art production, ‘Self-exhibition’ (Selbstdarstel- 
lung), ‘ Imitation,’ and ‘Decoration’ (Ausschiniick- 
ung), are found in the three great classes of 
animal plays, respectively, ‘Courting,’ ‘ Imita- 
tion,’ and Building Art’ (Baukiinste, seen in 
birds’ nest-building, etc.). On the strength of 
this, Groos finds both eesthetic appreciation and 
impulse in the animal, and all rests upon the 
original ‘experimenting’ impulse. Of this, 
however, Professor Groos does not give a satis- 
factory account. Experimenting is a necessary 
part of effective learning by ‘imitation,’ I think, 
and the use made of it in the selection of move- 
ments may be its original use. 

On the whole, Professor Groos’ book is both a 
pioneer work and one of great permanent value ; 
it should be translated into English. It con- 
tains a good index and a full list of the literary 


sources. 
J. MARK BALDWIN. 
PRINCETON. 


A Primer of the History of Mathematics. By W. 
W. Rouse Batt. London, The Macmillan 
Co. 1895. Pp. 148,16mo. Price, 65 cents. 

A History of Elementary Mathematics, with hints on 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. Vou. V. No. 113. 


By FLortaAn Cagori. 
1896. Pp. 


methods of teaching. 

New York, The Macmillan Co. 

viii+304, 12mo. Price, $1.50. 

The object of the ‘Primer,’ as well set forth 
in its introduction, is ‘‘to give a popular account 
of the history of mathematics, including therein 
some notice of the lives and surroundings of 
those to whom its development is mainly due, 
as well as their discoveries. Such a sketch, 
written in non-technical language and confined 
to less than 140 pages, can contain nothing be- 
yond a bare outline of the subject, and, of 
course, is not intended for those to whom it is 
familiar.’’ It consists of the author’s larger 
work* reduced in size by the omission of all 
detailed and highly technical matter. Ina few 
places the pruning process has been carried too 
far. For example, on p. 13 we are told that 
“Cafter the execution of Socrates, in 399 B. C., 
Plato spent some years in travel * * *”’ but we 
are given no clue to the relationship of Socrates 
to Plato. However, the few instances of this 
kind which occur do not appreciably detract 
from the clear, well ordered and interesting 
style which the ‘Primer’ enjoys in common 
with its source. 

The book affords to students in our high 
schools and colleges a means of gaining, with a 
small expenditure of time, a sufficiently com- 
plete history of the mathematical subjects they 
are studying, to give them a much greater ap- 
preciation of and interest for such subjects. 

As its title indicates, Professor Cajori’s book 
does not cover the entire field of mathematics ; 
he restricts it to arithmetic, algebra, geometry 
and trigonometry, as presented in undergradu- 
ate instruction, with a short account of the his- 
tory of non-Euclidean geometry. The arrange- 
ment of the material is first under the headings : 
‘Antiquity,’ ‘Middle Ages,’ ‘Modern Times ;’ 
under each of these are the subdivisions: ‘arith- 
metic,’ ‘algebra,’ ‘ geometry’ and ‘trigonom- 
etry.’ For a work of its size it contains a great 
deal of information, and nearly every statement 
is supported by a reference either to original 
sources or to other treatises upon mathematical 
history. The chapters upon arithmetic are par- 


*A short account of the History of Mathematics. 
London, the Macmillan Co. 2d edition. 1893. Pp. 
xxiv--520, 16mo. 


FEBRUARY 26, 1897.] 


ticularly rich in examples of methods of calcu- 
lating which haye long since disappeared from 
our arithmetics, and, as the author points out, 
some of these are, by no means, inferior to those 
now used. Such examples make the history 
of arithmetic very real to one. The sections 
entitled ‘Causes which checked the growth of 
demonstrative 4rithmetic in England,’ ‘Re- 
forms in arithmetical teaching,’ and ‘ Arithme- 
tic in the United States,’ show forcibly the 
stagnation which results in regarding it not as 
a demonstrative science, but merely as an art 
of calculation. 

The accounts of modern synthetic geometry 
and of non-Euclidean geometry (pp. 252-275) 
seem well chosen. It is necessary for teachers 
of geometry to have a broader view of their sub- 
ject than is afforded by the typical text-book. 

Having called attention to some of the merits 
of Professor Cajori’s work, it is unfortunately 
necessary now to note some of its defects. The 
inconvenient method of introducing an abbre- 
viation, the first time a work is cited, to be used 
for it subsequently, we trust will in future edi- 
tions be remedied by a table at the end of the 
volume. It is confusing, if one is not certain of 
their identity, to have ‘Ptolemy’ and ‘ Ptole- 
meeus’ used indiscriminately. In the statement 
that ‘“‘ Y2 cannot be exactly represented by any 
number whatever’’ (p. 51), the word rational 
has, of course, inadvertently been omitted. 
Foot-note 3, p. 72, is very indefinite in its pres- 
ent form. Referring to remarks at the top of 
page 74, we quite agree with the author that 
rigor in geometry demands the proof of the pos- 
sibility of all constructions before they are used. 
For example, that the circumference of a circle 
admits of being divided into any number of 
equal parts should be shown (which involves 
no difficulty) before considering regular in- 
scribed polygons in general. The example of 
the text leads one to suppose that rigor demands 
our ability to construct (subject, in fact, to the 
arbitrary condition of having only ruler and 
compass) every inscribed polygon we may wish 
to use. 

The material of the volume in places shows 
lack of coordination and incomplete moulding 
into an organic whole. One feels at times lost 
in amaze of fact. We are given part of the 


SCIENCE. 


309 


biography of Leonardo of Pisa on page 119 
and part on page 134. The origin of the word 
‘sine’ is found on page 124 and again on page 
130. On page 75 and again on page 78 we are 
told of the tomb of Archimedes. ; 

In the foot-note 1, page 160, the conclusion 
that the base of Napier’s logarithms is e— is 
erroneous, and it does not follow from what 
precedes it. If we define the logarithm of x 
with respect to the constant base b, by the equa- 
tion «=b'*, then the numbers discovered by 
Napier are not logarithms; but if bis not re- 
stricted to be constant, the above equation de- 
fines Napier logarithms when 


r\7 

atone 
(Hagen, Synopsis der hoeheren Mathematik I., 
p. 107.) To define the base of Napier’s loga- 
rithms as the number whose logarithm is unity 
is in this case misleading. The term is, how- 
ever, so used by Cantor (Geschichte der Mathe- 
matik, II., p. 672), who gives its value to be 


Owe 
10! = ol) 


BK. M. BLAKE. 
PURDUE UNIVERSITY. 


Die Bedingungen der Fortpflanzung bei eimigen 
Algen und Pilzen. Yon DR. GEORGE KLEBS. 
Jena, Gustav Fischer. 1896. Pp. i.+543, 
3 plates. 

This work of Dr. Klebs’ is an important con- 
tribution to the physiology of reproduction. As 
its title indicates, the experiments were con- 
ducted for the purpose of determining the con- 
ditions of reproduction in certain alge and 
fungi. A preliminary account of some of this 
work has been published in earlier contribu- 
tions. The earlier experiments have been am- 
plified and extended to a number of additional 
plants, and the present work details carefully 
his later experiments and presents the philos- 
ophy and deductions of all his work upon this 
topie. Itisa remarkable work, alike for the 
painstaking conduct of the experiments, the 
precautions against error, the important results 
obtained and the cautious generalizations upon 
the relations of the different kinds of reproduc- 
tion to environment. Not only is the work 
one of great interest to the student of develop- 


304 


ment and to those interested in the theoretical 
questions of reproduction, but it is one which 
will be a great aid to teachers who wish to 
supply material of these lower forms of alge to 
their classes in a condition in which these pro- 
cesses of reproduction can be observed. This 
is especially so in the case of certain species 
of Vaucheria, Hydrodictyon, Oedogonium and 
others, since the conditions have been deter- 
mined under which one can with certainty bring 
the material to the production of zoospores, or 
to the development of sexual organs within a 
reasonable limit of time. 

His most extended experiments were con- 
ducted upon species of Vaucheria, especially 
upon Vaucheria repens, clavata and sessilis, or 
upon the composite species Vaucheria sessilis, as 
some would treat it. Klebs would, however, 
treat these three forms as species, and it is in- 
teresting to see how the reactions of these three 
forms toward various conditions of environment 
and artificial treatment give support to the 
view that they may be regarded as species, and 
we are promised a thorough-going revision of 
the species of Vaucheria from the hand of one 
of Dr. Klebs’ students. 

The experiments cannot be given in detail, 
but under the head of the asexual reproduction 
through zoospores the methods employed were 
similar to those noted in 1892. Plants culti- 
vated in the light and in moist atmosphere, 
on being transferred to water produce numer- 
ous zoospores; cultivated in a 0.2 per cent. 
to 0.5 per cent. nutrient solution (inorganic 
salts) in the light, on being transferred to pure 
water produce zoospores. On the other hand, 
cultures in water, or in a 0.1 per cent. to 
0.2 per cent. nutrient solution, produce zoo- 
spores on simply being darkened. The devel- 
opment is especially active when the first or 
second method is combined with the third. In 
studying the conditions which influence sexual 
reproduction he found Vaucheria repens the best 
subject, though any of the species studied could 
be brought with certainty in artificial cultures 
to form sexual organs. For example, threads of 
Vaucheria repens placed ina 0.2 per cent. to 0.4 
per cent. cane-sugar solution form sexual organs 
with the greatest certainty in four to five days. 
In studying the influence of light he found that 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No. 113. 


it acts in a two-fold manner. Through the as- 
similation of CO, reserve material, in the form 
of organic compounds, which is necessary for 
sexual reproduction, is supplied, and the light 
also acts in a direct way stimulating the pro- 
cess. This was proved by growing cultures 
under conditions where an abundance of light 
was supplied, but the plants were deprived of 
the CO, of the air, so that none or little carbon 
assimilation took place and no sexual organs 
were formed. Cultures, under similar con- 
ditions, in a cane-sugar solution, produced sex- 
ual organs, the reserve material here being 
supplied by the sugar solution. On the other 
hand, cultures in a cane-sugar solution in weak 
light or in darkness produced no sexual organs. 
The same results were obtained in cultures of 
other genera of alge, and his conclusions that 
light acts in a twofold manner seem justified. 

In studying the conditions which influence 
the male or female organs some interesting re- 
sults were obtained, though no definite conclu- 
sions were reached regarding the relation be- 
tween these two kinds of organs. Cultures in 
a thermostat at 25° to 26° C. showed a ten- 
dency to complete suppression of the oogonium 
or to a vegetative growth of the same, the 
number of oogonia in a group being not in- 
eresed, while the antheridia were increased in 
number in some cases as much as five- to seven- 
fold. Cultures under air pressure of 120 mm. 
gave similar results. 

In his studies of Drapernaudia glomerata he 
discovered microzoospores and observed their 
conjugation to form z\gospores. Pringsheim, 
in 1860, first observed resting cells, and speaks 
of the formation of microzoospores, though he 
does not describe them. Klebs first observed 
them in 1894. Algze were taken from a cold 
standing culture and placed in a 2 per cent. 
cane-sugar solution in the heated laboratory. 
After twenty-four hours zoospores were formed, 
and after forty-eight hours microzoospores ap- 
peared. The microzoospores are oval to spher- 
ical and about half the size of the zoospores, 
and are four ciliate. The red-eye spot is near 
the base of the body while in the zoospores it 
is situated at the upper third. Many of the 
microzoospores form resting spores partheno- 
genetically, though, as stated above, Klebs was 


FEBRUARY 26, 1897.] 


able to observe certain of the resting cells 
formed by the conjugation of two microzoo- 
spores. 

In his studies upon Botrydium granulatum he 
determined by pure cultures that what has been 
regarded as a remarkable pleomorphic species 
really represents two distinct species. His at- 
tention was first called to this confusion by the 
difference in the cell structure of the various 
forms. In one the chlorophyll bodies are in the 
form of distinet discs, while in the other the 
chlorophyll is a single connected plate. In one 
the cells form a fatty oil but no starch, while 
the other possesses amylon grains and starch 
bodies, their structure being like that of the cell 
of Hydrodictyon. One of these plants is a true 
Botrydium, while the other is the Protococcus 
botryoides, described by Kuetzing in 1845, and 
in 1855 Cienkowski correctly described its de- 
velopment. Since the genus Protococcus is un- 
tenable, Klebs proposes the name of Protosiphon 
botryoides for this plant. 

He takes occasion to deplore the tendency of 
some algologists to repeat in the case of the al- 
gee the pleomorphic craze which once brought 
such confusion to bacteriology and mycology, 
citing especially Hansgirg, in 1855, and the 
more recent work of Borzi and Chodat, who 
claim to have connected a large number of gen- 
era in the form cycle of one species. He 
points out that these investigators did not use 
pure cultures and were thus led to include in 
the form cycle different genera appearing in 
the culture. It has been held by some that if 
filamentous algee possess protococcoid forms in 
one stage of development, then all protococ- 
coid forms are states of filamentous alge. It 
is impossible to distinguish the swarming ga- 
metes of Chlamydomonas and Ulothrix, still it 
does not follow that Chlamydomonas belongs to 
Ulothrix. He insists that in studies of devel- 
opment pure cultures should be used, though 
pure cultures in the sense in which they are 
made in bacteria and the fungi cannot be made. 
Pure cultures and continuity of observation, es- 
pecially in connecting different stages, should 
be substituted for mixed cultures and discontin- 
uous observations. 

Space will not permit a discussion of his ex- 
periments upon other genera of alge and the 


SCIENCE. 


305 


fungi, but the following outline of his experi- 
ments upon Vaucheria will give an idea of the 
thorough and comprehensive manner in which 
his work was conducted. 


I. The asexual reproduction through zoospores of 
Vaucheria repens and clavata. 

. Influence of nourishment. 

. Influence of dampness. 

. Influence of light; of darkness; of weak light; 
of the rays of the spectrum; of light intensity; 
of carbon assimilation. 

4, Influence of temperature; low temperature; high 
temperature; mean temperature and, variations 
of temperature. 

5. Influence of the chemical peculiarities of the 
medium. 

A. Inorganic compounds; effect of nutrient salts; 
change from nutrient salts to water. 

B. Organic compounds; cane sugar; camphor. 

C. Osmotic value of the compounds. 

D. Influence of acid or alkaline reaction. 

K. Influence of oxygen; influence of air pressure; 
of rarified air. 

F. Influence of flowing water; of friction; of 
temperature; of oxygen and nutrient salts. 

II. The asexual increase in the case of other species 
of Vaucheria: Vaucheria ornithocephala; ap- 
lanospores of V. geminata; conditions of their 
formation; aplanospores of V. racemosa, wnci- 
nata. 

Ill. The sexual reproduction of Vaucheria. 

1. Influence of light. 

A. Effect of light as a means of nourishment. 
B. Influence of light intensity. 
C. Significance of colored light. 

. Influence of dampness. 

. Influence of temperature. 

Influence of chemical peculiarities of the medium. 

. Influence of oxygen. 

. Influence of flowing water. 

. Upon the relation of the male and female sex. 

Gro. F. ATKINSON. 


wwe 


IRATE ww 


CORNELL UNIVERSITY. 


Codice Messicano Vaticano, No. 3778. EDIZIONE 

DEL DucA DE LouBAT. Roma. 1896. 

In the native literature of America that 
which was the product of aboriginal authors, 
the pictographic manuscripts, or ‘codices,’ as 
they are called, of Mexico and Central America, 
hold the first rank. Quite a number of them, 
though generally in an imperfect condition, have 
been preserved which date from before the 


306 


conquest of the country by Europeans. Most 
of these are the work of tribes speaking either 
the Nahuatl (Aztec) or the Maya languages ; 
but others are from the Zapotec or Mixtec re- 
gions, these representing different linguistic 
stocks. 

The accurate reproduction, by modern meth- 
ods, of these remarkable monuments of a per- 
ished civilization is one of the most valuable 
services which can be rendered to the study of 
American archeology ; and in presenting in all 
respects a fac-simile of one of the most perfect, 
the Codex Vaticanus No. 3773, the Duke de 
Loubat has added another and a most impor- 
tant item to his many claims on the gratitude of 
those interested in the ancient history of Amer- 
ica. His edition leaves nothing to be desired 
in point of faithfulness to the original; and that 
it is in fact a gift to science, being chiefly dis- 
tributed to public libraries, excites just admira- 
tion for the liberality as well as the appreciative 
scholarship of the donor. 

The Codex in this edition is accompanied by 
two articles from the pen of the well-known 
archeologist, Father Francisco del Paso y 
Troncoso, one on the proper sequence of the 
pages of the manuscript, the other on its prob- 
able age and origin. The former is indispensa- 
ble to ‘its comprehension. 

This Codex was included by Lord Kingsbor- 
ough in his great work published in 1831; but 
not only was the copy prepared by his artist 
defective in various particulars, but its pages 
were erroneously arranged, so that the study of 
it became hopelessly confusing. 

From what is know of the classes of native 
writings, this Codex is recognized as of Nahuatl 
origin and is concerned with the ritual year of 
260 days, doubtless either in its divinatory ap- 
plications, or as regulating the fasts, festivals 
and other religious ceremonies of the temples. 
The opening pages give the tonalamati, or list 
of days, and on the last is the picture of a 
masked figure indicating the astrological rela- 
tionship of the various parts of the body. 

As we have in the ‘Borgian Codex’ a docu- 
ment from the same locality, and also ritual in 
its character, there are facilities for the expla- 
nation of this Vatican Codex not to be found 
in other instances. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 113. 


So far as its history is concerned it rests in 
obscurity. It was certainly in the Vatican 
library as early as 1596, and may have reached 
there about 1550. But, of course, no question 
can be raised concerning its authenticity, and its 
composition previous to any European influence 
in Mexico. We thus have, by the generous 
action of M. de Loubat, placed within the 
reach of students probably the best conserved 
example of that once rich native literature in 
which were stored the history, religion and sci- 
ence of aboriginal American civilization. 

D. G. BRINTON. 


SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS. 
AMERICAN CHEMICAL JOURNAL, FEBRUARY. 


A Contribution to the Study of Water Solutions 
of Some of the Alums: By H. C. Jonus and E. 
Mackay. Various methods have been used in 
investigations of the conditions existing in a 
solution from which double salts will crystallize 
out. The question to be decided was whether 
the double salt was present as such in solution, 
or was formed at the moment of crystallization. 
The methods used may be grouped under the 
following heads, as they have to do with (a) the 
diffusion, (b) the thermal changes, (c) the vol- 
ume changes, (d) the solubility, (e) the electrical 
properties, or (f) the cryoscopic behavior of 
solutions of the compounds under investigation. 
After reviewing these methods the authors state 
that the aim of the present work was to obtain, 
from a study of the conductivity of solutions of 
alums, data which would justify more definite 
conclusions than had yet been drawn. They 
have compared the electrical conductivity and 
eryoscopic behavior of the double salts with 
that of their constituent salts to see if they 
corresponded to mixtures. The methods of 
work, analyses and preparation of various alums. 
are given. The results obtained by the con- 
ductivity method show that in dilute solutions. 
the complex alum molecules are broken down 
completely into the molecules of the simpler 
sulphates, which dissociate as if alone, while in 
more concentrated solutions the alums are either 
partially undecomposed or the dissociation is 
not complete. Potassium chrome alum appar- 
ently exists as such in moderately concentrated 


FEBRUARY 26, 1897. ] 


solutions. These results in general are con- 
firmed by the freezing point measurements. 

Silicides of Copper and Iron: By G. DECHAL- 
mot. Ina former number of this journal the 
author described a silicide of copper of the com- 
position Cu,Si;. Upon repeating the work with 
different specimens he found that the substance 
obtained wasa mixture of silicon, copper silicide 
and copper. The mixture forms apparently 
homogeneous pure crystals, which fact led him 
to think they were of the composition given 
above. He has also obtained a silicide of iron 
to which he gives the composition FeSi,. 

Formation of Diacetylenyl (Butadiine) from 
Copper Acetylene: By A. A. Noyes and C. W. 
Lucker. Several investigators have described 
a crystalline product obtained by the action of 
acetylene (from copper acetylene) on boiling 
bromine. The composition ascribed to it was 
C,H,Br,, and the present investigation was 
undertaken to verify this and to determine the 
origin of the compound. Pure acetylene (from 
calcium carbide) would not produce it, and it 
was finally discovered that the action would 
take place more readily if cupric chloride was 
added to the copper acetylene before its decom- 
position, as the formation was due to the oxi- 
dizing action of the cupric chloride formed by 
the action of the air on the copper acetylene 
and hydrochloric acid. The study of the com- 
pound led to the conclusion that it is formed by 
the direct union of the hydrocarbon C,H, with 
bromine. 

On the Action of Acid Chlorides on the Imido 
Esters and Isoanilides, and on the Structure of the 
Silver Salts of the Anilides: By H. L. WHEELER 
and P. T. WALDEN. The authors thought that 
light might be thrown on the constitution of 
the silver salts by the study of the action 
of acid chlorides on compounds that are defi- 
nitely constituted as the silver salts are sup- 
posed to be. From the action of acid chlorides 
on isoanilides and imido esters results were ob- 
tained which admit of only one interpretation 
according to which the reactions are explained, 
not by tautomerism, but by addition. This 
proves also that the metal in the silver salts of 
the anilides is directly joined to oxygen. The 
reactions of acid chlorides with imido esters 
also showed that diacid amides have both acid 


SCIENCE. 307 


groups attached to the nitrogen. These results 
were further confirmed by the action of the 
halogens on the imido esters. 

On the Effect of Light on the Displacement of 
Bromine and Iodine from Organic Bromides and 
Iodides: By J. H. KASTLE and W. H. BEATTY. 
In studying the decompositions of the halogen 
derivatives of the sulphonamides it was found 
that the halogen was set free, to a considerable 
extent, by the action of sunlight. If a sub- 
stance containing both chlorine and bromine is 
exposed to the sunlight in a sealed tube with 
water the chlorine is first set free, and after 
some time, from the action of this chlorine, the 
bromine is set free. Chlorine set free in this 
way could displace bromine and iodine from 
their most stable compounds. Parallel experi- 
ments carried on in the sunlight and in the dark 
showed that up to 50° no change took place in 
the dark, while the action in the light was 
marked. 

The Specific Gravities of Water Solutions of 
Formic Acid: By G. M. RICHARDSON and P. 
ALLAIRE. The authors have determined the 
specific gravity of solutions of formic acid, 
making seventy-one determinations between the 
pure acid and a solution containing only 0.618 
per cent., and have tabulated the data obtained. 

The Constitution of Benzanilide: By N. KNIGHT. 
There are two possible formule for benzanilide, 
and a method which was suggested to establish 
the correct one was to study the reactions of 
benzene sulphanilide with benzoylchloride and 
of benzanilide with benzenesulphonchloride. 
The results, however, were different from those 
expected, dibenzoylanilide being the chief prod- 
uct, and no important conclusions as to the 
structure could be drawn. 

A number of recent publications are also 
reviewed in this number of the Journal, viz.: 
Traité de chemie organique daprés les theories 
modernes, A. BEHAL; Analytical Chemistry, N. 
MENSCHUTKIN; Recherches sur la congelation 
des solutions aqueuses étendues, M. A. PonsoT; 
Kurzes Lehrbuch der organischen Chemie, A. 
BERNTHSEN ; Studies in Chemical Dynamics, J. 
H. vANn’T Horr; The Chemical Analysis of Iron, 
A. A. BLAIR (8d edition); and Gas and Fuel 
Analysis for Engineers, A. H. GILL. 

J. ELLIOTT GILPIN. 


308 


THE JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE NEUROLOGY, 
DECEMBER, 1896. DOUBLE NUMBER. 

The Brain of the Bee—A Preliminary Contri- 
bution to the Morphology of the Nervous System of 
the Arthropoda: By F. C. Kenyon, Ph.D., 
Clark University. This memoir contains the 
first really successful and comprehensive appli- 
cation of modern methods to the central nervous 
system of the insects. Dr. Kenyon was very 
successful with the newer silver and hema- 
toxylin methods, though the difficulties in this 
research were very great. This communication 
contains a detailed description of the structure, 
especially the fiber connections, of the brain of 
the honey bee, with the exception of the optic 
lobes, which are reserved for separate treat- 
ment. Thirty-two cell groups are enumerated 
and their connections given so far as known. 
The text comprises 78 pages and there are nine 
plates, three of photographs, two of silver 
preparations and four charts in colors showing 
the courses of the fibers in detail. Among the 
results perhaps the most interesting relates to 
the structure of the so-called mushroom bodies. 
Additional evidence is adduced to show that 
the function of these peculiar bodies is that of 
enabling the insect to intelligently adapt itself 
to its surroundings. They are shown to be 
connected at their calices with two pairs of 
sensory tracts of fibers from the optic lobes, 
with three from the antennal lobes and with one 
that is probably also sensory from the ventral 
neryous system. Their roots are shown by 
fragmentary evidence, sufficient to warrant the 
conclusion, to be very probably connected with 
the inner terminals of motor, or possibly of 
other efferent fibers. 

The Origin and Growth of Brain Cells in the 
Adult Body: By HowARD AyeErRS. The recent 
discovery of the centrosome in both vertebrate 
and invertebrate nerve cells has brought into 
prominence anew the question as to whether 
the current doctrine that adult nerve cells do 
not divide is true. It will be remembered that 
Herrick and others have long claimed that it is 
not, and now Dr. Ayers brings forward fresh 
evidence. In the brain of the adult Torpedo he 
finds cells dividing in a very characteristic 
manner and these are especially abundant in 
the electric lobes. The centrosome was found, 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S Voz. V. No. 113. 


but the division is apparently amitotic. In the 
electric lobes there is also another remarkable 
feature. The overgrown ganglion cells have 
applied themselves to the walls of the arterial 
capillaries and there spread themselves out, thus 
affording the best possible facilities for nutri- 
tion. 

The Innervation of the Auditory Epithelium in 
Mustelus canis DeKay: By A. D. Morritt. 
This paper gives a summary of the results of 
some very successful methylen blue prepara- 
tions of the ear of the smooth dog-fish. No 
continuation of the nerve into the cell was ob- 
served, although the cells were semi-transpa- 
rent. Satisfactory evidence of anastomosis of 
nerve fibers was not obtained. There are two 
kinds of nerve endings in the auditory epithe- 
lium, the one being free near the surface, and 
the other ending in knob-like structures in con- 
tact with the base of the hair cells. 

Neural Terms, International and National: By 
Burr G. WiLpER, M. D., Cornell University. 
In this extensive paper of 136 pages Dr. Wilder 
has brought together the main points in his 
voluminous writings on nomenclature, together 
with much new matter, and has arranged the 
whole in the form of a systematic presentation 
of the principles of nomenclature and their ap- 
plication to the nervous system, which should 
be a standard of reference for many years to 
come. The immediate occasion of the paper is 
the report of the Committee on Anatomical 
Nomenclature of the Anatomische Gesellschaft, 
Basel, 1895. As this German committee is to re- 
port again after three years, it is very desirable 
that in the meantime all questions of nomen- 
clature should receive careful attention. The 
paper contains a valuable list of definitions of 
terms employed in the discussion, a review of 
the author’s work on nomenclature, full dis- 
cussions on the reports of the American and 
German committees and extensive comparative 
tables of terms of brain anatomy, together with 
a bibliography. 


AMERICAN GEOLOGIST, FEBRUARY. 
A TRIBUTE to Professor Ch. Fred. Hartt, By 
Frederic W. Simonds. 
Dr. F. W. Sardeson continues his correla- 
tion studies on the Galena and Maquoketa 


FEBRUARY 26, 1897.] 


series. In this paper he discusses the species 
commonly known as Orthis testudinaria, and con- 
eludes that several separate forms are gener- 
ally comprised in it and that the original species 
has no typical American representative. 

Professor Jules Marcou finishes his review of 
‘Rules and Misrules in Stratigraphic Classifi- 
cation.’ Especial application is made to vari- 
ous members of the Orodovician, Mesozoic, 
Tertiary and Quaternary. In a postscriptum 
the three official geological maps of the State of 
New York are compared in some detail. 

The extreme rapidity of weathering and 
stream erosion in the artic latitudes is described 
by Professor R. S. Tarr. The,abundant lichen 
flora, the air and water and the great varia- 
tions of temperature are the active agents. 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 


NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, FEBRUARY 
1, 1897. 


SECTION OF ASTRONOMY AND PHYSICS. 


THE first paper was one postponed from last 
month by H. Jacoby, ‘On two Trailplates of 
Circumpolar Stars, made by Anders Donner at 
the Helsingfors Observatory.’ 

It was explained that these photographic 
negatives of circumpolar stars were taken with 
the telescope stationary, and hence that each 
star left a trail upon the plate, which, after 
necessary corrections, would be an arc of a circle 
around the true north pole of the heavens. The 
exposure, which was for a few moments at 
intervals of a half hour, extending over 14 
hours, thus gave a series of short arcs extending 
over a little more than a semicircle. This 
method, if no unforeseen difficulties appear, 
should give the position of the pole to within a 
few hundredths of a second of are and a sys- 
tem of right ascensions differing from the 
truth by a uniform correction. 

The paper was discussed by R. S. Woodward 
and others. 

Mr. P. H. Dudley then presented a paper 
under the following title: ‘Investigations of 
Undulations in railway tracks by his track 
indicator, and the reduction of two-thirds of 
the amount in the last fifteen years, by the use 
of his stiff-rail sections.’ 


SCIENCE. 


309 


Mr. Dudley pointed out the causes and char- 
acter of the inequalities in railroad rails, and 
described his very perfect car for obtaining a 
complete record of the condition of the track 
while travelling at 20 to 25 miles per hour. 
Among other records given is the summation of 
the inequalities of the rail per mile. A dozen 
years ago this total unevenness amounted to six 
or seven feet even on the better roads; now as 
a result of the records of the car, and of new 
designs and methods of manufacture of rails, 
the total has been reduced to 18 to 20 inches. 
It was shown that this remnant was due to 
dents in the rails and could not be helped by 
work on the road bed, but must be reduced by 
further improvements in the manufacture of the 
rails. 

Sections of rails and indicator records were 
exhibited, and lantern slides shown to illus- 
trate the above improvements on the New York 
Central and Boston and Albany system. A 
great proportion of the gain is due to the im- 
provement in Mr. Dudley’s improved rail sec- 
tions, which give a maximum of rigidity and 
wear, with a minimum of weight. 

R. S. Woodward pointed out the extreme 
importance of many of the problems upon 
which Mr. Dudley is working, and hoped that 
the author’s idea of a rail-rolling machine, 
which would turn out a 60-ft. rail straight and 
cold, would soon be put into operation. W. Hal- 
lock remarked upon the advantages to science 
which were sure to come from the author’s in- 
vestigation of many physical questions which 
cannot be studied in a laboratory and need a 
railroad to experiment with. 

J. J. Stevenson called attention to what the 
community at large owes to Mr. Dudley’s im- 
provements. It means heavier engines, heavier 
cars, longer trains, greater speed, reduced freight 
and passenger rates, all of which greatly con- 
tribute to the general welfare and the advance 
of civilization. 

H. S. Curtis presented a paper on ‘The ad- 
vantages of long-focus Lenses in Landscape 
Photography.’ After referring to the unsatis- 
factory results of photographing landscapes 
with ordinary lenses, owing to false perspective 
and lack of detail, he showed how this was 
remedied by lenses of longer focus. A telescopic 


360 


combination of 40-inch focal length was used by 
reversing the lens and putting the flint and 
crown about 1 mm. apart. A number of views 
were shown to illustrate the advantages of such 
lenses. 

Several pictures were taken with an ordinary 
spectacle lens, 34-inch focus, stopped to about 
4-inch diameter, which were very good indeed 
and scarcely distinguishable from those taken 
with the telescopic lens or a telephotic com- 
bination. Such a lens can be bought for ten 
cents. 

J. F. Kemp spoke of the comparative useless- 
ness of ordinary photographs in the study of 
mountain geology, and believed that such a 
simple camera would be of great value in field 
work. The paper was discussed by others. 

Wm. HALLOcK, 
Secretary of Section. 


NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—SECTION OF 
GEOLOGY, FEBRUARY 15, 1897. 

THE first paper of the evening was by Mr. F. 
C. Nicholas, and was entitled ‘Explorations in 
in the Gold Fields of Western Colombia.’ Mr. 
Nicholas described the curious placers in western 
Colombia, which, while extremely rich in lim- 
ited portions, are of very low grade when con- 
sidered as extended propositions. The gold 
gravels occur along the western base of the 
Andes Mountains, and extend from the Gulf 
of Darien southward, up the Atrato River, to 
Quibdo. They are also found to the southward 
of the San Juan River and are in the form of 
terraces similar to the terraces of the Atlantic 
States. After the formation of the auriferous 
gravels the speaker supported the view that 
igneous intrusions and upheavels had cut 
them off from their parent hills in the interior 
and had recognized the drainage, so that 
the streams do not now head in auriferous 
rocks. The surface geology indicated that the 
Gulf of Darien formerly extended a long dis- 
tance up the valley of the Atrato. Quite de- 
tailed descriptions of the gravels and of the 
character of the terraces were given in the 
paper. Mr. Nicholas described a route by 
which a man could sail in a canoe from the At- 
lantic to the Pacific in the wet season by going 
up the Atrato River to the Quito River, thence 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Voz. V. No. 113. 


to the divide, which is in a series of swamps, 
thence into the San Pablo River and on down 
the San Juan to the Pacific. 

The second paper of the evening was by 
Professor R. E. Dodge, entitled ‘ Recent Work 
in Physiography.’ 

Professor Dodge gave an outline of De Lap- 
parent’s ‘Lecons en Geographie Physique,’ of Sir 
John Lubbock’s ‘Scenery of Switzerland,’ and 
of two recent papers, one by M. R. Campbell, 
entitled ‘Drainage Modifications and their In- 
terpretation,’ and the other by C. F. Marbutt, 
‘On the Physical Features of Missouri.’ 

The last paper of the evening was by A. A. 
Julien, on the’‘Sculpture and Sorting of 
Sands.’ The speaker, by means of lantern 
slides, illustrated various varieties of sand and 
their chief methods of origin and their compo- 
sition. After citing the schemes for the classi- 
fication of sands advanced by Zirkel and Dau- 
brée he gave one of his own which was more 
elaborate and was partly based on the method 
of origin and partly on the physical characters. 

J. F. Kemp, 
Secretary. 


AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY—NEW YORK 
SECTION. 


THE meeting was held at the College of the 
City of New York on Friday, February 5th, at 
8:30 p. m., Dr. Wm. McMurtrie presiding, and 
about fifty members present. 

The first hour was occupied with the ‘ Dis- 
cussion of the Relations of the Section with 
the Scientific Alliance.’ 

Professor Breneman opened the discussion. 
Dr. Wiley described the work done by the 
Affiliated Societies of Washington, the advan- 
tages resulting from cooperation and more 
which might result from a little additional 
effort. Hestated that, with possibly one excep- 
tion, the Washington Societies were all strictly 
professional. 

Professors Sabin, Doremus and others spoke 
strongly in favor of the Alliance; others 
thought the promised advantages had not ma- 
terialized and that the returns were not pro- 
portionate to the annual subscription. 

Dr. H. W. Wiley read a paper on the ‘ Value 
of Foods and the Methods of Ascertaining it,’ 


FEBRUARY 26, 1897. ] 


pointing out the disparity, at least until very 
recently, in the relative amounts of investiga- 
tion and interest bestowed upon ‘man foods’ 
and animal foods. He described the classes of 
foods rated according to their fuel values, di- 
gestibility, etc., and noted the divergence be- 
tween price and actual food value of many 
articles, some of them not luxuries. 

The papers announced on ‘ Volumetric Esti- 
mation of Lead,’ by J. H. Wainwright, and 
“Electrolytic Production of Alkali Nitrites,’ by 
Wm. M. Grosvenor, were held over until next 
meeting. 

DURAND WOODMAN, 
Secretary. 


GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON, 58TH 
MEETING, JANUARY 9, 1897. 

Mr. WHITMAN Cross read a paper on ‘The 
igneous rocks of the Leucite Hills and Pilot 
Butte, Wyo.,’ in which he stated that the 
rocks of the Leucite Hills occur as surface 
flows and in volcanic necks or plugs. The 
leucite rock described by Zirkel, 20 years ago, 
is the least abundant type in the region, the 
other varieties containing more or less pot- 
ash feldspar, as pointed out by Kemp in his 
recent communication to the Geological Society 
of America. Chemical analyses of various rock 
types were submitted, together with analyses of 
the pyroxene and mica. 

The rock of Pilot Butte, an isolated point 
near the Leucite Hills, was also described and 
its chemical composition shown by an analysis. 
This rock is closely related to the leucite rocks, 
although containing much glass. 

In a large cavity of the leucite rock was 
found a quantity of potash nitre, and on a pro- 
tected face of the Boar’s Tusk, a volcanic plug, 
was observed a white coating of soda nitre. 
The origin of these nitrates, whose mode of oc- 
currence is so unusual, is not explained by any 
observations made. 

This communication will soon be published 
in some scientific serial. 

Mr. W. Lindgren read a paper on ‘ The Gran- 
itic Rocks of the Sierra Nevada,’ in which he 
called attention to the large areas of intrusive 
granitic rocks occurring along the Pacific coast 
and to the fact that these intrusives are of com- 


SCIENCE. 


361 


paratively recent date, probably early Creta- 
ceous. A map of the distribution of the 
various kinds of granitic rocks in the northern 
part of the Sierra Nevada was exhibited. It 
was shown that, while some true granite exists, 
the largest mass is made up of grano-diorite, a 
rock intermediate between granite and diorite 
or, more accurately, intermediate between a 
quartz-mica-diorite and a quartz-monzonite, re- 
cently defined by Brogger. 
W. F. Morse zt. 
U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 


BOSTON SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 


A GENERAL meeting was held January 6th, 
eighty persons present. 

Mr. A. W. Grabau read a paper on the sand- 
plains of Truro, Wellfleet and Eastham. (For 
an abstract see above p. 344.) 

Professor N. S. Shaler, in commenting upon 
Mr. Grabau’s paper, said that his observations 
agreed with those of Mr. Grabau as to the 
origin of the sand plains. The slopes are due 
to a complexity of causes and frequently can- 
not be discriminated. The hypothesis of fresh- 
water lakes and the ponding of streams was 
rejected as inadequate. Professor Shaler said 
that the agency of ants in the formation of 
these sand plains was very great, and should 
be considered in relation to any theory account- 
ing for them. 

Mr. J. B. Woodworth spoke of the difficulty 
of making out the internal structure of sand 
plains; he had observed that the gravels near 
the head were coarser than those from other 
parts. Mr. Woodworth compared the sand 
plains of the Cape region as described by Mr. 
Grabau with those he had studied in the Narra- 
gansett Bay district. The hypothesis of fresh- 
water lakes applies equally to the Narragansett 
Bay district. The kettle holes indicate masses 
of ice after the melting of the ice sheet. 

Prof. W. M. Davis claimed that the slopes 
could be discriminated, but that they should not 
be solely relied upon. 

Professor Shaler contended that the slope de- 
pended upon the material, and that the original 
angle is unreliable until the material is known. 
The difference of height of sea level should be 


362 


considered, and the origination of the deltas in 
the sea was advocated. 

Mr. Grabau replied briefly to some of the 
points raised in the discussion and emphasized 
the differences between erosion slopes and con- 
struction slopes ; the pointing of the slopes was 
stated ; the material on the northern side of the 
sand plains was perhaps coarser. 

Professor W. M. Davis defined briefly and 
with graphic illustrations coastal plains, and 
gave the outline for a geographic classification 
of the same. He advocated the use of distinct- 
ive descriptive names, and stated that the in- 
troduction of such terms as doab and cuesta 
would be of advantage to geographic science. 

Professor Shaler claimed that many of the 
terms could be expressed by words in our own 
language, and that the introduction of words 
from foreign sources was to be deprecated. 

SAMUEL HENSHAW, 
Secretary. 


THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE OF ST. LOUIS. 


AT the meeting of the Academy of Science of 
St. Louis on the evening of February 1, 1897, 
Professor L. H. Pammel read a paper embody- 
ing ecological notes on some Colorado plants, 
observing that botanists who have studied the 
Rocky Mountain flora have frequently com- 
mented on the interest attached to the plants 
from an ecological standpoint, but most per- 
plexing to the systematist. It is not strange 
that this should be the case, since there are 
great differences in altitude and soil, and the 
relative humidity of the air varies greatly. 
This is a most prominent factor in the develop- 
ment of plant life. A cursory glance at the 
plains flora of eastern Colorado shows that there 
are representatives of a flora common from 
Texas to British America and east to Indiana. 
We should not for a moment suppose that the 
species are identical in structure, since the con- 
ditions under which they occur are so differ- 
ent. Attention was called to the great abun- 
dance of plants disseminated by the wind, as 
Cycloloma, Salsola, Solanum rostratwm, Pop- 
ulus, Cercocarpus, ‘Fire-weeds’ (Epilobium 
spicatum and Arnica cordifolia), Hordeum ju- 
batum, Elymus sitanion, ete. Plant migration 
may be studied to better advantage in the irri- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No, 113. 


gated districts of the West than elsewhere, 
partly because the water carries many seeds 
and fruits in a mechanical way, and partly be- 
cause the soil is very favorable for the develop- 
ment of plants. Instances were cited where 
several foreign weeds are becoming abundant, 
as Tragopogon porrifolius and Lactuca Scariola. 
The latter, known as an introduced plant for 
more than a quarter of a century, is common at 
an altitude of 7,500 feet in Clear Creek Caton. 
Once having become acclimated, it is easy to 
see how Prickly Lettuce is widely disseminated. 

Collectors appreciate the great importance of 
giving more attention to conditions under 
which plants thrive, such as phases of develop- 
ment, soil, climate and altitudinal distribution. 
Structures of plants are produced to meet cer- 
tain conditions. Under extreme conditions 
protective devices are more pronounced. In 
discussing some of the plants, Warming’s 
classification into Hydrophytes, Xerophytes, 
Halophytes and Mesophytes was adopted. 
The Mesophytes of eastern lowa were compared 
with some of the Xerophytes of western Iowa, 
such as Yucca angustifolia, Mentzelia ornata, 
Liatris punctata, etc. These increase in abun- 
dance in western Nebraska, and attain a maxi- 
mum development in northern Colorado. In 
the foot-hills and mountains the Mesophytes 
constitute a large class, although the Xero- 
phytes are common in dry, open, sunny places. 
The photosynthetic system is reduced to guard 
against excessive transpiration which would 
otherwise take place at high altitudes. The 
thick rootstock of alpine plants in dry open 
places isan admirable protection against drouth 
and cold. In canons where snow remains on 
the ground plants do not need this protection. 
Halophytes are not numerous in species and 
genera. Hydrophytes are abundant at higher 
altitudes, where they occur in marshes and 
along streams. 

At the meeting of the Academy of Science, 
of St. Louis, on the evening of February 15, 
1897, Professor J. H. Kinealy presented a pre- 
liminary discussion of the Poley air-lift pump, 
a device for pumping water from artesian wells 
by injecting into the pump tube, at a consider- 
able depth below the surface of the water, 
bubbles of air from an air compressor. 


FEBRUARY 26, 1897. ] 


Mr. Trelease exhibited two hair ballsremoved 
from the stomach of a bull in Mexico, and 
showed that they were composed of the pointed 
barbed hairs of some species of prickly pear 
upon which the animal had unquestionably 
fed. Attention was called to similar balls from 
the stomachs of horses, which had been de- 
scribed in 1896 by Mr. Coville, of the United 
States Department of Agriculture. 

Wm. TRELEASE, 
Recording Secretary. 


THE TEXAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 


At the regular meeting of the Texas Academy 
of Science, held in the chemical lecture room 
of the University of Texas, at Austin, on Fri- 
day, February 5, 1897, Lieutenant W. V. Jud- 
son, U. 8. A., presented a paper on ‘The Im- 
provement of Galveston Harbor.’ 

This important communication, by one of the 
engineers in charge, dealt with the following 
topics: (1) Introduction, The Problem in the 
Case. (2) Physical Characteristics, etc. (8) 
Early Operations. (4) Project of 1880 and Work 
there under. (5) Project of 1886. (6) Opera- 
tions 1886-1891. (7) Continuous Contract Sys- 
tem. (8) Contract with O’Conner, Laing and 
Smoot. (9) Dredging. (10) Physical Results. 

In stating the problem, the speaker, after de- 
fining natural harbors, briefly discussed ‘bars,’ 
which he grouped into the following classes: 
(1) Drift Bars on. seaward side of passes into 
areas embayed by sandy islands and peninsulas. 
(2) Drift Bars at the mouths of rivers emptying 
into non-tidal seas. (8) Drift Bars emptying 
into tidal seas. (4) Sediment Bars at the 
mouths of delta-building rivers. The Galves- 
ton Bars were assigned to class 1. The prin- 
ciples governing harbor improvements were 
next stated. Under Physical Characteristics, 
Galveston Bay was described as an area of 
water, consisting of 490 square miles, bounded 
by the main land of Texas, Bolivar Peninsula 
and Galveston Island. Two passes connect it 
with the Gulf of Mexico: (1) San Louis, with a 
cross-section of 20,000 square feet; (2) The 
Principal Pass between Galveston Island and 
Bolivar Point. Width of the gorge, 8,200 feet; 
depth, 0-50 feet. For purposes of deep draught 


SCIENCE. 


363 


navigation the first is unimportant, consequently 
the improvements have been confined to the 
latter. To give an adequate idea of this work, 
it may be here stated that in 1867 there were 
9} feet of water on the inner bar of this pass and 
11 feet on the outer. On January Ist, of the 
present year, there were 25 feet of water at low 
tide on both bars. 

The first attempt to improve Galveston har- 
bor began with the congressional appropriation 
of 1870. For ten or fifteen years thereafter 
work was intermittently carried on as Congress 
made appropriations. The present jetty system, 
which has opened Galveston as a deep-water 
port, was based on the ‘ Project of the Board of 
1886,’ which consisted of Generals J. C. Duane, 
Henry L. Abbot and Cyrus B. Comstock. 

The following paragraph taken from Lieu- 
tenant Judson’s paper will give the reader some 
conception of the magnitude of this, now vir- 
tually completed, undertaking: ‘‘To build the 
Galveston jetties there has beer spent between 
July, 1887, and January 1, 1897, $6,029,283.84. 
There has been incorporated in the jetties 88,355 
cars of clay and rock aggregating 17,544.31 
cubic yards of clay and 1,800,672.90 tons of 
granite and sandstone. To use a popular form 
of illustration, if loaded on cars, the material 
placed in the jetties since 1886 would form a 
train reaching from New York City to Cleve- 
land, Ohio, and if this material were piled uni- 
formly over an acre of ground it would be 1,050 
feet above its base. I can recall no other sin- 
gle instance of work constructed by the hand of 
man that embodies within itself such a mass of 
material transported such a distance.’? The 
haul for the sandstone was 130-206 miles; for 
the granite 294 miles. 

Mr. T. U. Taylor, professor of engineering 
in the University ; Mr. Charles Corner, Engineer 
of the Texas Railroad Commission ; President 
Winston and others took part in the interesting 
discussion that followed. 

FREDERIC W. SIMONDS. 


THE GEOLOGICAL CLUB OF THE UNIVERSITY OF 
MINNESOTA. 

Atv the regular meeting on January 23d two 

topics were presented by Mr. Charles P. Berkey. 

The first was an announcement of the oc 


364 


currence of native copper and other copper 
minerals in the hematite ore of the Montana 
Mine, Soudan, Minnesota. The copper occurs 
in a thin seam and, in smaller amount, in cavi- 
ties of the fractured ore. The original mineral 
of the group is native copper. This has been 
altered extensively to cuprite, malachite and, 
in more limited quantity, azurite. These 
minerals are found penetrating the ore for a 
distance of five or six feet below the seam and 
horizontally for a distance of eighty feet. 
None of the secondary minerals occur above the 
native copper. All the minerals are exception- 
ally pure. Some specimens of the copper show 
former crystals, the faces of which are now 
heavily coated with secondary products. 

Attention was called to the very unusual as- 
sociation of these minerals. So far as the 
writer is aware, no similar occurrence has been 
recorded from the iron mines of the United 
States. 

The second topic included several charts il- 
lustrating the glacial geology in the vicinity of 
Taylor’s Falls, Minnesota. At this place the 
line of separation between the so-called eastern 
and western drift is very sharply defined. The 
course of the St. Croix river seems to be de- 
termined by the mutual adjustments of the 
eastern and western ice lobes. The moraine 
made up of typical eastern drift forms a close 
border along the east bank of the river for 
several miles, while typical modified western 
drift borders the west bank and, in at least one 
point, crosses the river. The combined effect 
is to force the river over the southwestern 
extension of the copper-bearing diabase of 
Keweenawan age exposed in this vicinity. It 
was further shown that the eastern drift occurs 
both below and above the western, arguing a 
readvance of the eastern lobe of ice upon the 
area of the receding western sheet. It was 
also shown that partially stratified early drift 
occupies a position so far below the average 
elevation of the sandstone surface in the pres- 
ent river gorge that it seems to indicate the 
location of a pre-glacial stream course at this 
place. Glacial action simply deepened this 
course and made it more permanent by direct- 
ing through it a great glacial river. It was fur- 
ther pointed out that the original topography 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 113. 


of the country was such that any flow of ice 
from the north or northeast would concentrate 
exceptional eroding force in the gorge of the 
St. Croix in the vicinity of the present falls. 


JANUARY 30TH, 1897. 

AT this meeting Mr. George W. Becker re- 
viewed some of the points in the geology of 
northern Georgia. Facts derived from personal 
observation upon a recent visit to that locality 
were discussed at some length. These related 
chiefly to the methods employed in gold min- 
ing, to the value and extent of the asbestos 
deposits of Yhona Mountain, and the occur- 
rence of corundum in northern Georgia. 

CHARLES P. BERKEY, 


Secretary. 
NEW BOOKS. 
Zeit-und Streitfragen der Biologie. OSCAR HERT- 
Wwic. Jena, Gustav Fischer. 1897. Heft 


II. Pp. iv+277. 

Beitrage zur Kenntnis der Septalnectarien. J. 
SCHELWIND THis. Jena, Gustay Fischer. 
1897. Pp. 87 with 12 plates. 15 M. 

Beitrige zur Lehre von der Fortpflanzung der 
Gewichse. M. Mosius. Jena, Gustav Fischer. 
1897. Pp. viii--212. 4.50 M. 

Kainogenesis als Ausdruck differenter phylogene- 
tischer Energien. ERNST MEHNERT. Jena, 
Gustav Fischer. 1897. Pp. 165 with 3 
plates. 

Angewandte Elektrochemie. FRANZ PETERS. 
Vienna, A. Hartleben. 1897. Pp. 338. 3 M. 

The Forcing Book. L. H. BatLEY. New York, 
The Macmillan Company. 1897. Pp. xiii+- 
266. $1.00. 

Analysis of the Sensations. ERNST MACH, trans- 
lated by C. M. WituiAms. Chicago, Open 
Court Publishing Company. 1897. Pp. viii+- 
208. $1.25. 

Eclairage. J. LEFEVRE. 
lars et fils, Masson et cie. 1897. 


Paris, Gauthier Vil- 

Pp. 180. 

Paris, 
Pp. 


Les succédanés du chiffon en papeterie. 
Gauthier Villars et fils, Masson et cie. 
178. 

Glaciers of North America. I. C. RUSSELL. Bos- 
ton, Ginn & Co. 1897. Pp. x+210. 


SCIENCE 


NEw SERIES. SINGLE Coprgs, 15 cts. 
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EKDEMITE, bright yellow on red wulfenite, Arizona, 50c. 


NATIVE ARSENIC, Japan, }4 to 34-inch crsytallized balls, 
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Collections for Schools. 


ALPHA COLLECTION, twenty-five specimens in trays, con- 
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page guide book (XIII., Guide for Science Teaching, Bos- 
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CABINET COLLECTIONS, 100 specimens, small size, $5.00. 
100 specimens, large size, $10.00. These specimens are 
each accompanied by a label giving name, system of 
crystallization, chemical formula, and locality, and make 
a good working collection for a student. 


EXCELSIOR COLLECTION for high schools and colleges. 
200 specimens, nicely mounted on wooden blocks, with 
beveled fronts for receiving labels. Price, packed, 
$100.00. School Bulletin justout. 


Loose Crystals. 


Small packages of free crystals for crystallographic study 
may be sent for inspection by mail at small cost. Ap- 
proyal boxes of cabinet specimens by express or freight. 


ROY HOPPING, 
MINERAL DEALER, 


504-506 Liberty Building 
Liberty and Greenwich Sts. fp NEW YORK. 


For 12 Cents 

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cabinet size, of Sioux Indian Chief, SITTING 
BULL, with his Signature. Haye 200 sub- 

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First-class work. Cabinet Size for 10 centseach. Some sent 
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want others. Indian Costume, Ornaments and Weapons. 
15,000 Flint Stone Ancient Indian Relics. 100,000 Mineral 
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HOUGH’S “AMERICAN WOODS” 


A publication illustrated by actwal specimens. 


WOODS FOR THE STEREOPTICON 


Enabling you to show upon the screen characteristic 
structures projected from nature itself. 


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Sections 1-1200 in. thick showing three distinct views of 
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From Nature, photographs and stereopticon views. 


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If you are interested in wood or trees in any way send for 
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Address R. B. HOUGH, Lowville, N. Y. 


SCIENCE 


EDITORIAL CoMMITTEE: S. NEwcomB, Mathematics; R. S. WooDWARD, Mechanics; E. C. PICKERING 
Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THURSTON, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry; 
J. Lt ContE, Geology; W. M. DAvis, Physiography; O. C. MARsH, Paleontology; W. K. 
Brooks, C. HART MERRIAM, Zoology; S. H. ScuDDER, Entomology; N. L. BRITTON, 
Botany; HenRy F. OsBorn, General Biology; H. P. Bowpircu, Physiology ; 
J. S. Binuines, Hygiene ; J. MCKEEN CATTELL, Psychology ; 
DANIEL G. BRINTON, J. W. POWELL, Anthropology. 


Fripay, Marca 5, 1897. 


CONTENTS: 

Goode Memorial Meeting: CYRUS ADLER............ 365 
George Brown Goode: S. P. LANGLEY............... 369 
Goode as a Naturalist: HENRY F. OSBORN......... 373 
The National University : CHARLES W. DABNEY, JR.378 
The Coast and Geodetic Survey: J...c.sccesceeeceeseeeeee 384 
The American Morphological Society : G. H. 

J PUTRI Ry op soncnn sap sp bonnsombanboosaneScocodadeGsaen6co5 30000 388 


Zoological Notes :— 
The Florida Monster: A. E. VERRILL. A New 
Subgeneric Name for the Water Hares (hydrolagus 
GRAY): EDGAR A. MEARNG...........2.0.ceeeeeees 392 

Current Notes on Anthropology :— 

Woman in China; Death Masks in Europe and 
America; Ontario Archzological Report: D. G. 
TSIRIOS TOW conpeensnensapasnoson poosoroqoscos¢HoconoDrinoNODIGGoC 393 

Notes on Inorganic Chemistry : 


Scientific Notes and News :— 
Vertebrates from the Kansas Permian : 


S. W. WIL- 
LISTON. A New Botanical Laboratory in the 
American Tropics: D. T. MACDouGAL. An Alloy 
composed of Two-thirds Aluminum and One-third 


UCT Mm GENET UL sawcieancriere seemaecae caseen ccleeteeroceteneee 395 
University and Educational News. ........0-.csseceseesees 399 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 
An Ambitious ‘ Paradoxer’: S. NEwcomsB. For- 
mer Extension of Greenland Glaciers: T. C. 
CHAMBERLIN. Two Extraordinary British Pat- 
ents: H.CARRINGTON BOLTON. Compliment or 
Plagiarism: ARTHUR LEFEVRE. Reduced Rates 
of Postage on Specimens of Natural History in the 
International Mails—An Appeal: H. A. Prts- 
BRY, LEWIS WOOLMAN, PHILIP P. CALVERT. 
The Lavoisier Monument: EDGAR F. SMITH.....400 

Scientific Literature :-— 
List of the Vertebrated Animals in the Garden of 
the Zoological Society of London: FRANK BAKER. 


Hirsch on Genius and Degeneration: CHARLES 

ap AUN AUareoneenneamesonccetoen srisiscescleseatecaceepeneaeenes 404 
Scientific Journals :— 

American Journal of Science ........1.00eceeer-seeeeee 406 


Societies and Academies :— 
The Philosophical Society of Washington: BER- 
NARD R. GREEN. Science Club of the University 
of Wisconsin: WM. S. MARSHALL.............0006 408 
UN CRB GOK Stor ceencenteccecsccecassucccercaccntectedconsec sete: 408 


GOODE MEMORIAL MEETING. 


On Saturday evening, February 13, 1897, 
a memorial meeting was held in the lec- 
ture room of the United States National 
Museum at Washington, to commemorate 
the life and services of the late George 
Brown Goode. Over four hundred persons 
were assembled, representing the seven 
scientific societies and the patriotic and 
historical societies of Washington, the 
American Philosophical Society and the 
American Society of Naturalists. 

The meeting was presided over by the 
Honorable Gardiner G. Hubbard, President 
of the Joint Commission, who opened the 
exercises with some brief remarks. He 
explained that the day was chosen be- 
cause if was Dr. Goode’s natal day, he hav- 
ing been born on the 13th of February, 
1851. ‘‘ Never,’ said Mr. Hubbard, ‘‘ was 
there a truer, a more intelligent counsellor, 
amore sympathetic friend, a more ready 
helper, a more kindly nature.”’ 


“None know him but to love him, 
None named him but to praise.’’ 


“His mind was versatile, his interests 
widespread, his tastes refined, his judg- 
ment correct. He was a true lover of 
nature, of art, of beauty everywhere.” 
“Into the work of the Museum he threw 
his heart and life.”” ‘“‘ He was urged last 
summer to go to the Seal Islands, but he 
was reluctant to leave his work. He re- 


366 


mained to die at his post.” ‘He was a 
friend whom I loved and whom I miss from 
my daily life.” 

Dr. S. P. Langley, Secretary of the 
Smithsonian Institution, then delivered an 
address in which he spoke of Dr. Goode’s 
moral qualities, his success as an adminis- 
trator, his love of nature and of men, his 
fine literary and esthetic instincts. The 
address is given in full in this number of 
SCIENCE. 

He was followed by Postmaster-General 
Wm. L. Wilson, the subject of whose ad- 
dress was ‘Goode as a Historian and Citi- 
zen.’ In the course of his remarks Mr. 
Wilson said : 

“Tt has been most appropriately assigned 
to those who were privileged to see more of 
Doctor Goode than myself, in his domestic 
life and in daily official intercourse, to 
speak of his virtues and his most charming 
and lofty traits as a man; and to speak of 
him in his chosen field of science, must be 
assigned to those who do not, like myself, 
stand outside of the pale of scientific at- 
tainment. The somewhat humbler part is 
mine, to speak of Doctor Goode in those re- 
lations in life in which he was probably less 
known and less thought of than as a man of 
science, or in other fields of his distin- 
guished attainment. 

‘Doctor Goode was honored in his own 
country, and in other countries, as an emi- 
nent man of science, and deservedly so 
honored; and his lasting fame must rest 
upon his solid and substantial contributions 
to science and the advancement of human 
knowledge ; upon his eminent success as an 
administrator of scientific organizations, 
and in that work which all his life shows to 
have been most congenial to him—the 
bringing of science down to the interest and 
instruction of the common people. 

“He was a richly endowed man: first, 
with that capacity and that resistless bent 
toward the work in which he attained his 


SCLENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 114. 


his great distinction, that made it a peren- 
nial delight to him; but he was scarcely 
less richly endowed in his more unpretend- 
ing and large human sympathies, and it was 
this latter endowment that distinguished 
him as a citizen and as a historian. 

“As a citizen he was full of patriotic, 
American enthusiasm. He understood, as 
all must understand who look with serious- 
ness upon the great problems that confront 
a free people and who measure the difficul- 
ties of those problems—he understood that 
at least one preparation for the discharge of 
the duties of American citizenship was the 
general education of the people; and so he 
advocated, as far as possible, bringing down 
to the reach of all the people, not only the 
opportunities, but the attractions and the 
incitements to intellectual living. 

“Doctor Goode, with the quick and warm 
sympathies of the man and of the historian, 
seems to have felt that he could do no 
greater service to the people of his day and 
generation and to his country, than in the 
most attractive and concrete way, if I may 
so express it, to lead the young men of this 
country to a study of the history of the 
past—to the deeds and the writings of the 
great men to whom we owe the foundation 
and the perpetuation of our institutions. 

“Perhaps no family in this country has 
had so perfect a book, so complete a study 
of all its branches as Doctor Goode gave to 
the family whose name he bore, in that 
book entitled ‘ Virginia Cousins.’ And it 
is especially gratifying to me to know that 
Virginia history, so much neglected, was 
perhaps the favorite field of Doctor Goode’s 
study and investigation. He was a student 
of the writings of Washington and gath- 
ered all the materials he could find about 
that great Virginian. He was a student of 
the writings of Jefferson ; he was a student 
of the lives of other distinguished men of 
that old Commonwealth, and I am told that 
he had in contemplation the publication of 


Marcu 5, 1897. ] 


a book to be called ‘ Virginia Worthies,’ in 
which doubtless he would try to give the 
proper standing to that minor and second 
class of Virginia great men of whom the 
country at large knows so much less to-day 
than it ought to know. 

“ But Dr. Goode was not only an his- 
torian in this respect and in this peculiar 
way. He was also an historian of science, 
and he seems here likewise to have followed 
the same general idea of grouping scientific 
history—the history of scientific progress— 
around the particular man and individuals 
connected with that progress. 

“Tam told that in certain lectures, partly 
published and partly as yet unpublished, he 
has given us the most interesting and in- 
structive history yet produced of the prog- 
ress of science in the United States ;- so 
that it is not attributing to Dr. Goode a 
novel and undeserved character to speak of 
him as an historian. Had his life been 
spared, in his peculiar way, in his own per- 
sonal and attractive manner, he would 
doubtless have made most substantial con- 
tributions to the study of American history; 
and I cannot doubt, as I have already said, 
that in doing this he was impelled by the 
patriotic idea that he was helping to build 
up a strong, American, intelligent citizen- 
ship in the country he loved so well.” 

Pofessor Henry F. Osborn then spoke of 
‘Goode as a Naturalist,’ reviewing his nu- 
merous contributions to the study of natural 
history and touching upon his fine charac- 
ter, his distinguished position as a museum 
administrator, and the elements which made 
him a leader of men and a controlling power 
in the natural history and museum work of 
the country. Professor Osborn’s address 
appears in full in this issue of ScrENCcE. 

The final address was by Professor Wil- 
liam H. Dall, of the United States National 
Museum, on ‘ Goode’s Activities in Relation 
to American Science.’ Professor Dall traced 
the origin of government scientific institu- 


SCIENCE. 367 


tions. These he showed were not ‘ created ’ 

by Congressional fiat, but were due in reality 
to the unselfish devotion of master minds. 
‘A great institution,” he said, ‘‘is not cre- 
ated; it is built up. With the mortar of its 
foundations is mixed the blood and sweat of 
its builders. Something of the very soul of 
its architect springs with its pinnacles to- 
wards the heavens.”’ He then described the- 
multitudinous operation of the Museum ; its 
cooperation with museums and institutions 

of learning in this and other lands and the 

wide knowledge, infinite tact and unweary- 
ing devotion which Dr. Goode displayed in 
directing all of these operations and rela- 
tions to a useful end. ‘‘ What has been 
said,’ remarked Professor Dall in conclu- 
sion, ‘‘I trust, is enough to show that no 
ordinary man could have done this work 
(and much else), and yet have left behind 
him no antagonisms, no memories of fail- 
ure, no hint of insufficiency associated 
with hisname. He is remembered as one 
never weary of well doing; who reached 
the heights, though ever aiming higher; 

whose example stimulated and whose his- 
tory will prove a lasting inspiration.” 

Professor Dall then read from among a 
large number of letters received since the 
death of Mr. Goode, appreciating his great 
service and offering consolation, the follow- 
ing extracts : 

Professor Henry Giglioli, of Florence, in 
writing to Mr. True, October 3, 1896, spoke 
of Mr. Goode as one of the men he loved 
and esteemed most. ‘TI feel so crushed,” 
he says, ‘‘ by this terrible blow that I hard- 
ly know what I am writing ;” “he was so 
full of energy and work, it is hard to be- 
lieve that he is now no more. To you all 
at the National Museum the loss must be 
immense, but to many abroad it is a great 
and much felt sorrow. To Science in 
America, not alone, but in the civilized 
world, his loss is indeed irreparable and 
will be felt for years.’’ 


368 


M. Henry de Varigny, of Paris, writes 
to Secretary Langley: ‘‘I have received 
the card which notifies me of the sad news 
of the death of that excellent and most dis- 
tinguished man, G. Brown Goode. I was 
already acquainted with the fact, and had 
published a few lines of obituary notice in 
the Revue Scientifique, but I have not ade- 
quately expressed the feeling of true sorrow 
I experience when I remember that he is no 
more, and that his untiring activity and 
energetic kindness have ceased to be. He 
was very kind and obliging to me, and I 
shall keep a warm remembrance of him. 
Your loss is a great one.”’ 

William Wirt Henry, descendant of Pat- 
rick Henry, wrote to Mr. Hubbard: “It is 
a source of great satisfaction to me that I 
knew Dr. Goode personally and was privil- 
edged to be united with him in his work 
for the patriotic and historical societies with 
which he was connected. No one could 
know him without being impressed with his 
learning and modesty and with the sterling 
qualities of the man. I feel that his death 
is a loss which will be felt in every path in 
which he walked, and will be mourned by 
every votary of science.”’ 

The Hon. John Boyd Thatcher, Mayor of 
Albany, N. Y., wrote to Mr. Hubbard: “My 
personal knowledge of Professor Brown 
Goode began in 1890, when he gave his ad- 
vice and counsel to the World’s Columbian 
Commission in classifying the various ob- 
jects into proper departments for exhibition, 
and more particularly in advising and estab- 
lishing an adequate method of passing 
judgment upon the exhibits. In these mat- 
ters I can testify to his ability and consum- 
mate skill. It was purely voluntary service 
he rendered, and I at once formed, and 
have still maintained, a profound sense of his 
goodness to those who were officially charged 
with work for which he knew we were most 
imperfectly equipped and to whom he gave 
not only suggestions, but detailed and elab- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 114. 


orate and finished plans. It is the glory of 
the modern scientist and scholar that he 
subordinates himself to the accomplishment 
of public work. Our friend never asked to 
be identified personally with the accom- 
plished thing. It was enough for him to 
know that some good was done ‘and not 
that the world should know that it was 
done byhim. The utter absence of selfish- 
ness in any life is worthy of recording in 
brass or in marble or in formulated words.” 

Doctor Mobius, of Berlin, writes January 
26,1897: ‘The unexpected death of Mr. 
George Brown Goode has deeply affected 
me. We were in agreeable communication 
to the advantage of our Museums. We 
have lost in him a distinguished promoter 
of our scientific efforts.” 

Dr. Richard Schone, Director-General of 
the Royal Museums at Berlin, expresses 
‘his sincere regret at the death of this 
worthy scholar’ and extends his sympathy. 

Prof. Pavesi, Director of the Zoological 
Museum of the University of Pavia, offers 
his condolence. A similar message was 
received for the Museum Francisco-Caro- 
linum in Linz. 

Dr. Leon Vaillant, professor of the Mu- 
seum of Natural History at Paris, says that 
‘the ichthyological world has experienced a 
great loss.” 

Dr. H. von Ihering of San Paulo, Brasil, 
speaks of the loss the National Museum suf- 
fered both in administrative and scientific 
interests. 

Dr. Duges, of Guanajuato, Mexico, ex- 
presses his profound regrets. 

General O. B. Wilcox, U. 8S. A., repre- 
senting the Sons of the American Revolu- 
tion of the District of Columbia, then offered 
the following resolutions which were sec- 
onded by Rear-Admiral J. A. Greer, U. S. 
N., representing the Sons of the Revolution, 
and adopted by a rising vote: 


We, the associates and friends of the late George 
Brown Goode, in the Scientific, Patriotic and Histor- 


Marcu 5, 1897. ] 


ical Societies of the City of Washington, being met 
together to commemorate his life and service, do 
recognize: 

That in his death the world has lost a great man of 


true moral worth, unusual breadth of intellect, pro-" 


found human sympathy, unswerving loyality to his 
duty and devotion to his family and his friends. 

That America has been deprived of a most patriotic, 
public spirited and loyal citizen; American Science 
of its first Historian, and American History of an 
original investigator. 

That Universal Science has lost one of its foremost 
Ichthyologists and a man broadly learned in the en- 
tire field of Natural History. 

That the Scientific service of the United States 
government, the Societies to which he belonged, and 
all the institutions in America for the promotion of 
knowledge, have lost in him an ever faithful and 
willing cooperator. 

Resolved, That this minute he communicated to the 
societies of which Dr. Goode was a member and a 
copy be sent to his family, to whom the persons here 
assembled extend their sincere sympathy. 

It is expected that all of these addresses, 
together with a narrative of Doctor Goode’s 
life, an account of his contributions to mu- 
seum administration, a bibliography of his 
writings, and possibly a chapter on his 
work in National and International expo- 
sitions will be fittingly published in a me- 
morial volume, and it is also likely that a 
permanent memorial will be established. 

But there is a memory in the hearts 
of all who knew him which grows more 
fond as the days pass by, mingled with a 
sense of grief and loss, not as yet tempered 
by the months that have elapsed since that 
sorrowful day in September on which Dr. 
Goode went to his reward. 

Cyrus ADLER. 


WASHINGTON, February 22, 1897. 


GEORGE BROWN GOODE* 

Waite I am aware that it is only fitting 
that I should say something here about one 
I knew so well as the late Doctor Goode, I 

* Address at the Goode Memorial Meeting held 


February 13, 1897, by Secretary Langley, of the 
Smithsonian Institution. 


SCIENCE. 


369 


feel the occasion a trying one, for he was so 
dear a friend that my very nearness and 
sense of a special bereavement must be a 
sufficient excuse for asking your indulgence, 
since I cannot speak of him even yet with: 
out pain, and I must say but little. 

Here are some who knew him still longer 
than I, and many who can estimate him 
more justly in all his scientific work, and to 
those who can perform this task so much 
better, I leave it. I willonly try to speak, 
however briefly, from a personal point of 
view, and chiefly of those moral qualities 
in which our friendship grew, and of some 
things apart from his scientific life which 
this near friendship showed me. 

As I first remember him it seems to me, 
looking back in the light of more recent 
knowledge, that it was these moral quali- 
ties which I first appreciated, and if there 
was one which more than another formed 
the basis of his character it was sincerity— 
a sincerity which was the ground of a trust 
and confidence such as could be instinctively 
given even from the first, only to an abso- 
lutely loyal and truthful nature. In him 
duplicity of motive even seemed hardly 
possible, for, though he was in a good sense 
worldly wise, he walked by a single inner 
light, and this made his road clear even 
when he was going over obscure ways, 
and made him often a safer guide than 
such wisdom alone would have done. He 
was, I repeat, a man whom you first 
trusted instinctively, but also in whom 
every added knowledge explained and jus- 
tified this confidence. 

This sincerity, which pervaded the whole 
character, was united with an unselfishness 
so deep-seated that it was not conscious of 
itself, and was, perhaps, not always recog- 
nized by others. It is a subject of regret to 
me, now it is too late, that I seem myself 
to have thus taken it too much as a matter 
of course in the past, at times like one I 
remember, when, as I afterwards learned, 


370 


he was suffering from wretched health, 
which he concealed so successfully while 
devoting himself to my help, that I had no 
suspicion till long after of the effort this 
must have cost him. He lived not for him- 
self, but for others and for his work. There 
was no occasion when he could not find 
time for any call to aid, and the Museum 
was something to which he was willing to 
give of his own slender means. 

Connected with this was an absence of 
any wish to personally dominate others or 
to force his own personal ways upon them. 
It is pleasantest to live our own life if we 
can, and with him every associate and sub- 
ordinate had a moral liberty that is not 
always enjoyed, for apart from his official 
duties he obtruded himself upon no one with 
advice, and his private opinion was to be 
sought, not proffered. 

His insight into character was notable, 
and it was perhaps due as much as any- 
thing to a power of sympathy that pro- 
duced a gentleness in his private judgment 
of others which reminded one of the saying 
that if we could comprehend everything 
we could pardon everything. He compre- 
hended and he pardoned. 

Associate this tolerance of those weak- 
nesses in others, even which he did not share, 
with the confidence he inspired and with 
this clear insight, and we have some idea of 
the moral qualities which tempered the 
authority he exercised in his administra- 
tive work, and which were the underlying 
eauses of his administrative excellence. 
I do not know whether a power of read- 
ing character is more intuitive or ac- 
quired; at any rate without it men may 
be governed, but not in harmony, and must 
be driven rather than led. Dr. Goode was 
in this sense a leader quite apart from his 
scientific competence. Every member of the 
force he controlled, not only among his 
scientific associates, but down to the hum- 
blest employees of the Museum, was an in- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 114. 


dividual to him, with traits of character 
which were his own and not another’s, 
and which were recognized in all dealings, 
and in this I think he was peculiar, for I 
have known no man who seemed to possess 
this sympathetic insight in such a degree ; 
and certainly it was one of the sources of 
his strength. 

I shall have given, however, a wrong 
idea of him if I leave any one under the 
impression that this sympathy led to weak- 
ness of rule. He knew how to say ‘no,’ 
and said it as often as any other, and would 
reprehend where occasion called, in terms 
the plainest and most uncompromising a 
man could use, speaking so when he thought 
it necessary, even to those whose associa- 
tion was voluntary, but who somehow were 
not alienated, as they would have been by 
such censure from*another. ‘He often 
refused me what I most wanted,’’ said one 
off his staff to me; “‘ but I never went to 
sleep without having in my own mind for- 
given him.” 

I have spoken of some of the moral quali- 
ties which made all rely upon him,. and 
which were the foundation of his ability to 
deal with men. To them was joined that 
scientific knowledge without which he could 
not have been a Museum administrator, 
but even with this knowledge he could not 
have been what he was, except from the 
fact that he loved the Museum, and its ad- 
ministration, above every other pursuit, 
even, I think, above his own special branch 
of biological science. He was perhaps a 
man of the widest interests I have ever 
known, so that whatever he was speaking 
of at any moment seemed to be the thing he 
knew best. It was often hard to say, then, 
what love predominated, but I think that 
he had, on the whole, no pleasure greater 
than that in his Museum administration, 
and that, apart from his family interests and 
joys, this was the deepest love of all. He 
refused advantageous offers to leave it, 


Marcu 5, 1897. ] 


though I ought to gratefully add that here 
his knowledge of my reliance upon him and 
his unselfish desire to aid me were also 
among his determining motives in remain- 
ing. They were natural ones in such a 
man. 

What were the results of this devotion 
may be comprehensively seen in the state- 
ment that in the year in which he was first 
enrolled among the officers of the Museum 
the entries of collections numbered less 
than two hundred thousand, and the staff, 
ineluding honorary collaborators and all 
subordinates, thirteen persons, and by com- 
paring these early conditions with what 
they became under his subsequent manage- 
ment. 

Professor Baird at the first was an active 
manager, but from the time that he became 
Secretary of the Institution he devolved 
more and more of the Museum duties on 
Dr. Goode, who for nine years preceding his 
death was in practically entire charge of it. 
It is strictly within the truth then to say 
that the changes which have taken place in 
the Museum in that time are more his 
work than any other man’s, and when we 
find that the number of persons employed 
has grown from thirteen to over two hun- 
dred, and the number of specimens from 
200,000 to over 3,000,000, and consider that 
what the Museum now is, its scheme and 
arrangement, with almost all which make 
it distinctive, are chiefly Dr. Goode’s, we 
have some of the evidence of his adminis- 
trative capacity. He was fitted to rule and 
administer both men and things, and the 
Museum under his management was, as 
some one has called it, ‘A House full of 
ideas and a nursery of living thought.’ 

Perhaps no one can be a ‘naturalist’ in 
the larger sense, without being directly a 
lover of Nature and of all natural sights 
and sounds. One of his family says, “he 
taught us all the forest trees, their fruits 
and flowers in season, and to know them 


SCIENCE. 


v1 


when bare of leaves by their shapes; all the 
wayside shrubs and even the flowers of the 
weeds, all the wild birds and their notes, 
and the insects. His ideal of an old age 
was to have a little place of his own in a 
mild climate, surrounded by his books 
for rainy days, and friends who cared for 
plain living and high thinking, with a 
chance to help some one poorer than he.” 
He was a loving and quick observer, and in 
these simple natural joys, his studies were 
his recreations, and were closely connected 
with his literary pursuits. 

I have spoken of his varied interests and 
the singular fulness of his knowledge in 
fields apart from biologic research. He 
was a genealogist of professional complete- 
ness and exactitude, and a historian, and in 
these capacities alone a biography might 
be written; but his well-founded claim to 
be considered a literary man as well as a 
man of science, rests as much on the excel- 
lent English style, clear, direct, unpreten- 
tious, in which he has treated these subjects, 
as on his love of*literature in general. I 
pass them, however, with this inadequate 
mention, from my incompetence to deal 
with him as a genealogist, and because his 
aspect as a historian will be presented by 
another; but while I could only partly 
follow him in his genealogical studies, we 
had together, among other common tastes, 
that love of general literature just spoken 
of, and I, who have been a widely dis- 
cursive reader, have never meta mind in 
touch with more far-away and disconnected 
points than his, nor one of more breadth 
and variety of reading, outside of the range 
of its own specialty. This reading was 
also, however, associated with a love of 
everything which could illustrate his special 
science on this literary side. The extent of 
this illustration is well shown by the wealth 
and aptness of quotation in the chapter 
headings of his ‘American Fishes,’ his 
‘Game Fishes of North America’ and the 


ol2 


like, and in his knowledge of everything 
thus remotely connected with his ichthyo- 
logic researches, from Saint Anthony’s 
Sermon to Fishes, to the Literature of 
Fish Cookery, while in one of his earliest 
papers, written at nineteen, his fondness 
for Isaac Walton, and his familiarity with 
him are evident. He had a love for every- 
thing to do with books, such as specimens 
of printing and binding, and for etchings 
and engravings, and he was an omniverous 
reader, but he read to collect, and oftenest 
in connection with the enjoyment of his 
outdoor life and all natural things. One of 
these unpublished collections, ‘The Music 
of Nature,’ contains literally thousands of 
illustrated poems or passages from his 
favorite poets. 

These were his recreations, and among 
these little excursions into literature, ‘‘ the 
most pathetic, and yet in some respects the 
most consolatory,’’ says his literary execu- 
tor, ‘‘seems to have been suggested by an 
article on the literary advantages of weak 
health, for with this thought in mind he had 
collected from various sources accounts of 
literary work done in feeble health, which 
he brought together under the title ‘ Mens 
Sana in Corpore Jnsano.’ ”’ 

Still another collection was of poems re- 
lating to music, of which he was an enthu- 
siastic lover. He sang and played well, 
but this I only learned after his death, for 
it was characteristic of his utter absence of 
display that during our nine years’ inti- 
macy he never let me know that he had 
such accomplishments, though that he had 
a large acquaintance with musical instru- 
ments I was, of course, aware from the col- 
lections he had made. 

We must think of him with added sym- 
pathy when we know that he lost the robust 
health he once enjoyed, at that early time 
during his first connection with the Mu- 
seum, when he gave himself with such un- 
calculating devotion to his work as to over- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 114. 


task every energy and permanently impair 
his strength. It was only imperfectly re- 
stored when his excessive labors in connec- 
tion with the Philadelphia Exposition 
brought on another attack, and this condi- 
tion was renewed at times through my ac- 
quaintance with him. When we see what 
he has done we must remember, with now 
useless regret, under what conditions all 
this was accomplished. 

I have scarcely alluded to his family life, 
for of his home we are not to speak here, 
further than to say that he was eminently 
a domestic man, finding the highest joys that 
life brought him with his family and chil- 
dren. Of those who hear me to-night most 
knew him personally, and will bear me wit- 
ness, from his daily life, that he was a man 
one felt to be pure in heart as he was clean 
of speech, always sociable, always consid- 
erate of his associates,a most suggestive 
and helpful man ; an eminently unselfish 
man—may I not now say that he was what 
wethen did not recognize, in his simplicity, 
a great man ? 

'““Tt is a proof,” says one who knew him, 
“of the unconsciousness and unobtrusiveness 
which characterized Doctor Goode in all his 
associations and efforts that, until his death 
came, few, if any, even of his intimate 
friends, realized the degree to which he had 
become necessary to them. All acknowl- 
edged his ability, relied on his sincerity, 
knew how loyally he served every cause he 
undertook. The news of his death showed 
them for the first time what an element of 
strength he was in the work and ambitions 
of each of them ; with a sudden shock they 
saw that their futures would have less of 
opportunity, less of enthusiasm and mean- 
ing, now that he was gone.” 

He has gone; and on the road where we 
are all going there has not preceded us a 
man who lived more for others, a truer 
man, a more loyal friend. 

8. P. LANGLEY. 


MAkcH 5, 1897. ] 


GOODE AS A NATURALIST.* 

THE designation ‘naturalist’ was one 
which Goode richly earned and which he 
held most dear, and our deep sorrow is that 
his activity as a naturalist extended over 
only a quarter of a century. It is pleasant 
to reflect that he was a man of whom no 
adverse word can ever be spoken either in 
science or in character. We think of both 
at this time because in him the man and the 
profession were inseparable and constantly 
interacting. His scientific virtues were of 
an order rare as the Christian virtues, and 
we cannot thoroughly understand his scien- 
tifie career unless we understand him as a 
man. Errors of judgment, misleading 
tenets and adherence to false hypotheses 
among some of the most gifted of our pro- 
fessional ancestors have arisen as often from 
defect of principle and from personal preju- 
dices as from defect of knowledge. We 
see in our friend, on the other hand, that 


the high standard of scientific achievement: 


was constantly parallel with, and very 
largely the outgrowth of, a high standard of 
personal character and motive. 

In brief the work of the true naturalist 
is ever lighted by the four lamps of love, 
of truth, of breadth and of appreciation, 
and all of these shone brightly upon the 
path of Goode. His love of nature was in- 
born, predetermining his career, and so far 
surpassing his self-interest we fear it is only 
too true that he sacrificed his life for the 
diffusion ofnatural truth. So faras I know, 
he never entered a scientific controversy, 
and was never under temptation to warp or 
deflect facts: to support an hypothesis, yet 
he was incapable of tampering with truth 
under any circumstances which might have 
arisen. His Presidential Address of 1887 
before the Biological Society showed him as 


* Address at the ‘Goode Memorial Meeting,’ Na- 
tional Museum, Washington, February 13th, by 
Henry Fairfield Osborn, DaCosta Professor of Zool- 
ogy, Columbia University. 


SCIENCE. 


373 


scrupulous not to overestimate as he was. 
eager not to underestimate the existing 
status of American science. While largely 
cultivated by wide experience in contact 
with nature and men, his breadth of view 
was certainly innate. If Goode had a 
fault it was that his interests were too 
numerous and his sympathies too broad. 
He displayed not only a warm appreciation 
of those around him and an enthusiasm for 
contemporary research, but an exceptional 
sense of the close bonds between the present 
and the past, as seen in his admiration for 
the pioneers of American science, and his 
repeated vindication of their services. , This 
passion for history led to an important phase 
of his literary work. His fine addresses, ‘The 
Beginnings of Natural History in America’ 
(1886), The Beginnings of American Sci- 
ence’ (1888), ‘The Literary Labors of Ben- 
jamin Franklin’ (1890), and ‘The Origin 
of the National Scientific and Educational 
Institutions of the United States’ (1890). 
‘An Account of the Smithsonian Institu- 
tion’ (1895), sprang from the same instinet 
which prompted him to compile the valua- 
ble bibliographies of Baird, of Girard, of 
Lea and of Sclater, and to undertake the 
remarkable genealogy of his own family 
entitled ‘ Virginia Cousins.’ The time, be- 
tween 1887 and 1895, which he devoted to 
these subjects caused some of his fellow 
naturalists anxiety, yet I fancy this work 
was largely sought by him for diversion 
and rest, just as Michael Foster tells us that 
philosophy and controversy served as rec- 
reation to Huxley, at a time when over- 
work had given him a passing distaste for 
morphology. 

His trend of life, guided by these four 
beacon lights, was swayed by two counter- 
currents—first, his strong impulses as an 
original investigator, and second, his con- 
victions as to the duty of spreading the 
knowledge ofnature. These currents moved 
him alternately. The most superficial view 


ov4 


of his career shows that his whole environ- 
ment fostered his public spirit and made 
difficult, and at times impossible, the re- 
tirement so essential to the studies of nature. 

Goode’s practical and public achieve- 
ments for natural history, therefore, do him 
even more honor than his writings, because 
from June, 1870, when he graduated from 
Wesleyan University, to September, 1896, 
administrative service became paramount, 
and he was free to devote only the odd 
intervals of his time to research. Our 
great gain in the national institutions he 
has advanced is our corresponding loss in 
icthyology and the kindred branches of 
zoology. 

Goode’s successful work in the natural 
history courses at Wesleyan led at gradu- 
ation to a position in the College Museum, 
where in 1870 he at once showed his great 
talent for systematic arrangement. In 
further preparation for zoology he went to 
Harvard and for a few months came under 
the genial influence of Louis Agassiz. But 
the turning point in his life came in 1872, 
when, working as a volunteer upon the 
United States Fish Commission at Eastport, 
he met Spencer F. Baird. The kind of 
simple but irresistible force which Abraham 
Lincoln exerted among statesmen, Baird 
seems to have exerted among naturalists. 
He at once noted young Goode’s fine 
qualities, adopted him and rapidly came to 
be the master spirit in his scientific life. 
Goode delighted to work with a man so 
full of all that constitutes true greatness. 
He frequently spoke of Baird as his master, 
and intimate friends say that he never 
showed quite the same buoyant spirit after 
Baird’s death—he felt the loss so keenly. 
Baird took Goode to Washington in the 
winter of 1872, and practically deter- 
mined his career, for he promoted him 
rapidly through every grade of the Fish 
Commission and Museum service. It is 
hard to realize now the intensely rapid and 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 114. 


eager development of our national scientific 
institutions in those years. 

No doubt Baird’s mantle fell fittingly 
upon Goode’s shoulders, and he had all but 
the magnificent physique of his master to 
qualify him for this heavy burden. His 
talents and methods were of a different 
order. Both men enjoyed universal ad- 
miration, respect and even love, but Baird 
drove men before him with quiet force, 
while Goode drew men after him. Lacking 
the self-confidence of Baird, Goode was 
rather persuasive than insistent. His suc- 
cess of administration also came partly 
from an instinctive knowledge of human 
nature and his large faculty of putting him- 
self in other men’s shoes. He sought out 
the often-latent best qualities of the men 
around him and developed them. When 
things were out of joint and did not move 
his way he waited with infinite patience for 
the slow operation of time and common 
sense toset them right. He was singularly 
considerate of opinion. Not ‘‘I think,” but 
“ Don’t you think ?”” was his way of entering 
a discussion. I am reminded of the gentle- 
ness of my teacher, Francis Balfour, when 
one of his students carelessly destroyed a 
rare and valuable preparation, as I learn 
from one of Goode’s associates that, under 
similar provocation, without a word of re- 
proof, he stooped over to repair the damage 
himself. He was fertile of original ideas 
and suggestions, full of invention and of 
new expedients, studying the best models 
at home and abroad, but never bound by 
any traditions of system or of classification. 
He showed these qualities in amarked de- 
gree in the remarkable Fisheries Exhibit 
which he conceived and executed for Berlin 
in 1879, and continued to show them in his 
rapid development of the scope as well as 
the detail of a great museum. To all his 
work also he brought a refined artistic taste, 
shown in his methods of printing and label- 
ing, as well as in his encouragement of the 


Marcu 5, 1897. ] 


artistic, and therefore the truthful and real- 
istic, development of taxidermy in the ar- 
rangement of natural groups of animals. 
To crown all, like Baird, he entered into 
the largest conception of the wide-reaching 
responsibilities of his position under the 
government, fully realizing that he wasnotat 
the head of a university or of a metropolitan 
museum, but of the museum of a great na- 
tion. Every reasonable request from another 
institution met a prompt response. I well 
recall Goode’s last visit to the Ameri- 
can Museum, the hearty approval of the 
work there, and especially his words: “T 
am glad to see these things being done 
so well in this country.”’ Not the advance- 
ment of Washington science, but of Ameri- 
can science, was his dominating idea. 

In fact, every act and every word of 
Goode’s breathed the scientific creed which 
he published in 1888 : 


“The greatest danger to science is, perhaps, the 
fact that all who have studied at all within the last 
quarter of a century have studied its rudiments and 
feel competent to employ its methods and its lan- 
guage, and to form judgments on the merits of cur- 
rent work. In the meantime the professional men 
of science, the scholars, and the investigators seem to 
me to be strangely indifferent to the question as to 
how the public at large is to be made familiar with 
the results of their labors. It may be that the use of 
the word naturalist is to become an anachronism, and 
that we are all destined to become, generically biolo- 
gists, and specifically, morphologists, histologists, 
embryologists and physiologists. 

“T can but believe, however, thatit isthe duty of 
every scientific scholar, however minute his specialty, 
to resist in himself, and in the professional circles 
which surround him, the tendency toward narrowing 
technicality in thought and sympathy, and above all 
in the education of non-professional students. 

“T cannot resist the feeling that American men of 
science are, in a large degree, responsible if their fel- 
low-citizens are not fully awake to the claims of sci- 
entific endeavor in their midst. 

“Tam not in sympathy with those who feel that their 
dignity is lowered when their investigations lead to- 
ward improvement in the physical condition of man- 
kind, but I feel that the highest function of science 
is to minister to their mental and moral welfare. 
Here in the United States, more than in any other 


SCIENCE. 


375 


country, it is necessary that sound, accurate know]- 
edge and a scientific manner of thought should exist 
among the people, and the man of science is becom- 
ing, more than ever, the natural custodian of the 
treasured knowledge of the world. To him, above 
all others, falls the duty of organizing and maintain- 
ing the institutions for the diffusion of knowledge, 
many of which have been spoken of in these ad- 
dresses—the schools, the museums, the expositions, 
the societies, the periodicals. To him, more than to 
any other American, should be made familiar the 
words of President Washington in his farewell ad- 
dress to the American people : 

“Promote, then, as an object of primary impor- 
tance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowl- 
edge. In proportion as the structure of a government 
gives force to public opinions, it should be enlight- 
ened.”’ 

As a naturalist Goode did not close any 
of the windows opening out into nature. 
His breadth of spirit in public affairs dis- 
played itself equally in his methods of field 
and sea work and in the variety of his ob- 
servations and writings. While fishes be- 
eame his chief interest, he knew all the 
Eastern species of birds after identifying 
and arranging the collection in his College 
Museum. He loved plants, and in the lat- 
ter years of his life took great pleasure in 
the culture of the old-fashioned garden 
plants around his house. He was not wed- 
ded to his desk, to dry bones nor to alco- 
holiec jars. His sea studies and travels 
ranged, as early as 1872, from the Bermudas 
to Eastport, on the Bay of Fundy ; to Casco 
Bay in 1873; to Noank, on Long Island 
Sound, in 1874. Here he conceived his great 
‘ Indea Bibliography of American Ichthyology,’ 
and here he met his future colleague, Bean, 
who describes him as ‘a young man with 
plump cheeks and a small mustache.’ 
During the following two years his Assistant 
Curatorship at the National Museum con- 
fined him, but in 1877 he was studying the 
fisheries off Halifax, and in 1879 off Proy- 
incetown. The work of the fishery census 
was starting up in earnest, and Goode was 


‘busy planning and getting together his men. 


Special agents were sent out to every part 


316 


of the coast and to the great lakes to gather 
information. Goode worked at it himself 
on Cape Cod, and manifested the same en- 
thusiasm as in every other piece of work 
he took up. He interested himself in get- 
ting together a collection representing the 
methods of the fisheries and the habits of 
thefishermen. Neglecting neither the most 
trivial nor important objects, branching out 
into every collateral matter, he showed his 
grasp both of principles and of details. 
His literary bent and facility of written 
expression showed itself before his gradua- 
tion at Wesleyan in the College Argus, which 
contains seven brief papers, including his 
first scientific article, prophetically entitled 
‘Our Museum.’ He contributed to the 
American Naturalist in 1871 a note upon 
‘The Bill-fish in Fresh Water,’ and in 1872 
‘A Sea Bird Inland.’ He published and 
presented before the American Association 
in 1873 his first paper of importance, en- 
titled ‘Do Snakes Swallow Their Young ?’ 
These studies of real merit foreshadow two 
marked features of his later work : First, his 
recognition of the importance of distribu- 
tion, which culminated in the preparation 
of his unfinished memoir upon the ‘ Geo- 
graphical Distribution of Deep-Sea Fishes ;’ 
second, his close observation of the habits 
of animals, which was of marked usefulness 
in his subsequent Fish Commission service 
and treatises upon fish culture. His ‘ Cata- 
logue of the Fishes of the Bermudas,’ from his 
1872 visit, indicate how early in life he had 
thought out a thoroughly philosophical 
method of studying a local fauna. “In 
working up my notes,”’ he says, ‘‘ I have en- 
deayvored to supplement previous descrip- 
tions by (1) descriptions of the colors of 
the fishes while living, (2) notes on size and 
proportions, (3) observations on habits, (4) 
hints in reference to the origin and mean- 
ing of their popular names, (5) notes upon 
modes of capture and economic value. He 
increased the number of recorded species 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 114. 


from 7 to 75 and gave a careful analysis of 
their probable geographical derivation. 

Many of his briefer papers deal directly 
with the biological problems which at- 
tracted his interest, especially among rep- 
tiles and fishes, touching such questions as 
migration, coloring, albinism, mimicry, 
parasitism, feeding and breeding habits, the 
relation of forest protection to the protection 
of fishes. 

It is difficult to classify the papers long 
and short which we find rapidly succeeding 
each other in the valuable bibliography 
prepared by Dr. Adler and Mr. Geare. Of 
his 193 independent papers, 21 are biologi- 
cal, 9 treat of reptiles and amphibians, 38 
are devoted to the structure, life habits and 
distribution of the fishes, in addition to 15 
purely systematic contributions upon the 
fishes. Among the former are his large 
Memiors upon the ‘ Menhaden,’ his shorter 
treatises upon the Trunk Fishes, the Caran- 
gide, the Sword Fishes and the eel. The 
work of the Fish Commission is described 
and published at home and abroad in 30 
reports and popular papers. The special 
branch of ‘ Fisheries Exhibits’ is treated 
in 8 papers, and of fish culture in 12 papers. 
Besides his 14 reports as Director of the 
National Museum, he published, between 
1881 and 1896, 13 papers developing the 
theory and practice of museum admin- 
istration, leading up to his very notable 
articles, ‘Museums of the Future,’ ‘Museum 
History and Museums of History’ in 1889, 
and his invaluable memoir upon ‘Museum 
Administration’ in 1895. His labors and 
writings placed him in the lead of 
museum experts in this country and upon 
the level of the distinguished leader of 
museum development in England, Sir 
William Flower. The closing sentence of 
his address before the English Museums 
Association must be quoted: 


“The degree of civilization to which any nation, 
city or province has attained is best shown by the 


Marcu 5, 1897. ] 


character of its public museums and the liberality 
with which they are maintained.’’ 


His popular works include the ‘Game 
Fishes in the United States,’ published in 
1879, a book written in charming literary 
style, besides innumerable short articles in 
the Chautauquan, Forest and Stream and 
Scrence. In 1888 appeared his ‘ American 
Fishes: a popular treatise upon the Game 
and Food Fishes of North America with spe- 
cial reference to habits and methods of cap- 
ture.’ These writings give us a further in- 
sight not only into the two sides of Goode’s 
scientific nature, the theoretical and practi- 
eal, but into his artistic and poetical senti- 
ment and into the wide extent of his reading. 
Besides the long list enumerated above, he 
published 51 joint ichthyological papers with 
G. Brown, W. O. Atwater, R. E. Earll, A. 
Howard Clark, Joseph W. Collins, Newton 
P. Seudder, but his chief collaborateur was 
Tarleton H. Bean. Under their names ap- 
pear 35 papers, but chief of all the ‘ Oceanic 
Ichthyology, a Treatise on the Deep-Sea and 
Pelagic Fishes of the World, based chiefly 
upon the collections made by the Steamers 
Blake, Albatross and Fish Hawk in the 
Northwestern Atlantic.’ 

In 1877 Goode saw his first deep-sea fish 
drawn fresh from the bottom and experi- 
enced a sensation which he thus describes 
in the preface of his monograph : 

“The studies which have led to the writing of 
this book were begun in the summer of 1877, when 
the first deep-sea fishes were caught by American nets 
on the coast of North America. This took place in 
the Gulf of Maine, 44 miles east of Cape Ann, on the 
19th of August, when from the side of the U. S. Fish 
Commission steamer ‘Speedwell’ the trawl net was 
cast into 160 fathoms of water. The writers were both 
standing by the mouth of the net when, as the sea- 
men lifted the end of the bag, two strange forms fell 
out on the deck. A single glance was enough to tell 
us that they were new to our fauna, and probably un- 
known to science. They seemed like visitors from 
another world, and none of the strange forms which 


have since passed through our laboratory have brought 
half as much interest and enthusiasm. Macrurus 


SCIENCE. 


377 


Bairdii and Lycodes Verrillii are simply new species of 
well-known deep-dwelling genera, and haye since 
been found to be very abundant on the continental 
slope, but they were among the first fruits of that 
great harvest in the field of oceanic ichthyology which 
we have had the pleasure to garner in the fifteen 
years which have passed since that happy and event- 
ful morning. It seems incredible that American 
naturalists should not then have known that a few 
miles away there was a fauna as unlike that of our 
coast as could be found in the Indian Ocean or the 
seas of China.’’ 

In one of the latest of his 45 contri- 
butions to the Bulletin of the United States 
National Museum is the description of the 
discovery of the new deep-sea Chimeeroid, 
for which, true to his appreciation of the 
past, he proposed the name Harriotta in 
memory of Thomas Harriott, the earliest 
English naturalist in America. 

The quaint, old-fashioned style of some 
of Goode’s essays again gives us an insight 
into his historic sense and his reversion to 
the ideas and principles of his Virginia an- 
cestors. Seldom have we known the loyal, 
conservative spirit, of reverence for old insti- 
tutions, fealty to independence of societies, 
combined with such a grandly progressive 
spirit in the cooperation of the government 
with the state, and of one country with an 
other, in the promotion of science. 

Again, what impresses us most is Goode 
as the apostle of scientific knowledge, the 
conviction of his mission in life breathing 
through his earliest papers in the College 
Argus to his final appeal in ScrencE for the 
‘Admission of American students to the 
French Universities.’ 

One of his intimate friends writes: 
“Sometimes we talked of more far-reach- 
ing matters and in such discussions I often 
took a position I had no faith in, hop- 
ing to draw him out. I remember once we 
fell to talking of the province of science, 
and for the sake of argument I took the 
position that most scientific work was 
merely a form of intellectual amusement 
and benefited no one. He became quite 


3718 


earnest in his protest against that view and 
asserted his belief that the majority of 
scientific men were working toward the 
improvement of things and that it was the 
destiny of science to be the salvation of the 
world. At another time he unfolded the 
idea that man through science was ap- 
proaching step by step nearer the Infinite 
Ruler of the Universe, and that it was only 
through these activities that he could hope 
to reach his proper destiny; that every 
amelioration in life, every improvement in 
manners, every change in theological tenets, 
was a token of man’s unfolding through the 
working of intellectual forces. 

Our lasting regret must be that Goode’s 
life terminated justas he had richly earned 
the right to retire from the scientific service 
of his country, from your service and mine, 
my friends, to devote himself more exclu- 
sively to his own researches. 

As early as 1880, during the herculean 
task of entering the New National Museum, 
Goode remarked to one of his friends: ‘‘ We 
have had pretty hard scrambling ; I think 
we will take a rest presently.” But alas, 
the rest days never came. One duty alter 
another fell heavily upon his too willing 
shoulders. All must have observed in later 
years a certain quiet melancholy which 
marked his overwork and conscious ina- 
bility to cope with all that his ambitious 
and resourceful spirit prompted. None the 
less he showed a continuous and rapid in- 
tellectual development during the last ten 
years of his life, and it was evident that his 
powers were constantly expanding and that 
his brightest and most productive days were 
to come in his projected independent and 
joint researches. As before noted, his ‘ Geo- 
graphical Distribution of Deep-Sea Fishes’ 
was nearly completed, the charts having 
been exhibited before the Biological Society, 
and a mass of voluminous notes and valu- 
able observations are ready to show that 
the distribution of deep-sea fishes is far 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Voz. V. No. 114. 


from being general, as has been supposed, 
and that there are certain well defined 
thalassic faunal regions. Another projected 
work for which extensive materials were 
collected was upon the ‘ Fishes of Amer- 
ica,’ in which Dr. Theodore Gill was to have 
cooperated. 

He was always encouraged by his su- 
preme faith in the reward of honest intel- 
lectual labor, and it is pleasant to recall 
now that he took the keenest satisfaction in 
the completion and publication of the ‘ Oce- 
anic Ichthyology,’ which revived in him all 
his old natural history spirit. He regarded 
it as his chief life work, and once observed 
to his fellow-writer, Tarleton Bean, ‘it will 
be our monument,” little foreseeing that in 
a fortnight he would be gone and that his 
friends and admirers all over the world 
would share this very thought in receiving 
the fine monograph a few weeks after his 
sudden and unexpected death. 

Our friend has gone to his fathers. Asa 
public spirited naturalist he leaves us the 
tender memory and the noble example 
which helps us and will help many coming 
men into the higher conception of duty in 
the service and promotion of the truth. 
We cannot forget his smile nor his arm 
passing through the arm of his friend. 
Thinking little of himself and highly of 
others, faithful to his duties and loyal to 
his friends, full of good cheer and helpful- 
ness, it is hard for us to close up the ranks 
and march on without him. 

Henry FArrFreELD OsBoRN. 


THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY. 
A GROWTH, NOT A CREATION. 


We Americans do not, as a rule, believe 
in ‘the day of small things.’ Whatever 
we do we like to do on a great scale and 
with a great rush and a greatnoise. Some- 
times we are unwilling to do anything 
at all until we can do something very 
grand. Unquestionably, it is wise not 


MaAkcH 5, 1897.] 


to try to do a thing until we are pre- 
pared to do it well; but our weakness is 
that, being a young and inexperienced 
people, whose growth has been rapid be- 
yond precedent, we are not willing to wait 
for things to grow. We believe in making 
things outright by our might or buying 
them with our money. We do, indeed, 
possess magnificent powers of initiative, 
but we trust too much to those powers to 
accomplish our purposes, and oftentimes 
try to do things before the conditions are 
present and the times are ripe for them. 

Our people believe in the power of the 
legislative fiat, and think they can accom- 
plish anything by passing an act through 
Congress or a Legislature. Born legislators, 
every one of us, we think we can educate 
the people by law and make them good by 
law. ‘Be it enacted’ is our method of 
making all improvements and our remedy 
for all social ills. 

A multi-millionaire who was considering 
the plans for a great university which he 
proposed to establish is said to have asked 
the distinguished president of an institution 
which he had just inspected by way of in- 
forming himself with regard to such mat- 
ters, ‘‘ Well, you have a big plant here ; 
how much does it stand youin?” In like 
fashion, the ordinary American business 
man thinks, no doubt, that when we all de- 
cide that we want it we will appropriate a 
vast sum of money, erect a magnificent pile 
of buildings, and establish a board of re- 
gents made up of distinguished men, who, 
in turn, will organize a series of great 
faculties, and that these faculties will go to 
lecturing at once in beautiful halls to ex- 
pectant crowds of young people, and there 
is the National University. 

Every student knows that even with all 
this grand outfit we should still not have a 
true National University until we also have 
great scholars, thinkers and investigators 
to teach, and great laboratories and libraries 


SCIENCE. 


319 


in which they and their students can 
work. Congress can not create thinkers 
or build laboratories or collect libraries, 
even in a decade. Even with all these 
things present, there would still be lacking 
the university spirit and atmosphere, which 
are the results of development and the 
products of national culture. 

We have not had a National University 
because we were not prepared for it. We 
were not competent to maintain or appre- 
ciate it. A National University is the 
richest fruit of the civilization of a people, 
and we shall see our great University opened 
when we are noble and cultured enough to 
build it. Washington foresaw clearly the 
necessity for such a university and provided 
for it as far as he could; but even he could 
not forsee that it would require a hundred 
years for the nation to take its primary, 
high school and collegiate training and so 
be prepared for the graduate course. If 
the times are now ripe for a National Uni- 
versity, as many of us believe they are, it 
is because we have as a people completed 
our preparatory course, and are now ready 
to improve the opportunities afforded by 
such an institution. If the time has 
arrived to begin the work of its organiza- 
tion, it is partly because the scholars and 
thinkers are here, because many of the 
laboratories are already built, and our 
various National libraries are full of books; 
but, if we are ripe for the National Uni- 
versity, ib is chiefly because the spirit of 
study and research is beginning to stir our 
whole people. Because the real National 
University already exists in spirit, in the 
great scientific and historical establishments 
in Washington and throughout the country, 
the time has come to give it a body. 

In an article in Science for January 15th 
the writer enumerated the scientific estab- 
lishments of the government designed to 
develop the natural resources of the coun- 
try, for the purpose of pointing out the ne 


380 


cessity for their better organization as a 
step towards the proper coordination of 
their work. It is proposed at this place: 

First, to look at these and the other 
scientific bureaus of the government from 
the point of view of a National University, 
so as to see what we already have in Wash- 
ington as basal material for such an institu- 
tion and what will have to provide, in ad- 
dition thereto, and 

Second, to point out a method by which 
the Civil Service Commission can be used 
to promote the National University and as- 
sist the proper persons in securing its ad- 
vantages and opportunities. 


1. WHAT MATERIAL HAVE WE ALREADY IN 
WASHINGTON ? 

A good deal of work is going on in the 
Congressional Library and the libraries of 
the State and other departments, which cor- 
responds to the literary work of a univer- 
sity, but there is little else in the government 
in Washington which would answer as a 
foundation for the departments of philology 
and philosophy of such an institution. 
These, however, are almost the only im- 
portant departments which are not already 
represented here. Anthropology is repre- 
sented by the Bureau of Ethnology and 
several other bureaus in the Smithsonian 
Institution and the National Museum. 
Political science and the science of society 
are represented by the several executive de- 
partments, by Congress and, more especially, 
in the work of the Congressional and other 
great libraries. Economics is pursued in 
many of its branches by all of these and es- 
pecially by the Bureau of Statistics of the 
Treasury Department, the Department of 
Labor, and by the Census, which we hope is 
soon to be made a permanent thing. Juris- 
prudence and law are represented by the 
Supreme Court and the other Courts of the 
District; history by several bureaus in the 
State Department, the Smithsonian Institu- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 114 


tion and the Congressional Library; and 
education by the Bureau of Education, the 
office of Indian Affairs, the Department of 
Agriculture, ete. In these we have already, 
if not active teaching agencies, at least the 
very best facilities in these subjects to be 
found anywhere in this country, if not in 
the world. 

It is in the department of science, how- 
ever, that the government has the most and 
best basal material ready to hand upon 
which to build a National University. This 
department is weakest, perhaps, in some of 
the pure sciences. Mathematics, however, 
is ably represented by the National Observ- 
atory and the Nautical Almanac. Physics 
is illustrated extensively in the several 
bureaus of steam engineering, construction 
and ordnance of the Navy Department, and 
in the engineering and testing laboratories 
of the War Department. Almost every 
conceivable application of physics is studied 
in the Patent Office, and many of them also 
in the Coast Survey and the Weather 
Bureau. Engineering is also represented 
in the Coast and Geodetic Survey, the 
General Land Office, the various hydro- 
graphic offices and many other bureaus. 
Chemistry is practiced extensively in many 
laboratories, notably those of the Geological 
Survey and the Department of Agriculture. 

In the Geological Survey and the National 
Museum we have the material for a de- 
partment of geology, geography and paleon- 
tology, etc.; in the National Herbarium and 
the Division of Botany of the Department 
of Agriculture the material for a school of 
botany ; in the Biological Survey, the Com- 
mission of Fish and Fisheries and the 
National Museum again, a complete col- 
lection of specimens and equipment is found 
for a department of general biology. And 
so through all the natural sciences. The 
men, the material and the laboratories are 
nearly all here already. 

The material for the chief great profes- 


Manco 5, 1897.] 


sional departments is even more abun- 
dantly supplied. Medicine is magnificently 
represented in the office of the Surgeon- 
General of the Army, to which belongs the 
great army medical museum and library 
and many other useful offices. In the same 
connection are to be mentioned the Marine 
Hospital Service of the Treasury Depart- 
ment, with its admirable laboratories, the 
Bureau of Medicineand Surgery ofthe Navy, 
and the bacteriological and pathological 
laboratories of the Bureau of Animal In- 
dustry. 

The material for the professional de- 
partment of jurisprudence and law is, of 
course, unsurpassed. Law libraries are 
found in the Supreme Court, and in nearly 
all of the other Courts and in several of the 
executive departments. In fact, it would 
seem that everything is ready at hand for 
this department, save only the central or- 
ganization and the lecture halls. 

In the Department of Agriculture we find 
all the material ready to hand fora college of 
agriculture, horticulture and forestry; in the 
Bureau of Education are rich stores of sta- 
tistics and other data for the use of students 
of pedagogies ; in the office of the Architect 
of the Treasury there is the foundation for 
a school of architecture and construction. 
In fact, so much material is found in Wash- 
ington that it will be difficult to decide 
what schools should be started first and 
and which postponed to some future time. 


2, RELATION OF THE CIVIL SERVICE COM- 
MISSION THERETO. 

The relation of the Civil Service Commis- 
sion to the National University has not 
received sufficient consideration. The dan- 
ger from the spoils system has been the 
chief objection to the National University 
in the minds of some of our greatest and 
best men. Every one appreciates, there- 
fore, the service which the Civil Service 
Commission has rendered the cause by re- 


SCIENCE. 


381 


reducing the opportunities for this vicious 
practice. The time has now arrived, how- 
ever, when the Civil Service Commission 
ean render this enterprise additional ser- 
vice by establishing a method through 
which properly prepared students can gain 
a support, corresponding to scholarships 
and fellowships, while prosecuting their 
studies in the different departments of the 
National University. It is to the method 
proposed for this purpose that the writer 
particularly desires to call the attention of 
the readers of ScimNncE at this time. 

It is now proposed by the Civil Service 
Commission to establish a regular system 
of examinations to be held at stated times, 
convenient to the great educational centers 
in the country, once or twice each year, for 
the purpose of examining applicants for 
positions in the scientific service of the 
government. This general plan may be 
sufficiently indicated by describing the one 
already drawn up for the Department of 
Agriculture, which was the first to take it up. 

All scientific assistants in this and other 
bureaus of the government, here referred to, 
have recently been brought into the classified 
service, as the clerical places had been be- 
fore. To fill these positions it was neces- 
sary to arrange a systematic plan of exami- 
nations. Heretofore such of these places 
as were included in the classified service 
were filled by special examinations, held at 
irregular intervals, at the request of the 
Secretary of the Department. An exami- 
nation was usually given for each particu- 
lar position and an eligible list provided, 
from which one person was taken. 

The objections to these special examina- 
tions are numerous. The notices given by 
the Civil Service Commission were neces- 
sarily short, and did not become widely 
known. The examination questions were 
hastily prepared to secure one eligible to fit 
a particular place, with the result that the 
person certified for the position had too 


382 


often only narrow special rather than 
broad scientific training. Too frequently 
the Department secured by this process 
only amateur scientists, having perhaps 
some ability and considerable knowledge in 
certain lines, but without general education 
and, therefore, limited in their usefulness 
and capacity to grow. 

Another objection was that the list of eli- 
gibles provided in this manner was a tempo- 
rary one only, being designed to get one per- 
son to fill one place. Under the rules of the 
Civil Service Commission such a list lived for 
one year only, and it was, therefore, rather 
unusual when a second person was taken 
from it. Such a system of examinations 
offers too little encouragement to candidates. 
Since special papers had to be prepared for 
each one of them and the examinations to 
be held in different parts of the country 
wherever there were applicants, the special 
examinations were troublesome and expen- 
sive to both the Civil Service Commission 
and the Department. 

For their best work the scientific bureaus 
of the government need men of broader 
training than can be secured in this way. 
The ideal man, of course, for such a posi- 
tion is one who has had a liberal education, 
to which has been added general education 
in the natural sciences and special training 
and experience in some special department. 
In order to secure such a corps of experts 
it was necessary to establish these perma- 
nent lists of eligibles and keep them up by 
regular examinations, held at stated in- 
tervals. 

After the new men are appointed in the 
department it is desirable to give them, be- 
fore they are advanced to positions of re- 
sponsibility, some preliminary training in 
the special work of the particular bureau. 
In the new plan it is provided, therefore, 
that these candidates shall come into the 
lower ranks first, where they shall have op- 
portunities for advancement, if they prove 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 114. 


worthy. The outlines of the plan proposed 
for the Department of Agriculture are given 
in an appendix to this paper. 

It will be noticed that the examinations 
are not for specified positions, but for cer- 
tificates of qualification in specified subjects 
or groups of subjects. Hach candidate can 
form his own group of subjects to suit him- 
self. The Civil Service Commission pub- 
lishes lists of the various positions in the 
government scientific service and the gen- 
eral qualifications required for each. When 
a new assistant is required the Secretary 
names the qualifications he desires and 
the Commission certifies the three persons 
who have the highest grade in the subjects 
mentioned or come nearest to supplying 
all of the qualifications required. 

It is hoped that the plan now adopted 
for the Department of Agriculture will, if 
it prove successful, be extended to include 
the other scientific bureaus of the govern- 
ment. All that will be necessary in order 
to do this will be to include other subjects 
in the examinations. When this has been 
done it is evident that the scientific service 
will have a much better list of eligibles 
from which to draw, and that the scientific 
students of the country will have, for the 
first time, a plain way opened up for their 
admission to these surveys and laboratories 
and to the enjoyment of the splendid oppor- 
tunities which they offer. 

From the standpoint of the scientific 
bureaus this plan has the advantage of sup- 
plying them with the highest class of as- 
sistants. Under it they would get persons 
educated for the work and capable of im- 
proving the advantages offered instead of 
persons having no special training and little 
or no ambition to improve themselves and 
advance human knowledge. 

From the standpoint of the National Uni- 
versity the government pay roll would be 
utilized to support a large body of properly 
educated scholars and fellows in the various 


Makrcu 5, 1897. ] 


scientific faculties. With all our surveys, 
libraries and laboratories filled with such 
educated and devoted persons we should 
soon have in Washington a noble body of 
students. 

It appears, therefore, that we need to take 
only two or three steps before we will have 
the National University for which we have 
waited so long. The first step, of course, 
will be to organize properly the scientific 
bureaus of the government as proposed in 
my former paper. The next step should be 
to extend the plan for civil service exami- 
nation now arranged for the Department 
of Agriculture, to include all the bureaus 
of the government, and thus provide schol- 
arships and fellowships for a much greater 
number of graduate students. When this 
is done, the only other thing necessary will 
be the central organization, with its deans 
and registrars, the boards of examiners to 
bestow degrees, and, finally, the outfit of 
buildings for lecture rooms and examina- 
tion halls. CHas. W. Dapney, JR. 


APPENDIX. 


PROPOSED PLAN FOR CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS 
FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 


The object of this plan is to secure for the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture in all the grades of its service 
candidates having a broad general and scientific or 
technical training, and to encourage the graduates of 
scientific and technical schools of collegiate grade to 
enter the service of the Department in the lower 
grades with a view to making a career in its service 
or fitting themselves more fully for scientific and 
technical work in higher positions, either within or 
outside the government service. Considerable weight 
should, therefore, be given to the training which the 
candidate has received prior to his examination. It is 
proposed to establish a class to be designated ‘‘Assist- 
ant in the Department of Agriculture’’ with sub- 
classes to correspond to the special subjects under A 
and B below. 


I.—Character and Rating of Examinations. 
Examinations for Assistant in the Department of 
Agriculture shall consist of five parts, as stated be- 
low and credit shall be given on the following per- 
centage scale : 


SCIENCE. 


383 


1. Basis Examination : 

For the convenience of the Civil Service Com- 
mission and as a test of fitness for temporary 
service on the clerical staff, the regular first 
grade basis examination is used : 


OrthosrTaphy, «-..-.-..-..s.cccsceseeee 0 oo) ALS) 
Arithmetic......... a0 CAD 
Letter Writing... . 2.0 
Penmanship. ...... 1.5 
(CODA cconceceoacabenaesbosnenea9d0%0809000000 2 
10 
2. A statement of candidate’s general training 
BING! ERVOAMEMESsceocaccocaciqoesooasdoosponsagELE5 5 
A test of proficiency in English composition. 5 
10 
3. Major examinations on special scientific or 
hechmicalls smb] ec hersseesteeesneeeeeetereeeeee 50 
4, Minor examinations on two required sub- 
TIEO ceocososnnoacosoeooconb.oBs seo bGsucdBaTGGIe00000 20 
5. Minor examinations on additional electives. 10 
“KOE Iconboaogsscooobadoodesseosoadodeaosdseardocd 100 


IT.—List of Subjects on which Examinations will be 
Offered. 

Division A: 

Chemistry, analytical, agricultural and industrial. 

Physics, especially as applied in meteorology and 
soil study. 

Meteorology. 

Physical geography of the United States. 

Botany, systematic. 

Vegetable physiology and pathology. 

Bacteriology. 

Forestry. 

Ornithology and mammalogy. 

Entomology, general and economic. 

Physiology and nutrition of man. 

Animal pathology. 

Animal production and dairying. 

Rural engineering. 

Statistics, especially of agricultural resources and 
productions. 
Division B: 

Bookkeeping. 

Stenography. 

Typewriting. 

Proof-reading and indexing. 

Editing and abstracting. 

Library work. 


Division C: 


Latin, 

French, ‘ M : 

Goma Translating and abstracting scien= 
ey tific articles in these languages, 

Italian, 


Spanish, etc. 


Two classes of examinations will be provided in 


384 


each of the subjects in A and B—a major examination 
for specialists and a minor examination for those who 
take the subject as an adjunct to their specialty. 


ITI.—Rules for Examinations. 


Candidates must elect one of the subjects in Divi- 
sion A or Bas their specialty or major, the examina- 
tion in which shall count 50. 

In addition to the major special subject, candidates 
must be examined on two minor subjects chosen by 
themselves from Divisions A, B and C, at least one of 
which must be from Division A and one from either 
Bor ©. Each of these subjects shall have a maxi- 
mum value of 10. 

Each candidate may take as many additional exami- 
nations from Division A, B or C as he chooses, but no 
one examination will count more than 5. 

Each candidate shall submit a statement of his edu- 
cational history and opportunities for scientific train- 
ing and experience, which shall be accessible to the 
Secretary of Agriculture in selecting eligibles for 
special positions. 

IV.—Eligible Lists. 

A record will be kept for each person on the eligible 
list of all the subjects in which he has passed. 

Bligible registers shall continue two years from the 
date of examination. 

Eligibles shall be drawn from the lists thus estab- 
lished to fill all vacancies in the scientific and tech- 
nical service of the Department of Agriculture. In- 
spectors, assistant inspectors, meat inspectors, stock 
examiners, microscopists and assistant microscopists 
in the Bureau of Animal Industry outside of Wash- 
ington, and river, rainfall and other special observers 
in the Weather Bureau, are not considered within 
this class, and these positions are to be filled, as pro- 
vided under VI. 


V.—Appointments and Promotions. . 

Candidates on the lists thus established shall be 
eligible to appointment to any position in the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture below the grade of Assistant 
Chief, under regulations to be established by the 
Commission. Vacancies occurring in any grade in 
the Department shall, as far as practicable, be filled by 
promotion from lower grades on such tests of fitness 
as the head of the Department shall prescribe. When 
this is not practicable, the Secretary of Agriculture 
shall call upon the Civil Service Commission to make 
certification from the aforesaid list of eligibles in ac- 


cordance with the statement which he shall make re-. 


garding the duties of the position to be filled and the 
relative importance of these duties. It is expected 
that the positions of Assistant Chief and Chief will 
ordinarily be filled by promotion, but in case this is 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 114. 


not practicable special examinations shall be held in 
which the employees of the Department shall be al- 
lowed to compete. 


VI.—Temporary Service in Minor Positions. 

Each candidate shall, at the time of examination, 
state whether or not he is willing to accept tempo- 
rarily a position in the service of the Department out- 
side the class of ‘ Assistant’ here provided for, and, if 
so, what branch or branches of work he prefers. A 
record of this shall be kept in connection with the 
eligible lists of the branches thus selected, and when- 
ever the Department of Agriculture shall ask for a 
veterinary inspector, microscopist, clerk-copyist, book- 
keeper, stenographer, compiler, artist, curator, propa- 
gator, skilled laborer, or other class of eligible outside 
the class of ‘ Assistant’ here provided for, the Civil 
Service Commission shall give the person who has. 
passed the Assistant’s examination (if there be one) 
preference in the certification. In case of failure to 
to find such scientific eligible, these positions shall be 
filled, as heretofore, from the list of eligibles for the 
general departmental service. 


THE COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 

Iy consideration of the changes that will 
follow the appointment of a new Secretary 
of the Treasury, it is to be hoped that a 
searching investigation will be made into 
the policy which has resulted in such great 
injury to the Coast and Geodetic Survey. 

This Bureau, organized at the instance of 
President Jefferson, has occupied a position 
in the esteem of men of science and affairs, 
at home and abroad, which has amply justi- 
fied the wisdom of its projector—a result, 
in no small measure, due to the wise appre- 
ciation of the administrations which from 
1807 to 1885 recognized the folly of subject- 
ing to political vicissitudes the management 
of a service whose success depended upon 
the labors of a trained body of men, valued 
for their acquirements as hydrographers, 
topographers, astronomers and physicists, 
and dependent for their employment upon 
their merits and devotion to duty. During 
these years the Survey, either by discovery 
or improvement, has won many a laurel for 
American science, and no other body under 
the government has done more to make 


Marcu 5, 1897.] 


the American name an honored one where 
applied science is recognized and appre- 
ciated. The physical hydrographic studies, 
applied in the improvement of our greatest 
harbors and in assisting the Mississippi 
Commissioners ; the magnetic data it has 
collected, deduced and accumulated for the 
Surveyor, almost his only guide in settling 
disputes about land lines which now put 
in jeopardy millions of dollars worth of 
property ; the admirable maps of the coast 
and adjacent waters it has produced, and 
the wealth of information its archives con- 
tain for the naval and military men upon 
whom may devolve the duty of protecting 
the country from foreign invasion—surely 
are fruits precious enough to satisfy the 
most exacting of utilitarians. 

Breadth in conception, thoroughness in 
method,rapidity and economy in execution — 
these were the characteristics of the Survey 
when an enlightened and generous super- 
vision gave assistance and support to the 
administration of such Superintendents as 
Hassler, Bache, Peirce, Patterson, Hilgard 
and Mendenhall; and to the honor earned 
by the services of the Survey to commerce 
and science must be added the credit due 
to the firmness with which its chiefs regu- 
lated their management in accordance with 
the highest form of what is now called Civil 
Service Reform. 

The first appointment of a Superinten- 
dent qualified by no previous scientific ex- 
perience for his position was made in 1885, 
but fortunately the appointee was a man of 
discretion, broad in his views and judicious 
in temperament. In attending to the pro- 
fessional details of the work the views and 
opinions of the most experienced and ablest 
of his scientific assistants were secured and 
given weight; his best efforts were called 
forth for the welfare of the Survey, and 
when he offered his resignation he sur- 
rendered his position with the knowledge 
that his honesty and fairness had won him 


SCIENCE. 385 


the respect of his associates, to whom he 
had come a stranger, and that his stay had 
been the means of preserving the Survey 
from the machinations of scheming spoils- 
men. 

President Harrison during his term in 
the Senate had acquired a personal knowl- 
edge of the operations of the Survey and a 
strong appreciation of the requirements 
that should be satisfied by a proper head 
for it, and to the making of such a selection 
it is well known that he gave an unusual 
amount of personal attention, the result be- 
ing the happy choice which fell on Dr. T. C. 
Mendenhall. To the readers of ScIENCE it 
would be an act of supererogation to recapit- 
ulate the qualifications of this distinguished 
scientist for the position, and no act of Mr. 
Harrison’s administration reflected more 
eredit upon his judgment than the selection 
he made for Superintendent of the Coast 
and Geodetic Survey. ‘The influence of the 
new chief was at once felt in every division 
of the office, as he brought to his super- 
vision not only a trained scientific mind, 
but the ripe results of a personal experience 
with nearly every line of work in the Sur- 
vey, with the consequence that at no time 
in its whole history was the Survey more 
productive in original and practical results 
than for the term that Dr. Mendenhall was 
allowed control of the Bureau. 

With the change of administration in 
1893 came a return of the hostile spirit with 
which the Survey was treated in 1885. The 
President, it is true, appreciated the abili- 
ties of the Superintendent, the great work 
he had done, recognized his suitability and 
expressed his desire that he should remain ; 
but the capture of a bureau where partisan- 
ship had never reigned was too tempting a 
prize to be lost for the new ruler that held 
sway in the Treasury Department. Left 
with only the semblance of executive power, 
and subjected to the pettiest and most 
odious treatment, Dr. Mendenhall remained 


386 


at his post until he had thwarted the most 
serious attack made in years on the integ- 
rity of the Survey, and then resigned an 
office his self respect could not allow him 
to retain. 

In the successor to Dr. Mendenhall the 
Treasury Department was fortunate enough 
to find a professional gentleman who showed 
the accommodating spirit with the clerical 
idea of how a scientific bureau should be 
conducted that the layman, Mr. Thorn, 
failed in. The new appointee, General 
Duffield, was a civil engineer in active prac- 
tice, but so far as has been shown none of 
his experience has been in connection with 
the special lines of work for which the Coast 
Survey has been noted. He had been em- 
ployed in the construction of railroads, in 
operations under the United States Engi- 
neers and in contract land surveying ; but 
seventy years had passed over his head at 
the time of his appointment without mak- 
ing his name a familiar one outside of his 
own vicinity. The professional career of 
the new Superintendent would indicate, if 
not expert knowledge of, at least intelligent 
sympathy with, the needs and requirements 
of his new charge ; but his attitude from the 
very first showed that this was not to be 
the case. For inspiration as to what should 
be his general policy in the Survey he took 
the directions of the Chief Clerk of the 
Treasury Department; for special informa- 
tion he drew, not on his assistants, but on 
the recent appointees in the clerical posi- 
tions, whose places in the Bureau were due 
to the same generous hands which had bene- 
fited himself. As the only places in the 
office, unprotected by civil service laws, 
which had not been filled by the new ad- 
ministration were those of the scientific 
force, upon them a raid was next to be 
made. 

With only a little over nine weeks’ ex- 
perience in an office to whose duties he had 
come an entire stranger, and without any 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. Von. V. No. 114. 


consultation with his natural advisers, 
the Superintendent wrote a letter to Con- 
gress, strongly advising a reduction of 20 
per cent. in the field force. This wild sug- 
gestion was ignored by the Senate, where 
long service had made the needs and re- 
quirements of the Survey best appreciated, 
but the insistence of the House of Repre- 
sentatives on general economy at any cost 
led to a compromise whereby a reduction 
of force was secured. 

The assistant in charge of the office, who 
had had that important position under Mr. 
Thorn and Professor Mendenhall, had the 
temerity to protest against the action of a 
Superintendent who had never drawn up 
an estimate for a year’s work on the Survey 
and had never been called upon to consider 
the requirements, in men, for a season’s 
work of the field parties, and his reward 
for his honesty and manliness in putting the 
welfare of the Survey above consideration 
for his own safety was a prompt request for 
his resignation. A lucrative berth was 
required for the Superintendent’s son and 
to provide it an assistant was dismissed, and 
to secure for this young man, with no train- 
ing in the distinctive work of the Survey, 
one of the highest salaries paid by the 
Treasurer, a reduction of $500 per year was 
made in the pay of the Geodesist who had 
connected the Pacific and Atlantic slopes 
by the grandest scheme of triangulation 
ever executed. 

When the time for carrying into effect the 
requirements of the new appropriation bill 
arrived the full measure of the Superin- 
tendent’s qualification for his position be- 
came apparent. The bill necessitated the 
retirement of four assistants. The Superin- 
tendent determined to remove eight ; but 
two received by accident notice of the fate 
intended for them and had time enough to 
bring to the notice of the Secretary of the 
Treasury such strong presentation of the 
injustice intended them that he interfered 


MAxrce 5, 1897. ] 


in their behalf, and only six were unde- 
fended before him and dismissed. 

If it was only for his treatment of one of 
these gentlemen the Superintendent stands 
overwhelmingly condemened for absolute 
unfitness for the place he holds. Among 
these dismissed assistants was Professor 
George Davidson, sound in health, active 
in mind, the most distinguished member of 
the scientific force of the Bureau, a man of 
international reputation and the staunchest 
reliance of every Superintendent from Bache 
to Mendenhall. For fifty years his life was 
one of indefatigable industry, his record 
one of honor and distinction in every line 
of work he has been engaged in. Dean of 
the scientists on the Pacific Coast, dele- 
gate to the International Geodetic Associa- 
tion, member of the National Academy of 
Sciences, and with a name connected with 
every piece of Coast Survey work from the 
Aleutian Islands to San Diego, a man who 
had deserved every distinction that could 
be earned in the Survey, he was rewarded 
for a half century of the highest class of 
work by a dismissal which went into effect 
in one hour after notice of it was received. 

Just before the last sweeping extension of 
the civil service regulations took the scien- 
tifie places in the Coast Survey out of the 
reach of spoilsman a last effort was made 
to utilize a power which was now to be 
lost forever, but the Secretary of the Treas- 
ury showed his appreciation of the inop- 
portuneness of so shameless an exercise of 
spoliation by allowing the removal of one 
efficient and respected officer instead of the 
three that the Superintendent intended to 
‘dismiss. 

It is true that the recent extension of 
the civil service regulations render it im- 
probable that such unjustifiable and disor- 
ganizing action will again be possible; but 
the memory of his subserviency to the policy 
of spoliation, and the knowledge of the 
utter lack of sympathy he has shown for 


SCIENCE. 


387 


the work and needs of the Survey, preclude 
any hope of usefulness from the present 
Superintendent in the future. 

The duties of the Superintendent, when 
properly executed, form a burden for the 
strongest of men; they broke down the 
strength of Hassler, Bache, Patterson and 
Hilgard ; and Professor Peirce, the greatest 
American mathematician of his day, found 
them too great to sustain. To their as- 
sumption came the present incumbent, with 
no previous experience of them, already 
burdened with the weight of 70 years and, 
as events have proved, with a mind which 
had lost its elasticity and entirely un- 
equal to the task of mastering the great 
requirements that were demanded in a 
Superintendent. A mind of the first order 
would have been capable of this mastery; a 
younger man, talented and receptive, would 
have recognized that until time and study 
had remedied his deficiencies a frank 
demand for the advice and views of the 
assistants who had grown gray in work 
which had earned the commendation of all 
qualified to pass upon it was not only due 
to the best interests of the government, but 
was most advantageous for himself. Men 
of the first class appear rarely; that he was 
not of the second the course of the Super- 
intendent makes evident to everyone; fail- 
ing in both, the necessity of replacing him 
by a competent successor is a self-evident 
proposition. That the successor should 
have the confidence and suffrages of scien- 
tifie men needs no better argument than 
the results which have followed as a conse- 
quence of the appointment of the present 
incumbent. 

We.need enumerate but a few of the 
measures and demands made on the Coast 
Survey to convince the general public of the 
necessity for an unusually capable man in 
the Superintendency ; there are the ordi- 
nary surveys and the questions of necessity 
for new and minuter resurveys where the 


388 


commerce and defense of the coast seem to 
demand them; there is the question of the 
places for an economical and adequate sur- 
vey of the vast shore line of Alaska; the 
assignment of officers to make the neces- 
sary surveys for disputed State boundaries 
and to sit on commissions for the establish- 
ment and improvement of harbors; and 
there is the provision of the astronomic, the 
gravimetric, magnetic, hypsometric and 
geodetic connections which will bring into 
an accordant whole the different surveys 
which the growth of our country and our 
rank as a civilized people are inevitably 
forcing us to provide. 

Our bankers and merchants scan jealously 
the qualifications of every man suggested 
for a place of responsibility connected with 
the conduct of the public financial policy. 
Does not a similar interest call upon scien- 
tific men to insist upon a worthy chief for a 
bureau whose results form so large a meas- 
ure of the amount of merit they can claim 
for the value of scientific application in 
public affairs and of the reputation due our 
country for her additions to the sum total 
of human knowledge? 

But that the desirable man may be had in 
this case it is necessary that the innovations 
in the spirit of the management in this Bu- 
reau that date from 1885 should be changed. 
The scientific bureaus of the government, to 
be properly officered, cannot be treated as 
part of the prey from which the victors in 
political wars can reward their most en- 
ergetic supporters. Their chiefs will never 
failin patriotic devotion to the best interests 
of their country because they neglect to 
emulate the ostentatious devotion of the 
man working for an office. 

From the political scientist, bound by the 
rules of the game to suffer the vicissitudes 
of party strife, what can be expected but a 
perfunctory attention to the affairs of an 
office whose details his term of official life 
gives but little promise that he will be 


SCIENCE. 


\ 
\ 
i 
\ 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No. 114. 


given sufficient time to master? If our 
country wishes for the reward and fame 
that accrued from the labors of Hassler, 
Bache, Maury, Henry and Baird it must 
perpetuate the policy that fostered their 
genius; the direction of the great scientific 
bureaus must be placed in the hands of capa- 
ble men, and to these chiefs the same meas- 
ure of protection must be accorded that now 
safeguards their subordinates. J. 


THE AMERICAN MORPHOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 

THE seventh annual meeting of the Amer- 
ican Morphological Society was held at the 
Harvard Medical School, Boston, December 
29, and at the Museum of Comparative 
Zoology, Cambridge, December 30, 1896. 
The following persons were elected to mem- 
bership: Dr. G. Lefevre, Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity ; Dr. A. Schaper, Harvard Medical 
School ; Dr. E. E. Bickford, Vassar College ; 
Dr. W. E. Castle, Knox College ; Dr. A. W. 
Weysse, Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
nology ; Dr. A. G. Mayer, Harvard Uni- 
versity; Dr. J. H. Gerould, Dartmouth 
College; Dr. H.S. Jennings, Jena; Dr. H. 
V. Neal, Munich; Miss Margaret Lewis, 
Radcliffe College; Dr. Ida Hyde, Cam- 
bridge; Mrs. G. C. Davenport, Cambridge ; 
Dr. H. McE. Knower, Williams College ; 
Dr. C. M. Child, Chicago University ; and 
Dr. E. L. Rice, Allegheny College. 

The following communications were pre- 
sented and discussed : 

The Individuality of the Cell. ARNOLD GRAF. 

The paper formulated a cellular theory 
opposed to the classical theory of Schleiden 
and Schwann, and to the Tolioplasma theory 
of Nigeli and Whitman, in the following 
terms: 

1. The cell is a physiological but not 
a morphological unit. 

2. It consists morphologically of numer- 
ous lesser units, which pertain to different 
categories, being specifically irritable by 
varying stimuli. 


Marcu 5, 1897. ] 


3. The sum total of the energies of these 
lesser units constitute cellular life. 

4, Differentiation is caused by specific 
irritation of certain kinds or elementary 
units, instigating these to multiplication 
and therefore to supremacy over the other 
units. 

5. The cell does not lead a double life; it 
leads only one life, namely, an independent 
life. There is, in fact, only one life that we 
know of. 

6. The axiom that a function presupposes 
cellular structure is not proved. Structure 
presupposes function is more acceptable, as 
it may be supported by direct evidence. 
Cellular structure becomes more compli- 
cated if the function of the cell is more 
energetic. 

7. Structure is a side product formed 
during the exchange between stimulus and 
reaction. (Was supported by examples 
from the organic and inorganic world.) 

8. The elementary units of the cell are 
partly demonstrated in the microsomes, 
chromatin granules and centrosomes. The 
microsomes are of different kinds, some of 
which were demonstrated by slides. 


1. Origin of the Centrosomes in the Unfertilized 
Egg of Chetopterus. 


2. The Behavior of the Centrosomes during the 
Maturation and Fertilization of Chetopterus. 
A. D. Mean. 


There is in the egg of Cheetopterus a defi- 
nite body, the centrosome, which is not an 
artifact, and which is not identical with the 
centrosphere or astrosphere, though the 
latter is sometimes present. 

In the ‘ oocite of the first order,’ 7. ¢., the 
unmaturated egg, the centrosomes arise by 
a modification of pre-existing cytoplasmic 
structures. Those of the first and succeed- 
ing cleavage spindles are identical with, or 
derived directly from, the male centro- 
somes, which are probably brought into the 


SCIENCE. 


389 


ego with the middle-piece of the spermato- 
zoon. 

The centrosomes, whatever their origin, 
are capable of growth and multiplication 
and persist through at least several cell 
generations. 

There is no union of male and female 
centrosomes during fecundation—no ‘ quad- 
rille of the centers.’ The female centro- 
somes entirely degenerate, and therefore 
cannot be considered a special means for 
conveyance of hereditary qualities. 

The centrosphere, a differentiated region 
about the centrosome, gives a different re- 
action from the centrosome, on the one 
hand, and the rest of the cytoplasm, on the 
other, both in point of color and resistance 
to certain reagents. Corrosive-acetic and 
certain other reagents will sometimes com- 
pletely destroy the centrosphere, though the 
rays and other structures are fairly well 
preserved. 

The centrospheres, unlike the centro- 
somes, appear and disappear with each suc- 
ceeding karyokinesis. When they are pres- 
ent the cytoplasmic rays of the aster are not 
so strongly developed as when they have 
disappeared and the rays diverge directly 
from the centrosomes themselves. 

The centrosomes divide and move apart 
within the centrosphere for a considerable 
distance without altering the spherical shape 
of the latter structure. 


On the Origin of the Centers of the First Cleav- 
age Spindle in Unio Complanata. F. R. 
LILuiz. 

After the formation of the second polar 
body the inner centrosphere and a large 
part of the aster become converted into 
archoplasm, against which the egg nucleus 
lies. The archoplasm is vesicular(or retic- 
ular) in structure, and contains the centro- 
some, though the latter cannot be distin- 
guished on account of the entire disappear- 
ance of radiations. The sperm nucleus 


390 


lying in the ege substance is, at this time, 
perfectly naked, 7. e., unaccompanied by 
archoplasm or radiation of any sort. As 
the sexual nuclei approach each other, 
radiations appear around the centrosome in 
the archoplasm ; or these radiations appear 
first after the nuclei have met. There can 
be no doubt in either case that the centrosome 
around which they appear is the egg center, see- 
ing that it lies within the archoplasm, 
which always accompanies the egg nucleus. 
The centrosome then divides in two, form- 
ing the amphiaster of the first cleavage. 

The egg and sperm nuclei never fuse to 
form a single vesicular cleavage nucleus, 
but each forms its own group of sixteen 
chromosomes. 

The study of the earlier stages shows, 
that the sperm head is accompanied soon 
after its entrance by a comet-like aster, 
with a minute centrosome. ‘his centrosome 
divides and forms an amphiaster, which entirely 
disappears in the late anaphase of the first matu- 
ration spindle. The sperm centrosomes never be- 
come functional again. But a supernumerary 
central aster appears near the center of the 
egg during the metaphase of the second 
maturation spindle. This aster also disap- 
pears during the anaphase of the same 
spindle. 

Thus the mode of fertilization in Unio 
agrees with that in Myzostoma, in so far as 
the centers of the cleavage spindles are de- 
rived from the ovum, but differs from it in 
as much as the spermatozoén in Unio 
brings in a centrosome, whereas the sper- 
matozoon of Myzostoma does not introduce 
a centrosome into the ovum. Unio is thus 
in a certain sense intermediate between 
Myzostoma and those forms in which the 
sperm centrosome forms the active centers 
of the cleaving ovum. 


Centrosome and Middle-piece in the Fertiliza- 
tion of the Egg. E. B. Witson. 
In an earlier paper the author had de- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 114. 


scribed the sperm-aster in Toxopneustes as 
arising about the middle-piece of the sper- 
matozoon as a center. Within the cen- 
tral mass thus formed no constant central 
granule could be found; the conclusion 
was therefore drawn that the middle-piece 
as a whole must be identified as the centro- 
some. Later studies on material differently 
fixed show that this conclusion was erro- 
neous. In eggs fixed in picro-acetic and 
weak sublimate-acetic (1-5 per cent. acetic) 
the middle-piece stains intensely black and 
its entire history can be accurately followed 
in sections. As the sperm nucleus moves 
inward the middle-piece separates from the 
nucleus, is left behind, and finally breaks up 
and degenerates. The astral rays are thus 
found to focus at a point lying at the base 
of the nucleus, between it and the middle- 
piece. At this point is an extremely minute 
intensely shining granule, which undoubt- 
edly is the centrosome, as described by 
Boveri, von Rath, Hill and Kostanecki. 
The centrosome occurs in the same form in 
Arbacia and Asterias. In some cases the 
Sperm-aster and centrosome move away 
from the nucleus before the latter has sep- 
arated from the middle-piece. These facts 
demonstrate that the middle-piece proper 
is not the centrosome, and that the latter 
is an infinitesimal granule which lies either 
inside the middle-piece or between it and 
the nucleus. 

In Arbacia the sperm centrosome can be 
traced continuously though the first cleay- 
age into the 2-cell stage, as in Chetopterus, 
Thalassema and Physa; and precisely as in 
those forms in the late anaphases each 
cleavage centrosome, after doubling, gives 
rise to a daughter-amphiaster and central 
spindle which are, however, of extraordinary 
minuteness. In Toxopneustes, after exactly 
the same treatment, the result is apparently 
different, agreeing in substance with the 
author’s earlier studies and with the ac- 
counts of Boveri and Reinke. In the ‘pause,’ 


Marca 5, 1897. ] 


after fusion of the sperm-aster, a single 
‘centrosome’ is found at the center of each 
aster. In later stages the center of the 
aster is occupied by a well-defined reticu- 
lated sphere, somewhat smaller than is the 
case after strong sublimate-acetic, and con- 
taining a group of distinct intensely shining 
granules (10-20 in number). The central 
sphere often has a sharp boundary and 
gives almost the appearance of a minute 
cell nucleus. Whether this appearance is 
normal remains to be seen, but the possibil- 
ity must be born in mind that even related 
forms may differ considerably in respect to 
the morphology of the centrosome and 
centrosphere. 


Observations upon Fertilization in Gasteropods. 

H. E. Crampton, JR. 

The observations were made upon a spe- 
cies of Doris collected on the Pacific coast 
and upon a species of Bulla from Wood’s 
Holl. A complete confirmation was ob- 
tained of the accounts of fertilization given 
by Wilson and Matthews, Boveri and Hill 
upon sea urchins, Mead upon Chetopterus, 
Kostanecki and Wierjeroski upon Physa. 
The sperm nucleus is preceded by the di- 
vided centrosome, although an asteris not 
formed till after the union of the germ 
nuclei. The first polar spindle of the egg 
has a double centrosome at the poles, while 
the second maturation spindle bears but a 
single centrosome at the pole. These, how- 
ever, are very large, and the one remain- 
ing in the egg finally breaks up, the centro- 
somes of the cleavage spindle being derived 
from the sperm. The germ nuclei never 
fuse, but lie in very close contact to one 
another. 


The Maturation and Fertilization of the Eggs of 

Timax. HK. ¥. Byrnes. 

After leaving the ovo-testis, the eggs of 
Iimas agrestis are stored in the albuminous 
gland, where they are fertilized prior to the 
formation of the capsules. 


SCIENCE. 


391 


By the time the egg reaches the albumi- 
nous gland the first polar spindle is already 
formed and occupies the middle of the ege 
(the stage of the ‘ archiamphiaster’). 

The center of the egg-astrosphere appears 
under widely different forms. In the stage 
of the archiamphiaster it appears as a 
central group of granules surrounded by two: 
sharply outlined, homogeneous envelopes, 
an inner colorless envelope and an outer 
deeply staining one. 

At the time of the formation of the first 
and second polar bodies the center of the 
astrosphere appears as a deeply staining 
center, surrounded by an almost colorless. 
envelope from which the astral rays di- 
verge. 

After the extrusion of the first polar body 
it appears as a uniform finely granular 
sphere in which two tiny centrosomes are 
often distinguishable. 

After the extrusion of the second polar 
body the center of the aster appears as a 
large, clear, spherical structure, traversed 
by a loose reticulum which connects, at the 
center of the sphere, with a large, deeply 
staining body. As the sphere increases in 
size the central body fades out, giving 
place to a reticulum which occupies the 
entire sphere. The egg-astrosphere then 
disappears. 

The sperm enters the egg at the lower 
pole. Asthesperm nucleus approaches the 
upper pole it keeps pace with the growth 
of the egg nucleus. 

The centrosome of the segmenting egg 
enters the egg with the sperm, but the time 
of the appearance of the sperm-asters is 
variable. 

1. A New Microtome. 
2. Laboratory Methods. C.S. Mrvxor. 

A new microtome was exhibited and its 
mode of working described; methods for 
polishing the edges of microtome knives, 
for storing pamphlets, and other matters of 
laboratory administration, were presented. 


392 


The Preservation of Cartilage and other Tis- 
sues in a Dried Condition. W. Patrren. 
The cartilaginous crania and other parts 

of the skeleton of the skate, when perfectly 
dehydrated, may be cleared in benzole, tur- 
pentine or chloroform, and impregnated 
with paraffine in the usual manner prepara- 
tory to sectioning. But if, instead of im- 
bedding them in a block of paraffine, they 
are drained in the warm oven for a few 
minutes, or wiped off quickly with blotting 
paper and then allowed to cool, they harden 
very quickly, with little or no shrinkage, 
and show very clearly the important ana- 
tomical details. 

Complete dehydration may require days 
and even weeks of immersion in strong al- 
cohol, to which pieces of calcium oxide are 
added to absorb the water given off by the tis- 
sues. In very difficult cases prolonged heat- 
ing or boiling in alcohol may be necessary. 

If the dehydration is not complete the 
objects will shrink when placed in paraffine. 
But in some cases the shrinkage will not ap- 
pear till three or four weeks after exposure 
to the air. Paraffine that has been used 
before and contains oil of cloves, etc., dis- 
colors the tissues. ‘Thesame is true of tur- 
pentine. When one wishes to preserve the 
clear, white color of the tissues the best 
results are obtained by using perfectly clear 
alcohol, chloroform and pure paraftine. 
The method has not been thoroughly tested, 
but there seems to be no reason why we 
cannot prepare in this way the entire skele- 
tons of animals, whether in whole or in part 
cartilaginous, and entire embryos or adult 
animals, when not too large. 

In this way series of amphibian eggs 
were prepared, which when fastened to a 
card are very useful in the laboratory; 
also a series of sections about =; of an inch 
thick from a horseshoe crab eight inches 
long. The sections are cut before dehydra- 
tion and impregnated with paraffine after- 
wards. When the paraffine collected in ex- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 114. 


posed cavities (blood sinuses, elementary 
cavities, etc.), and would not drain off 
readily, it was absorbed while hot by a bit 
of blotting paper. 

If the object is too large to be imbedded 
safely it may be cut open or sliced down 
approximately to the desired plane before 
dehydration and then heated, as described 
above. The imbedded pieces may then be 
cut down to the requisite level in the micro- 
tome, and, if necessary, heated again to 
drain off the excess of paraffine. Excellent 
sagittal sections of the brains of fishes . 
were obtained in this way, showing very 
clearly the ventricles and their connections. 
The same method might be easily applied 
to show the structure of sea anemones, 
earth worms, mammalian embryos, etc. 

G. H. PARKER, 

HARVARD UNIVERSITY. Secretary. 
( Zo be concluded. ) 


ZOOLOGICAL NOTES. 
THE FLORIDA MONSTER. 

I HAVE just received some large masses 
of the carcass cast ashore in December and 
described by me as the body of an Octopus 
in the American Journal of Science and else- 
where. These masses of integument are 3 
to 10 inches thick, very tough and elastic, 
and very hard to cut. They are composed 
mainly of tough cords and fibers of white 
elastic connective tissue, much interlaced. 
This structure resembles that of the blubber 
of some cetaceans. The creature could not 
have been an Octopus. It was probably re- 
lated to the whales, but how such a huge 
bag-like structure could be attached to any 
known whale is a puzzle that Iam unable 
to solve at present. 

The supposition that it was the body of 
an Octopus was partly based upon its bag- 
like form and partly upon the statements 
made to me that stumps of large arms were 
attached to it at first. This last statement 
was certainly untrue. A. EK. VERRILL. 

FEBRUARY 23, 1897. 


Marcu 5, 1897.] 


A NEW SUBGENERIC NAME FOR THE WATER 
HARES (hydrolagus GRAY.) 

Mr. Freprerick W. True has called my 
attention to the fact that the name Hydro- 
lagus used subgenerically by me in a recent 
paper on American Hares*is preoccupied in 
Ichthyology, the case standing as follows: 

Hydrolagus Gitt, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., 
Phila. for 1862, p. 331. 

Hydrolagus Gray, Ann. and Mag. Nat. 
Hist., 3d ser., XX., 1867, p. 221. 

There being no synonym of Gray’s pre- 
occupied Hydrolagus to replace it, the name 
Limnolagus, new subgenus, is therefore pro- 
posed for the group of Water Hares, of 
which Lepus [Limnolagus] aquaticus Bach- 
man will be the type. 

This section of Lepus was originally char- 
acterized by Baird (Mammals of North 
America, 1857, page 575), as follows: “ F. 
Skull and incisors very large and mas- 
Sive ; muzzle about as wide as high. Post- 
orbital process completely fused with the 
skull for its entire length, leaving neither 
foramen, notch nor suture, LD. aquaticus 
[and L.] palustris.” The above diagnosis, 
supplemented by additional characters 
given by Baird in his Key to the North 
American species of Lepus at the top of 
page 577, has since been repeated, with 
some modifications, by Gray (who raised 
Baird’s section ‘F.’ to generic rank), 
Allen and myself. 


EpGgar A. Mearns. 
U.S. ARMmy. 


CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 
WOMAN IN CHINA. 


Pror. GUSTAVE SCHLEGEL, of Leyden, 
contributed to the 10th International Con- 
gress of Orientalists a charming study (in 
French) on the position of woman in China, 

* Preliminary description of a new subgenus and 
six new species and subspecies of Hares from the 


Mexican border of the United States. Proc. U. S. 
Nat. Mus., Vol. XVIII., No. 1081, pp. 551-565, 1896. 


SCIENCE. 


393 


in times past and present. Truly, as he 
points out, she enjoys there in many re- 
spects an influence greater than with us. 
The Emperor of China to-day, in theory at 
least, does nothing but carry out the orders 
of his mother! The conjugal position of 
the wife is, as a rule, dignified and impor- 
tant; and when she is unhappy it is nearly 
always a case of two much mother-in-law. 

In the past Chinese women have occu- 
pied prominent rank in literature and the 
fine arts. They have been poets and 
writers of history, and indirectly have 
directed government. Even in the most 
ancient monuments of Chinese literature 
we do not discover any expressions which 
indicate that women were kept in a servile 
condition 


DEATH MASKS IN EUROPE AND AMERICA. 

Two interesting contributions to the study 
of death masks have recently appeared. 
One is by Mr. F. S. Dellenbaugh, in the 
American Anthropologist for February, on the 
faces of the dead so accurately reproduced 
on vases from Arkansas. These, he argues, 
were, in fact, not hand work, but obtained 
from moulds actually taken from the visage 
of the corpse. In no other way, he believes, 
can we explain their striking accuracy. 

In Folk-Lore for December, 1896, the 
Hon. J. Abercromby treats of funeral masks 
in Europe. The custom still prevails in 
various localities to cover the face of the 
dead with such a mask during the funeral 
ceremonies, though sometimes the mask is 
placed not on the face, but besides the 
corpse. His explanations of the custom in 
some of its details are not convincing, and 
probably we have not yet caught the exact 
spirit of remote ages on this point. 

ONTARIO ARCHHOLOGICAL REPORT. 

THE annual report (1896-7) of the On- 
tario Archeological Museum contains some 
matters of unusual interest. The first is a 
careful description of the Otonabee serpent 


394 


mound, by the Curator, Mr. David Boyle. 
A photographie illustration and a plan are 
added. There is no doubt of its artificial 
origin and religious character, and it even 
resembles the Ohio serpent mound in the 
presence of the ‘egg’ in front of the ser- 
pent’s head. Efforts will be made to pre- 
serve it. A number of other mounds and 
some graves are described, and a variety of 
noteworthy specimens acquired by the Mu- 
seum are mentioned and illustrated. At 
the close of the report (which covers 117 
pages) is a useful bibliography of the 
archeology of Ontario, prepared by Mr. A. 
F. Hunter. D. G. Brinton. 
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


NOTES ON INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 

THE last number of the Proceedings of 
the Chemical Society contains the abstract 
of a paper by W. N. Hartley and H. Ram- 
age on the wide dissemination of some of 
the rarer elements. A large number of 
ores and minerals were examined by means 
of spectrographic analysis. Most notable 
is the wide distribution of gallium, which 
was found in 68 out of 168 specimens, oc- 
curring in most magnetites, bauxites and 
blendes, and nearly half the clay ironstones 
and manganese ores. Rubidium appears 
to be even more widely distributed, occur- 
ring in most iron ores. Indium was found 
in thirty minerals, including all the carbon- 
ates of iron and tin ores and most blendes. 
Thallium, while less widespread, was fre- 
quently found. Iron and sodium were 
found in every specimen and potassium in 
all but two, one a blende and the other a 
tin ore. Calcium, copper and silver were 
found in all but a few cases. Such a wide 
dissemination of gallium and indium is un- 
expected, and the same might be said of 
silver. Among metals not looked for by 
the authors, titanium is known to be found 
almost universally, and possibly the same 
is true of gold. 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 114. 


Aw interesting class of substances has 
been discovered by Professor Wm. L. Dud- 
ley, of Vanderbilt, formed by the action of 
fused sodium dioxid on metals. The one 
most carefully studied is a hydrated oxid 
of nickel, of the formula Ni,O,,2H,O. It is 
formed by heating nickel with sodium 
dioxid in a nickel crucible to a cherry red. 
The surface of the fusion soon becomes 
covered with scaly crystals, which, after 
cooling and washing, possess the composi- 
tion given. They are lustrous, almost 
black, apparently hexagonal plates, soft 
and somewhat resembling graphite. They 
begin to lose water at 140°, and thus pre- 
sent the curious but not unique phenomenon 
of a substance containing water, formed at 
a high temperature and losing its water at 
a much lower temperature. Other metals 
appear to form similar compounds, buttheir 
study is not easy, since fused sodium dioxid 
attacks crucibles of porcelain, iron, silver, 
gold or platinum. 

BrEroreE the Edinburgh University Chem- 
igal Society on January 25th a paper was 
read by Dr. Dobbin on ‘ Who introduced 
the use of the balance into chemistry?’ 
After quoting from text-books many state- 
ments which attribute to Lavoisier the dis- 
covery of the law of conservation of energy, 
and the first employment of the balance in 
investigating theoretical questions in chem- 
istry, the author showed that every step of 
Black’s classic investigation on ‘ Magnesia 
Alba’ was made good by appeal to direct 
quantitative experiments. Boyle also made 
frequent use of the quantitative method of 
experiment. The earliest attempt to de- 
termine the accuracy of a view by appeal to 
quantitative experiment was, according to 
Dr. Dobbin, that of Van Helmont in his 
well-known experiment upon the supposed 
formation from water only, of 164 pounds 
weight of the substance of a willow tree, the 
weight of the earth in which this willow 
grew having varied by only about two 


Marcu 5, 1897.] 


ounces in five years. Van.Helmont’s work 
was most probably the inspiration of that 
of Boyle, and Lavoisier is well known to 
have been an attentive student of the works 
of the latter. Thus must we trace the 
evolution of the ‘ Father of Chemistry !’ 

do Ib, él, 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 
VERTEBRATES FROM THE KANSAS PERMIAN. 


VERY recently I have received from Cowley 
County, Kansas, a number of fossil bones ob- 
tained in an excavation for a well, which are of 
considerable stratigraphic interest. They are 
from near the base of the Permian, as defined 
by Professor Prosser, who is our authority on 
the stratigraphy of the Kansas Permian. Two 
of the animals represented by the remains are 
indistinguishable, so far as the descriptions 
show, from Cricotus heteroclitus and Clepsydrops 
collettvi, described by Cope from the Permian of 
Illinois ; with them, also, are numerous teeth, 
similar to or identical with an Illinois species 
of Didymodus. 

That species of vertebrate animals are good 
‘Leitfossilien,’ there can be no question, thus 
proving the contemporaneity of the Illinois and 
Kansas deposits. Furthermore, all of these 
genera are represented by closely allied forms 
from the Permian beds in Texas, which would 
therefore seem to be of earlier rather than later 
Permian time. Above the strata which yield 
these remains in Kansas there are two or three 
hundred feet of shales and limestones underly- 
ing, whether conformably or not is not known, 
not far from one thousand feet of deposits 
known as the ‘red beds.’ That these red beds 
are not contemporaneous with the Texas Per- 
mian would seem assured, and I feel yet more 
confident that they are, what they were first 
considered to be, of Triassic age. 

S. W. WILLISTON. 


A NEW BOTANICAL LABORATORY IN THE 
AMERICAN TROPICS. 


A MOVEMENT for the establishment of a 
botanical laboratory in the American tropics 
which should be international in its organiza- 


SCIENCE. 395 


tion and benefits had made such progress in the 
way of securing substantial support that the 
writer at the suggestion of the editors of the 
Botanical Gazette, on January 1, 1897, began to 
organize a commission for the selection of a 
location for the proposed laboratory, and to 
ascertain how far the moral support and active 
cooperation of American and British botanists 
might be enlisted. 

The organization of the commission has pro- 
ceeded with such facility that the American 
membership is now complete, with the following 
representation : : 


Professor Douglas Campbell, Stanford University. 

Professor J. M. Coulter, University of Chicago. 

Professor W. G. Farlow, Harvard University. 

Professor D. T. MacDougal, University of Minne- 
sota. 

It is proper to say that the entire moyement 
has received the support of almost every ac- 
tive botanical center engaged in work which 
would be benefited by the opportunities afforded 
by a tropical station—a unanimity that points 
to a speedy establishment of the proposed labo- 
ratory. 

Preliminary to the beginning of actual field 
work, advices have been secured concerning 
the regions which should receive the attention 
of the commission, from botanists in Germany, 
England and America, inclusive of the gentle- 
men in charge of the various tropical and sub- 
tropical stations now in existence. The sug- 
gestions made include the Pacific Coast from 
California to Peru, the Gulf Coast from Galves- 
ton to Panama and from Florida to Venezuela. 

Data concerning the climatic conditions, 
flora and transportation facilities are being ac- 
cumulated, and the commission will be able to 
select the region best adapted for the purposes 
of the laboratory before starting on its tour of 
inspection. The work of the commission in 
the field will consist in the selection of a site 
offering the most highly advantageous grouping 
of local conditions. The presence of a body of 
undisturbed tropical vegetation, easily acces- 
sible from a site, conveniently placed with ref- 
erence to towns or settlements, or other base 
of supplies, as well as direct and easy connec- 
tion with a marine sub-station, will be the more 
essential features. 


396 


The commission will be present at the meet- 
ings of the A. A. A. S. at Detroit and the Brit- 
ish Association at Toronto in August, and will 
make an informational report to these bodies if 
desired. 

D. T. MacDouGAaLt. 
AN ALLOY COMPOSED OF TWO THIRDS ALUMINUM 
AND ONE THIRD ZINC. 


Pror. W. F. Duranp, of Sibley College, 
Cornell University, supplied the following facts: 

From a series of tests made in the Mechan- 
ical Laboratory of Sibley College, on the strength 
of alloys of aluminum and zine in varying pro- 
portions, the best results were found for mix- 
tures of not far from the above proportion. 
The principal properties of the metal were 
found to be as follows: 


Tensile strength deduced from small bars 22,000 
Maxium fiber stress deduced from trans- 
WETSCLESbSecmeerneteecr ieee cere es sserterciese cele 44,000 
Modulus of elasticity.................2cseseseneeee 8,000,000 
SPECI Cin Granth yemeceeecee seer ese eeece-aoeseeeee 3.3 


Apart from of the above, comparative experi- 
ments have been made more recently between 
small bars of this metal and like bars of cast 
iron, showing the same general indications, and 
apparently warranting the conclusion that this 
alloy is the equal of good cast iron in strength, 
and its superior in location of elastic limit. The 
other general physical properties of chief inter- 
est are as follows : 

The color is white and it takes a fine smooth 
finish and does not readily oxidize. It melts at 
a dull red heat or slightly below, probably 
about 800-900 F. It can, therefore, be readily 
melted in an iron ladle over an ordinary black- 
smith’s forge or other open fire. It is very 
fluid and runs freely to the extremities of the 
mould, filling perfectly small or thin parts. In 
this particular it is much superior to brass. It 
does not burn the sand into the casting and 
hence comes out clean and in good condition to 
work. It is rather softer and more easily 
worked than ordinary brass, and yet is not as li- 
able to clog a file. It is brittle like cast iron and 
hence is not suited to pieces which require the 
toughness possessed by brass. For equal vol- 
umes and with aluminum at 50 cts. per pound, 
it is about equal in expense to brass bought at 
15 cts. per pound. 


SCIENCE. 


LN. S. Von. V. No. 114. 


This alloy would seem to be admirably 
adapted to many small parts of machines, 
models, ete., where it is desired to obtain cast- 
ings without waiting for a regular foundry heat, 
and where lightness combined with good finish, 
strength, stiffness and non-corrosiveness, are 
among the desiderata. It has been employed 
with great success in the construction of small 
serew propellers for experimental work in the 
Graduate School of Marine Engineering. 


GENERAL. 

THE author of ‘The Argentaurum Papers’ 
has brought suit against this JoURNAL for $50,- 
000, estimating that his reputation ‘as a scien- 
tist, philosopher, chemist and mathematician’ 
has been damaged to that extent by the review 
of his book in our issue of February 19th 
(p. 814). Should the ‘case’ prove one for the 
legal profession, the Supreme Court of the 
State of New York may need to pass on the 
validity of the law of gravitation. 


Tue American Society of Naturalists, the 
American Physiological Society, the American 
Morphological Society and the American Psy- 
chological Association will meet at Cornell Uni- 
versity, Ithaca, N. Y., on December 28, 29 and 
30, 1897. 


At the annual meeting of the New York 
Zoological Society, in January, the Board of 
Managers was strengthened by representatives 
from the American Museum of Natural History 
and from the New York Botanical Garden. 
The resignation of the Honorable Andrew H. 
Green, who has been President of the Society 
since its inception, was accepted, and the selec- 
tion of his successor was left to the Executive 
Committee. This Committee was reorganized 
for the year by the election of Henry F. Os- 
born as Chairman and Madison Grant as Sec- 
retary. At the last meeting of the Committee 
the Hon. Levi P. Morton, of New York, was 
elected President of the Society. The other 
officers of the Society are: Corresponding Sec- 
retary, George Bird Grinnell ; Treasurer, L. V. 
Randolph. The agreement with the City has 
been in the hands of the Park Board for nearly 
six weeks, and has undergone considerable 
modification, mainly in the direction of giving 


Makrcu 5, 1897.] 


the Society greater autonomy in the adminis- 
tration of the proposed Zoological Park. The 
Commissioner and other members of the Sink- 
ing Fund Commission, as well as members of the 
Park Board, have all declared themselves indi- 
vidually in favor of the proposals of the Society, 
and it is expected that a satisfactory settlement 
will be reached in the course of a short time. 

OFFICERS of the New York Academy of Sci- 
ences for 1897-1898, in most cases the same as 
for the past year, have been elected, as follows : 
President, John J. Stevenson, professor of geol- 
ogy, New York University; First Vice-Presi- 
dent, Henry F. Osborn, professor of zoology, 
Columbia University; Second Vice-President, 
Nathaniel L. Britton, director New York Bo- 
tanical Garden ; Corresponding Secretary, Wil- 
liam Hallock, department of physics, Columbia 
University; Recording Secretary, James F. 
Kemp, professor of geology, Columbia Univer- 
sity; Treasurer, Charles F. Cox; Librarian, 
Arthur Hollick, department of geology, Colum- 
bia University. 

PROFESSOR C. S. SHERRINGTON will deliver 
the Croonian lecture before the Royal Society on 
April 1st, having selected as his subject, The 
Spinal Cord and Reflex Actions. 

SurcEoN H. D. Gippines, United States 
Navy, the American scientific delegate to the 
conference on the plague, has arrived at Venice. 

PROFESSOR EBERMANN has been elected Presi- 
dent of the St. Petersburg Medical Society. 


Nature quotes from the Rendiconti del Reale 
Istituto Lombardo the award of the following 
prizes: One of the five Cagnola prizes of 2,500 
lire and a gold medal of the value of 500 lire to 
Dr. Andrea Giulio Rossi, of Padua, for his 
essay on methods of registering the phases of 
two alternating currents. The Brambilla prize 
of 1,500 lire and a gold medal are awarded to 
Prof. Carlo Figini, for his improvements in the 
weaving industry ; and rewards of 500 lire 
each to Signor Sala Salvatore and Signor 
Scartazzi Antonio. The Fossati prize of 2,000 
lire is awarded to Prof. Angelo Mosso, of Turin, 
for his essay on the temperature of the. brain. 
For the coming year the Istituto offers the 
prize of the institution of 1,200 lire, for experi- 
ments confirming Maxwell’s theory of dielec- 


SCIENCE. 


397 


tric stresses ; six Cagnola prizes of 2,500 lire, 
each accompanied by a gold medal of 500 lire, 
for essays on various selected subjects, mostly 
medical; one Brambilla prize, for improve- 
ments in some industry in Lombardy, and one 
Secco-Comneno prize of 864 lire, for an essay 
onuremia. These prizes are open to foreigners, 
but the essays must be in Italian, French or 
Latin. 


A NEW laboratory for hygiene has been 
erected and recently opened at the University 
of Freiburg. It is under the directorship of 
Professor M. Schottelius. 

THE Royal Meteorological Society, London, 
will hold from March 16th to 19th, in commem- 
oration of the Diamond Jubilee of the Queen, 
an exhibition of the meteorological instruments 
in use in 1837 and in 1897, together with dia- 
grams, drawings and photographs illustrating 
these. 

Lorp PLAYFAIR has written to the London 
Times suggesting that in addition to the various 
philanthropic and local plans proposed for the 
celebration of the Queen’s jubilee the event be 
celebrated by a permanent national memorial 
out of public funds. He calls attention to 
the fact that in 1837, the first year of Queen 
Victoria’s reign, a vote was taken and a mu- 
seum and school of design were opened at 
Somerset House. This initial effort to promote 
technical education has developed into the 
magnificent art collections and art instruction 
of South Kensington. For the purpose of 
technical instruction in art these collections are 
superior to any in Europe. Berlin and Vienna 
have avowedly founded new museums on the 
English type, while Paris has rearranged her 
museums to some extent in a like way. The 
museum at South Kensington was opened in 
1857, but while the collections have continually 
grown the building has never been completed. 
Lord Playfair proposes that Parliament com- 
plete the building and that the name be changed 
from the South Kensington Museum to the 
Victorian Museum. 


Lorp SALIsBuRY, the English Premier, re- 
ceived, at the Foreign Office, on February 16th, 
a deputation of representatives of science, who 
asked the government to establish a national 


398 


physical laboratory, at a cost of £30,000 for 
buildings, and £5,000 a year for maintenance. 
The deputation was introduced by Lord Lister, 
and addresses were made, urging the importance 
of such a laboratory, by Professor Rucker, Lord 
Rayleigh, Sir Douglas Galton, Mr. J. Wolfe- 
Barry and Sir Andrew Noble. Lord Salisbury, 
in reply, said that all must be heartily anxious 
for the attainment of the objects advocated, so 
far as they were practicable. He feared, how- 
ever, that the demands might in the end 
greatly exceed those proposed by the com- 
mittee. He thought it would be better to begin 
by determining standards which had already 
been acknowledged as a function of the state, 
and leave research to private munificence. 


WE have, on several occasions, called atten- 
tion to the work of the Forestry Commission 
under the auspices of the National Academy of 
Sciences. This Commission has now selected 
thirteen new forest reserves, including alto- 
gether an area of more than 21,000,000 acres, 
and these have been set aside by President Cleve- 
land as National forest preserves. Some years 
ago Congress authorized the Executive to with- 
draw from public sale parts of the forested pub- 
lic lands, and during Mr. Harrison’s administra- 
tion about 18,000,000 acres were thus set apart. 
The new reserves include the central portion 
of the Black Hills of South Dakota, the Big 
Horn Mountain Range in Wyoming, the Jack- 
son Lake country south of the Yellowstone 
National Park in Wyoming, the Rocky Moun- 
tains of northern Montana, a forest region in 
northern Idaho, the principal part of the Bitter 
Root Mountain region in Montana and Idaho, 
the Cascade Mountains of northern and of 
southern Washington, the Olympic Mountain 
region in northwestern Washington, the Sierra 


summits of California north of the Yosemite 
National Park, the San Jacinto Mountains in 


southern California, and the Uintah Mountains 
in northern Utah. 


THE February number of the Bulletin of the 
American Mathematical Society gives a brief ac- 
count of a Mathematical Conference held in the 
University of Chicago, December 31, 1896, and 
January 1, 1897, in response to a call issued by 
several members of the American Mathematical 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 114. 


Society. Fourteen papers were read and a reso- 
lution was adopted to the effect that, in the 
opinion of the conference, it was desirable for 
the members of the American Mathematical 
Society to hold in Chicago at least two meet- 
ings a year for the reading and discussion of 
mathematical papers, one during Christmas 
vacation and one in the spring. 


THE proceedings of the American Association 
for the Advancement of Science for the forty- 
fifth meeting at Buffalo last August have been 
published by the permanent secretary. The 
volume appears at an earlier date than usual, 
probably owing to the omission of abstracts of 
the papers read before the sections. We have 
already published the addresses of the presi- 
dent and the vice-presidents and full accounts 
of the meeting. We may, however, quote the 
following facts from the report of the perma- 
nent secretary. The 333 members and associ- 
ates in attendance were from the following 
States: New York, 92; Ohio, 31; Massachu- 
setts, 29; District of Columbia, 23; Pennsyl- 
vania, 22; Indiana, 13; Iowa, 12; Michigan, 
11, and less than 10 from each of twenty-seven 
States and foreign countries. The 270 papers 
presented before the sections were distributed 
as follows: mathematics and astronomy, 12; 
Physics, 32; chemistry 53; mechanical science 
and engineering, 18; geology and geography, 
42; zoology, 22 ; Botany, 44; anthropology, 33 ; 
social and economic science, 13. Several im- 
portant changes in the constitution have been 
proposed, which should be carefully considered 
by members before the next meeting. 


THE American Association for the Advance- 
ment of Physical Education has issued the first 
number of a new quarterly publication, en- 
titled the American Physical Education Re- 
view, edited by the Committee on Publication, 
consisting of Dr. E. M. Hartwell, Dr. George 
W. Fitz and Mr. Ray Greene Hieling. The 
present number, which is a double one, ex- 
tending to 128 pages, contains an article on 
Peter Henry Ling, the Swedish Gymnasiarch, 
by Dr. Hartwell, followed by articles on The 
Olympic Games, The Present Status of Physi- 
cal Training, Physical Education in Brunswick, 
Military Drill in the Public Schools, Manual 


Marcu 5, 1897.] 


Training, The Influence of Exercise on Growth, 
The Brooklyn Public Bath, and a report of a 
committee of the Boston Physical Education 
Society suggesting a substitute for the Manual 
of Arms as a means of physical exercise in the 
military training of school boys. There are 
also reports from local societies, editorial notes, 
book notices and an index of the proceedings 
and the reports of the Society issued during 
the past ten years. The American Society for 
the Advancement of Physical Education is ac- 
complishing an important work, which will 
doubtless be increased by the publication of 
this review. 

THE second annual report of Mr. F. A. 
Crandall, the Superintendent of Documents, is 
of considerable interest, more especially in view 
of the bill now before Congress. As everyone 
knows, a great number of important scientific 
papers and books are published each year by 
the government, but in such a manner as to 
lose a considerable part of their value. The 
documents are printed late and are often not 
bound and distributed for years after they have 
been printed. They are in large part given 
away where they are not wanted, while even 
their existence is unknown to many who would 
like to buy them. The present Superintendent 
has made great improvements in the publica- 
tion of the Document Catalogue of the Fifty- 
Third Congress, and more especially in the 
issue of a monthly catalogue. The bill now 
before the Senate provides for uniform pub- 
lication, so that there shall not be more than 
one original edition of each book. There are 
now often four editions of the same book bound 
in such a manner that no one could tell from 
the title on the cover that they are the same. 
The bill also provides for the more prompt 
binding and distribution of volumes. Other 
desirable provisions of the bill are that the 
publications of the several Departments and 
Commissions shall be bound in distinctive 
colors, so that their origin may be recognizable 
at sight; that the octavo size shall be used, ex- 
cept in unusual cases; that volumes shall be 
volumes and not parts; that series shall be 
series and not volumes; that gold leaf instead 
of base metal shall be used in lettering docu- 
ments ; that better cloth shall be used for bind- 


SCIENCE. 


399 


ing than has sometimes heretofore been used ; 
that sheep bindings for the library supply of 
public documents shall be abolished; that the 
back titles shall show the actual subject-matter 
of the books; that the bound yolumes of Con- 
gressional documents and reports shall be paged 
consecutively through the volumes. The need 
of a reform is shown by the fact that during 
the year covered by the report nearly 200,000 
documents were distributed, while only 3,581 
were sold. Of many important publications, 
such as the Memoirs of the National Academy of 
Sciences, only one or two copies were sold. The 
Monthly Catalogue of public documents is for the 
present distributed without charge, and men of 
science should apply for this before the edition 
of 2,000 is exhausted. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 

Mr. SwANTE PALM, Swedish Vice-Consul at 
Austin, has given the University of Texas his 
library of 25,000 volumes. 


WE have received a letter from Dr. I. Mad- 
dison, Secretary to the President of Bryn Mawr 
College, calling attention to the fact that in the 
article on ‘ Science in College Entrance Exam- 
inations,’ printed in the issue of this JourNAL 
for December 25, 1896, Bryn Mawr College was 
not included in a list of those institutions recog- 
nizing a proper preparation in physical and 
natural science. Colleges for women were not 
considered in the report in question, but we 
are glad to state that in this as in most other 
respects Bryn Mawr College has followed the 
admirable example of the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity. As Dr. Maddison writes: ‘Bryn 
Mawr College has from its foundation included 
science in its entrance requirements. Some 
slight changes haye been made in the regula- 
tions from time to time, but the latest program 
states that candidates for matriculation must 
be examined in the elements of one of the fol- 
lowing sciences: Physics, chemistry, botany, 
physiology or physical geography. No student 
can obtain an A. B. degree at Bryn Mawr 
College without having attended lectures in 
science (biology, chemistry, physics or geology), 
for at least five hours weekly for one year, and 
doing, in connection with the science chosen, 
the prescribed amount of laboratory work.’’ 


400 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
“AN AMBITIOUS PARADOXER.’ 

History tells us of a man whose great pride 
and boast it was that he had once been kicked 
by the Duke of Wellington. Mr. Stephen H. 
Emmens, whose advertisement appears in ScI- 
ENCE of February 19th, seems to be moved by 
a like ambition, only, the great Duke being 
dead, he has to get men of lower rank to perform 
the ceremony. Only thus can I explain his ad- 
vertisement in which he cites a number of 
names of scientific men, my own among them, 
as having written in such a manner ‘as to show 
that they regard his arguments and mathemat- 
ical demonstrations as incapable of refutation.’ 

I have never even seen Mr. Emmens’ book, 
and experience taught me long years ago that 
any attempt to cure that special mental condi- 
tion of which he is a victim by reasoning or ex- 
planation was futile. I therefore have long ago 
made it a rule neither to address any argument 
or comment to that class of people, nor tell 
them what I think of their vagaries. To fill the 
cup of Mr. Emmens’ happiness, I shall only add 
that he is entitled to the highest place in the 
class to which he belongs. 

S. NEWCOMB. 


FORMER EXTENSION OF GREENLAND GLACIERS. 


From Professor Tarr’s letter in the last num- 
ber of SCIENCE, under the above heading, it 
would appear that he is disposed to insist upon 
an erroneous interpretation of the views of Pro- 
fessor Salisbury and myself after the error has 
been explicitly pointed out. It appears that 
on the basis of my general inference ‘‘ that the 
ice formerly so extended itself as to reach the 
coast over about half its extent, while in the 
remaining portion the ice fell short,’’ Professor 
Tarr inferred that the area which he studied 
fell within the portion in which the ice did not 
reach the coast. He further assumed that the 
augularity of outline which he observed in a 
region which had been glaciated was the angu- 
larity from which we inferred non-glaciation. 
In the editorial in the Journal of Geology, to 
which he refers, it was explicitly pointed out 
that the region between Disco Island and Mel- 
ville Bay, within which Professor Tarr’s studies 
lay, was regarded by both Professor Salisbury 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 114. 


and myself as having been glaciated in general. 
Only some of the higher peaks which were not 
visited by Professor Tarr, and which rose to 
heights greater than any observed by him, and 
some lee faces were excepted. It was also 
pointed out that the topography of the region 
was not classed by us with the rugged unsub- 
dued type from which we inferred non-glacia- 
tion. On the contrary, we looked upon it as 
being partially subdued, and as indicating par- 
tial glaciation, a view which is precisely con- 
sonant with the determinations of Professor 
Tarr, and is substantially confirmed by them. 
Professor Tarr has thus unwittingly empha- 
sized, by his attempt to place us in error, the 
fact that the difference between a wholly un- 
subdued and a slightly subdued topography can 
be detected by passing observers with no better 
facilities than a coasting vessel and good field 
glasses. When his photographs shall be pub_ 
lished it will remain for glacial experts to deter- 
mine whether the topography gives indication 
of the feeble glaciation that took place and was 
detected by us, or not, and whether experi- 
enced students of glacial topography can rea- 
sonably be expected to catch and correctly in- 
terpret such indications in passing or not. I 
predict with the utmost confidence that expert 
judgment will at once classify the topography 
studied by Professor Tarr precisely as Professor 
Salisbury and myself classified the topography 
of the general tract in which it is embraced. I 
feel confident that Professor Tarr will not be 
sustained in calling the topography of the upper 
Nugsuak peninsula unqualifiedly ‘rugged’ and 
‘angular,’ but that, on the other hand, it will 
be pronounced partially subdued and obviously 
glaciated. I think it will then become evident 
that Professor Tarr’s error lies, first, in a lack 
of sufficient care in interpreting our statements, 
and second, in identifying the feebly glaciated 
topography, which he studied, with our unsub- 
dued topography, and in assuming that the 
topographic effects of glaciation cannot be de- 
tected even where some measure of ruggedness 
—even a large measure of ruggedness in the 
common gross sense of the term—may remain. 

It was pointed out in the editorial that I 
recognized an extension of ice in the general 
region of Professor Tarr’s studies essentially 


Marcu 5, 1897.] 


equal to that which his observations imply, and 
that in this particular he has added to my de- 
terminations the confirmation of specific evi- 
dence. T. C. CHAMBERLIN. 


TWO EXTRAORDINARY BRITISH PATENTS. 


Parent No. 14,204, granted 27th October, 
1884, by Her Majesty’s Commissioner of Patents 
to Harry Fell, Mercantile Clerk, of South Nor- 
wood Park, is described as a ‘New Method for 
getting Gold from Wheat.’ The complete speci- 
fication is as follows: 

“That in the steeping of the mixture of half, meas- 
ure, ‘the whole wheat straw cut into fine square snips 
the width of the straw and half’ the grains in a jar of 
ordinary cold water ‘‘I let the steep remain still for 
ten hours at a temperature of fifty-nine degrees 
Fahrenheit varying with temperature, and then 
straining off the liquor into a shallow pan of some 
such cool substance as china or earthenware, I leave 
this liquor to stand in this pan for yet twenty-four 
hours at sixty degrees also varying with temperature; 
these durations of times of ten hours and twenty-four 
hours speaking for a very inferior brown straw much 
knocked about and the grains those, of a very good 
quality, of red wheat; and then catch up the skim 
on a cylinder of some such cool substance as china or 
earthenware,’’ and then let this skim dry, so getting 
some results of films of Gold.” 

The simplicity of this process for getting gold 
from wheat is as extraordinary as the language 
used in describing it; the above being a literal 
transcript, including the peculiar use of punc- 
tuation marks. The specification occupies two 
pages*in quarto form and can be had at the 
Patent Office, Sale Branch, 38 Cursitor street, 
Chancery Lane, for two pence. 

The second of these curious patents is num- 
bered 1919 and bears the date 2d February, 
1889. Itis described as an ‘improved means 
of detecting the presence of gold and silver un- 
derground,’ and was granted to Samuel Adams 
Goodman, Jr., of Tyler, in the county of Smith 
and State of Texas, U.S. A. This specifica- 
tion also occupies two pages and is accompanied 
by a plate representing an ordinary glass bottle 
containing a solid body and a liquid, corked 
and sealed with wax; to the cork is fastened a 
string terminating in a loop. 

Mr. Goodman, farmer, of Texas, makes the 
following statement : 

“The object of this invention is to enable precious 


si SCIENCE. 


401 


metals to be discovered by a process of divination ; 
and it consists in a composition which has a strong 
attraction and affinity for gold and silver, the attrac- 
tion resembling somewhat that of magnetism. In 
carrying my invention into practice, I place the com- 
position in a vial or flask, seal it tightly and suspend 
it by means of a string. The composition referred to 
is made up of gold, silver, quicksilver and copper, 
the ingredients being placed in a small vial or flask, 
together with a quantity of dilute nitric, or tartaric 
acid or purealcohol. * * * 

“Tn using my gold and silver finder the instrument 
is held, preferably by the thumb and forefinger of the 
right hand and steadied with the left hand ; it should 
be held steady but not cramped. ‘Then, if there are 
any precious metals in the immediate neighborhood, 
the flask will be attracted by such metals and will 
move towards them at first and will then vibrate, 
thus indicating the presence of the metal sought for. 

““To protect and conceal the contents of the flask, 
I cover it with paper, cloth or tin.’’ 

This is substantially the whole claim, in se- 
curing which Mr. Goodman was assisted by 
A. M. and Wm. Clark, patent agents of 53 
Chancery Lane. 

It is satisfactory to note that Texan farmers 
write English much more clearly than London 
mercantile clerks. 

Western farmers are hereby warned against 
attempting to get gold out of their wheat by 
the Fell process and against seeking for pre- 
cious metals by the Goodman method. But 
seriously why are patents granted to persons 
making such absurd claims ? 

H. CARRINGTON BOLTON. 


COMPLIMENT OR PLAGIARISM. 


THE following letter is sent for publication, 
at Mr. Lefevre’s request, by Professor Beman. 

MEssrs. BEMAN AND SMITH, 

ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN. 

GENTLEMEN: Ihave just seen your reply to 
Dr. Halsted on page 275 of the current number 
of SCIENCE. 

Much as I regret the unhappy chance that 
led to the furthest association of my name with 
that deplorable controversy—being a rational 
and just man—I do not reproach you, even for 
omitting to state the intrinsically trivial nature 
of the parallelism of that sentence in my book 
with a sentence in Sandeman’s preface to his 
Pelicotetics. It was entirely proper to make 


402 


your point; but, considering the context, I am 
sorry you were not careful to prevent indefinite 
surmises by hasty readers. Itmay be remarked, 
also, that our librarian would gladly have 
furnished you still better proof that the book in 
question was in Texas. 

It is my desire merely to explain that I wrote 
out the book hurriedly and partly from lecture 
notes made long before, and that the little rhe- 
torical flourish (so acutely identified by you) 
somehow got incorporated without any con- 
sciousness, on my part, of its origin. If you 
will glance at the foot note on page 78 you will 
see that I was compelled once to quote: ‘From 
note made long ago ; exact reference lost.’ 

It only remains for me to correct the over- 
sight so foreign to my principles and practice, 
and to have the Hrrata page changed at once so 
as to contain the following statement : 

On page 92 read single quotation marks about the 
latter part of the last sentence of section 130 (after 
accept), and subjoin the foot note: An arraignment 
of algebraists on account of their abuses of infinite 
series, by A. Sandeman ( Pelicotetics, 1868, Preface, p. 
9.), which, though no longer deserved in that regard, 
is appropriate to widely prevailing ideas of the in- 
finitesimal calculus.’’ 

It may be proper to add in conclusion that 
when I made the notes for my class lectures I 
had not the remotest intention of ever working 
up the matter for publication, and that this cir- 
cumstance (though it would by no means excuse 
general carelessness) may explain how I acci- 
dentally omitted in this instance the citation 
for a rhetorical phrase that struck-my fancy. 

Yours respectfully, 
ARTHUR LEFEVRE. 
AUSTIN, TEXAS, February 17, 1897. 


REDUCED RATES OF POSTAGE ON SPECIMENS OF 
NATURAL HISTORY IN THE INTERNA- 
TIONAL MAILS—AN APPEAL. 


UNDER the present regulations of the Univer- 
sal Postal Union specimens of Natural History 
are admitted to the mails of the Union only at 
letter rates—five cents for each half-ounce or 
fraction thereof. 

At the International Congress of Zoology, 
held at Leyden, Holland, in September, 1895, 
Dr. Chas. Wardell Stiles, official delegate of 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S Vou. V. No. 114. 


the United States government, offered resolu- 
tions, which were subsequently adopted, that 
the Swiss government be requested, through its 
delegate to the Congress of Zoology, to propose 
to the next International Postal Congress an 
amendment to the regulations thereof whereby 
specimens of natural history shall be carried 
in the mails of the Universal Postal Union at 
the rates for samples of merchandise; that an 
appeal should be addressed to all the delegates 
and members of the Congress of Zoology to 
bring this amendment to the notice of their re- 
spective governments, so that those govern- 
ments should instruct their delegates to the 
Postal Congress to act favorably upon the 
same; that copies of these resolutions be sent 
by the Secretary of the Congress of Zoology to 
all governments forming part of the Universal 
Postal Union and which were not represented 
at the Congress of Zoology. 

In accordance with these resolutions Dr. 
Stiles suggested to the Committee of the 
Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 
haying the subject of postage on natural his- 
tory specimens in charge, that, although it is 
probable that the United States government 
will vote in favor of the proposed amendment, 
the cause will be helped by the Academy 
adopting resolutions in favor of this proposed 
amendment and requesting the Postmaster- 
General at Washington to instruct our Ameri- 
can delegates to vote for the same. 

This the Academy has done, but other Ameri- 
can scientific bodies should join in the work, 
adopt similar resolutions and send them to our 
Postmaster-General that he may know that the 
students of natural history in the United States 
eagerly desire such a reduction in postage rates. 
The next International Postal Congress meets 
at Washington on the 5th of May next. The 
purpose of this article is to urge all those who 
read it to use such means and influence as may 
be at their command to help in the accomplish- 
ment of this end. 

For the guidance of those who will aid in the 
manner suggested, a translation of the original 
French text of the amendment referred to is as 
follows: 

“Amendment to Article XIX. (samples) 4, 
of the Regulations of Details and Order. 


Makrcu 5, 1897. ] 


“5, Objects of natural history, dried or pre- 
served animals and plants, geological specimens, 
etc., of which the transmission has no commer- 
cial interest, and the packing of which conforms 
to the general conditions concerning packages 
of samples of merchandise.’’ 

If this amendment be adopted by the Postal 
Congress, specimens of natural history can be 
sent to countries of the Universal Postal Union 
at the rate of one cent for every two ounces. 

Statements of previous efforts of the Com- 
mittee on behalf of the same object will be 
found in ScrENcE for November 17, 18938, p. 
267, and for January 26, 1894, p. 49. 

H. A. PILsBRY, 
LEWIs WOOLMAN, 
PHILIP P. CALVERT, Chairman. 
Committee of the Academy of Natural Sciences of 
Philadelphia. 


THE LAVOISIER MONUMENT. 


FRENCH chemists, as well as physicists, are 
making an earnest effort to bring about the 
erection ofa monument to perpetuate, in a meas- 
ure, the memory of the great Lavoisier. They 
have authorized certain gentlemen in various 
countries to receive any contributions which 
non-residents of France may feel disposed to 
make in behalf of this very laudable under- 
taking. 

The chemists of America fully recognize the 
services rendered their favorite science by the 
great French experimenter, and will doubtless 
be ready to add their mite to bring the pro- 
posed monument to an early completion. To 
facilitate matters the Academy of Sciences of 
Paris has appointed as its delegate in this 
country Professor Gustavus Hinrichs, who in 
turn has called to his aid the following gentle- 
men, to any one of whom subscriptions may be 
sent : 


Jasper L. Beeson, A. M., Ph. D., Professor of 
Chemistry in the Audubon Sugar School, Research 
Chemist for the Louisiana Sugar Experiment Station, 
ete., New Orleans, Louisiana. 

Charles Anthony Goessmann, Ph. D., LL. D., Pro- 
fessor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Agricultural 
College, Chemist of the Hatch Experiment Station 
of the College ; Chemist of the Massachusetts State 
Board of Agriculture, etc., Amherst, Massachusetts. 


SCIENCE. 


403 


Eugene W. Hilgard, Ph. D., LL. D., Professor of 
Agricultural Chemistry in the University of Califor- 
nia, Director of the California Experiment Station, 
Berkeley, California. 

Richard Watson Jones, M. A., LL. D., Professor of 
Chemistry in the University of Mississippi, Uni- 
versity, Mississippi. 

John Uri Lloyd, Professor of Chemistry in the 
Eclectic Medical Institute of Cincinnati, President 
(1887) of the American Pharmaceutical Association, 
Cincinnati, Ohio. 

John H. Long, M. S., Sc. D., Professor of Chem- 
istry and Director of the Chemical Laboratories of 
the Schools of Medicine and Pharmacy of North- 
western University, 2421 Dearborn Street, Chicago, 
Illinois. 

John Ulric Nef, Ph. D., Professor of Chemistry 
and Director of the Kent Chemical Laboratory of the 
University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. 

James Marion Pickel, A. M., Ph. D., Professor of 
Chemistry in the University of Alabama, University, 
Alabama. 

Paul Schweitzer, Ph. D., Professor of Agricultural 
Chemistry and Chemist to the Agricultural Experi- 
ment Station, University of the State of Missouri, 
Columbia, Missouri. 

William Simon, Ph. D., M. D., Professor of Chem- 
istry in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of 
Baltimore, in the Maryland College of Pharmacy and 
in the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, 1348 
Block Street, Baltimore, Maryland. 

Edgar F. Smith, Ph. D., Professor of Chemistry 
of the University of Pennsylvania, Director of the 
John Harrison Laboratory of Chemistry ; President 
(for 1895) of the American Chemical Society, Phila- 
delphia, Pennsylvania. 

Eugene Allen Smith, Ph. D., State Geologist of 
Alabama, formerly Professor of Chemistry, now of 
Mineralogy and Geology in the State University of 
Alabama, University, Alabama. 

Henry Trimble, A. M., Ph. M., Professor of Ana- 
lytical Chemistry in the Philadelphia College of 
Pharmacy, Editor of the American Journal of Phar- 
macy, 145 North Tenth Street, Philadelphia, Penn- 
sylvania. 

Francis Preston Venable, Ph. D., Professor of 
Chemistry in the University of North Carolina, Sec- 
retary (for 1896) of the Chemical Section of the 
American Association for the Adyancement of 
Science, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. 

Gustavus Detlef Hinrichs, M. D., LL. D., Pro- 
fessor of Chemistry St. Louis College of Pharmacy, 
Delegate of the Academy of Sciences of Paris, for 
the United States, 3132 Lafayette Avenue, St. Louis, 
Missouri. 


404 


Every subscriptien will be promptly acknowl- 
edged by a formal souvenir receipt, bearing the 
portrait of Lavoisier in prison. The original 
individual subscription papers will be bound 
and deposited in the Archives of the Academy. 

While the American committee was rather 
late in beginning its work, we are advised that 
its efforts are slowly bearing fruit. Let every 
one who reads these lines join in the good 
work, giving money in accordance with his 
means and his regard for the conquests of the 
pioneer who wrought so well in laying the fun- 
damentals of chemical science. 


EpGAr F, SMITH. 
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 

List of the Vertebrated Animals now or lately liv- 
ing in the Gardens of the Zoological Society of 
London. London, Longmans, Green & Co. 
Ninth edition. 1896. Pp. xvi+724. 

The preface to this work states that its prin- 
cipal object is to facilitate the naming of speci- 
mens and to render nomenclature uniform. It 
is merely a transcript of the Society’s register 
of accessions illustrated by a few cuts from the 
proceedings. Its value would have been greatly 
increased had there been added statistics show- 
ing the number of each species present, the 
average life of each and the number and causes 
of the deaths. As the volume treats of all ani- 
mals that have been in the garden during 12 
years past, and embraces 2,557 species, a vast 
amount of information might thus have been 
given which would have been of great benefit 
not only to those having collections in charge, 
but to pathologists and biologists generally. 

We are able to gather from the list some idea 
of the number and kinds of animals born in the 
gardens during this period and thus judge how 
far the conditions were favorable for breeding. 
Some rather unexpected results are met with. 
We will consider the mammals only. The 
lemurs breed much more freely than monkeys; 
the lion is the only one of the cat tribe that is 
prolific, though our own puma is credited with 
five births. Among Esquimaux dogs there 
were but 9 births; the dingo has 15. From 
an apparently large number of raccoons but 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No. 114. 


8 were born, and among 52 squirrels (Sciurus 
vulgaris, common to the British islands) 
there were no births. On the other hand 14 
beaver (Castor canadensis), 6 bison (B. amer- 
icanus), 19 American elk, or Wapiti (Cervus 
canadensis), 35 mule deer (Cariacus macrotis) 
were born. The South African fruit bats 
(Cynonycteris collaris) produced 44, and the 
gerbilles, rat-like animals from western Asia 
and North Africa, threatened to become a 
nuisance, the birth of no less than 225 being re- 
corded. Other notable births were 47 coypus, 
13 yaks, 11 gayals (Bibos frontalis), 18 Hima- 
layan sheep (Ovis burrhel) 15 Barbary sheep 
(Ovis tragelaphus), 43 Japanese deer (Cervus 
sika), many kangaroos and phalangers. 

Certain species that breed freely in American 
zoological collections appear not to have bred 
at all or but rarely. Among these may be men- 
tioned our coyote, prairie dog and chipping 
squirrel (Tamias striatus) the collared peccary, 
the Virginia deer, and even some domesticated 
animals like the camel, the llama and the zebu. 
Some of these results could doubtless be ex- 
plained were the circumstances of each case 
fully known. FRANK BAKER. 

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 


Genius and Degeneration. A Psychological 
Study. By Dr. WitL1AmM Hirscu. D. Ap- 
pleton & Co. 1896. 

This work is published in the same style type - 
as Nordau’s ‘Degeneration’ and is announced 
as an answer to the latter work. An accom- 
panying circular assures us that Dr. Hirsch 
‘absolutely refuses to accept Dr. Nordau’s 
conclusions.’ This at once removes a good 
deal of tension from the inquiring critic and 
leaves him the simpler tasks of finding out who 
it is that thus deals in the absolute and what 
are his reasons for so firm an implantation of 
himself upon an adverse position. The open- 
ing chapters of the book discuss the position of 
modern psychiatry and the nature of insan- 
ity and of genius. It is shown that neither of 
these latter things represents a very definite psy- 
chological concept. The author then takes up 
the relations of genius and insanity to each other. 
He shows that they are not identical and that 
‘¢ovenius resembles insanity as gold resembles 


MaAkcH 5, 1897. ] 


brass’’—a similie that can hardly be called con- 
vineing. In this chapter he also attacks the 
position of Lombroso and those few alienists 
who teach that genius isa morbid psychosis. 
We feel sure that Dr. Hirsch is in close har- 
mony with the views of most modern alienists 
in this argument, and that he opens himself to 
no criticism, except, perhaps that he tells us 
only what is generally known; but Dr. 
Hirsch writes lucidly and with learning upon 
this subject. In his criticism on the attempts 
to make out a large number of great men 
epileptics or hallucinants, we note a little 
deficiency in his description of Luther’s his- 
torical hallucination about the devil. The com- 
pleted story leaves little doubt that Luther 
did have such a hallucination, though the 
fact is not very significant or important. The 
next chapter, on ‘degeneration,’ is an excel- 
lent description of this condition and so much 
in harmony with the views of Nordau that 
we are left wondering where the antagonism 
between the author and the Nordau monster is 
to appear. Up to the middle of the book, in fact, 
the two authors might coo together like turtle 
doves. It is in the last three chapters on ‘Sec- 
ular Hysteria,’ ‘Art and Insanity,’ ‘Richard 
Wagner and Psychopathology,’ that we find 
Dr. Hirsch tasking his resources and his rhetoric 
in showing the errors and extravagances of his 
opponent. These chapters are interesting, but 
are essentially polemical and do not have any 
particular bearing on Genius and Insanity—a 
fact which does not matter very much except in 
marring the scientific physiognomy of the book. 
Dr. Hirsch denies that this is an age of hysteria 
and of neuropathic temperaments. Unfortu- 
nately he does not furnish any particular facts 
in support of his denial. He says, ‘‘spiritualism 
has in the main died out,’’ but this is not the 
case in the United States at least. He cites 
the epidemics of hysteria of the Middle Ages 
as evidence of psychopathy in those times ; but 
their existence, it may be fairly assumed, was 
not by any means proof of a prevalent neu- 
ropathy as much as it was of ignorance, re- 
ligious zeal and church politics. No doubt 
very sturdy and lethargic natures danced 
with the rest of the populace in the epidemics 
of those times and did it out of a healthy fright, 


SCIENCE. 


405 


or puerile imitativeness or ignorant passion. 
The existence of false beliefs among an untutored 
race does not argue degeneracy by any means. 
The question at issue is in reality simply this: 
Whether there are or are not more neuropathic 
people per hundred of the population now than 
a century or two centuries ago. We confess to 
the opinion that there is now more of this neu- 
ropathic constitution. The statistics of crime, 
alcoholism, insanity and nervous diseases ; the 
fact that a larger proportion of the population 
are brain workers living on a higher mental 
plain than in former times; the diffusion of syph- 
ilis, the stimulating influences of modern ciy- 
ilization, the press, the telegraph, the rail- 
road; the gradual increase of urban at the 
expense of rural populations, all justify this 
position, which I believe only a blind or 
sentimental optimism can deny. This does 
not necessarily mean, however, that we are ‘in 
the midst of a black death of degeneracy and 
hysteria,’ but only that there we have now pro- 
portionately more nervous systems which are 
highly organized and unstable. We doubt if 
even Dr. Hirsch will deny this, and it is mainly 
the exaggerated and intense emphasis laid upon 
the matter by Nordau which has brought out 
such a crop of amateur optimists. We are, I 
should add, combating this condition with ever 
increasing diligence and, I trust, success. 

There seems to be little doubt that a man 
may be insane and still produce art of a high, 
if not of the highest quality. Here is where an 
endless controversy, however, isletin. For one 
party asserts that certain art work is of the high- 
est class, hence the author is not insane. The 
other, with equal positiveness, avers that the man 
is insane, hence his work can not be of the high- 
est class. Ido not propose to be dropped into this 
controversial cauldron. Itis, I believe, however, 
a pretty safe thesis to say that if a man is insane 
his work cannot be of the highest class or rank 
with that of a genius, since the fundamental 
quality of insanity is a more or less completely 
developed dementia, and a certain positive de- 
fect in the association processes. This has not 
prevented men of genius, originally sane, from 
doing some kinds of great work after mental 
disease had come upon them, through the sheer 
inertia of their marvelous aptitudes. 


406 


Dr. Hirsch devotes nearly one-third of his 
book to the defense of Richard Wagner. He 
must have felt that his hero was hard pressed. 
The great majority of his readers will, no doubt, 
believe that he has maintained his thesis and 
established his hero on a sane and solid basis. 
We are not at all unwilling to accept his position. 
But it is an interesting fact that the Wagner 
vogue, aside from Germany, has reached its great- 
est popularity in this country, a land which has, 
with equal fervor, taken to its heart spiritual- 
ism, homceopathy, Christian science and free 
coinage. Dr. Hirsch has, in general, reasoned 
well and shown both the learning of an alienist 
and the scholarship of a literateur. But we are 
grieved to see him descend to thecheap sophism 
that Nordau, by his own rules, has shown him- 
self a degenerate. This brilliant touch has been 
applied before by three-fourths of the penny-a- 
liners who have attacked his work. While it 
may be suggested by Nordau’s extravagant in- 
vective, it is simply nota logical retort. For 
it makes no difference what the author of an 
argument is. It is the force of the facts upon 
which it is based that concerns the critic. 


CHARLES L. DANA. 
NEW YORK. 


SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS. 
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 

THE March number opens with an article by 
J. S. Diller, of the United States Geological 
Survey, describing Crater Lake, in southern 
Oregon. This lake is situated in the summit 
of the Cascade Range, and, notwithstanding the 
interest of its geological history and the beauty 
of the natural scenery, a comparatively small 
part of the scientifie public is acquainted with 
its features. The nearly circular rim of the 
lake has an average diameter of six miles and 
rises 1,000 feet above the general level of the 
range. The slope without is gentle, but with- 
in quite precipitous. The general appearance 
is that of the hollow base of a large and deeply 
truncated cone, filled within by the waters of 
the lake. The crest of the rim varies in height 
from 6,700 to 8,200 feet above the sea, or from 
a little more than 500 to nearly 2,000 feet 
above the waters of the lake. The rim is com- 
posed of lava streams and beds of volcanic con- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 114. 


glomerate, which dip away from the lake. The 
prevailing rock is andesite, but rhyolites are 
common along the later flows and these are 
largely associated with pumice. A number of 
vertical dikes intersect the rim, the largest of 
which is known as the Devil’s Backbone. 
Within the lake is an island called Wizard’s 
Island, which consists of a steep cinder cone 845 
feet in height, surmounted by a perfect crater 
80 feet in depth and encircled by a rough lava 
field. According to soundings taken by Dutton 
in 1886, other prominences of this kind exist at 
the bottom of the pit. The rim of the lake has 
been extensively glaciated, and the study of the 
glacial striz and moraines gives evidence of the 
changes which have taken place since the gla- 
cial period. 

After discussing the prominent features of 
the locality, some of which are here alluded to, 
the author concludes that in the glacial period 
the site of Crater Lake was occupied by an ac- 
tive voleano about the height of Mt. Shasta ; 
this has been called Mt. Mazama. Its sides 
were glaciated by the descending ice streams, 
and moraines were deposited about its base. 
The author concludes as follows : 

“The later eruptions of Mt. Mazama occurred . 
in the glacial period and doubtless produced 
extensive floods which filled with débris the 
valleys of all the streams radiating from the 
mountain. In approximate connection with its 
final eruption, the molten material of the in- 
terior withdrawing, the summit of Mt. Mazama 
caved in and sank away, giving rise toa caldera 
nearly six miles in diameter and 4,000 feet 
deep. Thus originated the great pit in which 
Crater Lake is contained, encircled by a gla- 
ciated rim, the hollow base of the engulfed Mt. 
Mazama. Upon the bottom of the caldera 
voleanie activity continued. There were new 
eruptions building up cinder cones and lava 
fields and partially refilling the great pit. Pre- 
cipitation is greater than evaporation in that 
region. Volcanic activity ceasing, the condi- 
tions were favorable for water accumulation, 
and Crater Lake was formed in the pit.’’ 

F. D. Adams and A. E. Barlow discuss the 
origin and relations of the Grenville and Hast- 
ings series in the Canadian Laurentian. This 
is in continuation of an earlier paper by the 


Makcu 5, 1897.] 


first author on the same general subject. The 
region now especially described lies to the north 
of Lake Ontario, along the margin of the Pro- 
taxis. The nature of the various igneous rocks 
which make up the Fundamental Gneiss is de- 
scribed, and then the Grenville series, differing 
from the former in containing certain rocks 
whose composition marks them as highly altered 
sediments, for example, limestone and certain 
gneisses, either haying a composition approach- 
ing ordinary shale and slate or highly siliceous, 
and thus corresponding to sandstones. The 
whole has been invaded by great masses of the 
so-called Fundamental Gneiss. The south- 
eastern portion of the area is underlain by the 
Hastings series, characterized particularly by 
fine-grained bluish or grayish limestones and 
dolomites, differing from those of the Grenville 
series in being comparatively unaltered; these 
are cut through by intrusions of gabbro-diorite 
and granite. The contact of the Fundamenta] 
Gneiss and the Grenville series appear to a 
contact of intrusion; further, as regards the 
relation of the two series to each other, observa- 
tions thus far made indicate that the Hastings 
series represents the Grenville in a less altered 
form. That is, ‘‘the Hastings series, when in- 
vaded, disintegrated, fretted away and intensely 
metamorphosed by and mixed up with the 
underlying magma of the Fundamental Gneiss, 
constitutes what has elsewhere been termed 
the Grenville series.’’ ‘‘Like the Grenville 
series, the rocks of the Hastings series are un- 
conformably overlain by and disappear beneath 
the flat-lying Cambro-Silurian rocks of the 
plains, which limit the Protaxis on the south 
and are separated from it in time by an immense 
erosion interval.’? The authors add that if the 
explanation reached is correct, the Laurentian 
system of Logan will resolve itself into an 
enormous area of the Fundamental Gneiss 

which is essentially of igneous origin and which 
there is eyery reason to believe forms part of 
the downward extension of the original crust 
of our planet, perhaps many times remelted 
and certainly in many places penetrated by 
enormous intrusions of later date; into which 
Fundamental Gneiss, when in a softened condi- 
tion, there have sunk portions of an overlying 
series, consisting chiefly of limestones. 


SCIENCE. 


407 


The paper closes with some remarks by R. 
W. Ells, describing observations made by him 
in the region adjoining to the east, which 
confirm and extend the conclusions of the 
other authors named. 

C. E. Beecher gives (pp. 181-207) the con- 
clusion of his exhaustive paper on tl e Natural 
Classification of the Trilobites, closing with an 
index list of the genera included. F. B. Tay- 
lor describes the various forms of scoured 
bowlders in the Mattawa Valley, in the Prov- 
ince of Ontario. A number of distinct varieties 
of the bowlders are recognized; as those re- 
duced to aring form, others with a basin-like 
hollow, and finally those which are faceted 
or simply smoothed. The special conditions 
under which each type was probably produced 
are discussed at length, and it is shown that the 
evidence is very strong in favor of the supposi- 
tion of a former outlet of the Upper Great 
Lakes along the present course of the Mattawa 
River. 

C. Barus discusses some observations on the 
excursions of the. diaphragm of a telephone 
made with the special interference apparatus 
described in the February number. It is con- 
cluded, for example, that in the case of tele- 
phonic sounds of faint but distinct audibility 
the excursions of the plate cannot be greater 
than 3 10-® em., and are probably even be- 
low 10-5 cm. A computation of the force 
coming upon the plate in certain cases gives 
141 dynes as the force at the center. R. 5S. 
Tarr describes the action of Arctic sea ice in 
geological work; from observations made at va- 
rious points in the high north. The nature of 
sea ice and glacial ice is spoken of, the influence 
of sea-made ice on erosion, further the erosion 
by glacial ice, and the transportation accom- 
plished by both kinds. 

W. O. Crosby gives the results of his study 
of the geology of Newport Neck and Conanicut 
Island, especially with reference to the relation 
existing between the granite and the sedimen- 
tary rocks. The latter consist in part of Car- 
boniferous slates, in part of flinty slate, which 
resembles the Middle Cambrian slates of the 
Boston Basin. The author does not accept the 
view of Pirsson, that the flinty slate grades into 
the highly fissile Carboniferous slates, but re- 


408 


gards his observation as proving that the two 
formations are distinct. The arkose which 
forms a continuous belt separating the flinty 
slate and the unaltered green shales is be- 
lieved to be a regular member of the Carbonif- 
erous series, F. A. Gooch discusses the use of 
hydriodic acid in the estimation of molybde- 
num. This subject was treated in 1806, by 
Goosh and Fairbanks, but their methods were 
criticised by Friedheim. The present article 
shows that certain errors of calculation in an 
earlier paper by Friedheim and Euler vitiate 
the conclusions reached in the criticism referred 
to. I. C. Russell gives an abstract of the re- 
sults of recent observations in southeastern 
Washington, especially as regards the immense 
lava fields of the region and the gorge formed 
through them by the Snake river ; this is said 
to rival the Grand Canyon of the Colorado in 
grandeur, though lacking its brilliant coloring. 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 
PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 


THE Philosophical Society of Washington 
held its 464th meeting on the 20th inst, at 
which E. D. Preston, of the United States Coast 
and Geodetic Survey, read a paper on ‘The 
Transcontintental Arc from Cape May to San 
Francisco,’ which was followed by a paper by 
Wm. Eimbeck, of the same Survey, on ‘The New 
Primary Base Apparatus,’ used by the Survey, 
illustrated by one of the bars mounted. Mr. J. 
Howard Gore read a paper on ‘A Dutch Prac- 
tical Charity,’ and Charles R. Dodge read a 
paper on ‘Systematic Classification of Textile 
and other useful Fibers of the World,’ illus- 
trated by samples. 

BERNARD R. GREEN, 
Secretary. 


SCIENCE CLUB OF THE UNIVERSITY 
CONSIN, JANUARY 18, 1897. 

THE subject, ‘ Modern Methods of Milk Pres- 
ervation,’ was presented by Professor H. L. 
Russell. He divided the different methods 
proposed into three classes: 1. Those exclud- 
ing bacteria from the milk; 2, those inhibiting 
the development of bacteria as in condensed 
or preserved milk, or where milk is kept at 


OF WIS- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 114. 


temperatures too low for bacterial growth; and 
3, those in which bacteria are actually de- 
stroyed, as in the various methods where heat 
is employed, as in pasteurization and sterliza- 
tion. He also discussed the new method, de- 
vised by Dr. Babcock and himself, of restoring 
the consistency to pasteurized milk products. 
Mr. Louis Kahlenberg, in his paper, ‘ The Toxic 
Action of Dissolved Salts and their Electrolytic 
Dissociation,’ gave, as an introduction, a brief 
explanation of the theory of electrolytic disso- 
ciation and the reasons for holding the same. 
The general proposition was made that the 
physiological action of a solution of an electro- 
lyte depends on the action of the undissociated 
molecules, together with that of the ions pres- 
ent. The results of many experiments upon 
plants performed by the author and Mr. R. H. 
True and Mr. F. D. Heald were cited to sub- 
stantiate this view. It was further pointed out 
that experiments on bacteria performed at 
the University, and recent investigations car- 
ried on at the University of Leipzig, further 
confirm the general proposition which was first 
published in the Botanical Gazette of August, 
1896, by Kahlenberg and True. The signifi- 
cance of the discovery to physiological chem- 
istry, agriculture, bacteriology and therapeutics 
was briefly mentioned. 
Wo. S. MARSHALL, 
Secretary. 


NEW BOOKS. 


A Treatise on Analytical Statics. EDWARD JOHN 


RoutTH. Cambridge University Press. New 
York, The Macmillan Company. 1896, 1892. 
Vol. I. Pp. xii+801. Vol. Il. Pp. xii+ 
224, 

Elementary Text-book of Physics. Wm. A. ANn- 
THONY and Cyrus F. BRACKETT. Revised 
by W. F. MAcin. 8th edition. New York, 
John Wiley & Sons. London, Chapman & 
Hall, Ltd. 1897. Pp. viii--512. $4.00. 


Researches upon the Antiquity of Man. HENRY 


C. MERcER. Boston, Ginn & Co. 1897. Pp. 
178. 
Die Chemie in taglichen Leben. DR. LASSAR- 


Coun. Hamburg and Leipzig, Leopold Voss, 
1807. 2d edition. Pp. vii+303. 4M. 


SCIENCE | 


NEW SERIES. SINGLE Coptss, 15 cTs. 
Vou. V. No. 115. Fripay, Marcu 12, 1897. ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION, $5.00. 


A Treatise on Rocks, 
Rock-Weathering and Soils. 


By GEORGE P. MERRILL, 


Curator of Geology in the United States National Museum ; Professor of Geology in the Corcoran Scientific School 
and Graduate School of Columbian University, Washington, D. C.; Author of ‘‘ Stones for 
Building and Decoration,’’ ete. : 


CLOTH. 8VO. FULLY ILLUSTRATED. 


»»» CONTENTS.... 


Part I. THE CONSTITUENTS, Physical and II. AEolian Rocks. 
Chemical Properties, and Mode IV. Metamorphic Rocks. 


Ds CEE ESRES Ol ESS. Part III. THE WEATHERING of Rocks. 


I. Introductor y- Rocks defined. I. The Principles involved in Rock= 

Il. The Chemical Elements constitu= weathering. 

ting Rocks. aes Ii. Consideration of Special Cases. 
Ill. The Minerals constituting Rocks. Il. The Physical Manifestations of 
IV. The Physical and Chemical Prop= Weathering. 

erties of Rocks. IV. Time Considerations. 
V. The Mode of Occurrence of Rocks. Part IV. TRANSPOSITION AND REDEPOSI_ 

Part Il. THE KINDS of Rocks. Generalities TION of Rock Débris. 
and Classification. I. Action of Gravity. 


I. Igneous Rocks; Origin of and Il. Action of Water and Ice. 
3 Classification-Relationship be- II. Action of Wind. 
tween Plutonic and Effusive | Part V. THE REGOLITH. Classification and 
Rocks. General Description, etc. Con= 
II. Aqueous Rocks. clusion. 


Dr. Merrill has taken up a hitherto much neglected line of work, and one which on both economic and 
scientific grounds is of the greatest interest and importance. In his ‘‘ Rocks, Rock-weathering and Soils’’ he 
treats of the origin, composition and structure of the rocks composing the earth’s crust, the manner of their 
weathering, or breaking down, and the causes that lead thereto, and finally, of the petrographic nature of the 
product of this breaking down. The work differs from any thus far published in either England or America 
in its thorough discussion of the principles of weathering and its geological effects. Much of the matter given 
is new, the result of the author’s own observations and research, and has never before appeared in print. The 
twenty-five full-page plates and many figures in the text are of more than usual excellence and are ina large 
part entirely new or reproduced from the originals as they have appeared in scientific journals, not having as 
yet found their way into existing text-books. } 

The matter isso arranged that the book will be of value as a work of reference, and also as a text-book 
for students in the Agricultural Colleges and Experimental Stations, while teachers and students in general 
geology or physiography will find it to contain much of interest. 


Inquiries for further information should be addressed to 


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Eprrorrat Commitrer: S. Newcoms, Mathematics; R. S. WooDWARD, Mechanics; E. C. PICKERING 
Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THuRSTON, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry; 
J. LE ContE, Geology; W. M. Davis, Physiography; O. C. MARsH, Paleontology; W. K. 
Brooks, C. Hart MeRRIAM, Zoology; S. H. ScuppER, Entomology; N. L. BRITTON, 
Botany; HENRY F. OsBoRN, General Biology; H. P. BowpircH, Physiology ; 
J. S. BInLines, Hygiene ; J. MCKEEN CATTELL, Psychology ; 
DANIEL G. BRINTON, J. W. POWELL, Anthropology. 


Fripay, Marca 12, 1897. 


CONTENTS: 


A Lecture by Regnault: WoLCcoTt GIBBS............ 409 
Professor Fontaine and Dr. Newberry on the Age of 
the Potomac Formation: LESTER F. WARD...... 411 


The American Morphological Society: G. H. 
PVANRIRGE: Hesntes telanioitsiasiessteesjeretniee set ieesie me tee lenis el=l==lel min =l= 423 
‘Current Notes on Physiography :-— 
Campbell on Drainage Modifications; Russell's 
Glaciers of North America ; The Gohna Landslip : 
Wis Wile IDVAQWS) snosopoodnésnoancononenoncoossoaaopcoq00000cd 437 
Current Notes on Anthropology :— 
The Amerique Indians ; 30th Report of the Peabody 
Institute ; Pliocene Man in Britain: D. G. BRIN- 


Notes on Inorganic Chemistry : 
Scientific Notes and News :— 
Revue de Méchanique; General.........-.+-+12e0000-+ 440 
University and Educational News..........-..0+0+0seeeee: 444 
Discussion and Correspondence :— 
Opportunities for Training in Physiology: H. P. 
BownpitcH. Note on Natrix Grohamii B. & G.: 
FRANK C. BAKER, FRANK M. WooDRUFF. 
Pseudo-Aurora Again: H. A. HAZEN. Green- 
land Glaciers: EDWARD H. WILLIAMS, JR.....446 
Scientific Literature :— 
Letourneau on 1 Evolution de VEsclavage: D. 
G. BRINTON. The Geological and Natural History 
Survey of Minnesota: C. E. BEECHER. Shaw 
on Municipal Government in Continental Europe : 
EXDWIN OF JORDAN) -.ccccssceceeoseclaleleisiassecasenasnare 448 
Societies and Academies :— 
Torrey Botanical Club: EDWARD 8S. BURGEsS. 
The New York Academy of Sciences: W. HAL- 
LOCK. The Academy of Science of St. Louis: 
\Whtils WM RISTHIDYNST} cexononosaacnonaascquodscsocosnecacncoanae 451 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended 
for review should be sent to the responsible editor, Prof. J. 
McKeen Cattell, Garrison-on-Hudson, N. Y. 


A LECTURE BY REGNAULT. 


WuHeEn a student at the Collége de France 
in 1847 I[heard a lecture by Victor Regnault, 
of a part of which I send a copy. So faras 
I know, it was never printed. The lith- 
ographed copies were paid for by the 
students themselves. I think that the 
figures of prisms given (see plate) will have 
something more than a purely historical 
interest even now. 

Wotcorr GrBss. 

NEWweort, January 27, 1897. 


Quelques physiciens ont construits des 
appareils au moyen desquels on peut ob- 
server les raies du spectre sans qu’il soit 
necessaire de se placer dans une chambre 
obscure. 

A Vune des extrémités d’un tuyau, Mr. 
Dujardin place un diaphragme rectiligne ; 
4 Vautre extrémité, un certain nombre de 
prismes fixés dans la position du minimum 
de déviation, en les disposant ainsi, il a 
pour but de diminuer autant que cela est 
possible, Vaberration de sphéricité qui ré- 
sulterait de ce que les rayons incidents ne 
sont pas paralléles. 

On obtient ainsi un spectre trés dévié, 
mais cette disposition présente plusieurs in- 
conyvénients; la déviation minimum n’a 
lieu que pour les rayons qui marchent dans 
l’ axe du tuyau; de plus, quoi que l’on ait 
diminué le plus possible l’épaisseur des 
prismes les pertes de lumiére par réflexion 


410 


sur leurs faces, sont encore assez considér- 
ables. 

Mr. Mathiessen a fait disparaitre ces in- 
convénients au moyen de |’ appareil qui est 
représenté par la figure (a). 


Il se compose essentiellement d ’un lenti- 
prisme (Fig. B.), c’est-a-dire d ’un prisme 
dont une des faces est lenticulaire. Cette 
face est perpendiculaire 4 l’axe d’un tuyau 
qui porte le prisme a 1 ’une de ses extré- 
mités et qui est réuni 4 l’autre bout d’un 
diaphragme rectiligne. Les rayons lumi- 
neux en traversant la face lenticulaire sont 
ramenés au parallélisme et arrivent a la 
face postérieure en faisant tous un angle 4 
peu pres égal a celui de la réflexion totale. 
Ils emergent par consequent presque par- 
alléles 4 cette seconde place. L’effet du 
lentiprisme ressort des figures A. B. C. des- 
sinées par Mr. Mathiessen. La fig. A. montre 
comment un prisme ordinaire qui recoit un 
faisceau de rayons non paralléles et qui 
est placé dans la position du minimum 
de déviation par rapport aux rayons cen- 
traux, produit encore une aberration 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 115. 


de sphéricité considérable, parcequ’il ne 
remplit pas la méme condition a l’égard 
de tous les rayons. Grace a la face len- 
ticulaire du lentiprisme B, qui rend les 
rayons paralléles avant leur arrivée a la face: 


de sortie, l’aberration de sphericité se trouve: 
évitée; il ne reste que l’aberration de ré- 
frangibilité qui importe peu, parcequ’il 
n’est pas nécessaire d’observer toutes les 
couleurs en un méme point. Le systeme 
C, composé d’une lentille et d’un prisme 
pourrait produire un effet analogue a celui 
du lentiprisme mais pour produire la méme 
dispersion sur un faisceau incident de- 
méme ampleur, il devrait avoir une masse 
beaucoup plus considérable. On peut en- 
core empécher Vaberration de refrangibilité 
par Vaddition de lentilles disposées de facon 
a produire une sorte d’achromatisme. 

Cette modification se trouve réalisée dans 
les figures F et G, qui représentent, en outre 
le lentiprisme composé. Ce lentiprisme com- 
posé a permis 4 Mr. Mathiessen d’obtenir 
une dispersion plus considérable qu’avec 
le prisme simple. Et c’est ainsi qu’il a pu 


MARcH 12, 1897.] 


étendre les parties extrémes du spectre au 
dela des limites observées par Fraunhofer. 
Les nouvelles parties du spectre, avec leur 
raies sont représentées dans la Fig. 4, qui 
est la reproduction du dessin communiqué 
par Mr. Mathiessen. 


PROFESSOR FONTAINE AND DR. NEWBERRY 
ON THE AGE OF THE POTOMAC FORMATION. 

THE appearance at this time of two im- 
portant works on the Potomac formation, 
though both of them have been long de- 
layed in publication, is peculiarly oppor- 
tune in view of the discussion now going on 
in relation to the age of that formation. 
These works are first, that by Professor 
Fontaine on the Potomac Formation in 
Virginia,* and second, that of Dr. J. 8. 
Newberry, on The Flora of the Amboy 
Clays.t 

The greater part of the matter of the 
first of these works was originally sub- 
mitted by Professor Fontaine as an intro- 
duction to his important work on The Flora 
of the Potomac Formation,} giving a some- 
what detailed account of the stratigraphical 
relations of the Potomac formation in 
Virginia. But it was thought best to 
omit this introductory part and publish 
it separately. Owing to causes which 
need not be here enumerated, the publi- 
cation of this part of his work was long ne- 
glected, but is now hapily before the scien- 
tific world. 

As its name implies, this treatise is con- 
fined mainly to those portions of the Poto- 
mac formation which lie south of the Poto- 

* The Potomac Formation in Virginia, by William 
Morris Fontaine, Bull. U.S. Geol. Surv., No. 145, 
Washington, 1896. 

} The flora of the Amboy Clays, by John Strong 
Newberry. A posthumous work, edited by Arthur 
Hollick. Monographs of the U.S. Geological Survey, 
Vol. XXVI., Washington, 1896 (erroneously dated 
1895). 

{The Potomac or Younger Mesozoic Flora, 2 Vols. 
text and plates. Monographs of the U. 8. Geo- 
logical Survey, Vol. XV., Washington, 1889. 


SCIENCE. 


411 


mac River, 7. e., almost exclusively to the 
State of Virginia, and only contains inci- 
dental references to the condition of things 
in Maryland. A consequence of this is that 
it deals wholly with the Older Potomac and 
does not attempt to discuss the prolonga- 
tion of the formation through New Jersey 
and northeastward, where all the beds thus 
far found belong to the Newer Potomac, 
which finds its greatest exemplification in 
the Raritan and Amboy Clays. 

The second of these works, on the con- 
trary, deals exclusively with the Newer Po- 
tomac, but under the term Amboy Clays 
Dr. Newberry expressly included all that 
was known to him of those beds which oc- 
cupy the north shore of Long Island and 
are found all the way from Staten Island to 
Marthas Vineyard. Although I have desig- 
nated these latter beds as the Island Series, 
and have sufficiently demonstrated the just- 
ness of this subdivision, I have at the same 
time admitted that the character of the flora 
is substantially the same throughout. 

We thus have two new contributions to 
the subject under discussion written by able 
men who are not exclusively nor chiefly 
paleobotanists, but are known to the world 
as geologists of the first grade, each of whom 
prior to writing his work had devoted many 
years to an exhaustive study of the forma- 
tion to be dealt with. Although much has 
been learned since the date at which these 
works were written, it is not proposed in 
this paper to make special reference to such 
discoveries, as they have been for the most 
part fully set forth in a series of papers by 
Mr. David White, Dr. Arthur Hollick and 
myself, an acquaintance with which will be 
assumed on the part of the reader.* But 

*See Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., Vol. I., p. 554; Vol. 
VII., p.12; Am. Journ. Sci., 3dSer., Vol. XXXIX., 
p. 93; Trans. N. Y. Acad. Sci., Vol. XI., p. 96 ; Vol. 
XIL., p. 1, 222 ; Vol. XIII., p. 122; Bull. Torr. Bot. 
Club, Vol. XXI., p. 49; Fifteenth Ann. Rept. U. S. 
Geol. Surv., p. 307 ; Sixteenth Ann. Rept. U.S. Geol. 
Surv., p. 463. 


412 


the treatises here mentioned give the ma- 
tured views of their authors, and in the case 
of Dr. Newberry this work constitutes al- 
most his last contribution to science. I 
would therefore ask the privilege of direct- 
ing the attention of those geologists who 
are interested in the discussion of the age of 
the Potomac formation to the opinions of 
these two authors, and I have no apology 
to make for quoting somewhat freely from 
them. I will also take the liberty of itali- 
cizing, on my own responsibility, those pas- 
sages which I regard as bearing most di- 
rectly upon the subject. 

When Professor Fontaine commenced his 
studies he was confronted by the views of 
Professor Rogers, who, although he had rec- 
ognized the clear distinction between the 
Triassic formation and the higher Mesozoic 
beds and had designated the former as 
‘ Jura-Trias’ and the latter as ‘ Jurasso- 
Cretaceous,’ inclined to regard the whole as 
belonging below the Cretaceous. It there- 
fore required paleontological evidence to 
settle the question. Some fossil plants had 
been found in the Trias which were deter- 
mined by Bunbury, but, on account of the 
imperfect material and of the little that was 
then known of the Mesozoic floras, he was 
disposed to regard them as indicating an 
age similar to that of the Oolite of York- 
shire. This view had been completely dis- 
proved by Professor Fontaine’s previous 
studies of ‘The Older Mesozoic,’ as em- 
bodied in his work on that flora,* and he had 
correlated it with those transition beds in 
Europe and other countries which lie on 
the border of the Triassic and Jurassic and 
are known as Rhetic. Since that work was 
published Stur discovered at Lunz, in Aus- 
tria, a flora which corresponds still more 
closely with that of America, even contain- 
ing a number of the same species, the beds 

*The Older Mesozoic Flora of Virginia. Mono- 


graphs of the U. 8. Geological Survey, Vol. VI., 
Washington, 1883. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 115. 


yielding it having been definitely fixed in 
the Upper Keuper, and we may now look 
upon this as the more correct correlation.* 
After giving an account of the manner in 
which the fossil plants of the Younger Meso- 
zoic were discovered and of their general 
character Professor Fontaine says (p. 14) : 
“‘None of these fossils have been found in the 
Richmond coal field, and, so far as known, 
none of the supposed older Mesozoic areas contain 
any of them. It is sufficient to say here that 
this flora indicates that the Potomac beds 
were laid down in a period decidedly more 
recent than that in which the middle sec- 
ondary strata of Rogers were deposited.” 
Again, on p. 142, referring to the same sub- 
ject, he says: 

“In Virginia the youngest formation 
upon which the lower, or sandy member of 
the Potomac is seen to rest, is the older 
Mesozoic or Rhetic formation. The interval 
of time, however, between the deposition 
of the Rhetic and the deposition of the 
Potomac beds must have been a consider- 
able one. There are several reasons for 
coming to this conclusion: (1) Where the 
superposition of the Potomac on the Rhetic 
is visible the latter is seen to have been 
greatly worn before the deposition of the 
former. (2) The lithologic and structural 
character of the two formations is very 
different, implying a total change in the 
conditions of deposition. (3) The Rhetic¢ 
is made up of sandstones and shales which 
are distinctly bedded, so that the dip and 
strike can be easily made out. The ma- 
terials composing these beds were well 
sorted by water action. Before the depo- 
sition of the Potomac the Rhetic strata 
had been consolidated and, in the main, 
indurated, so as to form firm sandstones 
and shales, or even slates. The Rhetic beds 
are in many places crushed, contorted, and 
faulted, all of which changes took place 
before the Potomac age. No traces of them 

* Cf. Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., Vol. III., p. 31. 


Marcu 12, 1897. ] 


are found in the Potomac. The Rhetic is 
also penetrated by numerous dikes of igne- 
ous rock, none of which pass into the Po- 
tomac beds. The interval of time sepa- 
rating the two formations must, then, have 
been long enough to permit the occurrence 
of important geologic changes. These re- 
sulted in the draining off of the Rhetic 
waters and in the lateral compression of 
the Rhetic areas, which caused crumpling 
and faulting of the strata and outpours of 
igneous rock. The Rhetic basins were 
elevated and formed into dryland, subjected 
to great erosion, and the most eastern of 
them then depressed and brought under 
water again. Certainly no Rhetic species of 
plant survives into the Potomac.” 

From all this itis apparent that the Older 
Mesozoic or Triassic formation of the Atlan- 
tie border has really nothing to do with the 
Potomac formation. Only in a few places, 
as through parts of New Jersey and in Vir- 
ginia for a short distance in the vicinity of 
the North Annaand South Anna Rivers, are 
the two formations in contact, and here the 
latter rests in complete unconformity upon 
the former. At all other points they are 
separated by an interval of greater or less 
width of the old crystalline rocks. This 
shows that the Trias, as well below the 
Hudson as in the Connecticut Valley, con- 
stitutes a trough and forms no part of the 
Coastal Plain proper, having its affinity 
much more closely with the Piedmont 
Plateau. The fact that not a single Triassic 
species passes up into the base of the Po- 
tomac further proves that that interval 
must have been an exceedingly long one, 
and it is quite in conformity with the facts 
to suppose that it embraced the entire Ju- 
rassic period. 

The little that Professor Fontaine has to 
say of the relations of the Virginia beds to 
those of Maryland and farther north is im- 
portant and shows that, although he had 
not studied the latter except in a general 


SCIENCE. 


413 


way in Maryland, he had nevertheless 
formed a tolerably accurate opinion as to 
their nature. On page 14 he says: 

““Tt should be stated that there is reason 
to think that the extensive formation of 
clay and fine sand known in Maryland as 
the ‘variegated clay formation,’ or the ‘iron- 
ore clays,’ may belong to the same general 
epoch as the Potomac of Virginia, forming 
an upper member of the group of which 
the Virginia Potomac is the lower. The Vir- 
ginia beds and those of Maryland cannot now 


"be certainly separated by any sharp differ- 


ences; hence, for the present, the Virginia 
strata must be regarded as Lower Potomac, 
and the Maryland formation as Upper Po- 
tomae.’”’ And, again, on page 142 he makes 
the following statement : 

“On entering the District of Columbia 
two members of the Potomac formation 
may be recognized. The lower is that 
traced through Virginia, and this is the 
only member recognized in that State. 
From the predominance of sand and sand- 
stone in this it may be called the sandy 
member. The other, or upper member is 
composed of sands and clays, mostly the 
latter, both being usually highly colored 
with tints due to oxide of iron. The clays 
greatly predominate. ‘They have the colors 
arranged in irregular spots, patches, and 
seams, and on account of this they have 
been called by Mr. Philip Tyson and Pro- 
fessor Rogers the variegated clay group. 
This is the upper member of the Potomac 
described at Fort Washington. 

‘“ The sandy lower member of the Potomac is 
visible at Washington and at several points be- 
tween Washington and Baltimore, in the vicinity 
of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The 
farthest point north at which it has as yet 
been seen is Baltimore.” 

It is clear from this that Professor Fon- 
taine believed that the Older Potomac ex- 
isted in Maryland. I remember his saying 
to me at about the time that I began my 


414 


studies of the formation in that State that 
he thought the cycads came from the sand- 
stone member, and he once took me to see 
what he regarded as a typical exposure, on 
the Patapsco, near Relay, of the basal ar- 
kose, identical with certain phases that it 
presents in Virginia. This observation has 
been abundantly verified. 

In common, however, with the prevailing 
opinion at that date, which was shared by 
Mr. McGee and myself, he regarded theiron 


ore clays, so-called, as somewhat higher _ 


and as constituting an ‘Upper Clay Mem- 
ber.’ At that time no other fossils than 
eycads, silicified wood and lignite had been 
found in the iron ore belt. Within the last 
two years, however, Mr. Arthur Bibbins 
has demonstrated the occurrence of fossil 
plants representing a considerable variety, 
but chiefly consisting of ferns and conifers. 
He finds them not only in the iron ore de- 
posits, but in the iron ore itself, and I have 
had the satisfaction, in company with him, 
of collecting a large number of these and 
also of examining the much larger collec- 
tion which he has made. Although these 
collections have not yet been elaborated 
and fully determined, a simple glance 
at them would be sufficient to show that 
they represent a flora substantially identi- 
cal with that of the basal Potomac in Vir- 
ginia, as typified in the Fredericksburg de- 
posits. At the same time that Mr. Hatcher 
collected the bones in these beds which 
were described by Professor Marsh, and 
which constitute the only paleontological 
evidence that he has thus far brought for- 
ward as to their age, he also obtained, in 
intimate association with the vertebrate re- 
mains, a large number of fossil cones, which 
belong to the genus Sequoia and were un- 
doubtedly borne on the trees which have 
furnished the silicified wood. All this is 
simply confirmatory of the antiquity of the 
iron ores and of their substantial identity 
in age with the basal Potomac of Virginia. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 115. 


Professor Fontaine’s general conclusions 
as to the stratigraphical relations of the 
Potomac formation are of such value in 
connection with the views of Dr. Newberry, 
next to be considered, that they should be 
given somewhat in extenso. They are to be 
found on pages 143-147 of this Bulletin: 

‘““The New Jersey beds, as is shown by 
their fossil plants, are certainly considerably 
younger than the Virginia member of the 
Potomac. So far as is yet known, the 
Amboy clay is not younger than the Ceno- 
manian of Kurope. 

‘‘So far, then, as can be determined by the 
stratigraphy, the Virginia Potomac is con- 
siderably older than the Cenomanian and 
much younger than the Rhetic. The evidence 
from the stratigraphy, so far as it goes, 
agrees well with that of the fossils found 
in the Potomac. 

“ The Wealden formation is most probably not 
uppermost Jurassic, but the estuary and marsh 
equivalent of the oldest marine Neocomian. 
What will be said therefore concerning the 
Neocomian will include the Wealden. 

“The flora of the Potomac seems to have 
been an abundant one. It was rich in 
species of certain groups, but, as compared 
with modern floras, it was poor intypes. A 
large amount of fossiliferous material was 
obtained from points located at intervals be- 
tween James River and Baltimore. The 
fossils found will give a fair idea of the 
general character of the flora. This flora 
has been studied by me, and is described in 
Monograph XV of the United States Geo- 
logical Survey. The comparison of these 
plants with those of known fossil floras 
shows somewhat complex relations. 

“There is present in the Potomac flora a 
Jurassic element which is large in the very 
considerable number of genera that char- 
acterize that system. Some few of the 
genera begin as far back as the Rhetic. This 
element shows indications of decadence. 
The number of species of each genus is 


MARkcH 12, 1897. ] 


very small; generally only one or two. 
Very few individuals of the species are met 
with, and they are usually local in occur- 
rence. The species are nearly or quite all 
peculiar to the Potomac. 

“There is an important Wealden element in 
the flora. Many species of Potomac plants 
are identical with species found in the Wealden 
of Hurope, and this is the oldest known fossil 
flora that gives any considerable number of plants 
identical with the Potomac species. Some of 
these species of the European Wealden are 
abundant and widely diffused plants in the 
Potomac. But while the species common 
to the Huropean Wealden and the Potomac 
are noteworthy, there is a still larger num- 
ber of important species found in the Poto- 
mac which are so nearly allied to Wealden 
species that they are with difficulty distin- 
guished from them. These, although re- 
garded as new species peculiar to the Po- 
tomae, are probably forms representing Wealden 
species, being modified by differences of en- 
vironment. 

“The Jurassic and the Wealden elements 
combine to give a Jurassic or Mesozoic 
facies to the flora, and hence, so far as they 
go, give it a comparatively ancient charac- 
ter. The Jurassic or Mesozoic type of flora 
is, as is known, characterized by the over- 
whelming predominance of four elements, 
viz: Equiseta, ferns, cycads, and conifers, 
and by the absence of angiosperms.** 

“ The formations which possess the largest num- 
ber of species identical with those of the Potomac 
are those of the Middle Neocomian or Urgonian. 
The strata of this age which occur in 
Greenland (in Kome and other localities) 
and the Wernsdorf beds of the northern 
Carpathians yield an Urgonian flora, which 


* Both Professor Fontaine and Dr. Newberry use 
the old botanical classification which made the 
“Angiosperms’ synonymous with the Dicotyledons. 
It amounts to about the same thing here, however, 
on account of the almost complete absence of Mono- 
cotyledons in these floras. 


SCIENCE. 


415 


Heer and Schenk have described. In the 
plants coming from these regions we find the 
largest number of forms identical with Potomac 
species. The number of Potomac species 
nearly allied to Urgonian forms is still 
larger. These identical and nearly allied 
species include many of the most charac- 
teristic, abundant, and widely diffused spe- 
cies of the Potomac. If we are to deter- 
mine the age by tbe largest number of 
important species identical with those of 
known fossil floras, then we would without 
hesitation set it down as ranging from the Lower 
through the Middle Neocomian. A very large 
and important element of the Potomac 
flora is peculiar to this series. In this we 
find without doubt the most abundant, 
characteristic, and widely diffused species. 
As these are new, they can not give any 
direct evidence concerning the age of the 
formation, but indirectly the existence of 
such a large proportion of peculiar forms 
is favorable to the assumption that the age 
is Neocomian. The flora of this formation 
is one of the least known, and any large 
collection of richly fossiliferous material 
from beds of Neocomian age could not fail 
to furnish a great number of new species. 

“Then again, the relatively great develop- 
ment of the conifers, along with the existence 
of an important eycadaceous element, points 
strongly to the Neocomian as the era of the forma- 
tion. The survival of a considerable Ju- 
rassic element in the flora also indicates that 
it can hardly be younger than Neocomian. 
While much the most important elements 
of the flora indicate an age not more recent 
than the Urgonian or Middle Neocomian, 
there are some species which point to a 
more recent era of deposition for the forma- 
tion. There are one or two species which 
are probably identical with forms found by 
Heer in the Cenomanian beds of Greenland. 
These are local and are represented by very 
few individuals. A few of the species also 
may be considered as nearly allied to some 


416 


occurring in the Greenland Cenomanian. 
These Cenomanian types are probably to be 
regarded as precursors not yet fully estab- 
lished, just as the Jurassic types must be 
considered as survivors not yet extinct. 

“The angiosperm plants present in the flora 
are much more important in giwing a more recent 
facies to the flora. They show quite a large 
number of species, but these are almost al- 
ways local in occurrence, and are repre- 
sented in most instances by few individuals. 
In a number of cases only one or two speci- 
mens were found. It has been generally held 
that any considerable development of angiosperms 
in a fossil flora is strong, indeed conclusive, evi- 
dence that its age is not greater than that of the 
Cenomanian. But apart from the evidence 
given by the older and predominant ele- 
ments of the flora, there is reason to think 
that the Potomac flora is older than Ceno- 
manian, even if we take into consideration 
the angiosperms alone. 

“The conclusion above mentioned is based 
solely upon the fact that in no flora older than 
Cenomanian has any considerable angiosperm 
element been found up to the present time, but 
various writers have with justice maintained 
that it is improbable that the apparently 
sudden appearance of angiosperms in great 
force in the Cenomanian represents the true 
state of the case. It is highly probable that 
they had numerous precursors and ances- 
tors, which existed in the Neocomian, and 
perhaps some of them, at least, in the Ju- 
rassic. Itis probable that some of the forms 
called Protorhipis are ancient angiosperms. 
The existence then of numerous angio- 
sperms in a flora which is predominantly 
Neocomian, but which contains many sur- 
viving Jurassic types, isjust what we would 
expect tofind. But we have direct evidence 
of the existence of angiosperms in the Neo- 
comian. Heer hasdescribed from the Kome 
beds of Greenland, which are Urgonian in 
age, an angiosperm which he called Populus 
primeva. Only a few specimens were found. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 115. 


This single occurrence has remained so long 
unsupported by other discoveries of angio- 
sperms in the Neocomian that doubts have 
been expressed concerning the correct local- 
ization of these specimens. It was thought 
possible that they really came from a 
younger flora. If the Potomac flora is in 
fact Neocomian, we have in this case a note- 
worthy illustration of the truth that posi- 
tive evidence, however scanty, should out- 
weigh any amount of negative evidence. 

“The Potomac angiosperms in their gen- 
eral character give evidence of an age 
greater than Cenomanian. It is true that 
we find in them genera, and possibly some 
species, that survive into the Cenomanian 
and even down to the present time, but 
taken as a whole they form a peculiar group, 
totally unlike the floras of the Dakota and the 
Amboy beds. It is in the flora of the Dakota 
group, and the Amboy clays of New Jersey, 
especially the latter, that we would expect 
to find the greatest number of plants iden- 
tical with Potomac forms. Both of these 
floras are Cenomanian probably, and the Amboy 
flora, so far as yet known, is the one that comes 
next above the Potomac. ‘There are one or two 
species that are probably common to the 
Potomae and the Dakota beds, or that are 
nearly allied, but they are long-lived types, 
that come down to the present time with 
little modification. 

‘By the kindness of Dr. J. S. Newberry, 
who studied and described the New Jersey 
Amboy flora, I have been enabled to ex- 
amine a large number of drawings of the 
New Jersey plants. These plants are totally 
different from those of the Potomac. Jt is not 
certain that a single species survives from the 
Potomae into the Amboy beds. What is even 
more significant, even the genera that are most 
abundant in the Potomac and most characteristic 
of that formation have no representative in the 
New Jersey flora. It is clear that a very im- 
portant gap ewists between these two floras, and 
that an interval of time separates them, in which 


Marca 12, 1897. ] 


changes took place that produced an extensive 
destruction of vegetal types and altered the en- 
tire character of the flora. 

“The localization of the species of Potomac 
angiosperms and their slight development, 
as shown in the very few individuals that 
in most cases represent them, indicate that 
these forms are, comparatively speaking, 
newcomers and precursors or ancestors of 
forms destined to become the predominant 
ones. ‘This indication is confirmed by the 
character of a number of the species. They 
appear to be complex or comprehensive 
types, uniting in one form features that in 
the process of differentiation will later dis- 
tinguish separate species. 

“We may then conclude that the Potomac 
flora is not exactly like any known, but on 
the whole coincides most nearly with that of the 
Lower and Middle Neocomian. If this be 
true, then, we find that in this flora the de- 
velopment of angiosperms in considerable 
numbers has been pushed back through a 
long period of time.” 

In view of the fact that Professor Marsh, 
Mr. Gilbert and, to some extent, also Mr. 
Hill, in discussing the age of the Potomac 
formation, have referred toit as represent- 
ing one definite epoch in the geological his- 
tory of the Atlantic border, it does not 
seem superfluous to emphasize to any extent 
the fact which I have so prominently 
brought forward in my paper on The Po- 
tomac Formation,* and to which I also 
called attention in my own contribution to 
this discussion,} that the Potomac formation, 
as I have defined it and as also defined by 
Professor Marsh, including, as it does, the 
Older Potomac beds of Virginia, the iron 
ore belt, the purple clays, the white sands 
and white rocks (Albirupean of Uhler, Ma- 
gothy of Darton), the Raritan and Amboy 


*Fifteenth Ann. Rept. U. S. Geological Survey, 
pp. 307-397, Washington, 1895. 

{SciENcE, N.S., Voi. IV., No. 99, Noy. 20, 1896, 
p. 757. 


SCIENCE. 


417 


Clays of New Jersey, and the red micaceous- 
clay shales of Staten Island, Long Island and 
Block Island, as well as the variegated clays 
ofGay Head on Marthas Vineyard, repre- 
sents a prolonged period in the geological 
history of the Coastal Plain equal to the 
entire Lower Cretaceous of Europe, i. e., 
from the Wealden to the Gault of England, 
or from the lowest Neocomian to the highest 
Albian (Vraconnian)* deposits of the Con- 
tinent. 

With this fact in mind we are prepared 
to consider the still more startling state- 
ments contained in Dr. Newberry’s Flora 
of the Amboy Clays. And first it will be 
necessary to determine precisely what Dr. 
Newberry meant by the Amboy Clays. 
This is made sufficiently clear by the follow- 
ing description (pp. 21-22): 

“The Amboy Clays, to which our atten- 
tion is now more particularly directed, out- 
crop in a belt extending diagonally across 
the State, forming the east bank of the 
Delaware River for a long distance above 
and below Philadelphia, leaving the Dela- 
ware at Trenton and stretching across the 
State at its narrowest point to Raritan Bay, 
and thence, passing over the southern 
portion of Staten Island, where, as in the 
State of New Jersey, they are largely 
worked for economic purposes. They are 
then interrupted by the Narrows and New 
York harbor, as well as by the crystalline 
rocks which occupy New York Island and 
underlie the northern portion of Brooklyn 
and the adjacent shores of Hell Gate. 
Eastward of this the Amboy Clays are 
generally covered with drift, but they ap- 
pear at Glen Cove, Sea Cliff, and various 
other points on the north shore of Long 
Island, where it has been deeply cut into by 
glacial action and is now occupied by inlets 
from Long Island Sound. Possibly the 
whole length of Long Island is underlain by 
the Amboy Clays, as characteristic fossils 

*See 16th Ann. Rept. U. S. Geol. Sury., p. 533. 


418 


have been found in the moraine on the 
extreme end of Montauk Point. Farther 
east, the clay series reappears on Marthas 
Vineyard and forms part of the noted cliff 
of Gay Head.” 

It is therefore clear that he includes in 
his Amboy Clays all the deposits north of 
the Delaware River, and that so far as these 
deposits are concerned they are the same as 
those to which Professor Marsh has referred 
in this section of the belt. As regards 
points farther south he has also made him- 
self tolerably clear by the following lan- 
guage (p. 22): 

“The southern extension of the formation 
has not been definitely traced, but it ap- 
parently thins out southward, appearing as 
an insignificant element in the series in 
Cecil county, Md., where Professor Uhler 
has described it as the bed of ‘alternate 
sands and clays’ which there rests on the 
Potomac and is overlain by the equivalents 
of the Cretaceous marl beds of New Jersey. 
South of this point it has not been recog- 
nized.” 

That Dr. Newberry found no close rela- 
tions between the Amboy Clays and the 
Trias is also evident from the summary 
manner in which he dismisses this whole 
subject (p. 22): 

“In New Jersey the Amboy Clay series 
is generally underlain by the Triassic red 
sandstones, which have been proved to be 
of the age of the Keuper or Upper Trias in 
Europe.” 

As to the real age of the Amboy Clays 
his opinions are so important that they 
need to be stated in full. After referring 
to the animal remains, in which he makes 
use of the same data as were employed by 
Professor Marsh, viz., the report of Professor 
R. P. Whitfield, he says (pp. 22-23): 

“This evidence shows that the New 
Jersey clays occupy a position lower than 
the European chalk and higher than the 
upper member of the Trias. Such other evi- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 115. 


dence as can be gained in regard to their precise 
geological age must be derived from their abundant 
plant remains, among which are a number of 
species that are common to the Dakota 
sandstones of the interior of the continent, 
to the Atane and Patoot beds of Greenland 
—known to be Upper Cretaceous—to the 
Cretaceous clays of Aachen, Germany, and 
to the Upper Cretaceous rocks of Bohemia.”’ 

Turning then to the Older Potomac he 
discusses its relations to the Amboy Clays. 
as follows (p. 23): 

“The relation of the Amboy Clays to the 
Potomac formation of Virginia is not easily 
demonstrated, as the line of junction has. 
not been fully traced, but we may say that 
the Potomac is the more ancient formation, 
and that probably a somewhat long interval 
of tue separated the epoch of the Potomac 
group from that of the Ambey Clays. This is 
indicated by the almost entire distinctness of 
the floras of the two formations, which shows 
that a great change took place during that in- 
terval in the character of the vegetation which 
clothed the eastern shore of North America. 
Professor Fontaine has described, from the 
Potomac group of Virginia and Maryland, 
865 species of plants, of which not one is cer- 
tainly found in the Amboy Clays; and the 
difference in the character of the vegetation 
is shown by the fact that in the long list fur- 
nished by Professor Fontaine there are but 
76 angiosperms (about one-fifth of all), 
whereas in the New Jersey clays, throwing 
out fragmentary and doubtful remains, of 
156 described species all but 10 are dicotyledon- 
ous plants.” 

Having thus disposed of the possibility 
of the Potomac formation in Virginia being 
of the same age as the Amboy Clays, and 
having demonstrated its much greater an- 
tiquity, he sets about to discover the true 
geological affinities of the Amboy Clays. 
His conclusions may best be given in his 
own words (pp. 23-24): 

“The relation of the Amboy Clays to the. 


Manrcn 12, 1897.] 


Dakota group can be much more definitely 
determined, for the proportion between the 
angiosperms and the lower plants in the Da- 
kota group is about the same as in theAmboy 
Clays, showing a similar stage of progress in 
the development of plant life. We have 
already obtained 12 species common to the 
two formations, a number that will undoubt- 
edly be considerably augmented with the 
further exploitation of the Amboy flora. 
The Dakota group is known to occupy about the 
middle of the Cretaceous system. Until recently 
it was supposed to be the basal member of 
that system as developed on the North 
American continent, and it was believed 
that until about the middle of the Creta- 
ceous period our continent had remained 
above the ocean level ; but it has been shown 
recently that considerable areas of North Amer- 
tea wre occupied by sediments deposited from the 
Cretaceous sea before the date of the Dakota 
formation, and that on the northwestern 
coast, on Queen Charlotte Island, and in the 
Shasta group in California we have accu- 
mulations of sediment that took place before 
the Dakota sandstones. Mr. R. T. Hill and 
Dr. C. A. White have demonstrated that a 
considerable portion of the State of Texas is 
underlain by rocks that are the equivalent of 
the Neocomian or Lower Cretaceous of the Old 
World. Very recently, too, Sir William Daw- 
son has found inthe fresh-water coal-bear- 
ing deposits of western Canada fossil plants 
identical with some from the Kome group or 
Lower Cretaceous of Greenland; anda much 
larger collection of fossil plants obtained 
by the writer from the coal basin of the 
Falls of the Missouri in Montana, collected 
by Mr. R. S. Williams, contains many 
Kootanie or Lower Cretaceous plants, and, 
what is of still greater interest, a number 
of species that have been described by Pro- 
fessor Fontaine from the Potomac group of 
Virginia. Thus the conclusions of Professor 
Fontaine as to the Wealden age of the Potomac 
are strikingly confirmed. His arguments in 


SCIENCE. 


419 


favor of this view were that the Potomac 
flora was most like that of the Wealden of 
Europe, a few of the species being apparently 
identical, while it had nothing in common 
with any other flora known. To this I ven- 
tured to add the suggestion that it could hardly 
be Jurassic, as claimed by some writers, since 
in no part of the world had angiosperm plants 
been found in the Jurassic, though in Europe 
the Jurassic rocks had yielded great numbers of 
plants and the flora had been carefully studied. 
Now the finding of species identical with 
those of the Potomac in the Great Falls 
basin, and with them plants found in the 
Kootanie of Canada and the Kome deposits 
of Greenland, seems to place the question 
beyond doubt.” 

He was struck by the fact that several 
species were identical with those long ago 
discovered at Aachen by Dr. Debey, oc- 
curring in a formation whose geological 
position is known to be Upper Cretaceous, 
and he took the trouble to visit that locality 
and examine Debey’s collections, a consid- 
erable number of which he purchased and 
brought to America. After carefully com- 
paring these with those of the Amboy Clays, 
and in the light of an extensive acquaintance 
with other similar floras, he concludes the 
introductory part of his work with the fol- 
lowing general statement (p. 33): 

““The mode of accumulation of the beds 
at Aachen seems to have been similar to 
that of the Amboy Clays and the Potomac 
group ; that is, they are local estuarine beds 
resting upon the Paleozoic rocks and com- 
posed of the wash of the neighboring land, 
in which were buried great numbers of 
leaves and trunks of the trees which grew 
upon that land. The trunks are now con- 
verted into lignite, and they are as conspic- 
uous an element in the lithology of the 
group as in New Jersey. Dr. Debey sup- 
posed that his collection contained 300 to 
400 species of angiosperm plants. This is 
perhaps an exaggeration, for he included in 


420 


his list a great many doubtful fragments ; 
but when the floras of the Aachen beds and 
those of the clays of New Jersey shall be 
fully studied and illustrated it will undoubt- 
edly be found that the botanical aspects are 
the same, and that there are perhaps as 
many species identical in the two forma- 
tions as in those of Greenland and New 
Jersey. Hence, we may fairly infer that the 
collections of plants from the New Jersey clays, 
the Dakota group, the Patoot and Atane beds of 
Greenland, the Aachen series of Germany, and 
the plant-bearing Cretaceous rocks of Bohemia 
fairly represent the vegetation of the world dur- 
ing the middle and latter portions of the Creta- 
ceous age.” 

I do not wish to conceal the fact that Dr. 
Newberry’s views are somewhat extreme 
in the direction of raising the Amboy Clays 
up to a level with the Dakota group of the 
West and the Aachen and Atane beds. My 
own explanation has always been that the 
Greenland beds aresimply the northeastern 
extension of the Amboy Clays and Island 
Series, but that they may nevertheless rep- 
resent a somewhat higher horizon in the 
same way that the Amboy Clays are higher 
than the Older Potomac of Maryland and 
Virginia, although belonging to the same 
general belt, either through the destruction 
of the lower members of the formation or 
because the continent at those points was 
out of water while the Virginia beds were 
in process of deposition. On this theory it 
would be perfectly natural that a large 
number of Amboy Clay species should 
have survived with little change into the 
slightly more modern period at which the 
Atane beds were deposited. In confirma- 
tion of this, and against the view of the 
great similarity between the Amboy Clay 
flora and that of the Dakota group, I have 
shown that most of the species common to 
the two are such as Professor Lesquereux, 
in studying the Dakota group, identified 
with Greenland forms, and I have also 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 115. 


shown that, in a few cases at least, such 
identifications were not justified.* I there- 
fore still think that the Amboy Clays, in- 


cluding the Island Series, are lower than 


Cenomanian, but any attempt to place them 
below the extreme summit of the Lower 
Cretaceous would, in the light of these 
facts, involve assumptions too violent to be 
entertained. 

It certainly cannot be justly said that all 
this evidence, because derived from fossil 
plants, is without value. The floras, both 
of the Older and Newer Potomac, are alto- 
gether too rich and too definite to be disre- 
garded. Taken as a whole they show as 
well marked differences in the character of 
the vegetation as could be desired. It is 
true that geologists and paleozoologists are 
generally unprepared to weigh the evidence 
from fossil plants, butin this case they need 
not know the specific nature of the plants. 
It is sufficient to compare the illustrations, 
say, of The Flora of the Amboy Clays, with 
those of The Potomac or Younger Mesozoic 
Flora.t They may be regarded simply as 
pictures, and it requires no practiced eye to 
discover that they are utterly unlike. A 
child would readily perceive the difference 
between a plate illustrating the ferns, cy- 
eads, and conifers of the Older Potomac 
and one illustrating the broad dicotyle- 
donous leaves of the Amboy Clays. The 
contrast would be still greater if made with 
any of the true Jurassic floras of the world, 
as, for example, that of France, so profusely 
illustrated by the late Marquis Saporta in 
eight volumes containing 300 plates.{ It 
therefore seems to me that the two works 
now before us, together with the early illus- 
trated one of Professor Fontaine, furnish 

*The Potomac Formation. 15th Ann. Rept. U. 
S. Geological Survey, pp. 373-374. 

{+ Monographs of the U. S. Geological Survey, 
Vol. XYV., plates. 

{ Paléontologie francaise. Végétaux. Terrain Ju- 
rassique, par le Marquis de Saporta, 4 vols. each of 
text and atlas, Paris, 1873-1891. 


MARcH 12, 1897. ] 


the most complete demonstration that could 
be made of the essential difference between 
the Older and the Newer Potomac, and all 
the proof that should be necessary to es- 
tablish my fundamental thesis that, while 
the former must lie very near the base of 
the Lower Cretaceous and may even extend 
somewhat into the Upper Jurassic, the lat- 
ter must be correlated with the extreme 
Upper members in the European series of 
Lower Cretaceous deposits. 

So far as I am concerned, I have no inter- 
est whatever in the mere question of 
names, for example, as to whether the 
Wealden should be called Cretaceous or 
Jurassic, and I have done what I could to 
show that the Older Potomac was laid 
down under conditions very similar to those 
of the Wealden of England and that, in all 
probability, the process. of deposition of 
portions of both at least was going on at the 
same time. If Professor Marsh, through- 
out his papers, had substituted the term 
Wealden for ‘Jurassic’ it is doubtful 
whether they would have given rise to any 
discussion, so far as the Maryland beds 
containing the vertebrate remains are 
concerned. But he has chosen to employ 
the term Jurassic without qualification, and 
there are indications that he does not mean 
to correlate the Potomac formation with 
the Wealden, but regards portions of it at 
least as Oolite. In his last paper* he says: 
“Tt cannot, of course, be positively asserted 
at present that the entire series now known 
as Potomac is all Jurassic, or represents the 
whole Jurassic. The Lias appears to be 
wanting, and some of the upper strata may 
possibly prove to belong to the Dakota.” 
This would give the Potomac formation an 
enormous extension, viz., from the base of 
the Oolite to the Upper Cretaceous. The 
less than twelve hundred feet that it has 
been possible thus far to measure in the 


* Amer. Journ. Sci., 4th Ser., Vol. II., December, 
1896, p. 436. 


SCIENCE. 


421 


Potomac formation * would seem to be an 
exceedingly thin stratum to represent such 
a period, even after allowing for any amount 
of contemporary erosion. 

Professor Marsh says that it isa reproach 
to science that the Jurassic has not been 
discovered in the eastern part of the conti- 
nent. This may be true, provided it exists, 
but if it does not exist the finding of it 
would be a still greater reproach to science. 
His section would seem to indicate that he 
regards the Dakota group as forming the 
lowest member of the Cretaceous. This has 
never been maintained by any geologist. It 
is true that it was claimed for many years 
that it represented the lowest Cretaceous in 
America, but those who made this claim 
assumed the absence of the Lower Creta- 
ceous in any part of this country. Pro- 
fessor Marsh’s assumption, if that is what 
he means,} would carry with it some’ pecu- 
liar consequences; it would make the beds 
that are now known to underlie the Dakota 
group (the Comanche series, the Kootanie, 
the Shasta group, and the Queen Charlotte 
Island group, as well as the Potomac for- 
mation) all Jurassic. A number of these, 
especially those of Texas and the Pacific 
coast, are marine deposits and contain 
abundant invertebrate remains, fully es- 
tablishing their Lower Cretaceous age. But 

*15th Ann. Rept. U. S. Geol. Surv., p. 339. 

}+Sinee this was written I have had an interview 
with Professor Marsh and was glad to learn that he 
disclaims such an interpretation of his section. He 
maintains that the explanation on p. 144 of the 16th 
Annual Report United States Geological Survey was 
intended to prevent this impression from being gained 
and called my attention to the following words, and 
especially to those in italics: ‘‘This diagram repre- 
sents the principal geological horizons of vertebrate 
fossils in North America, as determined by the writer.” 
To have justified such an interpretation his diagram 
should have embraced no formations from which ver- 
tebrate fossils had not been determined by him. A 
glance at the diagram, however, shows that there are 
two groups opposite which he has indicated no verte- 
brate remains, and one of these unfortunately is the 
Dakota group. 


422 


this is not all. The Shasta group, at least, 
is directly underlain by true Jurassic beds. 
It is altogether improbable that those who 
have established the age of these deposits 
from what is admitted to be the very best 
paleontological evidence will abandon this 
determination and adopt that of Professor 
Marsh. 

When I made my slight contribution to 
this diseussion* only Professor Marsh’s two 
papers on the ‘Geology of Block Island’ 
had appeared, in which the evidence to es- 
tablish his position was promised in the fu- 
ture. From the confident manner in which 
he spoke in those papers all expected that 
his next paper would contain an account of 
the discovery of Dinosaurs and other verte- 
brate remains on Block Island, Long Island, 
Staten Island, and Marthas Vineyard. His 
much fuller paper in the December number 
of the American Journal of Science is disap- 
pointing in not furnishing this evidence. 
Every one, I believe, would welcome any 
facts bearing on the subject, and all are 
equally interested in considering all possi- 
ble data. His failure to present such evi- 
dence in this paper leads some skeptical 
people to suppose that it does not exist. 
Speaking of Gay Head, he says (p. 437): 
“The striking resemblance between the va- 
riegated cliffs at Gay Head, the Potomac 
hills in Maryland, and Como bluffs in Wy- 
oming, will impress everyone who has seen 
them. That all three are of essentially the 
same geological age, I have good reason to 
believe. Two of themare certainly Juras- 
sic, as demonstrated by typical vertebrate 
fossils, and I hope soon to prove that Gay 
Head, so similar in all other respects, also 
contains the same characteristic vertebrate 
fauna that marks the Jurassic,—the long 
missing formation on the Atlantic coast.” 

It would have been much better if he had 
actually proved this. It is always unsafe 
in geology to predict what we shall prove; 

*Scrmncn, N. S., Vol. IV., Nov. 20, 1896, p. 757. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 115. 


such sweeping generalizations as Professor 
Marsh makes are very hazardous. To stand 
on Block Island and correlate its formation 
with that of Como bluffs in Wyoming is 
not the modern method of geological in- 
vestigation. As he says: ‘The Gay Head 
Indians are not hostile.” I did not find 
them so, neither did Mr. White when he 
made his large collection of fossil plants 
there. They would probably not harm a 
vertebrate paleontologist any more than a 
paleobotanist, and I submit that there is a 
better way of geologizing than to sit at 
one’s ‘study window’ at New Haven and 
‘look across the Sound to Long Island.’ 

It is still fashionable to disparage the 
evidence from fossil plants, and Professor 
Marsh’s papers would have been incomplete 
without the usual amount of this kind of 
matter. This is not the place to enter into 
a defense of fossil plants or to point out 
their value to geology. I have attempted to 
do this on former occasions.* I only desire 
here to refer to the two authors whose works 
I have considered as among those who do 
not take this view. Professor Marsh has 
followed most other writers in digging up 
the errors of the early paleobotanists while 
ignoring the work of the later ones, but I 
am surprised that he should have adopted 
the view which resulted from these errors, 
and which has long been exploded, that 
there is any lack of harmony between the 
evidence which plants afford and that of 
other forms of extinct life. Dr. Newberry 
was one of the first to correct this error and 
to insist that when all the evidence from 
plants and animals should be in there would 


* Principles and Methods of Geologic Correlation 
by Means of Fossil Plants. American Geologist, 
Vol. IX., pp. 34-47; Principes et méthodes d’etude 
de corrélation géologique au moyen des plantes fos- 
siles, Compte-rendu de la cinquiéme session du 
Congrés géologique international, Washington, 1891, 
pp. 97-109. Cf. also: Fossil Plants as an aid to 
Geology, by F. H. Knowlton, Journal of Geology, 
Vol. IL., pp. 365-382. 


MARrcH 12, 1897. ] 


be no lack of correspondence in their teach- 
ings. This truth is now receiving a signal 
confirmation by the discovery of fossil plants 
in marine shell-bearing deposits, especially 
in the Lower Cretaceous of Portugal, of 
Texas, and of California. Neither is the 
‘botanical time piece’ either too slow or 
too fast, and the organic pendulum has al- 
ways swung in perfect unison on both sides 
of the Atlantic. Lester F. Warp. 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 


THE AMERICAN MORPHOLOGICAL SOCIETY.* 

The Réle of Water in Growth. C. B. DAvEN- 
PORT. 

In developing tadpoles of various am- 
phibia the amount of water contained was 
determined at short intervals between the 
time of hatching and midsummer. These 
determinations showed that during the first 
week or two of development the amount of 
dry substance in the embryo remains nearly 
absolutely the same as it is in the just- 
hatched larva, where it constitutes little less 
than half of the whole weight. During 
this period: the immense increment in 
weight which accompanies the outlining of 
the form of the larva and its organs is due 
almost solely to imbibed water. It is the 
specific imbibition of water then which de- 
termines the direction of differential growth 
in the developing tadpole. As in plants 
this ‘grand period of growth’ is followed 
by one of histological differentiation, dur- 
ing which the absolute (and relative) quan- 
tity of dry substance increases rapidly. 

The Structure and Function of the Midgut in 
Terrestrial Isopods. J. P. McMurricse. 
The general result of the study of the Iso- 

pod midgut may be summed up as follows : 

' 1. The so-called ‘midgut’ of the terres- 

trial Isopods is of ectodermal origin and is 

in reality a portion of the proctodzeum. 

2. It is lined ky an impervious layer of 
chitin. 

* Concluded from page 392. 


SCIENCE. 


423 


3. The cells which compose it possess no 
definite boundaries and form an epithelial 
syneytium. 

4, The fibrils which traverse the cells from 
the basement membrane to the layer of 
chibin are, throughout the greater part of — 
their extent, of the same material as the 
basement membrane, their central ends, 
however, being apparently chitinous. They 
are not protoplasmic, as Ide has maintained. 

5. The nuclei frequently show great ir- 
regularities of form ; these irregularities are 
sometimes due to injury, but in other cases 
appear to be normal and to indicate a power 
of amceboid movement. 

6. The conjugation of the nuclei, de- 
scribed by Ryder and Pennington, does not 
oceur. 

7. Fragmentation of the nuclei occurs as 
a degenerative change, but amitosis for 
growth or regeneration, if occuring at all, 
is infrequent. 

8. The increase in size of the ‘midgut’ 
appears to be due not to an increase of the 
number, but to an increase of the size, of the 
cells present at the close of embryonic life. 

9. Feeding experiments indicate that the 
midgut does not possess an absorptive 
function ; it merely serves for the passage 
of undigested material to the exterior. 

A paper giving in detail the evidence on 
which these conclusions are based is in the 
hands of the editor of The Journal of 
Morphology. 


The Result of the Suspension of Natural Selec- 
tion as Illustrated by the Introduced English 
Sparrow. H. C. Bumeus. 

Over 1,700 eggs were critically examined, 
and ‘curves of frequency’ were drawn to 
illustrate the differences between the Euro- 
peanand American specimens. It was found 
that the American eggs presented a much 
greater amplitude of variation than the Eu- 
ropean, that they were smaller and that 
they were of a strikingly different shape. 


424 


The bearing of these facts upon the current 
theories of degeneration, panmixia, etc., 
were indicated. 

The American eggs ranged in length from 
18 mm. to 26 mm., while the shortest and 
longest European eggs measured respec- 
tively 18.5 mm. and 25 mm. The typical 
American eggs, moreover, had an average 
length of approximately 21 mm., while the 
European eggs averaged at least 1 mm. 
longer. 

The ratio of breadth to length, 7. e., the 
ratio of the lesser to the greater diameter, 
showed much greater sphericity on the part 
of the American eggs, though also in respect 
to this feature the American eggs presented 
a much greater amplitude of variation. 

The extremes of variation in shape and 
color were determined by a process of ‘ dis- 
interested selection.’ After having placed 
a secret mark upon each American egg, the 
eggs of both countries (863 American and 
863 British) were thoroughly mixed together 
inasingle tray. A disinterested person was 
then requested to select from the mixture 
100 eggs that appeared to him to present 
extremes of shape variation. If eggs from 
the two countries were equally variable, of 
course approximately the same number 
from each would be selected, and if the 
American specimens were more variable, 
more American eggs would be selected. The 
result was in harmony with the evidence 
derived from the comparison of length and 
the ratios of breadth to length. Of the 
selected eggs, eighty-one were American and 
only nineteen were English, over four times 
as many of the former as of the latter. 

The same method was adopted for the 
determination of color variation and with 
the result that eighty-two of the examples 
of extreme color variation were found to 
be American and only eighteen British. 
It was pointed out that this large propor- 
tion of extreme color variation on the part 
of American eggs was not only interesting 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 115. 


in itself, but that when the figures are com- 
pared with those representing extreme vari- 
ation in shape the significance of both re- 
sults is enhanced. Not only is the pre- 
ponderance of variation among American 
eggs very obvious, but in both cases, in 
shape and in color, it is almost precisely 
the same. 

It was concluded that the data, whether 
gathered from comparisons of length, ratio 
of breadth to length, shape or color, all 
point in the direction of a general structural 
modification. 


On the Plankton of Brackish Water. G. W. 


Freip. 

Investigations of the Plankton are now 
being carried on at the Marine Laboratory 
of the Rhode Island Experiment Station at 
the Great Salt Pond, near Point Judith, in 
South Kingston, R. I. It is intended to 
continue the observations, both summer 
and winter, for a term of years. 

The pond is about five miles long and 
comparatively narrow. Its area is esti- 
mated at 1,500 acres. At the northern end, 
where the river enters, the water at the sur- 
face is quite fresh (specific gravity 1.000) ; 
at the bottom it is slightly saline (specific 
gravity 1.0055). The south end communi- 
cates with the sea. The specific gravity of 
the water at the outlet is 1.025. At points 
between the north and south ends of the 
pond are found all intermediate degrees of 
salinity. 

Examination of the number of organisms 
per litre shows that the number is greatest 
in those areas where the specific gravity is 
between 1.008 and 1.020 (7. ¢., the middle 
portion of the pond), and that in passing 
in either direction, southerly towards the 
ocean, or northerly towards the river, the 
number diminishes. 

The most important constituents of the 
Plankton, named in order of the number of 
individuals, are: diatoms and algal débris ; 


Maxrca 12, 1897.] 


ciliated infusoria; arthropods; (copepods, 
amphipods; ostracods; decapod larvee and 
larval tracheata) ; rotifers ; annelid larve ; 
ctenophores ; meduse. In its general char- 
acter it more closely resembles Haliplank- 
ton than Limnoplankton, the marked ex- 
ceptions being the presence of rotifers and 
the absence of cladocera. 

Tt has been frequently observed and re- 
corded that copepods come to the surface in 
vast numbers at night. We have frequently 
observed that on certain days they are at 
the surface in equal abundance. Their 
presence at the surface appears to be inde- 
pendent of light and darkness, or of 
meteorological conditions, but correlated 
with the presence at the surface of certain 
species of diatoms, or of quantities of algal 
débris; observations confirming the belief 
that these diatoms and amorphous organic 
materials are the principal food of copepods 
and of young decapod larvee. 

Rotifers occur in great abundance dur- 
ing July, August and September, but we 
have found them at the surface only during 
the day, and near the bottom during the 
night. 

Cordylophora and a nudibranch mollusc 
are found in water whose specific gravity 
never rises above 1.005. 

Investigations are now in progress to dis- 
cover the cause of the phenomena noted by 
us, that ctenophores and medusz (Duactylo- 
metra), which are brought into the pond by 
the tide, are checked in their growth, and 
after several months of residence in the 
pond show but a very slight increase in 
size. The same causes have possibly re- 
sulted in the various species of Nereis 
Balanus, and molluses described as inhabit- 
ing only brackish water, and which differ 
from similar marine species mainly in their 
smaller size. 

Our earlier methods of plankton collection 
were by means of fine nets, and by sand 
filtration of known volumes of water after 


SCIENCE. 


425 


the method of Henson, Reighard, Sedgwick- 
Rafter, Peck and others, but these have 
been superseded by use of the Planktonokrit, 
invented and described by Dr. C. S. Dolley.* 
The centrifugal method is a distinct ad- 
vance, and materially reduces the error 
when dealing with all organisms thus far 
met with, except the Cyanophycee. But 
with steam power it is confidently expected 
that enough centrifugal force can be de- 
veloped to throw out even these. 

The machine is particularly valuable as 
a rapid, sure method for collecting the 
microscopic plankton, and its use will dis- 
close many forms hitherto rare or unknown. 
As used by us, the two reservoirs, each of 
one litre capacity, are filled with water 
drawn from a known depth by means of a 
valved tin tube. For control purposes both 
reservoirs areused. After revolving 2 to 5 
minutes the volume of organic matter is 
read on the graduated tube ; the tubes are 
then unscrewed, and the contents washed 
out by a pipette and filtered distilled water 
into a tube of narrow lumen graduated to 
ity Of a ce. After settling for the neces- 
sary time, either with or without treatment 
with Formalin, the volume is read and 
compared with the volume noted upon the 
graduated tube of the reservoir. This is 
necessary from the fact that certain forms 
are packed more closely than are others by 
the centrifugal force. The volume of water 
is then made 5 cc.; the organisms are dis- 
tributed evenly by gentle shaking or by a 
pipette, and the number of individuals of 
each species is enumerated according to the 
Sedgwick-Rafter method. 


Nocturnal Protective Coloration of Mammals, 
Birds, Fishes and Insects. A. EK. VERRILL. 
Much has been written in respect to the 

imitative and and protective colors of mam- 

mals, birds, insects, etc., and the bearing 
of these facts on natural selection, to which 


*Proc. Acad. of Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, May, 1896. 


426 


they are unquestionably due, is well known. 
Nearly all the cases cited by authors relate 
to colors as seen by daylight. I wish to 
call attention to the importance of studying 
the forms and colors of animals with refer- 
ence to their appearance and protective 
value as seen by moonlight, starlight and 
in the dusk of early morning or the twi- 
light of evening, when vast numbers of in- 
sects, birds, small mammals, ete., are most 
in need of protection against their preda- 
cious enemies, which generally hunt their 
prey at such times. The danger to most 
birds and to diurnal insects is due to their 
sleeping more or less exposed to view, but 
the danger to most. of the smaller mam- 
mals and nocturnal insects, fishes, etc., is 
due to the fact that they are most active 
at night or in the twilight, and therefore 
more easily observed by their enemies. 
Moreover, the predacious species need 
protective or imitative colors at night, 
in order to approach their prey unob- 
served. 

Moonlight and skylight give very black 
shadows in which dark brown, dark gray 
and black animals are nearly or quite in- 
visible. Black shadows of foliage are apt to 
be broken up by patches of white moonlight. 
Therefore patches of white or light yellow 
on dark or black animals are imitative of 
such moonlight effects, and as they serve to 
break up the dark outlines of beast or 
bird, they are very effective as a protection 
at night. 

Thus we find among nocturnal carnivores 
many instances of black colors, as the mink, 
fisher, bear, ete., and of black and white 
ones, as the skunk, badger, etc. So among 
the small species preyed upon, there are 
numerous birds that are black, black and 
white, black and yellow, etc. All such 
strongly contrasted colors are more likely to 
be of value for protection at night than in the 
daytime. This also applies to the butter- 
flies and other bright colored diurnal insects 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 115. 


whose colors often have no obvious relation 
to their diurnal surroundings, but blend 
with the colors of the flowers or foliage on 
which they roost at night. Many of our 
large red and brown butterflies of the 
genus Argynnis, etc., have bright silvery 
spots on the under side of the wings, so 
that they are conspicuous objects in the 
daytime. But I have observed them at 
roost on the golden-rods and other favorite 
flowers by moonlight, when the colors of 
their folded wings blend well with those 
of the flowers, and their silvery spots glisten 
like the dewdrops around them. Thus their 
conspicuous markings become protective at 
night. 

A great number of field mice, shrews, 
moles, ete., have dark gray or grayish brown 
colors, more or less like the common rat and 
mouse. Such animals are nocturnal in 
their habits, usually hiding in holes by day. 
Their colors are not protective in the daylight 
amongst green herbage, but at night they 
are eminently so, for they are almost in- 
visible in green grass, if quiet, as I have 
often observed, even in good moonlight. 
Animals that live among the stalks of reeds 
or shrubs may gain protection by having 
conspicuous dark stripes. No doubt the 
tiger is better concealed by his stripes, while 
in his native haunts, in the night than in 
the daytime. The same is true of the 
leopard and jaguar, and perhaps of the zebra. 
Many fishes that rest at night among eel 
grass and sea weeds have conspicuous trans- 
verse or longitudinal black stripes, which 
are highly protective ina dim light, for they 
look like the dark stems and shadows of 
the weeds, and serve to break up or conceal 
the outline of the fish. Black tails and 
fins serve the same purpose. Such mark- 
ings of fishes are often more conspicuous 
at night than in the daytime. All the 
cases referred to above seem to be the di- 
rect results of long-continued natural selec- 
tion. 


MaRrcH 12, 1897.] 


Nocturnal and diurnal changes in the color of 
certain fishes, with notes on their sleeping 
habits. A. EK. VERRILL. 

While investigating the nocturnal habits 
of fishes, ete., in the aquaria of the labora- 
tory of the U. S. Fish Commission, at 
Wood’s Holl, in 1885 to 1887, I unexpect- 
edly discovered that many species of fishes, 
and also the common squid (Loligo Pealet) 
take on special colors at night, while asleep, 
or at rest, in a feeble light. These obser- 
vations have not hitherto been published, 
because I hoped to have had opportunities 
to continue them and make them more 
complete. It is now my hope that others, 
with better opportunities, may take up the 
subject. 
midnight, when everything was quiet, for 
fishes sleep very lightly. The gas jets 
near the aquaria were turned down as low 
as consistent with distinct vision, and 
: great care was taken not to jar the floor or 
furniture. With these precautions I was 
able to detect many species in the act of 
sleeping. Some of them took unexpected 
positions when asleep. 

The most common change in colors of 
the sleeping fishes consisted in a general 
darkening of the dark spots, stripes or other 
markings, by which they become more dis- 
tinct and definite. This was the case with 
various flounders, minnows (Fundulus), the 
black sea-bass (Serranus furvus), the sea- 
robins (Prionotus evolans and P. palmipes), the 
king-fish (MVenticirrus nebulosus) and several 
other species. 

In all these cases the change of color is 
in the direction of increased protective 
eoloration, the dark markings being gener- 
ally connected with their habits of resting 
naturally at night among eel-grass and sea 
weeds. The young fishes often showed 
greater changes than the adults. 

Other species showed a much greater 
change in color, for the pattern of coloration 
was itself entirely changed. Thus the com- 


SCIENCE. 


My observations were made after . 


427 


mon scup, or porgy (Stenotomus chrysops), 
while active in the daytime, is of a beautiful 
silvery color with bright, pearly, iridescent 
hues. But when asleep it takes a dull 
bronzy tint and is crossed by about six con- 
spicuous, transverse, black bands, a colora- 
tion well adapted tor concealment among 
eel grass, etc. If awakened by suddenly 
turning up the gas, it almost instantly takes 
on its silvery color, seen in the daytime. 
This experiment was tried many times. 

A common file-fish (Monacanthus), which 
is mottled with dark olive-green and brown 
in the daytime, when asleep becomes pallid 
gray or almost white, while the fins and tail 
become black. These are nocturnally pro- 
tective colors. The file-fishes, when asleep, 
often lean up obliquely against the glass of 
the aquaria, with the belly resting upon the 
bottom in very queer positions. The tautog, 
or black fish (Tautoga onitis), commonly 
sleeps on one side, often partly buried in 
sand or gravel, or under the edges of 
stones, much after the fashion of flounders, 
thus suggesting the mode in which the 
flounders may have developed from sym- 
metrical fishes in consequence of this mode 
of resting, becoming chronic as it were. 


Notes on the Phylogeny of the Carnivora. W. 


B. Scorr. (Read by title.) 


The Peripheral Nervous System of Nereis Virens. 

F. HE. Lanepon. 

This study was made partly on material 
living and unstained ; partly on that stained 
by methelene blue and examined either 
fresh or fixed by Bethe’s method, and partly 
on_ that prepared by the more common 
methods. 

The spindle-shaped sensory cells de- 
scribed by Retzius as isolated are really 
grouped into semi-organs which have a 
definite distribution over the body. Each 
organ consists of a fusiform group of cells 
whose bodies lie below the epidermis or in 
its base. The cuticular markings over the 


428 


organs in the appendages of the body are 
like those over the sense organs of Lum- 
bricus. Over the body itself each cuticular 
marking is concave on the exterior and the 
very thick cuticula encloses beneath each 
marking an ovoid cavity through which pass 
the outer ends of the sensory cells. Each 
sensory cell usually bears several sensory 
hairs, and these hairs cannot be retracted 
normally as supposed by Retzius. 

In the gill lobes of the parapodia, the 
base of the palps, the prostomium and 
several anterior metameres is found a 
second kind of sense organ, apparently a 
light-perceiving organ, not previously de- 
scribed. " 

In the center of each organ is a slender, 
flexible tube, open to the exterior and con- 
tinuous with the cuticula. Around this 
tube the club-shaped peripheral ends of 100 
or more bi- or multipolar nerve cells are ar- 
ranged ina spiral of from § to 14 turns. The 


bodies of these cells are irregularly grouped- 


in or beneath the base of the epidermis; the 
central nerve fibre passes to the central 
nervous system ; the peripheral fibre is at 
first slender, but ends in the club-shaped 
enlargement mentioned above.. The tip of 
this enlargement, and sometimes the entire 
enlargement itself, is filled with a clear, 
highly refractive, lens-like substance. 

The central fibres from both diffuse and 
light-perceiving organs end in apparent nerve 
baskets around the ganglion cells of the 
central nervous system. 

Beside the four eyes and the two pairs of 
sense organs of unknown function described 
by Retzius, the prostomium contains a third 
pair of organs near the anterior pair of 
Retzius. The groups of ganglion cells de- 
scribed by Retzius near the anterior eyes 
are not, as that author supposed probable, 
concerned with the innervation of the eyes ; 
the preparations from which this study was 
made show plainly the nerve bundles pass- 
ing from the eyes to the brain. 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 115. 


Epidermal Sense Organs in Certain Polychetes. 

Marcarer Lewis. 

The epidermal sense organs were studied 
in two members of the annelid family of the 
Maldanie, both by means of ordinary 
methods and by the use of methylin blue. 
The following are the chief conclusions: 

1. That multicellular sense organs are 
present throughout the integument of the 
two polychete annelids Clymenella torquata 
and Clymene longa. 

2. That the cells of these sense organs 
are spindle-shaped, bipolar nerve cells. 

3. That the individual cells making up a 
sense organ show great variation in the Gis- 
tance of the enlargement containing the 
nucleus from the cuticula. This enlarge- 
ment may be close to the cuticula, at half 
the height of the epidermis or sunk to the 
base of the epidermis. 

4. That the cells of the sense organs pos- 
sess at their peripheral ends sensory hairs. 

5. That from the deep end of each cell 
proceeds one process which turns at an an- 
gle beneath the epidermis toward the cen- 
tral nervous system. 

6. That in many respects the sensory 
cells of these epidermal sense organs show 
a striking resemblance to the epidermal 
sense cells which Retzius describes for 
Nereis; the chief difference being that Ret- 
zius found only isolated sense cells in the epi- 
dermis of Nereis, whereas in these Malda- 
nids these sense cells without exception are 
grouped into definite sense organs. 


A. P. HEencu- 


The Eyes of Limax maximus. 

MAN. 

The eye consists of six parts: (1) Optic 
ganglion, (2) Sclerotic capsule, (3) Retina, 
(4) Vitreous humor, (5) Lens, and (6) 
Corneal layer. The optic ganglion is a 
funnel-shaped enlargement of the optic 
nerve, containing oval nuclei. The scler- 
otic capsule is a thin, firm layer of con- 
nective tissue, containing at intervals oval 


Marcu 12, 1897.] 


nuclei which are much flattened. The 
retina is composed of nerve fibres and a 
single cell layer embracing two kinds of 
cells: viz. (a) pigment cells and (0b) sen- 
sory cells. In sections along the chief axis 
of the eye the retina presents three concen- 
tric zones; the innermost, of a pale yellow- 
ish color, is composed of the so-called cones; 
the middle is the pigment zone and exhibits 
higher radial bands alternating with broader 
masses of more opaque appearance; ' the 
outer zone, which is destitute of pigment 
contains, nuclei of two kinds: large, pale, 
circular ones, and smaller, elongated, deeply 
staining ones. The branches of the optic 
nerve constitute the outermost portion of 
this clear zone next to the sclerotic. 

These three zones are really made up of 
a single layer of cells, the retinal cells, of 
which there are two kinds: the unpig- 
mented, or sensory, and the pigmented. The 
pigment cells are club-shaped and contain 
granules of dark brown pigment. Their 
central ends all terminate at nearly the 
same level and rather abruptly. Their 
basal ends run out into long fibres which 
are often’ branched. The lighter radial 
bands of the middle zone are produced by 
the sensory cells. These extend nearer to 
the center of the eye than the pigment 
cells, each ending in a club-shaped portion 
that is rounded at its free extremity. This 
club-shaped prolongation is surrounded by 
a thick mantle of substance having a radi- 
ally fibrous structure. These prolongations 
with their mantles constitute the ‘cones.’ 
The unpigmented, or sensory, cell itself 
shows throughout its whole course a longi- 
tudinally fibrous structure, contains no pig- 
ment and terminates at its deep end ina 
large number of fibrous branches. 

The sensory and pigment cells are defi- 
nitely grouped into sets. Hach set, or om- 
matidium, comprises a single central sen- 
sory cell and a small number (5-7) of pig- 
ment cells surrounding it. 


SCIENCE. 


429 


In front of the pigment cells of the antero- 
ventral margin of the chief eye its sclerotic 
capsule is somewhat enlarged so as to in- 
clude a hitherto undescribed structure, 
which reproduces on a smaller scale almost 
exactly the conditions found in the chief 
eye. In one respect only does it differ 
from the chief eye; the cells corresponding 
to the pigment cells of the retina contain 
no pigment granules. In other respects it 
presents the same histological conditions 
and a similar arrangement of the’ histolog- 
ical elements. The innervation of this ac- 
cessory retina is effected by nerve fibres 
from the optic nerve, which accompany 
those distributed to the antero-ventral por- 
tion of the chiefeye. The cells composing 
the accessory eye are separated from the 
pigment cells of the adjacent parts of the 
chief eye by elongated cells with small oval 
nuclei. At the angle formed by the juxta- 
position of the two retinas are seen several 
very large nuclei. Some of these are prob- 
ably the nuclei of sensory cells, but there 
are others which are much larger than the 
nuclei of the sensory cells and do not seem 
to be connected with cells terminating in 
fibrous cones; they have a striking re- 
semblance to the large ganglionic cells of 
the central nervous system. These are 
the largest nuclei found within the eye cap- 
sule. 


The Optic Lobes of the Bee’s Brain. F. C. 


Kenyon. 

In the optic lobes of the bee’s brain there 
are, asin other hexapods, three masses of 
fibrillar substance surrounded more or less 
completely by masses of cells. The middle 
and inner masses or bodies may in section 
be recognized as composed of a pair of len- 
ticular, densely and finely fibrillar bodies or 
capsules, fitted one within the other and 
with their convex surfaces directed outward, 
their concave surfaces inward. The cap- 
sules in each body are separated from one 


430 


another by a loose mass of fibres running 
parallel to the surfaces of the capsules. 

In the middle body this middle layer of 
fibres is gathered into a bundle at the an- 
terior margin of the body and passes out 
towards the central portion of the brain. 
Almost immediately the bundle divides. 
One division goes to the calices of the mush- 
room bodies, forming thus the antero-supe- 
rior optic tract ; the other to the lower pos- 
terior portion of the brain, forming the 
antero-posterior optic tract. 

From the middle loose layer of fibres of 
the inner body several bundles arise, all 
penetrating the hinder portion of the brain. 
One bundle forms an upper, another a lower 
commissure between the two optic lobes. 

The fibrillar elements from the retina 
terminate in five branches and thus help 
to form the outer mass of fibrillar substance. 
From cell bodies between the basement 
membrane of the retina and this mass fibres 
pass inward, give off short, fine fibrils 
connecting with the terminating fibrils just 
noted, and then go further inward, form- 
ing, with their fellows, the outer chiasma 
and terminate in a bunch of fibrils in the 
outer capsule of the middle body. These 
form neural elements 1. From cell bodies 
between the outer chiasma and the middle 
body fibres penetrate the outer capsule of 
the latter, giving off a bunch of lateral 
fibrils connecting with the terminals of ele- 
ments No. 1. The main fibre then crosses 
the body to the inner capsule, gives off in it 
a group of short fibrils, then leaves the body, 
and after forming, with their fellows, the 
inner chiasma, finally terminate in the outer 
capsule of the inner body of the lobe. 

From cell bodies between the margins of 
the two bodies neural elements No. 3 arise, 
that bear the same relations to the inner 
body and its capsules as do elements No. 2 
to the middle body. Passing out of the 
concave surface of the inner body some of 
the elements are gathered into a bundle that 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 115. 


passes forward, forming the anterior optic 
tract and terminate in the optic body, a 
small oval mass of fibrillar substance above 
the antennal lobe. Others go upward as a 
bundle of fibres to the calices of the mush- 
room bodies, forming thus the postero-su- 
perior optic tract. 

The branching terminals of the fibres 
forming the antero-superior optic tract seem 
to connect with the lateral fibrils of element 
No. 2 in the inner capsule of the middle 
body, and the terminals of the fibres form- 
ing the posterior optic tracts connect simi- 
larly with the inner lateral fibrils of ele- 
ments No. 3. 

A stimulus toa retinal element may reach 
the central portion of the brain by passing 
over three or four neural elements and may 
reach either the mushroom bodies, the optic 
body or several portions of the posterior 
part of the brain, or passing over more ele- 
ments it may reach all these regions, and 
even be transferred over the two optic com- 
missures to the opposite lobe, and thus indi- 
rectly reach the mushroom bodies, the optic 
body or the posterior portion of the brain 
on the other side. 


The earliest differentiation in the central nervous 
system of Vertebrates. A. SCHAPER. 

The speaker presented briefly some of the 
results of his recent investigations on the 
histogenesis of the central nervous system 
which are to be published in extenso in the 
‘Archiv fir Entwicklungsmechanik.’ The 
essential points of this paper were the fol- 
lowing : 

1. The so-called ‘ Keimzellen’ of His, lying 
near the central cavity of the neural tube, 
along the membrana limitans interna, 
are not at all to be considered as a special 
type of cells in contrast to the main 
epithelial part of the medullary wall. 
They are nothing else than epithelial cells 
in process of continuous proliferation and 
serve in the earliest stage of develop- 


Marca 12, 1897.] 


ment only to increase the number of the 
epithelial components or their products 
of metamorphosis, the ependymal cells. 
By the continuous proliferating activity of 
the ‘ Keimzellen’ a considerable number of 
ependymal cells (at least in the case of 
higher Vertebrates) are gradually created. 
Thus a definite framework is brought into 
existence, in the meshes of which further 
processes of cellular development take place 
on prescribed lines. About this time the 
most important differentations in the neural 
tube begin. The descendants of the ‘ Keim- 
zellen’ ceasing gradually to turn into epen- 
dymal cells are transformed into the 
mother cells of future nerve cells which, 
provided with certain histological char- 
acteristics, are expressively named ‘ newro- 
blasts.’ In the highest Vertebrates, more- 
over, the offspring of the ‘ Keimzellen’ appear, 
provided with still higher capacity of differ- 
entiation, in so far as they produce a genera- 
tion of ‘indifferent cells,’ which later on dif- 
ferentiate into either nerve or newroglia cells. 

2. The ependymal cells, as a whole, are to 
be considered as a phylogenetically older or an 
embryonic stage of supporting tissue which, in 
the ascending series of the Vertebrates or in 
the progress of ontogenetical development, 
loses gradually its morphological and physi- 
ological importance, and is at last replaced 
by a cenogenetic form of supporting tissue, 
the neuroglia proper, the elements of which 
originate, like the nerve cells, from ‘ indif- 
ferent cells.’ 

3. The ‘ indifferent cells’ have the property 
of locomotion (especially developed in those 
of the cerebellum, where they give rise to 
the formation of the superficial granular 
layer of Obersteiner), a characteristic of the 
formative elements of the nervous system 
which is of great importance for a higher 
structural complication of the latter. 

4. The so-called ‘ Mantelschicht’ of His is 
in the higher Vertebrates composed of ‘in- 
different cells’ (not only of neuroblasts as 


SCIENCE. 


431 


His supposes), which later on differentiate 
into either neuroblasts or spongioblasts (the 
latter being the mother cells of neuroglia 
cells). 

5. Not all indifferent cells undergo simul- 
taneously such an early process of differ- 
entiation. A certain number remain for a 
longer or shorter time in an indifferent con- 
dition possessing moreover the property of 
further propagation, which activity is clearly 
shown by the appearance of karyokinetic 
figures within the ‘Mantelschicht’ during 
a certain period of development. This fur- 
ther proliferation of the structural elements 
of the neural tube is obviously adapted to 
furnish the material for the later develop- 
ment and completion of the intricate strue- 
ture of the nervous system as it is found 
especially in the higher Vertebrates. 

6. It is not improbable that these indiffer- 
ent cells may play an important role in re- 
generative processes within the central ner- 
vous system even in postembryonic periods. 


1. Cranial Nerves of Bdellostoma dombeyi. 
(Read by title.) 


2. The Structure of the Organ of Corti in Adal 
Man. (Read by title.) H. Avmrs. 


The Visual Centers of Arthropods and Verte- 
brates. W. Parton. 

Itis assumed, based on evidenceadvanced 
elsewhere, that the median ocellus of Limu- 
lus and the Arachnids is homologous with 
the pineal eye of Vertebrates, and that 
the lateral eyes of Limulus and the Merosto- 
mata are homologous with the lateral eyes 
of Vertebrates. In the Arachnids (Limulus), 
and probably in Vertebrates, the dista! end 
of the median eye stalk contains one or 
more pairs of medianly fused ocelli. (1) 
From the proximal end of the eye stalk 
the median eye nerves separate, and en- 
circling the posterior part of the fore-brain, 
just in front of the posterior commissure, 
terminate in Limulus, on the heemal side of 
the fore-brain, in two great lobes which in 


432 


position, form and development resemble 
the lobi inferiori of fishes. In fishes, am- 
phibia and reptiles two strands of nerve 
fibres associated with the median eye, and 
springing from a point just in front of the 
posterior commissures, extend around the 
sides of the fore-brain and terminate in the 
neighborhood of the lobi inferiores. Thus 
the anatomical relations in both Vertebrates 
and Arachnidsare essentially alike. (2) The 
lateral eyes of Limulus and the related fos- 
sil forms, owing to more rapid growth of the 
hemal margins of the eye, are kidney- 
shaped, with the helum directed toward the 
neural side. This gives the most advan- 
tageous and economical arrangement of the 
ommatidia on the convex surface of the 
carapace of such animals. If such an eye 
is infolded and forms a part of the brain, as 
our theory demands, it will not only be 
turned inside out, but upside down. The 
most rapidly growing edge will then, in a 
Vertebrate, be on the neural side and the 
retina will be kidney-shaped. Under such 
conditions, as there is no obvious hindrance 
to continued growth in that manner, the kid- 
ney shape will be accentuated, thus bringing 
the hemel margins together and forming the 
characteristic choroid fissure of Vertebrates. 
(3) Such a view implies that the ances- 
tral optic ganglion of Vertebrates is not a 
part of the retina, as is often assumed to be 
the case, but a series of ganglionic lobes 
similar to those belonging to the compound 
eyes of arthropods. 

In insects where the ganglion is beauti- 
fully developed it usually consists of three 
great lobes: (1) a central one the largest, 
and shaped like a thick hemispherical shell, 
in fact, having much the same shape as the 
compound eye itself; (2) a thick semicir- 
cular band extending along its whole distal 
margin (the retinal ganglion); and (3) a 
nearly spherical ganglion on its proximal 
side. The latter is united to the base of 
the fore-brain by a thick stalk, and each 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 115. 


ganglion is united with its neighbor by de- 
cussating bundles of fibres. The medullary 
portion of each ganglion is mainly on the 
heemal side, the ganglion cells on the dorsal. 
In Limulus we have just such a set of optic 
ganglia, and in the embryos they project 
far away from the fore-brain and at right 
angles to it, as in nearly all other arthro- 
pods; but they gradually move backwards 
toward the wide dorsal line till in the adult 
crab they lie jammed close together on the 
heemal side of the fore-brain near the me- 
dian line. 

Now if the migration of the optic ganglia 
of Limulus should continue in the same di- 
rection they would cross the median line 
and, following the path of least resistance, 
move in opposite directions towards the 
Open space just behind the cerebral hemi- 
spheres. 

As the proximal end of the ganglion 
stallx is fixed to the sides of the fore-brain, 
the ganglion would be bent double so that 
the stalk and optic nerve would lie parallel 
and side by side. The whole ganglion 
would now form the roof and sides of the 
mid-brain, and would reverse the direction 
of its curvature to fit its new position, thus 
effectively disguising its true character. 
The ganglion by its change in position is 
partly inverted, turning the ganglion cell 
layer toward the ventricle and the medul- 
lary portion toward the outside, just as the 
theory demands. In this position the reti- 
nal or most distal ganglion becomes the 
torus longus, the hemispherical one the 
tectum opticum, the third one the collicu- 
lus; the stalk or proximal end of the gan- 
glion becomes the brachia, and probably 
such other tracts as unite the various lobes. 
with the thalamencephalon; the crossed 
nerves form the chiasma and the optic 
tracts, the fibres in both cases entering 
what is morphologically the distal end of 
the series of ganglia, 7%. e., the torus longus 
and its vicinity. (4) The commissural 


MAxRcH 12, 1897. ] 


systems support such a comparison. Limu- 
lus has in each ventral ganglion two sets 
of transverse commissures, four or five 
bundles below the remnant of the median 
furrow, and two above it.. Thus a rudi- 
mentary ‘ canalis centralis’ is formed in the 
adult with commissures on either side of it. 
The entire set of neural commissures in the 
hind-brain of Limulus probably represent 
the beginnings of the cerebellum. In the 
fore-brain region of Limulus are three main 
systems of commissures, having the same 
general relation to the brain that the su- 
perior, middle and inferior commissures 
have in Vertebrates. 


Life History and Sexual Relations of the Ento- 
conchide. N. R. HARRINGTON. 


The Entoconchide are a very rare degen- 
erate type of molluscs, first observed by 
Johannes Muller. Since that observation, 
in 1852, but one contribution to their mor- 
phology has appeared. From the discovery 
of a new genus of this family, living under 
new conditions, the following facts may be 
observed : 

1. Ontogenetically these forms do not pass 
through a Thyca or Stilifer stage, as has 
been suggested by recent hypothesis. They 
are ejected through the cloacal wall (as 
are the Cuyierian organs), or else are evis- 


cerated, escaping from the sac by dehis- . 


scence. 

2. Thelarvais free swimming and enters 
the new host with the water taken into the 
respiratory system, penetrating either the 
walls of the latter or those of the alimen- 
tary tract. 

3. Theadult sac is produced by the enor- 
mous outgrowth of the genital organs and 
subsequent degeneration of head parts. 

4. For the first time in these degenerate 
shelless molluscs, separate sexes are ob- 
served. The males carry spermatophores. 
This observation takes Entoconcha from the 
evidence employed to show that Hermaph- 


SCIENCE. 


433 


roditism is simpler and more primitive than 
Gonochorism in the Mollusca. 


Budding in, Clavilinide. 

The only genera of this family of com- 
pound Ascidians whose bud development 
has hitherto been described are Olavilina 
and Perophora, but the following is a brief 
account of the process as it occurs in 
another genus, Ecteinascidia. The material 
was obtained in Jamaica and belongs to the 
species EH. turbinata, Herdman. Although 
in external appearance the zooids resemble 
those of Clavalina, as they are quite elonga- 
ted and the two siphons are at the anterior 
end, the species shows a closer similarity to 
Perophora, both in the structure of the adults 
and the mode of development of the buds. 
It differs from the former and agrees with 
the latter in the total absence of an epi- 
cardium and abdomen, but is distinguished 
from these two forms by the presence of 
perfect internal longitudinal bars in the 
wall of the branchial sac. Thereis nothing 
like the displacement or rotation of the 
inner vesicle of the bud rudiment, which has 
been described for Perophora. 

The ectoderm of the bud is directly de- 
rived from that of the stolon and the inner, 
or ‘endodermal,’ vesicle from the stolonic 
septum, which, however, is not a flat parti- 
tion, but a tube enclosed within the ecto- 
derm and bathed on all sides by the blood. 
The bud is connected with the stolon at its 
posterior end, and its long axis is perpen- 
dicular to that of the stolen, asin Clavelina. 

The pericardium is usually the first organ 
to appear, and is formed by cells which 
wander out from the wall of the inner 
vesicle far back on the right side. 

The dorsal tube has a similar origin, but 
arises at the extreme anterior end of the 
vesicle, while the ganglion is differentiated 
out of the dorsal wall of the tube. 

The sexual organs are also formed from 
cells which are given off from the wall of 


G. LEFEVRE. 


434 


the inner vesicle, but near the point where 
the digestive tract is growing out. 

It is quite probable that free cells of the 
blood also take part in the formation of all 
these organs, as appearances strongly indi- 
eate such an occurrence, but these cells 
themselves are derived from the inner 
vesicle, which is clearly seen to give them 
off into the body space, especially at very 
early stages. 

The ectoderm, therefore, is not actively 
concerned in the bud development, but the 
duty of providing the material for the for- 
mation of all the internal organs devolves 
solely upon the inner or ‘endodermal’ 
vesicle. 


Notes on the Structure and Development of the 
Type of a New Family of so-called. Social 
Ascidians from the Coast of Califoinia. W. 
E. Rirrer. 

In its superficial characters the new form 
closely resembles Clavelina. Studied in de- 
tail, however, its affinities are found to be 
much closer with the Polyclinide, e. g., with 
the genus Amaroucium, than with Clavelina. 
The acidiozoids are wholly distinct from 
one another, excepting for their attachment 
to a common basal stolon, as in Clavelina, 
and in form, size and color they closely re- 
semble the zooids of some species of this 
genus, ¢. g., C. savigniana M. Edw. 

They are flute-shaped, the attachment 
being at the small end. Their average length 
is about 3 cm. The colonies usually con- 
tain many zo0ids closely crowded together, 
as in Clavelina. But beyond this the dis- 
tinctively clavelinian characters cease. The 
general features of the individual zodids are 
distinctly those of the Polyclinide. The body 
is divided into three well-defined regions: 
viz, the thorax, containing the branchial 
sac; the abdomen, composed mainly of the 
intestine ; and the post-abdomen, contain- 
ing the gonads and the heart. 

In Clavelina, on the other hand, the 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 115. 


gonads are situated within the intestinal 
loop, and the heart along side of it—in other 
words, Clavelina has no post-abdomen. 

Now it will be noted that the Polyclinide 
are entirely typicical ascidiz composite ; 
i. €., not only does reproduction by gem- 
mation take place, but the blastozoids 
thus produced become closely crowded to- 
gether and all wholly embedded in a com- 
mon testicular mass. 

This brief comparison will suffice to call 
attention to the fact, which becomes much 
more striking when the comparison is 
carried out in detail, that in the new form 
we have an ascidian which in the relation of 
the blastozoides to one another in the colony is 
strictly a so-called social ascidian, while in the 
structure of the individual zodids it 1s as strictly 
a compound ascidian. 

Another illustration is thus produced of 
the artificialty of a classification of the tuni- 
cata which attempts to base primary sub- 
divisions on the condition of the blas- 
tozoides of the colony as regards a common 
test-mass. : 

The characters which prevent the form 
from being admitted to the family Polych- 
mide, and make necessary the establishment 
of a new one for it, are founded in the struc- 
ture of the gonads and the oviduct; the 
relations of the epicardiac tubes; and in the 
arrangement of the branchial tentacles. 

The study of the embryology is still quite 
incomplete. Theembryos are developed in 
a long expanded proximal portion of the 
oviduct which may properly be called a 
uterus. About a dozen embryos are found 
in each uterus, these being placed in a single 
row, usually with the oldest farthest for- 
ward and the youngest nearest the ovary, 
or farthest back. 

The larval stage is much abridged, the 
metamorphosis of the nervous system being 
nearly complete before the larva leaves the 
parent. It is doubtful if there is any free- 
swimming tadpole stage at all. 


MaRrcH 12, 1897.] 


Numerous amceboid cells are always pres- 
ent in the uterus among the embryos. 
These are probably concerned in the nutri- 
tion of the embryos, since they may be seen 
passing through the uterine wall, and the 
uterus is surrounded by a great quantity of 
cells filled with yellow granules, probably 
of food material. 

Perhaps the most important develop- 
mental point thus far made out is that the 
peribranchial sacs arise as two well defined 
ectodermal invaginations on the dorsal side of the 
embryo. 

The results, then, support the conclusions 
of Kowalevsky, Seeliger, Willey, Hjort and 
Caullery on this head, and oppose those of 
Della Valle, van Beneden et Julin, Pizon 
and Garstang, who hold, in one way and 
another, that these structures arise from 
the endoderm. 


Notes on Chelyosoma productum, Stimpson. F. 

W. Bancrorv. 

An examination of about 20 individuals 
in the collections of the University of Cali- 
fornia shows that this western ascidian is 
quite distinct from its Atlantic and Arctic 
representative, C. macleayanum.  Stimp- 
son describes the species as having the disk, 
which is characteristic of the genus, divided 
into fourteen plates; but in the individuals 
examined the number was found to vary 
from thirteen to twenty. This variability 
is associated with a muscular system that is 
quite different from what is found in the 
other member of the genus. In ©. produc- 
tum the systems of short muscles joining 
adjacent plates are wanting, except around 
the orifices, and are replaced by a series of 
fibres extending from near the center of the 
disk to its periphery and some distance 
down the sides of the animal. The method 
of attachment of these muscles is different 
from that described for any other ascidian. 
Both ends of every bundle of muscle fibres 
are firmly attached to little projections of 


SCIENCE. 


435 


the inner surface of the test. On these the 
ectoderm is thrown into deep folds and 
pockets which greatly increase the surface 
of contact with the test, so that the mus- 
cles which are joined to the inner ends of 
the ectoderm cells cannot tear them away. 

The matrix of the test, like that of some 
other tunicates, consists of an inner layer 
of cellulose and an outer one, very dis- 
tinctly separated from it, which is not cellu- 
lose, and which corresponds to the ‘ yellow 
layer’ of the early authors. In our species 
it is easily seen that this outer layer is 
formed from the cellulose matrix by the 
activity of the mesodermic bladder cells 
which the latter contains. The first traces 
of the ‘yellow substance’ are seen about 
isolated bladder cells near the outer layer, 
and all transitions can be traced from this 
stage until the cell and the yellow sub- 
stance it has produced are incorporated 
into the outer layer. The other organs of 
Chelyosoma are of a less exceptional char- 
acter and clearly show that it is more closely 
related to Corella than to any other genus. 


On the Plan of Development of a Myxinoid. 

BaAsHrorD DEAN. 

The marked dissimilarity in the develop- 
ment of Bdellostoma and Petromyzon was. 
noted. In the former a large supply of yolk 
produces a merocytic condition at a very 
early stage; The head region of the embryo, 
appearing first, very much as in Elasmo- 
branchs, takes its position near the animal 
pole; the body region is then laid down, 
apparently by concrescence, in an almost 
straight line extending in the direction of 
the yolk pole almost the entire length of 
the egg. The subsequent growth of the 
embryo constricts both head and tail from 
the yolk sac, and in very late stages an em- 
bryo of nearly two inches lies coiled within 
the ege A preliminary study confirms 
Professor Price’s observations as to the great 
number of gill slits. 


436 


On the Early Development of Chimera. Basu- 
FORD Dean. 
Emphasis was laid on the similarity of 
the embryonic characters of Chimeroid and 
Elasmobranch. 


Amphiuma and the Ceeilians. J. S. Kryes- 

LEY. 

The various statements which had been 
advanced to show the relationships of Am- 
phiuma and Cecilians were considered, 
and it was pointed out that these state- 
ments were almost entirely based upon mis- 
interpretation or misconception. The dif- 
ferences between the two were then empha- 
sized, and it was shown that the structural 
features were opposed to the view of Cope 
that the Czecilians had descended from an 
Amphiuma-like form, and to that of the 
Sarasins that Amphiwma was a neoteric 
Cecilian. In the possession of an ethmoid, 
in structure of vertebra, in the relations of 
palatine and trigeminal nerves, in structure 
of nephridia and genitalia and in circula- 
tory apparatus, the Cecilians differ from 
Amphiuna and from all Urodeles, and the 
group must be regarded as entirely distinct 
from Urodeles, and as having descended 
directly from some Stegocephalan ancestor. 


Vertebral Intercalation in Necturus. 


by title.) H.C. Bumpus. 


(Read 


Brachial and Lnmbo-sacral Plexi in Necturus. 

F.C. Warre. 

In Nectwrus maculosus the normal posi- 
tion of the pelvic girdle is with attachment 
to the 19th vertebra, but in about one- 
fourth the cases it is attached to the 20th 
vertebra. Unfrequent cases are found in 
which the attachment is asymmetrical, the 
sacral rib on one side being one segment 
anterior to that on the other side. 

Study of the plexi in a series of speci- 
mens shows: (a) that the position of the 
brachial plexus does not vary with dis- 
placement of pelvic girdle, and so it is im- 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. Vou. V. No. 115. 


probable that intercalation of vertebre 
occurs anterior to the posterior spinal 
nerve (V) involved in this plexus; (0) 
with normal position of pelvic girdle there 
are two prevalent types of topography of 
the lumbo-sacral plexus which depend upon 
the manner of branching of the spinal 
nerves to form the crural nerve, and further 
that there is considerable variation in the 
strength of the nerves involved, causing a 
shifting within narrow limits of the ‘source 
center’ ofthe plexus. (¢) When the girdle is 
attached to 20th vertebra the plexus shows 
a displacement posteriorly, but not iu a 
corresponding degree through an entire 
segment. It thus occupies a position in- 
termediate between the normal position and 
what would be its position were it displaced 
through an entiresegment. (d) Where the 
girdle is attached asymmetrically the plexus 
does not show corresponding asymmetry, 
but is essentially symmetrical in one of the 
two segments involved. 

The intermediate position of the plexus, 
the occurrence of symmetrical variation 
in position of girdle; of asymmetrically 
placed girdles and of supernumerary sacral 
ribs, appears to be explicable not upon 
ground of intercalation of vertebra nor of 
slipping of girdle during ontogeny, but upon 
the hypothesis that there are several seg- 
ments in this region, in any one of which a 
girdle may be developed. 


Discovery of a Huge Octopus on the Coast of 
Florida, A. E. VERRILL. 


The following officers were elected: 
President, C. S. Minot, Harvard; Vice- 
President, S. I. Smith, Yale; Secretary- 
Treasurer, G. H. Parker, Harvard ; Mem- 
bers of the Executive Committee from the 
Society at large, J. S. Kingsley, Tufts, and 
Bashford Dean, Columbia. 

G. H. Parker, 


HARVARD UNIVERSITY. Secretary. 


MARcH 12, 1897.] 


CURRENT NOTES ON PHYSIOGRAPHY. 
CAMPBELL ON DRAINAGE MODIFICATIONS. 
THE processes whereby rivers re-arrange 
their courses when the region that they 
drain is affected by gentle deformation is 
thoroughly treated by M. R. Campbell 
(Chicago Journ. Geol., TV., 1896, 567-581, 
657-678). He gives a detailed deductive 
consideration of expected changes, leading 
to the ‘law of the migration of divides ;’ 
in brief, that divides migrate towards an 
axis of uplift. It is further shown that, 
under the influence of tilting, rivers will, 
by the migration of divides, tend to arrange 
themselves in rectangular pattern, the 
smaller streams running down the dip, the 
larger along the strike of the tilt. Streams 
are most sensitive to these influences in 
their old age, when, by long striving, each 
individual has come to be so delicately bal- 
anced against its neighbors that the least 
outside influence may cause predatory con- 
quests by the more favored. Several exam- 
ples are given of rivers in the Appalachian 
region which appear to have been affected 
by changes of the kind here discussed ; 
among these the Chattahoochee, New and 
Roanoke rivers being especially interesting. 

To the student of the natural history of 
rivers this discussion by Campbell must be 
particularly acceptable, inasmuch as it in- 
troduces the competent consideration of an 
element of disturbance not sufficiently at- 
tended to in earlier studies of the develop- 
ment of river courses. 


RUSSELL’S GLACIERS OF NORTH AMERICA. 


Unpver the above title Professor I. C. Rus- 
sell has prepared another ‘reading lessons for 
students of geography and geology’ (Ginn & 
Co., Boston, 1897), a companion to his 
Lakes of North America, and has thereby 
placed teachers and students alike under 
many obligations to him. Good geograph- 
ical literature, neither in text-books nor in 
advanced professional reports, but in acces- 


SCIENCE. 


437 


sible and attractive form for ready use, is 
so rare that teachers are often at a loss 
where to find it; and students who reach 
an impressible, interrogative attitude are 
perforce left unsupplied with answers to 
their questions. It is only as books like 
these ‘lessons’ of Russell’s increase in 
number that the studious treatment of 
geography can flourish. This book on 
glaciers is doubly welcome at the present 
time of a growing interest in geographical 
science. We find first a general account of 
glaciers and of their modern and ancient 
action; then several chapters on the exist- 
ing glaciers of various districts in North 
America, the brevity of the chapter on 
Canada pointing clearly to that district as 
most in need of further exploration. Clos- 
ing chapters discuss climatic changes indi- 
cated by glaciers, why glaciers move, and 
the life history of a glacier; the latter being 
especially recommendable from its novelty 
and breadth of view. The book contains 
many excellent illustrations. 


THE GOHNA LANDSLIP. 


A REMARKABLE instance of foresight in 
averting disaster is found in an account of 
the Gohna landslip on a head branch of 
the Ganges, in the Garhwal Himalaya, and 
of the flood that followed on the overflow 
of the resulting lake, as published by the 
Public Works Department of the Govern- 
ment of India (Caleutta, 1896). The slip 
occurred in September, 1893, continuing 
three days with deafening noise, darkening 
the air with the dust from shattered rocks, 
and clogging the narrow valley with 800,- 
000,000 tons of detritus. The fall de- 
scended about 4,000 feet, spreading about 
two miles along the valley and rising 850 
feet above the former stream level. It re- 
sulted from the undercutting of strata that 
dipped into the valley, and hence should 
be classed with those slides that follow the 
erosion of narrow valleys in uplifted 


438 


masses; as such, being a characteristic of 
vigorous young mountains. 

Careful study of the ground made it clear 
that no artificial discharge could be made 
for the rising lake.. As the impending flood 
could not be controlled, every effort was 
made to insure the safety of the people in 
the valley below by timely warning of the 
disaster. A telegraph line was constructed 
from Hardwar, on the Ganges at the 
edge of the plains, to Gohna, 150 miles 
within the mountains. In April, 1894, 
August 15th was set as the probable date 
of the flood. A number of suspension 
bridges were dismantled and removed. 
Safety pillars were set up on the valley 
slopes, at intervals of half a mile, and at 
heights of from 50 to 200 feet above the 
ordinary river level, thus indicating the 
probable limit of the flood, above which 
there would be no danger. 

The lake back of the dam grew to be four 
miles long and half a mile wide. At mid- 
night of August 25th—26th, during a heavy 
rainfall, the flood began. In four hours 
the lake was reduced to two miles in 
length and quarter of a mile in breadth; 
10,000,000,000 cubic feet of water were dis- 
charged, cutting down the barrier 390 feet ; 
advancing at a rate of twenty miles an 
hour at first, and ten miles an hour further 
down the valley, sweeping away many miles 
of valley road, completely destroying two 
bridges that had been left standing, because 
of remonstrances from local authorities 
against their removal, and leaving no ves- 
tige of many villages and three consider- 
able towns ; yet so fully was the danger an- 
nounced that not a single life was lost. 


W. M. Davis. 
ALARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 
THE AMERIQUE INDIANS. 


THERE has lately appeared in Paris a 
book with the title ‘L’Amerique a-t-elle 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. Vou. V. No. 115. 


droit sous ce nom a un nom indigéne?’ by 
M. Franciot-Legall. 

The question discussed is one which at 
various periods has risen in the Congrés 
Internationale des Américanistes, and de- 
rives its origin from the fact that some- 
where in Central America there has been 
known a native tribe with the name ‘Amer- 
iques;’ and it was argued that Columbus in 
his fourth voyage met this tribe and from 
it his associates gave the name to the land, 
—not from Amerigo Vespucci, as the geog- 
rapher Waldseemiuller says, or, at least, in- 
dependently of him. 

Some have doubted that there was a tribe 
so-called, but their existence must be con- 
ceded. They have been met by explorers. 
of the present day—by Mr. Crawford, for 
example. Their affinity and precise loca- 
tion have, however, not been stated. These 
points have been settled lately by M. Alph. 
Pinart, who, as he lately informed me, se- 
cured a yocabulary of their tongue and 
found it to be of the Lenea stock, and their 
present home to be in the State of Hon- 
duras. 


30TH REPORT OF THE PEABODY INSTITUTE. 

Tue last report of the Curator of this in- 
stitution, Professor F. W. Putnam, shows 
it to be in a flourishing condition. Among 
the results of its field work are numerous 
specimens of chipped stones said by the 
Curator to be ‘ found in the glacial deposits 
of the Delaware Valley,’ about the age of 
which deposits it is fair to say geologists 
are not agreed. 

Mr. Gordon’s researches in Copan are re- 
ferred to, and the fact emphasized that the 
establishment of that city was far more an- 
cient than the surface ruins and standing 
monuments. 

The report closes with some excellent sug- 
gestions for a course of instruction in an- 
thropology, comprising a group of studies 
some acquaintance with which is essential to. 


ManrcH 12, 1897. ] 


an anthropologist. It necessarily includes 
several departments, but in a period of 
three years a diligent student could be 
qualified for original research. 


PLIOCENE MAN IN BRITAIN. 


GroLoeicaL readers are aware that the 
Cromer Forest Beds of eastern England are 
to be assigned to either the latest Pliocene 
or oldest Pleistocene. They are distinctly 
preglacial and contain remains of a sub- 
tropical fauna. 

From an article in Natwral Science, for 
January, it appears that Mr. W. J. Lewis 
Abbott has collected from these beds a series 
of chipped flints bearing ‘a striking resem- 
blance to the work of man,’ and have been 
pronounced to be such by competent ex- 
perts. One showed a plain ‘bulb of per- 
cussion.’ 

As there seems no doubt about their de- 
position with the original strata, the only 
question remaining is their production, 
whether by the hand of man or natural 
agencies. There still remains some doubt 
even as to the flints from the plateau of 
Kent on this vital point. 

D. G. Brinton. 

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


NOTES ON INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 

On January 11th Professor Clemens 
Winkler, of Freiberg, delivered an address 
before the Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft 
on The Discovery of New Elements during 
the last twenty-five years and problems 
connected therewith. He first considered 
the quantitative distribution of the ele- 
ments, showing by Professor F. W. Clarke’s 
tables that as far as concerns the outer ten 
miles of the earth, together with the atmos- 
phere, one-half of all the material is oxygen, 
and one-quarter is silicon, and that these 
two elements, with aluminum, iron, eal- 
cium, magnesium, sodium and potassium 
make up over 7.5 per cent. None of the 


SCIENCE. 


439 


remaining elements occur in as great abun- 
dance as one per cent. In the process of 
cooling of the earth, and subsequent geo- 
logic action, many of the less abundant ele- 
ments have become somewhat localized or 
concentrated ; as, for example, chlorin in 
the sea and in salt deposits, the heavy 
metals in veins and lodes. Were this not 
the case many of the rarer elements must 
have escaped detection. An instance of 
this is scandium, discovered by Nilson in 
1879, of whose oxid but a few grams exist. 
This element, and gallium, discovered by 
Lecoq de Boisbaudran in 1875, and germa- 
nium ,discovered by Prof. Winkler himself in 
1886, possess a peculiar interest, in that the 
properties of each had been quite accurately 
predicted by Mendeléefin1871. Their dis- 
covery was a complete confirmation of the 
principles of the periodic law. The mineral 
gadolinite, with others closely kin, has been 
a fertile source of investigation, and the 
list of ‘rare earths’ that have been discov- 
ered in itis apparently by no means com- 
plete. Hrbium, holmium, thulium, dyspro- 
sium, terbium, gadolinum, samarium, decip- 
ium and ytterbium have been discov- 
ered by various observers, but the independ- 
ent existence of several of these is far from 
certain. Of several supposed new elements 
the non-existence is more sure; such are 
metacerium, russium, jargonium, austrium, 
norwegium, actinium, idumium and mas- 
rium. Thesame may, perhaps, be said of the 
recently patented lucium, kosmium and 
neokosmium. (These last do not derive 
their appellation from kosmos, but from Kos- 
mann, their discoverer and patentee !). 
Work by Auer von Welsbach on his incan- 
descent light led him to the decomposition 
of didymium into neodymium and praseo- 
dymium, whose beautiful red and green 
salts were well shown at the Chicago Ex- 
position. The last elements considered by 
Professor Winkler were argon and helium. 
These apparently do not as yet fall into 


440 


harmony with the periodic system. The 
same may be said of tellurium and cobalt or 
nickel. Whether some or all of these ele- 
ments are mixtures or whether their seem- 
ingly anomalous atomic weights must be 
explained in some other way does not as 
yet appear. 

THE action of the silent electric dis- 
charge in effecting chemical synthesis is 
being studied by Losanitsch and Jovit- 
schitsch at the Konigliche Hochschule at 
Belgrade. The apparatus used is an ordi- 
nary ozonizator, or, as they prefer to call it, 
electrizator. Mixed gases are led through 
the apparatus, exposed to the discharge of 
a Ruhmkorff excited by a current of 70 
volts and three to five amperes. Carbon 
monoxid and water, also carbon dioxid and 
hydrogen, are condensed to formic acid; 
carbon dioxid and water yield formic acid 
and free oxygen ; carbon monoxid and hy- 
drogen give formaldehyde, which quickly 
polymerizes, apparently to a polymer gly- 
colaldehyde. Carbon dioxid and methane 
condense to acetaldehyde, which soon forms 
aldol. A general method for formation of 
aldehydes is thus presented. Nitrogen and 
water condense directly to ammonium 
nitrite, a fact known to Berthelot, and con- 
sidered to have a bearing on plant nourish- 
ment. Other interesting syntheses were 
obtained with sulfur compounds and with 
ammonia. In general, the reactions seem 
to be rather the reverse of those produced 
by heat. 

Tue December Zeitschrift fiir physikalische 
Chemie contains a study by Paul and Kronig 
on the behavior of bacteria towards solu- 
tions of different salts. All salts of the 
same metal donot have the same germicidal 
effect upon the spores of the anthrax ba- 
cillus used for most of the experiments. 
Thus mercuric chlorid is more deadly than 
mercuric cyanid. Apparently those solu- 
tions containing the largest number of free 
ions of a metal possessing a specifie poi- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 115. 


sonous character are most active. Mercuric 
chlorid is more completely dissociated in 
solution than the cyanid. Alkaline chlorids 
are often used to promote the solution of 
mercuric chlorid, but they also decrease 
the antiseptic power of the solution, since 
they diminish the dissociation and hence 
decrease the number of free mercuric ions. 
Dissolved in aleohol, mercuric chlorid has 
practically no effect on anthrax spores. 
Jo Iby 15l. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 
REVUE DE MECANIQUE.* 


A NOTABLE addition to the list of technical 
journals has been made in the establishment of 
this monthly. Its editors, Messieurs Haton, 
Bienaymé, Bourdon, Brill, Collignon, De Com- 
berousse, Flamant, Hirsch, Imbs, Linder, Raf- 
fard, Rozé, Sauvage, and the responsible col- 
laborateur, Richard, all stand among the fore- 
most men of applied science and engineering of 
France. They include the distinguished head 
of the ecole des Mines, member of the Insti- 
tute, the inspector-general of the navy, a 
famous inventor and constructor, a past-Presi- 
dent of the French Society of Civil Engineers, 
two inspectors-general of roads and bridges, 
two professors at the Conservatoire des Arts et 
Metiers, the engineer-in-chief of ponts et chaus- 
sées, upon whom the French government is ac- 
customed to rely for advice respecting all its: 
public works and especially at its international 
exhibitions, the inspector-general of mines, and 
the engineer-in-chief, and also a representative 
of the Ecole Polytechnique. 

This first volume opens with a prospectus indi- 
cating the scope of the plans of the editors and 
the field to be occupied by the new journal. The 
leading article is an extensive paper, sixteen 
pages, by M. Dwelshanvers-Dery, of the Univer- 
sity of Liege; Détermination des données fonda- 
mentales dans un essai de Machine a Vapeur, in 
which the famous author gives, in full detail, the 


* Publiée sous le Patronage et le Direction technique 
@un Comité de Rédaction, compose de MM. HATON DE 
LA GOUPILLIDRE, etc.; Seeréiaire de Rédaction, G. 
RICHARD. Paris, P. Vicq-Dunod et Cie. Tome I., 
No. 1, Janvier, 1897. 


MARcH 12, 1897.] 


methods employed by him in the analysis of the 
action of steam within the engine, and in the 
measurement of the heat and steam passing 
through its cylinder and in the determination 
of their various directions of useful application 
or of waste. This method is, in the main, that 
of Hirn, but reduced to algebraic expression by 
Dwelshauvers, and given application in scien- 
tific work of vastly more exact nature than was 
practicable in the time of the great master. 
The ‘experimental engine’ established withina 
few years at the School of Mines of the Uni- 
versity of Liege affords M. Dwelshauvers op- 
portunity to illustrate the principles enunciated 
and to secure original and helpful data, while, 
at the same time, giving practical instruction to 
his students. 

A paper by M. Boulvin, of the University of 
Ghent, on ‘Le Diagramme entropique et ses 
applications’ follows. This diagram and 
method of representation of thermodynamic op- 
erations, original with our own Professor Gibbs, 
nearly a quarter of a century ago, is just at- 
tracting attention among Scientific practitioners 
in engineering by its peculiar adaptation to the 
exposition of the effects of transformations 
upon the relative volumes of fluids, losing or 
gaining heat while work is being done. The 
pressure-volume diagram is usually better ad- 
apted to the needs of the engineer; but this 
special form of chart, the temperature-entropy 
diagram, better exhibits the physical condition 
of the fluid during the progress of the engine 
eycle. M. Boulvin, in his article, shows its 
practical uses, as particularly applied to the 
study of the permanent gases used as working 
substances in heat engines. 

M. Sauvage studies the compound locomotive 
engine, exhibiting the structure of the princi- 
pal classes in great detail and giving much at- 
- tention to the forms familiar in the United 
States. M. Richard similarly discusses the re- 
frigerating machines, giving detailed descrip- 
tions of the principal parts of such apparatus 
and according large space to those observed by 
him at the Chicago Exhibition of 18938. The 
same prolific pen offers an account of the con- 
struction of the later forms of the gas and pe- 
troleum engines. A ‘chronicle’ of current 
novelties and a review of contemporary litera- 


SCIENCE. 


441 


ture conclude the volume, which occupies 112 
giant pages. 

With such extraordinary editorial support, 
and with such contributors, the new journal 
should promptly assume a place among the 
leading periodicals of its class; in fact, it may 
be said to have done so with,this first issue. 

The following original papers are announced. 
as in preparation for succeeding numbers: 
L’Influence des parois dans les machines 4 
vapeur, par Bryan Donkin; Le Surchauffe, par 
M. Sinigaglia ; La Machine 4 vapeur américaine, 
par M. Thurston; Las Machines 4 vapeur ma- 
rines, par M. Roche; Les Chaudiéres, par M. 
Walkenauer; Les Pompes, par M. Masse; 
Les Régulateurs, per M. Marie; Les Appareils 
de levage, Les Machines-outils, par M. Richard. 


GENERAL. 


Mr. J. H. BrigHam, of Ohio, has been ap- 
pointed Assistant Secretary of Agriculture. 


THE fourth session of the Congress of Ameri- 
can Physicians and Surgeons will be held at 
Washington, D. C., on May 4th, 5th and 6th, 
under the presidency of Professor W. H. Welch, 
of Johns Hopkins University. Fourteen of the 
most important medical societies, including the 
Physiological Society and the Society of Anato- 
mists, will take part in the Congress. One of 
the three general meetings will be devoted to 
a discussion of ‘Internal Secretions considered 
in their Physiological, Pathological and Clinical 
Aspects.’ Dr. William H. Howell, of Balti- 
more, Md., and Dr. Russell H. Chittenden, of 
New Haven, Conn., will speak in behalf of 
the American Physiological Society. Dr. J. 
George Adami, of Montreal, Canada; Dr. James 
J. Putnam, of Boston, Mass., and Dr. Francis P. 
Kinnicutt, of New York City, in behalf of the 
Association of American Physicians, and Dr. 
William Osler, of Baltimore, Md., in behalf of 
the American Pediatric Society. The papers 
will be followed by a discussion. 

THE anniversary meeting of the Geological 
Society of London was held at Burlington- 
house on February 17th. The officers were ap- 
pointed as follows : President, Dr. Henry Hicks, 
F. R. S.; Vice-Presidents, Professor T. G. Bon- 
ney, F. R. 8.; Lieutenant-General C. A. M’Ma- 
hone Mrs Jaed abe Neal ek wha Sse ander: 


442 


Henry Woodward, F. R. S.; Secretaries, Mr. 
J. EH. Marr, F. R. §., and Mz. R. 8. Barries ; 
Foreign Secretary, Sir John Evans, F. R. §8.; 
Treasurer, Dr. W. T. Blanford, F. R. 8... The 
following awards of medals and funds were 
made: The Wollaston medal to Mr. W. H. 
Hudleston, F. R. S.; the Murchison medal and 
part of the fund to Mr. Horace B. Woodward, 
F. R. §.; the Lyell medal and part of the fund 
to Dr. G. J. Hinde, F. R. 8.; the Bigsby medal 
to Mr. Clement Reid; the balance of the pro- 
ceeds of the Wollaston fund to Mr. F. A. 
Bather; the balance of the proceeds of the 
Murchison fund to Mr. 8. 8. Buckman; the 
balance of the proceeds of the Lyell fund to 
Mr. W. J. Lewis Abbott and Mr. J. Lomas. 
The President delivered his anniversary address, 
which dealt with some recent evidence bearing 
on the geological and biological history of 
early Cambrian and pre-Cambrian times. 

THE Council of the Royal Photographic 
Society of Great Britain have awarded the 
progress medal of the Society to Professor Ga- 
briel Lippmann, of Paris, for his discovery of 
the process of producing photographs in natural 
colors by the interference method. 


A SELECT committee of the British House of 
Commons has been appointed to inquire into 
and report upon the sufficiency of the law rela- 
ting to the keeping, selling, using and convey- 
ing of petroleum and other inflammable liquids, 
and the precautions to be adopted for the pre- 
vention of accidents with petroleum lamps. 


THE Supreme Court of the State of Wisconsin 
has declared compulsory vaccination to be un- 
constitutional on the grounds that it may be 
objected to as a matter of conscience and its 
enforcement would be an interference with re- 
ligious liberty. 

THE Council of the Sanitary Institute of Great 
Britain have accepted an invitation of the City 
Council of Leeds to hold a sanitary congress 
and health exhibition in that city in September. 

THE Senate has passed a joint resolution re- 
citing the alarming spread of the bubonic 
plague now prevalent in India, and directing 
the Secretary of the Treasury to establish such 
national quarantine regulations as may become 
necessary to prevent the introduction and 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. Vou. V. No. 115. 


spread of infectious or contagious diseases. 
The resolution provides for the appointment of 
inspectors by the Secretary of the Treasury, on 
the advice of the surgeon-general of the Marine 
Hospital service, and for the inspection of ves- 
sels, persons, etc., pending the existence of the 
emergency. 

The British Medical Journal states that a care- 
ful and comprehensive report on the progress of 
public hygiene in Prussia during the years 1889, 
1890 and 1891 is being circulated by the Medical 
Board of the Prussian Cultus-Ministerium (Min- 
istry of Education, ete.). It is a book of more 
than 600 pages, comprising chapters on every 
branch of public health and on epidemics in 
man and beast, besides a large number of sta- 
tistical tables. The latter include general mor- 
tality,mortality at different ages, mortality from 
different specified diseases, and disease and 
mortality in different trades. The problems of 
water supply and drainage, police supervision 
of food and drink, supervision of factories and 
schools, etc., are fully discussed, and there are 
chapters on workmen’s dwellings, working col- 
onies, poorhouses, almshouses, hospitals, ete. 


ProFressoR W. M. SPAULDING writes us of 
the death of Lorenzo N. Johnson, formerly in- 
structor of botany in the University of Michigan, 
which occurred at Boulder, Colorado, Saturday, 
February 27th. ‘‘Mr. Johnson was an enthu- 
siastic student of alge and fungi and had de- 
voted much time to systemmatic work on the 
Desmidiacezee. He was the author of various 
papers on this group and had much extended 
their known range in the United States.’’ 

WE regret also to record the death of Mr. 
John Pierce, formerly professor of chemistry 
in Brown University, and of Professor Edward 
Thomson Nelson, of the chair of science in 
Ohio Wesleyan University, on February 28th. 

Atv the instance of the Commission on Bird 
Protection of the American Ornithologists’ 
Union, the Lighthouse Board at Washington 
has issued a decree forbidding the sale of eggs 
of the sea birds of Farrallones Islands, Cali- 
fornia. It is said that as many as 20,000 dozen 
eggs were annually sold. 

ACCORDING to the Electrical World, on June 
26th next an exhibition will be opened in the 


Marcu 12, 1897. ] 


Exhibition Building, Sydney, N. S. W., and 
will continue during the months of July and 
August. It is intended to embrace engineering 
in all its branches, and the exhibits will consist 
of raw material, manufactured articles, ma- 
chinery and models (in motion and otherwise), 
drawings and photographs of all kinds relative 
to scientific, mechanical and educational works, 
in classified sections. The object of the exhibi- 
tion is solely for the advancement of engineer- 
ing science and the promotion of a general and 
practical education therein. 


Iv is stated in the daily papers that what ap- 
pears to be a volcano has burst forth in the 
Great Salt Lake, a short distance southwest of 
Promontory Station on the Central Pacific Rail- 
way. The phenomenon first appeared recently 
in the form of a small cloud hovering over the 
water about a mile and a quarter from the 
shore. It gradually increased in dimensions 
and shotup so high in the air that it is now 
visible for a great distance, and the water in 
the immediate vicinity boils and seethes and 
the spray is thrown up in the air for hundreds 
of feet. 


AT a recent meeting of the executive com- 
mittee of the National Trust for Places of His- 
toric Interest or Natural Beauty, Sir Robert 
Hunter in the chair, it was determined to take 
steps to initiate a regional survey of the country, 
and, by means of local correspondents, initiate 
the compilation of a catalogue of buildings, ob- 
jects and places of historic and archeological 
interest, with a view to their proper protection 
and preservation. A report by the Treasurer 
showed that the work of repairing and making 
sound the old clergy-house at Alfriston (which 
has recently been acquired by the Trust) had 
had to be suspended on account of lack of funds, 
asum of £200 being still needed. It was an- 
nounced that the transfer of Barras Head, oppo- 
site Tintagel Castle (which has recently been 
acquired by the Trust) was complete. The com- 
mittee were unanimous in agreeing to resist the 
Hastings Habour District Railway Bill on the 
ground of its serious interference with features 
of natural beauty in the district. 


Iv is stated in Nature the government of the 
Colony of the Cape of Good Hope has under- 


SCIENCE. 


443. 


taken an investigation of the marine fauna of 
of the South African coast. A small marine 
station will probably be erected on False Bay, 
and a suitable steam vessel of about 150 tons is 
now being built for the station. The services of 
specialists are invited to work up the material 
that may be procured, under the following ar- 
rangements: Specimens will be forwarded as 
procured, and, on receipt of manuscript and 
drawings each piece of work will be published 
without delay in a uniform style, so as to form 
ultimately a complete record of the Cape marine 
fauna. Author’s copies will be forwarded as soon. 
as published, and a certain circulation will be 
guaranteed. No money remuneration is offered, 
but duplicate specimens may be retained by the 
authors. Unique specimens will be handed 
over to the South African Museum in Cape 
Town. . Further information will be supplied 
on application to J. D. F. Gilchrist, Marine 
Biologist to Cape Government Agricultural De- 
partment, Cape Town. 


WE have already noticed the return of Mr. 
J. HE. S. Moore from his scientific expedition to 
Tanganyika. In conversation with a represent- 
ative of Reuter’s Agency Mr. Moore said that 
he left England in September, 1895, and pro- 
ceeded to Chindi, thence going by a British gun- 
boat to the north of Lake Nyasa. At Karon- 
gas he got together his caravan consisting of 
about 50 men, some of whom were armed with 
rifles. There was, however, no likelihood of 
difficulty with the natives. He then marched 
along the Stevenson Road to the south end of 
Tanganyika, where the Chartered Company 
placed at his disposal a steel boat. He com- 
menced his researches in the beginning of April, 
1896, and concluded in September. He found 
the fauna of Tanganyika to be unique—unlike 
anything else anywhere—and as limited as pe- 
euliar. The jellyfish and shrimps were cer- 
tainly of a marine type while the geology of the 
district precluded the possibility of any con- 
nection with the sea inrecent times. The water 
of this lake, which Livingstone found to be 
brackish, was now quite drinkable. All this 
seemed to prove that the Tanganyika part of 
the great rift valley running through that part 
of Africa at one time had access to the sea, 
while it was perfectly clear that Lake Nyasa, 


ttt 


some 246 miles to the southeast, apparently 
never had any marine connection. It was also 
a matter of interest that the fauna of Tangan- 
yika was not only marine, but of a very pecu- 
liar and primitive type, and it was quite rea- 
sonable to suppose that the characteristics of 
the fauna were connected with the remote geo- 
logical connection of the lake with the sea. 


THE first census of the Russian Empire was 
completed on February 9th. The work has 
been in preparation for several years past, being 
carried out with the aid of the statistical com- 
mittees and the Imperial Geographical Society. 
The inevitable difficulties, due to the vastness 
of the Empire and the diversified character of 
the people, have been increased by their igno- 
rance and superstition. They are said to fear 
not only fresh taxes, but also a re-introduction 
of serfdom. ; 


UNDER the title ‘Magnetic Declination in the 
United States,’ the United States Geological 
Survey has just published a compilation and 
discussion of magnetic declination, by Mr. Henry 
Gannett, which will be of value to surveyors 
throughout the country. The compilation is 
based upon magnetic observations made at 
about 22,000 stations. All data obtainable for 
the discussion of the secular variation in declina- 
tion have been used, and the results are pre- 
sented in the form of tables, showing the ap- 
proximate reduction to a Selected epoch— 
namely, the year 1900—at each tenth year 
prior to that time for the period during which 
it may be required. Finally, the declination 
data have been reduced to this epoch, 1900, 


and are presented in the table by counties, ° 


cities and towns. The calculated distribution 
of the magnetic declination for the United 
States in 1900 is graphically exhibited upon a 
map in a pocket in the cover. W. F. M. 


WE have received from Dr. J. Milne an ad- 
vance copy of a circular to be issued by the 
Seismological Investigation Committee of the 
British Association, asking cooperation in an 
endeavor to extend and systematize the obser- 
vation of disturbances resulting from large 
earthquakes. The Committee recommend that 
similar instruments be used at all stations and 
are prepared to supply, for about £50, an in- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 115. 


strument to those willing to forward to them 
notes of disturbances having an earthquake 
character, for analysis and comparisom with 
the records from other stations. From time to 
time the results of these examinations would be 
forwarded to each observatory. The first object 
in view is to determine the velocity with which 
motion is propagated round or possibly through 
our earth. To attain this, all that is required 
from a given station are the times at which va- 
rious phases of motion are recorded; for which 
purpose, for the present at least, an instrument 
recording a single component of horizontal mo- 
tion is sufficient. Other results which may be 
obtained from the proposed observations are 
numerous. The foci of submarine disturbances, 
such, for example, as those which from time to 
time have interfered with telegraph cables, may 
possibly be determined, and new light thrown 
upon changes taking place in ocean beds. The 
records throw light upon certain classes of dis- 
turbances now and then noted in magnetom- 
eters and other instruments susceptible to 
slight movements, whilst local changes of level, 
some of which may have a diurnal character, 
may, under certain conditions, become appar- 
ent. Those willing to cooperate in this important 
investigation should address The Seismological 
Committee, British Association, Burlington 
House, London, W. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 

THE faculty of Mt. Holyoke College announce 
the gift to the College of $40,000 for a dormitory 
by Mr. John D. Rockefeller, of New York, 
and the receipt of a check ‘from a friend’ for 
$2,250. 

SOME months ago it was announced in 
SCIENCE (August 7, 1896) that the University 
of Texas, through the liberality of Hon. George 
W. Brackenridge, of San Antonio, a member of 
the Board of Regents, had come into the pos- 
session of the finest collection of recent shells 
west of the Mississippi. We now have the 
pleasure of recording a supplementary gift from 
the same generous donor consisting of the Gal- 
veston Deep Well Collection, numbering 102 
species; a collection of Eocene, Miocene and 
Pliocene fossils from California, Texas and 
other Southern States, 106 species; a collection 


MARcH 12, 1897. ] 


of Texas Carboniferous and Cretaceous fossils, 
58 species, and 157 specimens of Texas flints 
(implements). This material was brought to- 
gether by Mr. J. A. Singley, the well-known 
collector, now a resident of Giddings. In the 
mean time the library of the law department 
has been increased by the addition of nearly 
two hundred volumes, presented by Ex-Gover- 
nor O. M. Roberts. The gift from the first pro- 
fessor of law is greatly appreciated. The larg- 
est donation, however, is that announced on 
February 23d. On the day preceding the Palm 
library, consisting of 25,000 volumes, the larg- 
est private collection in Texas and probably in 
the Southwest, was formerly turned over to the 
University by its owner, Mr. Swante Palm, of 
Austin. It contains many rare and costly 
volumes brought together from the great book 
centers of the world. ‘The collection,’ it is 
said, ‘embraces not only general literature, 
history, biography, travels, science and philoso- 
phy, but also a remarkable collection of art 
books, illustrating ancient, medieval and mod- 
ern art, custom and manners.’ Mr. Palm is a 
native of Sweden and a resident of Texas for 
over fifty years. In 1883 he was knighted by 
King Oscar. The University library now con- 
tains over 40,000 volumes. 
FREDERIC W. SIMONDs. 


THE will of the late Anson Chapel], of West 
Hartford, Conn., leaves $3,000 to Washburn 
College, Topeka, Kans., and the same amount 
to the Hampton Normal and Agricultural In- 
stitute of Virginia. 


AT the regular March meeting of the trustees 
of the New York University it was decided 
that the control of the University Medical Col- 
lege should be vested in the Council., The Med- 
ical College Laboratory, said to be worth $400,- 
000, is transferred to the Council, which body 
will hereafter be responsible for the appoint- 
ment of professors. Chancellor MacCracken 
announced at the meeting that the Building 
Committee had made a contract for the construc- 
tion of the new library building at University 
Heights. The material used in construction 
will be grayish yellow Roman brick and Indi- 
ana limestone. The building will have a depth 
of 200 feet and will be 100 feet wide. 


SCIENCE. 


445 


Ir is reported that the investigation of the 
University of Wisconsin by a legislative com- 
mittee shows that the University has overdrawn 
its account at the State treasury to the amount 
of $145,944.76. 


THE syndicate of the University of Cambridge 
appointed to consider the question of granting 
degrees to women has reported. in favor of con- 
ferring the degrees of B.A. and M.A. under cer- 
tain conditions, but against admitting women 
to membership in the University. 


WE recently gave the percentages of hours 
devoted to different departments at Harvard and 
Yale Universities. The Boston Transcript has 
now published similar figures for Cornell Uni- 
versity and the New York Post for Princeton 
University. While we cannot vouch for the 
accuracy of these figures they seem sufficiently 
interesting to deserve repetition. 


Harvard. Cornell. Yale. Princeton. 

Classics! 4.2 ee one ee 8.7 8.0 24.2 22.6 
European languages..22.8 18.8 14.5 12.4 
JRE coosnocncoceeoao0e 16.8 16.3 10.9 11.3 
Political science........ 99 6.5 11.2 9.6 
Ei storyereereeneteeeees 14.3 8.2 10.4 

Mathematics a. 44 6.6 9.6 19.4 
Philosophy ............. 6.1 7.7 8.9 8.6 
Natural science........ 10.2 23.9 8.1 8.8 


It thus appears that Yale and Princeton agree 
somewhat closely in the distribution of studies, 
except for the excess in mathematics at Prince- 
ton. Harvard and Cornell also agree to a con- 
siderable extent, but Cornell devotes one-fourth 
of the entire time (the figures refer to the aca- 
demic department) toscience. Itis noteworthy 
that in the Senior year at Princeton, when the 
studies become elective, only 3.8 per cent. of the 
time is given to the classical languages, and 
15.1 per cent. to natural and physical sciences. 
The classical languages evidently only hold 
their position at Yale and Princeton through 
compulsion. European languages tend to take 
their place in large measure with some gains by 
English and the sciences. 


Iv is stated in the London Times that at a 
meeting of Edinburgh University Court it was 
reported that, in addition to the sum of £5,000, 
less legacy duty, bequeathed to the University 
in 1893 by the late Mr. A. L. Bruce, Edin- 
burgh, towards the founding of a chair of pub- 


446 


lic health, a further donation of £1,063 for the 
same object had been intimated from Mrs. 
Bruce and other members of the family. It 
was also reported that an offer of £5,000 to- 
wards the same object had been received since 
last meeting of the Court from a gentleman 
whose name, at his own request, is not to be 
made known for the present. The Court, con- 
sidering that the amount of donations approxi- 
mates the sum which they think to be necessary 
for the endowment of the proposed chair, re- 
solved to request the Universities’ Commission 
to frame a draft ordinance instituting a separate 
chair of public health in the University. 

Dr. Orro FIscHER, professor of chemistry at 
the University at Erlangen, has been called to 
Kiel; Dr. W. Felix has been promoted to an 
associate professorship of anatomy at the Uni- 
versity of Zurich. Dr. August Pauly has been 
made associate professor of comparative zoology 
at the University of Munich and director of the 
division of zoology at the forestry experiment 
station. Professor Pasquele Baccarini has been 
appointed professor of botany at the University 
of Catania and Dr. Oswald Kruch professor at 
the agricultural experiment station in Perugia. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
OPPORTUNITIES FOR TRAINING IN PHYSIOLOGY. 

TuE department of physiology in the Harvard 
Medical School offers to four qualified men 
positions in which training in physiology may 
pe obtained. 

It is expected that these men will give the 
mornings of the collegiate year to research and 
the afternoons to the direction of undergradu- 
ate students in experimental’ physiology, under 
the supervision of a professor in the department. 

Every effort will be made to instruct the 
holders of these positions in the ways of fram- 
ing problems for investigation, in the principles 
of criticism, in the technical methods of research, 
and in the manner in which the results of an 
investigation should be put together for publi- 
eation. Instruction will be given also in 
methods of teaching, including the arrange- 
ment of lectures, the division of subject-matter 
between the systematic course covering the 
entire field and the advanced special lectures, 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S Von. V. No. 115. 


the physiological conference, the Journal Club, 
the use of the projection lantern in physiolog- 
ical demonstration, and the demonstration of 
physiological experiments to large and small 
classes. 

The direction of laboratory work will be an 
important part of the training. The first year 
class in the Harvard Medical School is divided 
into sections of thirty-two. Hach section works 
twenty-four afternoons in experimental physi- 
ology, making more than one hundred experi- 
ments, such as the influence of temperature on 
the form of the muscle curve, the phenomena 
of electrotonus, the compensatory pause of the 
heart, the use of the artificial eye, the ophthalmo- 
scope, laryngoscope, sphygmograph, ete. etc. 
The repetition of fundamental experiments in 
this course, and the great variety afforded by 
so many experimenters working at the same 
time, secure to the directors of the work a 
thoroughness and a breadth of training in ele- 
mentary physiology scarcely attainable in other 
ways. 

The administration of a large department 
will be carefully explained. Attention will be 
given to the cost of apparatus for instruction 
and research, the problems of construction and 
maintenance of plant, the care of storage bat- 
teries, the making of lantern slides, the cata- 
loguing of physiological literature, the importa- 
tion of apparatus, and many other details essen- 
tial to the successful operation of a physiological 
laboratory. Men intending to devote them- 
selves to clinical medicine, will, of course, give 
less time to these things and will concern them- 
selves chiefly with matters bearing directly on 
their chosen work. 

It is evident that these appointments will 
afford an admirable training to those intending 
to make physiology or any other of the biolog- 
ical sciences a profession. To the physician they 
offer a training not less valuable in the opinion 
of those who believe that research in the funda- 
mental sciences is the best introduction to the 
higher walks of medicine. 

Applicants for these positions should possess 
an elementary knowledge of physiology and a 
sufficient training in one or more of the biolog- 
ical sciences to enable them to profit by the in- 
struction offered. Successful applicants are 


MARCH 12, 1897.] 


required to take twelve half-days’ instruction in 
the details of the course in experimental physi- 
ology, before October Ist of their year of service. 

No charge of any kind will be made for the 
year’s training. 

The Harvard Medical School will give suc- 
cessful applicants the title of ‘Assistant in 
Physiology,’ and for the direction of the classes 
in experimental physiology will pay each As- 
sistant four hundred dollars. 

Applications may be sent to 

Proressor H. P. BOWDITCH. 

HARVARD MEDICAL ScHooL, Boston, MAss. 


NOTE ON NATRIX GROHAMII B. & G. 


In Professor O. P. Hays’ report on the Batra- 
chians and Reptiles of Indiana* he says, on p. 
589, ‘‘The young are no doubt brought forth 
alive and active.’’? There is now no question 
about the fact of their being viviparous, as 
several were born alive in the Chicago Academy 
of Sciences, July 29th. 

The adult female, measuring 775 mm. in 
length, was collected at Glenn Ellyn, Illinois, 
on July 25th, by Mr. Frank M. Woodruff, and 
its extreme size was particularly noted; four 
days later it gave birth to eight young, which 
were alive and very active. The births took 
place some time during the night, and the 
young were noticed on the following morning a 
little after 7 o’clock. They were at that time 
fully active and resembled somewhat the parent, 
although differing in some of the color mark- 
ings. The young measured 246 mm. in length 
and were colored as follows: Back’slaty-blue 
with two very dark dorsal stripes; a dark stripe 
borders the edge of the blue dorsal surface and 
separates it from the yellowish lateral surface; 
this is in turn separated from the greenish- 
yellow ventral surface by a black stripe, which 
follows the edges of the plates in a zigzag man- 
ner and disappears on the side of the head. 

The young were kept alive for several weeks 
and finally preserved, with the parent, in the 
Academy’s collection (Mus. No. 10,337 adult; 
10,385 young). As another point of interest 
we might mention that a specimen of the West- 
ern Bull Snake (Pitnophis sayi Schleg), measur- 


*Tndiana. Department of Geology and Natural 
Resources, 17th Annual Report, 1891. 


SCIENCE. 


447 


ing nine feet in length, laid twenty-two eggs in 
captivity during the first week in August. The 
female was in the same cage with a small male 
for about two months previous to the laying, 
and it is probable that copulation took place 
during captivity. 

FRANK C. BAKER, 

FRANK M. WoopRUEF. 


PSEUDO-AURORA AGAIN. 


In SCIENCE, First Series, for December 2 and 
16, 1892, there was a short discussion of this 
subject, and now appears a still longer letter on 
the same subject in ScrencEe for January 29, 
1897. It seems a little strange that so simple a 
phenomenon should give rise to so diverse views, 
and yet when we consider how many views have 
been given of a‘precisely similar phenomenon, 
‘The Brooken Spectre,’ it is not so surprising. 
It is probable that this latest description is 
given from memory and not from notes made 
at the time—an exceedingly important proceed- 
ing if one would keep from falling into grievous 
errors.. Every electric are light has a support 
at the top, and this would absolutely prevent 
any column of pure white light being projected 
toward the zenith. More than this, if these as- 
sumed horizontal planes of ice reflected the 
light it seems impossible to consider that the 
reflections would be only from a region directly 
above the lamp. 

If one will turn to the description in SCIENCE, 
December 2, 1892, he will see how it is almost 
exactly contrary to this later one, and yet the 
former undoubtedly presents a better idea of 
the phenomenon. When the air is full of frost 
particles or fog any object standing before a 
light will cast a shadow into the mass of frost 
particles or fog. If one will stand underneath 
an are light when the air has fog in it he will 
see what appears like a beam projected into the 
fog. The same may also be seen when any foot 
rest or projecting arm intercepts the light; in 
this case a horizontal beam will be seen passing 
into the fog. Just at sunset if one stands upon 
a broad plain with his back to the sun he will 
see his shadow cast upon the ground and ex- 
tending more than 100 feet to the eastward. 
Now imagine the surface on which the shadows 
cast to be practically on all sides like fog ; then 


448 


the shadow will be cast into the fog and appear 
gigantic. This is probably an explanation of 


the ‘ pseudo-aurora.’ 
H. A. HAZEN. 
JANUARY 29, 1897. 


[The above letter entirely mistakes the point 
of Goode’s explanation ‘of the pseudo-aurora. 
The fact that the electric lights have shields 
above them, which cut off vertical rays, as 
stated by Hazen, is irrelevant; for Goode does 
not think that the apparently vertical pseudo- 
auroral rays are really vertical; but that they 
are due to oblique rays emitted from the light 
at various angles of inclination, and reflected 
from under surface of horizontal snow plates, so 
that the locus of the reflection stands in a ver- 
tical plane through the observer, and the light 
wherever the observer is; hence the subjective 
impression that the ray is really a vertical beam 
_ of light. There is no analogy between these 
apparently vertical illuminated rays and -the 
true dark shadows mentioned by Hazen.—Ep. 
SCIENCE. | 


GREENLAND GLACIERS. 


To THE EpiTor oF ScieNcE: The angular 
and apparently unglaciated peaks in Greenland 
mentioned by Professor Tarr in your issue of 
to-day are represented in Pennsylvania by simi- 
larly angular ridges covered by angular and 
local débris. It seems that advancing ice has 
no power to surmount a moderately sharp 
slope, but masses at its base and accumulates 
till the summit is reached, when a thrust plane 
is developed in the glacier above which the 
moving mass proceeds across the summit. This 
has been noted by the writer (Am. Jour. Sci., 
March, 1895, p. 181) at Bethlehem and in Mif- 
flin township. Since the publication of the 
above other instances have been found which 
show that the glacier pours into a valley and 
fills it, or masses against a steep, opposing 
slope, develops the shear and remains practi- 
eally stagnant below the thrust plane, or would 
remain so were it not for its ablation and the 
erosion due to subglacial torrents, which cause 
it to settle down the slope and down the valley 
trough, and thus become an accentuated creep 
which strews the valley with local fragments 
from the summit. The constantly forming 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 115. 


sub-glacial void, due to the causes just stated, 
induces a downward movement in the ice 
above the thrust plane, and the crest of the 
ridge is frequently found crushed by vertical 
forces. In the Mahanoy region the vertical 
outcrop of hard sandstone is thus crushed flat 
to a depth of ten feet on the crest, and bent to 
north on the northern slope and to the south on 
the opposite side. This is but one instance 
where valleys have been glaciated while the 
summits of the ridges remain angular, and the 
fact that there is always difficulty in tracing 
moraine lines over ridges may be accounted for 
by the fact that ridge deposits are not allowed 
to remain in situ but creep down the slopes to 
the valley troughs. The finding of angular 
ridges or peaks, therefore, is, as Professor Tarr 
states, no sign of the absence of ice from the 
locality. 
EDWARD H. WILLIAMS, JR. 
LEHIGH UNIVERSITY. 


SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 


LT’ evolution de V esclavage. Par CH. Lrrour- 
NEAU. Paris, Vigot Frerés. 1897. 1 vol. 
8vo. Pp. 538. 

Tt is a sad fact, emphasized by Professor Le- 
tourneau, that in all times and places most of 
the work of the world has been imposed upon 
the minority of the inhabitants. In old times, 
and in some places to-day, this was accom- 
plished by the simple means of brute force, re- 
ducing the conquered and the feeble to the 
condition of slavery. The development of this 
tendeney in the past, and its possible future 
effects, are the theme of the work before us. 

Tt begins with the lower species, pointing out 
that in the societies of ants and termites there 
are slaves and servile revolts, quite like those 
in human history. Among men of the inferior 
races—and not these only—the regular slave is 
the woman. In many of the negro peoples she 
is literally a beast of burden, and is rated no 
higher than one. The women are bought and 
sold; they are given away and, when incapable 
of further profitable labor, are killed and eaten, 
or turned out to starve. 

The long list of examples of this character 
collected by our author leaves a disagreeable 
sense of the meaness and baseness of masculine 


Marcu 12, 1897. ] 


nature. It inevitably led, as he points out, to 
a degeneration both of the slave and the master, 
both of the woman and the man, and destroyed 
the possibility of any notable progress in civil- 
ization. 

In the chapter on slavery among the Ameri- 
ean aborigines he adduces a few examples, but 
recognizes that it was not a prevalent institu- 
tion with the red race. The gynocracy found 
in some tribes, he explains as merely apparent, 
not areal government, but confined to indus- 
trial aims. On the slaves of Mexico and Peru, 
he is somewhat full, but confines himself to 
second-hand authorities and not always the 
best of these. 

From America he passes to the Polynesians 
and the Mongolians, where the condition of the 
enslaved classes was as wretched as anywhere. 
Turning to ancient history, he collects from 
classical authorities a mass of information on 
slavery among the Semites, the Egyptians, the 
Greeks and the Romans. Of course, on the 
latter he is particularly ample, as the sources of 
accurate knowledge areabundant. Everywhere 
he finds the same characteristics evolving in 
like social environments. 

The semi-servile conditions in the Middle 
Ages, such as those of the serfs, the adscripts 
of the glebe, and the like feudal dispositions of 
the lower classes, occupy an instructive chapter. 

Finally, the author applies himself to the 
practical application of his long study of enforced 
labor. How is it to be avoided? Or so modi- 
fied as to distribute even taxes on all? To this 
he devotes his closing pages; but they are too 
vague, too visionary, too remote from any pos- 
sible immediate adoption, to satisfy the earnest 
reader. Slavery, in its ancient forms, is prac- 
tically extinct; but is not modern freedom, in 
the face of labor unions on the one hand and 
monopolies on the other, just what Dr. Johnson 
defined it a hundred years ago and more, free- 
dom to work or starve? An excellent index 
closes the volume. 

D. G. Brinton. 


The Geological and Natural History Survey of 
Minnesota. N. H. WINCHELL, State Geolo- 
gist. 1892-1896. The Geology of Minnesota, 
Vol. Ill. Part Il. of the Final Report. Pale- 


SCIENCE. 


449 


ontology, by H. O. Ulrich, John M. Clarke, 

Wilbur H. Scofield, and N. H. Winchell. 

4to. Minneapolis, 1897. Pp. lxxxiii. to cliv., 

475-1081, plates 35-82, and 183 figures in the 

text. 

The introductory chapter by N. H. Winchell 
and E. O. Ulrich gives a detailed correlation of 
the Lower Silurian deposits of the Upper Mis- 
sissippi province, with those in the Cincinnati, 
Tennessee, New York, and Canadian provinces, 
together with the stratigraphic and geographic 
distribution of the fossils. It is doubtful 
whether any State Survey has ever before at- 
tempted so successfully such a minute study and 
correlation of the beds and horizons of an ex- 
tensive series of sediments. It shows a vast 
amount of careful and intelligent collecting. 
This kind of work has made possible the pre- 
paration of the succeeding excellent chapters 
on various classes of fossil remains from the | 
Lower Silurian or Ordovician. 

E. O. Ulrich, under separate chapters, treats 
of the Lamellibranchiata and Ostracoda. These 
classes of animals are generally recognized as 
difficult to deal with in the fossil state, the 
former from the common imperfection of preser- 
vation, and the latter from their minute size 
andsimpleform. The paleozoic lamellibranchs 
are arranged under twenty-nine families, of 
which ten will include all or nearly all of the 
Ordovician genera. 

The Trilobites are described by J. M. Clarke, 
in Chapter VIII. The material is not so rich 
as in some of the other classes, but is thoroughly 
elaborated. Valuable sections are added deal- 
ing with the American Lower Silurian Phacop- 
ide, and the subordinate generic relations of 
the species of the genera Ceraurus and Lichas. 
Chapter IX. on the Cephalopoda is by the same 
author. About fifty species are noticed, includ- 
ing the novel primitive nautiloid type, Nanno, 
about which there has already been considerable 
discussion in America, England and Sweden. 

The final chapter (X.) on the Gastropoda, by 
E. O. Ulrich and the late W. H. Scofield, occu- 
pies more than one-third of the volume. Nu- 
merous new genera and species are described and 
illustrated, showing the richness and variety of 
this fauna. 

C. E. BEECHER. 


450 


Municipal Government in Continental Europe. 
ALBERT SHAW. New York, The Century 
Co. 1895. Pp. 505. 

The energetic editor of the Review of Reviews 
has embodied in the volume before us the re- 
sults of much persistent investigation. The 
facts so industriously collected are sure to be of 
great value to such of our American municipali- 
ties as are beginning to struggle towards the 
light. Whatever be one’s opinion regarding 
the theory of municipal ownership of street 
railways, lighting plants, ship canals, etc., 
there can be no doubt that it is both useful and 
suggestive to have the facts derived from foreign 
experience made known tous. There will, more- 
over, be general agreement that we can profit 
largely by the varied experiments of European 
towns in municipal sanitation. 

Mr. Shaw’s attitude is at times, it must be 
confessed, one of breathless admiration. The 
phrases ‘bold project,’ ‘splendid public work,’ 
‘uniformly brilliant results,’ punctuate descrip- 
tions of undertakings and ‘achievements’ at 
which many critics still shake their heads. Can 
it be, we find ourselves asking, that every mu- 
nicipality has solved its sanitary problems in just 
the right way? Must it not be admitted that 
not a few European towns are still in the thick 
of experiment, still groping towards a solution 
of difficult problems which beset them, still far 
from confident that the demands of the situation 
have been really met ? 

Paris, under the caption ‘the typical modern 
city,’ receives by far the most elaborate treat- 
ment at the hands of our author, and there 
will be little dissent, we fancy, from his expla- 
nation in the preface: ‘‘I can hardly think 
that any reader will fail to agree that Paris is 
the necessary starting point for a description of 
the modern régime in Continental cities.” 
Here, as in the well-known companion volume, 
‘Municipal Government in Great Britain,’ al- 
ready reviewed in this JOURNAL, important ques- 
tions of sanitation are treated as municipal prob- 
lems of the first magnitude. 

The double service of water supply devised 
for Paris by M. Belgrand is, perhaps, as Mr. 
Shaw appears ready to believe, theoretically ad- 
mirable, but in practice it has not been found to 
work altogether smoothly. The supply of 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 115. 


spring water has been almost always too scanty 
and the insufficient quantity has been eked out 
by the water of the polluted Seine. So well 
recognized is the injurious effect of the Seine 
water that warning is given through the public 
press when the river water is to be turned into 
the pipes, and when water from the Seine has 
been substituted for more than twenty days in 
the year the householder has the right to a re- 
duction of rates. The water brought from a 
distance has, moreover, not proved all that 
could be desired. An epidemic of typhoid 
fever, which broke out in Paris in 1894, was 
traced by the authorities to the supply from the 
Vanne, in which full confidence had hitherto 
been placed. We are inclined to demur here 
at the encomiums bestowed by Mr. Shaw on 
the double system, and to believe that the day 
has not come when one may safely predict with 
him, ‘‘In due time * * * the double system 
will have been carried out in an ideal manner 
for all Paris.’’ (p. 67.) 

On p. 335 the statement occurs, during the 
admirable discussion of the functions of the 
German city, that ‘‘the quantity of water used 
by a city is regarded by British sanitary author- 
ities as, in a rough way, a measure of its rela- 
tive civilization.’’ On this point we believe our 
author missed an admirable opportunity for 
pointing a moral, a kind of opportunity which, 
it must be said, he does not often allow to slip un- 
heeded. The excessive quantity of water ‘used’ 
in the United Sates is not exactly an indication 
of our superiority in things sanitary. The dis- 
parity between the quantity of water per capita 
pumped into the mains in Europe and that sup- 
plied in the United States is, indeed, little to our 
credit, although no one will dispute Mr. Shaw’s 
statement that ‘‘an abundant supply of pure 
water, thoroughly distributed,is a vital consider- 
ation for any city.” While London gets along 
with 44 gallons a head daily, Hamburg with 58, 
Dresden with 22 and Berlin with 17, New York 
and Boston must have 92 gallons, Chicago 131, 
Philadeiphia 162, Pittsburg 220 and Allegheny 
247. It is well known that at least a partial 
remedy for this condition lies in the introduc- 
tion of the meter and other devices, and yet 
this disgraceful waste of water is steadily in- 
creasing in most large American municipalities 


MaAnRrcH 12, 1897.] 


despite the protests of responsible superintend- 
ents and engineers. 

The methods of sewage disposal in use on the 
Continent are discussed in a generally accurate, 
though non-technical fashion. The Paris and 
Berlin sewage farms are described in course. 
The Genneyilliers irrigation fields in the 
sandy peninsula opposite St. Denis are not, as 
might perhaps be inferred from Mr. Shaw’s 
statement, directly controlled by the munici- 
pality, but the individual occupants regulate 
at will the amount of sewage turned into the 
trenches. At Berlin the sewage farm system 
has achieved its most brilliant success. A great 
variety of crops is grown upon these farms; on 
one farm roses are cultivated for the purpose of 
manufacturing the perfume attar of roses. 

The housing of the working classes deservedly 
receives a good deal of attention, particularly 
in connection with the author’s study of the 
German cities, where the overcrowding is in 
some cases almost incredible. In Breslau in 
1885 no fewer than 150,000 people out of a 
population of 287,000 lived in habitations con- 
taining only one room that could be warmed. 
In Berlin in 1890 the average number of in- 
habitants in a dwelling house (Grundstiick) was 
73 as against an average of 67 in 1885. The 
point is taken, however, that the German mu- 
nicipal authorities have the facts of the case 
well in hand and are trying to remedy the evil. 

Our author notes here and there various in- 
teresting facts relating to the general sanitary 
oversight and organization in European towns. 
The control of food supplies, the supervision of 
abattoirs and the disinfection service all receive 
merited attention. Where so much is included 
it would be ungracious to remark the omission 
of some interesting and important topics. 

The chapter on Hamburg and its Sanitary 
Reforms takes careful note of the wave of reform 
that has lately swept over the great port. The 
dearly-bought lesson of the cholera outbreak of 
1892—’93 has not been thrown away, and the 
energetic administration of Dr. Dunbar and his 
staff of expert assistants has not only made a 
brilliant suecess of the attempt to purify the 
Elbe water, but has also wrought great im- 
provement in the general sanitary condition of 
the city. The story is told by Mr. Shaw in his 


SCIENCE. 


451 


best vein. We trust, however, that the follow- 
ing statement: ‘‘In July, 1898, the imperial 
health authorities at Berlin issued a warning 
to the municipal governments of the country 
not to supply their citizens with a drinking 
water containing more than 100 cholera germs 
to the cubic centimeter ’’ (p. 398), will not be 
taken as a literal transcript of the German 
decree. Mr. Shaw should have been told that 
all germs netted in the Elbe were not cholera. 


erms. 
8 EpWIn O. JoRDAN. 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 
TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB, JANUARY 27, 1897. 


THE scientific program was as follows: 

Dr. H. H. Rusby, ‘Remarks on some Sola- 
naceze.’ 

Mr. A. A. Tyler, ‘The Origin and Functions 
of Stipules.’ 

Dr. J. K. Small, ‘ Aster gracilis Nuttall.’ 

Mr. George V. Nash, ‘New and Noteworthy 
American Grasses.’ 

Dr. Rusby exhibited a number of Solanaceous 
plants and remarked upon their relationships. 
It was pointed out that the general appearance 
and chemical and physiological characteristics 
of these plants frequently fail to indicate their 
structural affinities. Cestrum and Sessea, Atropa 
and Datura were cited as illustrations of the 
separation of otherwise naturally related groups 
through their possession respectively of baccate 
and capsular fruits. Nicotiana was referred to 
as connecting those tribes having a radical 
symmetry with the tribe Salpiglosside, having a 
bilateral symmetry and thus connecting the 
family with the Labiales. The Androcera and 
Andropeda sections of the genus Solanum were 
instances of the appearance of this bilateral 
symmetry in a widely separated part of the 
family where radial symmetry is the otherwise 
invariable rule, 

Dr. Britton discussed the subject and re- 
marked upon this instance of development of 
two divisions of a group along different lines, 
in this case through baccate and capsular fruits. 
He cited similar parallelisms in other families 
tending to produce different resulting charac- 
ters, as in Capparidacex, and remarked that an 
indication of the lines along which these genera 


452 


have been derived may be read in these char- 
acters. 

The second paper by Mr. A. A. Tyler, on 
‘The Nature and Origin of Stipules,’ presented 
conclusions derived from studies extending 
through several years. The subject was treated 
at length in the light of geological, morpholog- 
ical, anatomical and developmental evidence. 
Discussing Mr. Tyler’s paper, which will shortly 
be published in full, Dr. Britton remarked that 
“the outcome of this very important paper is 
most interesting ; it emphasizes the significance 
of basal scales and those of buds and rootstocks ; 
and it is the more convincing from the nicety 
with which it accords with the seemingly hap- 
hazard distribution of stipules widely but irregu- 
larly here and there through the vegetable 
kingdom.”’ 

Mrs. Britton discussed the paper further, re- 
ferring to the different phases presented in 
Fissidens. 

Of the remaining papers, that by Mr. Nash 
was read by title and will appear in the Bulle- 
tin ; and that by Dr. Small was, on account of 
the lateness of the hour, deferred till the next 
meeting. 

EpWARD S. BURGESS, 
Secretary. 


NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—SECTION OF 
ASTRONOMY AND PHYSICS, MARCH 1, 1897. 


F. L. Turrts presented an abstract of work 
recently done by him in further testing the cor- 
rectness of the results obtained with the origi- 
nal form of the Rood flicker photometer. By 
a very elaborate series of tests by various 
methods, he found that the true ‘ flicker,’ which 
appears when the speed is just sufficient to give 
a uniform background, is independent of color 
and depends only upon differences of lumi- 
nosity. 

The paper was discussed by R. 8. Woodward 
and W. Hallock. W. Hallock described sey- 
eral forms of maximum thermometers used in 
subterranean temperature work, and described 
anew form which it is believed will obviate 
some of the difficulties of the U.S. signal ser- 
vice form, which has been used so successfully. 

Mr. Hallock also reported upon recent work 
on subterranean temperatures referring espe- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No. 115. 


cially to the Sperenberg well, near Berlin, 4,300 
feet; the Wheeling, W. Va., well, 4,500 feet ; 
the new Pittsburg well, 5,386 feet; the Schlade- 
bach well, near Leipzig, 5,740 feet, and the in- 
complete well at Paruschowitch, near Reibnik, 
which two years ago was 6,600 feet deep and 
was planned to go 2,700 meters (8,800 feet). 
The well at Pittsburg gave results practically 
identical with those obtained in the Wheeling 
well, which is forty miles distant but in prac- 
tically the same geological strata. The observa- 
tions at Pittsburg were preliminary, and it is 
hoped that a very complete and satisfactory 
series of temperatures will be obtained, owing 
to the generous public spirit of the Forest Oil 
Co., who have practically placed the well at the 
service of science. It is planned to drill it 


much deeper. 
W. HALLOCK, 


Secretary of Section. 


THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE OF ST. LOUIS. 


Av the meeting of the Academy of Science of 
St. Louis, of March 1, 1897, Mr. William H. 
Rush presented a demonstration of the forma- 
tion of carbon dioxide and alcohol as a result 
of the intramolecular’respiration of seeds and 
other vegetable structures in an atmosphere con- 
taining no free oxygen. The theory of the dis- 
solution and reconstruction of the living nitrog- 
enous molecules was explained in connection 
with the experiments, and the different beha- 
vior of these molecules when supplied with or 
deprived of free oxygen was indicated. 

Mr. H. von Schrenk briefly described certain 
cedematous enlargements which he had ob- 
served at the beginning of the present winter, 
near the root tips of specimens of Salix nigra, 
growing along the edge of a body of water. 
The speaker compared these with the cedemata 
of tomato leaves and apple twigs which were 
studied some years since at Cornell University. 

Professor J. H. Kinealy exhibited a glass 
model illustrating the mode of action of the 
Pohle air-lift pump, the efficiency of which he 
had discussed at the preceding meeting. 

One name was proposed for active member- 
ship. 

WILLIAM TRELEASE, 
Recording Secretary. 


SGleNCE 


NEw SERIES. 
Vou. VY. No. 116. 


Fripay, Marcu 19, 1897. 


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Sea e NCE 


EDITORIAL CommiTtTEE: S. NEwcoms, Mathematics; R. S. WooDWARD, Mechanics; E. C. PIcKERING 
Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THURSTON, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry; 
J. Le ContE, Geology; W. M. Davis, Physiography; O. C. MARsH, Paleontology; W. K. 
Brooks, C. HART MERRIAM, Zoology; S. H. SCUDDER, Entomology; N. L. BRITTON, 
Botany; Henry F. OsBorN, General Biology; H. P. Bowpircu, Physiology ; 
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DANIEL G. BRINTON, J. W. POWELL, Anthropology. 


Fripay, Marcu 19, 1897. 


CONTENTS: 
The Fur-seal Investigation of 1896........ Sepootescacaqcus 453 
Proposed Exploration on the Coasts of the North 
JRTMGHIO OBZ Osrocccnqacaacioccsosoobsogondecsasensqecoasaccced 455 


The New York State Science Teachers’ Association 
(1. ), including the Address of the President, S. H. 
Gage and Addresses by Albert L. Arey and E. L. 
Nichols: FRANKLIN W. BARROWG...........2+.0 457 

Current Notes on Meteorology :— 

Blue Hill Cloud Observations ; Some Climatic Fea- 
tures of the Arid Regions; Climatic Zones on the 
Island of Sakhalin: R. DEC. WARD.............- 468 

Current Notes on Anthropology :— 

Stature and Weight; The National Museum of 
Costa Rica: D. G. BRINTON..........-02c0eceeseenees 469 

Notes on Inorganic Chemistry : 

Scientific Notes and News :— 
Research and the University ; Science in the News- 
PIADET Spa Gi CNET A ldennnenevevee tent ieasadcecssescssccrsnsssee 

University and Educational News 

Discussion and Correspondence :— 

The Florida Sea-monster: A.E. VERRILL. 
Florida Monster: F. A. LUCAS. 


The 
Gibbers: J. B. 
WoopwortH. International Congress of Mathe- 


maticians at Zurich in 1897: GEORGE BRUCE 

HAusteD. A New Geographical Magazine: 

ISRAEL C. RUSSELL. Compliment or Plagiarism : 

BEMAN AND SMITH. Mexican Hieroglyphs: J. 

D. McGuire, ZELIA NUTTALL. The Play of 

Animals; The Fur Seal: F. A. LUCAS............ 476 
Scientific Literature :— 

Biedermann’s Electro-Physiology: HENRY SEW- 

ALL. Taber on the Coming Ice Age: G. FRED- 

ERICK WRIGHT. Mercer’s Researches upon the 

Antiquity of Man: D. G. BRINTON..............0+. 481 
Scientific Journals :— 

The Physical Review: American Geologist.......... 484 


Societies and Academies :— 
Biological Society of Washington: F. A. Lucas. 
Anthropological Society of Washington: J. H. 
McCormick. The New York Section of the 
American Chemical Society: DURAND Woop- 
MAN. The Geological Club of the University of 


Minnesota: CHAS. P. BERKEY. The Texas 
Academy of Science: FREDERIC W. SIMONDS...487 
New Books.........+ ae sR scicnercaislas ssinels seloieaisseeieesteesteeaees 488 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended 
for review should be sent to the responsible editor, Prof. J. 
McKeen Cattell, Garrison-on-Hudson, N. Y. 


THE FUR-SEAL INVESTIGATION OF 1896. 

Tue preliminary report of the commis- 
sion appointed in June, 1896, to investigate 
the condition of the northern fur-seals has 
recently been issued, although it has been 
in print for some time. It gives a resumé 
of the summer’s work and of the conclu- 
sions reached, and will be followed later on 
by a full report giving in detail the obser- 
vations and facts on which this summary 
is based. The work was prosecuted under 
exceptionally favorable conditions, not only 
from the facilities afforded the commission, 
but from the number of observers engaged, 
since what was not seen at one time or 
place might be seen at another, while the 
representatives of the various governments 
worked harmoniously together in the accu- 
mulation of data. Much, too, is also due to 
the thorough manner in which the work 
was planned and carried on by Dr. Jordan, 
the head of the American commission, 
while finally the reduced number of seals 
facilitated the work of observation. 


454 


We have for the first time a fairly accu- 
rate census of breeding seals, based not on 
estimates, but on an actual count of females 
and males present on the breeding grounds, 
checked by comparison with the number of 
young seals present. This last is an im- 
portant factor, since a count of the pups 
shows that only about one-half the females 
are on the rookery grounds at any one 
time. While an exact census is, from the 
nature of things, impossible, it appears that 
there were in October, 1896, a little less 
than 360,000 seals left on the Pribilof Is- 
lands, 123,000 being breeding females, 5,009 
males with harems, and 2,966 idle bulls, or 
those which were unable to secure any fe- 
males through the scarcity of those due to 
pelagic sealing. 

The breeding habits of the seals were 
carefully studied and the facts definitely 
settled that the young ‘cows’ make their 
appearance on the rookeries for the first 
time at the age of two years. This occurs 
late in July, after the vast majority of 
young have been born and the breeding 
grounds or rockeries have lost the compact 
appearance they present earlier in the sea- 
son, and the arrangement of the females in 
regular fixed harems has been broken up; 
the young females are not in the harems 
with the older cows. Mr. Townsend’s in- 
vestigations of the condition of female seals 
taken at sea were continued and extended 
and fully corroborate his conclusions that, 
with rare exceptions, all over two years 
old taken during August and September 
are not only pregnant but nursing. The 
statements that the females taken at sea 
are largely barren or non-breeding are un- 
supported by any shadow of evidence, as 
are the assertions that the fur-seal breeds 
biennially, all observations proving that 
seals bear annually and throughout life. 

Some additions have been made to our 
knowledge of the food of the fur-seal, al- 
though the data for this have mostly been 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 116. 


obtained by Mr. Townsend and Mr. Alex- 
ander in previous years. In Bering Sea 
the Alaskan Pollack (Pollachius chaleogram- 
mus) forms by far the most important item 
of the seal’s diet, a squid (Gonatus amenus) 
coming next. Salmon are eaten when 
found, and large numbers of a small, unde- 
scribed fish, allied to the Surf Smelt (Hypo- 
mesus olidus). Cod are not touched, at least 
in only one case out of three hundred, nor 
any species of bottom-frequenting fish, the 
seals feeding on such as are found near the 
surface, while the feeding grounds are in 
deep water. In regard to the young it is 
clearly shown that up to the time of leav- 
ing the islands they subsist entirely on their 
mother’s milk, deriving no nourishment 
from fish or crustaceans, much less if the 
hibernicism be allowed, from kelp or sea 
weed. Thus every seal pup whose mother 
is killed at sea inevitably perishes from 
starvation, even the largest gray pups being 
unable to care for themselves late in Octo- 
ber. 

An important feature of the work of the 
commission was the ascertaining of the fact 
that a large number of seals die when very 
young and the reason for this loss of life. It 
has been generally considered that all seal 
pups which have been found dead of late 
years have starved to death on account of 
the loss of their mothers from pelagic seal- 
ing. On the other hand, the English com- 
missioners in 1892 took the ground that 
there was a considerable loss from other 
causes, particularly drowning and epi- 
demics. Asa result of the investigations 
of 1896, it is now known that many young 
seals die before they are a month old and 
prior to the date on which pelagic sealing 
begins, through being trampled on by the 
old seals and mainly by the bulls. This 
loss does not take place all over the breed- 
ing grounds, but is almost wholly confined 
to those sections which are level or free 
from boulders. In such places there is no 


Makrcga 19, 1897.] 


protection for the young and no obstruc- 
tion tothe movements of the adults, and in 
consequence there is great loss of life 
through the quarrels of the bulls and the 
commotion thus caused among the others, 
during which the small pups are trampled 
under foot and many killed. In rocky 
places there is little loss, and about a fort- 
night or so after birth the pups draw out of 
the breeding grounds and are comparatively 
safe. A few young seals are drowned and 
a few die from disease or are killed by acci- 
denis, and afew starve from the death of 
their mothers and other unknown causes, 
but the number is not greatand there is no 
evidence of any epidemic. All the dead 
seals were counted between August 6th and 
August 14th, or as soon as conditions would 
allow, and there were found 28 adult males, 
131 females and 11,045 young, over 10,000 
of these latter having been killed by tramp- 
ling. The old bulls are killed in combat 
and the females by being pulled about in 
the struggles for their possession which 
take place among the bulls. The vast ma- 
jority of young are killed so early in the 
season that by the time it is possible to 
enter the breeding ground they are in an 
advanced stage of decomposition. 

In October the dead seals were again 
counted, and 14,343 were found starved to 
death, and 1,546 more in a perishing con- 
dition, all this being directly due to the 
killing of females at sea. 

In regard to pelagic sealing, and the 
effects of the award of the Paris Tribunal, 
_ the conclusions are emphatically expressed, 
and, while there has never been any doubt 
on these points in the minds of those who 
have given them the least unprejudiced at- 
tention, it is to be hoped that some im- 
pression may be made even on prejudiced 
minds. The closed zone of 60 miles about 
the islands affords little real protection, 
Save against raids, since the majority of 
seals feed at a distance of 75 to 150 miles 


SCIENCE. 


455 


from the Pribilofs, and all that the sealers 
need do is to lie just outside the 60-mile limit 
and there await the coming of the seals. 
The selection of August as an open month 
is about the worst that could be made, as 
during that month the weather is the finest 
of the year and the most seals are going to 
and coming from the feeding grounds. 
The majority of seals taken at sea are 
females, and nursing females at that, all 
reports that the numbers of sexes aré even 
approximately equal being intentionally 
or unintentionally false. 

The nursing females are obliged to go to 
sea in search of food at times when the 
males are safe on shore or in the vicinity 
of the islands, and, as they are not allowed 
to leave their harems uniil impregnated, 
the killing of each nursing seal means the 
death of her pup, as well as the loss of that 
which would have been born during the 
succeeding season. 

Ié is evident that pelagic sealing and the 
seal herd cannot exist together ; the continu- 
ation of the one means the practical ex- 
termination of the other, and nothing short 
of the total cessation of pelagic sealing will 
enable the seals to recuperate. The closure 
of Bering Sea might possibly preserve the 
seals in their present reduced condition, but 
this is by no means certain, as they are ex- 
posed to capture all the way from San Fran- 
cisco to the Aleutian Islands during six 
months of the year, and, so long as pelagic 
sealing is permitted at all, the fur-seal ques- 
tion cannot be considered as settled. 


PROPOSED EXPLORATIONS ON THE COASTS 
OF THE NORTH PACIFIC OCEAN. 

Tue American Museum of Natural His- 
tory is about to undertake a systematic ex- 
ploration of the peoples inhabiting the 
coasts of the North Pacific Ocean between 
the Amoor River in Asia and Columbia River 
in America. The funds for this important 
undertaking have been very generously 


456 


provided by Mr. Morris K. Jesup, President 
of the Museum, who has done so much 
already for the advancement of science and 
for furthering the work of the American 
Museum of Natural History. In 1895 he 
fitted out the Peary Relief Expedition,which 
extended the needed assistance to Lieut. 
Peary and thus resulted in important ad- 
vances in our knowledge of northern Green- 
land and in valuable additions to the Mu- 
seum. He also contributed the means for 
the Jesup Collection of North American 
woods, which is the best existing collection 
of North American foresty. 

The explorations on the coasts of the 
North Pacific Ocean are intended to cover 
a period of six years, during which time the 
investigations are to be carried on in both 
Asia and America. 

There are few problems that are of greater 
importance to our knowledge of the early 
history of the American race than its rela- 
tions to the races of the Old World. The 
discussion of this problem has been going 
on for along period, but its study has never 
been taken up in a systematic manner. 
While some investigators maintain that 
American culture has grown up spontane- 
ously, others claim to recognize traces of 
Asiatic culture in America. Two ways of 
connection between the New World and the 
Old have been suggested: the one leading 
over the islands of the Pacific Ocean to 
South America; the other leading along the 
coasts of the North Pacific coast to our 
continent. The problem that it is proposed 
to take up relates to the northern area. In 
recent time F. Ratzel, Otis T. Mason and 
Franz Boas have published studies which 
favor the theory that an early exchange of 
cultural achievements took place between 
northeastern Asia and western America, 
but it cannot be said that this opinion has 
been established beyond doubt. It is com- 
bated notably by D. G. Brinton. 

Still more doubtful is the racial relation- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 116. 


ship between the peoples of Asia and 
America, and when Boas expressed the 
opinion that the peoples of British Colum- 
bia are more closely related to the Asiatic 
race than any other North American In- 
dians he did not bring forward any material 
from the Asiatic side to sustain his asser- 
tion. The final solution of these questions 
requires a systematic study of the whole 
area. Anthropologists will appreciate the 
generosity of Mr. Jesup, who makes it pos- 
sible to investigate this important problem 
energetically before the destructive in- 
fluences of civilization have destroyed the 
primitive cultures entirely. 

Our knowledge of the ethnology of the Pa- 
cific coast of Siberia is largely based upon the 
reports of early travelers. Steller’s descrip- 
tion of Kamchatka supplies a gap that can- 
not be filled to-day. The circumnavigations 
of the globe of the last century and of the 
beginning of this century have furnished 
us with fragmentary material from these 
regions, but the only contribution that can 
claim any great scientific value is that of 
Schrenck on the peoples of the Amoor. 
Notwithstanding this work, and the publi- 
cations of Middendorf, Castrén, Schiefner 
and Radloff, the types of man, the lan- 
guages, customs and mythologies of the 
whole region are practically unknown. 

On the American side our information is 
somewhat fuller. Krom southern Alaska 
and the Aleutian Islands we have the lin- 
guistic works of Vemiaminoff, the great 
Russian missionary; of Dall, Pinart, Krause 
and Emmons. From Arctic Alaska we 
have mainly the work of Murdoch on the 
Eskimo of Point Barrow. Investigations 
in British Columbia have been carried on 
for a number of years under the auspices 
of the British Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science, mainly by Boas, but much 
remains to be done. 

Work on the Pacific coast of America 
will be commenced this spring in fields that 


Marc# 19, 1897. ] 


have heretofore remained unexplored, and 
will be continued as long as important gaps 
in our knowledge of the ethnology of the 
coast remain to be filled. 

The regions in which investigations are 
+o be carried on offer many peculiar diffi- 
culties, as well on account of the severity of 
the climate in the northern portions of the 
district as on account of the multitude of 
tribes that inhabit these regions. While 
almost the whole of Siberia is inhabited by 
tribes akin in language and similar in type, 
the eastern coast is occupied by a variety 
of races. The same is true in America, 
where in the interior we find a vast sweep 
of country inhabited by one people, while 
the diversity of languages and races on 
the coast is almost incredible. A thorough 
study of all the innumerable dialects, of the 
customs of all the tribes and of the physical 
characteristics, will be required to bring 
order into this chaos. 

The difficulties of this problem will be 
better appreciated when it is stated that 
between Columbia River and Behring Strait 
ten languages are found that are fumda- 
mentally distinct, and that these languages 


have 37 dialects which are mutually unin- . 


telligible. On the Asiatic side there are 
seven distinct languages spoken in at least 
ten dialects which are mutually unintel- 
ligible, but there may be more since our 
knowledge of the whole area is very meagre. 

The problem of the relationship of the 
racial types is a very attractive one. The 
relations of the races of southern Alaska 
and British Columbia to the other North 
American Indians, although not quite clear, 
are certainly very intimate, since a gradual 
transition of the northwest-coast types to 
those of eastern North America can be es- 
tablished. On the other hand, their features 
show a decided resemblance with the Asiatic 
types, but the races which we find in north- 
ern Alaska are much more remote from 
Asiatic types than those further south. It 


SCIENCE. 


457 


is, therefore, likely that extensive migra- 
tions have taken place in this whole area. 

We know that great changes in the seats 
of population have occurred in the central 
parts of northern Siberia. The weaker 
peoples of southern regions were pushed 
northward and finally came to occupy the 
inhospitable shore of the Arctic Ocean. It 
will require long and patient study of the 
inhabitants and of the prehistoric remains 
of the whole region to unravel its ancient 
history. 

Even after the time of the: early migra- 
tions of races in this region there has al- 
ways been opportunity for intercourse and 
for exchange of inventions and of other 
ideas. The forms of certain utensils are 
much alike on both coasts, thus favoring 
the theory that they has spread over the 
whole area from one center, but archzolog- 
ical investigation must show how long these 
forms have been in use and if they were 
preceded by other forms of culture. The 
mythologies must be scanned with great 
care. There is no doubt that among the 
people of Siberia a constant interchange of 
tales and myths has taken place. There 
are indications that the current flowed 
across to our continent, and it will be the 
task of the proposed investigation to dis- 
cover to what extent American and Asiatic 
ideas influenced each other. 

The whole field of research is a vast one, 
and it is to be expected that the enterprise 
inaugurated by Mr. Jesup will lead to re- 
sults which will clear up many of the ob- 
scure points regarding the early history of 
the American race. 


THE NEW YORK STATE SCIENCE TEACHERS’ 
ASSOCIATION. 

Tis Association, which was organized 
last July in connection with the Buffalo 
meeting of the National Educational Asso- 
ciation, held its first annual meeting in 
Syracuse, December 29th—31st, following the 


458 


holiday conference of the Academie Princi- 
pals of New York State. 

Tuesday evening, December 29th, Presi- 
dent J. G. Schurman, of Cornell University, 
addressed a joint meeting of the three edu- 
cational bodies convened in Syracuse ; his 
subject was ‘ College entrance requirements 
and the High School curriculum.’ Presi- 
dent Schurman expressed a strong disposi- 
tion to encourage more thorough science 
work in our high schools by accepting 
sciences in preparation for college, and out- 
lined several preparatory courses in which 
science should form an important part. 

The meeting of the Association opened 
on Wednesday afternoon with the follow- 
ing paper hy the President, Professor Simon 
H. Gage, of Cornell University : 


The Purpose of the New York State Science 
Teachers’ Association and the Work it Hopes 
to Accomplish. 

It is a source of congratulation that the 
Science Teachers of the Empire State are 
no longer to remain scattered and unor- 
ganized, but by association are to gain the 
encouragement and enthusiasm which 
united effort brings. That enthusiasm and 
efficiency are promoted by such organiza- 
tions of science teachers is abundantly at- 
tested by the results gained through the 
efforts of the American Society of Natural- 
ists, and the teachers of Illinois, Colorado, 
California, and of other sections. 

An association like this makes it easier 
for the college and for the secondary school 
teacher to come together and talk over mat- 
ters of mutual interest and concern. In 
these friendly consultations and discussions 
there will bea chance of finding out some- 
thing of what is most desirable and what 
is practicable and possible in the schools 
each represents. And in these discussions 
it will not be possible to forget the children 
in the elementary schools, the great ma- 
jority of whom come neither under the 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 116. 


training of the high school nor of the col- 
lege, but must be content to get the best 
they can from the elementary schools to 
equip them for the struggle of life which 
stands so near them. What help have 
these a right to ask from the high school 
and the college? And then the great world 
of thought and action whose mighty stream, 
sooner or later, draws all into it, what does. 
it demand? It is, after all, the final court 
which tries all alike, and puts each to the 
test whether he be a college graduate, 
high school graduate, pupil of an elemen- 
tary school or one who has only his heredi- 
tary endowment of mother wit. 

The signs of the times all indicate that 
the high school teacher is to be at least a col- 
lege graduate, and the elementary school 
teacher a high-school graduate. If this is 
true, while the college has but few under 
its immediate instruction it determines the 
character of the high school, and in turn 
the high school determines the character 
of the elementary school. The college is 
then the intellectual guide of the land. Is 
it and has it always been a wise and sym- 
pathetic guide? 

If we compare our times with those of 
500 or even 100 years ago there will be 
found an immense difference, and science 
is largely responsible for this difference. 
Whether we approve or not, things are not 
as they once were ; whether we designate 
the change as one of progress or decline, 
there has been change, the worid is not 
what it once was. The modern citizen must 
adapt himself to these changes or be ground 
to powder in the struggle for existence or for 
preéminence. The professional man, if he 
is a physician, is a criminal if he does not 
know and apply the science bearing upon 
his profession ; and the lawyer who has only 
the knowledge that the Middle Ages might 
have given him is soon eliminated from the 
race. It is with hesitation that I speak of 
the clergyman, but if he misrepresents na- 


Marcu 19, 1897. ] 


ture which he might know, and to which he 
so often reverts for illustration, how can he 
expect unhesitating acceptance of his words 
concerning the profound mysteries that all, 
even the most favored, must ‘now see as 
through a glass darkly’? The artisan, 
farmer and business man cannot live as 
did their forefathers ; and so from the pro- 
fessions, from all the people, there comes an 
appeal so earnest, so pressing, that we cannot 
choose but hear. If they suffer for lack of 
knowledge we must do our best to supply 
the knowledge. In place of lofty isolation, 
or worse, of indifference, we should give 
them the science we possess, show them 
the way it is gained, and how much there 
is yet to be gained, and thus make every boy 
and girl, and through them every man and 
woman, in our great State an observer or 
original investigator in science. This can 
come about only when real science is taught 
and studied, only when the fog of opinion 
and baseless authority are brushed aside 
and the pupils in the schools are brought in 
direct contact with nature, and there learn 
to appreciate and apply the scientific method 
so admirably stated by St. Paul: ‘‘ Prove 
all things, hold fast that which is good.” 

Our Association ought not and cannot 
stop with the work of the high school. 
From the elementary schools most pupils 
must enter the labors of life; they make the 
bulk of the State, and a noble patriotism 
should lead us to do all we can for them. 
On the principle of self-preservation also 
such help is wise, for the work of high school 
and college alike have their foundations 
laid in the elementary school. As the col- 
lege reaches down to help and encourage 
the high school, so should the high school 
reach down and help and encourage the 
elementary school, and thus will it come 
about that every child in the State will be 
brought into direct contact with nature, 
where he can experience for himself her in- 
spiring and uplifting sympathy. 


SCIENCE. 


459 


If this program is to be carried out the 
college must train its students and prepare 
them to take the true science, science at 
first hand into the high school, and banish 
therefrom anything savoring of sham. 
Then the college must honor its graduates 
by accepting for entrance the work in sci- 
ence of the high school on equal terms with 
other subjeets taught by its graduates. To 
bring this about, I take it, is one of the 
duties of this Association. Thanks to the 
work of the American Society of Natural- 
ists, and to the many able men and women 
who have worked for the same end, science 
work done in the high school is at the pres- 
ent moment recognized by a considerable 
number of colleges. See Scrrncz, Decem- 
ber 25, 1896. 

It is discouraging, almost prohibitive, for 
the college to say to the secondary school, 
when you reach the proper degree of ex- 
cellence in your science work, the college 
will consider your appeal for recognition. 
Why cannot the college state fairly and ex- 
plicitly exactly what the standard of excel- 
lence should be? and with equal fairness 
and justice say, when your students reach 
this standard we will accept them for en- 
trance on the same terms as for other good 
preparatory work. No true friend of science 
would ask the college to admit students 
with a training in science inferior to that 
required in the older disciplines. Let the 
college make its standard as high as it will, 
but let it recognize the work that comes up 
to its standard, and thereby honor its own 
graduates who have so worthily brought 
the work of their pupils up to the high 
standard. Such recognition would put sci- 
ence on a fair footing with the other disci- 
plines. It would encourage and inspire 
the teacher in the secondary schools and 
help to give his work a dignity and impor- 
tance in the eyes of his pupils and colleagues 
which it can never have if it is not honored 
by the college. Men still respect and honor 


460 


what the college approves, and it is a part 
of our work to see to it that the college 
puts the seal of its approval on sound 
learning in science as well as on that of the 
other disciplines which it accepts for en- 
trance to its halls. 

It seems to me the way before us is clear. 
Changed conditions have brought new 
needs, needs that knowledge of science can 
alone supply. We should do our best to 
help our day and generation, and in giving 
it the help of science and the sympathy of 
nature I feel confident that we are doing 
right in every way. Science, taught as 
every true teacher will teach it, will help 
the students to gain an insight into nature, 
will bring them face to face with reality, 
with law and order, and certainly will form 
at least one element in a noble education. 
It will emphasize the old lesson that power 
over nature comes only by obedience to her, 
and by this obedience, which can come only 
through understanding, discipline is gained. 
By action in accordance with law which is 
understood, and by reflection comes cul- 
ture. With this discipline and culture 
come large sympathies and a wide outlook 
upon the universe. There comes also the 
consciousness that, while the current of life 
and law is irresistible, man is a part of the 
mighty current and his will has its due 
share in directing it. 

Professor Albert L. Arey, of Rochester 
Free Academy, introduced the topic of the 
afternoon in the following address : 


The Educational Value of the Physical Sciences. 


It needs no skilled observer of the recent 
progress in educational affairs to discover 
that we are rapidly approaching that utopian 
condition in which the system of education 
shall be a system in fact as well as in name, 
and in which the work of the secondary 
school shall end where the college work be- 
gins, or, if you prefer the idea in this form, 
in which every subject that is entitled to a 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S.. Vou. V. No. 116. 


place in the secondary school shall be re- 
quired for admission to some course in 
college. 

As teachers of the sciences it is our duty 
to accelerate the progress towards this end 
by all means in our power and to retard it 
neither by strife among ourselves because 
of conflicting opinions nor by inaction be- 
cause of no opinion; but rather, by study- 
ing the problems confronting us in the same 
judicial spirit with which we study those of 
nature, to seek out the truth, and by dis- 
cussion of our observations and conclusions 
to speedily settle mooted questions among 
ourselves. Among these unsettled ques- 
tions which we may profitably discuss is 
this: Which science shall be required for 
admission to college, if but one is required ? 

My own answer to this question would 
be, Physics; first, because of its funda- 
mental character. Bacon long ago said 
that physics was the mother of sciences. 
The laws and facts of physies are neces- 
sary to the understanding of all other sci- 
ences; chemistry is becoming more and more 
a study of the transformations of energy, 
and the biologic group is tending in the 
same direction, while in geology a knowl- 
edge of physics is more necessary than in 
either of those mentioned. Without its aid 
the action of the grand forces which have 
moulded the earth cannot be comprehended. 
And, second, its cultural and informative 
values are at least equal to those of the 
other sciences. The logical order in mind- 
building, as in house-building, is to begin 
at the bottom, and therefore physics should 
be required for admission to college if but 
one science is required. I am aware that 
several societies of schoolmasters have dis- 
cussed this question, and that in some 
cases they have reached the conclusion 
that some other science should be first. 
And I hardly expect my friends, the biolo- 
gists, to agree with me, but friendly discus- 
sion leads to progress, and I hope that we 


Makrca# 19, 1897.] 


all desire to know the truth more than we 
desire the triumph of our own convictions. 

Other unsettled questions relate to the 
methods of instruction to be employed in 
the several branches of science, and these 
are important. 

The methods of teaching the languages 
and mathematics have been refined by ac- 
cumulated experience and they are substan- 
tially uniform throughout the world, while 
the teaching of science is of comparatively 
recent introduction and the variety of meth- 
ods employed is great; under these condi- 
tions uniformity of results in older subjects 
and great variety in science is what should 
be expected, and, other things being equal, 
it is what is obtained. 

It behooves us then to accumulate our 
experience that we may determine upon 
and adopt owr best method. The ‘ Commit- 
tee of Ten’ performed a valuable service in 
giving us the outlines of a method of teach- 
ing physics and chemistry, and most teach- 
ers endorse their recommendation, “ that 
these subjects be taught by a combination 
of laboratory work, text-book and thorough 
didactic instruction carried on conjointly, 
and that at least one-half of the time de- 
voted to these subjects be given to labora- 
tory work ;’’ but these directions are not 
explicit enough to prevent the teacher from 
doing poor work, even though he follows 
the suggestions to the letter, and we may 
profitably consider the objects and the pos- 
sibilities of the subjects from an educational 
standpoint. 

Properly taught, both physics and chemis- 
try yield splendid mental growth ; they lead 
to valuable lessons of law and order; their 
facts are important and useful, and they 
furnish a kind of manual training of a high 
order of merit. Without desiring to belittle 
the other possibilities, I shall confine my- 
self to the discussion of the mental growth 
which may be derived from these subjects, 
for this is the true education, the culture 


SCIENCE. 


461 


which remains to the student when the 
facts of the subject have long been forgot- 
ten. Although the cultural value of the 
sciences was not at once admitted when 
first claimed, and although we as teachers 
sometimes lose sight of this point, it is an 
easy matter to show, as Spencer has done 
in the first chapter of his ‘ Education,’ that 
the mental growth which results from the 
proper pursuit of the sciences is beyond 
compare the best. 

Furthermore, the amount of culture 
which may be derived from scientific sub- 
jects is not limited, as is that which may be 
obtained from other subjects. The longer 
one studies a language, the more expert he 
becomes in the application of the accidental 
rules of its grammar, and correspondingly 
less exertion is required for the solution of 
the somewhat similar problems in con- 
struction ; but in science, while he becomes 
more expert in the application of the neces- 
sary truths which he assimilates as time 
goes on, he attacks more and more pro- 
found problems, and the mental activity 
increases ; and he can never reach the end, 
for there are problems in nature which can 
only be comprehended by the perfect mind 
of the Creator. As Huxley says, we reach 
the summit of the mountain we have set our- 
selves to climb, only to find that it is but a 
spur of the greater range beyond. And now 
let us consider what faculties of the mind 
may be developed by the study of physics 
and chemistry, and how they may be best 
developed. Remembering that the mind is 
stimulated to activity in certain directions 
by frequent exercise in these directions, 
just as skill in following a trail was de- 
veloped in the Indian, our question be- 
comes: What opportunities do these sub- 
jects afford for the exercise of the mental 
powers ? 

Concerning the evolution of the ability to 
remember, little need be said. This power 
may be cultivated by the text-book and reci- 


462 


tation method, without experiments, with- 
out laboratory work, without apparatus, 
often without even understanding, but what 
a worthless reward is received for the effort. 
Our pupils come to the secondary schools 
with memories so abnormally developed 
that they have atrophied the interest in 
nature which each of them inherited, and 
have made serious inroads upon their rea- 
soning powers. 

Perception is rapidly and easily devel- 
oped by laboratory work. It is the uni- 
versal testimony of those who have con- 
ducted laboratory classes that the students 
learn to observe accurately and well, but this 
faculty is not necessarily exercised by either 
the recitation or the lecture method. 

Faraday said: ‘‘Society, speaking gener- 
ally, is not only ignorant as respects educa- 
tion of the judgment, but.is ignorant of its 
ignorance ;’’ and the cause to which he as- 
cribes this state is want of scientific culture. 

Herbert Spencer, in his ‘Education,’ says: 
“ Every step in a scientific investigation is 
submitted to his (the student’s) judgment. 
And the trust in his own powers thus pro- 
duced is further increased by the constancy 
with which nature justifies his conclusions 
when they are correctly drawn.”” And he 
adds: ‘From all this flows that independ- 
ence which is a most valuable element in 
character ;’’ and Professor Bessey, in an ad- 
dress on ‘Science and Culture,’ delivered in 
Buffalo last July, says: ‘‘The proper pur- 
suit of science should develop ajudicial state 
of mind toward all problems.” 

Here is abundant evidence that the judg- 
ment may be cultivated by proper work in 
science, and that the student may acquire 
confidence in his own judgment; but this 
also can only be accomplished in the labo- 
ratory. 

The cultivation of the imagination is 
another of the possibilities. Professor Car- 
hart, in his address to the Science Depart- 
ment of the National Educational Associa- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 116. 


tion, says: “It is no new thought that 
scientific study makes a draft upon the 
imagination.” And this may be best ac- 
complished in the laboratory, although in 
the hands of a skillful teacher lesser but 
valuable results may be obtained in the 
class room. 

The class-room work may be, and gener- 
ally is, so conducted as to afford training in 
deductive reasoning, such as is derived 
from courses in mathematics. The solu- 
tion of problems in physics affords particu- 
larly valuable exercise of the mind in this 
direction if the problems are judiciously 
selected, but there is a great difference in 
the benefits derived from the different prob- 
lems; for instance, to solve such problems as 
the following requires very little mental 
friction: ‘ What is the pressure on the 
upper surface of a Saratoga trunk, 2 by 3 
feet ?”’ while the solution of the following 
problem will compel thought which yields 
valuable results: ‘An empty toy balloon 
weighs 5 g. when filled with 10 1. of hydro- 
gen ; what load ean it lift ?” 

The repeated solution of problems based 
upon the same formula is not to be com- 
mended, since the operation soon becomes 
mechanical, and therefore of slight cultural 
value, but the skillful teacher can easily 
introduce some new point into each prob- 
lem, if he keeps in mind the object of his 
work. Furthermore, the discussions of the 
class room may be so shaped as to afford 
practice in deductive reasoning ; the appli- 
cation of theory to the objects of every- 
day life, the illustrations of the laws, 
principles and definitions, and questions 
like ‘ Account for the slowness with which 
ice increases in thickness over a pond,’ 
are easily presented to the pupil so as 
to develop power in this line. The pre- 
vailing tendency is, I think, to spend too 
much time on this class of work, for this 
is the particular province of mathematics, 
and deductive reasoning is of less value than 


MAkrc# 19, 1897.] 


inductive reasoning, because it leads to no 
higher intellectual level than that of the 
major premise. Every conclusion and every 
thought is subordinate to that with which 
we begin the process, while inductive rea- 
soning proceeds to broader and grander 
facts, which tax the human mind more and 
more in the effort to comprehend them. 

Now, let us consider in what manner we 
may develop power to reason inductively. 
In the lecture room the teacher may lead 
his class step by step through an inductive 
process, and he may receive evidence that 
they have followed him in answer to such 
questions as, ‘‘ Why do you believe that 
magnetism isa molecular phenomenon ?” or 
‘‘ Why do you believe that a body in motion 
will continue in motion indefinitely, unless 
acted upon by some external force?” But 
discipline in inductive reasoning is best 
obtained in the laboratory. It is not de- 
rived from such experiments as determining 
the coefficient of expansion of iron or 
measuring the resistance of a coil of wire. 
This class of work is similar to the work 
that a mechanic does in sharpening and re- 
pairing his tools. It may furnish useful 
manual training, but no such discipline as 
does the measuring the resistance of many 
coils of wire so selected as to furnish a line 
of argument confirming the laws of resist- 
ance. Neither do such exercises as the 
last possess any such value as do original 
researches ; here the experimental method 
reaches its maximum value. 

We thus see that laboratory work is 
necessary to the best development of the 
pupil’s mind, and that the object of the 
laboratory course is not to discover laws 
and facts ; not to prove that the book tells 
the truth; not the manual training in- 
volved; but its great advantage over other 
means of developing the mind. 

We see also that class-room work may 
be made valuable and that it is necessary, 
because of the culture derived by the stu- 


SCIENCE. 


463 


dents, and because of the opportunity which 
the teacher is afforded of guiding the stu- 
dents’ mental processes, and this combina- 
tion of laboratory and class-room work is 
the plan recommended by the ‘ Committee 
of Ten.’ Let us call it the American 
method for the present. 

If I catch the spirit of the method of 
instruction in science employed in the 
schools of Germany, it is expressed in one 
word— Questions ’—questions which lead 
the students step by step through their own 
thoughts to the facts and laws of the 
sciences. I am unwilling to admit that in 
the products of corresponding schools the 
German is superior to the American; but I 
believe that we may with profit combine 
the two phases, and that increased educa- 
tional value will be found in experiments 
which are performed with a set of questions 
to be answered before the pupil. Not such 
questions as ‘‘ What color is this gas?” but 
questions so shaped as to compel thinking 
and to guide the thoughts of the student. 
In many experimental sciences the direc- 
tions for experiments are accompanied by 
questions, but most of them are intended to 
call attention to facts. What I insist upon 
is that the teacher have in mind the mental 
process to which the question will lead the 
student. In closing, let me say that I found 
the Regent’s syllabus in physics altogether 
too long for this class of work, and I believe 
that many teachers who are ready to do this 
higher grade of work are now rushing 
through the long course, developing only 
the memory. 

Last November, in his opening address as 
President of Section A of the British Asso- 
ciation, Professor J. J. Thompson says: ‘I 
hope I may not be considered ungrateful if 
I express the opinion that, in the zeal and 
energy which is now spent in the teaching 
of physics in schools, there may lurk a temp- 
tation to make pupils cover too much 
ground. It is, indeed, not uncommon to 


464 


find boys of seventeen or eighteen who have 
compassed almost the whole range of phys- 
ical subjects. Physics can be so taught as 
to be a subject of the greatest possible edu- 
cational value, but when it is so, it isnotso 
much because the student acquires a knowl- 
edge of a number of interesting facts as by 
the mental training which the study affords 
in, as Maxwell says, ‘bringing our theoret- 
ical knowledge to bear on the objects, and 
the objects on our theoretical knowledge.’ 
“T think this training can be got better 
by going very slowly through such a sub- 
ject as mechanics, making students try in- 
numerable experiments of the simplest kind, 
rather than by attempting to cover the 
whole range of mechanics, light, heat, sound, 
electricity and magnetism.’? And he con- 
eludes by saying: ‘‘I confess I regret the 
presence, in examinations intended for 
school boys, of many of these subjects.” 


Discussion by Professor E. L. Nichols on the 
Teaching of Physics and Chemistry in the 
Secondary Schools. 

One of the chief difficulties with which 
we have to cope in considering the subject 
of science teaching in the schools lies in 
the fact that the schools have to handle two 
distinct classes of pupils: The large class 
which is not going to college and for which 
the education in science received in the 
schools is all that they are to receive, and 
a much smaller class with which the science 
taught in the schools is preparatory to the 
further study of science in the college and 
the university. 

It is most unfortunate that our high 
schools and academies are obliged to treat 
these two classes of pupils together instead 
of offering them entirely distinct courses of 
study. If physics and chemistry, for exam- 
ple, are to be accepted by the universities 
as entrance subjects alternative with math- 
ematics they must be so taught as to have 
a disciplinary value in some degree com- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No. 116. 


parable to mathematics. Now, the disci- 
plinary value of mathematics is universally 
conceded to be exceedingly high. 

It is unquestionably possible to teach 
science in such a manner as to afford excel- 
lent mental discipline, but in order to do so 
the teacher must be thoroughly up in his. 
subject and he must have this continually 
in view as the prime object of the instruc- 
tion which he is giving. For the larger 
class of pupils, on the other hand, to whom 
the courses in physics and chemistry offered. 
by the schools are all that they are to re- 
ceive, the object for which the teacher must 
strive is in great part to convey useful in- 
formation. In a word, the two objects 
sought cannot well be united in a single 
course. 

In spite of the fact that nearly all the 
principals and superintendents of schools. 
with whom I have spoken upon this sub- 
ject have held it to be impracticable to 
separate the pupils who are preparing for 
college from those whom the high school or 
academy is to afford the completion of their 
education, I feel compelled to lay down as 
a first principle that a thoroughly satis- 
factory substitute for the advanced mathe- 
matics now required for entrance to college 
can only be obtained by teaching science to 
those preparing for college in an entirely 
different manner, and indeed in different 
classes from those who are not preparing 
for the entrance examinations. Where no 
such division can be made it is at least pos- 
sible to treat the science primarily with a 
view to its disciplinary or truly educational 
value. 

It is scarcely necessary to say that all 
sciences are to be treated as laboratory sub- 
jects. No school course in physics or chem- 
istry which consists in the reading of a 
text-book, together with recitations upon 
the same, can possibly afford a suitable 
preparatory course for college. Neither 
will such a course prove of any appreci- 


Marcu 19, 1897.] 


able advantage to the class of non-college 
going pupils. It were in my opinion far 
better to exclude science teaching from the 
schools altogether than to teach it in this 
way. The plan very generally followed in 
our schools of accompanying recitations 
upon such a text as indicated above by 
demonstrations with apparatus performed 
by the teacher does not call for so sweeping 
a condemnation ; yet let me say plainly 
that no such course can be regarded as an 
adequate entrance requirement. 

In both physics and chemistry, laboratory 
instruction is to be regarded as the essen- 
tial thing ; this is to be accompanied, in so 
far as time may permit, by the reading of a 
text-book and by demonstrations on the 
part of the teacher. Since the time al- 
lotted to these subjects is rarely large enough 
to make it practicable to use two books—a 
text-book and a laboratory manual—the 
text-book selected should be one written 
with a view to the teaching of the subject 
by laboratory methods. Itshould combine 
the features of the laboratory manual and 
the ordinary text-book of physics in brief 
and clear form. With a good book of this 
kind the teacher who understands his sub- 
ject will select certain experiments to be 
performed by each member of the class in- 
dividually ; others he will reserve for dem- 
onstrations to be performed by himself in 
the presence of the class. The principles 
illustrated by these experiments, which 
should be so selected as to demonstrate the 
laws of the science, should form the subject 
matter of recitations. The lower the grade 
of the pupils the more prominent should 
the laboratory features of the course be 
made. ‘ 

I am aware that in our larger schools 
there are considerable difficulties in carry- 
ing out a program such as I have out- 
lined. The chief difficulty is not one, how- 
ever, which is confined to the teaching of 
science ; the fact is, that in all subjects the 


SCIENCE. 


465 


number of teachers is entirely too small in 
proportion to the size of the classes. The 
difference between the teaching of science 
and the teaching of other subjects is that 
in science teaching the attempt to cut down 
the teaching force, as is done in other sub- 
jects, leads inevitably to a complete failure. 
Such failure brings about too frequently the 
abandoning of proper science methods even 
where the teachers themselves are suffi- 
ciently well prepared in their subject to 
know what these methods are. If our 
school boards and superintendents and 
principles and teachers were equally honest 
in the teaching of other subjects they would 
feel compelled to abandon the teaching of 
these likewise. ‘The increase in the teach- 
ing force demanded for the purpose of per- 
mitting the schools to offer satisfactory en- 
trance requirement courses, therefore, is not 
an exorbitant demand; it is simply a de- 
mand which should be met in every depart- 
ment of school instruction. If the question 
of science teaching in the schools serves to 
bring this matter more forcibly than it has 
ever been brought to the attention of those 
whose duty it is to determine the teaching 
force in our schools a good work will have 
been done. 

While first-rate work in laboratory teach- 
ing of science can not be done where the 
number of students to be handled by each 
teacher is very large, something may be 
done. It is, for example, better to have 
laboratory experiments carried on by the 
instructor in the presence of the class than 
not atall It is much better to have labo- 
ratory experiments carried on by groups of 
students than by the instructor himself. 
The efficiency of the teaching increases as 
the size of these groupsis diminished, and 
it reaches its maximum only when the 
groups are reduced to one or two, or at 
most three, individuals. 

Laboratory practice for the schools is in- 
tended to serve a double purpose. In the 


466 


first place, to teach the pupil to observe; in 
the second place, to give him practice in the 
simpler methods of measurement. It may 
be laid down as a general rule that quanti- 
tative methods should be employed where- 
ever practicable, and that experiments in 
which a precise and definite result is 
reached are always to be selected. The 
metric system should be introduced at the 
very beginning and should be used to the ex- 
clusion of all others throughout the course. 
The introduction of the metric system of 
weights and measures into practical life in 
this country, for which strenuous efforts are 
now being made in many quarters, can be 
brought about more rapidly by its use 
in the schools than in any other way. 
The only thing which interferes with its 
immediate adoption by the people lies in 
their unfamiliarity with it. It may be con- 
fidently expected that within a few years this 
system will be used by our postoffice de- 
partments, in pharmacy and im every trans- 
action between the government and the 
people. The schools, however, by the ex- 
clusion of the teaching of other systems in 
arithmetic and in science, can further the 
reform more effectively than all other 
agencies combined. 

Finally, let me say a word or two with 
reference to the laboratory equipment. 
This in chemistry is not a serious matter. 
In physics, on the other hand, we find a 
great variety of opinions. There are those 
who hold that the best instruction is that 
which is carried on without the use of 
instruments; that school children should be 
taught to construct with spools and bits of 
string the philosophical apparatus which 
they are to use. We find, as the other ex- 
treme, equipments for demonstration, the 
price of which would involve the expendi- 
ture of tens of thousands of dollars. The 
proper course lies between these extremes. 
There are certain standard instruments 
which should be in the possession of every 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 116. 


school laboratory for use in demonstration 
and in laboratory instruction. These are 
not excessively expensive nor is the number 
of such instruments very large. A balance 
with weights, an air pump of the very 
simplest form but properly constructed with 
accessories, a lantern for projection, a 
clock with pendulum, a metronome, ther- 
mometers, an abundant stock of glass tub- 
ing and of flasks and beakers, a galvanom- 
eter (which may be home-made), a simple 
resistance box, some lenses and prisms, a 
set of tuning forks, an organ pipe and a 
sonometer—these together with scales 
divided to millimeters, a micrometer gauge 
and a supply of cross-section paper will en- 
able the properly trained teacher to give a 
very thorough course in laboratory in- 
struction. Where the number of pupils to 
be handled is large it will be necessary to 
duplicate many of these instruments. Be- 
fore the schools can hope, however, to offer 
science courses which will be acceptable 
alternatives for the advanced mathematics 
of our entrance requirement it will be ne- 
cessary to have a sufficient number of teach- 
ers who are thoroughly trained for scientific 
work and suitably equipped laboratories. 
The demand of science as regards the 
number of teachers is not really greater 
than that of other branches, but it is more 
urgent, and the failure which comes from 
inadequate numbers is more disastrous. 


Professor John F. Woodhull, of the 
Teachers College, New York City, referring 
to the one-year course in Physics, prescribed 
by the Regents of this State, explained that 
it was a compromise between the old twenty- 
weeks course and a better course which 
would require two years. It isto be hoped 
that the course will be further lengthened 
and made to include more laboratory work. 

Dr. T. B. Stowell, of the State Normal 
School at Potsdam, urged the importance 
of instruments of precision in the class- 


Marcu 19, 1897. ] 


room. The charge that the sciences are 
not comparable with linguistics in educative 
value, by virtue of their inaccuracies, is not 
without foundation. Ifa student in Latin 
should be taught that the third personal 
ending of the verb is ¢, or some letter in 
that vicinity, the college entrance examina- 
tion would disclose marvelous results. This 
is only a fair sample of the lax approxima- 
tions accepted by the teachers of physics 
in much of their experimental work. No 
piece of mechanism is too exact to demon- 
strate physical law, especially if we are to 
demand that the colleges accept work in 
the sciences as equivalent to the languages. 
An interesting discussion followed con- 
cerning the usefulness of home-made ap- 
paratus, both sides of the question being 
advocated. Dr. C. H. Sharp, of Cornell 
University, thought a well-equipped work- 
shop should be one of the first essentials of 
every physical laboratory, and a means of 
providing many well-constructed pieces of 
apparatus. It was agreed, however, that 
the quality of the teacher is of higher mo- 
ment than the apparatus, the good teacher 
being always superior to his instrument. 
Dr. William Hallock, of Columbia Uni- 
versity, stated that the ‘new curriculum,’ 
which goes into effect with the beginning 
of the year 1897-98, permits the student 
to offer, instead of Greek, an equivalent in 
the physical sciences for entrance to Colum- 
bia. Hence this desirable step in the ad- 
vancement of sound education is no longer 
untaken or uncontemplated in this State. 
Speaking as a teacher in college he ad- 
vocated the early study of physics. Me- 
chanics is particularly well adapted to the 
training of the young mind to see, to think, 
and to express itself freely. If the pre- 
paratory school can teach the scholar to see, 
to think and to express his ideas; certainly 
the instructors in college will be very well 
satisfied with such a preparation, and will 
have the work of the further cultivation of 


SCIENCE. 


467 


science greatly facilitated. Asa preparation 
for college it is not desirable that the stu- 
dent be initiated into the mysteries (?) of 
the ether and the electro-magnetic theory of 
light and other similar subjects; these, if 
ever taught, should be taught in college; 
recondite theoretical discussions are out of 
place in an elementary course; higher math- 
ematics is also superfluous. It is possible 
to give a student a very comprehensive 
knowledge of even the more abstruse facts 
of physics without requiring a knowledge 
of mathematics beyond the rule of three. 
College professors have all been teaching 
elementary physics because their students 
came to them with no knowledge of science, 
but with a loose way of thinking and writ- 
ing, which is very hard to correct at that 
stage of their mental development. 

As a general educational course for those 
who do not go to college, the course in 
physical science is of undisputed value. 
Here also the mechanical-physical side is 
preferable to the chemical side, as being 
simpler, more easily grasped, and more 
readily and generally applicable to every- 
day experience. The necessary apparatus 
is not extensive, complicated or expensive. 
The course should include a well-selected 
series of experiments which should tend to 
a gradual development of the powers of 
observation, of thought and of expression, 
rather than to instructing the student in all 
the latest and most remarkable discoveries 
of science. If he has the desire and has 
once acquired the proper method of seeing 
and thinking, the student will have little 
trouble in picking up much more infor- 
mation than can possibly be given to him 
in any superficial course of cramming. 
Teach him to see, to think and to speak 
clearly, and all will be well. 

Professor W. C. Peckham, of Adelphi 
College, urged that the attention of the 
young pupil should be directed to the 
phenonena of nature about him; to the 


468 


changes he may observe in the seasons, the 
days and the nights; the changes in the 
weather, the dews, the fogs and rain, hail, 
snow, the rainbow and the lightning flash. 
All these should be the occasion of in- 
struction. He should be taught the laws 
of the action of any machines in the house, 
on the farm or in the mills of a neighbor- 
hood. In the later years of the grammar 
school and in the high school, place should 
be found for experimental physics in the il- 
lustration of laws. The demonstration of 
laws is beyond the power of the pupil of 
this age. This belongs to the well-equipped 
student of the University. Measurements 
adapted to the stage of advancement of the 
pupil may be made in all parts of such a 
course, though much that passes for phys- 
ical-laboratory work is only physical arith- 
metic or geometry, and should be done 
in the time devoted to mathematics. 

If such a course should be carried out, 
the student would early begin to observe, 
reflect upon and endeavor to explain what 
he sees before him in daily life, to be 

‘intelligent with reference to the course and 

constancy of nature. Everything will not 
then to him be shrouded in mystery and 
weighty with omen. Such knowledge ac- 
quired in the grammar and high-school 
years will constitute the surest and best 
foundation for the course in modern physics, 
the science of the transformation of energy 
as taught in the college. 

The other speakers of the afternoon were 
Principal William M. Bennett, of Canan- 
daigua; Principal Henry Pease, of Medina ; 
Professor Irving P. Bishop, of Buffalo; 
Professor H. J. Schmitz, of Genesee ; Pro- 
fessor Morris Loeb, of New York University; 
Professor G. C. Caldwell, of Cornell; Pro- 
fessor H. C. Coon, of Alfred, and Professor 
Henry L. Griffis, of New Paltz. 

It was evident that on one point the As- 
sociation is practically unanimous: that of 
all the sciences which the colleges might 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 116. 


require for admission, physics is the one 
that the preparatory schools are best adapted 
to handle, and that the student is most in 
need of. The discussion showed clearly 
also that, in order to do the work in physics 
as it should be done, the secondary schools 
need to devote more time and thought to 
this work, and in some eases, perhaps, less 
time and thought to work in the other 
sciences. The laboratory method is indis- 
pensable. Several speakers were in favor 
of leaving all the work in chemistry to be 
done in college. 

After the discussion, the following resolu- 
tion, offered by Dr. Hallock, was unani- 
mously adopted : ‘‘ Resolved, That this Asso- 
ciation urges Congress to take such action 
as will bring into use, by the government 
and by the people, the metric system of 
weights and measures at as early a date as 


is practicable.” 
FRANKLIN W. Barrows, 
Secretary. 


BUFFALO, N. Y. 
(Zo be continued. ) 


CURRENT NOTES ON METEOROLOGY. 
BLUE HILL CLOUD OBSERVATIONS. 

CLaytTon’s ‘Discussion of the Cloud Obser- 
vations’ made at Blue Hill Observatory(An- 
nals Astron. Obs’y Harv. Coll., Vol. XX X., 
Pt. IV.) is a product of which American 
science has abundant reason to be proud. 
It represents the results of years of the 
most careful work at Blue Hill Observatory 
on the heights, velocities, movements, for- 
mation and classification of clouds, and is, 
as it stands, the most complete publication 
on the subject of clouds yet issued in any 
country. That the observers at Blue Hill 
were doing some excellent cloud work has 
been known for some years, and short arti- 
cles by the meteorologist of the station 
(Mr. H. H. Clayton), which have appeared 
from time to time in scientific journals in 
Europe and in this country, have given 
evidence that some interesting results were 


Marcu 19, 1897.] 


being derived from this work. We venture 
to say, however, that very few persons in- 
deed have had any idea of the extent or 
the value of the deductions which were be- 
ing drawn from the vast body of material 
thus collected. No one who looks over 
this volume of 230 quarto pages can fail to 
be struck with the thoroughness, the exact- 
ness and the eminently scientific quality of 
the whole work. It is obviously impossible 
to attempt to discuss the publication in 
these notes. It is our desire simply to call 
attention to it and to recommend a careful 
study of it to all meteorologists. Blue Hill 
Observatory has certainly given us a piece 
of work which will be a lasting credit to 
American science. 


SOME CLIMATIC FEATURES OF THE ARID 
REGIONS. 

A PAPER on ‘Some Climatic Features of 
the Arid Regions,’ prepared by the Chief of 
the Weather Bureau for the National Irriga- 
tion Congress,whose fifth session was held at 
Pheenix, December 15-17, 1896, is published 
by the Weather Bureau. It deals with 
the general climatic characteristics of the 
southwestern portion of our country, and 
lays especial emphasis on the amount of 
wind movement, with a view to determin- 
ing to what extent the wind may be used 
as a motive power in driving the mills to 
be used for irrigation purposes. Sensi- 
ble temperatures, which have come into 
prominence recently, and are now reg- 
ularly noted on our daily weather maps, 
come in for some share of attention, and 
two charts illustrate the average actual and 
sensible temperatures for summer, and the 
mean actual and sensible temperatures for 
July, 8 p. m. These charts show very 
clearly that it is in the regions of the West 
and Southwest, where the relative humidity 
is low, that there is the greatest difference 
between the sensible, or wet bulb, tempera- 
ture and that of the dry bulb, while in the 


SCIENCE. 


469 


Hast, especially in the Northeast, where the 
relative humidity is much higher, the tem- 
peratures as shown by the wet and dry bulb 
readings are most nearly the same. It ap- 
pears that there is an abundance of effec- 
tive wind on the plains east of the Rocky 
Mountains in all months of the year, and 
no special adaptation of the ordinary wind- 
mill is necessary. The amount of effective 
wind decreases with approach to the Rocky 
Mountains. 


CLIMATIC ZONES ON THE ISLAND OF SAKHALIN. 

Aw interesting fact regarding the relation 
of the floral zones and meteorological con- 
ditions on the island of Sakhalin is noted 
in Ciel et Terre (Jan. 1, 1897). This island, 
lying off-shore from the eastern coast of 
Siberia, is surrounded by cold currents and 
is further exposed to the cold northwest 
winds from the mainland. At sea-level 
snow falls in May and lasts till the end of 
that month, and the coast is very cold. 
The climate becomes milder with increasing 
distance from the sea and with increasing 
altitude, the cold air accumulating on the 
lowlands near sea-level. In consequence of 
this distribution of temperature the low- 
lands have an Arctic flora, while the high- 
lands and the intermediate heights have a 
temperature and, in some cases, a sub-trop- 
ical flora. This is a curious reversal from 
the ordinary condition of things, which 
gives more and more boreal vegetation with 


increasing altitude. 
R. DE C. Warp. 


HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 
STATURE AND WEIGHT. 

THESE anthropological elements are dis- 
cussed in a highly satisfactory manner by 
Dr. Buschan, of Stettin, editor of the Cen- 
tralblatt fiir Anthropologie, in the ‘ Real-En- 
eyclopadie der Gesammten Heilkunde,’ 
now publishing in Berlin. 


470 


The shortest tribes are the African pyg- 
mies, who stand about 1.30 meters. In 
America no tribe is mentioned with an 
average under 1.60. The tallest are un- 
doubtedly American, some (doubtful) Ca- 
ribs of the Orinoco at 1.84, and the Te- 
huelche, of Patagonia, at 1.78. 

The article on the weight gives abundant 
information about the relative weight of 
the brain and other organs. 

Both articles contain a very complete 
bibliography of the recent scientific litera- 
ture of the subjects. 


THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF COSTA RICA. 


LARGELY owing to the energy of the 
Director Sefior Anastasio Alfaro, the large 
archeological and ethnographic collection 
brought together by the government of 
Costa Rica has now been commodiously 
installed in a building erected for the pur- 
pose at San José de Costa Rica. A photo- 
graph of it is reproduced in La Revista 
Nueva for October last. 

Few localities on our continent offer bet- 
ter specimens of aboriginal pottery and stone 
work that are discovered within the area of 
Costa Rica, as was abundantly illustrated 
at the Columbian Exposition at Madrid. A 
beautiful example of a decorated jar is 
given in the journal of the date mentioned, 
and also the outlines of a number of others. 

In spite of the careful studies of Manuel 
de Peralta on the ancient tribes of Costa 
Rica, we still remain ignorant of the lan- 
guage and affinities of the tribe which seems 
to have left the most abundant remains— 


the Guetares. 
Dd. G. Brinton. 


UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


NOTES ON INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 

In the last Berichte F. Giesel describes 
an interesting instance of what are prob- 
ably solid solutions. A little more than a 
year ago Goldstein showed that the halid 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No. 116. 


salts of the alkali metals take on a more or 
less intensive color under the influence of 
kathode rays. Giesel obtains the same result 
by heating the salts in closed glass tubes at 
a very low red heat in sodium or potassium 
vapor. Bromid and iodid of potassium are 
colored a beautiful blue, chlorid of potas- 
sium or sylvine a dark heliotrope, chlorid 
of sodium or rock salt yellow or brown. 
The color is not superficial, as clear crystals 
of potassium bromid a centimeter cube are 
uniformly colored. The coloration seems 
to be due to the solution of the metallic 
sodium or potassium in the solid salt. It 
is thought probable by Giesel that the blue 
coloration of rock salt is due to dissolved 
sodium. Attempts to color in a similar 
way clear crystals of fluorspar were not 
successful. 

In continuing his investigations into the 
occurrence of gold in nature, Professor 
Liversidge finds the metal in all natural 
saline deposits. Rock salt and other 
natural salts contain from one to two grains 
of gold per ton, while bittern waters and 
kelps furnished in some cases from fourteen 
to twenty grains. 

Professor Liversidge has also examined 
the structure of gold nuggets from many 
different sources, by polishing and etching 
sections. He finds that all nuggets pos- 
sess a well-marked crystalline structure 
and usually contain foreign substances. 
He suggests that the gold has been slowly 
deposited from aqueous solution and that 
the nuggets are more or less rolled masses 
of gold which have been set free from dis- 


integrated veins. 
J. L. H. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 
RESEARCH AND THE UNIVERSITY. 

AN editorial note in the February number of 
the American Naturalist has been quoted with 
approval in several journals. We also repro- 
duce this note, partly in order to give it such 


Marcu 19, 1897. ] 


currency as we can, and partly in order. to com- 
ment upon it: 

“While the primary object of the University is in- 
struction, there are several reasons why original re- 
search is of more than incidental importance to its 
prosperity. The mastery of his subject, which is char- 
acteristic of the man who advances the knowledge of 
it, is an essential of a good teacher. The belief in 
this truth is so general that the teacher who is known 
as a discoverer will more successfully attract students 
to his classes than he whois not soknown. But, apart 
from this, the general reputation of a school before 
the public is more surely affected by the research 
work that issues from its faculty than the managing 
bodies of some of them seem willing to admit. As 
an advertisement, successful original work is incom- 
parable. It serves this purpose in quarters where the 
detailed work of the university is of necessity un- 
known. We know how it is with our estimate of in- 
stitutions of foreign lands ; we know them by the 
work of their professors in original research. We be- 
lieve that those universities which permit of the pro- 
duction of original work by those of its professors 
who have proven themselves competent for it are 
wise above those who do not do so. Those who load 
such men with teaching, so as to forbid such work, 
reduce their prosperity. We regret to learn that a 
tendency to the latter course is increasingly evident 
in some of our great schools. Who, in the chemical 
world, does not think the more highly of Harvard on 
account of the work of a Gibbs ; how much better is 
Brown known through the work of a Packard, and so 
on? Chicago, Pennsylvania and Cornell profit greatly 
in yarious fields by the work turned out by certain 
members of their faculties. Who does not know 
Columbia, Princeton and Johns Hopkins as the seat 
of the labors of men whose names are familiar to 
every American? Yet, in a few of these institutions 
the prosperity brought by these very men is becom- 
ing the means of choking the vitality of these, their 
life centers, by the increase of drudgery which it 
brings. The managers will be wise to preserve for 
these men sufficient leisure to enable them to advance 
the frontiers of the known, and thus to obtain juster 
views of things as they are, and to bring us ever 
nearer to a comprehension of the great laws whose 
expressions it is their business to teach to the grow- 
ing intelligences of the nation. By all means nour- 
ish the nuclei of the mental life, which will thus pre- 
serve the vitality of the cytoplasm of society and pro- 
tect them from being smothered by it into stagnation 
and ultimate crystallization.” 


WE quite believe that research work adver- 
tises a university, and in a more effective man- 


SCIENCE. 


471 


ner than athletic contests. But we do not think 
that research is chiefly useful as an advertise- 
ment, nor that instruction is ‘the primary object 
of the university.’ Instruction, or better train- 
ing, is the primary object of the college and 
professional school. Research is not only the 
primary object of the university ; it is the uni- 
versity itself. Further, we think that this is 
the view of President Eliot, President Low, 
President Gilman, Provost Harrison and the 
other able leaders who are now laying the 
foundations of our universities. We do not see 
any tendency ‘increasingly evident in some of 
of our great schools to load men with teaching 
so as to forbid’ original work and ‘ choke their 
vitality.’ Rather it is only within the past few 
years that the university, as we understand it, 
has been developed. A professorship, such 
as the editor of the Naturalist holds at the 
University of Pennsylvania, would not have 
been possible twenty yearsago. The university 
professor must indeed learn that he may teach 
and teach that he may learn. It would, per- 
haps, be well if he more often gave a small part 
of his time to carrying the spirit of the univer- 
sity to the lower classes of the college. But 
research is the university ; when both teachers 
and students are not advancing knowledge and 
applying it for the welfare of society, or learn- 
ing how to do these things, they are only part 
of the university as its impedimenta. 


SCIENCE IN THE NEWSPAPERS. 


THE last number of Nature contains a leader 
traversing an editorial in a recent issue of the 
London Times. That journal is accused of an 
‘outburst’ displaying ‘misrepresentations’ and 
‘absolute ignorance.’ It is scarcely needful to 
say that in the question at issue—the desirabil- 
ity of establishing a National Physical Labora- 
tory that will do for Great Britain what the 
Reichsanstalt does for Germany—we entirely 
agree with Nature. But the same number of 
the Times that the editor of Nature finds ‘ painful 
reading’ set the writer of this note to wonder 
why the English daily press is so superior to 
our own. Of the four editorial articles in the 
Times of that issue, three were devoted to sub- 
jects that might be regarded as belonging to 
science. The point of view was, doubtless, that 


472 


of middle class Toryism, but the questions were 
discussed in a manner that appealed to an in- 
telligent interest on the part of the readers. 
When the British Association meets, the address 
of the President is given in full, not only in the 
London dailies, but also in the provincial press, 
and pages are devoted to the sectional meetings. 
The New York papers contained one short note 
on the Buffalo meeting of the American Asso- 
ciation for the Advancement of Science, and the 
local press confined its attention to our enfant 
terrible, Section I. The Boston Transcript 
probably gives more space to science than any 
other American daily and is one of the most re- 
spectable of our newspapers, yet it describes to 
its readers how the soul has been photographed 
by ‘a member of the Paris Academy of Medi- 
cine’ and how ‘Sir’ Francis Galton has estab- 
lished communication with the inhabitants of 
the planet Mars. There are often in the daily 
papers items of scientific news that should be of 
interest, but their ‘probable error’ is about oo. 
While some of our newspapers are reverting to 
the pictograph stage of culture, will not one or 
two of them omit a few items of local and tran- 
' sient gossip and give a little space to subjects of 
permanent and universal importance ? 


GENERAL. 


THE Berlin Academy of Sciences has made 
an appropriation of 2,400 Marks to Professor 
Harnack for the expenses of the preparation of 
a history of the Academy to be published on 
the occasion of the two hundredth anniversary 
of its foundation. 


Ar its last meeting, March 10th, the Ameri- 
can Academy of Arts and Sciences elected as 
foreign honorary members Ludwig Boltzmann, 
of Vienna; Wilhelm Pfeffer, of Leipzig, and 
Wilhelm Dorpfeld, of Athens. 


Mr. GASTON DARBOUX, professor of geometry 
at the University of Paris, has been elected a 
corresponding member of the Berlin Academy 
of Sciences. 


THE Zoological Society of New York has re- 
ceived official notification from the Board of Park 
Commissioners consenting to allot for a Zoologi- 
cal Park the portion of Bronx Park which the 
Society desired. The land designated is the 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 116. 


southern portion of the park lying between 
Kingsbridge road and Pelham avenue and ex- 
tending eastward from the southern boule- 
vard so as to include the Bronx Lake and en- 
close two hundred and sixty-one acres of land. 
The largest Zoological Garden of Europe, that 
of Berlin, is only one-fourth this size. 

THE Royal Botanic Society of London is 
considering the establishment of a Botanical 
Institute for the study and teaching of botany 
in its gardens. The subject was brought be- 
fore the Society by Mr. William Martindale at 
a meeting of the fellows on February 27th, and 
the plan was favored by all who took part in 
the discussion. 

Sir J. BLUNDELL MAPLE has given University 
College, London, £100,000 for the rebuilding 
of the hospital. Lady Wallace has bequeathed 
to the British nation the finest private collec- 
tion of paintings and objects of art in the 
world, valued at between $5,000,000 and $10, - 
000,000. 


M. VIOLLE, of the Ecole normale Supérieure, 
has been elected in the room of Fizeau, member 
of the section of physics of the Paris Academy. 


JOSEPH JAMES SYLVESTER, the great mathe- 
matician, Savilian professor of geometry at Ox- 
ford, formerly professor at Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity, and in 1841 at the University of Vir- 
ginia, died at London on March 15th, aged 
eighty-three years. 

THE eminent mathematician, Dr. Karl Weier- 
strass, died at Berlin on Februry 19th, aged 
eighty-one years. 

PROFESSOR HENRY DRUMMOND, of the Free 
Church College, Glasgow, died on March 11th, 
at the age of forty-six years. He had published 
interesting accounts of his travels in tropical 
Africa and elsewhere, but was best known for 
his ‘ Natural Law in the Spiritual World,’ which 
has been published in many editions and in 
several languages. Professor Drummond gave 
the Lowell Lectures in Boston in 1893 which 
were published under the title ‘The Ascent of 
Man.’ 

WE regret also to record the deaths of M. 
Georges Ville, the chemist, professor in the 
Paris Museum of Natural History; of Dr. 
Timothée Rothen, known for his contributions 


Maxrcu 19, 1897. ] 


to telegraphy ; of Dr. Peter D. Keyser, an emi- 
nent ophthalmologist of Philadelphia, formerly 
professor of this subject at the Medical Chirur- 
gical College and surgeon to the Wills Hye 
Hospital; of Dr. Olaus Dahl, professor of 
Scandanavian languages in the University of 
Chicago; and of Mr. Luther H. Tucker, editor 
of The Cultivator and Country Gentleman. 

Tue late Professor Tilanus founded a gold 
medal, to be given every five years by the Uni- 
versity of Amsterdam for a contribution to 
medicine or natural science. It was conferred 
this year for the first time on Dr. Zwaardemaker, 
of Utrecht, for his work on ‘Physiology of Smell.’ 


THE Paris Faculty of Medicine has awarded 
the Lacaze Prize of 10,000 franes to Professor 
Nocard, of Alfort, for his researches on tuber- 
culosis. 

PROFESSOR OSCAR LIEBREICH, director of the 
pharmacological laboratory of Berlin University, 
has received the officer’s cross of the French 
Légion d’Honneur. 

THE following further awards of medals are 
recorded in Nature: The Albert Medal of the 
Society of Arts to Professor David Edward 
Hughes, F.R.S., ‘‘in recognition of the services 
he has rendered to arts, manufactures and 
commerce by his numerous inventions in elec- 
tricity and magnetism, especially the printing 
telegraph and the microphone ;’’ and a gold 
medal of the Société Industrielle du Nord de la 
France to M. Moissan, in recognition of his 
scientific investigations. The Royal Academy of 
Belgium has awarded gold medals, of the value 
of 600 franes, to Dr. C. De Bruyne, of Ghent, for 
his essay on the influence of phagocytes in 
the development of the invertebrata; to M. G. 
Cesaro, of Trooz (Liége), for his essay on Bel- 
gian minerals; to MM. J. F. Heymans and O. 
Van der Stricht, of Ghent, for their conjoint 
paper on the peripheric nervous system of 
Amphioxus ; and to M. Jean Massart, for his es- 
say on the cicatrisation of plants. 

Proressor E. E. BARNARD gave an illus- 
trated lecture at Oxford University on March 
1st. Sir Clements Markham will lecture before 
the London Royal Geographical Society on 
March 22d, on ‘Some Considerations in Polar 
Explorations.’ 


SCIENCE. 


473 


PROFESSOR W. LECONTE STEVENS, of the 
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has written 
to Professor J. K. Rees, of Columbia Univer- 
sity, Secretary of Metrological Society: ‘‘ For 
reasons which have been fully set forth orally, 
I regret that it will not be possible for me to 
accept the Secretaryship of the Metrological 
Society. My interest in the objects which the 
Society is endeavoring to attain is not on this 
account in the least diminished, and I shall con- 
tinue to spend such time and exert such influ- 
ence as I may be able to command in furthering 
these objects.’’ 

THE German government has appropriated 
20,000 Marks for the investigation of the foot 
and mouth disease, and the work has been en- 
trusted to Professor Loeffler, of Greifswald, and 
Dr. Frosch, of the Koch Institute. 


PROFESSOR BENO ERDMANN, of Halle, has 
been awarded 600 Marks by the Berlin Academy 
of Sciences for researches in experimental psy- 
chology. 

Tux trustees of Cornell University will build 
for Professor Harris a naptha launch to be used 
for the transportation of students studying pale- 
ontology. It is expected to use the boat dur- 
ing the summer holidays for field work. 


Ir is reported in the Engineering News that 
the largest spectroscope in the world has just 
been completed by John A. Brashear, of Alle- 
gheny, Pa., the well-known astronomical in- 
strument maker. It was made for the private 
research laboratory of Dr. Hans Hauswaldt, of 
Magdeburg, Germany. The instrument con- 
tains a concave diffraction grating with 110,000 
lines per inch, made on the famous ruling ma- 
chine of Professor Henry A. Rowland, of the 
Johns Hopkins University. 

ANOTHER secret method of color photography 
has been recently exhibited in London, the ex- 
hibitor being this time an Englishman, Mr. 
Bennetto. The pictures are said to show colors 
very well, but until the nature of the process is 
explained the matter is scarcely one coming 
within the range of scientific discussion. 

A BILL has been introduced into the Minne- 
sota Legislature providing for the appointment 
of a State phrenologist, who must examine not 
less than 2,000 Minnesota heads annually ! 


474 


THE Torrey Botanical Club and the College 
of Pharmacy of the City of New York offer two 
summer courses in botany: one on the general 
morphology of plants by Dr. W. Arthur Bas- 
tedo; the other on cryptogamic botany by Dr. 
Smith Ely Jelliffe. The courses will be given 
at the College of Pharmacy, beginning March 
25th and 26th, respectively, and in connection 
with them weekly field excursions have been 
arranged, lasting from April 24th to June 12th. 


Four hundred Cossacks have been sent to 
the Russo-Persian frontier to establish a mili- 
tary cordon for the enforcement of quarantine 
to prevent the introduction of the plague into 
Asiatic Russia. 

A SECOND international Congress of Sanita- 
tion and Hygiene of Railways and Navigation 
will be held at Brussels during September, 
1897. The preceding Congress at Amsterdam 
was of scientific interest, and the next Congress 
has the support of the Belgium government. 
Those wishing to attend the Congress or obtain 
information regarding it should apply to Dr. J. 
de Lantsheere, rue de |’ Association 56, Brussels. 


THE Council of the American Geographical 
Society has adopted the report of a committee 
consisting of Judge Charles P. Daly, Admiral 
Gherardi and Mr. Chandler Robbins, endorsing 
the plan of Lieutenant R. E. Peary, proposing 
to devote a number of years to complete the 
exploration of the unknown region between 
Greenland and the North Pole. The Council 
recommends that the Society subscribe toward 
the expense of his next expedition, provided 
that such subscription is needed, and the full 
amount to carry out the enterprise is subscribed. 

THE Geographical Club, now the Geographical 
Society of Philadelphia, during the month of 
February, 1896, transferred all its books and 
exchanges to a large room it had rented for a 
library. But a few days later the building was 
entirely destroyed by fire, and the Club lost all 
its possessions. It has only now been possible 
to make a fresh start, and all the books and 
exchanges which have been received since the 
fire and have been stored away have been 
transferred to the new rooms at 1520 Chestnut 
street. The Society would be glad to receive 
publications bearing upon geography. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 116. 


Nature reports that Dr. Arthur Willey, who 
worked out the later development of Am- 
phioxus when he was a pupil of Professor Ray 
Lankester at University College, London, has just 
made a most important discovery. He has suc- 
ceeded in obtaining the ripe eggs of the Pearly 
Nautilus, and is now at work on the develop- 
ment of that most interesting animal. Two 
and a half years ago Dr. Willey gave up a posi- 
tion in Columbia University and accepted the 
Balfour Studentship of the University of Cam- 
bridge, in order to proceed to the coast of New 
Guinea and neighboring islands in quest of the 
embryological history of the Pearly Nautilus. 
He has had great numbers of live nautilus, but, 
in spite of all efforts, had, till December 5th last, 
failed to obtain the eggs. Specimens which he 
was keeping in a large cage, sunk in the sea at 
a suitable spot in the Loyalty Islands, were 
found by him on that day to have spawned. 
Dr. Willey’sindomitable perseverance and devo- 
tion to his task have thus been at last crowned 
by success. Dr. Willey has been assisted in his 
arduous and dangerous enterprise—amongst the 
savage people of those remote islands—by grants. 
of money from the Government Grant Fund ad- 
ministered by the Royal Society. 


Mr. PALMER, the New York Secretary of 
State, has drawn up a report showing that the 
total number of convictions in the New York 
courts was 66,420 in 1896, as compared with 
71,480 in 1895 and 68,146 in 1894. 


ACCORDING to the British Medical Journal the 
medical faculty of Montpellier is authorized to 
accept the important legacy bequeathed to it 
by the widow of Dr. Bouisson, which is as fol- 
lows: The Grammont chateau and grounds to 
be devoted to the creation of a scientific and 
humanitarian establishment; also the furniture 
and linen belonging to the chateau; the interest 
of $60,000 to be applied to defray the expenses. 
of the establishment; a chapel to be built under 
the supervision of the executors; the interest 
of $9,000 to be given as a salary to the priest 
attached to the establishment. All the instru- 
ments, and the drawers containing them, like- 
nesses, manuscripts belonging to the late Dr. 
Bouisson and Dr. Bertrand, the husband and 
father of Mme. Bouisson, and a marble bust of 


MARCH 19, 1897.] 


Dr. Bertrand, are likewise included in the 
legacy. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 


Mrs. BE. A. STEVENS, widow of the founder 
of the Stevens Institute of Technology, has 
given the Institute land adjacent to it valued 
at $30,000. 


THE Trustees of the University of Pennsyl- 
vania have petitioned the Legislature for an 
appropriation of $1,000,000 in aid of the Uni- 
versity, conditional upon the raising of an equal 
amount by the friends of the institution. 


EvUREKA COLLEGE, in Illinois, is said to have 
received in subscriptions $150,000, of which 
some $20,000 was given by Mr. T. E. Bon- 
durant, of Deland, Ill. 


THE annual catalogue of Princeton Univer- 
sity shows that the number of students is 1,045, 
as compared with 1,088 last year. There are 
548 students in the academic department, 374 
in the school of science, 115 graduate students 
and eight fellows. 


TuE following promotions have been made at 
Cornell University : Louis M. Dennis has been 
appointed professor of analytical chemistry ; 
Walter F. Willcox, professor of sociology ; 
Henry 8S. Jacoby, professor of civil engineer- 
ing; John Henry Barr, professor of machine 
design, and Joseph HE. Trevor, professor of 
physical chemistry. 


CHRISTOPHER W. HALL, professor of geology 
and mineralogy and Dean of the College of 
Engineering, Metallurgy and the Mechanic Arts 
in the University of Minnesota, has been granted 
a leave of absence for the year beginning next 
September. Professor Hall has resigned the 
office of Dean, which will be abolished. A re- 
organization of the College has been voted ; the 
departments of civil, mechanical and electrical 
engineering will-constitute the College of En- 
gineering and Mechanic Arts; the departments 
of mining and metallurgy will constitute the 
Minnesota School of Mines, and the course in 
chemical engineering will become a course in 
pure and applied chemistry in the College of 
Science, Literature and the Arts, for which the 
degree of B. S. will be given. 


SCIENCE. 


475 


A MEETING of the delegates from the insti- 
tutions named in the report of the Cowper 
Commission was held on March 25th. Lord 
Lister, the President of the Royal Society, 
moved the following resolution: ‘‘That this 
meeting of delegates represents to her majesty’s 
government the great injury caused to the edu- 
cational interests of the metropolis by the delay 
in establishing a teaching university for Lon- 
don, and urges upon them the necessity of tak- 
ing immediate steps for the constitution of a 
statutory commission for the reconstruction of 
the University of London on the lines of the 
recommendations of the Cowper Commission.”’ 
The motion was seconded by Professor Ricker 
and carried unanimously. Remarks in sup- 
port of the resolution were made by Lord 
Lister, Sir George Young, Sir Henry Ros- 
coe, Rev. Dr. Wace and Lord Reay. The 
latter said, according to the report in the 
London imes, that it was most disheartening 
that the delegates should have to meet again. 
In no other country in Europe would such a 
company of distinguished men of science and of 
learning have urged on its government the 
necessity of founding a teaching university with- 
out its at once acceding to their wishes. We 
in England were being watched from abroad. 
Foreign nations formed their opinion regarding 
our advance in civilization by the action of Par- 
liament in reference to the reconstruction of 
the University of London. The House of 
Lords had done its duty ; last year the bill was 
passed unanimously. The mischief was done 
in the other House. The government had ap- 
pointed a chairman to the proposed commis- 
sion ; its honor and that of the country was en- 
gaged in bringing the matter to a successful 
issue. It was a court of arbitration that was 
required, a court which would tend as much to- 
wards the progress and honor of the country as 
the recently formed court of arbitration with 
the United States. 


Dr. KARru KAtsEr has been promoted to an 
associate professorship of physiology in the Uni- 
versity of Heidelberg, and Dr. Karl Futterer to 
an associate professorship of mineralogy and 
geology in the Polytechnic Institute at Karls- 
ruhe. 


476 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
THE FLORIDA SEA-MONSTER. 


SINCE the publication of the brief note in 
ScrencE, March 5th, I have made additional 
studies of the specimens received, which con- 
firm the cetacean affinities more definitely. 
The extreme firmness and toughness of the 
thick elastic masses of integument show that 
the structure must have been intended for re- 
sistance to blows and to great pressure, and 
could not have pertained to any part of an 
animal where mobility is necessary. They are 
composed of a complex of strong elastic connec- 
tive tissue fibers, like those of cetaceans. There 
are no muscular fibers present in any of the parts 
sent. This lack of muscular tissue and the re- 
sistant nature of the integument are sufficient 
to show that the creature could not have been 
a cephalopod, for in that group a highly con- 
tractile muscular tissue is essential. 

The structure found is closer to that of the 
integument of the upper part of the head and 
nose of a sperm whale than to that of any other 
structure known to me. It is probable, there- 
fore, that the great bag-shaped mass represents 
nearly the whole upper part of the head of 
such a creature, detached from the skull.* 

A rough area, shown in the latest photo- 
graphs of the under side of the upturned mass, 
may indicate the area that was attached to the 
skull. It may have belonged to a very large 
example of a common sperm whale, with an ab- 
normally developed and perhaps diseased nose; 
if not, then it probably pertains to some en- 
tirely unknown creature of the same family. 
It seems hardly probable that any such large 
cetacean remains to be discovered. The shape 
of the mass, and especially of the large, round, 
closed end supposed to represent the nose, is 
quite unlike the head of the sperm whale, which 
is truncated high and narrow in front and pro- 
jects but little beyond the upper jaw. More- 
over, nothing corresponding to the blowhole of 
a sperm whale has been discovered. Some of 
the photographs show an indentation near the 
large end on the upper side, but Dr. Webb in- 


* This view has been adopted by me in an article 
now in type for the next number of The American 
Journal of Science. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 116. 


formed me that it was only a pit or ‘sulcus’ 
about two feet long and six inches deep, per- 
haps due to injury. The internal cavity, so far 
as made out, seems to be unlike that of the 
sperm whale. Therefore, the view that it may 
be from an abnormal or normal sperm whale 
must be regarded as a supposition or theory 
that still needs more evidence to support it, 
but is at present the most plausible. 


A. E. VERRILL. 
NEw HAVEN, March 12, 1897. 


THE FLORIDA MONSTER. 


PROFESSOR VERRILL would be justified in 
making a much more emphatic statement (see 
ScrENCE for March 5th) than that the structure 
of the masses of integument from the ‘ Florida 
monster’ resembles blubber, and the creature 
was probably related to the whales. The sub- 
stance looks like blubber, and smells like blub- 
ber and it is blubber, nothing more nor less. 
There would seem to be no better reason for 
supposing that it was in the form of a ‘bag- 
like structure’ than for supposing that stumps 
of arms were present. The imaginative eye 
of the average untrained observer can see much 
more than is visible to anyone else. 

F. A. Lucas. 


WASHINGTON, D. C., March 8, 1897. 


GIBBERS. 


OBSERVERS the world over have reported, in 
wind-swept places, the occurrence of pebbles 
having carved and polished surfaces due to the 
action of the naturalsand blast. German geolo- 
gists first called these pebbles ‘Kantegerdlle,’ 
from the edges ground on them by intersecting 
planes of wear. Walther next proposed to call 
them ‘facettengerdlle,’ because the facets were 
the essential features, the edges resulting from 
the development of the planes. But not all 
sand-blasted pebbles are facetted. Planes and 
edges are not more common than concave sur- 
faces and pits; or, as Gilbert found in the 
Wheeler Survey, a vermicular fret-work wear 
ofthe rock surface. For these reasons the name 
‘glyptolith ’ was proposed by the writer in an 
account of the pebbles seen in southern New 
England. (Am. Jour. Sci. XLVII., 1894, pp. 


Marcu 19, 1897.] 


63-71.) 
equivalent to German usage. 

W. A. Horn, in The New Illustrated Magazine 
(London, March, 1897, pp. 597-605), gives a 
vivid description of the Eremian or Solitary 
Desert region of Australia. The surface of this 
deflated plain is described as strewn with ‘‘bare 
shining stones, having a polished surface, from 
the sand continually blowing over them. They 
are locally known as ‘gibbers’ (hard g.).’’ 
Those who have occasion to employ a name for 
such pebbles. now have an extended choice of 
German and Greek compounds and English gib- 
berish. J. B. WoopWwoRTH. 

HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF MATHEMATICIANS 
AT ZURICH IN 1897. 


‘(Tp is known that the idea of an international 
congress of mathematicians has been, above all 
in these latter days, the object of numerous 
deliberations on the part of scientists interested 
in its realization. It has appeared to them, by 
reason of the excellent results obtained in other 
scientific domains by an international ‘ entente,’ 
that assuring the execution of this project would 
have very weighty advantages. 

“As the outcome of avery active exchange of 
views, accord was reached on a prime point. 
Switzerland, by its central geographic situation, 
by its traditions and its experience of interna- 
tional congresses, appeared designated to invite 
a first attempt at a reunion of mathematicians. 
In consequence Zurich is chosen as the seat of 
the congress. 

“The mathematicians of Zurich do not disguise 
from themselves the difficulties they will have 
to surmount. But in the interest of this enter- 
prise they have thought it their duty not 
to decline the flattering overtures that have 
been made them from all sides. They have 
decided, therefore, to take all preparatory 
measures for the future congress and, to the 
extent of their powers, to contribute to its suc- 
cess. So, with the concurrence of mathema- 
ticians of other nations, was formed the under- 
signed committee of organization, charged to 
bring together, at Zurich in 1897, the mathematicians 
of the entire world. 

‘¢ The congress, in which you are cordially in- 


SCIENCE. 


At the time there was no English 


ATT 


vited to take part, will take place at Zurich the 
9th, 10th and 11th of August, 1897, in the halls 
of the Federal Polytechnic School. The com- 
mittee will not fail to communicate to you, in 
time, the text of the program determined, beg- 
ging you to inform them of your adherence. 
But even at present it may be said that the 
scientific contributions and questions of policy 
will pertain to subjects of general interest or 
recognized importance. 

“Scientific congresses have also this great: 
advantage, to favor and keep up personal 
relations. The local committee will not fail to. 
give great care to this part of its task, and, 
with this aim, it will arrange a program of fétes 
and social reunions. 

‘¢ May the hopes reposed in this first congress. 
be fully realized! May numerous participants 
contribute by their presence to create, among 
colleagues, not alone coherent scientific rela- 
tions, but also cordial bonds based on personal 
acquaintance ! 

“Finally, may our congress serve the advance- 
ment and the progress of the mathematical 
sciences! ”’ 

The invitation of which the above is a trans- 
lation is signed by eleven from Zurich and ten 
associates, as committee. 

Readers of SCIENCE already know of the per- 
sistent efforts of Vasiliev, of Kazan, and Lais- 
ant, of Paris, to establish this congress. It is 
matter for rejoicing that their noble endeavors ~ 
have been crowned with this definite successs. 

GEORGE BRUCE HALSTED. 


A NEW GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE. 


THE appearance of a new geographical maga- 
zine* is a matter for both congratulation and 
regret. The magazine referred to is designed 
to furnish authentic and well-selected geograph- 
ical data for the use of school teachers, and 
the opening number gives promise that much 
good may be expected from it in this direction. 
The articles presented seem well adapted to the 
audience addressed and are scarcely open to 


* The Journal of School Geography. R. E. Dodge, 
responsible editor ; W. M. Davis, C. W. Hayes, H. 
B. Kimmel, F. M. MeMurry and R. DeC. Ward, as- 
sociate editors. Published at Lancaster, Pa. Price, 
$1.00 a year. 


478 


criticism, when the special aim of the publica- 
tion and the space available are considered. It 
is not so much the subject-matter contained in 
the new magazine, or the dress in which it ap- 
pears, however, as the future of the enterprise 
and the demands of geography in America that 
suggest remarks. 

If the teachers in our schools will support a 
magazine devoted to the pedagogical phases of 
geography there is certainly a broad field open 
to Professor Dodge and his able associates, but 
unless the new magazine has such financial sup- 
port as to be practically independent of the re- 
turns received from subscribers, one can scarcely 
expect it to be long-lived. Other geographical 
magazines have germinated in this country, 
blossomed for a short period and, for want of 
financial support, died or passed to a condition 
of ‘innocuous desuetude.’ There is nothing in 
the appearance or character of the new effort 
to indicate that it possesses greater vitality than 
its predecessors. 

In addition to the geographic magazines re- 
ferred to, at least six of the geographical so- 
cieties of the United States are engaged in 
publishing magazines and journals. None of 
these publications are widely known or are 
exerting an important influence on the develop- 
ment of geography. None of them can be said 
to have a high standard or to make a near ap- 
proach to what may reasonably be considered 
- as an ideal geographical magazine. 

Instead of welcoming an addition to the 
number of but little known and far from suc- 
cessful publications already existing, with which 
the Journal of School Geography claims a place, 
it is for many reasons rather to be wished that 
the number might be materially decreased and 
the survivors strengthened. 

If our several geographical societies could be 
induced to put aside what are considered local 
interests and unite in issuing a single, strong, 
well-edited and attractively-illustrated monthly 
magazine, in which the proceedings of the 
several societies could be reported and the best 
papers read at the local meetings be published, 
a great gain would certainly result. Such a plan 
would do away with duplication in the printing 
of reviews, current notes, etc., and furnish the 
members of the affiliating societies with a wider 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. Vou. V. No. 116. 


range of reading matter, probably with a de- 
crease in expense, than is afforded by the 
present system of multiple publication. An 
American Journal of Geography, in fact as well 
as in name, published under the auspices of the 
geographical societies of America, would be 
welcome in many libraries where scarcely one 
of the present publications referred to finds a 
place. The proposed magazine, being sup- 
ported directly by several societies, would be 
furnished to each of their members, thus secur- 
ing a circulation at the start of at least 4,000. 
The subscriptions of teachers and those inter- 
ested in geography, but residing at a distance 
from the cities where geographical societies 
exist, would largely increase this number. A 
section devoted to studies for teachers would fill 
the place claimed for the journal that has just 
appeared. 

The good that such a magazine as here sug- 
gested might accomplish by reaching a larger 
audience, furnishing them with more varied 
and more carefully selected reading matter, and 
by maintaining a higher standard than the ex- 
isting geographical publications in this country, 
would certainly be far greater than under the 
present system. 

The proposed magazine might be placed 
under the general management of the presi- 
dents or secretaries of the affiliating societies, 
but the responsibility for its appearance and 
standing should rest with a paid editor. Pos- 
sibly, also, compensation should be offered for 
special articles in order to keep abreast of the 
times and furnish opportunities to those who 
could not afford to give their services. 

The deleterious results of diffused and fre- 
quently antagonistic efforts in publication, are 
painfully apparent in the low grade of many of 
our newspapers and popular magazines. This 
almost inevitable result of multiple publication 
may be avoided in geography by a union of in- 
terests. IsRAEL C. RUSSELL. 


COMPLIMENT OR PLAGIARISM. 


Now that Professor Halsted has made use of 
three issues of ScIENCE to prefer and establish 
charges of plagiarism against us, it may be well 
to make a comparison of the charges with the 
evidence as brought out in the discussion. 


MaRcH 19, 1897.] 


In his first article he says: ‘‘ Without the 
slightest word of acknowledgment these pro- 
fessors [Beman and Smith] ‘took’ a whole 
block of problems and a long note from Hal- 
sted’s Elements of Geometry;’’ or, as he puts 
it more picturesquely in another place: 
‘‘ [They] have paid Dr. Halsted’s Elements of 
Geometry the startling compliment of appro- 
priating bodily Book IY., Section I., Partition 
of a Perigon (pp. 151-154), in their Geometry, 
pp. 179-181; Ginn, 1895. Elementary Geom- 
etry has been the most stable part of all science. 
The introduction into it, by Dr. Halsted, of the 
section entitled Partition of a Perigon was an 
utter innovation. The section, and even the 
very phrase ‘ Partition of a Perigon’ had never 
before appeared in the world. This being the 
fact, the following ‘deadly parallel’ shows a 
psychologically interesting ethical color-blind- 
ness on the part of two teachers not otherwise 
known to have been openly immoral.’’ Then 
follows a comparison of the two books, omitting 
the ‘long note,’ which seems to have disap- 
peared from the controversy. 

We have shown that the order of these prob- 
lems is a perfectly natural one and not original 
with Professor Halsted. We have shown that 
the solutions of the problems in the two books 
are not the same. We have shown that Pro- 
fessor Halsted took the word ‘perigon,’ on 
which so much stress has been laid, from San- 
deman’s Pelicotetics without acknowledgment, 
and yet he affirms that ‘‘their [our] * researches 
on this matter turn out highly complimentary 
to me [him];’’ and that ‘‘ our having reason to 
believe that W. B. Smith, Newcomb and Fai- 
fofer all did see the word for the first time in 
Halsted’s books * * * surely * does me [him] 
great honor.’’ Evidently ‘‘honors are easy.”’ 

That Professor Halsted furnished the facts 
given on page 237 of Cajori’s Teaching and 
History of Mathematics in the United States 
we are not inclined to deny, but we look in 
vain for the slightest reference to the word 
‘perigon’ or its origin. 

That the phrase ‘ Partition of a Perigon’ oc- 
curs only in Halsted’s book and our own is 
true-—so far as we know—but surely the notion 
is not so original that Professor Halsted would 
claim it as his personal property. Compare 


SCIENCE. 


479 


Henrici und Treutlein, Lehrbuch der Elementar- 
geometrie, 1881, p.91: ‘‘Denkt man den Voll- 
winkel [Vollwinkel-perigon] * * in n gleiche 
Teile geteilt;’’ and again, ‘‘Teilt man den Voll- 
winkel in m gleiche Teile.’’ If this does not 
suggest ‘ Partition of the Perigon,’ how would 
the idea be expressed in German ? 

In the preparation of our geometry we made 
considerable use of Henrici und Treutlein and in 
our preface we mention it first among the helps 
employed; with respect to the sources of his 
material it is not the habit of Professor Halsted 
to take the public into his confidence. How 
familiar he may have been with this book we 
do not know. 

In answer to his last question we might say 
that Professor Beman saw Sandeman’s Pelicote- 
tics for the first time in the Peabody Institute 
library at Baltimore in February, 1882, and se- 
cured a copy for his private library that same 
year. 

With this summing up of the evidence we 
cheerfully submit the whole question to the in- 
telligent jury of readers of ScirNncE, feeling ab- 
solute confidence as to the verdict that will be 
rendered. BEMAN AND SMITH. 


[As the charges were first brought by Profes- 
sor Halsted, it seems best to close the discus- 
sion with the reply from Professors Beman and 
Smith.—Ep. ]. 


MEXICAN HIEROGLYPHS. 


‘To THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE : I have received 
the following note from Mrs. Zelia Nuttall, an 
expert in all that pertains to Mexican hiero- 
glyphs, in which she shows that figures 114 
and 115 of my paper in United States Na- 
tional Museum Report, 1894, Pp. 623-726, 
were not, as I supposed they might be, figures 
of drills. The fire drill in all countries is simi- 
lar to the drill employed in making holes 
through hard minerals and wood. Mrs. Nut- 
tall’s correction makes it probable that the 
North American nor the South American either 
of them know other than the straight shaft. 

J. D. McGuire. 


Fig. 114 is a copy of the hieroglyph of the 
town Huitzoco taken from the Codex Mendoza, 
p. 39, fig. 4. (See text of Codex Mendoza, 


480 


Vol. V., Kingsborough.) The fact that it was 
employed in pictography to express the sound 
Huitzoco proves that the object depicted is a 
‘Auitzoctli,’ described in Nahuatl dictionaries 
as ‘a staff of oak, used as a lever to upturn 
sod or earth—a digging pole.’ The figure 
placed across the staff is the emblem of the 
pulque (octli) gods and expresses here the 
octli. It offers another interesting illustration 
of the employment by Mexican scribes of com- 
plementary signs, in order to render the mean- 
ing of a hieroglyph unmistakable; a usage I had 
detected and published about 1886 (see Stand- 
ard on Headdress ? Peabody Museum, Papers, 
Appendix). 

From the foregoing it is evident that, instead 
of a possible drill, the hieroglyph represents 
the digging staff, employed for its phonetic 
sound with a complementary sign determining 
it, thus: huitzoctli word expressing name Huit- 
zoco (octli), complementary. 

Fig. 115 is the hieroglyph of the town, Tlach- 
malacac (see, also, text of Codex Mendoza). 
This word explains to us that the signs are rep- 
resentations of 1, the ¢tlachtli, not ‘a possible 
frame,’ but the groundplan of the court em- 
ployed for the national game of ball, or tlachtli. 
This sign is well known, and frequent examples 
of its employment to express the sound tlach 
are to be seen in the same Codex Mendoza; see, 
for instance, plate 33, fig. 2, and plate 38, fig 1, 
where the name of the town of Tlachco is ex- 
pressed in picture writing. 

See also plate 22, fig. 4 (town Tlachyahualco), 
and plate 47, fig. 8, Tlachquianhco, expressed by 
the sign tlachtli, within which are raindrops— 
quiachuitl. The affix co means inside of and is 
expressed by the rain being represented inside 
of the tlachtli. The object represented on the 
tlachtli sign is a spinning-wheel, a malacatl; it 
has nothing to do with the tlachtli and is only 
employed to express its own sound. 

Figs. 100 and 116 are both representations of 
priests kindling the New Fire at the beginning 
of a new cycle, a ceremonial observance. 

Fig. 116 shows how the themaitl, or fire drill 
of wood, was employed to kindle fire in a log 
or large piece of prostrate wood ; a fact that 
does not at all contradict Mr. McGuire’s in- 
teresting observation that, doubtless, the Mexi- 


SCIENOE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 116. 


cans employed the same kind of drill for boring 
wood. ZELIA NUTTALL. 


THE PLAY OF ANIMALS ; THE FUR SEAL. 


Ir was with some little pleasure that I read 
the review of Professor Gross’ Die Spiele der 
Thiere in SCIENCE for February 26th, and found 
that he holds play in animals ‘to be an instinct 
developed by natural selection, * * and to be 
on a level exactly with the other instincts which 
are developed for their utility.’ The pleasure 
lay in the fact that having ventured into the (to 
me) foreign domain of psychology, I had writ- 
ten as follows: ‘‘ The great redeeming feature 
of the fur-seal’s character is its playfulness 
when young, for few animals seem to enjoy life 
so well as the rollicking pups and young bach- 
elors. But here again it is necessary to curb 
our imagination and to remember that while the 
young seals undoubtedly do derive a certain 
amount of enjoyment from their sports very 
much of what strikes us as mere play is in re- 
ality dawning instinct. The sporting of seal 
pups foreshadows the time when their very 
lives will depend on the ability to capture food 
for themselves, and the playful wrestling con- 
tests in which they perpetually engage are mere 
hints of future fierce battles among bulls. Year- 
lings do not ‘round up’ harems of pups with the 
reasoning care that a child bestows on her dolls, 
but because centuries of heredity have caused 
this instinct to be developed long before it 
serves any practical purpose.’’ As the young 
seals do not associate with the old, their play 
would seem to be purely instinctive. The conclu- 
sion derived from this study of the mental traits 
of the fur seal and its direct bearing on the ques- 
tions at issue is that ‘‘this acting by instinct is 
the keynote of the seal’s character; the mind, 
like the body, has been molded by natural 
selection acting on the mass, so that one seal 
behaves like another and knows just as much 
as another, and no more. It is a creature of 
instincts and not guided to any great extent by 
reason; as it has done in the past so it will doin 
the future ; its habits being formed by the slow 
process of natural selection can change but 
slowly; hence the fur seal is not likely to alter 
its habits nor to adapt itself to changes in sur- 
rounding conditions.’ F. A. Lucas. 


Maxrcu 19, 1897.] 


SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 


Electro-Physiology. By W. BIEDERMANN, Pro- 
fessor in Physiology in Jena. Translated by 
FRANCES A. WELBY. Macmillan & Co., Lon- 
don and New York. 1896. Vol. I. Pp. 522. 


The perusal of such a work rather ‘takes it 
out of one’ under the most favorable conditions. 
With regard to the present treatise, a great deal 
may be said in praise of the patience with which 
the material has been collated, and the sound- 
ness of the conclusions which have been drawn 
from experimental facts. Indeed, the scientific 
independence of the author is evinced in the 
homogeneity of the work, which is far from be- 
ing a mere compilation. On the other hand, 
the intrinsic difficulties of the subject are much 
increased by the labored style of their presenta- 
tion; the sentences are frequently huge in 
length, and the noun substantive is commonly 
required to be carried in mind through several 
successive paragraphs. The pedagogic error, 
so common with investigators, of presuming too 
much on the ability of the student to read be- 
tween the lines, is here too constantly illus- 
trated. Another practical defect of the work is 
the lack of topical subdivisions of its subject- 
matter, by which device the reader might have 
been enabled to refer at once to any desired 
point of the discussion. Also, in a book de- 
signed chiefly for the use of investigators, a 
more complete bibliography of the subject than 
that which has been given might fairly have 
been expected. Im all these respects the work 
is far less admirable than that which pertains 
to the same subject in Hermann’s Handbuch 
der Physiologie, published seventeen years ago, 
and is much inferior in the presentation of its 
histological sections to the corresponding parts 
of Quain’s Anatomy. 

The name ‘ Electro-Physiology,’ by which the 
book is announced, is ill-chosen and by no means 
denotes its scope, as is evidenced by the follow- 
ing chapter divisions of the subject: 


1. Organization and Structure of Muscle, pp. 
51. 

2. Change of Form in Muscle during Actiy- 
ity, pp. 199. 

3. The Electrical Excitation of Muscle, pp. 
156. 


SCIENCE. 


481 


4, Hlectro-motive Action in Muscle, pp. 122. 

5. Electro-motive Action of Epithelial and 
Gland Cells, pp. 57. 

After giving due weight to these criticisms, it 
is only fair to say that, since the appearance of 
Hermann’s Handbuch, there has been no such 
approach to providing the student of physiology 
with a complete exposition of present knowl- 
edge of the field covered, as is made by this 
treatise of Biedermann. 

When the reader has become familiar. with 
the intricacies of his style it is clearly seen that 
the author is master of his subject ; he has suc- 
ceeded to a singular degree in linking his data 
into a continuous story, which, now and then, 
issummarized to show what general truths have 
been gained and whither they lead. It is the 
opprobrium of our knowledge of nerve-muscle 
physiology that, though its study has developed 
a vast number of experimental facts, it is well- 
nigh impossible to sift those that pertain essen- 
tially to the living organism from those of 
purely instrumental origin. Professor Bieder- 
mann, while giving full treatment of the ex- 
perimental processes lying at the base of his 
conclusions, has done much towards providing 
a philosophical exposition of our knowledge. 
The author is at his best the greater the intrin- 
sic difficulty of the subject he expounds; while, 

g., his description of the comparative histol- 
ogy of muscle lacks much in clearness, his ac- 
count of the intricate optical changes undergone 
by the contracting tissue is admirable. The 
statement, p. 55, that a single muscular twitch 
is characterized by ‘rapid contraction, with 
much slower subsequent elongation,’ is cer- 
tainly misleading as regards the action of fresh 
muscle under tension. The so-called ‘latent 
period’ of muscular excitement, or the time 
elapsing between the application of a stimulus 
and the beginning of muscular shortening, which 
was first announced by Helmholtz to have the 
value of about .01 sec., has gradually been re- 
duced by subsequent investigators. 

The author’s discussion of this subject is one 
of his best. It is strange, however, that the 
mechanical factor involved in the latent period 
is neither here nor in other works more clearly 
expressed. As the strength of a single stimulus 
is gradually increased, so as to produce a series 


482 


of contractions varying from minimal to maxi- 
mal in amplitude, the latent period is observed 
to become progressively shorter. The weaker 
waves of submaximal contraction do not pass 
through the full length of the muscle, and the 
unexcited part of the tissue acts simply as an 
elastic band whose tension must be increased to 
a definite degree before visible shortening of 
the whole muscle can take place. It can readily 
be seen that the time lost through the extensi- 
bility of the uncontracting part of a muscle fibre 
largely accounts for the ‘latent period of stimu- 
lation.’ The adjective ‘Subliminal,’ used by the 
translator to express a stimulus too weak to 
excite contraction, is not to be found in Webster. 

Errors of type and expression in the work are 
not numerous; but in the figures of tracings 
representing the effect of rest on the curve of 
muscular fatigue the increased height in the 
contractions immediately following an interval 
of rest is not represented. Also, on page 540, 
the terms hilus and hilum are used indiffer- 
ently. 

Certain views which are implied, rather than 
expressed, should not be admitted without 
specific inquiry. Thus, the author assumes a 
likeness in kind between those summations of 
stimuli, each stimulus by itself being ineffective, 
which, on the one hand, produce tetanus in 
certain slowly moving muscles, and, on the 
‘other, cause reflex action from the spinal cord 
when applied to a sensory surface (p. 119). 
It is a satisfaction to find, at last, an author 
who gives true value to current density as a 
physiological stimulus rather than to current 
intensity ; a current of given intensity has very 
different stimulating powers according as it is 
led to the tissues through broad or narrow 
electrodes. To the younger student, the ex- 
planation that physiological kathode, or point 
of excitation by the electric current, is at the 
place where the current leaves the irritable tis- 
sue, will clear up many obscure results of ex- 
periment. The author draws, perhaps, too 
close an analogy between the polar excitation 


effects shown by some protozoa on the passage’ 


of a constant current through them and the ex- 
citatory phenomena of muscle and nerve. There 
is nowhere to be found a more complete discus- 
sion of du Bois-Reymond’s law of the excitation 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 116. 


of irritable tissues. The law asserts, in brief, 
that it is not the absolute intensity of the stimu- 
lus which determines its irritating value, but 
fluctuation in intensity. Biedermann shows 
that the prolonged contraction manifested by 
muscle during the passage of a constant current 
through it forms no true exception to the law. 
He also calls attention to a needed amendment 
to du Bois-Reymond’s law, in that ‘‘ not merely 
the local changes at the seat of excitation, but 
still more the propagation of the excitatory 
process, 1. e., the discharge of a wave of excita- 
tion (contraction), are dependent upon the vari- 
ations of current intensity, and the steepness of 
the same, in the case of tissues in which con- 
ductivity is adequately developed. The ‘uni- 
versal law of excitation’ refers, therefore, less 
to the manner of the excitatory process, and 
effectuation of the changes of the excitable 
substance fundamental to it, at the seat of direct 
excitation (physiological anode and kathode), 
than to the conditions of the propagation of the 
excitatory process by conduction’’ (p. 314). 

It is a disappointment to find that, as yet, 
there is little light to be shed upon the relations 
between the excitatory and contraction waves 
of muscle. 

Much abtruse and technical literature would 
have to be culled in order to reach the results 
so ably summarized in the sections on electro- 
motive action in muscle; particularly satisfac- 
tory are the pages devoted to the ‘ Positive 
variation of the muscle current.’ 

It is a worthy reward for all the thought and 
labor that for nearly fifty years have been 
devoted to electro-physiology, to find that here 
the facts are pointing to a physiological gener- 
alization which was first conceived in another 
field of the science. A decade ago Gaskell, as 
the result of a masterly series of researches, 
concluded that to each contractile tissue there 
were supplied two forms of nerve fibre, a mo- 
tor and an inhibitory branch, the former excit- 
ing to functional activity and the latter bring- 
ing the organ to rest. As motor action, repre- 
senting evolution of energy, is a result of chem- 
ical disassimilation, so inhibition is coincident 
with absorption of energy by a tissue and its 
chemical change is one of assimilation. This 
theory, arrived at by a study of the phenomena 


MaxrcH 19, 1897. ] 


of muscular contraction, is now supported by 
results obtained through the study of the elec- 
trical changes set up in muscle by artificial 
stimulation. In brief, the chemical changes of 
disassimilation, coincident with functional ac- 
tivity, which are brought about by stimulation 
of the motor nerye, cause the active part of the 
tissue to become electro-negative to the resting 
part. — 

On the other hand, certain other efferent 
nerves, having an inhibitory effect, cause, when 
stimulated, the part of the muscle under their 
influence to become electro-positive to the rest- 
ing part. Inall probability these nerves also ex- 
cite chemical assimilation and the absorption of 
energy. 

It is approaching an anti-climax to turn from 
such a conception as this to the arid field of 
glandular electricity. Here the mechanical 
difficulties in the way of experimentation have 
affected the purity of results to such a degree 
that little of physiological importance can, as 
yet, be predicated from the work. In conclu- 
sion, a word of admiration is due the translator 
to whose fortitude we are indebted for this work 
in its present form. The rendition seems, for 
the most part, to be excellent; and the book- 
making by Macmillan is, of course, of the best. 


HENRY SEWALL. 
UNIVERSITY OF DENVER. 


The Coming Ice Age. By C. A. M. TABER. 

Geo. H. Ellis. 1896. Pp. 94. 

The difficulty of accounting for the Glacial 
period is so great and the disagreement of 
glacialists is so profound that one cannot but 
welcome any sincere effort to shed additional 
light upon the subject. Especially is one in- 
clined to give a candid hearing to an experi- 
enced navigator who has been led to study the 
effects of ocean currents upon climatic condi- 
tions. Such is the author of this little volume, 
who, in his extensive voyages had his attention 
directed to the subject at an early date, and in 
later years has made his personal observations 
the basis for collecting a large body of facts 
otherwise attainable. 

The theory of the author is that a land con- 
nection between Patagonia and the Antarctic 
Continent, or a great diminution of the channel 


SCIENCE. 


483 


between those lands, would produce an effect 
upon oceanic currents favorable to the glacia- 
tion of both hemispheres. In supposing such a 
land connection he is in company with many 
zoologists who have inferred the same from the 
unique distribution of the plants and animals of 
the southern hemisphere. 

Assuming this extension of land from Pata- 
gonia to the Antarctic Continent, the effect 
upon the currents would be, according to the 
author, as follows: The prevailing westerly 
winds in the south temperate zone would pile 
the waters up against the western side, and 
would drive them away from the eastern side 
of the southern part of this continent. The 
shape of the continents and the general direc- 
tion of ocean currents are such that during this 
condition of things there would be a movement 
of water towards the south pole in excess of that 
moving toward the north pole. This accumu- 
lation of water about the south pole would be 
increased by the attraction of the water until 
there was a submergence of the isthmus con- 
necting Patagonia with the Antarctic Continent, 
such as to allow a free passage from the higher 
levels of the Pacific to the lower levels of the 
Atlantic in that latitude. This water from the 
Pacific, being a cold current, would displace 
that which had formerly been drawn down 
from the tropics on the east side of South 
America, and thus lower the temperature of 
the Antarctic Continent and produce conditions 
favorable to glaciation, such as exist at the 
present time. These conditions he believes to 
be cumulative. 

This very general statement of the theory 
passes over many details, and it may be that it 
does not in all respects fairly represent the 
author’s views. But we are compelled to confess 
that his style is so obscure, and his digressions 
are so frequent, that we have found it difficult 
to be sure that we have comprehended his 
meaning. The author’s confidence in the sta- 
bility of the earth’s crust is such that he is not 
willing to grant the moderate changes of level 
in the sea-bottom south of Patagonia which 
would be necessary to secure the submergence 
there which his theory demands ; therefore, he 
is compelled to throw the whole burden upon 
the winds and the augmenting attraction of the 


484 


accumulating water. But it is difficult, not to 
say impossible, to believe that these forces 
would be adequate to the production of any 
such results as he supposes. The total amount 
of displacement which could result from them 
could be only a few feet. 

Combined with the theory of moderate oscil- 
lations in the earth’s crust at the proper places, 
Captain Taber’s views are. helpful in apprecia- 
ting the effect of the ocean currents in so dis- 
tributing heat and moisture as to produce glacial 
conditions both in the southern and northern 
hemisphere. But, unless he admits these 
changes of land level, we see little force in his 
arguments, and consequently his prognostica- 
tion of a coming ice age is without any scientific 
basis. 

G. FREDERICK WRIGHT. 


Researches upon the Antiquity of Man in the Dela- 
ware Valley and the Eastern United States. By 
Henry C. Mercer. Ginn & Co., Boston. 
1897. 8vo. Illustrated. Pp. 178. 

This volume is one of the series in ‘phil- 
ology, literature and archeology’ published by 
the University of Pennsylvania. They are not 
intended to be ‘popular,’ but to convey the 
products of original research work. Such is 
the character of the present number. It isa 
plain and careful description of a series of 
studies conducted in the last few years, with 
the object of finding out whether there is suf- 
ficient evidence in the locality selected to assert 
that man lived there in the glacial or early 
post-glacial period. 

Such assertions have been and are confidently 
advanced by several prominent American arch- 
eologists, especially with reference to the ex- 
humation of chipped stones from the glacial 
gravels at and near Trenton, New Jersey. 

On this particular point Mr. Mercer’s per- 
sonal researches are negative. His repeated 
examinations of the Trenton grounds ‘ failed 
to reveal a specimen in place’ (p. 32); the 
caves he examined along the Delaware river 
contained nothing of man’s handiwork which 
pointed elsewhere than to the Indian as we 
know him; and the so-called ‘turtle backs’ of 
argillite, found in the Trenton gravels, were 
probably ‘intruded by modern Indians’ (p. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 116. 


60); and, finally nothing was found ‘to corrob- 
orate the alleged antiquity of the chipped 
blades from Trenton,’ and nota little to weaken 
it (p. 85). 

These results, though in a measure negative, 
leave the supporters of the ‘glacial man’ 
theory at Trenton, with a large fraction of 
their argument exploded, since much has been 
made of the ‘argillite implements’ as proving 
antiquity. Now we know that whole quarries 
of argillite were worked by the modern Indian. 

Other essays in the volume describe the ex- 
ploration of an Indian ossuary on the Choptank 
River, Maryland, with a description of the 
physical characters of the bones by Professor 
Cope, and a discussion of their diseased (prob- 
ably syphilitic) conditions by Dr. R. H. Harte; 
investigations by Mr. Mercer in an aboriginal 
shell heap on York River, Maine, in which 
traces of cannibalism were discovered ; and 
excavations at the ‘Indian house’ and at Dur- 
ham Cave, by the author. Among other inter- 
esting facts which Mr. Mercer has been enabled. 
to substantiate by those studies is that in long 
post-glacial times the peccary, the tapir, the 
mastodon and the fossil sloth (Megalonyx) 
roamed the forests of the eastern United States. 
This, however, ‘refers to an epoch in the past 
removed by many milleniums from the discovery 
of America’ (p. 175), in the author’s opinion. 

The earlier pages of the volume recite seyv- 
eral important investigations of the author in 
the ‘quaternary’ deposits of France and Spain. 
These gave him an excellent standard of com- 
parison in his American work and the thor- 
oughly scientific manner in which he carried 
it out is visible on every page. 

There are a number of accurate and well- 
taken illustrations of localities and specimens, 
and the notes will aid the student in gaining 
access to the literature of the subject. It is to 
be regretted that no index was prepared. 

D. G. BRINTON. 

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS. 
PHYSICAL REVIEW, MARCH-APRIL. 


The Lead Cell: By B. BE. Moore, The ex- 
tension of the theory of free ions, solution ten- 


Marcu 19, 1897. ] 


sion and asmotic pressure to the lead cell was 
first made by Le Blanc. ‘This theory is farther 
developed in the article. The number of tetra- 
valent lead ions at the positive plate of a 
eharged lead cell is very small. When a cur- 
rent is taken from the cell, PbSo, is formed 
when the point of saturation of bivalent lead 
ions is reached. If the formation of such a 
product involves time, a supersaturation of bi- 
valent ions would rapidly follow. This is es- 
pecially true if the current is large. Upon the 
Nernst theory this would produce a rapid fall 
in the electro-motive-force of the cell, until 
equilibrium is produced, 7. e., until the rate of 
precipitation of the lead sulphate is equal to its 
rate of formation. In the charging process 
there would be a corresponding diminution in 
the products of ionization, and the charging 
electro-motive-force must rapidly rise above the 
normal electro-motive-force of the cell. Hx- 
periment confirms these deductions from the 
Nernst theory, and shows that these initial 
changes take place largely within the first two 
minutes after closing, or after opening the cir- 
cuit. Debarring this initial change in the cell, 
which causes large losses in energy, the curve 
of the electro-motive-force of the cell is shown 
to agree through a wide range with changes in 
electro-motive-force brought about by progres- 
sive changes both in the solution tension of the 
electrode and in the pressure of the ions. It is 
shown that Planck’s thermodynamic treatment 
leads to the same deductions. 

On the Influence of Electrification upon Surface 
Tension of Water: By EH. L. Nicwoxs and J. A. 
CLARK. In this paper an attempt was made to 
determine by quantitative measurements the 
change in the surface tension of liquids to 
which the well-known effect of electrification 
upon water jets, etc.,isdue. The method pur- 
sued was that of the water dropper. A reser- 
voir from which the water drops proceeded was 
kept charged by the continuous action of a 
Holtz machine driven by an electric motor. A 
large battery of Leyden jars furnished the cir- 
cuit with sufficient capacity to prevent rapid 
fluctuations of potential. 

The electrification of the reservoir was meas- 
ured by means of a form of an absolute electrom- 
eter; the temperature of the falling drops by 


SCIENCE. 


485 


means of athermo-electric junction. Therange 
of potentials was from zero to 11,000 volts. 
Beyond the latter value measurements became 
impossible because drops were no longer 
formed. The result of these measurements in- 
dicates that the surface tension falls off at first 
slowly, and then more and more rapidly as the 
potential rises, until at 10,000 volts it has been 
reduced to about one-half its value for the elec- 
trified liquid. No difference could be detected 
between the action of positive and negative 
charges. 

On the Mechanical Conceptions of Electricity 
and Magnetism: By W. S. FRANKLIN. This 
paper develops detailed mechanical concep- 
tions of various electro-magnetic phenomena, 
based upon the fundamental conceptions of 
Maxwell, with particular reference to the 
quantitative relations which hold among the 
various electro-magnetic quantities. Among 
other things, a minute description is given of 
the action which takes place in the region sur- 
rounding a Hertz oscillator. 

On a Possible Development of the Idiostatic 
Electrometer: By C. Barus. The idiostatic 
electrometer has not hitherto been developed 
to an extent comparable with the quadrant 
electrometer; yet it possesses the advantage 
that it introduces no foreign potentials to co- 
operate with those under investigation. The 
writer describes certain results obtained in an 
endeavor to perfect the idiostatic electrometer. 
The moving system was supported by a double 
bifilar suspension. The disc was made very 
light and protected by a guard ring. The ex- 
cursions of the disk were observed by Michel- 
son’s refractometer. Thus in one case ten 
fringes passed for a single volt; estimating 
0.1 fringe the sensitiveness thus became 0.01 
volt. 

Empirical Formule for Viscosity as a Function 
of Temperature: By A. WiLMER Durr. Sev- 
eral formule for the viscosity of liquids at dif- 


~ ferent temperatures have been proposed. The 


writer classifies and discusses these and con- 
siders means of interpolation and extrapola- 
tion. 

A synchronous Motor for Determining the Fre- 
quency of an Alternating Current: By GEORGE 
S. Motrer. This paper describes an exceed- 


486 


ingly neat instrument for determining the fre- 
quency of an alternating current. A small 
synchronous motor is connected through a train 
of gears to a dial which indicates the frequency 
direct. The apparatus is small and portable, 
the base being 14 inches long and the total 
weight being 8.5 pounds. It may be operated 
from a 16 candle-power lamp socket. 

Lecture-Room Demonstration of Orbits -of 
Bodies Under the Action of a Central Attraction: 
By R. W. Woop. The apparatus consists of 
an electro-magnet with a conical pole piece pro- 
jecting through a horizontal glass plate covered 
with lampblack. A bicycle ball is shot out 
upon this plate; its path is traced and a per- 
manent record of its motion is thus obtained. 
Various orbits were thus determined. 

The Refractory Index of Water and Alcohol for 
Alcohol and Electrical Waves: By A. D. CoLE. 
This short note calls attention to the fact that 
the writer in a previous paper had not ignored 
the absorption of the Medium. 

New Booxs: Higher Mathematics, Merriman 
and Woodward ; A Primer of Quaternions, Hath- 
away ; Alternating-Current Machinery, D.C. and 
T. C. Jackson; Transformers for Single and 
Multiphase Circuits, Kapp ; Méthode et principes 
des sciences naturelles, Brentano; Elements of 
Electro-Chemistry, Le Blane ; Motive Power and 
Gearing for Electrical Machinery, Carter ; Mathe- 
matical Papers read at the International Mathe- 
matical Congress, Chicago, 1893; Laboratory 
Manual of Inorganic Chemistry, Williams ; Chem- 
istry at a Glance, Tuttle; Inorganic Chemical 
Preparations ; The American Annual of Photogra- 
phy, Thorp; Problems and Questions in Physics, 
Matthews and Shearer. 


AMERICAN GEOLOGIST, MARCH. 


O. W. Crospy and M. L. FULLER present 
the results of their investigation as to the 
‘Origin of Pegmatite,’ or giant granite. The 
intimate association and evident close connec- 
tion of pegmatite with undoubted plutonic 
rocks, and their agreement with the latter in 
composition and relations to the inclosing for- 
mations, have led many writers to regard the 
pegmatite itself as of plutonic igneous origin. 
It is also not long since geologists were united 
in the conviction that these were true vein rocks, 


SCIENCE. 


LN. S. Vou. V. No. 116. 


due to the deposition of the various component: 
minerals from solution in open fissures or other 
preexisting cavities. Now, however, a decided 
drift in the opposite direction may again be 
noted, and recent literature indicates an ap- 
proaching agreement in favor of the association 
of the pegmatites, in their genetic relations, 
with plutonic igneous rocks rather than with 
subterranean aqueous deposits. The authors 
conclude that the magma of pegmatite may be 
formed by normal magmatic differentiation in a 
boss, or large body of magma, both crystalliza- 
tion and the operation of different temperatures 
in various parts of the mass tending to increase 
the degree of hydration of the residuum about 
favorable centers. These magma residues may 
erystallize in situ, in the midst of the preyi- 
ously solidified normal granite, or they may 
suffer extravasation and crystallize in spaces in 
the parent rock or in the surrounding forma- 
tions. Also, apophyses of the normal granite 
magma may invade highly heated, water-bear- 
ing formations, such as schists, and experience 
the necessary hydration for conversion into peg- 
matite magma. 

The correlation papers on ‘The Galena and 
Maquoketa Series,’ by F. W. Sardeson, end 
with this number. The basis employed has not 
been the usual one of computation of percent- 
ages among the various beds, but the limits, 
range, distribution and variation of the com- 
monest species has been taken. 

‘Evidence of Glaciation in Labrador and 
Baffin Land,’ by R. S. Tarr. All of the land, 
excepting possibly the highest parts, has been 
buried beneath an ice sheet. The glacial ac- 
tion produced more effect in the down-cutting 
of the surface in Labrador than in Baffin Land, 
and there is evidence that the ice has with- 
drawn from these regions in very recent times. 
Ice erosion has been greater in New England 
than in the northern region. On the other 
hand, proceeding northward, the effects of post- 
glacial weathering become progressively pro- 
nounced, so that the recency of the ice uncov- 
ering is more and more marked. 

O. H. Hershey has the first installment of a 
paper on ‘Esker’s indicating stages of glacial 
recession in the Kansan epoch in Northern 
Illinois.’ 


Marcu 19, 1897.] 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 


BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON, 272D 
MEETING, SATURDAY, MARCH 27. 


C. H. TownsEND spoke of ‘ The Distribution 
and Migration of the Northern Fur Seal,’ giv- 
ing a summary of the results obtained from a 
study of the log books of pelagic sealers, and 
illustrating his remarks by a chart showing the 
location of the seals on the Asiatic and American 
coasts at different seasons. The two herds, the 
American and the Asiatic, did not mingle, and 
the migrations of the former were much the 
more extensive of the two. 

Charles Louis Pollard discussed ‘What Con- 
stitutes a Type in Botany,’ arguing in favor of 
recognizing multiple types when necessary. He 
suggested the abolition of the expression ‘ dupli- 
cate type,’ on the ground that all specimens on 
which the original diagnosis is based must be of 
coordinate rank as actual types. 

Lester I’. Ward gave a ‘ Description of Seven 
Species of Cycadeoidea from the Iron Ore De- 
posits of Maryland,’ saying that up to Novem- 
ber 4, 1893, but a single species was known, 
based on four specimens collected by Philip Ty- 
son before 1861. In 1893 Mr. Arthur Bibbins 
began work in the iron ore beds, under the aus- 
pices of the Woman’s College of Baltimore, and 
up to the preset time he had procured no less 
than 59 specimens. These belonged to seven 
different species, but at present there was no 
reason to recognize more than the one genus 
Cycadeoidea. 

F. A. Lucas, 
Secretary. 


ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 


THE 260th meeting of the Society was held on 
March 2, 1897. 

Dr. H. Carrington Bolton read a paper en- 
titled ‘The Language used in Talking to 
Domestic Animals.’ He discussed the subject 
under the various animals controlled by man, 
dogs, horses, cattle, sheep, swine and poultry, 
and gave illustrations from nearly every coun- 
try in Europe and every State in the Union. 
His essay, which elicited much discussion, will 
appear in full in the American Anthropologist. 

The discussion was by Professor Lester F. 


SCIENCE. 


487 


Ward, W. H. Blodgett, P. B. Pierce, Dr. Frank 
Baker, Mr. Walter Hough, Dr. J. H. McCor- 
mick and others. 
J. H. McCormick, 
General Secretary. 


MEETING OF THE N. Y. SECTION OF THE AMERI- 
CAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY. 


‘THe New York Section of the American 
Chemical Society held its regular meeting on 
March 5th. : 

The following papers were read : 

‘Note on the Volumetric Estimation of Lead,’ 
by J. H. Wainwright. 

‘Blectrolytic Production of Alkali Nitrites,’ 
by Wm. M. Grosvenor. 

‘Method of Drying Sensitive Organic Sub- 
stances,’ by C. C. Parsons. 

‘Chemistry of the Sanitary Control of Milk 
Supplies,’ by E. J. Lederle. 

‘Quantitative Separations by Sodium Nitrite,’ 
by Gilette Wynkoop. 

‘On the Composition of Beet Sugar Ash,’ by 
Cc. F. A. Meisel. 

‘Determination of Lead in Lead Ores,’ by 
Richard K. Meade. 

The meeting was well attended, and much 
interest was shown in the papers read. 


DURAND WOODMAN, 
Secretary. 


THE GEOLOGICAL CLUB OF THE UNIVERSITY OF 
MINNESOTA, FEBRUARY 20, 1897. 


Mr. WARREN UPHAM read a paper entitled 
‘The Topography and Glacial Geology of the 
City of St. Paul.’ 

Attention was directed to the remarkable 
northeastward loop of the Mississippi river, 
here interrupting its general southeastward 
course. The rock formations beneath the drift 
have a horizontal stratification, being, in ascend- 
ing order, the St. Peter sandstone, Trenton lime- 
stone and Trenton shales. The observed thick- 
ness of the shales is about 145 feet, their highest 
outcrop being 260 feet above the river or 945 
feet above the sea. Above these bed rocks the 
glacial and modified drift deposits form the sur- 
face, and rise in morainic hills and smoother 
ridges from 200 to nearly 400 feet above the 


488 


river. The most noteworthy feature in the 
glacial geology of the area of St. Paul (com- 
prising 55 square miles) consists in its deposits 
of modified drift at high levels, forming a group 
of plateaus of gravel and sand, rising with 
steep slopes to nearly flat upper plains 100 to 
125 feet above the highest terraces representing 
the old flood plain of the river valley. These 
plateaus tell of a water level peculiar to this 
area; and the general contour of the region, 
the sigmoid course of the Mississippi, and two 
moraine belts, one of northeastern drift in the 
east part of the city, and another of northwest- 
ern drift in the west part, imply that this was 
the site of a glacial or ice-dammed lake, which 
is named Lake Hamline. The surface of the 
glacial lake during the early part of its exist- 
ence, as shown by the Hamline and Como 
plateaus, was about 250 feet above the present 
river, or 930 to 940 feet above the present sea 
level. A little later, when the plateau a mile 


east of Lake Como was formed, the glacial lake - 


level had fallen five or ten feet. Still later 
plateaus show that this lake finally was reduced 
to 875 or 870 feet above the sea. Its outlet was 
toward the southwest and south, across the 
present watershed between the Minnesota and 
Mississippi rivers, to Rich Valley and the Mis- 
sissippi. The modified drift forming the pla- 
teaus has an aggregate volume of a tenth of a 
cubic mile, and it is thought to have been 
brought by streams from the englacial and 
finally superglacial drift of the waning ice sheet. 
CHARLES P. BERKEY, 
Secretary. 


THE TEXAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 


THE regular monthly meeting of the Texas 
Academy of Science was held in the chemical 
lecture room of the University of Texas on 
Friday evening, March 5, 1897. 

Papers were presented by Dr. K. F. Northrup, 
professor of physics, on ‘ Ether,’ and by Dr. H. 
W. Harper, professor of chemistry, on ‘A New 
Suggestion Concerning the Transmutation of 
Matter.’ 

Since the February meeting of the Academy 
the transactions for 1896 have been published, 
together with the proceedings, from its organ- 
ization, January 9, 1892, to January 1, 1897, 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 116. 


thus completing Volume I. This publication 
of 404 pages contains the constitution, lists of 
officers, patrons, fellows and members, thirty- 
four papers in full and seven abstracts. Of 
the papers and abstracts thirteen are upon geo- 
logical or related subjects; six on mathematics; 
six on biological and allied topics; four on 
engineering; two on philosophy ; two on edu- 
cation and culture; and one each on physics, 
language, ethnology and physiological chemis- 
try; to these there must also be added four 
addresses of a somewhat general character. 

As now constituted the Academy consists of 
two patrons, each of whom has paid into the 
treasury $500, thirty-four fellows and 107 


members. 
FREDERIC W. SIMONDS. 


NEW BOOKS. 

The Will to Believe. W. JAMES. New York, 
London and Bombay, Longmanns, Green 
& Co. 1897. Pp. xvii+332. 

An Introduction to Geology. WILLIAM B. Scorr. 
New York and London, The Macmillan Com- 
pany. 1897. Pp. xxvii+5738. $1.90. 

Untersuchungen tuber den Baw der Cyanophycien 
und Bakterien. ALFRED FISCHER. Jena, 
Gastayv Fischer. 1897. Mark’7. 

Zur Zoogeographie der landbewohnenden Wirbel- 
losen. OTTo StTouy. Berlin, R. Friedlander 
& Sohn. 1897. Pp. 1138. Mark 4. 

Das Tierreich. I. Lieferung, Aves. bearbeitet 
von Ernst Hartert. Berlin, R. Friedlander 
und Sohn. 1887. Pp. 98. Subscription price, 
Mark 4.50. 

First Principles of Natural Philosophy. A. E. 
DoLBEAR. Boston and London, Ginn & Co. 
1897. Pp. 318. 

Laboratory Practice for Beginners in Botany. 
W. A. SETCHELL. New York and London, 
The Macmillan Company. 1887. Pp. xiv+ 
199. 90 cts. 


La cause premiére d’aprés les données expéri- 


mentales. FKMILE FERRIERE. Paris, Felix 
Alcan. Pp. 462. 
The Phase Rule. WILDER D. BANCROFT. 


Ithaca, N. Y., The Jour. Phys. Chem. 1897. 
Pp. viii-+255. 


SCIENCE 


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Cable Testing Apparatus, Meter Bridges, Con- 
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Dec. 1, 1896. Just Published. Sixth Edition of 


THE MICROSCOPE AND MICROSCOPI= 
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COMSTOCK PUBLISHING CO., Ithaca, N. Y. 
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ence to the brain. Pp. 187,including 7 Vab'es. Price, postpaid. $1. 

Also, List of Neural |¢rms, wi h Comments and Bib iography, 
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SCIENCE 


EpiToRIAL Committrr: S. Newcoms, Mathematics; R. S. WooDWARD, Mechanics; E. C. PICKERING. 
Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THURSTON, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry; 
J. LE Cont#E, Geology; W. M. Davis, Physiography; O. C. MARsH, Paleontology; W. K. 
Brooks, C. HART MERRIAM, Zoology; S. H. ScuDDER, Entomology; N. L. Britton, 
Botany; HENRY F. OSBORN, General Biology; H. P. BowpircH, Physiology; 
J. S. BinLines, Hygiene ; J. McKEEN CATTELL, Psychology ; 
DANIEL G. BRINTON, J. W. POWELL, Anthropology. 


. Fripay, Marcs 26, 1897. 


CONTENTS: 
The Forest Reservation Policy: B. E. FERNow....489 
Experiments wpon Metabolism in the Human Body, 
under the Direction of the United States Depart- 
MENT Ofi AGTICUILUNC .tocdacernc-tasteneacersnececsecnas ees 493 
An Induction Coil Method for X-Rays: CHARLES 
LL. NorTON, RALPH R. LAWRENCE.............++. 496 


The New York State Science Teachers’ Association 
CII. ), including Addresses by Ralph S. Tarr and 
_ Richard E. Dodge: FRANKLIN W. BARROWS..498 


Current Notes on Physiography :— : 
Tennessee Valley Region, Alabama; The Preglacial 
» Kanawha Again; Stages of Appalachian Erosion ; 
Balizer on the Diluvial Aar Glacier: W. M. 
IDV Bho sonsansa2ansnosapscstnns 2608 Shansopodaoaneboeg909000000 507 


Current Notes on Meteorology :— 

~The Teaching of Climatology in Medical Schools : 
Sunstroke Weather of August, 1896 ; Deforestation 
and Rajnfall: R. DEC. WARD............00cs0se0eee 508 


Current Notes on Anthropology :— 
The European ‘ Quaternary’ Man; The African 
JD TASS “IDL Cis TERIOSENON acc cosndocnscocngoasbacbos0es 509 


Scientific Notes and News :— 
A Bill for the Suppression of Science, Literature ~ 
AnaAgti GEN endlie. decs.csetcosccsjeseecscietcvereessetieeesk 510 


University and Educational News..........0ss.secesereees 514 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 
. The Former Extension of Ice in Greenland: R.S8. 
TARR, T. C. CHAMBERLIN. History of Elemen- 
tary Mathematics: FLORIAN CAJORI.............+6 515 


Scientific Literature :— 
Creighton’s Microscopic Researches on the Formative 
Property of Glycogen: R. H. CHITTENDEN. 
‘Barnes’ Analytical Keys to the Genera and Species 
of North American Mosses: GEO. F. ATKINSON..517 


Scientific Journals :— 
Journal of Geology: H.F.B. American Chem- 
ical Journal: J. ELLIOTT GILPIN. The Astro- 


Societies and Academies :— 


Torrey Botanical Club: EDWARD S. BURGESS. 


Science Club of the University of Wisconsin. W. 
S. MarsHaALL. The Academy of Science of St. 
Lowis: WM. TRELEASE. Science Club of North- 
western University: THOMAS F. HOLGATE....... 523 


New Books.........+ nfeostaciclescwenceincacecvek oreeos seaeeeronr 524 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended 
for review should be sent to the responsible editor, Prof. J. 
McKeen Cattell, Garrison-on-Hudson, N. Y. 


THE FOREST RESERVATION POLICY. 

On March 38, 1891, the Congress of the 
United States enacted into law a new and 
important policy, namely, that the govern- 
ment should own and hold in perpetuity 
certain lands other than those needed for 
its immediate purposes or those set aside 
for parks. 

_ This departure from the accepted policy 
of the past, according to which the public 
domain is held by the government only 
until it can be disposed of to actual settlers, 
was based upon the perception that a forest 
cover on slopes and mountains must be 
maintained to regulate the flow of streams, 
to prevent erosion and thereby to maintain 
favorable conditions in the plains below. 

Enormous devastation of the public 
timber by theft and fire has gone on for 
decades, through absence of any care and 
through lack of any rational system in the 
manner of permitting the utilization of the 
wood material by the resident population. 
For the last 25 years every Secretary of the 
Interior, every Commissioner of the Gen- 
eral Land Office, has pointed out this de- 
plorable condition and has asked for legisla- 


490 


tive relief. Bill after bill has been intro- 
duced for the protection of the public tim- 
ber, but most of these never found consid- 
eration even in the committees, much less 
on the floor of the two Houses of Congress. 


HISTORY OF FOREST RESERVATIONS. 


Tn 1887 the then Secretary of the Ameri- 
can Forestry Association formulated and 
had introduced into the 50th Congress an 
elaborate bill (afterwards in modified form 
known as the ‘Paddock Bill,’ 52d Cong.» 
Senate 3,235) providing for the withdrawal 
of all timber lands on the public domain 
from entry or other disposal, setting the 
same aside as public forest reservations, 
and instituting a fully organized service in 
the Department of the Interior to take care 
of such forest reserves, protecting them 
against fire and theft, regulating their oc- 
cupancy by prospectors, miners and herders, 
and permitting the cutting and sale of the 
timber under a system of licenses and under 
application of rational forestry methods. 

Of this radical yet reasonable legislation 
all that could be obtained was the enact- 
ment of a brief clause, inserted at the last 
hour of the 51st Congress into ‘An Act to 
repeal Timber-culture laws and for other 
purposes.’ The credit for securing this 
recognition belongs to the then Secretary of 
the Interior, Hon. John W. Noble. This 
clause, approved March, 1891 (Public—No. 
162, Sec. 24), by which the important policy 
of forest reservations was established, reads 
as follows : 

That the President of the United States may from 
time to time set apart and reserve in any State or 
Territory having public land bearing forests, in any 
part of the public lands, wholly or in part covered 
with timber or undergrowth, whether of commercial 
value or not, as public reservations, and the President 
shall, by public proclamation, declare the establish- 
ment of such reservations and the limits thereof. 

Under this law seventeen forest reserva- 
tions were made, sixteen by President 
Harrison, largely at the end of his admin- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 117. 


istration, and one by President Cleveland, 
on September 28, 1893. The estimated 
area of these is 17,500,000 acres. In some 
cases these were asked by petition and 
were investigated by the General Land 
Office; in others they were announced 
without previous public notice. In the 
absence of specific legislation the Secre- 
taries of the Interior construed the reser- 
vation of these lands as a withdrawal not 
only from sale and entry, but from all use 
whatsoever, the Department being power- 
less to protect or utilize the same. This 
was never the intention of the projectors of the 
forest reservations. 

As a result, strong opposition has grown 
up in the States where these large areas 
had been withdrawn from use. Although 
petitions for a number of other reserva- 
tions had been prepared, the advocates of 
the reservation policy have not considered 
it wise to extend the reservations until the 
needed legislation could be had providing 
for their rational use and administration. 

When it became apparent that the 
original bill (the Paddock bill), although 
most desirable was too elaborate to be con- 
sidered by Congress, a short bill, leaving 
the detail of framing rules of occupancy 
and use to the Secretary of the Interior, 
was prepared. This has become known as 
the McRae Bill (53d and 54th Congress, 
H. R. 119), Hon. Thos. C. McRae, Chair- 
man of the Committee on Public Lands of 
the 53d Congress, having with great in- 
terest forwarded the same. This bill, with 
amendments, was passed by the House of 
Representatives in December, 1895, and 
almost the same bill, with further amend- 
ments was passed by the Senate, but failed 
to become law. During the second session 
of the 54th Congress the McRae Bill (H. R. 
119), again modified, was again passed by 
the House, but remained unreported from 
the Committee on Forest Reservation in 
the Senate, while a bill, essentially the 


MARCH 26, 1897. ] 


same, was reported from that committee but 
remained on the calender without action. 

In the fall of 1895, finding that the argu- 
ments for legislation did not procure its 
enactment, the Secretary of the Interior 
was induced by the Executive Committee 
of the Forestry Asssciation to call upon the 
National Academy of Science for an ex- 
pression of advice as to’ the need and 
methods of a proper administration of the 
public timber lands, in order to secure the 
weight of authority of that body to the 
proposition. The Academy, as customary, 
appointed a committee, asked an appro- 
priation of $25,000 for the purpose of field 
examination, and members of this commit- 
tee visited the regions where public timber 
lands are situated. As a result -of this 
journey a report was made to Hon. D. R. 
Francis, Secretary of the Interior, advising 
the reservation of some 20,000,000 acres. 
On February 22d President Cleveland, fol- 
lowing the suggestion of Mr. Francis, pro- 
claimed the reservations asked for. 

This sudden withdrawal from use of such 
a vast area, some of which was occupied by 
mining and lumbering industries dependent 
upon wood supplies, created strenuous op- 
position in the Senate and led to the adop- 
tion of a clause in the Sundry Civil Appro- 
priation Bill at once restoring these 
reservations to the public domain. The 
House members of the Conference Com- 
mittee, however, succeeded in substituting 
an amendment by which practically the 
main provisions of the McRae Bill were in- 
corporated, namely, empowering the Secre- 
tary of the Interior to regulate their use 
and occupancy by miners, herders, etc., and 
for the sale of timber as needed under proper 
forestry regulations. This amendment failed 
of acceptance, except that part which em- 
powers the President to restore all or parts 
of the reservations. The bill did not be- 
come a law, not being signed by the Presi- 
dent. 


SCIENCE. 


491 


REASONS FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF FOREST 
RESERVATIONS. 

The forest and brush cover of the moun- 
tains in the country west of the 100th me- 
ridian occupies a small proportion of the 
total area, probably not more than 35 per 
cent. The timber of useful kinds occupies 
hardly 15 per cent. of the whole. The dis- 
tribution and character of this growth is 
extremely variable, from the chapparal and 
stunted growth of southern California and 
the open pine, cedar and spruce of the lower 
Rocky Mountains to the magnificent world- 
famed giants of the Sierras and the dense 
unmatched forest growth of the Cascade and 
Coast Ranges in northern California, Oregon 
and Washington. Corresponding to the 
difference in distribution and development 
of forest growth, the climate, especially with 
reference to moisture conditions, varies. 
The northwestern portion of the Pacific 
coast has an abundance of rainfull and high 
relative humidity; the southern portions and 
lower Rocky Mountains are more or less 
arid. In either section a forest cover of the 
higher elevations and slopes is needful ; in 
the one case to hold back the snow and 
rain waters from inundating agricultural 
lands below; in the other case to preserve 
the scanty water supply by impeding 
evaporation. In both cases the wood sup- 
ply needs careful husbanding, for, in the ab- 
sence of something better, even the poor 
material of the southern areas is needed for 
domestic uses. The magnificent timber of 
the Northwest, most wastefully lumbered 
and shipped away while the home consump- 
tion is limited, will ere long be needed at 
home and should be cut with due regard to 
the future and to reproduction. 

The attempts of the goverment to pro- 
tect its own property have been ineffectual 
and futile. The laws enacted in 1878 ap- 
pear to make legal a systematic plundering 
of this property. Hundreds of square miles 
have been absolutely destroyed by un- 


492 


-checked forest fires. ‘Thousands of acres of 
valuable timber have been appropriated 
-without any equivalent to the Treasury and 
without even an attempt at settlement as 
contemplated under the law. There are no 
provisions now on the statutes under which 
-any citizen can obtain wood from the pub- 
lic domain by purchase, except that on the 
Pacific coast a man may buy 160 acres of 
it at $2.50 per acre for his own personl use 
only. A mining company needing timber 
‘must either steal, buy stolen timber, or ob- 
tain it by circumvention or perversion of 
the law—at least of its intention, if not its 
wording. Large mill establishments, able 
and willing to pay, are forced to cut logs on 
government land free of charge under a 
permit system, which was invented for the 
single settler, the pioneer, whose right to 
help himself to what he needed was thereby 
established. Hundreds and thousands of 
men have been induced to perjure them- 
selves, in order that a lumbering company 
might acquire sufficient acreage from which 
to supply itself with timber. 

Not only has this baneful legislation led 
to the destruction of millions of dollars 
worth of forest growth, but it has prevented 
‘any reasonable administration of the public 
timber domain, and has tended to lower the 
-moral plane of otherwise estimable citizens 
with regard to their respect of public prop- 
‘erty. 

“The community has become demoralized 
with reference to this question, for it is 
forced to steal one of the necessaries of 
life. The paramount and absolute necessity 
to obtain timber for use overrides all con- 
siderations. To the miner and settler the 
use of timber from local supplies is as ab- 
solutely necessary as the use of water and 
air, and no plan of management which fails 
to recognize this necessity can hope to be 
successful.” 

The proposed forest laws are designed to 
remedy this condition of antagonism be- 


_ SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 117. 


tween the population and the administra- 
tion, which is vainly trying to enforce un- 
reasonable laws. Reservation is the first 
step; regulation of the use of the timber 
the second ; perpetuation of a valuable re- 
source for coming generations the object. 

The program of those urging this policy 
is as follows: 

1. Withdraw from sale or entry all lands 
not fit or needed for agriculture, and con- 
stitute as objects of special care by the 
government the lands at the headwaters of 


Streams and on mountain slopes in general. 


2. Permit prospecting, mining and other 
occupation under such regulations as to pre- 
vent unnecessary waste, and cut and sell 


‘the timber under such methods as to secure 


perpetuation and renewal of the HOWE 


growth. 


3. Provide for protection against fire, 


theft and unlawful occupancy. 


4, Respect all existing vested rights, and 
arrange an exchange, if necessary, for pri- 
vate lands included in reservations; finally, 
restore to the public domain for entry all 
lands which are found within the reserva- 
tions fit for agriculture. 

5. The rational management of these forest 
areas for the benefit of the future as well as 
of the present and for all interested with- 
out destruction. 

These are the business-like propositions 
embodied in the so-called Paddock Bill, 
and the same underlie the less elaborate 
McRae Bill, passed by the House of Rep- 
resentatives in the first session of last 
Congress, and also underlie the clause 
which the House tried to incorporate in the 
Sundry Civil Bill of the second session of 
the 54th Congress. The interests of the 
miner, the lumberman, the settler, of every 
citizen in the present and in the future, is to 
be taken care of in these forest reservations. 

There is one industry, and one only, that 
finds no consideration in this policy. It is 
that of the sheep herder. Not that his 


MARCH 26, 1897. ] 


‘business is considered illegitimate as such, 
but, carried on as it has been, it is incom- 
patible with all the other interests which 
the forest may subserve. Roaming through 
the woods, from township to township, from 
county to county, from State to State, the 
herds not only destroy the herbage and 
young trees and seedlings, but the irre- 
sponsible herder burns over the pasture, 
kills the underbrush and young growth 
that may havesprungup. This treatment, 
added to the trampling of the soil by the 
‘sharp hoofs of the sheep, finally changes 
the surface so that no seed can germinate, 
‘and natural reproduction is prevented and 
the forest is doomed to destruction. Just 
‘as the proverbial incompatibility of the 
‘goat and the garden, so the growing of wool 
and wood on the same gound is incompati- 
ble. 

Some of the provisions of the bills as 
‘passed by the House do not meet the ap- 
proval of the Executive Committee of the 
American Forestry Association; neverthe- 
less the main principle underlying, namely, 
the recognition of the legal status of the 
forest-reservation policy and of the neces- 
sity of their rational management, make it 
desirable to have this legislation enacted, 
‘with the expectation of amending its faulty 
provisions later. 

It is hoped that the 55th Congress will 
fully recognize the wisdom of upholding 
the forest reservation policy, and will enact 
the legislation necessary to make the re- 
servations useful to the fullest extent. 

B. F. Frernow, 
Chairman Executive Committee; 
American Forestry Association. 


EXPERIMENTS UPON METABOLISM IN THE 
HUMAN BODY, UNDER THE DIRECTION 
OF THE UNITED STATES DEPART- 
MENT OF AGRICULTURE. 

TuE Department of Agriculture has re- 
ceived and is about to publish the details 


SCIENCE. 


493 


of the experiments on the nutrition of man, 
the brief reports of which have lately ex- 
cited so much interest in different parts of 
the country. These experiments are car- 
ried out under the auspices of the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture, at Wesleyan Univer- 
sity, in Connecticut, in cooperation with the 
Storrs’ Experiment Station. They belong 
to a series of inquiries upon the economy of 
food and nutrition which are being prose- 
cuted in cooperation with universities, col- 
lege settlements and benevolent associations 
in different parts of the country. The 
special objects and methods of the experi- 
ments in Connecticut are referred to by 
Professor Atwater, special agent of the de- 
partment in charge of nutrition investiga- 
tions, as follows : 


“Research upon nutrition has brought us to the 


'-point where the study of the application of the laws 


of the conservation of matter and of energy in the 
living organism are essential. For this purpose a 
respiration calorimeter is being devised. Thisis an 
apparatus in which an animal or a man may be 
placed for a number of hours or days, and the 
amounts and composition of the excreta, solid, 
liquid and gaseous ; the amounts and composition of 
the food and drink and inhaled air; the potential 
energy of the materials taken into the body and 
given off from it ; the quantity of heat radiated from 
the body, and the mechanical equivalent of the 
muscular work done, are all to be measured.”’ 

This apparatus includes a so-called respi- 
ration chamber. ‘This is practically a box 
with copper lining. It is 7 feet long, 4 
feet wide and 64 feet high, large enough 
fora manto live in. It is provided with 
glass doors, through which the subject en- 
ters; and withachair, tableand cotbed. A 
current of air sufficient for ventilation 
passes through the box. Arrangements are 
made for passing in the food and drink and 
removing the excretory products. Thefood, 
drink and excretory products are all care- 
fully weighed, measured and subjected to 
chemical analysis. The ventilating current 
of air is measured and analyzed. In this 
way it is possible to learn just what ma- 


494. 


terials are taken into the body and what 
are removed from it. Arrangements are 
also made for regulating the temperature 
inside the chamber. In these experiments 
cold water is passed through tubes in the 
respiration chamber. These tubes act as 
absorbers, the heat given off from the body 
being taken up and carried away by the 
current of cold water. In this manner the 
temperature is kept at a point which is 
comfortable for the occupant at all times. 
This is the reverse of the system followed 
in heating houses by means of hot water 
passed through radiators from which the 
heat is given off into the rooms. A man 
can remain in the respiration chamber an 
indefinite time without particular incon- 
venience. The experiments thus far made 
have been of from 24 to 12 days’ duration. 
The assistant who remained in the cham- 
ber during the longest experiment expe- 
rienced so little inconvenience that he is 
by no means unwilling to undertake the 
same task during a period of even longer 
duration. Observers are at hand day and 
night. They not only attend to the wants 
of the subject and supply him with food 
and drink, but also make the weighings, 
measurements and analyses needed for the 
experiment. 


THE EXPERIMENTS AND THEIR RESULTS. 

These can be best explained by first de- 
scribing the diet and its nutritive ingredi- 
ents and then referring to the effects of the 
food upon the body of the subject. Facts 
drawn from several of the experiments will 
be used for this purpose. The first experi- 
ment was made with a laboratory janitor. 
He was a Swede about thirty years old and 
weighed, without clothing, 148 pounds. 
He was accustomed to rather active muscu- 
lar labor, and previous experiments had 
shown him to be a decidedly ‘hearty’ 
eater. He remained two and one-fourth 
days in the apparatus. He drank water 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 117. 
ad libitum. His daily food was as follows * 
Ounces. 

Cooked: meati cv. io eee ese eee 4.3 
1 SEES poodooocaoogoqoboobecoseccoStecquOcandcacDEC se 3.5. 
PROLALOES i. ccn-eccesscaccerscscceeseter ee ee ae 5.3. 
Bread occa eleccusssesece stescteee Soetoro eee 8.8 
Milk crackershesssccssescseceecueerccsereeteenes 3.5. 
BOGEN soos cecend fasccescevsccesrwonenesccaseneeone 1.1 
CHEESE Saves cetec tease docteodecee ores ceceereteenes 27 
MET Kc oats cecisioaevenseens savecteeeuusecceusceene 35.1 
SITE P oanosconcnn.s0d0uscad cachoSnecHsoqasaqSonNEHS 0.8 
Coffee! sce) sotsssteseessaecneseseseecosseeseseteeen 10.5 
Total nickavccsssescsceunjescaecsosesecees 75.6 


During the experiment the subject did no 
work ; he read a little, but had extremely 
little muscular exercise. The diet was. 
necessarily simple because of the labor re- 
quired for the preparation, measurement. 
and analysis of the foods. It was, how- 
ever, entirely agreeable to the subject and 
the quantities were such as he chose. In 
estimating the quantities of nutritive in- 
gredients of the food it is customary to take 
into account the protein, fats and carbohy- 
drates and the potential energy or fuel 
value. The protein compounds which oc- 
cur, for example, in the lean of meat, white 
of egg, casein of milk, gluten of wheat, 
are the so-called tissue-forming substances. 
They make blood and muscle, bone and 
brain. The fats include the fat of meat, 
the fat of butter and milk, the oil of wheat, 
etc. The carbohydrates are the sugars and 
starches, such as the starch of bread and 
potatoes and ordinary sugar. The fuel 
values are estimated in heat units or ca- 
lories. The fats and carbohydrates are 
the chief fuel ingredients of the body, 
although the protein compounds serve to 
some extent as fuel. But while the pro- 
tein compounds can do the work of the 
fats and carbohydrates in supplying fuel 
for warmth for the body and for its. 
muscular work, neither fats nor carbohy- 
drates can take the place of the protein in 
building and repairing the tissues of the 
body. In considering the nutritive in- 


Marcu 26, 1897.] » 


gredients of the food, therefore, we have to 
take into account the amounts of protein 
and the fuel values. The daily diet used 
in this experiment was found to furnish, in 
digestible form, 4.8 ounces of protein and 
2,960 calories of energy. It may be added 
that coffee, like tea, contains practically 
no nutrients, except those of the milk 
and sugar used with it. 

Taking into account the food and ex- 
creta it is possible to calculate how much 
protein or fat the body gained or lost 
per day during the experiment. In the 
experiment with the diet referred to, 
the man’s body gained about half an 
ounce of protein and two and one-tenth 
ounces of fat per day. This shows that 
the diet was more abundant than was re- 
quired for the maintenance of his body. 
In other words, he was supplied with more 
protein and fuel ingredients than he re- 
quired. This was not surprising, since dur- 
ing the period of the experiment he per- 
formed practically no muscular work, while 
his diet had been selected in accordance 
with his ordinary eating habits when he 
was engaged in his daily labor. 

In a second experiment with the same 
man the diet was reduced, mainly by di- 
minishing the amount of milk from about 
one quart toone pint per day. The protein 
was thusreduced to 3.9 ounces and the fuel 
value of the digested nutrients to 2,650 
calories. With this diet the body almost 
exactly held its own as regards protein, but 
still gained a small quantity of fat, about 
half an ounce per day, showing that the food 
still exceeded the amount needed to supply 
the wants of the man’s body when he was 
practically at rest. It was calculated that 
if the amounts of milk, potatoes and butter 
in his diet had been reduced by one-half 
the nutrients would have just sufficed to 
meet his needs under the conditions of the 
experiment, 

In another experiment, which is the most 


SCIENCE. 


495 


interesting of all, the subject was a young 
man 23 years of age, rather taller than the 
laboratory janitor, quite muscular, and 
weighing 168 pounds without clothing. He 
had been accustomed for a number of years 
to school and college life, and later, to the 
work of an assistant in the college labora- 
tory. This occupation involved but little 
muscular activity. Previous experiments 
had shown that he was inclined to eat 
rather small quantities of food. His daily 
diet during the experiment was of his own 


choosing as in the former case. The food 
materials were as follows: 
Ounces. 
Cookedbeeis siiscccoceosecescrcsctonscssessienes 3.4 
Mashed potatoes. ............cc.cseeseeesecees 3.5 
IWihibetbread ssc dee cs avers sacle sleninceisiect erie 5.4 
IBLOWMPDLEAMsacascaectinescssecceeceee seccesneete 8.8 
Oatmeal ees ecg escacscas tateaceaceiecsecs 1.5) 
BEAN Sai-vebeccsctinasstideseceves ceueveceweetcececiees 4.3 
But bers Boi comsetsse caeiisitsicenesioncccnccecnstode 1.6 
MDs ieesce aewascetcnc se siteccwe qosselsceicls oslo aul 22.9 
ISIDIRDVES cosadncon counssonescosacvoosenqnsoHOoNNECOONS 0.6 
IN OIGSS “noaqadedoadanageonadonqnadenqaGadeBoGbdaCO 4.3 
Motel Verse oecs aba cossducconsseesacsieecees 56.3 


The experiment showed that he digested 
from this food on the average about 3.3 
ounces of protein and with it enough fats 
and carbohydrates to make the fuel value 
of the digested food 2,500 calories per day. 

The experiment was divided into five 
periods. During the first period (14 days) 
and the fifth (14 days) the subject was at 
rest. He passed more or less of the time 
in reading, but did nothing to require any 
considerable exercise of either muscle or 
brain. The second, third and fourth periods 
were of 3 days each. During the second 
period he engaged in severe mental work, 
partly in calculating the results of experi- 
ments and partly in studying a German 
treatise on physics. The third period was 
one of absolute rest. The subject sat in 
his chair or reclined upon the cot bed, but 
did no reading and moved about as little 
as possible. In the fourth period he per- 


496 


formed severe muscular exercise. During 
eight hours of each of the 3 days he was 
engaged in raising and lowering a heavy 
weight which was suspended by a cord 
passing over a pulley at the top of the 
chamber. The work in this case was so 
severe that he was thoroughly exhausted. 

The result showed that the subject dur- 
ing the periods of rest gained about half 
an ounce of protein and lost not far from 
the same quantity of fat daily. The diet 
which was roughly caleulated in advance 
to be very nearly sufficient for the needs of 
the organism when no considerable amount 
of work was done proved to have a slight 
excess of protein and not quite enough fats 
and carbohydrates. With the severe men- 
tal work the results were almost exactly the 
same. During the 3 days of hard study 
the organism consumed about the same 
quantities of nutrients as when it was at 
rest. Whether this would prove true for a 
longer period is not certain. 

During the period of hard muscular work 
the results were quite different. As was to 
be expected, the food did not suffice for the 
demands of the body. Instead of gaining 
one-half an ounce, the organism lost about 
one-sixth of an ounce of protein per day, 
while the loss of fat reached 6.9 ounces. 
The fuel value of the materials consumed in 
the body during the periods of rest and of 
mental work ranged from 2,600 to 2,700 
calories per day, but in the period of muscu- 
lar work it rose to 4,325 calories. In this 
ease, therefore, the severe muscular work 
increased the consumption of protein by 
over half an ounce and the consumption of 
fats by more than seven ounces per day. The 
experimenters have estimated the changes 
which would have been needed in the daily 
food to make it equal to the demands of the 
body during the period of muscular work. 
They calculate, for instance, that if the 
daily food had been increased by doubling 
the butter and sugar and adding half a 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 117. 


pound of bacon it would have been suf- 
ficient. 

The chief interest of these experiments, 
from the practical standpoint is the light 
they throw upon the ways the food is used 
in the body and the kinds and amounts 
that are appropriate for people of different 
occupations and under different circum- 
stances. Physicians tell us that disease 
is largely due to errors in diet. It is 
only by such researches that the exact 
knowledge can be acquired which is needed 
to show how our diet can be fitted to the 
demands of health and strength as well as 
purse. In addition, the experiments have 
great scientific interest. 

A number of experiments of this kind 
have been made in Europe, but these are 
the first in the United States. These in- 
vestigations are being continued by the De- 
partment of Agriculture, and further re- 
ports may be expected from time to time. 

Thus far we have described only those 
features of these investigations which in- 
cluded the measurement of the income and 
outgo of matter and the determination of 
the fuel value of the food. The fuel value 
of excretory products was also determined, 
as well as the energy manifested by the 
body in the form of heat or external mus- 
cular work. For the measurement of the 
body’s energy delicate and elaborate ap- 
paratus was devised. Highly interesting 
results have already been obtained, but so 
many improvements in the methods and 
apparatus have suggested themselves dur- 
ing the progress of the work that it has not 
been deemed advisable to publish the de- 
tails of this part of the investigation at 
present. 


AN INDUCTION-COIL METHOD FOR X-RAYS. 

SINcE sending a note of a new method of 
operating an induction coil by the discharge 
of a condenser we have used it for opera- 
ting X-ray tubes, and find it gives us a 


Manrcu 26, 1897. ]- 


much more powerful means of driving than 
any method we had heretofore tried. An 
exposure of one second gives an excellent 
negative of such common test objects as 
coins in a purse, and an exposure of five 
seconds is sufficient to give a negative 
showing clearly all the bony structure of 
the hand and wrist, a negative sufficient 
for the purposes of a surgeon. The best 
negative of the hand is to be obtained in 
about 20 seconds, and 45 seconds gives a 
marked over-exposure. Not only the bones, 
but the outlines of the cartilaginous and 
fatty tissues, and the tendons, are shown in 
a negative from a 25-seconds exposure. We 
have not had any opportunity to take any 
photographs through the body, but judging 
from results given by the flourscope this 
method gives a far greater penetration of 
the rays and a much sharper outline of the 
~ shadows than any other we have used. The 
fluorescence is absolutely steady ; the pul- 
sations of the heart can be seen with start- 
ling clearness, and the outline of the liver 
and lungs may be sharply distinguished. 
The details of the bony structure of the 
trunk are also clearly shown. The ribs 
appear as tubes rather than solid rods, ow- 
ing perhaps to the outer portion being more 
dense than the inner. The processes on 
the spinal column are well marked. The 
hand of the observer may be held between 
the patient under examination and the 
tube, and a clear image of its bones may be 
seen even through the most dense portions 
of the trunk. 

The tunstate of calcium crystals glow so 
brightly as to make the screen have a dis- 
tinctly granular appearance. Hach crystal 
seems to be separately illuminated like the 
grains of sand on a piece of coarse sand 
paper placed in the bright sunlight. 

The effect of prolonged running on the 
tubes is very similar to that of a static ma- 
chine, only more pronounced. ‘The resist- 
ance of a tube may be increased by running 


SCIENCE. 


497 


with closed spark-gap, making the concave 
electrode cathode as usual. If the tube be 
reversed the resistance will be lowered. It 
is very often found that a tube which has 
been run hard for some time when allowed 
to cool will increase in resistance, so as to 
be beyond the range of the coil. By run- 
ning such a tube, making the concave elec- 
trode anode on the coil a few minutes, the 
resistance will be lowered. Slight warming 
will facilitate matters. Again reversing the 
tube and running with closed spark-gap, the 
tube may be brought back to its maximum 
efficiency in a very few minutes. We have 
repeated this operation five or six times on 
some of our tubes with good results. It is 
needless to say that the above applies only 
to focus tubes with a platinum anode, 

The part played by the spark-gap is not 
yet clear to us, but we have noted the fol- 
lowing observations: A spark-gap between 
spheres is better than one between points. 
Some tubes will run without a spark-gap, 
but when the gap is used it should be on 
the cathode end of the tube. The proper 
adjustment of a spark-gap may increase the 
intensity of radiation several hundred per 
cent. 

The platinum anode in the focus tubes 
which we use becomes red hot, and the 
whole tube feels warm tothe hand. This 
is true of tubes which do not heat when 
driven by a 12-plate, 26-inch Wimshurst 
machine, 

As stated in our note of February 17th, 
we are operating our induction coil by dis- 
charging through its primary a condenser 
which has previously been charged at 220 
volts from the lighting mains. This 
charging and discharging we now accom- 
plish 250 times a second by means of a five- 
part commutator on the shaft of a small 
motor. Since the condenser is discon- 
nected from the mains only when it has 
risen to their voltage, there is no spark 
ing when it is disconnected; and since 


498 


the discharge of the condenser is exceed- 
ingly rapid, it has entirely passed before 
the commutator segment has left the brush 
leading to the primary. In other words, 
the condenser brush leaves its commutator 
segment when both are at 220 volts, and 
the coil brush leaves its commutator seg- 
ment when both are at zero. Hence no 
sparking need occur on the commutator ex- 
cept the slight spark of making circuit. 
The great increase in voltage at the termi- 
nals of the secondary over that given by the 
same coil when operated in the ordinary 
manner is probably due to the exceeding 
rapidity of discharge of the condenser, and 
hence the rapid change in the number of 
lines of force enclosed by the secondary. 
For each discharge of the condenser there 
must be a rise and fall of the currentin the 
primary of the induction coil; but, since we 
get a uni-direction discharge at the second- 
ary, one of these alone, either the rise or 
fall, must be effective. The reaction of the 
secondary of the coil tends to increase the 
rapidity of rise of current in the primary, 
but tends to retard the fall, moreover, at the 
instant the condenser is connected to the 
coil we have 220 v., the potential of the 
condenser, applied to a circuit of exceed- 
ingly low resistance and very small induc- 
tion, and from this we must get an ex- 
tremely rapid rise of current. From these 
considerations alone it appears probable that 
the secondary discharge is due to rise rather 
than to the fall of current in the primary. 
The volume of the discharge is so great 
that the ends of the secondary bristle with 
brush discharges, even when the terminals 
are within sparking distance of one another, 
and great care must be taken in insulating 
the primary from the secondary. There 
seems, moreover, to be a continual brush 
discharge from turn to turn of the primary, 
the nature of which we are unable to deter- 
mine. Ifthe iron wire of the core be put 
in a glass tube, and the primary be wound 


SCIENCE. 


| [N.S Vor. V. No. 11%. 


in a single layer about it, and the whole 
inclosed in a second larger tube, and the 
space between the tubes be filled with oil, 
the needed insulation is given. 
Cuares L. Norton, 
Rape R. LAWRENCE. 
ROGERS LABORATORY OF PHYSICS, 


MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, 
Boston, March 5, 1897. 


NEW YORK STATE SCIENCE TEACHERS’ AS- 
SOCIATION, I. 


[Continued from p. 468.] 
WEDNESDAY evening was devoted to the 
Earth Sciences. Dr. Frank M. MeMurry, 
of the Buffalo School of Pedagogy, read the 
following paper, written by Professor Ralph 
S. Tarr, of Cornell. 


Place of the Earth Sciences in the Secondary 

Schools. 

The question is raised again and again, 
shall the earth sciences (geology and phys- 
ical geography with their subdivisions) 
have a place in the curriculum of the 
secondary school? and this has been vari- 
ously answered. Many schools have prop- 
erly omitted them from the course, and 
others are thinking of doing so. I say 
properly, because, as the subjects have been 
taught in the majority of cases, it is better 
to omit than to continue them. 

Then again, when the question is under 
consideration, which of the natural sciences 
shall have a place in the schools, we very 
often find the earth sciences excluded, 
though this was certainly not the case in 
the report of the Committee of Ten. The 
reasons given for the exclusion of these 
subjects from the proposed curriculum are 
usually two: first, that they are not dis- 
ciplinary subjects; and second, that for their 
proper understanding they need too much 
knowledge of other sciences. The first 
grows out of a failure to appreciate that 
there has been progress in the methods of 
teaching the earth sciences, a progress 


MARcH 26, 1897.] 


which the critics have evidently not yet 
learned about, but which nevertheless has 
been most marked and important. The 
second conclusion of the critics is based 
in part upon this misunderstanding, and in 
part upon the misinterpretation of the pos- 
sibilities embraced within the earth sci- 
ences. There is no subject of natural 
science which, for study of an advanced 
character, does not require a knowledge 
beyond the present ability of the secondary 
schools to give. We do not find it neces- 
sary to omit these sciences for this reason, 
but merely the part that presents the diffi- 
culty. Why does not the same principle 
apply to the earth sciences? Even when 
this exclusion of parts has been made, 
there is enough left. 
It is my belief that no science is better 
adapted for the beginning in science study 
in the secondary schools than physical 
geography. There are two reasons for 
this belief. In the first place, of all the 
criticisms made against the science in- 
struction in the schools, the one that ap- 
peals most strongly to my mind is that there 
is too much smattering and jumping about 
from one thing to another, before any real 
Knowledge of any science has been gained. 
There is an effort to obtain wide informa- 
tion on various topics, with the result that 
almost no training is gained, and so much 
information is poured in that the mind of 
the student is necessarily confused. Phys- 
ical geography is a direct extension of the 
-geography study which has been carried on 
for years before in the lower grades. With 
this geography properly taught, and phys- 
ical geography made an advanced continua- 
tion of this, there is at least one year added 
‘to the consecutive study of what may be 
properly considered closely allied subjects 
‘belonging to the same group. 

The second reason for considering phys- 
ical geography adapted, above all the other 
natural sciences, to first year study is that, 


SCIENCE. 


499 


when properly handled, it arouses a general 
interest which no other science does so well. 
That this point is correct I have long 
known, but never before have I so fully 
realized it as when, a few weeks ago, I vis- 
ited a number of the Chicago high schools, 
where physical geography is being taught 
in the modern way. The eager interest, 
the evidence of acute observation and clear 
thinking, and the intelligent questions asked 
by boys in knickerbockers and girls just 
fresh from the grammar school, was the 
best proof I have ever seen of the truth of 
this conclusion. The teachers, forty in 
number, assured me in conference that no 
other subject aroused so much interest as 
that of physical geography, and this came 
from teachers most of whom were especially 
interested either in biology or physics. 
This fact of interest I make a central 
point of the argument, because it is the 
means for obtaining an end. The old in- 
struction in physical geography has for its 
object the imparting of information. The 
new school endeavors to make it a subject 
of disciplinary value. Observation is en- 
couraged and, in fact, insisted upon. The 
results of these observations aud of other 
groups of facts are placed together to make 
explanations. Weak arguments are tested 
and overthrown ; fallacies are discovered 
and pointed out, and the subject is hence 
made to train habits of the mind which every 
high school pupil will need, if he lives by 
even a partial use of his mental powers. 
We need to know how to use and discover 
facts, and then to understand what they 
mean: The proper study of physical geog- 
raphy helps to train these habits of mind. 
No better means for gaining such a disci- 
pline can be found than to arouse the in- 
terest of the pupils. With interest, or, bet- 
ter still, with enthusiasm, the pupil ob- 
serves and thinks beyond the requirements 
of the study and plies his teacher with 
questions, sometimes of great ingenuity. 


500 


Incidentally, however, he gains informa- 
tion ; and I believe that much more of this 
is obtained by this means, and that this is 
much more firmly rooted in the mind than 
is the case when the main idea is the ac- 
cumulation of the mere information which 
anyone can get from an encyclopedia or a 
dictionary. 

If we are willing to grant that the earth 
sciences have a claim for a place in the 
secondary schools equal to that of the bio- 
logical and physical groups, the question 
arises, how shall they be taught? This is, 
of course, a question which cannot be 
answered in a few words. We are con- 
fronted at once with the difficulty that the 
ideal at present seems impracticable. Never- 
theless, I am going to dwell especially upon 
the ideal, believing that if this is set, and 
an effort is made to reach it, more prog- 
ress will be made than if we are content 
to be held down to what seems to be prac- 
ticable. 

This matter is treated mainly from the 
standpoint of the colleges, though not with- 
out recognizing the fact that but a small 
number of the high school pupils enter the 
college ; but in the belief that what is de- 
sired by the college is also best for the boy 
whose systematic education ends in the 
high school; and also because it seems that 
the college, by setting the standard, can 
mould and lead public opinion even in a 
new direction, provided, of course, there is 
also hearty sympathy and support from the 
teachers in the schools. If between us we 
can decide upon something, we can in time 
carry our point; but if we act independ- 
ently, and along different lines, progress 
will be slow, indeed. 

I am certain that I voice the sentiment 
of most of the college scientific teachers 
who have thought upon the subject when 
I say that the prime need in education to- 
day is some change in the college-entrance 
subjects which have so long served as 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 117%: 


standards. The world has been progress- 
ing, and even the college, one of the slow- 
est of institutions to depart from tradition 
and precedent, is beginning to take cog- 
nizance of this. Natural science instruc- 
tion is demanded by the people who support 
the schools, and so far the colleges have 
retarded the proper fulfillment of this de- 
mand, by so occupying the time of the 
student with other subjects, that natural 
science has been possible only in very small 
doses. The attempt has been made to sup- 
ply the demand for information, but in 
most cases there has been but little more. 

The science teacher of the college also. 
needs and asks for more adequate science 
in the secondary schools. For my own partI 
am obliged every year to teach college stu- 
dents the simplest habits of observation, 
which might better have been learned in 
the kindergarten. To turn a boy out into the 
world trained in Latin, Greek and mathe- 
matics, and yet unable to use his own eyes 
or think with his own brain, is not treating 
him fairly. He is very poorly prepared to 
compete with the keen, shrewd intellect of 
some business man whose boyhood days 
were spent not in school, but in gaining a 
mental training from nature on a farm, or 
from men in that great, heartless school of 
affairs. To me it seems that the parents 
are demanding a knowledge of science; the 
pupil, whatever his chosen vocation, needs 
the training, and the college science teacher 
needs to have his students come to him with 
a better preliminary training. 

Really valuable discipline in science, 
properly comparable to that gained from 
the classics or mathematics, cannot be ob- 
tained from courses of fourteen weeks each. 
Nor can it even be gained by courses of a 
year each. This is one of the points that 
prevents the science teacher of the college 
from making progress in his efforts to intro- 
duce science into the list of college-entrance 
requirements. He is immediately con- 


MARCH 26, 1897.] 


fronted by the query whether the science 
instruction is really comparable with that 
of the stock entrance subjects; and he is 
forced to admit that it is not. 

The reason why he must make this ad- 
mission, which is fatal to his efforts, are 
first, that time enough is not given to any 
one subject or group, and that the method 
of teaching is generally not equally good. 
To be really comparable with Latin in dis- 
ciplinary value, some one of the sciences, 
or group of allied sciences, should be 


taught consecutively for at least two or 


three years by means of laboratory methods, 
which call for expensive apparatus. 

This is the ideal, but there are practical 
difficulties. The parents call for more than 
one science, and the committeemen are not 
willing to furnish the money for the neces- 
sary equipment. I have considered these 
difficulties elsewhere, and proposed a plan 
of compromise,* which is briefly to have all 
sciences represented in the course, but to 
have some one taught as a major subject, 
according to the best methods, and as a 
consecutive study covering not less than 
two years. Ultimately, when the benefits 
of a proper study of one science are shown, 
the school may see its way clear to the in- 
troduction of similar study of others; but I 
believe that one science properly taught is 
better by far than several poorly handled, as, 
of necessity, so often happens at present.f 
Which group is chosen seems to me of little 
importance. 

I feel certain that the larger colleges of 
the country will stand ready to accept a 


*Educational Review. 

tI have recently had an application for a teacher of 
physical geography ; and when it become known, a 
number of students have come to me; one of them, a 
former teacher, when I said that areal knowledge of 
physical geography was needed, replied, that she had 
taught nearly everything, and could do so in the 
future, and that she would be ashamed of herself if 
she could not teach so simple a subject as physical 
geography. 


SCIENCE. 


501 


properly taught science as an entrance 
alternative fully equivalent to advanced 
Latin, Greek or mathematics. There is no 
reason why it should not be considered an 
equivalent; and if the colleges can be as- 
sured that proper teaching and discipline 
is possible in the schools, the move can cer- 
tainly be made. However, having set what 
seems to me the ideal, I must say that I 
think we shall find it necessary to start far 
short of it, though always moving toward 
it. One cannot change radically and sud- 
denly ; there are many questions to be con- 
sidered, not all of which are familiar to the 
college teacher. Hence I believe it will be 
necessary to adopt a compromise course, 
with the distinct understanding that we are 
moving toward the higher end. Let us 
have four years of science taught as nearly 
as possible by laboratory methods. It 
would not be necessary for all studerts to 
take four years, but insist upon everyone 
having not less than one year of genuine 
science instruction. For those who, by 
choice, take a course which allows of con- 
secutive study for four years it would, per- 
haps, be better to have this kept along the 
line of some allied subjects; but, as this is 
hardly possible, the instruction should be 
confined within as narrow limits of subject- 
matter as possible. 

Because of the interest which it arouses 
in science subjects, and the training which 
it furnishes to the important powers ot 
observation and reasoning, physical geog- 
raphy is the best adapted of the sciences 
for the basal study. Moreover, numerous 
experiments have proved that it fits admi- 
rably into the first-year curriculum. It 
would be well if this could be supplemented 
and continued during the second year by a 
study of geology, which is so closely allied 
to it; but, perhaps, in most cases the demand 
for instruction in the biological and phys- 
ical sciences will be so great that this will 
not be possible. 


502 


If the schools will offer genuine science 
instruction the colleges will no doubt ac- 
cept it, and thus lend encouragement to the 
schools in their effort to give such instruc- 
tion. Why should not a minimum science 
entrance requirement be set by the college, 
leaving the subject elective, but demanding 
that every student on entrance shall have 
had at least one year of genuine disciplinary 
science instruction ; then, as one of the al- 
ternative requirements, allow the accept- 
ance of advanced science study in the place, 
let us say of Greek or advanced mathe- 
maties, ete. Four years of properly con- 
ducted science study gives as valuable a 
training and culture, even though this be of 
a somewhat different kind, as an equal time 
spent in the study of German, Latin or 
mathematics. The colleges which permit 
election of studies are practically committed 
to the theory that each subject well taught 
in the college is as valuable as any other. 

The science instruction, both in the ele- 
mentary and the advanced study, must be 
of the best if it would meet this require- 
ment, and the teacher must know and have 
an interest in the subject which he teaches. 
No one can have an adequate knowledge of 
all the natural sciences, and it is unfair to 
ask a teacher to give instruction in them 
all. As time goes on this will be remedied, 
provided we can inaugurate a movement 
to improve science instruction ; for such an 
improvement all along the line means, of 
necessity, more teachers. Therefore, it 
seems well for the present that the science 
teacher should be selected with special ref- 
erence to his ability to give good instruction 
in one subject; and this he should be 
allowed to develop, as far as he can, with 
the constant effort to obtain higher grade 
work in at least one line of natural science. 
Well trained in one subject he will be a 
better teacher of the others than if he was 
equally well prepared in all sciences. 

Very little has been said of physical 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 117. 


geography, because it has seemed to me 
that there is a more important point per- 
taining toallsciences. I feel thatit matters 
little whether the science instruction be in 
physical geography, physics, chemistry or 
biology, so long as it is genuine science in- 
struction. That physical geography has a 
claim equal to the others can be demon- 
strated. To teach it in such a way that I 
would be willing to accept it as a subject 
for entrance to Cornell University there 
must be very much more than book work. 
The attempt to gain information must be 
subordinated to the effort to train the 
powers of observation, the habit of inquiry 
and ability to reason out valid conclusions 
from an assemblage of facts. 

This training must in large part be gained 
by practice in the laboratory and in the 
field. The air, earth and water, the natural 
laboratories of physical geography, are ac- 
cessible to all. They have lessons to teach, 
and furnish means for discipline of the 
nature suggested. The natural laboratory 
is not always accessible, nor are all features 
of physical geography capable of illustra- 
tion in every instance. Hence, out-of- 
door work must be very decidedly supple- 
mented by work within doors. We cannot, 
for instance, take many classes to a glacier. 
Models, maps, photographs and lantern 
slides must take the place of some features 
of the actual land. These are not so good 
as the real out-of-door examples, but, skill- 
fully handled, they illustrate the facts well, 
and serve well as a means of gaining im- 
portant training. In geology the same 
means may be used and these may be sup- 
plemented by the study of specimens of 
various kinds. Much material for this in- 
struction is accessible and cheap, and 
schools that would make the study of 
physiographic subjects of disciplinary value 
must equip a laboratory with these ma- 
terials. It is now no more possible to 
teach physical geography properly by means 


MARCH 26, 1897. ] 


of mere recitations than it is to give desi- 
rable instruction in chemistry or physics 
in this old-fashioned way. 

The entrance examination in physical 
geography should then not be merely a set 
of questions upon the subject matter of a 
book, but also questions concerning the 
physical features of the neighborhood, and 
others which should prove the ability of 
the student to observe and to think. This 
should be supplemented by a note-book 
containing the record of the laboratory 
work actually done. 

This is a statement of my conception of 
the results which we are to aim to obtain. 
How we shall reach the desired end is quite 
another matter, and one which certainly 
cannot be considered here. If we can be- 
come agreed concerning the goal, the means 
of approaching it, or even reaching it, will 
be found. I believe that we should first of 
all lay down a wise plan, and then try to 
follow it. A committee should be appointed 
to consider various suggestions and decide 
upon the best; then bring it before the 
society. After the plan is finally decided 
upon, the concentrated effort of our mem- 
bers will make it a success, provided it is 
a wise plan. 

I have, therefore, spoken rather concern- 
ing the principle at large than concerning 
the particular claims of physical geography, 
or the means by which instruction in this 
ean be given. The subject has claims 
which in any wisely made plan of procedure 
must be recognized. If it seems necessary 
to go over these claims it can be done. The 
subject offers a means of furnishing valua- 
ble discipline. Already enough has been 
written upon this subject to serve as a basis 
to guide the teachers along the proper line 
of advance in the mode of instruction in 
physical geography. 


Discussion—The Earth Sciences. By RicHarD 
E. DopcE. 


SCIENCE. 


503 


The Earth Sciences, including meteorol- 
ogy, geology and physiography, should most 
emphatically have a prominent place in the 
curriculum of the secondary and grade 
schools, for many reasons. They are capable 
of arousing the best mental faculties ; they 
train observation and reasoning ; they bring 
the child more closely in contact and sym- 
pathy with the world about him than do 
any other group of sciences. Once love for 
nature is aroused, the stimulation for deeper 
study follows without fail. 

In the study of this group of sciences, as 
well as in all other sciences, the training 
should be largely by the laboratory method, 
and the laboratory should be out of doors 
as far as possible. In the progress of the 
work, the study of facts and the representa- 
tions of facts should be augmented by a 
series of developmental exercises designed 
to lead up to and develop principles. 

The method to be employed depends 
largely upon the personality and ability of 
the teacher, and no one method can be 
prescribed as a sure panacea for all ills of 
science teaching. Each teacher must aim 
to bring out scientific principles by some 
method demanding reasoning on the part of 
the pupil and causing advance from the 
simple to the complex. My experience has 
shown that such aims can well be accom- 
plished if the facts be given by making the 
pupil solve a progressive series of related 
problems, each problem being solved through 
a similar series of related questions. The 
advance is thus by steps toward the end 
sought, each step being secured by a focali- 
zation of ideas toward the point in mind. 
Such a method of presentation is rational 
and scientific and is as capable of applica- 
tion in the grades as in the higher schools. 

The simpler facts and principles should 
be crowded back from the high into the 
lower schools, and we cannot better the 
work in the higher schools until we have 
made the proper beginnings in sciences in 


504 


early youth. In such introductory work, 
we should aim for intensive and not exten- 
sive work, to give the ability to gain further 
information rather than mere knowledge of 
unrelated and incomplete facts, as is so often 
done. 

Considering these as our aims, what 
should we aim to give for subject matter in 
each of the sciences under consideration ? 

In meteorology we should aim to give an 
understanding of the winds, precipitation, 
insolation, weather, climate, etc., and the 
dependence of life on climatic conditions. 
This work should be by the laboratory 
method, making use of the ever-present 
weather conditions and of maps, charts, 
weather maps and instruments of measure- 
ment. 

In geology we should devote most atten- 
tion to observational study of dynamical 
geology. Minerals, rocks and fossils should 
be studied only so far as they give a better 
understanding of the fundamental charac- 
ters of the rocks themselves, except in those 
localities where there are fossiliferous rocks, 
where, of course, more stress can be laid on 
those subjects. The life processes of the 
earth and their results are the most ra- 
tional, interesting and helpful features of 
geology to the beginner. In this science, 
as in any other, if function be made the 
causal condition and form the result, we 
have a rational arrangement of subject, 
and we at once elicit the confidence and 
sympathy of the pupil. The inorganic 
becomes alive and the dead sciences are no 
longer dead, but equally alive with the 
organic sciences. 

In physiography earth forms should be 
studied, their origin, their relations and the 
dependence of life upon them. This is a 
broad and ever broadening field, and in it 
we can come more closely in contact with 
the world about us than in any other sci- 
ences. The application of the principles to 
the understanding of human history and 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. Vou. V. No. 117. 


progress offers a possible field of study that 
is almost inexhaustible and inspiring to the 
highest degree. Descriptive, political and 
commercial geography gains its greatest 
value when some understanding of the cli- 
matic and topographic determining condi- 
tions has been gained previously. Descrip- 
tive geography with no knowledge of the 
origin of land forms is like anatomy with 
no knowledge of the skeleton, which is the 
basis of anatomy. In this study a mere 
study of geographic distributions is not 
enough. The study should largely be one 
of comparison and of relation. 

The science—for physiography is a sci- 
ence—thus becomes not only of value for 
itself, but also because of the light it casts 
upon the study of other subjects in the cur- 
riculum. 

Such are some of the possibilities of the 
earth sciences if they be studied in a com- 
mon-sense way. We must acknowledge 
that at present most teachers are not pre- 
pared to treat these sciences, so commonly 
called easy, in a scientific and broad way. 
One of our tasks is to see what can be done to 
give the secondary school and grade school 
teachers a better ability to teach the earth 
sciences with a scientific understanding. 


Professor Albert P. Brigham, of Colgate 
University, emphasized the lack of training 
in observation on the part of students com- 
ing to the earth sciences in the upper years 
of the college course. This is more to be 
regretted since the subject is capable of 
graded presentation in all stages of educa- 
tion. Interest is absolutely to be depended 
upon in children or adults when earth facts 
are explained in a rational and simple 
manner. It is a grave loss if that great 
company who never go above the grades 
must go out ignorant of the common facts 
of out-of-door nature and of the earth 
materials upon which our daily life is de- 
pendent. Let us insist that geography is a 


MARCH 26, 1897.] 


genetic science, vital, causal, evolutionary. 
Nor may we neglect the moral and esthetic 
value of these studies. This is the work of 
the teacher who knows, who has a horizon, 
who can arouse and inspire. 

Professor Charles S. Prosser, of Union, 
advocated the thorough teaching of geog- 
raphy in the grammar schools, suggesting the 
use of such a work as Frye’s which should 
be followed in the high school by physical 
geography. The class-room work should 
be supplemented by excursions to localities 
in the neighborhood affording illustrations 
of some of the features of physiography. 

It is now found that a portion of the col- 
lege students when taken on geological 
field trips are indifferent to the illustrations 
of geologic structure. The early interest 
of boys in objects to be found in field and 
forest seems to have become atrophied, a 
condition of mind said by Professor Shaler 
to be due to super-civilization. This is 
more apparent in the students coming from 
large cities than in those from the smaller 
cities and villages. It was stated by the 
great teacher of geology—Professor Dana 
—that as a rule the students who mastered 
geology were those who had spent a con- 
siderable portion of their boyhood in the 
country. It was emphasized that this 
power to observe would be greatly devel- 
oped by a high-school course, using such a 
work as Tarr’s Elementary Physical Geog- 
raphy. 

Professor E. C. Quereau, of Syracuse 
University, spoke on the need of corre- 
lation of the university and the secondary 
school work in physical geography. The 
geography taught in the lower schools has 
been too much descriptive and locative, 
the pupil being required to memorize geo- 
graphical features, while the work which 
has been taken up in the college and uni- 
versity in later years has been a study of 
the origin and progressive changes of the 
surface features of the earth and their vital 


SCIENCE. 


505 


relations to the needs of man. A better 
correlation of the work, from the secondary 
school up to the college, would be an ad- 
vantage. 

Dr. Frank McMurry, of Buffalo, argued 
that mental discipline is not the highest aim 
in the study of the earth sciences in the 
high school curriculum. The great object 
to be emphasized in teaching literature, 
history, and nature study in the common 
school is inspiration. They arouse the 
whole mind, develop life-long tastes or 
loves, and hence become permanent sources 
of energy and mental life. The ability to 
arouse a great love for nature is the greatest 
object in bringing physical geography into 
the curriculum. It is a much nobler, 
higher purpose than discipline or infor- 
mation. This study can excite this love, 
because in it inductive work can be done; 
it can be concrete, and the laws involved 
can be reached through abundant data. 
Then, too, these data stand related in a 
causal way; they can fall into a causal 
series, a series in which function can take 
the lead and be more prominent than form. 
Further than that, as said by Professor 
Dodge, the whole subject can be approached 
through problems, and one series of problems 
can lead to another and higher series. 

It is plain, then, that this is a science in 
which the subject matter is so arranged 
that it can be a source of great mental life ; 
that is why this subject is so valuable. 
Life is controlled by loves, by tastes, and 
this subject is able to generate a great love 
for one field of nature. 

Careful consideration of this science and 
proper teaching of it will ultimately influ- 
ence greatly the teaching of geography in 
the grades. If we can once establish the 
conviction that the earth is alive and 
changing and active it can affect the teach- 
er’s attitude toward the grade work. Pos- 
sibly at last physical geography can pre- 
cede the book work in geography. This, 


506 


then, is also a reason for urging the im- 
portance of the earth sciences as a proper 
high school study. 

Professor I. P. Bishop, of the Buffalo 
Normal, spoke of the importance of geology 
in the teaching of geography. Whether it 
be included in the school course or not, 
there is no doubt that it should form an 
essential part of the geography teacher’s 
outfit. For it is manifestly impossible to 
teach the detached facts of physical geog- 
raphy so as to give them much educational 
value without knowing the causal relations 
upon which the significance of these facts 
depends. 

It is not so difficult to obtain material for 
this kind of nature work as is often imag- 
ined ; the true way is to study the material 
nearest at hand. Every gravel bank is a 
museum. Hvery stream, even to the tiny 
rivulet formed by a shower, illustrates the 
carving of a river valley or a Niagara 
gorge. In almost any village we can show 
how a hard layer of rock in the bed of a 
stream has made a waterfall, cascade, or 
rapid ; how by the aid of a dam this has 
been utilized to run a saw or grist mill; 
how this has then naturally become a favor 
able spot in time for the location of a store, 
blacksmith shop, hotel, churches, schools, 
and the other interests of such a com- 
munity. Thus the material available al- 
most anywhere serves to illustrate the 
mutual relation between a country and its 
people. 

Professor B. G. Wilder, of Cornell, re- 
called with dissatisfaction the time and 
energy expended by him during his earlier 
school days in the memorizing of many 
geographic names of comparatively insig- 
nificant localities, and held that in a natural 
order physical geography should precede 
rather than follow the ordinary political 
geography. Hevalso believed that if, be- 
tween 1860 and 1870, the study of physical 
geography had been carried even as far as 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vout. V. No. 117. 


at present, so that the public, and especially 
the clergy, could have realized that the ap- 
parently stable earth is really a sort of cos- 
mic organism still in process of develop- 
ment, the acceptance of evolution might. 
have required only a decade instead of the 
quarter of a century. 

The discussion turned upon the best 
means of conducting excursions for the 
study of the earth sciences. It was ad- 
mitted that in most schools too little at- 
tention is paid to this phase of the work. 
Teachers are too apt to strive for an interest 
in far-away matters, glaciers, trade winds 
and ocean currents, while they neglect the 
means that are nearest at hand for arousing 
and developing an interest in the earth. 
At the same time there were many expres- 
sions of warm appreciation of the work in. 
some of our secondary schools, and in the 
grades as well. Reference was also made 
to the great assistance rendered by the 
American Museum of Natural History in 
its distribution of lantern slides to the: 
schools of the State. 

Mr. William F. Langworthy, of Colgate 
Academy, speaking of the teachers of 
geography in our grammar schools, said. 
that their failure to accomplish better re- 
sults in the direction of modern methods is 
not so much their own fault as the fault of 
those who have trained them, of those who. 
have charge of our courses of study. Much 
time is lost in the lower grades upon some: 
parts of arithmetic. If some of the more 
advanced portions of arithmetic were taken, 
up in the later years of the high school. 
course, or in college, it would leave more 
time for geography in the grades ; but it is 
not advisable to crowd any more work into: 
the grammar school course. It is better to 
enrich the grammar school course than to: 
enlarge it. 

The other speakers were Dr. D. L. Bard- 
well, of the Cortland Normal ; Professor H. 
J. Schmitz, of the Geneseo Normal; Dr. T. B. 


MARCH 26, 1897. ] 


Stowell, of the Potsdam Normal; Professor 
William Hallock, of Columbia; Professor 
©. C. Wilcox, of Starkey Seminary; Pro- 
fessor Henry L. Griffis, of the New Paltz 
Normal; Miss Sherman, of Ithaca High 
School; Professor E. R. Whitney, of Bing- 
hamton; Mr. Charles N. Cobb, of the Re- 
gents’ Office; Principal S. G. Harris, of 
Baldwinsville; Dr. Charles W. Hargitt, of 
Syracuse University; Mrs. 8. H. Gage, of 
Ithaca; Professor Warren Mann, of Pots- 
dam Normal; Principal Henry Pease, of 
Medina ; Professor O. D. Clark, of the Boys’ 
High School, Brooklyn, and Principal 
Henry S. Purdy, of Brewster. 
FRANKLIN W. BARROWS. 

BuFFALO, N. Y. Secretary. 

(Zo be Concluded. ) 


CURRENT NOTES ON PHYSIOGRAPHY. 
TENNESSEE VALLEY REGION, ALA. 


A RECENT report for the Geological Sur- 
vey of Alabama by Henry McCalley, on 
‘the Tennessee valley region,’ contains a 
general description of the paleozoic area in 
the northern part of the State, excepting 
the Coosa valley district, which is reserved 
for a later volume. Account is given of 
the level sandstone uplands, or ‘ barrens,’ 
in the northwest corner of the State; and 
of the rolling limestone lowlands with rich 
red soil in the valley of the Tennessee river; 
these two districts being the higher and 
lower parts of the dissected uplands which 
enter from Tennessee. Next to the east 
rise the table mountains of the dissected 
Cumberland (Allegheny) plateau. The 
waters of the tables often disappear in 
sinks, and reappear in large springs at the 
head of coves on the flanks of the ‘moun- 
tains.’ South of the Tennessee, Little and 
Sand mountains are monoclines or cuestas, 
with steep and ragged escarpments to the 
north and gentle slopes to the south. The 
broad flat ‘Moulton and Russellville’ val- 
ley lies between them, trending east and 


SCIENCE. 


507 


west. The Sequatchee valley of Tennessee 
is called Brown Valley in Alabama, and 
limits the preceding divisions on the east; 
it is excavated on an unsymmetrical an- 
ticline. An outline map locating these 
areas would haye added much to the ease 
of interpreting the text. Most of the re- 
port is concerned with stratigraphic and 
economic geology ; the illustrations are 
chiefly of quarries. 


THE PREGLACIAL KANAWHA AGAIN. 


REFERENCE should have been made, in a. 
recent note on the Preglacial Kanawha, to 
the studies of Professor W. G. Tight, of 
Granville, Ohio, and of Professor I. C. 
White, of Morgantown, W. Va., regarding 
the changes in river courses of Pennsyl- 
vania and Ohio on account of obstructions. 
by ice and drift. An article by the last 


named writer (Origin of the high terrace 


deposits of the Monongahela river, Amer. 
Geol., X VIII., 1896, 368-379) should have 
been cited, along with the note regarding 
Leverett’s work from the Report of the 
Director of the United States Geological 
Survey; for both are concerned with iden- 
tical problems. White describes several 
channels among the hills of the Allegheny 
plateau, where the waters of the impounded 
Monongahela for a time ran over cols; 
one of these channels being permanently 
adopted in the present course of the Ohio. 
When this region is mapped and studied 
in detail it promises to reveal features of 
peculiar interest in connection with the 
rearrangements of river courses by glacial 
action. 


STAGES OF APPALACHIAN EROSION. 

AttHoueH this series of notes cannot 
pretend to completeness, it has been the 
writer’s intention to report here on all the 
more important American essays, and on 
certain foreign essays that are relevant to 
modern physiography. It was entirely by 
oversight that an abstract of Keith’s brief 


508 


article on ‘Some stages of Appalachian 
erosion’ (Bull. Geol. Soc. Amer., VII., 
1896, 519-525) was omitted from earlier 
notice. A tardy note upon it is therefore 
now presented. Keith contends against 
the conclusion of Hayes and Campbell re- 
garding the warping of the Cretaceous and 
Tertiary Appalachian peneplains; he main- 
tains that river basins at different distances 
from the sea must, in similar rocks and at 
similar stages of denudation, produce pene- 
plains of different altitudes and of different 
inclinations; and that part of the inequal- 
ity of altitude and attitude that was ex- 
plained by the earlier authors as a result 
of warping is better explained as a result 
of difference of distance to the sea. The 
slopes of a number of peneplains, thus in- 
terpreted, is generally so slight that their 
present altitude is better accounted for by 
nearly uniform uplift than by pronounced 
warping. A fuller discussion of the prob- 
lem is promised. We may then see it illus- 
trated and argued with the detail that so 
important a matter deserves. 

It may be noted that in New England a 
tilting of the Cretaceous peneplain of the 
uplands from its former lower and nearly 
level attitude is well proved ; for the sub- 
mature rivers of to-day run to the sea on 
flatter grades than the descent of the up- 
lands; and this would be impossible if the 
peneplain had not been distinctly tilted. 


BALTZER ON THE DILUVIAL AAR GLACIER. 


Tue thirteenth number of the Beitrage 
zur Geologischen Karte der Schweiz is a 
treatise on the diluvial glacier of the Aar 
and its deposits in the neighborhood of 
Berne, by Professor A. Baltzer of that city. 
It is a handsome quarto volume of 170 
pages and seventeen plates. The text is 
chiefly concerned with the results of glacial 
action in the neighborhood of the strong 
terminal moraines and the included amphi- 
theatre of Belp (just above Berne). This 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 117. 


amphitheatre was in general eroded; the 
moraines outside of it were built up; and 
the forelying district was broadly aggraded 
by surcharged glacial rivers. The chief of 
the latter was the Aar, which shifted its 
course to the right and left across the fore- 
land, as one part after another was sheeted 
with sands and gravels. Among the plates 
special mention should be made of a superb 
view showing the confluence of the two 
main glacial branches far up among the 
mountains, from a photograph by Sella; 
a pictorial section exhibiting the dimensions 
of the whole length of the diluvial glacier 
when it extended even beyond Berne; and 
several views of the drift topography in the 
piedment district. The effect of the Rhone 
glacier in obstructing the natural outflow 
of the Aar glacier and requiring it to run 
over the Brunig pass towards Lucerne is 
clearly set forth. A large two-sheet map 
of the district about Berne will prove a 
a valuable guide to foreign students who 
wish to examine a typical glaciated area in 
the light of detailed local investigations. 
W. M. Davis. 


HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


CURRENT NOTES ON METEOROLOGY. 
THE TEACHING OF CLIMATOLOGY IN MEDICAL 
SCHOOLS. 

THE importance of astudy of climatology 
by medical students is urged in a paper by 
R. DeC. Ward, under the above title, in 
the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal for 
February 4th. At present very little atten- 
tion is paid to this subject in any of our 
medical schools, and a special course in 
climatology is given in but about half a 
dozen. Medical men all realize the close 
relations which exist between climatic con- 
ditions and health, but, so long as no in- 
struction is provided for them during their 
medical course, they are left to pursue the 
subject as best they can after they begin to 
practise. In this paper a general outline of 


MARCH 26, 1897.] 


a course in meteorology and climatology, 
suitable for medical schools, is given, and 
reference is made to the books which will 
be found most useful in the work. The 
writer believes that the subject of climatol- 
ogy is of sufficient importance to stand by 
itself, as an independent course in the 
medical curriculum, and that every medical 
student should have a general knowledge 
of it. The special relations of climate in 
the different branches of medicine can be 
discussed by the instructors in hygiene, or 
therapeutics, or bacteriology, after the stu- 
dents have the general knowledge just re- 
ferred to. Correspondence has shown that 
a large number of the deans of our medical 
schools favor the giving of some such in- 
struction in climatology in the medical 
course, and there can be no doubt that all 
the most progressive schools of medicine 
will provide such instruction before long. 


SUNSTROKE WEATHER OF AUGUST, 1896. 


WE are reminded of the exceptionally 
hot weather which prevailed over the east- 
ern two-thirds of the United States early 
last August, by a paper by Dr. W. F. R. 
Phillips, entitled ‘Sunstroke Weather of 
August, 1896,’ in the November Monthly 
Weather Review. The opportunity which 
this extraordinary heat wave offered, of 
studying the relations of meteorologic con- 
ditions and the occurrence of sunstroke, 
was made good use of by our Weather Bu- 
reau, and, as a result of a careful study, Dr. 
Phillips has been able to draw some inter- 
esting conclusions from the large body of 
hospital and official city statistics collected. 
The most important results are as follows : 
(a) the number of sunstrokes follows more 
closely the excess of temperature above the 
normal than it does that of any other me- 
teorological condition; (b) the number of 
‘ssunstrokes does not appear to sustain any 
definite relation to the relative humidity ; 
(ce) although the absolute humidity was 


SCIENCE. 


509 


greatest during the maximum of sunstrokes, 
yet it does not appear that the variations 
influenced the number of cases; (d) the 
liability to sunstroke increases in propor- 
tion as the mean temperature of the day 
approaches the normal maximum tempera- 
ture for that day. Itis rather striking to 
find no decided connection between the hu- 
midity of the atmosphere and the occur- 
rence of sunstroke. So far as can be 
ascertained, the whole number of deaths 
during August, 1896, directly attributable 
to sunstroke was 2,038. 


DEFORESTATION AND RAINFALL. 


Nature for January 28th contains a note 
on the much vexed question of the influ- 
ence of forests on rainfall. According to a 
recent Bulletin of the Royal Botanic Gardens, 
Trinidad, the rainfall on that island is 
slowly but surely decreasing. The average 
rainfall for the decade 1862-71 was 66.715 
inches; for 1872-81, 65.993 inches, and for 
1882-91, 65.037 inches. The cause of this 
decrease is said to be the disappearance of 
the forests. It would be well, however, to 
wait a good many years more before com- 
ing to that conclusion. Records for only 
thirty years, even if they are absolutely 
comparable and reliable, are hardly suffi- 
cient to warrant holding such a belief at 


the present time. 
R. DEC. WARD. 


HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 
THE EUROPEAN ‘ QUATERNARY’ MAN. 
Our geologists rarely use the term ‘ qua- 
ternary.’ By European writers it is un- 
derstood to mean the period which followed 
the Tertiary and includes the present time. 
Archeologically it is divided into two 
epochs, the older including the pre-glacial, 
the glacial and the post-glacial ages, all 
characterized by a chipped-stone industry; 
the later beginning with the neolithic cul- 
ture and continuing till now. 


510 


Professor Gabriel de Mortillet, in the 
Revue Mensuelle of the Paris School of 
Anthropology (January 15), succinetly ex- 
plains these divisions and sets forth, with 
his usual clearness, the typical products and 
the fauna which characterize them. He 
has found no reason materially to modify 
the opinions he advanced in his earlier 
works, and still maintains that a careful 
study of the geological data bearing on the 
question of the antiquity of man does not 
allow us to assign it a more recent date 
than 230,000 years ago. 


THE AFRICAN DWARES. 


In the Mittheilungen of the Vienna An- 
thropological Society, for December, Pro- 
fessor Paulitschke presents his views on the 
dwarfs of Africa. He referred to the pres- 
ent localities occupied by them, which are 
scattered from the Atlas chain in Morocco 
to the Kalehari desert in South Africa. 
For a variety of reasons, he believes these 
dwarfs to be the remnants of a distinct 
race, not degenerates, but a ‘sport’ 
(Spielart) of Homo Sapiens, which at some 
distant epoch occupied large areas of the 
continent and extended to Madagascar. 

Referring to the Dume, the small people 
found by Dr. Donaldson Smith north of 
Lake Stephanie, he regretted that so little 
information was secured about them. But 
Dr. Smith did obtain a vocabulary of their 
language and photographs of two of the 
males, which are printed in his recent vol- 


ume of explorations. 
D. G. Brinton. 
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 
A BILL FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF SCIENCE, 
LITERATURE AND ART. 

THE new tariff bill now before Congress im- 
poses a tax of 45 per cent. ad valorem on scien- 
tific apparatus ‘imported especially for colleges 
and other institutions;’ it imposes a tax of 25 
per cent. on books imported for public libraries, 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 117. 


on books ‘ printed in languages other than Eng- 
lish,’ on books ‘printed more than twenty years,’ 
and on books ‘devoted to original scientific re- 
search,’ and it imposes a tax of 25 per cent. on 
works of art. This simple statement is the 
most severe indictment that can be brought 
against these provisions of the bill. Argument 
in such a case seems almost useless. 

Import duties are imposed in order to raise rey- 
enue and, according to one of our political par- 
ties, to protect home industries from foreign 
competition. Indirect taxes for purposes of rey- 
enue are by common consent imposed on those 
articles whose consumption is not necessary nor 
useful. Thus the British government collects. 
an import duty only on stimulants, narcotics 
and silverware. The United States govern- 
ment collects internal revenue only on alcoholic 
drinks, tobacco, opium, oleomargarine and play- 
ing cards. Opposed to such commodities are 
scientific instruments and books, which con- 
tribute the most to the advance of civilization. 
A single scientific instrument or the book de- 
scribing it may increase the wealth of the 
country by millions of dollars. It is inconceiv- 
able that any government should deliberately 
impose a special tax on such an instrument or 
book for purposes of revenue. 

We must suppose that if anyone approve 
these new duties it is on the ground of protec- 
tion to home industries—that, for example, 
they will benefit our instrument makers. But 
it seems evident that makers of apparatus 
will be injured by such taxes. If a college 
must pay 45 per cent. to the government for 
the apparatus that it imports it will have less 
to spend on domestic as well as on foreign 
instruments. If the best models cannot be im- 
ported from abroad, and if American men of 
science are prevented from improving instru- 
ments and inventing new ones, the makers of 
apparatus in the United States will suffer se- 
verely. 

But a4 more important consideration remains. 
Those who believe in the protection by govern-- 
ment of home industries undoubtedly must re- 
gard as most important the protection of the 
industry that contributes the most to the wel- 
fare and development of the nation. Agricul- 
ture, manufactures and commerce depend on sci- 


MARCH 26, 1897.] 


entific work. It is only by keeping fully abreast 
of the scientific progress of the world and by 
contributing its share to this progress that the 
United States can maintain a position equal to 
that of Great Britain and Germany. We can 
afford to confine our considerations to material 
wealth, even though we may regard as far 
more important than this, health of body, in- 
tellectual development and moral balance. 
Eyen those who wish to limit the paternal 
functions of government believe that it should 
encourage education and science. It seems in- 
credible that a bill intended to protect the 
industries of the United States, enacted by a 
party representing a large part of the intelli- 
gence of the nation, should contain provisions 
tending to suppress science, literature and art. 

The President and faculties of Yale University 
have presented a petition against these duties, 
and this example should be followed by other in- 
stitutions. Men of science should also write in- 
dividually to their Representatives in Congress. 
When the character of such taxes is properly 
understood, the bill containing them can scarcely 
be passed by Congress and signed by the Presi- 
dent. 


GENERAL. 


TuHE forcible arguments urged by Lord Lister 
and other members of the recent deputation to 
the British Prime Minister on the question of 
the establishment of a National Physical Lab- 
oratory apply equally toa similar institution 
at Washington. We may especially call atten- 
tion to the able advocacy of this plan by Pro- 
fessor F. W. Clarke in this JouRNAL (January 
22d). A department that will do for the man- 
ufactures and commerce of the nation what the 
Department of Agriculture now does for the 
agricultural interests might properly begin 
with an institution at Washington similar to the 
German Reichsanstalt and the National Physical 
Laboratory now urged by English men of 
science. 


In view of the present advocacy of a depart- 
ment of health under our government, it may 
be worth noting that the Lancet commends a 
similar plan for Great Britain, proposing that 
there be a minister of health with a seat in the 
Cabinet having charge of the following depart- 


SCIENCE. 


511 


ments: (1) The Registration Department ; (2) 
the Local Government Department; (8) the 
Factory and Workshop Department; (4) the 
Analytical and Chemical Department; (5) the 
Veterinary Department; (6) the Public Works 
and Prisons Departments ; and (7) the Lunacy 
Department. 

Mr. JosEpH H. BRIGHAM has been appointed 
Assistant Secretary of Agriculture. According 
to the biographical notice in the New York 
Evening Post his qualifications for the office are 
as follows: ‘‘The new Assistant Secretary of 
Agriculture is a farmer living near Delta, O., 
in the western part of the State. He has an 
excellent war record as an officer in the Union 
army, and is well known in Ohio political cir- 
cles, having been his party’s nominee in several 
hot fights. Among the agriculturists he is 
widely known as Master of the Grange, which 
office he held for some time. He has lectured 
to granges in all parts of the country, and was 
warmly endorsed by granges for Secretary of 
Agriculture. He is six feet five inches tall. In 
the Harrison administration he was one of the 
commissioners to negotiate with the Shoshone 
and Arapahoe Indians for a cession of a part of 
the Wild River Reservation in Wyoming.’’ 


Mr. Rosert T. Hitt, of the United States 
Geological Survey, has just returned from the 
fourth of a series of annual studies in the Tropi- 
cal American regions, made under the auspices 
of Professor A. Agassiz. The present expedition 
was devoted to a further study of the geology, 
paleontology and geomorphology of the Antilles, 
Barbadoes and the Leeward Islands, and their 
relations to continental problems. Mr. Hill re- 
ports that much new and valuable information 
was obtained upon these subjects. 

Mr. 8. F. Emmons, also of the Survey, is in 
South America, under a month’s furlough, 
working in mining geology. 

Henry L. MARInpINn, an assistant in the 
Coast and Geodetic Survey, has been appointed 
a member of the Mississippi River Commission. 

Iv is proposed to erect a memorial to Galileo 
Ferreris, the eminent student of electrical sci- 
ence, in the Industrial Museum at Turin. A 
strong committee has been formed for the pur- 
pose, including a number of leading Italian 


512 


statesmen and men of science. It is intended 
to make the memorial international. Subscrip- 
tions should be sent to Sig. Cav. Zappata, the 
municipal Treasurer of Turin. 


OXFORD University conferred the degree of 
D. C. L. on Dr. Nansen on March 18th. 


Dr. FELIX KLEIN, professor of mathematics 
at Gottingen, received the degree of D. Sc. from 
Cambridge University on March 11th. 


Proressor EH. HE. BARNARD, of the Yerkes 
Observatory, has returned to America. Owing 
to stormy weather the steamship arrived a day 
late for the annual meeting of the Royal Astro- 
nomical Society, but a special informal meeting 
of the Society was arranged on March 2d for 
the presentation of the gold medal awarded to 
Professor Barnard. 


GENERAL SEBERT has been elected member 
of the section of mechanics of the Paris Acad- 
emy in the room of M. Resal. 


M. GAILLoT has been appointed successor of 
M. Loevy as sub-director of the Paris Observa- 
tory. 

It is stated in Nature that Professor W. Ram- 
say has been elected a corresponding member 
of the Royal Academy of Bohemia and of the 
Academy of Sciences of Turin. 


Mr. HERBERT SPENCER, in accordance with 
his uniform practice of declining honors, will 
not accept the degree of D. Sc., which the 
Council of the Senate of the University of Cam- 
bridge proposed to confer on him. 


A MEMORIAL to Professor Jaccard, who held 
the chair of geology at the Academy at Neu- 
chatel until 1895, has been unveiled at the 
Academy. 

A PROFESSOR of natural science is wanted for 
the Thomason Engineering College, Rurki, in 
the northwest provinces of India. Applications 
should be addressed to the Secretary, Indian 
Office, London. 

A SELECT committee of the British House of 
Commons has been appointed to inquire into 
and report upon the administration and cost of 
the museums of the Science and Art Department. 
Parliament will consider appropriations for a 
frontage of South Kensington Museum and the 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 117. 


use of the electric light in the Natural History 
Museum. 

THE Lowell Observatory has not found the 
site in the vicinity of the City of Mexico as. 
favorable as had been expected and will be 
moved back to Flagstaff, Arizona. 


Dr. MARSHALL WARD, professor of botany 
at Cambridge, reports that a collection of Py- 
renean and Alpine plants, made by the late Mr. 
Charles Packe, M. A., Christ Church, Oxford, 
has been presented to the Herbarium, by his 
widow, Mrs. Charles Packe, Stretton-park, 
Leicestershire. The specimens, on about 3,700 
sheets, are mounted and named, and were for 
the most part collected by Mr. Packe himself 
between 1858 and 1893. 


Proressor H. C. Bumpus has arranged for 
the students of comparative anatomy of Brown 
University, according to the New York Evening 
Post, an excursion on Narragansett Bay during 
the spring recess. A steamer has been char- 
tered for the purpose and seventy students are 
taking part in the work. 

THE final sitting of the International Sani- 
tary Conference at Venice took place on March 
19th, when the protocol was signed. It will be 
sent for signature to those governments whose 
representatives had already left Venice. Turkey 
signed it with reserves. Besides the ambassa- 
dors and ministers of the Powers, the follow- 
ing-named technical delegates have signed the 
protocol as plenipotentiaries : Dr. Thorne, for 
England ; Professors Brouardel and Proust, for 
France; Professor Emergen, for Belgium, and 
Dr. Ruisch, for Holland. 


Dr. E. H. Witson, Chief of the Bureau of 
Bacteriology in the Brooklyn Health Depart- 
ment, secured, some time ago, bacilli of the 
Bubonic plague and has made experiments 
with them. He finds that sunlight and desic- 
cation cannot be relied upon to limit the via- 
bility of this bacillus under commercial circum- 
stances. The bacilli survived for forty-three 
days when desiccated. Dr. Wilson conse- 
quently holds that rags, mails, ballast and gen- 
eral merchandise coming from infected ports 
should be subjected at either the port of depart- 
ure or the port of entry to a thorough system 
of disinfection. 


MARCH 26, 1897.] 


. STATISTICS of the French population for 1895 

show a decrease of 17,000. There was a de- 
erease in 1890, 1891 and 1892, but this was at 
the time attributed to the prevalence of influ- 
enza. The birthrate in France, which at the 
beginning of the century was 33 per thousand, 
has now decreased to 22. 


A CORRESPONDENT of the London Times, in 
reviewing the consumption of intoxicating 
liquors in Great Britain and Ireland during the 
year 1896, shows that, as compared with 1895, 
there has been an increase, costing over six and 
a half million pounds, the total expenditure 
being £148,972,230. This is the largest amount 
ever spent in the United Kingdom for alcoholic 
liquors, though the annual expenditure per 
head for the years 1871-78 was greater. The 
cause of the present backsliding after a tempo- 
rary improvement is not evident, for it is prob- 
able that the number of total abstainers is 
increasing. 

OnE of the English anti-vivisection societies 
wrote to the Prince of Wales requesting that 
none of the money subscribed in honor of the 
Queen’s Jubilee should be given to hospitals 
maintaining laboratories in which experiments 
are made on living animals. The Prince of 
Wales replied through his secretary that it 
would not be advisable for him to enter into 
any collateral consideration regarding the dis- 
position of the fund. In his original appeal 
the Prince of Wales had emphasized hospitals 
as being not only institutions for the relief of 
suffering, but also places affording a means 
of medical education and the advancement of 
medical science. 


THE President of the British Board of Trade 
stated, at the meeting of the Association of 
Chambers of Commerce on March 10th, that the 
bill introduced last session by the government 
legalizing the metric system of weights and 
measures would be brought forward, but that a 
compulsory measure could not be carried in the 
present state of public opinion. It was proposed 
before the Association, ‘‘ That, whilst approv- 
ing of the bill introduced into the House of 
Commons last session proposing to legalize the 
use of metric weights and measures, this Asso- 
ciation is at the same time of opinion that the 


SCIENCE. 


513 


bill should be amended in the following respects : 
(1) That the decimal system as defined in the 
bill shall be a compulsory subject of instruction 
in all the elementary schools in the kingdom ; 
(2) that the use of the decimal weights and 
measures so proposed shall be optional for only 
two years after the passing of the bill, and shall 
then be compulsory.’’ This resolution was, 
however, not carried. A compulsory introduc- 
tion of the metric system seems to have heen re- 
garded as desirable, by the Association, but not. 
as feasible. It was stated by Sir Samuel Mon- 
tagu, M. P., President of the Decimal Associa- 
tion, that the passing of a permissive bill would 
encourage the United States to take a further 
step in the matter and pass a compulsory bill. 
If that were done Great Britain would have to 
follow, as a matter of course. 


PROFESSOR JASTROW’S letter to this JOURNAL. 
(p. 26) entitled ‘a test on diversity of opinion’ 
was republished in the London Academy, but 
under a misleading title. A number of corre- 
spondents sent solutions to the Academy. But 
Professor Jastrow would prefer to have answers. 
sent directly to him, as it is his wish not to 
secure answers to the problem, but data for the 
study of diversity of opinion, and for this pur- 
pose the answers should be independent. 

PROFESSOR KARL PEARSON has collected his 
scientific essays dealing with problems of 
chance and variation, several of which are of 
special interest to students of anthropometry 
and evolution, which will shortly be published 
in two volumes by Edward Arnold. 


THE Clarendon press will publish a series of 
five books on musical history, under the editor- 
ship of Mr. W. H. Hadow, fellow of Worcester 
College. 

THE New York State Library has just issued 
its seventh annual comparative summary and 
index of State legislation, covering the laws 
passed in 1896. Each act is briefly described 
or summarized and classified under its proper 
subject-head, with a full alphabetic index to the 
entries. It is proposed that the eighth bulletin 
shall consolidate into a single series, with the 
legislation of 1897, the summaries for the pre- 
ceding seven years. This material will be 
closely classified and so presented as to give a 


514 


clear view of the general progress of legislation 
for the eight years ending in 1897. 


A SECOND edition of Professor Bailey’s ‘Sur- 
vival of the Unlike’ having been called for, he 
has prepared a new preface, in the course of 
which he thus summarizes his views on heredity 
and variation: ‘‘I conceive the organic crea- 
tion to have started out with no definite tenden- 
cies so far as the corporeal forms of organisms 
are concerned, but these tendencies have all 
been developed—heredity amongst the rest— 
by the environmental necessities of later time ; 
whilst variation or plasticity was a normal and 
necessary feature of the original form of life, 
this constitutional elasticity has been constantly 
bred out by the pressure of circumstances, and 
the subsequent variation has come to be more 
and more the result of definite environments. 
In some groups, in which the decline towards 
extinction has now well progressed, or when 
environments are very stable, organisms re- 
produce themselves with considerable rigidity, 
so that it may be said that like produces like. 
In some of the variable groups, which, pre- 
sumably, have not yet reached the height of 
their development, it might with equal truth 
be said that unlike produces unlike. But, in 
any event, the normal or original fact is con- 
ceived to be that unlike produces unlike. At 
the present time it would be truer to say that 
similar produces similar.’’ We are glad to 
learn that Professor Bailey is contemplating a 
work on the philosophy of the evolution of 
plants. 


THE Cairo correspondent of the London 
Times writes that the second annual horticul- 
tural exhibition was opened by the Khedive on 
January 22d. This year an agricultural de- 
partment was added, comprising exhibits of 
food, forage, textile and dyeing products from 
all parts of Egypt. A novelty was specimens 
of bagging and fine canvas made from the fibre 
of the sisal agave, the cultivation of which has 
lately been introduced by Mr. E. A. Floyer, who 
has established 30,000 plants in various places, 
and anticipates that after two years their produce 
will attain important dimensions. The plant 
requires very little care or irrigation, and can be 
grown in places unsuited for other crops. The 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. Von. V. No. 117. 


fibre exhibited was decorticated in a hand ma- 
chine invented by M. Faure, Messrs. J. Planta 
and Co., Swiss merchants, of Alexandria, who 
have established a scientific experimental cot- 
ton plantation near Zagazig, on which 60 differ- 
ent cultivations are being made, exhibited 
some of the results of their enterprise in an ar- 
tistic kiosque, where every detail connected 
with the plant could be studied. The dis- 
play of vegetables, chiefly by natives and the 
youths of the Agricultural College, contained 
some fine specimens, grown to a consider- 
able extent from imported English seeds, for 
which a good demand has sprung up. The 
Finance Ministry’s nursery garden at Ghezireh 
is an active agent in cultivating and distri- 
buting economic plants. Immediately after 
the exhibition it received applications for 
5,000 young trees from native cultivators. 
The show of butter, vying with the best de- 
scriptions produced in Europe, was remark- 
able as representing an industry dating from 
only three or four years back. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 


THE late Sir Thomas Elder has bequeathed 
£155,000 for public objects in Adelaide, includ- 
ing £65,000 for the University. 


Mr. W. H. CorBert, the new United States 
Senator from Oregon, has given the Pacific 
University, Forest Grove, Ore., $10,000. 


THE report that the University of Wisconsin 
had overdrawn its account on the State Fund 
is incorrect. We are informed on the best au- 
thority that the balance to the credit of the 
University is $40,000. 


WELLESLEY COLLEGE will receive $3,000 for 
a scholarship through the will of the late Sarah 
S. Holbrook. 


FunpDs are being collected for a Joseph 
Mosenthal fellowship of music in Columbia 
University, $6,000 having already been given. 


PROFESSOR H. WILSON HARDING, who for 25 
years has held the chair of physics and electri- 
eal engineering at Lehigh University, will be 
made professor emeritus at the end of the pres- 
ent year. 


MARCH 26, 1897.] 


Bryn Mawr CoLiEcsE awards annually three 
traveling fellowships. One of these has just 
been awarded to Miss Margaret Hamilton in 
natural science and one to Miss E. N. Martin 
in mathematics. 


Mr. ARTHUR H. Pierce, Kellogg fellow of 
Amherst College, has begun a course of lec- 
tures on psychology at the College. The Kel- 
logg fellowship is the most valuable in the gift 
of any American university. The income of 
$30,000 is given to the holder for seven years, 
part of the time to be spent in study abroad, 
and part in residence at Amherst with certain 
duties as lecturer. 


THE New York Evening Post reports that the 
museum of economic geology of New York 
University has recieved a full series of speci- 
mens illustrating the coal beds in the several 
anthracite basins. Series exhibiting the peculi- 
arities of the ores and enclosing rocks have 
been sent by the officers of eleven important 
mines in Montana, Nevada, Utah, Colorado 
and Arizona, and similar series have been re- 
ceived from several of the more celebrated iron 
mines. The department of geology has been 
assigned for the present the south end of the 
new museum, which is approaching completion. 
It has a length of between eighty and ninety 
feet, and a width of over thirty-five feet, and 
will comprise three sections, namely, the mu- 
seum section, the laboratory section and the 
classroom section. ‘The space in the temporary 
building now occupied by geology will be given 
to the department of biology. 


AN attempt is being made to secure funds for 
the endowment of a professorship in agriculture 
and forestry at the University of Cambridge. 
During the present year a short course of lec- 
tures on the practice and science of agriculture 
have been given by Professor Somerville, of the 
Durham College of Science. 


A DESPATCH to the London Times from St. 
Petersburg says that more than a thousand stu- 
dents of the University and other institutions 
have been arrested at the very doors of the 
Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan. They were 
endeavoring to attend prayers said for the soul 
of a girl student named Vitroff, who, it is al- 
leged, set fire to her blanket and burned her- 


SCIENCE. 


515 


self to death in her prison cell, to escape the 
insults and violence of a prison official. She 
had been imprisoned since December, on the 
charge of being a political agitator. 

Dr. CLASSEN, of the Polytechnic Institute 
at Aachen, has been appointed professor of 
chemistry in the University at Kiel; Dr. A. 
Palladin, professor of plant anatomy and 
physiology at the University of Warsaw, and Dr. 
de Vries, docent at the Polytechnic Institute at 
Delft, professor of geometry in the University 
of Utrecht. Dr. W. Beneke has qualified as 
docent in botany in the University of Stras- 
burg. 


DISCUSSION AND. CORRESPONDENCE. 

THE FORMER EXTENSION OF ICE IN GREENLAND. 

SINCE the facts in the case will soon be pub- 
lished there might seem to be no especial need 
of continuing this discussion, but I do not feel 
that I should leave it while Professor Cham- 
berlin is insisting that I have misinterpreted 
him. It is not a question whether he thought 
the Upper Nugsuak region had been glaciated, 
but upon what evidence he has drawn his sweep- 
ing conclusion that ‘the ice fell short’ of half 
the Greenland coast in a distance of a thousand 
miles. It would be of interest to know more 
exactly where the half is, but that is not the 
point. This conclusion is certainly based upon 
angular topography, mainly seen from a vessel. 

My contention is that this class of evidence by 
itself is of no value, and in proof of this I point 
out that distinctly angular peaks have been gla- 
ciated and, moreover, that one of the most angu- 
lar now rises in the midst of the Cornell glacier. 
Ihave not seen a thousand miles of the Green- 
land coast, but have seen nearly half that, in- 
cluding the island of Disco, the Waigat Strait 
and Umenak Fjord. Nowhere in all this dis- 
tance did I see more rugged topography than 
that of the Upper Nugsuak peninsula region, as 
viewed from the sea. Professor Chamberlin 
thinks that the topography on this peninsula is 
the partly subdued, not the entirely unsubdued 
upon which he bases his generalization. It 
would require much more delicately made ob- 
servations than any of our party was able to 
make to detect this difference. 

The prediction is made by Professor Cham- 


516 


berlin that when pronounced upon by ‘experts’ 
in glacial topography, there will be seento be a 
difference between the two types as illustrated 
by the photographs. If so, it should be a 
requisite that such an expert should have been 
to the top of some of the unsubdued peaks 
to prove that they have not been glaciated. 
The mere conclusion based upon a conception 
of what seems probable should not suffice. I 
know for my own part that until I got to the 
top of some of the high peaks on the Upper 
Nugsuak I could not believe they had been 
ice-covered ; yet I found that the ice had not 
only covered them, but had extended at least 
twenty miles further. From my studies the 
conclusion was forced upon me that isolated 
peaks, as well as those rising well above the 
general level, may be glaciated for a long time 
and still remain very angular. 

Iam not engaged in an ‘attempt’ to place Pro- 
fessor Chamberlin in error, as he states, but in- 
tend to point out what I believe is an error of 
judgment. What glacial geology needs above 
all other things at present is a greater body of 
fact upon which to base our conclusions. We 
now have the fact that many parts of the Green- 
land coast are angular; we have the further 
fact that a region of angular topography has 
been glaciated. It isthe truth that we wish to 
see discovered, whether this proves that all of 
Greenland has been glaciated or only a part ; 
but until more facts are obtained I hold that 
Professor Chamberlin’s conclusion that the ice 
did not extend into the heart of Baffin’s Bay is 
based upon evidence of such a questionable 
nature that it ought not to be accepted. I, 
therefore, say again, let us get facts and trust 
more in them than in ‘expert judgment.’ 
When this is done glacial geology will have a 
better reputation. R. S. TARR. 

CoRNELL UNIVERSITY. 


So long as Professor Tarr continues to insist 
that a glaciated and a partially subdued topo- 
graphy cannot be distinguished by its contours, 
although his own observations show the dis- 
criminations of two observers, on separate 
trips, to have been essentially correct, and so 
long as he persists in calling a topography un- 
qualifiedly angular which these observers have 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. ‘Von. V. No.-117. 


distinguished from the unqualifiedly angular, it 
seems idle to continue to discuss the subject. 
In pursuance of his urgency of the importance 
of fact and truth and better methods in glaci- 
ology there is but one defense which he can 
properly make, and that is to publish in 
SCIENCE, whose readers he seeks to influence, 
the photographs which accompany his Wash- 
ington paper. Glacialists will then be able to 
judge for themselves whether glaciation is or is 
not indicated by the topography. 
T. C. CHAMBERLIN. 


HISTORY OF ELEMENTARY MATHEMATICS. 


In Professor Blake’s appreciative review of 
my ‘ History of Elementary Mathematics ’ there 
are two or three statements which appear to 
me open to objection. It must be admitted 
that, if the logarithm of x be defined by the re- 
lation x=b's*, b being constant, then, strictly 
speaking, Napier’s numbers are not logarithms. 
It is the knowledge of this fact which led me to 
write in my history (p. 160): ‘‘In determining, 
therefore, what the base of Napier’s system 
would have been, we must divide each term in 
the geometric and arithmetic series by 10’.””? In 
the light of this remark, my statement that the 
base ‘demanded by his [Napier’s] reasoning is 
the reciprocal of that of the natural system’ 
seems correct. The real question raised by Pro- 
fessor Blake’s criticism is this: In considering 
the matter of a base, what is the best method 
of describing the nature of Napier’s logarithms 
to a modern student? My claim is that the 
method of dividing each of Napier’s numbers 
and logarithms by 107 and then finding the 
fixed base—a method which I followed in imi- 
tation of W. R. MacDonald, M. Marie and 
others—is more readily grasped by the elemen- 
tary student than the one involving the diffi- 
cult notion of a variable base, suggested by 
Hagen and Blake. 

The sentence ‘ /2 cannot be exactly repre- 
sented by any number whatever’ is correct 
from the Greek point of view, for on page 29 I 
say that ‘by the Greeks irrationals were not 
classified as numbers.’ 

I am unable to find anything on page 74 
which would ‘lead one to suppose that rigor 
demands our ability to construct* * *every in- 


Manon 26, 1897. ] 


scribed polygon we may wish to use.’ The ex- 
ample in question refers to a problem, to in- 
scribe in a circle a regular polygon of any 
given number of sides. 


FLORIAN CAJORI. 
CoLORADO COLLEGE, 


COLORADO SPRINGS, March 2, ’97. 


SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 
Microscopic Researches on the Formative Property 
of Glycogen. Part I., Physiological. By 

CHARLES CREIGHTON, M.D., Formerly Dem- 

onstrator of Anatomy at Cambridge. London, 

Adam and Charles Black. 1896. With five 

Colored Plates. Pp. 152. 

Dr. Creighton’s work, as stated in the preface 
to the present volume, has been directed espe- 
cially to the problem of glycogen in the forma- 
tive processes of disease, but it was found neces- 
sary to turn aside at numerous points in search 
of a physiological basis or paradigm, and as a 
result we have the present volume, dealing 
mainly with the bearing of glycogen on normal 
growth. Emphasis is laid upon the fact that the 
glycogen of animal tissues is not destined solely 
for conversion into sugar, but that in embryonic 
formations, as well as in pathological new 
growths, glycogen presents itself in its tissue- 
making, not its sugar-yielding character. Dr. 
Creighton’s microscopic studies lead him toward 
the somewhat broad generalization ‘‘ that the 
formative property of glycogen is analogous to 
or parallel with that of hemoglobin; * * * 
that glycogen plays the part of a carrier to the 
tissues; that it contributes somewhat to the 
building up without losing its own molecular 
identity; that it is present at the formation of 
tissues and employed therein without becoming 
part of them, and that it acts thus, in some cases 
as the precursor or deputy of hemoglobin, and 
until such time as the vascularity of the part is 
sufficiently advanced ; in other cases as the sub- 
stitute of hemoglobin from first to last—in 
those tissues which are built up in whole or in 
part without direct access of blood.’’ 

The observations which lead to this some- 
what startling view are made upon tissues, or- 
gans or whole embryos, usually fixed in potas- 
sium bichromate and hardened in absolute 

“alcohol, the presence or absence of glycogen 


SCIENCE. 


as a formative agent. 


517 


being determined in the sections of tissue by 
the usual method of treatment with a weak so- 
lution of iodine in potassium iodide. Attention 
is called to the fact that methyl-violet, contrary 
to the view frequently held, also gives a distinc- 
tive reaction with glycogen, the dye picking 
out the spots of glycogen from all other parts of 
the section as distinctively as iodine itself. This 
method, however, possesses no practical advan- 
tages over the iodine method. 

Dr. Creighton has studied especially the re- 
lation of glycogen to the growth of the bronchial 
tree and of the choroid plexuses; its relation 
to the formation of the renal tubules and the 
development of the intestinal mucous mem- 
branes ; its distribution in foetal hoof, nail and 
hair, and in the developing and functional stri- 
ated muscular fibre ; its relation to the enamel- 
ling and cementing of teeth; its presence in 
cartilage and in the developmental and other 
immature secretions of the mammary glands, 
etc. As noted by many previous observers, 
glycogen is found to be especially prominent in 
these young embryonic tissues, especially at the 
centers or points of rapid growth, and at a time 
in foetal life when the vascularity of the part is 
limited or not even established. The point, 
however, upon which most stress is laid is that 
glycogen is the dynamic principle in the de- 
veloping tissue; in epithelial cells, for exam- 
ple, as in the formation of the renal tubules, 
the glycogen being the precursor of hemoglobin 
Thus, in the tubular 
formation within the kidney the advancing and 
differentiating epithelium is supposed to depend 
mainly, if not solely, upon resources contained 
within itself, 7. e., the glycogen, pending the 
complete establishment of vascularity, when 
the glycogen disappears. Similarly, in the 
muscular tissue of active or mature life, glyco- 
gen, like the hemoglobin, is looked upon as a 
reserve store for emergencies. Although not 
essential to the activity of the muscle, it may, 
perhaps, says Creighton, take the place of the 
circulating blood in one way as the store or 
reserve of hemoglobin does in another, or 
possibly there may be muscles in which the 
reserve is chiefly hemoglobin, and others in 
which the reserve is mainly glycogen. 

The physiologist has no hesitancy whatever 


518 


in accepting the view that glycogen is a reserve 
material of primary importance in the growth 
and development of new tissues, but it may well 
be considered whether the theory formulated 
by Barfurth, that the glycogen so abundant in 
new growths is a bye-product resulting from 
the cleavage of complex proteids, ready to be 
again utilized or stored up as reserve material 
as occasion demands, is not more consistent 
with present knowledge than the assumption 
that glycogen contributes somewhat to the 
building up of the tissues ‘without losing its 
own molecular identity,’ or that it is employed 
in the growth and development of the tissues 
without becoming part of them. The very 
nature of glycogen—certainly, as we ordinarily 
use the term—is opposed to the stability as- 
sumed in the preceding quotation. Far more 
plausible is the assumption that glycogen isa 
prominent product of metabolic activity, and as 
such may be widely formed in all developing 
tissues, while in the absence of circulating blood, 
which precludes its immediate removal, it may 
accumulate for a time in the growing tissues, 
doubtless being used again in the construction 
of fresh protoplasm. Indeed, it is so readily 
decomposable that it naturally constitutes a 
valuable pabulum for the nutrition or growth 
and development of fresh tissue. In this sense 
we can readily conceive of its importance, both 
as a measure of some forms of metabolic activity 
and as an aid to new growth, but wholly asa 
chemical substance which, like other kindred 
carbohydrates, can be utilized by the living cells 
which are of necessity the active agents in all 
growth. But Dr. Creighton, if we understand 
him aright, attributes to the glycogen of em- 
bryonic tissues a kind of intangible power which 
makes it the forerunner and pioneer of new 
growths, without loss of its own molecular 
identity and without becoming an integral part 
of the tissues. 

Thus, in considering the glycogen so notice- 
able in primordial cartilage it is stated that 
‘one function of the glycogen of cartilage may 
be guessed to be the separating out of calcareous 
salts from the protoplasm in such wise that 
they become visible in the form of granules or 
vesicular drops. Of course, by far the most 
of the calcareous matter of bones must come 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. -V. No,117. 


to them direct from the blood; but there isa 
period of development, the period of transition 
from cartilaginous moulds, at which lime salts 
are deposited independently of the blood and 
in some unknown manner by the agency of 
glycogen. Assuming that to be a real office of 
glycogen within the cells of cartilage, it need 
not exhaust its functions. The diffusion of 
glycogen through the cartilage-protoplast ap- 
pears to impart to it a certain mobility or dy- 
namic property, whereby cavities are hollowed 
out in the matrix and the partitions absorbed 
in aid of the formation of the central space 
which the blood-vessels enter and possess. 
Even when all trace of cartilaginous structure - 
is lost, it appears probable that some of its 
protoplasm, still occupied by glycogen, is util- 


ized in the form of ostoclasts for the further 


modelling of the medullary canal or the can- 
cellous tissue. These various uses of glycogen, 
or purposes to which it may be put, are con- 
sistent with the view of it as an intra-cellular 
or parenchymatous medium, doing duty for a 
time, or in occasional circumstances, in place 
of the great internal medium, namely, the blood 
itself.’? This somewhat lengthy quotation is a 
good illustration of the character of the activity 
or dynamic power which Creighton constantly 
attributes to the glycogen present in embryonic 
tissues. To the unbiased reader, however, it 
would seem that such conclusions are hardly 
warranted, although it is possible that, in the 
pathological part to follow the present volume, 
additional facts will be presented which may 
tend to strengthen the author’s peculiar views. 
Glycogen may well be considered in the above 
tissue as a pabulum, which, like the blood itself, 
furnishes material necessary for the growth and 
activity of the developing cells, but we fail to 
see why it should be necessary to attribute to 
the glycogen a special formative power so radi- 
cally different from that heretofore attributed 
to carbohydrate matter in general; a formative 
power which raises the intra-cellular glycogen 
to the plane of living protoplasm itself. Its 
presence in the protoplasm may give to the 
latter increased activity, may indeed endow it 
with peculiar and exceptional power for the 
time being, but it seems far more consistent to 
consider that the true formative power resides 


-MARCH 26, 1897. ] 


in the cell-cytoplasm and karyoplasm rather 
than in the glycogen as a substance by itself. 
It seems to the writer that the physiologist 
must demand very conclusive evidence before 
he can accept the view that ‘‘glycogen plays 
the part of a carrier to the tissues; that it con- 
tributes somewhat to the building up without 
losing its own molecular identity; that it is 
present at the formation of tissues and employed 
therein without becoming part of them.”’ 

In conclusion, it must be stated that the 
volume contains a record of most careful obser- 
vations and that it is replete with interesting 
and important facts bearing upon the distribu- 
tion of glycogen in embryonic tissues. Further, 
due weight must be given to Dr. Creighton’s 
conclusions, although, as already stated, it 
appears to the writer that physiologists will 
have some difficulty in accepting them in their 
entirety. R. H. CHITTENDEN. 

YALE UNIVERSITY. 


Analytic keys to the genera and species of North 
American Mosses. By C. R. BARNES. Re- 
vised and extended by F. D. HEALD, with 
the cooperation of the author. Bull. Univ. 
Wis. Sci. ser. I., 5, pp. 157-368, 1897. 

This bulletin is the 3d edition of analytical 
keys of mosses published by the author. The 
first edition, published in 1886, included only 
the genera recognized in Lesquereux and James’ 
Manual. To this was added in 1890 keys to 
the species, including descriptions of those 
published since the issue of the Manual. Dur- 
ing the past decade there has been great activity 
in the study of North American mosses, which 
is shown in the description of 603 species and 
varieties since the publication of the Manual 
and up to January 1, 1896. The present bulle- 
tin includes besides the analytical keys descrip- 
tive of these 603 species and varieties as an 
appendix. 

As a basis for the nomenclature used in the 
work the author has followed Renauld and Car- 
dot’s Musci Americe Septentrionalis, preferring 
to do this rather than make new combinations 
which would necessitate the citation of the 
‘ Analytical Keys’ in future taxonomic work. 
‘The former keys have been very useful to bry- 
ologists in this country, and students of the 


SCIENCE. 


519 


mosses have been further placed in debt to the 
author by this comprehensive revision of the 
work. Gro. F. ATKINSON. 


CoRNELL UNIVERSITY. 


SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS. 
JOURNAL OF GEOLOGY, FEBRUARY—MARCH, 1897. 


Professor Geikie’s Classification of the North 
European Glacial Deposits: By K. KEILHACK. 
The classification proposed in this Journal by 
Professor James Geikie, in which six glacial 
epochs separated by five interglacial epochs 
are recognized, is criticised. In its place is 
offered an unofficial announcement of the re- 
sults of the detailed mapping carried on by the 
Royal Prussian Geological Survey. 

The Average Specific Gravity of Meteorites: By 
O. C. Farrineton. Account is taken of both 
the weight and the specific gravity of 142 speci- 
mens which give an average of 3.69. 

Drift Phenomena in the Vicinity of Devil’s Lake 
and Baraboo, Wisconsin: By R. D, SALISBURY 
and W. W. Atwoop. The region studied is 
on the eastern edge of the Driftless Area where 
the Wisconsin ice pushed out over certain high 
quartzite ridges. The rough topography (900— 
1600 A. D.) lead to certain exceptional phe- 
nomena in connection with the drift border. 
The ice mounted the high ridges but halted on 
the summits in a most peculiar manner. The 
edge of the ice is marked by a moraine of the char- 
acter known as ‘ Endmorane’ by the Germans. 
Where it crossed the ‘ Devil’s Nose’ the slope 
of the upper surface of the edge of the ice was 
measured and found to be about 320 feet per 
mile. This measurement has the exceptional 
interest of being the first recorded measurement 
at the extreme margin of the ice. Skillett 
creek was diverted by the filling up of its lower 
course by the overwash; the Baraboo was 
dammed and a temporary lake was formed, 
and on the east quartzite bluff a smaller lake 
was formed which finally became extinct by 
the complete filling up of its basin. 

Comparison of the Carboniferous and Permian 
Formation of Nebraska and Kansas, II: By 
CHARLES S. PRossER. A continuation of the 
author’s paper in the preceding number of the 
Journal. The Nebraska City section is quite 


520 


‘fully discussed and the exposures of Cass county 
are treated in detail. 

-The Geology of. the San Francisco Peninsula : 
By ANDREW C. LAwson. A retort to the criti- 
cism appearing in the preceding number of the 
Journal, of the author’s paper, by H. W. Fair- 
banks, 

Note on the Geology of Southwestern New Eng- 
land: By WM. H. Hosgs. The structure of 
the apparently anticlinal ridges of Berkshire 
schist was studied in the ridge of schist imme- 
diately to the south of the east Twin Lake in 
‘the township of Salisbury and in the mass of 
Tom Ball near Housatonic village. The obser- 
‘vations obtained have been sufficiently numer- 
‘ous and reliable to show that the folds are 
either overturned anticlines with easterly dip- 
‘ping axial planes or nearly recumbent fanned 
‘synclines with the axial planes inclined to the 
-eastward. The ridge south of Twin Lakes was 
followed southward into Watewanchu Moun- 
tain, where the limestone can be seen to pass 
‘under the schist on the end of the fold. This 
‘latter locality is, therefore, a crucial one and 
shows that the apparent anticlines of schist are 
nearly recumbent synclinal folds with the necks 
“compressed so as to produce a fan structure. 

Studies for Students. Deformation of Rocks V. 
Supplementary Notes: By C. R. VAN HIseE. 
Notes supplementary to the author’s recent 
‘papers with reference especially to the follow- 
‘Ing topics are given: Separation of the outer 
crust of the earth into zones; Plastic flow pro- 
duces folding ; Complex folds ; Monoclinal an- 
ticlines and synclines; Position of cleavage in 
‘anticlines and synclines; Relations of cleavage 
produced by shearing and shortening; Rela- 
tions of cleavage and fissility to faults; Rela- 
tions of joints to bedding; and Relations of 
joints to folds. 

H. F. B. 


AMERICAN CHEMICAL JOURNAL, MARCH. 


On the Decomposition of Diazo Compounds: By 
JOHN J. GRIFFIN. The author has studied the 
reaction of ethyl and methyl alcohols with 
paradiazometatoluenesulphonie acid in the pres- 
ence of various substances, as sodium methy- 
late, sodium carbonate, sodium hydroxide, zinc 
dust, calcium carbonate, sodium ethylate and 


SCIENCE. 


‘ammonia. 


LN. S. Vou. V. No. 117- 


When diazo compounds are decom- 
posed by alcohols, one of the products formed 
contains either hydrogen or an alkoxy group in 
place of the diazo group. The influence of 
temperature and pressure on this reaction has 


-been studied with a number of diazo com- 


pounds, and the present research was a con- 
tinuation in this line. When the substance un- 
der investigation was decomposed in alcohol in 
the presence of an excess of some alkali and 
zine dust, only the hydrogen reaction took 
place; that is, the diazo group was in all cases re- 
placed by hydrogen, the nature of the alcohol 
in these cases having little, if any, influence on 
the reaction. When the decomposition took 
place in alcohol saturated with ammonia, the 
ammonium salt of paratoluidinemetasulphonic 
acid wasformed. The product in each case was 
converted into the amide and separated by 
crystallization. The properties of this amide 
were studied, and some of it was oxidized’ to 
metasulphaminebenzoic acid, and its properties 
and those of its salts were also studied. The 
only exception noted was with calcium carbon- 
ate, which had no influence on the diazo decom- 
position. 

The fact that pure metatoluenesulphonamide 
could be made in any desired quantity by these 
reactions suggested transforming it into the 
acid, to settle the contradictory statements 
which have been made about its properties. 
The pure acid and a number of its salts were 
prepared, and the results indicated that the 
substances hitherto obtained had not been pure. 

On the Colored Compounds Obtained from Sodic 
Ethylate and Certain Aromatic Nitro Compounds: 
By C. Lorine Jackson and M. H. ITtner. 
A number of investigators have observed and 
studied the strikingly colored substances 
formed by the action of alkaline solutions on 
certain aromatic nitro compounds. Some of 
these colored substances have been isolated and 
analyzed and some light has been thrown on 
the conditions governing their formation. The 
authors have prepared and studied the action 
of about fifteen complex nitro compounds. The 
duration of the color varied from a few seconds 
to hours, related substances behaving in general 
alike. The explanation advanced by Victor 
Meyer, that these compounds are salts formed 


MARCH 26, 1897.] 


.by the replacement of an atom of hydrogen of 
the benzol ring by the metal, is not applicable 
here, as he considered the hydrogen replaced 
-to be the one between the the nitro groups. In 
the compounds here studied this position is oc- 
cupied by other groups, but it is perhaps the 
-hydrogen between the nitro and carboxyl groups 
‘which is replaced. The evidence, however, is 
not conclusive, as there are facts which support 
‘this theory and others which are against it. One 
.of these colored compounds was isolated and 
studied and some derivatives prepared. 

On the Action of Chlorcarbonic Ethyl Ester on 
Formanilide: By H. L. WHEELER and H. F. 
-MeErcALr. The authors have given in a recent 
‘number of this Journal the method of prepara- 
-tion of formylphenylurethane. According to 
“Some authors this breaks up, giving an amidine 
and other products. The authors show that the 
oil obtained by Freer and Sherman in this reac- 
tion was not, as they stated, ethylisoformanilide, 
buta mixture of several compounds. They also 
succeeded in isolating a number of other final 
reaction products. The structure of formanilide 
is represented in two ways, either as an anilide 
or as an imido compound, phenylimidoformic 
-acid. _The structure cannot be determined by 
the final reaction products, as the formation of 
all the compounds can be readily explained by 
,either structure. According to the authors the 
-weight of evidence from recent work favors the 
imido-acid structure. 

Notes of Student Work from the Laboratory of 
Analytical Chemistry, University of Virginia: By 
_F. P. DunNINGTON. Analyses. are given of a 
variety of Ilmenite ; of ‘Mineral Tallow’ from 
“Vermont; of Marble from Texas, Md. ; of Alum 
Water from Lee county, Va., and of Infusorial 
_Earth. A number of determinations were also 
made of the power of certain calcium and mag- 
nesium salts to absorb and retain water. No 
regularity in the amount lost in certain time 
could be detected, different salts requiring dif- 
ferent times to be dehydrated. The formation 
.of definite hydrates by absorption of water 
could not be established by a study of the 
amount taken up. 

The Proteose of Wheat: By T. B. OSBORNE. 
‘The author calls attention to certain wrong as- 
‘sumptions which Mr. G. E. Teller had made in 


SCIENCE. 


521 


a recent article in this Journal, and also to a 
fact he had overlooked in quoting the author’s 
work. The following books are reviewed: An 
Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical 
Analysis, with Explanatory Notes and Stoichio- 
metrical Problems, H. P. Talbot; A Simple 
Method of Water Analysis, Especially Designed 
for the Use of Medical Officers of Health, J. C. 
Thresh; The Gases of the Atmosphere, The 
History of their Discovery, W. Ramsay; A 
Manual of Quantitative Chemical Analysis for 
the Use of Students, F. A. Cairns. An obituary 
notice of Eugene Baumann is also contained in 


this number. 
J. ELLIOTT GILPIN. 


THE ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL, NOVEMBER, 1896. 


A Further Study of the effect of Pressure on the 
Wave-lengths of the Lines in the Arc Spectra of 
Certain Elements: By W. J. HuMpHREYS. In 
their previous work along this line* Messrs. 
Mohler and Humphreys investigated the spectra 
of twenty-three elements. The present paper 
covers experiments upon some twenty-three 
more. With some exceptions, the results of the 
previous investigations were verified. In par- 
ticular, the law that the shift is proportional 
to the pressure into the wave-length of the line 
considered was found to hold. In this con- 
nection it was found necessary to divide the 


strontium and barium lines into two groups, 


as had been done with calcium. ‘The relation 
of the shift to the position of the element in its 
Mendelejeff group is also discussed. ; 

Prominences Observed August 8, 1896: By J. 
FENYI. Observations of the prominences are 
given as being of possible interest in connection 
with the solar eclipse of the above date. 

Notes on a Method of Determining the Value of 
the Light Ratio: By ALEXANDER W. ROBERTS, 
A discussion of a method of determining the 
light ratio for a system of magnitudes. That 
is if the magnitudes of a number of stars are 
given, with an unknown light ratio between 
the magnitudes, a method is suggested by 
which from an estimation of the magnitude of 
two superimposed star discs the ratio may be 
determined. A discussion of algol variables 
follows. 


* Ap. J. February, 1896. 


522 


The Modern Spectroscope XX. On a New Fluid 
Prism Without Solid Walls and its Use in an 
Objective Spectroscope: By F. LL. O. WaAvs- 
WorTH. The writer suggests that a plane 
mirror slanting downward at the proper angle 
be introduced into the dispersing fluid, and 
that the level surface be made to form the face 
of the prism. The arrangement is similar to 
that in the Lettrow form of spectroscope. 

Preliminary Table of Solar Spectrum Wave- 
lengths: By HErNnry A. ROWLAND. One of 
the regular series of tables. 

Researches on the Arc Spectra of the Metals 
III, Cobalt and Nickel I. One of the regular 
series of papers by B. HASSELBERG. The 
measurements of the wave-length are discussed 
and probable impurity lines eliminated. 

Minor Contributions and Notes—Recent Astro- 
physical Publications. 


DECEMBER, 1896. 


Oxygen in the Sun: By C. RunecE and F. 
PASCHEN. In the oxgen vacuum tube there 
exists a triplet: 1 7772.26, 74.30, 75.97, which 
is also found in thesolar spectum. As the solar 
spectrum is comparatively weak in lines in this 
region (which is on the outside edge of the red) 
the chance of coincidence with lines of foreign 
origin is less than elsewhere. It is therefore 
suggested by the writers that observations upon 
these lines be made, to determine their solar or 
telluric origin, whichever it may be. If the 
origin be solar the writers believe the existence 
of oxygen in the sun will be proved.* 

The Algol Variable + 17°4867; W. Delphini: 
By EpwaArp C. PickERING. An ephemeris and 
light curve for the star. 

The Determination of the Various Quantities of 
Aqueous Vapor in the Atmosphere by Means of the 
Absorption Lines of the Spectrun: By L. E. 
JEWELL. An investigation of the relative in- 
tensities of the water vapor lines on the red 
side of the D lines, in connection with meteoro- 
logical readings. 

* Recent observations by Mr. L. E. Jewell at Johns 
Hopkins University show that the triplet varies in 
intensity upon different days in the same manner in 
which the water vapor lines do, thereby indicating 
that it is due to that substance in the earth’s atmos- 
phere and not to oxygen either here or in the sun. 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 117. 


Researches on the Arc Spectra of the Metals III. 
Cobalt and Nickel IT: By B. HAssELBERG. A 
continuation of the details of comparison by 
which impurity lines are eliminated from the 
spectra of these elements. 

Minor Contributions and Notes. Including H. 
C. O. circulars No. 12,13 and 14. No. 13 con- 
tains a description of the spectrum of Pup- 
pis. This spectrum in addition to dark hydro- 
gen lines and the line K contains a series of 
dark lines that are satisfied by Balmer’s formula. 
less a constant term.* 


JANUARY, 1897. 


On the Spectroscopic Binary UGeminorum: By 
A. BELOPOLSKY. Containing an account of the 
detection of the binary character of the princi- 
pal component of castor. A general discussion 
of the elements is also included. 

On an Automatic Arrangement for Giving 
Breadth to Stellar Spectra on a Photographic Plate : 
By WILLIAM Hueeins. Dr. Huggins suggests. 
in this article that an eccentric gear wheel be 
put in the clock mechanism so as to produce an 
oscillation of the telescope during exposure.. 
This will cause the stellar image to move back 
and forth over the desired length of slit. The 
advantage claimed for this method, over the one 
ordinarily in use (that of changing the rate of 
the clock, which was also due to the writer), is 
the saving of time ordinarily wasted in the re- 
setting, and in general convenience. 

On the Application of Interference Methods to 
the Determination of the Effective Wave-length of 
Starlight: By Gro. C. Comstock. An investi- 
gation taken up in connection with the effect 
of refraction upon the apparent places of 
stars. The author claims that for physiological. 
reasons the effective wave-length can not be de- 
termined by matching the apparent color of the 
stars with the spectrum. The following device: 
was adopted. The objective of the equatoriali 
was covered by a diaphragm having two paral- 
lel slits cut out of it. When the telescope was- 
pointed at a star there resulted the usual dif= 


* More recent investigations by Professor Picker= 
ing, and Professor Kayser, indicate that this second 
series is also due to hydrogen under physical eondi- 
tions different from those under which it has been 
previously observed. 


MARCH 26, 1897. ] 


fraction pattern, consisting of a central band 
with a series of fainter ones ranged symmetri- 
cally on each side. The most distant of these 
resembled faint stars, and were of course due 
to the more intense part of the stars’ spectrum. 
The distance of one of these bands from that 
symmetrically situated on the other side gave 
the data for the determination of the wave- 
length. The measurements were made directly 
with a micrometer. 

Remarks on the Articles of Mr. E. J. Wil- 
ezynski: By PAUL HARGER. Being rather a 
spirited attack upon the validity of some of 
Mr. Wilczynski’s assumptions in connection 
with his work on Solar Rotation. 

Researches on the Arc Spectra of the Metals 
ITI. Cobalt and Nickel III: By B. HASSELBERG. 
One of the regular series of papers dealing 
with the measurement of lines and the elimina- 
tion of impurities. 

Preliminary Table of Solar Spectrum Wave- 
lengths: By Henry A. ROWLAND. Minor Con- 
tributions and Notes. Reviews of Recent Astro- 
physical Literature. Bibliography of Recent 
Astrophysical Literature. 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 


TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB. 


Av the regular meeting of February 9th, 
about 200 persons present, the scientific pro- 
gram consisted of a lecture by Mr. Henry A. 
Siebrecht, entitled ‘Orchids; Their Habitat, 
Manner of Collecting and Cultivation,’ hand- 
somely illustrated with lantern slides by Mr. 
- Cornelius Van Brunt, colored by Mrs. Van 
Brunt. 

Mr. Siebrecht in his paper referred}to the 
hardships undergone by the orchid collector, 
and paid a tribute to the energy displayed by 
three friends of the speaker, Carmiole, an Ital- 
ian, who had come to New York when the 
speaker was a boy; Fostermann, who died 
about two years ago, the victim, like most col- 
lectors, of disease contracted in that enterprise ; 
and Thieme, who had made three trips for Mr. 
Siebrecht, and who went last to Brazil in search 
of the Cattleya autumnalis, but was never heard 
from. 

Mr. Siebrecht referred also to three trips of 


SCIENCE. 


523 


his own in quest of orchids, to the West Indies, 
Venezuela, Brazil and Central America. He 
then exhibited the lantern views, which were of 
remarkable beauty and evoked frequent ap- 
plause. They included numerous representa- 
tives of the chief tropical genera cultivated, 
also with views of interiors showing the Cat- 
tleya house in full blossom, ete. Slides show- 
ing numerous species native to the Eastern 
United States followed. 

Mr. Siebrecht then described the culture of 
orchids and classed their diseases, as chiefly 
because too wet, when the ‘spot’ closes the 
stomata, or too dry, when they collect insects. 
He referred to their insect enemies at home, 
the ‘Jack-Spaniard,’ which eats the marrow 
from the bulb, and Cattleya-fly, now introduced 
into English houses. He mentioned the ravages 
of Cladosporium and the great difficulty with 
which orchids of the genus Phaleznopsis are 
preserved from fungal diseases. 

The subject was further discussed by the 
President, Dr. Britton, Mr. Samuel -Henshaw 
and Mr. Livingston, the latter referring to his 
recent experience as an orchid collector. A 
slide was exhibited, made from a photograph 
taken by Mr. Livingston, showing his orchids 
packed upon oxen and so carried down from 
the mountains to Magdalena. 

Mr. Henshaw spoke of his visit to Mr. Sie- 
brecht’s nursery in Trinidad, and of the growth 
made there by Crotons, as much in one year as 
here in four or five. In those gardens they 
divide their plants by rows and edges of Crotons, 
which are sheared off as we would trim a privet- 
hedge. Mr. Henshaw also paid a deserved 
tribute to Mrs. Van Brunt for the wonderful 
success of her coloring of the orchid slides. 

EDWARD S. BURGESS, 
Secretary. 


SCIENCE CLUB OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WIS- 
CONSIN. 


Ar the meeting on February 22, 1897, Profes- 
sor F. H. King, in a paper ‘The Movements of 
Ground Waters,’ referred first to a world-wide 
zone, probably extending as deeply below the 
surface of the earth as rock fissures exist, and 
which is interpenetrated with water incessantly 
in motion. These movements were classified as 


524 


gravitational, thermal and capillary, due respec- 
tively to fluid pressure, osmotic pressure and sur- 
face tension. Charts were presented constructed 
from automatic, continuous records, showing 
that the ground water is constantly in a state of 
oscillation which may extend over a long period, 
may be seasonal, or may correspond with the 
high and low barometric waves associated with 
the movements of storms. The records pre- 
sented show that the surface of the ground 
water in a well is much more responsive to at- 
mospheric changes of temperature than the 
barometer itself, and during stormy weather 
the movements of the water surface are so com- 
plex and so short in period that a rapidly mov- 
ing chronograph is required to separate them. 
Data from different wells and springs strongly 
suggest the existence of a lunar ground-water 
tidal disturbance. The variations in the rate 
of discharge of water from springs under baro- 
metric changes is very great, and the surface 
of Lake Mendota has been shown, even in 
winter when covered with ice, to be subject to 
extremely complex oscillation, some of which 
appear to be barometric. Professor C. R. 
Barnes, speaking on ‘ An Evolutionary Failure,’ 
first discussed the meaning of the title, hold- 
ing it applicable to those groups of organisms 
which do not give-rise to higher forms. The 
evolutionary history of the mosses was briefly 
traced, showing that their ancestors diverged 
along two lines, one of which culminated in the 
mosses and the other in the seed plants. The 
. cause of failure in the first case seems to have 
been due to the retention from lower stages of 
the two most important functions, nutrition 
and sexual reproduction, by the gametophyte; 
while success was attained in the other line by 
specializing the sporophyte for nutritive work. 
W. S. MARSHALL, 
Secretary. 


THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE OF ST. LOUIS. 


Art the meeting of the Academy of Science of 
St. Louis on March 15, 1897, President Gray in 
the chair, present also thirty-five members and 
guests, a portrait of Dr. Enno Sander, who for 
the past thirty-five years has served uninter- 
ruptedly as its Treasurer, was presented to the 
Academy. Dr. Hambach spoke entertainingly 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 117. 


and instructively on what a geologist may find of. 
interest about St. Louis, exhibiting specimens 
of the principal fossils and minerals character- | 
istic of the local deposits, and indicating the 
best localities for the collection of certain speci- 
mens. One person was admitted to active 
membership. 
WILLIAM TRELEASE, 


Secretary. 


SCIENCE CLUB OF NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY. 


AT a meeting of the Club held March 5th, Pro-, 
fessor William Locy read a paper on the ‘ Primi- 
tive Sense-Organs of Vertebrates and their Re- 
lations to the Higher Ones,’ of which the fol-, 
lowing is a synopsis : 

_The sense-organs differ from one another 
mainly in degree of differentiation and speciali- 
zation. They may be regarded as forming a 
series at the lower end of which are the sim-; 
plest sensory papille, and at the upper end the 
highest developed sense-organs. From the; 
combined results of investigations on both in- 
vertebrates and vertebrates it seems probable 
that the higher sense-organs have been derived . 
from those of a lower order, and that they have 
all been differentiated from a common sensory 
basis, and, therefore, are related in a direct way. 

In vertebrates the sense-organs of the lateral- 
line system are the most generalized, and it 
seems probable that from these most of the: 
others have.been derived. Especial attention 
was directed to the earliest rudiments of the. 
vertebrate eye, and the bearing of the facts on the. 
phylogenetic history of the eye, was discussed. : 

THomas F. HOLGATE, ) 
Secretary. 


NEW BOOKS. 

A Treatise on Rocks, Rock-weathering and Soils. , 
G. P. Merritt. London and New York, 
The Macmillan Company. 1897. Pp. xx+ . 
411. $4.00. : : 
An Outline of Psychology. EDWARD BRADFORD : 
TITCHENER. New York, The Macmillan 
.Company. 1897. Second Edition. Pp. xiv 

+352. $1.50. 
The Aurora Borealis. 
York, D. Appleton & Company. 
xii-+ 264. 


_ALFRED ANGoT. New 
1897. -Pp.: 


fF oOCIENCE 


NEw SERIES. 
Vou. V. No. 118. 


Fripay, Aprit 2, 1897. 


SINGLE CopiEs, 15 cts. 
ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION, $5.00. 


STRUCTURAL GEOLOGY. 


Many of the most prominent geologists and educators of the 
United States have testified to the u efulness in imparting the 
facts and phenomena of this science of the 


IvES STRATA MAP, 


Which graphically exhibits superposition, denudation, and out- 
crop of strata, with the phenomena of escarpments, outliers, 
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A copy having been purchased for use in Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity, President D, C. Gilman wrote to the author: ‘* Wherever 
American geology is taught your map should be part of the ap- 
paratus.’’ 

Another haying been purchased by Vassar College, Prof. Wm. 


DIPLOMA AND MEDAL AWARDED 


B. Dwight writes: ‘‘It represents visually, and far more vividly 
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These Maps may be had in atlas form, handsomely half-bound 
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form, is $17.50, and the size over frame is 30// x 24/7, 

The method of construction was invented, and the scientific 
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other reliable sources of information, by JAMES T, B, IvEs, F.G.S. 


PRICE, $17.50. 


THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE 
UNITED STATES 


Is impressively exhibited by a novel combination of the two 
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IvES ALTITUDE Map. 


This is an original device by the same inventor and based like 
the Strata Map upon data of undoubted authority. 

In reference to the usefulness of this map, as well as the Strata 
Map, the author has received the following, among other testi- 
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‘NOILISOdXA NVIGINNTOSD S.dTYOM FHL Lv 


Prof. E. D. Cope, of the University of Pennslyvania, writes: 
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graphic map; both together elucidate the structure to the eye of 
the student.” 


President J. E. Talmage, of the University of Utah, writes: ‘IT 
consider your ‘Strata and Altitude Maps,’ which I haye the pleas. 
ure of examining with care, and of which I have purchased cop- 
ies, excelient aids for class instruction. * * * Your plan is surely 
an excellent one and the Maps will doubtless be appreciated by 
all active teachers of geology.’ 


Diploma and medal awarded for this also at the World’s Colum- 
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PRICE, $9.50. 


ADDRESS ORDERS AND ENQUIRIES TO 


JAMES T. B. IVES, Care of SCIENCE, 66 Fifth Avenue, NEW YORK CITY. 


li SCIENCE.— ADVERTISEMENTS. 


RARE MINERALS. 


THAUMASITE, from Paterson, N. J., asulphate, silicate and 
carbonate of calcium, pure white, 25c. 


EKDEMITE, bright yellow on red wulfenite, Arizona, 50c. 


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Collections for Schools. 


ALPHA COLLECTION, twenty-five specimens in trays, con- 
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Small packages of free crystals for crystallographic study 
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ROY HOPPING, 


MINERAL DEALER, 


504-506 Liberty Building, 
Liberty and Greenwich Sts. 
A large collection of Upper 


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from the St. Croix (Potsdam) sandstone for sale. Mostly 
Trilobites. Send for low prices. 


W. A. FINKELNBURG, WINONA, MINN. 


NEW YORK. 


Dec. 1, 1896. Just Published. Sixth Edition of 
THE MICROSCOPE 4%2,micRoscopi- 
CAL METHODS, 
By SIMON HENRY GAGE, Professor of Microscopy, His- 
tology and Embryology in Cornell University and the 
New York State Veterinary College, Ithaca, N. Y., U.S A. 


Sixth edition, rewritten, greatly enlarged, and illustrated 
by 165 figures i in the text. Price, $1.50, postpaid. 


COMSTOCK PUBLISHING CO., Ithaca, N. Y. 


NEURAL TERMS, International and National. 


By Burr G. WiLpER, M.D., Professor of Neurology, etc., in 
Cornell University. Reprinted from the JOURNAL OF COMPARA- 
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ciples and practice ‘of avatomic Nomenclature with special refer- 
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Also, List of Neural ‘l'erms, with Comments and Bibliography, 
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SCIENCE 


EDITORIAL CommittrE: S. Newcoms, Mathematics; R. S. WooDWARD, Mechanics; E. C. PICKERING. 
Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THURSTON, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry; 
J. LE Conts, Geology; W. M. DAvis, Physiography; O. C. MARSH, Paleontology; W. K. 
Brooks, C. HART MERRIAM, Zoology; S. H. SCUDDER, Entomology; N. L. Britton, 
Botany; HENRY F. OSBORN, General Biology; H. P. Bowpitcu, Physiology; 
J. S. Binnines, Hygiene; J. MCKEEN CATTELL, Psychology ; 
DANIEL G. BRINTON, J. W. POWELL, Anthropology. 


Fripay, Aprin 2, 1897. 


CONTENTS: 


The Relations of Science and the Scientific Citizen to 
the General Government: J. R. EASTMAN........ 525 


The New York State Science Teachers’ Association 
(ZI.), including Address by Thomas B. Stowell : 


FRANKLIN W. BARROWS........00.ccceceseccesneeeees 531 
Migration of Bats on Cape Cod, Massachusetts : 
GEBRIT S) MUGLER, JiB.t.--..cccecceseo-socereceoneres 541 


Zoological Notes :— 
Museums and Science; A Dog of the Ancient 
PRUED LOS) ea cE WAGs 1UU CAStetsccuesenccctscincacce-osess sce 543 
Current Notes on Anthropology :-— 
European Ethnographical Museums ; Ethnograph- 
ical Survey of Great Britain: D. G. BRINTON...545 


Notes on Inorganic Chemistry: J. L. H...........-++- 545 


Scientific Notes and News :— 


The Threatened Legislation against Science and 


Education ; General 546 


University and Educational News 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 


Relations of Tarsius to the Lemurs and Apes: A. 
A. W. Huprectr. The Journal of School Geog- 


raphy: W. M. DAvis, RicHARD E. DopeGE. 
The Drainage of the Saginaw Valley: ALFRED 
(hs TUS) onocnonceooncetoacchoaaccoososencarebocconebenuneacd 550 


Scientific Literature :— 
Newton's Dictionary of Birds : 
Recent Geological Bibliographies : 


ELLIOTT COUES. 
H. F. BAIN. 553 


Societies and Academies :-— 
Chemical Society of Washington: V. K. CHES- 
Nur. Geological Society of Washington: W.F. 
MORSELL. Entomological Society of Washington : 
L.O. Howarp. New York Academy of Sciences: 
RICHARD) Be DODGE. c.0.:.<-conessseccorsereneccveserees 557 


New Books........+.. aeons Ssltierisis sais wien wintle cctactenecetceeaaen 560 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended 
for review should be sent to the responsible editor, Prof. J. 
McKeen Cattell, Garrison-on-Hudson, N. Y. 


THE RELATIONS OF SCIENCE AND THE SCI 
ENTIFIC CITIZEN TO THE GENERAL 
GOVERNMENT.* 

In the founding of states, and in the 
early stages of that development of local 
and general government that rests on new 
principles or on novel combinations of well 
recognized theories, the stress of individual 
and collective effort for simple existence is 
the dominant factor in the community. 
Under such circumstances the systematic 
investigation of natural phenomena can 
have no place in the occupations of men, 
nor receive recognition in those fundamen- 
tal laws that set forth the rights and the 
duties of the citizen and the powers of the 
state. 

Republics are born of the impelling de- 
sire for the greatest good for the maximum 
number of citizens, and that democratic 
impulse reaches its highest activity only 
when community of interest and compara- 
tive equality of estate and station charac- 
terize the members of the body politic. 
With the material development of states 
the varied energies and capacities of in- 
dividuals soon introduce aspirations for 
higher knowledge and also those combina- 
tions for wielding financial power which 
are inseparable from all highly organized 
communities; and such forces, in their turn, 
demand not only the practical application 


* Read before the Philosophical Society of Wash- 
ington, D. C., February 6, 1897. 


526 


of scientific methods in every direction, 
but they are satisfied with nothing less than 
the latest and best results of scientific in- 
vestigation. 

While this is generally true of the evolu- 
tion of all states and nations, it is espe- 
cially characteristic of the progress of our 
own Republic. 

During the existence of the English-speak- 
ing colonies in what is now known as the 
United States of America, the independence 
of the various colonial governments, the 
slow and uncertain means of communica- 
tion, and the general lack of wealth through- 
out the land, not only furnished no stimulus 
to scientific activity, but presented effectual 
barriers against all continuous devotion to 
scientific investigation. Up to the time of 
the War of the Revolution the schools and 
colleges of the colonies would have been 
held guiltless of wasting any time on the 
natural sciences. At that time, also, there 
was no attempt in any of the seats of learn- 
ing to teach anything but a smattering of 
mathematics and the physical sciences. 

In 1787 science was not recognized by 
the individual or by ethical, social, educa- 
tional or political organizations as a promi- 
nent factor in intellectual or material prog- 
ress. In the old and wealthy states of 
Europe the pursuit of mathematical studies 
had opened the way for the develepment of 
the physical sciences; but on this continent 
the study of algebra, the basis of mathe- 
matical analysis, had not acquired a respect- 
able standing in even the best colleges, 
while in most of the educational institutions 
of the land the subject was entirely ne- 
glected, if not unknown. For that reason 
alone, the physical sciences could have no 
place or influence in the thoughts of the 
people who formed our Federal Constitution. 

Without recognition in the organization 
of the general government, science was left 
to fight its way along its own lines ; strug- 
gling at first to reach practical results rather 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 118. 


than fundamental laws; sometimes failing 
and often uncertain in its aims, but still 
untrammeled by the fetters of bureaucratic 
domination. 

The State, Treasury, War, Postoffice and 
Law Departments of the general govern- 
ment were organized in 1789; the Navy 
Department in 1793, the Interior in 1849 
and the Department of Agriculture in 1889. 
The real or fancied needs of a government 
devised to promptly respond to the widely 
divergent interests and activities of an 
energetic people soon made it necessary to 
have under its own control some of the 
means for producing results by the best 
known scientific methods. 

In a halting and half-hearted way a 
number of attempts were made to lay the 
foundations of scientific attachments to 
some of the executive departments. These 
centers of scientific activity were set in 
motion by widely different influences, 
though all were united apparently in seek- 
ing immediate and practical accessions to 
the material welfare of the country. 

When considerable progress had been 
made in the installation of these new ven- 
tures it was found that the men of scientific 
training, the only proper personnel for such 
work, were not to be found in this country, 
and the development of the scientific 
worker, under more or less incompetent 
direction, was the first obstacle to be over- 
come. With that remarkable adaptability 
and energy which has characterized the 
American mind in its struggle with the 
forces of nature during the last century, 
the men for prosecuting the work of these 
new establishments were found and were 
mostly trained in this country. 

That the best plans and the most efficient 
methods were not always adopted was to 
be expected, but it may be truthfully said 
that in the short space of fifty years the 
generosity of our general government so 
fully met the demands of the people for 


APRIL 2, 1897. ] 


scientific work and investigation that the 
cost of buildings and apparatus, together 
with the apparent propects for immediate 
and valuable results, compels a not unfavor- 
able comparison with the progress of two 
centuries in the older and more wealthy 
countries of Hurope. 

That these achievements were not all real 
or highly satisfactory was not altogether 
the fault of the scientific men who zealously 
labored in the good cause. Under a mon- 
archical or paternal form of government the 
nominal head possesses the power and as- 
sumes the responsibility. The heads of 
departments and the directors of public 
works are given certain powers and are held 
to a rigid accountability. An ideal republic 
might enjoy similar advantages, but a re- 
public in esse is not always so fortunate. 

Theoretically, all citizens of a republic 
owe their government equal and faithful 
service; but actual equality of individuals 
under any form of government, save in re- 
gard to the right to protection of person and 
property under the law, is a myth, a weak 
survival of the time when popular senti- 
ment misquoted reason in the arena of prac- 
tical politics. Out of this erroneous theory, 
however, has grown in our Republic a 
somewhat hazy and ill-defined feeling that 
any citizen is competent as an executive, 
an administrator, a legislator, a jurist or a 
director of scientific investigation. 

This nebulous but popular belief in the 
varied aptitude of our citizens has in many 
instances resulted in serious damage to some 
of those centers of scientific work which 
come under the control of the.Govern- 
ment. 

For many years the political theory that 
‘to the victors belong the spoils’ cast its 
baneful influence over the scientific as well 
as the business branches of the executive 
departments, and social and bureaucratic, 
leagued with political, influences left few 
positions for the unfortunate men of science 


SCIENCE. 527 


who were forced to rely on the power of 
their own accomplishments. 

Another and by no means a minor factor 
in the relations of science and the Govern- 
ment is a popular notion of the status of 
the scientific investigator in society in this 
country. From one standpoint he is re- 
garded as a human prodigy, gifted beyond 
his fellows, able to fathom all the subtle 
mysteries of nature; one by whom all 
moral and social as well as physical prob- 
lems are readily solved with more than or- 
dinary human certainty. On the other 
hand, when the practical politician, or some 
other fortunate man born to direct affairs, 
assumes the direction of a branch of the 
government service he looks upon the sci- 
entific man as a more or less harmless 
eccentric, a feeble specimen of manhood, 
but, unfortunately, sometimes necessary to 
the existence of his bureau. Pity for his 
assumed helplessness is mingled with crude 
flattery in such proportions as are deemed 
expedient to secure the necessary profes- 
sional work, while at the same time the 
unhappy man of science is assured that he 
is peculiarly fortunate in having the guid- 
ance and protection of a man of affairs 
who knows the ways of the world. 

It is hardly necessary to say that, as a 
matter of fact, both these extreme views of 
the scientific man are usually wrong. In 
general he differs from his fellows only in 
the possession of some peculiar aptitude or 
talent for study or investigation in some de- 
partment of science. He may be a good 
chemist, and shirk every duty of a good 
citizen; a learned mathematician, with 
manners and tastes that bear no trace of 
gentle breeding or moral training ; a gifted 
biologist, but with a selfish greed that puts 
him out of touch with the best citizens, the 
wisest government or the true unselfish 
seeker after truth in any sphere of human 
endeavor; in short, the manifestation of 
ability im scientific pursuits, as in other 


528 


walks in life, does not necessarily imply the 
possession of good morals or the other quali- 
ties that make the good citizen. The true 
scientific man ought to be the highest type 
of moral and patriotic development, since, 
above all other men, he should fully 
recognize the unfailing logical relation of 
cause and effect. 

The sooner he is freed from the injustice 
of absurd flattery on the one hand and 
ignorance and vicious criticism on the other, 
and is permitted or obliged to stand on his 
own merit as a citizen and as a scientific 
worker and investigator, the better it will 
be for science and for our country. 

Again, the real scientific man has no 
more need of a business manager than has 
a lawyer, a doctor or any other professional 
man. From observation and from experi- 
ence gathered in the service of the Govern- 
ment for a third of century, I am convinced 
that the genuine scientific men in the Ex- 
ecutive Departments and throughout the 
country have as much executive and ad- 
ministrative ability as any other class of 
citizens in the land. 

The nature of their interests and pursuits 
tends to make them less demonstrative 
than most other men, and in their ownranks 
those who make the most display and noise 
in the public press and otherwise are 
generally least effective as investigators or 
as directors of real work. 

Organized as most of our Government 
scientific bureaus are, subject to a change 
in the controlling force, at least every four 
years, it would be strange, indeed, if the 
individual members, from their almost con- 
stant contact with the practical politician, 
did not unconsciously acquire some of the 
habits of thought and action of those who 
have learned to so manipulate the primaries 
that the final outcome of an apparently 
free election shall result in purely personal 
rather than public advantage. 

That some scientific men have not en- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 118. 


tirely avoided this contagion may be in- 
ferred if one studies the methods sometimes 
employed to obtain the influence that 
recommends candidates for important po- 
sitions and that frequently controls such 
appointments. 

The usual remark in such cases that, 
“after all, scientific men are only human,” 
is not sufficient excuse for any man whose 
first duty is to be a good citizen. 

In Washington one frequently hears the 
complaint that the scientific man does not 
receive that respectful consideration from 
the Government which he really deserves. 
One also hears in this connection an un- 
complimentary comparison between the 
honors bestowed upon scientific men under 
our republican Government and those con- 
ferred upon their fellows by the imperial 
rulers of foreign nations. That there is 
some truth in these views may not be 
wholly denied, but it should be remembered 
that, to a great extent, in this country, as 
in all others, the scientific men have this 
matter under their own control. 

Many times in every year the executive 
and administrative officers of our Govern- 
ment find it necessary to ask for the opinions 
and counsel of scientific men. Frequently 
these same men feel moved to offer their 
views and advice to the Government, and 
on all such occasions they have ample op- 
portunity to exhibit whatever unselfish, 
self-respecting and patriotic characteristics 
they may possess. If, however, the repre- 
sentatives of the Government find that a 
body of scientific men have urged the ap- 
pointment, to a position of trust and respon- 
sibility, of one whom they must have known, 
if they knew the man, was morally and 
mentally unfit for the place; or if they put 
in train a scheme for their personal aggran- 
dizement or professional profit, then they 
have plainly cheapened their own influence 
and damaged the reputation of all scientific 
men in the country in the opinion of the 


APRIL 2, 1897.] 


Government officials; and they have no 
right to complain of lack of appreciation by 
men whom they have once deceived. Those 
who would win the respect of others must 
first respect themselves. 

The widely scattered condition of the 
scientific bureaus of the Government in 
Washington is sufficient in itself to prevent 
a normal development of those interests in 
which the whole country is concerned, and 
for which important legislation and large 
appropriations have been urgently invoked 

If the opponents of scientific work under 
the control of the general government had 
sought for a system that should produce 
generally the least valuable results for the 
money and energy expended, it would be 
difficult to see how they could have devised 
a plan better suited to their purposes than 
the one which has existed in Washington 
for many years. : 

Until the organization of the Department 
of Agriculture no change had been made, 
since the foundation of the Republic, in the 
custom of founding scientific bureaus or 
divisions in the various departments, like 
mission churches on the extreme frontier, 
with scant visible means of support, and 
no active, intelligent or discriminating offi- 
cial interest as an effective, sustaining 
power in the inevitable struggle with ad- 
verse legislation and ill-considered, semi- 
official criticism. 

In the fiscal year of 1895-6 Congress 
appropriated in round numbers $4,500,000 
for such scientific work as requires special 
and technical training in those who carry 
out the details, and a high degree of scien- 
tific knowledge and skill in those who 
actually plan and superintend the work and 
finally prepare and present the results to 
the public. 

This amount is very unequally divided 
between the Treasury, War, Navy, Interior, 
Agriculture and Labor Departments, and 
amounts, in the aggregate, to about one per 


SCIENCE. 


529 


cent. of all the money appropriated for these 
several departments. Considering the total 
appropriations for each department it is 
found that scientific work is accorded in 
the Treasury Department about one-half of 
one per cent.; in the War Department six- 
hundredths of one per cent.; in the Navy 
Department seventy-six hundredths of one 
per cent.; in the Interior Department one 
per cent., and in the Agricultural Depart- 
ment fifty-three per cent. 

It should be noted that the Department 
of Agriculture was organized for a special 
purpose—to treat the vast interests of agri- 
culture in a technical and scientific manner ; 
and it is the only executive department of 
the Government whose principal interests 
and energies are fostered and guided by the 
methods and the results of modern science. 

The highly important duties of a national 
character which require the daily attention 
of the heads of the large executive depart- 
ments naturally occupy all the time at their 
disposal and absorb their active interest. 

Under such conditions it is not likely 
that the quiet and undemonstrative scien- 
tific bureaus can receive the intelligent care 
and sympathy necessary to their proper de- 
velopment. It can not be said truthfully 
that this lack of support is due to any fault 
of the various Secretaries. 

It is due primarily to the inherent weak- 
ness of a system which, if it ever worked 
well, in the present crowded and compli- 
cated work of the larger departments, now 
leaves the various scientific bureaus to shift 
for themselves and permits them to be 
driven out of the field of consideration in 
competition with the imperative and legiti- 
mate work of such departments. 

It is not likely that this unfortunate con- 
dition of the scattered scientific bureaus 
will improve under the present conditions. 

This peculiar situation has been a source 
of considerable anxiety in the minds of 
many scientific men for the last fifteen 


530 


years, and it has not escaped the notice 
of several thoughtful members of both 
branches of the national legislature. On 
January 5, 1888, the Hon. R. W. Townsend, 
of Illinois, introduced in the House of Rep- 
resentatives a bill ‘To establish a Depart- 
ment of Industries and Public Works,’ 
under which should be collected all those 
bureaus and divisions of scientific work 
under the control of the general Govern- 
ment, except such as were essential to the 
' distinctive duties of the several existing 
executive departments. 

The author of this bill intended to im- 
prove and strengthen all these centers of 
investigation by bringing them under one 
executive head, whose sole business would 
be to protect their rights, provide for their 
support and represent them with author- 
ity before Congress and in the executive 
councils. 

Unfortunately for the scientific interests 
involved, Mr. Townsend died before his 
proposition could be considered in the com- 
mittee to which it was referred; and no 
comprehensive plan of that nature has since 
been considered by Congress. The general 
scheme formulated by Mr. Townsend was 
approved by scientific men throughout the 
country, as well as by those in the Govern- 
ment service in Washington, and it has not 
been abandoned. 

It should be said, however, that it has 
not received the wniversal assent of scientific 
men either here or in other parts of the 
country. The scientific man is sometimes 
swayed by the same motives that influence 
other people. 

If his field of view is limited by the nar- 
row bounds of his own specialty ; if he feels 
certain of getting all he wants for his own 
particular investigation, or that the present 
chief of his department is generous to him 
personally; if he feels that it is more 
agreeable to rule his small office absolutely 
while nominally under the control of an 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 118. 


easy-going but untrained chief, rather than 
to help forward the whole cause of scien- 
tific investigation; or, if he feels that lack 
of intelligent supervision enables him to ma- 
nipulate the affairs of his office for his own 
immediate, personal reputation, aggran- 
dizement or pecuniary profit ; he is likely to 
prefer the present system rather than one 
that aims to so arrange and adjust all the 
scientific bureaus of the Government in 
such a way that their mutual relations 
shall be harmonious, and their several in- 
terests continually advanced under eco- 
nomical and thorough methods, but with- 
out friction or duplication of work. 

It is not the object of this communica- 
tion to point out the selfishness or incom- 
petence of individuals or the shortcomings 
of bureaus or departments, but to call 
anew the: attention of the members of this 
society to their relations to the general 
Government either as citizens or as scientific 
investigators. 

It should never be forgotten that our 
Government as represented by the Execu- 
tive, Legislative and Judical powers is sim- 
ply the agent of the people, not some of the 
people, but all of the people, and that they 
are entitled to the best service to be found 
within the borders of our broad domain. 

To that end it follows that personal 
claims, clamor of cliques, and the greed and 
selfishness of those who seek to hold or gain 
official position, should have little or no 
weight in the proper organization and con- 
trol of the scientific work of the Government, 
where professional merit and adaptibility 
alone should guide the selection of the per- 
sonnel, and where practical and theoret- 
ical results and investigations, in their 
proper mutual relations, and controiled by 
wise economy, should be the single aim of 
the Government. 

It may be exceedingly difficult to fix the 
time when this desirable consummation 
shall be affected; but to all scientific work- 


APRIL 2, 1897. ] 


ers, both in and out of the public service, 
who really believe that there has been nota- 
ble progress along the lines of scientific in- 
vestigation in this country since 1789, it pre- 
sents a common goal towards which all may 
strive ; a higher ideal of the relations of 
science and the government, and a more 
patriotic conception of the true relations 
between the intelligent citizen and the gov- 
ernment in a genuine republic. 


J. R. HASTMAN. 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 


THE NEW YORK STATE SCIENCE TEACHERS’ 
ASSOCIATION. 


Ii. 

TuHuRSDAY, December 31st, two sessions 
were held in the new Medical College of 
Syracuse University. The morning meeting 
was devoted to Biology. Professor C. W. 
Dodge, of the University of Rochester, read 
a paper on ‘ Biological Work in the High 
School.”* “He was followed by Dr. Thomas 
B. Stowell, of the Potsdam Normal School, 
with a paper entitled : 


The Educative Value of the Study of Biology, 

Mr. Presipent: Memory of the many 
days that we have labored together in the 
Biological Laboratory gives me greater bold- 
ness to continue this discussion; for I shall 
rely upon you, sir, to supply whatever may 
be lacking in my argument to make sure 
defense of the cause which I gladly espouse. 

I shall outline my idea of the educative 
value of the biological studies from two 
standpoints: their value ky virtue of the 
psychology of the study; and second, be- 
cause of the demands of practical life. And 
I shall venture to concrete my conclusion 
by suggesting methods and measures to 
make this scheme effective and operative. 

*At the request of the Association, Professor Dodge 
repeated this paper, which he prepared last spring for 
the University Convocation of the State of New York. 


It is printed in Regents’ Bulletin, No. 36, September, 
1896, pp. 46-62. 


SCIENCE. 


531 


Two problems confront us at the thresh- 
old of practical life: the ever present 
‘bread and butter’ problem, type of all 
utilitarian questions ; and processes or pro- 
cedures to effect desired ends, 7. e., the mul- 
tiple forms of ethical questions whose solu- 
tion depends primarily upon taste, for Itake 
it that men differ little in conclusions from 
demonstrable or even from probable prem- 
ises, which are intellections; the radical 
difference in men is in taste, or in the emo- 
tions which prompt to specific action. 

The final cause of study is both cultural 
and utilitarian; forces or agencies which 
afford increased facility in developing and 
in directing the energies or the activities of 
soul are termed cultural; the results of 
these forces, that which discovers what is 
utilized or may be used in every-day life, 
that which conduces to personal comfort 
and pleasure, and that which fosters the 
discovery of such forces and ends are prac- 
tical, utilitarian. 

I shall not contend for the ultilitarian 
value of the nature studies, for their contri- 
bution to temporal comfort, to happiness, 
to longevity and to prosperity is generally 
conceded. 

The discussion is restricted to the cultural 
value of such studies. To fit men for life 
in a broad sense demands such soul-furnish- 
ing as will insure correctness in judgment ; 
acquisition of such habits as will guaran- 
tee prompt action; and assurance of con- 
duct conformable with the high standards 
espoused. If I err not, a critical examina- 
tion of the school curriculum will disclose 
the fact that its final cause is intellectual 
acumen rather than moral power ; in other 
words, intellectual activity rather than 
emotional is the purpose of the schools. I 
do not decry the schools of to-day ; I donot 
advocate lowered standards, but I urge 
most persistently the need of culture of the 
emotional life which is the spring, the source 
ofeonduct. Modern psychology has happily 


532 


abandoned the hypothesis of faculties, and 
studies the self, the soul as a unit. This dis- 
cussion assumes the constancy of the ag- 
gregate of soul energy and its non-correla- 
tion with radiant energy ; in other words, 
the number of units of soul energy, potential and 
kinetic, 1s constant. The radical difference 
then between the educated and the illiterate 
is in the ratio of potential to kinetic power. 

This defines the province of the school, 
which is to furnish proper stimuli to render 
active and available the possible, inherent 
and inherited energy. 

There is little debate regarding the order 
of succession, and the dependence of the 
forms of mental activity. Admitting that 
nearly every form seems to be involved or 
implied in every other form it is cus- 
tomary and convenient to speak of these 
forms as separate. Following this order, 
the first end sought in an educative proce- 
dure is to effect a sensorial modification, 7. e., 
to produce a definite change in the cortical 
cells, which change automatically induces a 
corresponding change in the self or the soul 
and gives it form or experience, or the pre- 
condition of knowledge. 

These partial and vague experiences, 
percepts, must be related, interpreted ; they 
must receive meaning which is put into them 
by virtue of their relations to previous and 
correlated experiences, else they necessarily 
remain unintelligible. The condition of 
experience thus interpreted by the self to 
the self is what contemporary pedagogics 
terms appercept, the basis of all clear, de- 
finite, positive knowledge. 

I have thus briefly outlined the first 
stages in intellectual activity to get more 
clearly before this body the reason for my 
position in my first contention which is: 

Contention 1. That the study of biology is 
preeminently adapted to awaken those psychoses 
—forms of soul-activity—which prepare for the 
demands of practical life. 

I am not prepared to admit that content 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. Von. V. No. 118. 


of mind is secondary in soul development. 
I am aware that we recall individual and 
exceptional cases where we have been ac- 
customed to concede great learning with 
little ability for application ; but I am led 
to raise two questions at the very begin- 
ning of the inquiry: ist. In these cases 
has the existence of apperceptive scholar- 
ship been definitely established? 2d. If 
this be conceded, has it been shown that 
under proper stimuli there is the claimed 
lamentable weakness? I am not contend- 
ing for restricted specialization, but I do 
hold that the ignoring of the value of mind 
content has been and still is a lamentable 
weakness in the school curriculum. Let 
me again recur to the primary law of 
knowledge development, viz: that percepts 
must be related and interrelated before 
definite meaning or knowledge can be predi- 
cated. The failure to insist upon clear, 
verifiable forms is a prolifie source of su- 
perficiality and of baneful habit. Some- 
thing more than effort is needed. I can- 
not concur with the traditional dogma that 
the educative value of a process inheres in 
the effort. Nerve tracts are not trained 
to definite and specific response by ill- 
directed conditions. Meaning cannot be 
put into new forms from vague percepts. 
The character of the form acquired is too 
important to be ignored or even to be rele- 
gated to a secondary position. 

It seems to me, sir, that a radical defect 
in educational theory has grown out of a 
misconception of the nature of so-called 
mental power. It is a matter of grave mo- 
ment what is studied, what is known ; and 
it is of far greater importance to heed well 
the habits formed and the tastes induced. 
The failure of men who address themselves to 
the various avocations in life; the number- 
less wrecks occasioned by futile attempts to 
occupy positions for which neither heredity 
nor education has prepared ought to be suffi- 
cient demonstration of the fallacy of the ‘ ef- 


APRIL 2, 1897. ] 


fort’ hypothesis, and ought to provoke seri- 
ous controversy regarding the nature of men- 
tal power. How long must we observe that 
success in a given kind of work is no 
guarantee of success in another, and that 
expertness in one direction is an almost in- 
fallible proof of mediocrity in another, be- 
fore we shall concede the specific nature of 
mental power. It is this concession which 
gives preeminence to modern pedagogics. It 
is impracticable and unphilosophical to 
talk about symmetrical development. My 
contention so far has been to show the su- 
perior value of nature study as a source of 
material for sensuous stimuli which are the 
basis of all knowledge of the outside world 
and of its myriad relations ; and, further- 
more, the source of those stimuli which will 
induce precise and economic action of nerve 
centers and nerve tracts, a prerequisite to 
the formation of habit and taste. I concede 
the spiritual nature of these psychic forms, 
but I contend for their physical basis. 

Accepting the proposition as established, 
the question arises by what agencies can 
habits be induced which will insure prompt- 
ness and accuracy of execution. The de- 
mand of the age is for ability to totalize 
energy, to focalize power and quickly. 
This is my second contention: That in cul- 
turing value nature studies are not surpassed by 
other branches of study. 

Conceding that nature study does not 
furnish all the data demanded for the solu- 
tion of all of life’s problems, I still hold that 
the habits induced by their study and, what 
is of far greater importance, the tastes de- 
veloped are of superior value in training to 
manliness. Dr. Kuss says that “the asso- 
ciation of conception with ideas and their 
union with feelings and aspiration is under 
the control of education.” And Dr. Rade- 
stock vigorously states that “‘ scientific edu- 
cation is only worth anything and is of vital 
importance when its actions, powers and 
means have become firm and steady hab- 


SCIENCE. 


533 


its;’’? and Rousseau, more than a century 
since in his Emile, ‘‘ Education is certainly 
nothing but a formation of habits;” and 
Locke, a century earlier, ‘‘ We must expect 
nothing from precautionary maxims and 
good precepts, though they be deeply im- 
pressed on the mind, beyond the point at 
which practice has changed them to firm 
habits.” These citations are made in cor- 
roboration of what has been advocated. I 
do not contend that the humanities are 
wanting as means to the desired end, but 
by reason of their less sensuous nature they 
are not as well adapted to form the be- 
ginnings of habit which they admirably 
strengthen and supplement. 

My third contention is that the study of 
nature is preeminently ethical, since the exactness 
demanded by all scientific research fosters and 
necessitates love of truth. 

It seems hardly necessary to mention in 
this presence the value of nature study as 
promotive of the habit of truthfulness. 
That the ethical value of scientific training 
has been questioned may be referred to the 
early practice of advocating this study be- 
cause of the attractiveness of objective and 
concrete study, until many regarded na- 
ture study as a sort of amusement or enter- 
tainment. I assume that the larger portion 
of this audience is connnected with some 
one or more of the scientific associations of 
the country. I need but call attention to 
the character of the papers, and to their 
criticism to demonstrate the fact that with 
the student of science truth 13 supreme. 
With him hypotheses are abandoned as 
cheerfully and as promptly as they are 
formed. Experience teaches that this abil- 
ity to set aside cherished ideas is not easily 
acquired, but the very inexorableness of 
nature schools men to place priceless value 
upon truth. <A scientific lar is a mis-. 
nomer, a self-contradiction. 

The importance of the habit of truthful- 
ness is worthy of greater emphasis than the 


584 


limits of the paper will permit. I cannot 
refrain from calling attention to the clear- 
ness with which the students of biology 
learn that the omission of a single step in 
the treatment of tissue, or even the slight- 
est variation from a specified course of pro- 
cedure, will invariably modify or invalidate 
the results attained. This lesson has great 
educative value in impressing upon the 
mind the consequences of variation from 
truth in all procedures, demonstrations or 
speculations. 

Having given so large a portion of my 
time to the discussion of pedagogical prin- 
ciples, I hasten to the suggestion of modes 
and measures to make this scheme effective 
and operative. 

Whenever the teacher is prepared by 
previous training to present the subject of 
comparative zoology, my experience of 21 
years as teacher of biology has convinced 
me that the best results can be secured with 
students of high-school grade by beginning 
with the simplest unicellular organisms and 
proceeding to the more complex. The 
pupil who has a clear, definite knowledge 
of an ameceba is prepared to comprehend 
the structure of complex forms, and with 
this knowledge he cannot fail to grasp the 
secret of animal morphology. When some 
of the more complex forms are studied 
minutely the problem presents two phases: 
shall one form be studied minutely, and 
shall the available time be given to the 
study of a few types, or shall the study of a 
single type be less exhaustive and a larger 
number of types be examined ? 

I am satisfied that I have secured the 
best results by the study of many types, 
for comparative study rendered the knowl- 
edge of each type apperceptive, and the en- 
larged circle of experience gave the enlarged 
interest based upon enlarged knowledge 
which cannot exist with a restricted con- 
tent to the concept. Thus in the study of 
the ccelenterata we examined not only a 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No, 118. 


simple hydra, but studied one or more com- 
plex marine forms, some from actual alco- 
holic specimens, others by means of charts 
and diagrams. Polyp, anemone (Metrid- 
ium), jelly-fish (Aurelia), holothurian 
(pentacta), sea-urchin (Toxopneustes), 
sand-dollar (Hehinarachnius), brittle-star 
(Ophiopolis), not only aid in the formation 
of a correct concept of the Coelenterate 
type, but the knowledge gained from the 
study of each makes the study of the 
others more significant. I do not hesitate 
to affirm that the examination of half a 
dozen type specimens carefully dissected by 
the teacher will give a clearer and better 
knowledge of the type in one class period 
than a week’s study of a single specimen 
by an untrained pupil who is vaguely work- 
ing in the dark, with scalpel and specimen, 
acquiring habits of wastefulness and slov- 
enly generalizations. Where time and ap- 
pliances will permit, more individual work 
is desirable; the best and the most econom- 
ical mode known to the writer is that in- 
augurated and followed by Dr. B. G. Wilder, 
of Cornell University, in what he has hap- 
pily named Practicums.* But quantity is 
essential to quality, a principle true in 
every line of research. Something more 
than effort is demanded. 

After careful training to observation of 
the significance of homologues it is of great 
value to let each pupil trace a type struc- 
ture, e. g., the distribution of a spinal nerve 
in two or more types, as in the cat, dog, 
rabbit, and learn the significance of per- 
sistence of type-forms. No exercise of mind 
can be made more conducive to that judicial 
habit which is essential in every department 
of life and yet is so rare. 

From a utilitarian standpoint all this 
knowledge of animal structure and func- 
tion becomes the basis of the study of 

* Outline directions for these Practicums can be 
obtained by addressing B. G. Wilder, Ithaca, N. Y. 
Price, $1.00. 


APRIL 2, 1897. ] 


human anatomy and physiology. The 
vexed and vexing problem of how to teach 
the effects of narcotics in our schools can 
not be solved until our teachers are more 
thoroughly grounded in the matter to be 
taught and their profound convictions 
have awakened corresponding emotion 
which will result in consistency in instruc- 
tion and in life. 

Time forbids detailed mention even of 
an outline course of study of botany, the 
most easily taught and the most available 
of the biological subjects. It should have 
a place in every grade from the kinder- 
garten to the University. 

I am met with the objection that proper 
equipment of schools for study of biology 
and anatomy is expensive. To which I 
gladly make reply: The equipment of a 
school for the study of English or of the 
Classics is expensive, but who ever argued 
against the study of Latin or Greek because 
of expense of lexicon or grammar or text, 
and furthermore the objection is based upon 
a misapprehension of the facts. It is not 
necessary to have a museum in every 
school. Type-forms alone are required. 
Fresh-water clams, snails, slugs with the 
convenient salt-water clams are accessible 
for a few cents, and these furnish the data 
for the study of the lamellibranchs, their 
differentiz and their homologies. Fresh- 
water and marine lobsters are within reach 
of every school, and no one will complain 
because of scarcity of material for the study 
of insects. 

The study of the life history of a common 
beetle will fix in the mind of the student 
the relation of environment to life more 
vividly, hence more availably than tomes of 
unintelligible literature, made unintelligible 
because of lack of experience as the founda- 
tion of interpretation. 

It may matter little whether a stray bone 
belongs to ruminant or rodent, butit matters 
not a little whether the boy who finds the 


SCIENCE. 


535 


bone has awakened in him a desire to know 
its relation and whether he knows how to 
proceed to solve the problem. The habit of 
comparative study, the ability to give just 
values to data, to weigh evidence, so indis- 
pensable to success, but alas, so rare, cannot 
be over estimated. 

' Time limitations exclude the discussion 
of the value of the habit of confidence in 
ultimate discovery of truth. The attitude of 
soul with which the student of nature ad- 
dresses himself to a given task is no less sub- 
lime than that with which the Priest of Is- 
rael entered the Holy of Holies to have direct 
audience with the J Am. ‘This faith in law, 
this love for truth, this sympathy with 
creature and Creator are the birth-right of 
every child; the school can give it; angels 
can do no more. 


Mr. Charles N. Cobb, of the Regents’ 
office, said that, however desirable it might 
be to have science taught in our schools by 
college graduates, the fact is that most of 
our science teachers are not college gradu- 
ates. A large part of the science pupils of 
the State are in the small village schools. 
Many of the science teachers in these 
schools are normal graduates. The teacher 
of science in the normal school may be 
called on to teach physics, chemistry, zo- 
ology, physiology, geology, mineralogy and 
astronomy. The established normal course 
in this State gives 20 weeks to each of the 
first two previously mentioned sciences, 
and ten weeks to each of the others. This 
is modified slightly by the various normal 
schools. 

The discussion of Mr. Cobb’s remarks 
developed the fact that normal school grad- 
uates, prepared in this manner, frequently 
find their way into the high schools of the 
State as teachers of science, often, however, 
against the best judgment and advice of 
their normal school teachers. 

Dr. C. W. Hargitt, of Syracuse Univer- 


536 


sity, referring to the lack of adequately 
trained teachers for the best sort of science 
work in the schools, said that a bungling or 
half-hearted teacher will never be able to 
produce satisfactorily prepared students, 
whatever time or equipment he may have 
at his disposal. The teacher who aims 
chiefly to prepare pupils for examinations 
will be equally unsuccessful. Hxamina- 
tions will take care of themselves if we have 
teachers whose primary aim is to teach 
science, to infuse into the mind of the 
pupil the scientific spirit. 

It is gratifying to know that some of our 
normal school principals enter protest 
against the disposition to offer science po- 
sitions to even normal graduates, if their 
special training for science teaching is in- 
adequate. May it not come within the 
province of this Association to enter similar 
protest if necessary, aye more, to exercise 
a mild though vigilant censorship over the 
science work of the schools, and seek by 
every reasonable measure to secure con- 
stantly better results. 

We must be cautious about placing 
biology among the exact sciences, or hold- 
ing out unwarranted expectations as to the 
infallibility of experimental results. This 
may be all right in physics or inorganic 
chemistry; it is unsafe in biological teaching. 
The very fact that this is, preeminently the 
living science, having to do with the occult 
processes of life, the most distinctive char- 
acter of which is change, renders many 
results in biological experimentation ex- 
ceedingly capricious. Indeed this is one 
of the very charms of the science. Nor is 
its educational value any the less on this 
account. 

Superintendent Henry P. Emerson, of 
Buffalo, spoke on some of the practical 
difficulties attending science work in the 
lower grades of city schools. Nature study 
lacks vitality unless it is begun early. A 
canvass of the school children in a number 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 118. 


of Buffalo schools a few years ago revealed 
the fact that many of the pupils had never 
seen a lake, a hill, or the Niagara River. 
Hereafter every pupil in the fourth grade 
is to have at least one excursion a year, 
visiting some of the public works, the park 
and the river front. In the high school, 
excursion work has been a prominent 
feature in the study of botany and geology 
for the past twenty-five years, every 
Saturday during warm weather being im- 
proved systematically for the exploration 
of the vicinity. It is only by such studies, 
pursued in this manner, that the artificial 
and mechanical element of school work 
can be broken up. 

Mr. Arthur G. Clement, of the Regents’ 
office, said that in visiting over 175 schools 
of this State last year he saw some good 
science work even in our smaller villages 
where the teacher is usually one from the 
normal school. 

The Regents have their ideals in regard 
to the teaching of science, but do not expect 
to see them realized until schools are more 
fully equipped. Accordingly the examina- 
tions in science are prepared in view of the 
conditions existing in the schools. It is 
the intention, however, that the nature of 
the questions shall indicate to some extent 
the kind and method of teaching which 
they hope to see gradually established in 
the schools, and it is expected that teachers 
will recognize these hints and act accord- 
ingly. 

In zoology it is recommended to study a 
single type in each branch in accordance 
with laboratory methods. The order of 
progress should be from the lower to the 
higher, with constant attention to the in- 
creasing complexity of structure and its 
correlation with increasing differentiation 
of function from branch to branch. If 
properly done, this work will necessitate 
observation, discrimination and comparison, 
and it will impress the pupil with the idea 


APRIL 2, 1897. ] 


that the method of life is from the simple 
to the complex, which is the greatest lesson 
to be learned from this study, since it is also 
the method of growth of all social phenom- 
ena. 

Professor A. D. Morrill, of Hamilton Col- 
lege, thought that if the colleges and uni- 
versities knew more of the objects toward 
which the Regents are striving, and the dif- 
ficulties with which they are contending, it 
would enable the colleges and universities 
to be of the greatest help in the advance- 
ment of science in the secondary schools. 

The chief requisite for the instructor is to 
be able to arouse mental activity, to care 
more for the soul of the pupils than for the 
amount of knowledge that he can impart to 
them. Thorough scientific training can of- 
ten awaken pupils who have been wholly 
uninfluenced by language teaching. It is 
not so important what the science is as how 
it is taught. When pupils are taught to 
use books and not to worship them they are 
in a position to begin to learn. But the 
laboratory is of no value except as a means 
to an end—the awakening of the pupil. 

Professor R. E. Dodge, of New York, was 
glad to notice the emphatic disapproval of 
systematic botany and zoology. In the 
study of biology interest can be at once 
elicited by showing that all living things 
are attempting the same tasks of life in dif- 
ferent and yet similar ways. Function as 
producing form, comparative morphology 
and forms as the result of function, should 
be studied in the early years of education. 
Thus a basis for interest and better love for 
nature can be aroused through the sym- 
pathy that comes from understanding. 

Professor Warren Mann, of Potsdam Nor- 
mal, was sure that if the same quantity and 
quality of work were given to science that 
are now given to languages the results 
would be equal to or even better than those 
in language courses. He would not cry 
down the languages, but he would cry up 


SCIENCE. 


537 


the sciences until they have an equal 
footing in all respects with the languages. 
The next ten years will witness great strides 
in science study. This Association should 
be one of the means to that end. 

Professor B. G. Wilder, of Cornell, ad- 
mitted that after thirty years of teaching 
he still found it dificult to determine the 
proper sequence of biological subjects and 
the manner in which they should be pre- 
sented. He warmly commended the ad- 
dress of Professor Wm. North Rice, ‘ Science 
Teaching in the Schools.’* He heartily 
agreed with Professor Rice as to the intro- 
duction of elementary physiology into the 
lowest grade of schools, but urged that, in- 
stead of beginning in the fifth grade, the 
nervous system should have a place in the 
first. The very difficulty of the subject de- 
manded that its rudiments be acquired 
early. Paradoxical as it sounds, the brain, 
as a gross object, is easier to study than 
the heart. He would have the sheep’s 
brain put into the hands of the youngest 
scholars to draw and observe. At later 
stages comparison should be made with the 
brains of cats and dogs, and, still later, the 
general plan of the vertebrate brain should 
be elucidated upon that of the green turtle. 
In every high school should be at least one 
well-preserved human brain and a series 
illustrating the development of the organ. 
From scholars thus early and gradually 
familiarized with fundamental facts and 
ideas much might be expected in univer- 
sities and medical schools. 

Mrs. 8. H. Gage, of Ithaca, spoke of the 
desirability of keeping the minds of the 
children pure by telling them the truth 
about their own origin and development. 

Professor John F. Woodhull, of New 
York, in view of some of the criticisms of 


* Delivered at the meeting of the American Society 
of Naturalists, December, 1887 ; printed inthe Ameri- 
can Naturalist, September and October, 1888. Pub- 
lished by D. C. Heath & Co. 


538 


science work in the State, contended that 
poor work in science is better than none at 
all. If we are ever to have good science 
teaching we must first begin. 

There have been many sins committed 
under the head of ‘teaching observation.’ 
We are learning that one may be a very 
good observer in lines in which he is inter- 
ested, but very unobservant in other lines. 
We must not expect more of the children 
than of ourselves. Observation is only 
good when you have some use for it, when 
you are looking for something to relate to 
something else. This is scientific observa- 
tion. 

Dr. Frank Baker, of the University of 
Georgetown and Superintendent of the 
National Zoological Park in Washington, 
remarked that the teaching of science in 
the schools of Washington, D. C., begins 
in the low grades, children being taught to 
observe common objects of biological inter- 
est, note their parts and describe them. 
They are often taken out upon excursions 
into the country to observe the geological 
formations, the plants and the animals. 
The Zoological Park, free to the public, is 
much used for this purpose. He also re- 
marked upon the ethical bearings of science 
teaching. 

Dr. Herbert Williams, of the University 
of Buffalo, was one of the few represent- 
atives of the medical schools of the State 
who were present. He thought that 
teachers in medical schools might have at- 
tended these meetings with much profit. 
Too little thought is given to methods of 
teaching, even in medical schools of the 
highest standing. He was delighted with 
the prominence given to laboratory work. 
Medical schools are constantly giving more 
time and increasing facilities to laboratory 
work. But, after all, this can include only 
a part of the field tobe covered. The pupil 
ean verify some of the facts given him to 
study, but the major part must still be 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 118. 


learned outright and taken for granted. 
Yet laboratory work covering part of the 
ground studied gives a more concrete idea 
of the whole and makes the student feel 
more certain of the realness of what he 
learns second hand. 

He was astonished that no one else 
seemed to have met with the difficulty that 
he had felt most keenly. Though he had 
the necessary laboratory equipment and an 
earnest, intelligent class of students, he 
found it very difficult to teach the large 
numbers that came to him—twenty-five to 
fifty at atime. Even with the help of two 
or three assistants he found it impossible 
to assure himself that every one of his 
pupils’ saw things correctly with the micro- 
scope and appreciated what he was looking 
at. Suppose a class is studying the ameeba. 
The practical difficulties of showing the 
amceba to each of fifty students are great. 
If they are beginners you may use up an 
afternoon in finding amcebas for each of 
fifty students and in distinguishing them 
from air bubbles, bits of dirt, and al] the in- 
numerable living things seen in stagnant 
water, to say nothing of having your stu- 
dents interpret the object correctly after 
they have found it. 

More time is needed for science work, 
and smaller classes, and he believed medi- 
cal schools were trying to teach their stu- 
dents too much, but at present the situation 
must be met as practically as possible. The 
conditions in the high schools must often be 
very much the same in these respects as in 
the medical colleges, and it is surprising 
that high school teachers have not been 
more impressed with these difficulties. 

Dr. Charles J. Walch, of Syracuse, spoke 
of the successful work in nature study in 
the Syracuse kindergartens, where the 
children study in their own gardens the de- 
velopment and growth of different plants. 
He warmly endorsed Mrs. Gage’s senti- 
ments. 


APRIL 2, 1897. ] 


Professor George F’, Atkinson, of Cornell, 
thought that the outline for the study of 
zoology as presented in the Regents’ Bulle- 
tin offered encouragement for the presenta- 
tion of a much better course of study in this 
subject than was the case with botany. 

With a few exceptions the study of bot- 
any in the high school is merely the study 
of the various members of the higher plants 
with the sole view of using this knowledge 
in ‘running down’ the plant to its name. 
This method of study has brought the 
science of botany into disrepute in many 
quarters. If we should study zoology in a 
similar way we might confine ourselves 
to the birds and study the various kinds of 
feathers, the modifications of the beak, toes, 
etc., with the sole purpose of using the 
knowledge of these things to trace, with the 
aid of a key, the bird toits name. No one 
would call such work zoology. No more is 
the similar method employed by many in 
dealing with plants botany, and yet in many 
places the word botany suggests that kind 
of study alone. It has sometimes seemed 
to the speaker that if it were possible to 
drop the word botany we might at the 
same time do away with certain prejudices 
against the study of plants; and if we 
should instead use the word phytology the 
study of plants would thus be placed among 
‘ologies,’ and would at once, from the very 
name, be recognized as a science ! 

Regarding the study of types it was sug- 
gested that no plant is a type of a branch 
or class of plants, and that the study of sev- 
eral plants in aclass would give a better 
knowledge of the characteristics of the class 
than the study of a single one. The study 
of a single plant or animal to represent a 
large group may be carried too far in the 
case of beginning students. By going 
deeply into the minute structure of a single 
plant or animal a mass of facts is obtained, 
which may be very interesting and wonder- 
ful, but which do not in themselves teach 


SCIENCE. 


539 


any great principle. It would be better for 
the young student to study the plant or 
animal less thoroughly and to study others 
of the same class in comparison. 

Emphasis was laid on the importance of 
so conducting elementary science study as 
to bring frequent deductions of some funda- 
mental law or principle: from the few facts 
observed. Training in such methods of 
study, the comprehension of fundamental 
principles, and the tying together of the 
facts observed into a living whole, gives far 
greater power than the mere observation of 
many wonderful details of a few organisms. 

Principal S. G. Harris, of Baldwinsville, 
seconded the ideas of the preceding speaker 
on the inductive method in biology. In 
the grades this method may be used to ad- 
vantage in order to foster a love of nature 
and prepare the pupil for the work of the 
high school. By skillful questions and sug- 
gestions the teacher leads her pupils to see 
the facts of one form and another in nature 
about them. Frequent repetition of this 
operation fixes the habit; so that when the 
pupils reach the high school they have not 
only a habit of observation and a love for 
the study, but also the pegs on which they 
may hang subsequent knowledge—apper- 
ceptive centers about which new facts may 
be grouped. Then, and not till then, are 
they prepared intensively to study any liv- 
ing form, singly or comparatively. 

No wonder some pupils do not take to 
the study of science in high school or col- 
lege, if they must begin by mastering 
classification, technical terms and a sea of 
facts, without either a desire for the facts, 
a habit of seeing for themselves or a single 
fact by which to fasten their knowledge. 
Too often teachers seem to think than one 
must have the knowledge of a specialist to 
rightly teach pupils in these studies, so 
great is the field. Here is the danger, not 
that the teacher may know too much, but 
that she may tell too much. The idea is to 


540 


direct thought as induced by the object 
studied, not to pour into the young mind 
thoughts of others. There is no surer way 
of disgusting a child with nature than to 
give him laws and technical terms that are 
beyond his years. 

Dr. Amelia Earle Trant, of the Buffalo 
high school, spoke from the standpoint of a 
high school teacher of physiology working 
under conditions not altogether favorable, 
such as large classes, and pupils with no 
previous knowledge of chemistry or phys- 
ics. While thorough scientific work here 
is perhaps impossible, there are, however, 
certain definite results obtainable which are 
not only valuable and practicable, but also 
consoling and, on a broad outlook, satisfac- 
tory. She must be satisfied to ignore the 
meagre amount of technical physiology pos- 
sible to be taught under such conditions, if 
a few things in English and ethics can be 
mastered. 

For instance, she would be satisfied if the 
definition of physiology is so clearly under- 
stood that the word may be used inter- 
changeably with its synonyms, use, func- 
tion, action or office ; if the distinction be- 
tween the terms physiology, anatomy and 
hygiene is clear beyond question; if the 
vital, practical import of personal hygiene 
and of public sanitation is too firmly im- 
pressed to be forgotten; if the difference 
between vivisection and dissection is clear 
enough for missionary work in the house- 
hold—information as to the value, the 
necessity and the place of each being so 
much needed in these days of sensational 
head lines ; if the etiquette of class demon- 
stration, is acquired, so that all material is 
regarded with appreciative interest rather 
than with amusement, flippancy or pseudo- 
disgust; if reverence for the wonder and 
the mystery of created things is so increased 
that the pupil’s attitude of kindness could 
but be approved by the Humane Society ; 
if a little lesson in broad-mindedness is 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No..118. 


learned and the Ainsworth Law found not to 
be the whole of alcohol; if interest has been 
aroused—even if the majority of boys, and 
girls as well, decide with the iridescent im- 
agination of youth that they will be physi- 
cians; if the knowledge of physiological 
problems yet to solve will be likely to make 
simple reading of scientific discoveries in- 
teresting in the days to come ; if at the end 
of the term most of the pupils are able to 
hold their own in a test from the outside, 
questions reasonable and broad, such as the 
Regents’ examinations have been of late; 
and finally she is satisfied if, when leaving 
the subject, the pupils take with them its 
most important lesson of life—that the 
physiological axiom, ‘‘ The well being of 
the whole depends upon the integrity of the 
unit,’ is also a great ethical truth, inex- 
orable not only in the human organism, but 
also in the school, the family, the State 
and the Nation. 

The other speakers were Professor H. J. 
Schmitz, of Geneseo Normal, and Dr. 
Frank McMurry, of Buffalo School of 
Pedagogy. 

The convention closed with a business 
meeting Thursday afternoon. A number 
of changes were made in the constitution. 
It was decided to have a committee of nine 
members appointed by the President to re- 
port to the Association at its next annual 
meeting on the following subjects: (1) The 
recognition of science as a requirement for 
entrance to colleges. (2) Science courses 
for secondary schools. (8) Nature study 
in elementary schools. 

The following officers were elected for 
the year 1897. The presidency was offered 
to Professor Gage for another year, but at 
his earnest request, another was nominated 
in his stead. 


President, Dr. E. L. Nichols, Cornell University ; 
Vice-President, Dr. Charles W. Hargitt, Syracuse 
University ; Secretary and Treasurer, Dr. Franklin 
W. Barrows, Buffalo High School. 


APRIL 2, 1897.] 


Executive Council. Four years—Dr. Charles W. 
Dodge, University of Rochester; Principal Henry 
Pease, Medina High School; Professor W. C. Peck- 
ham, Adelphi College, Brooklyn. Three years—Dr. 
J. McKeen Cattell, Columbia University, New York; 
Professor LeRoy C. Cooley, Vassar College, Pough- 
keepsie; Professor E. R. Whitney, Binghamton 
High School. Two years—Professor Irving P. Bishop, 
Bufialo Normal School; Mr. Charles N. Cobb, Re- 
gents’ Office, Albany ; Professor C. S. Prosser, Union 
University, Schenectady. One year—Professor Albert 
L. Arey, Rochester Free Academy ; Professor R. E. 
Dodge, Teachers’ College, New York ;. Professor T. B. 
Stowell, Potsdam Normal School. 

FRANKLIN W. BARROWS, 
Secretary. 


MIGRATION OF BATS ON CAPE COD, MASSA- 
CHUSETTS. 

Bar migration has received little atten- 
tion. Various writers have made vague 
reference to the fact that certain bats are 
found in winter at localities where they are 
not known to breed, but no detailed ac- 
count of the migratory movements of any 
species has yet been published. The only 
special paper on the subject that I have 
seen is by Dr. C. Hart Merriam,* who 
clearly establishes the fact that two North 
American bats migrate. The data on 
which this conclusion rests are as follows : 
. The hoary bat, one of the migratory species, 
is not known to breed south of the Cana- 
dian fauna. In the Adirondack region it 
appears about the middle of May and dis- 
appears early in October. During the 
autumn and winter it has been taken in South 
Carolina (Georgetown, January 19th), 
Georgia (Savannah, February 6th), and on 
the Bermudas} (‘autumn’). As the writer 
remarks, these facts may be fairly regarded 
as conclusive evidence of migration. The 
evidence of the migratory habits of the 
silver-haired bat rests chiefly on the ani- 
mal’s periodical appearance in spring and 
fall at the lighthouse on Mount Desert 


*Trans. Royal Soc. Canada V (1887), Section V, p. 
85, 1888. 

+Imay add that I havea bat of this species, killed 
at Brownsville, Texas, on October 22d. 


SCIENCE. 


541 


Rock, thirty miles off the coast of Maine. 
This species has also been observed on the 
Bermudas. 

In August and September, 1890 and 1891, 
I had the opportunity to watch the appear- 
ance and disappearance of three species of 
bats at a locality where none could be found 
during the breeding season. Highland 
Light, the place where my observations 
were made, is situated near the edge of one 
of the highest points in the series of steep 
bluffs of glacial deposit which form the 
outer side of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The 
light, which is less than ten miles from the 
northern extremity of the cape, is separated 
from the mainland toward the east and 
northeast by from twenty-five to fifty miles 
of water. The bluff on which it stands 
rises abruptly from the beach to a height of 
one hundred and fifty feet. I found the 
bats for the most part flying along the face 
of this bluff, where they fed on the myriads 
of insects blown there by the prevailing 
southwest winds. They chiefly frequented 
the middle and upper heights and seldom 
flew over the beach at the foot of the bluff 
or over the level ground about the light- 
house. I do not know where the animals 
spent the day, as careful search in old 
buildings, under the overhanging edge of 
the bluff, and in deserted bank swallow 
holes, failed to reveal their hiding places. 
It is possible that they found shelter in the 
dense, stunted, oak scrub with which the 
bluff is in many places crowned, but of this 
I have no evidence. I hope that the ob- 
servations given below may again call the 
attention of field naturalists to a subject 
which presents many difficult and interest- 
ing problems. 


ATALAPHA NOVEBORACENSIS* (RED BAT). 
August 21, 1890. The first bats of the sea- 
son were seen this evening. There were 


*With bat nomenclature in its present unsettled 
state it is well to use the names adopted by Dr. 


542 


only two, and I could not positively identify 
them, but they were probably red bats. 

August 25, 1890. An adult male taken. 

August 28, 1890. Two seen. 

August 29, 1890. The evening was too 
chilly for many bats to be on the wing. A 
few A. noveboracensis seen and two taken. 

August 80, 1890. Six or eight A. novebora- 
censis seen and three taken. The evening 
was warm and bats flew much more freely 
than on the 29th. 

August 31, 1890. A chilly evening again, 
and only two bats seen, both A. noveboracen- 
sis. ’ 

September 2, 1890. A few red bats seen 
and two taken. 

September 5, 1890. I was not at Highland 
Light this evening, but Mr. W. M. Small re- 
ported a heavy flight of bats. He shot five, 
all A. noveboracensis. 

September 8, 1890. Heavy fog, so that no 
bats could be seen, if any were moving along 
the face of the bluff. Three or four red 
bats flew about the light house tower dur- 
ing the first half of the night, feeding 
on insects attracted by the light. They 
flew mostly below the level of the deck 
which encircles the tower about six feet be- 
low the lantern and never approached the 
light itself. 

September 12, 1890. A single red bat shot 
this evening. 

After this date I watched for bats on sey- 
eral consecutive evenings. As I saw no 
more I concluded that the migration had 
ended. 

August 25, 1891. Fourteen Atalapha nove- 
boracensis, the first bats of the season, seen 
this evening. They were flying both north 
and south. 

August 26, 1891. Evening very foggy. A 
red bat which flew about the lighthouse 
was the only one seen. 


Harrison Allen in his latest Monograph of the Bats 
of North America (1893), although many of these 
will require revision. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 118. 


August 27, 1891. Half a dozen red bats 
seen and one taken. 

August 28, 1891. Four red bats seen. 
flew toward the south. 

August 30, 1891. A red bat caught in a 
house near the edge of the bluff. 

September 2, 1891. Hight or ten seen and 
three taken. The movement this evening 
was mostly, though not wholly, from north 
to south. 

September 8, 1891. Six seen and three 
taken. 

September 5, 1891. Evening cold and 
misty. No bats moving. 

September 7 and 8, 1891. A few bats seen 
each evening, but none taken. All ap- 
peared to be this species. 

September 10, 1891. One red bat shot. 

September 11, 1891. One seen. 

September 12, 1891. One killed. About a 
dozen bats seen, but how many were of this 
species, and how many Lasionycteris noctiva- 
gans I could not determine. 

September 13, 1891. About a dozen bats 
seen. Two of these were certainly red bats. 

After this date I watched for bats on con- 
secutive evenings for more than a week. As 


All 


I saw none I finally gave up the search. 


ATALAPHA CINEREA (HOARY BAT). 


August 26, 1890. One Atalapha cinerea, 
the only bat seen, shot this evening. 

August 28, 1890. Two hoary bats taken, 
and atleast two, and probably four, others 
seen. 

August 30, 1890. Two taken and two 
others seen. 

September 2, 1890. Only two seen. 
taken. 

No more hoary bats seen during 1890. 

August 25, 1891. A single Atalapha cinerea 
seen flying south along the face of the bluff 
this evening. 

September 2, 1891. One seen flying north. 

September 12, 1891. An adult male shot— 
the last of the season. 


Both 


APRIL 2, 1897. ] 


At Highland Light I found the hoary bat 
less active and irregular in its movements 
than the red bat. Its large and compara- 
tively steady flight made it easier to shoot 
than either of the two smaller species with 
which it was associated. It began to fly 
immediately after sunset. In the Adiron- 
dacks Dr. C. Hart Merriam found the hoary 
bat a late flyer, and an exceeding difficult 
animal to kill on account of its swift, ir- 
regular motions.* It is possible that while 
on Cape Cod the animal modifies its habits 
on account of the unusual surroundings in 
which it finds itself. The fatigue of a long 
migration might also have an appreciable 
effect on a bat’s activity. 


LASIONYCTERIS NOCTIVAGANS (SILVER-HAIRED 
BAT). 

September 1, 1890. One silver-haired bat 
taken. 

September 2, 1890. Four taken and per- 
haps a dozen others seen. 

The silver-haired bat was not seen again 
during 1890. 

September 10, 1891. Three shot and prob- 
ably half a dozen others seen. They were 
mostly flying north. 

September 11, 1891. Two shot and four or 
five more seen. 

September 12, 1891. About a dozen bats 
seen. Some were without doubt this species, 
but just what proportion I could not tell. 

While September 12th is the latest date 
at which I have seen Lasionycteris noctivagans 
at Highland Light, I have a specimen killed 
there by Mr. W. M. Small on October 28, 
1889. Gerrit 8. Mriuier, JR. 


ZOOLOGICAL NOTES. 
MUSEUMS AND SCIENCE. 

Tue recently published report of the 1896 
meeting of the Museums Association of 
Great Britain shows how much interest is 
taken and thought bestowed in rendering 

* Trans. Linn. Soc. New York, II, p. 78-83. 1884. 


SCIENCE. 


543 


museums instructive and attractive to the 
public. The most interesting of the eleven 
papers read, however, is one from the sharp- 
pointed pen of Mr. F. A. Bather, dealing 
with the scientific rather than the popular 
side of museums, and entitled ‘ How May 
Museums Best Retard the Advance of Sci- 
ence?’ Chief among these is ‘“‘ that jealousy 
with which a museum curator should guard 
the precious specimens entrusted ‘to his 
care, forbidding the profane hands of the 
mere anatomist ever to disturb them in 
their holy rest.”” This is a well-aimed shatt, 
for specimens have no value save for the 
information to be extracted from them, and 
yet, in too many cases, they are regarded as 
fetishes and, like Spirula and Notoryctes, care- 
fally bottled up with the probability that 
they will eventually go to pieces without 
yielding up any information. Another point 
on which Mr. Bather dwells at some length 
is the ‘‘idea of keeping certain collections 
separate according as they happen to have 
belonged to some person with a lengthy 
name * * * or to have been presented 
by some individual who laid it down in his 
will that his specimens were to be known 
for all eternity as the ‘ Peter Smith Collec- 
tion.’”? This is a matter that was touched 
on by Dr. Goode in his principles of Mu- 
seum Administration, and, as he says, ‘“ the 
acceptance of any collection, no matter how 
important, encumbered by conditions, is a 
serious matter, since no one can forsee how 
much these conditions may interfere with 
the future development of the museum.” 
Fortunately, the bequests received by the 
larger museums of the United States are 
practically unhampered. Other methods 
of impeding the progress of science are no- 
ticed, such as striking dullness through the 
hearts of thousands by funeral rows of 
stuffed birds with their melancholy Latin 
names, and,as Mr. Bather says, much may 
be done if a museum will keep its material 
carefully to itself. On the question of 


544 


loaning specimens Mr. Bather dwells 
lightly, owing to his connection with the 
British Museum, whose policy in this re- 
spect is well known. Here, again, we in 
this country are fortunate, as most speci- 
mens, even types, may be borrowed by 
workers in museums and some knotty 
problems thereby unravelled, but the main 
propositions in the paper demand a careful 
consideration. Finally, Mr. Bather seems 
to use the term type a little vaguely,as one 
does not feel quite sure whether he means 
type or typical material. Therecan be but 
one type, or one series of specimens collect- 
ively forming a type, and no museum can 
afford to permanently part with these. 
Typical specimens are quite another mat- 
ter, and the more distributed the better. 


A DOG OF THE ANCIENT PUEBLOS. 


Amone the many objects obtained by Dr. 
Fewkes last summer from the ruined pueblo 
of Chaves Pass, Arizona, is the cranium 
of a domesticated dog, found in a grave 
with a human skeleton. Although the 
mere fact of a dog being discovered under 
such circumstances is in itself interesting, 
it is not at first sight remarkable, since it 
is well known that in America, as else- 
where, the dog was domesticated at an 
early date, and Clavijero mentions an an- 
cient dog which he calls ““a quadruped of 
the country of Cibola, similar in form to a 
mastiff, which the Indians employ to carry 
burdens.’’ Aside from the fact that this is 
the first dog’s cranium discovered by Dr. 
Fewkes, there are some points of special 
interest in the present case. Most of the 
Indian dogs are more or less wolfish in their 
aspect, and have long skulls with compara- 
tively low foreheads, thus showing a small 
degree of specialization in the way of breed, 
and this is true of such of the mummied dogs 
of Egypt as I have seen. The cranium of 
the Chaves dog, on the contrary, is of the 
broad-faced type, with high forehead, and, 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 118. 


curiously enough, is precisely similar in 
size and proportions to the cranium of an 
Eskimo dog from Cumberland Sound, the 
resemblance extending to the peculiar con- 
cavity and squareness of the nasal region. 
While this is an interesting coincidence, it 
is not brought forward as implying com- 
munity of origin, but as instancing long 
domestication in order that so well-marked: 
a breed could be established. A curious 
confirmation of the early origin of this 
breed was received from San Marcos, Texas, 
where, in excavating for ponds, at the 
station of the U. 8. Fish Commission, a 
human skeleton and bones of other animals 
were found in a layer containing many flint 
implements, overlaid by two feet of black 
soil. The bones were those of existing 
species, including teeth of several bison, 
and there was also a fragment of a dog’s 
skull similar in size and proportions to 
that obtained at Chaves Pass. Owing to the 
circumstances under which the bones were 
exhumed it is not known whether or not 
the dog and man were found together. 
While none of the bones were mineralized, 
the condition under which they were found, 
and the character of the human cranium, 
showed them to be of very considerable age. 

Dr. Fewkes states that the skulls of car- 
nivores are used in Hopi religious cere- 
monies and that the skull, paws, etc., are 
regarded as powerful fetishes of warriors 
and cherished by them with much care. It . 
is customary to bury a priests’ fetishes with 
him, and there is little doubt that the dog’s 
cranium from Chaves Pass was a fetish of 
the man in whose grave it was found. As 
Dr. Fewkes believes that the people of the 
Chaves Pass ruin formerly lived far south, 
in contact with Nahuatl peoples, it can 
readily be seen how a dog’s skull came to 
be part of the ceremonial outfit of the priest 
in whose grave it was found. 

F. A. Luoas. 
U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM. 


APRIL 2, 1897. ] 


CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 
EUROPEAN ETHNOGRAPHICAL MUSEUMS. 
A very useful report on the ethnological 

museums of central Europe has been pub- 
lished by the Dutch Ministry of the Interior, 
from the studies of Dr. J. D. E. Schmeltz 
(Ethnographische Musea in Midden-Eu- 
ropa, E. J. Brill, Leiden, 4to. pp. 109). 

It contains the observations made during 
his personal visits to all the great collec- 
tions of Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Paris, 
London, ete., in the summer of 1895. 
Many of the more interesting objects are 
described and figured, and both the con- 
tents of the Museums, their arrangements 
for display and their architectural plans 
are discussed. Dr. Schmeltz is thoroughly 
conversant with the literature of modern 
ethnography, and his numerous references 
to monographs and special articles are a 
fruitful lesson in themselves. There is an 
excellent index, in which I note that 
“America’ includes objects in twenty of 
the collections visited. 


ETHNOGRAPHICAL SURVEY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 

Tuer fourth report of the committee of 
the British Association which has this 
survey in charge has been published. Itis 
of exceptionable interest, its leading feature 
being an article by Mr. G. Lawrence 
Gomme, on the method of determining the 
value of folk-lore as ethnological data. In 
this he explains the principles of the classi- 
fication and analysis of the facts gleaned 
by folk-lore researches, and illustrates the 
scientific method of handling them by a 
a discussion of the fire rites and ceremonies 
retained among the rural population of the 
United Kingdom. The conclusions he 
reaches are valuable, both in themselves 
and as a fine exemplification of the correct 
plan of utilizing such material to enlighten 
us as to early considerations of social life, 
concerning which history tells little or 
nothing. 


SCIENCE. 


545 


The general report is drawn up by the 
Chairman, Mr. E. W. Brabrook, and is ac- 
companied by notes from the Secretary, Mr. 


H. Sidney Hartland. 
D. G. Brinton. 
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


NOTES ON INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 

M. BerruEetot has recently published in 
the Comptes Rendus analyses of weapons, 
tools, etc., from Tello, in Chaldea. Their 
date is put from 4000 to 3000 B.C. A 
large lance and a hatchet were found to be 
approximately pure copper, and another 
hatchet was of copper with traces of arsenic 
and phosphorus, by which it seems to have 
been hardened. No trace’ of tin was pres- 
ent in any case. Thus in Chaldea an 
‘age of copper’ seems to have preceded 
the ‘age of bronze.’ An egg-shaped object 
from the same locality, weighing 121 grains, 
was of iron; an ingot of white metal was 
95 per cent. silver; a leaf of yellow gold was 
found to contain considerable quantities of 
silver. 

THE following order appears in the 
English scientific journals: ‘In conse- 
quence of the growing importance of carbid 
of calcium, and the fact that the mere con- 
tact of moisture with this material causes a 
dangerous evolution of the highly inflam- 
mable gas known as acetylene, the Home 
Secretary has caused inquiries to be made 
into the subject, with the result that an 
Order in Council has to-day been made un- 
der the 14th section of the ‘ Petroleum Act, 
1871,’ bringing carbid of calcium within the 
operation of that Act. Accordingly, from 
the date on which such order comes into 
force, viz., 1st April, 1897, it will be unlaw- 
ful to keep carbid of calcium, except in 
virtue of a license to be obtained from the 
local authority under the Petroleum Act.” 

THE Council of the Chemical Society 
(London) haveawarded the Longstaff medal 
to Professor William Ramsay, F. R. S., 


546 


for the discovery of helium and his share 
in the investigation of argon. 


THE last Proceedings of the Chemical 
Society contain a further study in spectro- 
graphic analysis by W. N. Hartley and H. 
Ramage. The alums are found to contain 
all the alkalies as well as copper, silver, 
gallium, thallium, nickel and manganese. 
Of these the thallium comes from the 
pyrites, but the other elements from the 
aluminous minerals, bauxite and_ shale. 
The Stassfurt minerals were found to con- 
tain no rubidium, cesium, gallium or 
thallium, and only barest traces of elements 
other than the principal ones composing the 
minerals. Steel (from Middlesborough) 
contained the alkali metals, calcium, cop- 
per, silver, gallium, manganese and lead. 
It is pointed out that this method of spec- 
trographic analysis might lead to results of 
practical importance in the study of railroad 
steels, as copper, (?) silver, gallium and lead 
have not been considered in dealing with 
commercial irons, and their influence upon 
the physical properties is unknown. 


THE Gazzetta Chimica Italiana contains an 
article by U. Antonyand T. Benelli on the ac- 
tion of water of various degrees of purity on 
lead pipes. The greatest solvent action was 
in the case of distilled water, especially when 
saturated with air. Aeration with carbon 
dioxid retarded the action one-half. Water 
containing calcium sulfate or sodium sul- 
fate possesses about one-half the solvent 
power of pure water, and the action here also 
was much retarded by aeration with carbon 
dioxid. Bicarbonate of lime had only 
about one-fourth the solvent power of pure 
water, but when aerated by carbon dioxid 
its action was nearly doubled. Common 
salt had little action except in the presence 
of carbon dioxid, and seemed to often 
slightly diminish the solvent powers of 
other salts. These results are rather at 
variance with the generally accepted ideas 


SCLENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 118. 


and seem to show that waters with perma- 
nent hardness would be seriously contami- 
nated by passage through lead pipes and 
ordinary hard waters only somewhat less so. 
The maximum amount of lead dissolved 
was 130 parts per million, for five days con- 
tact of 150 ccm. ordinary distilled water 
with 285 sq. cm. lead ; the minimum 6.8 
parts per million for water containing so- 
dium chlorid and aerated with air. 


In the same number of the Gazzetta Pro- 
fessors Antony and A. Lucchesi describe 
the reaction of an excess of mercurous chlo- 
rid on auric chlorid with the production 
of the characteristic color of purple of Cas- 
sius. Similar results are obtained with 
cuprous chlorid and the chlorid of gold. 
When barium sulfate and mercurous 
chlorid are suspended in water and auric 
chlorid added, the barium sulfate takes up 
the gold and becomes the color of the pur- 
ple of Cassius. From these experiments 
the authors conclude that the true purple 
of Cassius is not a definite compound, but 
merely stannic acid mechanically colored 
with metallic gold. Vo Ib, sl, 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 
THE THREATENED LEGISLATION AGAINST SCI- 
ENCE AND EDUCATION. 


THE Ways and Means Committee of the 
House, either convinced by argument or coerced 
by the force of public opinion, has retracted 
the duty on scientific apparatus and books im- 
ported for institutions in cases in which the 
apparatus and books are not manufactured in 
the United States. It is satisfactory to find that 
the committee is willing to reconsider its ill- 
advised action, even though it has but partially 
corrected its blunders. The provision imposing 
a duty on instruments and books also manufac- 
tured in the United States is ambiguous and will 
cause endless confusion. If the Encyclopedia 
Britannica is pirated in America will that pre- 
vent its importation for a library? If a micro- 
scope is manufactured in America will that 
prevent the importation of all instruments 


APRIL 2, 1897. ] 


called microscopes? Mr. Dingley has stated 
for publication that’ his objection to exceptions 
in the tariff is the trouble they cause custom 
house officials, but he appears now to propose 
exceptions that can only be defined by the 
Courts. 

We asked the leading makers of scientific in- 
struments in the United States whether they 
regarded a tax on instruments imported for 
educational institutions as likely to be bene- 
ficial or harmful to them. The answers were 
about equally divided. One maker writes: 
‘We know that putting these on the free list 
ruined our business in that line.’? Consequently 
his business must have been ruined in the 
eighteenth century. Half of those who favor the 
duty had not heard of its proposal, and it thus 
seems that it was not planned in consultation 
with those interested. If Mr. Dingley had con- 
sulted makers of instruments he would have 
found opposition to his plan. Thus Messrs. 
Warner and Swasey write us: ‘‘We believe that 
all institutions of learning should be able to 
purchase their instrumental equipment in the 
cheapest market, and that thereby the good of 
all will best be secured. We would, therefore, 
be loathe to have any duty imposed that would 
interfere with the best results of our schools 
and colleges, as we fear would be the case 
should the proposed duty come into effect.” 
Mr. John A. Brashear states that he is making 
more instruments for foreign than for home 
universities. 

We feel sure that our legislators at Washing- 
ton wish to do the best they can for the country 
and for themselves. If it be brought to their 
attention that boeks and instruments are the 
raw materials of science, education and civiliza- 
tion they will not wish to tax these. When 
they see that the leading Republican papers, 
such as the New York Tribune, the Boston 
Transcript and the New York Independent, op- 
pose such legislation, they will not wish to 
carry its burden through the elections of 1898 
and 1900. 

GENERAL. 

PROFESSOR W. W. HENDRICKSON, head of 
the department of mathematics at the Naval 
Academy at Annapolis, has been appointed 
Superintendent of the American Ephemeris 


SCIENCE. 


547 


and Nautical Almanac, in succession to Profes- 
sor Simon Newcomb. The retirement of Pro- 
fessor Newcomb, on reaching the age limit fixed 
by the naval authorities, has called forth many 
notices in appreciation of his great contribu- 
tions to science. 


THE American Mathematical Society will 
hold its summer meeting at Toronto on Mon- 
day and Tuesday, August 16th and 17th. It 
will thus follow the meeting of the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science at 
Detroit, and precede the meeting of the British 
Association at Toronto. 


As we have already announced, the Fourth 
Triennial Congress of American Physicians and 
Surgeons will be held at Washington on May 
4th, 5th and 6th. The sessions of the societies 
will be held in various places, the American 
Physiological Society and the American An- 
atomists having been assigned rooms in the 
Columbian University. The President of the 
Congress, Professor William H. Welch, of 
Johns Hopkins University, will deliver an ad- 
dress on Wednesday evening, May 5th, at 8.15 
o’clock, in the Columbia Theatre. The exer- 
cises attending the unveiling of the statue of 
Professor Gross, under the auspices of the Sur- 
gical Association, will be held on Wednesday, 
May 5th, at 5 o’clock. The Hxecutive Com- 
mittee has decided that the Congress shall give 
a dinner on Tuesday evening, May 4th, at the 
Arlington, to which guests will be invited. 
On Wednesday evening, at 9.30 o’clock, the 
President of the Congress will receive the mem- 
bers, the invited guests and the accredited 
visitors, with the ladies accompanying them, at 
the Arlington. On Thursday evening the Cos- 
mos Club will give a complimentary ‘smoker’ 
to the Congress. 


THE Sinking Fund Commissioners of the 
City of New York upon March 25th unani- 
mously adopted a resolution setting aside the 
entire southern portion of Bronx Park, com- 
prising 261 acres, for the establishment of a 
Zoological Park. The tract is directly in the 
geographical center of the great ‘annexed 
district.’ The conditions are that the Society 
shall raise $100,000 before entering the tract, 
and an additional $150,000 within three years 


548 


from the date that the work of improvement of 
the land is begun by the Park Department. 
The Society will contribute the buildings and 
collections of animals. The city will expend 
$125,000 immediately in the preparation of the 
land, and will during the first year of occupa- 
tion provide a maintenance fund—not exceed- 
ing $60,000—for the care of the animals and 
further improvement of the park. Ina coming 
issue of SCIENCE a full account of the plans of 
the Society will be published. 

THE Missouri Legislature has made the usual 
biennial appropriation of $30,000 for the sup- 
port of the State Geological Survey. In Iowa 
the law governing the Survey has been incor- 
porated in the new code, thus assuring the per- 
manence of the work. In both States the bills 
passed without opposition of note. 

THE sixty-ninth meeting of German Men of 
Science and Physicians will be held at Bruns- 
wick from the 20th to the 25th of September 
of the present year. There will be thirty-three 
sections as compared with thirty at the Frank- 
fort meeting. The new sections are anthro- 
pology and ethnology, which at Frankfort was 
united with geography, geodesy and cartogra- 
phy and scientific photography. 

THE scientific work which is such a promi- 
nent part of the manufacturing chemical estab- 
lishments of Germany is again borne witness 
to by the fact that the firm of Friedrich Bayer 
& Co., manufacturers of dye stuffs in Elberfeld, 
has purchased the library of the late Professor 
Kekulé, consisting of 18,000 volumes, and said 
to be the most complete collection of chemical 
works in existence. 


From the plans submitted in the competition 
for a statue of yon Helmholtz, those by the 
sculptors Lessing, Hertert and Janenseh have 
been selected and exhibited in Berlin. The 
final selection has not yet been announced. 
The statue will be placed in the court of the 
University near the statues of the two Hum- 
boldts. i 

A COMPANY has been organized in Berlin for 
the establishment of a German colonial museum. 

It is reported that Dr. Nansen will lend the 
Fram, the vessel in which he made his Arctic 
journey, to a private Arctic expedition that 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 118. 


will start during the coming summer. The 
expedition will be mainly English, and its pur- 
pose will be meteorological observations and 
an examination of the Arctic currents. 


Mr. CHARLES ELioT died at Brookline, Mass., 
on March 25th, at the age of thirty-seven years. 
Mr. Eliot was the landscape architect of the 
Boston Metropolitan Park Commission. The 
admirable park system of Boston and the preser- 
vation of public reservations throughout the 
State are largely due to his influence. 


WE regret to note the deaths of Dr. Kolbe, 
professor of mathematics in the Polytechnic In- 
stitute at Vienna, at the age of seventy-one 
years, and of Dr. Wilhelm Doellen, the astrono- 
mer, in Dorpat, aged seventy-seven years. 

A PUBLIC meeting to promote the National 
Jenner Memorial was to have been held in the 
theatre of the University of London on March 
31st. It was expected that the chair would be 
taken by the Duke of Westminster and that 
addresses would be made by Lord Herschel, Lord 
Playfair, Lord Lister and Professor Foster. 

Dr. RUDOLF KOBERT, professor of medicine 
in the University at Dorpat, has resigned to 
take charge of the hospital for consumptives in 
Gorbersdorf, in Silesia. It is said that the 
Russian authorities do not wish to retain Ger- 
man professors in Dorpat. 

THE mortality figures for the four weeks end- 
ing March 12th, at Bombay, are as follows, in 
chronological order: Deaths from all causes, 
1,772, 1,525, 1,370, 1,274; deaths from plague, 
843, 730, 635, 521. The plague shows a ten- 
dency to spread and deaths are reported from 
many places, including for the week 206 in 
Karachi. 

ACCORDING to the Bulletin of the American 
Mathematical Society, Professor O. Schlomilch, 
the founder of the Zeitschrift fiir Mathematik und 
Physik, has withdrawn from the editorship of 
this journal, which he has conducted for 41 
years. Dr. R. Mehmke, professor of mathe- 
matics in the Polytechnic School at Stuttgart, 
takes his place, while Professor M. Cantor, of 
the University of Heidelberg, will continue to 
have charge of the ‘literarisch historische 
Abteilung.’ 


THE students of Stanford University have be- 


APRIL 2, 1897. ] 


gun the publication of an Engineering Journal, 
which will be issued semi-annually. The first 
number opens with an article by F. A. C. Per- 
rine, entitled ‘A Practical Index of Engineer- 
ing Literature,’ which is followed by several 
other articles showing the high character of 
the work in engineering accomplished in Stan- 
ford University. 


A MONTHLY journal entitled Deutscher Tier- 
freund has been established in Leipzig under 
the editorship of Dr. R. Klee. 

THE first edition of the New York State bota- 
nist’s report on ‘ Poisonous and Edible Fungi’ 
has proved insuflicient to supply the demand, so 
that it will be impossible to fill further orders 
for the work unless a new edition is printed. 


Dr. HENRY E. ARMSTRONG has prepared an 
extended article now being published in suc- 
cessive numbers of Nature entitled ‘The Need 
of Organizing Scientific Opinion.’ The article 
is a severe arraignment of the lack of scientific 
principles and research in British manufactures 
and of English educational methods as com- 
pared with those of Germany. Dr. Armstrong 
writes of the United States as follows: ‘‘ Amer- 
ica is bound, in fact, to develop, and not only 
on account of the restless energy of her peo- 
ple; her Government departments have at- 
tached to them many active men engaged in 
initiating or conducting scientific inquiries ; 
and when the various departments are organ- 
ized inter se the country will have in its ser- 
vice a highly-trained body of scientific experts 
guiding all branches of public work and co- 
operating to minimize the faults of democracy. 
And universities are arising all over the coun- 
try, in which German models are being fol- 
lowed, not Knglish. It is safe to predict that, 
ere many years are past, the United States will 
suddenly burst into prominence, and probably 
into predominance, as a nation promoting 
scientific inquiries of all kinds, so surely isa 
foundation being laid. Mistakes will frequently 
be made, perhaps, but they will soon be recog- 
nized and remedied in a country instinct with 
advance.’ 

THE Engineering News states that a textile 
school has been established in Lowell, Mass. 
The city appropriated $25,000 for its support, 


SCIENCE. 


549 


and the manufacturing establishments contrib- 
uted $50,000 in machinery and other facilities. 
The equipment is said to compare favorably 
with that of similar schools in England and on 
the Continent, where they have been main- 
tained for a number of years and are constantly 
growing in number. It is stated that the com- 
petition of Southern mills in the production of 
ordinary grades of cotton goods has led the 
Lowell manufacturers to turn their attention to 
the finer grades, which have hitherto generally 
been imported from Europe, where the textile 
schools have been of great aid in training skilled 
workmen and designers, 

Sir DouGcLAs GALTON has issued an appeal 
for subscriptions to the Childhood Society, 
which has recently issued a report on the scien- 
tific study of the mental and physical conditions 
of childhood, giving details of 100,000 chil- 
dren, examined individually. It is estimated 
that the sum of £1,000 would be needed to 
examine 50,000 children in twenty-five towns. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 

HAVERFORD COLLEGE has now received the 
title deeds to the real estate of the late Jacob 
P. Jones, of Philadelphia, who in 1885 made 
the College his residuary legatee. The estate 
is valued at $900,000. Haverford College, which 
is located near Philadelphia and is conducted 
under Quaker auspices, is now one of the best 
endowed of our colleges. The trustees have 
wisely decided to maintain a strong college and 
not to attempt the development of a university. 

THE long contested Marett will case has been 
decided by the Supreme Court of Connecticut, 
giving, among other public bequests, $18,000 
to Yale University. 

Ir is reported in the daily papers that the 
late Mr. Deury, said to be a multi-millionaire 
and the largest landowner in the United States, 
has left his estate to his widow for life and at 
her death ninety-one hundredths of it for the 
establishment of a college in Illinois. 

Bits have been reported favorably in the 
New York Legislature authorizing New York 
City to spend $12,500,000 in school buildings. 

Dr. JULIAN APRICIO has been appointed 
Director of the Meteorological and Astronomical 


550 


Observatory of San Salvador. Dr. Szymonowicz, 
of the University of Cracow, has been made 
associate professor of histology and embryology 
in the University of Lemberg. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 


RELATIONS OF TARSIUS TO THE LEMURS AND 
APES. 


UnDER this title Mr. Charles Earle, in your 
issue of February 12, 1897, gives a valuable 
contribution to our knowledge of the mutual 
relationship of recent and fossil Lemurs and 
discusses at the same time a proposal made by 
myself to remove Tarsius from among the 
Lemurs and to place it with the Primates s. str. 

Such proposal finds but scanty favor in the 
eyes of this able paleontologist, who formulates 
the a priori objection that ‘‘we shall be little 
benefited by this change in the classification of 
the Primates, as it will be exceedingly difficult 
to discover any characters of the skeleton by 
which we can separate the Apes from the 
Lemurs.”’ 

Now, I hold that the primary object of classi- 
fication is not to facilitate or to benefit, but to 
establish, as closely as possible, the true posi- 
tion which species and genera, both living and 
fossil, occupy in the actual line of descent, 
which is slowly but surely revealing itself to 
the persistent and combined efforts of paleon- 
tology, anatomy and embryology. 

At the same time, if Mr. Earle finds fault 
with the embryologist who wishes to transfer 
Tarsius from the Lemurs to the Apes, he is 
fully entitled to stand by his osteological and 
dentary characters and to fight for the current 
classification, that is apparently more conye- 
nient to paleontologists. He is, however, 
bound to state the arguments of his opponent 
fully and fairly, and this he does not do when 
he suggests to his readers that my reason for 
removing Tarsius from the Lemurs lies in its 
different ‘type of placenta,’ nor is he quite up 
to date in his valuation of recent placental 
investigations when he complacently quotes 
Mivart’s and Balfour’s warnings against the 
systematic value of differences in placental ar- 
rangements, when not accompanied by other 
characteristic differences. 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 118. 


It is, indeed, rather hard upon me, who have 
endeavored, in the past eight years, to clear up 
some of the confusing views that were being 
entertained concerning placentation in general, 
to be now pilloried by Mr. Earle as if J had 
been making that coarse and indiscriminate use 
of placentary characters in classification against 
which I have been all the time loudly protest- 
ing. Thus, for instance, I have shown that 
the placenta of the hedgehog, the shrew and 
the mole is in each case a structure Sui generis, 
all these different Insectivores having placentas 
of the discoid shape, but which reveal. them- 
selves, on close and careful examination, both in 
their structure and in their genesis, as far more 


_ different inter se than is the diffuse placenta- 


tion of the horse from that of the Lemurs or 
from the cotyledonary placentation of the 
Ruminants. I have hitherto refrained from 
proposing changes in the classification of the 
Insectivores, because I am well aware that to 
make these fruitful the paleontological and 
anatomical evidence tending in the same direc- 
tion will first have to be collected and sifted. 
Nor would I dream of bringing Tarsius in 
closer connection with the Apes on account of 
the discoid placenta, for the very same reasons 
that it is not the external shape, but the histo- 
logical and the genetic details, which are of 
importance in any such comparison. Still Mr. 
Earle would make the readers of SCIENCE be- 
lieve (see p. 258) that this is my line of argu- 
ment! 

Referring to my paper in the Gegenbaur 
Festschrift (1896)—the abstract of which ap- 
peared in an October number of ScreENcE and 
can hardly have remained unknown to Mr. 
Earle—it will there be seen that I founded the 
closer relationship between Tarsius and the 
Apes on something quite different, viz., on the 
development of the embryo ina vesicle to which 
it does not become attached by means of an 
outgrowing allantois, but to which it is fixed 
from the beginning by a stalk of tissue (‘ Haft- 
stiel’ or ‘Bauchstiel’ of the Germans), which 
was up till lately only known as a characteristic 
feature of the human embryo, but which Selenka 
also discovered in monkeys (Cercocebus a. 0.), 
and which in Tarsius has now for the first time 
revealed its entire developmental history, in- 


APRIL 2, 1897. ] 


cluding a very aberrant mode of formation of 
the mesoblast and the coelome. We are fully 
entitled to say that by the details of its very 
earliest development and of its blastocyst Tar- 
sius is more closely related to man and the 
monkeys than it is to any other known mammal. 
And that the gulf separating Tarsius from the 
Lemurs on this head is far wider than that 
separating it from many Insectivores. This 
may be inconvenient for paleontologists, but 
none the less it remains a stubborn fact. And 
a fact of all the more primary importance be- 
cause we must recognize that the influence of 
external agencies on the gradual modification of 
teeth and of limbs is certainly more direct than 
that which is brought to bear upon these very 
early and very hidden and intricate processes 
that occur inside the uterus in a most delicate 
vesicle that is hardly visible to the naked eye. 
These few words of protest against an obvious 
misrepresentation may suffice. A full account 
both of the early development and of the 
placentation of Tarsius is in preparation ; to 
this I may be allowed to refer those who might 
desire a fuller account of the various points 


above alluded to. 
A. A. W. HUBRECHT. 


UTRECHT, March 8, 1897. 


THE JOURNAL OF SCHOOL GEOGRAPHY. 


To THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: Professor Rus- 
sell’s discussion (SCIENCE, March 19) of the ex- 
pediency of starting an independent Journal of 
School Geography, imstead of consolidating the 
existing geographical journals into a single 
publication under the joint management of the 
various geographical societies in this country, 
affords a very pretty basis for divided opinions. 
To my mind there is no probability at present 
thatthe American Geographical Society, the Na- 
tional Geographic Society, the Appalachian 
Mountain Club, the Geographical Society of 
Philadelphia, the Geographical Society of the 
Pacific, and the Sierra Club of California will 
merge their interests and journals into a single 
American Journal of Geography. However at- 
tractive such an ideal may be, it does not ac- 
cord with the usual run of human nature. 
Local and individual effort, manifested not 
only in the maintenance of local societies, but 


SCIENCE. 


551 


in the publication of more or less local journals, 
is likely to be the course of geographical events 
for many years to come. 

Improvement of the existing geographical 
journals is probably a matter that their respec- 
tive editors have warmly at heart, and I believe 
that they are all agreed as to the first step 
towards such improvement; namely, an in- 
crease in the number of geographers among 
their members. Several different methods may 
be effective in promoting this increase: The 
societies offer various attractive opportunities 
to members, in the way of libraries, lectures, 
excursions and soon. This promotes member- 
ship, and among increasing members it is fair 
to suppose that there will be an increasing num- 
ber of geographers. Quite another method 
looks to the production of a larger crop of 
geographers, when the children of to-day shall 
reach manhood and womanhood. Thismethod is 
of slow action, but, if it acts at all, it is sure. 
It tries to strengthen the future crop by careful 
cultivation of geography during school years. 
This is, along with other objects, one of the 
chief ends of the promotors of the Journal of 
School Geography. It isan end that cannot be 
attained by Professor Russell’s plan, for the ex- 
pense of such a journal as he proposes would 
put it entirely out of reach of schools and 
teachers. Moreover, in the present condition 
of geography and of teachers of geography in 
the schools of this country, there is no reason 
for disguising the fact that a general journal of 
geography, however ably edited and however 
well supplied with ‘ studies for students,’ could 
not possibly attain the circulation among school 
teachers that may be attained by a special 


. journal of school geography, directly and 


wholly prepared for teachers’ use. 

It is worth noticing that the systematic en- 
couragement and development of geography in 
the schools has never been a leading feature of 
any geographical society in this country. The 
American Geographical Society, with a large 
membership and a rich library, has had no in- 
fluence worth mentioning on the teaching of 
geography in the schools of New York; it has 
never (unless within the last year or two) tried 
to exert such an influence; it has been con- 
ducted with apparent entire indifference to the 


502 


development of members in the younger genera- 
tion. The same is essentially true of our other 
geographical societies ; they are not particularly 
concerned with the educational aspect of geog- 
raphy. The prizes offered to schools by one 
society failed of effect, for there was no sub- 
stantial basis for the work that they were in- 
tended to excite. The societies are chiefly con- 
cerned with narrative reports of expeditions 
and excursions, and with occasional articles of 
more scientific and studious quality ; but even 
the latter rarely have any effect on the schools, 
for they hardly ever reach the teachers. Under 
existing conditions, with membership in the 
various societies constituted as at present, it is 
not likely that the conduct of the societies will 
be materially altered. The educational ele- 
ment of geography will be left in the hands of 
educators. It will not be taken into the hands 
of travellers. It will not be taken up by the 
members who, unable to travel themselves, still 
enjoy hearing the narratives of returned travel- 
lers. 

But an entirely additional object is also in 
the minds of the promoters of the Journal of 
School Geography; namely, the better educa- 
tion in geography of the tens of thousands of 
school children who will never hear anything 
about geographical societies; and, to this end, 
the better cultivation of the great body of 
teachers who ought in an ideal state to be stu- 
dents of geography, and who as such ought to 
be members of geographical societies, but who 
under existing and long enduring conditions 
can not be either. The great body of our 
teachers have had but an elementary education 
and have little time or inclination for study. 
They cannot be reached by a high-class scientific 
journal, such as Professor Russell contemplates, 
but some of them may be reached by a per- 
sonally subsidized journal of low subscription 
price. Their work will thus be improved, and 
the children under them will profit thereby ; 
but this is an end which the consolidated 
American Journal of Geography cannot hope 
toreach. Indeed if, under a rearranged human 
nature, such a journal were established, it could 
not have a better ally than the Journal of School 
Geography. Even as matters stand, the new 
journal hopes to be the means of first informing 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. Von. V. No. 118. 


hundreds of school teachers that such institu- 
tions as geographical societies and such publica- 
tions as their journals exist in this country. 
It is a mistake to confound the objects and 
fields of two publications, so essentially dif- 
ferent. 

I believe that Professor Russell is again mis- 
taken in saying that there is nothing in the 
character of the new journal to indicate that it 
possesses greater vitality than its, predecessors. 
One of the predecessors was a highly sensa- 
tional affair, with more pretension than per- 
formance. Another was a perfectly sincere 
performance, but directed to a miscellaneous 
audience, not conducted by a teacher of school 
geography, and burdened with the expense of 
excellent illustrations. The Journal of School 
Geography has the advantage of a single, definite 
aim. It looks for external support to subscrip- 
tions from schools and teachers and from libra- 
ries to which teachers resort. It expects that, 
for a time at least, receipts from subscriptions 
may not equal expenses ; but expenses will at the 
beginning be kept as low as possible by holding 
the pages to a minimum, and inserting illustra- 
tions only when they are paid for by the author of 
the illustrated article. In the management of 
such a journal, some might say it is best to 
borrow capital and begin with fine illustrations 
so as to catch subscriptions quickly. Others 
might say it is best to pay as you go. The 
latter plan was adopted, and I believe wisely. 
As soon as illustrations can be afforded, they 
will be introduced. At present the expenses 
are moderate; the subscriptions are steadily 
coming in; and, for one, I believe that such a 
Journal of School Geography may be made to 


. come so near paying for itself that its life will 


be assured. 
W. M. DaAvis. 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


To THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: Professor Rus- 
sell in his letter, entitled ‘A New Geographical 
Magazine,’ in SCIENCE, March 19th, has given 
a chance for an expression of opinion that, as 
responsible editor of the publication in ques- 
tion, I cannot allow to pass. I question very 
much the suggestion that the ends sought by 
the Journal of School Geography could be bet- 
ter attained by a consolidation of the existing 


APRIL 2, 1897. ] 


geographical periodicals into one publication, 
with a department for teachers. The plan of 
adding such a department to an existing journal 
was proposed to the editors of the Journal of 
School Geography and the offer declined be- 
cause they believed: 

1. That the cause of geographical education 
warranted a separate periodical. 

2. That teachers would not and could not 
subscribe to so expensive a journal as a valu- 
able scientific periodical must be. 

3. That educators would many of them shun 
pedagogic assistance vended by a society whose 
aims were primarily scientific. 

4. That the organ of no one society or com- 
bination of societies could be advertised so as to 
reach the greater number of teachers. 

5. That a journal for teachers should be 
edited by teachers. 

I believe that the new journal has a legiti- 
mate right in the educational world for all these 
reasons and many more. The knowledge of 
the world may be enlarged for the few by the 
geographical societies, through the promotion of 
exploration and research and the publication of 
the results thereof. It may be enlarged for the 
many by such a journal as the one in question, 
if the editors sift and select new and old facts 
and put them in a form and dress for the larger 
public, who are not in touch with modern geo- 
graphic progress. The increasing of the geo- 
graphic knowledge of the world at large by 
either of these methods is a proper aim for 
those interested, and one may be as useful and 
necessary a task as the other. It may be that 
success can better be attained by specialization 
than by a combination of efforts. The Journal 
of School Geography will continue to select facts 
from the great mass of geographic information, 
to try and express them in a simple and 
straightforward manner, and do what it can to 
help the geographic societies and publications 
in the wider dissemination of knowledge of the 
world. This work with the teachers and youth 
in this generation may bear fruit in the next 
generation in a larger demand for the consoli- 
dation and improvement of the publications of 

a scientific character. 
_ J agree with Professor Russell that there is 
need of bettering all the scientific geographical 


SCIENCE. 


5d3 


publications in this country. I disagree with 
him in his idea that there is no room for a 
journal whose aim is not the publication of new 
scientific results, but the broader dissemination 
of geographical knowledge, expressed not in 
childish, unscientific or pedagogic terms, but in 
simple English, with a knowledge, on the part 
of the editors, of the needs and tastes of the 
readers to whom they would appeal. 
RICHARD E. DODGE. 

TEACHERS COLLEGE, NEW YORK CITY. ; 


THE DRAINAGE OF THE SAGINAW VALLEY. 


To THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: Professor 
Davis has asked me to add a few more in- 
stances apropos of his note on the drainage of 
the Saginaw Valley (p. 337, issue of Feb. 
26, 1897). The peculiar circuitous drainage 
due to moraines of retreat, in which streams do 
not flow directly to the water of the bay near 
by, but fetch a compass and make backhanded 
branches, has numerous other examples in 
Michigan. Among the most striking are the 
Sturgeon, which heads in the Huron Mountains, 
Sec. 9, T. 49N., R. 32E., and flows clear around 
Keweenaw Bay to empty into Portage Lake, 
and the region of Grand Traverse Bay, where 
the Rapid River, Boardman River, Platte 
River and the Betsie River show a similar 
type of drainage, which we may call willowy. 
For in discussing a relation of branches it 
seems natural to use a term borrowed from 
botany. A comparison of a drainage map of 
the Saginaw Valley with the pendent branch- 
ing of the willow will show the appropriateness 
of the comparison, and the term can easily be 
changed by those who prefer Latin terms into 


salicious. 
ALFRED C. LANE. 


SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 

A Dictionary of Birds. By ALFRED NEWTON, 
assisted by HANS GADOW, with contributions 
from RICHARD LYDEKKER, CHARLES 8S. Roy, 
ete. London, A. and C. Black. [The Mac- 
millan Company, 66 Fifth Avenue, New 
York.] 1893-1896. 1 vol., 8vo, pp. t-2it + 
1-124, i-viii+ 1-1088. Map and unnum- 
bered fige. in text. 

The ninth edition of the Encyclopedia 


5d4- 


Britannica contains a long series of short articles 
on birds, which have seldom been approached 
and never equalled for pith and point in the 
literature of Ornithology. The same publica- 
tion also contains two extensive articles, under 
the heads of Aves and of Ornithology respec- 
tively, in which the science itself and the his- 
tory of the science are set forth in a masterly 
manner. It does not suffice to call these con- 
tributions able and authoritative; they are 
mainly from the most facile and forceful pen 
that has ever been bent in the service of the 
science of which Professor Newton is a fore- 
most exponent and ornament. The whole of 
these articles have served as the foundation of 
the present Dictionary, for which purpose they 
have been modified into something like con- 
tinuity, so far as an alphabetical arrangement 
will admit; and supplemented by the inter- 
calation of a much greater number, be they 
short or long, to serve the same end. ‘‘Of 
these additions by far the most important have 
been furnished by my fellow-worker, Dr. 
Gadow, which bring the anatomical portion to a 
level hitherto unattained, I believe, in any book 
that has appeared’’ (Note, p. v). Less numerous 
though not less valuable articles have been con- 
tributed by Mr. Lydekker, and others of great 
merit by Professor Roy. The result may be 
correctly characterized as altogether the best 
book about birds that has ever been written in 
English or any other language. 

Of writings on Ornithology there is no end. 
As Professor Newton says (p. 22), ‘‘the de- 
sponding mind may fear the possibility of its 
favorite study expiring through being smothered 
by its own literature.’’ So huge has the ac- 
cumulation become that the most expert bibli- 
ographer could no more than guess vaguely the 
total of titles a complete catalogue would con- 
tain; no such catalogue exists, nor is likely to 
ever be produced. The total number of species 
now known may be somewhere about eleven 
thousand only; but they will average several 
synonyms apiece, in Latin binomial form. 
Generic names in current usage are several 
thousand, and their synonyms are still more 
numerous. Non-technical names of birds in 
English use are derived from almost every lan- 
guage that has been reduced to writing, and a 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 118. 


vast number of purely English ‘ phrase-names’ 
(consisting of more than one word) are em- 
ployed. We must add to this rough tally all 
the biological terms which are peculiar to Orni- 
thology, or which this science shares in common 
with other branches of zoology. <A bare list of 
words which might serve as entries for a Dic- 
tionary of Birds would make a bulky volume, 
without a line of text to define them ; and any 
treatment of such a mass of verbiage in its en- 
tirety would be practically impossible, even 
were it desirable. A majority of such candi- 
dates for lexicography make a rubbish heap not 
worth overhauling. Noone knows this better 
than Professor Newton, who has made no at- 
tempt in this work ‘‘to include in it all the 
names under which Birds, even the commonest, 
are known”’ (p. v). He characterizes his selec- 
tion of names to be entered as ‘ quite arbitrary ;’ 
but we may be permitted to testify that his 
arbitration is that of a tactful expert who 
understands the beauty of utility, and has gov- 
erned himself accordingly. How many entries 
there may actually be we have hardly any idea ; 
the alphabet runs for more than a thousand 
pages; the articles range from a line or two to 
several pages, presumably according to the 
author’s estimate of the relative interest or im- 
portance of their respective subjects. Regard- 
ing the form as distinguished from the substance 
of the work we cannot do better than here re- 
peat its eminent author’s significant words 
(p. vii): 

“‘T would say that the alphabetical order has 
been deliberately adopted in preference to the 
taxonomic because I entertain grave doubt of 
the validity of any systematic arrangement as 
yet put forth, some of the later attempts being, 
in my opinion, among the most fallacious, and 
a good deal worse than those they are intended 
to supersede. That in a few directions an ap- 
proach to improvement has been made is not to 
be denied; but how far that approach goes is 
uncertain. I only see that mistakes are easily 
made, and I have no wish to mislead others by 
an assertion of knowledge which I know no one 
to possess; yet with all these drawbacks and 
shortcomings I trust that this Dictionary will aid 
a few who wish to study Ornithology in a scien- 
tific spirit, as well as many who merely regard 


APRIL 2, 1897. ] 


its pursuit as a pastime, while I even dare in- 
dulge the hope that persons indifferent to the 
pleasures of Natural History, except when 
highly-coloured pictures are presented to them 
by popular writers, may find in it some correc- 
tive to the erroneous impressions commonly 
conveyed by sociolists posing as instructors.’’ 

The ‘drawbacks’ and ‘shortcomings’ to 
which the modesty of a master of the art of ex- 
position and a past master of birdcraft may 
permit him to allude in speaking of his own 
performance appear to the present reviewer to 
be a drawing back from profitless penwork and 
a coming short of adding anything to the rub- 
bish heap above specified. The plan of the 
work is not open to any criticism, except it be 
captious, and its execution is such as makes 
mere praise seem impertinent. 

A respect for precision of statement which 
verges on scrupulosity is a prime quality of this 
author’s mental furnishing, and his ability to re- 
flect that quality clearly is conspicuous in his 
literary composition. An ornithologist who 
should be asked, ‘What is a Wagell?’ would 
probably reply, ‘A young Black-backed Gull.’ 
This would be right, but not exactly right. We 
will give what Professor Newton says about 
this name as a single sample of one of his short 
‘definitions,’ as distinguished from any of the 
extended articles in this book : 

‘“WAGELL,* the Cornish name of a bird of 
which Ray and Willughby were told, 30th 
June, 1662, on Godreve Island near St. Ives in 
Cornwall (Memorials of Ray, ed. Lankester, p. 
188, and Ray, Collection of Words, p. 93). From 
what is said of it the Arctic Gull (SkuA, p. 870 
[small caps for cross-reference]), seems to have 
been meant, but they took it to be the young of 
what we now know as Larus marinus, and so 
the name has been attached to that species by 
subsequent writers.+’’ 

The Dictionary has appeared in four parts, 


“* The derivation and pronunciation of this word 
are unknown to me. It is spelt indifferently by Ray 
with one 7 or two. I preserve the latter form as 
possibly indicating a stress to be laid on the last 
syllable.’’ 

“t+ See Additions to Borlase’s Natural History (re- 
printed from Journ. R. Inst. Cornwall, Oct. 1865), 
Truro: 1865, p. 46.” 


SCIENCE. 


running 1893-96, the last part having been 
issued in November or December of 1896. Be- 
sides finishing the alphabet (Sheathbill- Zygodac- 
tyli) and furnishing the permanent title, preface 
and indexes, it brings us the cream of the whole 
performance in its Introduction (pp. 1-124). 
Upon the Britannica basis already indicated 
Professor Newton has erected an imperishable 
monument. The task he set himself was noth- 
ing short of a critical review of ornithology and 
of ornithologists in few more than one hundred 
pages. The result is something to which no 
other writer who has ever lived has attained. 
It may possibly add somewhat to the luster of 
a name already renowned ; it will, if any thing 
can; but certainly it illuminates the whole his- 
tory of the subject. Professor Newton is un- 
equalled, if not unapproached, by any person 
now living, in his grasp of ornithological litera- 
ture, and all the resources of his erudition 
have been brought to bear upon this summation 
of his subject, with rare tact and skill, with still 
rarer sense of historical perspective. It is a 
masterpiece of composition, in perfect focus and 
adjustment, without a blurred line from start 
to finish. Professor Newton is nothing if not 
accurate in statement of facts, nothing if not 
cautious and conservative in expressions of opin- 
ions, nothing if not scholarly in his modes of lo- 
cution ; these are qualities which all his writings 
display conspicuously, and we have a right to 
hold him to them, requiring him never to fall 
short of a standard of excellence he has taught us 
to expect to find in his work. But we admire not 
less, in this instance, what we may call the tem- 
per of this piece of writing—so eminently wise, 
just, kindly, courteous, dignified, and withal of 
fine academic flavor without a trace of pedantry. 
In its impersonal aspects, as merely a matter of 
erudition, it was no easy thing to do; it became 
one of increased difficulty and great delicacy, 
in its personal bearings. Professor Newton 
has relaxed nothing of rigid censorship, main- 
taining his judicial character throughout, and 
passing severe sentences in more than one case; 
but few there will be, we imagine, to dispute the 
fairness with which he has rendered his eyen- 
handed decisions. It was an invidious task, 
to bring so many of his contemporaries to the 
bar, to answer for their performances; but it 


556 


has been executed with scrupulous fidelity. 
Some offenders will writhe at the point of his 
pen, as they feel the keen discernment of his 
criticisms, and others may thank their own insig- 
nificance for the charitable mantle of his silence. 
Meanwhile, this Introduction takes its rightful 
place as the most valuable and most inter- 
esting contribution ever made to the subject of 
which it treats. 

Lacking space for any adequate analysis of 
this portion of the Dictionary, we prefer to say 


no more. 
ELLIOTT COUES. 


Recent Geological Bibliographies. (Bibliography 
and Index of North American Geology, Pale- 
ontology, Petrology and Mineralogy for 1895; 
F. B. WEEKs; Bul. U.S. Geol. Survey, No. 
146, 130 pp.; Washington, 1896. Bibliography 
of Missouri Geology; C. R. KryEs; Mo. Geol. 
Sury., Vol. X., pp. 221-523; Jefferson City, 
1896.) 

Perhaps there are no publications more wel- 
come or more serviceable to the worker in any 
branch of science than bibliographies. When 
accurately and conveniently arranged they save 
the specialist much time, energy and money. 
One who is not a specialist is even more 
dependent on them. This is particularly true 
in our country, where so many who are inter- 
ested in scientific subjects are necessarily lo- 
cated where library facilities are poor. The 
worker in some small town, miles, perhaps, 
from any really good library, learns to carefully 
treasure all bibliographic matter. Bibliogra- 
phies render distant libraries more or less acces- 
sible, and enable book purchases to be made by 
mail with the same certainty of satisfactory 
selection which comes from personal examina- 
tion. A glance over the list of periodicals ex- 
amined by Mr. Weeks shows that it is quite 
complete. Indeed the U.S. Survey library is 
one of the most complete geological libraries in 
America. The acquisitions for 1895, as listed 
here, include 575 titles. In Mr. Weeks’ paper 
there is, under each title, a brief abstract of the 
contents of the paper noted. This in a certain 
sense brings the library to each worker, while 
a visit to the library would be impossible to 
many geologists, except at great expense. 


SCIENCH. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 118. 


The survey has from the first recognized the 
responsibility which comes with the possession 
of an excellent library, and has issued many 
helpful bibliographies.* Two of these were 
compiled by Mr. Weeks, and their wide use has 
shown that they were carefully planned and 
conscientiously executed. In the present, as in 
the preceding papers, the references are full 
and clear, the abstracts concise and the ar- 
rangement convenient. Limits have necessarily 
been drawn. The proper limits to such a work 
are a matter of opinion. It would seem, for 
instance, that signed editorials in standard 
journals might properly be included, since they 
often contain much which is germane to current 
geologic discussion. In this they seem on a par 
with signed reviews which have been included. 
While certain trade journals, such as Engineer- 
ing and Mining Journal, have been included, 
others, which often contain original papers of 
merit, for example the Colliery Engineer, have 
been excluded. Since so large a portion of the 
work of the modern geologist has to do with 
economic subjects, an extension of the scope of 
the work to include a larger portion of the 
economic literature would be welcome. Cer- 
tain of the discussions in such a book as ‘The 
Mineral Industry,’ + would probably be as 
helpful to the working geologist as some of the 
strictly paleontologic literature noted. This is 
a criticism, not of the bibliography itself, but 
upon its possibly too restricted scope. 

The paper by Dr. Keyes is on a somewhat 
different plan. The attempt has been made to 
bring together all the literature bearing upon 
the geology of a single State. The result is 
that a considerable number of titles have been 
added to the list published by Sampson.{ There 
is the same lack, however, of references to im- 
portant economic literature that is shown by Mr. 
Weeks’ paper. Numerous papers upon the zine 
and lead deposits of Missouri have been pub- 
lished in the Engineering and Mining Journal, 
and any one studying the deposits would need 
to be famillar with these papers, yet none have 

* See Bulletins 7, 13, 44, 63, 69, 71, 75, 91, 99, 100, 
102, 121, 127, 130, 135. 

t Scientific Pub. Co., New York. 

Geol. Surv. Mo., Bul. 2, 158 pp. Jefferson City, 
1890. 


APRIL 2, 1897. ] 


been noted. It would seem that, in this case 
at least, too much has been eliminated. The 
list is quite complete otherwise. It is particu- 
larly rich in references to the geology of the 
surrounding region. Such side references are 
especially valuable to workers in Missouri, since 
they recall widely scattered notes which might 
otherwise be overlooked. The paper also be- 
comes more than a mere bibliography of 
Missouri. It is a guide to the study of the 
geology of the central Mississippi Valley and 
brings out excellently the development of our 
present knowledge from a historical point of 
view. Such a bibliography could only come as 
a result of wide studies throughout the region 
and is a natural sequence to the similar publi- 
cation issued by Dr. Keyes while connected 
with the Iowa Survey.* The general scope 
and arrangement of the paper is the same as 
that followed by the author in the Lowa bibliog- 
raphy. The abstracts are perhaps briefer than 
those given by Mr. Weeks, but its value is very 
largely increased by the dictionary arrange- 
ment. A not unimportant feature of both the 
bibliographies reviewed is the very full ac- 


companying index. 
H. F. Barn. 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 


CHEMICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON ; THE 93D 
REGULAR MEETING, WASHINGTON, D. C., 
FEBRUARY 11, 1897. 


THE Society was called to order at 8 p. m. by 
the President, Dr. Bigelow, with twenty-five 
members and several invited guests present. 

The first paper of the evening was read by 
Dr. E. W. Allen, and was entitled ‘A Critical 
Review of Aikmann and Wright’s Translation 
of Fleischmann’s Lehrbuch der Milchwirt- 
schaft,’ an abstract of which has been pre- 
sented by the author: ‘‘Attention was called 
to the heavy verbose style of the translation, 
and often foggy statements, errors in transla- 
ting the sense and failure to adapt the book for 
English and American readers, and to correct 
certain statements which do not apply at the 
present status of knowledge. The fallacy of 


*Towa Geol. Surv., Vol. I., pp. 209-464, 
Moines, 1893. 


Des 


SCIENCE. 


5d7 


translating a book for students and semi-popu- 
lar use, without editing the translation and in 
a measure adapting it to the new field, was 
pointed out.”’ 

Dr. H. Carrington Bolton exhibited two 
British patents which he has described in Scr- 
ENCE (p. 401). 

Mr. W. H. Krug read a review, from the 
German, of a paper by Adolph Meyer entitled 
‘The Maximum of Plant Production.’ 

Mr. Wirt Tassin’s paper was entitled ‘A New 
Blowpipe Reagent.’ He gave a review of 
the use of iodine in blowpipe analysis from the 
time of Bunsen to Haanel and Andrews. He 
then stated that for several years past he had 
been using iodine in several forms and found 
that a mixture of equal parts of iodine and 
potassium sulfocyanate, plus a little sulfur, 
the whole being intimately mixed, fused and 
then ground, gave the most satisfactory results. 
The powder was used as a flux on a gypsum 
tablet. A series of the iodine and cyanate films 
produced by some forty minerals was shown. 
Some of these illustrated the extreme delicacy 
of the test; others showed the effect that the 
coating produced by one element had upon that 
produced by another when they were deposited 
together; still others showed the methods of 
differentiating interfering elements. Some at- 
tempts at quantitative methods were shown, 
and attention was called to the fact that a mix- 
ture of three parts of alcohol and one part of 
chloroform burned in a lamp gave rise to some 
very interesting reactions either with or with- 
out the iodine flux. 

The Society adjourned at an early hour, and 
the remainder of the evening was devoted to 
feasting and social discourse. 


SPECIAL MEETING, TUESDAY, MARCH 9, 1897. 


A SPECIAL meeting of the Chemical Society 
was held in the Assembly Hall of the Builders’ 
Exchange Club, under the auspices of the Joint 
Commission of the Scientific Societies of Wash- 
ington, to hear the address of the retiring Presi- 
dent, Dr. E. A. de Schweinitz, upon ‘The War 
with the Microbes,’ which will be printed in 
ScIENCE. The speaker was introduced by Sur- 
geon General Sternberg, of the United States 
Army, and the hall was filled with members of 


508 


the Society, medical men and over 300 invited 

guests from the other scientific societies of 

Washington. V. K. CHESNUT, 
Secretary. 


GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON ; MEET- 
ING OF MARCH 10, 1897. 


The Geological Relations of some Southern Iron 
Ores. By C. WILLARD Hayes, U.S. G.S. 
Notwithstanding all that has been written 

concerning the Southern iron ores, there has as 

yet been no satisfactory statement of their 
geological relations. This is particularly true 
of the brown ores or limonites. The latter are 
separated by the writer into two classes, the 
gossan ores and the brown, valley ores. The 
latter class is by far the most important. An 
examination of many hundred deposits in con- 
nection with the study of the areal geology of 
the region in which they occur has led to a 
classification in three groups depending on their 
genesis and present relations. The first group 
comprises a large number of deposits composed 
chiefly of gravel ore imbedded in red clay near 
the top of the Knox dolomite. During the 
period of Tertiary baseleveling, the Chicka- 
mauga limestone, which overlies the, Knox dolo- 
mite, was reduced to baselevel somewhat before 
the latter, and areas underlain by the limestone 
received the drainage from adjacent areas of the 
dolomite. Deposits of bog ore were there 
formed, and when the limestone was again re- 
duced to a lower level, shortly after the eleva- 
tion of the region, a part of the ore deposits 
were left at the altitude of the Tertiary pene- 
plain, forming a fringe about the depressions 
which resulted from the removal of the lime- 
stone. Deposits belonging to the second group 
occur along the base of Cambrian quartzite 
ridges where the quartzite passes with steep dip 
beneath the siliceous limestone underlying the 
adjacent valleys. The deposits are regarded as 
segregations of the iron originally disseminated 
through the limestone, concentrated upon the 
impervious bed of quartzite during the progress- 
ive reduction of the limestone surface. In the 
third group are the extensive deposits associated 
with the numerous thrust faults of the region. 

While the deposits belonging to the two groups 

above described are due wholly to the surface 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 118. 


concentration of disseminated iron, the deposits 
of this group are produced, in part at least, by 
iron brought in solution from considerable 
depths below the surface. Their character de- 
pends largely on the kind of rocks cut by the 
fault. Where these are quarizites the iron may 
be in the form of ocher directly replacing the 
silica, or it may occur as the cement in a fault 
breccia or rarely, filling true fissure veins. The 
largest deposits occur in connection with fault$ 
between quartzite and limestone or between two 
limestone formations, where they are intimately 
associated with deposits of bauxite, the hydrated 
oxide of aluminium, and the two ores are prob- 
ably closely connected in origin. 


Geologic Notes on Kansas, Oklahoma and In- 
dian Territory. By T. WAYLAND VAUGHAN, 
U.S. G.S. 

Mr. Vaughan presented the results of a gen- 
eral reconnoissance made from Muskogee, I. T., 
via Tulsa, I. T., Perry, Enid and Alva, Okla- 
homa, to Coldwater and Medicine Lodge, Kan- 
sas; thence back to Coldwater, and south by 
Woodward, old Camp Supply, Taloga, Arapaho, 
to the Wichita mountains, in Oklahoma. The 
journey from Muskogee to Medicine Lodge was 
made in company with Professor L. F. Ward. 
The Wichita mountains were reconnoitered as far 
west the North Fork of Red River, east of 
Mangum, and along their northern side east- 
ward to Ft. Sill, at their eastern end; thence 
eastward, keeping on the north side of the 
Arbuckle Hills. 

Mr. Vaughan considered the Tishomingo 
granite (of Mr. Hill) in the Choctaw Nation, as 
probably of Archzean age. The axis of the 
Wichita mountains consists of solid plutonic 
masses, forming numerous isolated peaks, or 
groups of peaks, separated by wide, very level, 
grass-coyered valleys. The mountains are very 
rugged and precipitous, and rise from several 
hundred to more than a thousand feet above the 
valleys between them. A series of the rocks 
collected was found to consist of hornblende 
granites, which form most of the mountains, 
and an interesting series of gabbro rocks. The 
rounded hills northwest of Ft. Sill are composed 
of quartz poryhyry. The age of the plutonic 
axis of the Wichita mountains is still undeter- 


APRIL 2, 1897. ] 


mined, but as the Red Beds (Permotrias) were 
found resting against one of the granite mosses, 
with an arkose at their base, it must be older 
than the Permian. The Silurian was found 
north of the Wichita mountains, forming hog- 
backs, and at Ft. Sill the fossils showed the 
limestone to be Ordovician. Ordovician and 
Upper Silurian strata were found north of the 
Arbuckle Hills. 

No definite line could be drawn between the 
Carboniferous and the Permian, or between the 
Permian and the Trias. 

In discussing the Cretaceous (Comanche 
Series) the following facts were noted: In the 
vicinity of Belvidere, Kansas, the Cretaceous 
extends above the highest divides, but is de- 
posited upon the eroded surface of the Red 
Beds. As one goes southward the Cheyenne 
sandstone member disappears, the Kiowa shales 
become thinner, and the cretaceous beds rest 
against the sides of the Red Bed hills. Ten 
miles northwest of Taloga, and in the vicinity 
Arapaho, the Cretaceous is an agglomerate of 
Gryphea forniculata (White), the G. pitcheri of 
Marcou, afew feet thick. The Gryphxiatucum- 
carii of Marcou, a fossil asserted by him to be 
Jurassic, often occurs imbedded in the same 
_ matrix. 

The Great Plains formation does not extend 
as a continuous formation east of a line from 
Alya to Woodward, Taloga and Arapaho, nor 
south of Arapaho. 

There were also communications on ‘ Oscilla- 
tions of the Coast of California, during the 
Pliocene and Pleistocene,’ by H. W. Fairbanks, 
and on a ‘ Discovery of Marine Cretaceous de- 
posits in Eastern Virginia,’ by N. H. Darton ; 
but these are here referred to by title only, for 


want of space. 
W. F. Morse Lt. 


U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 


ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 


February 4, 1897. THE meeting was devoted 
to the annual address of the retiring President, 
C. L. Marlatt. 

The address was entitled ‘A Brief Survey of 
the Science of Entomology from its Beginning 
to the Present Time.’ A running account was 
given of the history of the study of insects and 


SCIENCE. 


559 


of the persons who have been most prominent 
in such work from the earliest times to the 
present, classified in accordance with their re- 
lation to prominent men or well marked peri- 
ods. With the historical summary as a basis, 
estimates were made of various phases of the 
results of the study, as follows: An estimate 
was given of the total amount of the literature 
of entomology, considered both at the various 
past periods and at the present time. It was 
stated that the total writings on insects:-would 
probably amount to between 12,000 and 15,000 
volumes of 500 pageseach. Theactual number 
of persons interested in the study of insects at 
various times was estimated, and from various 
sources of information it was deduced that there 
are from 3,000 to 4,000 persons now living who, 
either as students, writers or collectors, are in- 
terested in the science of entomology. The ad- 
dress concluded with a summary of the results 
so far accomplished, particularly in the field of 
systematic entomology and the relation this 
bears to what remains to be done. ‘The esti- 
mates were based upon the actual number of 
described species, in comparison with the esti- 
mates of species still to be described or dis- 
covered, and also in connection with the present 
rate of progress as indicated by the annual or 
periodical works of record in zoology. 

March 18, 1897. Mr. Ashmead showed speci- 
mens of Halobatopsis beginwi, recently described 
by him in the Canadian Entomologist. 

Dr. Motter read letters from Dr. Wyatt John- 
son, of Quebec, and Garry de N. Hough, of 
New Bedford, giving accounts of investigations 
by both observers of the fauna of cadavers, and 
showing in what respects their results differed 
from his own. 

Mr. Busck exhibited six larve of Anthrenus 
varius, each of which showed well marked wing 
pads on the second and third thoracic segments. 

Mr. Ashmead read a paper entitled ‘Five 
new hymenopterous parasites from Canarsia 
hammondi.’ These parasites were among a 
series reared by Mr. W. G. Johnson in Illinois, 
in the course of an investigation of the host in- 
sect. The new species were Spilocryptus canar- 
siz, Limneria canarsix, <Apanteles canarsiz, 
Elasmus meteori and Tetrastichus cerulescens. 

Mr. Ashmead also read a paper entitled ‘A 


560 


new species of Roptronia.’ The type was col- 
lected by Mr. Garman in Kentucky. 

Mr. Howard read a paper entitled ‘On some 
parasites of Coccidee,’ in which he referred to 
the extraordinary geographical distribution of 
certain of the forms. <Aspidiotiphagus citrinus 
(Craw), for example, has been found in many 
localities of the United States; at Grenada, 
B. W.1.; Portici, Italy; Punduloyaand Kandy, 
Ceylon; Hong Kong and Amoy, China; Tam- 
sui, Formosa; Yokohama, Japan; Newlands, 
Cape Colony; Brisbane, Queensland; Adelaide, 
South Australia; and Honolulu, Hawaii. He 
also showed that Arrhenophagus chionaspidis 
(Aurivillius) has an almost equally universal 
distribution, and announced the finding of the 
hitherto unknown male of this species in some 
material reared by Mr. Koebele at Macao. 

A paper by Mr. W. J. Fox, entitled ‘The 
species of the genus Pepsis found in America 
north of Mexico,’ was read by title. 

A synopsis of a paper entitled ‘ Notes on bred 
parasitic Hymenoptera, with descriptions of 
new species,’ by Geo. Dimmock and Wm. H. 
Ashmead, was presented by Mr. Ashmead. 

L. O. Howarp, 
Secretary. 


NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, SECTION OF 
GEOLOGY, MARCH 15, 1897. 


THE first communication of the evening was 
by Mr. Heinrich Ries, entitled ‘ Mineralogical 
Notes.’ Mr. Ries spoke of some Allanite 
erystals with new faces; also of some large 
crystals of fibrous gypsum from Newcastle, 
Wyoming; also exhibited some large Children- 
ite crystals from Maine, and some Amphibole 
crystals with many terminal faces from Vir- 
ginia. He also spoke of some Pseudomorphs 
of gold after Sylvanite from Cripple Creek, 
Colorado. The finding of a new Beryl crystal, 
with an unusually large number of terminal 
faces in New York City, was also noted. 

The second paper of the evening was written 
by Mr. Herbert Bolton, entitled ‘The Lan- 
cashire Coal Field of England,’ and read in ab- 
stract by President Stevenson. The paper 
spoke of the geographic conditions of the Lan- 
cashire coal field and its neighborhood, of the 
extent and quality of the coal and of the age 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 118 


of the structural movements which had caused 
the present geological characteristics in the 
coal area. A careful correlation was made be- 
tween the Coal-measures of this field and the 
deposits of the United States. Distribution of 
the fauna and flora and their character was 
taken up in some detail, and it was shown that 
in the Lower Coal-measures the life is mostly 
marine, in the Middle Coal-measures of fresh 
and blackish origin, and in the Upper Coal- 
measures that the fauna was scarce. When 
published, this paper will be a valuable contri- 
bution to the literature of coals and will be of 
great assistance to workers in America in their 
endeavors to correlate the deposits on the two 
sides of the water. 

The third paper of the evening was by Mr. 
Stuart Weller, of Chicago University, entitled 
‘The Batesville Sandstone of Arkansas,’ and 
abstracted by Mr. Gilbert van Ingen. The 
paper entered into some detail regarding the 
Batesville section and the fauna of the Bates- 
ville sandstone in that section. Of the inverte- 
brates thirty species have been found, of which 
eleven point to the St. Louis age of the sand- 
stone, six to the Kaskaskia age, while thirteen 
are Of indeterminate value. On account of 
the greater abundance of the numbers of speci- 
mens of the second group and from strati- 
graphic evidence as well, it is probable that the 
sandstone belongs in the base of the Kaskaskia 
group and is the same as the Aux Vasa lime- 
stone of southern Illinois. This paper gives 
the data wherewith to correlate the Mississip- 
pian section with the section about the Ozark 


Hills. 
RICHARD E. DODGE, 


Secretary. 


NEW BOOKS. 

Diseases of Plants induced by Cryptogamic Para- 
sites. KARL FRELHERR VON TUBEUF. London, 
New York and Bombay, Longmans, Green 
& Co. 1897. Pp. xv+598. 

The Fern Collector’s Handbook and Herbarium. 
SADIE F. Price. New York, Henry Holt & 
Co. 1897. 72 figures. 

Electricitét direkt aus Kohle. ETIENNE DE 
FEpor. Wien, Pest, Leipzig, A. Hartleben. 
Pp. vi+304. Mark 3. 


AW | 09 F 


SCIENCE 


INEW SERIES. 
VoL. V. No. 119. 


Fripay, Aprit 9, 1897. 


SINGLE Coprss, 15 crs. 
ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION, $5.00. 


LONGMANS, GREEN, 


& CO.’S NEW BOOKS. 


Papers and Notes on the Glacial Geology 


of Great Britain and Ireland. 


By the late HENRY CARVILLE Lewis, M.A., F.G.S., 
Professor of Mineralogy in the Academy of Natural 
Sciences, Philadelphia, and Professor of Geology 
in Haverford College, U.S.A. Edited from his 
unpublished MSS. With an Introduction by 
HENRY W. Crosskery, LL.D., F.G.S. With 83 
Illustrations in the Text and 10 Maps. 8vo, 542 
pages, $7.00. 

Essays. 


By GEORGE JOHN Romanss, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S. 
Edited by C. LLoyd MoreGAvy, Principal of Uni- 
versity College, Bristol. Crown 8vo, $1.75. 

CONTENTS: Primitive Natural History—The Darwinian 

Theory of Instinct—Man and Brute—Mind in Men and Ani- 

mals—Origin of Human Faculty—Mental Differences Be- 

tween Men and Women—What is the Object of Life?—Recrea- 

tion—Hypnotism—Hydrophobia and the Muzzling Order. 
*,* The many admirers of the late Professor Romanes will 

be glad to have this collection of his briefer scientific essays, 

which appeared at different times during the years 1884-91 

in such periodicals as the Wineteenth Century, the North 

American Review, the Contemporary, and the Forum. 


Diseases of Plants 
Induced by Cryptogamic Parasites. 


Introduction to the Study of Pathogenic Fungi, Slime 
Fungi, Bacteria, and Algze. Translated from the 
German of Dr. CARL FREIHERR VON TUBEDR, of 
the University of Munich, by WILLIAM G. SMITH, 
B.Se., Ph.D., Lecturer on Plant Physiology to the 
University of Edinburgh. With 330 Illustrations. 
8vo, $5.50. 

“This book is a most valuable production, and may be 
most cordially recommended to all who have to do with 


growing the staple crops of the farm, the forest or the gar- 
den.”—Worth British Agriculturist. 


Magnetic Fields of Force: 


An Exposition of the Phenomena of Magnetism, 
Electro-Magnetism, and Induction, based on the 
Conception of Lines of Force. By H. EBERT, 
Professor of Physics in the University of Kiel. 
Translated by C. V. BurToN, D.Sc. Part I. With 
93 Illustrations. 8vo, $3.50. 


Sold by booksellers. 


Sent, postpaid, on receipt of price. 


LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., Publishers, 91-93 Fifth Avenue, NEW YORK, 


Columbia University 
in the Witn of Tem Bork. 


Columbia University, pedagogically, consists of a college and a university. The coliege is Columbia College founded 
in 1754. The university Conca a the Faculties of Law, Medicine, Applied Science, Philosophy, Political Science and Pure 


Science. 
The 


point of contact between the college and the university is the senior year of the college, during which year 


students in the college pursue their studies, with the consent of the college faculty, under one or more of the faculties of the 


university. 
I. THE COLLEGE. 


The college has a curriculum of four years’ duration, lead- 
ing to the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Candidates for ad- 
mission to the college must be at least fifteen years of age, 
and pass an examination on prescribed subjects, the partic- 
ulars concerning which may be found in the annual Circular 
of Information. 


Il. THE UNIVERSITY. 


Pedagogically, the Faculties of Law, Medicine, Applied 
Science, Political Science, Philosophy and Pure Science, 
taken together, constitute the university. These faculties 
-offer advanced courses of study and investigation, respect- 
‘ively, in (@) private or municipal law, (b) medicine, (¢) ap- 
plied science, (d@) history, economics and public law, (e) phil- 
osophy, philology and letters, and (/) mathematics and 
natural science. Courses of study under one or more of 
these faculties are open to members of the senior class in 
the college and to all students who have successfully pur- 
sued an equivalent course of undergraduate study to the 
close of the junior year. These courses lead, through the 
Bachelor’s degree, to the university degrees of Master of 
Arts and Doctor of Philosophy. The degree of Master of 
Laws is also conferred for advanced work in law done under 
ithe faculties of Law and Political Science together. 


Ill. THE PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS. 


The faculties of Law, Medicine and Applied Science, con- 
duct respectively the professional schools of Law, Medicine, 
Mines, Chemistry, Engineering and Architecture, to which 
all students, as well those not having pursued a course of 
undergraduate studies as those who have, are admitted on 
terms prescribed by the faculties concerned, as candidates 
for professional degrees. 

1. The School of Law, established in 1858, offers a three 
years’ course of study in common law and equity jurispru- 
dence, medical jurisprudence, criminal and constitutional 
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SCIENCE 


EpITorRIALn CommittEe: S. Newcoms, Mathematics; R. 8. WooDWARD, Mechanics; E. C. PICKERING. 
Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THURSTON, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry; 
J. Le Conts, Geology; W. M. Davis, Physiography; O. C. MARsH, Paleontology; W. K. 
Brooks, C. HART MERRIAM, Zoology; S. H. SCUDDER, Entomology; N. L. BRITTON, 
Botany; HENRY F. OsBoRN, General Biology; H. P. BowbitcH, Physiology; 
J. S. Bintines, Hygiene; J. McKEEN CATTELL, Psychology ; 
DANIEL G. BRINTON, J. W. POWELL, Anthropology. 


Fripay, Aprit 9, 1897. 


CONTENTS: 
The War with the Microbes: E. A. DE SCHWEINITZ..561 
The Growth of Children: FRANZ BOAS.............+. 570 
The Promise and Potency of High Pressure Steam : 
Tip Lak, MUS QOL SION cosaoconsadnosocq9snHosoNsoDoGEDINEETONS 573 
The Origin of the Teeth of the Mammalia : 
F. OSBORN 
Zoological Notes :— 
The Sharp-tailed Finches of Maine: A. K. FISHER.577 
Current Notes on Physiography :— 
Yellowstone National Park; Bearpaw Mountains, 
Montana; Laurentian Highlands of Canada; 
Maps of Mt. Desert: W.M. DAVIS...............:. 577 
Current Notes on Anthropology :— 
The Progress of Anthropology ; The Lumbar Curve ; 
Native American Mysticism: D. G. BRINTON....578 
Scientific Notes and News .........sce.ccsecesseesseeeeee +079 
University and Educational News.......2...:s..ssssse000 584 
Discussion and Correspondence :— 
Diffraction of X-Rays obtained by a New Form of 
Cathode Discharge: R.W. Woop. The Height 
and the Velocity of the Flight of a Flock of Geese 
Migrating Northward: H. HELM CLAYTON. 
Archxological Discoveries made in the Gravels at 


HENRY 


Trenton: G. FREDERICK WRIGHT, D. G. BRIN- 
TON. AnImaginary Fleet: G.D. HARRIS. The 
Metric System: BURT G. WILDER................-. 585 


Scientific Literature :— 
The Formation of the Quarternary Deposits of 
Missouri: O. H. HERSHEY. Peters’ Angewandte 
Elektrochemie: EDGAR F. SMITH................2++ 587 
Scientific Journals :— 
American Journal of Science; The Astrophysical 
PIOURNGL <ccowasssexcvas<ce cae sondaeccrecssasecuenseneeneetae 589 


Societies and Academies :— 
Zoological Club of the University of Chicago. The 
Anthropological Society of Washington: J. H. 
McCormick. The New York Academy of Sci- 
ences—Biological Section: BASHFORD DEAN. 
The Torrey Botanical Club: EDWARD §. BuR- 
GllSIES) coscogecobnCOsCHO USOC ESHCC-REASCODNEIEASES OO 2CaNCOAECCON 592 


MSS. intended for publication and books, ete., intended 
for review should be sent to the responsible editor, Prof. J. 
McKeen Cattell, Garrison-on-Hudson, N. Y. 


THE WAR WITH THE MICROBES.* 

From the moment that man made his ap- 
pearance in the world there has been per- 
petual warfare between himself and every- 
thing animate and inanimate upon the 
earth. Toa great extent this has been an 
ageressive strife, man’s every effort being 
exerted to compel nature to contribute to 
his comfort, welfare and advancement by 
the subjugation of her materials and forces. 
It was many centuries, however, before he 
recognized that there were certain unknown 
insidious enemies, which often rendered 
fruitless his simple household occupations, 
defied his every effort at control and some- 
times menaced even his well-being and life. 
Though in 1675 Leeuwenhoeck discovered, 
with a powerful magnifying glass, certain 
minute organisms in decomposing animal 
matter, it was not until nearly two cen- 
turies later that their true significance was 
recognized, and Davaine first demonstrated 
the positive connection between these 
minute forms of life and disease. When 
animal and vegetable life ceased, in accord- 
ance with the laws of nature, they were 
supposed to be changed by purely chemical 
actions, so that their elements were again 
returned to the earth and air to supply food 
for other plants and animals. This destruc- 
tion was considered to be wrought simply 
by the oxygen of the air, and the process of 


* Address of the President before the Chemical So- 
ciety of Washington, March 9, 1897. 


562 


fermentation was thought to be due toa 
similar cause. It had been known for ages 
that the juice of the grape, if allowed to 
stand, underwent changes by which its 
character was modified and wine was 
formed, or this change might be allowed 
to progress further until the juice had been 
converted into vinegar and finally carbon 
dioxide gas and water. These alterations, 
those which take place in the digestive 
tract of animals and are involved in the 
conversion of dead animal and plant matter 
into their simplest constituents, were classed 
under the general head of fermentations. 
The fermentations, especially that of wine, 
an Italian chemist, Fabroni, in 1822, sup- 
posed to be induced by a substance of vege- 
table origin, but closely allied to the white 
of ege. He considered this material iden- 
tical with the gluten of cereals and gave 
to it the name of the ‘ principle vegeto- 
animal.’ For nearly forty years after- 
wards this theory was applied by chemists 
to all fermentations. It was supposed that 
the albuminoid substance present exposed 
to the oxygen of the air experienced a pro- 
gressively variable alteration, that diverse 
modifications of matter were produced 
which constituted the ferments of diverse 
nature. The fermentation was the result 
of the molecular movement thus commu- 
nicated. These theories were based upon an 
erroneous interpretation of what occurred 
under certain conditions. There exists in 
wine, when it is being converted into vine- 
gar, a substance which acts to bring about 
this modification, but this is not dead 
albuminoid matter, but a living plant. 
This fact the lamented chemist, Pasteur, 
demonstrated in his careful studies upon 
the production of wine and its conversion 
into vinegar. Before this time, it is true, 
there were many who failed to accept the 
theory of spontaneous oxidation, and en- 
deavored to show that if fermentable liquids 
were boiled in flasks which were then im- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Voz. V. No. 119. 


mediately sealed, the fermentation could 
not take place. But this did not fulfill the 
demands of one school of chemists, viz., 
that plenty of oxygen gas should always be 
present. When the liquid was boiled in con- 
tact with air which had previously been 
drawn through sulphuric acid, it was claimed 
that the air had undergone some chemical 
change, so it was not until 1854 that this 
objection was overcome by previously pass- 
ing the air in the presence of which boiling 
took place through cotton, and it was then 
that this school of chemists found their 
theories in danger. Pasteur demonstrated 
that the plant present in the preparation 
of vinegar was the simplest form of life, a- 
cell which could be easily destroyed by 
heat. Its presence was absolutely neces- 
sary for fermentation, and without the liv- 
ing cell no amount of dead vegetable matter 
could cause the peculiar molecular disar- 
rangement which had been claimed. While 
Liebig had contended that as long as the 
juice of the grape remained away from con- 
tact with the oxygen of the air the neces- 
sary motion could not be imparted to the 
molecules, which movement subsequently 
caused the phenomena of fermentation. 
Thus was brought to an end the strife be- 
tween the two schools of vitalists and 
chemists; the one school of chemists de- 
manding the presence of ogygen only, the 
other the presence of a living plant cell in 
addition to oxygen. From this strife of 
the two schools was evolved in reality a 
new science and new theories, which have 
made the past thirty years marvelous in 
their explanations of many of the simplest 
phenomena of plant and animal life and 
death, placed the practice of medicine upon 
a scientific basis and rendered possible an 
intelligent system of agriculture and ani- 
mal husbandry. 

Pasteur’s discoveries also served to explain 
the true cause of the poisonous properties of ° 
spoiled meats and other foods, stagnant 


APRIL 9, 1897. ] 


water, and water from marshy countries. 
For more than half a century before this 
time a number of investigators had proved 
the dangerous character of old sausage 
meats, bread and the like. Kerner con- 
cluded that they contained a fatty acid to 
which the poisonous action was due; others 
confirmed these ideas and came to similar 
conclusions in regard to poisonous cheese. 
In 1856 Panum asserted, as a result of his 
studies upon the poisons found in putrid 
animal matter, that these poisons might be 
formed by some active plant cell, but their 
injurious effect was independent of these 
cells. He demonstrated that fixed non-vol- 
atile poisons could be extracted from putrid 
matter which were soluble in water and 
aleohol, not destroyed by heat, and pro- 
duced the same effects after they had been 
submitted to a high temperature as before. 
These poisons he found to be intense in 
their action, 0.012 grams sufficing to cause 
the death of a small animal. In 1866 
Bence-Jones obtained from the liver a sub- 
stance which, with dilute sulphuric acid, 
gave a bright blue fluorescence like that 
noted in similar solutions of quinine. Prob- 
ably this was the product of what we now 
call fluorescing bacteria. 

The work of Pasteur threw light upon 
the origins of these poisons. As the ferment 
causes the alteration in the grape juice, so 
do microscopic forms of life bring about the 
changes which take place in dead animal and 
vegetable matter, and also those conditions 
in the living body which we call disease. 

Many of these microscopic forms of single- 
celled plants, the bacteria, have their natural 
habitat upon dead organic matter, but they 
may flourish in the living body and are 
almost unlimited in variety, appearance and 
behavior. It is possible also to cultivate 
them upon specially prepared solutions after 
their individual peculiarities have been 
studied. Some thrive best in light, others 
in darkness ; some like a goodly supply of 


SCIENCE. 


563 


oxygen, others prefer nitrogen; some are 
very sensitive to changes of temperature, 
while others readily accustom themselves 
to vicissitudes. 

These different bacteria further are some- 
what eccentric within as well as without 
the animal body. Some, as the diphtheria 
germs, find their most comfortable habitat 
upon certain mucous membranes, others in 
the lungs, some in the digestive tract, still 
others in the blood, while others again con- 
fine themselves to certain external cells and 
membranes. In their artificial cultivation 
this eccentricity is equally apparent. While 
nearly all thrive upon a beef broth, some 
prefer the beef broth with an excess of acid, 
others with an excess of alkali. Some de- 
mand the addition of sugar or glycerine, 
others the addition of sugar together with 
acid, while some are satisfied with a diet 
of phosphates, salt and water. These pecu- 
liarities have to be studied for each germ, 
and while many can accommodate them- 
selves to their surroundings, and while the 
same germ grown upon different media pro- 
duces the same substances, the amount of each 
substance is a varying one, and in cultiva- 
ting them artificially we must find which 
diet gives rise to the largest amount of the 
most active products. 

Shortly after the work of Panum just re- 
ferred to, the Italian chemist Selmi out- 
lined methods of extracting poisonous prin- 
ciples from dead animal matter, and gave 
to these substances the name ptomaines, on 
account of their origin. Later, in 1876, the 
first analysis of a ptomaine was made by 
Nencki and its formula determined. Fur- 
ther experiments showed that volatile and 
non-volatile substances, alkaline in charac- 
ter, could be obtained from various portions 
of the animal body, often from fresh mate- 
rial and also from the cultures of bacteria. 
These ptomaines were found to resemble 
the alkaloids in their chemical reactions. 

In 1882-83 Brieger succeeded in separa- 


564 


ting and determining a number of these 
ptomaines, from the brain, from fish musca- 
rin, from decomposed glue, neuridine and 
dimethyl amine, muscarin, etc. From pure 
cultures of the typhoid germ he obtained a 
substance, typhotoxin, which produced ty- 
phoid symptoms, and from cultures of the 
tetanus germ tetanin, which caused convul- 
sions. The presence of similar poisonous 
bases was demonstrated in cultures of the 
cholera, hog cholera, anthrax, pyogenes 
aureus and like active bodies were isolated 
from cheese, milk, ice cream, sausage and 
other foods which had caused sickness. 

The isolation of these poisons from bac- 
terial cultures gave rise to the belief that 
they were the bodies which caused the 
fatal effects of disease. But while in 
many instances they produced the charac- 
teristic symptoms, in others they were not 
sufficient to account for all the phenomena. 
For example, from cultures of the tetanus 
germ it was possible to isolate a base that 
had but slight poisonous properties, while 
the culture liquid from which this was ob- 
tained after all the germs had been removed 
was ten thousand times more poisonous 
than the base secured. Non-poisonous pto- 
maines were also obtained from cultures of 
disease-producing bacteria, and, in fact, the 
majority of ptomaines were found to be 
non-poisonous. 

The next question was, if in the culture 
liquids freed from bacteria, poisonous sub- 
stances are obtained, and if they do not be- 
long to the class of ptomaines, how shall 
they be identified and classified? In 1886 
Mitchell and Reichert, while studying the 
venoms of serpents, noted that these poisons 
belonged to a class of bodies different from 
the ptomaines, viz., to the group called 
proteids. Shortly after, Roux and Yersin, 
in their studies upon the diphtheria poison, 
demonstrated that this was a substance 
which resembled the ferments and led them 
to think that an enzyme, as it is called, 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Voz. V. No. 119. 


a substance like pepsin, was the active poi- 
son, and that this enzyme was in some way 
elaborated by the germ. Other investiga- 
tors had found a similar substance in 
tetanus and hog cholera cultures, and a re- 
investigation by Brieger of a number of 
bacterial cultures showed that by precipita- 
tion with ammonium sulphate and alcohol 
very poisonous substances giving proteid 
reactions could be obtained. Proteids of 
various characters belonging to different 
classes were obtained from cultures of 
many bacteria. About this time it was 
shown that certain plants of a higher order 
contained poisonous bodies of a like proteid 
character. An albumose abrin was ob- 
tained from the Jequirity seeds and ricin 
from the castor-oil bean. These were in- 
tensely poisonous, zyppo7 Of @ grain of 
abrin being sufficient to kill an animal 
weighing one kilogram, or the 74, of a 
grain should be a fatal dose for a man 
weighing about 130 pounds. 

A relationship was thus established be- 
tween the poisons from higher plants and 
from the lowest plants and certain animals. 
Was this poisonous property of these bac- 
terial substances due to a true proteid, or 
was there an admixture of an active fer- 
ment-like substance with the proteid, and 
are these poisons mechanically carried down 
in the process of precipitation of the albu- 
minoid matter in the culture liquids? Ex- 
periments show that while the poisons may 
be proteids, itis more than probable that they 
are simply carried down with proteid matter 
as indicated. Brieger in 1893, in view of 
the results so far obtained, endeavored to 
isolate the pure poison from cultures of 
the tetanus bacillus. The cultures were 
first filtered through porous porcelain, a 
Chamberland or Monroe filter tube, for in- 
stance, and the liquid which passed through 
was treated with a concentrated solution of 
ammonium sulphate. This preciptated the 
poisons and a number of other substances 


APRIL 9, 1897. ] 


which gave proteid reactions. After puri- 
fication and dialysis the poison was ob- 
tained as yellow soluble flakes which no 
longer gave proteid reactions. It was a 
substance in which there was no noticeable 
phosphorus nor sulphur. It was thus 
proved that the tetanus poison belonged 
neither to the ptomaines before referred to, 
nor to the proteids. The poison, while not 
perfectly pure, was purer than any ever 
before obtained, and was so poisonous that 
@ mouse weighing 4 oz. was killed by 
pazea0 Part of a grain, while 4, of a 
grain should kill a man weighing 150 lbs. 

It is not difficult to understand how if the 
tetanus bacillus outside of the body can 
produce such powerful poisons, it can give 
rise in the animal organism to serious 
troubles. The diphtheria bacillus is an- 
other germ which forms very powerful poi- 
sons in the solutions upon which it feeds. 
As already mentioned, some authors, Roux 
and Yersin, believe that this poison also 
belongs to the ferments like trypsin and 
pepsin, while Brieger and Fraenkel thought 
it was a toxalbumin. We find after the 
germ has been removed from the culture 
liquid by filtration, that the poison can be 
separated by calcium phosphate or am- 
monium sulphate, just like the tetanus poi- 
son. In the purest condition in which it 
has been so far obtained it fails to give the 
proteid reaction, and ,, of a grain will kill 
a guinea pig. It dialyses readily. Bodies 
of a similar kind have been obtained from 
cholera, glanders, swine plague, tubercu- 
losis, and anthrax cultures, while many 
other bacteria produce soluble intensely 
poisonous substances in artificial cultures 
as well as inside the animal body. 

These products are all characteristic of 
the individual organism. The conditions 
under which the most poisonous ones are 
formed seem to be dependent partly, we 
may say, upon the humor of the germ and 
also upon the food offered for its use. It 


SCIENCE. 565 


appears, for example, in connection with 
the diphtheria germ that, if there happens 
to be present in the beef broth upon which 
it is being cultivated, an undue amount of 
glucose and an insufficient supply of alkali, 
that, instead of producing a very active 
poison, the substance secreted is much less 
harmful. This is accounted for by the sup- 
position that the glucose is decomposed into 
acid which, in its turn, neutralizes or de- 
composes the poison ordinarily produced 
by the germ. These poisons, it was origi- 
nally supposed, resulted from the decompo- 
sition of the food of the germ, just as 
soluble and assimilable albuminoids are 
produced by the acids and ferments of the 
animal body from the insoluble albuminoids 
that are ingested as food. It has been 
found, however, that in most instances the 
poison of the germ is in solution in quan- 
tity only after the germs themselves have 
become partially disintegrated. In other 
words, the active bacterial poisons seem to 
be products of the cell and retained within 
the cell until the latter dies and the cell 
membrane is broken, permitting the passage 
into the surrounding liquid of the poison. 
What then is the true nature of these poi- 
sons if they belong neither to the bases nor 
to the proteids or toxalbumins? That, un- 
fortunately, is one of the problems to 
which, up to the present time, chemical re- 
search has not been able to give a definite 
answer ; and this, because, as we have al- 
ready noted, the poisons of these bacteria 
are so tremendously active and conse- 
quently produced in proportionately small 
amount, even when a large quantity of the 
culture media is used, that it has so far been 
a matter almost of impossibility to separate 
a sufficient quantity of these poisonous 
principles to purify them perfectly for 
chemical analysis. Perhaps this object has 
been attained more nearly than ever before 
by some workers in the Biochemie Labora- 
tory in this city, who have succeeded in 


<7 


35 


566 SCIENCE. 


separating from cultures of the tuberculosis 


germ a crystalline poison with constant 
melting point and a constant composition. 
This is not the only poison produced by the 
tuberculosis germ, but that it is one of the 
principles which is responsible for much of 
the trouble with this disease is beyond 
doubt. These special poisonous principles, 
which are so difficult to obtain pure, we 
designate by the name toxines, to distin- 
guish them from the ptomaines and proteid 
substances before mentioned. Another dif- 
ficulty which is always encountered in ex- 
tracting the poisons of bacteria is their in- 
stability. The material with which an ex- 
periment is begun may be very poisonous, 
but the processes of precipitation and ex- 
traction through which it must be passed in 
order to obtain a desired substance are such 
that often, long before the final stages have 
been reached, the nature of the poisons has 
undergone an entire change due to the 


_ chemical processes which have necessarily 


been applied. 

We have said that the poisons of the 
germ were synthetic products which were 
built up within the cell wall. Some of 
these easily pass through the cell wall, due 
probably to the greater permeability of the 
living membrane; others are retained within 
the cell wall only to pass into solution when 
these walls are broken down. ‘Tetanus, 
diphtheria and swine plague allow this dif- 
fusion to take place very rapidly, while 
with other germs, like typhoid fever, an- 
thrax, cholera, glanders, tuberculosis, the 
poison is produced and retained within the 
cell more firmly during the life of the latter. 
As the germs die, however, in artificial cul- 
tures, the cell walls gradually disintegrate 
and the poison passes out into the surround- 
ing liquid. In the case of tuberculosis and 
glanders a strong solution of these cell 
poisons in the surrounding liquid upon 
which the germ has been feeding gives 
tuberculin and mallein, the two diagnostic 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 119. 


agents which have been of inestimable value 
in detecting latent disease in men and ani- 
mals and thus preventing the spread of un- 
told evils. 

Thus the warfare first began by the 
chemist with the microbes in identifying 
their character and relation to disease has 
been prosecuted for little more than a 
decade in endeavoring to detect the true 
character of the insidious poisons with which 
their arrows are tipped. Toa certain ex- 
tent, as we have seen, this warfare has 
been a successful one in so far that the 
poisons have been hunted and driven to 
their last stronghold, which, ere long, with 
the many workers in attack, must yield as 
heretofore to superior forces. But while 
this search for the pure poisons has been in 
progress the chemist has not been idle in 
endeavoring to counteract these poisons, 
the nature of which he did not thoroughly 
understand, but the evil effects of which 
were only too apparent. While Jenner in 
vaccination for small-pox, and Pasteur with 
his method of vaccination for anthrax, had 
shown that it was possible to protect ani- 
mals and men from a virulent attack of 
disease by giving them first a mild attack, 
(though, by the way, there are a few who 
contend even to-day that vaccination is use- 
less), it remained for Salmon, his assistant, 
and Smith in this city to demonstrate, in 
1882, that the poisons of germs could be 
used by men and animals to fortify them- 
selves against the attacks of these same 
bacteria. This could be accomplished by 
introducing into the circulation of the ani- 
mala small quantity of the poison of the 
germ, so that when the germ itself was in- 
jected the poison which it produced was 
without effect. What had been found true 
for one disease of animals proved also to be 
true for many others, and chemical vaccina- 
tion was tried for diphtheria, tetanus, an- 
thrax, cholera, typhoid fever, tuberculosis, 
glanders and a number of other diseases. 


ry 


Apri 9, 1897.] 


But this discovery led to another, important 
and far-reaching. Fodor showed that the 
blood serum of animals, made immune to a 
particular disease by injecting the animal 
with the poison which this germ formed, had 
the effect of destroying the germ of the dis- 
ease. This excited renewed interest in the 
study of the blood, and within a few years 
it was demonstrated by the work of many, 
some in this city in the laboratories before 
mentioned, that this serum from previously 
immunized animals, not only had the prop- 
erty of conferrmg immunity upon other 
animals, but also of checking the disease 
after it had once begun. How thoroughly 
this fact was demonstrated, first by Behring 
and subsequently by Roux and others in 
connection with diphtheria and tetanus, 
has been dwelt upon often, and we know of 
the many thousands of lives that have been 
saved by the use of antitoxic serums. 

To prepare these the solution of the 
toxins, which we have before described, are 
injected into different animals, preferably 
horses, and at the end of six to twelve 
weeks the blood of these animals is found 
to yield a serum containing substances 
possessing both immunizing and curative 
properties which we call antitoxines. The 
active principle of this serum is present in 
a comparatively small quantity, but its in- 
fluence is enormous. It does not appear to 
be a substance which directly chemically 
neutralizes the poison, but counteracts its 
effects within the animal in some unknown 
way. 

But some of our friends may ask: Were 
not these facts discovered first by the use 
of animals, and hence has not this knowl- 
edge, though of inestimable value to man- 
kind, been too dearly bought? Yes, per- 
haps, a score or two of guinea pigs and 
sweet, lovely rats and mice have sacri- 
ficed their lives for humanity’s sake. But 
this knowledge could not have been gained 
in any other way unless by the sacrifice of 


SCIENCE. 


567 


human life. What mother would hesitate 
to sacrifice a thousand guinea pigs for the 
life of her child, or, on the other hand, 
would wish her child to serve as the subject 
of experiment for others ? 

I have often been asked if the horses 
placed under this treatment for the produc- 
tion of antitoxines suffer. I think not and, 
as an illustration, will relate an incident 
which has come under my own observation, 
in the study of the antitoxins of the dread 
disease, tuberculosis. A well-blooded horse, 
gentle in every particular, except that he 
would run away upon the slightest provo- 
cation, seemed to be a suitable subject for 
some work. Accordingly he received an 
injection of the poison of the tuberculosis 
germ with the expectation that so high 
strung an animal would rebel against these 
pleasant familiarities. But he was entirely 
too wise for this. He submitted quietly 
and seemed much interested while by means 
of a hypodermic syringe a small quantity 
of the poison was ejected beneath his skin. 
A few days afterwards when the operation 
was repeated it would have been reasonable 
to expect that if there had been any dis- 
comfort the horse would have rebelled 
against the procedure. Did this happen? 
Not by any means. As soon as he observed 
the doctor appear with the syringe and 
bottle he trotted toward him with pleasure, 
stood quietly looking around with intelli- 
gence, while the injection was made and 
ever afterwards lent himself to the experi- 
ment with as much evident pleasure and 
interest as that of the investigators, appar- 
ently thoroughly appreciating its object. 

It would hardly be fair to say that this 
dumb animal was endowed with more in- 
telligence than some of our ill-informed but 
well-meaning friends, and yet would its ac- 
tions not seem to indicate a high regard for 
scientific work and disclaimer of suffering ? 

Is it that they are instigated by a desire 
to inflict torture that scores of investigators 


568 


have sacrificed their lives in searching for 
the poisons of dangerous bacteria and their 
antitoxins? Is it inhumanity which spurs 
them on at imminent personal risk in their 
efforts, which are daily yielding new and 
brilliant results to find means for control- 
ling a disease which annually causes one- 
seventh of the deaths of the population of 
the globe? 

However, it is not only for protection 


against the two diseases, tetanus and diph- 


theria, just mentioned, that antitoxic serums 
can be prepared. Recent investigations 
have proved that typhoid fever, cholera, 
anthrax, the plague, etc., are amenable to 
similar treatment and in the same depart- 
ment in this city that chemical vaccina- 
tion received its first impetus, but by 
workers in the Biochemic laboratory it 
has been demonstrated that two diseases 
that cause such losses to the farmers of the 
country may be controlled by antitoxic se- 
rums. Investigators in this same labora- 
tory have shown also that a substance anti- 
toxic to tuberculosis can be produced in 
the serum of animals when they are prop- 
erly treated, which has undoubted and pro- 
nounced effect in checking experimental 
tuberculosis in small animals. When we 
inquire the character of these antitoxins we 
are almost as yet more in the dark than in 
our efforts to discover the exact nature of 
the poisons of germs. However, it has 
been possible to separate in a fairly pure 
form the antitoxic principle from diphtheria 
serum, a minute amount of which will con- 
fer immunity and the antitoxic principle of 
swine plague, .002 g. of which has been 
found to cure animals weighing 1 pound, 
and even a solid antitoxic-like substance 
for tuberculosis has been obtained in an im- 
pure form. All these solid antitoxic prin- 
ciples resemble each other very closely in 
their chemical tests and methods of separa- 
tion showing albuminoid reactions, but in 
their curative properties they are totally 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No.°119. 


independent the one of the other. The 
diphtheria antitoxic serum does not cure 
tetanus; the swine plague serum does not 
cure the cholera. 

In the case of the venom of serpents it 
has been found that repeated injections will 
make the serum of an animal antitoxic and 
curative against other venoms. The anti- 
toxic serum produced by the cobra venom 
will protect animals and men against the bite 
of the rattlesnake as well asits own bite. It 
would seem from this that there is a very 
close relationship between the poisons of 
venomous snakes and that immunity to one 
also gives protection from the other. Itap- 
pears very probable also that the poisons of 
germs belonging to the same genus will be 
closely allied and that an antitoxin for one 
will also be an antitoxin for the other. In 
fact, it has been demonstrated that the prod- 
ucts of the bacillus coli communis will 
protect animals from the typhoid germ to 
which it is closely allied. The same effect 
will probably be found with many other 
diseases where the germs are related. 

The difficulty of separating these anti- 
toxins completely from the other constitu- 
ents of the blood has made it impossible as 
yet to obtain positive information as to 
their true chemical character. 

As to theiraction in producing immunity 
one theory is that they directly neutralize 
the poisons which the germs produce, but 
this does not seem to be substantiated by 
experiment. 

Another theory proposed first by Stern- 
berg, then by Metchinkoff, ascribes im- 
munity to the action of the white blood 
corpuscles upon the bacteria, while the third 
theory, and the one which seems most ten- 
able in view of actual results, is that the 
antitoxic principle partakes of the nature of 
an unorganized ferment like diastase, and 
that its action in the body, with the aid of 
the leucocytes, suffices to render innocuous 
the poisons of the particular germs. 


APRIL 9, 1897.] 


There is little room for doubt that in the 
first instance the antitoxins are the result of 
cell activity upon the introduced poison. 
Just how the cell manages to convert the 
toxin into antitoxic ferment is not known, 
probably by absorption of the toxin and 
subsequent secretion of the antitoxin within 
the cell-wall. Every added dose of toxin 
finds not only the leucocytes but a ferment 
to aid in its decomposition, and so the 
change proceeds more rapidly and the im- 
munity is increased. Exactly what the 
chemical alteration in this instance is, has 
not been explained, but that there is oxida- 
tion, and molecular rearrangement of the 
toxin seems to be probable. 

Thus without taking into consideration 
the destruction of the causes of disease, 
viz., germs themselves, by means of such 
excellent disinfectants as formaldehyde, has 
the warfare against the microbes progressed. 
Although as we learn more of the proper- 
ties and uses of their toxins we are almost 
forced to confess that it is not a warfare, 
but rather that man is learning how to 
train and control these microscopic forms 
of life as centuries before he learned how 
to control the animals and higher plants. 

Our ideas of germs are so thoroughly 
associated with disease that we often forget 
that these germs are but the simplest forms 
of plant cells which are endowed with vari- 
ous functions. The majority of them are 
not injurious to man, but very useful fellow- 
workers if he has once learned how to 
manage them. The value of this cell life 
in the production of wines, beer and other 
fermented liquids is too well known to need 
more than passing mention. But you may 
not all know to what extent the aroma and 
flavor of butter and cheese are due to the 
products of micro-organisms. Now these 
products are frequently ethers and esters, 
sometimes acid and acid derivatives or 
amines, the latter a class of compounds to 
one of which smoked herring owes its par- 


SCIENCE. 


569 


ticular flavor and which is also formed by a 
number of bacteria. 

When milk is first collected from healthy 
animals it is almost free from germs, but ex- 
posed to the air it soon becomes filled with 
those forms of life which are perfectly 
harmless. If placed under suitable condi- 
tions with regard to temperature they will 
multiply very readily and the milk becomes 
sour, due to the formation of lactic acid 
produced from the sugar in the milk by one 
or more of these germs. If the germs 
present happen to be those giving an ether 
and ester which have a pleasant flavor and 
aroma, good butter can be made, but if 
they give rise to the formation of disagree- 
able thio, ethers and esters or some amines, 
the butter is poor and bad . 

Now, by isolating different germs found 
in the milk and cultivating them separately, 
so as to discover their own peculiar product, 
it is possible to always make butter of the 
same sort and flavor by first destroying the 
other germs present by Pasteurization and 
then inoculating the cream with the par- 
ticular germs desired. A number of germs 
have been isolated from milk which will 
produce good butter, and any one of them 
is, perhaps, as satisfactory as the other, the 
etheral product being slightly different and 
more palatable to different individuals. 
Of course, a great many germs have been 
found in milk which produce disagreeable 
compounds and it is not possible to tell 
from their appearance simply, which will 
be desirable plants, but it is easy to culti- 
vate them in a small quantity of milk, note 
the results and select the desirable plant 
cells. 

Fortunately or unfortunately the use of 
these germs has been patented, so that in 
the near future we may see branded upon 
particularly fine butter and cheese patented 
in 1893, amended 1896, reissued 1908, ete. 
May we expect soon a patented process for 
sterilized breathing, eating and sleeping ? 


570 


Recently it has been found that malt if in- 
oculated with a particular ferment from the 
skin of the grape will be converted into 
wine, the ferment used giving rise to the for- 
mation of characteristic ethers, so it is cer- 
tainly not beyond the limits of possibilities 
that in the near future American beer after 
a voyage to France may return as excellent 
champagne. When we discover too a germ 
(as had been done recently) that converts 
starch into cellulose, we are almost led to 
wonder if it might not be possible to pro- 
duce cotton in a culture flask if the parti- 
cular germs were supplied with nutritious 
food and a sufficient amount of carbon di- 
oxide, oxygen and water. 

The flavor of many lucious fruits and 
foods is due to the products either directly 
or indirectly of one or more of these useful 
bacteria, and on the other hand similar 
germs play an important and as yet un- 
known roéle in the formation of poisonous 
alkaloids. 

Many bacteria form beautifully colored 
substances, reds, yellows, blues, greens and 
delicate shades which the art of man has 
not been able to imitate and the nature of 
which he has not yet learned. These, too, 
are Only hiding their secrets with a thin veil 
which investigation will soon withdraw. 

But it is not only in simple industrial 
processes that the products of germs are 
important. Man’s very existence, while 
menaced on the one hand by a few germs, 
is on the other dependent upon their activ- 
ity. The germs which in the soil produce 
nitrous and nitric acid and ammonia, and 
aid their assimilation by the plants, those 
which facilitate the decomposition of phos- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8S. Von. V. No. 119. 


phates and bring the phosphorous, a so nec- 
essary constituent for the life of plants and 
animals into an available form, and those 
which aid in the destruction of dead vege- 
table and animal matter, play a very valu- 
able and but little appreciated part in the 
continuance of the life and well-being of 
man. 

There are many other ways in which the 
products of these dreaded microscopic cells 
are useful, but all,a very insignificant num- 
ber of which we have mentioned, are only 
waiting man’s bidding to become valuable 
subjects, and to show that, as has been in- 
stanced in the history of nations, conquered 
people often make the best and wisest citi- 
zens. 

E. A. DE SCHWEINITZ. 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 


THE GROWTH OF CHILDREN. 

In the years 1891 and 1892 I collected 
statistics on the growth of children in Wor- 
cester, Mass., mainly with a view to investi- 
gating individual growth. Although it was 
not possible, as was my original intention, 
to continue the series through a number of 
years, some results of interest have been 
obtained. The measurements were taken 
partly by myself, partly by fellows and 
students of Clark University. I am in- 
debted to Dr. G. M. West for many of the 
measurements. 

The stature of the same children was 
measured in May, 1891, and in May, 1892. 
The average annual increases and the vari- 
ability of the amount of growth (the mean 
of the squares of individual variations) for 
these intervals were as follows: 


AVERAGE INCREASES IN STATURE OF CHILDREN BETWEEN THE FoLLowING YEARS (cm.). 


56and6 6and7 7and8 8and9 9andi10 10andi1 lland12 12and18 18and14 i4and15 15 and 16 
Boys 6.55 5.70 5.37 4.89 5.10 5.02 4.99 5.91 7.88 6.23 5.64 
Girls 5.75 5.90 5.70 5.50 5.97 6.17 6.98 6.71 5.44 334 — 
VARIABILITY OF ANNUAL GROWTH. 
Boys +0.68 £0.86 +0.96 +1.03 +0.88 -+1.26 +186 +2.39 +291 +3.46 
Girls +0.88 -+0.98 +1.10 +0.97 +1.23 +1.85 +1.89 +206 +2.89 342.71 


APRIL 9, 1897. ] 


This table shows that young children 
grow more uniformly than older children. 
The increasing variability is very great dur- 
ing the years of adolescence. After this 
period it must necessarily fall. It disap- 
pears as soon as all the individuals have 
ceased growing. This increase in varia- 
bility must be considered due to the 
effect of retardation and acceleration of 
growth. During the period preceding pu- 
berty some individuals will have reached 
their full growth, while others are still 
growing at a very rapid rate. As 
the rate of growth during the early 
years of childhood does not vary very 
much, retardation and acceleration will 
not have any effect of this sort. For the 
same reason the distribution of amounts of 
growth during the years preceding puberty 
is very asymmetrical and must be more so 
for the years from 17 to 20, for which I have 
no observations. It will be noticed that 
the growth of girls is more variable than 
that of boys. 

I have furthermore divided the series for 
each year in two equal halves, the one em- 
bracing the tall children, the other embra- 
cing the short children. The average an- 
nual increases of these two groups are as 
follows : 


AVERAGE INCREASE IN STATURE 


6and7 7and8 S8and9 9and1l10 
Short boys 5.5 5.2 4.8 4.8 
Tall boys 5.9 5.5 5.0 5.4 
Difference +0.4 +0.3 +0.2 +0.6 
Short girls 5.7 5.5 5.3 5.5 
‘Tall girls 6.1 5.9 5.6 6.4 
Difference +0.4 +0.4 +0.3 +0.9 


It appears that during the early years of 
childhood short children grow more slowly 
than tall children, that is to say their gen- 
eral development continues to be slow. 
Later on, during the period of adolescence, 
they continue to grow while tall children 
have more nearly reached their full de- 
velopment. That is to say, small children 


SCIENCE. 


571 


are throughout their period of growth re- 
tarded in development, and smallness at 
any given period as compared to the aver- 
age must in most cases be interpreted as due 
to slowness of development. During early 
life slowness of development which has 
manifested itself is likely to continue, while 
some of the effects of retardation will be 
made good during the period of adolescence, 
which is liable to be longer than in children 
who develop rapidly in early life. 

We will call the average stature at the 
age ¢ A,; the amount of growth of an indi- 
vidual whose stature at that period is A, + = 
may be called d,. We assume that the re- 
lation between the actual size of an indi- 
vidual and the average amount of its annual 
growth be expressed by the simple relation 

d,=d+ az 
where a is a constant. 

Furthermore we will assume that the vari- 
ability of d, will be the same for all values 
of x. Then it can easily be proved that 


2 2| 
— mM 
a= [4 —1 
we 


where » and », the variabilities of stature 
at the periods ¢ and ¢, and where m the 
variability of the amount of growth during 
the period ¢,-t. 


BETWEEN THE Fo~Lowine YEARS: 


10and11 lland12 12and13 13and14 Ifand15 15 and 16 


4.8 4.8 5.2 7.3 7.5 6.8 
5.3 ‘5.2 6.6 8.5 5.0 4.4 

SE Olo, E04 E016) 2212) 215) er! 
5.8 7.0 7.4 6.5 4.5 
6.5 7.0 6.0 4.4 2.2 

+0.7 OO av =on = 268 


From these data the following values of 
a have been computed: 


Age. Boys. Girls. 
6 0.05 0.05 

ai 0.05 0.05 

8 0.01 0.01 

9 0.03 0.03 
10 0.06 0.06 
11 0.07 


0.06 


572 
Age. Boys. Girls. 
12 0.10 —0.11 
13 0.08 —0.17 
14 — 0.03 — 0.20 
15 — 0.22 


The values cannot claim any great weight, 
since the series of observations is very 
small. Only about fifty individuals for 
each year and sex are available. They 
prove, however, that the values of a first 
decrease until about the eighth year. Then 
they increase and decrease again very 
rapidly after the thirteenth year in boys 
and after the eleventh year in girls. 

According to the assumptions made be- 
fore, the average individual which meas- 
ured A + z at the period ¢ will measure 


(Ata) + ta)—Atatee hh a 


at the period ¢,. 
If it measured 


Ase Ge gS , 
“ 


it would remain in the same percentile grade 
while according to the above formula its 
percentile standing will be nearer the aver- 
age than at the initial period t. Only when 
all the children of the initial measurement 
A-+« grow equally, 7. e., if m=0 could 
they remain in the same percentile grade. 
This conclusion agrees with Dr. Henry G. 
Beyer’s observations.* 

The above approximation is fairly satis- 
factory during the early years of childhood. 
During the period of adolescence it is not 
satisfactory, because the values of a are too 
large. More extended observations will 
enable us to include terms of higher order 
in the considerations and to obtain more 
accurate knowledge of the laws of growth. 

The results of this investigation suggest 
that the differences of growth observed in 
children of different nationalities and of 
parents of different occupations may also 
be partly due to retardation or acceleration 

* Proc. U. S. Naval Institute, Vol. XXI., No. 2. 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 119. 


of growth, partly to differences of develop- 
ment in the adult stage. 

In order to decide this question we may 
assume that in the averages obtained for all 
the series representing various social groups. 
accidental deviation from the general aver- 
age only occurred. Then it is possible to 
calculate the average deviation which would 
result under these conditions. When the 
actual differences that have been found by 
observation are taken into consideration 
another average deviation results. If the 
latter nearly equals the former, then the 
constant causes that affect each social group 
are few and of slight importance. If it is. 
much larger than the former, then the 
causes are many and powerful. The pro- 
portion between the theoretical value of the 
deviation and the one obtained by observa- 
tion is therefore a measure of the number 
and vaiue of the causes influencing each 
series. 

I have applied these considerations to the 
measurements of Boston school children ob- 
tained by Dr. H. P. Bowditch. Ihave used 
thirteen different classes in my calculations, 
namely, five nationalities: American, Irish, 
American and Irish mixed, German and 
English ; and eight classes grouped accord- 
ing to nationalities and occupations: Amer- 
ican professional, mercantile, skilled labor 
and unskilled labor, and the same classes 
among the Irish. 

The results are as follows : 


Boys. GIRLS. 
Deviation. Deviation. 

Age. Theory. Obs. Ratio. Theory. Obs. Ratio. 
5 0.34 0.34 1.0 0.40 0.58 1.5 
6 0.28 0.46 1.6 0.34 0.57 1.8 
Te 0.29 0.76 2.6 0.32 0.81 2.5. 
8 0.28 0.54 1.9 0.30 0.71 2.4 
9 0.32 0.89 PT 0.36 0.40 1.1 

10 0.33 0.76 2.4 0.38 0.83 2.1 

11 0.35 1.05 3.0 0.46 1.04 2.2 

12 0.40 1.18 3.0 0.52 1.89 3.6 

13 0.46 1.65 3.6 0.52 1.44 2.8 

14 0.57 2.69 4.3 0.53 0.98 1.9 

15 0.67 2.06 2.9 0.53 1.02 1.9 

16 0.72 1.50 Peal 0.54 0.53 1.0 


APRIL 9, 1897. ] 


Wesee that the values obtained by actual 
observation are always greater than those 
obtained under the assumption that only 
accidental causes influence the averages for 
each class. We also see that these causes 
reach a maximum during the period of 
growth and decrease as the adult stage is 
reached. The maximum is found in the 
fourteenth year in the case of boys, in the 
twelfth year in the case of girls, 7. e., in 
those years in which the effects of accelera- 
tion and retardation of growth are strongest. 
Although the values given here cannot 
claim any very great weight on account of 
the small number of classes, this phenom- 
enon is brought out most clearly. 

The figures prove, therefore, that the 
differences in development between various 
social classes are, to a great extent, results 
of acceleration and retardation of growth 
which act in such a way that the social 
groups which show higher values of meas- 
urements do so on account of accelerated 
growth, and that they cease to grow earlier 
than those whose growth is in the beginning 
less rapid, so that there is a tendency to 
decreasing differences between these groups 
during the last years of growth. 

FRANZ Boas. 


_THE PROMISE AND POTENCY OF HIGH- 
PRESSURE STEAM. 

THE writer has been so fortunate, recently, 
as to be permitted to study the action of 
exceptionally high-pressure steam in the 
engine, under favorable conditions, and 
thus to add to the record of Jacob Perkins 
and his sons, and of Dr. Albans and others 
experimenting with steam of extraordinarily 
high-pressure, data which represents much 
more satisfactorily the conditions now 
known by the engineer to be those essential 
to economic operation.* 


*The ‘Promise and Potency’ of high-pressure 
steam; illustrated by the performance of the triple, 
and the quadruple-expansion experimental engines of 
Sibley College. Trans. Am. Soc. M. E., December, 
1896. Vol. XVIII; No. DCCXVIII. 


SCIENCE. 


573 


The progress made to date and during 
the century now elapsed since the intro- 
duction by James Watt of the modern type 
of steam-engine, as adapted to the per- 
formance of every variety of work, has 
been mainly through the steady advances 
effected in the successful management and 
application of steam of increasing pressure, 
with corresponding thermodynamic gain by 
increasing the ratio of expansion, and with 
reduction of wastes, mainly by increasing 
speeds of engine. The accessory gains have 
been through expedients for improving the 
lubrication, to reduce wastes of dynamic 
energy, and for securing better protection 
against external losses of thermal energy, 
and improvements, as by jacketing and 
superbeating, resulting in suppression of the 
internal condensation, due to the action of 
the cylinder wall. 

Increasing steam pressure gives increased 
mean effective pressures, and rising tem- 
peratures of steam afford gains by wid- 
ening the range of adiabatic and thermody- 
namic transformation of energy. Super- 
heating has not, as yet, been successfully 
carried so far as to permit increased ther- 
modynamic transformation by providing a 
steam gas as the working fluid in the engine. 
It practically simply insures dryer, and 
thus better, working steam. Up to the 
present time the risings, temperatures and 
expansions have gone together, being limited 
by the conditions which give us dry and 
saturated steam. The result has been a 
steady advance for a century, both in the 
‘duty’ of the machine and its comple- 
mentary elements, thermodynamic and me- 
chanical efficiency. Watt insisted on re- 
stricting steam pressure to seven pounds 
per square inch on the score of safety ; we 
now employ from twenty to thirty times that 
pressure with probably no greater risk. The 
work described in the communication here 
abstracted was done at 300 to 500 pounds 
pressure, and the boiler employed had been 


574 


tested up to 1,350 pounds and operated, 
with the engine, at times, at above 600 
pounds pressure. But even these working 
pressures are comparatively low figures be- 
side those of Perkins, who sixty years ago 
operated steam engines at 1,000 and 1,500 
pounds and upward, and whose disciple, 
Dr. Albans, built a number of engines for 
regular work at nearly as great tensions of 
steam. Owing to their incomplete expan- 
sion, and owing to the fact that they were 
not compounded or otherwise insured 
against great ‘cylinder condensation,’ the 
engines of neither of these experimentalists 
attained what would be to-day thought re- 
markable economy. It was, however, re- 
markable for their time. 

In thoseearly daysa piston speed of ‘128 
times the cube root of stroke’ was standard 
practice ; the figure has now risen to, in some 
instances, four times this figure, and 
standard practice ranges from 600 feet, 
with small ‘automatics,’ to 1,000 feet 
per minute in large engines. The size, 
weight and cost of the machine for any 
stated power have been correspondingly 
diminished. The main source of gain in 
the meantime has been the diminution of 
the internal thermal wastes of the machine, 
which constituted in the days of Watt 
ninety per cent. or more of the demand 
for steam in the old Newcomen engine 
which he reconstructed, thirty to forty 
per cent. of the steam consumption in his 
Own engines, and which has now fallen in 
the best contemporary machines to about 
twenty per cent., still constituting an im- 
portant source of loss. ‘Duty’ has risen 
from about 10,000,000 foot-pounds in the 
first of these series to 60,000,000 in the 
second, and has attained to-day about 
150,000,000 and promises to become 160,- 
000,000 at the end of the century, per 
hundred pounds of best coal consumed. 
Reduced to steam consumed, the latter 
figures correspond to about eleven and a-half 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 119. 


and about eleven pounds per horse-power 
per hour, and, in heat expended, about as 
many thousand B. T. U., with high tem- 
perature feed-water with large proportion, or 
ten per cent. more with moderateadmixture, 
of jacket water. In fuel, it corresponds to 
from 14 to 12 pounds per I. H. P. per hour. 
The average steam engine of even good 
makers seldom attains much more than 
one-half the efficiency of the modern record- 
making machines. 

The triple-expansion engine of Sibley 
College, built and employed as an experi- 
mental engine purely, illustrates the action 
of good engines at about 125 pounds pres- 
sure (absolute). It gives the indicated 
horse power on about 13.3 pounds of steam, 
15.1 per D. H. P., and 14,160 B. T. U. per 
hour; its total ratio of expansion being 
13.83, and the jackets supplying 13.72 per 
cent. of the feed water. The thermody- 
namic efficiency of the corresponding Carnot 
Cycle would be 24.7 per cent.; that of the 
engine is 18 per cent. A low vacuum, 22 
inches, makes this work still more remark- 
able for so small an engine. It operated 
at 140 I. H. P. in this case. The ma- 
chine was built for 175 pounds steam— 
another disadvantage. The dictum of 
Dwelshauver-Dery and the writer, that the 
jackets produce best effect, and efficiency 
attains a maximum, when the expanding 
steam is dry at or before final exhaust into 
the condenser, is confirmed by these re- 
sults. The jackets are in this engine always 
advantageous. 

The records first given, as the present 
maxima, are from large engines operated at 
from 125 to 175 pounds pressure. Those are 
triple-expansion. The following are data 
relating to the quadruple-expansion experi- 
mental engine of Sibley College, Cornell 
University, operated at, in some cases, 500 
pounds pressure and upward. The ma- 
chine is of but twenty horse-power rating; 
its cylinders having diameters of respec- 


APRIL 9, 1897. ] 


tively 2.344, 3.969, 6.977 and 10.266 inches; 
the stroke of piston being 4.5 inches, and 
its speed of revolution usually about 300 
per minute. The engine possesses a num- 
ber of interesting and ingenious new de- 
vices introduced by its designers and 
builders, Messrs. Hall and Treat, graduate 
students of the College; and its boiler, a 
water-tube construction, is also original in 
plan. 

The trials of this engine, conducted under 
many difficulties, and often at some hazard, 
in consequence of perpetual trouble met 
with, in the early part of its history, in se- 
curing a reliable means of feeding against 
the high boiler-pressure, and in finding a 
good method of obtaining water-level indi- 
cations, resulted in showing an exceedingly 
low steam and heat consumption. After a 
good feed pump had been secured, and the 
boiler could be handled with safety and 
without anxiety, and after the constructors 
had devised a new and reliable system of 
water-level indication, trials were carried 
on, the outcome of which has now been 
published. The net result was the indica- 
tion of a pressure of maximum efficiency, 
for this engine, less than that for which it 
was designed, and the obtaining, at best ad- 
justments, of an efficiency of about thirty 
per cent., asteam consumption of about ten 
pounds per I. H. P. per hour, and of 226 
B.T. U. per I. H. P. per minute, 13,560 per 
hour, at 300 and 400 pounds pressure. The 
engine was provided with ‘reheaters,’ or 
drying chambers, between each pair of 
cylinders, and, these being thrown out and 
the steam worked wet, the consumption 
rose to from 13.7 pounds at 500 pounds 
pressure to 15.5 at 300 pounds, per I. H. P. 
per hour. ‘The wastes in the latter case 
were substantially the same at high as at 
low pressures, and the deduction follows 
that we may expect at high steam pressures 
about as close an approximation to the 
ideal thermodynamic case as at ordinary 


SCIENCE. 


575 


tensions of steam. There still remains, 
however, some question as to the exact 
efficiency of even this engine; owing to irreg- 
ularity and shortness of most of the trials, 
due to the difficulties with the boiler above 
mentioned, and some uncertainty regard- 
ing leakage past piston and valves ; the ex- 
istence of which is at least indicated by the 
measurements of the indicator diagrams. 

A comparison of these figures with those 
of larger engines in commercial use can 
only be made after allowing for the com- 
paratively large internal wastes, due to the 
excessive proportion of area of cylinder wall 
to weight of steam passing through the 
engine, in the case of small machines. 
Reducing these wastes by any probable 
fraction, the heat, steam and fuel con- 
sumption of the engine at its regular pres- 
sure, above thirty-three atmospheres, would 
give a consumption of not far from 74 
pounds of steam per I. H. P. per hour, or 
from 7,500 to 8,000 B. T. U., according to 
temperature of feed water. 

The diagram herewith presented shows 
the relation of the efficiency of the ideal, 
purely thermodynamic, engine of similar 
eycle—the Rankine form—to the actual 
performance. The curve A is that of the 
best ideal, case B that of the average best 
performance of the experimental engine, C 
that with its reheaters out of use, and the 
various observations indicated on the chart 
show the variations due to varying effi- 
ciency of reheating and to other variable 
conditions of operation. .D may be taken 
as representing fair average performance, 
and # the limit of best work; while F' is 
not far from what should be expected from 
large engines of similar type, and is taken 
as representative of the commercial attain- 
able performance of such good practice at 
500 pounds pressure and under. 

These curves of relation of steam used to 
power produced are of the form 

w= a/ log p; 


576 


1 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 119. 


AH 
400 ; 


g 


| Consun, ption not using 


| | Rehéatérs 


2 
S 


- 


Pressures, pounds per sqtiare inch. 
= 2 
3 3 


tion using Reheaters | 


2 a ES different temperatures 


100 


Probable|Consum 


i = 
° tion for large Engines’ 


| t 
Pee d-water teniperature = 40° 


oi a 


| poral Consumnwon 


2h tar CAR GT 


8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 


21 2 23 24 2 


Thousands of B.T.U. and pounds of Steam per H.P. per Hour 
— EFFICIENCY CURVES, IDEAL AND ACTUAL, 


where the value of a varies from 18 on the 
line A, to 25 on B, 30 on C, and to 22 and 
24 on lines F and EH; w being weight of 
steam per h. p. per hour, p steam pressure. 

Of the figures representing efficiency, as 
here recorded, it is probable that those on 
the line C may be accepted as accurate. 
Those obtained with reheaters in use are 
obviously less certain, and may be subject 
to some error. On the whole, the writer 
considers that the assignment of the lines 
Hand F as those to be attributed to suc- 
cessful practice with large engines, and as 
representing the ‘promise and potency’ 
of high-pressure steam, is well justified. 


R. H. THursron. 
CoRNELL UNIVERSITY. 


' THE ORIGIN OF THE TEETH OF THE MAM- 
MALIA. 

Prorressor H. G. Sretry, F.R.S., in a 
series of memoirs in the Philosophical Trans- 
actions, during the past three or four years, 
has been describing the Upper Triassic 
vertebrates of South Africa. Certain of these 
animals are upon the border line between 
the Reptiles and Mammals, and, as Profes- 
sor Seeley points out, show a most remarka- 


ble intermingling of characters. The cranial 
characters, with the exception of the paired 
occipital condyle, are mainly reptilian; 
the dental characters, and this is the point 
to which I wish to especially draw atten- 
tion, are pro-mammalian. The point of 
particular interest is that within this group 
are found all the primitive mammalian types of 
teeth. Lycosaurus is haplodont; Galesawrus 
Cynognathus, both members of the Cynodon- 
tia or Carnivorous division, are #ricono- 
dont. The teeth are as clearly divided into 
incisors, canines, premolars and molars 
as those of the lower Jurassic mammals. 
The dental formula approximates that of 
the stem mammal. These animals parallel 
or are actually related to the great ‘ proto- 
dont-triconodont-trituberculate ’ phylum of 
mammalia, which includes the Marsupials 
and Placentals. In a distinct division of 
herbivorous reptiles, which Seeley terms the 
Gomphodontia, we find a corresponding par- 
allel or ancestral relation to the ‘ multitu- 
berculate’ phylum of mammals, including 
the Multituberculata and possibly the Mono- 
tremata. Here, in fact, actually belongs 
Tritylodon, which upon good grounds has, 
until recently, been considered a multitu- 


APRIL 9, 1897. ] 


berculate mammal. The teeth of Diade- 
madon show an incipient division of the fang 
and closely resemble in the crowr the al- 
leged Microlestes of the Rhetic of Germany. 
The point of additional interest is in the 
superior molars of an allied form, Gomphog- 
nathus. These are, as Professor Seeley im- 
plies, multitubercular, but they are also ér7- 
tubercular in pattern. It is difficult to 
resist the inference that the four upper 
cusps do not represent the protocone, para- 
cone, metacone and hypocone. If this is 
supported by further discoveries it will 
amply demonstrate the truth of the hy- 
pothesis which I have long advocated, that 
multitubercular teeth are more or less de- 
generate derivatives of tritubercular teeth. 
Henry F'. OsBorn. 

MARcH 25TH. 

ZOOLOGICAL NOTES. 

THE SHARP-TAILED FINCHES OF MAINE. 

In the proceedings of the Portland Society 
of Natural History (Vol. II., March 15, 
1897) Mr. A. H. Norton remarks on the 
distribution and relationship of the sharp- 
tailed finches of Maine. 

He states that Ammodramus c. subvirgatus 
breeds in the swale-bordered tide rivers, in 
close proximity to rocky bluffs fringed with 
black spruce, while true caudacutus of south- 
western Maine rears its young in the broad 
salt marshes along the sandy beaches. As 
there are none of these low marshes in the 
area inhabited by subvirgatus, it necessarily 
takes the only available nesting grounds; 
consequently the difference in the charac- 
ter of the home of the two birds is of no ap- 
parent significance. It is suggested that 
after the close of the glacial epoch subvirga- 
tus followed up the receding ice until a bar- 
rier to the bird’s northward migration was 
reached at the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 
From this point the overflow of individuals 


pressed westward along the Great Lakes 


and finally covered the area now occupied 
by nelsoni. 


SCIENCE. 


577 


The author, in common with a few others, 
is of the opinion that A. caudacutus and A. 
nelsont are specifically distinct, and that 
subvirgatus is a race of the later so-called 
species. In this we do not agree, and would 
consider it just as logical to separate Melos- 
piza fasciata and M. fallax into species with 
montana as a race of the latter bird. 

A. K. Fisner. 


CURRENT NOTES ON PHYSIOGRAPHY. 
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK. 


THE Yellowstone folio of the Geologic 
Atlas, by Hague, Weed and Iddings, forms 
No. 30 of the series. It has six pages of 
text, three plates with eleven admirably re- 
produced photographs, four topographic and 
four geologic sheets; all at a cost of 75 
cents. Apart from the wonders of the gey- 
sers, the plateaus of lava beds and vol- 
canie breccias, deeply dissected, especially 
in the Absaroka range, along the eastern 
border of the Park, are most notable. The 
slender, digitate forms of some of the an- 
cient plateau remnants are remarkably well 
displayed on the topographic sheets. The 
continental divides in two open valleys that 
trench across Two-ocean plateau are pecu- 
liar, one of them being the famous Two- 
ocean pass, where a stream from the north 
forms a fan at the summit of the pass, 
turning its water rather indifferently to At- 
lantic Creek on the east or to Pacific Creek 
on the west. The origin of this deep and 
rather wide valley through the plateau is 
not stated, and our curiosity is left unsatis- 
fied as to the reason why the Yellowstone 
River, with its relatively mature and open 
headwater valleys, has cut a distinctly 
young, steep-sided canyon in its more north- 
ern course. 


BEARPAW MOUNTAINS, MONTANA. 
Messrs. Weed and Pirsson describe the 
Bearpaw mountains of Montana (Amer. 
Journ. Science, I., 1896, 283-301, 351-362) 


578 


as the dissected remains of a group of Ter- 
tiary voleanoes. Seen from the surround- 
ing plains, the mountains have a serrate 
outline, highest near the center of an oval 
area, 20 by 40 miles in diameter. Seen in 
plan, they exhibit a well defined system of 
radial valleys. The interstream peaks and 
ridges consist of volcanic tuffs, breccias, and 
flows, lying on Cretaceous strata, around 
a central district of laccolitic cores, dikes 
and bosses. The Cretaceous strata are 
somewhat upturned and baked around the 
largest laccolitic mass, and the ‘contact 
ring’ stands in bold relief, forming ridges 
around the igneous center. 

In the absence of detailed surveys of this 
region, a somewhat similar type may be 
studied on the topographical and geological 
maps of the great dissected volcano, known 
as the Cantal, on the central plateau of 
France. 


LAURENTIAN HIGHLANDS OF CANADA. 


A REpoRT by Professor F. D. Adams on 
the geology of a portion of the Laurentian 
area (Geol. Surv. Canada, VIII., 1896, pt. 
J) includes a brief account of the physical 
features of an area lying northwest of 
Montreal. Leaving the drift-covered val- 
ley of the St. Lawrence, underlain by 
paleozoic strata, the Archean highlands 
rise abruptly in a line of hills, which con- 
stitute the edge or southerly limit of a 
great uneven plateau, gradually rising to 
the northwest. Its surface is undulating 
or mammilated; the depressions being gen- 
erally filled in with drift, forming extensive 
flats, studded with numerous lakes, great 
and small. Rounded, ice-worn bosses or 
hills protrude through the drift, seldom ris- 
ing more than three or four hundred feet 
above the general level, and presenting, 
especially when burnt over, great faces or 
whole summits of bare rock. The lake 
outlets have carved terraces in the drift- 
clogged valleys. Settlements are scattered 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Voz. V. No. 119. 


over the drift plains, avoiding the rocky 
hills. 

The ‘date of origin of the undulating: 
plateau is not considered ; but Lawson’s. 
supposition that it is a pre-paleozoic land 
surface, long preserved by burial, and lately 
revealed by the erosion of its cover—a 
geographical fossil, as it were—seems to be 
contradicted by the well defined line of 
bluffs in which the Archean rises from the 
St. Lawrence valley, unless this line is de- 
termined by an unmentioned fault. 


MAPS OF MT. DESERT. 

Messrs. Bates, Rand and Jaques have 
rendered a service to the summer residents. 
of Mt. Desert by publishing several good 
maps of the island; one on a scale of 
1:40,000 (in a single sheet or folded in 
cover), another on a scale of 1:25,000 in 
two large sheets, and a third of Bar 
Harbor, on a still larger scale. All have 
contour lines, the first two printed in 
brown with the culture in the black and 
the water in blue. A special map of the 
eastern part of the island shows the moun- 
tain paths in red. All the maps are based 
on the Coast Survey sheets ; but the names. 
are carefully revised to accord more closely 
with local usage, the revision and republi- 
cation being the outcome of a careful work 
on the Flora of Mt. Desert by Mr. E. L. 
Rand and collaborators. Any of the maps. 
can be had of Mr. Waldron Bates, 40 Water 
street, Boston. To the more observant of 
the island residents, winter or summer, 
these maps would serve as a good base for 
detailed record of the supposed high-level 
shore lines, described by Shaler. 

W. M. Davis. 


HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 
THE PROGRESS OF ANTHROPOLOGY. 
Tuer President of the Anthropological In- 
stitute of Great Britain, Mr. E.W. Brabrook, 
in his annual address in January last, re- 


APRIL 9, 1897. ] 


viewed the advance of the science during 
the past year. He pointed out the con- 
stantly accumulating evidence to the con- 
tinuity of human culture from the earliest 
period, and the growing certainty that the 
progress of the race has been constant. The 
importance of establishing an ethnographic 
bureau for the United Kingdom, analogous 
to our Bureau of Ethnology, was strongly 
emphasized, and the progress of the Eth- 
nographic Survey was mentioned in compli- 
mentary terms. His closing remarks on 
“The Problem of Transmission’ are as fol- 
lows : 

“Tt has appeared to me that there is, in 
the minds of anthropologists, a growing 
tendency to discountenance inquiries into 
transmission, and to consider phenomena 
related to a particular stage of civilization 
arrived at by the operation of general laws, 
rather than as arising from communication 
between the people.” 

There is no doubt of this. 


THE LUMBAR CURVE. 


Tue study of the lumbar curve as a point 
in comparative ethnic anatomy has received 
some attention from somatologists, but the 
first examination of it among the native 
American tribes is that by Dr. George A. 
Dorsey, in the Bulletin of the Essex Insti- 
tute, Vol. XXVII. His specimens were 
drawn from tribes of the northwest coast, 
the Iroquois, the Ohio mounds and Peru. 
His conclusions are that the index of the 
curve is an important means of determining 
sex and that ‘‘it bids fair to become one of 
the most valuable ethnic tests known in 
determining the physical superiority or in- 
feriority of any tribe or race.” 

Dr. Dorsey’s tables and measurements 
are most carefully presented, and the 
subject is set forth with great clearness. It 
would appear, however, from the remarks 
of Cunningham which he quotes (p. 59) 
that these variations are due largely to 


SCIENCE. 


579 


habits of life, and if so this index could be 
only a secondary ethnic test, as such habits 
vary so widely in the same community. 


NATIVE AMERICAN MYSTICISM. 


A SYMPATHETIC but far from exhaustive 
study of this subject has lately appeared 
from the pen of Dr. L. Kuhlenbeck (Der 
Occultismus der nord-amerikanischen In- 
dianer,’ pp. 60, Leipzig, W. Friedrich). 
He points out, with entire correctness, that 
not only the religious observances, but the 
actions of the social and individual life 
among the Indians are constantly guided by 
spiritual agencies or occult forces. He 
compares their mental position in this 
respect with that of Goethe, who, in his 
conversations with Eckermann, so often 
referred to the ‘demonic’ powers which 
control events—surely an honorable com- 
parison. 

The author analyzes the mental experi- 
ences of the ‘medicine men,’ and quotes a 
number of instances of their strange powers 
and the processes by which these are ac- 
quired. Though the essay is lacking in the 
critical caution desirable in treating so 
obscure a subject, it is suggestive and com- 
posed in an appreciative spirit. 

D. G. Brinton. 


UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 

PROFESSOR J. WILLARD GIBBS, professor of 
mathematical physics at Yale University, has 
been elected a foreign member of the Royal So- 
ciety. 

M. BonnieR has been elected member of 
the section of botany of the Paris Academy of 
Sciences in the room of the late M. Trécul, re- 
ceiving 42 votes of the 57 cast. 


THE portrait of Lord Lister, painted by Mr. 
W. W. Ouless, was presented to the Royal Col- 
lege of Surgeons on March 29th. 


It is proposed to celebrate the sixtieth anni- 
versary of Sir George Stokes’ connection with 
the University of Cambridge by the presenta- 


580 


tion of a bust to be executed by Mr. Thorny- 
croft. Sir George Stokes has for nearly fifty 
years been Lucasian professor of mathematics in 
the University. 

THE bust of Sir Henry Acland, formerly 
Regius professor of medicine at Oxford, has 
been placed in the court of the University 
Museum. 

Srr WILLIAM Dawson the eminent geologist, 
late principal of McGill University, and Lady 
Dawson celebrated their golden wedding on 
March 19th. 

THE library of the German Astronomical So- 
ciety has been purchased by a number of citi- 
zens of Bamburg and presented to the observa- 
tory. B 

Mr. Henry M. PAUL, assistant astronomer 
at the U. S. Naval Observatory, and Mr. George 
A. Hill, computer in the office of the Nautical 
Almanac, have been appointed professors of 
mathematics in the navy. 

THE members of the New York Zoological 
Society have learned, with regret, of the death 
of Dr. A. A. van Bemmelin, late director of the 
Zoological Garden of Rotterdam. Besides the 
loss to zoological science in general, his death 
is a loss to the New York Zoological Park in 
particular. From the inception of that enter- 
prise Dr. van Bemmelin responded most 
heartily to all calls made upon him for informa- 
tion and advice, and forwarded to the Society 
many closely-written pages of details regarding 
the status of the garden that has been developed 
so successfully under his direction. Although 
the Rotterdam garden is not quite so large as 
some of the other European gardens, it is very 
beautiful and attractive, and the highest praise 
that could be bestowed upon Dr. van Bemmelin 
is found in the statement that for more than 
twenty years he has been its director. The 
first of the four great flying cages in Europe is 
the one designed and constructed by him. The 
most recent lion house in Hurope is the one 
erected by the Rotterdam society, under his 
direction, in 1894. 

THE funeral of Professor Sylvester took place 
on March 19th at the cemetery of the West 
London Synagogue of British Jews. The Royal 
Society and the London Mathematical Society 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 119. 


were represented by Professor Michael Foster, 
Major Macmahon, Professor Forsyth, Professor 
Elliott, Dr. Hobson, Professor Greenhill, Mr. 
‘A. B. Kempe and Mr. A. H. Love. 


WE regret to announce the deaths of Dr. 
Joseph F. James, known for his writings in 
paleontology, botany and geology, who died of 
pneumonia at Hingham, Mass., on the 29th of 
March; of M. Antoine T. d’Abbadie, sometime 
President of the Paris Academy of Sciences, 
known for his works on geographical explora- 
tion and on geodesy; of Dr. Robert Hogg, the 
horticulturalist; of Mr. John Biddulph Martin, 
President of the Royal Statistical Society; of 
M. C. Contejean, of the Pasteur Institute, and 
of C. F. Wiepken, for sixty years director of 
the Oldenburg museum. 

WE learn from Nature that a meeting of 
presidents of various scientific societies in Lon- 
don was recently convened by the President and. 
officers of the Royal Society to consider whether 
any, and if so what, steps should be taken to 
commemorate the sixtieth year of Queen Victo- 
ria’sreign. Itwas unanimously resolved ‘‘ That 
a fund to be called the Victoria Research Fund 
be established, to be administered by represent- 
atives of the various scientific societies, for the 
encouragement of research in all branches of 
science.’? The President of the Royal Society 
has communicated this resolution to the scien- 
tific societies, with a letter asking whether sup- 
port would be given to it. 

In addition to the nominations made by the 
Council of the British Association for presidents 
of the different sections at the forthcoming 
meeting at Toronto, announced in the issue of 
ScrencE for February 12th (p. 251), Mr. J. 
Scott Keltie has been nominated as president of 
the geographical section. Evening lectures will 
be given by Professor Roberts-Austin and Pro- 
fessor John Milne. 

THE Museums Association of Great Britain 
meets this year at Oxford, from June 29th to 
July 2d, under the presidency of Professor Ray 
Lankester. Men of science wishing to attend 
or present papers should apply to the secreta- 
ries, H. M. Platnauer, the Museum, York, and 
E. Howarth, the Museum, Sheffield. 


THE eleventh annual meeting of the German 


APRIL 9, 1897. ] 


Society of Anatomists will be held at Ghent 
from April 24th to 27th, under the presidency of 
Dr. Waldeyer. 

Ir is stated in Nature that the Comité 
d@’Organisation of the seventh International 
Geological Congress, to be held at St. Peters- 
burg from August 29th to September 4th, have 
received so many applications from persons who 
are not geologists, and yet wish to obtain free 
railway tickets and to participate in other ad- 
vantages arranged by the Russian government, 
that they have issued a special circular stating 
that the facilities offered are intended only for 
geologists. Excursion tickets will only be 
granted to persons who are known by their 
contributions to geology. Even with this re- 
striction, the meeting promises to be a large 
one, for more than six hundred geologists have 
applied for tickets. 

Tur American Medical Association will meet 
in Philadelphia, beginning on June ist. The 
American Medical Publishers’ Association meets 
on the preceding day. There aresaid to be pub- 
lished in America 275 medical journals, of which 
10 are issued weekly, 11 semi-monthly, 225 
monthly, 6 bi-monthly, and 23 quarterly. 


ACCORDING to the New York Medical Record 
the next course of ten lectures instituted by 
the late Professor Thomas Dent Mitter, M. D., 
LiL. D., on ‘Some Point or Points in Surgical 
Pathology,’ will be delivered in the winter of 
1899-1900, before the College of Physicians of 
Philadelphia. The compensation is $600. The 
appointment is open to the profession at large. 
Applications stating in full subjects of proposed 
lectures must be made before October 1, 1897, 
to the committee on Mitter Museum, John H. 
Brinton, M. D., chairman, northeast corner of 
Thirteenth and Locust streets, Philadelphia, 
Pa. 


THE John Crerar Library of Chicago was 
opened to the public on April 1st. It will occupy 
rented rooms until the accumulated income 
from its endowment, which is $2,500,000, will 
suffice to pay for the erection of a building. 
The library is devoted especially to the natural, 
physical and social sciences and their applica- 

_ tions. 


Ir is expected that the New York Legisla- 


SCIENCE. 


581 


ture will pass the bill recommended by Gov- 
ernor Black appropriating $1,000,000 for the 
preservation of the Adirondack forests. 


Mr. FRYE has introduced a bill in the Senate 
creating a National Academy. The bill pro- 
vides that the Academy shall be devoted to the 
accumulation and preservation of new discov- 
eries and the perfection of the arts and sciences. 
The Academy would have five divisions: First, 
laws and literature ; second, inscriptions, archee- 
ology and belles-lettres; third, sciences ; fourth, 
fine arts; fifth, moral and political science. The 
Academy would have one hundred members 
and fifty foreign associate members, and in 
addition 100 American and 200 foreign corre- 
sponding members. 

A NATIONAL German exhibition ‘For the 
Hygiene of Childhood at Home and at School’ 
is to be held in Breslau at the end of May. 

THE following items are taken from Natural 
Science: The collections of Gustav Nachtigal 
from the west coast of Africa, made during 
1894-95, are now exhibited in the Berlin 
Museum of Ethnology. The Berlin Museum 
fir Naturkunde has received from the island of 
Ralum a collection of the flora and fauna made 
by Dr. Dahl. Mr. H. J. Ernst, an apothecary 
of Iceland, has presented to the State Museum 
in Stockholm a valuable collection of Icelandic 
minerals. Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Bent, the 
archeological explorers, have returned from a 
successful expedition in Socotra. Mr. J. White- 
beard has been investigating the highland fauna 
of the Philippines, where he obtained a huge 
fruit-pigeon at a height of 6,000 feet. Mr. C. 
W. Andrews, of the geological department of 
the British Museum, has received leave of ab- 
sence for nine months in order to investigate 
the natural history of Christmas Id. 


THE Director of the United States Geological 
Survey has just addressed to the geologists, the 
topographers and all authors in the Survey a 
circular on the use of ‘Quadrangle,’ the new 
designation for the quadrilateral land units of 
the government surveys. In prosecuting the 
topographic and geologic survey of the United 
States the Geological Survey divides the land 
into small quadrilateral units, bounded by 
meridians and parallels, and from these result 


582 


atlas equivalent sheets, the paper dimensions 
of which are 20 by 163 inches. The map units, 
the director explains, are appropriately called 
sheets, but no name has been uniformly applied 
to the land units, in the way, for example, in 
which section is used in the nomenclature of the 
General Land Office. The custom has arisen 
of applying the name sheet to the land unit also. 
The geologist and topographer ordinarily speak 
of surveying a ‘sheet.’ This usage is objection- 
able for obvious reasons. Hereafter, therefore, 
according to the new practice, the word sheet 
will be restricted to the designation of the map 
unit. Whenever the land unit, strictly speak- 
ing, 7. e., a quadrangular portion of the earth’s 
surface delimited by the meridians and parallels 
of an atlas sheet, is referred to, the word quad- 
rangle will be used (e. g., ‘In the southeastern 
corner of the quadrangle’); and in those cases 
where a word is desirable which does not con- 
note definite demarcation, or which more 
strongly connotes land, the word district will be 
used (e. g., ‘The investigation of the district’). 
The use of these two words (quadrangle and 
district) in any other connection is to be avoided, 
recourse being had to the various synonyms, 
such as area, tract, region, territory, etc. The 
definite usages proposed will doubtless be a de- 
cided gain for clearness and uniformity. 


Mr. Wotcott, of Colorado, has presented 
in the United States Senate a memorial from 
the Legislature of Colorado praying for a gen- 
erous provision to enable the United States 
Geological Survey to continue and extend the 
examination of the metalliferous districts of the 
States and Territories and to carry forward the 
needed surveys. Provision is also urged for the 
prompt publication of the Survey’s work, much 
of the work depending for its value upon early 
publication. There isa strong feeling, especially 
throughout the mining regions of the country, 
that the government should do more for the 
survey of the mining districts and the devlop- 
ment of the mineral resources, as is evidenced 
by the various propositions that were presented 
at the last regular session of Congress. Though 
much of the work of the Survey has been ren- 
dered less useful by delays in publication, the 
past two or three years have witnessed a marked 
improvement in this regard. A number of re- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 119. 


cent publications have been published with 
gratifying promptness, notably among them 
being the Seventeenth Annual Report of the 
Director, just issued. 


WE have received several further replies 
from scientific instrument makers in regard to 
the imposition of a tax on scientific instruments 
imported for educational institutions. Mr. J.G. 
Gray, President of Queen & Co., Philadelphia, 
writes that ‘‘it is possible froma narrow point 
of view that the proposed abrogation of the 
duty-free clause in the tariff law might benefit 
makers of apparatus in the United States.’’ 
‘“‘But from the broader standpoint of the wel- 
fare of educational institutions in general and 
the advancement of science, it would be a 
retrograde step and a serious misfortune if it 
should become impossible to import free of 
duty, for the use of such institutions, the class 
of instruments and apparatus which they are 
now accustomed to import. Whilst we are 
manufacturers, we cannot but recognize that 
the narrow and possibly supposed interest of a 
few makers of scientific apparatus should not 
weigh against the wider and unquestioned in- 
terests of those engaged in education and origi- 
nal research and whose labors return many 
times over to the commercial community any 
advantage which may be granted them.”’ 


CHARLES SCRIBNER’S Sons have in press a 
work on Philosophy of Knowledge, by Professor 
G. T. Ladd, Yale University, which will be of 
interest both to men of science and to students 
of philosophy. The subjects treated may be 
seen from the titles of the chapters, which are 
as follows: I., The Problem; II., History of 
Opinion; III., History of Opinion (continued) ; 
IV., The Psychological View; V., Thinking 
and Knowing; VI., Knowledge as Feeling and 
Will; VII., Knowledge of Things and Knowl- 
edge of Self; VIII., Degree, Limits and Kinds 
of Knowledge ; IX., Identity and Difference ; 
X., Sufficient Reason ; XI., Experience and the 
Transcendent; XII., The ‘Implicates’ of 
Knowledge; XIII., Scepticism, Agnosticism 
and Criticism; XIV., Alleged ‘ Antinomies ;’ 
XY., Truth and Error; XVI., Ethical and 
/®sthetical ‘Momenta ;’ XVII., The Teleology of 
Knowledge; XVIII., Knowledge and Reality ; 


APRIL 9, 1897. ] 


XIX., Idealism and Realism; XX., Dualism 
and Monism; XXI., Knowledge and the Abso- 
lute. 


NEw volumes in the Contemporary Science 
Series, edited by Mr. Havelock Ellis and pub- 
lished in England by Walter Scott and in 
America by Charles Scribner’s Sons, will in- 
clude ‘The New Psychology,’ by Dr. E. W. 
Scripture; ‘Psychology of the Emotions,’ by 
Professor Th. Ribot, and ‘Hallucinations and 
Illusions,’ by Mr. E. Parrish. 


THE California Academy of Sciences an- 
nounces important changes in its publications. 
In addition to occasional extended mono- 
graphs, the proceedings will be issued in several 
wholly independent divisions or parts; each 
division to be devoted to a single branch of 
science, or to a group of closely related sciences. 
There will be begun at once three divisions, 
viz.: for geology, for botany and for zoology, 
and from time to time such others as may be 
demanded, and as the finances of the Academy 
will permit. It is probable that a mathematico- 
physical division will be added in the near 
future. Papers will be issued separately and 
will be distributed immediately. Each title 
page will bear date of issue and the number in 
the volume of the division to which the paper be- 
longs. The divisions will be formed in volumes, 
chiefly according to convenience, and with but 
incidental reference to time, each volume con- 
taining generally about 400 to 500 pages. The 
Publication Committee, charged with the gen- 
eral supervision of all publishing done by the 
Academy, consists of Professor William HE. Rit- 
ter, Chairman, first Vice-President of the 
Academy; President David Starr Jordan, 
President of the Academy, and Mr. G. P. Rix- 
ford, Recording Secretary. This committee 
will be supplemented by editorial committees 
in the different departments, as now consti- 
tuted, Professors Andrew C. Lawson and James 
Perrin Smith in geology, Professors W. R. Dud- 
ley and W. A. Setchell in botany, and President 
David Starr Jordan and Professor William E. 
Ritter in zoology. We find in the recent pro- 
ceedings of the California Academy very im- 
portant contributions to our knowledge of the 


fauna, flora and geology of the Pacific Coast, 


SCIENCE. 


583 


and the subjects on which papers are expected 
in the near future show great activity in sci- 
entific research in California. 


ACCORDING to the London Times Mr. H. N. 
Thompson, Assistant Conservator of Forests in 
Burma, in a recent report on the forests of the 
Hukong valley and the Upper Namkong basin, 
in Upper Burma, devotes a section to the pro- 
duction of rubber in that region. It appears 
that in the Hukong valley the rubber tree is 
not a gregarious one ; sometimesa family group 
of four or five trees may be seen, but, as a rule, 
amature tree is found every 200 or 300 yards 
in the richer forests. When the tree is sur- 
rounded by dense shade it grows to enormous 
heights in order to get at the light, and some of 
those examined by Mr. Thompson were the 
largest trees of any species he had ever seen. 
In the thick forest he found no seedlings in the 
ground ; they were invariably growing at a 
great height on other trees and sending their 
roots down towards the ground, so that the 
roots finally formed great supports on which 
the main trunk rested, while the original tree, 
on which the seedling was a parasite, was de- 
stroyed. 


REUTER’S agency reports that the Egyptian 
Council of Ministers has approved of the ap- 
pointment of Professor Forbes, the electrician, 
to examine the Nile cataracts and prepare an 
exhaustive report regarding the best methods 
of utilizing the water power available for gener- 
ating electricity. Professor Forbes will com- 
mence his studies in the autumn. 


THE report of the Meteorological Council to 
the Royal Society for the year ended March 31, 
1896, has been issued as a Blue-book. We 
learn from the London Times that the report is 
divided into four sections: (1) Ocean Meteorol- 
ogy, (2) Weather Telegraphy, (8) Climatology, 
and (4) Miscellaneous. With respect to weather 
telegraphy and forecasts, it is stated that the 
daily weather report appeared regularly, and 
there was a regular display at the Meteorolog- 
ical Office in London of the state of the weather 
on British coasts. It is stated that of the total 
number of forecasts 55 per cent. were complete 
successes, 25 per cent. partial successes (‘ par- 
tial’ meaning ‘more than half’) 14 per cent. 


584 


partial failures, and 6 per cent. total failures. 
The total percentages of successes was therefore 
80. The total amount voted by Parliament 
during the year was £15,300, and £769 became 
available in addition. The expenditure was 
£15,187, showing a decrease of £25 as com- 
pared with 1894-95. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 

Ir is reported in the daily papers that the 
subsidy given by the state to the University of 
California will be doubled, being hereafter 
$240,000 annually. Mr, Levi Strauss, of San 
Francisco, has endowed twenty-eight under- 
graduate scholarships in the University, and 
seven graduate scholarships, of the value of 
$250, have been endowed by other doners. The 
number of students in the University has in- 
creased from 918 in 1891-2 to 2,250 in the 
present year. It is again stated that the Uni- 
versity will receive gifts amounting to $5,000,- 
000 for buildings, of which sum $1,200,000 is 
promised by Mrs. Hearst, of San Francisco. 

CHICAGO UNIVERSITY has received a gift of 
$225,000 from Mrs. Mary Esther Reynolds in 
fulfilment of a pledge made nearly five years 
ago. 

Dr. Huco MUNSTERBERG, professor of ex- 
perimental psychology in Harvard University, 
will return to Cambridge at the opening of the 
next academic year. He has hitherto retained 
his position in the University at Freiberg, and 
during the past two years has been in residence 
at that University. 

Dr. HEINRICH RIES has been appointed to 
the Barnard Fellowship of Columbia University. 
He will undertake the study of the physical 
properties of clays. 

PROFESSOR WILLIAM JOHN SOLLAS, F. RB. S., 
D. Se. Camb., Hon. LL. D., of Dublin, pro- 
fessor of geology in the University of Dublin, 
has been elected to the chair of geology at Ox- 
ford, vacant by the death of Professor Green. 
According to the London Times Professor Sol- 
las was a foundation scholar of St. John’s, 
Cambridge, and obtained a first class in the 
natural science tripos. In 1882 he was elected 
a Fellow of St. John’s, and in 1889 was made a 
F.R.S. In 1878 he was awarded the proceeds 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 119. 


of the Wollaston Endowment for his researches 
in fossil sponges, and in 1893 the Bigsby Medal 
for geological and paleontological investiga- 
tions. Antecedently to his appointment at 
Dublin in 1883 he was first lecturer and then 
professor of geology and zoology in University 
College, Bristol. He has investigated in person 
many regions of Europe, America, Australia 
and Polynesia. He was last year sent by the 
Royal Society in charge of the scientific expe- 
dition to Funafuti. 

Proressor H. W. Hucues. M.B., M.S. 
(Edin.) has been appointed professor of an- 
atomy at King’s College, London. 

PROFESSOR RUCKER, F.R.S., has been ap- 
pointed Reade lecturer at University of Cam- 
bridge for the present year. Mr. F. F. Black- 
man, of St. John’s College, has been appointed . 
university lecturer in botany. Dr. Arthur 
Willey has been elected to the Balfour student- 
ship in animal morphology for another year. 


Dr. JOHN YULE MACKAY, professor of an- 
atomy of the University of Dundee, has been 
appointed principal of the College. 

THE CLOTHWORKERS’ CoMPANY, of London, 
has offered £200 for five years, and Miss E. A. 
Ormerod offers £100 toward the emolument of 
the Sibthorpian professorship of rural economy 
at Oxford. 

Ir appears from the report for 1896 of the 
New York Examination Department of the 
University of the State of New York, on about 
400,000 papers submitted by academic students, 
that the increase is greater in languages than in 
science. Not only do English and modern 
languages show an increase, but also Greek and 
Latin, whereas six of the eleven branches of 
science show a decrease. Thus there is an in- 
crease of 1,304 papers in first-year Latin and a 
decrease of 1,322 in geography, of 1,186 in 
physiology and hygiene, of 907 in physical 
geography, of 310 in physics, Part I., of 197 in 
chemistry, Part I., and of 145 in botany. The 
causes for the decrease of the number of stu- 
dents studying science in our schools at a time 
when there is an increase in the number of 
those studying literature and languages should 
be considered by the State Science Teachers’ 
Association at the next annual meeting. 


APRIL 9, 1897. ] 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 


DIFFRACTION OF X-RAYS OBTAINED BY A NEW 
FORM OF CATHODE DISCHARGE. 


To THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: Will you allow 
me to publish a very brief statement concerning 
some work which is now in progress on the 
diffraction of X-rays. The trouble has been in 
obtaining a sufficiently intense source to give 
diffraction bands with the very narrow slits that 
must be used. After considerable experiment- 
ing I have found a new method of producing 
the rays, by which the intensity of radiation 
per unit of area of radiating surface is from ten 
to twenty times as powerful as in the best focus 
tubes. A ‘total radiation’ equal to the large 
focus tubes has not yet been obtained. The 
rays are produced by an arc-like discharge be- 
tween two very small beads of platinum in a 
high vacuum. The discharge bulb is only about 
an inch in diameter, while the radiation (which 
comes from an area about the size of a pinhead) 
is strong enough to show the bones in the fore- 
arm. The ‘arc’ appears to be a new form of 
cathode discharge and can only be produced 
under peculiar conditions. I am now using a 
tube with a platinum slit 1 mm. wide, mounted 
within the bulb at adistance of 2 mm. from the 
radiating bead. The second slit of variable 
width is placed at a distance of 10 cm. from 
the first and the photographic plate at dis- 
tances varying from 10 to 30 cm. from this. 

The images of the slit on the plate showa 
distinct dark line on each edge, which I can 
only explain on the supposition that interfer- 
ence occurs. The plate is at too great a dis- 
tance from the slit for such an effect to be pro- 
duced by reflection of the rays from the edges. 
Images of fine wires show similar phenomena. 

As yet I have not succeeded in getting a 
maximum of the second order, possibly because 
of under exposure of the plates. The details 
of the work will appear shortly in Wiedemann’s 
Annalen and The Physical Review. I am under 
great obligation to Professor Cross for his kind- 
ness in placing at my disposal the facilities of 
the physical laboratory of the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology. 

R. W. Woop. 


JAMAICA PLAINS, Mass., March 31st. 


SCIENCE. 


585 


THE HEIGHT AND THE VELOCITY OF THE FLIGHT 
OF A FLOCK OF GEESE MIGRATING NORTH- 
WARD. 


DuRING the three days ending March 22d 
numerous flocks of geese were seen migrating 
northward, or rather northeastward, since they 
were following the general trend of the coast 
line, which, in New England, is nearly north- 
eastward north of Cape Cod. On the morning 
of March 22d, while Mr. A. E. Sweetland and 
I were measuring clouds, at the ends of a base 
line 1178.4 meters in length, extending from 
the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory to- 
the base of Blue Hill, we succeeded in measur- 
ing, with our cloud theodolites, the height and 
the velocity of flight of one of these flocks of 
geese. So rapid is the velocity of flight that 
the flock was visible to the observers only 
about two minutes, but during that time two 
sets of measurements, were taken with the 
theodolites on the leader of the flock. The 
first measurements, at 8.49 a. m., were accu- 
rately taken at the Observatory station, but 
were only approximate at the other station. 
The second measurements, at 8.50 a. m., were 
accurate and simultaneous at both stations. 
Using the second set of observations at both 
stations for the height and the two sets of ob- 
servations at the observatory station for the 
velocity, the calculations gave the height as 
905 feet above the Neponset River valley, or 
960 feet above sea level, and the velocity of 
flight as 44.3 miles an hour. The direction of 
flight was from southwest to northeast. 

The self-recording instruments at Blue Hill 
Observatory, 615 feet above the river valley, 
showed that the wind at the time of the meas- 
urements was from the west-northwest with a 
velocity of eight miles an hour. 

The height calculated from the first set of ob- 
servations at the two stations was 928 feet above 
the river valley. This result, though not con- 
sidered strictly accurate, serves as a good check 
on the adopted value which is given above. 

On a previous occasion as described in SCIENCE 
of January ist, p. 26, we found a flock of ducks. 
flying from the northeast at a height of 958 feet 
with a velocity of 47.8 miles an hour. The 
close agreement between the two results is sug- 


586 


gestive, though it may have been accidental. 
H. HELM CLAYTON. 
BLUE HILL METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATORY, 
READVILLE, MAss., March 25, 1897. 


ARCH MOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES MADE IN THE 
GRAVELS AT TRENTON. 


To THE EprToR oF SCIENCE: In Dr. Brinton’s 
reference in your issue of March 12th to Pro- 
fessor Putnam’s report to the Peabody Insti- 
tute, he scarcely does justice to the recent 
archeological discoveries made by Mr. Ernest 
Volk in the gravels at Trenton. Dr. Brinton 
says, referring to Professor Putnam’s descrip- 
tion of chipped stones ‘‘found in the glacial 
deposits of the Delaware Valley,” that ‘‘it is 
fair to say that geologists are not agreed about 
the age of these deposits.” It cannot be that 
Dr. Brinton has Professor Putnam’s recent facts 
clearly in mind or he would not make this 
remark. 

For Mr. Volk’s investigations have been car- 
ried on on the Lalor farm, which is clearly 
within the range of the ‘Trenton gravels’ as- 
cribed to glacial floods by every recent geologist 
who has visited them, including Professors Cook, 
Shaler, Chamberlin and Salisbury. This farm 
lies fifty feet above the level of the Delaware 
river, and abuts directly upon it. Boulders 
two or three feet in diameter are lying about 
loose upon the surface in the immediate vicinity. 
Mr. Volk, under Professor Putnam’s direction, 
has systematically dug over acres of this farm 
and has found hundreds of chipped pieces of 
argillite in the undisturbed layers of sand 
which are everywhere found from two to three 
feet below the present surface. In the upper 
twelve inches of the soil, where there are evi- 
dences of disturbance, great numbers of jasper 
and flint implements have been found, together 
with some argillite implements; but in the 
lower two feet excavated no jasper and flint 
implements have been found, but only argillite; 
thus demonstrating the correctness of Dr. C. C. 
Abbott’s previous observations, and excluding 
the various extravagant theories propounded to 
account for their burial by natural causes; such 
as overturning of trees, the burrowing of ani- 
mals and the cracking of the soil. 

I would say that I have had the privilege of 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 119. 


accompanying Mr. Volk during some of these 
excavations, and can add my testimony to his 
as to the genuineness and importance of these 
very significant discoveries. In this case there 
is no chance to claim that they have been buried 
in the talus; for in the cases which I saw with 
my own eyes the implements were dug up from 
the undisturbed strata of the sand more than 
one hundred feet back from the edge of the bluff. 

I trust that the Philadelphia geologists and 
archeologists will give more personal attention 
to the work which Professor Putnam, through 
Mr. Volk, is so successfully carrying on in that 
disputed district. G. FREDERICK WRIGHT. 


[When Mr. Volk’s specimens were exhibited 
at Buffalo Professor McGee stated in the Sec- 
tion that he did not consider that the age of the 
deposit in which they were found is positively 
ascertained. The sand layers overlie the gravels, 
and have usually been supposed to be consider- 
ably later. Mr. Volk has not found the speci- 
mens referred to in the true, undisturbed 
gravels. —D. G. BRINTON. | 


AN IMAGINARY FLEET. 


To THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: Permit me to 
congratulate you for the extremely just and 
advanced view you take of what a university 
should be. In your issue of March 19, p. 471, 
I find, to my great satisfaction, ‘‘ Research is 
not only the primary object of the university ; 
it is the university itself.’ So dominant is this 
sentiment in my mind that I have attempted 
the establishment of a department where all 
work, however elementary, shall be carried on 


_after the manner of original research. 


Would that the statement found on p. 473 of 
the above-mentioned date were true, viz., that 
the trustees of Cornell University are going to 
build me a naptha launch for the transportation 
of my students in paleontology; would also that 
the launch were forthcoming that a prominent 
firm writes me about, viz., one they understand 
the ‘Cornell students’ are making for me. 
These, with the one I am personally having built 
by Lintz & Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan, would 
certainly form an enviable fleet for the prosecu- 
tion of paleontologic research. 

G. D. HARRIS. 

CORNELL UNIVERSITY. 


ApRIL 9, 1897.] 


THE METRIC SYSTEM. 

To THE EpIToR or ScrENCE: Is it not a 
little incongruous for American scientists and 
scientific journals to urge upon Congress the 
legalization of the metric system to the exelusion 
of the old, while ScIENcE prints, without com- 
ment and in a quasi-editorial way, an abstract 
of government researches in which all weights 
are in ounces?* Would you not be warranted 
in declining any contribution in which were not 
given at least the metric equivalents? 

Burr G. WILDER. 

CORNELL UNIVERSITY. 

[Men of science and scientific journals ought 
certainly to use the metric system when possible. 
The United States Department of Agriculture 
cannot, however, afford to lessen its usefulness 
and to awaken criticism by making such of its 
researches as are intended for the general public 
more technical or difficult to understand than 
is necessary. It is consequently not certain 
that the metric units should have been used in 
this work on metabolism so long as foods are 
sold by pounds and ounces. It is often useful 
to give the common equivalents of the metric 
system in order that the matter may be under- 
stood and to teach the equivalents, but it is not 
often desirable to give the metric equivalents 
of the common system. Nothing is gained in 
clearness for Anglo-Saxons, and, as far as mis- 
sionary work goes, the long series of decimals 
naturally required to express ounces or feet in 
the metric system give it a cumbrous and for- 
bidding aspect. ED.] 


SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 

The Formation of the Quaternary Deposits of Mis- 
sour. By JAMES E. Topp. Reports of the 
Missouri Geological Survey, Vol. X. [1896], 
pp. 113-217, with two maps, four section 
plates, five full-page illustrations, and five 
small figures in the text. 

No detailed study of the Quaternary deposits 
of Missouri has ever been attempted, except in 
a few limited districts, but short references to 
them are scattered through all the reports of 
the several Geological Surveys which have, in 
the past, been instituted in the State. By a 

* Experiments upon metabolism, etc., March 26, 
1897, pp. 493-496. 


SCIENCE. 


587 


eareful compilation of these fragmentary notes, 
supplemented by much personal observation, 
Professor Todd has collected a large body of 
valuable information on the later geological his- 
tory of the northern portion of the state. His 
intimate knowledge of the general features of 
the Pleistocene formations as developed in 
other states, has enabled him to producea very 
concise description, and his conclusions, in the 
main, seem to be fully warranted by the data 
given. ; 

The Quaternary formationsare classified into 
(1) the Bouldery Drift, (2) the Loess and Gray 
Loamy Clay, (8) Terrace Deposits, and (4) Allu- 
vium. 

In many respects the drift deposits of Mis- 
souri are remarkable. The till, or boulder clay, 
is found in the north-central portion of the 
State in considerable thickness, but thins thence 
in a southwardly direction, as also toward the 
Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Over a large 
portion of the state north of the Missouri river 
itis less than five feet in average thickness, 
‘‘and over considerable areas consists of small, 
shallow, detached patches. Toward the margin 
of the drift it usually disappears, and gives 
place to sparsely scattered boulders of northern 
origin.’’? There is a total absence of distinet 
moraines, drumlins, kames, eskers, ‘kettle 
holes,’ basins, Knobs, and the other classes of 
irregularities of surface usually found in drift- 
covered regions. No buried forest beds have 
been reported, and but few striz observed. 
Probably the most interesting part of Professor 
Todd’s discussion of the drift proper is a de- 
scription of the small driftless areas in Ralls, 
Pike, Lincoln and Saint Charles counties. They 
correspond to a similar driftless ridge studied by 
Leverett in Pike and Calhoun counties, in west- 
ern Illinois. 

The second great formation of the Quater- 
nary deposits of Missouri is the Loess and Gray 
Loamy Clay. The two are considered merely as 
different phases of the same formation. This 
is shown to extend, in probable original con- 
tinuity, over nearly the whole of the northern 
portion of the state, but to terminate south- 
wardly at an irregular line, whose position 
seems to be controlled by the topography. It 
descends from about 950 feet above the sea, at 


588 


Kansas City, to 825 feet, at Pilot Grove, in 
Cooper county. Except in Lafayette, Pettis 
and adjoining counties, it is never far beyond 
the recognized limits of the drift sheet. Along 
the Missouri river, especially at and near 
Kansas City, two divisions of the loess are 
recognized. The ‘higher loess’ is that which 
has the widest extension, being found nearly 
everywhere in association with the drift sheet, 
while the ‘lower loess’ forms high terraces 
along the Missouri valley. It is the latter 
which has furnished most of the data concern- 
ing the loess which have heretofore been re- 
ported from Missouri. 

Much valuable information is given of the 
trough of the Missouri river, and the ques- 
tion of its age relative to the epoch of glacia- 
tion of its vicinity is discussed in considerable 
detail; also, the preglacial and present val- 
leys of the Mississippi river between Mont- 
rose and Keokuk, Iowa. The sections of the 
old and new gorges are especially finely ex- 
ecuted. 

In the discussion of the origin of the Mis- 
souri Pleistocene formations, the following lead- 
ing problems are recognized: 1. Waterlaid 
character of the loess and gray loamy clay. 2. 
Great difference of level between similar deposits 
in Missouri and southern Illinois. 3. Vastness of 
gorges of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. 
4. Absence of drift in the lower Missouri. 
The Missouri loess deposits are referred to a 
fluvio-lacustrine origin. A barrier in the form 
of a rocky ridge is supposed to have formerly 
extended from the present divide between the 
Osage and Glasconade rivers, across the pres- 
ent course of the Missouri river, through War- 
ren, Saint Charles, Pike and Ralls counties, to 
and connecting with a ridge in Pike county, 
Illinois. This barrier, by preventing free drain- 
age toward the lowlands in southern Illinois, is 
supposed to have enabled the waters flowing 
away from the melting ice sheet to deposit the 
loess and loamy clay on the drift plain to the 
northwest of it, while a similar formation was 
being laid down at a much lower level in the 
country southeast of it. 

In summing up the Quaternary history of 
Missouri, Chamberlin’s classification of the 
Pleistocene formations is adopted. The major 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No. 119. 


portion of the drift proper is referred to the 
Kansan epoch. The Aftonian interglacial 
epoch is scarcely represented in Missouri, but 
its effects may be recognized in slight valley 
erosion, particularly in the extreme north- 
western part of the State. During the Iowan 
epoch the ice sheet is believed to have again 
advanced into territory now included in 
Missouri, but to a less distance than formerly. 
The loess is also referred to this epoch. The 
succeeding Toronto and Wisconsin epochs are 
inseparable in this state, but their effects con- 
sisted largely of increased depth of stream ero- 
sion, 

The present writer desires to suggest that the 
idea that the distinctive deposit commonly 
known as loess was deposited by broad semi- 
lacustrine stream floods, originated from the 
study of flat areas where the formation was 
laid down as a nearly uniform sheet upon a 
plain. This hypothesis would not have origi- 
nated upon certain other areas, for instance, 
the upper Mississippi region, where a loess of 
the same age as that of Missouri and nearly 
identical in the lithological features, mantles 
almost equally as uniformly, a characteristic- 
ally hilly land surface, Here, undoubtedly, a 
purely lacustrine or possible semi-marine origin 
must be assumed for the waterlaid silt and 
loamy clay which covers hill-tops, slopes and 
broad flat valley-bottoms alike. It may be 
possible that the great difference in altitude be- 
tween the loess-covered plain of southern 
Illinois and the much more elevated drift and 
loess plain of northern Missouri may be the 
result solely of the original altitudinal diversity 
of the preglacial land surface upon which they 
are superimposed. The supposed barrier from 
the Osage-Gasconade divide to the driftless ridge 
in Pike county, Illinois, would thus become 
unnecessary. O. H. HERSHEY, 


Erster Band. Yon 
Hartleben’s Verlag, 


Angewandte Elektrochemie. 
Dr. FRANZ PETERS. 
Wien ; Leipzig. 
Hlectro-chemistry is one of the most recent 

subdivisions of chemical science. The study of 

its theoretical side has been most actively pro- 
moted and splendid results have been brought 
to light. Applied electro-chemistry is of eyen 


Aprit 9, 1897.] 


more recent date; still, it has become the sub- 
ject of very general attention. Separate or 
special chairs devoted to this branch have 
been created at several of the foreign technical 
schools, and journals intended for the publica- 
tion of its distinctive methods and practices 
have been established. Efforts are now being 
made to gather in the widely spread literature 
relating to this subject. The volume before us 
presents a very full, although not exhaustive, 
treatment of all the sources of electric energy, 
the dynamo excepted. The author aims, in 
this volume, to give a concise account of the 
various forms of primary batteries and storage 
cells which have been devised at various times, 
and adds information in regard to the same 
which will prove helpful both to those who are 
engaged in promoting electro-chemical pro- 
cesses and to students who are seeking to gain 
for themselves as complete a knowledge of this 
subject as is possible. Some idea of the con- 
tents of the volume may be obtained from the 
following topics: A. Galvanic Batteries: 1. 
Batteries with one electrolyte. 2. Batteries 
with two electrolytes. 3. Dry batteries. 4. 
Normal batteries. 5. Suggestions for the con- 
struction of batteries and their components. 
B. Batteries serving for production of electric 
energy directly from carbon. C. Gas batteries. 
D. Thermopiles. E. Accumulators. 

The author has treated his subject under- 
standingly and has prepared a work which will 
prove of great value to all interested in applied 
electricity. It is his purpose, at an early date, 
to issue companion volumes, dealing with the 
application of electricity to metallurgy, to gal- 
vanoplastic processes, to chemical analysis and 
to industrial chemistry. The subject-matter in 
these later volumes is to be discussed in a 
thoroughly practical manner. 

EDGAR F. SMITH. 

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS. 
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, 


THE April number opens with an extended 
article by A. M. Mayer, giving the results of a 
long series of investigations of the phenomena 
of flotation of disks and rings of metal. The 
author briefly reviews the early literature on 


SCIENCE. 


589 


the subject and notes the erroneous statement 
often repeated in treatises on physics thata film 
of grease is necessary to float a piece of metal 
on a water surface. With respect to this point 
his results confirm the idea that the film of 
air which adheres to the body is essential to its 
floating, since rings of metals, as also rods of 
glass, sank in water if they had been heated and 
the air expelled, but regained their power of 
flotation after being exposed to the air for some 
10 or 15 minutes. The disks experimented upon 
were made of aluminum, but the rings were 
made also of other metals, as iron, copper, 
brass, etc. The method of experimenting 
made possible the accurate determination of 
the depression of the water surface and also of 
the weight required to just break it and allow 
the disks or rings to sink. In the case of the 
tings the form of the water surface was more 
complex and called for special investigation. 
The equation of forces acting upon the disk of 
aluminum allowed finally of a determination of 
the surface tension of water, which was found 
to be .0791 as the mean of three determinations. 
With rings of different metals the value ob- 
tained was .0809. The mean of twenty-eight 
determinations of this constant by various 
physicists during the past sixty years is .0772. 
The surface tension of a solution of sodium 
chloride of a density of 1.2 was also determined 
and found to be .0860 (using the value .0772 
for water). 

George F. Becker contributes a paper on the 
method of computing diffusion with special 
reference to the diffusion in the viscous fluids 
as applied to geological phenomena. ‘This is in 
connection with an earlier discussion by the 
same author on rock differentiation, published 
in the January number. HE. O. Hovey discusses 
the rock of a dike in the Connecticut Triassic 
area, a few miles east of New Haven. This 
rock is remarkable in that it departs from the 
usual diabase character which so remarkably 
characterizes the Triassic igneous rocks of 
the entire Atlantic border. It is distinctly acid 
in character and seems to belong to the group 
of keratophyres. F. A. Gooch and C, F. 
Walker discuss the application of iodic acid to 
the analysis of iodides, The granitic rocks of 
the Pyramid Peak district in the Sierra Nevadas 


590 


of California are described by W. Lindgren. 
These include granites proper and the grano- 
diorite, which is characterized as an intermedi- 
ate type, neither a normal diorite nor a granite, 
but occupying a place between normal quartz- 
mica-diorite and quartz-monzonite; also normal 
diorite and gabbro from smaller areas inclosed 
in granodiorite or granite, or on the contact 
between them and the schists. It is concluded 
that all of the granite rocks are later than the 
altered sedimentary rocks described and the 
augite-porphyrite, though the relative age of 
the granite, granodiorite, diorite and gabbro, 
is not decisively settled. ‘‘The probability is 
that the intrusion both of the granite and of the 
granodiorite was accompanied by minor intru- 
sions of acid and basic magmas, and that there 
are diorites, pegmatites and aplites, of the age 
of the granodiorite and of that of the granite, 
the latter being the older rock.’’ 

R. S. Tarr discusses the difference in the 
¢élimate of the Greenland and American sides of 
Davis’s and Baffin’s Bay. The former name is 
proposed for the bay between Labrador and 
Greenland, south of Davis’ Straits. When in 
the Arctic region in the summer of 1896 the 
author noted the remarkable difference in 
climate of the two localities, the eastern side 
being distinctly warmer and at a given time 
more free from snow and ice than the western. 
The cause of this is found largely in the ocean 
current moving northward on the Greenland 
coast, to which is added the influence of the 
winds. Remarks are also made on the changes 
of level of Baffin Land and its relation to glaci- 
ation. E. C. Case describes the foramina per- 
forating the cranial region of a Permian reptile. 
The paper is accompanied by a series of cuts. 

John Trowbridge and Theodore W. Richards 
discuss the temperature and ohmic resistance of 
gases during the oscillatory electric discharge. 
The paper gives the result of a series of experi- 
ments which have led the authors to conclude 
that ‘‘a mass of gas at low tension contained in 
a capillary tube may act as though it opposed a 
resistance of only five or six ohms to the spark 
of a large condenser.’’ Plucker tubes were em- 
ployed with aluminum electrodes and the volt- 
meter allowed of measuring the voltage up to 
1,800 volts and above by approximation. A 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. Von. Vo No. 119. 


battery of from five to fen thousand storage 
cells was employed with a large condenser and 
a water resistance interposed of from five to 
fifty megohms. A series of tables give the 
number of half oscillations corresponding to 
varying resistances and capacities. Experi- 
ments were made with hydrogen and nitrogen 
gas in particular, and the evidence reached 
from them is summed up as follows : 

‘¢(1) The resistance of a gas at low pressure to 
the oscillatory discharge is equivalent to only a 
very small ohmic resistance. (2) This resist- 
ance is in general greater the less the quantity 
of electricity. (38) Down to a very small pres- 
sure this resistance decreases with the tension 
of the gas. (4) The form of the tube has an 
important effect upon the resistance of the gas. 
(5) With the oscillatory discharge it is evident 
that the electrodes produce far less effect than 
with the continuous discharge.’’ Certain con- 
clusions are also suggested as to the effect of the 
dissociation in diminishing the resistance of the 
gas experimented upon, thus tending to ex- 
plain the difference of the spectra obtained 
under different conditions. In a following arti- 
cle, discussing whether a vacuum conducts elec- 
tricity, Trowbridge states that his experiments 
lead him to believe that ‘‘a disruptive discharge 
of electricity encounters its chief resistance at 
the going-over layer between the electrodes 
and the medium, and that during the discharge 
in a highly rarified medium very little resist- 
ance is encountered.”’ 

I. C. Russell discusses the plasticity of glacial 
ice, with reference to recent experiments by 
McConnell, Kidd and Migge. The observa- 
tions made of the optical structure of the ice 
lead to the conclusion that ‘‘the yielding of 
glacial ice to pressure is due to movements 
along gliding planes in the granules of which it 
is composed.’’ |The closing article is by O. C. 
Marsh on the affinities of the Cretaceous bird, 
Hesperornis. He recalls his early conclusions 
that the hesperornis was allied to the ostriches 
and shows that they are confirmed by the re- 
cent discovery of a specimen showing feathers 
in place and these feathers are the typical plu- 
mage of an ostrich. In the notes which follow 
A. E. Verrill states that in the examination of 
a mass of the integument from the supposed 


APRIL 9, 1897. ] 


' octopus cast ashore on the Florida coast, some 
months since, it has been shown that the mass 
resembles not an octopus, but rather the sub- 
stance which forms the head of a sperm whale. 
The nature of the original animal is still in 
doubt, since no known species could have 
yielded a mass of this size, entirely free from 
any bony structure. 


THE ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL, FEBRUARY. 


The Absorptian of Light as a Determining Factor 
in the Selection of the Size of the Objective for the 
Great Refractor of the Potsdam Observatory: By 
H. C. Vocet. The author discusses the effect 
of absorption upon the ‘light-grasping power’ 
of objectives of various apertures. The first 
part of the paper deals with the experiments 
for the determination of the absorption of the 
various varieties of glass available for large 
objectives. The second part consists of the 
application of the constants thus obtained to 
the determination of dimensions. Assuming 
the ratio of diameter of lens to thickness to be 
between six and seven, it is shown that an 
increase in aperture above 80 cm. gives very 
little corresponding increase of light. This is 
due to the additional absorption which is en- 
tailed by the increased thickness. An increase 
in diameter from 35 cm. to 80 cm. multiplies 
the light-gathering power by four, while a further 
increase to 100 cm. adds another factor of only 
1.4. In view of the rapid increase in cost of 
a telescope, corresponding to an increase in 
size, and the smallness of this last factor, Dr. 
Vogel considers 80 cm. as about the most eco- 
nomical diameter. As the telescope is to be 
used chiefly for astrophysical work, it is to be 
corrected for photographic rays, and it is the 
absorption of these which determined the di- 
mensions. The life partner of the great re- 
fractor is to be a visually corrected finder of 
50 cm. aperture. 

The Spectrum of Puppis: By E. C. PickER- 
inc. As was announced in H. C. O. Circular, No. 
12 (Ap. J., Dec., 1896), the spectrum of 
Puppis contains two rythmical systems of dark 
lines, one being the known series due to hydro- 
gen. It was also announced that the other series 
is governed by a law somewhat resembling 
Balmer’s law for hydrogen. In the present 


SCIENCE. 


591 


paper the writer points out that by a modifica- 
tion, Balmer’s formula may be made to satisfy 
both series. The formula as ordinarily written 


. 2 
(for Rowland’s scale) is A = 3646.1 -5 4 » where 


-m=8, 4, 5, 6, etc., substituting + =m we ob- 


2 


n 
tain 7 — 3646.1 n—16’ which gives the hydro- 


gen lines when n=—6, 8, 10, 12, ete., and the 
lines of the newly discovered series when 
n=5, 7, 9, 11, ete. In the light of this re- 
markable relation it seems probable that the 
new series is, in fact, due to hydrogen under 
some physical condition so far unknown upon 
our globe. 

On the Spectrum of Puppis: By H. KAYSER. 
In connection with this spectrum Professor 
Kayser calls attention to the fact that hydrogen 
is the only element which has, until now, been 
considered to have only one series of lines. In 
every other case where series have been found 
to exist, there are two converging approx- 
imately to the same limit, each satisfying a 


formula of the type e =A — Bin’ — Cm 


where m=3, 4, 5, 6, ete. The alkali metals 
have in addition a third series, brighter than 
these two. It has been generally supposed here- 
tofore that the ordinary hydrogen spectrum 
consisted of this series. Certain considerations 
however seemed to contradict this. The 
newly found series in Puppis now fits in very 
neatly, converging approximately to the same 
point as doesthe old one. In the light of these 
developments more accurate measurements of 
the positions of the new lines will be of great 
interest. 

On the Effect of Pressure in the Surrounding 
Gas on the Temperature of the Crater of an Elec- 
tric Are. Correction of Results in Former Paper : 
By W. E. Witson and G. F. FITZGERALD. 
‘The primary object of this research was to 
determine, if possible, whether the temperature 
of the crater in the positive carbon varies when 
the pressure in the surrounding gas is changed.’’ 
The result is interesting as bearing directly 
upon the mooted question as to whethet the 
temperature of the crater is that of boiling car- 
bon. If such were the case we should expect 
a rise in the temperature of the crater with in- 


592 


creased pressure, corresponding to a rise in the 
boiling point of carbon. The radiation from 
the crater was measured with a radiomicrom- 
eter. Since the radiation varies as the fourth 
power of the temperature, a slight change in 
the latter should be noticeable. The experi- 
ments were not definitive, on account of the 
many difficulties encountered, but seemed to 
show that the temperature remained constant 
throughout a range of pressure of from one to 
seven atmospheres. At any rate, the constancy 
was sufficient to practically disprove the boiling- 
point idea. Among the chief difficulties to be 
met were connection currents in the apparatus, 
which rendered the gases so opaque as to sug- 
gest to the writers a new explanation of sun 
spots. The paper has the additional interest of 
indicating that temperature effects can not play 
an important part in the shifting of lines in 
metallic spectra when pressure is applied to the 
are. 

Preliminary Table of Solar Spectrum Wave- 
lengths, XVII.: By Henry A. ROWLAND. 

On the Comparative Value of Refracting and 
Reflecting Telescopes for Astrophysical Investiga- 
tions: By GEORGE E. HALE. The paper, as is 
indicated by the title, is a discussion of the rela- 
tive merits of the two forms of instruments men- 
tioned. In addition to economy, freedom from 
chromatic abberation, and other advantages 
sometimes urged in favor of reflectors, Professor 
Hale brings forward that of their relative free- 
dom from absorption. The effect of this in 
large refractors is discussed in the above paper 
by Dr. Vogel, and is shown to increase with 
the size. Since the percentage of absorption of a 
reflector is independent of its dimensions, this 
factor is of great importance where large aper- 
tures are concerned. The paper isaccompanied 
by an interesting diagram, which shows, among 
other things, that for linear apertures greater 
than 90cm. the photographic |light-gathering 
power of a reflector exceeds that of a refractor. 

On a New Form of Mounting for Reflecting 
Telescopes Devised by the Late Arthur Cowper 
Ranyard: By F. L. O. WapsworrH. ‘The 
writer discusses some developments of the idea 
of the Cassegraiman Condé proposed by Mr. 
Ranyard. Several forms of mounting are con- 
sidered. In every case, with one exception, 


SCIENCE, | 


LN. S. Vou. V. No. 119. 


the polar axis is of the fork type. A mirror at 
the intersection of the polar and declination 
axis is so arranged that its plane always bisects 
the angle between the telescope and polar axis, 
so that light from the small convex mirror is 
always thrown up or down the polar axis 
(which is hollow), as may be desired. 

A Support System for Large Specula: By G. 
W. RitcHry. In this article Mr. Ritchey de- 
scribes a support system designed to reduce to 
a minimum the effects of flexure in large mir- 
rors. The system is in reality a double one: 
1. The back support. 2. The edge support. 
In the first system the mirror is considered as 
divided, by cylindrical surfaces perpendicular 
to the back of the mirror, into twelve parts of 
equal mass. Hach part rests upon a support. 
Nine of these supports are counterbalanced in 
all positions by weighted levers, while the re- 
maining three rest upon the cell. It is evident 
that if all twelve supports were counterbalanced 
the mirror would be in equilibrium in any posi- 
tion close to its normal one. If three of the 
supports are fixed, however, the nine remain- 
ing counterweights will be unable to take any 
of the weight off of the fixed supports which will, 
therefore, determine the plane of the mirror. 
The mirror will, therefore, float in a fixed plane. 
The edge support is designed upon the same 
general principles. There is reason to believe 
that the plan will combine with a perfect flota- 
tion support, a degree of stability heretofore 
unattained in speculum mounting. 

Oxygen in the Sun: By Lewis E. JEWELL. 
See foot-note to abstract of App. J, December, 
1896, in ScteNcE, March 19th. 

Minor Contributions and Notes, Reviews, Bibli- 
ography. 

SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 


ZOOLOGICAL CLUB, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, 
MEETING FEBRUARY 10. 


ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS PRESENTED. 


On the Morphology of the Skull of the Pelycosauria 
and the Origin of the Mammals.* By G. BAUR 
and H. C. Case. 

*A fuller account of this paper has just been pub- 
lished in Anatom. Anzeiger, XIII. Band., No. 2 and 5, 
January 30, 1897, pp. 109-120, with three figures of 
the skull. 


APRIL 9, 1897. ] 


The sub-order Pelycosauria was established 
by Professor Cope in May, 1878, for certain 
Reptilia, especially Clepsydrops and Dimetrodon, 
from the Permian of Texas. It was said to 
differ from the Rhynchocephalia by the absence 
of the quadrato-jugal arch. At the end of the 
same year the order Theromorphas was estab- 
lished, as distinct from the Rhynchocephalia, con- 
taining the suborders Pelycosauria and Anomo- 
dontia (Owen). 

The characters of this order with its two sub- 
orders were given as follows: 

Theromorpha, Cope. Scapular arch consisting 
at least of scapula, coracoid and epicoracoid 
which are closely united. Pelvic arch consist- 
ing of the usual three elements, which are 
united throughout, closing the obturator fora- 
men and acetabulum. Limbs with the phalanges 
as in the ambulatory types. Quadrate bone 
proximally united by suture with the adjacent 
elements. No quadrato-jugal arch. 

Pelycosauria. Two or three sacral vertebre ; 
eentra notochordal; intercentra usually present. 
Dentition full. 

Anomodontia. 
centra not notochordal; no intercentra. 
tion very imperfect or wanting. 

The order Theromorpha was regarded by Pro- 
fessor Cope as approximating the Mammalia 
more closely than any other division of the 
Reptilia, and as probably the ancestral group 
from which the latter were derived. 

The order Theromora has been admitted by 
nearly all paleontologists and zoologists, and 
the opinion of the close relationship of this 
group with the Mammalia has found very many 
supporters. 

This view is not correct. It is shown ‘that 
the order Theromora has no existence. The 
Pelycosauria cannot be brought together with 
the Anomodontia, since they have both the 
upper (postorbito-squamosal) and lower (quad- 
rato-jugal) arches, like the Rhynchocephalia. 

This result was reached by the study of an 
excellent specimen of Dimetrodon incisivus, Cope, 
collected in the spring of 1896, by Dr. E. C. 
Case, while in charge of the field expedition of 
the department of paleontology of the Univer- 
sity of Chicago. 

The following conclusions were reached, after 


Four or five sacral vertebre ; 
Denti- 


SCIENCE. 


593 


the description of the skull and the principal 
portions of the skeleton: 
The Affinities of the Pelycosauria. 

There cannot be any doubt that Dimetrodon 
is nearest to the Rhynchocephalia and Progano- 
sauria (Palxohattertidx). The structure of the 
skull, the vertebral column, and the humerus 
are of the same type. 

The specialization of the Pelycosauria consists 
in the enormous development of the neural 
spines of the dorsal vertebrx, and in the reduc- 
tion of the upper part of the quadrate and its 
nearly complete inclosure by the squamosal, 
prosquamosal and quadrato-jugal. It is quite 
evident that the Pelycosauria with the two temporal 
arches, and the specialized neural spines cannot be 
the ancestors of mammals; they represent a 
specialized side branch of a line leading from 
the Proganosauria to the Rhynchocephalia, 
which becomes extinct in the Permian. 

The mammals have a single temporal (zygo- 
matic) arch; the posterior nares are placed far 
back, and are roofed over the maxillary and 
palatine plates; the quadrate is completely co- 
ossified with the squamosal and quadrato-jugal ; 
the occipital condyle is double, the entepicon- 
dylar foramen is present in all the generalized 
forms. The ancestors of mammals must show 
the same condition. 

Seeley has combined a number of Permio- 
Triassic Reptilia from South Africa into an order 
which he calls Gomphodontia. These reptiles 
are: Tritylodon, Owen (always so far considered 
amammal); Diademodon, Seeley; Gomphognathus, 
Seeley; Micro gomphodon, Seeley; and Triracho- 
don, Seeley. 

In Gomphognathus we haye a double occipital 
condyle ; the posterior nares are placed far back 
and are roofed over by the maxillary and ptery- 
goid plates, and there is an entepicondylar 
foramen. The quadrate seems to be of the re- 
duced form; a condition we see also in the 
closely related Cynognathus. 

These forms look very much like mammals 
and could possibly be ancestral to them. We 
must suppose that the condition of the palate 
seen in the Mammalia and Gomphodontia has 
been developed from a type which we find 
among the Rhynchocephulia. The Crocodilia, 
where we have a palate similar to that of mam- 


594 


mals, show us how such a type of palate was 
developed from the Rhynchocephalia, through 
the Belodonts and the Teleosaurs. It is possi- 
ble that the Gomphodontia originated from the 
Proganosauria. 

We are fully convinced that among these 
South African forms, one of which was for a 
long time considered a mammal, we have those 
reptiles which might be considered as ancestral 
to the mammals or at least closely related to 
their ancestors. Further finds and careful 
critical observations have to decide this. 


The Cranial Region of Dimetrodon. 

CASE. 

The paper presented additional evidence of 
the relationship of Dimetrodon incisivus, Cope, 
to the living and extinct Rhynohocephalia. 

It was shown that in Dimetrodon there was a 
_ common distal opening of the eustachian tubes, 
as in the Crocodilia and aglossal Anura, and 
that this opening corresponded to a deep pit in 
the posterior part of the lower surface of the 
basisphenoid. ‘There was a large hypophysis, 
which extended backward nearly as far as the 
tympanic region, and occupied an excavation 
of the lower part of the basioccipital, just as 
the hypophysis occupies an excavation in the 
basisphenoid in young Crocodilia. The tym- 
panic region was not separated from the brain 
cavity by a wall of bone, but communicated 
freely as in fishes and some amphibians. A 
cast of a part of the brain cavity showed that 
the posterior region was very similar to the 
brain of Sphenodon. The nerves all occupied 
similar positions. The cerebellum was probably 
thin antero-posteriorly, elongated from side to 
side and elevated. There was a sharp descent 
of the medulla in its anterior portion, forming 
an angle with the part anterior to it. This 
angleis very apparent in the brain of Sphznodon, 
but absent in most other Reptilian brains, where 
the medulla is horizontal or joins the mid- 
brain at only a very slight angle. 


By E. C. 


THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASH- 
INGTON. 
THE 261st regular meeting of the Society was 
held Tuesday evening, March 16, 1897. 
Professor Thomas Wilson read a paper on 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. Vou. V. No. 119. 


‘A Cafion in Prehistoric Archeology,’ in which 
he said that the more widely extended is the 
search for prehistoric man the greater will be 
found the area that he occupied, and the more 
profound the excavations the greater will be 
found the antiquity of that occupation. This 
is not meant to indicate that prehistoric man 
occupied all the area of the world, nor that, 
having once discovered his occupation of a cer- 
tain area, an extension of the investigation 
would necessarily show an extension of the area. 
The theory maintained is that, having shown 
his occupation of a certain locality, investiga- 
tions made in other localities, or in other por- 
tions of the same country, will show his increas- 
ing and wider distribution and occupation. It 
is a proposition announced by the foremost 
prehistoric archeologists that prehistoric man 
is not found in proportion to the number of sites. 
occupied by him, nor by the density of his 
population, nor yet by the number of objects. 
which he has left, but is, on the contrary, in 
proportion to the number of seekers. The 
world has hardly yet awakened to a just ap- 
preciation of the extent of the occupation of 
the earth by man during prehistoric times, nor 
yet to his antiquity. He used, as illustrations, 
the reports recently made by archeologists of 
investigations in two countries. The first, 
Babylon, has resulted in pushing the historic 
period back to a muck greater antiquity. The 
other country, the prehistoric occupation of 
which has been doubted, if not denied, is Egypt, 
and is the result of investigations and excava- 
tions lately made by the Director-General of 
Antiquities in charge of the Gizeh Museum. 
He then detailed the investigations and results 
in these countries, exhibiting a rare collection, 
which he had obtained from Mr. de Morgan, 
the head of the Gizeh Museum, to whom the 
greatest credit is due for these researches. 

Mr. R. T. Hill then read a paper on ‘Some 
Phases of the Negro of the West Indies,’ in 
which he described the geographic distribution, 
the difference in type, the social and political 
conditions of the negro in the several islands 
and groups of islands. Obeaism, or voodooism, 
is widespread in its practice and powerful in its 
influence, nearly all of the common people 
believing in Obeah, not only the blacks and 


APRIL 9, 1897. ] 


colored, which is the term applied to mulattoes, 
but the whites. A member of the City Coun- 
cil of Kingston was suspected of being a promi- 
nent Obeah man. The Obeah man is always 
flogged when detected in such practice. The 
object of this practice, or worship, as it is often 
ealled,is to: (1) Thwart or remove the spirits 
of the departed. (2) To bring success. (3) To 
punish enemies. (4) To prevent theft. They 
consist of sacrifices, charms, terrorizing and 
hypnotizing influences. To remove duffies or 
ghosts, a cock is sacrificed, and they hang up a 
bottle of water. To bring success they strew 
rice and other powders. To punish enemies 
they sacrifice a cock, cut off feet and head and 
plant the head with beak toward the door of 
the enemy. To prevent theft they hang up a 
bottle. The belief in duffies or ghosts is the 
most -striking feature of Obeaism ; charms are 
worked to keep the duffies in their graves and 
to keep them out of their homes. Sacrifices 
and practices of the most inhuman and revolt- 
ing character are sometimes performed, and in- 
stances of human sacrifices were known. Every 
unexplainable act is credited to the duffies, and 
a negro will not answer a knock at his door 
after dark for fear it will prove a duffie. Many 
curious and interesting beliefs and customs were 
related. Discussed by Professor Mason, J. H. 
Blodgett, Drs. Frank Baker, J. H. McCormick 


and others. 
, J. H. McCormicx, 


General Secretary. 


NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ; BIOLOGICAL 
SECTION, MARCH 8, 1897. 

THE papers presented were: 

H. E. Crampton, ‘ On the Ascidian Half Em- 
bryo.’ His experimental studies on the egg of 
Molgula manhattensis showed that the isolated 
blastomeres segment ina strictly ‘ partial’ man- 
ner, but that a gradual passage to a ‘total’ de- 
velopment ensues. As far as the early stages 
were concerned, Chabry, Roux and Barfurth 
are entirely correct in arguing for a half or ‘ par- 
tial’ development. But Driesch, Hertwig and 
others are also correct in considering the end 
result a ‘total’ larva of less than the normal 
size. The paper will be published in full. 

N. R. Harrington, ‘On a Nereid from Puget 


SCIENCE. 


595 


Sound (Pacific coast), which lives commensally 
with the Hermit crab, Hupagurus alaskensis.’ A 
variety of the western European species, N. 
fucata, is known to inhabit deserted whelk cells 
with Eupagurus bernhardus, and a careful com- 
parison of the Old and the New World forms 
brings out resemblances in structure due to the 
operation of the same physiological factors. 
These are notably: (1) the degeneration of the 
muscular and cuticular layers in the posterior 
two-thirds ofthe body; (2) loss of the pigment in 
the same ; (3) physiological factors may explain 
why only females are found (as yet) in this com- 
fortable and nutritive habitat. The author sur- 
mises that the commensal form is the female 
epitocous type of some free living nereid. ; 

This apparently undescribed species from the 
Pacifie differs from N. fucata B. inquilvina of 
Wirén in the arrangement of the paragnathi, 
respiratory lobes of notopodium and transverse 
pigment stripes. 

Bashford Dean, ‘A Posthumous Memoir of 
Professor J. S. Newberry.’ This paper de- 
scribed new species and a new genus of North 
American fossil fishes, and discussed the genera 
Oracanthus, Dactylodus, Polyrhizodus, Sandalodus 
and Petalodus. 

Among the types were species of Cladodus, 
Oracanthus, Ctenacanthus, Stethacanthus, Aster- 
optychius, Dactylodus, Deltodus, Sandalodus, Pse- 
phodus, Helodus and Ctenodus. Dinichthys corru- 
gatus was taken as a type of a new genus, 
Stenognathus. 

At the conclusion of the papers an election 
of sectional officers was held. Professor E. B. 
Wilson was elected Chairman for the ensuing 
year and Professor C. L. Bristol Secretary. 

BASHFORD DEAN, 
Secretary pro tem. 


TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB, FEBRUARY 24, 1897. 


THE first paper was by Mr. Arthur Hollick, ‘A 
fossil Arundo from Staten Island.’ The paper 
was presented by Dr. Britton, with prefatory 
remarks referring to this discovery. Its occur- 
rence was in yellow sand of Staten Island, be- 
longing to late Tertiary or early Quaternary; the 
locality, a pit near Port Wadsworth. The pre- 
liminary reference to Phragmites is now changed 
by Mr. Hollick to the tropical genus Arundo. 


596 


Mr. E. O. Wooton made ‘Remarks on some 
of the rarer Plants of New Mexico,’ sketching 
briefly the botanical regions of New Mexico, 
and tracing upon a map the routes traversed by 
most of the botanical collectors who have visited 
them. Mr. Wooton was himself practically the 
first to make collections in the southeast section 
of the Territory, a very interesting, botanical 
region, with high mountains, some of which 
were illustrated by photographs. Specimens of 
Mr. Wooton’s collecting were then shown, ex- 
hibiting about thirty-five flowering plants and 
ferns, and including, among those familiar in 
the East, Pella atropurpurea, Cystopteris fragi- 
tis, Pteris aquilina and Cheilanthes tomentosa. 

Mr. Rydberg compared some of the features 
presented by the sand region of central Ne- 
braska ; referred to Muhlenbergia pungens and 
other so-called ‘blow-out grasses’ of the sand- 
hills, and described the formation of the 
characteristic ‘blow-outs’ or hollows, origi- 
nating in spots where the grasses had died out 
and deepening rapidly, sometimes to 300 feet, 
producing a country where the hills are moving 
every year, and where he, when camping, 
could find no fuel except roots of sand-cherries 
exposed along fresh ‘ blow-outs.’ 

Dr. H. M. Richards spoke ‘On Some of the 
Reactions of Plants Toward Injury,’ as shown 
by his experiments in Germany last summer. 
Diagrams illustrating the effect of injury upon 
both respiration and temperature were shown. 
In the former case it was seen that the respira- 
tion is greatly increased by wounding, attaining 
its maximum about 24 hours after the injury 
was inflicted ; this increase depending both on 
the stimulus of the wound itself and upon the 
access of atmospheric oxygen to the tissues. 
The occurrence of a corresponding rise in tem- 
perature, of a local nature, was also briefly re- 
ferred to ; the temperature curve corresponding 
closely to that described by the increased respi- 
ratory activity. The thermo-electric apparatus 
used was described ; its delicacy is such as to 
indicate a difference of 755 of a degree; the 
result with potatoes showing a maximum rise of 
temperature of a little over 7% of a degree at the 
end of the second day, falling to the end of the 
fifth day. A remarkable temperature rise in 
the onion of nearly 34 degrees was explained 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 119. 


by the fact that here the rise was not local, but 
affected the whole onion, in accordance with 
the morphological structure, and with the fact 
that metabolism is carried on very fast in the 
onion. 

The next paper was a contribution from Dr. 
Alexander Zahlbrickner, of Vienna, a corre- 
sponding member of the Club, entitled, ‘ Revisio 
Lobeliacearum Boliviensium hucusque cogni- 
tarum.’ The paper, which is in Latin, enumer- 
ates all the species, giving synonymy and refer- 
ences to the literature, and cites collectors and 
their numbers. Thereare 39 species, as follows: 
9 in Centropogon, 2 new; 20 in Siphocampylos, 7 
new; 1 in Lauwrentia; 2 in Rhizocephalum; 3 in 
Hypsela ; 4 in Lobelia. 

EDWARD S. BURGESS, 
Secretary. 


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The Outlines of Physics. EDWARD L. NICHOLS. 
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CIENCE 


EpIToRIAL CommitrEr: S. NeEwcoms, Mathematics; R. S. WooDWARD, Mechanics; E. C. PICKERING 
Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THURSTON, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry; 
J. LE ContE, Geology; W. M. DAvis, Physiography; O. C. Maxgsu, Paleontology; W. K. 
BRooKs, C. HART MERRIAM, Zoology; 8S. H. ScuDDER, Entomology; N. L. BRITTON, 
Botany; Henry F. OsBorn, General Biology; H. P. Bowpitcu, Physiology; 
J. S. Bintines, Hygiene; J. MCKEEN CATTELL, Psychology ; 
DANIEL G. BRINTON, J. W. POWELL, Anthropology. 


Fripay, Aprit 16, 1897. 


CONTENTS: 

Sylvester}: GEORGE BRUCE HALSTED................- 597 
The Great Fault and accompanying Sandstone Dikes 

of Ute Pass, Colorado: W. O. CROSBY...........- 604 
Exhibition in Science by the New York Academy of 

Sciences: RICHARD E. DODGE............02202 2200 607 
The Missouri Botanical Garden .........+.s0e-eseeeeneseee 610 
The Ganodonia or Primitive Edentates with Enam- 

elledeLecthy ss El piinl O sonedeusnvereaecceerereeceeesa-cecs 611 


Current Notes on Meteorology :— 
The Exploration of the Air ; Visibility of Mowntains 
and Atmospheric Dust ; The Blue Hill Meteorolog- 
ical Observatory: R. DEC. WARD............cee00- 612 
Current Notes on Anthropology :— 
The so-called ‘ Bow-pullers’ of Antiquity; Fairy- 
land; Recent Etruscology : 


Notes on Inorganic Chemistry: J. L. H........ pnoa0ed 615 
Scientific Notes and News .........000essescssecenssncecseees 616 
University and Educational News.............+.+++ pocoodd 619 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 
The Bruce Astronomical Medal: EDWARD S. 
HOLDEN. Professor Scott’s Bird Pictures; F. 
A. Lucas. Note ona Simple Method for Newton’s 
Total Reflection Experiment: F. W. McNAtrR.....620 


Scientific Literature :— 
The Annual Report of the Geological Survey of Can- 
ada: C. H. HircHcock. Tables for the Deter- 
mination of Minerals by their Physical Properties : 
E. B. MatHEws. Duhem’s Traité élémentaire de 
mécanique chimique: WILDER D. BANCROFT. 
Trigonometry for Beginners: J. B. CHITTENDEN..621 
Scientific Journals :— 
The Astrophysical Journdl......11.+00cesseceeseeeeseeeee 628 
Societies and Academies :— 
The Biological Society of Washington: F. A. Lu- 
CAs. Zoological Club of the University of Chicago : 
C.M. CHILD. Torrey Botanical Club: E.S. Bur- 
GEss. Boston Society of Natural History: SAM- 
UEL HENSHAW. The Academy of Science of St. 
Louis: Wm. TRELEASE. Science Club of the 
University of Wisconsin: WM. S. MARSHALL...629 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended 
for review should be sent to the responsible editor, Prof. J. 
McKeen Cattell, Garrison-on-Hudson, N. Y. 


D. G. BRINTON...... 614 


SYLVESTER. 

On Monday, March 15, 1897, in London, 
where, September 3, 1814, he was born, 
died the most extraordinary personage for 
half a century in the mathematical world. 

James Joseph Sylvester was second 
wrangler at Cambridge in 1837. When 
we recall that Sylvester, Wm. Thomson, 
Maxwell, Clifford, J. J. Thomson were all 
second wranglers, we involuntarily wonder 
if any senior wrangler except Cayley can 
be ranked with them. 

Yet it was characteristic of Sylvester 
that not to have been first was always bitter 
to him. 

The man who beat him, Wm. N. 
Griffin, alsoa Johnian, afterwards a modest 
clergyman, was tremendously impressed by 
Sylvester, and honored him in a treatise on 
optics where he used Sylvester’s first 
published paper, ‘ Analytical development of 
Fresnel’s optical theory of crystals,’ Philo- 
sophical Magazine, 1837. 

Sylvester could not be equally generous, 
and explicitly rated above Griffin the fourth 
wrangler George Green, justly celebrated, 
who died in 1841. 

Sylvester’s second paper, ‘On the motion 
and rest of fluids,’ Phil. Mag., 1838 and 
1839, also seemed to point to physics. 

In 1838 he succeeded the Rev. Wm. 
Ritchie as professor of natural philosophy 
in University College, London. 

His unwillingness to submit to the re- 


598 


ligious tests then enforced at Cambridge and 
to sign the 39 articles not only debarred 
him from his degree and from competing 
for the Smith’s prizes, but, what was far 
worse, deprived him of the Fellowship mor- 
ally his due. He keenly felt the injustice. 

In his celebrated address at the Johns 
Hopkins University his denunciation of the 
narrowness, bigotry and intense selfishness 
exhibited in these compulsory creed tests, 
made a wonderful burst of oratory. These 
opinions were fully shared by De Morgan, 
his colleague at University College. Copies 
I possess of the five examination papers set 
by Sylvester at the June examination, 
session of 1839-40, show him striving as a 
physicist, but it was all a false start. Even 
his first paper shows he was always the 
Sylvester we knew. To the ‘Index of 
Contents’ he appends the characteristic 
‘note: ‘‘Since writing this index I have 
made many additions more interesting than 
any of the propositions here cited, which 
will appear toward the conclusion.” Ever 
he is borne along helpless but ecstatic in 
the ungovernable flood of his thought. 

A physical experiment never suggests 
itself to the great mental experimenter. 
Cayley once asked for his box of drawing 
instruments. Sylvester answered, ‘“‘ I never 
had one.” Something of this irksomeness 
of the outside world, the world of matter, 
may have made him accept, in 1841, the 
professorship offered him in the University 
of Virginia. 


On his way to America he visited Rowan . 


Hamilton at Dublin in that observatory 
where the maker of quaternions was as out 
of place as Sylvester himself would have 
been. The Virginians so utterly failed to 
understand Sylvester, his character, his as- 
pirations, his powers, that the Rev. Dr. 
Dabney, of Virginia, has seriously assured 
me that Sylvester was actually deficient in 
intellect, a sort of semi-idiotic calculating 
boy. For the sake of the contrast, and to 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 120. 


show the sort of civilization in which this 
genius had risked himself, two letters from 
Sylvester’s tutors at Cambridge may here 
be of interest. 

The great Colenso, Bishop of Natal, pre- 
viously Fellow and Tutor of St. John’s Col- 
lege, writes: ‘‘ Having been informed that 
my friend and former pupil, Mr. J. J. Syl- 
vester, is a candidate for the office of pro- 
fessor of mathematics, I beg to state my 
high opinion of his character both as a 
mathematician and a gentleman. 

“On the former point, indeed, his degree 
of Second Wrangler at the University of 
Cambridge would be, in itself, a sufficient 
testimonial. But I beg to add that his 
powers are of a far higher order than even 
that degree would certify.” 

Philip Kelland, himself a Senior Wrang- 
ler, and then professor of mathematics in 
the University of Edinburgh, writes: “TI 


have been requested to express my opinion 


of the qualifications of Mr. J. J. Sylvester, 
as a mathematician.”’ 

“Mr. Sylvester was one of my private 
pupils in the University of Cambridge,where 
he took the degree of Second Wrangler. My 
opinion of Mr. Sylvester then was that in 
originality of thought and acuteness of per- 
ception he had never been surpassed, and I 
predicted for him an eminent position among 
the mathematicians of Europe. My antici- 
pations have been verified. Mr. Sylvester’s 
published papers manifest a depth and 
originality which entitles them to the high 
position they occupy in the field of scientific 
discovery. They prove him to be a man 
able to grapple with the most difficult 
mathematical questions and are satisfactory 
evidence of the extent of his attainments 
and the vigor of his mental powers.”’ 

The five papers produced in this year, 
1841, before Sylvester’s departure for Vir- 
ginia, show that now his key-note is really 
struck. They adumbrate some of his great- 
est discoveries. 


APRIL 16, 1897.] 


They are: ‘On the relation of Sturm’s 
auxiliary functions to the roots of an alge- 
braic equation,’ British Assoc. Rep. (pt. 2), 
1841; ‘Examples of the dialytic method of 
elimination as applied to ternary systems of 
equations,’ Camb. M. Jour. II., 1841; ‘On 
the amount and distribution of multiplicity 
in an algebraic equation,’ Phil. Mag. XVII., 
1841; ‘On a new and more general theory 
of multiple roots,’ Phil. Mag. XVIII., 
1841; ‘Ona linear method of eliminating 
between double, treble and other systems 
of algebraic equations,’ Phil. Mag. X VIII., 
1841; ‘On the dialytic method of elimina- 
tion,’ Phil. Mag. X X1., Irish Acad. Proce. II. 

This was left behind in Ireland, on the 
way to Virginia. Then suddenly occurs a 
complete stoppage in this wonderful pro- 
ductivity. Not one paper, not one word, is 
dated from the University of Virginia. Not 
until 1844 does the wounded bird begin 
again feebly to chirp, and indeed it is a 
whole decade before the song pours forth 
again with mellow vigor that wins a wait- 
ing world. 

Disheartening was the whole experience ; 
but the final cause of his sudden abandon- 
ment of the University of Virginia I gave 
in an address entitled ‘ Original Research 
and Creative Authorship the Essence of 
University Teaching,’ printed in Sciences, 
N.S&., Vol. I., pp. 203-7, February 22, 1895. 

On the return to England with heavy 
heart and dampened ardor he takes 
up for his support the work of an actuary 
and then begins the study of law. In 1847 
we find him at 26 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 
“eating his terms.’ On November 22, 1850, 
he is called to the bar and practices con- 
veyancing. 

But already in his paper dated August 
12, 1850, we meet the significant names 
Boole, Cayley, and harvest is at hand. 

The very words which must now be used 
to say what had already happened and 
what was now to happen were not then in 


SCIENCE. 


599 


existence. They were afterward made by 
Sylvester and constitute in themselves a 
tremendous contribution. As he himself 
says: ‘“‘ Names are, of course, all important 
to the progress of thought, and the inven- 
tion of a really good name, of which the 
want, not previously perceived, is recog- 
nized, when supplied, as having ought to be 
felt, is entitled to rank on a level in impor- 
tance with the discovery of a new scientific 
theory.” 

Elsewhere he says of himself: ‘‘ Perhaps 
I may without immodesty lay claim to the 
appellation of the Mathematical Adam, as 
I believe that I have given more names 
(passed into general circulation) to the 
creatures of the mathematical reason than 
all the other mathematicians of the age 
combined.” 

In one year, 1851, Sylvester created a 
whole new continent, a new world in the 
universe of mathematics. Demonstration 
of its creation is given by the Glossary of 
new Terms which he gives in the Philosoph- 
ical Transactions, Vol. 143, pp. 543-548. 

Says Dr. W. Franz Meyer in his exceed- 
ingly valuable Bericht tiber die Fortschritte 
der projectiven Invariantentheorie, the best 
history of the subject (1892) : 

‘Als ausseres Zeichen fir den Umfang 
der vorgeschrittenen Entwickelung mag die 
ausgedehnte, grésstenteils von Sylvester 
selbst herruhrende Terminologie dienen, 
diesich am Ende seiner grossen Abhandlung 
uber Sturm’sche Functionen (1853) zusam- 
mengestellt findet.” 

Using then this new language, let us 
briefly say what had happened in the dec- 
ade when Sylvester’s genius was suffering 
from its Virginia wound. The birth-day of 
the giant Theory of Invariants is April 28, 
1841, the date attached by George Boole to 
a@ paper in the Cambridge Mathematical 
Journal where he not only proved the in- 
variantive property of discriminants gener- 
ally, but also gave a simple principle to 


600 


form simultaneous invariants of a system 
of two functions. The paper appeared in 
November, 1841, and shortly after, in 
February, 1842, Boole showed that the 
polars of a Form lead to a broad class of 
covariants. Here he extended the results 
of the first article to more than two Forms. 
Boole’s papers led Cayley, nearly three 
years later (1845), to propose to himself the 
problem to determine a priori what functions 
of the coefficients of an equation possess 


this property of invariance, and he dis- 


covered its possession by other functions 
besides discriminants, for example the 
quadrinvariants of binary quantics, and in 
particular the invariant S of a quartic. 

Boole next discovered the other invariant 
T of a quartic and the expression of the 
discriminant in terms of S and T. Cayley, 
next (1846) published a symbolic method 
of finding invariants. Early in 1851 Boole 
reproduced, with additions, his paper on 
Linear Transformations; then at last be- 
gan Sylvester. He always mourned what 
he called ‘the years he lost fighting the 
world’; but, after all, it was he who made 
the Theory of Invariants. 

Says Meyer : ‘‘sehen wir in dem Cyklus 
Sylvester’scher Publicationen (1851-1854) 
bereits die Grundztge einer allgemeinen 
Theorie erstehen, welche die Elemente von 
den verschiedenartigsten Zweigen der 
spateren Disciplin umfasst.” ‘Sylvester 
beginnt damit, die Ergebnisse seiner 
Vorganger unter einem einzigen Gesichts- 
punkte zuvereinigen.”’ 

With deepest foresight Sylvester intro- 
duced, together with the original variables, 
those dual to them, and created the theory 
of contravariants and intermediate forms. 
He introduced, with many other processes 
for producing invariantive forms, the prin- 
ciple of mutual differentiation. 

Hilbert attributes the sudden growth of 
the theory to these processes for producing 
and handling invariantive creatures. “Die 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 120. 


Theorie dieser Gebilde erhob sich, von 
speciellen Aufgaben ausgehend, rasch zu 
grosser Allgemeinheit—dank vor Allem 
dem Umstande, dass es gelang, eine Reihe 
von besonderen der Invariantentheorie 
eigenthumlichen Prozessen zu entdecken, 
deren Anwendung die Aufstellung und 
Behandlung invarianter Bildungen be- 
trachtlich erleichterte.” 

“Was die Theorie der algebraischen In- 
varianten anbetrifft so sind die ersten Be- 
grunder derselben, Cayley und Sylvester, zu- 
gleich auch als die Vertreter der naiven 
Periode anzusehen: an der Aufstellung der 
einfachsten Invariantenbildungen und an 
den eleganten Anwendungen auf die Auf- 
losung der Gleichungen der ersten 4 Grade 
hatten sie die unmittelbare Freude der 
ersten Entdeckung.”’ It was Sylvester alone 
who created the theory of canonic forms 
and proceeded to apply it with astonishing 
power. What marvelous mass of brand 
new being he now brought forth ! 

Moreover he trumpeted abroad the erup- 
tion. He called for communications to him- 
self in English, French, Italian, Latin or 
German, so only the ‘ Latin character’ 
were used. 

From 1851 to 1854 he produces forty-six 
different memoirs. Then comes a dead 
silence of a whole year, broken in 1856 by 
a feeble chirp called ‘ A Trifle on Projec- 
tiles.” 

What has happened? Some more ‘ fight- 
ing the world.’ Sylvester declared himself a 
candidate for the vacant professorship of 
geometry in Gresham College, delivered a 
probationary lecture on the 4th of Decem- 
ber, 1854, and was ignominiously ‘turned 
down.’ Let us save a couple of sentences 
from this lecture: 

“He who would know what geometry is 
must venture boldly into its depths and 
learn to think and feel asa geometer. I 
believe that it is impossible to do this, to 
study geometry as it admits of being stud- 


APRIL 16, 1897. ] 


ied, and I am conscious it can be taught, 
without finding the reasoning invigorated, 
the invention quickened, the sentiment of 
the orderly and beautiful awakened and en- 
hanced, and reverence for truth, the foun- 
dation of all integrity of character, con- 
verted into a fixed principle of the mental 
and moral constitution, according to the 
old and expressive adage ‘ abewnt studia in 
mores.’ ”’ 

But this silent year concealed still another 
stunning blow of precisely the same sort, as 
bears witness the following letter from Lord 
Brougham to The Lord Panmure : 


‘‘ BROUGHAM, 


PRIVATE. 28 Aug. 1855. 


My DEAR P. 

My learned excellent friend and brother 
mathematician Mr. Sylvester is again a candidate for 
the professorship at Woolwich on the death of Mr. 
O’Brian who carried it against him last year. 

I entreat once more your favorable consideration of 
this eminent man who has already to thank you for 


your great kindness. 
Yours sincerely 


H. BRoUGHAM. 


On this third trial, backed by such an ar- 
ray of credentials as no man ever presented 
before, he barely scraped through, was ap- 
pointed professor of mathematics at the 
Royal Military Academy, and served at 
Woolwich exactly 14 years, 10 months and 
15 days. 

A single sentence of his will best express 
his greatest achievement there and his 
manner of exit thence: 

“Tf Her Most Gracious Majesty should 
ever be moved to recognize the palmary ex- 
ploit of the writer of this note in the field of 
English science as having been the one 
successfully to resolve a question and con- 
quer an algebraical difficulty which had 
exercised in vain for two centuries past, 
since the time of Newton, the highest 
mathematical intellects in Europe (Euler 
Lagrange, Maclaurin, Waring among the 
number), by conferring upon him some 


SCIENCE. 


601 


honorary distinction in commemoration 
of the deed, he will crave the privilege of 
being allowed to enter the royal presence, 
not covered, like De Courey, but bare- 
footed, with rope around his waist, and a 
goose-quill behind his ear, in token of re- 
pentant humility, and as an emblem of 
convicted simplicity in having once sup- 
posed that on such kind of success he could 
found any additional title to receive fair and 
just consideration at the hands of Her 
Majesty’s Government when quitting his 
appointment as public professor at Wool- 
wich under the coercive operation of a 
non-Parliamentary retrospective and ut- 
terly unprecedented War Office enactment.” 
Atheneum Club, January 31, 1871. Of 
course this means a row of barren years, 
1870, 1871, 1872, 1873. 

The fortunate accident of a visit paid 
Sylvester in the autumn of 1873 by Pafnuti 
Lyovich Chebyshev, of the University of 
St. Petersburg, reawakened our genius to 
produce in a single burst of enthusiasm a 
new branch of science. 

On Friday evening, January 23, 1874, 
Sylvester delivered at the Royal Institu- 
tion a lecture entitled ‘On Recent Discov- 
eries in Mechanical Conversion of Motion,” 
whose ideas, carried on by two of his hear- 
ers, H. Hart and A. B. Kempe, have made 
themselves a permanent place even in the 
elements of geometry and kinematics. A 
synopsis of this lecture was published, but 
so curtailed and twisted into the third per- 
son that the life and flavor are quite gone 
from it. I possess the unique manuscript 
of this epoch-making lecture as actually 
delivered. A few sentences will show how 
characteristic and inimitable was the origi- 
nal form: 

“The air of Russia seems no less favor- 
able to mathematical acumen than to a 
genius for fable and song. Lobacheffsky, 
the first to mitigate the severity of the 
Euclidean code and to beat down the bars 


602 


of a supposed adamantine necessity, was 
born (a Russian of Russians), in the gov- 
ernment of Nijni Novgorod; Tchebicheff 
[Chebyshev], the prince and conqueror of 
prime numbers, able to cope with their re- 
fractory character and to confine the stream 
of their erratic flow, their progression, 
within algebraic limits, in the adjacent 
circumscription of Moscow; and our own 
Cayley was cradled amidst the snows of St. 
Petersburg.”’ [Sylvester himself contracted 
Chebyshey’s limits for the distribution of 
primes.] ‘I think I may fairly affirm that 
a simple direct solution of the problem of 
the duplication of the cube by mechanical 
means was never accomplished down to 
this day. I will not say but that, by a 
merciful interpretation of his oracle, Apollo 
may have put up with the solution which 
the ancient geometers obtained by means of 
drawing two parabolic curves; but of this I 
feel assured that had I been then alive, and 
could have shown my solution, which I am 
about to exhibit to you, Apollo would have 
leaped for joy and danced (like David be- 
fore the ark), with my triple cell in hand, 
in place of his lyre, before his own dupli- 
cated altar.” 

That in the very next year Sylvester was 
taking a more active part than has hither- 
to been known in the organization of the 
incipient Johns Hopkins University is seen 
from the following letter to him in London 
from the great Joseph Henry : 


SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 
August 25, 1875. 
My DEAR SIR: 

Your letter of the 13th inst. has just been received 
and in reply I have to say that I have written to 
President Gilman of the Hopkins University giving 
my views as to what it ought to be and have stated 
that if properly managed it may do more for the ad- 
vance of literature and science in this country than 
any other institution ever established; it is entirely 
independent of public favor and may lead instead of 
following popular opinion. 

I have advised that liberal salaries be paid to the 
occupants of the principal chairs and tha¢é to fill them 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 120. 


the best men in the world who can be obtained 
should be secured. 

Ihave mentioned your name prominently as one 
of the very first mathematicians of the day; what the 
result will be, however, I can not say. 

The Trustees are all citizens of Baltimore and 
among them I have some personal friends ; the Presi- 
dent, Mr. Gilman, and one of them, came to Wash- 
ington a few weeks ago to get from me any sugges- 
tions that I might have to offer. 

It is to be regretted that in this country the Trus- 
tees, who control the management of bequests of this. 
character, think it important to produce a palpable 
manifestation of of the institution to be established 
by spending a large amount of the bequest in archi- 
tectural displays. Against this custom I have pro- 
tested and have asserted that if the proper men and 
the necessary implements of instruction are provided, 
the teaching may be done in log cabins. 

It would give me great pleasure to have you again 
as my guest, and I will do what I can to secure your 
election. Very truly your friend, 

JOSEPH HENRY. 

We know the result. 

Sylvester was offered the place; de- 
manded a higher salary; won; came. 

I-was his first pupil, his first class, and he 
always insisted that it was I who brought 
him back to the Theory of Invariative Forms. 
In a letter to me of September 24, 1882, 
he writes: ‘‘ Nor can I ever be oblivious. 
of the advantage which I derived from your 
well-grounded persistence in inducing me to 
lecture on the Modern Algebra, which had 
the effect of bringing my mind back to this 
subject, from which it had for some time 
previously been withdrawn, and in which I 
have been laboring, with a success which 
has considerably exceeded my anticipations, 
ever since.”’. 

He made this same statement at greater 
length in his celebrated address at the Johns 
Hopkins on February 22,1877: “At this 
moment I happen to be engaged in a re- 
search of fascinating interest to myself, and 
which, if the day only responds to the 
promise of its dawn, will meet, I believe, a 
sympathetic response from the professors of 
our divine algebraical art wherever scat- 
tered through the world. 


Aprin 16, 1897. ] 


“There are things called Algebraical 
Forms; Professor Cayley calls them Quan- 
tics. These are not, properly speaking, 
Geometrical Forms, although capable, to 
some extent, of being embodied in them, 
but rather schemes of processes, or of opera- 
tions for forming, for calling into existence, 
as it were, algebraic quantities. 

“To every such Quantic is associated an 
infinite variety of other forms that may be 
regarded as engendered from and floating, 
like an atmosphere, around it; but infinite 
in number as are these derived existences, 
these emanations from the parent form, it is 
found that they admit of being obtained by 
composition, by mixture, so to say, of a cer- 
tain limited number of fundamental forms, 
standard rays, as they might be termed, in 
the Algebraic Spectrum of the Quantic to 
which they belong; and, as it is a leading 
pursuit of the physicists of the present day 
to ascertain the fixed lines in the spectrum 
of every chemical substance, so it is the aim 
and object of a great school of mathemati- 
cians to make out the fundamental derived 
forms, the Covariants and Invariants, as 
they are called, of these Quantics. 

“Mhis is the kind of investigation in 
which I have, for the last month or two, 
been immersed, and which I entertain great 
hopes of bringing to a successful issue. 

“Why do I mention it here? It is to illus- 
trate my opinion as to the invaluable aid 
of teaching to the teacher, in throwing him 
back upon his own thoughts and leading 
him to evolve new results from ideas that 
would have otherwise remained passive or 
dormant in his mind. 

“But for the persistence ofa student of this 
university in urging upon me his desire to 
study with me the modern algebra I should 
never have been led into this investigation ; 
and the new facts and principles which I 
have discovered in regard to it (important 
facts, I believe) would, so far as I am con- 
cerned, have remained still hidden in the 


SCIENCE. 


603 


womb of time. In vain I represented to 
this inquisitive student that he would do 
better to take up some other subject lying 
less off the beaten track of study, such as 
the higher parts of the Calculus or Elliptic 
Functions, or the theory of Substitutions, 
or I wot not what besides. He stuck with 
perfect respectfulness, but with invincible 
pertinacity, to his point. He would have 
the New Algebra (Heaven knows where he 
had heard about it, for it is almost unknown 
on this continent), that or nothing. I was 
obliged to yield, and what was the conse- 
quence? In trying to throw light upon an 
obscure explanation in our text-book my 
brain took fire; I plunged with requickened 
zeal into a subject which I had for years 
abandoned, and found food for thoughts 
which have engaged my attention for a con- 
siderable time past, and will probably oc- 
cupy all my powers of contemplation ad- 
vantageously for several months to come.”’ 

Another specific instance of the same 
thing he mentions in his paper, ‘ Proof of 
the Hitherto Undemonstrated Fundamental 
Theorem of Invariants,’ dated November 
13, 1877: 

“JT am about to demonstrate a theorem 
which has been waiting proof for the last 
quarter of a century and upwards. It is 
the more necessary that this should be 
done, because the theorem has been sup- 
posed to lead to false conclusions, and its 
correctness has consequently been im- 


-pugned. Thus in Professor Faa de Bruno’s 


valuable Théorie des formes binaires, Turin, 
1876, at the foot of page 150 occurs the 
following passage: ‘‘ Cela suppose essen- 
tiellement que les équations de condition 
soient toutes indépendantes entr’elles, ce qui n'est 
pas toujours le cas, ainsi qu’il résulte des re- 
cherches du Professor Gordan sur les nom- 
bres des covariants des formes quintique 
et sextique.”’ 

The reader is cautioned against suppos- 
ing that the consequence alleged above does 


604 


result from Gordan’s researches, which are 
indubitably correct. This supposed conse- 
quence must have arisen from a misappre- 
hension, on the part of M. de Bruno, of the 
nature of Professor Cayley’s rectification 
of the error of reasoning contained in his 
second memoir on Quantics, which had led 
to results discordant with Gordan’s. Thus 
error breeds error, unless and until the per- 
nicious brood is stamped out for good and 
all under the iron heel of rigid demonstra- 
tion. In the early part of this year Mr. 
Halsted, a fellow of John’s Hopkins Uni- 
versity, called my attention to this passage 
in M. de Bruno’s book; and all I could say 
in reply was that ‘the extrinsic evidence 
in support of the independence of the equa- 
tions which had been impugned rendered 
it in my mind as certain as any fact in na- 
ture could be, but that to reduce it to an 
exact demonstration transcended, I thought, 
the powers of the human understanding.’ ”’ 

In 1883 Sylvester was made Savilian pro- 
fessor of geometry at Oxford, the first Cam- 
bridge man so honored since the appoint- 
ment of Wallis in 1649. 

To greet the new environment, he created 
a new subject for his researches—Recipro- 
cants, which has inspired, among others, 
J. Hammond, of Oxford; McMahon, of 
Woolwich; A. R. Forsyth, of Cambridge; 
Leudesdorf, Elliott and Halphen. 

Sylvester never solved exercise problems 
such as are proposed in the Educational Times, 
though he made them all his life long down 
to his latest years. For example, wnsolved 
problems by him will be found even in Vol. 
LXII. and Vol. LXIII. of the Educational 
Times reprints (1895). If at the time of 
meeting his own problem he met also a 
neat solution he would communicate them 
together, but he never solved any. In the 
meagre notices that have been given of 
Sylvester the strangest errors abound. Thus 
C. 8. Pierce, in the Post, March 16th, speaks 
of his accepting, ‘ with much diffidence,’ a 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 120. 


word whose meaning he never knew; and 
gives 1862 as the date of his retirement from 
Woolwich, which is eight years wrong, as 
this forced retirement was July 31, 1870, 
after his 55th birthday. Cajori, in his in- 
adequate account (History of Mathematics, 
p. 326), puts the studying of law before the 
professorship at University College and the 
professorship at the University of Virginia, 
both of which it followed. Effect must fol- 
low cause. And strange, that of the few 
things he ascribes to Sylvester, he should 
have hit upon something not his, ‘“ the dis- 
covery of the partial differential equations 
satisfied by the invariants and covariants 
of binary quantics.” But Sylvester has 
explicitly said in Section VI. of his ‘Cal- 
culus of Forms:’ ‘TI alluded to the partial 
differential equations by which every in- 
variant may be defined. M. Aronhold, as 
I collect from private information, was the 
first to think of the application of this 
method to the subject; but it was Mr. 
Cayley who communicated to me the equa- 
tions which define the invariants of func- 
tions of two variables.”’ 

Surely he needs nothing but his very own, 
this marvellous man who gave so lavishly 
to every one devoted to mathematics, or, 
indeed, to the highest advance of human 
thought in any form. 

GEORGE Bruce HALstTED, 

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS. 


THE GREAT FAULT AND ACCOMPANYING 
SANDSTONE DIKES OF UTE PASS, COLO- 
RADO.* 

THREE year years ago Whitman Cross 
first directed the attention of geologists to 
the fact that dike-like masses of sandstone 
occur in the granite of the Pike’s Peak 
massif, forming a belt about one mile wide 
extending north-northwest from the vicinity 
of Green Mountain Falls, in Ute Pass, 


*Abstract of a paper read before the Boston Society 
of Na_ al History, January 20, 1897. 


APRIL 16, 1897.] 


along the southwest side of the narrow 
Manitou Park, basin of sedimentary rocks 
(Silurian and Carboniferous). Among the 
more important characteristics of the dikes 
noted by Cross are the following: 1. The 
dikes have a general trend parallel to the 
belt in which they occur; are approximately 
vertical and often appear as a complex of 
nearly parallel fissures with many branches 
and connecting arms; and vary in width 
from mere films to two or three hundred 
yards, the largest being a mile or more in 
length, and forming rugged ridges with nar- 
row crests which contrast markedly with 
the gentle sloping hills of granite about 
them. In short, “In all formal relation- 
ships to the enclosing rocks these bodies are 
as typical dikes as any of igneous origin.” 
2. The rock of the dikes is a fine and 
even-grained aggregate of sand grains vary- 
ing in degree of induration from a normal 
sandstone to a dense hard quartzite, but 
throughout of a remarkably massive and 
uniform character. 

During the past summer of 1896 I was 
able to devote several weeks to the investi- 
gation of the sandstone dikes and the great 
displacement to which I have found them 
to be genetically related. To the dikes de- 
seribed by Cross I gave only sufficient at- 
tention to become familiar with their char- 
acteristics, and then endeavored to trace 
the series southeastward through Ute Pass 
to Manitou and beyond. 

The sedimentary formations of the Mani- 
tou area embrace, from below upward, as 
described by Hayden, Cross and others: 
1. A basal sandstone which is usually 40 to 
50 feet thick, white or gray for the lower 
10 to 15 feet and dull red or brown above, 
only rarely of arkose character, but fre- 
quently more or less glauconitic. 2. This 
sandstone, which may be referred provi- 
sionally to the Potsdam, becomes calcareous 
upward, passing into red, cherty limestones, 
and these into a massive gray limestone 


SCIENCE. 


605 


having a thickness of several hundred feet. 
The limestones are throughout more or less 
magnesian and contain recognizable traces 
of a Lower Silurian (Ordovician) fauna. 
3. This great Manitou limestone series is 
overlain without apparent unconformity by 
the Fountain (Carboniferous) beds 1,000 to 
possibly 1,500 feet in thickness—a remark- 
able complex of red and white arkose sand- 
stone, gritsand conglomerates. 4. The red 
sandstone series (Triassic), a thousand feet 
or more in thickness. 5, The white, varie- 
gated and gypsiferous Jurassic strata. 6. 
The Cretaceous series, beginning with the 
massive and conspicuous Dakota sandstone. 

Each of these formations is cut off on the 
south by the great fault which skirts the 
northeastern base of the Pike’s Peak mas- 
sif. This profound displacement, which 
must be regarded as a dominant factor in 
the geological structure of the region, and 
to which we undoubtedly owe, in the main, 
the Manitou embayment of sedimentary 
rocks and the exceptional elevation of the 
Pike’s Peak massif as compared with the 
Front Range to the north of Ute Pass, 
gained early recognition and is clearly in- 
dicated on Hayden’s maps of the Manitou 
area. It is altogether probable that the 
fault by which Cross has bounded the Mani- 
tou Park sediments (Potsdam, Manitou 
limestone, and Fountain series) on the 
southwest is a direct continuation of that 
which, cutting across the strike of the beds, 
is so much more conspicious in the Mani- 
tou area. This great displacement, which 
divides very obliquely the entire Front 
Range and the beds lying upon either flank 
of the range and sloping away from its 
crest, may therefore be appropriately 
designated the Ute fault. Erosion has cut 
deeply enough over the top of the arch to 
remove the sedimentary rocks from the 
down-throw as well as the up-throw side of 
the fault. The Ute fault cuts every forma- 
tion of the region from the fundamental 


606 


granite and the Potsdam to the Laramie, 
and in its maximum throw must exceed the 
aggregate thickness of the Paleozoic and 
Mesozoic terranes ; and its completion, at 
least, must date from relatively late geolog- 
ical times. 

I have succeeded in tracing the sand- 
stone dikes from the vicinity of the Iron 
Spring, in Manitou, northwest along the 
great fault two miles, or a little farther 
than the sedimentary rocks extend, and 
southeastward from Manitou, along the 
base of the mountains, and closely fol- 
lowing the Ute fault, to Cheyenne Cafion 
and beyond, a distance of six miles. The 
dikes of this series vary in width up to 500 
or 600 feet. A large dike usually follows 
the main line of displacement, separating 
the sedimentary rocks and granite, with 
one to several other dikes closely parallel 
with it in the granite. Almost without ex- 
ception the dikes exhibit a strong south- 
westerly hade, making angles of 5 to 
75 degrees with the vertical, and slicken- 
sided shear planes at corresponding angles 
are very common. Although the rock is 
prevailingly a fine and even-grained gray 
and reddish-brown sandstone, identical 
with that described by Cross, much of it is 
decidedly coarser, and at several points it 
is distinctly conglomeratic. In several 
dikes, also, the sandstone is more or less 
distinctly stratified. 

Mr. Cross has briefly discussed the origin 
of the sandstone dikes, without arriving at 
a definite conclusion. He recognizes that 
these sandstone dikes are radically distinct 
in character and origin from those described 
by Diller in California, and asserts that the 
known facts do not indicate the source of 
the sand; that the facts do show that the 
fissures of this dike complex were filled by 
fine quicksand injected from a source con- 
taining a large amount of homogeneous 
material; that such a system of fissures, 
large and small, with their many inter- 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. Von. V. No. 120: 


sections, could not remain open to be filled 
by any slow process; that the uniformity 
and purity of the material filling fissures 
varying from mere films on cleavage planes 
of orthoclase grains in the granite to dikes 
several hundred yards in width could not 
have resulted from infiltration; and, finally, 
that none of the sedimentary formations of 
the region can be regarded as probable 
sources of the material. 

My study enables me to accept all of these 
generalizations, except the last one. The 
most important of the facts which the true — 
theory of the dikes must explain are: first, 
their very evident close relationship to an 
important zone of displacement; second, 
the homogeneity of the materials and the 
general absence of stratification in the 
dikes; third, the great maximum and avyer- 
age widths of the dikes. 

The relations of the dikes to the great 
Ute fault are indisputable. Not only is the 
fault at most points closely accompanied by 
one or more dikes; but nowhere have I 
been able to find any trace of the dikes 
more than a few hundred feet (500 to 1,000 
feet) distant from the principle line of dis- 
placement. That these fissures, unlike the 
relatively narrow ones described by Diller 
in California, have not been filled from be- 
low becomes perfectly obvious when we re- 
flect that the inclosing rock formation is 
a deep-seated plutonic. The homogeneity 
and purity of the sandstone, and especially 
the absence of feldspathic or argillaceous 
material, make it impossible to regard the 
dike rock as a fault breccia or as due in 
any way to the comminution of the wall 
rock. Ruling out this theory and infiltra- 
tion, we are forced to the conclusion that 
the fissures have been filled from above. 
But of this theory two principal forms 
naturally suggest themselves. First, the 
fissures antedate the deposition of the sand, 
existing as cracks in the sea-botton which 
were filled by the slow process of sedimenta- 


APRIL 16, 1897.] 


tion. Second, the cracks post-date the depo- 
sition of the sand, but antedate its lithifi- 
cation to form a firm sandstone and the un- 
consolidated sand subsided and flowed down 
into and filled the fissures. 

By this process of elimination we are 
forced to the consideration of the view that 
the fissures were formed after the granite 
had been covered by the sedimentary de- 
posits and before their complete consolida- 
tion, the unconsolidated portions naturally 
contributing to the filling of the fissures 
and the formation of the dikes. There are 
two questions especially which the accept- 
ance of this explanation would require to 
be answered in the affirmative. First, are 
there, among the sediments of the Manitou 
and Manitou Park basins, any that, aside 
from structural features like stratification, 
which would, of course, be obliterated dur- 
ing the filling of the fissures, present a 
reasonably close agreement in character 
(composition and texture) with the sand- 
stone of the dikes? Second, may we 
reasonably assume that these sediments 
were, in part at least, unconsolidated or 
imperfectly consolidated at the time when 
the fissures were formed? The only sand- 
stone formations that need be considered in 
this connection are the Potsdam, Carbon 
iferous, Triassic and Dakota. Of these 
four sandstone horizons the last three bear 
no special resemblance to the material of 
the sandstone dikes. On the other hand, I 
became convinced before the field work was 
finished that the Potsdam beds and the 
dikes are lithologically identical. The dike 
rock is absolutely indifferent to the changes 
in the character of the neighboring forma- 
tions, showing no appreciable variation, as 
in succession, from Manitou southeast to 
Cheyenne Cafion, the Potsdam, Silurian, 
Carboniferous, Triassic and Dakota beds 
abut against or border the great fault. 

The close association of the dikes, 
throughout the entire belt, with the great 


SCIENCE. 


607 


displacement, and their unvarying litho- 
logical similarity to the Potsdam sandstone, 
have suggested to me that the dikes prob- 
ably date from the formation of the Ute 
fault ; that the fault probably dates from 
the time when the Potsdam beds, which are 
still, at the base, in part of a more or less 
friable character, were imperfectly consoli- 
dated and covered the entire region; that 
the fault, as is likely to be the case with a 
great displacement, was not simple, but 
that a moderate breadth of the granite and 
overlying formations was traversed by a 
series of parallel fissures; and that the 
dikes resulted from the sinking of the Pots- 
dam sandstone and sand into the fault fis- 
sures. Such local subsidences of the friable 
sandstone would naturally be attended by 
a more or less complete obliteration of the 
bedding. 

No single feature of the dikes is more 
significant than the great breadth of indi- 
vidual examples. Although presenting, 
apparently, an insuperable obstacle to all 
the other suggested explanations of the 
sandstone dikes, it offers no difficulty what- 
ever to the theory proposed here, for we 
have only to make the extremely probable 
supposition that sheets of granite of vary- 
ing width and bordered by complemen- 
tary faults have settled down relatively 
to the bordering masses, bearing with them 
their loads of Potsdam sediment. 

W.O. Crospy. 


EXHIBITION IN SCIENCE BY THE NEW YORK 
ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 

Tue Fourth Annual Exhibition of Recent 
Progress in Science, given by the New York 
Academy of Sciences, was held at the Amer- 
ican Museum of Natural History on April 
5th and 6th, and was in every way the 
most successful in the history of the Society. 
The exhibit occupied the floor space of the 
main hall and bird gallery, and was at- 
tended by an estimated number of more 


608 


than three thousand people. The first 
evening was devoted to a reception to the 
members of the Academy and a few invited 
guests, and was more or less social in its 
nature. On the afternoon of the second 
day the visitors included many from the 
public and private schools of city who were 
especially invited. On the second evening 
the reception was to members of the Scien- 
tific Alliance and other friends, and the oc- 
casion was more informal and public than 
on the previous evening. 

Besides the Exhibition, the committee had 
planned a program of considerable inter- 
est, for the second evening, including a short 
informal talk by Dr. Nicola Tesla on ‘ The 
Streams of Lenard and Rontgen.’ Dr. 
Tesla gave a short synopsis of some of his 
more recent discoveries and exhibited 
several pieces of apparatus for producing 
high power, electrical currents with simple 
machines. This talk was preceded by a 
short review of the scientific results of the 
year by Professor J. J. Stevenson, President 
of the Academy, and an address of welcome 
by Mr. Morris K. Jesup, President of the 
Museum, to whose courtesy and hospitality 
much of the success of the occasion was 
due. 

In every way the success of the Exhibi- 
tion was very great and very encouraging to 
workers in science, for the manifest interest 
of the large numbers of people attending was 
a striking sign of the times. Interest, and 
not popular curiosity, attracted the greater 
number of visitors. The attention that the 
Exhibition was given both by people of New 
York and the newspapers showed that this 
annual feature of the Academy is fast be- 
coming one of the occasions of the year to 
which many people look forward with very 
great anticipation. 

The reception was in charge of a com- 
mittee of Professor Henry F. Osborn, Mr. 
Charles F. Cox and Professor Richard E. 
Dodge. They were assisted in the plan- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No. 120. 


ning of the details and in the execution 
thereof by a committee of one from each 
department represented, of which a list fol- 
lows: Anatomy, Professor George S. Hunt- 
ington; Astronomy, Professor J. K. Rees; 
Botany, Professor L. M. Underwood; 
Chemistry, Professor Chas. A. Doremus; 
Electricity, Mr. George F. Sever; Ethnol- 
ogy and Archeology, Mr. Franz Boas and 
Mr. M. H. Saville ; Experimental Psychol- 
ogy, Professor J. McK. Cattell; Geology, 
Professor J. F. Kemp; Mineralogy, Mr. 
George F. Kunz; Paleontology, Mr. Gil- 
bert van Ingen; Photography, Professor 
William Stratford; Physics, Professor Wil- 
liam Hallock and Professor J. F. Woodhull; 
Physiography, Professor R. E. Dodge; 
Zoology, Professor C. L. Bristol and Mr. 
Bashford Dean. 

The exhibits that received the most at- 
tention were naturally those concerning 
which there has been the most said publicly 
within the last year. The electric furnaces, 
including the one used by Dr. Henri Mois- 
san in his lectures before the Academy ; the 
outfits for illustrating the uses and effects 
of the Rontgen rays, and the instruments. 
of fatigue in experimental psychology were 
continually surrounded by a large number 
of interested listeners and spectators. 

Inasmuch as the Exhibition was arranged 
to show progress during the last year only, 
there were few duplications of former ex- 
hibits in any department. Everything 
shown was in a way new and received at- 
tention in proportion to its importance. The 
chairmen of the departments were in at- 
tendance during most of the time and 
gladly answered questions and explained 
particular points of interest. In this way 
the visitors felt that they were guests rather | 
than sightseers. Nothing of an advertis- 
ing character was allowed, and hence the air 
of the whole Exhibition was serious and 
truly scientific. 

Besides the exhibits that were mentioned 


APRIL 16, 1897.] 


above as being the most attentively studied, 
there were many other exhibits worthy of 
mention, of which only a few can be spoken 
of here. In chemistry, besides the exhibits 
noted, the most interesting materials were 
the artistic glasses exhibited by the Tiffany 
Decorative Company, and several striking 
pieces of apparatus exhibited by the chair- 
man. 

In electricity the enclosed are lamps, 
the Crookes tubes and fluoroscopes received 
a great deal of attention. In ethnology 
and archeology the busts of the Kwakiutl 
Indians and the paintings, diagrams and 
specimens illustrating the culture of the 
primitive American races were the more 
notable exhibits. 

In geology the exhibit of clays from 
various parts of America and the products 
made therefrom won a great deal of well 
deserved attention. The photographs from 
the Cornell Greenland expedition illustra- 
ting some of the conclusions of Professor 
Tarr regarding the effects of glaciers in 
Greenland were of interest both to the un- 
scientific and the scientific. The associated 
subject mineralogy had on exhibition a large 
series of new and valuable specimens which 
cannot be noted here in detail. In 
paleontology was one of the largest exhib- 
its that took the greatest amount of labor 
in arranging. The exhibit included fossils 
from some of the more important locali- 
ties illustrating the work accomplished by 
leading paleontologists of the East. Be- 
sides the stratigraphic collections exhibited, 
there was a large series of fossil insects from 
Florissant, Colorado, including some very 
handsome butterflies exhibited by Mr. §S. 
H.Seudder. The preparations of Beecher, of 
Yale University, illustrating the structures 
of Trilobites, were much studied, represent- 
ing, as they do, the best knowledge of what 
hasbeen untilrecently butlittle known. The 
fossil gums including insects of all kinds 
also deserve a note. In vertebrate paleon- 


SCIENCE. 


609 


tology there was a large collection of fos- 
sils from the American Museum, and some 
striking water colors of the reproductions 
of extinct mammalia. 

The exhibit in photography included 
some very beautiful prints and some of the 
more recent apparatus, and received much 
attention. It was, however, disappointing 
to those in charge because so many exhib- 
itors failed to send promised materials, some 
of which were of especial interest and value. 

In physiography the exhibit included 
several large models of New England and 
New York, representing the newest and 
best work of Mr. Howell, of Washington. 
A series of teaching models from Professor 
W.M. Davis, which have just been cast, 
also were exhibited uncolored. These 
models represent the best work of the year 
outside of the numerous publications. 

In zoology the most important exhibition 
was the collection of animals from the 
Puget Sound region, exhibited by Columbia 
University. Many of the forms represented 
were shown in all stages from embryonic to 
adult and are very valuable additions to 
our knowledge of the lower animals. The 
plans and models of the new Zoological Park 
of New York City also were shown in some 
detail and naturally received very much 
attention. 

The Exhibition represents a large in- 
vestment of time and labor on the part 
of the few in charge, and should bring very 
valuable results to the Academy in many 
ways. It has aroused considerable interest 
in many places at a distance from the city, 
and it is hoped that the plan of having such 
exhibitions may be followed by other scien- 
tific societies in the country. If scientists 
would have the support of the public they 
must show their work. ‘There is no better 
way to show work than by a scientific ex- 
hibition in which the popular and wonder- 
ful are exhibited together with the more 
valuable and enduring. The committee in 


610 


charge feel that the investment of time, 
money and labor has paid for itself, for the 
interest we have aroused has been an in- 
spiration to all of us and, we think, to many 
others. It has shown that science has a 
very strong hold upon the public and that 
the public appreciate the work of abstruse 
science, whether or not it shows immediate 
results from an economic standpoint. 
RicHarp E. Dopee. 


THE MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN.* 

Durine the year 1896 the ornamental 
features of the Garden were of the same 
general character as heretofore, and about 
the same number of species and nearly the 
same of individuals were cultivated for this 
purpose, in the open air, as in 1895. The 
house collections, on the other hand, espe- 
cially that of orchids, have been considera- 
bly increased, both in size and variety. A 
conservative estimate by the Head Gardener 
shows that at present about two and one- 
half times as many species and named 
varieties of plants are cultivated as in 1889. 
At the end of 1895 an inventory of the 
plants in cultivation at the Garden showed 
that 3921 species and varieties other than 
annuals were cultivated at that time. Dur- 
ing the past year, while considerable addi- 
tions have been made, it is probable that 
certain species have dropped out of cultiva- 
tion, so that in the absence of a special in- 
ventory itis possible to state merely that 
the number now in cultivation is unques- 
tionably somewhat greater than that in 
1895. 

Tt is estimated that, for various temporary 
reasons, the number of visitors to the Gar- 
den during 1896 was scarcely as large as in 
the preceding year. On the open Sunday 
afternoon in June 10,598 persons passed 
the gate, and on the corresponding Sunday 
afternoon in September 13,589 visitors were 


*From advance sheets of the eighth annual report 
of the Director, Professor Wm. Trelease. 


SCIENCE, 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 120. 


counted. So far as estimates can be made 
from the data at hand, the number of visi- 
tors to the Garden is now about one-half 
greater than in 1889, though, as no auto- 
matic register of visitors is kept at the gate, 
the estimates are not accurate. 

As a result of the most destructive hail- 
storm that has ever been experienced at the 
Garden, some 6,000 lights of glass were 
broken on tne 21st of May last, the falling 
glass doing incalculable damage to many of 
the plants, which were further exposed to 
the weather for a considerable time. Cacti 
and other plants which are sheltered under 
glass during the winter, but which had 
been placed in the rockeries and elsewhere 
before the storm, were either destroyed or 
so badly bruised that it is impossible even 
yet to count the final loss. Some idea of 
the force of the falling hail may be obtained 
from the statement that the ribbed glass on 
the roof of the Linnzan house, nearly a 
quarter of an inch thick, was in consider- 
able part broken. 

Closely following this storm, the tornado 
of May 27th, which caused great loss of life 
and property in and about St. Louis, dev- 
astated a considerable portion of the Gar- 
den. While the grounds, fortunately, were 
not actually traversed by the cyclonic 
funnel, but were exposed only to the strong 
northwest gale which accompanied it, the 
violence of the wind was such that a num- 
ber of the structures on the grounds were 
either unroofed or totally wrecked, while 
some 450 trees, many of them of large size, 
were totally or practically destroyed, and a 
large percentage of those left standing were 
seriously broken. A more graphic view of 
the destruction of trees may be obtained 
from the statement that 186 cords of fire- 
wood have been prepared from the more 
workable trunks and larger branches of the 
trees removed. Aside from the direct in- 
jury, it is probable that no small number of 
those left have suffered from unwonted ex- 


APRIL 16, 1897. ] 


posure to the strong sunlight oflast summer 
and the winds of the present winter, so that 
many more are almost certain to require 
removal during the next year or two. 

During the period of time covered by this, 
report the herbarium has increased from 
159,046 unmounted specimens, constituting 
the Engelmann and Bernhardi herbaria, to 
258,629 mounted specimens, protected by 
impregnation with corrosive sublimate. 
The library, which at first contained con- 
siderably less than 5,000 volumes and 
pamphlets, has increased to 23,257, valued 
at nearly $40,000. 

Notwithstanding the provision of safe and, 
for the time being, ample quarters for the 
library and herbarium in the reconstructed 


city residence, it has not yet been found © 


practicable to remove the numerous wood 
specimens, and other unattractive but 
necessary and valuable material, from the 
old museum building, so as to free the latter 
for other uses ; nor has it proved possible to 
spare funds for the purchase of material 
and the salary of an assistant who should 
be charged with the installation and main- 
tenance of a museum illustrating some 
branch of pure or applied botany, such as 
might be accommodated in this small build- 
ing were it empty. 

Aside from an increase in the plant- 
houses, and the accumulation of books, liv- 
ing and preserved specimens of plants and 
their parts, and a small collection of in- 
sects, no considerable facilities for research 
have been acquired at the Garden thus far, 
the instrumental equipment of the School 
of Botany being found available for all 
necessary use by the few Garden employees 
and pupils, and, as yet, no properly equipped 
permanent laboratory rooms have been pro- 
vided, adequate temporary provision being 
made in the herbarium building and the 
plant-houses for such work as has been un- 
dertaken. While in some respects much 
remains to be done, such facilities as have 


SCIENCE. 


611 


been secured thus far have been placed at 
the disposal of investigators, of whom one 
or more have occupied tables at the Garden 
for a period of from one month to a year, 
each season for several years past, three 
such investigators having been accommo- 
dated at the Garden during the current 
autumn and winter. By direction of the 
Board, a general announcement is made, by 
a widely distributed circular, in the early 
part of each year, that such facilities as the 
Garden possesses, or can readily acquire for 
any worthy piece of investigation, are freely 
placed at the disposal of competent inves- 
tigators. 


THE GANODONTA OR PRIMITIVE EDENTATES 
WITH ENAMELLED TEETH. 

THE discovery of the forefoot of Psittaco- 
thervum in the upper division of the Puerco 
beds (New Mexico) is one of the most 
fortunate accidents in the recent history of 
paleontology, because of its remarkable like- 
ness to the foot of the sloth. This likeness 
at once suggested to Dr. J. L. Wortman the 
relationship of Psittacotherium to the Gravi- 
grada, or great Ground Sloths. Upon his 
return to the American museum from the 
field the entire collection was placed in his 
hands, and it soon appeared that a series of 
animals which had been referred to the 
Creodonta, to the Tillodontia and to other 
orders formed in reality a part of a genetic 
series pointing conclusively toward the 
modern sloths, especially towards Mega- 
lonyx. The evidence is summed up in Dr. 
Wortman’s recent paper, as follows : 

* (1) In the skull there is great simi- 
larity in form; the muzzle is short, the 
sagittal crest is low, and the occipital plane 
slopes forwards as in Mylodon, Megathe- 
rium and Megalonyx. (2) The lower jaw 
is short, deep and robust, with a greatly en- 
larged coronoid, a prominent angle, and a 

*‘The Ganodonta, and their relationship to the 


Edentata.’? Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., March 22, 
1897. 


612 


position of the condyle high above the 
tooth line. (3) The incisors are reduced to 
a single pair in the lower jaw of Calamodon, 
and are probably completely absent in 
Stylinodon. (4) The posterior portion of 
the tooth line below passes well behind the 
anterior border of the coronoid. (5) The 
canines in all are enlarged, and in Calamo- 
don and Stylinodon grew from persistent 
pulps, as in Megalonyx. (6) All the mo- 
lars and premolars in Stylinodon are greatly 
elongated, of persistent growth, and the 
enamel is confined to narrow vertical bands. 
(7) There is a thick deposit of cementum 
on the dentine in those situations in which 
the enamel disappears. (8) The cervical 
vertebrae strongly resemble those of the 
Gravigrada. (9) There were well devel- 
oped clavicles present. (10) The humerus 
bears a striking resemblance in all of its 
essential features to those of Mylodon, Mega- 
lonyx and Megatherium. (11) The ulna and 
radius are also similar. (12) The manus 
is almost identical with that of the ground 
sloths. (18) The humerus and ulna and 
radius have no medullary cavities; and 
(14) the femur has all the characteristic 
features of the Gravigrada. (15) The 
lumbar vertebral formula was the same as 
in the Edentata. (16) The pelvis is de- 
cidedly Edentate and (17) the caudals 
bear a striking resemblance to those of the 
Ground Sloths.”’ 

It follows, or at least is extremely prob- 
able, that not only the Gravigrada, but all 
the South American Edentates had their 
origin in North America. Thus a group 
which has been traditionally assigned to 
South America now appears to have taken 
its origin in the north, for the sloths first 
appear in the Santa Cruz beds of Patagonia, 
which are not older than the North A meri- 
can White River beds or Oligocene, whereas 
in North America they are found immedi- 
ately over the Cretaceous. The importance 
ofthis discovery can hardly be exaggerated, 


SCIENCE. 


LN. S. Vou. V. No. 120. 


both because of its bearing upon phylogeny, 
and upon geographical distribution. It ap- 
pears certain that there was an early land 
connection between North and South A mer- 
ica, and it is in the highest degree improb- 
able that the sloths found their way to 
South America by way of Asia and Ant- 
arctica, as Lydekker has suggested. This 
early land connection enables us to connect 
the South American Ungulates, especially 
the Litopterna, with the American Condy- 
larthra, as Cope and others have suggested, 
so that it will throw renewed life into the 
study of the genetic relations of these 
northern and southern faunas. Another 
important result is, that the Edentates are 
proved to be of tritubercular origin, thus 
reinforcing the evidence of a trituberculate 
stem form of all the mammalia. 
H. F. O. 


CURRENT NOTES ON METEOROLOGY. 
THE EXPLORATION OF THE AIR. 

In Appalachia, Vol. VIII., No. 1, pp. 179- 
189, Mr. A. L. Rotch has a paper on ‘ The 
Exploration of the Free Air,’ in which he 
gives a general outline of the way in which 
this work is being done, by means of moun- 
tain stations, balloons, cloud measurements 
and kites. The following facts are of general 
interest: The first summit station in the 
world was established on Mt. Washington, 
N. H. (6,280 ft.), in 1870. The Pikes Peak 
station (14,134 ft.), now closed, was for 
many years the highest in the world, but 
at present the highest station is that of the 
Harvard College Observatory on the summit 
of the voleano El Misti, in Peru (19,200 ft.). 
On Mont Blanc there is a station at the 
Rochers des Bosses. (14,320 ft.), operated 
during the summer, and on the summit 
(15,780 ft.), the latter still being idle. The 
Sonnblick (10,170 ft) in the Austrian Alps; 
the Saentis (8,200 ft) in Switzerland; Monte 
Cimone (7,100 ft.) in the Apennines, near 
Lucca, and Ben Nevis (4,400 ft.) in Scot- 


APRIL 16, 1897. ] 


land, are the other well-known high alti- 
tude stations. Epoch-making balloon as- 
cents were those of Dr. John Jeffries, of 
Boston, who made the first scientific balloon 
voyage from London in 1784; Gay Lussac 
in 1804 (23,000 ft.); Coxwell and Glaisher 
in 1862 (29,000 ft.), and Crocé-Spinelli, 
Sivel and Tissandier, in 1875, in which the 
two former were asphyxiated. In 1894 
Berson ascended alone to an altitude of 
about 30,000 ft., his barometer reading 9.1 
inches, and the minimum temperature being 
—54° Fahr. Pilot balloons, without aéro- 
nauts, have ascended over 10 miles on two 
occasions, the ‘ Cirrus’ in J uly, 1894, bring- 
ing down a barograph reading of 3.3 inches, 
and a thermograph reading of —64° Fahr. 


VISIBILITY OF MOUNTAINS AND ATMOSPHERIC 
DUST. 


A paper by Schultheiss, in the Meteorol- 
ogische Zeitschrift for December, discusses a 
matter of some interest that has not yet 
been much considered. It concerns the ef- 
fect of the dust in the atmosphere in rela- 
tion to the greater or less visibility of dis- 
tant mountains. Observations on the visi- 
bility of the Alps have been made for 20 
years past at Hochenschwand, a station in 
‘the southern Black Forest, at an altitude 
of 1,000 meters and commanding, under 
favorable conditions, an extended view of 
the Alps as far as Mont Blane. Three de- 
grees of visibility are noted, designated re- 
spectively as 0, 1 and 2, the latter figure 
denoting the greatest clearness of view. A 
eareful study of the records and of the 
weather conditions prevailing at the times 
of observation reveals the fact that the visi- 
bility is best under anticyclonic conditions 
or during the prevalence of a foehn wind. 
In both cases there is a descending move- 
ment of the atmosphere, and as the upper 
strata are cleaner and purer than the lower 
this process results in causing greater clear- 
ness of the air and hence a higher degree of 


SCIENCE. 


613 


visibility. Ninety per cent. of all the cases 
in which the view of the distant Alps was 
clear are found to be associated with such 
anticyclonic or foehn conditions. Cleaning 
the air by means of rain seems to be the 
controlling factor in the majority of the 
other 10 per cent. of cases. Naturally, as 
anticyclones are more frequent and longer- 
lived over central Europe in winter, the 
visibility is greater in winter and less in 
summer. There is a common belief, here 
as well as in Europe, that very clear days, 
which give very good views of distant 
mountains, are most likely to be followed 
by rain. Schultheiss has investigated this 
question in the case of the Alps as seen 
from Héchenschwand, and finds that an 
especially clear view is seldom closely fol- 
lowed by rain. He also finds that the dust 
in the atmosphere at 1,000 meters is very 
fine and does not include large quantities of 
coarser smoke particles as it does at lower 
levels. 


THE BLUE HILL METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVA- 
TORY. 

Ir is a very great satisfaction to learn 
from the volume of Blue Hill Observations 
for 1895 (Annals Harv. Coll. Obs’y, Vol. 
XL., Pt. V.) that the President and Fellows 
of Harvard College have secured from the 
Metropolitan Park Commissioners of Boston 
a lease of about one and a quarter acres of 
land on the summit of the Hill. This lease 
is for ninety-nine years, and will enable the 
work of the Observatory to be continued 
without any change in the present condi- 
tions of exposure of the instruments. There 
was some fear, when, a few years ago, the 
Metropolitan Park Commission added the 
Blue Hills to the Boston Park system, that 
the future usefulness of the Observatory 
might be seriously interfered with by the 
possible erection of buildings in its vicinity. 
It would have been a very serious loss to 
science, not only in this country but in the 


614 


world, had anything happened to interfere 
in any way with the work that the Blue 
Hill Observatory has been doing so admi- 
rably since its foundation. The present 
volume of observations contains the usual 
data for the year and, in addition, sum- 
maries for the lustrum and decade, with a 
discussion of the annual and diurnal peri- 
ods, by Clayton. A number of interesting 
points are brought out, among them the 
grouping of thunderstorms around certain 
dates; the occurrence of maxima in the 
frequency and amount of snowfall at in- 
tervals of twenty or thirty days; of the 
greatest snowfall in February, and of a 
minimum of rainfall in June, with a maxi- 


mum in October. 
R. DEC. WARD. 


HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 


THE SO-CALLED ‘ BOW-PULLERS’ Of AN- 


TIQUITY. 


Tus is the title of a carefully prepared 
essay by Professor Edward S: Morse, in the 
Essex Institute Bulletin, Vol. XXVI., the 
essential facts of which have been copied 
in Globus, Bd. LX XI., No. 10, and other 
foreign journals. The subject discussed is 
the purpose of certain objects of bronze or 
iron found in Greek, Roman and Etruscan 
tombs. These objects are two connected 
rings of the metal about seven centimeters 
in full length, the space between them be- 
ing about two centimeters, from which space 
three or four knobs, projections or spines, 
of irregular height, arise. 

Professor Morse proves that these objects 
can be neither bow-pullers, spear throwers, 
curbs, bits, caltrops, nor anything else 
which has been proposed by classical 
archeologists ; but what they are, he says, 
after seven years’ study, he cannot suggest, 
nor do the European editors who have re- 
published his article offer an explanation. 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 120. 


I take, therefore, some special pleasure 
in solving this enigma, and in identifying 
this curious and puzzling object. It is 
without doubt the Greek myrmex (udppyé) 
which, in pugilistic encounters, was strapped 
or chained on the hand over the leathern 
cestus. This identification answers every 
condition of form, material, decoration and 
use mentioned by Professor Morse. I shall 
shortly publish an article giving the Greek 
and Latin authorities at length, confirming 
this opinion. 

FAIRYLAND. 

In his presidential address, published in 
Folk-lore for March, Mr. Alfred Nutt dis- 
cusses the origin of the fairy-lore which 
has been such a prominent feature in Eng- 
lish literature and rustic narrative. He 
brings together many reasons for attributing 
it to a Celtic source. It is, in fact, a 
survival of the belief in the pre-Christian, 
pagan gods of the Celtic tribes. These have 
been best remembered in Ireland, where 
they are still spoken of as the tuatha de 
Danann—the folk of the goddess Danu ; 
and they are to this day considered the 
occupants of the fairy hillocks. 

Mr. Nutt does not explain why the fairies 
were considered very little beings, as this. 
is not mentioned in the earliest Irish myths. 
I may suggest that there are reasons for 
believing that the goddess Danu was the 
moon (from the O. I. verb, daon, to arise, 
to ascend ; and compare Harley, Moon-lore, 
p. 121), and her followers, or folk, the little 
twinkling stars ; whence by an easy step of 
personification they were transformed into 
the tiny fairy folk. 


RECENT ETRUSCOLOGY. 

Tur ‘ Htruscan problem’ is one of peren- 
nial interest, and now that the Metropoli- 
tan Museum of New York and that of the 
University of Pennsylvania have acquired 
large and valuable collections from ancient, 
Etruria, the affinities of its mysterious in- 


APRIL 16, 1897.] 


habitants have an increased attraction for 
American students. 

In the February number of the Journal 
of the Anthropological Institute the eminent 
antiquary, Dr. Oscar Montelius, offers some 
new views on the subject. He identifies 
the Etruscans of Italy with the Tyrrhe- 
nians and the Pelasgians, and the earliest 
Etruscan culture with the Mycenean. Both, 
he believes, emerged from Asia Minor, the 
Htruscans reaching Italy by sea about 1050 
B. C., bringing with them their peculiar 
alphabet. The‘ Tursha’ of the Egyptian 
inscriptions of the 13th century B.C., he 
argues, were the Tyrrhenians. 

In the discussion which followed, some of 
these views were opposed by Mr. Arthur 
Evans and Mr. J. L. Myres, the former 
maintaining that the ‘root elements’ of the 
Mycenean civilization were Huropean and 
not Asiatic; and the latter referring with 
approval to the theory that the Etruscans 
belonged to the Hamitie stock of North 
Africa, advanced on linguistic grounds by 


myself. 
D. G. Brinton. 
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


NOTES ON INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 

A RECENT number of Nature (March 11th) 
contains an interesting review, by T. K. 
Rose, of the extraction of gold by chemical 
methods; much of the gold in oresisina 
state of very fine division, the particles be- 
ing often less than one thousandth of an 
inch in diameter, and sometimes less than 
one twelve thousandth. Such particles are 
much more readily dissolved by chemical 
means than by mercury. In sulfid ores, too, 
mercury is an unsatisfactory solvent. Such 
ores have until lately been worked by the 
chlorination process, which is now nearly 
fifty years old. The sulfids must, however, 
be very completely roasted, as the chlorin 
has a greater preference for sulfids than for 
the gold. When alkaline earths are pres- 


SCIENCE. 


615. 


ent, salt must be added in the roasting. 
This however occasions, save in the im- 
proved furnaces, a loss of chlorid of gold 
by volatilization. The ore is generally 
treated with chlorin water in large vats or 
in revolving barrels under pressure. The 
plant at Mount Morgan, Queensland, is the 
largest in the world, 1500 tons of ore being 
treated at a cost of $4.50 per ton, about 
$25 in gold being recovered for each ton. 
The gold is best precipitated from the 
chlorin solution by hydrogen sulfid, though 
iron sulfate or charcoal in boiling solution 
may be used. On account of the expense 
of roasting and the non-recovery of any 
silver in the ore, the chlorination process is 
being gradually superseded by the cyanid 
process, which, while hardly recovering the 
gold as completely as the former, can be 
used with sulfid ores directly, and which 
recovers also any silver present. It has 
been long known that potassium cyanid in 
dilute solution dissolves gold, especially in 
the presence of air, with the formation of 
potassium aurocyanid, K Au (CN)., and 
this reaction is used practically in the pro- 
cess introduced by MacArthur and the 
Forrests. The action of the cyanid is 
most rapid in one-fourth per cent. solution, 
but at the best it is slow, and Sulman and 
Teed propose to hasten it by the addition 
of cyanogen bromid. The gold is precipi- 
tated either by zinc shavings, or, less com- 
monly, by electro-deposition with iron cath- 
odes and anodes of lead foil. The use of 
zine is cheaper, but 14 to 2 dwts. of gold 
per ton of liquid remain unprecipitated, 
and the gold obtained is only about 700 
fine. The electrolytic process is more com- 
plete and the bullion produced is very fine. 
At the Worcester mine, in the Transvaal, 
seventy tons of liquid are treated a day at 
an expenditure of five horse power, and 
12,000 square feet of surface of lead are 
exposed. 

The cyanid process enables low-grade 


616 


ores to be worked successfully, and it may 
be expected that these ores, such as those 
of the Rand, will be the most important 


source of gold in the future. 
J. L. H. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 

WE record with deep regret the death of 
Professor Edward D. Cope, professor in the 
University of Pennsylvania, editor of the Ameri- 
can Naturalist, President of the American As- 
sociation for the Advancement of Science, and 
eminent for contributions to paleontology, zo- 
ology and a wide range of natural science. 
Professor Cope became seriously ill on Tuesday 
of last week and died on Monday from uremic 
poisoning. In his death science has suffered 
an irreparable loss, and for many the personal 
loss is equally severe. 

THE German Zoological Society proposes to 
hold its seventh annual meeting at Kiel on June 
9th-11th, under the presidency of Professor O. 
Butschli, of Heidelberg. Reports are expected 
from Professor Brandt on the fauna of the Baltic 
Sea, and by Professor Chun on the Siphonophora. 
The report of the editors of Das Tierreich, 
which is published under the auspices of the 
Society, will also be presented. Lectures and 
demonstrations are announced by Professor 
B. Henson on the North Sea Expedition of 
1895, by Dr. Apstein on the Methods and Ap- 
paratus of Modern Marine Biological Investiga- 
tions, and by Dr. Vanhdéffen on the Marine 
Fauna of Greenland. 


Mr. C. H. TownsEND has been appointed 
Chief of the Division of Fisheries, U. S. Fish 
Commission, while Dr. H. M. Smith is assigned 
to the Division of Scientific Inquiry. Mr. 
Townsend has been connected with the U. S. 
Fish Commission for fourteen years and has for 
a long time held the position of Naturalist on 
the Albatross which he now relinquishes. He 
is especially familiar with the fisheries of the 
Pacific Coast, including the many problems con- 
nected with the salmon canning industry, which 
is prosecuted under such varying conditions in 
the United States and Alaska that no one law 
can be made applicable to all localities. Mr. 
Townsend also has a long acquaintance with 


SCIENCE, 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 120. 


the fur seal question, and it is to his investiga- 
tions that we owe most of our knowledge con- 
cerning the food, breeding habits and migrations 
of this animal. 


A SECOND circular of the Committee of Ar- 
rangements for the International Geological 
Congress has been issued and the Committee 
announces a most attractive program. As we 
have already stated, three excursions are ar- 
ranged before the Congress: tothe Ural region, 
to Esthonia and to Finland. After the Congress 
the chief excursion is to the Caucasus, leaving 
St. Petersburg on the 24th of August in three 
groups, each under special directors. All the 
details have been worked out with the greatest 
care, and expenses are reduced to a very low 
figure by practically free transportation and by 
hospitality offered by many of the large cities. 
The Finland excursion, for example, is esti- 
mated at only fifty francs, while the very ex- 
tensive excursion to the. Caucasus is estimated 
at six hundred and sixty-five francs. The 
sessions of the Congress take place at St. 
Petersburg between the 17th and 23d of 
August, in the rooms of the Imperial Academy 
of Sciences. 


AT a meeting in the rooms of the Royal 
Society in 1898, the Prince of Wales in the 
chair, it was unanimously resolved ‘‘that the 
eminent services of the late Sir Richard Owen 
in the advancement of the knowledge of the 
sciences of anatomy, zoology and paleontology 
should be commemorated by some suitable 
memorial.’’ A fund was collected for a bronze 
statue, which has been executed by Mr. Thomas 
Brock. This statue has just been placed in the 
Central Hall of the Natural History Museum, 
where it stands facing Boehm’s statue of Dar- 
win. 

THE annual meeting of the American Insti- 
tute of Electrical Engineers will be held in New 
York on May 18th. The Council have nomi- 
nated Professor Francis B. Crocker, of Columbia 
University, for President. The Institute will 
hold a general meeting at Greenacre, Maine, 
beginning on July 26th. 

THE Women’s National Science Club met in 
the lecture room of the National Museum, 
Washington, on April 7th, 8th and 9th. Many 


APRIL 16, 1897.] 


papers were presented covering a wide range 
of scientific subjects. 

WE regret to record the death of Dr. Edson 
S. Bastin, professor of materia medica and 
botany at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, 
from cerebral hemorrhage, at the age of fifty- 
four years. Professsr Bastin’s text-books, ‘ Hle- 
ments of Botany’ and ‘College Botany,’ are 
extensively used, and he was the author of 
numerous researches in pharmaceutical botany. 


THE biological laboratory of Cold Spring 
Harbor, L. I., conducted under the auspices of 
the Brooklyn Academy of Arts and Sciences, 
will again this year be under the direction of 
Professor H. W. Conn, of Wesleyan University. 
The laboratory will be open for research work 
after the middle of June, and the regular courses 
will begin on July 7th and continue for six 
weeks. 

PROFESSOR JOHN M. MACFARLAND, of the 
University of Pennsylvania, has arranged an 
Easter botanical excursion for his students, who 
will camp in the neighborhood of Savannah, Ga. 


Mr. E. P. SHELDON, lately instructor in bot- 
any at the University of Minnesota, has accept- 
ed a commission from the National Herbarium 
to organize a field party for the exploration of 
the Blue Mountains in Oregon. He expects to 
devote at least six months to the field work. 


Proressor A. F. yoN WALDHEIM, of Warsaw, 
has been appointed Director of the St. Peters- 
burg Botanical Garden. 


THE Scientific Society of Danzig has offered a 
prize for a research on fungus epidemics in in- 
sects which are harmful to the forests. The 
thesis must be presented before the end of the 
present year. 

THE State subsidy to the fresh-water Biolog- 
ical Laboratory at Plon, under the Directorship 
of Dr. Otto Zacharias, may be withdrawn next 
year. Several German societies are, however, 
urging the Ministry to continue the subsidy, and 
special subscriptions for the laboratory have 
been opened. 


THE public meeting, which we have already 
announced, for the purpose of raising a fund for 
a national memorial to Edward Jenner in cele- 
bration of the centenary of his discovery of 


SCIENCE. 


617 


vaccination was held in the theater of the 
University of London, on March 31st. The 
chair was taken by the Duke of Westminster, 
who made some introductory remarks. Lord 
Herschell, the Chancellor of the University, pro- 
posed the first resolution, which was: ‘That 
the present is an appropriate time to inaugu- 
rate a work of national utility in honor of Hd- 
ward Jenner.’’ Lord Lister proposed: ‘‘ That 
a subscription be set on foot with a view of pro- 
moting, in connection with the British In- 
stitute of Preventive Medicine, but in amanner 
distinguished by Jenner’s name, researches on 
the lines which he initiated.’’ Lord Lister inti- 
mated that the name of the Institute of Preven- 
tative Medicine might be altered to that of the 
Jenner Institute. 


THE annual dinner of the Chemical Society, 
London, was held on March 81st, with Mr. A. G. 
Vernon Harcourt, the retiring President in the 
chair. Speeches were made by Lord Lister, Sir 
John Evans, Prof. Michael Foster and others. 
Professor Dewar is President-elect of the Society. 


THE annual dinner of the Institution of Civil 
Engineers, London, was also held on March 
3lst. Mr. J. Wolf Barry presided and addresses 
were made by Sir F. Bedford, Mr. St. John 
Brodrick, Lord George Hamilton, the Lord 
Chancellor, and the Speaker of the House of 
Commons. According to the report in the 
London Times, the president stated that 
the institution was only about 70 years old, 
and even the name civil engineer was not 
very much more than 100 years old. The 
institution now numbered about 6,000 mem- 
bers, associate members and associates, and 
about 1,000 students, making in all an in- 
dustrial army of about 7,000 persons. Their 
members labored in all parts of the world, and 
some of them were doing excellent pioneer 
work in the colonies. By a unanimous vote of 
the general meeting of the Institution held on 
the previous day a new departure had been 
taken. From the present time forward admis- 
sion to the institution would be gained either 
by scientific examination or by the submission 
of some valuable paper or thesis. He thought 
that would be found of great value to the out- 
side world, since it would be a guarantee that 


618 


a member of the institution wherever found 
possessed that amount of scientific knowledge 
on which all civil engineering must be based. 
It would also be of great value to the institu- 
tion, raising it as a body to its proper position 
and enabling it to keep pace with those great 
developments of scientific research which were 
continually being brought to light. 


A BILL before the German House of Repre- 
sentatives appropriates about two and a-half 
million dollars for rebuilding the hospitals and 
clinics of the University of Berlin, and about 
two million dollars for the establishment of the 
Botanical Gardens with its museum and the 
pharmaceutical laboratory at Dahlem. 


THE interest of the Frohschammer fund of 
the University of Munich, amounting to $400, 
is offered for an essay on ‘A Psychological 
Analysis of the Facts of Volition,’ which must be 
presented before October 1st, 1899. 


THE Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bor- 
deaux offers a prize of $600 for a paper on the 
culture of fresh-water fishes. 


THE University of St. Petersburg has received 
a gift of 100,000 roubles from M. Ssimin for a 
bacteriological observatory. 

THE Boston Museum of Fine Arts receives 
$50,000 through the will of the late Miss Mary 
G. Morrill. 

WE learn from the Revue Scientifique that the 
Geographical Society of Paris has awarded its 
gold medal to Dr. Nansen; the Ducros-Aubert 
prize, 14,000 frs. and a gold medal to Lieuten- 
ant Hourst for his expedition to the Niger, and 
gold medals to M. Flamand for his studies in 
the south of Algeria, to M. Versepuy for his ex- 
pedition across Africa, to M. Chaffanjon for his 
journey from the Caucasus to Mandjourie, to 
commander Koch for his maps of French colo- 
nies, and to M. de Flotte for his map of Mo- 
rocco. 


THE library of the late Professor G. vom 
Rath, the mineralogist, has been presented by 
his widow to the University at Bonn. 


Dr. Kuno FiscueEr, of Heidelberg, the well- 
known writer on the history of philosophy, 
celebrated on the 19th of March the fiftieth 
anniversary of his doctorate. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Voz. V. No. 120. 


PrRoFEssOR A. BASTIAN has asked for leave of 
absence for another year from the University 
of Berlin to continue his anthropological inves- 
tigations in the Kast. 

AccOoRDING to the latest reports there has 
been a decided decrease in the prevalence of the 
plague at Bombay, the number of deaths for the 
last week of which reports are at hand number- 
ing only 360, with 323 new cases. Dr. Yersin 
reports that flies as well as rats play an impor- 
tant part in the dissemination of the plague. 

In the Bulletin of the American Museum of 
National History, Dr. J. A. Allen describes a 
new species of mountain sheep from the British 
Northwest Territory, which he calls Ovis stonei. 
It is very closely related to O. dalli, from which 
it differs chiefly in the darker coloration and 
restriction of the white to well defined areas, 
and, in fact, it would seem entirely probable 
that O. stonei may prove to be merely a sub- 
species whose darker coloration is correlated 
with its more southern and less elevated habitat. 


THE Committee on Units and Standards of 
the American Institute of Electrical Engineers 
has recommended that Hefner-Alteneck Amyl- 
Acetate Lamps furnished with test certificates 
from the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt. 
at Charlottenburg, Berlin, should be temporarily 
adopted as concrete standards of luminous in- 
tensity, or candle power. It ought not to be 
necessary to go to Germany for a photometric 
standard. The existence of the Reichsanstalt 
at Charlottenburg has an undoubted influence 
on the great increase of exports from Germany. 
Figures for 1896 are not at hand, but in the 
course of the preceding five years the annual 
exports from Germany increased in value by 
nearly $250,000,000, while in the same period 
those in England decreased to the extent of 
$100,000,000. 

AT the annual general meeting of the fellows 
of the Royal Horticultural Society, London, it 
was reported that in order to celebrate the 
Queen’s long reign the Council had decided to 
strike a special medal or medallion, to be called 
the Victoria medal of horticulture, and to be 
awarded honoris causa in the domain of horti- 
culture. The Society has now £4,000 and 
wishes to increase this amount to £40,000 in 


APRIL 16, 1897. ] 


order that it may erect a horticultural hall in 
London. 


AccoRDING to the London Times Sir Claude 
Macdonald has published, in China, a report 
from Mr. Bourne, of the British Consular Ser- 
vice there, on an extraordinary landslip on the 
banks of the upper Yang-tsze, which has 
created a new and dangerous cataract in that 
river. Mr. Bourne describes the cataract as 
being situated in latitude 30° 54’ 30”, and in 
estimated longitude 109° 16’, and about half a 
mile above a small rapid called Tachang. It 
is now much the worst rapid in the Yang-tsze, 
over which junks can only go empty and even 
so with the greatest danger. The rapid was 
formed at10p. m. on the 30th of September 
last by a landslip that occurred after 40 days 
of rain. While the water was high the extent 
of the obstruction was not apparent; as the 
river sank the rapid became impassable to up- 
ward-bound junks, and remained so for about 
a month. On the 4th of December the first 
upward-bound junk was hauled over, and there 
seems a great probability that as the river 
drops further the rapid will become again im- 
practicable to the upward traffic. <A block of 
ground, measuring 700 yards north and south 
by 400 yards east and west, has fallen down 
from the slope of the mountain on the north 
bank, a distance of 150 yards, reducing the 
breadth of the river from 250 to 80 yards. 


In France the manufacture of matches is a 
state monopoly and under state control, and in 
view of the numerous cases of illness among 
the workers and the many complaints which 
have been made in the press the Minister in 
charge has asked the Academy of Medicine to 
draw up rules for the regulation of the govern- 
ment factories. According to the Lancet, the 
Academy has agreed to the following answer 
being sent to the Minister: 1. It is necessary 
to put a stop to the unhealthy conditions which 
exist in many of the match factories in France. 
2. The suppression of the use of white phos- 
phorus is the only certain way of insuring 
health to the workers in this manufacture. 3. 
The employment of perfected automatic ma- 
chinery is a costly matter and carries with it 
the condition that all dangerous operations 


SCIENCE. 


619 


should be done under glass. 4. Until these 
recommendations can be carried out as a whole 
the present unhealthiness can be diminished by 
thorough ventilation, short shifts for those men 
working in the dangerous shops, careful selec- 
tion of healthy hands, and periodical medical 
inspection, with power to prohibit the labor, 
either for a time or altogether, of anyone with 
lesions of the mouth or whose general health is 
impaired. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 


THE Medical College of the New York Uni- 
versity and the Bellevue Hospital Medical Col- 
lege have been consolidated under the control 
of the New York University. The enrollment 
of students last year in the two schools was 
1,057. 

THE Sheffield Scientific School of Yale Uni- 
versity receives $25,000 by the will of Mrs. 
Sarah Van Nostrand. 


THE department of natural history of Vassar 
College will receive about $25,000 through the 
settlement of the will of the late Jacob P. 
Giraud. 


A BILL before the Texas Senate appropriates 
for the State University $35,000 for 1897 and 
$85,000 for 1898, and in addition $42,000 an- 
nually for the medical department. 


THE trustees of the Teachers’ College have 
appointed Mr. George P. Krapp associate pro- 
fessor of the biological sciences, in conjunction 
with Professor F. BH. Lloyd. 

Dr. BECKENKAMP, teacher in the Chemical 
School at Muhlhausen, has been called to the 
chair of mineralogy at Wutrzburg; Professor 
L. Claisen, of Aix, to the chair of chemistry at 
Kiel. Dr. Gaupp has been promoted to an as- 
sistant professorship of anatomy at the Uni- 
versity of Freiburg. Dr. Boldinger has quali- 
fied as docent in analytical chemistry in the 
University of Amsterdam, and Dr. v. Buchka 
as docent in chemistry in the Polytechnic In- 
stitute at Charlottenburg. 


PRor. vy. Kriss, of Freiburg, has declined a 
eall to the chair at Berlin vacant through the 
death of Du Bois-Reymond. 


Ir is proposed to take powers to transfer the 


620 


patronage of Edinburgh Royal Botanical Gar- 
‘dens to the Crown, and to unite the Regius 
professorship and the University professorship 
of botany. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
THE BRUCE ASTRONOMICAL MEDAL. 


To THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: Miss Catherine 
Wolfe Bruce, of New York city, to whom as- 
tronomy all over the world is indebted for 
liberal and intelligent benefactions, proposes to 
found a gold medal to be awarded not oftener 
than annually by the Astronomical Society of 
the Pacific for distinguished services to astron- 
omy. The medal is to beinternational in char- 
acter and may be given to citizens of any 
country and to persons of either sex. The de- 
sign for the obverse of the medal is the seal of 
the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. The 
medal is to be 60 mm. in diameter. The re- 
verse is to bear this inscription: ‘‘ This medal 
founded A. D. MDCCCXCYVII. by Catherine 
Wolfe Bruce is presented to—(name)—for dis- 
tinguished services to Astronomy (date).”’ 

The Astronomical Society regularly awards 
also a bronze medal founded in 1890, by the 
late Joseph A. Donohoe, for the discovery of 
each unexpected comet. 

EDWARD S. HoLpEN. 


Lick OBSERVATORY. 


PROFESSOR SCOTT’S BIRD PICTURES. 

In Scribner’s, for April, Professor W. E. D. 
Scott ‘scores the conventional method of bird- 
stuffing, and furnishes eight pictures of birds 
which are stuffed according to his own ideas.’ 
Now, Professor Scott speaks from long experi- 
ence, and what he says is largely, but by no 
means wholly, to the point, for much of our 
museum work is undoubtedly bad. Whether 
or not the pictures which illustrate the article 
and are held up as examples for us to follow 
are any great improvement over our more recent 
bird work is very questionable. It might seem 
ungracious to criticise these pictures of stuffed 
birds, but when our attention is called to them 
by aggressive italics and special postal cards 
criticism would seem to beinvited. It therefore 
becomes a painful duty to say that the Clapper 
Rail and Robin are certainly not in conven- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 120. 


tional attitudes and that aside from these at 
least three of the birds are decidedly faulty, 
these, moreover, being birds with which Profes- 
sor Scott should be most familiar. The Bittern, 
p. 508, isso poised that he seems about to topple 
over backward, while his neck and free foot are 
both wrong. Ward’s Heron, p. 501, and the 
Little Blue Heron, p. 502, both have curves in 
their necks which, from the structure of their 
backbones are physically impossible. The shape 
and articulation of the neck vertebrz of herons 
is such that they always have more or less of an 
angular bend in their necks, whether these be 
extended vertically or doubled upon themselves, 
and failure to reproduce this very characteris- 
tic feature means failure to convey a correct 
idea of a heron. We may accept Professor 
Scott’s strictures, but we decline to follow his 


models. 
F, A. Lucas. 


NOTE ON A SIMPLE METHOD FOR NEWTON’S 
TOTAL REFLECTION EXPERIMENT. 


DEMONSTRATORS who have written for their 
fellows seem to have overlooked the fact that 
Newton’s beautiful experiment, showing that 
for any pair of media each color having its own 
index of refraction has, therefore, its own criti- 
cal angle, may be exhibited by much more sim- 
ple and inexpensive means than the four prisms 
usually required for that purpose. 

All that is really necessary beside the lantern 
or other means for getting a strong sharp paral- 
lel beam is a refraction tank, such as Wright’s, 
having glass ends. If this tank is set up in the 
path of the beam in such a manner that the 
light may be made to pass obliquely upward 
into the water as for total reflection it will be 
found that, by adjusting the depth of the water 
in the tank and the angle of incidence of the 
beam, the apparatus can be so arranged that 
only red rays will emerge, all others being 
totally reflected. Now, by diminishing the 
angle of incidence of the pencil on the air sur- 
face, tilting the mirror if one is used, the re- 
mainder of the spectrum may be brought in 
order out of the water, and, by reversing the 
operation, sent back again totally reflected. 
Just as in the demonstration in which the right- 
angled prisms are employed, the image of the 


APRIL 16, 1897. ] 


slit formed by that portion of the pencil which 
at every incident angle undergoes reflection is 
tinted by the rays so sent back. 

As in all such work, the sharper the beam 
the better the results, but I find the experiment 
succeeds very well indeed with the beam ob- 
tained by projecting with the ordinary optical 
front a narrow slit in the stage of my electric 


lantern. 
F. W. McNair. 


MICHIGAN MINING SCHOOL. 


SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 


Annual Report of the Geological Survey of Canada 
for the Calendar Year 1894. G. M. Dawson, 
C. M. G., LL. D., F. BR. S., Director. 

_ This yolume is No. 7 of the New Series of 
Reports of the Canadian Survey, and comprises 
1,206 pages, accompanied by eleven maps, fif- 
teen plates and diagrams, besides figures in the 
text. It is a storehouse of facts relating to the 
geology of all parts of the Dominion, and is the 
first of the reports prepared by the guiding 
hand of the new Director. 

The staff of this organization, including all 
employees, professional and ordinary, numbers 
fifty-one persons, and the total amount, ex- 
pended sum up $110,000 for the fiscal year end- 
ing June 30, 1894. The several reports are, first 
a summary of all the operations by the Director ; 
then an account of the geology of the Kamloops 
map-sheet in British Columbia, by Dr. Dawson ; 
an exploration of the Finlay and American 
rivers inthe north part of the same province, 
by R. S. McConnell; preliminary report upon 
the south part of the district of Keewatin, by 
D. B. Dowling; the geology of the southwest 
sheet of the eastern townships, by R. W. Ells 
and F. D. Adams; the surface geology of 
eastern New Bruswick, northwestern Nova 
Scotia and a portion of Prince Edwards Island, 
by R. Chalmers; upon the chemistry and min- 
eralogy, by G. C. Hoffmann; upon mineral 
statistics and mines for 1893 and 1894, by E. 
D. Ingall and H. P. H. Brumell, and many 
paleontological notes interspersed here and 
there by J. F. Whiteaves and H. M. Ami. 

Out of such a mass of information one can 
only refer to matters in which he is most inter- 
ested. 


SCIENCE. 621 


At Athabasca landing, near the Canadian 
Pacific Railway, a trial boring has been effected 
to the depth of over 1,000 feet for petroleum. 
Beds of soft Cretaceous sandstones from 140 to 
225 feet in thickness, for a distance of ninety 
miles along Athabasca river, are more or less 
saturated with bitumen. It is believed that the 
petroleum occurs in Devonian strata, which in 
the neighborhood underlie the Cretaceous. As 
the tar sands proved to be somewhat thicker 
than was expected, and yarious difficulties 
arose, partly in connection with the large sup- 
plies of gas exhaled, operations had not been 
completed at the time the report was made; 
and it was thought it would be necessary to con- 
tinue this boring five hundred feet further before 
abandoning the location. The probabilities 
seemed ample for expecting the development 
of another oil field in this district. 

The statistics of production of valuable min- 
erals give a total value of $20,950,000 for the 
year 1894, which is a slight falling off from the 
yield of the previous year. The more valuable 
products in the order of their importance are 
coal, nickel, bricks, building stone and gold, the 
last having the value of $1,042,055. British Co- 
lumbia produced the most, $456,066, followed 
closely by Nova Scotia. The Columbian mines 
are almost entirely worked in placers of Plio- 
cene age, derived from auriferous veins in the 
Carboniferous and Triassic rocks. Dr. Dawson 
states that ‘‘ British Columbia has now fairly 
entered on a period of rapid and thorough de- 
velopment of its mineral resources.”’ 

Perhaps with the idea of promoting this de- 
velopment, large spaceis given to the descrip- 
tion of the geology of the Kamloops sheet, 
with a map descriptive of an area about 
eighty miles square, just above the latitude of 
50° and comprised between longitudes 120° 
and 122°, through which the Canadian Pacific 
Railway takes its course. The aggregate thick- 
ness of the formations in this field is 79,500 
feet. The Archean is wanting, though present 
just to the east of longitude 120°. The Cam- 
brian consists of two parts: the lower, or Nis- 
conlith series—dark argillites; and the upper, 
or Adam’s Lake series—volcanic beds with ar- 
kose conglomerates; both amounting to 11,500 
feet. The Silurian and Devonian have not 


622 


been recognized. The Carboniferous or Cache 
Creek series is 12,000 feet thick, one-third 
limestone. Its character is like that of the 
corresponding limestones and quartzites of cor- 
responding age observed in our Fortieth Parallel 
Survey. The Triassic, or Nicola group, occupies 
a considerable area, with a thickness of 10,000 
to 15,000 feet comparable with the rocks of the 
same age in Nevada. The materials are largely 
volcanic, diabase porphyrites becoming amyg. 
daloidal; also agglomerates passing into diabase 
tuffs. The sediments are marine limestones 
and argillites. Certain limited areas are be- 
lieved to be Lower Jurassic, though not sepa- 
rated upon the map. 

Passing the Cretaceous development, the 
Oligocene Tertiary, or Coldwater group, is quite 
important, its materials consisting of aqueous 
deposits, conglomerates, sandstones and shales, 
in some places holding coal and lignite. None 
of the beds are marine, and all are said to 
be separated from the Miocene by uncon- 
formity. 

Fully half the area of the map is occupied 
by the Miocene, which is composed of volcanic 
rocks over 9,000 feet in thickness. The lower 
division consists mainly of augite-porphyrites ; 
the middle of fine-grained tuffs that have been 
laid down in water containing beds of lignite, 
perhaps of merchantable value, and the upper of 
basalts, melaphyres, etc., easily seen to have 
been ejected from numerous local vents. Fossil 
plants have been collected from all parts of the 
Cretaceous and Tertiary series, and serve for 
the basis of the stratigraphical reference and 
assignment. 

The granites found in the Kamloops area are 
of medium coarseness passing from biotite- 
granite to hornblende-biotite granite, are some- 
times foliated, especially near their contact 
with Paleozoic strata, and are probably post- 
Archean in age. 

Perhaps the most interesting part of the vol- 
ume is the description of the geology of the 
Montreal sheet by Dr. Ellis. This area lies be- 
tween latitudes 45° and 46°, immediately north 
of the international boundary and between 
longitudes 72° and 74°. It is the first area 
studied carefully by the Survey, as it embraced 
the vicinity of Montreal, the chief city of the 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 120. 


Dominion ; and it is interesting to United States 
geologists because the formations pass from it 
into our territory. It has also great historic 
interest, as it has been the field of vigorous con- 
troversy. 

Before 1860 it was supposed that its structure 
furnished the key to the solution of the meta- 
morphic problem of eastern America. Studies 
by Sir William E. Logan furnished the founda- 
tion for a peculiar paleontology, which referred 
the terranes southeast from the St. Lawrence 
to the horizon of the Chazy-Calciferous ; some of 
these had, in the previous decade, been referred 
to the Medina or Middle Silurian. Because of 
the accurate stratigraphical and paleontological 
studies of this area, it was claimed that the ex- 
tension of the terranes southerly defined the 
age of the crystallines of New England, all of 
them being Silurian or Devonian. The Ver- 
mont Geological Survey had accepted these 
Canadian conclusions, fortified, as they were, 
by the opinions of Professor James Hall. But 
the Vermonters could not accept Logan’s in- 
tepretation of the structure of the Green Moun- 
tains as they continued into Canada. Logan 
called it the ‘ Danville and Sutton Synclinal ; ’ 
whereas on the southern side of the boundary 
line no interpretation of the dips could justify 
any such structure. In the midst of these per- 
plexities of adjustment there came, at the end 
of the year 1860, a communication from Sir W. 
E. Logan containing a letter from Barrande af- 
firming the primordial (Potsdam) age of the 
trilobites referred by Hall to the Hudson River 
group, and the consequent abandonment of a 
belief in the Silurian age of the Olenellus slates. 
Much readjustment of the details has been re- 
quired, and it is only now, thirty-five years 
after the publication of Barrande’s letter, that 
the details are properly presented. Instead of 
the ‘Danville and Sutton synclinal’ Dr. Ellis 
gives us the ‘Sutton mountain anticline,’ and 
there are broad expanses of pre-Cambrian and 
Cambrian terranes to take the place of the for- 
mer Middle and lower Silurian. This pre- 
Cambrian Green Mountain area is about twenty 
miles wide at the international boundary, 
flanked on both sides by a Cambrian terrane and 
there by the Cambro-Silurian. On the westside 
the Calciferous sandrock seems to be absent be- 


ApRIt 16, 1897.] 


tween the Cambrian and the Chazy-Trenton 
limestones of Farnham. On the east side the 
Cambro-Silurian succession involves the refer- 
ence to alower horizon than has been commonly 
accepted, of the micaceous limestones which pass 
into the group termed the ‘Calciferous mica 
schist’ in the Vermont and New Hampshire 
reports. This reference is based upon dis- 
coveries of graptolites about Lake Memphrem- 
agog clearly of the age of the lower Trenton. 
In the St. Lawrence plain country there are 
very few strata referred to the upper Silurian ; 
but on the Memphremagog side well-defined 
Niagara and Devonian fossils are abundant. 
This area has also afforded much material for 
petrographical studies in the series of bosses 
and eruptive masses of diorites, diabase, syen- 
ites and late granites extending from Stanstead 
across the whole sheet to the Laurentian 
gneisses and anorthosites of the northwest cor- 
ner back of Montreal, a part of the original 
Laurentian area of Logan. The anorthosites 


are now clearly understood to have had an: 


eruptive origin ; and hence the original concep- 
tion of an upper Laurentian or Labrador sys- 
tem of stratified rocks is abandoned. 

The Dominion of Canada now furnishes us 
the most important field for the study of glacial 
phenomena. By slow degrees the existence of 
an outer margin and various terminal or reces- 
sional moraines has been proved for the United 
States ; and it remains needful to explore the 
districts farther north up to the Arctic regions 
in order to find additional moraines and the 
starting points of the ice movements. Dr. G. 
M. Dawson, the Director of the Survey, has 
given names to two parts of what has been 
called the continental ice mass. One is the 
Laurentian and the other the Cordilleran glacial 
sheet, each with an independent existence, but 
sending out ice streams which have coalesced 
in the great western plains. The Cordilleran 
mass was somewhat the smaller of the two, 
having at its maximum development a length 
of 1,200 miles. The main gathering ground or 
névé of this ice sheet lay between Latitudes 55° 
and 59°; and the ice flowed northerly, into 
Alaska 350 miles, westerly into the Pacific 
Ocean, southerly asmuch as 600 miles, into the 
edge of the United States, and southeasterly 


SCIENCE. 


623 


over peaks rising to altitudes of over 7,000 
feet ; thus implying a thickness of over 6,000 
feet above the principal depressions of the sur- 
face. Dr. Dawson thinks there were two max- 
imum periods of glaciations in the Cordilleras, 
followed by subsidences, in the first case 500 
and in the second to 2,500 feet below the level 
of to-day. There are numerous terraces of 
boulder clay and white silts corresponding to 
these levels. Indeed, judging from the descrip- 
tions and views of these high terraces, there is 
nothing comparable with them anywhere else 
upon the continent. 

From the report of Mr. Low it would appear 
that the central part of the Labrador peninsula 
was the gathering ground of the Laurentian 
ice sheet, from which glaciers flowed off in all 
directions, notably to the west, east and south. 
The strive indicating the westerly movement are 
the least distinct. 

Mr. Robert Chalmers reported upon the sur- 
face geology of the maritime provinces. He finds 
evidence of ice movements northerly and east- 
erly from the higher elevations in northern New 
England and Quebec, as well as southerly in the 
St. Johns valley. No ice reached the peninsula 
of Nova Scotia from the mainland except to a 
very slight degree; and the glaciation effected 
is explained by supposing radial movements 
from the Cobequids and the watershed of the 
main peninsula. The general conclusion drawn 
is that there was no movement from the St. 
Lawrence valley up and over the New England 
highlands towards the sea. All the phenomena 
are to be explained upon the theory of local 
glaciers moving outwardly to all quarters of the 
compass from the greater mountains. Instead 
of our going to Canada for the source of the 
New England glaciation, the Canadians now 
come to the White and Green mountains in 
search of the ice which brought débris into the 
St. Lawrence valley. The writer would remark 
that these conclusions are undoubtedly correct 
for one of the later epochs of glaciation. The 
glaciers of the Champlain age entering the St. 
Lawrence valley, both from the Labrador penin- 
sula and the New England summits, brought 
icebergs which floated over Montreal and Que- 
bec and induced the severe climate, lasting for 
a long time, which was suitable for the habita- 


624 


tion of the boreal mollusca, For this reason 
the till of the lower St. Lawrence valley seems 
to have been deposited under marine condi- 
tions, covering up all the marks made by the 
earlier ice sheets. Hence it is not strange that 
the Canadian geologists have so generally given 
the largest place to icebergs in their conceptions 
of the work done in the ice age. 

The perusal of this volume clearly shows the 
great efficiency of the Director and his assist- 
ants in carrying on the work so ably com- 
menced by Logan and Selwyn. The field work 
has been carried on economically and success- 
fully. While theories of divers kinds are ad- 
vocated, there seems to be no attempt to distort 
the facts to square with preconceived notions, 
and all will hope that abundant means will be 
continuously supplied to the survey organiza- 
tion to carry on its explorations in a manner 

- honorable to the Dominion government. 
C. H. HircHcock. 


Tables for the Determination of Minerals by Phys- 
ical Properties ascertainable with the aid of a few 
field Instruments based on the system of Prof. 
Dr. Albin Weisbach. By PERSIFOR FRAZER. 
Lippincott. 1897. 4th edition enlarged, 
163 pp. 

The first edition of this book appeared in 
1874 and has been followed by the succeeding 
editions at varying intervals (1877, 1891, 1896). 

This is really an authorized translation of the 
German work of Weisbach, to which Professor 
Frazer added the empirical formule best repre- 
senting the data at hand. Few changes were 
made till the publication of the third edition 
which appeared rewritten and considerably 
changed in detail, though following the lines 
laid down in the first edition. The chemical 
formule previously used were replaced by those 
given by Groth in his ‘ Tabellarische Uebersicht 
der Mineralien,’ and to the tables were added 
the characteristic habit, structure, fracture, 
specific gravity and association of the minerals. 

The present edition is an enlarged and cor- 
rected reprint of the preceding. To the seven 
hundred and sixty odd species and subspecies 
previously included, there have been added a 
hundred and thirty-five others, which embrace 
several old and well known species, like micro- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 120. 


cline, and many minerals which recently have 
been described or rendered of economic im- 
portance, like monazite. 

As in the earlier editions, the only instruments 
necessary are a knife, streak table, file and 
pocket lens. The classification is based on the 
lustre, streak and hardness, thus dividing the 
minerals into sixteen different classes upon 
criteria which are easily determined by the 
practical manipulator. The book is intended 
to be of service to the student, as an artificial 
aid to memory; to the field geologist, as a re- 
minder and handy book of reference for proper- 
ties of unusual minerals ; and to the amateur, 
as an incentive to more accurate observations. 

The author, for the sake of economy, in 
using the old electrotype plates, has, in a meas- 
ure, decreased the value of the book, as their 
use has caused the retention of features which 
to-day savor of an earlier period in mineralogy. 
At the present time there is a tendency to dis- 
card even the well known crystallographic 
symbols of Naumann in favor of the Miller sys- 
tem. The present book, however, retains the 
abbreviated Naumann symbols suggested by the 
elder Dana, without incorporating the modifica- 
tions introduced in the last edition of E. 8. 
Dana’s Manual of Mineralogy. A still more 
pronounced archaism is the introduction of 
such ‘mineral species’ as pitchstone and perlite 
which belong to rocks and not to minerals. 
Similar criticism might be passed on the am- 
biguous use of the term ‘andesite,’ which on 
page 92 is used to designate a mineral, while on 
page 99 it designates a rock; or the term pegma- 
tite, which is given as a varietal name for ortho- 
clase. 

Turning to the tables themselves, there seems 
to be looseness in the choice of values given for 
hardness and specific gravity ; the habitat or 
association of the minerals, and the symbols 
used as abbreviations. 

In turning over the pages, the eye catches 
such deviations from the hardness, as on page 
90, where the opal is ranked as ‘5’ (Dana 
5.5.-6.5), or the separation of ‘andesite’ on 
page 92 from laboradorite on page 100 (both 5- 
6). The choice of values for density may be 
illustrated by those given in the mica group, 
where the higher limits seem to be preferred, 


Aprrt, 16, 1897.] 


though micas generally give lower values than 
the true on account of their crystal habit. For 
example, Lepidolite 2.9 (2.8-2.9), biotite 2.9 
(2.7-8.1), muscovite 3. (2. 76-3.), phlogopite 2.9 
(2.78-2. 85). 

In spite of these slight deviations, which un- 
dermine one’s faith in the accuracy of the book, 
there is little doubt that the tables will prove 
serviceable to the practical worker who wishes 
to gain at a glance the approximate values of 
the substance under investigation. 

The typography of the book is good, the type 
is clear, and the matter is well spaced. An es- 
pecially attractive feature is the size, which is 
adapted to the collecting bag or pocket. The 
few instruments required, the use of the exter- 
nal and physical properties only, the notes on 
the paragenesis, and the great number of 
rarer minerals, will make it serviceable alike to 
the field geologist, the mining engineer and the 
teacher. 

K. B. MATHEWS. 


Traité élémentaire de mécanique chimique, fondée 
sur la thermodynamique. P. DUHEM. Paris, 
A. Hermann. 1897. Vol.I. Large octavo. 
Pp. vili+299. Price, 10 francs. 

The object of this book is to give a consistent, 
coherent account of the mathematical theory of 
the changes in physical state and chemical 
constitution, as obtained by an application of 
thermodynamics. This would be valuable even 
if badly done, since the mathematical treat- 
ment of physical chemistry in book form is 
painfully deficient in comparison with the ex- 
haustive handling of the experimental side of 
the subject by Ostwald. This particular book 
is doubly valuable because it not only gives us 
the mathematical development of the subject, 
but presents it in a masterly way. 

Duhem begins with a short sketch of the ana- 
lytical methods to be used, and then develops the 
fundamental principles of thermodynamics, tak- 
ing up in order the conservation of energy, the 
first law of thermochemistry, the theorem of 
Carnot-Clausius and the absolute temperature, 
the entropy and the thermodynamic potential, 
the general equations of thermodynamics, the 
application of the thermodynamic potential to 
systems at constant pressure or constant vol- 


SCIENCE. 


625 


ume, perfect gases, isothermal displacement of 
equilibrium, heat effects, adiabatic displace- 
ment of equilibrium and the change of the 
equilibrium with the temperature. The re- 
marks on the accuracy of Hess’s law, page 49, 
are especially worth reading because the points 
raised are usually overlooked in the statement 
of the theorem. 

The second part of the volume—devoted to 
false equilibria and explosions—is even more 
interesting than the first part because the point 
of view is less familiar. Duhem has been 
troubled like many others by the fact that in 
certain cases there was a state of equilibrium 
when the theory, as formulated, said that this 
was impossible. Gibbs showed that many of 
the difficulties could be removed by the assump- 
tion that the surface of a phase was in a dif- 
ferent state from the interior—in other words, 
by the theory of capillarity. Duhem attempts 
to carry this farther by introducing the notion 
of viscosity or of false equilibrium. His idea 
can best be understood by an analogy from 
mechanics. Suppose we have a body on an in- 
clined plane. In an ideal state of things where 
there is no friction the body is not in equilib- 
rium and will slide down the inclined plane. 
In the world as it is we can not get rid of fric- 
tion entirely and the body will remain stationary 
on the plane, provided the pitch is not too great. 
Similarly, if there were no passive resistance to 
change, water vapor and a mixture of hydrogen 
and oxygen in the proportions in which they 
combine to form water should yield the same 
system under the same conditions, At low 
temperatures this is not the case experimentally, 
so far as we now know; so that it is natural to 
follow out the analogy and to say that in the 
actual chemical world there is a chemical fric- 
tion or chemical viscosity and that states of 
equilibrium are thus possible which could not 
occur in a system where there were no passive 
resistances to change. 

Duhem now attributes to capillary phenom- 
ena the behavior of supercooled vapors and 
superheated liquids, and he is inclined to group 
under this head supercooled solutions, super- 
saturated solutions and some theoretically un- 
stable solid allotropic forms, classifying under 
false equilibria hydrogen and oxygen, liquid 


626 


phosphorus, silicon trichlorid and many other 
substances. It is a question whether this is 
justifiable. It seems irrational to put rhombic 
and monoclinic sulphur in one class and the 
two modifications of phosphorus in another ; 
but it is certainly interesting, and the applica- 
tion of his theory to the point of reaction, to re- 
action velocities and to explosions deserves 
careful attention. It will interest many to note 
that Duhem’s view of a mixture of hydrogen 
and oxygen as being actually in equilibrium at 
low temperatures is not reconcilable with the 
Ostwald-Nernst idea that it is not a case of 
equilibrium at all, but rather of immeasurably 
low reaction velocity. A fairly strong argu- 
ment can be made out for either view, and the 
scientific world owes thanks to Duhem for mak- 
ing the question a live one. 
WILDER D. BANCROFT. 


Trigonometry for Beginners. ReEy. J. B. Loce, 
M,. A. Revised and enlarged by Joun A. 
Minter, A. M., Indiana University. New 
York, The Macmillan Company. 1896. 200 
pp. Price, $1.10. 

Trigonometry, of all elementary branches of 
mathematics, might easily substantiate its right 
to be considered the most congenial and popular 
subject that necessarily claims the attention of 
engineers and practical men, otherwise but little 
inclined to sympathize with the purest in the 
science. Led on by its numerous and interesting 
applications, many a student, without being 
aware of it, has taken his first step in the theory 
of functions, acknowledged the results to be fas- 
cinating as well as eminently practical, and gone 
his way to rail atthe higher theory, quite un- 
conscious of the spectacle he thereby makes of 
himself. The natural result of this favoritism 
has been a steady improvement in the quality 
of the text-books produced in trigonometry 
until such works as that of Chauvenet and, 
to mention a lessambitious book, that of Wells, 
challenge competition successfully for a series 
of years. 

With a new edition of Lock’s Trigonometry, 
-The Macmillan Company enters the field, and 
with its usual business sagacity have secured 
its revision by an American. Professor Miller 
has certainly earned the right to have his name 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 120: 


on the cover, indeed, because of additions and 
improvements far less necessary and funda- 
mental many a man would have called the 
volume his own. As claimed, the new edition 
corrects the fundamental weakness of its prede- 
cessor by carefully emphasizing the necessity 
for proofs for all relations, especially for the 
addition formula, that are rigidly correct for all 
values of the angles involved. ‘To this end, as 
is necessary, we find clear demonstrations of 
such relations as, for example, sin (90° + 4) = 
cos A for all values of A. This enables the 
author in 279, while attempting to generalize 
the addition formula, to write. 
sin [90°++(4’+ B) ]= cos(A’+ B), 0< A? < 
90°, 0< B< 90°. 

He then remarks since A’ and B are now both 
less than 90° we may write 

cos (4’ + B) =cos A’ cos B—sin A’ sin B. 

( 2 76). 
There is certainly a flaw in the general ac- 
curacy of the argument up to this, the 
pivotal point of trigonometric analysis, for 
2 76 does not completely justify this ex- 
pansion, since the demonstration to which 
reference is made depends upon a figure 
representing both A’ and B, as in the first 
quadrant, and their sum also as in the first 
quadrant, whereas, in the case before us, we 
have no means of knowing whether A’ + B is 
greater or less than ninety degrees. In fact, 
before analytic demonstrations for particular 
cases can be accurately defended, geometric 
demonstrations must be given for 0° << 4 < 90°, 
0° < B<90° for the four possible cases under 
this head, namely, 
(A+ B)< 90°, (A+B)>90°, 
(A— B) <0°. 

On the other hand, it must be admitted that the 
author, in paragraph seventy-eight, calls atten- 
tion to the fact that a similar construction will 
apply to all possible cases, and even gives a 
third example, different from either, of those 
that are necessary. The criticism is, however, 
that, since up to this point unusual effort has 
been made to demonstrate the addition theo- 
rems, this is certainly not a good place to leave 
necessary steps to the student. 

Like most English text-books, the present 


(A—B)>0°, 


APRIL 16, 1897. ] 


volume is very rich in illustrative examples 
carefully and admirably adapted to meet the 
requirements of both teacher and student. In- 
deed, this feature of the book will be its strong- 
est recomendation to many practical teachers. 
In revising the work Professor Miller has placed 
Chapter VII., which, in the old edition, followed 
Chapters VIII. and IX. in its logical position, 
and by thus developing first the Cartesian sys- 
tem of coordinates has succeeded in making the 
results of the later chapters general. To this 
portion of the text other tables might be added 
to some advantage, for example, one tabulating 
the values of functions of angles that are multi- 
ples of five, and one giving an expression for 
each function in terms of the others. While 
of undoubted worth as a means of reference, 
such tables, it might be argued, are of doubtful 
value from a pedagogic standpoint. At least 
they should be required to be established by 
every student of trigonometry, and it would 
have been well to have required them among 
the examples. The book is also unique in 
respect to the absence of the time-honored 
figures illustrating the positions and compara- 
tive lengths of the functions other than the sine 
and cosine in the different quadrants of a circle 
whose radius has been assumed as the unit. 
Here, again, the omission may be defended on 
the ground that nine students out of ten, having 
these figures for the special case in mind, will 
carry to the graye the impression that the 
functions are lines instead of ratios. Neverthe- 
less, they are of value in mechanical drawing, 
and especially as affording a ready means of 
prompting the memory in the thousand and 
one simple relations they illustrate, and by con- 
stant emphasizing of the ratio definitions on the 
part of the teacher they can be used without 
confusion of ideas. 

The added chapter on inverse functions, and 
the one that has been much improved on the 
solution of trigonometric equations, are valuable 
and essential parts of the new edition, the 
importance of which will not be underestimated 
by the advanced student of mathematics. 
Finally the analytic portion of the plane trigo- 
nometry is completed by the establishment of 
the so-called tangent formula, a—b:a+ b= 
tan 4 (A—B): tan 4 4+ B), by a direct de- 


SCIENCE. 


627 


velopment from the rigidly demonstrated addi- 
tion theorems. Many of the old treatises prove 
this formula, probably because of its importance, 
geometrically, and lose thereby in generality. 
The geometric proof is of exceeding interest, 
however, and the present demonstration would 
be emphasized and the book gain in pedagogic 
strength were it given in a foot-note with a 
corresponding valuable reference to its limita- 
tions. 

In outline the design of the book is to discuss, 
in the first thirteen chapters, the general theory 
of the trigonometric functions; then, in chapter 
fourteen, to give a short review of the theory 
of logarithms followed by a discussion of the 
solution of the triangle, and, finally, by two 
short chapters giving applications to engineer- 
ing and geometrical problems. This is the 
time honored arrangement, certainly in the 
hands of a good teacher sufficiently effective. 
As our author says, ‘‘the discussion of logarithms 
belongs properly to algebra,’’ and as a rule the 
student has met with them during the preced- 
ing term’s work, but has, nevertheless, far from 
mastered their application and still less their 
theory. Why not then begin at once with a 
review of the theory of logarithms and insure 
a thorough mastery of their application by con- 
stant practice from the beginning? While the 
student is learning about angular measurement 
and the trigonometric ratios the class can be 
exercised in the evolution of complicated nu- 
merical expressions and in the solution of loga- 
rithmic equations, and, as soon as the functions 
are developed, a large number of the applications 
to right triangles reserved for the last chapters 
may be discussed immediately, affording new 
material for logarithmic work, thus arousing 
at the start the keen interest of the practical 
mind. 

The last thought has been acted upon by the 
author. Pages 10, 11, 26 and 27 are filled with 
practical problems of a most interesting charac- 
ter, all of which, however, are intended for 
solution without the aid of logarithms. 
Finally Professor Miller has added two short 
chapters, in which he develops the theory of 
the solution of spherical triangles. Here, asin 
the plane trigonometry, the author is fully alive 
to the limitations of geometric proof and care- 


628 


fully renders the fundamental formula cos a= 
cos 6 cos c + sin b sin c cos A perfectly general, 
and then by basing all further deductions on 
this one determines rigorously all necessary 
relations. 

To some teachers it may seem that on this 
feature of the work too much emphasis is laid, 
and that too much time, and, possibly, clearness 
and definiteness are sacrificed to this end. On 
the other hand, the careful student will main- 
tain that this one feature should recommend 
the book most highly, for long after the pupil 
has forgotten what a cosine is he will have re- 
tained the habit of mind which distinguishes 
clearly between the general and the particular, 
and will be less apt to make that most frequent 
of all mistakes in logic, that of arguing to the 
former haying proved the latter. Certainly, if 
the present criticism is at all just, enough has 
been said to put in evidence the fact that Pro- 
fessor Miller has succeeded, at important points, 
in improving Lock’s trigonometry, and his 
work will assuredly be found acceptable to 
many educators. 

So far as the publishers are concerned, the 
typographic results are excellent; different 
types have been employed with useful discrimi- 
nation, and a cheerful appearance is given 
through liberal use of space. The book, how- 
ever, is, for practical use, large. It contains 
two hundred pages, is heavier than Chauvenet, 
while containing only one-fourth as much sub- 
ject-matter, and three times as heavy as Wells, 
while, save for some sixty pages devoted to 
logarithmic tables of questionable value, it does 
not contain any more. The student of Lock’s 
text book in its present dress will certainly 
receive the impression that trigonometry is a 
very large subject indeed, and the probabilities 
are that he will never entirely recover from 


this, his first impression. 
J. B. CHITTENDEN. 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. 


SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS. 
THE ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL, MARCH. 
Résumé of Solar Observations Made at the Royal 
Observatory of the Roman College During the Sec- 
ond Half of 1896: By P. TAccuini. A general 
summary of solar observations, giving the dis- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 120. 


tribution in latitude of spots, facule and promi- 
nences during the period indicated. 

Oxygen in the Sun: By ARTHUR SCHUSTER. 
In a short note Professor Schuster calls atten- 
tion to the close agreement in wave-length be- 
tween two of the triplets of the ‘compound line 
spectrum’ of the oxygen and two of Young’s 
chromosphere lines. In view of the recent 
opening of the question of the existence of oxy- 
gen in the solar atmosphere, Professor Schuster 
suggests that an accurate determination of the 
chromorpheric lines in question be made. 

The Yerkes Observatory of the University of Chi- 
cago—lI. Selection of the Site: By GEORGE E. 
HALE. The writer gives a review of the con- 
siderations that led to the selection of the 
site of the Yerkes Observatory. A general 
discussion of the points to be considered 
in the selection of an observatory site is fol- 
lowed by a discussion of the conditions to be 
met in the case in hand. 

Preliminary Table of Solar Spectrum Wave- 
lengths: By HENRY A. ROWLAND. 

On the Occurrence of Vanadium in Scandina- 
vian Rutile: By B. HASSELBERG. The paper 
describes the detection of the heretofore unsus- 
pected existence of Vanadium in Norwegian 
and Swedish Rutile. The research was entirely 
spectroscopic. 

A New Formula for the Wave-lengths of Spec- 
tral Lines: By J.J. BALMER. The author dis- 
cusses a generalization of his formula for the 
hydrogen spectrum. This formula, which is 
generally known under the name of ‘ Balmer’s 


2 
law,’ is 2, = 3645.6 7 By introducing a new 
_. (+e)? on 
constant c, we have 4, =a (aaa) =n which is 


found to satisfy the series of lines hitherto in- 
vestigated by Kayser and Runge by the aid of 


B C 


the formula = —4————. Balmer’s new 


ne? nt 
law is similar to that due to Rydberg, except 


that the latter considered the value of as to 


be constant for all elements. Several geomet- 
rical constructions based upon the formule are 
given. 

Minor Contributions and Notes, Reviews of 
Recent Astrophysical Literature. 

Bibliography of Recent Astrophysical Literature. 


APRIL 16, 1897. ] 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 
BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON—273D 
MEETING, SATURDAY, MARCH 18. 

A PAPER by R. T. Hill and T. W. Vaughn 
on ‘The Lower Cretaceous Gryphzas of the 
Texas Region’ was presented by Mr. Vaughn. 
He spoke of the abundance of the individuals 
of this genus and their value in determining 
the location of artesian wells, the various species 
being characteristic of certain strata. He traced 
the phylogeny of the species and dwelt at some 
length on their involved synonymy. 

Chas. F’. Dawson spoke of the ‘ Dissemination 
of Infectious Diseases by Insects,’ instancing 
the manner in which tuberculosis, swine plague, 
Texas fever and anthrax could be thus spread. 
The speaker described his own experience with 
flies, stating that from their habits they were 
particularly liable to convey disease. 

Under the title, ‘The Type (?) of a New-Old 
‘Species,’ William Palmer spoke of the confusion 
which existed in regard to certain genus of 
birds, stating that while Linnzeus had originally 
given a specific name to what he believed to 
be a cosmopolitan species, he had subsequently 
admitted a second species, based on a plate, 
while another author had described a third from 
still another plate. There was no type existing 
of any of these, while the authors of the 
second and third species had no specimens when 
they established their names. Mr. Palmer 
stated that two distinct birds had been confused 
under the three names, and that he proposed 
to separate them, basing his description on a 
bird which he had selected among numerous 
specimens. Would this specimen, to which a 
binomial name and definite description were 
attached for the first time, be a type? 

Sylvester D. Judd, in a paper entitled ‘Sex- 
ual Dimorphism in Crustacea,’ limited himself 
to the Amphipoda. He stated that while in 
certain genera the males and females were very 
similar, there were other genera where second- 
ary sexual characters were so marked that 
different sexes of the same species might be 
thought by the casual observer to belong to dif- 
ferent genera. Theanterior and posterior parts 
of Amphipoda are the parts that present sec- 
ondary sexual characters. The antenne are 
particularly subject to variation; in some 


SCIENCE. 


629 


species the inferior antenna is several times as 
long in the male as it is in the female. In 
other species the caudal end of the body of the 
male is monstrously developed. The hairs that 
occur on the anterior and posterior parts of the 
body are differently disposed, thus only in the 
males of Byblis do the antennal hairs form 
brushlike tufts, and in a number of other genera 
the hairs on the antennze of the males are modi- 
fied into elaborate sense organs called calceoli. 
It appears that the parts of the body of Amphip- 
oda which exhibit secondary sexual characters 
often coincide with those parts upon which 
specific differenti: are founded. 
F. A. Lucas, 
Secretary. 


ZOOLOGICAL CLUB, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, 
MEETING MARCH 4. 


I. Cleavage of the Egg of Arenicola. The 
cleavage belongs to the type known as ‘spiral,’ 
or better oblique. There is considerable yolk 
in the egg and it is almost evenly distributed 
before segmentation. In the four-cell stage 
there are three smaller cells and one very large 
one representing nearly half the entire egg. 
All the cells contain yolk. The two ‘cross- 
furrows’ on the upper and lower poles of the 
egg are parallel and are formed by the blasto- 
meres B and D; the cross-furrow at the lower 
pole is much longer than the other, however, 
and is perfectly constant up to a stage shortly 
before the closure of the blastopore, thus afford- 
ing an invaluable means of orientation. The 
future median plane passes at right angles to 
this furrow and thus forms an angle of 45° with 
each of the first two cleavage planes. The 
upper pole forms the anterior end and the lower 
pole the posterior end of the worm. 

Ectoblasts, mesoblasts and entoblasts are 
formed in the usual way. The cells X and M 
(vid. Wilson, Nereis) are by far the largest 
cells in the egg. Primary trochoblasts, sixteen 
in number, arise from first quartet and are 
supplemented later by three cells from each of 
the small micromeres of the second quartet, 
which complete the prototroch except dorsally, 
where a break is left. Through this space four 
cells, derivatives of the first quartet, pass and 
come to lie posteriorly to the pototroch. The 


630 


first bilaterally symmetrical division in the egg 
(58-cell stage) is the fourth division of the blasto- 
meres of the first quartet, viz., the formation 
of the apical cross of eight cells. There are no 
head-kidneys, and the cell corresponding to the 
nephroblast remains on the surface as a small, 
inconspicuous ectodermal cell. 

The ventral or somatic plate grows as in 
Amphitrite. Thesecond bilaterally symmetrical 
division in the egg is the third division of the 
large posterior cell (X). A smaller cell is given 
off anteriorly and lies across the median plane. 
The somatic plate broadens laterally and pos- 
teriorly, the lateral portions growing posteriorly 
faster than does the central portion, so that 
finally the cells along the posterior edge begin to 
meet in the median line just dorsal to the blasto- 
pore. The point where this concrescence begins 
is the point where the paratrochappears. This 
organ is formed from derivatives of X, but by 
an entirely different set of divisions from those 
which take place in Amphitrite, according to 
Dr. Mead’s very kind personal communication. 
Within the paratroch are enclosed certain small 
cells which later become the proctodeum. 

The first bilaterally symmetrical division of 
the mesoblast occurs at the seventy-cell stage. In 
the entomeres a fifth quartet is formed and the 
three cells of the fourth quartet divide bilater- 
ally. No further divisions occur before the 
closure of the blastopore. 

The first bilateral division, in the small ecto- 
meres, in the large X cell, in the mesoblast and 
in the entomeres all occur at very different 
periods in development but in the same generation 
of cells, viz., the eighth, counting the unseg- 
mented egg as the first. 

Gastrulation is a combination of invagination 
and epiboly. The mesoblast shows the first 
sign of invagination; then the entomeres also 
elongate inward until they form a column ex- 
tending to the ectoderm of the upper pole. 
Now the ectomeres overgrow their lower sur- 
face from the sides and ventrally, forming a 
triangular blastopore with its short base directed 
ventrally. The cells forming the lateral and 
ventral lips of the blastopore are twelve deriva- 
tives of the third quartet of ectomeres and later 
form the stomodeum. The proctodzal region 
should probably be regarded as a part of the 


SCIENCE. 


-their formation. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 120. 


blastopore, for it is originally continuous with 
the rest of the opening. It becomes separated 
from the stomodzeum by the postero-anterior 
concrescence of the somatic plate. The gastrula. 
is bilaterally symmetrical and its axis corre- 
sponds to none of the principal axes of the 
adult. 

During the closure of the blastopore the meso- 
blast bands are forming in the interior of the 
egg. In this case we have an actual change of 
the plane of the mesoblast bands through nearly 
90°, 7. e., from nearly dorso-ventral to longi- 
tudinal. The first cells of the bands are given 
off almost ventrally, but with each successive 
division of the mesoblasts the direction of the 
spindle is more nearly longitudinal with respect 
to the egg, until finally the cells of the bands 
arise anteriorly from the mesoblasts. 

A word concerning the cleavage of Sternaspis 
scutata may be added here. This was worked 
out as far as the 80-cell stage by the author of 
this paper and corresponds, cell for cell, with 
that of Arenicola, differing, however, as regards 
size and structure of blastomeres and order of 
Sixteen relatively large cells 
corresponding to the primary trochoblasts of 
Arenicola are formed, but Sternaspis possesses 
no prototroch and these cells form part of the 
ectoderm. 

II. The Oblique Cleavage and its Relation to the 
Mosaic Theory. After a review of the positions 
held by Roux, E. B. Wilson, Driesch, Hertwig, 
etc., the following arguments were given 
against the mosaic theory as applied to the 
oblique cleavage. 

1. The failure of cell-homology in a rapidly 
increasing number of cases. 

2. The very different size and structure in 
different species of blastomores which have the 
same normal fate. 

3. Experimental work. Professor Wilson and 
Mr. Crampton err in regarding the experiments 
of the latter on Jlyanassa as supporting the 
mosaic theory, for in most cases ‘regeneration ’ 
occurs. Mr. Crampton himself states in the 
text that in } and + embryos the endoderm cells 
are completely overgrown by ectoderm, and also 
gives figures illustrating the same fact. Itis, of 
course, impossible for ectoderm cells, which 
normally cover only the outer surface of cer- 


APRIL 16, 1897.] 


tain endoderm cells, to overgrow in the } and 
} embryo all sides of these cells and thus com- 
pletely enclose them, unless ‘ regeneration’ or 
‘postgeneration’ occurs. Consequently Mr. 
rampton’s so-called } and } embryos have at 
least made an attempt to become whole em- 
bryos, and Crampton and Wilson are wrong 
when they state that the power of ‘regenera- 
tion’ or ‘ postgeneration ’ is entirely absent. 

A number of other points in this work were 
mentioned as affording evidence against instead 
of for the mosaic theory, even as modified by 
‘Wilson. 

In general terms, the oblique cleayage is, of 
course, the result of the organization of the egg. 
It may be pointed out that it is the form of 
cleavage which brings each cell into contact 
with the greatest number of other cells. It is 
certainly not ‘mechanical’ in Wilson’s sense, 
for even the constant direction of obliquity 
cannot be explained in this way. 

O. Hertwig’s view of the organization of the 
egg cannot be regarded as sufficient to explain 
the facts. Examples were given showing the 
extreme differences in the allotment of yolk in 
different species even when the yolk was simi- 
larly placed in the unsegmented egg. There is 
an organization more fundamental than the 
visible one, which governs both the form of 
cleavage and the position of yolk in the blas- 
tomeres. 

The egg appears to be a complex of sub- 
stances possessing the power to produce an 
embryo and through this anadult, by a series of 
processes not as yet understood. Visible locali- 
zation in the egg or early cleavage stages, 
which is only a localization of protoplasm and 
deutoplasm, does not necessarily imply a corre- 
sponding location of the morphogenetic factors. 
The facts rather appear to indicate that what 
we call the morphogenetic factors are the pro- 
cesses going on in the egg as a whole. Any 
strictly cellular theory of development must be 
inadequate, as Dr. Whitman has shown. 

In the final analysis the organization of the 
egg is dependent on the structure of the ‘idio- 
plasm.’ This would seem to favor Dr. Whit- 
man’s view that the egg has a definite organi- 
zation from the start. The localization of 
protoplasm and deutoplasm, however, which 


SCIENCE. 


631 


we find in the mature egg must be acquired 
during ovigenesis. C. M. Cup. 


TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB, MARCH 9, 1897. 


THE Secretary announced the conditions of a 
grant now offered from the funds left by Pro- 
fessor Newberry for encouragement of research, 
to be supplied successively to zoology, botany, 
geology and paleontology.. For the present 
year the award is offered in geology or paleon- 
tology to amount to $50.00, payable July 15, 
1897, the competitors to belong to the Scientific 
Alliance of New York City. 

The scientific program was then taken up, 
the evening being devoted to the subject of 
ferns, with papers as follows: 

1. Mrs. Elizabeth G. Britton, ‘ Notes on some 
Mexican Ferns,’ presented in Mrs. Britton’s 
absence by Dr. Rusby, with exhibition of nu- 
merous specimens, including species of Pellza, 
Polypodium, Cystopteris and Cheilanthes. Dr. 
Rusby, having been himself present at their 
collection, described vividly the tongue of hard, 
black lava on which the collectors walked, and 
which was filled with large cavities often form- 
ing caves, containing some accumulation of soil 
and crowded with a luxuriant growth of ferns, 
although in November and practically the win- 
ter season. 

2. Mr. Willard N. Clute, ‘The New York 
Stations for Scolopendrium.’ Mr. Clute con- 
trasted the wide distribution of the Hart’s- 
tongue fern in the old world, from the Azores 
to Japan, with the extremely local North 
American occurrence, in five areas only, 
Mexico, Tennessee, central New York, Owen 
Sound, in Ontario and New Brunswick. The 
central New York locality was made known 
early in the present century through John 
Williamson, and was visited by Pursh in 
July, 1807, who found it five miles west 
of Syracuse on the farm of J. Geddes, where 
it has recently been rediscovered. About 
1827 Wm. Cooper discovered it at Chittenango 
Falls, where Mr. Clute found hundreds of plants 
growing last summer. Mr. Clute described the 
Chittenango ravine and its ferns. On sunny 
exposures of the limestone walls of the ravine 
grow rue spleenwort and purple cliff-brake in 


632 


quantities; in shady places the slender cliff- 
brake ; on the talus upon the larger bowlders 
the walking fern, and in the shade of these 
bowlders the Scolopendrium, chiefly in clus- 
ters of 2 to 6, at first erect, finally somewhat 
drooping, and ripe in September. Mr. Clute 
added that the species seems to be increasing at 
present, being now under the protection of an 
association. 

8. The third paper was by Mr. B. D. Gilbert, 
of Utica, N. Y., entitled ‘New and interesting 
Ferns from Bolivia,’ with exhibition of speci- 
mens of two new ferns, a species of Blechnum 
and a new variety of Nephrodiwm villosum, the 
first peculiar in being fully pinnate, the second 
in being a one-sided dwarf persistently under a 
foot and a half high, instead of 4 or 5 feet as 
its type. 

4, The fourth paper, also by Mr. Gilbert, 
‘Jamaica, the Fern-Lover’s Paradise,’ de- 
scribed the abundance of species and of indi- 
viduals which the speaker had collected there, 
illustrating the subject by numerous specimens. 
He remarked that Swartz in his Species Filicum, 
1783-6, enumerating all then-known ferns, de- 
scribed 709 species, of which 149 were from 
Jamaica; the Jamaican number was raised to 
800 by Grisebach and now to 500 by resident 
botanists there, an estimate confirmed by Mr. 
Gilbert. Probably no other equal area pro- 
duces half that number. Among reasons which 
account for this are the warm latitude of 
Jamaica, its south shore sheltered from cooler 
breezes by a mountain wall, its mountains 
themselves rising to 7,000 feet and reaching 
into a cool temperature climate, and its great 
variation in moisture, with daily rains in the 
mountains and sometimes but twice in six 
months on the plain. 

EDWARD 8. BURGESS, 
Secretary. 


BOSTON SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 


A GENERAL meeting was held January 2, 
1897; forty-three persons present. Professor 
W. O. Crosby gave an account of the dike-like 
masses of sandstone that occur in the granite 
of the Pike’s Peak massif in the Ute Pass, 
Colorado. For an Abstract see SCIENCE, page 
604 above. 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 120. 


The Society met February 3d; one hundred 
and six persons present. 

Mr. William C. Bates spoke of Venezuela 
and British Guiana, giving a brief historical ac- 
count of their discovery, and describing, with 
the aid of a series of stereopticon views, various 
points of interest connected with their natural ~ 
history, scenery and people. 

SAMUEL HENSHAW, 
Secretary. 


THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE OF ST. LOUIS. | 


AT the meeting of the Academy of Science of 
St. Louis held on the evening of April 5, 1897, 
Professor Frederick Starr, of the University of 
Chicago, briefly addressed the Academy on the 
functions of such organizations, with especial 
reference to local problems. Mr. H. C. Irish 
presented a paper on the relations of the un- 
folding of plants in spring to meteorological 
conditions, in which were embodied deductions. 
drawn from a series of observations made at 
the Missouri Botanical Garden, and those by 
other observers, extending back to the time of 
Stillingfleet, in the last century. Mr. Charles 
Robertson presented for publication a paper 
entitled ‘North American Bees—Descriptions 
and Synonyms.’ 

Wm. TRELEASE, 
Secretary. 
SCIENCE CLUB OF THE UNIVERSITY OF 
WISCONSIN. 


AT the regular meeting of the Club held 
March 11th the only paper of the evening was 
by Wm. B. Miller on ‘Pulmonary Architec- 
ture.’ The object of the paper was to show 
that in the structure of the lung there is a de- 
finite relation of the bronchi, blood and lymph 
vessels to each other; and that there is to be 
found in the lung the same as in the liver, in- 
testines and other organs, a wnit which repeats. 
itself throughout the entire organ, and that 
when this unit is understood there is little 
difficulty in understanding the whole organ. 
The paper was illustrated by means of numer- 
ous models, macroscopic and microscopic prep- 


arations. 
Wm. S. MARSHALL, 


Secretary. 


hod aN C 


NEw SERIEs. 
Vou. V. No. 121. 


Fripay, Aprit 23, 1897. 


SINGLE Copixs, 15 cts. 
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to ts condition at any geological epoch, allowance being made for original limitation and subsequent erosion. He will also recognize 
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to state that the work has been executed with care and fidelity.”’ State Geologist, JAMES HALL, New York, wrote: ‘Maps con- 
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useful apparatus for teaching Geology, by representing to the eye of the student the areas of superimposed formations, 1 cordially 
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Dec. 1, 1896. Just Published. Sixth Edition of 
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SCIENCE 


EpiToRIAL CommittEE: S. NEwcoms, Mathematics; R. S. WoopwARD, Mechanics; E. C. PICKERING, 
Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THURSTON, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry; 
J. Lz Conte, Geology; W. M. DAvis, Physiography; O. C. MaRsH, Paleontology; W. K. 
Brooks, C. HART MERRIAM, Zoology; S. H. SCUDDER, Entomology; N. L. BRITTON, 
Botany; HENRY F. OSBORN, General Biology; H. P. BowpitcuH, Physiology; 
J. S. BILLines, Hygiene ; J. McKEEN CATTELL, Psychology ; 
DANIEL G. BRINTON, J. W. POWELL, Anthropology. 


Fripay, Aprit 23, 1897. 


CONTENTS: 
The Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics: E. D. 
COPE Reecciecson cote saenseestcencle socsecetecsarsecerecees 633 
Organic Selection: J. MARK BALDWIN.............. 634 
What is a Type in Natural History? CHARLES 
SCHUCHER Dp eoncenececesteneseeceasectsenccccssteceeseaere. 636 
The Fauna of Central Borneo: GEORGE R. STETSON.640 
Semon on the Monotremes: J. H. McG.........-......643 


Notes on French Geography: F. P. GULLIVER......644 
Current Notes on Physiography :— 

Is Green River Antecedent to the Uinta Mountains ? 

Santa Catalina Island, Cala.; Notes: W. M. DAvi1s.647 
Current Notes on Meteorology :— 

Winter Storms on the Coast of China: The ‘ Iltes’ 

Typhoon ; Angot’s ‘The Aurora Borealis:’ R. 

IDICL WANTED pocconocgancdnnsabecnoponescacooagasedcoqnceINdd 649 
Current Notes on Anthropology :— 

The Jewish Physical Type ; On Wampum Records ; 

6 


The Otomis: D. G. BRINTON 
Notes on Inorganic Chemistry: J. L. H 
Scientific Notes and News .............0sscsee++ 


Oniversity and Educational News..........0...s0scseseees 
Discussion and Correspondence :— 
Mr. Lowell’s Observations of Mercury and Venus : 
EDWARDS. HOLDEN. Further Considerations on 
the Systematic Position of Tarsius: CHARLES 
EARLE. The Coming Ice Age: C. A. M. TABER. 
The Smithsonian Table at the Naples Station: 
CHARLES WARDELL STILES..........0....-0000+ eenee e506 
Scientific Literature :— 
Scott’s Introduction to Geology: H.S. WILLIAMS. 
Russells Glaciers of North America: HARRY 
FIELDING Rep. Meteorological Reprints: R. 
DEC. WARD. Goodman on Archaic Maya In- 
scriptions: D. G. BRINTON. ......c0.ccsccscescsseeees 659 
Scientific Journals :-— 
The American Chemical Journal: J. ELLIOTT 
GILPIN. Terrestrial Magnetism; The American 
Physical Educational Review: G. W. F 
Societies and Academies :— 
The Scientific Association of the Johns Hopkins 


University: CHARLES LANE Poor. The Bio- 
logical Society of Washington: F. A. LUCAS...... 667 
EN CWEB OOM Stensentcstoctccsscusccsscduccccscasseereesmttecetoe 668 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended 
for review should be sent to the responsible editor, Prof. J. 
McKeen Cattell, Garrison-on-Hudson, N. Y. 


THE INHERITANCE OF ACQUIRED CHARAC- 
TERISTICS.* 


ProFeEssor Copr’s defense of the doctrine 
of the inheritance of acquired characters 
was selected from the evidence contained in 
his book, ‘ The Primary Factors of Organic 
Evolution.’ He referred especially to the 
history of the moulding of the articulations 
of the vertebrate, and especially of the 
mammalian skeleton, of which such com- 
plete series has been furnished by paleon- 
tology. The forms of the articulations he 
believed to be the result of their move- 
ments, for the reason that they could be 
formed artificially, as the result of experi- 
ment, Or in consequence of Inxations. He 
believed that the resulting forms have been 
inherited, because they are found in the 
embryo before the animal has had an op- 
portunity of developing the structure for 
himself by interaction with the environ- 
ment. 

He admitted the justice of Dr. Minot’s 
demand for an explanation of this phe- 
nomenon. He stated that the preforma- 
tionists offered no explanation, and, indeed 
so far as he could see, none was possible 
from their point of view. The epigenesis- 
ists could, on the contrary, appeal to the 


* Abstract of Professor Cope’s part in the discus- 
sion by Professors Minot, Macfarlane, Cope and 
James before the Boston meeting of the American 
Society of Naturalists, prepared at the request of the 
editor by the late Professor Cope. 


634 


phenomena of memory as a plausible ex- 
planation. Stimuli from without and from 
within the organism leave a record on the 
brain-cells which give the form to con- 
sciousness, when the latter invades them, 
along the guiding lines of associations. 
Why should not the germ-plasma be capa- 
ble of a similar record of stimuli which is 
expressed in the recapitulatory growth of 
the embryo? He thought that the evi- 
dence pointed to such a process. These 
stimuli affected the soma and the germ- 
plasma simultaneously in accordance with 
the doctrine of Diplogenesis, but that the 
soma only records results in each tissue 
which are appropriate to the functions of 
thesame, while the germ-plasma and brain- 
cells may record them all. The certainty 
of record in both cases he supposed to de- 
pend on the frequency and strength of the 
impression, as is known to be the case with 
the memory ofthe mental organism. Hence 
mutilations or single impressions are rarely 
recorded, while those due to the constant 
and habitual movements are recorded, and 
form the physical basis of growth and of 
evloution of type. 

He further remarked that the belief that 
natural selection originates structure cannot 
be entertained, as paleontological evidence 
shows that evolution has proceeded by very 
gradual additions and subtractions of char- 
acter, which required long periods to be- 
come of any value in the struggle for ex- 
istence, sometimes an entire geological 
period being occupied in the elaboration of 
a character to structural usefulness. 

Finally he referred to the physical mech- 
anism of mental phenomena, and stated 
that some physiologists require a com- 
pleted machine for the performance of 
special mental functions. The speaker 
called attention to the fact that the funda- 
mental sensations do not even require a 
nervous system for their expression. Thus 
Protozoa appear to experience the sensa- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 121. 


tions of hunger, temperature and the mus- 
cular sense of resistance. Hence it is as 
true of the physical basis of mental as of 
other functions that the function produces 
the structure, while structure merely spe- 
cializes or perfects function. 


ORGANIC SELECTION. 


In certain recent publications* an hypoth- 
esis has been presented which seems in 
some degree to mediate between the two 
rival theories of heredity. The point of 
view taken in these publications is briefly 
this: Assuming the operation of natural 
selection as currently held, and assuming 
also that individual organisms through 
adaptation acquire modifications or new 
characters, then the latter will exercise a 
directive influence on the former quite in- 
dependently of any direct inheritance of 
acquired characters. For organisms which 
survive through adaptive modification will 
hand on to the next generation any ‘ coin- 
cident variations’ (7. e., congenital varia- 
tions in the same direction as adaptive 
modifications) which they may chance to 
have, and also allow farther variations in 
the same direction. In any given series of 
generations, the individuals of which sur- 
vive through their susceptibility to modifi- 

*H. F. Osborn, Proc. N. Y. Acad. of Sci., meeting 
of March 9 and April 13, 1896, reported in SCIENCE, 
April 3 and November 27, 1896. C. Lloyd Morgan, 
‘Habit and Instinct,’ October, 1896, pp. 307 ff., also 
printed earlier in SCIENCE, November 20, 1896. J. 
Mark Baldwin, discussion before N. Y. Acad. of Sci., 
meeting of January 31, reported in full in SCIENCE, 
March 20, 1896, also Amer. Naturalist, Juneand July, 
1896. The following brief statement has been pre- 
pared in consultation with Principal Morgan and 
Professor Osborn. I may express indebtedness to 
both of them for certain suggestions which they 
allow me to use and which I incorporate verbally in 
the text. Among them is the suggestion that “Or- 
ganic Selection’ should be the title of this paper. 
While feeling that this cooperation gives greater 
weight to the communication, at the same time I am. 
alone responsible for the publication of it. 


APRIL 23, 1897.] 


cation, there will be agradual and cumula- 
tive development of coincident variations 
under the action of natural selection. The 
adaptive modification acts, in short, as a 
screen to perpetuate and develop congenital 
variations and correlated groups of these. 
Time is thus given to the species to develop 
by coincident variation characters indis- 
tinguishable from those which were due to 
acquired modification, and the evolution of 
the race will proceed in the lines marked 
out by private and individual adaptations. 
It will appear as if the modifications were 
directly inherited, whereas in reality they 
have acted as the fostering nurses of con- 
genital variations. 

Tt follows also that the likelihood of the 
occurrence of coincident variations will be 
greatly increased with each generation, 
under this ‘screening’ influence of modi- 
fication; for the mean of the congenital 
variations will be shifted in the direction 
of the adaptive modification, seeing that 
under the operation of natural selection 
upon each preceding generation variations 
which are not coincident tend to be elimi- 
nated.* 

Furthermore, it has recently been shown 
that, independently of physical heredity, 
there is among the animals a process by 
which there is secured a continuity of social 
environment, so that those organisms which 
are born into a social community, such as 
the animal family, accommodate themselves 
to the ways and habits of that community. 
Professor Lloyd Morgan,; following Weis- 
mann and Hudson, has employed the term 
‘tradition’ for the handing on of that 
which has been acquired by preceding gen- 
erations; and I have used the phrase 
‘social heredity ’ for the accommodation of 


*This aspect of the subject has been especially 
emphasized in my own exposition, American Natu- 
ralist, June, 1896, pp. 147 ff. 

} Introduction to Comp. Psych., 
’ Habit and Instinct,’ pp. 183, 342. 


p. 170, 210, 


SCIENCE. 


635 


the individuals of each generation to the 
social environment, whereby the continuity 
of tradition is secured. * 

It appears desirable that some definite 
scheme of terminology should be suggested 
to facilitate the discussion of these prob- 
lems of organic and mental evolution ; and 
I therefore venture to submit the follow- 
ing: 

1. Variation: to be restricted to ‘ blasto- 
genic’ or congenital variation. 

2. Accommodation: functional adaptation 
of the individual organism to its environ- 
ment. This term is widely used in this 
sense by psychologists, and in an analogous 
sense by physiologists.} 

3. Modification (Lloyd Morgan): change 
of structure or function due to accommoda- 
tion. To embrace ‘ontogenic variations’ 
(Osborn), 7. e., changes arising from all 
causes during ontogeny. 

4. Coincident Variations (Lloyd Morgan): 
variations which coincide with or are sim- 
ilar in direction to modifications. 

5. Organic Selection (Baldwin): the per- 
petuation and development of (congenital) 
coincident variations in consequence of ac- 
commodation. 

6. Orthoplasy (Baldwin): the directive or 
determining influence of organic selection 
in evolution.{ 

7. Orthoplastic Influences (Baldwin): all 
agencies of accommodation (e. g., organic 
plasticity, imitation, intelligence, etc. ), con- 

* ‘Mental Development in the Child and the Race,’ 
1st ed., January, 1895, p. 364, ScIENCE, August 23, 
1895. 

+ Professor Osborn suggests that ‘ individual adap- 
tation’ suffices for this; but that phrase does not mark 
well the distinction between ‘accommodation’ and 
‘modification.’ Adaptation is used currently in a 
loose general sense. 

{ Eimer’s ‘orthogenesis’ might be adopted were 
it possible to free it from association with his hy- 
potheses of ‘ orthogenic’ or ‘determinate’ variation 
and use-inheritance. The view which I wish to 


characterize is in some degree a substitute for these 
hypotheses. 


636 


sidered as directing the course of evolution 
through organic selection. 

8. Tradition (Lloyd Morgan): the hand- 
ing on from generation to generation (in- 
dependently of physical heredity) of ac- 
quired habits. 

9. Social Heredity (Baldwin): the process 
by which the individuals of each generation 
acquire the matter of tradition and grow 
into the habits and usages of their kind.* 


J. Mark BAaLpwin. 


PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, 
March 13, 1897. 


WHAT IS A TYPE IN NATURAL HISTORY? 


Aut naturalists concede that type speci- 
mens constitute the most important ma- 
terial in a museum of natural history. The 
true appreciation of this fact, however, is 
of recent date, and is shown in the numer- 
ous lately published catalogues of types pos- 
sessed by different museums. The greater 
number of these publications have appeared 
in England and America. This just valua- 
tion of type material in recent years has 
come about through the work of specialists 
in their efforts to monograph groups of 
organisms. In those branches of natural his- 
tory where original descriptions are usually 
accompanied by figures, the value of type 
material is not so apparent as where no 
figures are given, but in all branches of this 
science except bacteriology, it is upon the 
type material that the entities of natural 


* Professor Lloyd Morgan thinks this term unneces- 
sary. It has the advantage, however, of falling in 
with the popular use of the phrases ‘social heritage’ 
and ‘social inheritance.’ On the other hand, ‘ tradi- 
tion’ seems quite inadequate; as generally used it 
signifies that which is handed on, the material; while 
in the case of animals we have to deal mainly with 
the process of acquisition. ‘Social heredity’ also 
calls attention to the linking of one generation to an- 
other. However, I think there is room for both 
terms. For further justification of the terms ‘ Social 
Heredity ’ and: ‘ Organic Selection,’ I may refer to 
the American Naturalist, July, 1896, pp. 552 ff. 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. Von. V. No. 121. 


history and its taxonomy rest. It is there- 
fore of the greatest importance to learn the 
whereabouts of types. The object of this 
article, however, is not to point out the 
great scientific value of type specimens, but 
to determine what constitutes a type and 
what kinds of types exist. 

There is considerable diversity of opinion 
as to what is meant by a type. One writer 
states that ‘“ By a type is meant the original 
specimen to which any generic or specific 
name was first assigned.’”** 

The late Dr. G. Brown Goode writes 
that 


By a typeis meant a specimen which has been used 
by the author of a systematic paper as the basis of 
detailed study, and as the foundation of a specific 
name. In cases where a considerable number of 
specimens has been used, it is desirable to separate 
one or more as being the primary types, while the 
other specimens, which may have been used in the 
same study for the purpose of comparison, may be 
regarded as collateral types.t 

A mammalogist further states that ‘“‘ The 
word ‘type’ itself, when first intro- 
duced, was meant to refer to the particular 
specimen (in the singular) originally de- 
scribed, but it was soon naturally applied 
to any individual of the original series, if 
more than one specimen was examined by 
the describer.’’} 

These citations clearly show that a type 
is not always restricted to a single speci- 
men selected by an author, but also applies 
to several, or even to all the specimens con- 
tained in the original lot. Moreover, the 
word type has been applied to specimens 
sent out by the author of a species, but not 

*T. McKenny Hughes, Catalogue of the Type Fos- 
sils in the Woodwardian Museum, Cambridge, 1891 ; 
prepared by Henry Woods. 

{Circular letter of July 1st, 1893, to Curators in 
the U. 8S. National Museum. 

{Suggestions for the more definite use of the word 
‘type’ and its compounds, as denoting specimens 
of a greater or less degree of authenticity, by Old- 


field Thomas. Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1893, pp. 
241-2. 


APRIL 23, 1897.]: 


described in the original paper. Students 
of parasitic insects often rear numerous in- 
dividuals from a single mother of a new 
species, any one of which is naturally as 
much like the type as those selected by the 
author. Some of the individuals of such 
broods are distributed to other workers and 
museums as types. For a clear description 
of a new species a paleobotanist may re- 
quire as many individuals as there are 
specimens selected for study, all of which 
are regarded as types. Because of the 
general imperfection of fossils, much of the 
original material is usually accepted by pa- 
leontologists as types, but when specimens 
are figured, as is the general custom, it is 
good practice to regard these alone as types. 
The writer is not aware that any inverte- 
brate paleontologist in America ever con- 
siders a species to be based upon a single 
specimen, if others are present at the time of 
original publication. Itis doubtful if many 
species, living or extinct, can be defined 
from a single individual; hence the multi- 
plicity of types is generally a necessity. 
In birds and mammals, where the sexes 
usually exhibit marked differences, there are 
seasonal modifications, a bony skeleton, 
geographical and individual variation, and 
stages of growth, and all these parts and 
variations require material for the proper 
and final interpretation of species. The 
practice of selecting a single example as the 
type, however, has its advantages, since all 
doubt is thus removed when a new spe- 
cies is later found to contain diverse ele- 
ments. 

The writer believes that it is possible to 
harmonize all these different conceptions as 
to what constitutes a type. The following 
is, therefore, offered as an expression of in- 


dividual opinion, in the hope that biologists : 


will, when necessary, emend the different 
definitions here given or offer new ones, so 
that a proper terminology in regard to 
types may come into general use. 


SCIENCE. 


637 


KINDS OF TYPES. 

Type Material.—This includes all speci- 
mens which have served as the basis for 
published primary and supplementary de- 
scriptions and figures. Mere lists of names 
should not be regarded as based upon 
‘type material ;’ neither should typical un- 
described specimens of the original series 
identified by the author of a new species, 
nor the reared original duplicates of a 
series out of which the type material was 
selected, be sent out to collectors and 
museums as types. There are, therefore, 
two great groups of type material: primary 
and supplementary types. These may be 
defined as follows: 

Primary Types.—These are the described 
or figured specimens of any new species. 
There are three kinds of primary types: 
holotype, cotype and paratype. ‘To these 
may be added a fourth, plastotype, includ- 
ing all artificial reproductions moulded di- 
rectly from some primary type. 

Supplementary Types.—These consist of 
the described or figured specimens used in 
publication in extending or correcting 
knowledge of a previously defined species. 
For such type material the term hypotype 
(hypo=under or sub, and typos=type) may 
be used. For artificial reproductions 
moulded directly from a supplementary 
type, hypoplastotype may be useful. 

The collective term, ‘type material,’ 
therefore includes all specimens used in 
publications and upon which the entities 
of natural science are founded. ‘ Primary 
types’ include only the material of a new 
species, while ‘ supplementary’ or ‘ hypo- 
types’ are those specimens supplementing 
knowledge of a previously defined species. 
The various kinds of primary types may 
be defined as follows : 

Holotype (holos=whole or entire, and 
typos=type).—A holotype in natural history 
is a particular individual deliberately se- 
lected by the author of a species, or it 


638 


may be the only example of a species 
known at the time of original publication. 
A holotype, therefore, is always a single in- 
dividual, but may embrace one or more 
parts, as the skin, skeleton or other portions. 
When a holotype is selected, but other 
specimens are.also described, the latter 
must be known as paratypes. When no 
holotype is selected, and more than one 
specimen is described, all become cotypes. 
Therefore, the original material of any 
species cannot include a holotype and co- 
types, but may include a holotype and 
paratypes, or all may be cotypes. 

In cases where a holotype is selected, 
but no description or designation is given 
to distinguish it from the associated ma- 
terial, the holotype practically does not 
exist. 

In cases where a holotype has been 
selected, but the diagnosis is found to 
contain more than one species, the re- 
maining material will always constitute 
the paratypes. These will not neces- 
sarily remain as such under another 
name, but will always be the paratypes of 
the new species as interpreted by its author. 

The author of a new species having failed 
to select a holotype, no subsequent author 
ean do this for him. No just law is retro- 
active. However, there are two exceptions 
which appear not to violate this law: first, 
when the original definition includes, two 
or more species ; and second, when no holo- 
type is selected and but a single example is 
figured. Further remarks on these excep- 
tions follow : 

In cases where a single individual is 
originally figured, no holotype being se- 
lected, and the original diagnosis is known 
to be based upon several examples, it is 
recommended that the figured one be re- 
garded as the holotype by subsequent 
authors. The remaining material described 
will, therefore, be changed from cotypes to 
paratypes, since out of the original series the 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 121. 


holotype has been selected. (See definition. 
of cotype. ) 

Where the original diagnosis is without 
illustrations and contains more than one 
species based upon cotypes the first subse- 
quent author is at liberty to select from 
these a holotype for the old species, adher- 
ing as far as can be ascertained to the in- 
tention of the original author. For the other 
new species, if any, he may select from the 
remaining cotypes, or from other material 
in his possession, the holotypes or cotypes 
of his new species. 

In cases where a new species is not 
directly based upon material, but upon the 
published description of an earlier author, 
the specimens of the latter become the type 
material of the new species. The kind of 
type then present will depend on whether 
in the original description a holotype had 
been selected. 

A species described or new and proving to 
be a synonym does not affect the type ma- 
terial of the species with which it is 
synonymous. All such synonymous ma- 
terial, however, should be carefully pre- 
served arid marked as holotype or cotype 
under the original name as well as under 
the one of which it is known to be a 
synonym. 

Cotype (or associate type).—Cotype was 
introduced by Waterhouse, and is defined by 
Oldfield Thomas as follows: ‘‘ A cotype is. 
one of two or more specimens together form- 
ing the basis ofa species, no type [holotype] — 
having been selected. Nospecies would have 
both [holotype] and cotype, but either the 
former [or holotype and paratype], or two 
or more of the latter.”’ In cases where the 
cotypes are unmarked and cannot be dis- 
tinguished from the balance of the original 
series the only safe plan to follow will be 
to regard all the original material of a new 
species as cotypes. If such specimens are 
sent out to collectors and museums they 
should be marked as cotypes. 


APRIL 23, 1897.] 


Paratype (para=beside, and typos =type). 
—‘‘A paratype is a specimen belonging to the 
originalseries, butnotthetype [holotype], in 
cases where the author has himself selected 
a [holotype]. It should, however, be one 
of the specimens * * * [described] in the 
original description.” The present writer 
has removed from this definition of Thomas, 
the words ‘ mentioned or enumerated’ and 
substituted ‘described.’ Specimens merely 
mentioned or enumerated add no characters 
to the description of a species. Lists of 
specimens giving measurements, however, 
do add to the knowledge of a species, and 
are to be regarded as type material, either 
as paratype, cotype or hypotype, as the case 
may be. 

A paratype may be subsequently selected 
as a holotype when it proves to be a new 
species and is not the species to which it 
was originally referred. 

Plastotype (plastos = formed or moulded, 
and typos = type) .—Any artificial specimen 
moulded directly from a primary type. 
There are many specimens of this kind in 
existence, cast directly from fossils, and 
these are often quite as good as the 
originals. No models, however, can be in- 
eluded, since they are not cast from type 
material. Artificial casts made from sup- 
plementary material will become plasto- 
types if a specimen from which the repro- 
duction was made is subsequently used for 
the founding of a new species. 

In this connection it may be well to give 
a name to artificial casts made from sup- 
plementary types, since some have a very 
decided value. For instance, many arti- 
ficial casts are in museums of one of the 
supplementary types of the trilobite Isote- 
lus gigas, the only one preserving the 
ventral limbs. For such the term hypoplasto- 
type may be useful. 

In paleontology fossils are sometimes 
described and illustrated from artificial 
casts or squeezes made from natural rock 


SCIENCE. 


639 


cavities from which the fossils have been 
leached. Such plastotypes are not to be re- 
garded as type material. The natural 
moulds from which they are made, how- 
ever, should always be so considered. 


TYPICAL MATERIAL. 


Mr. Thomas has also proposed the terms 
‘topotype’ and ‘metatype.’ The material 
to which these terms are applied has not 
served in publication, but simply refers to 
typical material, either derived from the 
type locality (topotype) or derived from 
the type locality and identified by the au- 
thor of a new species (metatype). 

These were defined as follows: Topo- 
type—‘A specimen simply collected at the 
exact locality where the original type was 
obtained.’  Metatype.—‘A specimen re- 
ceived from the original locality after the 
description has been published, but deter- 
mined as belonging to his own species by 
the original describer himself.’ 

Genotype (genos = race, and typos =type). 
—Genotype applies to any typical material 
of the type species of a genus. The ma- 
terial, however, should be, if possible, from 
the original locality of the species, or a geno- 
type should also be a topotype or metatype. 
Therefore there may be as many genotypes 
of Lingula as there are museums having 
characteristic specimens of Lingula ana- 
tina. 

MARKING OF TYPE MATERIAL. 


All type material should be plainly and 
permanently marked to distinguish it from 
other specimens. If this is carefully done, 
much doubt will be removed for subsequent 
students. When such material is large, as 
birds and mammals, a small highly colored 
card or apiece of plain zinc may be at- 
tached, upon which should be printed or 
stamped the proper term indicating the 
kind of type and the museum catalogue 
number. In paleontology it is the custom 
to glue small colored tickets upon the type 


640, 


material in addition to the catalogue num- 
ber, when sufficiently large to permit of 
this without covering too much of the speci- 
men. The small specimens are placed in 
numbered vials or boxes. In the Wood- 
wardian Museum (Cambridge) type fossils 
are mounted on blue tablets. This ar- 
rangement, however, has the disadvantage 
of giving the exhibition series a checkered 
appearance, and should the specimens be- 
come loosened and displaced there is danger 
of the types being overlooked. 
CHARLES SOCHUCHERT. 


THE FAUNA OF CENTRAL -BORNEO. 

In 1893 the Netherlands Commission, es- 
tablished for the purpose of promoting re- 
search into the natural resources of the 
Dutch colonies, united with a similar so- 
ciety formed in Batavia composed of 
merchants, financiers and government offi- 
cers in organizing an expedition of scien- 
tists to central Borneo, a hitherto scientific- 
ally unexplored region. 

Herr Buttikofer was the zoologist of the 
expedition and presented an account of its 
results to the third International Zoological 


Congress, held last year at Leyden, and his. 


report has since been printed in the Compte- 
rendu of the Congress. 

To zoologists it is hardly necessary to say 
that Herr Buttikofer is the distinguished 
curator of the Zoologischen Reichs Museum 
in Leyden, and the author of ‘ Reisebilder 
aus Liberia’ (Leyden, H. T. Brill, 1890), 
the best zoological and sociological study of 
that country which has been made, and 
which in its minute descriptions of animal 
life is superior to any work upon any part 
of the African continent with which we are 
acquainted. 

The work of the expedition was divided 
intosix departments : Geology, Mineralogy, 
Botany, Zoology, Anthropology and Eth- 
nography. Of these geology and mineralogy 
were assigned to Professor Molengraaff, of 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 121. 


Amsterdam; Botany, to Dr. Hallier, of 
Buitenzorg (Java); anthropology and eth- 
nography to Dr. Nieuwenhuis, who was also: 
medical officer; and zoology to Dr. Butti- 
kofer, as before stated. Each had perfect 
control of his own department as to the field 
of research and the time to be spent. 
In anthropology and ethnography not 
much could be expected, as they require a 
much longer residence and acquaintance 
with the native populations than such ex- 
peditions usually afford. 

“In my own department,” says Herr But- 
tikofer, “I had the valuable assistance of a 
black man, Max Moret, a soldier in the 
Dutch army who had before accompanied 
Professor Selenka in his Borneo journey.” 
“The natives became interested in my 
department and willingly lent me a helping 
hand.” 

Herr Buttikofer reached Batavia, Novem- 
ber 1, 1898, and during his three weeks’ 
stay in Java made an excursion to the Pre- 
anger regencies, and to the lofty mountains 
Gedeh and Pangerango, where he obtained 
among other specimens the very rare 
Merulajavanica. Leaving Java on November 
17th, he landed at Pontianak, on the west 
coast of Borneo, and ascending the mighty 
river, Kapuas, established a central station 
at Smitau. The river being in flood, the 
hunting was confined to birds and other 
tree-living animals, and many new speci- 
mens were obtained. 

In December they moved on to Mt. Ken- 
epai (1200 metres), near the borders of 
Sarawak, where on higher ground a better 
field was found. Ascending the mountains, 
they pitched their tents half way to the sum- 
mit and found the life most romantic. ‘“ In 
the early dawn we were awakened by the 
loud jodelling of gibbons and the ear-split- 
ting shriek of the Rhinoceros birds, after 
which, as the morning advanced, the other 
members of the winged orchestra joined in 
the chorus.” 


APRIL 23, 1897.] 


The rain and fog and the resulting hu- 
midi ty were very annoying, as the specimens 
dried at the fire when taken away, imme- 
diately became wet again. “The orangutans 
amused themselves by swinging in the tree 
tops over our heads.’’ From the isolated 
peak of Kenepai the view was beautiful and 
disclosed here and there in the forest-covered 
plain the waters of the Kapuas and Kenepai 
stretching out into a chain of lakes ; on the 
north Mt. Tutup reared its head, its foot hills 
forming the southern boundary of Sarawak. 

Returning to Smitau in February, 1894, 
the specimens were prepared for shipment, 
and at the end of the month a new start 
was made for the Mandai river, one of the 
principal tributaries of the upper Kapuas, 
and having its source in a great group of 
mountains, which sends out the Mandai and 
the Melawi on the west, the Barito on the 
south, and the southern tributaries of the 
Mahakkam, on the east coast. Ascending 
the Kapuas to the mouth of the Mandai, 
the journey was pursued in small boats, 
through a flat, uninteresting and tiresome 
country, until the rapids were reached. 

At Nanga-Raun, the next stopping place, 
reached in five days, they built a roomy hut. 
In that mountainous region, Herr Biit- 
tikofer chose for exploration Mt. Liang- 
kubung. About 2,500 feet up its side he 
camped in one of the dry grottoes, inhabited 
by large numbers of the native Punans, 
and there remained from the 10th of March 
to the beginning of May, 1894. 

The hunting, while rough and tiresome, 
gave excellent results, and many new speci- 
mens were procured, such as the Sciurus 
whiteheadi and the Calyptomena hosei, hereto- 
fore only known in north Borneo. Fresh 
foot prints of the rhinoceros were also seen ; 
on the summit the only evidence of life in 
the grave-like silence was the forest blood- 
leech, the pest of the mountain climber 
in Borneo, which fell upon them murder- 
ously. 


SCIENCE. 


641 


Returning to Poetoes Sibau on the 5th of 
May, Buttikofer and party went up the 
Sibau as far as Poelau, the only settlement 
in the whole Sibau valley, and again re- 
turning to Poetoes Sibau, joined Dr. Nieu- 
wenhuis and Professor Molengraaf in the 
journey to the Mahakkam region. Con- 
cluding his résumé of the various journeys 
he remarks: ‘‘I confined my work to the 
region of the upper Kapuas, under the 
equator, because of the isolation of the dis- 
trict and the ignorance concerning it, and 
as a result I lack many specimens of species 
belonging to the coast.” 

The mammalia and birds of Borneo can 
best be compared with those of the known 
islands of the Hast Indian archipelago, and 
I have, therefore, few new specimens, al- 
though working in an entirely unknown re- 
gion. This demonstrates that the fauna of 
the Kapuas region is identical with the 
Sarawak and upper Borneo. I am of the 
opinion, as a result of my observation, that 
the lateral diffusion of animals is of much 
greater interest than the altitudinal, and 
that this observation can be used to illus- 
trate the speculative theory of the eleva- 
tion and depression of the Malay archipelago 
and the island of Sundain. 

While Borneo, from a zoo-geographical 
point of view, resembles Java and Sumatra 
and the adjacent islands, as well as the 
peninsula of Malacca, it nevertheless shows 
a constant tendency to deviate. Fora good 
classification of the mammalia of Borneo we 
have to thank an Englishman, Mr. Chas. 
Hose, who gives 146 species, of which he 
has collected the greater part. The number 
found by me in the Kapuas region is about 
66, divided as follows: Apes and Lemurs 
12, Bats 18, Insectivora 10, Carnivora 7, 
Rodents 13, Artiodactyls 3, Perissodactyls 
2, Edentates 1. 

Among the mammalia the greatest inter- 
est centers on the orangutan, which is met 
with in the mountain region dividing Dutch 


642 


Borneo from Sarawak. It seems to avoid 
the valley forests as well as the higher alti- 
tudes, the central region of its dispersion 
being between Sambas and Batang Lupar- 
Seen. There they are so plentiful that 
Moret, who after my departure hunted for 
them to gather embryo material, found in 
thatregion alone 139 specimens in 3 months. 
How far north this distribution reaches 
cannot be ascertained from Mr. Hose, who 
himself does not seem to have met them. I 
conclude that the northern limit of distri- 
bution is not above southern Sarawak. 

Eastward the distribution is limited, and 
it is not found east of Batang Lupar-Seen, 
and to the Sibau-Djaks it is only known 
by name. At the sources of the Kapuas it 
is not found. The cause of this limited 
distribution is not obvious, for the region 
of wild figs and similar fruit greatly ex- 
ceeds its range and the climate does not 
vary. Another region in which it is found is 
the great alluvial plain of south Borneo, 
where it inhabits the swampy forests as 
far as the coast. The numerous specimens 
in the Leyden museum came from this re- 
gion. Their color varies from a dusky red 
to a russet brown. 

The attempt has been made to separate 
the dark varieties into a distinct species to 
which the name Simia morio has been given. 

The orangutan lives exclusively in the 
tops of the trees and in his search for food 
covers a large territory; it does not like 
the gibbons, which are much more active, 
swing itself to a great distance, because 
of its great size, and is sometimes forced 
to descend. After eating it can be hunted 
with great ease by a practiced shot, but un- 
less mortally wounded or shot in the arms 
it is impossible to bring it down. If 
a mother is shot with her young by her, 
the latter can be easily captured and readily 
tamed. The habit of the Maias (which is the 
Djak name of the orang) is to build it- 
self a nest which he uses at night. 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. Von. V. No. 121. 


In the forests of the Kenepai, where it is 
often met with, we found so many of these 
nests that I am convinced that it does not 
occupy the same nest every night, but builds 
them when necessity requires. They are 
about the size of an eagle’s nest, and are 
often found on small young trees ; and not 
much skill or pains or uniformity of design 
is shown in building them. 

The gibbon is much livelier and lives in 
small communities of five or ten individ- 
uals; it by preference inhabits the moun- 
tain forests, and I have found it at an 
attitude of 900 metres, while in the river 
valleys it is seldom found. They rush 
through the forest with great noise and 
crying, swinging from tree to tree; the Djaks 
call them mblian. The varieties are two, 
light and dark; the former named Hylo- 
bates concolor, the latter H. Miilleri. 

The proboscis monkey has his home on 
the banks of the rivers and never ascends the 
mountains. I found them near the mouth 
of the Palin river as it flows into the Kapuas. 
They live in small families of 5 or 8 and 
are not at all shy ; a living specimen I ob- 
tained was quite white, and his nose was 
just a little elongated. 

A very pretty animal is the lemur (Vycti- 
cebus tardigradus), most plentiful in the lower 
Kapuas, but not found much above Sintang; 
of these I collected several living specimens. 
The tarsier (Tarsius spectrum) is not rare 
in the lower river regions and is brought 
living, for sale by the Malays. On the day 
of my arrival at Pontianak, I bought a fly- 
ing lemur ( Galeopithicas volans) , which I kept 
alive. Of the insectivora the Tupaias, or tree 
shrews, are most numerous. The Gym- 
nura alba is much rarer and more inter- 
esting. The Malays, because of its noc- 
turnal habits and appearance, call it tikus 
bulan,, which means moon-rat; in color 
it is a dirty white with a stiff, spindle- 
shaped, naked tail. In the daytime it lives 
among the roots of the trees and burrows 


APRIL 23, 1897.] 


in the ground, and is easily located by its 
musky odor. 

The seven carnivora in the Kapuas re- 
gion, with the exception of one cat, one otter, 
and the Malay bear belong to the civet cats 
and the Ichneumons. Of the 13 rodents the 
‘squirrels are the most numerous, and 
among them are two very pretty species, 
Sciurus melanotis and Sciwrus whiteheadi. In 
the same locality we found the giant of 
the squirrels, Rhetthrosciwrus macrotis, which 
lives on the ground and is distinguished 
by a large bushy tail, and which is univer- 
sally distributed over Borneo, but is no- 
where plentiful. We also found flying 
squirrels and on the Kenepai a small species 
-of porcupine 

Of the artiodactyls, the deer family has 
three specimens—the sembar (Cervus 
equinus), the muntjac (Cervulus muntjac), 
and the small musk deer ( Tragulus kanchil) ; 
all are common in the Kapuas region and 
are caught by the natives. I have already 
mentioned the Rhinoceros ; the remaining 
animal is the bearded pig (Sus barbatus), 
which lives on the shores of the Kapuas and 
is very numerous. His food is preferably 
earth worms, which are so plentiful that in 
poling in the mud of the river one pulls out 
more worms than earth. Because of his 
light skin and scanty hair the wild pigs 
appear white. In closing Herr Buttikofer 
calls attention to the preponderance of the 
arboreal animals, and states that of the 
66 species found by him 52 are arboreal. 
“This preponderence is not found else- 
where in similar geographical conditions, 
either in Celebes, Africa or America ; a pre- 
ponderance which cannot be due to the pri- 
ority of beasts of prey living upon the 
ground, for, as has been shown, they play 
no partin Borneo, and the tiger is unknown. 
It must be due to the forest covering of the 
island and to the yearly floods.” 

This imperfect résumé of Herr Biutti- 
kofer’s paper will, perhaps, suffice to indi- 


SCIENCE. 


643 


cate its value to the zoologist and to suggest 
to the layman its romantic interest. We 
shall anticipate the pleasure of reading the 
forthcoming report which is to contain the 
combined results of the Borneo expedition. 


GrorGE R. STETSON. 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 


SEMON ON THE MONOTREMES.* 

Amone the contributions to zoological 
literature which have appeared in the re- 
ports of Dr. Richard Semon’s expedition to 
Australia and the Malay Archipelago, per- 
haps none have more popular interest than 
the papers by Dr. Semon himself on the 
habits and development of the Monotremes. 

Both Echidna and Ornithorhynchus were 
studied. In neither of these animals is 
maturity attained until the end of the 
second year. The male Hehidna is consid- 
erably larger than the female. In both 
genera the testes increase greatly in size 
during the breeding season, and the female 
Echidna develops a marsupium which dis- 
appears when no longer required by the 
young. The breeding season of Echidna 
begins late in July, and Ornithorhynchus 
commences to breed a little later, or about 
the middle of August. A striking ornithic 
character is that eggs from only the left 
ovary are fertilized, although the right 
ovary and oviduct appear to be well devel- 
oped. The usual number of ova is one in 
Echidna and two in Ornithorhynchus. The 
ege is fertilized before or about the time of 
its entrance into the oviduct, and is at this 
time about four millimeters in diameter and 
nearly spherical, but during its sojourn in 
the genital passages a shell, composed of 
keratin, is secreted, and the egg (in Echidna) 
increases in diameter to about fifteen milli- 
meters by absorption of uterine secretions. 
Both animals are oviparous, and in Kehidna 

* Zoologische Forschungsreisen in Australie und 


dem Malayischen Archipel. Von Dr. Richard Semon. 
Zweiter Band, I. Lieferung. Jena, 1894. 


644 


the single egg is transferred by the mother 
to the temporary marsupium, where the 
young are hatched, the period from fer- 
tilization to hatching being about ten weeks. 
Ornithorhynchus, being an aquatic animal, 
develops no marsupium, and the eggs are 
said to be deposited in the burrow which 
the animal constructs, but upon this point 
Semon made no observations. 

Most of Semon’s studies of the develop- 
ment were upon Echidna. The Monotreme 
ege is strictly telolecithal, resembling the 
eggs of Sauropsids in many points. The 
four-celled stage shows two vertical cleayv- 
ages at right angles, the blastomeres being 
exactly equal. Quite early in development 
the blastoderm is seen to consist of a layer, 
one cell in thickness, except near the middle, 
where a few cells lie deeper. These were 
called hypoblast by Caldwell in 1887, but 
Semon regards this apparently two-layered 
stage as a morula, since he finds that the 
blastoderm later resumes the one-layered 
condition which he calls the blastula. In 
the mode of gastrulation the Monotreme egg 
suggests the Anamniotic type, the invagi- 
nation preceding or accompanying the for- 
mation of cenogenetic entoderm, instead of 
following it as in Sauropsids and Mammals 
generally. 

Late embryos of Echidna show external 
genital knobs, which become enclosed within 
the cloaca before the time of hatching. 

Among observations on the foetal mem- 
branes may be mentioned the persistent 
union of amnion and serosa (chorion), 
which is very similar to the condition de- 
scribed in Chelonia by Mitsukuri.. During 
the latter half of the embryonic period the 
body lies between the allantois on the right 
and the yolk-sac on the left, the two 
structures being, for a time, of nearly equal 
size. The inner walls of the allantois be- 
come adherent, obliterating its cavity, ex- 
cept near the middle, while the outer sur- 
face, which is very vascular, unites with 


SCIENCE. 


LN. S. Vou. V. No. 121. 


the chorion and serves undoubtedly as a re- 
spiratory organ, as in Sauropsids. 

Some very interesting notes on the body 
temperature are recorded, which show 
that it bears no direct relation to season,. 
age nor temperature of the external air. 
Temperatures taken in the cloaca, varied. 
from 26.5° C. to 34° C., so that the Mono- 
tremes are in a sense midway between the 
so-called cold-blooded and warm-blooded. 
animals in regard to body temperature. 

J. H. McG. 


COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. 


NOTES ON FRENCH GEOGRAPHY. 
PAYS DE BRAY. 


THE even skyline seen in looking across. 
from either side of the vallée de Bray between 
Neufchatel and Bauvais, in northwestern 
France, is a most marked feature in the 
landscape. One rides over the even chalk 
upland to come suddenly upon the crest of 
an escarpment that descends steeply before: 
him. He there looks across a lowland and 
sees a similar escarpment ascending upon 
the farther side, whose elevation above sea- 
level is about the same as that of the crest 
upon which he stands. After descending 
and crossing the different formations with 
varying structures appropriate to the half 
dome, cut off on the east by a series of 
faults which is the main structure of the 
Pays de Bray, he ascends the other side of 
the lowland and finds himself again on a 
Chalk upland exactly like that which he 
left. One at first sight might suppose that 
here is the uncovered base of a dome which 
had been baseleveled and later covered by 
horizontal Cretaceous beds. The exceed- 
ingly level skyline lends countenance to 
this view, but even a hasty inspection of 
the region shows that this is not the case. 

The production of the even upland is 
subsequent to the uplift of the half-dome, 
which once must have risen higher than the: 
present upland. ‘Two reasons for this are- 


APRIL 23, 1897. ] 


as follows: The Chalk, although nearly hori- 
zontal, sympathizes with the arching of 
the Portland oolites in the Upper Jurassic, 
the Lower Cretaceous, and the Gault series, 
which formations make up the half-dome 
as at present revealed by denudation ; and 
the Chalk is also faulted with the other 
Mesozoic rocks.* The second reason for 
regarding the remarkably even upland of 
the Chalk as produced by baseleveling after 
the up-arching and faulting is found in the 
arrangement of the surrounding streams. 
The drainage to the southwest of the half- 
dome, which is the side where the arching 
is but little broken by faults, likewise shows 
the influence of the dome form during the 
initial stages of dissection which followed 
the uplift of the region. The radiating 
arrangement of the streams, la Varenne, 
Cailly, Robec, le Heron, Andelle and Eple 
indicates initial and consequent courses 
upon the western side of the half-dome.+ 
Subsequent branches of the Eple and 
Bethune have discovered the weaker mem- 
bers of the Pays de Bray half-dome. Ina 
word, the whole drainage system of the re- 
gion between the Seine and the English 
channel is in accordance with what one 
would expect to find upon an area including 
a baseleveled half-dome, slightly elevated 
and dissected to youth or adolescence in the 
second cycle. Moreover, the adjustment of 
the drainage to the structure of the half- 
dome is so perfect that one cannot believe 
that the elevated region was a gently slop- 
ing coastal plain upon whose surface conse- 
quent streams became superposed upon a 
baseleveled and buried half-dome. The 
amount of dissection in the present cycle 
is not sufficient to allow of such perfect ad- 
justment of stream to structure as we find 
to-day in the Pays de Bray. 


*See Le Pays de Bray, by Professor A. de Lappa- 
rent, Paris, 1879, pp. 11, 116, 141. 

} See Neufchatel and Rouen sheets, Nos. 20 and 31, 
Carte topographique de |’ Etat-Major, 1: 80,000. 


SCIENCE. 


645 


BLIND VALLEYS AND SINKS. 

Ir one goes westward from the Pays de 
Bray, across the exceedingly level upland 
to the cliff above the straight shoreline of 
the English channel, where the coast has 
been developed to maturity by the vigorous 
action of the Atlantic waves cutting into the 
Cretaceous rocks, he will find remnants of 
drainage systems left upon the edge of the 
upland. These remnants appear to have 
been branches of a river that was situ- 
ated where the English channel now is 
found. The remnants are evidently cut 
by flowing streams of water upon the surface 
of the land, though at present the valleys 
descend gently toward the cliff and there 
precipitously pitch into the ocean,* and 
thus evidently depart from the grade of a 
normally developed one-cycle stream. 

In marked contrast to these evident sub- 
aerial remnants are the blind valleys seen 
upon the surface of the upland between the 
Pays be Bray and the coast, similar to those 
described in Austria.t One enters a small 
valley and follows it down for some dis- 
tance seeing nothing in its form to lead 
him to suppose that it is anything but a 
normal branch of some river system. All 
at once he comes upon a plain area opening 
out from the comparatively narrow valley. 
The plain is a sink, surrounded on all sides 
by higher land sloping gently toward its 
center. 

A typical young form of sink with three 
blind valleys beginning to develop, working 
back slowly from the central hole, is shown 
by M. Mantel in the plan of Mas Razals.t 
Slightly older forms are figured by the same 
writer at Aven de Hures, Igue de Baou, 
Igne de Planagreze and Pouor de Cettinje.§ 

* See French map 1 : 80,000; St. Valery, Abbeville, 
Yvetot sheets, Nos. 10, 11 and 19. 

} Tietze. Jahrb. k. k. geol. Reichsanstalt, XXX., 
1880, 738 ; Supan. Kirchhoff’s Landerkunde yon Eu- 
ropa, 1(2), 1889, 288. 

{ Les Abimes, Paris, 1894, p. 184. 

§ Loe. cit., pp. 225, 302, 335, 486. 


646 


MM. de la Noé and de Margerie have shown 
similar forms in eastern France north of 
Besangon.* The combination of blind val- 
leys and sinks gives various forms; the 
greater the number of subterranean passages 
for the water, the greater will be the irregu- 
larity of the surface. The simplest type of 
a blind valley is found where a single val- 
ley gently descends on a continuous grade to 
a flat depression of little or no greater width, 
under which is the subterranean outlet for 
the water. The method of formation of the 
passages below the surface of the Chalk is 
discussed in the chapter on subterranean 
water in Mantel’s Les Cevennes (Paris, 
1890) and in his Les Abimes. 


MARAIS DE SAINT GOND. 


Map of France, 1: 80,000, sheet 50. 
Chalons, S. W. 

Upon a recent trip up the valley of the 
Petit Morin, toward the open Champagne, 
it was observed by the writer that the floor 
of the valley that trenches the Tertiary up- 
land was aggraded for the whole distance 
from a point a few miles west of Montmirail 
(sheet 40) up to the head of the St. Gond 
marsh. There are places where the valley 
sides approach each other more closely, 
leaving a narrower aggraded bed, thus in- 
dicating more resistent layers in the Lower 
Tertiary or Upper Cretaceous strata, and 
hence harder work for the Petit Morin- 
Somme-Vaure when it was cutting the val- 
ley, now aggraded, before the capture of the 
headwaters by the Soude.| Professor Davis 
has shown that the diminished volume of 
water in the Petit Morin would necessitate 
aggradation. The smaller amount of water 
is not able to carry off the same amount of 
detritus which is still washed down from 
the same slopes. ‘The soil creeps down, the 
storms wash much fine detritus from the 

* See fig. 1 in Les Formes du Terrain. 


tSee the Seine, the Meuse and the Moselle, by 
W. M. Davis, Nat. Geog. Mag., VII., 1896, 197-202. 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 121. 


slopes into the valley bottom, and the small 
side streams, which now are as able to do 
the work given them as before the capture 
of the headwaters of the Petit Morin, also 
carry much waste into the valley. At the 
western end of the marsh, near St. Prix, the 
little side stream entering here from the 
north has brought in considerable detritus, 
but this is only one of the minor factors in 
the production of the Marais de Saint Gond. 

The Petit Morin has lost the greater 
part of its drainage area. It had developed 
a good-sized adolescent valley, particularly 
broad east of the hard rocks which form 
the great Tertiary escarpment of the Paris 
Basin. Since the loss of its headwaters it 
has been compelled to aggrade throughout 
the greatest portion of its course, thus 
causing many small swamps in the lower 
narrow valley and a broad marsh, le Marais 
de Saint Gond, at the upper limit of the 
beheaded Petit Morin. The present condi- 
tion is one of unstable equilibrium. The 
small stream at the elbow of capture of 
the head waters of the Petit Morin by the 
Somme-Soude, in the small village of Ecury- 
le-Repos, will soon cut through the low 
divide, on account of the steeper grade of 
the Somme, and will drain the Marais de 
Saint Gond near the village of Morains.* 


THE AGGRADING BAR. 

Tue little wriggling bar staggering blindly 
along in a broad meandering valley is like 
a small boy attempting to fill his grand- 
father’s boots. The waste supplied from 
the sides of the adolescent valley, cut by 
the ancestor of the present stream, is much 
too great a load for a little brook. Beneath 
the recent deposits of the bar, Professor de 
Lapparent has found, by means of excava- 
tions lately made, a deposit of argillaceous 
green sand, which must have been trans- 
ported from the basin of the Aire when 


*See Atlas Cantonal, Départment de la Marne, 1: 
50,000, sheet No 5, Canton de Vertus. 


APRIL 23, 1897. ] 


that stream was a tributary of the Meuse 
and flowed through the valley now occupied 
by the beheaded bar. 

This geological confirmation of the geo- 
graphic interpretation of the river captures 
in this region made by Professor Davis* is 
interesting on account of the reversal in 
the order of the observations from those 
made in the case of the capture at Toul. 
That the present upper Moselle formerly 
joined the Meuse was first argued from the 
presence of pebbles in the valley of the 
Meuse which must have come from that of 
the Moselle above Toul. The strong geo- 
graphic argument from the form of the val- 
leys later corroborated the geologic evi- 
dence. Now we have the geologic added to 
the geographic evidence for the turning of 
the Aire by the Aisne from the drainage 
system of the Meuse to that of the Seine. 

‘One of the sources of the present Bar 
has been turned by man recently, so that it 
now increases the water supply of the 
Briquenay, the reversed portion of the sub- 
sequent Aire-Bar. This change of a water- 
course for industrial purposes is a continua- 
tion of the work begun by nature. The 
broad aggraded floodplain of the Bar is be- 
ing taken advantage of this year, and a 
railway has been constructed along it be- 
tween Sedan and Vouziers, with a branch 


running to Buzancy. 
F. P. GuULuLiver. 
BERLIN. 


CURRENT NOTES ON PHYSIOGRAPHY. 
IS GREEN RIVER ANTECEDENT TO THE UINTA 
MOUNTAINS ? 


A RECENT paper by J. D. Irving (‘Strati- 
graphical relations of the Brown’s park 
beds of Utah,’ Trans. N. Y. Acad. Sci., 
XV., 1896, 253-259), says: “It is a fact 
no longer disputed that these deep cafions 
in the quartzite by which Green river 


*Loe. cit., p. 232. 
T Loe. cit., p. 228. 


SCIENCE. 


647 


crosses the Uinta mountains were first 
established in the softer overlying forma- 
tions, and that these formations furnished 
much of the corrosive material by means of 
which the harder rocks were cut away.” 
It is not clear whether the overlying forma- 
tions here mentioned were higher members 
of the Uinta arch or unconformably over- 
lying Tertiaries. If the former, the writer 
would support Powell’s explanation of the 
antecedent origin of the river ; if the latter, 
he would support Emmons’ view that the 
river is of superposed origin. In either 
case discussion on the question is hardly 
closed. Indeed, considering how frequently 
the Green is referred to as an antecedent 
river, it is remarkable that so little atten- 
tion is given to the doubts that have been 
expressed regarding that manner of origin 
and to the difficulties that such an origin 
involves. Two recent text-books on geology 
credit the antecedent explanation. Tarr 
says: “‘In some cases the uplift of moun- 
tains appears to have been so slow that 
rivers have been able to maintain their 
courses across them as they rose; at least 
this is the interpretation placed upon some 
rivers, such as the Green river of Utah, 
which cuts directly across the high Uinta 
mountains’ (EHlementary Geology, 1897, 
319). Scott is more cautious: ‘“ A famous 
example of what many authorities believe 
to be an antecedent stream is the Green 
river in Wyoming and Utah. Entering 
from the north, the river cuts its way in a 
winding course through the great mountain 
barrier of the Uintas in a remarkable series 
of cafions. This explanation is not ac- 
cepted by all the observers who have 
examined the region ; some of them explain 
the phenomenon by the theory of superim- 
posed drainage” (Introduction to Geology, 
1897, 325). 

The Green river was unquestionably 
laked by the uplift of the Uinta range, and 
to this extent it is a defeated and not an 


648 


antecedent river. Between its two merid- 
ianal portions, north and south of the range, 
the river makes a great bend to the east, 
turning from the higher towards the lower 
part of the uplift—a remarkable coincidence, 
if this was an antecedent turn. It should 
further be noted that argument by which 
the antecedent origin of the Green was first 
supported, involved a similar origin for a 
number of smaller streams, although there 
can be little question that most or all of the 
latter are the result of headwater erosion 
along the strike of weak strata. Finally, 
the antecedent origin of the Green gives no 
adequate explanation to the broad depres- 
sion of Brown’s park near the eastern end 
of the mountains and chiefly within the 
rimming ridges. The paper by Irving, 
above named, explains the Brown’s park 
beds as due to a lake formed by a slight 
uplift which dammed the river, but gives 
no consideration to the origin of the park 
itself. This, as well as the origin of the 
river, deserves careful study, in view of the 
frequent reference made to the region in 
geological writings. As the problem stands 
to-day, the Rhine in its gorge through the 
Schiefergebirge, in its middle course, is a 
better proved example of an antecedent 
river than the Green in its canyon through 
the Uinta mountains. 


SANTA CATALINA ISLAND, CALA. 

A stupy of this interesting island has 
been made by W. S. T. Smith (Geology of 
Santa Catalina Island, Proce. Cal. Acad. 
Sci., I., 1897, 1-71), following a brief de- 
scription of some of its physical features by 
Lawson three years ago. It is gratifying 
to see that Smith recognizes as a chapter of 
geology the processes of taking away as 
well as those of giving; the work of denuda- 
tion as well as that of deposition. Both 
these processes are plainly involved in any 
discussion of géology as a matter of earth- 
history, although it has often enough been 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vox. V. No. 121. 


the fashion to treat the ‘geology’ of a re- 
gion as if it were concerned with composi- 
tion, structure and deformation alone, giv- 
ing only the briefest attention to denuda- 
tion. Certainly, old mother earth has 
been about as much occupied with the lat- 
ter as with the former, and our attention 
might be equally well distributed. Whether 
this chapter of geology shall be called geo- 
morphogeny or geomorphy, or whether it 
affords appropriate material for these notes, 
is a less important matter. 

Santa Catalina is regarded as a block 
broken from a much greater area of de- 
formed basement rocks when the region 
was part of the mainland. Since then it 
has been dissected, partly covered with 
lavas, depressed so as to form an island, 
and the still emerged part denuded almost 
to a peneplain; then elevated, again dis- 
sected, and again depressed. The argu- 
ment leading to this succession of events is 
well sustained. At present the shores are 
rapidly cut back by the sea. The gap in 
the island ridge where drowned valleys 
enter from either side, forming bays with 
with beautiful concave beaches, is ex- 
plained as a local sag or structural depres- 
sion. 


NOTES. 


FURTHER account of the Lammbach dis- 
aster on the north side of Lake Brienz, 
Switzerland (see Scrence, Jan. 1, 1897), is 
given by C. Schmidt, of Basel (der Murgang 
des Lammbaches bei Brienz, Schr., Ge- 
sellsch. Urania, Berlin, no. 43, 1896), witha 
number of excellent illustrations. Most 
peculiar is the abrupt termination of the 
stony flood at certain points, where its mar- 
gin resembles that of a thin lava flow. 


THE Geology of the Fox Islands, Maine, 
a dissertation by G. O. Smith, of Johns 
Hopkins University (1896), includes a brief 
account of their geography. The islands 
are hills rising over the broad floor of the 


APRIL 23, 1897. ] 


half-drowned Penobscot valley. Small 
modifications of form are ascribed to glacial 
action. The processes of to-day cut back 
the salients and fill the re-entrants of the 
shore line. 

‘GxacrAt flood deposits in the Chenango 
Valley,’ described by A. P. Brigham (Bull. 
‘Geol. Soc. Amer., VIII., 1897, 17-30), are 
good examples of forms produced by the 
constrained drainage of the retreating gla- 
cier, passing from the Mohawk valley, over 
a divide and through the plateau country 
on the south, to the Susquehanna. 

W. M. Davis. 


HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


CURRENT NOTES ON METEOROLOGY. 
WINTER STORMS ON THE COAST OF CHINA. 


Two noteworthy publications come to us 
from the Shanghai Meteorological Society. 
‘They are the 3d and 4th Annual Reports 
of that Society, and were prepared by Rev. 
S. Chevalier, the energetic President of the 
Society, and Director of the Zi-Ka-Wei Ob- 
servatory, atShanghai. The first is entitled 
an ‘Essay on the Winter Storms of the 
‘Coast of China,’ and the second, which is 
really a part of the same investigation, con- 
cerns ‘The Variations of the Atmospheric 
Pressure over Siberia and Eastern Asia dur- 
ing the Months of January and February, 
1890.’ Both of these monographs furnish val- 
uable information concerning the meteorol- 
ogy of the eastern coast of China. Among 
the results of Father Chevalier’s study we 
note the following: The cyclones which 
travel across Europe and reach western Si- 
beria experience great difficulty in crossing 
this region, and are generally driven off to- 
wards the North Pole by the anticyclone 
over Siberia, but some may cross the whole 
of Asia directly from west to east, or else 
may be deflected to the southeast towards 
China. These depressions over Siberia af- 
fect the weather on the coast of China in- 
directly. There are, in addition, cyclones 


SCIENCE. 


649 


developed over China or further west, 
which cross the Chinese coast with an east 
or northeast movement, and it is such cy- 
clones as these that precede the winter 
storms on the coast of China. The gale in 
these storms bursts more or less suddenly 
after the passage of the center, and depends 
for its violence on the depth of the depres- 
sion, as well as on the height of the suc- 
ceeding cyclone in the rear. 


THE ‘ ILTIS’ TYPHOON. 

THE somewhat remarkable typhoon, which 
resulted in the loss of the German gunboat 
“Titis,’ with all her officers and the ma- 
jority of her crew, during the night of July 
23-24, 1896, in the neighborhood of the 
Shantung Promontory, on the coast of 
China, has been made the subject of a spe- 
cial study by Rey. Louis Froc, S.J. The 
results are published by the Zi-Ka- Wei Ob- 
servatory in a monograph entitled ‘The 
Iltis Typhoon, July 22-25, 1896.’ The 
conclusions reached by the author are in- 
teresting. He says: ‘ There is never 
any advantage in undertaking a struggle 
with a typhoon. Even with the powerful 
forces which our great steel liners carry 
within their breast, prudence is yet in this 
instance a good adviser, and a safe anchor- 
age is far better than the risks of a wrestle ; 
no time is gained thereby, and the vessel is 
exposed, if not to a fatal loss, at least to 
serious damages. Several steamers (in 
this typhoon) were kept back, despite the 
force of their engines, in the neighborhood, 
or even drawn in towards the center of the 
hurricane.” The swell from this typhoon 
was noted 500 miles in front of the advanc- 
ing center. There was a marked fall of 
the barometer 310 miles from the center, 
and the lowest pressure recorded was 27.97 
inches. 


ANGOT’S ‘THE AURORA BOREALIS.’ 


Aw English translation of Angot’s ‘ Les 
Aurores Polaires’ appears as Vol. LX XVII. 


650 


of the International Scientific Series (D. 
Appleton & Co.). This book has already 
been reviewed in Science (Vol. II., 107— 
108), so that extended comment on the 
translation is not necessary. The volume 
presents an interesting and complete ac- 
count of the aurora in all its aspects, and 
will prove a valuable addition to scientific 
libraries. We note that the title page and 
cover give the title as ‘The Aurora Bore- 
alis,’ while the headings on the even pages 
all through the book give it as ‘ The Polar 
Aurora.’ There are several illustrations of 
different forms of the aurora, but we do not 
find any index. 
R. DEC. Warp. 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 
CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 
THE JEWISH PHYSICAL TYPE. 

Tue peculiar physical type which we call 
‘Jewish’ is as easily recognizable in the 
sculptures from Tello and Nippur, carved 
two or three thousand years before the 
Christian era, as it is in the satirical comic 
papers of our own day. The most promi- 
nent trait is the nose, which has the curve 
of an italic figure 6 reversed. 

This is sometimes called the Semitic 
type, but erroneously, as the purest Sem- 
ites, the Arabians of the desert, do not ex- 
hibit it. We must, therefore, seek its 
origin elsewhere. In an article read be- 
fore the Munich Anthropological Society, 
printed in the Correspondenzblatt for January, 
Professor Oberhummer agrees with von 
Luschan in attributing it to the ancient 
Anatolian people, probably of Caucasic 
(Alarodian) affinities, residents in Arme- 
nia before the Aryan Armenians possessed 
the land, and whose branches were the 
Elamites and Susians of the south. 
These, by intermarriage with the Semitic 
invaders, impressed upon them this phys- 
ical type, though not their language or cul- 
ture. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8S. Vou. V. No. 121. 


This theory does not fully explain the 
prevalence of this type in Palestine, un- 
less we allow a larger intermingling there 
of foreign blood than has been customary 
with historians. 

ON WAMPUM RECORDS. 

THE last scientific contribution prepared 
by our late eminent colleague, Mr. Horatio 
Hale, is printed in the Journal of the An- 
thropological Institute for February, 1897. 
It is entitled ‘Four Huron Wampum 
Records; a study of Aboriginal American 
History and Mnemonic Symbols.’ His. 
usual patient research and careful deduction 
are well exemplified in it. The manu- 
facture of wampum, its earliest use as a. 
form of record, and the origin and meaning: 
of the symbols woven into the belts, are 
fully discussed. Much collateral informa- 
tion on the history of the Hurons and 
Iroquois and on the formation of the famous. 
‘League’ is added. 

A note is appended by Professor EH. B. 
Tylor, which reviews Mr. Hale’s con- 
clusions and suggests further lines of re- 
search relating to the subject. He argues 
that the wampum belt had its origin among 
the Iroquois. 

The studies on this question are yet far 
from completeness, as wampum was merely 
a method of arranging beads for mnemonic 
symbols, a custom widely prevalent in 
savagery and branching in many directions. 


THE OTOMIS. 


Accorpiné¢ to the traditions of the Aztecs, 
their predecessors in Central Mexico were: 
the Otomis, an undersized dark people, 
described as stupid and barbarous and 
speaking a tongue most cacophonous and 
difficult. Many thousands of them still 
survive on the Mexican plateau, but our 
actual knowledge of them is very scant. 

A few years ago Judge Eustaquio Buelna 
published a grammar and dictionary of 
their language, composed by a Jesuit mis- 


APRIL 23, 1897. ] 


sionary about 1770 (* Luces del Otomi,’ pp. 
303). We have others, but it is one of the 
most valuable, and is carefully edited. 

The assertion has been several times ad- 
vanced by Mexican writers that there is a 
relationship between the Otomi and the 
Apache, that is, the Athapasean stock. I 
made a careful comparison of one hundred 
test words between the two groups, and 
sent the results to the Congress of Ameri- 
canists at Stockholm, but I am informed 
that the paper has been lost. It showed 
that a sufficient number of verbal similari- 
ties exist to render either linguistic rela- 
tionship or admixture probable. 

D. G. Brinton. 

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


NOTES ON INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 

In arecent number of the Comptes Rendues 
P. de Wateville describes a method of grow- 
ing crystals with a transparency and luster 
analogous to those of cut and polished 
stones. The small crystal is so mounted 
that while growing in a saturated solution 
it can be continuously rotated on itself with 
a speed of several rotations a second. In 
alum crystals thus grown at 50°, dodeca- 
hedron and cube faces progressively dis- 
appear, those of the octahedron alone finally 
remaining. Potassium and ammonium 
alums, copper sulfate and sodium chlorate 
are said by the author to give particularly 
fine results. 

In the American Chemical Journal for April 
Professors Jackson and Comey, of Harvard, 
describe a peculiar hydrogel formed by the 
action of nitric acid on potassium cobalti- 
cyanid. When a strong solution of the 
latter salt is boiled with an equal volume 
of concentrated nitric acid for two hours it 
suddenly changes into a dark red semi solid 
gelatinous mass. This jelly is insoluble in 
acid or salt solutions, but somewhat soluble 
in cold or boiling water, and more so in 
water at 60°. This solution can be evap- 


SCIENCE. 


651 


orated without gelatinizing, and the residue 
from evaporation when moistened with 
water decrepitates with a series of insignifi- 
cant explosions to a red powder, almost in- 
soluble in cold water, but somewhat soluble 
in water at 60°. The formula from analysis 
is KH,Co,(CN),,,H,O, provisionally called 
monopotassium cobaltocobalticyanid. Sev- 
eral other salts (barium, silver and copper) 
of the acid were made. A similar jelly has 
been formed by the authors by the action 
of nitric acid on potassium ferricyanid. On 
boiling potassium ruthenium nitrosochlorid, 
K,RuCl,NO with potassium cyanid in 
quantity insufficient to convert it into the 
ruthenocyanid, the writer has obtained a 
similar hydrogel with almost identical prop- 
erties. 


Accorpineé to the recently published re- 
port of the Russian Department of Mines 
for 1895, the production of platinum for 
that year was 9,700 pounds, a decrease of 
1,700 pounds from that of the year preced- 
ing. The production of all other mineral 
products showed a decided increase, except 
that of gold, which decreased slightly. The 
largest relative increase was in mercury, the 
production of which, 500 tons, was more 
than twice that of the previous year. 

g Vo 1p Jab, 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 

AT a meeting of the Academy of Natural 
Sciences of Philadelphia, held the 13th inst., 
the following was unanimously adopted: The 
Academy of Natural Sciences, of Philadelphia, 
has received, with profound sorrow the an- 
nouncement of the death of Professor Edward 
Drinker Cope. It is fitting that this meeting 
should place on record a minute expressive of 
its sense of the loss sustained. The Academy 
witnessed the beginning and the end of his long 
labors. It was to its halls he came as a student 
in 1859 and it was to them he paid his last visit 
before his final illness. The lustre thrown upon 
the society by his researches is but a reflex of 
the spirit of this remarkable man, who exibited, 


652 


in a way rarely equalled in the history of 
science, the consecration of a powerful intellect 
to the pursuit of the knowledge of nature. To 
an almost unerring accuracy of observation he 
conjoined admirable judgment. He was unex- 
celled as an expert in the field of vertebrate 
zoology of both present and extinct forms; he 
discovered great numbers of genera and spe- 
cies ; he announced startling and epoch-making 
schemes of classification ; he framed compre- 
hensive systems of philosophy based on biologic 
premises. One hesitates which to admire the 
most, the tenacity of his memory, the brilliancy 
of his wit, or the ease with which he used his 
“enormous erudition. To any community and 
at any time the loss of such a man is a calamity. 


Mr. M. E. D. TROWBRIDGE writes from De- 
troit that Professor F. W. Putnam, Permanent 
Secretary of the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science, visited Detroit on the 
8th inst., in the interests of the meeting to be 
held in this city next August. He reported 
himself highly pleased with the facilities offered 
by the new high school building for the accom- 
modation of the several sections of the Associa- 
tion. At present there is promise of a most 
successful meeting. Local committees are at 
work to provide interesting features for the en- 
tertainment of their guests. While in the city 
Professor Putnam spoke upon the Ruins of 
Copan, Honduras, under the auspices of the 
Detroit Archeological Society. There was an 
interested audience of 2,500 people. Professor 
Putnam was introduced by Professor M. L. 
D’Ooge, of the University of Michigan, Presi- 
‘dent of the Detroit Archzeological Society. 

A CONFERENCE was held on April 15th by 
Provost Harrison, of the University of Pennsyl- 
vania ; President Schurman, of Cornell Univer- 
sity, and President Low, of Columbia Univer- 
sity, at the house of the latter, at which it 
was decided to ask Congress not to change the 
present law in regard to apparatus, books, ete. 
imported for public institutions. All the lead- 
ing newspapers, Republican as well as Demo- 
cratic, have protested against the imposition of 
a tax on science, literature and art, and it 
seems unlikely that the Senate committee will 
disregard this unanimous expression of public 
opinion. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 121. 


Mr. H. WILpz, President of the Manchester 
Scientific and Literary Society, has given the 
Paris Academy of Sciences the sum of £5,500 
to be used for an annual prize of 4,000 fr. for a 
discovery or publication in physical science. 
The prize is to be international. Mr. Wilde 
states that he has made this gift as a return for 
the benefit he has drawn from French science. 


M. RaApAv, the astronomer, has been elected 
a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences in 
the room of the late M. Tisserand. 


As we have already noted, the British Med- 
ical Association will hold its sixty-fifth annual 
meeting in Montreal, beginning on August 31st. 
The address of the President-elect, Dr. Rod- 
dick, will be on medical education in Canada. 
The address in medicine will be by Professor 
W. Osler, of Johns Hopkins University, and 
that in surgery by Mr. W. M. Banks, of Liver- 
pool. 

THE Board of Managers of the New York 
Zoological Society held a meeting on April 13th 
at which the plans of the park were discussed. 
and especially the methods to be used in col- 
lecting the needed $250,000. Several subscrip- 
tions of $5,000 and others for smaller amounts 
were made by the managers. 


PROFESSOR LEON DU PASQUIER, of Neuchatel, 
died after a brief illness on April 1st in his 
thirty-third year. He will be recalled by 
geologists as one of the most accomplished 
expert guides during the excursions offered in 
connection with the International Geological 
Congress at Zurich in 1894, and as author of 
a number of essays on the glacial geology of 
northern Switzerland. 

Dr. G. A. KENNGOTT, professor of mineralogy 
at Zurich, died on March 14th, aged seventy- 
nine years. He had made important contribu- 
tions to crystallography and petrography and 
was one of the editors of ‘Handworterbuch der 
Mineralogie, Geologie and Palaontologie.’ 


WE also regret to record the deaths of Dr. 
F. W. Klatt, known for his contributions to 
botany; of Dr. Ludwig Hollaender, a writer on 
anatomy of the teeth; of Dr. Schols, professor 
of geology in the Polytechnic Institute at Delft; 
of Dr. Alfred Dewéore, the botanist; of Dr. 
Thollen, the geologist; of Dr. Ed. Freiherr 


APRIL 23, 1897. ] 


von Hardtl, astronomer at Innsbruck, and of 
Dr. Jacob Breitenlohner, professor of meteor- 
ology at the Agricultural School of Vienna. 


AT a meeting held April 13th the Academy 
of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia conferred 
the Hayden Memorial Award for 1897, consist- 
ing of a bronze medal and the interest of the 
special endowment fund, on Professor A. Kar- 
pinski, the Chief of the Geological Survey of 
Russia, in recognition of the value of his con- 
tributions to geological and paleontological 
science. 


Proressor H. A. ROWLAND, of Johns Hop- 
kin’s University, has been elected an honorary 
member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 


Dr. GEORGE M. Dawson, Chief of the Geo- 
logical Survey of the Dominion of Canada, has 
been awarded the gold medal of the Royal Geo- 
graphical Society of Great Britain, in recogni- 
tion of his services in the surveys and maps of 
British Columbia, the Northwest Territory and 
the Yukon region. 

ARRANGEMENTS are being made for the erec- 
tion of a monument to Johannes Miller, in 
Coblentz, the place of his birth. 


Sir JOHN Evans, Treasurer of the Royal So- 
-ciety and President-elect of the British Associa- 
tion, has been elected a corresponding member of 
the Bologne Academy of Sciences in the room 
of Huxley. 

Dr. NANSEN lectured before the German 
‘Geographical Society on April 3d. The So- 
-ciety bestowed upon him the gold Humboldt 
medal. It was also announced that the Em- 
peror had conferred on him the gold medal for 
-science and art, ‘the highest distinction which 
can be bestowed in Germany for peaceful 
achievements.’ Dr. Nansen subsequently lec- 
tured at Copenhagen before the Danish Geo- 
graphical Society, and received from the king 
the gold medal of merit with the royal crown. 


LIEUTENANT ROBERT E. PEARY, now on 
-duty at the New York Navy Yard, was de- 
tailed to Mare Island, Cal., by Secretary Long, 
but the order has been revoked at the request 
-of those interested in the continuation of Lieut. 
Peary’s Arctic explorations. 


Mr. Ropert B. YounpD has been appointed 


SCIENCE. 


653 


Assistant Biologist at the Department of Agri- 
culture, and will be assigned to work in Oregon 
and Washington. 


THE daily papers report that the building of 
the College of Agriculture of the University of 
California at Berkeley has been burned, the 
loss being estimated at $400,000. 


THE Governor of Florida has issued a call for 
a National Fisheries Congress to assemble at 
Tampa, Fla., on the 19th of January, 1898. 
The National Fishery Commission will take a 
prominent part in the proceedings, and the 
Governors of the different States are requested 
to send delegates. Governor Bloxham states 
that it is necessary to devise means to save from 
total extinction many varieties of valuable food 
fish. 


THERE will be held an international fisheries 
exhibition at Bergen, Norway, from the 16th of 
May to September 30th of next year. 


THE International Congress of Hygiene and 
Dermatology will be held in April next year, 
instead of this year, as was intended. 


TuE American Medico-Psychological Associa- 
tion will meet at Baltimore from the 11th to 
the 14th of May. 


THE fifth International Congress of Criminal 
Anthropology will be held at Amsterdam in 
August, 1901. 


THE New York Microscopical Society held 
its 18th annual exhibition on April 14th, at the 
American Museum of Natural History. There 
were nearly one hundred exhibits, which were 
examined with interest by a large number of 
visitors. 

CHAS. SCRIBNER’S SONS announce the early 
publication of a series of volumes contain- 
ing the ‘Princeton lectures’ delivered by dis- 
tinguished foreigners during the week preced- 
ing the public sesqui-centennial exercises of 
Princeton University. 


A NEW review for psychology and cognate 
subjects, including mental pathology, is an- 
nounced to appear in Rome. It will be edited 
by a board of scholars, of whom Dr. Sancto di 
Sanctis, of the University of Rome, is to be 
Editor-in-Chief. Professor G. Sergi, the well- 


654 


known psychologist, is one of the directors of 
this review. ; 

Ar the beginning of April a new American 
monthly entitled Marine Engineering was es- 
tablished. 

Proressor JI. P. Roperts, Director of the 
Agricultural College, Cornell University, an- 
nounces that the College has undertaken to as- 
sist teachers and parents interested in nature 
study by distributing, free of charge, leaflets giv- 
ing instructions for the making of accurate ob- 
servations of common objects. 


AN editorial article in Garden and Forest in- 
cludes a letter addressed to the Secretary of the 
Interior by the committee of the National Acad- 
emy of Sciences appointed to consider the for- 
estry policy of the government, which outlines 
the report, which will shortly be presented. 
This letter states that the report now in 
course of preparation provides: (1) That au- 
thority be given to the Secretary of War to 
make details of troops to protect, until a forest 
service is organized, the property of the govern- 
ment; (2) That a permanent forest bureau be 
established ; (3) That a commission be ap- 
pointed to institute, under the supervision of the 
Director of the Geological Survey, topographical 
surveys of the reservations and determine what 
portions of them should be permanently reserved; 
and (4) to authorize the Secretary of the Inte- 
rior to issue regulations for the protection of the 
reservations, for sales of timber, for entrance to 
the reservations, etc. 


In Science Progress for April, Professor E. B. 
Poulton, of Oxford, prints, under the caption 
‘A Remarkable Anticipation of Modern Views 
of Evolution,’ a note showing that Dr. James 
Cowles Pritchard, adistinguished pre-Darwinian 
anthropologist, anticipated by half a century 
the arguments urged by Weismann in favor of 
the non-transmission of acquired characters. 
This fact was brought to Professor Poulton’s 
notice by Professor Mendola; and on consulting 
the work of Pritchard, entitled ‘Researches 
into the Physical History of Mankind’ (2d edi- 
tion, 1826), Professor Poulton ‘found that other 
important ideas are anticipated in it.’ It throws 
an interesting side light not only upon the ‘an- 
ticipation,’ but also upon the attitude of Pritch- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No. 121. 


ard’s mind toward the subject, that in a later 
edition of the work he cut out the passage. It. 
is for thisreason, Professor Poulton thinks, that 
the anticipation escaped the notice of ‘ Darwin 
and others,’ who ‘always went to the later edi- 
tion.’ 

In an account of the work of the Lowell Ob- 
servatory, for the last three months, published 
in the New York Tribune for April 17th, we are 
told: ‘‘Dr. Lee, who was in charge of the Ob- 
servatory in the Southern heavens, announces 
that since January 1 more than three hundred 
thousand double and triple stars had been 
measured.’’ Even for ‘ Dr. Lee,’ from the vant- 
age ground of an ‘observatory in the Southern 
heavens,’ this is doing finely—23 of them 
‘measured’ per minute, day and night, more 
than half ‘new,’ as the Tribune tells us! We 
venture to suggest, however, that the Tribune is. 
mistaken in stating that Sir John Herschel made 
larger additions to Southern stellar astronomy.’ 
In his odd moments we are told that ‘Dr. Lee’ 
discovered ‘many brilliant stars.’ ‘‘In addi- 
tion to these discoveries, his corroborative 
points of argument as to the formation of heay- 
enly bodies will be exceptionally interesting—”’ 
the Tribune concludes. 

A REUTER dispatch from Cape Town gives. 
Dr. Koch’s report on the rinderpest to the Sec- 
retary of the Agriculture Department, part of 
which is as follows: ‘‘I succeeded in immuniz- 
ing within a fortnight several animals by means 
of a mixture of serum and virulent rinderpest 
blood to such a degree that they were enabled 
to withstand an injection of 20 cem. of rinder- 
pest blood, a ten-thousandth part of which is a 
fatal dose. From this fact I judge that the 
immunity of these animals is of a much higher 
degree, and I believe it is an active immunity 
equal to that of a beast which has contracted 
rinderpest and has then recovered. It is par- 
ticularly important to know that only 20 ccm. 
of such serum are required to immunize one 
animal, and therefore one liter suffices for fifty 
head of cattle. A second and equally important 
fact is that one is able to render immune 
healthy cattle with the bile of such as have 
succumbed to rinderpest. In this case one: 
hypodermic injection of 10 ccm. is sufficient. 
This immunity sets in on the tenth day at 


APRIL 23, 1897. ] 


the latest, and is of such an extent that 
even four weeks afterwards 40 ecm. of rin- 
derpest blood could be injected without any 
injurious effect. I therefore conclude that the 
immunity produced in such a manner is of an 
‘active’ nature. Rinderpest can be eradicated 
with but little difficulty and within a compara- 
tively short time by putting these methods into 
practice. In infected parts nearly every case 
of rinderpest supplies a greater or less quantity 
of vaccine for those animals which are still 
healthy. I cannot but urge upon you the im- 
portance of bringing this method immediately 
to the notice of those cattle owners whose ani- 
mals are suffering from or threatened by the 
disease.’’ Dr. Koch offers to give a course of 
instruction at the experimental station at Kim- 
berley. 

Dr. Scuuicy, C. I. E., professor of forestry 
at the Royal Indian Engineering College, 
Coopers-hill, read a paper at the Imperial Insti- 
tute on Monday night on ‘The Timber Supply 
of the British Empire.’ Sir Stewart Colvin 
Bayley presided. According to the report in 
the London Times the lecturer said the average 
annual imports of timber into the several parts 
of the Empire during the years 1890-94 
amounted to £19,185,000, while the exports 
averaged £5,114,000, showing that the net 
imports into the Empire reached the enormous 
sum of £14,021,000, an increase of £2,293,000 
in six years, or a mean annual increase of 
£382,167. The United Kingdom was by far 
the greatest importing country within the Em- 
pire, having taken timber to the amount of 
£17,595,000 out of the total of £19,135,000. 
During 1894 the timber imported into Great 
Britain and Ireland from British colonies and 
dependencies was valued at £4,274,480, and 
foreign countries at £14,149,055. By far the 
larger portion of the timber imported into the 
United Kingdom came from Russia, Sweden, 
Norway, Germany, France and the United 
States, Canada being the only British depend- 
ency which at all equalled the export countries 
onthe Baltic. Canada was estimated to contain 
1,248,798 square miles of woodlands, but enor- 
mous tracts of that area did not contain any 
useful timber, while the remainder was by no 
means so well taken care of as it ought to be. 


SCIENCE. 


655 


Fires were frequent and disastrous, and the 
quantity of timber thus lost to the colony was 
calculated to be many times more than that 
cut down and exported. Notwithstanding those 
drawbacks, however, he believed that with 
proper management and careful conservation 
of the forests Canada might, at a moderate 
relative expenditure, supply the whole world 
for many years to come. He advocated the 
creation of a forest department in Great Britain, 
the careful conservation of existing and the 
creation of new forests by planting vacant 
lands, the establishment of schools of forestry, 
and model plantations for the guidance or 
private owners, and government grants in aid 
of those objects. 


REUTER’S agent at Valparaiso, writing under 
date February 27th, gives particulars of Mr. 
Fitzgerald’s expedition for the ascent of Acon- 
cagua. The expedition of the Royal Geo- 
graphical Society left Mendoza on December 
7th last. There were, in addition to Mr. Fitz- 
gerald himself, Mr. Vines, geologist; Mr. A. E. 
Lightbody, an engineer who joined the expedi- 
tion at Mendoza; Mr. Philip Gosse, a naturalist, 
and Mr. Allan de Trafford, an engineer, with 
Mattias Zurbriggen, chief guide; Joseph Pol- 
linger, second guide; Luis Pollinger and Loch- 
mater, additional guides, and Zante Niccolo 
and Fritz Loribel, attendants. In order to climb 
Aconcagua they entered the valley of Horcones, 
where, at a height of 12,500 ft., a camp was 
pitched on January 7th. Another camp was es- 
tablished at a height of 14,000 ft., from which 
the actual ascent began. At the height of 18,- 
000 ft. it was decided to plant on the side or 
Aconcagua the last camp. On January 15th Mr. 
Fitzgerald, accompanied by the chief guide, 
started for the summit, but ata height of 23,- 
000 feet found himself unable to proceed. The 
guide went on alone, however, and on the after- 
noon of that day reached the highest summit of 
the mountain. Almost a month later, on Feb- 
ruary 13th, Mr. Vines also reached the top, 
after a journey of nine hours. Mr. Vines 
studied the geological structure of the moun- 
tain. The hillside, he said, is porphyritic and 
has a thick covering of argilaceous earth which 
cannot sustain vegetation. The south side is 
broken up into peaks. After the expedition 


656 


has made all the necessary observations of the 
formation of the mountain and the different 
heights, it will proceed to explore the mountain 
of Tupungato and also Mercedario, in the prov- 
ince of Coquimbo, which is nearly as high as 
Aconcagua. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 


HARVARD UNIVERSITY receives $50,000 by 
the wills of the late Miss H. A. Haven and Miss 
C. M. Haven. Dartmouth College receives 
$15,000 from the same source, and Smith Col- 
lege $3,000 from Miss E. A. Haven. 


Mr. C. W. SPAULDING, lately Treasurer of the 
University of Illinois, is said to have used for 
his own purposes $400,000 in bonds and a 
large amount of money belonging to the Uni- 
versity. 


PRESIDENT DwicuHtT, of Yale University, in 
his annual report recommends that the fiftieth 
anniversary of the Sheffield Scientific School, 
which occurs this year, be celebrated by suitable 
exercises. He states that a new building for 
the departments of physiology and morphology 
is needed and hopes that funds will be provided 
during the year. Gifts and bequests to the 
University during the last ten years have 
amounted to more than $4,000,000. 


From the report of Cambridge University 
for 1896 it appears that during the year the 
University conferred 679 degrees of Bachelor 
of Arts, 33 of Bachelor of Law, 6 of Doctor of 
Science and 1 of Doctor of Letters. The total 
receipts of the University were upwards of 
£41,000. 


WE stated recently that in nearly all cases 
the State universities had remained non-parti- 
san. We must now record with regret the 
fact that the Populists, on securing a majority 
in the Board of Regents of the Kansas State 
Agricultural College, have dismissed a President 
who had served for eighteen years, to make 
room for a young man ‘in harmony with the 
fundamental principles of the administration,’ 
and have removed other members of the faculty 
and employees. 


Mr. Junius MorGAan, a Princeton graduate 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8S. Vou. V. No. 121. 


resident in New York, who is known for his 
bibliographical collections, some of which he 
has recently contributed to the Princeton Uni- 
versity library, has been appointed associate 
librarian in that institution. It may be added 
that the north stack room of the new library 
building at Princeton is nearing completion and 
the main collections are to be removed to it dur- 
ing the coming summer. 


Mr. W. B. Morron has been appointed pro- 
fessor of natural philosophy in Queen’s College, 
Belfast, filling the vacancy caused by the resig- 
nation of Dr. J. D. Everett. 


PROFESSOR R. VON LENDENFELD, of Czerno- 
witz, has been appointed professor of zoology 
in the German University at Prague. Dr. v. 
Below, of the Munster Academy, has been called 
to the chair of zoology at Marburg. Dr. Lud- 
wig Heim has been appointed assistant profes- 
sor of bacteriology. Dr. Gadamer has quali- 
fied as docent in pharmaceutical chemistry, at 
the University of Marburg. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 


MR. LOWELL’S OBSERVATIONS OF MERCURY 
AND VENUS. 


THE Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronom- 
ical Society for January, 1897, contains plates of 
drawings of Mercury and Venus, made by Mr. 
Lowell, at the Flagstaff Observatory, in 1896. 
The markings on Mercury were ‘at once con- 
spicuous’ with the new twenty-four-inch ob- 
ject-glass; those on Venus are ‘perfectly dis- 
tinct and unmistakable.’ The undersigned 
made a considerable number of observations of 
Mercury in the years 1873-1885, and a very 
large number of Venus in the years 1873-1890, 
with telescopes of six, sixteen, twenty-six, 
thirty-six inches in aperture, without ever once 
seeing markings of the character depicted by 
Mr. Lowell. Other markings of the class drawn 


_by Schiaparelli and many other observers have, 


on the other hand, been seen and recorded 
whenever the conditions of vision were good. 
I have no hesitation in saying that such mark- 
ings as are shown by Mr. Lowell did not exist on 
Venus before 1890. It is my opinion that they 
do not now exist on the planet, but that they 


APRIL 23, 1897. ] 


are illusions of some sort. Their general char- 
acter* is what would be shown if the adjusting 
screws of an objective were set up too tightly, 
producing a set of strains in the glass, or if the 
objective were strained by its cell. Strains of 
this sort will sometimes produce faint com- 
panions to stars sufficiently bright. A com- 
parison of all the drawings of Venus available 
in the library of the Lick Observatory is very 
instructive. All observers, except those at 
Flagstaff, see faint markings of one class, while 
those drawn by Mr. Lowell are of a totally dif- 
ferent nature. 

Venus has been observed on very many oc- 
casions at Mt. Hamilton, with our essentially 
perfeet twelve-inch object-glass, in the years 
1888-1897, without once seeing markings of the 
kind drawn by Mr. Lowell, or ‘distinct’ mark- 
ings of any kind. Faint and indistinct mark- 
ings, of the character of those drawn by scores 
of observers for a century past, are, however, 
seen when the circumstances are good. 

The foregoing notes seem to me to throw 
doubt on the reality of the markings reported 
from the Flagstaff Observatory. Until Mr. 
Lowell’s observations are fully comfirmed by 
other observers with other telescopes, it will be 
wise not to accept them unreservedly. 

EDWARD 8. HOLDEN. 

Mr. HAMILTON, March 9, 1897. 


FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS ON THE SYSTEMATIC 
POSITION OF TARSIUS. 


PROFESSOR HUBRECHT has replied with some 
warmth to the paper I lately published in 
SCIENCE, in which I attempted to show that, 
in my opinion, Yarsius is more of a lemur 
than an ape, although in reality an annectant 
type between the two. The objection I raised 
to placing Tarsius among the apes and the 
effect of this transferral on the classification 
of the Primates based on their osteology re- 
lated to recent forms. Professor Hubrecht is 
probably quite aware that, when we introduce 
the fossil Primates into the question of classify- 
ing the recent forms, the apparently sharp 
lines of demarcation between the skeletons of 
recent lemurs and apes disappear. 

*Six or more radial rays, thicker at the outer rim 
of the image of the planet. 


SCIENCE. 


657. 


I entirely agree with Professor Hubrecht in: 
the idea that classification should be based 
as far as possible on phylogeny, and that the 
only truly scientific arrangement of animals 
depends upon a knowledge of their whole or- 
ganization, both embryonic and adult. I claim, 
however, that the paleontological method in 
determining phylogeny is more nearly accurate: 
than the embryological, as in the latter many 
characters are lost and innumerable ceenogenetic: 
variations are introduced which the embryolo- 
gists often cannot distinguish from real homo- 
genetic structures. The great number of phy- 
logenetic trees based on embryology which are. 
annually cut down is amazing, and in fact the: 
truth of the theory of recapitulation as applied 
to the embryonic stages is now somewhat ques- 
tioned. 

Ido not at all regret quoting the name of 
Francis Maitland Balfour in regard to his warn- 
ing against placing too much reliance on pla- 
cental arrangements as criteria for the classifi- 
cation of the Mammalia, and hold that it applies 
directly to the question of the systematic posi- 
tion of Tarsius. On this side of the Atlantic 
we do not all follow the Neo-Darwinians in 
believing that the germinal products are locked 
up in iron safes as it were, and not affected by 
external conditions as the rest of the organism. 

I will now sum up my principal reasons 
for not accepting Professor Hubrecht’s views. 
that Tarsius is only related among the Primates 
to the Anthropoids: 

1. It has not been shown as yet that the 
placenta in the lemurs is not a derivative of the 
chorion as in the apes.* 


*M. A. Milne-Edwards remarks: ‘‘Or, Vallan- 
toide des Indrisines est si facile 4 detacher des parties 
adjacentes, qu’il me semble peu probable qu’il ait 
laissé un de ses feuillets adhérent au chorion, etily a 
tout lieu de penser que 1’explication mécanique de la 
production du placenta, telle qu’elle a été proposée 
par M. Baer et Bischoff n’est pas toujours 1’expres- 
sion de la vérité, et que, dans certain cas au moins, 
Varrivée des vaisseaux sanguins de l’allantoide a la 
face externe du chorion provoque une hypertrophie 
dans les parties correspondantes du tissu de cette en- 
vellope foetal, et que c’est de cette maniére que se 
forme le placenta, et non 4 la suite de ’accolement 
d@une' portion des parois de la vesicule allantoidi- 
enne.’? Mammiferes de Madagascar, p. 284. 


658 


2. The diffuse stage of the placenta of some 
of the anthropoids is apparently directly com- 
parable to that of the lemurs. 

8. There is no fundamental distinction be- 
tween a large free allantois and one which is 
rudimentary ; it is merely a matter of degree 
and not one of kind. 

4, There is no paleontological evidence as 
yet deduced which proves that apes and lemurs 
have arisen independently and that these two 
phyla were distinct as early as the Meso- 
zoic. 

5. The Santa Cruz beds of Patagonia in which 
Homunculus occurs are probably as late as the 
Lower Miocene. 

6. Anaptomorphus of the Lower Eocene is 
much more closely related to the lemurs than 
to the apes, but it has certain anthropoid 
characters which indicate that some of the 
latter may have been derived from this genus. 

7. Our present paleontological knowledge 
indicates that the Old World apes have been 
derived from a lemurine stock as late as the 
Oligocene. 

8. Synthetic types as Adapis, Tarsius and 
Mesopithecus demonstrate that apes and lemurs 
are genetically related. 

It remains to be seen whether naturalists in 
general will be willing to accept Professor Hu- 
brecht’s views as to the systematic position of 
Tarsius, depending upon the connection of 
placenta with the embryo (bauchstiel) and also 
on the histological details of the former. It 
seems probable that in forming an opinion as to 
the affinities of any animal the only judicious 
course to pursue is to consider the whole organ- 
ization as well as the development. As far as 
I can learn from Professor Hubrecht’s paper 
he has not followed this method, but wishes 
us to accept his conclusions hardly referring 
to the structures of Tarsius which are iden- 
tical with those of the lemurs and which occur 
in no other mammalian group except the 
lemurs. 

In conclusion I would like to call Professor 
Hubrecht’s attention to the following passage 
from Burmeister’s Monograph, which shows 
that he considered Tarsius to be a lemur, al- 
though Professor Hubrecht does not mention 
this fact in his memoir: ‘‘Aber Tarsius ist 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Voz. V. No. 121. 


nicht mal ein Affe, er ist vielmehr nur ein 
Halbaffe, ein Mitglied jener Gruppe * * * * *; 
Darin unterscheidet er sich yon allen tbrigen 
Halbaffen und steht eben desshalb so isolirt 
unter ihnen da.’’ It would be of interest if 
other morphologists would enter into this dis- 
cussion and give their opinions as to the sys- 
tematic position of Tarsius. If I did not state 
Professor Hubrecht’s case thoroughly it was an 
oversight on my part. 
CHARLES HARLE. 


NEw ROCHELLE, NEW YorK, April 7, 1897. 


THE COMING ICE AGE. 


To THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: In SCIENCE of 
March 19th Professor G. Frederick Wright, in 
his notice of the Coming Ice Age, says that ‘‘he 
is not sure that he has comprehended the au- 
thor’s meaning.’’ And it seems that such is 
the case where he writes that ‘the theory of 
the author is that a land conection between 
Patagonia and the Antarctic Continent, or a 
great diminution of the channel between these 
lands, would produce an effect upon the ocean 
currents favorable to the glaciation of both 
hemispheres.’’ This description is so inade- 
quate that it may produce a wrong impression, 
and so prevent a clear apprehension of what 
follows in the review. One of the main objects 
of my explanations has been to show that the 
closing or diminution of the channel south of 
Cape Horn would cause the tropical currents 
to enter the southern seas in sufficient volume 
to cause an age of mildness in the high southern 
latitudes which would spread over the globe, 
and the warm climate would continue until 
the southern oceans through a slow process re- 
tained water sufficient to greatly enlarge the 
channel south of Cape Horn, and so cause con- 
ditions favorable for the glaciation of lands 
situated in the high southern latitudes, such as 
is being performed to-day. Consequently, my 
prognostication of a coming ice age is based on 
the present enlarged condition of the Cape 
Horn channel, which affords sufficient space 
for the strong prevailing westerly winds of that 
latitude to force the surface waters of the 


‘southern oceans through the wide channel and 


so onward around the globe. Therefore, the 


APRIL 23, 1897.] 


tropical surface currents setting southward are 
largely turned away from the antarctic regions, 
so only a scanty portion of the water from such 
currents reach the frigid latitudes. And through 
this cause the antarctic lands have become 
heavily glaciated, and the glaciers are con- 
stantly flowing into the sea. This process chills 
the waters surrounding the antarctic shores and 
causes them to sink and find their way to the 
temperate and tropical latitudes in under cur- 
rents. In this way aJl of the under-waters of 
the oceans have acquired a low temperature, 
and there is much to show that their coldness 
is being slowly increased, and in consequence 
a cold epoch is being brought about. There is 
nothing hypothetical concerning the vast opera- 
tions of nature which give support to this view 
of the subject. For it is well known to the 
navigators of the southern oceans that the belt 
of strong westerly winds which sweeps the 
southern seas causes a cold drift current to 
move around the Antarctic Continent. And it 
is also well known to science that the chilly 
waters of the antarctic seas find their way to 
the temperate and tropical latitudes in cold 
under-currents. 
C. A. M. Taser. 


THE SMITHSONIAN TABLE AT THE NAPLES 
STATION. 


In view of the necessary delay in connection 
with several applications which have recently 
been made for the use of the Smithsonian Table 
at the Naples Station, it may be well to call the 
attention of zoologists and botanists to the ‘ Re- 
port on the Memorial presented to the Smith- 
sonian Institution regarding an American 
Table at the Naples Zoological Station,’ printed 
in SCIENCE, XXI., No. 641, June 16, 1893, pp. 
328-329. 

Candidates will avoid delay in the considera- 
tion of their applications if they will bear in 
mind the following suggestions : 


1. Applications should be addressed to Professor S. 
P. Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 
Washington, D. C., and not to the Secretary of the 
Advisory Committee. 

2. The candidate should state his entire educa- 
tional history, give a list of the papers he has pub- 


SCIENCE. 


659 


lished, and if possible send reprints of the same to 
accompany his application. 

3. He should apply for a definite period of time, 
not exceeding six months, and state the time of year 
which will be most convenient for him to occupy the 
table. 

4. Heshould givesome definite statement as to the 
general line of investigation he wishes to pursue 
while at Naples. 

5. If arecent graduate and a person not thoroughly 
known as an author, he should request his former in- 
structors to write in his behalf to the Secretary of the 
Smithsonian Institution. 

If the professors of zoology and botany in 
the various universities will bear these sugges- 
tions in mind they will greatly lessen the corre- 
spondence and delay in connection with the 
consideration of the applications from their stu- 
dents and will at the same time forward the in- 
terests of the applicants. 

CH. WARDELL STILES, 
Secretary Advisory Committee. 


SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE, 
An Introduction to Geology. By WILLIAM B. 

Scott. The Macmillan Co. 1897. 

The author of this class-book has at- 
tempted, and we think successfully, to provide 
a brief but complete and sufficiently detailed 
treatment of geology for the ordinary college 
student. 

He has used asa basis the fuller standard 
treatises on Geology, has taken as his model 
Sir Archibald Geikie’s ‘ Class-book ;’ has written 
it for American students, selecting examples 
from American geology; has illustrated the 
work with reproduced scenes taken by Ameri- 
can geologists, and has had help and sugges- 
tions from other workers in special fields. The 
result is, in general, a satisfactory book to put 
in the hands of a class of students, and partic- 
ularly well adapted, as it seems to the writer, 
to supplement a course of lectures in a general 
college curriculum. 

The arrangement of the chapters is not al- 
together such as a teacher would naturally use, 
and that some license is given to readjust the 
chapters is suggested by the remark in the 
preface: ‘‘The order in which the different 
sections of the book are taken up should de- 
pend somewhat upon the season of the year in 


‘660 


which the study is begun.’” The chapters 
themselves, however, treat of the subjects 
with precision and sufficient detail for the pro- 
duction of definite notions on the points dis- 
cussed. 

The treatment of Historical Geology is on 
the lines of Dana’s Manual, but without the 
details. This method in an exhaustive manual 
is valuable, but it may be doubted whether the 
use of so many scientific names of animals and 
plants as is necessary in such a treatment con- 
veys any definite information to readers who 
are unfamiliar with zoology and botany ; and 
even to zoologists, unless very well acquainted 
with the paleontological side of their science. 
The fact is that a really satisfactory mode of 
treatment of this fascinating subject of the 
biological problems of historical geology has 
not yet come to light. 

The illustrations are, in the main, excellent 
and new and, as has been said, richly Ameri- 
can. But some of them are so imperfectly re- 
produced from the original photographs as to 
lose much of their value. 

The publishers’ part of the work is well done, 
though the user of the book will often be caused 
to lament that it is found necessary to put so 
much weight into a book one is expected to 


hold in a single hand. 
H. S. WILLIAMS. 
YALE UNIVERSITY. 


The Glaciers of North America. By IsRAEL C. 
RUSSELL, Professor of Geology in the Uni- 
versity of Michigan. Boston, Ginn & Co. 
Pp. x+210. 

When the glaciers of Switzerland had been 
well explored those in this country were 
scarcely known, and now Professor Russell tells 
us that North America is the best region in the 
world for the study of glaciers ; that all types 
occur here, of all sizes and in great variety ; 
and he makes good his assertion by the descrip- 
tions of the glaciers of North America, so far as 
they are now known, which fill the greater part 
of the volume before us. 

Professor Russell attacks his subject as a 
geographer; his aim is to report the present 
condition of knowledge concerning the glaciers 
of this country and to ‘stimulate a thirst for 


SCIENCE, 


[N. S. Voz. V. No. 12%. 


fresh explorations and renewed study along an 
almost untrodden path.’ : 

To carry out this object the book must neces- 
sarily be largely a compilation, but the material 
for an important part is furnished by the original 
papers of the author himself. Of these we 
mention especially the account of the Mt. St. 
Elias region, which Professor Russell explored 
in the course of two remarkably plucky at- 
tempts to ascend Mt. St. Elias. 

He opens with a chapter giving a clear ac- 
count of the characteristics of glaciers and their 
work, in the course of which he is confronted 
with the question : ‘What is a glacier ?” 

A concise definition of a class of natural ob- 
jects is always difficult; and certainly none 
has yet been given which includes all the 
phenomena of glaciers. Mr. Russell recognizes 
this and gives provisionally the following defi- 
nition: A glacier is an ice body originating from 
the condensation of snow in regions where 
secular accumulation exceeds melting and evap- 
oration, 7. e., above the snow line, and flowing 
to regions where waste exceeds supply, 7. e., 
below the snow line. 

The majority of geologists and physicists 
would accept this as fairly representing the 
essential characteristics of a glacier; but the 
small number who believe that the force urging 
a glacier down its bed is not due to gravity 
alone, but to a large extent to the increase of 
the volume of the ice on account of the growth 
of the ice grains, must utterly reject it; for, 
according to their hypothesis, the source of 
supply is not snow that falls in the névé-fields, 
but the water that freezes throughout the body 
of the glacier. ] 

The glaciers of North America are confined 
to the Cordilleran mountain series and to the 
Greenland region. Professor Russell says that 
“the Cordilleran glaciers form an irregular 
curve, broadest and reaching the sea line in 
the Mt. St. Hlias region, and narrowing and 
becoming more and more elevated at both its 
western and southern extremities,’’ and then he 
successively describes in greater detail the 
glaciers of the Sierra Nevada; of the Cascade 
range, the higher peaks of which are volcanic 
cones and carry glaciers radiating from their 
summits; of Canada, and of Alaska. The’ 


APRIL 23, 1897. ] 


latter, of course, claim the greatest attention, 
on account of their number, size and variety. 
Here are the most accessible tide-water glaciers, 
and many tourists have already seen the birth 
of icebergs at the end of Muir glacier. Here 
also is the great Malaspina glacier, a mass of 
ice formed by the coalescence of the ends of 
many glaciers descending from the St. Elias 
Alps. It lies on a flat expanse between the 
mountains and the ocean and covers an area of 
some 1,500 square miles. Professor Russell 
has crossed this glacier along several lines and 
practically all we know of it is due to his ex- 
plorations. It is the only Piedmont glacier that 
has been visited. 

The absence of glaciers in the central and 
northern parts of Alaska is explained as due to 
insufficient precipitation ; but in these regions 
we find the strange subsoil ice whose thickness 
has not been determined, but which in places 
certainly extends several hundred feet below 
the surface of the soil. 

The glaciers in the northeastern part of the 
continent occur both in Grinnell Land and 
Greenland. Some of the former have been vis- 
ited and described, but have not received much 
attention, whereas the latter have attracted 
quite a number of observers. The recent stud- 
ies of Professor Chamberlin first made us 
familiar with certain remarkable characteristics 
of these glaciers which are not found in regions 
further south. 

In the chapter on Climatie Changes, Professor 
Russell shows that the glaciers of North Amer- 
ica, with a few exceptions, are growing smaller; 
and he mentions the efforts being made by the 
International Committee on Glaciers to collect 
information on the variations of glaciers every- 
where. 

In telling of ‘How and Why Glaciers move,’ 
the observations of Kock and Klocke are nar- 
rated. These observers thought they had de- 
tected certain irregularities in the motion of the 
Moteratsch glacier, parts of the ice moving at 
times up the valley. Professor Russell is cau- 
tious in accepting such an anomaly, and indeed 
the observers themselves have since recognized 
that these irregularities were within the limit 
of the errors of observation. 

_ The hypotheses which have been advanced 


SCIENCE. 


661 


to account for the apparent plastic flow of ice, 
notwithstanding its great brittleness, are well 
given and well criticised, especially from the 
point of view of the geographer; though James 
Thomson’s theory is too shortly dismissed, and 
Croll’s hypothesis receives more attention than 
it deserves, for it is radically wrong. The 
growth of the glacier grains, as a cause of 
motion, has been advanced from time to time, 
but has not been sustained; Forel developed 
this hypothesis into a theory, but found later 
that it was not supported by his observations. 

Professor Russell believes that the motion of 
glaciers is due principally to the plastic flow of 
ice under its own weight, but that many other 
causes play a minor part; some of these a physi- 
cist would throw out entirely. 

The book closes with a very interesting chap- 
ter on ‘The Life History of a Glacier.’ This 
is an extension of Professor Davis’ topographical. 
cycle to the history of a glacier, and is an 
entirely new addition to glacial literature. 

A slip is made on page 181 in saying that the 
heat absorbed when ice melts equals the heat 
necessary to raise the water thus formed from 
its freezing to its boiling point, and 211, p. 187 
is misleading; exception might also be taken 
to the statement (p. 192) that in a vertical sec- 
tion through the névé-fields the maximum flow 
[velocity] would probably be near the bottom. 

This book may be heartily commended to the 
general reader, and will be of great help to the 
student of glaciers. It is illustrated by a num- 
ber of well-selected pictures and maps, and. 
important references are given in foot-notes. 

HARRY FIELDING REID. 

GEOLOGICAL LABORATORY, 

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 


Neudrucke von Schriften und Karten iiber Meteor- 
ologie und Erdmagnetismus, herausgegeben von 
Pror. Dr. G. HELLMANN. 

No. 7. Esperienza dell’ Argento Vivo. BEvVaAn- 
GELISTA TORRICELLI. Istrumenti per conos- 
cer 1 Alterazioni dell’ Aria. ACCADEMIA DEL 
Cimento. 4to. Pp. 22, 16. 

No. 8. Meteorologische Karten. E. HALLEY, A. 
von Humsoutpr, HE. Loomis, U. J. Le VEr- 
RIER, E. RENOU. 1688, 1817, 1846, 1863,. 
1864. 4to. Pp. 13. Charts 6. 


662 


No. 9. A Discourse Mathematicall on the Varia- 
tion of the Magneticall Needle. HENRY GELLI- 
BRAND. London, 1635. 4to. Pp. 7, 24. 
Fascimiledrucke, mit Einleitungen. Berlin. 
A. Asher & Co., 1897. 

Three new numbers in Dr. Hellmann’s no- 
table series of Neudrucke are before us, each 
number being of great interest and value. Dr. 
Hellmann certainly deserves, and we do not 
doubt will receive, the thanks of all men of 
science for the pains he is taking in preparing 
this set of publications. No. 7 contains re- 
prints of the letters which passed between Tor- 
ricelli and Ricci concerning the measurement 
of atmospheric pressure, and of the description 
of the thermometer and hygrometer, prepared 
and published by the Accademia del Cimento. 
The letters of Torricelli are of very great scien- 
tific interest, for they concern the famous ex- 
periment, which was carried out by Viviani in 
Florence in 1643, at the suggestion of Torricelli. 
The latter left no written statements regarding 
the barometer, but he sent word of his discoy- 
ery to his friend Ricci, in Rome, and his two 
letters, most fortunately preserved, are re- 
printed in the present volume. They bear 
dates June 11 and 28, 1644, and show clearly 
that Torricelli knew that the mercury in the 
tube changed its height according to the condi- 
tions of the surrounding atmosphere, rising or 
falling as the air became heavier or lighter, and 
that he made the experiment in order that he 
might have an instrument for observing atmos- 
pheric changes. The report of the Accademia 
del Cimento concerns the early history of tem- 
perature and humidity observations. This re- 
print, which is a facsimile, gives two chapters of 
acelebrated work by Lorenzo Magalotti, Secre- 
tary of the Academy, entitled ‘ Saggi di naturali 
esperienze fatte nell’ Accademia del Cimento’ 
(1667), in which the most important results of 
the experiments made by the Academy were 
set forth. These chapters deal with thermome- 
ters and hygrometers, and facsimiles of the 
original drawings of some of these instruments 
are given. 

No. 8 of the Neudrucke gives reproductions 
of six meteorological charts, the original publi- 
cation of which was in each case epoch-making. 
The first is the wind chart of Halley (1686), the 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 121. 


oldest of all meteorological charts ; the second, 
Humboldt’s isothermal chart, 1817, the first one: 
on which isotherms were given; the third isa 
reproduction of one of the 13 synoptic weather 
maps published by Loomis in 1846, the fourth 
and fifth charts are facsimiles of those issued 
by Le Verrier in September, 1863. These were: 
the first daily weather maps with isobars, 
based on data sent by telegraph. The sixth 
chart is a reproduction of one by Renou in 
1864, which was the first to give the mean iso- 
bars for any country. ‘This gives the mean iso- 
bars of France. 

No. 9 is a facsimile reprint of a very rare 
paper by Gellibrand (1635), which contains the 
first account of the discovery of the secular 
variation of magnetic declination. 

All these reprints, like those which have pre- 
ceded, contain copious notes by Dr. Hellmann, 
in addition to the introduction. The series is 
one which should be in every scientific library. 

R. DEC. WARD. 

HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


Biologia Centrali-Americana. Archzology. The 
Archaic Maya Inscriptions. By J. T. Goop- 
MAN. London, R. H. Porter. 1897. 4to. 


Illustrated. Price, $13.50. 

One of the early Spanish missionaries warns 
his readers against studying the native Mexi- 
can calendar system, since it is an invention 
of the devil and liable to disturb the faith and 
cloud the reason of those who seek to under- 
stand it. 

It is a pity that this warning has not been 
heeded in the present generation by a certain 
class of writers, as we should then have been 
spared a rather extensive series of works char- 
acterized by a plentiful lack of sound knowl- 
edge and an abundance of wild speculation ; 
among them the bulky quarto (which the 
author fancifully calls ‘a little book’ !), the 
title of which is given above. 

It is the result, he tells us, of twelve years’ 
labor ; but when it was tendered to the Cali- 
fornia Academy of Sciences that learned body 
‘could not see its way’ to printing the book 
(prudent Academy !). Mr. Maudslay, however, 
whose explorations have been so valuable, but 
who does not pretend to interpret the inscrip- - 


APRIL 23, 1897.] 


tions, was impressed by the author’s claims 
and secured its publication in London. 

That it should appear as one of the series of 

the ‘ Biologia Centrali-Americana’ will give ita 
position liable to credit it to the intelligent 
public as a scientific work. This it is not in 
any sense, and no one can be more positive on 
this point than the author himself. He loses 
no opportunity to berate all who have attempted 
to apply scientific methods to the study of the 
Mayan inscriptions and the ancient calendars. 
They are ‘shoe-string scientists,’ ‘ dilletanti,’ 
‘assumed authorities,’ engaged in ‘pompous 
kowtowing to each other.’ He, the author, 
Mr. J. T. Goodman, announces himself as the 
‘illiterate proletaire’ who is to ‘push them 
rudely from their seats.’ Like Walt Whitman, 
he ‘flings his barbaric yawp over the roofs of 
the world.’ That was fine in Whitman, but 
he was a poet ; though Mr. Goodman can claim 
considerable imagination also. 
- Needless to add that his pages show no trace 
of this despised learning. The names of such 
European scholars as Seler, Forstemann, Rosny, 
do not once appear. This we may excuse, as 
Mr. Goodman doubtless extends his contempt 
to a knowledge of French and German; but 
one would suppose that the interesting compu- 
tations of Dr. Cyrus Thomas, published by the 
Bureau of Ethnology, would have been vouch- 
safed a word. But they are not once men- 
tioned. 

He does not consider any knowledge of the 
Maya language necessary in order to read the 
inscriptions, nor an acquaintance with the my- 
thology or culture of the tribe, nor an investi- 
gation into the origin of the glyphs. All this 
is beside the mark. To him, each glyph, each 
face or figure, each day or month sign, is a 
numeral, simple or complex. He ascertains 
their meanings by a ‘sort of intuition’ (p. 78) ; 
he ‘arrives at a conviction’ (p. 144); he has 
no doubt of his results, though they obstinately 
‘evade proof’ (p. 97); but at any rate he is 
willing to bet considerable on their accuracy 
(p. 83) ; and this certainly ought to be sufficient 
for anybody except some stupid scientific 
reader ! 

Occasionally he betrays a slight but regret- 
table distrust of this original and excellent 


SCIENCE. 


663 


method. He acknowledges that this opinion is 
‘little more than an assumption,’ or that 
identification insufficiently established ; but his 
faith is not in the least shaken that time and 
the future big volumes he has in view will 
demonstrate all his positions to the satisfaction 
of everybody, excepting always ‘the incompe- 
tent few’ (p. v.), by which polite reference he 
means his bétes noirs, the scientific students of 
the subject. 

His main thesis is that, ‘with the exception of 
the priests and their assistants, all the person- 
ages of the codices and inscriptions, ornaments 
and accessories, are composed of numeral 
signs’ (p. 85). In illustration, he portrays the 
head of the ‘long-nosed god,’ so frequent in 
the Dresden Codex, and finds a numeric value 
in each of its elements, in the eye, the ear 
ring, the head dress, and even in the celebrated 
nose itself, which we learn stands for 13. 
This has been equalled in Mayan research 
only by the late Dr. Cresson, who dissected 
in a similar manner the glyphs and figures, 
but who found, not numbers, but phonetic ele- 
ments, in each curve and crook of the work of 
the aboriginal artist. 

The crown and completion of Mayan numera- 
tion Mr. Goodman discovers in the bird which 
surmounts the cross in the well-known tablet 
at Palenque. This is the sign of the ‘grand 
era’ of the Mayas, which he figures out to be 
374,400 years. He has not fully dissected the 
bird, and is not quite prepared to assign the 
arithmetical value of each of its legs, etc.; but 
that is merely because he has ‘not found time’ 
for it(p. 84); and this does not in the least dis- 
turb his ‘ belief.’ 

To one unprepared by twelve years of study 
of hieroglyphs it is at first a little choking to 
swallow such a large antiquity for the Mayan 
culture ; but Mr. Goodman wisely warns us that, 
in view of his researches, ‘‘ we shall have to let 
out the strap that confines our notion of his- 
tory,’’ and acquire a ‘wider mental range’ 
than we have hitherto enjoyed (p. 149). To go 
back ten thousand years in the history of the 
happy Mayan people is to him but a trifle, 

It is rather difficult to take this big volume 
seriously. Even the formidable tables which 
fill its last hundred pages fail to dispel the feel- 


664 


ing of amusement created by the author’s 
curious notions and chosen ‘wild and wooly’ 
style, on which latter he especially plumes him- 
self. Only, it is out of place in the ‘ Biologia.’ 
It should have been issued by Bret Harte’s 
scientific society ‘on the Stanislaw,’ and re- 
ported upon by ‘ Truthful James.’ 

Nor, in the hundreds of guesses of the 
author, has he failed of some worth passing 
reflection. His theory of the correction for 
the bissextile year is at least suggestive. His 
explanation of the ua katun; his comments 
on the Cakchiquel calendar; his reasons for 
dismissing the cypher in Mayan numeration ; 
his argument that the ancient system of com- 
putation was to the end of a period instead of 
the beginning of a new one—these and some 
other thoughts may be rescued from the mass 
of crude assertions as meriting separate consid- 
eration. But, as a whole, the conviction will 
be forced on the enlightened reader that the 
cause of American archzeology has gained prac- 
tically nothing, and has lost something, by the 
publication of this heavy tome. 

D. G. BRINTON. 

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS. 
AMERICAN CHEMICAL JOURNAL, APRIL. 


On the Butanes and Octanes in American Petro- 
eum: By Cuas. F. MABERY and Epwarp J. 
Hupson. The authors have studied the very 
volatile portions of petroleum, obtained by dis- 
tilling the crude product during the cold winter 
months, the distillation in some cases proceed- 
ing from the heart of the atmosphere and being 
regulated by cooling the still. In order to 
identify the different hydrocarbons formed they 
were converted into their chlorine substitution 
products by bringing the vapor of the hydro- 
carbon together with chlorine. The distilla- 
tions were carried out with great care and 
ingenuity and a number of derivations of butane 
were made and studied. The results showed 
that the petroleum contained no normal butane, 
but isobutane. In isolating the octane the 
authors found that a long series of distillations 
had to be carried on to obtain pure products. 
They state that these octanes do not begin to 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 121. 


accumulate with any degree of purity until the 
twentieth distillation. They obtain an octane 
which they studied and also showed that the 
petroleum contained no octane boiling above 
125°. 

Naphthalene Tetrabromide: By W. R. ORN- 
DORFF and ©. B. Moyer. Naphthalene tetra- 
chloride has been studied by a number of chem- 
ists, but the corresponding bromine compound 
had not been prepared until the authors of this 
paper undertook its investigation. They found 
it could be prepared by treating naphthalene, in 
sodium hydroxide, with bromine. Cracked ice 
was put in the flask and also around it to pre- 
vent any decomposition taking place from the 
heat developed. A white cystalline substance 
was obtained which melted at 111° C. The 
cystallography of this substance was studied, the 
angles measured and the more common forms 
drawn. Many attempts were made to obtain 
an isomeric substance, but they all failed. The 
molecular weight could not be determined by 
the boiling-point method, but some rough de- 
terminations of the molecular weight of the 
tetrachloride were made and the composition 
of the bromide deduced from this by analogy. 
By this method and by analysis the composition 
was shown to be C,,H,Br,. 

On Hydrocobaltocobalticyanic Acid and Its 
Salts: By C. Lorine JAcKson and A. M. 
Comry. This work was undertaken in the hope 
of preparing, from potassium cobalticyanide, 
compounds analogous to the nitroprussides. 
When this compound was boiled for some time 
with strong nitric acid a gelatinous substance 
was formed, which was found to contain all 
the cobalt and to have the composition 
KH,CO,(CN),,H,O. This is the monopotassium 
salt of hydrocobaltocobalticyanic acid. The 
barium, silver, copper and zinc salts of the acid 
were also prepared. When the monopotassium 
salt was treated with potassium hydroxide 
cobaltic hydrate was precipitated and a sub- 
stance was isolated from the filtrate which 
proved to be potassium cobalticyanide. The 
fact that the substance crystallized in needles 
instead of in broad, rhombic crystals was prob- 
ably due to a slight amount of impurity. While 
some of the properties of these substances are 
similar to those of the ferrocyanides and ferri- 


APRIL 23, 1897.] 


yanides, they are not such as would aid specu- 
lation on the nature of their salts. 

On the Analogies in Composition of the Salts of 
Calcium, Strontium and Barium: By J. H. 
Kastuy. The author calls attention to the 
strong analogies which exist between the cal- 
cium, barium and strontium salts. According 
to the views of Lenssen strontium and barium 
show greater analogies, in the composition of 
their salts, to one another than they do to 
calcium. In this paper the author cites a 
large number of salts, and concludes from 
a study of their composition that the analogy 
and composition of the calcium, barium and 
strontium salts of any given acid is just as 
likely to show itself between the salts of all 
three of these metals, or between the calcium 
and strontium salts of that acid, as it is between 
the calcium and barium salts, or those of stron- 
tium and barium, and vice versa ; or that, so far 
as composition of their salts is concerned, these 
three metals are altogether similar. 

Action of Mercaptides on Quinones: By H. S. 
‘GRINDLEY and J. L. SAmmis. This article 
contains a preliminary notice of an investiga- 
tion being carried on by the authors, on the 
action of mercaptides or substituted quinones. 
They have obtained a product, by the action of 
sodium mercaptide on dichlor-diphenoxyqui- 
none, which is very unstable and decomposes in 
the presence of water, forming tetrathioethyl- 
quinone. Some of the derivatives of this sub- 
stance were also prepared and studied. 

The Action of Sodium Ethylate on Amide Bro- 
mides: By S. E. Swartz. It has been shown 
that amines can be formed from acid amide 
‘bromides by treatment with caustic alkali, and 
that the peculiar rearrangement which takes 
place in the molecule is perfectly analogous to 
the so-called Beckmann’s rearrangement of 
‘ketoximes. These changes take place in alco- 
holic solutions, and it was suggested that, per- 
haps, if the substances were brought together in 
some solvent which would not produce electro- 
lytic dissociation, the rearrangement might be 
prevented and direct substitution effected. It 
was found that succinimide bromide, treated 
with dry sodium methylate, regenerated suc- 
-cinimide, that no rearrangement took place, 
and that at the same time bromine was not re- 


SCIENCE. 


665 


placed by the methoxy group. When the re” 
action was carried out in alcoholic solution in 
every case rearrangement was effected. A 
number of amide bromides were decomposed in 
this way, and in every case the action took 
place as described above. One of the products, 
phenyl urethane, was treated with phosphorus 
pentachloride and chloroformanilide and phenyl 
isocyanate were obtained. As these compounds 
had been studied very little, a number of their 
derivatives were prepared and studied. 

The Hydrolysis of Acid Amides: By IRA 
REMSEN. The author calls attention to the 
changes produced by the action of dilute acids 
on acid amides. It has been shown by him, in 
the course of an investigation on the oxidation 
of substitution products of aromatic hydrocar- 
bons, that when chromic acid is used, an oxidi- 
zable residue, situated in the ortho position 
with reference to a group that is not oxidizable, 
is almost completely protected from oxidation, 
while similar groups in the meta or para posi- 
tion are easily oxidized. An investigation is 
now being carried out which, up to the present, 
shows that the ortho amide resists the action of 
the hydrolysing agent to a marked degree, while 
the meta and para amides yield readily, the 
latter more so than the meta. The investiga- 
tion will be extended to other amides to see if 
they will conduct themselves in the same way. 

A review of Lehrbuch der allgemeinen 
Chemie, W. Ostwald ; Zweiten Bandes, zweiter 
Teil; is also contained in this number of the 


Journal. ; 
J. ELLIOTT GILPIN. 


TERRESTRIAL MAGNETISM, MARCH, 1897. 


WITH the present number, this journal, de- 
voted to Terrestrial Magnetism and allied sub- 
jects, such as Harth Currents, Auroras and At- 
mospheric Electricity, enters on its second vol- 
ume. The editor, Dr. L. A. Bauer, having 
been appointed assistant professor at the Uni- 
versity of Cincinnati, the office of publicatior 
has been transferred to that institution. The 
contents of the present number are: 


The Effect of Hardness on the Electrical and Mag- 
netic Constants of Steel, with Particular Reference to 
the Tempering of the Magnetic Parts of Instruments, 
Carl Barus ; Vertical Earth-Air Electric Currents, 


666 


LL; A. Bauer ; Magnetic Work at the Kew Observa- 
tory, Charles Chree ; On the Distribution of Magnetic 
Observatories over the Globe, Adolf Schmidt ; Results 
of Magnetic Observations on the Greenland Expedi- 
tion of 1896, G. R. Putnam ; Letter to Editor: A 
Proposal with Regard toan International Magnetic 
Congress, A. Schuster. 


Professor Barus, in his article, gives a valua- 
ble summary of the results obtained in the tem- 
pering of magnetic needles, by Dr. Strouha] and 
himself, some years ago. The article, which is 
illustrated, closes with rules for the practical 
treatment of magnets, where great secular per- 
manence of magnetization is the principal de- 
sideratum. 

Dr. Bauer investigates the matter of electric 
currents passing from the air into the earth or 
from the earth into the air. If such currents 
exist, their presence will be indicated by the 
non-vanishing of the line integral of the earth’s 
magnetic force, resolved along a closed curve 
of the earth’s surface. The author selects, as 
his closed circuits, parallels of latitude between 
60° N and 60° S and distant by 5° from each 
other. He bases his investigations on the Neu- 
meyer magnetic maps of 1885. The result of 
the investigation would seem to be that, appar- 
ently, an appreciable part of the earth’s total 
magnetism can be referred to an effect similar 
to that of vertical electric currents. The aver- 
age intensity of these currents for the region be- 
tween 60 N and 60 8 would be about one-tenth 
of an ampere per square kilometer of surface. 

Dr. Chree gives an interesting account of the 
work done at Kew Observatory, of which he is 
Superintendent. Dr. Schmidt finds that the 
present distribution of magnetic observatories, 
the great majority being on European ground, 
is far from satisfying the demands of modern 
science. In order to establish some criterion 
with regard to the precision to be obtained in the 

_ results of a geomagnetic investigation as based 
upon the present observatories, he undertakes 
a mathematical examination, making various 
combinations of existing observatories and pro- 
posed ones. It is remarkable how much the 
addition of one or two observatories in the 
southern hemisphere will reduce the probable 
error in the coefficients of the spherical harmonic 
series representing the phenomenon under con- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 121. 


sideration. New observatories are, above all, 
needed in the southern part of South America, 
the central Pacific and in New Zealand. 

Mr. Putnam summarizes his recent magnetic. 
work in Greenland. Professor Schuster pro- 
poses that an International Magnetic Congress. 
of all those interested in the subject be held in. 
1899. 


THE AMERICAN PHYSICAL EDUCATIONAL RE- 
VIEW.* 


Tue American Association for the Advance- 
ment of Physical Education has made a new 
departure in the line of publication. This 
Association has been in existence since 1885 
and has published ten reports containing papers 
given at the annual meetings. These reports 
have been increasing in size and value and con- 
stitute the best literature of physical education 
in English. 

In the reorganization of the Association, 
which took place a year and a-half ago, the 
annual meetings ceased, to give place to trien- 
nial or quadrennial conventions. The effort is- 
now being directed to the formation of local 
physical education societies and of State 
branches, making it possible for the teachers to 
have sections in connection with the County 
and State Teachers’ Associations. Twelve 
local organizations have already sprung up and 
are exhibiting signs of considerable activity in 
their monthly and annual meetings. 

The interests of the National Association are- 
in the hands of a Council of nine members, who: 
act as an executive committee in all matters re— 
lating to the Association’s interest. The Na- 
tional Council, after publishing the Tenth 
Annual Report, which fell to their lot at the 
close of 1895, have undertaken, instead of such 
annual reports, the publication of the American 
Physical Educational Review, the first volume 
of which has just appeared. It is proposed 
during 1897 to publish four numbers consisting 
of about 60 pages each, to contain original 
articles relating to physical education, reprints 
of articles not easily accessible to members of” 


* Published quarterly under the auspices of the 
American Association for the Advancement of 
Physical Education. Edited by E. M. Hartwell, G. 
W. Fitz, R. G. Huling. Cambridge, 1896. 


APRIL 23, 1897. ] 


the Association, reviews of related literature, 
ete. 

The first volume consists of the following 
original and reprinted papers: 

‘Peter Henry Ling, the Swedish Gymnasi- 
arch,’ by E. M. Hartwell; ‘The Olympic 
Games and Their Influence upon Physical Edu- 
cation,’ by Ellery G. Clark ; ‘Statistical Sketch 
of the Present Status of Physical Training,’ by 
Karl Zapp ; ‘What the City of Braunschweig, 
Germany, Does for the Physical Training of 
her Children,’ by Ernst Hermann ; ‘ Report of 
Committee of the Boston Physical Education 
Society, to Suggest a Substitute for the Manual 
of Arms as a Means of Physical Exercise in the 
Military Training of School-boys;’ ‘ Military 
Drill in the Public Schools,’ by D. A. Sargent ; 
‘Manual Training: Its Educational Value,’ by 
Thomas M. Balliet ; ‘ The Influence of Exercise 
upon Growth,’ by Henry G. Beyer; Brookline 
Public Bath; Reports from Societies ; Editorial 
Notes and Comment; Book Notices and Bibli- 
ography ; ‘Index to the Ten Reports of the A. 
A. A. P. E.,’ by J. M. Pierce. 

One of the most important contributions to 
this number is the Index to the ten reports of 
the A. A. A. P. E. prepared by Mr. John M. 
Pierce. The National Council have decided to 
strike this off as a reprint for the benefit of 
those who desire to bind it with the reports. 
The report of the Committee on Military Train- 
ing has also been reprinted and should do good 
educational service in combating the misguided 
efforts in different parts of the country to foist 
military drill on the public schools in place of a 
rational system of sports, games and physical 
exercises. Copies of both these reprints may 
be obtained by application to the Correspond- 
ing Secretary, Dr. G. W. Fitz, Cambridge, 
Mass. 

The Council of the A. A. A. P. E. are to be 
commended for their boldness in undertaking 
this publication, and to be congratulated on its 
creditable appearance. Teachers in general 
will feel indebted to them for making accessi- 
ble valuable papers on physical education, 
especially since the low price of membership, 
one dollar per year, brings the Review easily 
within their reach. G. W. F. 

HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


SCIENCE. 


667 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 


SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION OF THE JOHNS HOP- 
KINS UNIVERSITY. 

THE one hundred and thirty-second regular 
meeting was held March 18, 1897, President 
Remsen in the chair. 

The papers presented and read were: 

1. ‘The Projection of Panoramic Views of 
Contoured Surfaces,’ by Josiah Pierce, Jr. 

The principal subjects brought up for dis- 
cussion were: 1. The metrical and projective 
properties of contours and bas-reliefs. 2. The 
principles involved in the projection of irregu- 
lar plane-figures and surfaces. 38. The prac- 
tical applications of the laws of projection in 
the design of perspectographs and mechanical 
aids to projection. 

It was demonstrated in the paper that the 
general problem of the projection of an irregular 
surface of any form could be reduced to one of 
great simplicity by the methods suggested by 
the author of projecting successive contours or 
equidistant sections of the surface. The meth- 
ods were shown to be applicable to the illus- 
tration of complex geological problems, which 
under ordinary conditions would require to be 
illustrated upon models, and for the solution of 
many difficult problems in projection, such as 
the determination of shadows on irregular sur- 
faces and the development of bas-reliefs and 
projective forms. 

Illustrations were given of a number of 
practical applications of the methods by draw- 
ings of very irregular surfaces developed in 
relief by the projection of contours—such as 
panoramic views of wide areas, and surfaces 
developed in high or low relief under different 
conditions of projection from horizontal verti- 
cal and inclined sections. 

In the discussion given of the general prob- 
lem of the projection of irregular plane figures 
two methods of operation were presented—one 
involving the metrical and projective relations 
of corresponding points of plain figures in 
perspective, applicable in the design of per- 
spectographs and linkages; the other the re- 
lations of corresponding lines in perspective— 
applicable in the methods of tracing the pro- 
jections of irregular figures—enclosed in nets of 
intersecting lines. 


668 


It was shown to be possible to perform any 
vperation of plane perspective with a sliding 
linkage of three rods and by a slight modifica- 
tion of the pantagraph to obtain any desired 
orthogonal or parallel projection of an irregular 
figure or surface. 

The author also called attention to the 
extreme simplicity of the methods of project- 
ing extensive panoramic views from contoured 
maps by the employment of a linkage of two 
threads, the methods being fully illustrated by 
the drawings and models accompanying the 
paper. 

2. ‘The Nerve Impulse in its Relations to 
the Strength of the External Stimulus,’ by C. 
W. Greene. 

The papers presented and read by title 
were: 

1. ‘A New Form of Mirror for Boheme 
Telescopes,’ by Chas. Lane Poor. 

The mirror is a portion of a paraboloid of 
revolution, cut at the extremity of the param- 
eter. The advantages over the old form were 
indicated as follows: Utilization of the full 
aperture; the reflected beam being at right 
angles to the incident light ; no second mirror 
necessary ; possibility of constructing mirrors of 
great focal length; possibility of such mirrors 
of short focal length, replacing photographic 
doubts. 

2. ‘A New Form of Equatorial Mounting for 
Reflecting Telescopes.’ 

With mirror of the above form an equa- 
torial mounting becomes very simple; the dec- 
lination axis becomes the telescope tube, the 
mirror being mounted at extremity of such 
axis and capable of revolving about it in a 
manner similar to the large flat of the equa- 
torial condé. 

The image is formed at the intersection of 
the polar and declination axes and is always in 
the same position; the observer, therefore, re- 
mains at rest while viewing any and every 
part of the visible heavens. A single reflecting 
surface replaces three in the reflecting equatorial 
condé, and four in the forms mentioned by 
Wardsworth. No dome is required. Many 
other advantages were indicated and several 
modifications of the general form pointed out. 

Note. —Experiments with mirrors of the 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V.. No. 121. 


above form are now being carried out at the 
University. CHAS. LANE Poor, 
Saepaiaven 


BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON, 
MEETING, SATURDAY, MARCH 27TH. 


274TH 


Mr. M. B. WatrEspoke on ‘ Factors Govern- 
ing Pear Blight,’ showing that the very condi- 
tions which were favorable to the growth of the 
tree were also favorable to the development of 
the disease, and that an important factor in 
combating the blight was the prevalence of a 
considerable degree of drouth. 

Mr. Theo. Holm gave a historical review of 
our knowledge of ‘The Grass Embryo and its 
Constituents.’ He described the embryo as 
defined by Malpighi and authors of recent date, 
saying that there seemed to be good reason for 
adopting the explanation of its structure given 
by Malpighi more than 200 years ago. This 
involves the definition of both the ‘scutellum ’ 
and the ‘lobule’ as independent leaves, while 
the ‘pileole’ thus becomes the first sheathing leaf 
or the second leaf proper after the cotyledon. 
A full account will soon appear in an article 
upon Fuirena, by the speaker, in the American 
Journal of Science. 

Dr. E. A. De Schweinitz described ‘Some 
Methods of Generating Formaldehyde and its 
use as a Disinfectant,’ showing a specially de- 
vised form of lamp with a platinized wick by 
which large volumes of the gas could be readily 
generated. F. A. Lucas, 

Secretary. 


NEW BOOKS. 
The Materials of Construction. 
New York, John Wiley & Sons. 
xv + 787. $6.00. 
The Principles of Mathematical Chemistry. GkO. 
Heim. Authorized translation from the Ger- 
man by J. Livineston R. MorGan. New 


J. B. JOHNSON. 
1897. Pp. 


York, John Wiley & Sons. 1897. Pp. viii+ 
228. $1.50. 
An Outline of the Theory of Solution. J. Liv- 


INGSTON R. MorGAN. New York. 

Plane and Solid Analytical Geometry. FREDER- 
Ick H. BAILEY, FREDERICK S. Woops. 
Boston and London, Ginn & Co. 1897. Pp. 
xii+371. 


MR ee ee 


>, 
£%, 


SCIENC 


NEW SERIES. 
Vou. V. No. 122. 


Fripay, Aprit 30, 1897. 


SINGLE COPIES, 15 cts. 
ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION, $5.00. 


The Macmillan Company's New Books. 


SIR ARCHIBALD GEIKIE’S NEW WORK. 


The Ancient Volcanoes of Great Britain. 


By SIR ARCHIBALD GEIKIE, F.R. S., 


D.C.L. (Oxford), D. Se. (Cambridge and Dublin), LL.D. (St. Andrews and Edinburgh). 
Director-General of the Geological Survey of Great Britain and Ireland. 
Member of all the Academies of Science and Scientific Societies of note. 


With Seven Maps and Numerous Illustrations. 


Cloth. 8vo. 


Two Volumes. 


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The present work is intended to offer a summary of what has now been ascertained regarding the former volcanoes ot 
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SCIENCE 


EDITORIAL CommittEe: S. NeEwcoms, Mathematics; R. S. WooDWARD, Mechanics; E. C. PICKERING, 
Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THURSTON, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry; 
J. LE Contx, Geology; W. M. DAvis, Physiography; O. C. Maxrsu, Paleontology; W. K. 
Brooks, C. HART MERRIAM, Zoology; S. H. SCUDDER, Entomology; N. L. Britton, 
Botany; HENRY F. OsBoRN, General Biology; H. P. BowbitcH, Physiology; 
J. S. BrnLines, Hygiene ; J. MCKEEN CATTELL, Psychology ; 
DANIEL G. BRINTON, J. W. POWELL, Anthropology. 


Fripay, Apri 30, 1897. 


CONTENTS: 
The National Academy of Sciences : ........00.+00e-00e+ 669 
An Essay on the Classification of Insects: JOHN B. 
SSMID Hage nctacene se sass scorn sleces sscetiasesccesedseereasacenecs 671 
How may Museums best Retard the Advance of Sci- 
ENCE AA, VA DHIER lone cesaceseecseceesereceer cere set 677 
Internal Secretions considered in Relation to Varia- 
tion and Development: ALBERT MATHEWG........ 683 


A Layman’s Views on Scientific Nomenclature : 
THEODORE ROOSEVELT. .........scccccceseeeeeeeeenees 685 


Current Notes on Anthropology :— 
Contributions to Ethno-botany; Cannibalism in 
Europe; The Pre-history of Northern Europe: 
Grp RENTON iecacsecssioctecescescceeenccesnccneecess 688 
Scientific Notes and News :— 
How Flowers attract Insects; The Scientific Ex- 
position of the Government at the Tennessee Ex- 
WPOSI ORM GENEL GU eneoeseecsapactenasetcceeeecascerceen 689 
University and Educational News........0-.s0esececsees 694 
Discussion and Correspondence :— 
The Re-distribution of Type-specimens in Museums : 
F. A. BATHER. The Quarternary of Missouri: 
J.E. Topp. A ‘driftless’ Ridge: O. H. HER- 
SHB. o00...s0e.seeesesoseee occeesceesnnedenessroneenracenre 694 
Scientific Literature :— 
Von Tubeuf on the Diseases of Plants induced by 
Cryptogamic Parasites: GO. F. ATKINSON. 


Recent Books on Quaternions: ALEXANDER 

IVIGA'C RY ACRIVAUN Ryerson neseee nessa iiasaceemseeetec neers 696 
Scientific Journals :— 

The Journal of Geology: H. FB. Bu.....sesseceneeeeees 701 


Societies and Academies :— 
New York Academy of Sciences ; Section of Geol- 
ogy: RICHARD E. DopGeE. Boston Society of 
Natural History: SAMUEL HENSHAW. The 
Texas Academy of Sciences: FREDERIC W. 


Smonps. The Academy of Science of St. Lowis : 
IWIGLTAM TRELBASH. 1... ..c.c--ccerecseccceeecens 702 
New Books .........+ JeadaosnadeonaasascsoocooaboondonSonccesend 704 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended 
for review should be sent to the responsible editor, Prof. J. 
McKeen Cattell, Garrison-on-Hudson, N. Y. 


THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 

THE annual meeting of the National 
Academy of Sciences in Washington began 
on Tuesday, the 20th inst., and continued 
through the following Wednesday and 
Thursday. 

‘The meeting was remarkable for the nn- 
usually small number of scientific papers 
presented and the unusually large number 
of obituary notices and biographical mem- 
oirs read. 

In the order of their presentation the 
scientific papers were: ‘ An Experimental 
Study of the Influence of Environment upon 
the Biological Processes of the Various 
Members of the Colon Group of Bacilli,’ by 
Adelaide Ward Peckham (presented by Dr. 
Billings); ‘On the Energy involved in Recent 
Earthquakes,’ by Dr. Mendenhall, who, with 
Professor A. 8. Kimball, presented a second 
paper on ‘A Ring Pendulum for Absolute 
Determinations of Gravity,’ the first being 
discussed at some length by Professors Agas- 
siz, Rowland, Gilbert, Hastings and Men- 
denhall; ‘On the Variation of Latitude,’ by 
Dr. S. C. Chandler; ‘ On the Position of the 
Tarsiids and Relationship to the Phylogeny 
of Man,’ by Dr. Theodore Gill; ‘A New 
Harmonic Analyzer,’ by Professors Michel- 
son and S. W. Stratton ; ‘A report on the 
Variation of Latitude and Constant of 
Aberration from Observations at Columbia 
University,’ the joint work of Professors 
Rees and Jacoby and Dr. Davis, presented 


670 


by Dr. 8. C. Chandler; ‘On Recent Bor- 
ings in Coral Reefs,’ by Professor Agassiz ; 
and ‘ Notes on Experiments upon the Ront- 
gen Rays,’ by Professor Arthur W. Wright. 

Biographical memoirs were read as fol- 
lows: Of Dr. G. Brown Goode, by Professor 
Langley; of General Thos. L. Casey, by 
General Abbott; of Dr. Brown-Sequard, 
by Dr. Bowditch ; of Professor H. A. New- 
ton, prepared by Professor J. W. Gibbs and 
read by Professor A. W. Wright; and of 
Professor George H. Cook, by Mr. G. K. 
Gilbert. 

Formal announcement was made of the 
death, since the last meeting of the 
Academy, of four of its members, including 
several of those most eminent and most 
widely known, namely, Dr. B. A. Gould, 
General F. A. Walker, Professor E. D. Cope 
and Professor M. Carey Lea. 

Four new members were elected: Profes- 
sor Morley, of Cleveland; Dr. Minot, of 
Boston; Dr. Dall, of Washington, and Pro- 
fessor Gooch, of New Haven. 

On Wednesday Professor Asaph Hall 
was elected as Vice-President, to succeed 
General Francis A. Walker, who filled that 
office at the time of his death. Professor 
Remsen was elected to succeed Professor 
Hall as Home Secretary, and Professor A. 
Graham Bell was chosen as Treasurer of 
the Academy, to succeed Dr. Billings, who 
resigned that office, owing to his removal 
to New York. 

Sir Archibald Geikie, Director of the 
Geological Survey of Great Britain, who is 
giving a course of lectures at the Johns 
Hopkins University, was the guest of the 
Academy at luncheon on Thursday, and 
was formally presented to the Academy at 
the session immediately following. 

The plan agreed upon a year ago, of hav- 
ing the reading of papers begin at 2 p. m. 
and not attempting scientific work in the 
morning, was followed this year and will be 
productive of good results as soon as it is 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 122. 


generally understood. It may be assumed 
that the Academy is indifferent as to 
whether it has an audience or not, and it is 
becoming quite evident that those who do 
not belong to it are pretty much of the 
same mind; but it is none the less a fact 
that there are always many people in 
Washington at the time of its annual 
meeting, including many residents and 
many temporary visitors, who would be 
glad to listen to the papers and discussions, 
and as long as the so-called ‘scientific ses- 
sions’ are avowedly open to the public, an 
invitation to attend being in some sense 
offered, some consideration ought to be 
given to those who often put themselves to 
much trouble to be present. The new plan 
of having a definite hour for beginning the 
‘scientific session’ is an important step in 
this direction, and it ought to be followed 
by a rigid adherence to the order of the 
printed program in the presentation of 
papers. Often a member will invite those 
specially interested to be present at the 
reading of a particular paper, only to be 
disappointed by a change in the order to 
accommodate one whose title is lower down 
on the list. The Council has full power, it 
is assumed, to arrange the list as it deems 
best, but when once printed it should be 
adhered to, certainly, unless departure from 
it is by common consent. 

The Academy is not only indifferent to 
the presence or absence of listeners, but it 
is probably equally indifferent to criticism 
from the outside; but having already ven- 
tured a word of critical comment, it will 
do no harm to add another and remark 
that if the formal introduction of a dis- 
tinguished foreigner is an event likely to 
occur again it would be well to have some 
understanding among the few members 
who may accidentally be present at the 
time as to whether they are or are not ex- 
pected to share in any way in the bestowal | 
of this pleasant compliment. 


APRIL 30, 1897.] 


On such occasions, and, indeed, on all 
occasions when the Academy is in session 
for other than the transaction of its private 
business, the presence of a goodly number 
of its members would be desirable, and it 
ought not to forget that it is a National 
Academy, chartered by the government; 
therefore to a degree the creature of the 
people and their representatives in the 
highest domain of scientific investigation. 
They do not wish to direct or restrict its 
operations, but are content to see that they 
are controlled by a membership which in- 
cludes the ablest specialists which the 
country produces, selected from time to 
time in accordance with a standard with 
which they have no particular quarrel. 
On the other hand, the Academy may well 
give great consideration to its obligations 
to such an enormous and unusually intelli- 
gent constituency, whose character and 
dignity, from the scientific standpoint, it is 
delegated to represent. 

The November meeting will be this year 
in Boston, beginning on Tuesday, the six- 
teenth of that month. 

AN ESSAY ON THE CLASSIFICATION 
INSECTS. 

Or late years the phylogeny of insects 
has attracted considerable attention from 
students, and much light has been thrown 
upon the subject by the researches made. 
One of the most notable facts has been the 
breaking away from the old Linnzan orders 
and the substitution of a number of more 
compact assemblages for some of the almost 
indefinable aggregations found in the old 
classification. New characters have been 
sought, not only in structures visible exter- 
nally, but even in internal anatomical pe- 
culiarities. The subject is a very interest- 
ing one, which the teacher is of necessity 
compelled to study more or less, and which I 
was led to examine more particularly when 
the question recently came up as to the adop- 


Or 


SCIENCE. 


671 


tion of some system in a general work on 
‘Economic Entomology,’ which has since 
been published. The conclusions reached 
by myself, while in general they agree with 
the latest published results, have been ar- 
rived at by a somewhat different method, 
and my ideas concerning the development 
of the orders are somewhat unlike those 
heretofore accepted. I have tried to ad- 
here logically to a scheme of easy develop- 
ment, and have made use of some charac- 
ters not heretofore particularly noted. 
Leaving aside for the present all questions 
as to the origin of the class ‘ Insecta’ and 
as to its ancestors, I start from a developed 
hexapod—an archetypal Thysanuran with 
six, jointed legs; without wings ; with or 
without abdominal appendages other than 
functional legs ; with no eyes or with ocelli 
only ; with a head not greatly differing in 
size or form from the body segments; with 
the thoracic segments equally developed 
and not greatly differing except in append- 
ages from those of the abdomen. This 
creature lived in moist places, perhaps par- 
tially in the water, and had the tracheal 
system feebly or not at all developed; 
absorbing oxygen chiefly through the skin 
and tending, perhaps, as much in the di- 
rection of an aquatic as a terrestrial life. It 
had no distinct metamorphosis, was ovip- 
arous, bisexed, changing little in appear- 
ance from the time it emerged from the egg 
until it was adult and capable of reproduc- 
tion. The mouth structures were general- 
ized, feebly developed; but with at least 
three, and possibly four, pairs of composite 
structures corresponding to mandibles, 
maxille and labium of our existing insects. 
The possible fourth pair may have been an 
endo-labium and, perhaps, the labrum with 
its attached epipharynx may have required 
a fifth pair of structures. Most essential of 
all was an inherent power of variation and 
adaptation, and probably, as with some of 
our present Thysanurans, reproduction was 


672 


rapid and enormous numbers existed. The 
first important differentiation occurred in 
the mouth structure long before wings be- 
came developed, tending on the one hand to 
a perfection of all or most of the parts, or 
to a mandibulate type; on the other toa 
loss of certain of the structures, accompanied 
by a different development of the others, 
forming a haustellate type. In this latter 
branch the mandibles were never developed, 
the maxillary structures became elongated, 
separated into their parallel parts, and the 
labium became obsolete as a functional or- 
gan. Just how many intervening orders ex- 
isted between Thysanura emandibulata and the 
best development of the haustellate struc- 
tures it is impossible to say; but the only one 
in existence at the present time is Thysanop- 
tera, also called Physopoda, otherwise Thrips. 

This order I consider a distinct one on 
the same branch from which arose the 
Hemiptera, but forming merely a short spur 
and retaining characters which were soon 
lost in the main and more vigorous branch. 
It is a survival which has lost the power of 
further development, and can do no more 
than merely maintain itself. The main 
branch formed the Hemiptera, or, as I prefer 
to call them, the Rhyngota, of to-day ; the 
mandibulate parts being completely lost, 
the labium losing all external appendages, 
and the maxille forming the jointed beak 
with its inclosed lancets. 

The Thysanoptera and Rhyngota of all the 
existing orders are the only ones that do 
not have functional mandibles in some stage 
of their development. They arehaustellate 
from their birth, and the character of the 
mouth parts never changes. In all the 
other orders, either larve or adults, or 
both, are mandibulate. I am aware that 
there are seeming exceptions in several 
orders, notably the Diptera; but it will 
hardly be disputed that this order is of a 
mandibulate stock, and many larve have 
the parts well developed. 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 122. 


It results from the views just stated that 
the Thysanoptera and Rhyngota are a division 
equal in value to all the other, or mandibu- 
late, orders combined. They have their 
origin from the common stock; but were 
always haustellate or emandibulate in all 
stages, forming the first and lower of my 
main divisions. With the development of 
this branch, after its distinctive feature be- 
came established, I have nothing to do at 
present. It seemed adapted for variation 
in special lines only, and, as the method of 
feeding was practically fixed from the be- 
ginning, there is a remarkable similarity in 
mouth parts throughout. 

The mandibulata possessed much greater 
powers of variation and a mouth structure 
in which all the parts were developed and 
capable of modification, containing possi- 
bilities of much greater range in obtaining 
food. They lived, therefore, under all sorts 
of conditions, in all sorts of media, and all 
kinds of modification were produced ; some 
of them short-lived, adapted only to sur- 
roundings then existing ; others with greater 
possibilities, that exist to the present time. 

The first mandibulate insect had the 
thoracic segments similarly developed, all 
of about the same size and each of them 
free; but the advent of wings gave oppor- 
tunity for radical divisions. I have no de- 
sire to go into details here more than neces- 
sary to explain my views of classification, 
hence will not pretend to account for the 
origin or development of wings. They did 
appear, however, and independently at sev- 
eral different points. In all cases the 
wings were net-veined or neuropterous in 
type, a peculiarity which is explicable if the 
venation be considered of a tracheal origin. 
With the appearance of wings many diver- 
gences in habit were made possible and 
new types began to appear. Three main 
lines branched almost simultaneously from 
the common stock, each of them fairly well 
marked from the beginning, retaining its 


APRIL 30, 1897. ] 


peculiarities and even intensifying them in 
all future subdivisions to the present time. 
In the first of these the prothorax, bearing 
no wings, became separated from the other 

rings and moyable, or in a sense domi- 
“nant. In both the others it tended to a re- 
duction in size or to become agglutinated 
with or united to the others. In a general 
way it may be said that the series in which 
the prothorax is free is lower in the scale 
of development, as retaining a more primi- 
tive type. The orders belonging to this 
subdivision or branch are the Dermoptera, 
Coleoptera, Plecoptera, Platyptera and Orthop- 
tera. 

If we examine this series as a whole sev- 
eral characters will be found to challenge 
attention: First, a series of similarities in 
the mouth structure. Omitting the Coleop- 
tera and Platyptera, which are most highly 
specialized, all the others agree in the gen- 
eral structure of thelabium. Inthe Harwigs, 
Stone-flies and Roaches a divided ligula is 
quite usual, and throughout the Orthoptera 


glossa and paraglossa are usually separate 


and even jointed. In the maxilla of all the 
orders the lacinia may be said to dominate 
and the galea tends to become rather a sub- 
ordinate, often palpiform structure. There 
are numerous exceptions to this in the 
Coleoptera to answer special requirements, 
but I believe that, as a whole, my state- 
ment is correct. The maxilla tends to the 
exercise of mandibular functions, and the 
lacinia is the sclerite armed and modified 
for the chief labor. Throughout this entire 
series of orders the head is fairly well set 
into the prothorax. There is no develop- 
ment of a distinct neck between the head 
and the first thoracic segment, and in many 
cases the head can be almost entirely with- 
drawn into the prothorax. This is an im- 
portant feature which, so far as I am aware, 
has not been sufficiently valued. In wing- 
structure the secondaries dominate through- 
out, and the uniform tendency is to a re- 


SCIENCE. 


' primaries. 


673 


duction in size and loss of function in the 
Furthermore, the wings lie flat 
upon the back, and the secondaries are 
folded under the primaries. To this struc- 
ture of the wings, and the method of carry- 
ing and folding them, I attribute much 
weight, for it seems to me that, combined 
with the other characters of head and 
thorax, itargues a community or origin and 
a separation from those forms differing in 
these features. 

Among the most primitive in this series 
are the Orthoptera, of which the roaches and 
walking sticks are the most generalized in 
mouth structure as well as in the way the 
wings are carried. In this order the domi- 
nance of the secondaries as organs of flight 
is established, and the tegmina or primaries 
are more and more changed in character. 
The hind wings are always folded longitu- 
dinally under the primaries and sometimes 
both pairs are lost. In the primaries a 
gradual change in position occurs, part of 
the wing being first bent down in the crick- 
ets to protect the sides, the character be- 
coming more prominent in the Locustide 
and most obvious in the Acrididez which, 
in my opinion, are the highest of the order 
in point of development. Some of the 
roaches have the wings folded transversely 
as well as longitudinally, and this is a very 
primitive character which emphasizes the 
relation of these insects to the Coleoptera 
and points to a common ancestor. 

A prominent feature in the Dermoptera 
and Coleoptera is that the secondaries are 
transversely folded, separating these orders 
at once from all the others except the few 
roaches already mentioned. It is, of course, 
true that there are Coleoptera in which the 
secondaries are not transversely folded ; but 
these are secondary peculiarities and ex- 
ceptions to the rule. JI am inclined to at- 
tribute considerable importance to this 
character, and to give these orders an inde- 
pendent derivation from a Thysanuran 


674 


spur, very close, however, to the point from 
which the roaches originated. The Der- 
moptera cannot remain associated with the 
Orthoptera and present more affinities to the 
Coleoptera from my point of view. JI donot 
mean to say that the Harwigs were the an- 
cestors of the beetles; but that both were 
derived from the same spur in which the 
secondaries became transversely folded, and 
the Dermoptera now present some of the es- 
sential characters of the ancestral Coleop- 
teron. The Coleoptera proved a vigorous 
shoot and stand far the highest of all those 
series with a freely movable or separate 
prothorax. 

While the terrestrial branches were de- 
veloping independently, two aquatic types, 
the Plecoptera and Platyptera, became devel- 
oped, the larval forms living similarly under 
the surface of the water, but assuming a 
winged, aérial type before becoming ca- 
pable of reproducing their kind. The 
Plecoptera or Stone-jlies have the metamor- 
phosis incomplete, while the Platyptera have 
it complete. The differences in this respect 
are very slight, however, and I have no 
hesitation in classing these forms together 
as comparatively small divergences from 
one stem. It will be noted that I use the 
term Platyptera in a different sense from 
any in which it has been heretofore em- 
ployed, and do not include with it either 
the Chrysopide, Hemerobiide or Myrmele- 
onide. Raphidia and Mantispa, which 
seemed at first sight referable to this series 
on account of the elongate prothorax, do 
not really belong here, because this segment 
is not free, but is closely united at its base 
with the mesothorax. The Plecoptera are, 
of course, much the most primitive and are 
a survival, the main line of development 
continuing in the direction of the Platyptera, 

The second branch from the Thysanuran 
stem started with all the thoracic segments 
nearly equally developed. While the pro- 
thorax was of good size and in the lowest 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 122. 


forms quite free, yet the tendency was from 
the very start to unite it at its base to the 
other thoracic segments. In this series it 
is always fairly well developed, sometimes 
even very long; but it is always closely 
joined to the meso-thorax at the base and is 
not movable, while the tendency is for the 
head to become free from it, and at all 
events not to be inserted into the thoracic 
segment. While we do not have anywhere 
in this series a distinct neck, yet on the 
other hand there is nowhere a retraction 
of the head into the prothorax. In this 
series both pairs of wings are similarly de- 
veloped, both as to size and as to general 
character, while the secondaries, though 
frequently covered by the primaries, are 
never folded beneath them in any way. 
The primaries are always functional. 

The lowest in this series, and almost the 
simplest in general structure, are the IJsop- 
tera, where all the thoracic segments are 
well developed and the prothorax is scarcely 
dominant, though larger and almost free 
from the others. The wings are very much 
alike, the secondaries only a little larger 
than the primaries, and both are laid flat 
upon the abdomen. The mouth structures 
are almost identical with those of the ear- 
wigs and some of the Orthoptera. I believe 
the members of this order are among the 
most primitive of all the terrestrial winged 
insects now existing, and among the most 
ancient, though remarkably specialized in 
certain directions at the present time. 
Though at first glance it would seem as if 
these insects should belong to the series in 
which the prothorax is free, yet the char- 
acter of the wing structure forbids this asso- 
ciation and makes the Jsoptera a natural 
stem from which were derived the Malloph- 
aga, Corrodentia and Newroptera. 

The Mallophaga are a degraded parasitic 
type which were not improbably developed 
from a wingless Isopteron, and perhaps at 
about the time that the wingless forms of 


APRIL 30, 1897.] 


the Corrodentia were also developed. The 
Corrodentia, and especially the winged forms, 
are peculiar in many respects and stand 
by themselves; but I believe that they are 
derivatives from the branch upon which I 
have placed them. Ido not consider it at 
all improbable that in the Corrodentia wings 
were independently developed, and indeed 
cannot well explain the peculiar venation 
on any other theory. 

The Neuroptera are evidently derivatives 
from the Jsoptera stock. Here we have the 
prothorax well developed in all cases, some- 
times very long indeed, but always united 
at the base to the meso-thorax and never 
movable. The wings are similarly de- 
veloped, both pairs used in flight, the prima- 
ries covering the secondaries, but neither 
pair folded in any way. All the forms are 
terrestrial, as indeed are all belonging to 
this branch. In all cases the larve are 
predatory and have a similar appearance, 
in the younger stages at any rate. I ex- 
clude the Sialide from this order, because of 
the movable prothorax and the folded sec- 
ondaries, and include of our American fami- 
lies only the Mantispide, Chrysopidw, Heme- 
robiude, Myrmeleonde and Raphidiide. This 
branch is one of fragments, and all the 
groups belonging to it, or orders, if we 
choose to call them so, are of small extent. 
They may be considered remnants, and the 
branch as a whole does not seem to be in- 
creasing at the present time. It will be 
noted that as at present constituted it con- 
tains no aquatic species. Its point of 
origin, therefore, is very close to that from 
which the Orthoptera and Coleopterabranched. 

The third series, in which the prothorax 
becomes much reduced in size and firmly 
articulated to the meso-thorax, has the body 
parts as a whole much more closely jointed 
and globular. The tendency is to bring 
the origin of the legs close together, and to 
the loss of the sternum as a distinct part or 
sclerite between the coxe. The meso- 


SCIENCE. 


675 


thorax becomes dominant and best de- 
veloped, bearing also the chief organs of 
flight. As a whole, subject to many ex- 
ceptions, the tendency is to the develop- 
ment of the primaries, which are never re- 
duced to mere wing-covers and never lose 
function. The tendency seems to be rather 
to a decrease in the size of the secondaries, 
as in Hymenoptera, and to their total loss, as 
in the Diptera. There is, however, a great 
deal of variation in this respect, and the 
most that can be justly said is that in this 
series the secondaries never become the 
only, or primary, organs of flight. Another 
point of very great importance is that here 
the head is nearly always more or less free 
or well separated, tending to the formation 
of a distinct neck ; while there is never any 
insertion of the head into the prothorax. 
This fact will become very striking when 
the orders that are placed here are com- 
pared with those in the other section, and 
this difference in the articulation of the 
head has never been, in my opinion, suffi- 
ciently emphasized in our classification of 
the orders. It is closely correlated with 
the decrease, in size, of the prothorax. 

In mouth structure the tendency is all in 
the direction of galear development in the 
maxilla, while the lacinia becomes con- 
stantly less important. In the Diptera, in 
which this series finds its highest develop- 
ment, the galea predominate over all other 
mouth structures. In the Hymenoptera the 
galea is always most highly developed, and 
particularly so in the bees, the most com- 
pletely differentiated of all in the order. In 
the Lepidoptera the galea alone is developed 
into a functional organ, and in those net- 
veined orders in which the mouth parts are 
not rudimentary merely the galea is at 
least as well developed as and never subor- 
dinated to the lacinia. The orders in which 
I placed in this series are Odonata, Hphe- 
merida, Trichoptera, Mecoptera, Hymenoptera, 
Siphonoptera and Diptera. 


676 


The Odonata presents the characters of 
the series in a very compact form and evi- 
dently had an early origin, though now 
quite decidedly specialized. As they exist 
at present they are the end of a very dis- 
tinct line, once much more numerous than 
they are now, and they show us a survival 
of one of nature’s experiments in methods 
of reproduction. The separation of the 
copulatory organs from the testes is a 
unique character for which some cause 
must have existed. I am aware that else- 
where similar separations exist, but I am 
not acquainted with any similar character 
in the Insecta. At all events the line lead- 
ing to the Dragon flies was single, and none 
of our existing orders lead to it. 

The geologic record, and their loosely 
jointed make-up, point to the Ephemerida as 
the most primitive in this series; but even 
here we have, well-marked in most of the 
forms, the free head, fairly distinct neck, 
unimportant prothorax, always closely 
joined to the meso-thorax, and the domi- 
nant primaries. The order has not varied 
much and is a survival; but from the same 
stem bearing the Ephemerida all the other 
orders of this branch have originated, giv- 
ing them all a derivation from an aquatic 
larval type. 

As the earliest spur from this branch we 
have the Trichoptera, in which the larvee re- 
main aquatic, but have assumed a cylin- 
drical, caterpillar-like form, and from these 
the Lepidoptera were derived in compara- 
tively recent times. The break between 
these two orders is not very great even at 
present, and in many of the Lepidoptera 
characters of a Trichopterous type may yet 
be distinguished. 

The Mecoptera branched from the same 
stem with the Trichoptera with similar 
worm or caterpillar-like larve, some of 
which were probably aquatic ; others lived 
in mud or moist ground, where some of them 
are still to be found, while yet others be- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 122. 


came entirely terrestrial. From one of the 
semi-aquatic forms the Diptera were de- 
rived. In the adult Mecoptera, instead of a 
loss of mouth parts, which was the ten- 
dency in the Trichoptera, we had rather a de- 
velopment of all the parts in parallel series, 
much as in Panorpa, which even at present 
retains many of the primitive characters. 

I am inclined to give the phytophagus 
Hymenoptera a much earlier origin than the 
Diptera and to derive them from the Mecop- 
terous branch before it became very highly 
specialized. The Diptera seem to me to be 
the most recent of all the insect lines, and 
embody the highest type of that series in 
which the thoracic rings are united. Here 
the head is entirely distinct, the prothorax 
firmly united with the other rings, which 
are, themselves, solidly joined. The fore- 
wings dominate to the exclusion of the sec- 
ondaries, and the galear structures of the 
mouth are the most highly specialized, 
showing, however, when closely studied, a 
remarkable resemblance to those of the 
Hymenoptera and pointing very strongly to 
a community of origin. 

The Siphonoptera, or fleas, are entitled to 
ordinal recognition. They have much in 
common with the Diptera, but a type of 
mouth structure which could not possibly 
have been derived from the type now exist- 
ing in thatorder. There is nothing, how- 
ever, to prevent the belief that they de- 
veloped from the same Mecopterous branch 
which culminated in the Diptera. In fact, 
the mouth parts of the fleas resemble those 
Mecoptera very interestingly in certain di- 
rections, and will be, I think, best under- 
stood by comparing them with that series. 

I am quite aware that objections may be 
urged to this scheme, and that it is imper- 
fect in some repects, but so also are all the 
others that have been proposed ; and I be- 
lieve, as I look at the matter, that my plan 
answers more of the objections than any 
other that I have seen. Nothing known 


APRIL 30, 1897. ] 


to me contradicts it more vitally than any 
other that has been proposed. 

I have accorded very little place to the 
character of the metamorphosis, because 
there is no hard and fast line between com- 
plete and incomplete ; but the closer com- 
parative study of early stages will unques- 
tionably help out our future classification. 
I have not made use of any one character 
as the basis of my scheme of division, be- 


SCIENCE. 


677 


cause I do not think nature works in that 
way, and finally, I have used adult stages 
only, because I see in the adult ready to 
reproduce, the species. It is the culmina- 
tion of individual growth, and until it is 
ready to reproduce it is incomplete, subject 
to change, and not an expression of the 
point to whichits development has attained. 
In another form my scheme may be ex- 
pressed as follows : 


PROTOTHYSANURA 


Thysanura mandibulata 
Mouth mandibulate in some 
or all stages 


Thysanura emandibulata 
Month haustellate in all stages 


Prothorax mobile ; -Prothorax well developed not , Prothorax reduced s ¥ 
Head is not free” mobile; head free but not on immobile; head on Beet bladder tipped Feet claw tipped 
‘a distinct neck a distinct neck ings fringed Wings not fringed, 
Secondaries Secondaries 4 
transversely longitudinally TsorTera OponaTa EPHEMEBIDA ‘THYSANOPTERA, Reynoora 
folded folded 
Terrestial Aquatic Parasinica 
Homorrer, 
‘TRICHOPTEBA Hl 
& EMIPTEBA 


= MAttopnaaal 
PRIM CoBropeNTIA 
Denmorrans 


PLATYPTERA r s 
EUROPTERA 
ORTHOPTERA 
CoLgoprena 


RUTGERS COLLEGE. 


HOW MAY MUSEUMS BEST RETARD THE 
ADVANCE OF SCIENCE?* 

Various subjects have at various times 
suggested themselves to me as appropriate 
for a paper to be submitted to this Associa- 
tion, but when I read the magnificently ex- 
haustive address by Dr. Brown Goode, pub- 
lished in our last Report, it was manifest 
that all the ideas I had ever had were an- 
ticipated in that masterly production. 
There is, however, one side of our subject 
which has hardly had the attention paid to 
it that it undoubtedly deserves. We have 
been taught how best to arrange our mu- 
seums for the satisfaction of the collector, 
of the student, of the investigator, or of the 
British public, but no one has ever pointed 
out to us the magnificent opportunities that 
are at our disposal whereby we may accom- 
plish the great work of retarding the ad- 


*From Report of Museum Association for 1896. 


‘Hrwrnoptrea 


'Mecorresa) 


SIPHONOETEBA LeprpoprerA 


\Drerera 


JouN B. Smita. 


vance of science. It will perhaps not be 
wholly waste of time if we devote a few 
minutes this morning to considering this 
great power that is in our hands and how 
we may avail ourselves of it. 

There are certain lines of conduct that 
are so surely and obviously prejudicial to 
science that the most uninstructed curator 
scarcely needs to be reminded of them. 
None of us but has been taught how to be- 
wilder the eyes of the public with thirty 
specimens of an object, all placed the same 
way up, and displaying as few of its essen- 
tial characters as possible, when one speci- 
men properly labelled would have sufficed. 
We know how to strike dullness through 
the hearts of thousands by our funereal 
rows of stuffed birds with their melancholy 
lines of Latin names; we know how to chill 
the enthusiasm of the young and to disgust 
the susceptibilities of tender souls by the 


678 


display of entrails and abortions stewing in 
some brown decoction in the depth of anti- 
quated pickle-jars. To suggest such well- 
known methods to the experienced audi- 
ence of practical curators before me would 
‘be ridiculous and a waste of time. Fortu- 
nately there are further means that may be 
employed, and more subtle actions that may 
be performed, all tending to the same end. 

First let us consider that jealousy with 
which a museum curator should guard the 
precious specimens entrusted to his care, 
forbidding the profane hands of the mere 
anatomist ever to disturb them in their 
holy rest. An excellent instance is afforded 
us by the history of the genus Spirula, of 
which an account has recently been pub- 
lished by Dr. Pelseneer in the Report of the 
‘Challenger’ Expedition (Appendix, Zo- 
ology, pt. 83). 
to obtain individuals of this interesting 
genus for dissection, but only fragmentary 
specimens came into their hands. At last, 
in 1865, a complete individual was collected 
near Port Jackson. The hopes of the 
naturalist were raised; ‘‘ but,” says Pelse- 
neer, ‘but it was deposited in the Sydney 
Museum, and consequently could not be 
made the subject of anatomical research.” 
There are other specimens in various pub- 
lic and private collections, notably in Lon- 
don; but they too, like the specimen in 
the Sydney Museum, cannot be made 
the subjects of scientific investigation. As 
curators we must regret that two speci- 
mens which were in the hands of a captain 
of the French navy, who for many years 
zealously refused to trust them to a zoolo- 
gist—we must, I say, regret that, in the 
words of Pelseneer, ‘‘on the death of their 
owner, thanks to Professor Giard, these 
Spirule did not become the prey of a public 
collection.”” There are investigators so 
eaten up with their own conceit as to be 
bold enough to say that a specimen which 
shows nothing cannot be hurt by dissection, 


SCIENCE. 


Naturalists for long desired — 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 122. 


since it cannot show less and there is the 
chance of its showing more. Be not de- 
ceived! Do not allow the hidden recesses 
of your specimens to be explored by the 
devastating scalpel! What does it matter 
whether their internal anatomy can be seen 
or no? They have been entrusted to you 
for safe preservation, and you as a faithful 
steward will have to render account of the 
same. 

The exhibition series of a museum are, 
in their essence, potent agents for retard- 
ing the advance of science. By mere force 
of circumstances, lack of time, underman- 
ning, and so forth, the arrangement of 
specimens in the show-cases of a museum 
remains the same throughout many years, 
and names there applied to genera and 
species cannot be constantly changed. 
Classifications come and classifications go, 
but the classification that was adopted 
when the museum was built, say fifty 
years ago, seems likely to go on. forever. 
Possibly even those who are in favor of in- 
troducing ideas into our scientific classifi- 
cations, and who think that the arrange- 
ment of species and genera should be in 
accordance with their affinities and the 
facts of their structure, and, therefore, 
should change as our knowledge of that 
structure increases—even those fanatics, I 
say, may possibly regard this influence of 
museums as in some sort a chastening one. 
After all, it may not conduce to the 
advancement of science that each of us 
should have his own special classification 
and should call animals by his own pet 
names; and the museum here comes in, 
like its companion, the text-book, as a 
maintainer of stability amid the vagaries 
of ephemeral publication. Still knowledge 
does increase, science does advance, and 
classifications and names unfortunately do 
change. It is in our power to prevent this 
knowledge percolating to the mass of the 
people. If we are unable, like the text- 


APRIL 30, 1897. ] 


book writers, to foist upon the public senile 
illustrations that are nothing better than 
earicatures, still we can always excuse an 
effete arrangement or an obsolete nomen- 
clature on the plea that we cannot possibly 
find the time or the money to re-arrange 
or re-name the specimens. We can, with 
much show of justice, refuse to give con- 
crete form to the philosophic ideas of our 
greatest thinkers. We can refuse to allow 
our specimens to be experimented with, 
and arranged this way or that way accord- 
ing as a systematist may desire to check 
the working-out of his system. 

‘Allied to the natural conservatism of 
museums is another efficacious practice. It 
is a well-known story that in the good old 
days of zoology, when species were regarded 
as separate creations, a profane sceptic ven- 
tured to ask one of our greatest zoologists 
what he really did manage to do with the 
connecting links. After looking carefully 
round the room, the zoologist whispered in 
reply, ‘“‘ My dear sir, I throw them out of 
the window.” It is these window speci- 
mens that form the basis of our theories of 
evolution. Itis by their means alone that we 
ean work out the numerous problems that 
are pressing on us to-day—the problems of 
geographical distribution, the problems of 
heredity and growth, all the vast problems 
of the origin of our groups of animals. It 
is these window specimens that the mu- 
seum curator always has suppressed with a 
stern hand; may he long continue to do so! 
How absurd it would be to expect other- 
wise! Under what names should we enter 
them in our registers? How could we 
place them in our cases? Where, indeed, 
should we find the room for the thousands 
of variations from the central types that 
are to be met with in all parts of the world ? 
A museum, being finite, must select more 
or less, and if we select only those speci- 
mens that agree with the diagnoses of 
authors, we shall be saving both ourselves 


SCIENCE. 


679 


and the authors a vast amount of trouble. 
With regard to the numerous details valued 
by that exacting creature, the modern biol- 
ogist—details of locality, of season, or, in 
the case of fossils, of the definite zonal 
horizon—it is hardly necessary to add that 
their accumulation would involve the cura- 
tor in enormous labor, and if indulged in 
would probably lead him to the collection 
of an absurd number of specimens. 

All that I have yet said may be summed 
up in the one phrase ‘Shun ideas!’ Would 
it be believed that a certain Professor Her- 
réra, of the National Museum of Mexico, 
has recently produced a paper in which he 
says that the museum of the future is to be 
a museum of ideas? “There will be no 
gallery of birds, or of mammals, or of fishes, 
or of reptiles; no collection of Coleoptera, 
no collection of Chiroptera or of pheasants, 
or of pigeons. Museums of the future do 
not classify by classes, families, tribes, 
genera, species, sub-species, varieties, sub- 
varieties, races and sub-races ; they put in 
order facts and classify ideas. There are 
rooms for heredity, for ontogenesis, cceno- 
genesis, variation, mimicry, the struggle for 
life, nutrition, and so on. These rooms are 
arranged in a philosophical order, and in 
that order they must be visited by the 
public; to this end there will be barriers 
suitably disposed. In the museum of the 
future the specimen is the lacquey of an 
idea; whereas, in our present museums, 
ideas are the slaves of specimens. Thus a 
specimen is not exhibited because it is rare 
or because it ought to be exhibited; we 
show the most profound contempt for speci- 
mens that are rare, curious or pretty. The 
museum of the future aims at being, not a 
magazine of dead lumber eaten by worms, 
but an open book in which men can read 
the philosophy of nature.” And, after sug- 
gesting some ideas that may be exemplified 
in museums, our author concludes, “but, 
instead of studying these ideas and exhibit- 


680 


ing them in his museum, from time im- 
memorial man has tried to imprison the 
things of nature in a fixed system, a fixed 
classification, which is not the whole of 
science, and which cannot be the nest of the 
whole of philosophy. Nature, in her vast- 
ness, protests against the classifiers ; mad- 
dened, indignant, despairing, she revolts 
against routine.”?’ What rubbish! How 
can the curator at £70 a year be expected 
to have ideas of this kind? And how as- 
suming that he has found the intelligence, 
how can he spare the time to put them into 
operation? And what would our Boards 
of Governors, our Trustees, our Town Coun- 
cils, say if they went into a museum and 
found a curator, instead of mounting speci- 
mens by the hundred, and making as large 
a display as possible, calmly sitting at his 
table reading the ‘ Origin of Species,’ or the 
latest number of the Archiv fiir Entwicke- 
lungs-Mechanik ? 

Apropos of the curator, he has been de- 
scribed, and very rightly, as the soul of the 
museum. What kind of a soul does the 
museum want? It is obvious that the 
curator should not be a scientific man ; for 
if he be he will constantly be led astray 
from his work of labelling, ticketing, mount- 
ing, and so forth, to investigate the rela- 
tionships, distribution, and what not, of 
some new species that has come into his 
hands; or, in tracing out some peculiar 
facts of anatomical or historical interest, he 
will waste the time that should be employed 
in compiling a list either of specimens fig- 
ured by others or of his own grievances. 
The function of a curator is to keep his 
specimens clean, to keep them in order, and 
to exhibit them in such manner as will 
satisfy the annual visitation of his Board of 
Trustees or his Town Council. The 
motto that the curator should hold before 
his eyes is that famous one, ‘Surtout point 
de zéle.’ It is not for him to add to the 
stores of the museum by spending his Sun- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 122. 


days in the country collecting fresh speci- 
mens, or his holidays in foreign lands to: 
verify the localities whence specimens have 
come. It is not long since a paper was 
read before this very Association, read, I 
regret to say, by a person for whom I am 
in some respects responsible, recommending 
that the museum assistant should be sent 
out ‘to collect in the fields, the rocks and 
the seas,” then that he should “study the 
specimens that he has collected, each of 
which will have for him an interest and a 
living history which under present condi- 
tions it never has; by their means he will 
extend the boundaries of knowledge and 
confirm the foundations of system, so that 
it is for him an expression of universal 
thought, and no longer a mechanical de- 
vice for sorting species into their places. 
Then, with this vitalized classification, and 
with some real meaning in his head, he will 
proceed to prepare his most instructive 
specimens for exhibition, so that the final 
result may convey to others something at 
least of the beauty he himself has found in 
the world.””—So too, at the beginning of the 
century, P. A. Latreille wrote in Sonnini’s 
edition of Buffon (‘Insectes,’ I., p. x.) 
‘‘L’?homme, qui n’étudie les Insectes que 
dans son cabinet, peut étre descripteur ;. 
mais il ne sera jamais, 4 ce que je pense, 
un profound entomologiste.”” But the cura- 
tor does not require to be ‘un profond 
entomologiste,’ ‘un profond géologiste,’ ‘un 
profond biologiste,’ or anything that re- 
motely resembles a scientific man. The 
curator should take for his pattern and 
exemplar the clerk in a dry-goods store. 
We turn now to a certain practical detail 
in the arrangement of our museums, which 
fortunately seems to commend itself to the 
outside public who are not scientific people, 
and especially to the donors of specimens 
and bequeathers of collections. I mean 
this idea of keeping certain collections 
separate according as they happen to have 


APRIL 30, 1897.] 


belonged to some person with a lengthy 
name, or to have been described by some 
pottering genius of the locality, or, perhaps, 
merely to have been presented by some in- 
dividual, who, because his name was utterly 
unknown, desired to adopt this method of 
bringing it into prominence, and laid it 
down in his will that his specimens were 
to be known for all eternity as the ‘ Peter 
Smith Collection.’ This method, at all 
events, places an insuperable bar in the 
way of our associating specimens that the 
student wishes to compare, and enables us 
to hide from the gaze of the traveling man 
of science specimens of historic interest 
that he may have come to our museum on 
purpose to see. Permit me here to indulge 
in a fragment of autobiography. Many 
years ago I journeyed to Strassburg on 
purpose to examine certain specimens that 
had been described by Mr. de Loriol. The 
various curators whom I met at the mu- 
seum assisted me very willingly through- 
out three days searching for these speci- 
mens, but they could not be found, and I 
went on my way sorrowing. Arrived at 
Freiburg, I mentioned the fact to my friend, 
Professor Steinmann, who suggested that 
possibly the specimens might have been over- 
looked as being in the Cartier collection. At 
considerable expense and inconvenience I, 
therefore, returned to Strassburg, and, sure 
enough, there were the specimens carefully 
obscured. I have known instances of emi- 
nent foreigners coming to a great museum 
in our own country, desirous of inspecting 
certain remarkable specimens, and, after 
searching for many hours in the cases, 
where all logic would lead one to imagine 
the specimens were, learning at last that 
they were at the other end of the museum 
because they had once belonged to some 
vainglorious amateur, or been described 
by some muddle-headed genius of the dark 
ages. Who, after this, can say that such a 
system is not to be encouraged ? 


SCIENCE. 


681 


Somewhat akin to the distribution of 
specimens among various collections, and 
equally efficacious as a skid on the wheels 
of science, is the practice that still obtains 
in the majority of our museums of separa- 
ting recent and fossilforms. It is necessary 
that I should say some words about this, 
because there are in this and other countries 
certain people who strongly urge the amal- 
gamation of these collections, coming out 
with such absurd dicta as that one specimen 
should not be separated from another be- 
cause it happens to be preserved in stone 
instead of in spirits, maintaining that the 
evolution of life and the relations of the 
present to the past are far more easily seen 
if one has not to walk several hundred yards 
to see the living ally of a fossil species. 
They also believe that the zoologists are 
led into errors through their ignorance of 
extinct animals, an ignorance largely 
fostered by the museum custom of keeping 
them apart; and they deny that the 
paleontologist can properly understand the 
fossils with which he deals so long as he is 
prevented by the assumed necessities of 
museum arrangement from studying living 
forms pari passu. An intimate friend of my 
own, who happens to be officially connected 
with one of our greatest scientific establish- 
ments, has privately complained to me that 
his studies found yet another difficulty in 
the fact that the books which are sup- 
posed to deal with modern life are placed 
in two or three separate rooms at a con- 
siderable distance both from one another, 
and from the room that contains the books 
dealing with extinct life. Nor is this all. 
He adds that, when the necessities of the 
case compel him, as they often do, to visit 
one of the other libraries, he is actually 
scowled at as an intruder by his fellow- 
workersin that department. Itis clear that 
in the institution to which my friend has 
the honor to belong the true museum-spirit 
is still flourishing with vigor. It is this 


682 


spirit, this idea of separation, of privacy, 
and, as it were, personal property, to which 
the Greeks appropriately applied the term 
(Ocwors—it is this that we curators must con- 
tinue to foster, if we are seriously desirous 
of retarding science. 

To carry on the (ga (Orwrza: a Museum 
should keep itself to itself; it has nothing 
to do with the Free Library, with the Uni- 
versity, or with the Zoological Gardens. 
Do you wish to be overpowered by a lot of 
rowdy students coming and pawing over 
your specimens; or do you, as a peace-lov- 
ing curator, wish to be dragged off to give 
aD opinion upon some new accession of an 
animal that is possibly dangerous? Re- 
member, too, that by this cooperation your 
collections are likely to be increased to an 
unmanageable extent and your hours of la- 
bor will be lengthened without a corre- 
sponding rise in salary. 

This leads me to consider an exceedingly 
difficult question—the lending-out of speci- 
mens. It is, as you are aware, the rule of 
the British Museum never to let a single 
specimen that has once been registered pass 
outside its walls, except as a donation or an 
exchange. Other museums are either, as you 
may prefer to term it, less careful or less mi- 
serly. There can be no doubt that science is 
greatly advanced when a reliable investiga- 
tor, working in one locality, is able to borrow 
from the museums of other cities or of 
other countries specimens that will aid his 
labors. On the other hand, there is this 
to be said in favor of the proceeding: that 
in a large number of cases the specimens 
that are thus loaned never return to the 
museum, and ultimately are lost to science. 
It therefore does not very much matter, so 
long as, if you lend them, you conveniently 
forget whither they have been sent, and so 
long as, if you keep them, you place the 
necessary obstacles in the way of the in- 
vestigator. 

But it may be retorted to the last argu- 


SCIENCE. 


LN. S. Von. V. No. 122. 


ment: there is another way whereby these 
difficulties are avoided and science greatly 
advanced. Videlicet, one museum can ex- 
change type-specimens or special collections 
with another. Such a solution of the prob- 
lem was laid before us at Dublin by Dr. H. 
O. Forbes. Now, on this question of the 
dispersal of types, a conversation that I 
had with a leading English entomologist 
impressed me forcibly. New species of 
insects, he said, are being described at the 
rate of about 6,000 per annum. Those who 
attempt to coordinate the scattered descrip- 
tions cannot possibly do so without com- 
paring the type-specimens. Experience 
shows it to be impossible for even an ex- 
pert to draw up a description that shall be 
accepted as recognizable by another expert. 
Further, no entomologist of ordinary human 
powers can retain in his memory the con- 
ception of any one species, much less of 
three or four hundred, sufficiently well for 
him to compare specimens in one museum 
with those in another, unless he can set 
them side by side. For any real advance 
in this subject, the type-specimens of all the 
species of a family must be gathered to- 
gether in one room, so that the specialist 
may examine and compare them directly. 
This could be done, either by the various 
type-specimens being lent for some time to 
another museum, or by a permanent inter- 
change of specimens—one museum special- 
izing in Hymenoptera, another in Diptera, 
and so on. The difficulties are felt most 
strongly in entomology, but they affect 
ornithology, botany, conchology, and other 
branches of systematic biology to a marked 
extent. Obviously, then, we have it in our 
power to retard the advance of these 
sciences, or even to check it altogether, by 
jealously guarding our treasures, either for- 
bidding them to leave their abodes under 
any circumstances whatever, or cleaving to 
our type-specimens as to some musty but 
sacred heirloom, useful only to aliens, but 


APRIL 30, 1897. ] 


a tattered badge of pride to ourselves. 
Here is a weapon, the use of which has far- 
reaching results that appeal to the imagina- 
tion with the certain annihilation they in- 
flict. Fellow-curators, grasp your weapon, 
and, more powerful than Canute, force back 


the advancing tide ! 
F. A. BATHER. 


BRITISH MusEuM (NArt. HIst.), 
Lonpoy, 8S. W. : 


INTERNAL SECRETIONS CONSIDERED IN RE- 
LATION TO VARIATION AND DEVELOP- 
MENT. 

THE so-called internal secretions of glands 
and other’ organs consist of products manu- 
factured by them and passed back to the 
blood. Many of these products are known 
to be of very great importance to the adult 
organism; it is possible that they may be 
of no less importance to the developing 
organism and that we may here find a clue 
to some of the unsolved problems of devel- 
opment. Internal secretions have probably 
been longest recognized in case of the repro- 
ductive organs. The effects of castration, 
of non-development or development of these 
organs are well known. It has also been 
generally recognized that the influence of 
these organs depends on substances formed 
by them and given to the blood. What 
these substances are is still unknown, but 
there can be little doubt that their presence 
determines the development of other organs 
and characters, the so-called secondary 
sexual characters. The long recognized 
healing effect of removal of the ovary in 
women suffering from soft bones and the 
subsequent growth of bone and fatty tissue 
has been the subject of researches by Cura- 
tulo and Tarulli.* These authors concluded 
that the ovaries produce a substance which 
oxydizes the organic phosphorus com- 
pounds and thus cause their rapid destruc- 
tion. The removal of the ovaries would 
seem to remove the destroying substance 

*Phys. Cent. 1X. 


SCIENCE. 


683 


and hence to cause a deposition of phos- 
phorus, and experiment showed that after 
extirpation of the ovary the excretion of 
phosphorus fell off one-half. 

Perhaps the best known internal secre- 
tion is glycogen. This substance, made by 
the liver and given to the blood, is used as 
food by many other organs. Thanks to 
Hedin, Minkowsky and others, the internal 
secretion of the pancreas is now known to 
be a necessity to the organism, for if this 
organ is extirpated, the animal (mammal) 
quickly dies from diabetes mellitus. What 
the active substance is and whether it acts 
directly on the liver or through the nervous 
system is not yet decided. Equally impor- 
tant internal secretions are produced by the 
thyroid and thymus glands and the supra- 
renal capsules, the complete extirpation of 
any of which leads to rapid death, though 
life may be prolonged for a longer or shorter 
time by feeding the animal with the miss- 
ing organ or injecting its extract into the 
system. Very striking is the effect of non- 
development or over-development of the 
thyroid on the cranium. The low broad 
skull of the cretin forms a distinct type, 
and the rapid change in physiognomy in 
patients suffering from goitre after the re- 
duction of the thyroid or the injection of 
thyroidin is well known. According to 
Brown-Séquard, the fatal results of extirpa- 
tion of the kidney are due not to poisoning 
by urea, but to the lack of an internal 
kidney-secretion essential in some way to 
the organism. There can be no doubt that 
the muscles also form such a secretion, for 
it has been shown that the excitation of the 
breathing center on muscular activity is the 
consequence of some chemical substance 
given by the muscle to the blood. Perhaps 
a similar secretion is the ammonia manu- 
factured by the mucous membrane of the 
stomach and carried to the liver, there to 
be elaborated into other products. Al- 
though such substances have not yet been 


684 


isolated from the brain, salivary glands and 
some other organs, there seems good reason 
to believe that even these furnish to the 
blood substances peculiar to them. 

It is, therefore, highly probable that 
all organs have besides their obvious 
function, a hidden function, in the 
maintenance, by means of their internal 
secretions, of the metabolic equilibrium of 
the body. Further, many of these secre- 
tions are absolutely essential to the life of 
other organs, and in certain cases, as in the 
thyroid and reproductive organs, they are 
necessary to the development of organs ap- 
parently not in any way connected with 
them. There can be little doubt that one 
of the prime uses of the blood is as a dis- 
tributing agent of these substances, and 
that its co6rdinative function is one of its 
most important offies. 

We are thus led to a possible explanation, 
along these lines, of the organic unity of 
organisms unprovided with a nervous sys- 
tem. Itis highly probable that the inter- 
nal secretions play an important role in the 
correlation of parts in the higher organisms. 
It is possible that this rdle becomes the 
principal one in case of the developing 
embryo or of organisms like the plants 
which have no nervous system. The inter- 
nal secretions are also of interest in their 
bearing on the correlation of variations. 

If an organ in one part of the organism 
depends in any manner upon the internal 
secretion of some other organ we may un- 
derstand how the increased developement 
of the one may lead to an increased de- 
velopment of the other, though apparently 
in no way connected withit. Thus we could 
see how variations have arisen and how 
they have been perpetuated until they are 
themselves useful. Many organs, the be- 
ginnings of which could hardly have been 
useful enough to be acted upon by natural 
selection, may have been developed because 
they are correlated by means of their inter- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 122. 


nal secretions with other organs which are 
useful. It would also be clear why certain 
organs or groups of organs vary together. 
If such organs are mutually interdepend- 
ent in the manner indicated, then the 
diminution of one necessarily means the 
diminution of another and another and so 
on. In certain cases the diminution of one 
may lead to the growth of another organ. 
This is, perhaps, most strikingly seen in 
the case of castrated cattle, which are pro- 
verbially large boned and fat, the growth 
of the bone being correlated with the 
diminution of the internal secretion of the 
sexual organs. In another case, where two 
organs were dependent on the internal 
secretion of some third, the suppression of 
one of the two might lead to a compensa- 
tory growth in the other. 

That the internal secretions play a part 
in embryonic differentiations seems very 
probable. Striking examples of their im- 
portance in the later stages of development 
are afforded by the thyroid and the repro- 
ductive glands, already referred to. Lack 
of development of the thyroid hinders the 
development of the cranium and the whole 
body. If cretins be fed on thyroid they in- 
crease both in size and intelligence. The 
development of the sexual organs is essential 
to that of many other so-called secondary 
sexual characters. The same may very 
well be the case inthe embryo. Thus an 
organ called into being by a previous organ 
may in its turn determine, through an in- 
internal secretion, the development of a 
succeeding organ ; and we should here have 
an explanation of the persistence of rudi- 
ments, or the temporary appearance of 
glands and organs which later disappear 
and seem to fulfill no function whatever. 
They may be necessary to the organism 
through their internal secretions, which 
give the necessary stimuli to the develop- 
ment of other organs which are permanent.* 


*See note at end. 


APRIL 30, 1897.] 


I would suggest also that the internal 
secretions may possibly give the explana- 
tion of the modifying influence of the male 
element on the surrounding mother-tissue 
forming the fruit in plants. Darwin notes 
many cases of hybrids in which the fruit, 
though composed of purely maternal tissue, 
nevertheless plainly shows paternal char- 
acters. He explained these cases by the 
wandering of the pangens. It is not im- 
possible that his ‘ pangens,’ not only here, 
but in other cases, may be nothing else 
than the internal secretions. There can be 
little doubt, furthermore, that the internal 
secretions from the foetus play a very con- 
siderable part in the modification of the 
maternal organism during pregnancy. 

The foregoing suggestions are difficult of 
proof, but they do not seem to me inherently 
improbable, since it is altogether unlikely 


that the metabolic coordination, which cer- - 


tainly exists in the adult organism, comes 
into being only after the close of em- 
bryonic development, and only in such or- 
ganisms as possess a well developed vascular 
system. It is well, too, to bear these in- 
ternal secretions in mind in the study of 
the development of organisms. Such an 
organ as the shell-gland of the molluscs 
may be of vastly greater value to the or- 
ganism as a manufacturer of an internal 
secretion than as the maker of a protective 
shell. 
ALBERT MATHEWs, 
Former Fellow in Biology, Columbia University. 
MARBURG, GERMANY. 


[NorEe: The above interesting suggestion 
regarding the physiological réle of internal 
secretions in development is, as far as I 
know, new. It is obviotis, however, that 
the interpretation given of rudimentary or 
temporary organs in development is nearly 
related to that of Kleinenberg, with which 
the author is apparently unacquainted. 
Kleinenberg long since held that the per- 


SCIENCE. 


685 


manent parts of the embryo might appear 
and be guided in their development 
‘through the stimulus or by the aid’ of 
‘rudimentary’ as well as of obviously 
functional organs; and that ‘when these 
(the permanent organs) have attained a 
certain degree of independence the inter- 
mediary organ, having played its part, may 
be placed on the retired list’ (Lopadorhyn- 
chus, 1886, p. 223). Mr. Mathews’ sugges- 
tion has the great merit of supplying an 
intelligible working hypothesis regarding 
the nature of the ‘stimulus’ or the ‘aid’ 
given by the intermediary organ, and it 
seems well worthy the attention of experi- 


mental embryologists. 


E. B. W.] 


A LAYMAN’S VIEWS ON SPECIFIC NOMEN- 
CLATURE. 

Anytuine that Dr. Hart Merriam writes 
is sure to be of great value. He is one of 
the leading mammalogists and he has laid 
all men interested in biology under a heavy 
debt by reviving the best traditions of the 
old-school faunal naturalist and showing 
that among the students of the science of 
life there is room for other men in addition 
to the section cutter, the microscopist and 
the histologist. There are a good many of 
us who look forward to the publication of 
his great work on the North American 
Mammals, including their life histories, as 
to something which will mark a real epoch 
in scientific work on this continent. 

Having made this kind of preface, every- 
one will naturally and rightly conclude that 
I intend to say something in dissent from 
some of Dr. Merriam’s views. I have just 
been reading his very interesting pamphlet 
on the smaller North American wolves, 
commonly called prairie wolves, or coyotes. 
His facts and deductions are most impor- 
tant; he has shown for the first time how 
many different races of coyotes there are, 
together with their inter-relationships and 


686 


their distribution in groups which coincide 
with the geographical divisions of their 
habitat. For the way in which he has 
worked out this, the most important, part of 
the article, no one can feel anything but ad- 
miration. But I quarrel with the termi- 
nology by which he seeks to describe the 
results at which he has arrived. He divides 
the coyote into a large number of different 
species, giving to each full specific rank 
and a specific name, in accordance with the 
theory of binomial nomenclature. 

Now, terminology is a matter of mere 
convenience, and it is nothing like as im- 
portant as the facts themselves. Neverthe- 
less terminology has a certain importance 
of its own. It is especially important that 
it should not be clumsy or such as to con- 
fuse or mislead the student. Although 
species is a less arbitrary term than genus, 
still it remains true that it is more or less 
arbitrary. If one man chooses to consider 
as species what other men generally agree 
in treating merely as varieties it is unfortu- 
nate, both because the word is twisted away 
from its common use and further because 
it confuses matters to use it in a new sense 
to the exclusion of the word commonly used 
in that sense. Moreover, it is a pity where 
it can be avoided, to use the word so that it 
has entirely different weights in different 
cases. 

I can illustrate what I mean by reference 
to the terminology used in describing the 
geographical distribution of mammals. It 
is not very important whether we call the 
great primary division of the world, 
faunistically considered, realms or regions. 
But it is important that we should not use 
the words first in one sense and then in 
another, and above all that we should not 
use the same word with totally different 
values. For example, Mr. Wallace’s classi- 
fication was absurd in so far as he made 
the Nearctic, Palearctic, Neotropical and 
Australian regions of equal value. There 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 122. 


are differences between the mammalian 
faunas of northern North America and 
northern Eurasia, but they are utterly 
trivial as compared with the differences 
which divide the fauna of both regions 
from the fauna of either South America or 
Australia, or indeed of South Africa. To 
indicate by the nomenclature used that the 
differences are of equal importance in the 
four cases is as misleading as it would be 
to describe the ethnology of the United 
States in terms that would imply that the 
New Englanders, the Kentuckians, the 
Indians and the Negroes formed four divi- 
sions of aboutevenrank. There are differ- 
ences between the New Englanders and the 
Kentuckians; but no one would dream of 
distinguishing the two by terms that would 
imply that they were as widely separated as 
either is from the Indians or Negroes. 

It seems to me that the same principle 
should hold true of the excessive multipli- 
cation of specific terms to describe the dif- 
ferent varieties of a groupof animals like 
the coyote. Specific as well as generic 
terms are quite as useful in denoting like- 
ness as in denoting unlikeness. The exces- 
sive multiplication of the species in the 
books cannot, as it seems to me, serve any 
useful purpose, and may eventually destroy 
all the good of the Latin binomial nomen- 
clature. In the group of wolves, for in- 
stance, so far as North America is con- 
cerned, the really important points to re- 
member and to bring out are that there are 
two types: one, the small wolf, the coyote, 
which, wherever found, is sharply separated 
from the other, and only exists ina portion 
of North America ; and the other, the large 
wolf, which is much more widely distributed 
over North America than the coyote, and 
is practically identical with the wolf of 
Europe andnorth Asia. There are a great 
many varieties of each, just as there are 
doubtless a great many varieties of wolves 
in Europe and north Asia. Among coyotes 


APRIL 30, 1897.] 


it is an interesting fact that the coyote of 
the Little Missouri is bleached compared to 
the coyote of the upper Mississippi, and 
that he has larger teeth than the coyote of 
the Rio Grande ; but it seems to me to be un- 
wise to separate all these forms by giving 
them rank that would imply that they 
differ from one another as much as they 
differ from the great gray wolves of the 
same region. I understand perfectly that 
this is not what Dr. Merriam means, and 
that he would subdivide the genus into 
various groups so as to show that the 
species are not of equal value. Neverthe- 
less, the fact remains that the important 
point is the essential likeness of all the 
coyotes one to the other, and their essential 
difference from the big wolves with which 
they are associated, and which are them- 
selves essentially like the big wolves of 
Europe and north Asia; and it seems to 
me that these facts can best be brought out 
by including the coyote and the wolf in one 
genus and treating each as aspecies. Then 
the geographical and other varieties may or 
may or may not be treated as worthy of sub- 
specific rank according to the exigencies of 
the particular case. The alternative is to 
use terms of super-specific value, including 
groups of minutely separated species; and 
this would be clumsy and would hardly 
seem worth while. 

I will illustrate what I mean by referring 
to some other mammals. The points of re- 
semblance between. beasts like the wolver- 
ines, the beavers and the moose of the two 
northern continents are far more impor- 
tant than the points of difference. In each 
of these cases it does not matter much 
whether these animals are given separate, 
specific rank, because in each case the Old 
World and the New World representatives 
-make up the whole genus ; but even here it 
would seem to be a mistake to separate 
them specifically unless they are distin- 
guished by characters of more than trivial 


SCIENCE. 


687 


weight. The wapiti and Scotch red deer, 
for instance, are markedly different, and 
the differences are so great that they should 
be expressed by the use of specific terms. 
If the American moose and Scandanavian 
elk are distinguished by specific terms of 
the same value, then it ought to mean that 
there is something like the same difference 
between them that there is between the red 
deer and the wapiti, and as far as our pres- 
ent knowledge goes this isnotso. Thewol- 
verines, beavers and moose of the two con- 
tinents should only be separated by specific 
terms, if the differences between each couple 
are of some weight, if they approximate the 
differences which divide the red deer and 
the wapiti, for instance—and I know that 
even these two may intergrade. 

I would not dogmatically assert that even 
though forms intergrade they should not 
be sometimes separated by specific titles. 
In their extreme forms the grizzly bear and 
the little black bear are certainly utterly 
different, and I have shot these extreme 
forms within a mile of one another on the 
Big Horn Mountains. Whether they inter- 
grade or not, there should be a sharp line 
of difference drawn between the typical 
representatives of these two kinds of bears; 
but I confess that I think that many of the 
multitude of ‘species’ of holarctic bears 
will have to be reduced to less than 
specific rank before we get a very clear 
idea of the true relationship of the bears of 
North America and northern Eurasia. — 
The excessive multiplication of species based 
on trivial points of difference merely serves 
to obscure the groupings which are based 
on differences of real weight. Moreover, it 
has always seemed to me unwise to make 
the word species depend solely upon the 
accident of the survival or non-survival of 
some connecting link. Two closely con- 
nected forms may not intergrade, while two 
widely separated forms may; and it seems 
to me the term species should express the 


688 


fact of a wide and essential variation 
rather than the accident of the existence of 
a connecting link. 

One more example and [am done. The 
‘cougar, or puma, is a perfectly distinct and 
well marked kind of cat, noteworthy not 
only for the sharpness with which its color 
and other points differentiate it from its 
spotted relatives, but also for the extent of 
its range. It seems to me it would be un- 
wise because of any trivial differences to es- 
tablish various species of cougars, separa- 
ting the different races by terms of the 
same weight by which we separate, for 
instance, any one of them from the totally 
different jaguar. Here again the essential 
point is the likeness the cougars bear to one 
another, and their wide unlikeness to the 
great spotted cats. The Latin name we give 
them should indicate, by the employment 
of the generic term, their resemblance to all 
other cats, and by the employment of the 
specific term their fundamental agreement 
among themselves on points wherein they 
differ from all other cats. Of course, it 
would be possible to make the pumas into 
one genus, with another for the leopards, 
another for the lions, etc., etc.; but this 
again seems to me to be clumsy and, on the 
whole, misleading. 

I quite realize that there is a certain 
amount of presumption in a layman criti- 
cising any conclusion reached by a trained 
scientific expert of the standing of Dr. 
Merriam. It must be remembered that my 
criticism is directed only to the expediency 
of the terminology by which he expresses 
certain of his results, and not in the least 
to the results themselves ; in fact, it is be- 
eause I am so ardent an admirer of Dr. 
Merriam’s work that I wish to see it made, 
without any sacrifice of accuracy, so com- 
prehensible in its terms as to be easily 
understood by the lay mind. 


THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 122. 


CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 


CONTRIBUTIONS TO ETHNO-BOTANY. 

In the last number of the Internat. Archiv 
fiir Ethnographie, the editor, Dr. Schmeltz, 
reviews the progress of ethno-botany, re- 
ferring with special emphasis to Professor 
Guppy’s ‘plant names of Polynesia’ (pub- 
lished by the Victoria Institute, 1895). 
Such studies cast a light upon the early 
migration of tribes which cannot be obtained 
from other sources. 

An interesting example is given in the 
American Anthropologist, February, by Mr. 
Walter Hough. It is upon ‘The Hopi in 
relation to their Plant Environment.’ How 
important their floral world, sparse as it is, 
has been to this people may be judged from 
the author’s remark: ‘‘ There is almost no 
plant which the Hopi do not use in some 
way, and there is none to which they have 
not given aname.’”’ Anample list is added, 
including the native name, the botanical 
title and the use to which the plant is put. 


CANNIBALISM IN EUROPE. 


We rarely reflect how near in time mod- 
ern civilization is to savagery. Less than 
a thousand years ago the Picts of Great 
Britain were man-eating barbarians. The 
recent researches of Matiegka, in Bohemia, 
prove that anthropophagy prevailed there 
in the bronze age (Centralblatt fiir Anthro- 
pologie, January, 1897). If we can trust 
medieval authorities quoted by Dr. Krauss 
in the Der Urquell, B. I., they held dis- 
tinetly in memory the period when the 
Wends and Slavs ‘killed, cooked and ate’ 
their aged relatives. 

But this is quite surpassed by the evi- 
dence addicted by the same writer that the 
southern Slavonians even. down to well 
within the present century were familiar 
with the custom of ceremonially eating the 
flesh of their enemies. Indeed, one of their 
songs, aS late as 1820, refers to it as a 
recognized procedure. To taste the broth 


APRIL 30, 1897. ] 


made with the head of some famous warrior 
was believed to confer on women the possi- 
bility of similarly heroic offspring ! 


THE PRE-HISTORY OF NORTHERN EUROPE. 


Maw first entered northern Europe in 
the Neolithic period ; but that period, for 
that locality, is divided into an older epoch, 
when flint implements were not polished, 
and a later, when they were polished. 
The first of these was the age of the oldest 
Danish kitchen-middens; the oak was 
abundant there and in Scandinavia ; but 
the men of the time did not carry on agri- 


culture. The climate was warmer than it 
had been since. This epoch closed about 
3000 B. C. 


About that time the cultivation of barley 
and wheat was introduced, polished flint 
implements were manufactured, the beech 
began to abound, and the later refuse heaps 
and the dolmens were constructed. The 
distribution of this early culture indicates 
that it approached the north of Europe 
from the Iberian peninsula and probably 
from North Africa. 

Such are the conclusions reached by Dr. 
E. H. L. Krause, in Globus, Bd. LX XI., No. 
9, from the works of Andersson, Montelius 
and Meitzen. 


D. G. Brinton. 
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 
HOW FLOWERS ATTRACT INSECTS. 


PROFESSOR FELIX PLATEAU, of Ghent, has 
been making further careful experiments in the 
open air to determine what part the corolla and 
other conspicuous parts of the inflorescence of 
flowers bear in attracting insects, and has 
reached some results strikingly at variance with 
-generally received opinions. 

His first series of experiments (see SCIENCE, 
N.S8., III., 474) were made on composite flow- 
-erS with radiate inflorescence and resulted in 
the conclusion that their form and color play 
Mo part in attracting insects, these being guided 


SCIENCE. 


689 


by some other sense than sight—probably by 
odor. 

In a second series he mutilated flowers of 
Lobelia, Gnothera, Ipomaea, Delphinum, Cen- 
taurea, Digitalisand Antirrhinum, with a wholly 
similar result, viz, to show that the colored or- 
gans of these flowers play a very unimportant 
role. 

Further experiments, related in a third 
paper, lead him to make the following state- 
ments as their conclusion : 

1. That insects show the most complete indif- 
ference for the different colors which flowers 
of the same species or of the same genus may 
present. 

2. That they fly unhesitatingly toward flow- 
ers habitually neglected by them on account of 
their total lack or small supply of nectar, the 
moment one places in them an artificial nectar, 
represented by honey. 

3. That they cease their visits to flowers 
from which the nectiferous portions have been 
eliminated (but in which the inflorescence re- 
mains intact) and that they renew their visits 
if one afterward replaces the eliminated nectar 
by honey. 

The details of these experiments and obser- 
vations are given with the utmost care and 
their importance cannot be questioned. The 
results are published in the Bulletin of the Bel- 
gian Academy. 


SCIENTIFIC EXHIBITS OF THE GOVERNMENT AT 
THE TENNESSEE EXPOSITION. 


Dr. W. F. Morse writes that the govern- 
ment scientific exhibits for the Tennessee Expo- 
sition, which opens on May 1st, are well ad- 
vanced. Exhibits will be made by the National 
Museum, taken from its numerous departments, 
and the Smithsonian Institution will include in 
the complete set of its publications the book 
prepared in celebration of its semi-centennial. 
The Bureau of International Exchanges will 
show the extent of its work, and astronomical 
photographs will be sent from the Astrophysical 
Observatory. The Zoological Park will send a 
model of the Park about seven feet square, and 
the Bureau of American Ethnology will present 
a Kiowa camping circle. 

The exhibit of the United States Geological 


690 


Survey will embrace two cases of minerals and 
a case of fossils. It will also include a suite of 
the rocks of the Educational Series. This is 
one of a number of duplicate suites, each con- 
sisting of 156 typical rocks, which the Geolog- 
ical Survey has been preparing for a number of 
years, to be distributed to universities and col- 
leges for purposes of instruction. In addition 
to the above, the Survey will show twelve or 
fifteen relief models, most of them very fine, 
and a large collection of the topographic maps 
and geologic folios, as well as a number of 
transparencies and pictures of various kinds. 

The exhibit of the Department of Agriculture 
is designed to show as completely as possible 
the character of the scientific work which this 
Department is doing in developing the agricul- 
tural resources of the country. Each one of 
the scientific bureas and divisions will have its 
allotted space, with characteristic exhibits of 
its peculiar functions. The Weather Bureau 
will show a complete set of the instruments 
used in observing the weather, with its maps, 
' charts, ete.; the Bureau of Animal Industry, 
typical specimens of animal parasites and illus- 
trations of animal diseases; the Forestry Di- 
vision, the forest resources of the country, 
particularly of the South; the Division of 
Entomology, the insects most injurious to 
Southern crops, with wax models of the corn 
and the cotton plant, insecticide apparatus, etc. 
The office of Fibre Investigations will show 
specimens of economic fibres (hemp, flax, etc.); 
the Division of Pomology, wax models of native 
fruits; the Division of Vegetable Pathology, 
specimens illustrating typical plant diseases; 
the Division of Biological Survey, the birds 
and wild mammals of the country, and the Di- 
vision of Botany, useful and harmful plants. 
This Division will show also specimens of the 
various useful seeds, and will illustrate the 
methods employed in the Department’s seed- 
testing laboratory. The space allotted to the 
Division of Agrostology will be devoted to a 
display of the grasses used for forage, for bind- 
ing sandy soils, ete. 


GENERAL, 


PROFESSOR HENRY SIDGWICK, professor of 
ethics in Cambridge University, has been elected 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 122. 


a member of the Danish Royal Society of Sci- 
ences; Professor Rudolf Heidenhain, professor 
of physiology at Breslau, a member of the Royal 
Society of London, and Dr. Salenski, sometime 
professor of zoology in the University of Odessa, 
a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of 
Sciences. 


THE Honorary Medal of the Royal College of 
Surgeons was presented to Lord Lister and Sir 
James Paget at the last meeting of the Council 
of the College. This medal has been conferred 
but eight times previously during the present 
century—on the last occasion on Sir Richard 
Owen. 

PROFESSOR J. MARK BALDWIN, of Princeton, 
has been awarded the gold medal offered by the 
Royal Academy of Science and Letters of 
Denmark for the best work on a general question 
in social ethics. 

Dr. KARL Bouin, of Upsala, Sweden, has. 
has been appointed Astronomer to the Royal 


Academy of Sciences and Director of the Ob- 


servatory at Stockholm. 


AT a meeting of the Royal College of Physi- 
cians, of London, on April 12th, Mr. Samuel 
Wilks, M.D., F.R.S., was re-elected President. 
of the College. A portrait, by Sir Thomas Law- 
rence, of Sir Henry Halford, President of the 
College from 1820 to 1844, was received from 
the executors of his grandson, the late Sir Henry 
St. John Halford, who had bequeathed it to the: 
College. 


Av the public exercises held on February 
22d in honor of the twenty-first anniversary of 
the Johns Hopkins University, Professor Welch, 
on behalf of the friends and associates of Profes- 
sor Newcomb, asked that he sit for a portrait to- 
be given to the University. The remarks of Pro- 
fessor Welch as reported in the University 
Circular were as follows: ‘‘The custom which 
prevails in many foreign universities of cele- 
brating, by some memorial, epochs in the lives 
of distinguished teachers and investigators- 
connected with the university is one which can 
only be commended. A _ similar custom is. 
finding increasing favor within recent years in 
this country, where so few material honors at- 
tend success in university and scientific careers. 
The colleagues and other friends of Professor 


APRIL 30, 1897.] | 


Newcomb desire to manifest their affectionate 
regard and their high appreciation of his ser- 
vices to science and to this University, and to 
mark an epoch in his life, by asking him to sit 
for a portrait to be painted in oil and presented 
to the Johns Hopkins University. It is just 
forty years since he left the work of a school 
teacher in the State of Maryland to engage in 
the mathematical service of the United States 
government. It is twenty years since he be- 
came senior professor of mathematics in the 
United States navy and editor of the American 
Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac. For many 
years he held the post of Astronomer in the 
Naval Observatory at Washington. With the 
Johns Hopkins University he has been closely 
associated since its foundation. He has been 
honored in unusual degree by academic dis- 
tinctions and by election to membership in 
learned societies both in this country and 
Europe. Hisnumerous contributions to science 
have received the highest possible recognition. 
This is not the occasion, nor am I the one, to 
attempt to estimate, in detail, the significance 
and the value of these contributions. The 
judgment of one’s own peers is the test of the 
worth of discoveries in pure science. The 
great mathematician, Professor Cayley, has 
pointed out the rare combination, in Professor 
Newcomb’s publications, of mathematical skill 
and power and of good, hard work devoted to 
the furtherance of mathematical science. When 
the blue ribbon of science, the Copley medal, 
was conferred upon our colleague by the Royal 
Society of London, attention was publicly 
called to the fact that he had won his distinc- 
tion especially by his contributions to the 
science of gravitation and that his name was 
worthy to be remembered in the domain for- 
ever associated with the illustrious Isaac 
Newton. Professor Newcomb, your friends 
and colleagues now ask permission to place 
your portrait by the side of that of your col- 
league, Professor Gildersleeve, that thus there 
may be here silent and enduring tokens of the 
honor which this University bestows upon the 
man of letters and the man of science.’’ Pro- 
fessor Newcomb responded briefly, acceding to 
this request. 


WE recently expressed the hope that the 


SCIENCE. 


691 


valuable physiological library of the late Pro- 
fessor Du Bois-Reymond might be secured for 
an American institution. We now learn that Dr. 
Nicholas Senn has bought the library and has 
presented it to the Newberry Library of Chicago. 

Ir is stated that the widow of the late Pro- 
fessor Charcot has resigned the annual pension 
of 2,000 frances which she received from the 
State, in favor of other widows and children of 
professsors or Agrégés of the Faculty of Medi- 
cine of Paris who have died without leaving 
provision for their survivors. 


PRINCETON UNIVERSITY will send its four- 
teenth geological expedition to the West during 
the coming summer. The party will be under 
the direction of Professor Scott and will make 
paleontological and geological studies and col- 
lections in South Dakota. 


PROFESSOR LAWRENCE BRUNER, of the Uni- 
versity of Nebraska, sailed April 27th for 
Buenos Ayres, where he will spend a year in- 
vestigating the injurious’ locusts which have 
recently increased enormously in three of the 
eastern provinces of the Argentine Republic. 
Professor Bruner goes out under the employ- 
ment of a commission of business men and 
bankers of Buenos Ayres, who have raised a 
large sum of money for the purpose of fighting 
the locusts, and who, very wisely, decided that 
the first step should be to engage an expert of 
great experience and acknowledged reputation. 
The commission applied to the United States 
Minister, Mr. W. I. Buchanan, and Mr. Bu- 
chanan wrote at once to Major H. E. Alvord, 
of the United States Department of Agriculture, 
asking him to consult with several of the direc- 
tors of the agricultural experiment stations in 
the United States and to select the best-fitted 
person for the work. The committee at once 
chose Professor Bruner, who has secured a 
year’s leave of absence from the University of 
Nebraska. No better choice could possibly 
have been made. Professor Bruner was con- 
nected with the U. S. Entomological Commis- 
sion in its thorough investigations of the Rocky 
Mountain locust, or Colorado grasshopper, in 
1876 to 1880, and has since become known as 
one of the foremost workers on the order of 
Orthoptera in the United States. He has de- 


692 


voted much time and attention to migratory 
species. 

WE regret to record the death of M. Lucien 
Biart, a French physician resident in Mexico, 
who made contributions to ethnology and nat- 
ural history. The Paris Museum of Natural 
History contains botanical and ornithological 
collections made by him. 


Mr. Oris E. Buttock died in New York 
from yellow fever on April 22d. He contracted 
this disease in Central America while on his 
way to make collections in natural history for 
the Frank Blake Webster Co., of Hyde Park. 


PRESIDENT MENDENHALL lectured before the 
National Geographical Society, Washington, on 
February 23d, his subject being ‘ Weighing 
the Harth.’ 


THE Illinois Child Study Society will hold its 
third annual congress at Englewood, Chicago, 
from April 26th to May 1st. It willbe presided 
over by Colonel Francis W. Parker, and ad- 
dresses are expected from President G. Stanley 
Hall, Professor John Dewey, Professor William 
L. Bryan and other leaders in the movement for 
the scientific study of children. 

THE Canadian Electrical Association will 
meet at Niagara Falls, Ontario, on June 2d, 3d 
and 4th. 


AN Educational Museum will be opened at 
the State House, Boston, on May 1st. It will 
include the exhibits of the Massachusetts schools 
at the Columbian Exposition, together with the 
work of other schools, school appliances and a 
pedagogical library. 

THE Astronomical Journal, Cambridge, Mass., 
offers for sale several complete and partial sets 
of the Journal, founded by B. A. Gould in 1849, 
with an interruption from 1861 to 1885. The 
complete set is offered for $70, or without the 
first volume, which is very rare, for $55. 

Dr. WALTER WENGA will editand A. Priber, 
Berlin, will publish a new journal, Zeitschrift 
fir Criminal-Anthropologie. 

A JOURNAL devoted to the applications of 
the X-rays to medicine and surgery, entitled 
La radiographie, has been established in Paris, 
It is edited by Dr. Paulin-Méry. 


THE Paris Municipal Council has voted $1,000 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Voz. V. No. 122. 


towards the cost of installation and maintenance 
of a skiagraphic laboratory at the Trousseau 
Hospital. 

THE French Chamber has allowed a sum of 
297,000 francs for the payment of expenses in- 
curred on account of defensive measures taken 
against the plague. 

THE Executive Council of the Massachusetts. 
State Board of Trade, at a meeting on April 
21st, passed the following resolution: ‘‘ That 
the Board recognizes the great advantages. 
which the general adoption of the metric system 
of weights and measures will promote, favors. 
not only its general use and practice, but also 
endorses the bill now before the Congress of the 
United States which provides for the adoption 
of this system as the only system in the several 
departments of the United States government. 
And, further, that the Secretary of the Board 
inform the chairman of the Committee on Coin- 
age, Weights and Measures of the vote of this. 
Board.”’ 


PRESIDENT McKINLEY and Secretary Sher- 
man have recommended that Congress make an 
appropriation of $350,000 for the representa- 
tion of the United States at the Paris Exposition 
of 1900. Such provision will doubtless be 
made, and we hope that the example of Ger- 
many and other nations at the Chicago Exposi- 
tion will be followed, and that scientific and 
educational matters will be well represented. 

THE Executive Committee of the Tennessee 
Centennial Exposition (which opens May 1st 
and continues six months) has petitioned the 
Board of Trustees of Vanderbilt University for 
the release of Dr. William L. Dudley, professor 
of chemistry, for the remainder of the present 
academic year, in order that they might engage 
his services. The University authorities granted 
the request, and the Centennial management 
has elected Dr. Dudley to the position of 
‘Director of Affairs,’ giving him full charge of 
the executive management of the Exposition. 

AT a meeting of the Royal Botanical Society 
of London, on April 10th, the Secretary, Mr. J. 
B. Sowerby, gave an account of the cultivation 
and manufacture, into paper, of esparto grass, 
illustrating it by specimens and growing plants 
from the gardens. According to the report in the 


APRIL 30, 1897. ] 


London Times, the raw material is chiefly ob- 
tained from the north of Africa, Algiers being 
the center of distribution. The plant producing 
it, Stipa tenacissima, is capable of living under 
the most adverse conditions, being often found 
flourishing in the deserts in places where no 
other vegetable life can exist. It was suggested 
by the lecturer that this would be a most suita- 
ble plant by means of which the deserts of Sa- 
hara might not only be reclaimed, but turned 
into a source of profit. For many years past 
esparto grass has very largely superseded rags 
and similar substances in the manufacture of 
paper, and enormous quantities are annually 
imported to England for the purpose. Sam- 
ples of paper made of esparto, in various stages 
of its manufacture, were shown by Mr. Layton, 
from the mills of Messrs. Weir, of Alloa, who 
consume over 7,000 tons of this material per 
annum. 


Sir BENJAMIN STONE, M.P., has been in cor- 
respondence with the authorities of the British 
Museum on the subject of a proposal to estab- 
lish a national photographic record collection. 
In a letter to the Board of Trustees of the Brit- 
ish Museum, Sir Benjamin Stone offered for ac- 
ceptance a series of 100 platinotype photographic 
views of Westminster Abbey, hoping that this 
would be the commencement of a national pho- 
tographic record and survey collection to be 
under the direction and in charge of the British 
Museum authorities. In replying to Sir Benja- 
min Stone the Trustees state that they are in 
full agreement with him that such a record sur- 
vey collection, if carefully and systematically 
brought together, cannot fail to be of the great- 
est value and interest both to the present and 
to future generations, and they are most willing 
to take charge of the photographs which from 
time to time may be deposited with them. It 
is proposed to form a preliminary committee to 
organize the work and to invite to act upon it, 
representatives of the Royal Society, the Society 
of Antiquaries, the Royal Photographic Society, 
the Royal Institute of British Architects, the 
Royal Archzological Institute, the Royal Geo- 
graphical Society, the Trustees of the British 
Museum, and others. The Council of the War- 
wickshire Photographic Survey have promised 
a first contribution of 100 pictures ofthat county. 


SCIENCE. 


693: 


A COMMITTEE of the House of Commons, con- 
sisting of Sir E. Hamilton, Sir A. Godley and 
Mr. G. H. Murray has been appointed to in- 
quire into the organization, pay and duties of 
the staff of the British Museum, including the 
system under which the staff is recruited and 
the reasons for or against competitive examina- 
tion, either limited or otherwise; the classifica- 
tion, scale of salary, and hours of attendance 
required to insure the efficient and proper dis- 
charge of the duties of the establishment, and 
whether it is practicable to assign clerical and 
routine work wholly or in part to clerks of the 
second division; and, generally, any matters 
connected with the Museum establishment in 
regard to which they may be of opinion that 
alteration of existing regulations is desirable. 


AN exhibition of agriculture and forestry will 
be held in Vienna by the Imperial and Royal 
Agricultural Society from May 7 to October 9, 
1898. The following sections are intended to. 
be of an international character: (1) Machinery 
and implements for agriculture and forestry. 
(2) Machinery and implements for agricultural 
industry. (8) Dairy machinery and appliances. 
(4) Fertilizers, feeding stuffs, and chemical prod- 
ucts for agricultural and forest purposes. (5) 
Veterinary science. (6) Agricultural improve- 
ments, building and engineering. (7) Agricul- 
tural and forest education, research work, 
statistics and literature. 


Mr. C. T. Hrycocr, F. R. S., lectured be- 
fore the Royal Institution on April 8th on ‘ Me- 
tallic Alloys and the Theory of Solution.’ Ac- 
cording to the London Times the lecturer showed 
a number of experiments which established an 
analogy between the solution of a substance 
such as sugar in water and the solution of met- 
als in each other. Just as the freezing point of 
a solution of a salt in water was lower than 
that of pure water, so the freezing point of a 
solution of a metal, such as thallium, in mer- 
cury was lower than that of pure mercury. 
After explaining that there was no essential 
difference between the two phenomena hestated 
that the remarkable theory of Van t’ Hoff, to the 
effect that a substance in dilute solution ex- 
isted within the liquid in a state resembling 
a gas, afforded the best clue to the interpreta- 


694 


tion of the results. This contention was sup- 
ported by means of a table proving that the re- 
sults arrived at by experiment agreed with 
those predicted by the theory. He showed 
that a weak solution of permanganate of potash 
when frozen yielded at first nothing but pure 
colorless ice, all the color, and hence all the 
salt in solution, becoming concentrated in the 
central unfrozen part. While seeking to 
establish that the same held true for the 
metals Mr. Neville and himself had hit on 
a method which he believed to be one of 
importance and which was shown that even- 
ing for the first time. Gold was very readily 
dissolved by metallic sodium, and if a so- 
lution of gold in sodium were allowed to 
solidify very slowly then sections cut from the 
solid alloy would appear perfectly uniform to 
the eye. If, however, the sections were placed 
on a photographic plate and exposed to the X- 
rays, on developing the plate a picture was ob- 
tained showing the actual structure of the solid 
alloy, the sodium being transparent to these 
rays, while the gold was opaque. By means of 
lantern slides sections were exhibited cut from 
sodium-gold alloys containing different percent- 
ages of gold. These sections showed that 
crystalline plates of sodium traversed the mass 
both horizontally and vertically, and that the 
gold, as the solution solidified, had become con- 
centrated between the crystalline plates of so- 
dium. The analogy between the solidification 
of an alloy and the solidification of an aqueous 
solution was thus established. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 


THE will of the late Judge B. R. Shelden, of 
Rockford, Ill., bequeathes $100,000 to Williams 
College, $100,000 to the Hampton Institute and 
$10,000 to Rockford College. 


It is stated in the New York Medical Record 
that Dr. William H. Welch and Dr. William 
Osler, of the Johns Hopkins Medical School, of 
Baltimore, have declined the call extended to 
them by the University of New York, which 
has lately been consolidated with Bellevue 
Hospital. 


ProFessoR ALBERT BUSHNELL HART has 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 122. 


been promoted to a full professorship of physics 
at Harvard University. 

PROFESSOR W. F. EpwAnrps has been elected 
President of the Washington University, Seat- 
tle, in the place of Dr. Mark W. Harrington. 

Dr. ANDR. Lipp has been appointed professor 
of analytical chemistry in the Polytechnic In- 
stitute at Munich. Professor Sissingle, of the 
Polytechnic Institute of Delft, has been called 
to the chair of physics in the University of Am- 
sterdam, and Dr. George Scheffers, of Leipzig, 
to an assistant professorship of mathematics in 
the Polytechnic Institute in Darmstadt. Dr. 
Wilfing, docent in mineralogy at Tubingen, 
and Dr. Max Siegfried, docent in physiology at 
Leipzig, have been promoted to assistant pro- 
fessorships. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
THE RE-DISTRIBUTION OF TYPE-SPECIMENS IN 
MUSEUMS. 


I can’? think why Mr. F. A. Lucas, in his 
most friendly review of my paper ‘How may 
Museums best Retard the Advance of Science ?? 
(ScIENCE, April 2, V., p. 548), should say: ‘‘ Mr. 
Bather seems to use the term type a little 
yaguely, as one does not feel quite sure 
whether he means type or typical material.’’ 
The term I used was ‘type-specimen,’ which 
has for me, and doubtless for Mr. Lucas, one 
meaning and one only. The question raised in 
my paper has been much discussed of late in 
England ; permit me to put my view, which 
differs from that of Mr. Lucas, without satirical 
obscurity. 

The object of museums is after all toadvance 
and not to retard science. Take the case of a 
provincial museum, say at Thurso, in the ex- 
treme north of Scotland; suppose that this 
museum by some chance acquires a single 
specimen of a new Mexican beetle; suppose 
that some wandering ‘ Koleopterolog’ from 
Germany chances on this and describes it in 
the Zoologischer Anzeiger. The specimen is 
now a type-specimen, ‘‘and no museum,’’ says 
Mr. Lucas, ‘‘can afford to permanently part 
with these.’’ But does the retention of this 
specimen at Thurso, in charge of some under- 
paid jack-of-all-trades curator, do anything 


APRIL 30, 1897.] 


other than retard science? Would it not be 
better for all parties, including the museum 
and people of Thurso, if this priceless speci- 
men were sent to Mexico, or to Washington, or 
to the Godman-Salvin collection in London, or 
even to Berlin, in exchange fora good teaching 
set of zoological specimens intelligible to the 
Thurso fisher-people ? 

This is a strong, though by no means an im- 
possible case. Every specialist knows similar 
instances. Of what advantage was it to science 
that, when Dr. Otto Jaekel was writing his 
admirable memoir on the Devonian crinoids of 
Germany, all the type-specimens described by 
Schultze in his ‘Echinodermen des Eifler 
Kalkes’ were locked up in dusty boxes in a 
store room at Harvard? As things are, the 
type-specimens of any group of animalsor plants, 
whether a zoological group, a geographical 
group, or a stratigraphical group, will be found 
by the specialist scattered all over the world 
without reference to country or to facilities for 
study. And we museum curators go on adding 
to this confusion as hard as ever we can, with 
the aid of preliminary notices, and stretch 
miserly hands over specimens that are wanted 
most in some center of research 8,000 miles 
away. Weadvance our museums, but we retard 
science. 

And yet there are some of us who are also 
students and lovers of science. We wish to 
use our powers for her advancement. This 
we think might be done partly by the collection 
of the type-specimens of a single group in a 
single museum, partly by the restoration of 
type-specimens to the country of their origin, 
provided that it possessed a museum capable of 
preserving them unharmed, partly by the with- 
drawal of type-specimens from small local 
museums where they ‘waste their sweetness, 
etc.,’ and are far from safe, to the larger 
museums with permanent endowment. Wedo 
not wish any museum to suffer ; exchange is 
no robbery, and in this case might be as much 
gain to each contracting party as it would be to 
scientific investigators. 

Another small point in Mr. Lucas’ notice 
provokes an explanation. ‘‘On the question 
of loaning specimens,’’ says he, ‘‘Mr. Bather 
dwells lightly, owing to his connection with the 


SCIENCE. 


695 


British Museum, whose policy in this respect is 
well known.’’ This is Mr. Lucas’ reason, not 
mine. My view is that type-specimens should 
not be lent (they should, if necessary, be ex- 
changed); but other material should be lent 
freely to responsible workers. There is always 
a danger of loss; but, while the lost type-speci- 
men can never be replaced, the gain to the 
museum and to science through the study and 
description of ordinary specimens more than 
counterbalance the occasional loss of one. This 
is not the policy of the British Museum, and no 
remarks of mine are likely to make it so. 
Similarly my opinions will not prevent me from 
borrowing type-specimens of crinoids from any 
museum rash enough to lend them to me. 
F. A. BATHER. 
BRITISH MusEUM (Nat. Hist.), April 15, 1897. 


THE QUATERNARY OF MISSOURI. 


TO THE EDITOR OF ScrENCcE: After reading 
the quite satisfactory review of my report on 
the Quaternary of Missouri, in your issue of 
April 9th, some unanswered questions were left 
in my mind. As the answers may be of in- 
terest to others I venture to offer them through 
your columns. Mr. Hershey suggests that the 
idea that the loess ‘area deposited by broad 
semilacustrine stream floods,’ ‘would not have 
originated upon certain other areas, for in- 
stance, the upper Mississippi region.’ Is not 
this virtually the origin conceived the most 
probable for the loess of the ‘ Driftless Area’ 
by Chamberlin and Salisbury in the 6th Annual 
Report, U. S. Geol. Survey ? 

Mr. Hershey, if I understood rightly, sug- 
gests that the loess deposits of Missouri and of 
southern Illinois as well as of the upper Mis- 
sissippi were formed in a vast lake or arm of the 
sea. If that be the case I would ask (1) why 
no traces of beach ridges have been preserved 
anywhere, and (2) how he would account for 
the absence of loess from surfaces along the 
Mississippi below the supposed ‘barrier’ much 
lower than the general level of the loess north- 
west of that ‘barrier,’ viz., the Osage Gasconade 
divide? 

If I had been able to find beach ridges and 
been able to make the margin of the loess south 
of the Missouri river pass easily into that west 


696 


of the Mississippi I should have been only too 
ready to accept the lacustrine hypothesis. 
J. E. Topp. 


A ‘DRIFTLESS’ RIDGE. 


To THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: In reviewing, 
in the April 9th number of your journal, Pro- 
fessor Todd’s report on the quaternary geology 
of Missouri, I mentioned a certain ‘ driftless’ 
ridge in Pike and Calhoun counties, in Illinois, 
and referred its study to Mr. Frank Leverett. 
My attention has been called to the fact that the 
driftless nature of this ridge was discovered by 
Professor R. D. Salisbury (see Proc. A. A. A.S., 
Washington meeting, 1891, pp. 251-253), and 
that its study was largely accomplished by him. 

In reference to the sections of the old and 
new gorges of the Mississippi river, between 
Montrose and Keokuk, Iowa, I wish to add to 
what I have said previously, that they were 
published through the courtesy of the Iowa 
Geological Survey, to which institution their 
preparation should be credited. 

O. H, HERSHEY. 


SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 
Diseases of Plants Induced by Cryptogamic Para- 
sites. An Introduction to the Study of Path- 
ogenic Fungi, Slime-Fungi, Bacteria and 


Algae. By Dr. KARL FREIHERR VON TU- 
BEUF. English edition by WILLIAM G. 
SmitH. Longmans, Green & Co., London, 


New Yorkand Bombay. 1897. 

The German edition of this work appeared 
in 1895 and was the first attempt at a compre- 
hensive treatment of the diseases of plants 
caused by parasites of the class Thallophyta, 
chiefly parasitic fungi. Such a work has been 
long needed, but there have been many diffi- 
culties in the way of the successful preparation 
of it. The fact that many of the diseases were 
but little known, that the organism causing 
them had been but little studied, and that im- 
portant contributions were constantly being 
made to our knowledge of these forms, made it 
exceedingly difficult to get a book of such di- 
mensions through the press before important 
changes would be necessary in order that it 
should properly represent the then status of 
the subject. While the German edition when 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. Vou. V. No. 122. 


it appeared was welcomed because of the mass 
of information which was here for the first time 
brought together in a single book, it was nota- 
ble for some important omissions, especially of 
work done in the United States. This was 
probably due in part to the fact that some of 
the investigations had not come to the notice of 
the author, and partly to a failure on his part 
during the press of the work to consult the 
American journals like the Botanical Gazette and 
the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club. 
While it is evident there was no intent on the 
part of the author to ignore American work, 
the edition would have been more valuable had 
a little more time been given to investigations 
of this portion of the literature of the subject. 
Since, however, the work was intended pri- 
marily for the German-speaking people there 
is here some partial defence of the omissions. 

The chief difficulty, however, that of keeping 
the work up to date while going through the 
press, was, from the very nature of the state of 
our knowledge of these subjects, an insur- 
mountable one. This is forcibly illustrated in 
the fact that in the English edition, which ap- 
pears within two years after the first edition, it 
was necessary to recast and rewrite the whole 
portion of the book which treats of the family 
Exoasceze and the genus Gymnosporangium, so 
rapidly have investigations in these groups fol- 
lowed each other, and so greatly have the limita- 
tions of species been changed by a study of the 
physiological effects on the hosts on the one 
hand and of biological studies on the other. 

In the preparation of the English edition the 
author, Dr. von Tubeuf, privatdocent in the 
University of Munich, has added much that 
was omitted from the first edition and has re- 
written the sections already alluded to above. 
The English translator, William G. Smith, lec- 
turer on plant physiology in the University of 
Edinburgh, has also assisted in enhancing the 
value of the work in some additions for which 
he alone is responsible. It is not often that an 
author is so fortunate in the selection of his 
translator as Dr. vy. Tubeuf has been. Dr. 
Smith was at one time a pupil of the author in 
the laboratory of the University of Munich, and 
at the very time when the book was being pre- 
pared for the first edition, so that he was 


APRIL 30, 1897.] 


familiar with its general plan and with the 
spirit of the author. 

In looking over the bibliography, which in- 
cludes the more important works consulted by 
the author and translator, it is interesting to 
note that the bulletins of the experiment sta- 
tions in the United States have been given a 
place, and there are many references in the 
body of the work to the published investigations 
of several of these stations. 

In defining the parasitism of the parasitic 
fungi, on account of the facultative nature of a 
large number of the species of both parasitic 
and saprophytic forms, the author believes that 
it is more correct to consider as parasites those 
which in their attack respond to the stimuli 
exerted upon them by living plant cells rather 
than as an adaptation to nutrition, being in- 


fluenced in this respect by the researches of | 


Pfeffer and Miyoshi. According to these in- 
vestigations the stimulus seems to be a purely 
chemical one, and Miyoshi has shown that ordi- 
nary saprophytic fungi, as Penicillium glaucum, 
may be made to behave like a parasite by in- 
jecting a two per cent. solution of cane sugar 
into leaves. 

The terminology applied to those forms which 
are not strictly obligate parasites or saprophytes 
is different from that employed by de Bary and 
others, the present author employing the terms 
“hemi-parasites’ and ‘hemi-saprophytes.’ The 
first chapter further deals with the mode of life 
of the parasitic fungi, their relation to the host 
and to its different tissues, and the various modi- 
fications of the mycelium into absorbent organs 
for the taking up of nutritive matters. 

In the chapter on the reaction of the host to 
parasitic attack the work treats of the absorp- 
tion of cell contents, the absorption of cells and 
tissues (notably in certain Ustilaginex), the 
killing of host cells and tissues by ferments, the 
killing of organs or entire parts, the premature 
development of buds, preservation of the host 
plant, arrest of growth, atrophy, hypertrophy, 
and changes in cell contents of the host. Under 
the last head among other things is cited a kind 
of chlorosis produced by certain fungi on the 
host, when the green parts become bleached 
and lose their green color, as in the case of the 
attack of many of the Exoascex. This is 


SCIENCE. 


697 


termed ‘mycetogenous chlorosis.’ Contrasted 
with this are those cases which have probably 
been observed by all students of parasitic fungi, 
in which the affected portions of the leaves or 
shoots remain green longer, while the unaf- 
fected parts become pale and lose their green 
color. A third case is termed ‘mycetogenous 
chloranthy,’ that is the development of green 
color in the floral parts, as in the petals and 
stamens of Brassica nigra and Sisymbrium pan- 
nonicum attacked by Cystopus and Peronospora, 
and in the flowers of Anemone ranunculoides 
attacked by cidium punctatum. In some 
eases of hypertrophy the cell sap assumes 
a rose color on the sunny side, as in galls, 
caused by Exobasidium and in the bracts of the 
catkins of alder attacked by Exoascus. Car- 
mine and yellow colors also occur, and yellow 
color may sometimes result from the yellow oil 
contents of the mycelium lying in the tissues. 
The accumulation of starch in parts of the host 
attacked by certain fungi is noted, as in the 
spruce needles when affected by Lophodermium 
macrospermum at a time when it is only being 
slowly formed in unaffected needles. Starch 
preservation is noted in oak wood destroyed 
by two fungi simultaneously. This chapter 
further deals with the effect of the mycelium 
in dissolving starch grains, wood cell walls and 
the effects of fungi on the anatomical structure 
of their hosts. 

Under ‘mutualism’ or ‘symbiosis’ in the 
stricter sense the author first cites the much dis- 
cussed case of the lichens. Here, the author 
claims, ‘‘as a result of the union of fungus and 
alga, a living organism originates, which in 
form necessities, and mode of life is quite new, 
and differs completely from either of its com- 
ponents.’’ In dilating upon the evolution of 
this new organism the author compares it with 
water, which is the result of the combination of 
oxygen and hydrogen, or to a certain extent to 
the new individual, which is produced by the: 
union of sexual cells. ‘‘These and other ex- 
amples,’’ he says, ‘‘ will serve to illustrate how 
we have in the lichen an organism with pe- 
culiarities of structure and of life widely differ- 
ing from those of either an alga or a fungus.’’ 
This unification of two living beings into an indi- 
vidual whole the author terms ‘ individuation.” 


698 


(individualismus). While there are a number 
of lichenologists at the present day who accept 
this theory of the lichen, which has been elabo- 
rated farther by Reinke, it should be understood 
that there are others who are not convinced 
by the ‘relentless’ logic which separates the 
lichen fungi as a distinct class, but who look 
upon this relation of fungus and alga as para- 
sitism in which the fungus is no more depend- 
ent on the alga than are certain other fungi upon 
their hosts. In the perennial parasitic Exo- 
ascez, for example, the affected parts of the host 
in the case of such species as Exoascus deformans, 
EE. pruni, etc., are totally unlike the normal parts 
of the host, and during their existence, in ‘form, 
necessities and mode of life, differ completely 
from either of their components.’ This de- 
formed structure differs from the lichen only in 
the fact that the entire host is not a changed 
and ‘new’ being. But here there is no neces- 
sity for this, since the host is a bulky, multi- 
cellular structure, while the alga which is asso- 
ciated with the fungus is often an unicellular 
organism, or one of a few cells, or at most in a 
few cases a comparatively complex organism of 
small size, so that it could not afford a suffi- 
cient amount of nutrition for the fungus unless 
woven in close connection with the fungus 
threads. 

The author recognizes that the same kind of 
‘individuation’ which is manifested in the 
lichens also exists in the modified structure 
brought about by the parasitism of many of the 
fungi when he cites the negative geotropism 
characteristic of witches’ brooms, since the new 
growth is no longer controlled by the same laws 
of growth as the normal lateral branches. Fur- 
ther, he points out that this structure possesses 
other characteristics not exhibited by normal 
plants when the witches’ broom of the silver fir 
easts its needles each year. . In other cases they 
bear no flowers or fruit. ‘‘From these facts it 
can be deduced that parts of plants attacked by 
fungi exhibit that kind of symbiosis with the 
fungus which we call individuation, the joint 
community behaving more or less as a parasite 
on the stem or branches of the host plant. This 
is clearly the case where the attacked parts 
exhibit increased growth, and at the same time 
a diminished production of chlorophyll result- 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. Voz. V. No. 122: 


ing from degeneration of chloroplasts. Such 
parts of plants are quite as individualized as: 
the lichens, with the single distinction that they 
remain in communication with the parent plant’ 
and draw nourishment from it.’’ 

From this it would seem reasonable to con- 
clude that if the fungi which attack alge are to: 
be placed in a separate class because of this in- 
dividualized condition, as some contend, these 
‘individualized’ parts of vascular plants should 
be separated as another class of organisms. We 
do not understand, however, from his discus- 
sion that the author sanctions the separation of 
the Jichen fungus from other fungi as a distinct 
class rather than on the ground of convenience. 
It has been a matter of convenience as well as. 
one of taste to study and publish the lichens 
separately, just as it is often a matter of con- 
venience to separate the parasitic fungi from 
others. Butneither matters of convenience, nor 
taste, nor continued dependence upon some other 
organism and physiological amalgamation with 
it for limited periods, should be the ruling princi- 
ple in natural taxonomy. 

The word ‘individuation’ (individualismus), 
is misleading, unless the author means by it that 
the lichen has become a being with individual 
traits as distinct as those beings which are rec- 
ognized as individuals. If this latter interpre- 
tation is given it would seem to violate one of 
the fundamental criteria of an individual being, 
namely, that in reproduction it must pass 
through the one-cell stage, while the lichen 
thallus is never originated by less than two cells. 

The author uses the term nutricism to denote: 
the ‘symbiotic’ relation of ‘mycorhiza’ to: 
their hosts, as exampled in the case of Mono- 
tropa and the filamentous fungus covering its 
roots, the mycodomatia of the alder, the leg- 
umes, orchids, etc. These general topics make 
up the first part.of the book aud cover about 
100 pages. 

The second part covers over 400 pages and 
treats first of the pathogenic fungi and lastly of 
the pathogenic alge. f 

The fungi are taken up in the following 
order: Chytridiacez, Zygomycetes, Oomycetes, 
Ascomycetes, Ustilagineze, Uredinez, Basidio- 
mycetes. Then follow the ‘Fungi Imperfecti.’ 
The discussion of each genus is preceded by a 


APRIL 30, 1897. ] 


description of its principal characters. A few 
of the important species in each genus are quite 
fully described and in many cases illustrated. 
These are followed by a further enumeration of 
a number of other species with their hosts and 
localities, the species in many cases for Britain 
and the United States being indicated. 

The book is very fully illustrated, a very 
large number of the illustrations being new, 
either from the pencil of the author or from ex- 
cellent photographs. As foot notes, there are 
very copious references to works even in cases 
where space would not permit of a discussion 
of their contents. 

Neither the author nor the translator pre- 
tends to completeness, but modestly offer ex- 
cuses for faults which under the conditions 
could not be well avoided. These can well be 
overlooked in view of the great amount of in- 
formation contained in the volume which will 
prove to be a very useful adjunct to reference 
works on parasitic fungi. When a new Ger- 
man edition shall be called for the author 
promises to thoroughly revise it and expresses 
the wish that those who have in the past sent 
him copies of their investigations continue to 
do so in order that he may make this edition as 
complete as possible. 


Geo. F. ATKINSON. 
CoRNELL UNIVERSITY. 
RECENT BOOKS ON QUATERNIONS. 


1. Theorie der Quaternionen. VON DR. P. MOLEN- 


BROEK. Leiden, E. J. Brill. 1891. Pp. 
vii+ 284. 

2. Anwendung der Quaternionen auf die Geo- 
metrie. By the same author. 1893. Pp. 
xv-+ 257. 

8. The Outlines of Quaternions. By. LiEvurT.- 


Cou. H. W. L. Hime. 
Co. 1894. Pp. 190. 

4. A Primer of Quaternions. By A. S. HATHA- 
way. New York, Macmillan & Co. 1896. 
Pp. x+113. 

5. Utility of Quaternions in Physics. By A. Mc- 
AULAY. Macmillan & Co. 1893. Pp. xiv 
+107. 

The above books are all contributions to the 
literature of the Quaternion side of space-analy- 
sis. The first, by Dr. Molenbroek, is a care- 


London, Longmans & 


SCIENCE. 


699: 


fully written exposition of Hamilton’s theory ; 
the author, if he does not examine the corre- 
spondence of the theory with exact science and 
established analysis, at least presents it so as to- 
be internally consistent. For instance, he ex- 
plains the fundamental rule ij =k as meaning 
that a quadrant round the axis 7 followed by a 
quadrant round the axis 7 is equivalent to a 
quadrant round the axis k. Consistently with 
this, he explains the rule i?2=—1 as meaning 
that a quadrant round the axis 7 followed by a 
quadrant round the same axis is equivalent to 
a reversal. The treatise, however, does not go 
deep enough; for the subject of quaternion 
logarithms and exponentials is embraced in a 
9-page appendix, and what is there given is. 
the well-known theory of coplanar exponentials. 
It is only when diplanar exponentials are 
handled that problems can be attacked which 
are insoluble, or at least not readily solved by 
the ordinary methods of analysis. Dr. Molen- 
broek introduces an indefinite use of / — 1 to 
signify a quadrant round some axis perpendicu- 
lar to a given line. There are reasons for be- 
lieving that in space-analysis / — 1 is scalar 
in its nature, and that it distinguishes the hy- 
perbolic angle from the circular angle. Any- 
how, that is one definite meaning. 

The third book, by Col. Hime, presents a 
very dim and imperfect outline, which it would 
be well for the beginner to avoid. By perusing 
it he may get his ideas confused, not only of 
analysis, but of mechanics; for example, at 
p. 33 the terms ‘ version,’ ‘torsion,’ ‘rotation,’ 
‘twist,’ are all used as synonymous. This is, 
at least, awkward, for one of the first things 
which a student of quaternions must do is to 
distinguish between the trigonometrical com- 
position of angles and the mechanical composi- 
tion of rotations. The author explains the rule 
ij =k by saying that 7 and k each signify a 
unit vector, but 7 signifies a quadrantal versor 
which turnsj into *. But he fails to observe 
that this explanation cannot apply to the com- 
plementary rule 72? = —1, for a quadrantal ver- 
sor 7 operating on a unit vector 7 would leave it 
i. Chapter Tenth is devoted to the ‘ Interpreta- 
tion of Quaternion Expressions ;’ thus for nine 
chapters the reader is supposed to be dealing 
with symbolical expressions. Would it not be 


700 


better if the real meaning of each expression 
were clear from the beginning? 

The fourth book, by Professor Hathaway, 
presents a much better introduction to the 
method, and the student who masters it will find 
that he has acquired some real knowledge, not 
merely additional dexterity in formal manipu- 
lations. The exposition, as a matter of logic 
and of truth, is not all that can be desired, for 
it is based partly on formal laws, partly on 
mechanical truths. For example, the principle 
that the addition of vectors is associative is 
made to depend on an arbitrary definition of 
the equality of vectors, but the same principle 
for the product of quaternions is rested upon the 
composition of rotations of a rigid body. 

The fifth book, by Mr. McAulay, has a dif- 
ferent purpose from that of the others. It is 
an essay, not an introduction or a treatise, and 
the aim of the essay is to make good the fol- 
lowing statements: First, that Quaternions are 
in such a stage of development as already to 
justify the practically complete banishment of 
Cartesian geometry from physical questions of 
a general nature ; and second, that Quaternions 
will in physics produce many new results that 
cannot be produced by the rival and older the- 
ory. In the essay the author applies the quater- 
nion analysis to the theories of elastic solids, 
electricity and magnetism and hydrodynamics. 
It is almost wholly a translation into quater- 
nion notation of known results ; the author has, 
however, endeavored to advance each of the 
theories mentioned in at least one direction. 

It is evident that the utility of a method is 
best proved not by any essay, but by its exten- 
sive and fruitful use. How does it come about 
that the method of quaternions is so far from 
general and accepted use that it is still the sub- 
ject of debate, misunderstanding and even ridi- 
cule? Not a few mathematicians agree with 
the opinion expressed by a German mathema- 
tician, that it is an aberration of the human in- 
tellect. The answer to the above question I 
believe to be as follows: 

In the books before us, and, indeed, in all 
the works by members of the old school, it ‘is 
admitted, even proclaimed, that the Hamilto- 
nian analysis is a rival of the Cartesian analy- 
sis. Mr. McAulay talks of it as a new plant, 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 122. 


independent of the old tree of analysis; andin 
their letterto SCIENCE proposing an international 
association Dr. Molenbroek and Mr. Kimura 
invited mathematicians to leave the old domain 
of Cartesian analysis. Now, when one who 
has been trained in the Cartesian analysis ap- 
proaches the new method he finds that the no- 
tation is strange and the conyentions contra- 
dictory of those to which he has been accus- 
tomed; consequently, he concludes, as David 
did about Saul’s armor, that it is better in 
actual warfare to rely on a familiar weapon 
than on one which may be superior but is un- 
proved. 

What is the true relation of space-analysis to 
the Cartesian analysis? The quaternionist 
makes them rivals; thereisthe blunder. Space- 
analysis can be presented so as not to contra- 
dict or rival the Cartesian analysis, but, on the 
contrary, be consistent with and supplementary 
to it. The relation of the former to the latter 
is like that of algebra to arithmetic. Algebra 
is universal arithmetic; so space-analysis is 
universal Cartesian analysis; that is, it con- 
siders the properties of vectors which are inde- 
pendent of coordinates. Many theorems are 
readily proved by algebra which it would be 
difficult, if not impossible, to prove by arith- 
metic; similarly, many theorems can be read- 
ily proved by space-analysis which it is 
difficult, if not impossible, to prove by means 
of coordinates. If we wish numerical results, 
coordinates must be introduced, just as, if we 
wish numerical results, numbers must be intro- 
duced into the formula furnished by algebra. 

Some writers express the opinion that agree- 
ment about notation is all that is required in 
order to render space-analysis generally ac- 
cepted. But it appears to me that the difficulty 
is more deep-seated ; the fundamental princi- 
ples need to be discussed, and no notation can 
be adequate and lasting which is not built on 
the simplest and truest principles. I may men- 
tion briefly some points of principle which have 
to be settled. 

It is unscientific to base the analysis partly 
on formal laws, partly on physical principles. 
By not distinguishing between simultaneous 
and successive addition Hamilton failed to dis- 
cover the true generalization for space of the 


APRIL 30, 1897. ] 


exponential theorem. Ihave demonstrated that 
in space e?<e1=e?+t%, and the demonstra- 
tion shows conclusively that the Hamiltonian 
ideas about the addition of vectors require to be 
revised. Although I have asked quaternionists 
to point out any error in the demonstration, no 
error has been pointed out. 

The Hamiltonian principle that a unit-vector 
may be identified with a quadrantal versor re- 
quires to be modified. The conception of a 
line does not involve the idea of an angle, 
whereas the conception of an angle involves the 
idea of two lines. The question reduces to the 
following: Can a line be conceived apart from 
an initial line? The answer appears to be yes, 
for Hamilton did not succeed in his endeavors 
to extend algebra to space until he abandoned 
the idea of an initial line and considered all 
three axes as equally real. The vector and the 
versor are complementary ideas, and just as a 
vector is expressed in terms of rectangular co- 
ordinates which are in their nature vectors, so 
a versor is expressed in terms of rectangular 
quadrantal coordinates which are in their na- 
ture versors. 

On the other hand, a vector cannot take the 
place of the versor. To ignore the versor and 
more generally the quaternion is the mistake 
made by writers who confine space-analysis to 
vector-analysis, which is merely a branch. The 
very name vector-analysis implies a restricted 
view of space-analysis. The versor is the prop- 
rer idea in spherical trigonometrical analysis, 
‘and in a modified form expresses the rotation of 
avigid body. It leads up to higher ideas which 
express elliptic and hyperbolic angles and the 
motion of a body which is not rigid. 

In mathematical analysis the product of two 
quantities having the same direction is positive, 
while that of two quantities haying opposite di- 
rections is negative; consequently the square of 
a quantity is always positive. Consistent with 
this the reciprocal of a negative quantity is the 
negative of the reciprocal. Now, are all the 
‘quantities considered in algebra or the Carte- 
sian analysis scalar quantities, or are they in 
some cases partial vectors? If in any case they 
‘are partial vectors (that is, component of a 
vector) then, in order to be consistent, the 
‘square of a vector in space must be positive 


SCIENCE. 


701 


and the reciprocal of a vector have the same 
direction as the vector. 

The order of writing of the terms of a sum or 
the factors of a product should conform, as far 
as possible, to the order followed in mathemat- 
ical analysis. There the natural order of writ- 
ing is followed, from left to right, and, asin a 
determinant, from top to bottom. But in books 
on Quaternions, for example, Hathaway’s 
Primer, p. 49, we have the Hebrew order of 
writing. This abnormal order of writing was 
adopted from the idea that a product of qua- 
ternions supposed an operand and that the 
operand ought to be on the right. Asa matter 
of fact, in the expression for the rotation of a 
versor the operator is written both before and 


behind. 
ALEXANDER MACFARLANE. 


SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS. 
JOURNAL OF GEOLOGY, APRIL-MAY. 


PROFESSOR CHAMBERLIN continues his gla- 
cial studies in Greenland, giving a description 
of the Bowdoin glacier. This is a tongue of 
the great inland ice-cap which descends from 
the north into the head of Bowdoin Bay. On 
the west it is confluent with the Tuktoo and 
Sun glaciers. The Bowdoin glacier has a length 
of six or eight, and in its lower part a breadth 
of about two miles. It has a descent of 2,000 
to 3,000 feet, and is notably crevassed. It dis- 
charges icebergs of considerable dimensions, 
the discharge varying greatly with the season. 
The west side does not present the usual verti- 
eal scarp, and this is thought to be due to the 
fact that the ground which should act as a re- 
flecting plane is covered by protuberances from 
the Tuktoo glacier. The stratification and 
basal loading of the ice is much the same as in 
the glaciers previously described, though the 
débris does not rise so high. The bowlders 
were usually more rounded, and this rounding 
is of such a nature as to imply very considera- 
ble wear. This considerable rounding, the 
small amount of débris and its low position in 
the ice are especially significant in view of the 
fact that the Bowdoin is one of the larger 
tongues of the great icecap. 

Dr. Henry Washington describes the Rocca 
Monfino region in the fourth of his Italian 


702 


Petrological Sketches. The rocks of the region 
belong to three periods of activity: (1) the leu- 
citic characterized by leucites and leucite-teph- 
rites, (2) the trachytic and (8) the basaltic. 
Among the rocks of the first period is a biotite- 
vulsinite, a rock intermediate between the 
trachytes and andesites. The silica is lower 
than in the vulsinites, the lime, iron and mag- 
nesia very much higher and the alkalies con- 
siderably lower. Chemically the rock is almost 
identical with ciminite, but in deference to the 
present mineralogical classification of rocks it 
is put with the vulsinites. 

Are the Bowlder Clays of the Great Plains 
marine? is asked by Dr. George M. Dawson, 
and as a reason for the question he enumerates 
several species of foraminifera, in part modern 
forms, determined from the Canadian bowlder 
clays by Mr. Joseph Wright. 

The Beauxite deposits of Arkansas are de- 
scribed by Professor John C. Branner. The 
beauxite deposits were discovered by the recent 
Geological Survey of that State and are of fer- 
ruginous, earthy and kaolin-like varieties with 
pisolitic structure. In age they probably belong 
to the Tertiary. They appear to have been 
laid down in water near the shore and, in part 
at least, to have been uncovered at low tide or 
broken up by storm waves, rolled, and finally 
left at or near where the material had originally 
lain. In the opinion of Professor Branner, be- 
fore the eruptive syenites had cooled they were 
sunk beneath the Tertiary sea, and either by 
the contact of the sea water or the issuing of 
springs, whose waters had been in contact with 
the hot syenites, the aluminous materials were 
segregated as pisolite and sank near where they 
were formed. The beds have not been devel- 
oped, though they could be used to advantage 
as a refractory material in the manufacture of 
iron and steel. The paper includes a consider- 
able bibliography. 

H. F. B. 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 
NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—SECTION OF 
GEOLOGY, APRIL 19, 1897. 
THE evening of the monthly meeting of the 
Section was devoted to a reception, by the 
whole Academy, to Sir Archibald Geikie, Direc- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 122. 


tor-General of H. M. Geological Survey of 
Great Britain, who had just returned to this 
country for a brief visit after an absence of 
eighteen years. After an informal reception 
the meeting was called to order and addressed 
briefly by the President of the Academy, Pro- 
fessor J. J. Stevenson, who extended a most 
hearty welcome from the scientists of New York 
to the guest of the evening. Professor Steven- 
son was followed by Professor J. F. Kemp, the 
Chairman of the Section, who reviewed in a. 
few words the greater contributions of Sir 
Archibald Geikie to the cause of geology. He 
spoke of his early work in Scotland, in France 
and in the western United States in the study 
of vulcanism, and paid particular attention to 
the work that had been done in Scotland on 
the metamorphic rocks. Professor Kemp con- 
eluded with a tribute to Sir Archibald as a nat- 
uralist, and spoke of the superior quality of 
work that is given the world by the man who 
is in love with nature and finds in the solitude: 
of the wildness of nature his greatest company 
and inspiration. 

The next speaker was the Secretary of the 
Section, who spoke particularly of the work of 
Sir Archibald Geikie as looked at from the 
standpoint of the teacher and physiographer. 
He reviewed hastily the character and quality 
of Geikie’s Text-book and Class-book of Geol- 
ogy, and spoke more especially of the example 
this distinguished geologist has set in physi- 
ography in the masterly analysis of the physical 
features of Scotland given in his Scenery of 
Scotland. 

The last address of welcome was given by 
Professor Angelo Heilprin, of Philadelphia, who: 
spoke as a traveler and contrasted the knowl- 
edge of the geology of the world now with our 
knowledge at the time of Humboldt. He spoke 
of how much we owed to the guest we were 
welcoming for his work in bringing together 
the shreds of knowledge from all parts of the 
world and in building up a great mass of geo- 
logical information, which is a vast help to all 
workers in geology and a stimulus to all. 

In reply Sir Archibald Geikie expressed his. 
thanks to the Academy for the very cordial 
reception that had been tendered him in New 
York. He contrasted the appearance of the: 


APRIL 30, 1897.] 


city eighteen years ago and now, and spoke of 
the great growth of New York vertically as well 
as horizontally. He paid a brief word of tribute 
to his friends of his former visit, particularly 
Newberry, Leidy, Dana, Cope and Hayden, 
whose help and good will have ever been a 
great inspiration to him. 

In reviewing the work of world-wide reputa- 
tion that the American geologists are producing, 
Sir Archibald Geikie paid a warm tribute to 
their industry, their perseverance, their breadth 
and their scientific acuteness. He contrasted, 
in a very favorable way to the United States, 
the policy of the British and United States 
governments in regard to the printing, publish- 
ing and distribution of government reports. 

After these brief addresses an opportunity was 
given for meeting the guest of the evening, 


for personal social meetings among the members 


of the Academy, and for greeting the guests 
from a distance, including several well-known 


geologists. 
RICHARD EH. DonGE, 


Secretary. 


BOSTON SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 


THE Society met February 17th; seventy- 
three persons present. 

Professor N.S. Shaler spoke of the subter- 
ranean water of southeastern New England, 
stating briefly the distribution of earth water, 
the characters of the superficial deposits, and 
of the supply yielded by the deeper rocks. In 
America the bed rocks yield but little water, a 
case of supply being unknown. Good water 
depends upon the length of time the rocks have 
had to decay; it is obtained from the uncom- 
pacted rocks and from drift deposits; in 
Massachusetts the supply from the latter rarely 
fails. Wells that penetrate into preglacial de- 
posits are largely charged with iron and seldom 
furnish good water. The till or boulder clay 
gives good water, except where lime abounds; 
the water-holding power of these clays is, how- 
ever, small. Sand plains are favorable for a 
good water-supply. Professor Shaler gave a de- 
tailed description of the sources of the water- 
supply of southeastern Massachusetts, especially 
of that of Martha’s Vineyard, and in closing 
said that the desire for pure water was increas- 


SCIENCE. 703 


ing and would shortly be a demand. Boston, 
from its proximity to the Bristol, Plymouth 
and Cape sand plains, is favorably situated for 
an abundant supply, and a reservation of 10,- 
000 acres in the region mentioned would be a 
benefaction for future generations. 

Dr. C. R. Eastman prefaced his paper on some 
Devonian bone- and fish-beds of North America 
with an account of the difficulties encountered 
in the study of fossil fishes, owing to the imper- 
fectness of the material and the lack of sys- 
tematic exploration. He discussed the struc- 
ture of Coccosteus and described remains of 
lung-fishes that simulate shark’s teeth, found 
in the Devonian of Iowa. 

At the meeting on March 3d sixty-five persons 
were present. Mr. T. A. Jaggar, Jr., gave an 
account of his experimental studies of mountain 
building, illustrating his remarks with a series 
of models. Thescope of geological experimen- 
tation was explained, and the conditions under 
which rocks fracture, the determinant of flexi- 
bility and the influence of initial dip noted. A 
most interesting experiment shows deformation 
at both ends; the opposite direction of thrusts 
shows on oneside only; the ratio of force to re- . 
sistance is not influenced by the scale. Mr. J. 
B. Woodworth remarked upon the geology of 
the Gay Head Cliff, describing briefly the geo- 
logical characteristics of the New England group 
of islands, and giving a detailed account of the 
formation studied at Gay Head. 

A general meeting was held on March 17th; 
ninety-three persons were present. Mr. Frank 
Russell gave an account, illustrated by lantern 
views, of his two years’ voyage down the Mac- 
kenzie, sketching briefly the characters of the 
surrounding country and describing with some 
detail the difficulties that arose owing to the 
customs and traditions of the Dog-rib Indians. 
Some of the customs of the Eskimos were noted, 
also the natural history of the musk ox, Barren 
ground caribou and bison. 

SAMUEL HENSHAW, 
Secretary. 


THE TEXAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 


THE regular monthly meeting of the Texas 
Academy of Science was held on the evening 
of April 2d. 


704 


A paper on ‘Experiments with X-Rays on 
the Blind’ was read by Dr. H. L. Hilgartner, 
oculist to the State Institution for the Blind. 
This contribution is the joint production of Dr. 
Hilgartner and Professor EH. F. Northrup, of 
the chair of physics in the University. As the 
authors state, the experiments were stimulated 
by the extraordinary claims made by Dr. Louis 
Bell in a letter to the editor of the Electric 
World (December 12, 1896), in which it was 
maintained that a man totally blind from 
paralysis of the optic nerve was able to dis- 
tinguish the flickering of a Crook’s tube. 
the authors wished to verify or disprove. As 
to their apparatus they say: ‘‘ The outfit em- 
ployed in our test is of the best. A double 
focus tube is excited by a Tesla coil capable 
of giving an eight-inch discharge. The X-Rays 
produced will show a shadow of the hand upon 
the fluorescent screen at a distance of twenty- 
five or thirty feet.’’ Of the eleven persons 
experimented upon, seven had no light percep- 
tion ; they were suffering from atrophy of the 
optic nerve. Of the four having some light 
perception, three were blind from affections of 
the cornea and lens, and one from atrophy of 
the optic nerve. After describing their experi- 
ments the authors give as their conclusion 
“that the X-Rays themselves have no power 
whatever of exciting vision or even light per- 
ception in any kind of an eye, diseased or 
normal. Of course, these results regarding the 
blind apply only to the eleven subjects experi- 
mented upon, and it would be unscientific to 
say that no subject can ever be found in whom 
the X-Rays will excite light sensations. None 
of the blind subjects could see anything by 
looking into the fluoroscope, even those having 
some light perception getting no sensation, and 
our experiments gave us no hint that the X- 
Rays, or any other kind of rays, proceeding 
from the Crook’s tube are able to give any light 
perception to those who are totally blind from 
any cause whatever.’? * * * * xX X % 

‘““We should not have thought the above 
negative results worthy of record if the matter 
had not been taken up by scientists of eminence 
and the newspapers filled with trashy and mis- 
leading myths.’’ 

Mr. J. R. Bailey gave an account of his in- 


SCIENCE. 


This © 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 122. 


vestigations of the Hydrazine Derivatives of 
Propionic Acid, being a continuation of his 
studies begun more than a year ago in the 
laboratory of Professor Thiele at Munich. 

A paper by Mr. M. B. Porter, now of Harvard 
University, ‘On the Roots of Bessel’s Func- 
tions,’ was announced by title. 

FREDERIC W. SIMONDS. 

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS. 


THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE OF ST. LOUIS. 

AT the meeting of the Academy of Science of 
St. Louis, held on the 19th of April, 1897, 
twenty-one persons present. Dr. C. Barck de- 
livered an address on Helmholtz—his life and 
work; and Dr. C. R. Keyes, the State Geologist 
of Missouri, presented papers on the relations 
of the Devonian and Carboniferous systems of 


‘the upper Mississippi basin and the distribution 


of Missouri coals. 
WILLIAM TRELEASE, 
Secretary. 


NEW BOOKS. 

The Ancient Volcanoes of Great Britain. SIR 
ARCHIBALD GEIKIE. London and New York, 
the Macmillan Co. 1897. Vol. I., pp. xxiv 
+477, Vol. IL, pp. xv-+492. $11.25. 


The Theory of Electricity and Magnetism. AR- 
THUR GORDON WEBSTER. London and New 
York, the Macmillan Co. Pp. x+576. $350. 


Elements of Astronomy. SiR ROBERT STAWELL 
Batu. London, New York and Bombay, 
Longmans, Green & Co. 1896. Pp. xvi+ 
469. 


Numerical Problems in Plane Geometry with Metric 
and Logarithmic Tables. J.C. ESTELL. New 
York, London and Bombay, Longmans, Green 
& Co. 1897. Pp. vii+144. 


Topics and References in American History, with 
Numerous Search Questions. GEORGE A. WIL- 
LIAMS. Syracuse, N. Y., C. W. Bardeen. 
1897. Pp. viiit176. $1.00. 


ERRATA: P. 591, col. 1, line 42 and col. 2, lines 
14 and 29 for Puppis read ¢ Puppis. P. 592, col. 2, 
line 36 for March 19th read March 26th. 


SCIENCE 


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New Works on Embryology. 


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American Naturalist. 


The Development of the Frog’s Egg. 


An Introduction to Experimental Embryology. 


By THOMAS HUNT MORGAN, Ph.D., 
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The object of the book is to give an account of the early development of the ege of the frog in connection with ~ 


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An account is given of Pfliiger’s work on the relation between the planes of cleavage and the direction of the 
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Finally the development of the organs of the embryo and the effects of heat and light on development are de- 
scribed. 


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McGILL UNIVERSITY, MONTREAL, 
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Dec. 1, 1896. Just Published. Sixth Edition of 
THE MICROSCOPE 432, "cRoggerr 
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SCIENCE 


EDITORIAL ComMMITTEE: S. NEwcoMB, Mathematics; R. S. WooDWARD, Mechanics; E. C. PICKERING, 
Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THURSTON, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry; 
J. LE ConTE, Geology; W. M. DAvis, Physiography; O. C. MARsH, Paleontology; W. K. 
Brooks, C. HART MERRIAM, Zoology; S. H. SCUDDER, Entomology; N. L. Britron, 
Botany; HENRY F. OSBORN, General Biology; H. P. BowpitcH, Physiology; 
J. S. Binuines, Hygiene ; J. MCKEEN CATTELL, Psychology ; 
DANIEL G. BRINTON, J. W. POWELL, Anthropology. 


Fripay, May 7, 1897. 


CONTENTS: 
Edward D. Cope: HENRY F. OSBORN..............++ 705 
Psychology and Comparative Psychology: WESLEY 


Pareiasauria Seeley (Cotylosauria Cope) from the 

Triassic of Germany: G. BAUR........c0scsecereeeeee 720 
Current Notes on Physiography :-— 

McGee on Sheetflood Erosion ; Relief Map of New 

Jersey; Moraines of the Missouri Coteau; Notes: 

WWiew Wise DV AW LS otcnss cee sencccssts<ccscesvescenwestcetces veh 7122 
Current Notes on Anthropology :— 

The Monoliths of Tafi; Ethnography of the Myce- 

Me aTs)\-ie lon Cre RUN TONewscerescas: strecesccerseacestore 724 
Notes on Inorganic Chemistry: J. L. H............... 725 
Astrophysical Notes: E. B. F.............sesesesccoereee 
Scientific Notes and News............... 

University and Educational News 
Discussion and Correspondence :-— 

Type Specimens in Natural History: C. Hart 

IGG HONS CSocoaonqdooende ciadecososocabeuacconanooDecodee 731 
Scientific Literature :— 

Spencer's Principles of Sociology; Le Bon on The 

Crowd: FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS.  Setchell’s 

Laboratory Practice for Beginners in Botany : 

L. M. UNDERWOOD. Hannequin’s Essai critique 

sur Vhypothése des atomes dans la science contem- 

POCO S13, TNs FSIMTORNE toce caccocococconacceooncceoseced 732 
Scientific Journals :— 

The American Journal of Science; The Auk........ 738 
Societies and Academies :— 

The Biological Society of Washington: F. A. 

Lucas. he New York Section of the American 

Chemical Society: DURAND WOODMAN............ 739 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended 
for review should be sent to the responsible editor, Prof, J. 
McKeen Cattell, Garrison-on-Hudson, N. Y. 


EDWARD D. COPE. 

NATURAL science and- philosophy have 
sustained a heavy loss in the premature 
death of Professor Edward D. Cope. His 
work began at a most favorable time, in 
1859, when comparative anatomy first felt 
the impetus of the ‘Origin of Species,’ and 
for thirty-eight years his active mind has 
been hastening our progress in no less than 
five great lines of research. In each his 
inspiring example and leadership will be 
sadly missed. He passed away upon April 
12th, at the age of fifty-seven,in the full vigor 
of his intellectual powers, leaving a large 
part of his work incomplete. Almost at 
the last he contributed several reviews to 
the Naturalist, and upon the Tuesday pre- 
ceding his death he sent to the press an 
elaborate outline of his University lectures 
containing his latest ideas of the classifica- 
tion of the Vertebrata. For two months his 
health had been affected by a serious dis- 
order, which might possibly have been 
remedied by a surgical operation. This 
was unfortunately postponed until it was 
too late, and the end came so suddenly that 
his family decided not to remove him from 
his house, in Pine Street, which was both 
his study and museum. He thus passed 
away in the scene of his life work, surround- 
ed by his fossilsand books. A gathering of 
his scientific friends in hismemory also took 
place here a few days later. His will proves 
to be consistent with his life, as he leaves 


706 


all his rare scientific treasures for the bene- 
fit of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences 
and the University of Pennsylvania. It is 
hoped that the following sketch of his early 
life and brief review of his principal writ- 
ings will give some idea of his genius and 
of his position in the world of science. 

Edward Drinker Cope was born in Phila- 
delphia, July 28, 1840, of distinguished 
American ancestry.* His great-grandfather, 
Caleb Cope, is said to have been the staunch 
Quaker of Lancaster, Pa., who protected 
Major Andre from mob violence. Thomas 
Pim Cope, his grandfather, founded the 
house of Cope Brothers, famous in the early 
mercantile annals of Philadelphia. His 
father was Alfred, the junior member of the 
firm, a man of very active intellect, who 
showed rare judgment in Edward’s educa- 
tion. Together the father and son became 
brisk investigators, the father stimulating 
by questions and by travel the strong love 
of nature and of natural objects which the 
son showed at an unusually early age. 

In August, 1847, they took a sea voyage 
to Boston, and the son’s journal is full of 
drawings of jellyfish, grampuses and other 
natural objects seen by the way. When 
eight and a half years old he made his first 
visit to the Museum of the Academy of 
Natural Sciences, ‘on the 21st day of the 
10th Mo., 1848,’ as entered in his journal; 
he brought away careful drawings, meas- 
urements and descriptions of several larger 
birds, but especially the figure of the entire 
skeleton of an Icthyosaur, with this quaint 
memorandum: ‘ Two ofthe sclerotic plates 
look at the eye—thee will see these in it.” 
At the age of ten he was taken upon a 
longer voyage to the West Indies. Thus 
the child was in a remarkable degree the 


*In the preparation of this article the writer is in- 
debted to several members of Professor Cope’s family, 
also to Professor Bashford Dean and to Professor 
George Baur. ‘The latter has contributed especially a 
section upon the Reptilia. 


SCIENCE. 


LN. S. Von. V. No. 123. 


father of the man. The principal impres- 
sion he gave in boyhood was of incessant 
activity in mind and body, of quick and 
ingenious thought, reaching in every direc- 
tion for knowledge, and of great independ- 
ence in character and action. It is evident 
that he owed far more to paternal guidance 
in the direct study of nature and to his own 
impulses as a young investigator than to 
the five or six years of formal education 
which he received at school. He was 
especially fond of map drawing and of 
geographical studies. His natural tal- 
ent for languages may have been culti- 
vated in some degree by his tutor, Dr. 
Joseph Thomas, an excellent linguist, editor 
of a biographical dictionary. Many of his 
spare winter hours were passed at the Acad- 
emy. After the age of thirteen the summer 
intervals of boarding school life and later 
of tutoring were filled among the woods, 
fields and streams of Chester county, Pa., 
where an intimate knowledge of birds was 
added to that of batrachians, reptiles and 
insects. He always showed a particular 
fondness for snakes. -One of these excur- 
sions, taken at the age of nineteen, is de- 
scribed in a letter to his cousin (dated June 
24, 1859); at the close of a charming de- 
scription of the botany of the region ap- 
pears his discovery of a new type: 


“‘T traced the stream for a very considerable dis- 
tance upon the rocky hillside, my admiration never 
ceasing, but I finally turned off into the woods to- 
wards some towering rocks. Here I actually got to 
searching for Salamanders and was rewarded by 
capturing two specimens of species which I never 
before saw alive. The first (Spelerpes longicauda) is 
a great rarity here. Iam doubtful of its having been 
previously noted in Chester county. Its length is 6 
inches, of which its tail forms nearly four. The color is 
deep brownish yellow, thickly spotted with black, 
which becomes confluent on the tail, thus forming 
bands. Tome a very interesting animal—the type 
of the genus Spelerpes, and consequently of the sub- 
family Spelerpine, which I attempted to characterize 
in a paper published in the Proceedings of the Acad- 
emy of Natural Sciences. Isend thee a copy, with 


May 7, 1897. ] 


the request that thee will neither mention nor show 
it, * for—however trifling—I would doubtless be 
miserably annoyed by some if thee should. Nobody 
in this country (or in Europe, of owrs) knows any- 
thing about Salamanders, but Professor Baird and thy 
humble coz., that isin some respects. Rusconi, the 
only man who has observed their method of repro- 
duction, has written enough to excite greatly one’s 
curiosity and not fully satisfy it. With suitable ap- 
pliances of aquariums, etc., I should like to make 
some observations. The other Salamander I caught 
was Plethodon glutinosum—the young—remarkable 
for the great number of teeth that lie together in 
two patches on the ‘basisphenoid’ bone ; about 300 
or more.”’ 


Another passage gives an insight into his 
strong opinion, so often expressed after- 
ward, as to what constitutes the real pleas- 
ures of life: 


“Pleasant it is, too, to find one whose admiration 
of nature and detail is heightened, not chilled, by 
the necessary ‘investigation ’—which in my humble 
opinion is one of the most useful as well as pleasing 
exercises of the intellect, in the circle of human study. 
How many are there who are delighted with a ‘fine 
view,’ but who seldom care to think of the mighty 
and mysterious agency that reared the hills, of the 
wonderful structure and growth of the forests that 
crown them, or of the complicated mechanism of the 
myriads of higher organisms that abound everywhere ; 
who would see but little interesting in a fungus, and 
who would shrink with affected horror from a de- 
fenseless toad* * * Dr. Leidy is getting up a 
great work on comparative anatomy which is to be 
the modern standard. Such a work will be very use- 
ful to those who want to go to the bottom of natural 
history ; itis an interesting study, too, to notice the 
modifications in form—the degradations, } substitu- 
tions, et¢., among the internal organs and bones. 
The structure, forms and positions of teeth, too, are 
interesting to notice—so invariably are they the index 
of the economy and the position in nature of the ani- 
mal.’’ 


This is the reflection of a lad of nineteen, 
an age at which some modern educators 
would have us believe our young men are 
just ready for the collegiate Freshman class. 

*This passage probably indicates that he was sen- 
sitive to being teased about his interest in these 
animals. 


fA word used by French writers of the time to ex- 
press lines of descent. 


SCIENCE. 


707 


During the same year young Cope went to 
Washington to study and work in the 
Smithsonian Institution under Spencer F. 
Baird, and it is amusing to observe him in 
the above letter classing himself with 
Baird as the only Americans who knew 
anything of the Batrachia. Upon April 19, 
1859, he contributed his first paper (alluded 
to above) to the Academy ‘on the primary 
divisions of the Salamandride, with a de- 
scription of two new species.’ He followed 
this by a full description in the same year 
of reptiles brought from West Africa by 
Du Chaillu, naming several new forms; also 
by a catalogue of the venomous snakes in 
the museum. In the succeeding three 
years he made twenty-four communications 
upon the Reptilia and established himself 
at the age of twenty-two as one of the lead- 
ing herpetologists of the country. 

It is obvious from other portions of the 
letter that by this time young Cope’s career 
was fully determined in his own mind. 
Here and in the papers he was now pre- 
senting he shows keen observation and 
powers of systematic diagnosis, a wide 
range of self-acquired knowledge, and 
familiarity with the characteristics of his 
distinguished seniors, Agassiz and Leidy. 
This period included a year’s study 
(1858-9) of anatomy and clinical instruc- 
tion at the University of Pennsylvania. In 
1863 he traveled abroad for several months, 
visiting especially the museums of Leyden, 
Vienna and Berlin and extending his hori- 
zon aS a comparative anatomist, for upon 
his return he at once showed the impulse of 
the philosophical spirit, complete familiarity 
with the history of opinion and marked 
power of generalization. Thus his papers, 
which began to crowd the pages of the 
‘Proceedings of the Academy,’ chiefly in 
recent herpetology and ichthyology, display 
a new breadth and range as in his division 
of the Anura into the Arcifera and Rani- 
formes (Firmisternia) and his demonstra- 


708 


tion of the main evolution principles in 
these groups. 

In 1865 he married Miss Annie Pim, 
daughter of Richard Pim, of Chester Co., 
Pa. In the year 1864 Haverford College 
called him to a professorship of natural sci- 
ence. This position, however, he held for 
ouly three years. Twenty-two years later 
he again resumed teaching as professor of 
geology and paleontology in the University 
of Pennsylvania, all the interval having 
been devoted to exploration and research. 
In 1865 he first began to extend his studies 
among the mammalia, especially the Ceta- 
cea, recent and extinct, of the Coastal Ter- 
tiary. Early in 1866 a wider paleonto- 
logical field opened in the vertebrata of the 
Cretaceous marls of New Jersey, whence 
he procured the remains of Dinosaurs, de- 
scribing especially the carnivorous Lelaps, 
and grouping (Noy., 1866), these reptiles 
into three great suborders, Orthopoda (Ha- 
drosaurus and Iguanodon), Goniopoda and 
Symphopoda (Megalosaurus, Leelaps and 
Compsognathus). In the same year ap- 
peared the continuation of his tropical 
American and Sonoran herpetology and his 
third contribution to the history of the Ce- 
tacea. Henceforward his papers become 
far too numerous to consider together and 
we must endeavor to follow merely the 
main outlines of his life work. 

This was a bright era in the history of 
the Academy, Leidy, Gill and Harrison 
Allen being frequent contributors. In 1868 
Cope gave his first complete synopsis of the 
extinct Amphibia of the world. Between 
1868 and 1870 he made his first six contribu- 
tions upon the Plesiosaurs of the Cretaceous 
of Kansas and in 1871 began his first west- 
ern explorations in these beds. This led to 
his connection with the U. S. Geological 
Survey, under Dr. Hayden, and to further 
explorations in Wyoming (1872) and Colo- 
rado (1873), which resulted in the dis- 
covery of many new types of fishes, mosa- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 123. 


saurs, chelonians, dinosaurs and other rep- 
tiles, notably Portheus, Platecarpus, Clidastes, 
Compsemys (type of the Amphichelydia, Ly- 
dekker), Protostega, and Agathawmus. These 
were described chiefly in the Bulletins 
of the Survey and in the Transactions of 
the American Philosophical Society, and 
culminated in his first large volume The 
Vertebrata of the Cretaceous Formations 
of the West,’ No. II., of the Hayden quartos, 
published in 1875. 

He spent his summers in the Bad Lands, 
exploring the Bridger and Washakie, Wa- 
satch, New Mexican and Judith River 
(1877 formations). Thelatter exposures he 
visited in 1874, in connection with the 
Wheeler Survey, securing a collection which 
is now preservedin the National Museum, 
and publishing a most vivid description of the 
geology of this interesting region. His move- 
ments in the field are described by one who 
was with him as so rapid and full of energy, 
so regardless of food and rest, that he wore 
out the other members of his parties and 
did not allow time for thorough search; 
yet he himself found a number of his most 
important types. 

The fruits of the New Mexican journey 
appeared in many bulletins and were fi- 
nally collected in his second great volume, 
‘The Extinct Vertebrata obtained in New 
Mexico by Parties of the Expedition of 
1874,’ Vol. IV., of the Wheeler Survey. In 
1874 appeared the first of his studies upon 
the comparison of American and European 
horizons, and of his contributions to the 
John Day fauna. His collections were now 
accumulating so rapidly as to demand more 
time for research and for many years he 
was fortunate in securing the field services 
of C. H. Sternberg and Dr. J. L. Wortman. 
He continued to make brief expeditions, 
among the last being his trip into the Lara- 
mie region. 

As early as 1868 it may be said that he 
had laid the foundations for five great lines 


May 7, 1897. ] 


of research, which he pursued concurrently 
to the end of his life ; these must, however, 
be followed separately to be understood and 
appreciated. Only for comparatively. brief 
intervals would one line be pursued exclu- 
sively in order to complete some special 
memoir, for his marvelous memory appar- 
ently held and resumed the details of all 
the others with perfect ease. 


FISHES. 


Cope’s work in ichthyology would alone 
have given him high rank among zoologists. 
In his early papers (1864) he appears as an 
enthusiastic systematist, studying especially 
the living forms of Teleosts, making care- 
ful diagnoses of all types that came into 
his hands, critically considering the prob- 
lems of distribution, never casting aside 
those types whose especial difficulties had 
been the stumbling block of earlier writers. 
Thus he studied successively the fishes of 
Michigan (1864-65), of Virginia (1868), 
of the Lesser Antilles (1870), the cyprinids 
of Pennsylvania (1867), again the fishes of 
South Carolina (1871), of Alaska (1872), 
of Montana, those from South America 
collected by Professor Orton (1872-78), 
those from the territories collected by the 
Wheeler Survey, and even not infrequently 
new forms from Africa and the East Indies. 

Almost from the first he set aside the 
superficial characters which had been em- 
ployed in the classification of fishes, sym- 
pathizing keenly with the morphological 
spirit in systematic study which Dr. Gill 
was then showing. A great step in his 
career was, therefore, his purchase, while 
abroad, of Professor Hyrtl’s private collec- 
tion of fish skeletons, which gave him 
nearly a thousand admirable preparations 
for immediate study. Owen had proposed 
(1866) the Teleostomi to include the old 
Ganoids and Teleosts. Before the Ameri- 
can Philosophical Society, in 1870, and the 
American Association, in 1871, Cope dem- 


SCIENCE. 


709 


onstrated the law that the primary divisions 
of the Teleostomi are indicated by their 
jin structure. This is now the accepted basis 
of sub-ordinal classification. Besides pro- 
posing the Actinopteryii, he established the 
fundamental division (Holocephali, Se- 
lachii, Dipnoi, Crossopterygii, Actinoptery- 
gii) of the living fishes into five groups, as 
they stand at the present day, upon cranial 
and fin structure. In 1876 Huxley adopted 
Cope’s wide separation of the Holocephali 
from the Selachii. Fin structure as a tax- 
onomic motive was uppermost in his mind 
and undoubtedly served to direct his atten- 
tion later to the foot structure of land ver- 
tebrates as of diagnostic value. 

The masterly part Cope continued to play 
in the major classification of the fishes may 
be gathered from a perusal of the introduc- 
tions of Smith Woodward’s standard vol- 
umes ‘Catalogue of Fossil Fishes of the 
British Museum.’ In 1884 he proposed a 
new Hlasmobranch subclass, Icthyotomi, from 
the Permian Diplodus. This order was sub- 
sequently enriched by his discovery of Didy- 
modus and is now firmly established to in- 
elude the pleuracanth and other paleozoic 
sharks. In 1889 he proposed another great 
sub-order, the Ostracodermi, which is also 
established. 

His interest in the phylogeny of the group 
was naturally intensified by increasing 
knowledge of extinct forms, and here his 
wide studies among living types stood him 
in good stead, for he was first brought in 
contact with fishes from the Tertiary and 
Cretaceous, from the vertebrate remains 
from the New Jersey Greensand (1869) to 
the rich yields of the Green river shales 
(1871-7). The older fishes had long been 
in the hands of Professor Newberry, the 
pioneer among the fossil fishes of North 
America, but his studies came naturally to 
lead him among the more ancient types in 
his eager study of phylogeny. Into this diffi- 
cult field he carried his work always with 


710 


suggestive results; for the most abstruse 
problems he had ever at hand a wide range 
of answers. Thus the curious fish-like 
Bothriolepis he compared to an armored as- 
cidian, basing this surprising view upon a 
remarkable similarity in the arrangement 
of plates, arguing that it was reasonable to 
expect in the early horizon of Bothriolepis 
that the back-boned creature should be built 
on the plan of the ascidian tadpole. His final 
Opinions and additions to the taxonomy and 
phyogeny of the fishes are inserted in the 
syllabus of his university lectures (1897). 
AMPHIBIANS. 

“There never has been a naturalist,” 
writes Dr. Baur, ‘who has published so 
many papers upon the taxonomy, morphol- 
ogy and paleontology of the Amphibia and 
Reptilia as Professor Cope.’” The first of a 
series of more than forty papers upon the 
former group is the one ‘On the Primary 
Divisions of the Salamandride, with de- 
scriptions of two new species,’ alluded to in 
his letter above, and presented at the age 
of 19 (April, 1859). It exhibited the pre- 
cocious taxonomic instinct which soon after- 
wards prompted him to attack and rear- 
range the major divisions of the Amphibia. 
Rapidly following this first essay by others 
upon the Anura, in 1865 and 1866 he out- 
lined the larger Ecaudate or Anurous divi- 
sions: I. Aglossa; II. Bufoniformia; IIT. 
Arcifera; IV. Raniformia. At the age of 25 
he described his first extinct Amphibian, 
Amphibamus, from the Carboniferous of Ohio, 
and at 28 he published his first large quarto 
memoir, ‘ Synopsis of the Extinct Batrachia, 
Reptilia and Aves of North America.” 
This contained, in addition to the above, 
the recent urodelous divisions, Trachysto- 
mata, Gymnophidia, Proteida, but of chief 
importance, to include the Permian and 
Triassic forms of the world, he proposed 
the great extinct order Stegocephali, which 


* Trans. Amer. Phil. Soc., read 1868, pub. 1869. 
See also Proc. Phil. Acad. Nat. Sci., 1868, p. 211. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 123. 


has since been universally adopted. As a 
supplement to this memoir appeared in 
1874 his ‘Catalogue of the Air-Breathing 
Vertebrata from the Coal Measures of Ohio,’ 
including results also published in the pale- 
ontology of the Geological Survey of Ohio 
of the same year. His researches and collec- 
tions in the typical coal measures and Per- 
mian extended to Iowa and Illinois, lead- 
ing to the determination of Cricotus, which 
in 1880* he made the type of the suborder 
Embolomeri, or Stegocephalia with double 
vertebral rings. In 1877 he received the 
first remains of Eryops and Trimerorachis, 
from the supposed Triassic, but actuaily 
Permian beds of Texas, animals which in 
1882 he made the type of the Rachitomi, 
a second suborder of Stegocephalia. This 
accession of material, as we have seen, 
ranks with that of the Puerco among the 
chief events of Cope’s scientific career, for 
the Permian of Texas yielded to him not 
only these remarkable Batrachians with 
complex vertebre, but also the great prim- 
itive representatives of the Reptilia. The 
suborders Rachitomi and Embolomeri have 
been grouped as Temnospondyli in con- 
trast with the specialized Labyrinthodontia 
and simpler Microsauria of Europe, chiefly 
made known through the labors of Fritsch, 
Credner, Gaudry and Miall. Cope’s brief 
memoir of 1884 upon the ‘ Batrachia of the 
Permian Period of North America ’ summed 
up his previous contributions, but he an- 
ticipated that the more exhaustive mono- 
graphic treatment of the rich amphibian 
and reptilian fauna of this period, exclu- 
sively collected and described by him, would 
constitute a volume of the Hayden Survey 
memoirs and give him an opportunity of 
rounding up his prolonged studies. 

In the meantime his investigations upon 
the living Batrachia extended to Central 
and South American species, as well as to 
very original observations upon the laws of 


* American Naturalist, p. 610. 


May 7, 1897.] 


geographical distribution of the Amphibia, 
which were published by the Smithsonian 
Institution. In 1875 he prepared a ‘ Check 
List of the North American Batrachia and 
Reptilia’ for the U. S. National Museum ; 
this was followed by an essay ‘On the Zo- 
ological Position of Texas’ (1880). Soon 
afterwards, at the request of Spencer F. 
Baird, he began the preparation of a general 
work upon the Batrachia; this was facili- 
tated by a manuscript prepared for a work 
of the same character both by Baird and 
Girard, but was not completed until 1889. 
As a volume of 523 pages and numerous 
plates this work,* while showing many signs 
of haste and subject to considerable changes 
in the larger systematic divisions, fortu- 
nately remains as a monument of the im- 
mense range of knowledge and observation 
of its author upon the structure and habits 
of the living representatives of this group. 
It must always be a matter of regret that 
he could not have published his final views 
upon the extinct forms. One of his most 
most important generalizations from the 
latter, contained in a short memoir, ‘The 
Intercentrum of the Terrestrial Vertebrata’ 
(1881), is that the vertebre of living am- 
phibia are composed of intercentra and are, 
therefore, not homologous with the true 
centra (pleurocentra) of reptiles, birds and 
mammals. 
REPTILES. 


We have already traced Cope’s initial 
work upon the Reptilia. As in other 
groups, his researches rapidly branched out 
in many directions, first his treatment of 
the reptiles of the Bridger and other fresh- 
water Tertiary lakes in connection with the 
mammalain fauna; second, the continuation 
of his systematic description of the Kansas 
Cretaceous fauna; third, the brief papers 
upon the herbivorous Dinosaurs of the 
Dakota (1877 and 1878) and the horned 


**The Batrachia of North America.’ Bull. No. 
34, U.S. Nat. Museum. 


SCIENCE. 


fall 


Dinosaurs (Monoclonius) of the Laramic for- 
mations ; fourth, the numerous papers upon 
the Reptilia of the Triassic and especially of 
the Permian. The latter must be con- 
sidered the most important and unique in 
their influence upon paleontology. In 
1875 he first announced the discovery of 
reptiles in the Permian, and in 1877 he re- 
ported the first primitive Crocodilia (Belo- 
don) and Dinosauria (Clepsysawrus and 
Zatomus in the Triassic of North Carolina. 

The detailed sequence of this reptilian 
work is clearly stated by Professor Baur : 
“ Already in 1864 he published a paper on 
the characters of the higher groups of the 
Squamata.* Two years later he made his 
first remarks about the Dinosaur Lelaps,+ 
and in 1867 he compared the carnivorous 
Dinosaurs with the birds; { this he did be- 
fore Huxley’s paper upon the same subject 
appeared. § 

In 1870 he read an important paper be- 
fore the American Association ‘On the 
homologies of some of the Cranial Bones of 
the Reptilia and the systematic arrange- 
ment of the class.’|| He discussed the fol- 
lowing topics.: 1. Homologies and Compo- 
sition of the cranial arches. 2. The cra- 
nium of the Ichthyosauria. 3. The cranium 
of the Anomodontia. 4. The homologies of 
the opisthotic. 5. Thesquamosal bone. 6. 
The columella (epipterygoid.) 7. The sys- 
tematic arrangement of the Reptilia. 8. 
Critical remarks on the system. 9. The 
Rhyncocephalia and supposed Lacertilia 
of the Trias and Permian. 10. Strati- 
graphic relation of the orders of Reptilia. 

His classification is this: 

A. Extremities beyond proximal segment 
not differentiated as to form. 

I. Ichthyopterygia : Order Ichthyopterygia. 

* Proc. Acad. Phila., 1864, p. 224. 

{ Lelaps aquilunguis, Cope. Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., 
Phila., July, 1886, p. 275-279. 

t Ibid., 1867, p. 234-235. 


@ Popular Science Review, 1868, p. 237-247. 
|| Proc. Assoc. Adv. Sci., XIX., p. 194-247, 


712 


B. Extremities differentiated. 

II. Streptostylica: Orders Lacertilia, Py- 
thonomorpha, Ophidia. 

III. Synaptosauria: Orders Rhyncocephalia, 
Testudinata, Sawropterygia. 

IV. Archosauria: Orders Anomodontia, Di- 
nosauria, Crocodilia, Ornithosauria. 

In 1875 the large volume ‘The Verte- 
brata of the Cretaceous Formations of the 
West’ appeared, as Vol. II., of the Rep. U. 
8. Geol. Surv. Territ. (302 pp., Pl. LVII.). 
This work contains extensive descriptions, 
especially of the Mosasaurs, also of Testu- 
dines, Crocodilia, Plesiosaurs and Dinosaurs 
(Iguanodontia): Agathawmus, Cope ( Tricera- 
tops, Marsh(; Hadrosawrus, Leidy (Trachodon, 
Leidy ; Diclonius, Cope, Claosauwrus, Marsh). 

Cope’s most epoch-making contributions, 
however, are his researches on the Permian 
Reptiles of Texas, which commenced in 
1878. In the Proceedings of the American 
Philosophical Society of this year he estab- 
lished the sub-order Pelycosawria of the 
Rhynchocephalia to contain Clepsydrops, Di- 
metrodon, Diadectes, Bolosawrus, Pariotichus, 
Empedias. In the December Naturalist of 
the same year the order Theromorpha was cre- 
ated, with the sub-orders Anomodontia, Owen, 
and Pelycosauria, Cope. The Pelycosawria 
were considered as the ancestors of the Mam- 
malia. In 1880* a new division of the Thero- 
morpha was established, with the name of 
Cotylosauria, to contain the family Diadectide. 
In a skull of Empedias he described two oc- 
cipital condyles, being misled by the missing 
basioccipital. In 1883 + he placed his genera 
Pariotichus and Pantylus in a new family 
Pariotichide; characterized by the over-roof- 
ing of the temporal fossze and the presence 
of the supra-occipital and par-occipital 
plates (intercalare, Cope). He now found 
the basi-occipital in position and the Cotylo- 
sauria were given up. In 1890 (March 12th) 
Cope placed again the Cotylosauria as a sub- 


* American Naturalist, p. 304. 
t Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc., p.{631. 


SCIENCE. 


\ 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 123. 


order with the Theromora distinguishing 
three families: Pareiasauride, Pariotichide, 
Diadectide. In 1882* Seeley had estab- 
lished the order Pareiasawria; NLiydekker 
(1889) and Zittel considering it a sub-order 
of the Theromora. In 1892+ the Cotylo- 
sauria were made an order by Cope. The 
two last papers published by Cope in the 
Proceedings of the American Philosophical 
Society give much new evidence about this 
very interesting group. The titles of these 
papers are: ‘The Reptilian Order Cotylo- 
sauria’ { and ‘Second Contribution to the 
History of the Cotylosauria.’§ In this paper 
a new family, Otocelide, was described with 
the following characters: Posterior border 
of temporal roof excavated laterally by the 
meatus auditorius externus. Teeth present 
in a single row, not transversely expanded. 
Ribs immediately overlaid by parallel trans- 
verse derm-ossifications which form a cara- 
pace. This family he considered, or at least 
suggested was, ancestral to the Chelonians. 

Cope had in preparation for many years 
an extensive work on the Lacertilia and 
Ophidia of the United States, to be pub- 
lished, like his Batrachia, in a bulletin of 
the United States National Museum.|| The 


* Proc. Roy. Soc., Vol. 44, p. 383. 

} Trans. Am. Phil. Soc., Vol. XVII. 

{ Proc. Am. Philos. Soc., Vol. XXXIV., 1896 
(Feb. 2d), p. 436-457, Pl. VII.-IX. 

@Ibid., Vol. XXXY., p. 112-139, Pl. VII.-X. 
Aug. 15, 1896. 

|| Many preliminary papers have appeared for this 
publication, of which the following are named below : 

“An Analytical Table of the Genera of Snakes.’ 
Proc. Am. Philos. Soc., 1886, p. 479-499. 

“The Osteology of the Lacertilia.’ Proc. Am. 
Philos. Soc., Vol. XXX., 1892, p. 185-221. Pl. II.- 
VI. 

“On Degenerate Types of Scapular and Pelvic 
Arches in the Lacertilia.’ Journ. Morphol. Vol. 
VII., 1892, p. 233-244, Pl. XIII. 

‘The Classification of the Ophidia.’ Trans. 
Amer. Philos. Soc., Vol. XVIII., April 15, 1895, p. 
186-219, Pl. XIV.-X XXIII. 

“On the Hemipenes of the Sauria.’ Proc. Acad. 
Nat. Sci, Phila., August, 1896, p. 461-467, 


May 7, 1897.] 


MSS. for this work cost him much labor, 
especially during the past two years, and 
for a while interrupted all his other work. 
It was characteristic of him to turn aside 
for a laborious detailed investigation of the 
soft anatomy of the snakes in the hopes of 
finding some satisfactory means of classify- 
ing this puzzling group. This investigation 
constituted his latest original work and was 
barely completed before his death. 


MAMMALIA. 

Up to 1868 Leidy held the Western pale- 
ontological field exclusively. In this year 
Marsh and Cope also entered the Western 
territory and began the simultaneous ex- 
ploration and description of a limited fauna 
in a somewhat limited region, with the in- 
evitable result of a struggle for priority 
and a permanent rupture of friendly inter- 
course. It is necessary to allude to the 
fact, because it greatly affected the subse- 
quent history of American paleontology. 
Fortunately, the western fossil area proved 
to be a vast one, and the remarkable dis- 
coveries by Wortman in the Big Horn and 
Wasatch, beginning in 1878, also by Bald- 
win in the Puerco of New Mexico, begin- 
ning in 1880, and the explorations already 
described of Cummins in the Permian of 
Texas, afforded Cope a noble field of re- 
search quite free from the haste of rivalry. 
From the Wasatch ungulates Cope estab- 
lished the stem forms of three lines of Per- 
issodactyla and of far wider import than 
these, the foundations of the classification 
of the great group of Ungulata. The gen- 
eralized Phenacodus, which he at first re- 
garded as a perissodactyl, furnished the 
key to the evolution of the carpus and tar- 
sus, from the serial (Taxeopod) to the dis- 
placed (Amblypod and Diplarthrous) types 
with the interlocking joints. Kowalevsky, 
in 1873, had pointed out the significant ar- 
ticulations of the metapodials; Cope now 
showed the still greater importance of the 


_ SCIENCE. 


713 


mutual articulations of the podials, firmly 
establishing thereupon the orders Condyl- 
arthra and Amblypoda, uniting Owen’s Peris- 
sodactyla and Artiodactyla into the Dip- 
larthra, and by hypothetical phyla connect- 
ing the Proboscidia and Hyracoidea with a 
still-to-be-discovered plantigrade, unguicu- 
late, bunodont stem, the ‘ protungulate’ of 
Huxley and Kowalevsky. These general- 
izations, despite errors of excess and of 
detail which Ruttimeyer and Osborn have 
pointed out, constituted the first distinct 
advance in mammalian classification since 
Owen demolished Cuvier’s ‘ pachydermata;’ 
they rank with Huxley’s best work among 
similar problems, and afford a basis for the 
phylogenetic arrangement of the hoofed 
orders which has been adopted by all 
American and foreign paleontologists. 

At the same time it became apparent that 
the hoofed mammals had sprung from 
clawed ancestors, but the Wasatch period 
was too remote from the parting to furnish 
conclusive evidence. This evidence came 
in a flood from the underlying Puerco fauna, 
the systematic treatment of which consti- 
tutes the most unique section of Cope’s 
work among the extinct mammalia. From 
this material originated his second great 
generalization—namely, that the primitive 
pattern of the molar tooth consists of three 
tubercles. Around this ¢rituberculy centers 
the whole modern morphology of the teeth 
of the mammalia and the establishment of 
a series of homologies in the teeth of most 
diverse types, wholly unsuspected in the 
“Odontologies’ of Cuvier and Owen, con- 
necting the most ancient Mesozoic mam- 
mals with the most modern and specialized 
types, including the teeth of man. The 
force and application of the tritubercular 
law Cope clearly perceived, but left to others 
to fully work out and demonstrate. It 
promises ultimately to give us the key to 
the entire phylogeny of the mammalia, ex- 
tending to every division of the Marsupialia 


714 


and Placentalia, and will probably be found 
among the Monotremata. 

These are the mountain peaks, the points 
where exploration and discovery were fol- 
lowed by happy inspiration, in a chain of 
contributions, which includes his exposi- 
tion of the faunal succession from the 
’ base to the summit of the tertiary. In 
the Bridger, Cope himself found the lower 
jaw of Anatomorphus, with its typically 
human dentition, which, owing to its ex- 
treme antiquity, occasioned him a greater 
surprise than any discovery he ever made; 
he also found the last of the great race of 
Uintatheres at the top of Washakie Moun- 
tain. We owe to him alone our knowledge 
of the scanty Wind River fauna. From 
the White River Oligocene his materials 
were poor and his work less satisfactory. 
From the rich Upper Oligocene, with the 
assistance of Wortman, he secured fine 
collections and has especially enriched our 
knowledge of the Anchitheriide, Felide 
and Canide. From the Upper Miocene 
Deep River and Loup Fork beds he has 
practically contributed all that we know, 
especially of the Rhinoceroses, Horses, Mas- 
todons, Camels and other ruminants and 
earniyora. Of the latter fauna his most 
complete papers were upon the evolution of 
the Oreodontide. His latest contributions 
to our knowledge of the fossil mammalia 
were upon the fauna of the Blanco and 
Palo-Duro, or Goodnight beds of Texas 
and the rich cave fauna from Port Kennedy, 
Pa., brought together by Dr. H. C. Mercer. 
It was his intention to cover the entire 
later Tertiary in a second part of the ‘ Ter- 
tiary Vertebrata ;’ many of the plates and 
much of the MSS. of this volume are 
ready. 

The ‘ Tertiary Vertebrata,’ Vol. III., of 
the Hayden quartos published in 1883, is his 
most imposing contribution to paleontol- 
ogy, including his studies of all the verte- 
brate fauna of the Tertiary lakes west of the 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V No, 123. 


Rockies. This work of over a thousand 
pages and eighty plates is said to have been 
the despair of the public printer owing to 
the constant additions made while in press. 
It extends from the Puerco to a portion of 
the Lower Miocene fauna. Besides the full 
description and illustration of the great 
hoofed orders above alluded to, it contains 
the full exposition of the characteristic 
forms of Creodonta, an order of primitive 
carnivora which he separated from the 
Marsupiala in 1875, and in which he placed 
six families of mammals from different parts 
of the world. 

Before leaving the mammals it is fitting 
to speak of his work upon ‘ kinetogensis,’ or 
the mechanical origin of the hard parts of 
the body, especially of the teeth, vertebree 
and limbs. An invaluable paper by his 
friend and later colleague, Ryder, put him 
upon this line of investigation, the results 
of which he published in a long series of 
papers culminating in his memoir upon the 
‘Origin of the Hard Parts of the Mam- 
malia’ and in his collections of essays in 
the ‘Origin of the Fittest’ and ‘ Primary 
Factors of Organic Evolution.’ One of his 
chief motives in these researches was the 
demonstration, he believed they afforded, 
of the hereditary transmission of the effects 
of individual efforts, use and disuse, but 
even if this motive is subsequently shown 
to be an illusive one, by our future knowl- 
edge of the real nature of evolution, these 
investigations lose little, if any, of their in- 
trinsic value. First, as in all his work, he 
brings together an immense array of valu- 
able facts and observations; second, he ex- 
tends the principle of the independent 
origin of similar structures; third, hein most 
cases successfully establishes the actual 
mechanical adaptive or teleological relations 
of the parts described ; fourth, he traces the 
course of phylogenic modification in a num- 
ber of important organs and thus estab- 
lishes certain obscure homologies, notably 


May 7, 1897.] 


those in the teeth of the Amblypoda, Cory- 
phodon and Uintatherium. 


PHILOSOPHY. 

Cope’s contributions to philosophy began 
in 1868, with the remarkable essay upon 
the ‘Origin of Genera,’ and, continuing 
steadily in a series of papers which in col- 
lected form fill three octavo volumes, they 
cover both the data and the factors of evo- 
lution, psychology, ethics and metaphysics. 
Unpublished manuscripts, prepared in con- 
nection with his last work, ‘ The Primary 
Factors of Organic Evolution,’ contain 
also his views upon many sociological and 
theological problems. It is singular that 
at the age of 28 he adopted the Lamarckian 
theory under cover of a misconception of a 
part of Darwin’s theory, for he states the 
latter in part as follows: ‘‘ This is, in brief, 
that the will of the animal, applied to its 
body, in the search for the means of subsist- 
ence and protection from injuries, gradu- 
ally produces those features which are evi- 
dently adaptive in their nature.”” Hesoon 
detected this error; but a year later, in a 
paper upon ‘The Laws of Organic Develop- 
ment,’ before the American Association, he 
again connected rudimentary will or con- 
sciousness with use and effort, and struck 
the keynote of all his later evolution phil- 
osophy in the sentence: “Thus intelli- 
gent choice may be regarded as the origi- 
nator of the fittest, while natural selection 
is the tribunal to which all the results of 
accelerated growth are submitted.”’ (1869.) 

His chief contention in the ‘Origin of 
Genera’ is that, while a large proportion of 
specific characters are adaptive, few generic 
characters are so, and the latter evolve 
separately by the force of ‘acceleration or 
retardation’ of one of several plans or 
types of development preordained by the 
Creator. To sustain this proposition he 
applied the principles of arrested, hastened 
or abbreviated development with extra- 


SCIENCE. 715 


ordinary knowledge both of the osteology 
and soft anatomy of the entire vertebrata 
to hundreds of examples of exact and ineaact 
parallelism,** and with such force that he 
completely establishes his law. Inciden- 
tally the principle of heterology, or what Lan- 
kester has since termed homoplasy, is abun- 
dantly illustrated. Darwin, in one of his let- 
ters, states that he never could understand 
this Cope-Hyatt + law of ‘acceleration and 
retardation.’ It is undeniable that its ex- 
position might have been clearer; of its 
truth, not as a theoretical factor, but as a 
grand principle of evolution, there can, 
however, be no question, and it has received 
far less attention than it deserves. 

Cope subsequently altered some of the 
main standpoints of this thesis, but his sys- 
tematic definition of genera and families, 
horizontally or transversely to phyletic de- 
scent according to the heterologous assump- 
tion of similar structures, persisted as a 
conspicuous and confusing feature of all his 
later phylogenetic tables and writings. It 
is throughout evident that in 1868 he was 
still en route to his later broader conception 
of the sweeping extent and natural causa- 
tion of evolution. He entered vigorously 
into the evolution compaign,{ always show- 
ing great consideration and courtesy for his 
orthodox opponents and desiring rather to 
convert than to offend. As above noted, 
in 1870, he drew a sharp distinction be- 
tween the ‘ preservation of the fittest’ and 
‘the causes of the origin of the fittest,’ 
which he ascribed to the increase and loca- 
tion of ‘growth force.’ In 1871 appeared 
‘The Method of Creation of Organic 


* Parallelism is here used in the sense of recapitu- 
lation (von Baer), not of homoplasy or convergence. 

} Professor Hyatt, Cope’s fellow laborer in La- 
marckism, worked out this law independently at 
the same time: 

{‘On the Hypothesis of Evolution,’ Lippincott’s 
Magazine, 1870 ; ‘Evolution and its Consequences,’ 
The Penn Mouthly, 1872. 


716 


Forms,’* in which he set forth in a most 
interesting way a complete system of the 
modes and causes of evolution under the 
five laws of: (1) Acceleration and Retarda- 
tion ; (2) Repetitive Addition ; (8) Use and 
Effort; (4) Bathism or Growth Force ; (5) 
Intelligent Selection. This system was 
largely original with him, because he had 
not as yet studied Lamarck’s writings, 
knowing them only through abstracts; it 
cannot be said, however, that he ever either 
advanced beyond or substantially modified 
the theoretical position he reached at the 
age of 31. Later, as he carefully studied 
the writings of the great French naturalist, 
he fully recognized Lamarck’s priority and 
accepted the Neo-Lamarckian title when it 
was applied to him during the Weismann 
controversy. Cope, Hyatt, Ryder and 
Packard became the pioneers of the school 
in America. It is not necessary here to 
detail*his widely known arguments as 
champion of this philosophy, which he gath- 
ered from his rich stores of comparative 
anatomy and paleontology and put forth 
in numerous essays and public discussions, 
concluding with his final argument before 
the recent meeting of the American Society 
of Naturalists, in Boston. Suffice it to say 
that he showed much of the same kind of 
confident strength and of the same logical 
weakness which characterized Lamarck. 
The latter, in fact, among all naturalist 
philosophers is Cope’s nearest prototype. 
The papers upon the ‘Origin of Intelli- 
gence’ (1872), ‘Consciousness in Evolu- 
tion’ (1874), ‘The Origin of the Will’ 
(1877), ‘On Archeesthetism ’ (1882), follow 
a line of thought largely foreshadowed by 
Lamarck, but none the less striking. Cope 
was nothing daunted by Weismann’s chal- 
lenge and vigorous attack upon the trans- 
mission theory, and maintained to the end 

*American Philosophical Society, December 15, 
1871. 

} Reported in ScrENCE, April 23, 1897. 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. Vou. V. No. 123. 


that the paleontological evidence was too 
strong to be refuted. His first collected 
essays, ‘The Origin of the Fittest,’* ante- 
dated this discussion, but his second col- 
lection, ‘The Primary Factors of Organic 
Evolution,’+ enters into it very fully and 
with as much force of reason as the facts 
afford at present. This volume goes over 
some familiar territory, yet is striking be- 
cause of the very wide range of fresh read- 
ing and research it gives evidence of. The 
concluding chapter contains (p. 508) his 
final statement of what may be called his 
fundamental causal principle—namely, the 
formative or creative role of consciousness 
from the dawn of life. 

Side by side with these studies of the fac- 
tors of evolution are numerous essays upon 
the history of man,{ beginning in 1875, 
and upon the evolution of the vertebrata, 
progressive and retrogressive, which are 
full of speculative phylogeny. In formu- 
lating descent trees Cope has been second 
only to Haeckel. He let no opportunity 
slip by of at least throwing out an hypothe- 
sis as to the phyletic relations of every 
great type he studied, and many of these 
random guesses have been confirmed. 

More remote from the main trend of his 
profession were his collateral intellectual 
pursuits, each of which seemed to issue from 
a clearly defined alcove of his brain upon 
consecutive occasions and express his ever 
widening and deepening philosophy. His 
progressive thought upon metaphysical 
problems can be followed in ‘The Origin of 
the Will’ (1877), ‘Theology of Evolution’ 
(1877), ‘The Relation of Mind to Matter’ 
(1877), ‘Ethical Evolution’ (1889),‘ An 
Outline of the Philosophy of Evolution’ 
(1889), ‘The Evolution of Mind’ (1890), 
“The Foundations of Theism’ (1893). 


*D. Appleton & Co., 1897, 8vo., 467 pp. 

+ Open Court Publishing Co., 1896, 547 pp. 

{Among others see ‘The Genealogy of Man,’ 
American Naturalist, 1893 ; ‘Lenurine Reversion in 
Human Dentition,’ Journal of Morphology. 


May 7, 1897.] 


In this review no mention has been 
made of Cope’s several papers upon fossil 
birds or of his extremely valuable contri- 
butions to historical geology. 

We have at present few data for the his- 
tory of his later life apart from that furnished 
by his writings. His editorial connection with 
the American Naturalist, begun in 1878, in as- 
sociation with Professor A.S. Packard, who 
retired a few years later, was continued for 
twenty years, with a great sacrifice of time. 
It afforded an outlet for his continuous 
stream of shorter publications and for the 
free expression of his very independent 
_ Opinions upon current scientific movements 
and topics. This constant occupation kept 
him from foreign travel; at the time of the 
first Paris Exposition he made his second 
and final journey abroad. He was a close 
student but never a recluse. Extremely 
fond of the society of thinking people, he 
was also a very regular attendant upon the 
learned societies of his city and country. 
It is a cause for regret, and an instance of 
the non-recognition of genius, that only at 
avery late day the Society of Naturalists 
and the American Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Science elected him to their 
chief offices. His retiring presidential ad- 
dress was to have been made at the coming 
meeting of the Association. ; 

The most conspicuous feature of Cope’s 
personal character from boyhood upwards 
was his independence; this was partly the 
secret of his venturesome and successful 
assaults upon all traditional but defective 
systems of classification. He was no re- 
spector of authority per se. Even if some- 
times mistaken his fearless criticism of men 
and of institutions was chiefly animated by 
high ideals, not by personal feeling, nor for 
personaladvantage. His open and aggres- 
sive statements made him many opponents 
and attracted to him many friends, because 
whether right or wrong they always sprang 
from conviction. Another marked charac- 


SCIENCE. 


717 


teristic was his fortitude. He bore material 
reverses with stoical resignation, regretting 
chiefly the limitations they placed upon his 
explorations. He was full of cheer and deter- 
mination when things looked most unpromis- 
ing, allowing nothing to disturb the compo- 
sure which is so essential to research. His 
life in fact became a fine illustration of the 
happiness attendant upon plain living and 
high investigation which he foresaw at nine- 
teen in his letter to his cousin quoted above. 

Cope is not to be thought of merely as a 
specialist in paleontology. After Huxley he 
was the last representative of the old broad- 
gauge school of anatomists and heis only to 
be compared with members of that school. 
His life-work bears the marks of great 
genius, of solid and accurate observation 
and at times of inaccuracy due to bad logic 
or haste and overpressure of work. The 
greater number of his Natural Orders and 
Natural Laws will remain as permanent 
landmarks in our science. As a com- 
parative anatomist he ranks both in the 
range and effectiveness of his knowledge 
and his ideas with Cuvier and Owen. When 
we consider the short life of some of the 
favorite generalizations of these great men 
he may well prove to be their superior as a 
philosophical anatomist. His work, while 
inferior in style of presentation, has another 
quality which distinguished that of Huxley-— 
namely, its clear and immediate perception 
of the most essential or distinctive feature 
in a group of animals. As a natural phil- 
osopher, while far less logical than Huxley. 
he was more creative and constructive, his 
metaphysics ending in theism rather than 
agnosticism. In mere mass of production 
Cope’s work was extraordinary. He leaves 
twenty octavo and three great quarto vol- 
umes of collected researches. By his un- 
timely death a wide gap is left which can 
néver be filled by one man. 

Henry F. Ossorn. 
CoLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, May 3, 1897. 


718 


PSYCHOLOGY AND COMPARATIVE PSY- 
CHOLOGY.* 

Ir is now more than ten years since I 
suggested to a few of the students of this 
Faculty of Comparative Medicine that it 
might be interesting and profitable to band 
together for the study of the psychic nature 
of animals, particularly those animals with 
which we are brought into daily contact. 

In December, 1885, at a meeting called 
to consider the subject, it was unanimously 
decided that a society should be formed 
to study animal intelligence as best it 
could. Practically all the students and 
those teachers more immediately con- 
nected with the work of this Faculty joined 
the Association and entered into the new 
project with enthusiasm. It was early de- 
cided that only material obtained either at 
first hand or from the most reliable sources 
should be brought before the Association, 
and that principle, the wisdom of which 
will not be questioned, has been acted upon 
throughout. 

Whatever the value of the papers and 
discussions which have engaged our atten- 
tion it may be fairly claimed that the facts 
upon which they have been based were be- 
yond question. The first essential in any 
student of nature is a strong desire to know 
the truth, and, therefore, a great respect 
for exact observation at the outset: While 
theories change, and this is inevitable ow- 
ing to the imperfection of our grasp of 
many-sided truth, a fact is always a fact. 
The patient collection of facts, so well illus- 
trated by the illustrious Darwin, when 
theorizing without very great regard to 
them was so tempting in framing explana- 
tions of organic nature, is a work that the 
world long undervalued and the importance 
of which it is to be feared all psychologists 
at the present day do not adequately ap- 


preciate. 

* An address delivered to the Association for the 
study of Comparative Psychology in Montreal, No- 
vember 2, 1896. 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 123. 


In this, at all events, our unpretentious 
Association may claim to have trodden in 
the safe path. At the end of our first 
decade of existence it may be profitable to 
review what has been accomplished. It 
could scarcely be expected that the mem- 
bers of this Association, being for the most 
part undergraduates, whose time is largely 
taken up with professional studies, should 
be able to make elaborate original research- 
es worthy of publication. From the first, 
however, our proceedings have been given 
to the public in condensed form by the local 
press, and evidence has been abundant on 
every hand that one of the results has been _ 
an altered attitude of mind on the part of 
many intelligent persons in this city towards 
the animal world about us, notably our 
domestic species. This is not a work to be 
despised, for the welfare of our fellow crea- 
tures lower in the scale is largely dependent 
on the views we entertain of their psychic 
nature. 

It is surely not to be supposed that such 
studies as have engaged the members of 
our Association are without a value of a 
professional kind; for in the handling of 
sick animals, in diagnosing their exact con- 
dition, in appreciating their sensations and 
generally in understanding their entire na- 
ture, the man who observes and reflects 
on such things must be more competent as 
a veterinarian, other things being equal, 
and certainly a more agreeable visitor to 
both patients and clients. 

But it is difficult, in my opinion, to over- 
estimate the good to the individual who in 
the right spirit studies animals. A frame 
of mind is established which, even when one 
exaggerates animal intelligence, is rarely 
practically harmful—often the reverse— 
and nearly always begets sympathy and 
modesty. 

Psychology has passed through’ great 
changes, during even the last decade. Now 
almost every college in America of much 


May 7, 1897.] 


importance has its chair of psychology, and 
many colleges are provided with psycho- 
physical laboratories. In America alone 
there are two periodicals devoted to this sub- 
ject; and at last pedagogical institutions 
are attempting to found the training for 
teachers on the laws of the mind, 7. e., on 
psychology. In fact no recent educational 
movement has been more widespread in 
its influence or more rapid in its develop- 
ment than the modern psychology. 

The scope and methods of the science 
have also changed. While none the less 
introspective, it has become more objective. 
The allied science of physiology owes 
something to psychologists, notably in the 
direction of a more complete and accurate 
study of the senses and keen criticism of 
positions assumed by physiologists in re- 
gard to the central nervous system. 

The psychologists have borrowed freely 
from the realm of mental and nervous 
disease; all of which marks a new depart- 
ure from which not only psychology, but 
physiology and practical and scientific medi- 
cine, must benefit. 

Tt is usually a hopeful sign when methods 
of exact estimation begin to be applied to 
any science. There has been much diversity 
of opinion as to the extent to which this 
ean be or has been successfully done in 
psychology. In the opinion of one of 
the most accomplished workers in this de- 
partment of the science who occupied the 
presidential chair at the last meeting of the 
American Psychological Association, there 
can be no doubt about the value of such 
methods and their application. He says: 
“T venture to maintain that the introduc- 
tion of experiment and measurement into 
psychology has added, directly and indi- 
rectly new subject-matter and methods, 
has set a higher standard of accuracy and 
objectivity, has made some part of the sub- 
ject an applied science with useful appli- 
cations, and has enlarged the field and im- 


SCIENCE. 


719 


proved the methods of teaching psychol- 
ogy.” 

But what shall we say of the status and 
prospects of comparative psychology? The 
works of Romanes were well known prior 
to the beginning of the last decade. They 
may be considered as marking about the 
first serious attempts to treat the subject of 
comparative psychology in a truly scientific 
spirit and in a form accessible to the intelli- 
gent portion of the general public. 

Much later appeared the books of Profes- 
sor Lloyd Morgan—works which possess 
the charm of unusual clearness. If 
Romanes was open to the charge of claim- 
ing too much for animals, Morgan is cer- 
tainly cautious enough to please the most _ 
conservative, unless it be those who deny 
true intelligence to animals entirely. 

It isa hopeful sign of the times in psy- 
chology that a professor of philosophy, Dr. 
Carl Groos, of Giessen, has found material 
for a book of considerable size on the play 
of animals, a subject which has been treated 
by him with interest, learning and critical 
acumen. 

Animal intelligence is more and more at- 
tracting the attention of the professed psy- 
chologist and biologist, and that both real- 
ize the difficulties of the subject, while its 
importance is acknowledged, is of good 
omen. Comparative psychology is now be- 
yond the stage of neglect and contempt, 
though there are those who seem to think 
that before we can judge of the mental 
processes of animals much greater progress 
must first be made in the study of the hu- 
man mind; in other words, they would 
take their standards, their criteria from 
human psychology. That we must in the 
end find the clue to interpretation from our- 
selves there is no doubt. But is it not the 
fact that every complicated subject has 
been advanced by studies on a lower plane 
and by the process of comparison? Anat- 
omy and mammalian embryology would 


720 


scarcely be worthy of the name of sciences 
to-day but for studies conducted on simpler 
forms. Do not psychologists sometimes 
forget, as anatomists long did, that the 
human is scarcely to be comprehended 
apart from the study of simpler creatures ? 
Should we not look at psychology as the 
naturalist now does at zoology, and endeavor 
to discover the various grades in psychic 
processes, if such there be, and it is only, so 
far as I can see, by comparative investiga- 
tion that their existence or non-existence 
can be established. 

To do such work at its best requires a 
knowledge of both biology and psychology, 
and an intimate acquaintance with the ways 
_ of animals. Closet lucubrations can not 
be expected of themselves to advance com- 
parative psychology very much. 

Might not human psychology be made 
more objective still, and is not the amount 
of wheat garnered much out of proportion 
to the quantity of sheaves brought to the 
thresher? Has individual psychology re- 
ceived the attention it deserves? Might not 
the inductive method be more fully applied 
to psychology ? I have long been convinced 
that differences for races and for individuals 
have been insufficiently recognized in phys- 
iology, and at last there seems to be a reac- 
tion against the former reckless leaps from 
frog or rabbit to man. 

The physiologist cannot, however, afford 
to ignore the frog or the rabbit even when 
his goal is man; nor, if I may venture to ex- 
press an opinion, can the psychologist do 
so either without some loss,—possibly great 
loss, to his subject. 

I hope to see published in the next few 
years detailed studies on many individual 
human beings of both sexes and also on in- 
dividual animals. We must have more 
facts for our conclusions. The departures of 
French psychologists are very welcome, 
whatever the final outcome may be. It 
cannot be doubted that the study of hypno- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 123. 


tism, double personality and morbid states 
of various kinds has greatly advanced our 
knowledge of the normal man, and his fel- 
lows lower in the scale; and I should be 
disposed to say that the investigation of the 
psychic processes of animals aids in the 
comprehension of even such abnormal states 
as those to which reference has been made. 

At the recent great Psychological Con- 
gress at Munich there was, among others, 
a department for comparative psychology ; 
and an endowed lectureship on this subject 
has recently been established at Aberdeen, 
so that it is clear that in this, as in other 
directions, the world is moving. 

If my view is correct that we are in need 
of vastly more facts and observations, then 
is there room for many workers. The ex- 
perimental has a wide range of application 
in comparative psychology and as yet 
but little has been done. In this direction, 
as I have urged for years on our members, 
we could do much to advance the subject 
we have at heart. 

It has been my happy privilege to attend 
every meeting of this Association held 
since its foundation, and reviewing the 
work of the past ten years I feel that, al- 
though it has been a humble one, the Society 
for the Study of Comparative Psychology 
in Montreal has not existed in vain. 

Westrey Mints. 

McGILL UNIVERSITY. 


PAREIASAURIA SEELEY (COTYLOSAURIA 
COPE) FROM THE TRIASSIC OF GERMANY. 
Tue first notice on Triassic Pareiasauria 

was published in 1857 by Professor Fischer, 

of Freiburg in Breisgau, based on notes 
received from the eminent paleontologist 

Hermann von Meyer, to whom he had sent 

the specimen for examination. The title 

of the paper is: Uber Sclerosaurus armatus 

H. v. Meyer, eine neue Saurier-Gattung 

aus dem Bunten Sandstein bei Warmbach 

gegentuber Rheinfelden. Hierzu Tafel III 


May 7, 1897.] 


nach einer Photographie [und eine Figur, 
Wirbel und Rippen]. Neues Jahrb, f. 
Mineral., Geogn. Geol. und Petrefacten- 
kunde, Jahrgang, 1857; Stuttgart, 1857, 
p. 186-140. Two years later H. v. Meyer 
gave an excellent description with a very 
good plate of this specimen in the Palaeon- 
tographica Bd. VII.,1. June, 1859, p. 35— 
40, Taf. VI. ‘“ Sclerosaurus armatus aus dem 
bunten Sandstein von Rheinfelden.” This 
most interesting form has been entirely 
overlooked in all modern text-books and 
hand-books of paleontology and by all 
authors who have written about the 
Pareiasauria.* 

The specimen was found in the upper 
layers of the ‘ Bunte Sandstein,’ near Inger- 
felden, in Baden, n. w. of Rheinfelden, in 
Switzerland, with Gyrolepis alberti, Agassiz. 
The fossil consists of twelve consecutive 
presacral vertebre, the ribs in connection, 
the pubis, the two femora, and the dermal 
armour. 

The vertebre, the rib-articulations, the 
pubis are typically Pareiasaurian. Of the 
greatest interest is the dorsal armour. 
There is a median series of rhombic plates, 
somewhat broader than long, the posterior 
end a little overlaped by the anterior end of 
the following plate. Each of these plates 
corresponds toa single vertebra. With the 
posterior sides of the plates of the median 
row, 2 or 3 more or less rhomboidal plates 
are connected, which covertheribs. There- 
fore for each segment there are one median 
and 2 or 3 lateral dermal plates. Their 
connection is loose. 

In Pareiasaurus Owen we have also a 
dorsal armour. ‘Three rows of scutes ex- 
tend down the median line of the back, and 


*T may mention here that the same is true for 
Pristerodon McKayi, Huxley from the Permo-triassic 
of South Africa. T. H. Huxley. On Saurosternon 
Bainii and Pristerodon McKayi, two new fossil 
Lacertilian Reptiles from South Africa. Geol. Magaz. 
Vol. V. No. 5, May, 1868, p. 1-4, pl. XI. and XII. 


SCIENCE. 


721 


are partially in contact with the neural 
spines. The median row is placed on the 
summits of the neural spines. In con- 
nection with these, laterally, there is a pair 
of scutes extending transversely outwards 
(Seeley). In 1878 Wiedersheim* published 
a paper entitled Labyrinthodon Riitimeyert. 
Hin Beitrag zur Anatomie von Gesammt- 
skelet und Gehirn der triassischen Labyrin- 
thodonten. Abhandlungen der schweizer- 
ischen palaeontol. Gesellsch., Vol. V. 1878, 
p. 1-56, Pl. I.—III. 

The specimen on which the description 
is based was discovered in 1864 at Riehen 
(Switzerland), near Lorrach (Baden). The 
locality in which Selerosawrus was discov- 
ered is only 11 kilometers distant from the 
locality in which Wiedersheim’s ‘Zabyrintho- 
don’ was found. In both places Gyrolepis 
Alberti Agassiz occurs, and there is no 
doubt that these forms came from exactly 
the same horizon of the Upper Bunte Sand- 
Stein. 

The specimen of Labyrinthodon is nearly 
complete, but some of the bones have been 
destroyed, leaving only the vacuities. This 
fossil is no Labyrinthodont at all, but a 
Pareiasaurian identical with Sclerosaurus 
armatus H. v. Meyer. 

Already Zittelt has doubted its Stego- 
cephalian nature, and stated that it pro- 
bably belongs to the reptiles, giving several 
reasons for this opinion. The latest contri- 
bution is from Seeley. On the complete skele- 
ton of an Anomodont Reptile (Aristodesmus 
Riitimeyeri, Wiedersheim) from the Bunter Sand- 
stone of Riehen, near Basel, giving new evidence 
of the relation of the Anomodontia to the Mono- 
tremata.{ Seeley has examined the specimen 


*This paper is absolutely useless, full of mistakes 
and unsound ideas, indicating absolute inability to 
handle the material. 

} Zittel, Karl A. Handbuch d. Palaeont. Palaeo- 
zool. III. Band., 1888, p. 407-408. 

¢ Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. (6) Vol. 17. Febr., 1896, 
p. 183-184. (From Proc. of the Royal Society. ) 


722 


and reaches the following result: The re- 
puted humerus is the interclavicle ; the re- 
puted scapula is the humerus; the reputed 
supra-scapula is the left coracoid; the re- 
puted supra-scapula is the right scapula ; 
the reputed right and left coracoids are the 
pre-coracoid (epicoracoid) and coracoid of 
the right side; the reputed clavicles are 
ribs. Five digits are identified in place of 
four. The fossil is referred to a new genus 
—Aristodesmus. It is identified as an Ano- 
modont reptile, chiefly on the basis of re- 
semblence to Procolophon and Pareiasaurus. 
He also compares it with the Monotremata. 
In conclusion, he argues that the points 
of structure are so few in which Mono- 
treme mammals make a closer approxi- 
mation to the higher mammals than is 
seen in his fossil (4ristodesmus) and other 
Anomodontia, that the Monotreme resem- 
blances to fossil reptiles become increased 
in importance. He believes that a group 
Theropsida might be made to include Mono- 
tremata and Anomodontia, the principal diff- 
erences (other than those of the skull) 
being that Monotremes preserve the marsupial 
bones, the atlas vertebra and certain cranial 
sutures. Aristodesmus, which suggests this 
link, is at present placed in the Procolophonia, 
a group separated from its recent associ- 
ation with Pareiasawrus, and restored to its 
original independence because it has two 
occipital condyles [!], with the occipital 
plate vertical, and without lateral vacuities, 
and has the shoulder-girdle distinct from 
Pareiasauria in the separate precoracoid 
extending in advance of the scapula. In 
the same remarkable communication Seeley 
discusses, also, the relation of the Laby- 
rinthodont type to the existing Amphibia, 
and regards the Labyrinthodont osteology as 
demonstrating closer relationship with Ichthyo- 
The group is there- 
fore regarded as reptilian, forming a branchiate 
division of the class [/]. What aresuch wild 
speculations good for? 


sauria and Anomodontia. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 123. 


To conclude I give the synonyms of this 
reptile.* 

Sclerosaurus armatus, H. v. Meyer. 
Jahrbuch f. Min., 1857, p. 136. 

Labyrinthodon Riitimeyeri, Wiedersheim, 
Abhandl., Schweiz. Pal. Gesellsch. v. 1878, 
p. 1-56. 

Aristodesmus Riitimeyeri (Wiedersheim) ; 
Seeley, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. (6), Vol. 17, 
1896, p. 183. 


Neues 


G. Baur. 
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. 


CURRENT NOTES ON PHYSIOGRA PHY. 
MCGEE ON SHEETFLOOD EROSION. 


SHEETFLOOD is a term coined by McGee 
(Bull. Geol. Soc. Amer., VIII., 1897, 87— 
112) to name the thin sheets of water that 
occasionally flow over the thinly gravel- 
covered intermont slopes of the Sonoran 
district in Arizona and bordering Mexico. 
Itis contrasted with streams, in which a 
water current is gathered into a channel. 
Sheetfloods may be a mile or even ten miles 
wide, yet only a foot or two deep, running 
rapidly down slopes of one or two hundred 
feet to a mile; everywhere ‘ at grade;’ that 
is, their ability to do work everywhere 
nicely balanced against the work that they 
have to do. By sheetfloods, not by streams, 
the peculiar gravel-covered rock floors of 
the Sonoran district are thought to have 
been planed down ; and the abrupt transi- 
tion from streams in the mountain gullies to 
sheetflood on the piedmont surface is taken 
to explain the equally abrupt transition 
from mountain to plain; the rocks remain- 
ing thesame. Unlike the aggraded plains 
of the Utah, where intermont depressions 
are heavily filled with mountain waste, the 


* Basileosaurus Freyi Wiedersheim (Uber einen 
neuen Saurus aus der Trias. Mit einer Tafel. Abh. 
Schweiz. Pal. Ges., vi., 1879, 4 pp.) from Riehen is 
too insufficiently described and figured to determine 
its true position. It is doubtless a reptile, but, ac- 
cording to Wiedersheim, not Sclerosaurus. 


May 7, 1897. ] 


rock plains of Sonora are only veneered 
with gravel and sand. At the outlet of 
mountain ravines McGee pictures and de- 
seribes triangular, convex ‘ fans,’ which are 
really carved in solid rock like the plains, 
and only veneered with alluvium. These 
must be retreating alluvial fans, in con- 
trast to the advancing alluvial fans ordi- 
narily seen in mountain valleys. After ad- 
vancing for a time, fans of the latter class 
are often dissected by streams and thus 
worn away; but the Sonoran rock-fans 
seem to have been worn back by sheetflood 
action, thus preserving their form. 


RELIEF MAP OF NEW JERSEY. 


A HANDSOME and effective publication of 
the New Jersey Geological Survey is a new 
relief map of the State, on a scale of four 
miles to an inch. It is shaded in gray- 
brown, as if under northwest illumination, 
making the relief of the surface only too 
clear. The map will prove extremely ser- 
viceable, but it may be questioned whether 
amore delicate rendering would not have 
been more educative, particularly in the 
schools, where such a map as this must 
have its greatest and most important use. 
This is particularly the case in the southern 
part of the State, where the shading does 
not seem to be reduced to the delicacy of the 
faint inequalities in the surface, but where 
the inequalities of the surface are exagger- 
ated to meet the demands of distinct shad- 
ing and easy recognition. The effect pro- 
duced by the southern plains does not 
tally with that gained on reading the text 
of the State Survey reports; it is as if the 
drawing of the relief map were done by a 
topographer accustomed to exaggerated sec- 
tions on which an almost imperceptible 
natural slope becomes a distinct incline, 
rather than by a geographer who wished to 
give a just sense of the proportions of hills 
and plains. The criticisms directed against 
the vertical exaggeration of geographical 


SCIENCE. 


723 


models may be equally directed against so 
forcible ‘a relief map as this. The map is 
headed with the names of John C. Smock, 
State Geologist, and C. C. Vermeule, topog- 
rapher; but no explicit recognition is given 
to the artist who prepared the map or to 
the lithographer who printed it. 


MORAINES OF THE MISSOURI COTEAU. 

A REPORT with the above title by J. E. 
Todd forms Bulletin 144 of the U. 8. Geo- 
logical Survey. It is chiefly occupied with 
detailed descriptions of the moraines, from 
which one may gain a good idea of their 
importance in determining the relief of the 
Coteau. A map and many plates, appar- 
ently drawn in outline from photographs, 
afford good illustrations; but it is often 
difficult to identify localities between text 
and map. The Blue lake loop, 60 miles 
southeast of Bismarck, six to ten miles 
wide, is so rough, with so many stony hills 
and marshy hollows, as to present a for- 
midable barrier to travel. One may easily 
lose his way on this undulating surface, 
where no conspicuous landmarks serve as 
guides. Many ofthe moraines are traversed 
by dry channels that once carried water 
from the melting ice sheet. The channels are 
now frequently occupied by small shallow 
lakes. The Ree hills, 40 miles east of 
Pierre, chiefly of Cretaceous beds with a 
veneer of drift, are traversed by an elabo- 
rate extinct drainage system; the main 
channel begins in a gap in the hills, receiv- 
ing tributaries from either side on its way 
south, and gaining a depth of 60 to 70 feet 
with abrupt, stony sides, and a breadth of 
# mile (p. 27). 


NOTES. 


THE two numbers of Appalachia for 1896 
contain several good accounts of mountain 
ascents in the Canadian and Montana 
Rockies and in the High Sierra of Califor- 
nia. A number of the plates are excellent; 
that of the Avalanche lake, Montana, being 


724 


particularly fine. Narrative, rather than 
physiography, characterizes the text; but 
much of the quality of our higher mountains 
ean be gleaned from it. A sad interest at- 
taches to the later pages, in the account of 
the death of Philip S. Abbot on Mt. Lefroy, 
Canada. The great precipices of the moun- 
tain are shown in a full-page plate. 


Tue physiography of northern Indiana is 
described by C. R. Dryer (Inland Educator, 
IV., 1897, 63-69) as a contribution towards 
more rational geography in the schools. 
The region was first explained by Gilbert 
in 1870; the drainage is now shown to be 
even more dependent on morainic ridges 
than was at first supposed. North of the 
Maumee-Wabash line the moraines are 
heavier, enclosing numerous lakes and 
forming a most picturesque contrast to the 
flatter surface of the Erie clays around the 
lake border. 


C. SappEeR writes upon the physical geog- 
raphy and the geology of Yucatan (Bull. 
No. 3, Inst. geol. Mexico, 1896). A con- 
siderable area is described as of ‘ very 
strange topography ;’ lacking ridges of de- 
terminate direction, and everywhere gently 
undulating ; the cause of this being ascribed 
to the horizontal position and the porous 
structure of the rocks, and to the ‘sinks’ 
consequently formed over subterranean 
channels. The same author describes the 
volcanoes of Salvador and southeast Guate- 
mala (Petermann’s Mitt., XLIIT., 1897, 1- 
7). The voleano Guazapa is well dissected 
by radical valleys, while nearly all the others 
are young enough to have smooth contours. 


Joun Murray, of the Challenger expedi- 
tion, gives an account of ‘ Balfour shoal’ 
(Scot. Geogr. Mag., XIII., 1897, 120-134, 
two plates), probably a volcanic cone, ris- 
ing from the Pacific bottom, east of Austra- 
lia, in Lat. 19° S., Long. 157° E., from a 
depth of 1,300 fathoms to 836 fathoms. 
The side slopes are steepest on the north- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 123. 


east, where they reach 200 fathoms per 
mile, or 1 in 4.4. Hxamples of other oce- 
anic cones may be found in a paper by G. 
W. Littlehales, entitled ‘Average form of 
isolated submarine peaks,’ published by our 
Hydrographic Office in 1890. 

W. M. Davis. 


HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 
THE MONOLITHS OF TAFI. 


Tart is the name of a broad valley in the 
province of Tucuman, Argentine Republic. 
The well-known scientist, Professor Am- 
brosetti, in a recent visit there, had his at- 
tention called to an extraordinary colloca- 
tion of monolithic pillars and stone enclos- 
ures, erected in remote ages by the native 
inhabitants. He describes them in Globus, 
Bd. LX XI., No.11. The monoliths are from 
six to ten feet in height above the soil, 
some plain, others decorated with conven- 
tional designs, others rudely chipped into 
the likeness of faces, etc. They extend 
over a considerable area and their purpose 
is problematical. 

Ambrosetti is inclined to attribute them 
to the predecessors of the Calchaqui In- 
dians, who occupied this territory at the 
Conquest. He suggests that they are the 
work of the same people who erected the 
buildings of Tiahuanuco; a suggestion 
which I think is extremely probable, for 
some of the decoration shown in his cuts is 
strikingly like that on the stone pillars of 
Hatuncolla, two leagues from Lake Titi- 
caca, portrayed in Squier’s ‘Peru,’ pp. 
385-6. 

ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE MYCENEANS. 


In the excellent volume on Mycenean art 
from the pens of Professors Tsountas and 
Manatt there is a chapter devoted to the 
ethnic affiliations of the peoples who, some 
two milleniums before the Christian era, de- 
veloped that remarkable culture. 

Their tombs, dwellings and arts point to 


MAy 7, 1897.] 


two different strata of growth, but both 
purely and originally European and Gre- 
cian. The influence of the Orient was late 
and slight. The two early migrations may 
be called Danaan and Achzan; but the 
chief fact remains that they were both of 
indigenous cultural development, not im- 
ported or exotic. 

What is more, the later, historic Greeks 
directly inherited this culture, as is proved 
by the identity or close similiarity of archi- 
tecture, ornament, pottery, arms, and relig- 
ious and political institutions. This also is 
asserted by Homer and all early Greek tra- 
dition. 

The linear and hieroglyphic writing, 
scantily represented in the Mycenean 
horizon, may point to Asiatic fonts; rather 
Anatolian (Hittite) than Phoenician; but 
the evidence is too slight to speak finally 


on this question. 
D. G. Brinton. 
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


NOTES ON INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 

A PAPER was recently read before the 
Royal Society, by Dr. W. A. Tilden, on the 
gases enclosed in crystalline rocks and 
minerals. From the time of Brewster, ob- 
servers have found in many crystallized 
minerals, notably in quartz, cavities con- 
taining gas, and often drops of liquid. 
Water, carbon dioxid, hydrocarbons and 
nitrogen and, more recently, hydrogen 
and carbon monoxid have been found. 
A large number of crystalline rocks— 
granite, gneiss, basalt, ete.—have been ex- 
amined by Dr. Tilden, and the yield of gas 
varied from 0.65 volumes, in a recent (1760) 
lava from Vesuvius, to 17.8 volumes, in a 
gneiss containing corundum from Serringa- 
patam. The gas is apparently contained in 
cavities which are visible in thin micro- 
scopic sections, but that these cavities are 
extremely minute is shown by the fact that 
there is practically no diminution of yield 


SCIENCE. 


725 


when the rock has been reduced to a coarse 
powder before heating. The largest portion 
of the gas is carbon dioxid and hydrogen, 
with nitrogen, methane, and carbon monox- 
id, each to the extent of a few per cent. In 
no case was any evidence of helium found. 
The presence of hydrogen and carbon 
monoxid is accounted for by the formation 
of the rock in an atmosphere rich in steam 
and carbon dioxid, which was or had been 
in contact with an easily oxidizable sub- 
stance ; this might be metallic iron, which 
has been found in basalts and other rocks. 
The presence of marsh gas in the rocks 
tends to support the view that in the in- 
terior of the earth’s crust there are large 
masses, not only of metal, but compounds 
of metals, such as iron and manganese, 
with carbon. This view, first put forth by 
Mendeleef, which would account for the 
great deposits of natural gas, petroleum 
and other natural hydrocarbons, appears to 
be steadily gaining ground, and has received 
further support by the work of Moissan and 
others on the metallic carbids. 

MAURICE DE THIERRY communicates to 
the Comptes Rendus determinations of at- 
mospheric ozone on Mount Blanc, begun in 
1894. At Chamounix the amount of ozone 
was 3.5 mg. per 1,000 cubic meters of air ; on 
the Grand Mulets (elevation 3,020 meters), 
9.4 mg., or nearly four times as much as at 
Paris. The conclusion is drawn that the 
amount of ozone increases with the eleva- 
tion, a confirmation of earlier results. Hail, 
falling at an elevation of 4,200 meters, 
when placed on a sheet of iodo-starch ozono- 
scopic paper gave immediately circular 
violet spots of larger diameter than the 
hailstones and paler in the center, but it 
was not determined whether these spots 
were due to an atmosphere of ozone sur- 
rounding the stone, or to hydrogen dioxid 
from the melting hail. Neighboring snows, 
however, have never shown a reaction for 
hydrogen dioxid. 


726 


THE Journal of the College of Science, 
Imperial University, Japan, quoted in the 
Chemical News for April 9th, gives the full 
description of the atomic weight determina- 
tion of tellurium by Masumi Chikashige, 
already noticed in Scrrncr. Previous de- 
terminations have been made from tellu- 
rium associated with heavy metals, and the 
figure found, 127.6, is higher than that of 
iodin, below which it should be, according 
to the periodic law. It has been thought 
that some impurity of higher atomic weight 
might account for the anomaly. Chika- 
shige worked with a tellurium of a wholly 
different (Japanese) origin, occurring as- 
sociated with sulfur and selenium. He 
also reaches the same result, 127.6. It may, 
however, be noted that if the supposed con- 
tamination in the American and European 
tellurium be due to a higher element of 
the sulfur group, it would not be un- 
natural to suppose the same element present 
in the Japanese mineral, which contains 
99.75 per cent. sulfur, 0.06 per cent. selen- 
ium, and 0.17 per cent. tellurium. 

J. Li. H. 


ASTROPHYSICAL NOTES. 

In Circular No. 12 of the Harvard Col- 
lege Observatory, dated November 2, 1896, 
Professor Pickering published the discovery 
on the Draper Memorial photographs of a 
remarkable stellar spectrum, that of Zeta 
Puppis (Mag., 2.5; R. A., 8” 0.1”; Dec., 
—39° 43’). 

In addition to dark hydrogen lines and 
K, there were two broad bright lines at 2 
4633 and 4688, and a peculiar series of dark 
lines whose wave-lengths were rltythmically 
related. These were 2 4544, 4201, 4027, 
3925, 3859, 3816 and 3783. It was at first 
thought that they represented some new 
element not yet found on the earth or in 
the stars. Circular No. 16, of date Janu- 
ary 12, 1897, announced, however, the im- 
portant discovery that these lines are very 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 123. 


probably due to hydrogen, being produced 
under conditions of luminosity not hitherto 
known. Professor Pickering finds that by 
writing Balmer’s formula, connecting the 
wave-lengths of the hydrogen lines, in the 
form 


N= —— 
3646.1 ° 16 


n2 
22 — 
the ordinary lines will be given when for n 
the even integers 6, 8, 10, etc., are substi- 
tuted, and the new lines when the odd 
integers from 9 to 21 are successively as- 
signed to n. It appears that the lines for n 
= 7 (A 5412), 9 (1 4544), 11 (A 4201) and 
13 (A 4027) have been hitherto recorded in 
certain spectra of type IIb. Professor 
Pickering has since reported that three other 
southern stars are somewhat similar to 
Zeta Puppis in having part of the lines of 
the new series. 


MEANWHILE Professor H. Kayser, of Bonn 
—whose work in conjunction with Professor 
Runge on the harmonic relations of spectral 
lines is so favorably known—also investi- 
gated the origin of the new lines, and pub- 
lishes his conclusions in two articles in the 
Astrophysical Journal for February and April. 
Hydrogen had been the only element hay- 
ing harmonicaily related lines which had 
possessed only a single series of such lines. 
Now Kayser and Runge have found that 
two of the series of lines for an element end 
at nearly the same place. Hence on exam- 
ining the frequencies of the new lines, 
Kayser concluded that they have this char- 
acteristic and represent a new hydrogen 
series, a conclusion confirmed in his second 
article written after seeing Circular No. 16. 
Thus the spectral relations of hydrogen 
lines become normal. 

It is a matter of much interest to know 
if the lines of the new series can be pro- 
duced in laboratory experiments. I=fso, im- 
portant information as to stellar tempera- 
tures and pressures is likely to be o btained 


May 7, 1897.] 


THE Lick Observatory has just sent out 
Plates 2 to 5 of its Observatory Atlas of the 
Moon, finely reproduced in photogravure, 
on a scale of 38 inches to the lunar di- 
ameter, from the negatives obtained with 
the great refractor. The publication of this 
valuable series of photographs was made 
possible by the generosity of a citizen of 
New York, Mr. W. H. Law. 

In the Monthly Notices of the Royal As- 

tronomical Society for January Mr. W. F. 
Denning contributes a catalogue of the real 
paths of 107 meteors, observed by himself 
and others in England during the last ten 
years. The averages are: 
Height at first appearance...73.6 miles (106 meteors) 
Height at disappearance.....45.3 ‘‘ (107 meteors) 
Length of path................ 62.1 ‘* (105 meteors) 
Velocity per second........... 26.9 “ (58 meteors ) 
The greatest height of any well-observed 
meteor was 126 miles. In the above aver- 
ages no distinction was made between fire- 
balls and shooting-stars. 

In the same number of the Notices Pro- 
fessor G. von Neissl, of Brunn, contributes 
a list of the real paths of 100 large meteors 
which have been authentically observed, 
chiefly in the last two decades. For these 
the average height when first seen was 91 
miles. No. 77 of the list was visible from 
Servia to France, traveling in a real path 
of 1770 miles, from the hardly credible ele- 
vation of 483 miles to that of 115 miles. 
From a comparison of the catalogues of 
von Neissl and himself, Denning shows 
several instances of the recurrence of large 
meteors from the same radiant, indicating 
that they belonged to the same swarm. 

E. B. F. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 

Miss ALIczE BACHE GOULD has given $20,000 
to the National Academy of Sciences as a me- 
morial to her father, the great astronomer, B. A. 
Gould. It will be known as the Gould fund 
and the income will be used to promote re- 
searches in mathematics and astronomy. 


SCIENCE. 


727 


Sir Henry THompson has presented the 
Royal Observatory at Greenwich with a tele- 
scope said to be the most powerful instrument 
at present existing for the prosecution of astro- 
nomical research by means of photography. 
The photographic refractor has an object glass 
26 inches in diameter. The photographs it will 
take will be on twice the scale of 2 mm. to one 
minute of arc, and its short focal length gives 
it great light-gathering power. The instrument 
now mounted at Greenwich has been in course 
of construction by Sir Howard Grubb, of Dublin, 
during the last three years. 


THE Royal Observatory at Bonn has received 
from the state a preliminary appropriation of 
30,000 Marks, which will ultimately be in- 
creased to 90,000 Marks, for the construction 
and mounting of a refracting telescope of 
medium size. 


SIR WILLIAM FLOWER’s term 0 office as Di- 
rector of the Natural History Departments of 
the British Museum has been extended for three 
years from the expiration of his retirement date 
under the age regulation of the Civil Service. 


THE American Philosophical Society, Phila- 
delphia, will hold a conyersazione in honor of 
Sir Archibald Geikie on the evening of May 7th. 
Sir Archibald Geikie will make a communica- 
tion on recent geological work in the Hebrides 
and Faroe Isles. 


THE Council of the British Medical Associa- 
tion has conferred the gold medal of the Asso- 
ciation on Mr. C. G. Wheelhouse and Sir Wal- 
ter Foster. 

THE Cothenius medal, Leopold Carolinische 
Akademie der Naturforscher, has this year been 
awarded to Dr. G. Quincke, professor of physics 
at Heidelberg. 

Dr. P. GREHANT, professor of physiology in 
the Paris Museum of Natural History, has been 
awarded 4,000 francs by the French govern- 
ment to promote his researches on the applica- 
tions of physiology to hygiene. 

Mr. J. H. Prart, instructor of mineralogy 
in the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale Univer- 
sity, has accepted the post of mineralogist in 
the North Carolina Geological Survey. 

M. Picou was elected president and M. 


728 


Gosselin secretary of the Société Internationale 
des Electriciens at the last meeting of the Society 
held on April 7th. 

Dr. TRAILL GREEN, emeritus professor of 
chemistry at Lafayette College, died at Easton, 
Pa., on April 29th, at the advanced age of 
eighty-four years. Dr. Green was first made 
professor in Lafayette College sixty years ago, 
and during that time took an important part 
in the building-up of the college, having been 
dean of its scientific department and having 
given it an astronomical observatory. He made 
many contributions to medicine and to other 
sciences. 


WE regret further to record the death of Miss 
Emily L. Gregory, professor of botany at Bar- 
nard College and the author of valuable contribu- 
tions to botany, and also thedeaths of Dr. de 
Marbaix, founder of the Bacteriological Institute 
at Boma; of Dr. Jakob Breitenlohner, professor 
of meteorology and climatology in the Vienna 
School of Agriculture; of Dr. Sinku Sakaki, 
professor of psychiatry in the University of 
Tokio, and of Dr. Victor Lemoine, formerly 
professor of the Medical School at Reims, and 
known for his contributions to comparative 
anatomy and paleontology. 


LONGMANS, GREEN & Co. are about to publish 
a new and revised edition of Sir John Evans’ 
“Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons and 
Ornaments of Great Britain,’ which has long 
been out of print. 


THE London Academy is publishing a series of 
portraits of eminent writers. The issue of 
April 10th contained an admirable reproduc- 
tion of a photograph of Darwin, by Mrs. J. M. 
Cameron. 


THE British government authorities have 
presented Dr. Nansen, in recognition of his ser- 
vices in scientific exploration, with a complete 
set of the Challenger Reports. This is said to 
be the only case in which this great publica- 
tion, extending to fifty volumes quarto, has 
been presented to an individual. 


Dr. CARL LUMHOLTZ, the Norwegian anthro- 
pologist, has returned to New York after hay- 
ing spent three years in the interior of Mexico 
in the interests of the American Museum of 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 123. 


Natural History. He has secured valuable col- 
lections and much information regarding the 
aboriginal tribes. 


Ir is stated in Nature that at the last meeting 
(April 14) of the Russian Geographical Society, 
Baron Osten Sacken read a telegram which he 
had received from Sven Hedin, the well-known 
Swedish traveler in Central Asia, announcing 
that he had crossed Tibet (Northern Tibet) by 
following a route which lies somewhat to the 
south of General Pyerstoff’s route ; during that 
journey he discovered 23 new salt lakes, four 
of which are of considerable size. Notwith- 
standing the great difficulties of the journey, 
and the loss of 44 beasts of burden out of 50, 
all collections are safe. From Tibet, Sven He- 
din went through Mongolia to Pekin, and to- 
wards the end of May he expected to be in St. 
Petersburg. 


M. AvuGustin FALcoNnz has given the Uni- 
versity of Lyons 100,000 franes to be used for 
biennial prizes, one for each of the four facul- 
ties of the University. 


A CHAIR of physical geography has been 
established in the faculty of sciences in the 
University of Paris, and M. Vélain has been 
appointed the first incumbent. 


A MEMORIAL proposing a physical laboratory 
for India signed by Lord Kelvin, Lord Lister 
and other leading British men of science has 
been presented to the Secretary for India. The 
memorial is as follows: 

“‘We, the undersigned, interested in the progress 
of physics, desire respectfully to draw your lordship’s 
attention to the great importance which we attach to 
the establishment in the Indian Empire of a central 
laboratory for advanced teaching and research in 
connection with the Presidency College, Calcutta, 
the most important educational institution under the 
Government of India. We believe that it would not 
only be beneficial in respect of higher education, but 
also that it would largely promote the material in- 
terests of the country, and we venture to urge on you 
the desirability, therefore, of establishing in India a 
physical laboratory worthy of the great empire.’’ 


Proressor D. T. MAcDovuGAt, in a letter to 
the Botanical Gazette, on the Tropical Labora- 
tory Commission, states that Dr. J. E. Hum- 
phrey, accompanied by a number of advanced 
students in zoology from the Johns Hopkins 


May 7, 1897.] 


University, will carry on some investigations in 
the vicinity of Port Antonio, Jamaica, during 
the ensuing season, and that he has agreed to 
cooperate with the Commission in the examina- 
tion of theisland. In the arrangement of plans 
for the work of the Commission provision will 
be made for a repetition of a portion of the tour 
of investigation during the coming winter, in 
order to appreciate more fully the climatic pos- 
sibilities of the more promising localities. The 
Journal of Botany, in an article expressing cor- 
dial approval of the undertaking, advocates one 
of the Lesser Antilles as the site of the labora- 
tory, urging that a site in Mexico would bea 
hindrance to cooperation on the part of bota- 
nists in Great Britain on account of the length 
of the journey. 

THE Friday evening meetings of the Royal 
Institution of Great Britain were resumed on 
April 30th, when Professor J. J. Thomson gave 
a discourse on ‘Cathode Rays.’ Succeeding 
discourses will probably be given by Professor 
Harold Dixon, the Right Hon. Lord Kelvin, 
Professor H. Moissan, Mr. W. H. Preece, Mr. 
William Crookes and others. The Tyndall lec- 
tures for 1897 are being given by Dr. Tempest 
Anderson, his subject being ‘ Volcanoes.’ 


THE Royal Society will hold the first of its 
two annual conyersaziones on the evening of 
May 19th. 

THE ninety-fifth anniversary of the founding 
of the Zoological Station at Naples was cele- 
brated on April14th. Addresses were made by 
Professor Todaro, representing the University 
of Rome and the Accademia dei Lincei by Dr. 
Hisig, of the Station; by Professor Waldeyer, 
representing the Berlin Academy of Sciences, 
and by Professor His, of Leipzig. Professor 
Dohrn was presented with the freedom of the 
city of Naples and the Grand Cordon of the 
Crown of Italy. After the German Ambassador 
had made a few remarks Professor Dohrn himself 
gave an account of the origin and progress of 
the laboratory whose work has been such an 
important factor in the progress of biological in- 
vestigation. 

SEVERAL members of the British Royal Com- 
mission on Tuberculosis, including Sir Herbert 
Maxwell, M. P. (Chairman), Mr. Harcourt 


SCIENCE. 


729 


E. Clare, Mr. John Speir and Mr. T. M. 
Legge (Secretary), accompanied by Professor 
M’Fadyean, started on April 22d for Brussels, 
Cologne, Berlin and Leipzig, in order to investi- 
gate the methods adopted on the Continent for 
dealing with tuberculosed meat. The Belgian 
and German Governments have made arrange- 
ments to aid the Commissioners in the investi- 
gations. The Commissioners expect to return 
about the end of the second week in May. 


INVITATIONS have been sent for the sixty- 
fifth annual meeting of the British Medical As- 
sociation, to be held at Montreal. The program 
is as follows: August 31st, 12 a. m.—Services 
in the English Cathedral. 2:30 p. m.—Wind- 
sor Hall, opening ceremonies and addresses of 
welcome. 3p. m.—Address by the President- 
elect, T. G. Roddick, M.D., M.P. 4 p. m.— 
Garden parties, excursions around the moun- 
tain, etc. 9 p. m.—Soirée at Laval University. 
September ist, 1. p. m.—McGill University, 
openings of sections (eleven in all). 8p. m.— 
Windsor Hall: Address in medicine, by Dr. 
Wm. Osler. 4. p. m.—Excursion down the St. 
Lawrence, etc. 9. p. m.—Sohmer Park, con- 
versazione and dance. September 2d, 9:30 p. 
m.—MceGill University, sectional meetings. 
1:30 p. m.—Lunch on the mountain. 3:30 p. 
m.—Windsor hall, address in surgery, by Mr. 
T. Mitchell Banks. 4:30 p. m.—Excursion 
across the Island, etc. 7:45 p. m.—Annual 
dinner of the Association, Windsor Hall. Sep- 
tember 3d, 9:30 a. m.—McGill University, 
sectional meetings. 3 p. m.—Windsor Hall, 
address in public medicine by Herman M. Biggs 
and concluding general meeting. 4:15 p. m.— 
Excursion to St. Anne’s and down the Lachine 
Rapids. 9 p. m.—Soirée at McGill University. 
September 4th.—Excursion to Ottawa, Quebec, 
Kingston, St. Agathe, Lake Memphremagog, 
etc. 


CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY has made a slight 
provision for the study of experimental psy- 
chology, but the science is very inadequately 
represented in Great Britain as compared with 
Germany, the United States and France or even 
with countries such as Russia, Switzerland, 
Italy, Belgium and Denmark. We are glad to 
learn that an effort is now being made to intro- 


730 


duce the subject into University College, 
London. A committee, including Mr. Francis 
Galton, Professor Carl Pearson, Professor C. A. 
Schiiffer and others, has been formed and sub- 
scriptions are invited for the purchase of ap- 
paratus and the establishment of a lectureship. 


In an interesting historical sketch of the 
University of Minnesota, Professor C. W. Hall 
describes an important adjunct of the scientific 
work of the University—the Geological and 
Natural History Survey of the State. This was 
organized in 1872 and placed under the direc- 
tion of the Board of Regents. The original 
cost of this work was $1,000 per year; this was 
soon increased to $2,000, and in 1875, and sub- 
sequently, 38,643 acres were turned over to the 
Regents to be disbursed in accordance with the 
law ordering the Survey. This land, at the 
minimum price of $5.00 per acre, for which it 
could be sold, will eventually enable the Re- 
gents to realize over $200,000. The cash ap- 
propriations which the State has at various 
times voted for the maintenance of this work 
amount at date to $50,000, not including cost 
of printing. The Survey is comprehensive in 
its scope. The fields of investigation named in 
the original act are geology, botany, zoology 
and meteorology. Two maps, a geologic and 
topographic, were also provided for ; the latter, 
on approval, to become the official map of the 
State. A museum was also contemplated, which 
should exhibit to the people of the Common- 
wealth, in an orderly and scientific way, its nat- 
ural resources as discovered by the Survey. 
The geological exploration of the State was 
first prosecuted. Botany, zoology, meteor- 
ology and topography are to follow in order, 
unless economy and efficiency can be secured 
by joint operations. The results of these in- 
vestigations thus far available are to be found 
in a series of annual reports covering almost a 
quarter of a century of geologic work; three 
volumes onthe final report of the geology of 
State; two brief reports of the State Zoologist, 
accompanied by a study of the birds of Minne- 
sota, by Dr. P. L. Hatch, and a synopsis of the 
Entomostraca of Minnesota, by C. L. Herrick 
and ©. H. Turner; one report of the State 
Botanist, containing an exhaustive review of 
the Metasperme of the Minnesota river valley ; 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 123. 


a series of bulletins, containing geological, 
botanical and zoological papers, besides many 
scientific papers from less comprehensive fields 
of study. 


THE EHlectrical World reports on a recent com- 
munication by M. d’Arsonyal to ,the Société 
Internationale des Electriciens concerning the 
therapeutic and physiological effects of high 
frequency currents. He showed the powerful 
inductive effects which can be obtained with 
these currents. A striking experiment consists 
of placing three lamps in tension and allowing 
the current to pass through the body. These 
currents cause no sensations, and a man placed 
in a circuit does not feel that he is traversed by 
the currents which brilliantly illuminate the 
lamps. The principal results of this electrifica- 
tion are an augmentation of the oxidations in 
the organism and an increase in the produc- 
tion of heat. A subject who, under ordinary 
conditions, eliminates 17 to 21 liters of carbonic 
acid per hour throws off 37 liters after having 
been submitted to this action. High-frequency 
currents do not act solely upon the surface of 
the body, but also profoundly upon the interior. 
All of these results have been obtained upon a 
number of subjects by MM. Apostoli and Char- 
rin. M. d’Arsonval cited, in closing, the ac- 
tion exercised upon microbes and bacteria by 
these currents. The microbes and bacilli are 
modified, and the toxines are killed and trans- 
formed to vaccine. MM. d’Arsonval and Char- 
rin hope by this method to arrive ata direct 
treatment for the interior of the bodies of 
patients suffering with zymotic disease, and ex- 
periments to this end have begun. 


WE are extremely glad to note that the tariff 
bill, as amended by the Senate Finance Com- 
mittee, includes the following additions to the 
free list : 

Books, maps, music, engravings, photographs, etch- 
ings and charts, printed more than twenty years 
before the date of importation; all hydrographic 
charts and scientific books devoted to original scientific 
research, and publications issued for their subscribers 
by scientific and literary associations, or publications 
of individuals for gratuitous private circulation, and 
public documents issued by foreign governments. 

Books printed exclusively in foreign languages for 
the blind. 


May 7, 1897.] 


Books, maps, etc., especially imported, not more 
than two copies in any one invoice, for the use of any 
society or institution established solely for religious, 
philosophical, educational, scientific or literary pur- 
poses, or for the encouragement of the fine arts, or for 
the use of any college, school or public library, and 
not for sale. 

Paintings, original drawings and sketches, en- 
gravings and statuary, not otherwise provided for ; 
paraffine, philosophical and scientific apparatus for 
schools, libraries and societies ; professional books, 
implements and instruments, and tools of trade or 
occupation in the actual possession at the time of 
persons arriving in the United States ; regalia and 
gems, statues, casts of marble, bronze, or alabaster, 
where specially imported in good faith for the use of 
any society, school or library. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 


THE will of the late John Foster, of Boston, 
gives $120,000 to public purposes, including 
$10,000 to the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
nology. 


THE will of the late Charles Bell, of Spring- 
field, Mass., bequeaths $7,000 to Wellesley Col- 
lege for a scholarship fund. 


Brown UNIVERSITY receives $10,000 by the 
settlement of the will of the late Mrs. Maria 
L. Benedict, of Providence. 


PRoFeEssor H. L. Hurcuin, Dean of the Law 
Department of the University of Michigan, has 
been offered the presidency of the University 
during President Angell’s absence in Turkey. 


Mr. C. H. WARREN has been appointed in- 
structor in mineralogy in the Sheffield Scientific 
School of Yale University. 


THE Spanish universities and other educa- 
tional institutions under state control have just 
been thrown open to foreigners by royal decree. 
By the new ordinance foreigners are admitted to 
theright of matriculation,study and examination 
in all educational establishments under the 
Spanish government, and are entitled to take 
degrees in the universities. 

In announcing last week the promotion of 
Professor Albert Bushnell Hart, of Harvard 
University, it was accidentally stated that his 
chair was physics; it should, of course, have 
been history. 


SCIENCE. 


731 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
TYPE SPECIMENS IN NATURAL HISTORY. 


A RECENT number of ScieNcE* contains an 
article by Mr. Charles Schuchert, entitled 
‘What is a Type in Natural History ?’ 
The title is misleading, for, instead of discussing 
type forms or types of groups, Mr. Schuchert 
confines his attention to type specimens, and 
chiefly to the names by which such specimens 
may be designated, in which direction he 
shows remarkable fertility of resource. In 
view of these facts, and of the additional cir- 
cumstances that the subject is approached 
from the standpoint of the student of fossils, 
his paper might have been better described 
under some such heading as ‘Suggestions for 
the Multiplication of Type Specimens in Pale- 
ontology.’ 

Mr. Schuchert revives several obsolete terms, 
such as paratype and metatype, which have 
never been used, so far as I am aware, even by 
the man who proposed them, and adds a num- 
ber of his own invention, such as genotype, ho- 
lotype, hypotype, plastotype and hypoplastotype. 
These may be taken as mild examples of a 
prevalent and apparently incurable form of 
mania which busies itself in burdening science 
with a useless and formidable terminology. 
The most serious objection to such terms is the 
discouraging effect they have on students, for 
they wall in a subject with a barrier that few 
have the courage to assail. In my own case I 
am bound to confess that, although the greater 
part of my life has been spent in the study of 
animals and plants, I am to-day unable to read 
half the literature on these subjects, because of 
the multiplicity of technical terms by which the 
author’s meaning is made unintelligible. Life 
is too short and too precious to be fritted away 
in memorizing such a disheartening and ever 
increasing mass of terminology. 

My reasons for replying to the article in ques- 
tion are, first, to make the occasion an excuse 
for filing a protest against the unlimited coinage 
of new terms, and second, to assure the amateur 
and beginner that in descriptive zoology and 
botany these particular terms are wholly un- 
necessary. In practice the best systematic 

* ScIENCE, N. S., No. 121, pp. 636-640, April 23, 
1897. 


732 


writers find the single word type—understood 
the world over—sufficient for ordinary needs. 
But in cases where a species rests on more than 
one specimen, and the author neglected to in- 
dicate a type, the term cotype is used to desig- 
nate each of the several specimens on which the 
original description was based. Still another 
term is found convenient and is in common use 
among mammalogists. It is the word topotype, 
proposed by Mr. Oldfield Thomas, and used to 
designate a specimen from the identical locality 
from which the type specimen of a species came. 
Among plants and non-migratory terrestrial ani- 
mals, topotypes are, after the original types, 
the most valuable study material a museum 
can possess. 

In paleontology, where it is customary to de- 
scribe new species from very fragmentary ma- 
terial—such as the tooth of a mammal or the 
leaf of a plant—which is afterwards supple- 
mented by the discovery of additional parts, it 


becomes convenient, as pointed out by, Mr. © 


Schuchert, to consider the later and more per- 
fect specimens, from which additional charac- 
ters are derived, as supplementary types. This, 
however, hardly seems sufficient provocation 
for the introduction of a special set of new 
terms. Nevertheless, if paleontologists really 
feel the need of these terms I suppose the rest 
of us should try to bear them with becoming 
fortitude ; but would it be too much to ask that 
they be considered as proprietary material and 
not let loose on the whole field of systematic 
biology? 

It is pleasing to note that Mr. Schuchert is a 
firm believer in the priceless value of type 
specimens and that he advocates the use of 
special colored labels to distinguish them from 
others. Fortunately the use of such labels for 
this purpose is rapidly becoming general. It 
might be added that as arule type specimens 
should not be placed in the exhibition series 
in public museums, but should be carefully pre- 
served in special cases devoted exclusively to 
such material. The exhibition in glass cases 
of type specimens of animals injured by light— 
as birds and mammals—indicates a disinterest- 
edness amounting almost to criminal neglect. 

While discussing the matter of types I would 
like to digress sufficiently to express the con- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 123. 


viction now shared by a large body of working 
naturalists that type specimens, being units of 
comparison, should from the nature of the case 
be single, not multiple. It is the common ex- 
perience of naturalists that in a considerable 
percentage of the cases where several speci- 
mens have been used as types, subsequent study 
has shown these specimens to belong to different 
species, and in some cases to different genera. 


‘Is not this fact alone an unanswerable objection 


to the existence of more than one type specimen 
of a species ? C. Hart MERRIAM. 


SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 

Spencer’s Principles of Sociology. New York, D. 
Appleton & Co. 1897. Volume III., pp. x 
+645. 

This volume completes not only Mr. Spen- 
cer’s great work on ‘The Principles of Soci- 
ology,’ which in itself is an undertaking quite 
sufficient to establish the permanent reputation 
of any one man; but also the system of ‘Syn- 
thetic Philosophy,’ which was begun more than 
thirty-six years ago, and has been carried for- 
ward under circumstances of extraordinary 
difficulty. The system as it now stands in its 
final form includes the volume entitled ‘ First 
Principles,’ in which the general doctrine of 
evolution is formulated in abstract terms; two 
volumes on ‘The Principles of Biology,’ two 
on ‘The Principles of Psychology,’ three on 
‘The Principles of Sociology’ and two on ‘ The 
Principles of Ethics.’ 

No other mind in our generation has at- 
tempted to grapple so seriously with so many 
great subjects as Mr. Spencer has done; no 
other one thinker has so impressed himself 
upon all serious investigators in each of the 
great branches of scientific knowledge. Very 
few professional biologists are more frequently 
quoted than Mr. Spencer in works on biology; 
few, if any, professional psychologists are so 
frequently quoted in works on psychology; 
few, if any, professional writers on ethics are 
so frequently quoted in discussions of morals. 
This one fact is a significant index of Mr. 
Spencer’s range and power. Even if it be true 
that the expert in each of the sciences men- 
tioned disagrees with Mr. Spencer’s conclusions 
on vital points, it is an astonishing achieve- 


May 7, 1897.] 


ment for any one man to have so impressed 
himself upon the best thought in so many fields 
of mental activity that all whose life work is con- 
cerned with these subjects find it necessary to 
define their relations to one such comprehensive 
thinker. 

Of Mr. Spencer’s ‘ Principles of Sociology’ it 
must be said, first, that it should not be judged 
with reference to any conclusion that the critic 
may have reached upon the question whether 
or not there is a science of society. The phe- 
nomena of society are the most complex and 
perhaps the most elusive with which a serious 
student can deal. It may be that scientific 
opinion will presently be practically unanimous 
that no laws of social causation can be formu- 
lated which can be placed in the same category 
with those laws that make up the physical 
sciences. It will not follow, however, that 
society cannot be studied in a scientific spirit 
and by scientific methods. Whether or not, 
then, Mr. Spencer has created a science of 
sociology, he has at least demonstrated that 
social phenomena can be studied with scientific 
seriousness, and that if we do not thereby es- 
tablish positive laws of social causation we 
shall, at least, attain to broader and truer 
views of social organization, of our personal 
relations to our fellow men and of the expedi- 
ency of various schemes of governmental policy. 

Of the wealth of illustration, the enormous 
array of facts which Mr. Spencer has brought 
together in these volumes, it is desirable to say 
that they have been made the subject of some 
unjust criticism. It is true that Mr. Spencer 
has depended upon the reports of travelers, 
explorers and missionaries for the greater part 
of his material; it is true that the observations 
so obtained have not always been made with 
critical discernment; but, on the other hand, it 
is to be remembered that comparatively little 
work has ever been done in sociological obser- 
vation by trained observers. The test, there- 
fore, that should be applied to Mr. Spencer’s 
data is the question: ‘‘ Has he on the whole made 
a discriminating and critical use of such material 
as was available ?’’ When judged by this stand- 
ard, Mr. Spencer’s work in sociology will be 
found to be above the average level of treatises 
on anthropology and ethnology. 


. SCIENCE. 


733 


It is not necessary to speak in detail of Mr. 
Spencer’s analysis of social organization or of 
his interpretation of social progress, as these 
things have become already familiar to the 
general reader. The organization of society, 
like that of the plant or of the animal, becomes 
complex through differentiations of activities 
and of groupings; it becomes unified through 
the integration of small communities into great 
nations. Social change, on the whole, isa prog- 
ress from homogeneity to heterogeneity, in 
both activity and organization. Another point, 
however, and the one which is really vital in 
Mr. Spencer’s philosophy of human relations, 
may be emphasized, because it is too often 
overlooked. Mr. Spencer does not admit that 
human nature is unchanging. Character, like 
everything else, undergoes a progressive modi- 
fication. The environment and circumstances 
of a community are the environment of the in- 
dividual character. Under conditions favoring 
industry and peace human nature develops 
the virtues of gentleness, truthfulness and in- 
dustry; under conditions necessitating pro- 
longed or chronic warfare human nature be- 
comes cruel, tyrannical or subservient, un- 
truthful, all that is vicious. This contention is 
maintained in all of Mr. Spencer’s sociological 
writings, and isthe chief proposition of ‘The 
Principles of Sociology,’ recurring again and 
again in the successive parts on Domestic, 
Ceremonial, Political, Ecclesiastical, Profes- 
sional and Industrial Institutions. 

Mr. Spencer’s final conclusions, as he sur- 
veys the civilized world at the present moment, 
are somewhat despondent. Hesees everywhere 
the revival of the military spirit and he looks 
for a marked deterioration of individual and 
national character in the immediate future. Of 
the more distant future, however, he expects 
better things, and at the conclusion of his work 
he renews the prediction which he made nearly 
fifty years ago: ‘‘The ultimate man will be 
one whose private requirements coincide with 
public ones. He will be that manner of man 
who, in spontaneously fulfilling his own nature, 
incidentally performs the functions of a social 
unit, and yet is only enabled so to fulfil his 
own nature by all others doing the like.”’ 

FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS. 


734 


The Crowd. A Study of the Popular Mind. By 

GusTAVE LE Bon. The Macmillan Co. 

This is a translation of a little volume en- 
titled ‘ Psychologie des foules,’ which appeared 
in Paris in 1895. The author is well known in 
the European scientific world as a voluminous 
writer upon many branches of physiology and 
psychology, and in recent years more especially 
as a student of the psychology of races and of 
mankind as socially organized. 

In the present work M. Le Bon devotes his 
attention to an analysis of the psychological 
phenomena of masses of men. The substi- 
tution of the unconscious action of crowds for 
the conscious activity of individuals, he tells 
us, is one of the principal characteristics of the 
present age. The epoch is one of those critical 
moments in which the thought of mankind is 
undergoing a process of transformation. The 
general destruction of those religious, political 
and social beliefs which were the elements of 
an earlier civilization has been succeeded by 
new intellectual conditions of existence, the 
product of scientific thought and industrial dis- 
coveries In this critical transition period we 
are witnessing also the transformation of social 
organization from monarchical and aristocratic 
forms to democracy. Our author declares that 
we have entered, or we are about to enter, upon 
an age that may truthfully be described as the 
era of crowds. While only two generations 
ago the opinion of the masses scarcely counted 
in political affairs, to-day it is the old traditions 
and the opinions of individuals that are without 
influence. The voice of the masses has become 
preponderant. 

What effect is this rule of the crowd to have 
upon civilization? In the past, civilizations 
have been created and directed by a small in- 
tellectual aristocracy, never by the crowd. 
Crowds, thus far in the world’s history, have 
been powerful chiefly for destruction. Ob- 
viously, before we can answer any question in 
regard to the probable future action of crowds, 
we shall need to know much more of the psy- 
chology of collective men than we know at pres- 
ent. The thoughtful public should be grateful 
to M. Le Bon for this first serious attempt to an- 
alyze the mind of the crowd. One need not ac- 
cept all of his conclusions to appreciate the value 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 123. 


of his work. Its importance consists in the fact 
that he has clearly stated a large number of 
problems which merit diligent consideration— 
problems which hitherto have not been seriously 
studied as the foundation of political science. 

The starting point of M. Le Bon’s philosophy 
of crowds is a conviction that the crowd is 
always something more than the sum or the 
average of its individual elements. Ourauthor 
believes that when men become organized as a 
crowd they lose many of their individual char- 
acteristics and acquire others which, as individ- 
uals, they never exhibit. The crowd isalways, 
according to M. Le Bon’s observations, swayed 
by feeling rather than by reason. This is be- 
cause men differ more widely in intelligence 
than in feeling. The mental unity of a crowd, 
therefore, is sympathetic rather than rational. 
Again, crowds are undoubtedly to a very great 
extent subject to suggestion and to hypnotic in- 
fluence. So far as the mental operations of 
crowds are intellectual they think in images, 
and are therefore in a large measure controlled 
by imagination. Like children, crowds are im- 
patient of any obstacle interposed between sug- 
gestion and act; they desire to carry a purpose 
into immediate effect. They are, therefore, in- 
tolerant of discussion and of delay. 

These truths, M. Le Bon declares, have 
always been instinctively apprehended by men 
with a genius for leadership. The imagination 
of crowds is awakened by whatever presents 
itself in the shape of a startling and effective 
image, freed from all accessory explanations. 
The leader, therefore, will take care to lay things 
before the crowd as a whole, and will carefully 
avoid any attempt to justify them on grounds 
of reason or to explain their origin. No man 
ever so thoroughly understood this truth as the 
first Napoleon. ‘‘It was by becoming a Catho- 
lic,’’? he said to the Council of State, ‘that I 
terminated the Vendéean war; by becoming a 
Musselman that I obtained a footing in Egypt; 
by becoming an Ultramontane that I won over 
the Italian priests, and had I to govern a nation 
of Jews, I would rebuild Solomon’s temple.’’ 

In general, crowds are powerless to hold other 
opinions than those which are imposed upon 
them by example or authority, and are not to 
be controlled by rules based upon theories of 


May 7, 1897.] 


pure equity or of economic expediency. 
They are rather to be directed, if at all, by 
seeking what produces an impression on them 
and what seduces them. The danger to civili- 
zation in this psychology of crowds lies in the 
fact that the dogmas whose birth we are now 
witnessing will soon have the force of old 
dogmas, that is to say, the tyrannical and 
sovereign force of being above discussion. The 
divine right of the masses is about to replace 
the divine right of kings. Nevertheless, M. 
Le Bon affirms that it would be dangerous to 
meddle with the organization of crowds, not- 
withstanding their psychological inferiority. 
The facts of history have demonstrated that 
social organisms are every whit as complicated 
as those of all beings, and it is notin our power 
to force them to undergo any sudden or far- 
reaching transformation. 

M. Le Bon’s account of the general psychol- 
ogy of crowds is supplemented by a detailed 
analysis of more special characteristics, in 
separate chapters on the sentiments and mo- 
rality of crowds, the ideas, reasoning power 
and imagination of crowds, the religious shape 
assumed by the convictions of crowds, and the 
immediate factors of the opinions of crowds. 
In the latter part of his volume he describes 
different kinds of crowds, including criminal 
crowds, electoral crowds and parliamentary as- 
semblies. 

The chief criticisms to be passed upon this 
volume are: First, that the author has not ac- 
knowledged, as he should have done, his very 
obyious indebtedness to the greatest living 
social psychologist, M. Tarde, whose ‘Les 
Lois de limitation’ and ‘La logique sociale’ 
contain in their original form many of the sug- 
gestions which have governed M. Le Bon’s 
thoughts. Second, that he makes rather too 
much, probably, of what he would call the 
hypnotic phenomena of crowds, and too little 
of the absence of personal responsibility which 
the individual feels when he unites with his 
fellowmen in collective action. 

FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS. 


Laboratory Practice for Beginners in Botany. By 
Witiiam A. SETCHELL, PH. D., Professor 
of Botany in the University of California. 


SCIENCE. 


735 


New York, The Macmillan Company. 1897. 

Pp. xiv+199. Price, 90 cents. 

There are already a number of laboratory 
guides in elementary botany and, judging from 
the announcements of book publishers and their 
statements in conversation, there are soon to 
be several others. Their multiplication only 
argues that no single outline will satisfy other 
teachers. No good teacher can follow closely 
the outlines of instruction laid down by an- 
other; each must throw his own personality 
into the work and the method, and the condi- 
tions of time, place and facilities for work will 
all enter into the problem of how to teach an 
introductory class in botany. The author of 
the workin hand recognizes this condition when 
he says (p. 137): ‘‘ The ideal way isto teach the 
student without any book.’’ 

The book illustrates what we regard as a false 
principle of instruction, though one much in 
vogue, namely, the telling a pupil in advance 
to see certain things before he has had a chance 
to look for something himself; this, followed too 
closely, can only result in preventing the de- 
velopment of any originality in the pupil and 
tends to reduce him to a mere machine. To 
illustrate the method followed, we quote from 
one of the chapters: 

““T. Take a piece of stem of the Japanese 
Quince, which has several leaves attached to it. 
Examine the leaves and notice that: 

‘1. They are all borne on the sides of the 
stem (7. e., that they are lateral structures). 

“2, They are broad and thin (i. e., they are 
also expanded structures). 

“3. Their color is green. (This is not true 
for all leaves, e. g., examine the leaves of some 
common red Colias [sic] of the garden or green- 
house, in which another coloring-matter is 
present and hides the green.) 

“4. They are all borne at the nodes of the stem. 
(We may consequently separate that portion of 
the plant above the root into a number of simi- 
lar parts, each of which may be called a phyto- 
mer or plant part. Hach phytomer will consist 
of an internode, and a node with its leaf or 
leaves. Sketch a phytomer of the Japanese 
Quince and label it.’’) 

This criticism is, of course, general, applying 
to many books of its class that have been 


736 


adapted to students of various grades in various 
subjects. They may be useful for giving sug- 
gestions to teachers who are themselves poorly 
prepared, but are not of the character to be 
placed in the hands of the beginning pupil. 
The pupil, to again quote the sentiment of the 
author, should be taught without books. 

Treated, however, as a book for the instruc- 
tion of teachers, this work possesses many 
meritorious features, among which we may men- 
tion : 

1. It outlines work that can be accomplished 
without the aid of a compound microscope. 
This is highly important, because many schools 
eannot be equipped with compound microscopes, 
and what is a better reason, because a pedagog- 
ical one, it will prevent pupils becoming famil- 
iar with the compound microscope before they 
have exhausted the possibilities of the simple 
one. Botanical perspective cannot be attained 
by looking down the tube of a compound 
microscope alone, and the failure to learn how 
to use the unaided eye or a simple lens has been 
responsible for some of the lack of perspective 
in the rising generation of botanists. 

2. It emphasizes the ecological side of botany, 
which is destined to be the next ruling feature 
of elementary botanical instruction. 

3. Its list of required laboratory books for 
the teacher is short but excellent, and empha- 
sizes the feature last named in such books as 
those of Kerner and Selina Gaye, and rigidly 
excludes manuals and other works on system- 
atic botany which belong to a later stage in 
the evolution of botanical students. 

Besides the general criticism given above, 
which falls on this book only as one of a special 
class, there are features peculiar to itself that 
could be improved. For example, it combines, 
among many suggestions suitable to the age of 
the pupils for which the work is intended, some 
that seem infantile and others that savor of 
pedantry or at least belong to children of a 
larger growth. Such expressions as ‘strophi- 
ole,’ ‘phytomer,’ ‘reclinate prefoliation’ and 
‘indeterminate anthotaxy,’ might well be de- 
ferred to a later stage of instruction, if in- 
troduced at all. Then the work gives a more 
fragmentary treatment of the spore-producing 
plants than would be expected from a spe- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 123. 


cialist in cryptogamic botany, tending, as was 
the case with Dr. Gray’s text-book, on which 
this is quite closely patterned, to create the im- 
pression that all plants produce flowers or at 
least all that are worth considering. Besides 
leaving out a half of the plant world, and an 
important half at that, this plan hides away 
from the student the great principle of evolution 
of plant life which would be impressed upon 
him unconsciously were the study to commence 
with lower forms or at least give them a fair 
amount of attention. It is amazing how much 
knowledge of these lower plants can be gained 
by means of a simple magnifier, and it is un- 
fortunate, to say the least, to prevent the 
student, however young, from getting a well- 
rounded conception of the whole subject. 
There are some few obsolete expressions in the 
book like ‘stomata or breathing pores’ and 
occasional typographical slips that it is always 
difficult to avoid in a first edition. On the 
whole, the merits of the work are much greater 
than its demerits, and if used by teachers alone, 
and not by students, it is probably as good or 
better than most the books of its type. 
L. M. UNDERWOOD. 


Essai critique sur Vhypothése des atomes dans 
la science contemporaine. ARTHUR HANNE- 
quin. Annales de l’Université de Lyon. 
Tome Septiéme. Paris, G. Masson. 1895. 
Pp. 419. 

This is an interesting and important book of 
its kind, but it is also a kind of book which to 
many physicists will need justification. Itisa 
serious attempt to form a philosophy of atom- 
ism, and as such will be found to contain too 
much physics to please most metaphysicians 
and too much metaphysics to please physicists. 
That each party in the case may take his own, 
the book is frankly divided into two parts, the 
first having to do with atomic theory as actu- 
ally found in science, and the second with the 
metaphysics of this theory. But it would be 
too much to hope that the physics and the 
metaphysics of atomism had actually been dis- 
entangled and separated. Whatever the meta- 
physician may do the wise physicist will read 
the whole book if he wishes to get M. Hanne- 
quin’s complete message. 


May 7, 1897.] 


The book is written in a charming style, 
picturesque without loss of dignity and viva- 
cious without flippancy. The discussion is at 
once so orderly and so complete as to give a 
high impression of unity and elegance. To one 
interested in the subject the book will prove 
easy and delightful reading. While we have 
in English many books upon parts of the field 
and many special investigations concerning 
molecular action we have yet no general work 
like this upon the foundations of atomism. 
Stallo’s Modern Physics comes nearest to it and, 
although elementary in character and limited 
in scope, deserves to be better known than it is. 

It is easy to see that the main interest of the 
author is philosophy and yet he shows every- 
where wide and thorough reading in the history 
of atomistics and also in modern physics and 
mathematics. But with competent knowledge 
his perspective is often false. Leibnitz, though 
not better known, seems distinctly nearer to 
him than Maxwell, and he does not scruple to 
put down Cantor with a quotation from Des- 
cartes. Indeed the book is not only scholarly, 
but distinctly scholastic. This is perhaps the 
reason why the author takes everywhere a hard 
and fast view of science as a fixed body of 
knowledge instead of the growing, elastic, ten- 
tative thing that it really is. Having proved 
that the universe cannot be explained by the 
atom of Greek philosophy, a hard, round, indi- 
visible solid, without parts or qualities, he fails 
to do justice to, although he shows a full con- 
sciousness of, modern atomistic speculation. 
M. Hannequin’s statement on page 225, and 
everywhere implied throughout the book, that 
“the rigorous unity and the perfect simplicity 
of an explanation are the highest guarantees of 
its truth,’’ should be limited to pure science. 
For experimental science this is an early and 
naive view. The universe, and every part of 
it, is infinitely complex and diverse, and any 
view that makes it small and plain is the view 
of innocence, or of one who cares more for 
method than for matter. 

The argument of the book runs in part as 
follows : 

As the mind knows completely only what it 
creates—knows of things only what it projects 
into them—so science is rigorous and exact in 


SCIENCE. 


737 


such measure as itis a creation of the mind. 
Science takes its rise in the human need of ren- 
dering intelligible that which falls beneath the 
intuition of the senses. Number the mind has 
created and so knows completely, but extension 
and direction the mind cannot know directly. 
It can know these categories only by breaking 
them up into equal parts and counting them, 
that is, by measuring. 

The first step in progress is the reduction of 
the physics of fact and phenomenon to the 
physics of law, which in its more generalized 
form becomes the physics of succession and 
change. The fundamental change—change of 
place or motion—turns one side toward fact and. 
the other toward a rigorous mathematic, in 
terms of which the laws of succession and 
change are expressed. Thus science becomes 
universal in motion only as it breaks up its con- 
tinuity by number. So we triumph over con- 


tinuity by dividing it into units of time and 


mass, units small enough to measure any time 
and any space. These units, the differentials of 
mathematics, are the atoms of pure science—of 
geometry, of algebra, of kinematics, etc. Thus 
atomism is a necessary hypothesis growing out 
of the nature of knowledge. 

So far we follow our author mainly with 
satisfaction, even in his long argument to prove 
that number and measurement are fundamental 
in geometry. A straight line is the shortest 
distance between two points; found shortest by 
measuring. Other definitions of a straight line 
he endeavors to reduce to the same notion. But 
all lines are made up of straight lines, and all 
figures are bounded by lines, so that all figures 
bear .about with them quantitative relations. 
To arrive at this conclusion he ignores projec- 
tive geometry, and discredits transcendental 
geometry by arguments which are familiar. 

But the atom in pure science is a concept, the 
object of a definition. We must not project it 
into the real world. So how about atomism in 
nature? This is, of course, the main theme of 
the book, and is pursued through the various 
fields of chemistry, mineralogy, optics, elec- 
tricity, etc., with intelligence and thorough- 
ness. Mainly he will carry the great body of 
physicists with him. Sometimes he will part 
company with them; as when he insists that 


7938 


the atom must have volume if it has mass, and 
that equal elementary masses imply equal vol- 
umes ; when he attempts to disprove the possi- 
bility of a vortex atom in a homegeneous fluid; 
when he tries to prove the conception of atoms 
as centers of force inconsistent with the idea of 
mass; and in many details of his argument. 

With greater success he exhibits the incon- 
sistency and incompleteness of molecular theory 
in chemistry; shows the inadequacy of the 
hypothesis of a single ether or a multitude of 
ethers to explain action at a distance; of the 
hypothesis—‘ that scandal of atomistics’—of 
molecular atmospheres to explain attraction 
and repulsion ; and, in general, of any hypothe- 
sis of an indivisible element to explain elasticity 
and other properties of matter. He compels us 
to see that our analysis only draws out of the 
atom what we have put into it; that, indeed, 
the atom of modern physics is a little world, 
almost organized, upon which are assembled all 
the properties and dynamic relations which it 
was to have been their mission to explain. 


E. A. STRONG. 
YPSILANTI, MIcH. 


SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS. 
THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, 


THE leading article of the May number is a 
biographical paper about the late Professor 
Hubert A. Newton, by J. W. Gibbs. It presents 
a brief account of his life and estimate of his 
personal character, and besides gives an ex- 
tended and thorough summary of his contribu- 
tions to astronomical science. This paper was 
read before the National Academy of Sciences 
at the recent meeting in Washington. 

A. G. Webster discusses a method of pro- 
ducing constant angular velocity in cases where 
a considerable amount of power is needed, as 
in driving a large telescope or siderostat. It is 
based upon the use of a tuning fork which in- 
terrupts an intermittent current and thus regu- 
lates an electric motor. Some experiments 
show that the method is a practical one up to 
more than one and a-half horse power. The 
same author also discusses a method for rapidly 
breaking powerful electrical currents. The end 
is accomplished by making the break under 
water while the mercury surface employed is 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 123. 


kept clean by being continuously elevated by 
means of an aspirated pump. By this means 
the jet is kept cool and presents a continually 
fresh surface of mercury, this being washed by 
the flowing water. The apparatus was found 
satisfactory in a current of twelve mean 
ampéres carried on for the course of an hour. 

John Trowbridge, following out the line of 
discussion involved in the paper in the April 
number, discusses the ‘ Electrical Conductivity 
of the Ether.’ By the method employed the 
author thinks he obtains an estimate of the 
energy required to produce the Rontgen rays 
and also a measure of resistance of sparks in 
air and different media. He closes thus: ‘‘It 
shows conclusively that the discharge in a 
Crookes tube at the instant when the Rontgen 
rays are being emitted most intensely is an 
oscillatory discharge. In popular language it 
can be maintained that a discharge of lightning 
a mile long under certain conditions encounters 
no more resistance during its oscillations than 
one of a foot inlength. In other words, Ohm’s 
law does not hold for electric sparks in air or 
gases. Disruptive discharges in gases and in 
air appear to be of the nature of voltaic arcs. 
Each oscillation can be considered as forming 
anare. It is well known that a minute spark 
precedes the formation of the voltaic arc in air. 
The medium is first broken down and then the 
are follows. I believe that this process occurs 
also in a vacuum and that absolute contact is 
not necessary to start the are. My experiments 
lead me to conclude that under very high 
electrical stress the ether breaks down and be- 
comes a good conductor.”’ 

T. W. Richards and John Trowbridge discuss 
the effect of great current strength on the con- 
ductivity of electrolytes. Experiments were 
made with copper sulphate and zine sulphate, 
and the conclusion is reached that the conduc- 
tivity is not essentially affected by great changes 
in the strength of the current. 

H. S. Williams has a paper on the Southern 
Devonian formations, especially in southern 
Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky, where he 
has recently carried on personal observations. 
He shows the remarkable contrast which exists 
between the formation as known in New York 
State and that as developed in the South, where 


May 7, 1897. ] 


it is characterized by a uniform black shale with 
even sedimentation. An hypothesisis advanced 
to account for this difference and some broad 
fundamental principles laid down which apply 
to such problems in general. C. D. Walcott 
gives a brief description of a new species of 
Lingulepis from the Middle Cambrian, in the 
Yellowstone Park. 

A. W. Duff discusses the secondary undula- 
tions of the water surface noted in tidal observa- 
tions on the Bay of Fundy. At Indiantown, 
near St. John, New Brunswick, slight fluctua- 
tions of level were noted on a calm day, which 
had a fairly constant period of thirty-five sec- 
onds. There was found also a series of larger 
undulations obtained in the record which had a 
period of from thirty to forty minutes. Both 
series ceased at about the same time—about half 
an hour after high water. In connection with 
these, the author reviews observations made by 
various authors on the seiches, particularly those 
of Forel on Lake Geneva. It is shown that 


Forel’s formula gives with fair accuracy the » 


proper period for the secondary undulations, but 
while the Swiss seiches are regarded as con- 
nected with the abnormal conditions of the 
barometer, no such relation appears to exist in 
the case here described. 

S. L. Penfield and H. W. Foote describe a 
new silicate from Franklin Furnace, N. J., to 
which they give the name Reblingite, which 
is remarkable in containing sulphur dioxide 
(SO.) and lead. 


THE AUK. 


THE April number opens with two papers on 
the spring plumage of the bobolink, respectively 
by Arthur P. Chadbourne and Frank M. Chap- 
man, the first being illustrated with a colored 
plate. Dr. Chadbourne describes a case of the 
change of color in a caged male bobolink to the 
spring dress without any loss or renewal of 
feathers, whereupon he claims that ‘color 
change in the individual feather is fact, not 
theory,’ and that ‘‘ the change to the breeding 
dress in the male bobolink sometimes takes 
place without a so-called ‘moult.’’” Mr. Chap- 
man’s paper is to some extent in the nature of 
a rejoinder to Dr. Chadbourne’s, especially in 
respect to a specimen of a moulting spring bobo- 


SCIENCE. 


739 


link from Corumba, Brazil, which Dr. Chad- 
bourne regards as acquiring the breeding dress 
partly by moulting and partly by change of 
color in the feathers themselves, an interpreta- 
tion, which, Mr. Chapman claims, is quite with- 
out basis in fact as regards the feathers alleged 
to be changing color. 

Jharles W. Richmond describes ten new 
species of birds from the Kilimanjaro region of 
Hast Africa, collected by Dr. W. Ju. Abbott; 
A. W. Anthony describes several new birds 
from Lower California ; W. W. Price describes 
a new pine grosbeak from California, and 
Leonhard Stejneger a new guillemot from the 
Kuril Islands. Harry C. Oberholser discusses 
at length the characters and relationships of 
the Western forms of the long-billed marsh 
wren, describing a new subspecies. William 
Leon Dawson gives an interesting annotated 
list of the birds of Okanogan county, Oregon; 
and A. W. Butler writes of various rare birds 
occurring in Indiana, including an account of 
the recent remarkable occurrence of Briinnich’s 
murre far inland. 

The department of ‘ General Notes’ includes, 
as usual, a large number of notes on rare or 
little known species, and a number of important 
nomenclatural notes ; ‘Recent Literature’ con- 
tains sixteen pages of reviews and notices of 
recent ornithological publications; ‘Correspond- 
ence’ and ‘General Notes’ complete the num- 
ber, which is much larger than usual and is 
filled with matter of unusually varied interest. 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 


BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON—275TH 
MEETING, SATURDAY, APRIL 10. 


Dr. THEO. GILL and Mr. C. H. Townsend 
presented by title, ‘Diagnoses of New Species 
of Deep Sea Fishes.’ 

Dr. Jonathan Dwight, Jr., under the title, 
“A Species of Shearwater (Puffinus assimilis, 
Gould) New to the North American Fauna,’ 
noted the occurrence of this species as a strag- 
gler, on Sable Island, on September 1, 1896. 

Mr. Sylvester D. Judd spoke on ‘ Antennal 
Circulation in Crangonyx.’ 

Mr. Charles T. Simpson read ‘ Notes on the 
Classification of Unios,’ being a brief sketch of 
the anatomical work of Lea, Agassiz, Kirtland 


740 


and Sterki. The speaker stated that there are 
two great groups of Unios in North America. 
The first is characterized by different forms of 
shells and branchiz in the male and female. 
The shell of the latter is swollen in the post- 
basal region, a character wanting in the male, 
and the outer branchize are developed in this 
region into a marsupium. The shells of this 
group are generally highly colored, without a 
ridge on the dorsal slope, not arcuate, have 
delicate beak sculpture, and the assemblage is 
no doubt entitled to generic rank, for which 
the name Lampsilis, proposed by Rafinesque and 
again by Agassiz, may be used. 

In the other great group the shells of male and 
female are essentially alike, being generally dull 
in color and arcuate in old age, having usually 
coarse beak sculpture and a posterior ridge. It 
is not certain that the sexes are always sep- 
arate. In one subdivision of this group the 
shells are oval to oblong, and the embryos are 
contained in the whole of the outer branchiee ; 
in the other the shells are heavy, short, often 
tuberculous, and have the embryos generally 
distributed throughout all four leaves of the 
branchie. This great group is retained in 
Unio, and it is believed that in anatomical 
characters it closely agrees with the forms of 
Europe. The Australasian Unios are very much 
like those of South America in shell and ana- 
tomical characters and are classed as a separate 
genus, Diplodon. The two naiad faunas may 
be relics of an older Northern fauna, which was 
superseded by more modern forms, or it is pos- 
sible that they may be parts of a Southern 
fauna that has migrated along a now sunken 
Antarctic continent. 

Mr. Harry C. Oberholser discussed ‘the 
American Golden Warblers,’ with particular 
reference to their geographical distribution. He 
recognized twenty forms of this difficult group, 
one-half of which he considered subspecies. 
The Boreal and Austral regions of North 
America and Mexico together possess five forms, 
probably all races of a single species ; the Cen- 
tral American subregion of the Neotropical has 
four ; the Columbian subregion four; and the 
Antillean subregion seven. Various anomalies 
of distribution were pointed out and com- 
mented upon. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 123. 


Mr. T. Wayland Vaughan gave some ‘ Notes 
on a Monograph of the Eocene Corals of the 
States,’ stating that until recently they had not 
been well understood, although the United 
States possessed the richest Eocene coral fauna. 
of any country. The original species came 
almost entirely from the Jackson stage and 
Lower Claiborne beds, and the material was 
often so water-worn as to be unrecognizable. 
Certain genera are well characterized and easily 
identified ; others are so close as to run to- 
gether. Virginia and Maryland constitute one 
fauna, containing their own peculiar species; 
the Gulf States constitute another, while Cali- 
fornia contains only three species, all endemic. 
This fauna as a whole belonged to shallow 
rather than deep water. No species of the 
American Kocene can be referred to the foreign 
Eocene. F. A. Lucas, 

Secretary. 


AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY. 


A SPECIAL meeting of the New York section 
of the American Chemical Society was held at 
the College of the City of New York on Friday, 
April 23d. Dr. C. B. Dudley, President of the 
Society, presided. 

Dr. E. K. Dunham, of Carnegie Laboratory, 
New York, read a paper on ‘ The Value of Bac- 
teriological Examination of Water.’ The dis- 
cussion was opened by Dr. W. T. Sedgwick, 
Director of the Biological Laboratory of the 
Massachussets Institute of Technology. Dr. J. 
J. Kinyoun, of the United States Marine Hos- 
pital Service; Dr. W. P. Mason, of the Troy 
Polytechnic Institute; Dr. A. R. Leeds, of Ste- 
vens Institute, and others, expressed their views 
and gave testimony to the independence of 
chemical and bacteriological methods in the 
study of water supply. 

An important point strongly insisted upon by 
Dr. Sedgwick is the necessity for a personal in- 
vestigation of the source from which a sample 
of water is obtained, and he advises the chem- 
ist and bacteriologist to refuse to report without 
personal investigation of the sources of supply. 

DURAND WOODMAN, 
Secretary. 


ERRATUM: P. 658, col. 1, line 25 for Mesopith- 
ecus read Nesopithecus. 


Lo-7 714 


Sore NCE 


N S: js SINGLE Copiss, 15 cts. 
Vor. V. No. 124, FRiIpAy, May 14, 1897. ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION, $5.00. 
OF 


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‘ 


SCIENCE 


EDITORIAL ComMITTEE: S. NEwcomsB, Mathematics; R. S. WooDwARD, Mechanics; E. C. PICKERING, 
Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THURSTON, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry; 
J. Lt ContE, Geology; W. M. Davis, Physiography; O. C. MArsu, Paleontology; W.K. 
Brooks, C. HART MERRIAM, Zoology; S. H. SCUDDER, Entomology; N. L. Brirron, 
Botany; HENRY F. OsBoRN, General Biology; H. P. Bowpitcu, Physiology; 
J. S. Brntines, Hygiene ; J. MCKEEN CATTELL, Psychology ; 
DANIEL G. BRINTON, J. W. POWELL, Anthropology. 


Fripay, May 14, 1897. 


CONTENTS : 


On the Distribution of Marine Mammals: P. L. 
{SUID AIT occuennsacoacconoscosoanadabecqsoouoanbscceacneeN 741 


Former Extension of Cornell Glacier near the South- 
ern End of Melville Bay: T. C. CHAMBERLIN ..748 


Suggestions for a New Method of Discriminating be- 
tween Species and Subspecies : C. HART MERRIAM..753 
The National Academy of Sciences :— 


On the Variation of Latitude; The Variation of 
Latitude at New York and a Determination of the 
Constant of Aberration from Observations at the 
Observatory of Columbia University ; Notes of Ex- 
periments upon the Rontgen Rays ......2....0-00se000s 758 


The American Association for the Advancement of 
erences HS We PUTNAM. ..0...ccssssss-cesenes--ea0s+-- 200 


The Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons..761 


Zoological Notes :— 


Color Change in the Plumage of Birds unaccom- 
panied by Mowt: F. A. LUGAS...... 22.0.0 reeeee 102 


Notes on Inorganic Chemistry : 
Astrophysical Notes: HE. B. F. 


Scientific Notes and News :— 


Legislation on the Forest Reservations; The Be- 
quests of the late Professor Cope; General 


University and Educational News.........0...01.seeeeeee: 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 
On Supposed Effects of Strain in Telescopic Objec- 
tives: ALVANG.CLARK. The Loess Formation 
of the Mississippi Region: OscaR H. HERSHEY.768 
Scientific Literature :-— 


Ridgway on Birds of the Galapagos Archipelago : 
C.H.M. Wiesbach and Hermann on the Mechanics 


of Pumping Machinery: R. H. T.........cc.eceeeeee 770 
Scientific Journals :— 
The Journal of Comparative Neurology............. 773 


Societies and Academies :-— 


Chemical Society of Washington: V.K. Cuxs- 
Nutr. Zoological Club of the University of Chi- 


cago: WILLIAM MORTON WHEELER. The New 
York Academy of Sciences : Subsection of Anthro- 
pology and Psychology: LIVINGSTON FARRAND. 
The St. Lowis Academy of Sciences: W1ILLIAM 
AN RISIEINSTS). coacocopa9ocaccoaccogadedeqnoonGeonosecsonocaence 774 


NCWEBOOKS .cccaicesaverss sc onseecrccedaeresccsen teen esee 776 
MSS. intended for publication and books, ete., intended 


for review should be sent to the responsible editor, Prof. J. 
McKeen Cattell, Garrison-on-Hudson, N. Y. 


ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF MARINE MAM- 
MALS.* 


I. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 


Most of the recent writers on Geograph- 
ical Distribution have confined their atten- 
tion to terrestrial mammals, or, at any rate, 
have but casually alluded to the marine 
groups of that class. On the present occa- 
sion I wish to call your attention to some 
of the principal facts connected with the 
distribution, over the world’s surface, of the 
marine, or aquatic, members of the class of 
mammals. 

Aquatic mammals, which pass their lives 
entirely, or, for the greater part, in the 
water are, of course, subject to very dif- 
ferent laws of distribution from those of 
the terrestrial forms. As regards aquatic 
mammals, land is, of course, an impassible 
barrier to their extension, and, subject to 
restrictions in certain cases, water offers 
them a free passage. Just the opposite is 
the case with the terrestrial mammals, to 
which, in most cases, land offers a free pas- 


* Read before the Zoological Society of London on 
March 16th. 


742 


sage, while seas and rivers restrain the ex- 
tension of their ranges. 

The groups of aquatic mammals that are 
represented on the earth’s surface at the 
present time are three in number, viz.: (1) 
the suborder of the Carnivora, containing the 
Seals and their allies, generally called the 
Pinnipedia, which are semi-aquatic; (2) 
the Sirenia, which are mainly aquatic, and 
(8) the Cetacea, which never leave the 
water, and are wholly aquatic. We will 
consider briefly the principal representa- 
tives of these three groups, following nearly 
the arrangement of them employed in 
Flower and Lydekker’s ‘Mammals living 
and extinct.’ 


II, DISTRIBUTION OF PINNIPEDS. 

The Pinnipeds, which I will take first, 
comprise three distinct families—the Ota- 
riide, the Trichechide, and the Phocide. 
Beginning with the Otariidw, or Eared Seals, 
commonly known as Sea-lions and Sea- 
bears, we find the greater number of the 
species confined to the South Polar Ocean, 
where they pass most of their time at sea, 
but, as is well known, resort to the land at 


certain seasons for breeding purposes. In the 


Atlantic Ocean, so far as I know, the Eared 
Seals have never been ascertained to occur 
further north than the estuary of the La 
Plata on the American coast and the vicinity 
of the Cape on the African coast. But in 
the Pacific, on the contrary, three distinct 
species of Otaria are found all over the Arctic 
portion of that ocean, and there are well 
founded traditions of Hared Seals having 
been formerly met with.in the Galapagos, 
while they still occur on the coast of Peru 
and Chili. I think, therefore, we may as- 
sume that Otaria was originally an Anarctic 
form, but has traveled northwards along the 
west American coast and is now firmly 
established in the North Pacific. In a 
parallel way in the class of birds, the Al- 
batrosses (Diomedea), which are essentially 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 124. 


a group of the Antarctic Seas, are repre- 
sented by three distinct species in the 
North Pacific. 

The second family of the marine Car- 
nivora, on the other hand, the Walruses 
(Trichechide), are entirely Arctic in their 
distribution; one species (Trichechus ros- 
marus) being peculiar to the North Atlantic, 
while a second nearly allied species (7. 
obesus) takes its place in the Northern 
Pacific. 

The third family of Pinnipeds is more 
numerous and varied, both in genera and 
species, than the two preceding and has a 
more extended range. The Seals, Phocide, 
embracing about nine different generic 
forms, are most numerous in the Arctic and 
Antarctic seas, but are also feebly repre- 
sented in some intermediate localities. Be- 
ginning with the North Atlantic, we find 
several species of Phoca inhabiting vari- 
ous parts of this area, and the Gray 
Seal (Halicherus) and the Bladder-Seal 
(Cystophora) exclusively confined to it. In 
the North Pacific all the four true Seals be- 
long to the genus Phoca, and three of them 
are identical with the North Atlantic spe- 
cies, but when we descend as far south as 
the Gulf of California on the American 
coast we meet with a species of Sea-elephant 
(Macrorhinus) which, like Otaria, has no 
doubt penetrated up here thus far from its 
ancestral abode in the Antarctic Ocean. 

Returning to the central Atlantic we 
find two species of seals inhabiting these 
waters, both belonging to the same genus 
Monachus. One of these (M. albiventer) in- 
habits the Mediterranean and the adjoining 
coasts of the Atlantic, while the other (i. 
tropicalis) is in these days restricted to some 
of the smaller and less known islands of the 
‘West Indies. 

The Phocide of the Antarctic Ocean all 
belong to genera distinct from the Arctic 
forms and more nearly allied to Monachus, 
the seal of the mid-Atlantic. They are of 


May 14, 1897.] 


four species belonging to as many genera: 
Ogmorhinus, Lobodon, Leptonychotes and Om- 
matophoca. Besides these the sea-elephant 
of the whalers (Macrorhinus) is essentially 
an Antarctic form, though now nearly ex- 
tinct there, after long persecution by man. 
But, as already noted, it extends, or has in 
former days extended, far up the west 
coast of America, and is still occasionally 
found on Santa Barbara Island, on the coast 
of California. 


III, DISTRIBUTION OF SIRENIANS. 

Only two forms of Sirenians are at the 
present time existing on the earth’s surface 
—the Manatee (Manatus) and Dugong 
(Halicore)—each representing a distinct 
family of the Order. The Manatee is an 
inhabitant of the coasts and estuaries of 
both sides of the middle Atlantic Ocean— 
one species (Manatus senegalensis) occurring 
on the African shores, and another (J. 
americanus) on the South American coast 
and in the Antilles. <A third species (i. 
imunguis), So far as we know at present, is 
found only in fresh water high up the 
Amazons. 

The Dugong (Halicore) is distributed 
from Hast Africa, along the shores of the 
Indian Ocean and its islands, to North 
Australia. Three species of this genus 
have been established—Halicore tabernaculi 
from the Red Sea, H. dugong from the In- 
dian Ocean, and H. australis from Australia; 
but it is doubtful how far these forms are 
actually distinguishable. 

Besides Manatus and Halicore, a third 
quite distinct form of Sirenian was formerly 
an inhabitant of the North Pacific. This 
was Steller’s Sea-cow (Rhytina stelleri), by 
far the largest animal of the group, which 
was exterminated by human agency about 
1768. Fortunately recent researches in 
Bering’s Island have been successful in 
supplying specimens of its skeleton for our 
principal museums, and Steller, its dis- 


SCIENCE. 


743 


coverer, left to posterity a good account of 
its habits and anatomy. 


IV. DISTRIBUTION OF CETACEANS. 

Adopting the recognized division of the 
Cetaceans into two Suborders, Mystacoceti 
and Odontoceti, according as to whether 
their mouths are furnished with baleen 
(‘whale-bone’) or teeth, we will first con- 
sider the True or Whale-bone Whales, 
which consist of a single family, Balenide, 
usually divided into five genera: Balena, 
Neobalena, Rhachianectes, Megaptera and Bale- 
noptera. Of these, Balena, Megaptera and 
Balenoptera are almost cosmopolitan—spe- 
cies of them, whether distinct or not is at 
present more or less uncertain, being met 
with in nearly every part of the ocean. 
But Rhachianectes has, as yet, been ascer- 
tained to occur only in the Northern Pa- 
cific, and Neobalena in the South Polar 
Ocean, so that we have in these cases two 
well-marked local types to deal with. 

The Toothed Wales (Odontoceti) are 
more diversified than the preceding group, 
and are usually held to embrace at: least 
four existing families, besides several extinct 
forms. The first family, containing the 
Physeteridz, or Sperm-Whales, consists of 
at least six genera (Physeter, Cogia, Hyper- 
oodon, Ziphius, Mesoplodon and Berardius). 
Physeter and Cogia are inhabitants of the 
whole oceanic area between the tropics, ex- 
tending in certain localities some way be- 
yond them. Hyperoodon is confined to the 
North Atlantic. Ziphius has an extensive 
range, and has been found in nearly every 
part of the ocean. Mesoplodon is also widely 
distributed, but is apparently more abun- 
dant in the Southern Hemisphere. Berar- 
dius, however, so far as we know at present, 
is restricted to the South Polar Ocean. 

The Third family of Toothed Whales con- 
tains only the Platanistide, or fresh-water 
Dolphins, which although, in some cases at 
the present day entirely fluviatile, must 


744 


necessarily have all descended from what 
were originally oceanic forms. The three 
known genera are Platanista of the Ganges 
and Indus, Inia of the river Amazon, and 
Pontoporia of the river La Plata;; the last 
form making a connecting link between the 
two preceding genera and the marine Dol- 
phins. 

The fourth family of Toothed Whales, 
containing the Dolphins, Delphinide, is very 
numerous in species and embraces at least 
fifteen or sixteen genera. But in spite of the 
efforts of Mr. True, who has recently given 
us an excellent summary of our present 
knowledge of them,* both the genera and 
species of Delphinide are still so imperfectly 
understood that I cannot say much about 
their geographical distribution. Most of 
the forms appear to be very widely distrib- 
uted, but it may be said generally that 
Dolphins are most abundant in the inter- 
tropical seas and less plentiful both to the 
north and south of them. 

There are, however, two forms that are 
exclusively inhabitants of the North At- 
lantic. These are the very remarkable Nar- 
whal (Monodon), in which the male is fur- 
nished with a single enormous horn-like 
tusk, and the Beluga, or White Whale (Del- 
phinapterus), closely allied to the Narwhal 
in many points of its general structure. 
These may be looked upon as quite isolated 
forms characteristic of the Arctic portion of 
the Atlantic, but not known in the Pacific. 


VY. DIVISION OF THE MARINE AREA OF THE 
GLOBE INTO SEA-REGIONS. 


From what has been already said, it will 
be evident that although many of the Ma- 
rine Mammals have a wide distribution, 
others are very definitely localized; and a 
study of the latter will, I think, enable us 
to divide the oceanic portion of the globe 

*See ‘A Review of the family Delphinide,’ by 


Frederick W. True: Bull. U.S. Nat. Mus. No. 36; 
Washington, U. 8., 1889. 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 124. 


into six Sea-regions, corresponding to a cer- 
tain extent with the six Land-regions into 
which I proposed to separate the terrestrial 
portion of the globe in 1874, and which 
were subsequently adopted by Mr. Wallace 
in his standard work on the Geographical 
Distribution of Animals. I propose to call 
these Sea-regions : 

(1) The North-Atlantic Sea-region or Arc- 
tatlantis (dpztos and. ariayrés = the daughter 
of Atlas), consisting of the northern portion 
of the Atlantic down to about 40° N. lat. 

(2) The Mid-Atlantic Sea-region or Mesat- 
lantis (uécos and ariayris), consisting of the 
middle portion of the Atlantic down to 
about the Tropic of Capricorn. 

(8) The Indian Sea-region or Indopelagia 
(voces and zédayos), containing the Indian 
Ocean down to about the same degree of 
S. lat., and extending from the coast of Af- 
rica on the west to Australia and the great 
Oriental islands on the east. 

(4) The North Pacifie Sea-region or Arcti- 
renia (apztos and stpyy=pax), containing 
the northern portion of the Pacific Ocean 
down to about the Tropic of Cancer. 

(5) The Mid- Pacific Sea-region or Mesirenia 
(vécos and e/p7y7) containing the inter-trop- 
ical portion of the Pacific Ocean; and finally 

(6) The Southern Sea-region or Notopelagia 
(véros and zéiayos), containing the whole of 
the South Polar Ocean all around the globe 
south of the above mentioned limits. 

We will now proceed to consider shortly 
the characteristic Mammals of these six 
Sea-regions. 


VI. THE NORTH ATLANTIC SEA-REGION, OR 
ARCTATLANTIS. 

Amongst the Pinnipeds, two well-marked 
generic forms, the Gray Seal (Halichwrus) 
and the Bladder-Seal (Cystophora) are ex- 
clusively confined to Arctatlantis. The True 
Seals (Phoca) and the Walrus (Trichechus) 
are found in this region and in Arctirenia ; 
and of the former genus three species (P. 


May 14, 1897.] 


vitulint, P. gremlandica, and P. barbata) are 
actually common to both these Sea-regions, 
while the Walruses ( Trichechus rosmarus and. 
T. obesus) of the two Sea-regions are perhaps 
somewhat doubtfully distinguishable. It 
may be easily understood how this has come 
to pass, because the Seals and Walrus may 
in the course of time, during unusually mild 
summers, have extended themselves along 
the north coast of the American continent 
into the Northern Pacific. But Arctirenia, 
as we shall presently show, is markedly dis- 
tinguishable from Arctatlantis, by the pres- 
ence of Eared Seals (Otaria), which is 
utterly unknown in the whole of the At- 
lantiec area. Otaria is, in fact, as regards 
Arctatlantis what I have called, on previous 
occasions (see P. Z. S. 1882, p. 311), a ‘ lip- 
otype’ of Arctatlantis, but what I now pro- 
pose to designate a ‘ lipomorph.”* 

The Sirenians are entirely absent from 
the North Atlantic and constitute another 
lipomorph of that area. 

Coming to the Whales, we find the Mysta- 
coceti well represented in the North Atlantic 
by Balena, Megaptera and Bolenoptera, but 
of these the two latter are almost univer- 
sally distributed over the ocean, and Balena 
recurs again in the North Pacific as well as 
in more southern latitudes, so that there is 
no genus of Whalebone Whales peculiar to 
Arctatlantis, although the great Balena 
mysticetus has never been found elsewhere. 

Proceeding to the Odontoceti, the case is 
different. Amongst the Physeteride, Hy- 

* On former occasions I have used the term ‘lipo- 
type’ for a natural group which characterizes a par- 
ticular locality by its absence. It would, however, 
perhaps be better to change the term to ‘lipomorph,’ 
because the type and its compounds have been gener- 
ally employed in reference to the particular speci- 
mens of a species upon which original descriptions 
are based (cf. Thomas, P. Z. S. 1893, p. 241). In the 
same way a natural group which characterizes a par- 
ticular country may be called a ‘ topomorph’ (té70¢ 
locus and yop¢4 forma). Thus in Africa Giraffa and 
Phacocherus would be ‘topomorphs,’ and Cervus 
and Ursus would be ‘lipomorphs.’ 


SCIENCE. 


745 


peroodon is confined to Arctatlantis and, as 
already explained, two very well-marked 
types of the Delphinide, Delphinapterus and 
Monodon, are likewise exclusively denizens 
of the North Atlantic ocean. Arctatlantis, 
therefore, may be said to be well character- 
ized by the possession of at least five genera 
of Marine Mammals not found elsewhere, 
viz., Halicherus, Cystophora, Hyperoodon, Del- 
phinapterus, and Monodon. 


VII. THE MIDDLE ATLANTIC SEA-REGION, OR 
MESATLANTIS. 

Mesatlantis has certainly not so many 
forms of Marine Mammals confined to its 
area as Arctatlantis, but there seem to be 
good grounds for its separation As we 
descend towards the tropics the true Seals 
(Phocine), which are constituted to live in 
colder water, gradually fall off in number, 
and in Mesatlantis are no longer met with. 
But in their place we find the genus Mona- 
chus or Monk Seal restricted to Mesatlantis, 
one species (J. albiventer) occurring in the 
Mediterranean and on the North African 
coast, and a second (WM. tropicalis) being 
found in the West Indies. Mesatlantis is 
likewise the true home of the well-marked 
Sirenian genus Manatus, one species of which 
(M. americanus) frequents the coast of 
America and another (M. senegalensis) that 
of Africa. 

As regards the Cetaceans we are not able 
to say that Mesatlantus, although well- 
furnished with many generic types of this 
Order, has one peculiar to it. We must, 
therefore, rest content with assigning two 
genera of Marine Mammals, Monochus and 
Manatus, as characteristic forms or topo- 
morphs of the Sea-Mammal life of Mesat- 
lantis. 


VIII. THE INDIAN SEA-REGION, OR INDOPE- 
LAGIA. 

The Marine Carnivora, so far as we know, 

are entirely foreign to Indopelagia, but the 


746 


Sirenians are well represented by the Du- 
gong (Halicore), which pervades all its 
northern coasts from North Australia to 
India and the Red Sea and down the A frican 
coast to Lamu*. Whether the species of 
Halicore found at different points within 
this area are the same or different is still a 
matter of discussion, but there can be no 
doubt that Halicore is an exclusive inhabi- 
tant of Indopelagia. As regards the Whales 
of Indopelagia, we know that Physeter, 
Cogia and Ziphius, and numerous forms of 
Delphinide, occur there, but I am not aware 
of any Cetacean that is entirely restricted 
to this Sea-region. 

IX. THE NORTH PACIFIC SEA-REGION, OR 

ARCTIRENIA. 

As was pointed out when speaking of 
Arctatlantis, Arctirenia has one genus of 
Phocide (Phoca) in common with the North 
Atlantic, and three of the species of this 
genus appear to be actually identical in 
these two Sea-regions, whilst a fourth Phoca 
(P. fasciata) is only found in the North Pa- 
cific. The Walrus (Trichechus) is again a 
form of Marine Mammals, common to both 
the great northern Sea-regions. But the 
feature of Pinnipedian life that absolutely 
distinguishes Arctirenia from Arctatlantis 
is the presence in the former of three (if not 
four) well-marked species of the Hared 
Seals ( Otartide), which are absolutely un- 
known in the vast extent of the Atlantic 
down at least to 30° S. lat. 

Arctirenia has unfortunately lost its Sire- 
nian, Steller’s Sea-Cow (Rhytina stellert), 
the largest and finest modern representative 
of this formerly prevalent group, which since 
the days of the Pleistocene, has greatly di- 
minished in numbers, but I think we may 
still treat Rhytina as one of the characteris- 
tic forms of the Arctirenian Sea-region. 
The North Pacific is also even at the pres- 


* A fine specimen of the Dugong from Lamu (on 
the east coast of Africa, lat. 2° 50’S.), obtained by 
Mr. J. C. Haggard in 1885, is in the British Museum. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 124. 


ent day the sole possessor of a remarkable 
genus of Whalebone Wales which combines: 
the long head and elongate form of Bale- 
noptera with the smooth skin of the throat 
and absence of the dorsal fin of Balena.* 
This is the Gray Whale, Rhachianectes glaucus 
of Cope, which, in these days, is confined to 
the North Pacific, and does notrange farther 
south than the 20th parallel in that ocean. 
At the same time it should be stated that 
indications have been discovered that a 
nearly allied form existed in the Atlantice 
in previous geological ages, though this is 
by no means certain. Besides Rhachianectes: 
Balena, Megaptera and Balenoptera are all 
represented in the North Pacific, and also. 
many species of Delphinide, of which little 
is at present known. But hytina- and 
Rhachianectes are the only genera of Marine 
Mammals absolutely confined to Arctirenia. 


X. THE MIDDLE PACIFIC SEA-REGION, OR 
MESIRENIA. 

The Eared Seals, Otaria, must have 
necessarily passed through Mesirenia in 
their passage from south to north, though 
the only record of their recent presence in 
the central part of the Pacific is, so far as. 
I know, the report that they were formerly 
found in the Galapagos. It should be 
stated, however, that Tschudi records the 
occurrence of two species of Otaria on the 
islands of the coast of Peru, and that in 
1802 Humboldt met with an Hared Seal on 
the island of San Lorenzo, in the Bay of 
Callao, which is only some 12° south of the 
Hquator. 

.. Like Otaria, the Sea-elephant (Macro- 
rhinus) has apparently in former ages trav- 
elled up the South American shores and 
established itself as far north on the coast: 
of California as about 34° N. lat. The 
California Sea-elephant has been discrimi- 
nated by Gill asa distinct species (Macro- 
rhinus angustirostris), but its differences from 


* Flower and Lydekker, Mammals, p. 241. 


May 14, 1897.] 


the southern form (JZ. leoninus) seem to be 
but trifling. 

As regards the Cetaceans of Mesirenia, 
our information is at present very imperfect, 
and I have little to say except that species 
of Meguptera, Ralenoptera, Physeter, Cogia and 
Ziphius certainly occur there, besides many 
representatives of the widely spread Del- 
phinide. 


XI. THE SOUTHERN POLAR SEA-REGION, OR 
NOTOPELAGIA. 


The wide ocean which surrounds the 
Southern Pole on every side, and extends 
up to 40° 8. lat., seems to present, as re- 
gards its marine mammals, a nearly homo- 
geneous fauna, which we will now briefly 
consider. In the first place it contains rep- 
resentatives of four genera of true Phocide 
—Ognorhinus, Lobodon, Leptonychotes,* and 
Ommatophoca, which are peculiar to the 
southern seas, and are quite distinct from 
all their northern representatives in the 
Arctic Ocean. The Sea-elephant, Macro- 
rhinus, is also a denizen of Notopelagia, 
though, as we have already seen, it has 
wandered north along the South American 
coast far into Mesirenia. 

Like Macrorhinus, Otaria also, containing 
the group of Eared Seals, appears to have 
been an Antarctic group, and the greater 
number of its species, although now-a-days 
very much reduced in numbers, are still 
found in the Southern Ocean. But the 
Otarie have travelled still further north 
than Macrorhinus, and three, if not four, 
species, as already stated, are in these days 
well established inhabitants of Arctirenia. 

The Sirenians are absent from Notope- 
lagia, but Cetaceans of every kind are abun- 
dant. Besides one or more representatives of 
the true Whale-bone Whale (Balena), No- 


*This generic term, established by Gill in 1872, 
seems to take precedence of Pacilophoca, proposed by 
Flower and Lydekker for the same type (LZ. weddelli) 
in 1891. Cf. Allen, North American Pinnipeds, p. 
418. 


SCIENCE. 


747 


topelagia has a smaller representative of the 
group (Neobalana) entirely restricted to its 
area. It has also representatives of Meg- 
aptera and Balanoptera, though it is doubt- 
ful how far they are even specifically dis- 
tinct from some of their northern repre- 
sentatives. 

Among the Toothed Whales ( Odontoceti) 
we find a large Ziphioid form, Berardius, re- 
stricted to the Notopelagian area, while 
ZAiphius and Mesoplodon also occur there. 
The Dolphins (Delphinide) are likewise 
numerous and present some distinct species, 
but not, so far as our present knowledge ex- 
tends, any generic forms that do not occur 
elsewhere. 

But Notopelagia is sufficiently distin- 
guished from all the five more northern 
Sea-regions by possessing four genera of 
Seals and two of Cetaceans entirely re- 
stricted to its area. 


XII. CONCLUSIONS. 


It has, therefore, I think, been shown that 
for the Geography of Marine Mammals the 
Ocean may be most conveniently divided 
into six Sea-regions, which are as follows : 

I. Regio Arctatlantica, characterized by its 
Seals (Phocinw), of which two genera, Hali- 
cherus and COystophora, are peculiar, whilst 
Phoca is common to it and Arctirenica; by 
the absence of Sirenians ; and by the pos- 
session of three peculiar genera of Ceta- 
ceans (Hyperoodon, Delphinapterus and Mono- 
don). 

Il. Regio Mesatlantica, sole possessor of the 
Monk-seal, Monachus, amongst the Pinni- 
peds, and of the Sirenian genus JManatus. 

IIL. Regio Indopelagica, characterized by 
the presence of the Sirenian Halicore and by 
the absence of Pinnipeds. 

IV. Regio Arctirenica, with Phoca, like the 
Regio Arctatlantica, but having Ofaria also ; 
the home of the (now extinct) Sirenian 
Ehytina and of the endemic Cetacean Rhachi- 
anectes. 


748 


V. Regio Mesirenica, without true Seals 
(Phocine), but having Otaria and Macro- 
rhinus from the south ; no Sirenian known. 

VI. Regio Notopolagica, characterized by 
four endemic genera of Phocide, and by the 
presence of many Otarie ; without Sirenians, 
but with two endemic forms of Cetaceans 
(Neobalena and Berardius). 

In conclusion, I will call attention to 
some of the more remarkable points in the 
general distribution of the marine Mam- 
mals, and to their apparent significance. 

In the first place it is evident that the 
Pacific has much more in common with the 
Notopelagian region than the Atlantic. 
Otaria and Macrorhinus, quite unknown in 
the Atlantic, extend themselves to the 
northern extremity of the Pacific, the 
former pervading that ocean up to Behr- 
ing’s Straits, and the latter reaching to the 
Californian coast. It follows that in former 
ages there must have been some barrier in 
the Atlantic which did not exist in the Pa- 
cific to stop their progress northwards. The 
only barrier I can imagine that would have 
effected this must have been a land uniting 
South America and Africa, across which 
they could not travel. Adopting this hy- 
pothesis, we have, at the same time, an ex- 
planation of the presence of the Manatee 
on both the American and African coasts. 
The Manatee could hardly live to cross the 
Atlantic. It is only found close to the 
coast, where it browses on sea-weeds and 
other vegetable food in shallow water. 
How did it travel from America to Africa 
(or vice versa), unless there were a continu- 
ous shore-line between them? The same 
may be said of the Monk Seal (Monachus), 
of which one species lives in the Mediter- 
ranean and on the African coast and Islands, 
and another in the West Indies. We can 
hardly believe that these creatures could 
easily traverse the whole Atlantic. The 
hypothesis of a former barrier of land be- 
tween Africa and America, which we know 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 124. 


is supported by other facts of distribution,* 
would alone explain the difficulty. 
On the other hand, in the Pacific we find 


no such break between the north and south. 


The aquatic Mammals of Notopelagia have 
evidently had free access to the whole 
Pacific. for a long period and have well 
availed themselves of this facility. 

Again, while the great Southern Ocean 
exhibits a considerable uniformity of marine 
Mammalian life, we see the Northern waters 
divided into two distinctly recognizable Re- 
gions by the interposed masses of land. All 
these facts, with the one exception of the 
supposed Atlantic Barrier, would tend in 
favor of the now generally accepted 
doctrine that the principal masses of land 
and water are not of modern origin, but 
have existed mainly in their present shapes 
throughout all ages. 

P. L. ScuaTEr. 

ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY, LONDON. 


FORMER EXTENSION OF CORNELL GLACIER 
NEAR THE SOUTHERN END OF MEL- 
VILLE BAY.+ 

THE ivitial effort of Professor Tarr’s paper 
is to controvert the opinions recently ex- ~ 
pressed by Chamberlin and Salisbury re- 
specting the former extension of the general 
glaciation of Greenland, their view being 
that the coast was not universally and pro- 
foundly overwhelmed by the inland ice. 
The observations of Professor Tarr had a 
range in latitude of about 5° 30’, those of 
Mr. Chamberlin about 17° 15', and those of 
Professor Salisbury about 12°. The joint 
observations of Chamberlin and Salisbury 
covered 18° 30’, the range of their landings 
being about 13° 40’. These landings em- 
braced thirteen different localities, counting 
the numerous landings on the border of 
Inglefield Gulf as one. ‘This statement has 

* Of. Wallace, Geogr. Distrib. Vol. I., p. 156. 


+ Bull. Geol. Soc. Amer., Vol. 8, pp. 251-268, 
Plates XXV.-XXIX., March, 1897. 


749 


SCIENCE. 


May 14, 1897.] 


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‘qJa] UO punoasyouq ut Aqdvisodo} synsuv ‘pessnr ‘punoibos0y ur eovyins poyviorys {yee NGg‘'G MOAR “ANAH], §TIATG FHL,, T YA 


750 


its occasion in the too insistent implication 
of the author of the paper under review 
that the observations whose validity he 
questions were limited to those made chiefly 
from a passing vessel. Of the latitude 
covered by the observations of Chamberlin 
and Salisbury about 8° 30’ lay south of 
the tract seen by Professor Tarr, and about 
4° 30! lay to the north of it. If the total 
distribution of observations be divided into 
three parts, 8° 30’, 5° 30’ and 4° 30’, in 
order from south to north, Professor Tarr’s 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 124. 


prerequisite is neglected, although an ex- 
plicit statement covering this common ter- 
ritory had been made by Professor Salis- 
bury (Journal of Geology, Vol. III., 1895, 
pp. 876-877). 

What are the respective conclusions rela- 
tive to this common tract? Professor Tarr 
insists upon general glaciation. Salisbury 
and Chamberlin believe in general glacia- 
tion with the exception of some high peaks 
and lee faces. Of the exceptions named 
by them none was visited by Professor 


Fia. 2. Dalrymple Island—Type of unglaciated topography. 


also Jour. Geol., Vol. II., 1894, p. 661.) 


observations fall within the middle division 
and cover less than one-third of the whole. 

It appears, therefore, that the testimony 
of 5° 30’ is being urged to set right the testi- 
mony of 18° 30’ in a matter of general con- 
clusions. In such an attempt it would 
seem altogether imperative that an author 
urging conclusions from the minor fraction 
should have ascertained, with scrupulous 
care, whether his own observations within 
that fraction confirmed or contradicted the 
coincident part of those made upon the much 
wider tract. Singularly enough, this vital 


(Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., Vol. VI., pp. 219; 


Tarr. There is, therefore, no direct obser- 
vational conflict. More than this, no ob- 
servations of the one party demonstrate 
glaciation where the other thought it ab- 
sent. The grounds for an issue are, there- 
fore, rather tenuous. The two sets of ob- 
servations are in reality rather confirma- 
tory than conflicting. The issue has arisen 
from an attempt to adjudicate the whole 
coast by a fraction which happens to be in- 
termediate in type, having been neither 
strongly subjugated by glaciation nor left 
conspicuously intact. 


May 14, 1897.] 


The author recognizes that the conclu- 
sions of Chamberlin and Salisbury are 
based upon evidence of two kinds: ‘one, 
the presence of a driftless area in the In- 
glefield Gulf region, announced by Profes- 
sor Chamberlin; and a second, the angular 
topography of the Greenland coast, de- 
scribed by both.” The first evidence, al- 
though vital to a general conclusion, is passed 
without discussion, because it was not seen 
by the author. He remarks, however, in a 
footnote that he ‘‘ cannot let this opportu- 
nity pass without raising the query whether 
the topography in the neighborhood of the 
Greenland driftless area is not such that an 
area of this sort would naturally be ex- 
pected. Was not the movement of the ice 
outward and the main stream down the In- 
glefield Gulf? And is not the driftless area 
located in the place where the high Red 
Cliff peninsula would naturally have clogged 
the ice and hence prevented its action of 
erosion and notable transportation ?”’ The 
driftless area is a part of the same ancient 
peneplain as the summit of the Red Cliff 
peninsula (Jowrnal of Geology, p. 205-6, Vol. 
IIT., 1895). It lies on the east side of Red 
Clif peninsula (see map, p. 668, Vol. IT., 
Jour. Geol.). It lies between it and the great 
ice cap. It is separated from the peninsula 
by the valley of Bowdoin bay, about two 
miles wide and 2,000 feet deep. How an 
isolated part of a peneplain can protect 
from glaciation another part of the same 
plain lying between it and the source of the 
glacial motion and several miles distant is 
not easily understood. The suggestion ap- 
parently sprang from the same lack of cir- 
cumspection that gave birth to the main is- 
sue without adequate grounds. 

The evidence drawn from topography is 
the main subject of discussion in the initial 
portion of the paper. The essential point 
urged in the paper and reiterated in subse- 
quent discussion is that angularity of to- 
pography is compatible with general glacia- 


SCIENCE. 


751 


tion, and that general observations on to- 
pographic contours have little or no value 
in deciding the prevalence of glaciation. 
The most important illustrative evidence 
in support of this is a photographic view of 
‘The Deyil’s Thumb.’ The photograph is 
here reproduced (Pl. 26, Vol. VIII., 1886, 
Bull. Geol. Soc. Am.). (Fig. 1.) Nothing has 
recently so astonished the present writer or 
his colleague as the presentation of this 
photograph as an illustration of the absence 
of topographic signs of glaciation. It is a 
marvel to us how any glacialist could fail 
to read from these coutours—even from the 
summit contours— just that degree of gla- 
ciation which was found by the more rigor- 
ous lines of study. It is true that the lee 
side is angular, but this does not in any es- 
sential way confuse or obscure the dominant 
expression, which is that of moderate gla- 
ciation. That geologists may see how dif- 
ferent are the contours that led Professor 
Salisbury and the writer to infer absence of 
glaciation in certain other regions, there is 
here reproduced the photograph of Dal- 
rymple Island which was used as an illus- 
tration of the asperities of a typical angular 
topography (Jour. of Geol., Vol. II., p. 661). 
(Hig. 2.) It must be evident to the critical 
observer that the two topographies belong to 
distinct types. The contours of Dalrymple 
Island clearly show the absence of any gla- 
cial softening. The contours of the so-called 
Devil’s Thumb and of the adjacent region 
clearly portray a moderate measure of gla- 
cial softening. The normal asperities of a 
non-glacial arctic topography are gone. 
This topographic expression seems to the 
reviewer to be such as to be read with ease 
and accuracy even at a distance, especially 
after the general habit of the region has 
been determined by more rigorous lines of 
evidence. The photograph does not sus- 
tain the author in calling the topography 
angular in an unqualified sense; nor does 
it sustain him in insisting that it is imprac- 


752 


ticable for observers to detect such signs of 
glaciation. 

An additional source of confusion is in- 
troduced by naming the promonotory of 
the photograph ‘The Devil’s Thumb.’ It 
is stated in a foot-note that ‘‘ This is the 
Devil’s Thumb as given on the Danish and 
British Admiralty charts. The real Devil’s 
Thumb of the Arctic explorers is some forty 
or fifty miles to the north of this”’ (p. 254). 
The true Devil’s Thumb is, however, 
sketched on the British Admiralty chart. 
The sketch as there given is herewith photo- 
graphically reproduced (Fig. 3). It will 


Fia. 3. The Devil’s Thumb, as given on the British 
Admiralty Chart. 


be seen that it does not bear even a remote 
resemblance to the promontory illustrated 
in the paper. It is to be assumed without 
question that the latter stands at the loca- 
tion designated on the charts as The Devil’s 
Thumb, but this location is obviously an 
error. It does not seem to us that it justi- 
fies the transfer of the name Devil’s Thumb 
to a new promontory to which the name 
has no fitness. It is especially unfortunate 
to introduce a second Devil’s Thumb in this 
connection, because the true Devil’s Thumb, 
by reason of its slenderness and angularity, 
has a significant bearing on the question of 
glacial extension, and together with Mel- 
ville Monument a similar pinnacle some- 
what further north has been so cited. Mis- 
apprehension has already arisen on account 
of this double use of the name. The slen- 
derness and angularity of the Devil’s 
Thumb are exaggerated in the sketch of the 
Admiralty chart—about as much as such 
objects are usually exaggerated by the im- 
pressions of the average observer. With 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 124. 


some discount for this it gives a fair idea of 
this singular landmark. 

If the true Devil’s Thumb, Dalrymple 
Rock, and similar instances of angularity 
and asperity are taken as one type; if the 
contours illustrated by the paper under. re- 
view be taken as a second type; if the con- 
tours of the Carey Islands (Journal of Geol- 
ogy, Vol. II., p. 662) be taken as a third 
type, and if the plainer topography north of 
Godhaab be taken as a fourth type, some- 
thing of the degrees and gradations of 
topographical modification which the coast 
belt of Greenland suffered at the hands of 
glaciation will be indicated. 

The view of the author that the peaks 
would remain more angular than the val- 
leys seems perfectly valid so long as the 
conditions are limited to the border of the ice 
cap. Near the border the thickness of the 
ice in the valleys is much greater than upon 
the hills. The main flowage is through the 
valleys, and subjugation of the heights is 
relatively slight. On the other hand, this 
reasoning entirely falls to the ground when 
applied to profound glacial submersion, 
such as is implied by an advance of the 100 
or 200 miles necessary to reach the heart 
of Baffin’s Bay. Such an advance means a 
depth of at least 5,000 feet of ice on the 
peaks. In this case the difference be- 
tween the depth on the heights and 
in the valleys is relatively much less, 
and three well established principles com- 
bine to emphasize the erosion of the 
peaks: (1) the upper portion of the ice 
moves faster than the lower; (2) ero- 
sion is correlated with rapidity of motion 
by some high power of the rate; (3) 
peaks yield to erosion more than emboss- 
ments of the valley, because (a) the surface 
exposed to action is relatively greater, and 
(b) the attachment, and hence the resist- 
ance, of the exposed parts is relatively less. 
The erosion, therefore, proceeds on the 
crests with a facility superior to that in the 


May 14, 1897. ] 


valleys by the measure of some multiplier 
much greater than unity. When valleys 
are irregular the basal retardation is still 
further increased and the movement of the 
ice is correspondingly transferred to the 
upper horizons. The irregularities of the 
coast of the region in question give this 
fact special application. The interpretation 
of the author is, therefore, quite consistent 
with a limited extension of the ice border, 
but quite inconsistent with profound exten- 
sion. The whole of the phenomena de- 
scribed in the paper are precisely concord- 
ant with moderate extension. They are as 
precisely discordant with great extension. 

The remainder of the paper consists of a 
description of the Cornell glacier, of the 
evidences and amount of former invasion, 
of the recent advance and retreat of the ice, 
and of the evidences of present retreat of 
the Cornell glacier. This portion embraces 
much valuable data, unless it is vitiated, as 
it probably is not, by the lack of care which 
marks the controversial part. It is ac- 
companied by excellent photographs, all of 
which, as the writer would interpret them, 
show evidences of greater or less glacial 
modification of contour. 

T. C. CHAMBERLIN. 
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. 


SUGGESTIONS FOR A NEW METHOD OF DIS- 
CRIMINATING BETWEEN SPECIES AND 
SUBSPECIES. 

Accorpine to present usage the rule 
which determines whether a particular 
animal or plant shall stand in our books as 
a species or subspecies may be stated as 
follows: Forms known to intergrade, no matter 
how different, must be treated as subspecies and 
bear trinomial names ; forms not known to inter- 
grade, no matter how closely related, must be 
treated as full species and bear binomial names. 
This principle was first distinctly formu- 
lated in the Code of Nomenclature of the 
American Ornithologists’ Union, published 


SCIENCE. 


759 


in 1886. In the remarks that follow, the 
authors of the Code state: “‘The kind or 
quality, not the degree or quantity, of differ- 
ence of one organism from another de- 
termines its fitness to be named trinomially 
rather than binomially. A difference, how- 
ever little, that is reasonably constant, and 
therefore ‘specific’ in a proper sense, may 
be fully signalized by the binomial method. 
Another difference, however great in its 
extreme manifestation, that is found to 
lessen and disappear when specimens from 
large geographical areas or from contiguous 
faunal regions are compared is, therefore, 
not ‘specific,’ and, therefore, is to be provided 
for by some other method than that which 
formally recognizes ‘species’ as the ulti- 
mate factors in zoological classification. In 
a word, intergradation is the touchstone of 
trinomialism.” 

Eleven years have now elapsed since the 
publication af the A. O. U. Code of Nomen- 
clature, in which the above canon and 
statement were first published. During 
this period the plan advocated has been very 
thoroughly tested, not only by ornitholo- 
gists, but by systematists in many other 
departments of zoology, and also in botany. 
The time has come, therefore, when it should 
be possible to examine its practical work- 
ings, with a view to ascertaining whether 
or not the system is satisfactory. 

In practice it has been found that only in 
a small percentage of cases does an author 
have at his command a sufficiently large 
series of specimens, from a sufficient num- 
ber of well-selected localities, to enable him 
to say positively that related forms do or 
do not intergrade. The result of this ob- 
vious embarrassment is that authors usually 
exercise their individual judgment as to the 
probable existence or non-existence of in- 
tergradation, thus introducing the personal 
equation it was hoped toavoid. The natural 
result is a degree of inconsistency in the use 
of trinomials which has formed the subject 


754 


of much criticism, and which, under exist- 
ing rules, it seems impossible to avoid. But 
its inconsistencies are not the only objection 
to the present system. From the nature of 
the case, increase in knowledge as to the 
interrelations of forms often shows that 
those treated as full species really inter- 
grade, and that closely related forms sup- 
posed to intergrade really remain distinct, 
necessitating corresponding changes from 
a binomial to a trinomial, and vice versa. 
Changes of this kind may be found in the 
A. O. U. Check-List of North American 
Birds by comparing the editions thus far 
issued. 

It will be many years, even in America, 
before it will be possible to say that certain 
forms do or do not intergrade, and until 
that time a fixed nomenclature will be im- 
possible. 

In view of the objections to the present 
system—incurable inconsistency, inevitable 
changes with increase of knowledge, and 
consequent delay in attaining a fixed nomen- 
clature—and also in view of what to me 
seems the logic of the case, it would appear 
desirable to modify the system in the interest 
of consistency, stability and common sense. 

In systematic zoology and botany a 
knowledge of the degree of difference between 
related forms is infinitely more important 
than a knowledge of whether or not the in- 
termediate links connecting such forms hap- 
pen to be living or extinct. It would seem, 
therefore, since it is is impossible for our 
nomenclature to tell everything we wish to 
know about a species, that it would serve a 
more useful purpose if the terms species and 
subspecies were so used as to indicate de- 
gree of difference, rather than the author’s 
opinion as to the existence or non-existence 
of intergrades. It may be argued that ‘ de- 
gree of difference’ is an elastic term, in- 
capable of measurement and subject to the 
same personal. equation that -kesets the 
present system. While this is to a certain 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 124. 


extent true—since authors rarely see ob- 
jects through the same spectacles— it is also 
true that individual opinion as to whether 
or not an observed degree of difference is 
worthy of specific recognition would vary 
within much narrower bounds than in the 
alternative case of hypothetical intergrada- 
tion; and, further, that the change in nom- 
enclature incident to the discovery of new 
facts, inevitable under the old system, would 
be entirely done away with. 

This leads to what is, after all, the most 
practical consideration in connection with 
the proposal to be governed by degree of dif- 
ferentiation rather than intergradation in our 
choice of binomial and trinomial nomencla- 
ture, namely, the quantity of difference it 
is desirable to accept as a measure of spe- 
cific distinctness. Some authors, like Mr. 
Liydekker in England, and Mr. Roosevelt 
in this country, would have us limit the 
number of species to types of groups, many 
of which are commonly regarded by natu- 
ralists as of subgeneric or even generic 
weight. Among the larger mammals their 
species are nearly always used in a super- 
specific sense. Thus they would have one 
large wolf, one small wolf, one black bear, 
one large brown bear, and so on, urging 
that the recognition of a number of related 
species is inconvenient, interfering with the 
clear and easy comprehension of the differ- 
ent groups. Of course this is true, but since - 
the function of the naturalist is neither to 
create nor destroy species, but to recognize, 
describe and learn as much as he can about 
those which nature has established, a diffi- 
culty arises in carrying out their views of 
classification. It is one thing to say—with- 
out taking the trouble to find out the char- 
acters that distinguish a batch of species— 
what one thinks ought to be done for the 
easier comprehension of the science ; a very 
different thing to arrange the animals them- 
selves in accordance with the species which 
actually exist. 


May 14, 1897.] 


A good deal, of course, depends on the 
point of view. Mr. Lydekker as a paleon- 
tologist and compiler of excellent general 
works on natural history, and Mr. Roose- 
velt as a hunter and writer of the best ac- 
counts we have ever had of the habits of our 
larger mammals, find it inconvenient and 
annoying to be confronted by a large num- 
ber of species. Still, if we examine the 
writings of these authors closely it becomes 
evident that they usually accept without 

complaint such species as have been cur- 

rently recognized by their predecessors. 
This is only human nature, for are we not 
always more ready to challenge the an- 
nouncement of new facts than to suspect 
those with which we have been long fa- 
miliar ? 

In my judgment, forms which differ only 
slightly should rank as subspecies even if 
known not to intergrade, while forms which 
differ in definite, constant and easily recog- 
nized characters should rank as species even 
if known to intergrade. 

In a recent article in Scrence, Mr. 
Roosevelt protests against the use of the 
word species where “‘it has entirely differ- 
ent weights in different cases,” and cites 
examples of what he considers its proper 
use. But he forgets a host of cases in 
which admittedly distinct species are not 
separated by any such gaps as those he 
mentions. Mr. Roosevelt, in addition to 
being a good deal of a mammalogist, is 
something of an ornithologist, and has 
made contributions of value to ornitholog- 
ical literature. He knows, therefore, that 
in the eastern United States we have two 
species of falcons belonging to the genus 
Falco, the Sparrow Hawk and the Duck 
Hawk, and two species of woodpeckers be- 
longing to the genus Melanerpes, the Red- 
headed Woodpecker and the Red-bellied 
Woodpecker, in both of which cases the 
species are separated by the kind of gaps he 
likes. He knows also that we have two 


SCIENCE. 


755 


species of thrushes, the Olive-back and 
Alice’s, and two species of small flycatchers, 
Traill’s and the Least, in both of which 
cases the species are so much alike that a 
trained eye is necessary to tell them apart. 
What will he have us do with these birds ? 
Shall we unite the two thrushes and the 
two flycatchers? If not, how can he recon- 
cile his theory to the enormous difference in 
weight of characters that distinguish the 
species of hawks and woodpeckers, con- 
trasted with those that distinguish the 
thrushes and flycatches? The real diffi- 
culty is thatin nature some existing species 
are closely related, while others are widely 
separated. Still, suppose for the sake of 
argument that we do attempt to carry out 
Mr. Roosevelt’s suggestion to lessen the 
number of species by uniting some of those 
that are more or less closely related, and 
suppose we select for this purpose two 
groups of mammals—the bears and coyotes 
—against whose species he has developed 
such a violent aversion. If in case ofthe 
bears we try to get rid of either the Grizzly 
(Ursus horribilis), the Barren-ground (U. 
richardsoni), the Yakutat bear (U. dalli), 
or the huge Alaska Peninsula bear (U. 
middendorfi), and in the case of the coyotes 
we aim to abolish any one of half a dozen 
species, as the northeastern Canis latrans, 
the California C. ochropus, the Rio Grande 
C. microdon or the Mexican C. cagottis, we 
are at once confronted by the same diffi- 
culties that would beset Mr. Roosevelt 
were he to undertake to unite under a 
smaller number of specific names such 
birds as the Hermit, Wood, Olive-back, 
Bicknell’s and Wilson’s thrushes, or the 
Warbling, Red-eyed, White-eyed, Hutton’s 
and Philadelphia vireos. These difficulties 
are of several kinds and involve the solu- 
tion of such questions as: (1) How many 
and what species shall be selected as the 
favored ones with which the others shall be 
merged? (2) Which of the species to be 


756 


distributed among the chosen ones shall 
go to this and which tothat? (3) When we 
have made what seems to be the best con- 
glomeration practicable with the material 
at hand, how are we to frame descriptions 
that will cover such incongruous assem- 
blages and distinguish them from one 
another ? And after all (4) why should we 
try to unite different species under common 
names? It is well to remember that the 
book of nature is not always easy to read, 
and that in the great majority of cases we 
know nothing of the ancestry of individual] 
species. 

A prolific source of error respecting the 
interrelations of allied forms is the common 
assumption that such forms are necessarily 
derived from one another. In numerous 
instances this is not the case, their origin 
dating back to a common ancestor now ex- 
tinct. Thus a species which in Pleistocene 
times had a transcontinental distribution 
may have given off in remote parts of its 
range several lines of descendants, each of 
which has since spread over so large an 
area that the resulting forms, originally 
widely separated, have now come to inhabit 
contiguous areas and as a consequence are 
assumed to intergrade. 

Possibly the skepticism of Mr. Lydekker 
and Mr. Roosevelt as to the validity of the 
new species of mammals recently described 
is a result of unconsciously overlooking the 
wide difference in the present status of the 
sciences of ornithology and mammalogy. 
Relatively, ornithology is a finished science, 
while mammalogy is yet in its infancy. 
Birds have been studied by scores of 
able naturalists; mammals by compara- 
tively few individuals. The disproportion 
in available material is even greater, for 
museums containing many thousands of 
bird skins rarely have more than a few hun- 
dred mammals. Until recently our mu- 
seums have made no effort to secure series 
of mammals from extreme points in their 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8S. Von. V. No. 124. 


geographic ranges, so that specimens might 
be placed side by side for direct comparison 
in order to ascertain positively—instead of 
assuming theoretically—what the differ- 
ences really are. Even to-day no museum 
in the world possesses anything like an 
adequate series of any of our larger mam- 
malia. In the few cases in which speci- 
mens of supposed single- species have been 
brought together from widely separated 
areas it has generally been discovered that 
two or more species had been confounded 
under a single name. 

In America the science of mammalogy 
took along sleep after the pioneer work of 
Audubon, Bachman and Baird, which ended 
with the publication of their great works in 
1854 and 1857. From this time until about 
ten years ago little advance was made. 
Then an active interest in the subject sprang | 
up and scientific collecting really began. It 
is probably safe to say that during the past 
decade more mammals have been collected 
in North America alone than were pre- 
viously contained in all the museums of the 
world. Furthermore, these specimens are 
not only of infinitely better quality than 
the old, but are accompanied by full data, 
uniform field measurements and perfect 
skulls. As a result, it is now becoming 
possible, for the first time in the history of 
the science, to bring together for actual 
comparison series of specimens in the dif- 
ferent groups covering the greater part of 
the range of these groups in an entire conti- 
nent. Is it surprising that the study of 
such material should result in the discovery 
of many new species? As a matter of fact, 
during the last ten years the number of 
species known in North America has been 
considerably more than doubled, and several 
entirely new genera have been found. 

In criticising a recent paper of mine on 
the coyotes, Mr. Roosevelt says: “‘ The im- 
portant point is the essential likeness of all 
the coyotes one to the other, and their 


May 14, 1897.] 


essential difference from the big wolves 
with which they are associated, and which 
are themselves essentially like the big 
wolves of Europe and: north Asia; and it 
seems to me that these facts can best be 
brought out by including the coyote and 
the wolf in one genusand treating each as a 
species. Then the geographical and other 
varieties may or may not be treated as 
worthy of subspecific rank according to the 
exigencies of the particular case.”’ 

The above remarks are based on a total 
misapprehension of the facts in the case 
and remind one of the judge who gave his 
decision first and tried the case afterward. 
As a matter of fact, two assumptions are 
made by Mr. Roosevelt which are widely 
at variance with the facts. The first is the 
assumed ‘essential likeness of all the coyotes 
one to the other ;’ the second, the assumed 
“essential difference [of the coyotes] from 
the big wolves.’ I can show Mr. Roosevelt 
a series of skulls of wolves from the United 
States in which the great gaps are not be- 
tween the big wolves and coyotes, but be- 
tween two species of big wolves and two of 
coyotes. Thus, there is an enormous gap 
between the large northern coyote (C. 
Jatrans) and the small C. microdon from the 
lower Rio Grande, and another great gap be- 
tween the big red wolf of Arizona and the big 
gray wolfof Wyoming. On the other hand, 
no such gap exists between the northern 
eoyote and the big red wolf of Arizona, 
the skulls and molar teeth of these species 
resembling one another surprisingly. Mr. 
Roosevelt’s third assumption, the assumed 
essential likeness of our big wolves to the 
big wolves of HKurope, may be correct or in- 
correct according to the parts of Hurope and 
America from which specimens-are taken. 
The southern wolves of the two countries 
are too unlike to require close comparison, 
and even in the case of the northern forms 
the specific distinctness is apparent as soon 
as the skulls are brought together. Thus, 


SCIENCE. 


757 


not to mention other differences, the long 
muzzle and narrow forehead of the wolf of 
our northern plains offer a sufficient con- 
trast to the short muzzle and broad fore- 
head of the Scandinavian animal. 

In my paper on the coyotes eleven forms 
were recognized, of which seven were named 
for the first time. All were treated bi- 
nomially, but it was intimated that pallidus 
and lestes would probably be found to inter- 
grade with latrans, and that estor might in- 
tergrade with mearnsi, leaving eight as dis- 
tinct species. It was stated that the avail- 
able material was insufficient to admit ‘ of 
determining which members of each group 
do and which do not intergrade,’ for which 
reason it was necessary, in obedience to the 
rule respecting the use of specific and sub- 
specific mames given at the beginning of this 
article, to treat all as species. This was 
done reluctantly and with the conviction 
that the rule is illogical and should be 
changed. If the plan here recommended is 
adopted we need not care whether inter- 
gradation occurs or not, but may bring to- 
gether as subspecies the closely related 
forms, and accept as species those more 
distantly connected. 

Tn conelusion, let me appeal to museums, 
sportsmen and naturalists to take advan- 
tage of every opportunity, before it is too 
late, to secure and preserve specimens of 
our larger mammals from remote parts of 
their ranges. In Europe it is certain that 
many species have been exterminated 
through the agency of man, and in this 
country the process is not only about to be 
repeated, but has already begun. The fa- 
miliar story of the vanishing buffalo is only 
one of many. The largest carnivorous 
animal of the United States, the giant 
grizzly of southern California, is on the 
verge of extinction, and it is doubtful if a 
museum specimen will ever be obtained. 
The large wolves have been exterminated 
over more than half the area they formerly 


758 


possessed, and no one knows what forms 
have disappeared and an unknown form of 
elk or wapiti which within the memory of 
our fathers—and of some men still living— 
inhabited the Alleghany region from North 
Carolina to the Adirondacks has been wiped 
off the face of the earth. 
C. Hart Merriam. 


THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 
ON THE VARIATION OF LATITUDE.* 

At the autumn meeting of the Academy in 
1894 the author had presented the numerical 
theory of the motion of the pole, synthetic- 
ally derived from the observations from the 
beginning of the history of the astronomy of 
precision up to that time, in its complete 
development, exactly as it stands to-day. 
Since then he had been interested to com- 
pare it with the various series of observa- 
tions subsequently published, not only for 
the purpose of verification and improve- 
ment of the numerical values of the various 
constants, but also to detect any additional 
characteristics which these later data might 
make apparent. These additional investi- 
gations had individually been neither ex- 
tensive nor important enough to call for 
separate publication ; since their general 
result has been merely a satisfactory con- 
firmation of the previous deductions as to 
the nature of the law of these motions, 
without furnishing material improvement 
of the numerical elements. But sufficient 
material has thus been gradually accumu- 
lated to make the present communication 
of some interest. 

The new material to be here utilized con- 
sists of the various series of observations 
by Talleott’s method up to the middle of 
1896, so far as published, at the following 
European stations, named in order of longi- 
tude : Kasan, Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Pots- 
dam, Karlsruhe and Strassburg. In Amer- 


*Abstract of a paper presented by Dr.S. C. Chand- 
ler. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 124. 


ica we have Doolittle’s series at Bethle- 
hem, which was brought to a close in the 
summer of 1895. He is now carrying for- 
ward a new series at Philadelphia of which 
we may hope soon to see the results. Of 
the series at Columbia University, by Rees, 
Jacoby and Davis, begun in the spring of 
1893 and still current, there have come to 
hand the results for the first fourteen 
mouths. It is an extremely fortunate cir- 
cumstance that a portion of this series, yet 
unreduced, will bridge the gap in Doolittle’s 
work rendered unavoidable by his removal 
from Lehigh University to the University 
of Pennsylvania. 

The curves of latitude variation from 
these various series were then exhibited, 
and compared with the numerical theory. 
This comparison shows a fidelity of repre- 
sentation eminently satisfactory, the differ- 
ences between computation and observation 
being practically within the range of errors 
of observation. 

A determination of the elements of the 
ellipse of the annual component of the polar 
motion was then presented, made from the 
newer observations, independently of the 
older ones previously used. The resulting 
elements are practically identical as to 
form, size and position of this ellipse. This 
seems to show that the axis of this elon- 
gated vibratory motion is stationary on the 
earth’s surface, along a meridian forty-five 
degrees east of Greenwich. This negative 
evidence as to any apsidal motion seems to 
be of extreme importance in its bearing on 
the theory of the earth’s rotation. 

A demonstration was then presented of 
the fact that since 1890 the circular 428-day 
motion has been diminishing its radius in 
conformity to the requirements of the nu- 
merical theory derived from the observa- 
tions between 1825 and 1890. 

In addition to the above, a discussion 
was presented of 645 observations of the 
Pole Star made with the Pulkowa Vertical 


May 14, 1897.] 


circle between 1882 and 1891. This series 
is especially interesting and important in 
that it covers an interval during which 
we have very little other information, of an 
extensive character, as to the variations of 
latitude. A comparison of the curves of 
observation and theory thus provided for 
this decade exhibited a most striking ac- 
cordance, and seems to leave no possible 
doubt that Nyrén’s inference, that his ob- 
servations do not betray evidence of the ex- 
istence of the annual component of the polar 
motion, is erroneous and attributable to il- 
logical methods in drawing his conclusions. 


THE VARIATION OF LATITUDE AT NEW YORK, 
AND A DETERMINATION OF THE CONSTANT 
OF ABERRATION FROM OBSERVATIONS AT THE 
OBSERVATORY OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.* 
THE results given in this paper were ob- 

tained from 1,774 observations made be- 

tween May 6, 1893, and June 20, 1894, with 
an 8-centimetre Wannschaff zenith tele- 
scope. The observations were planned for 

a determination of the constant of aberra- 

tion by Kustner’s method. Four groups 

of stars were used, having mean right as- 
censions approximately, as follows: 


(CaO O20 LoaSGeyanoosste snaaadedsceeebEnend 6" 
TD save geet nnaeeates euaece 14 
1 eS eae aca AC aREeR Aan aan aoe 18 
A Vicities aU Sees tass tues URk fast 22 


Each group contained seven pairs of stars, 
and covered two hours in right ascension. 
The groups were observed both morning 
and evening, whenever the weather per- 
mitted. The original plan of observations 
required four observers, but it was unfor- 
tunately necessary to reject altogether the 
work of one observer. This caused con- 
siderable gaps in the series, in addition to 
those due to unfavorable weather conditions. 

‘Only observations obtained during the 
period when it was possible to observe both 

* Abstract of a paper presented by Professor 


John K. Rees, Professor Harold Jacoby and Dr. Her- 
man S. Davis. 


SCIENCE. 


759 


evening and morning groups were used in 
calculating the latitude results employed 
for the computation of the constant of aber- 
ration. The observations of each group 
were gathered together into periods of 
about ten days each, in such a manner that 
the weighted mean of the dates should be 
the same for both the evening and morning 
groups. In this way the mean latitudes 
from the two groups should differ only on 
account of the difference between the decli- 
nation systems of the two groups, and on ac- 
count of any error in the assumed value of 
the aberration constant. They cannot 
differ on account of variation of latitude, 
provided any such variation is uniform 
during the short time of ten days. The 
result for the aberration constant is there- 
fore independent of any assumption as to 
the law of latitude variations. 

The constant of aberration was found to 
be 20.457 + 0.013. The mean latitude of 
the observing station * was 40° 48’ 27’7.195. 
The table of definitive latitudes for every 
ten days showed the variation of latitude, 
which was very small. The probable error 
of a single latitude was + 0’’.16. 

Observations have been continued from 
the date last given to the present time by 
Professor Rees and Dr. Davis, and will be 
kept up for some time longer. Reductions 
of the later series will be finished soon. A 
series of observations on the same stars has 
been made and is now being continued at 
the Royal Observatory at Capodimonte, 
Naples, by Professor Em. Fergola and two 
assistants, Messrs. Contarino and Angelitti. 


NOTES OF EXPERIMENTS UPON THE RONTGEN 
RAYS.} 


In most investigations hitherto made 
for testing the question of the refraction of 

* The observing station was at the new site of the 
University, about four miles north of the present 
University Observatory. 

} Abstract of a paper presented by Professor A. W. 
Wright. 


760 


the rays the refracting body has been in 
the form of a prism. ‘This involves the in- 
convenience that the absorption of the rays 
is so much greater toward the thicker por- 
tion of the prism as to cause imperfect or 
unequal definition in the image of the slit or 
wire used for the test. This has sometimes 
given rise to the appearance of a deflection 
of the rays away from the base of the prism 
instead of towards it, a negative action, 
implying a refractive index less than 
unity. 

In the present experiments this was 
avoided by employing for the refracting 
bodies thick pieces of glass and Iceland 
spar with parallel sides, which were in- 
clined at an angle of 45° to the path of the 
rays. The distances traversed by the rays 
in the two media were about 10 and 14 mm. 
respectively. The displacement of the image 
for ordinary light is about 1.5 mm. for the 
glass, and for the Iceland spar about 1.0 
mm. and 1.8 mm. respectively, for the two 
images due to double refraction. A small 
platinum wire, stretched so as to be quite 
straight, rested upon the upper surfaces of 
the plates, and the rays from the tube were 
passed through a narrow slit in a copper 
plate. The slit was parallel with the wire 
and at a considerable distance from it. A 
strong and very clearly defined image of 
the wire was formed upon the photographic 
plate, showing no displacement by the glass 
plate or the Iceland spar, and no trace of 
widening or duplication by the latter, or, in 
other words, no perceptible effect of refrac- 
tion, or double refraction. 

Other experiments were described, in 
which very sharply defined images of fine 
platinum wires produced by the rays 
upon a photographic plate showed a faint 
central band, dark in the negative but light 
in the positive, corresponding to the familiar 
bright central band behind an opaque wire 
in the case of luminous rays. The con- 
verse effect of a dark central band in the 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 124. 


positive from a narrow slit was also ob- 
served, but less distinctly. These results 
offer some support to the idea of true diffrac- 
tion and the periodic character of the rays, 
but the matter must be regarded as some- 
what uncertain until secondary maxima 
and mimima are obtained, which would 
settle the question of diffraction and per- 
mit the definite determination of wave- 
lengths. 


AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCE- 
MENT OF SCIENCE. 

A MEETING of the Council of the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science 
was held at Washington, D. C., on April 
12th. Owing to the lamented death of Pro- 
fessor Edward D. Cope, the late President 
of the Association, Professor Theodore Gill 
presided as Senior Vice-President. A num- 
ber of members were elected, and several 
matters of importance relating to the De- 
troit meeting were discussed and arranged 
at this meeting. 

Professor Leland O. Howard, of the De- 
partment of Agriculture, Washington, D.C., 
was nominated as Vice-President and Chair- 
man of Section F, to fill the vacancy caused 
by the death of Professor G. Brown Goode. 
Professor Howard was requested to prepare 
an address to be delivered before the Section 
at the Detroit meeting. 

Professor I. C. White, Vice-President and 
Chairman of Section H, will go to St. Peters- 
burg this summer as one of the delegates to 
the International Congress of Geologists. 
He will, however, prepare his Vice-Presi- 
dential address to be read before the Section 
at the Detroit meeting. 

On Monday evening, August 9th, at the 
Detroit meeting, Professor Theodore Gill 
will deliver a memorial address on the life 
and work of Professor Cope, at the time and 
place appointed for the Presidential address, 
which was to have been given by Professor 
Cope. In this address Professor Gill will 


May 14, 1897.] 


give an account of the development of ver- 
tebrate paleontology, with which Professor 
Cope was so intimately connected. 

Dr. Seth C. Chandler, of Cambridge, was 
elected Auditor of the Association, to fill 
the vacancy caused by the death of Dr. B. 
A. Gould. 

The Permanent Secretary read the letters 
received from the British Association for 
the Advancement of Science in which it was 
stated that the General Committee of the 
British Association had voted to make the 
officers of the Detroit meeting of the A. 
A. A. §. honorary members of the B. A. A. 
S. for the Toronto Meeting, and to receive 
all fellows and members of the American 
Association as members of the British As- 
sociatian for the Toronto meeting by the 
payment of the regular annual assessment. 
It was voted that the Permanent Secretary 
should acknowledge the courtesy of the 
British Association and at the same time 
should express the hope that members of 
the British Association would be present at 
the Detroit meeting, calling attention to 
the provision in the constitution of the 
American Association relating to members 
of foreign associations. 

Considerable discussion followed as to 
the proper method of extending courtesies 
to such members of the British Association 
-as might take part in the Detroit meeting. 
It was voted that members of the British 
Association at Detroit should be invited to 
register as members of the several sections 
-of the American Association, and that 
Special attention should be paid by the of- 
ficers of the respective sections to all for- 
-eigners thus registering. 

The Permanent Secretary was instructed 
to arrange for the delivery of the Vice- 
Presidential addresses at the Detroit meet- 
‘ing in the afternoon as at former meet- 
angs. 

F. W. Pornan, 
Permanent Secretary, A. A. A. 8. 


SCIENCE. 


761 


CONGRESS OF AMERICAN PHYSICIANS AND 
SURGEONS. 

Tue fourth triennial session of the Con- 
gress was held at Washington on May 4th, 
dth and 6th. The meeting was well at- 
tended, as it deserved to be, the proceed- 
ings of the Congress as a whole and of the 
separate societies being interesting and 
profitable. Washington, especially in the 
spring, is the best possible place for such 
meetings, and this was recognized by decid- 
ing to hold the triennial meetings hereafter 
in that city. The only drawback is the 
lack of an adequate auditorium, which may 
be provided in the interval. 

The proceedings of the Congress, as a 
whole, included several joint discussions. 
On Wednesday afternoon the Association of 
American Physicians, the American Phys- 
iological Society and the American Pedi- 
atric Society, united in discussing ‘ In- 
ternal Secretions considered in their Phys- 
iological, Pathological and Clinical As- 
pects.’ The other subjects taken into 
consideration in the general sessions were 
‘The Gouty and Rheumatic Diatheses 
and their Relation to Diseases of the 
Eye,’ Otology in its Relations to Gen- 
eral Medicine,’ ‘Deformities of the Hip- 
Joint, especially Congenital Dislocations,’ 
and ‘The Classification of Acute General 
Peritonitis : The Prognosis and Treatment 
of the Different Varieties.’ 

The address by the President, Professor 
William H. Welch, on Thursday evening, 
was entitled, ‘Compensatory and Protective 
Pathological Processes,’ and was an admi- 
rable presentation of the subject, equally in- 
teresting to the practitioner and to the man 
of science concerned with the study of 
adaptations and evolution. The attendance 
at the meeting was largs, although it and 
the subsequent reception were unfortunately 
simultaneous with a lecture by Sir Archi- 
bald Geikie and a reception to him in the 
rooms of the Geological Survey. Other ar- 


762 


rangements for the entertainment and social 
intercourse of members were a banquet on 
Tuesday evening at the Arlington and a 
‘Smoker’ given by the Cosmos Club on 
Thursday evening. 

On Wednesday afternoon a statue of the 
late eminent surgeon, Samuel D. Gross, was 
unveiled on the Smithsonian grounds near 
the Army Medical Museum. The statue 


was presented to the United States Govern- 


ment in a speech by Dr. C. N. Mastin, and 
was received by Surgeon-General George 
M. Sternberg. An address was made by 
Professor W. W. Keen, the successor of 
Gross at the Jefferson Medical College. It 
is to be hoped that many statues of men 
who have contributed to the advancement 
of science may ultimately find their place in 
the grounds of the Smithsonian Institution. 
Reports of the proceedings of the Ameri- 
can Physiological Society and of the Asso- 
ciation of American Anatomists will be 
published in this journal. The papers pre- 
sented before the various medical societies 
were so numerous that it is not possible to 
present a report of them, even though 
many of the contributions were not merely 
of interest to the medical specialist, but 
were also valuable contributions to science. 
The societies taking part in the Congress, 
their presidents and the numbers of papers 
offered before each, were as follows : 


The American Otological Society, 
Dr. Arthur Mathewson, Brooklyn, N. Y. 6 papers. 
The American Neurological Association, 


Dr. M. Allen Starr, New York City. 27 papers. 
The American Gynecological Society, 
Dr. James R. Chadwick, Boston, Mass. 21 papers. 


The American Dermatological Association, 
Dr. James C. White, Boston, Mass. 
The American Laryngological Association, 

Dr. Charles H. Knight, New York City. 18 papers. 

The American Surgical Association, 

Dr. John Collins Warren, Boston, Mass. 21 papers, 
including six subjects, followed by special dis- 
cussion. 

The American Climatological Association, 

Dr. E. Fletcher Ingalls, Chicago, Ills. 


26 papers. 


26 papers. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 124. 


The Association of American Physicians, 
Dr. J M. DaCosta, Philadelphia, Pa. 36 papers. 
The American Association of Genito-Urinary Surgeons, 
Dr. Francis S. Watson, Boston, Mass. 20 papers. 
The American Orthopedic Association, 
Dr. Samuel Ketch, New York City. 45 papers. 
The American Physiological Society, 
Dr. Russell H. Chittenden, New Haven, Conn. 22 
papers. 
The Association of American Anatomists, 
Dr. Frank Baker, Washington, D. C. 
The American Pediatrie Society, 
Dr. Samuel §. Adams, Washington, D. C. 33 
papers. 
The American Ophthalmological Society, 


Dr. George C. Harlan, Philadelphia, 
papers. 


10 papers. 


Pa. 38 


ZOOLOGICAL NOTES. 
COLOR CHANGE IN THE PLUMAGE OF BIRDS: 
UNACCOMPANIED BY MOULT. 


Nor long ago SciENcE noticed two papers, 
one by Dr. J. A. Alien and one by Mr. F. 
M. Chapman, in which the possibility of 
any change of color taking place in a feather 
after it was fully developed was emphat- 
ically denied. Now Dr. Arthur E. Chad- 
bourne comes forward in the Awk for April, 
1897, with facts which seem to make it evi- 
dent that this alleged impossibility does. 
take place. The author kept a pet Bobo- 
link from January until the breeding plum- 
age was complete, and writes as follows : 
“The bird always seemed well and strong, 
and the color change was NoT accompamed by 
any increase in feather loss, 1. e., not greater 
than during the winter, and often for sev- 
eral days in succession there were no cast- 
off feathers at all to be found. The total 
during the three weeks that the change 
was in progress was thirteen—namely, two 
broken rectrices and eleven contour feathers. 
It is hardly possible that any stray speci- 
mens were unnoticed, for even had they 
fallen outside of the cage they would have 
been found in the room, and a wire netting 
protected the window. ‘ Pin-feathers ’ could 
hardly have been overlooked, if present ; 
for I often held the bird in my hand and 


May 14, 1897.] 


carefully examined it, blowing back the 
plumage until the skin could be seen. It 
is also safe to say, doubtless, that the cast- 
off feathers were not eaten by the bird itself. 
Hence it follows that unless the previous 
plumage was made up of only two tail and 
eleven body feathers, both of the former on 
the same side—which was certainly not the 
case—my Bobolink was unquestionably an in- 
stance of color-change in the plumage without 
moult.” 

Dr. Chadbourne had already presented 
evidence tending towards the same end in 
the Auk for October, 1896, and January, 
1897, wherein he discusses change of color 
in the Screech Owl, Megascops asio. 

In The Ibis for October, 1896, Mr. John G. 
Millais also discusses the problem of color- 
change without moult, describing and figur- 
ing feathers from the Hared Grebe, Colymbus 
auritus, and Sanderling, Calidris arenaria, 
showing the great probability of such 
change taking place. The word probability 
is used advisedly, for Mr. Millais figures 
feathers in different stages from different 
birds, and while this evidence may be very 
strong it can not in the nature of things be 
so conclusive as change of color in the 
plumage of a bird kept under observation 
day after day. 

In spite of all that has been written, the 
moulting and change of color in birds is 
comparatively little known, and it remains 
a fine field of research for the investigator 
who is willing to spend his time in the pa- 
tient and careful collection of facts. 

135 AX, IU, 


NOTES ON INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 

For some time past there has been a 
tendency on the part of an increasing num- 
ber of chemists to attack the problems of 
inorganic chemistry, profiting by the light 
which the study of organic chemistry has 
thrown upon the carbon and nitrogen atoms. 
This is an encouraging tendency from the 


SCIENCE. 


763 


standpoint of theoretical chemistry, for 
while the devotion of by far the largest 
proportion of chemists, for several decades 
down to the present time, to organic chem- 
istry has widened vastly our knowledge of 
organic compounds and the carbon atom, 
yet the study of all other atoms is even 
more necessary for the theory of chemistry. 
Relatively very few inorganic compounds 
have been studied and some of our most 
familiar reactions are illy understood. So 
far from the inorganic field having been long 
ago worked out and exhausted, it is here 
that the chemistry of the future will find 
its most prolific harvest. Yet the field is 
far harder to till and less productive of im- 
mediate results. 


THE Berichte of the German Chemical 
Society might almost seem to be devoted to 
organic chemistry, so large is the prepon- 
derance, yet we find that the inorganic field 
is not wholly neglected. In the last num- 
ber Muthmann and Seitter contribute an 
investigation of the sulfid of nitrogen, which 
is in part a development of earlier work of 
Demargay. When nitrogen sulfid N,S, is 
treated with chlorin a theachlorid N,S,Cl, 
is formed, as shown by Andreocci. When 
sulfur chlorid is used, a compound of the 
formula N,S,Cl is obtained, and from this a 
series of derivatives, including the bromid, 
iodid, nitrate and thiocyanate. There thus 
appears to be a comparatively stable univa- 
lent group, N,S,, which the authors be- 
lieve to have a ring formula analogous to 
that of benzine. 


In the same Berichte, Pawlewski, of Lem- 
berg, gives a careful study of the physical 
properties of sulfuryl chloride, SO,Cl,, and 
some of its chemical reactions. Professor 
Séderbaum, of Gothenburg, in the same 
number describes a reaction between acety- 
lene and cupric salts. The cuprous acety- 
lid has been long known, but that acetylene 
gives a precipitate with cupric salts has 


764 


apparently been overlooked. The com- 
pound formed seems to have a very complex 
formula, being represented by C,,Cu,H,O,. 
It is more explosive than the corresponding 
cuprous compound and, unlike it, on treat- 
ment with dilute acid yields very little 
acetylene. It gives, on the contrary, a 
humus-like substance of a formula of about 
C,,H,O,, which resembles both humic acid 
and the so-called graphite hydrate obtained 
from the graphite of cast iron. It would 
seem to be an unique case of the condensa- 
tion of acetylene, at ordinary temperature 
under the influence of a copper salt, to a 
compound of high molecular complexity. 
J. L. H. 


ASTROPHYSICAL NOTES. 

In No. 367 of the Proceedings of the Royal 
Society is a note by Professor Oliver Lodge, 
read on February 11th, in which he calls at- 
tention to the notable discovery by Professor 
P. Zeeman, of Amsterdam, that lines in the 
spectrum of a flame may be broadened 
when a magnetic field is concentrated upon 
the flame. 

Zeeman’s paper appears in the Philosoph- 
ical Magazine for March (Vol. 43, pp. 226- 
239). He alludes to the fact that similar 
experiments were the last researches: of 
Faraday, in 1862. With the relatively 
slight dispersion then available, however, 
the effects could not have been observed. 

Sodium and lithium were used by Zee- 
man, and the broadening effects were ob- 
served in both the emission and absorption 
spectra, which were obtained from a power- 
ful concave grating. 

The experiment was also tried on the 
band spectrum of absorbing iodine vapor, 
with negative results, which, however, con- 
firmed the accuracy of the experiments 
with sodium. The widening of the sodium 
lines to both sides amounted to about 2, of 
the distance between D, and D, (that is, to 
about 0.15 tenth-meters). As the intensity 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 124. 


of the magnetic field was about 10* c.g.s. 
units, there would be a positive and nega- 
tive magnetic change of ,,5, of the period. 

The theory of the motion of ions or 
electrons, whose vibrations are those of 
light, is discussed according to the views of 
Professor Lorentz, who pointed out to Zee- 
man thatif the theory was true the edges of 
the widened lines ought to be circularly 
polarized in the direction along the lines of 
magnetic force, and plane polarized in direc- 
tions normal to the lines of force. This 
was clearly shown by experiment to be the 
case, and it has been confirmed by Lodge, 
who also readily obtained the broadening 
effect in the sodium flame. 

These researches are decidedly suggestive, 
and have an important astrophysical as well 
as physical application. The view is held 
by many that strong magnetic forces occur 
in the sun (and hence by analogy in the 
stars). Thus a new cause may perhaps be 
assigned for the wide range and variations 
in the breadth and intensity of spectral 


lines of celestial bodies. 
EK. B. F. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 


LEGISLATION ON THE FOREST RESERVATIONS. 


THE Senate, on May 6th, adopted Senator 
Pettegrew’s amendment to the Sunday Civil 
Appropriation Bill, suspending President Cleve- 
land’s order of February 22d, setting aside some 
20,000,000 acres of timber lands in the North- 
west as forest reservations. The N. Y. Hven- 
ing Post calls this action ‘monstrous,’ and it 
seems to be generally misunderstood. The 
Senators from the States concerned favor forest 
reservations, but President Cleveland’s order, 
with the laudable purpose of adequately cele- 
brating Washington’s Birthday and securing to 
his administration the credit of this important 
movement, seems to have been premature. The 
letter from the Secretary of the Interior to the 
President of the National Academy of Sciences 
requested an official expression of the Academy 
upon the following points : 


“ 


May 14, 1897.] 


1. Is it desirable and practicable to preserve from 
fire and to maintain permanently as forested lands 
those portions of the public domain now bearing 
wood growth for the supply of timber? 

2. How far does the influence of forest upon cli- 
mate, soil and water conditions make desirable a 
policy of forest conservation in regions where the 
public domain is principally situated ? 

3. What specific legislation should be enacted to 
remedy the evils now confessedly existing ? 

It came within the province of the committee 
to recommend the setting aside of additional 
forestry reservations, but its primary object was 
to suggest an intelligent policy for the preser- 
vation of the reserves previously made. The 
Academy was especially asked for an opinion 
on the legislation recommended by the Ameri- 
can Forestry Association and by the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science, in 
the hope that the weight of the Academy’s in- 
fluence would induce Congress to enact the 
needed legislation. Recommendations to this 
effect will doubtless be in the report now pre- 
pared by the committee of the Academy, and 
will guide the President and the Secretary of 
the Interior in the administration of the reserves 
in accordance with the powers given them by 
Senator Pettigrew’s amendment. 


THE BEQUESTS OF THE LATE PROFESSOR COPE. 


THE will of Edward D. Cope, signed October 
1, 1895, in accord with the guiding principles 
of his life, leaves, after making ample provision 
for his family, his collections for the benefit of 
science. His scientific books, his osteological 
collection, and his collection of fresh-water mol- 
lusea are given to the School of Biology of the 
University of Pennsylvania, and his collection 
of minerals to the University. Duplicates of 
the collection of fresh-water mollusca are to go 
to the Cincinnati Society of Natural History 
and to the American Museum of Natural His- 
tory. The collections preserved as wet prepa- 
rations and the skins of animals are given to 
the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. 
The paleological collections are divided into 
three parts: First. The North American col- 
lection. Second. The South American, 7. e., 
the Pampean collection which was purchased 
of the Buenos Ayrean exhibitors at the Paris 
Exposition of 1878, and small collections from 


SCIENCE. 


765 


the West Indiesand Mexico. Third. European 
collections chiefly from the Neocene of Alber of 
France. It is directed that these collections be 
sold, and after the payment of private bequests, 
including $2,500 to each of his assistants, Mr. 
Jacob Geismar and Miss Anna M. Brown, that 
the balance, estimated at $40,000, be given to 
the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadel- 
phia, as an endowment for a professorship or 
curatorship of vertebrate paleontology. The 
incumbent must be an original investigator 
elected by the Council of the Academy and ap- 
proved by the National Academy of Sciences, 
$400 of the income of this endowment to be 
used for the procurement, either by collection 
or purchase, of vertebrate fossils. The execu- 
tors of the will are Mr. John B. Garrett and 
Professor Henry F. Osborn. 


GENERAL, 


A MEMORIAL meeting in honor of the late 
Professor Sylvester was held under the auspices 
of the Johns Hopkins University on May 1st. 
Addresses were made by Dr. Fabian Franklin 
and others. 

THE Flower Astronomical Observatory of the 
University of Pennsylvania was dedicated on 
the afternoon of May 12th. An address was 
made by Professor Simon Newcomb. 


PRINCE LUIGI with a large party will shortly 
arrive in this country, with a view to making 
explorations in Alaska and ascending to the 
summit of Mt. St. Elias. Professor I. C. Rus- 
sell has made thorough explorations of the 
mountain, attaining a height of 12,000 feet, but 
the summit, some 18,000 feet in height, has 
never been reached. 

THE Literary and Philosophical Society of 
Sheffield proposes to have painted for the So- 
ciety a picture of Dr. H. C. Sorley in celebra- 
tion of the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning 
of his scientific work. 

THE degree of LL.D. has been conferred by 
the University of Edinburgh on Professor James 
Dewar and Dr. John Willie. 

THE Royal Geographical Society has elected 
the following as honorary corresponding mem- 
bers: Professor G. Della Vedova, Baron Toll 
and Captain Otto Irminger. 


766 


Dr. NANSEN’S proposed lecture before the 
Geographical Society at Rome has been aban- 
doned because the Society was unable to pay the 
terms demanded. 

TuE Board of Estimate and Apportionment 
of New York City have authorized the issue of 
bonds to the amount of $500,000, the money to 
be used for the erection of a further wing for 
the American Museum of Natural History. 
Plans for the wing prepared by the architects, 
Messrs. Kodeberg and See, were submitted and 
approved. 

THE class of 1897 of Yale University has pre- 
sented to the Peabody Museum a meteorite, 
weighing 65 lbs., which was found three years 
since in Kansas. 

A PROPOSITION in the Massachusetts House 
of Representatives to amend the bill appropri- 
ating $150,000 for the work of exterminating 
the gypsy moth, by making the amount $200.- 
000, was voted down, but the bill itself was 
ordered to a third reading. 


Ir is reported that the authorities of the ele- 
vated railways of New York City have exam- 
ined Mr. Keely’s motor with a view to its in- 
troduction. It is probable that the nature of 
motor was not made clear to them and that it 
will not be used in New York. Scientifically 
inclined people are not likely to believe that 
Mr. Keely’s motor can make something out of 
nothing, but this will not be the opinion of 
those who have invested money in the scheme. 


AT the monthly general meeting of the 
Zoological Society of London, held on April 
22d, it was reported that the additions to the 
Society’s menagerie during the month of March 
were 152 in number. Special notice was di- 
rected to three examples of the Indian pygmy 
goose (Nettopus Coromandelianus), presented by 
Mr. Frank Finn. It was stated that many at- 
tempts had previously been made to introduce 
this bird into Europe, but without success, and 
that these were the first specimens which had 
reached the Society’s gardens alive. 


ANOTHER great Auk’s egg has been sold at 
auction in London—this time to Mr. G. T. 
Middlebrook for 280 guineas. 


THE appearance of two new serials is noted 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vout. V. No. 124. 


in Natural Science: The Aeronautical Journal, 
published by the resuscitated Aeronautical So- 
ciety, and Kast Asia, a quarterly, which will 
include the natural history, etc., of the region. 


Dr. C. Du Bois-REYMOND, son of the late 
Emil Du Bois-Reymond, expects to edit, from the 
notes of students, the courses of lectures given 
by Du Bois-Reymond, at the University of Ber- 
lin, on the Results of Modern Science and Phys- 
ical Anthropology. 


IT gives us regret to announce the death of 
Martin L. Linell, Aid in the Department of In- 
sets of the U. S. National Museum for the past 
nine years. Mr. Linell was 47 years of age, a 
Swede by birth and a former student in the 
University at Lund. He came to America in 
1879, and was at first Curator of the Brooklyn 
Entomological Society, accepting the position 
in the National Museum in 1888. He was one 
of the most learned coleopterists in the country, 
and his high scientific attainments, as well as his 
thorough acquaintance with the great collection 
of insects at Washington, will render it very 
difficult to fill his place. 


THE American Naturalist for May contains a 
short appreciation of the late Professor Cope, 
by Dr. Persifor Frazer, who takes pro tem. 
Cope’s place as senior managing editor of the 
journal, and an article on Cope by Professor J. 
8. Kingsley, who for many years was associated 
with Cope in the editorship of the journal. 
The number also contains six portraits of Cope. 
Four of these are from photographs taken re- 
spectively in 1879, 1884, 1887 and 1892. These 
show an evident gain in force of expression, 
which appears not to be unusual with men of 
great achievement. The frontispiece of the 
number is from an oil painting by Mr. George 
W. Pettit, in the possession of the American 
Philosophical Society, and a second full-page 
plate is from a bust by Mr. Eugéne Costello. 


THE opening article of the May number of 
the American Journal of Science is an admirable 
memoir of Hubert Anson Newton, by Professor 
J. Willard Gibbs. The frontispiece of the 
number is a portrait of Professor Newton in 
his library, taken by a member of his family in 
the spring of 1894. The appended bibliography 
contains 69 titles. 


May 14, 1897.] 


FROM a note in the current number of the 
American Journal of Science we take the follow- 
ing facts regarding the late Matthew Carey Lea, 
who died on the 15th of March. He was born 
in 1823, and was the eldest son of Isaac Lea, 
the publisher, well known as a geologist and a 
mineralogist, but especially as a conchologist in 
connection with his investigations on the genus 
Unio. His early associations giving him a 
special interest in scientific matters, he entered 
the laboratory of Professor James C. Booth and 
there acquired great proficiency in chemistry. 
To this science he devoted his life, his chemical 
researches being numerous and important. He 
was elected to membership in the National 
Academy of Sciences in 1892, and the list of his 
nore important papers then published con- 
tained fifty-four titles. These investigations 
for the most part related to the chemistry of 
photography, and especially to the action of 
light and other forms of energy upon silver 
salts. He described photo-bromide and photo- 
iodide of silver, and in 1887 published a paper 
on the ‘Identity of the photo-salts of silver with 
the material of the latent photographic image.’ 
His most remarkable discovery, made in 1889, 
. was that silver is capable of existing in three 
allotropic states. 


On the catalogues of Muscinez by Mitten, 
in Godman’s Natural History of the Azores, 
which recognized 47 species from the archi- 
pelago, and the recent collections of Trelease, 
Brown, Carreiro, Machado, Blanchy, Richard 
and Minelle, M. Cardot in the last report of the 
Missouri Botanical Garden bases a catalogue of 
88 Azorean species and 14 varieties or forms, of 
which 9 species and 3 varieties are considered 
as new to science. He also describes one new 
species and indicates one other as probably un- 
described, from a small collection of 19 species 
made on Madeira last year by Trelease. Eleven 
plates illustrate, in habit and detail, the novel- 
ties. 


A LETTER from Professor Th. Tschernychew to 
Dr. Persifor Frazer in reference to the approach- 
ing International Geological Congress is trans- 
lated and published in the current number of 
the American Naturalist. It states ‘‘that from 
this time on the number of persons who have in- 


SCIENCE. 


767 


scribed themselves is so great—nearly 700—that 
it will be absolutely impossible to enable them 
all to take part in the excursions.’’ It is not 
clear from this whether those already registered 
may be excluded from the excursion or whether 
this applies only to new applicants, but those 
who are attracted to the Congress by these ex- 
cursions will do well to make enquiry. 

THE issue of SCIENCE for February 12th con- 
tained an article by Professor A. B. Macallum 
on the arrangements for the Toronto meeting of 
the British Association. We are now able to 
give the preliminary daily programme, which is 
as follows : 

Wednesday, August 18th. Reception Room open, 8 
a. m. to 6 p. m.; Meeting of Council at 10a. m.; 
Meeting of General Committee at 3 p. m ; Address 
of the President, Sir John Evans, in Massey Hall, 
at & p. m. 

Thursday, August 19th. Sectional Meetings in most 
cases, 10 a. m. to 3 p. m.; Garden Party, 3.30 to 6 
p. m ; Conyersazione in the Legislative Buildings, 
8.30 to 11.30 p. m. 

Friday, August 20th. Sectional Meetings in most 
cases, 11 a. m. to 3 p. m.; Garden Party, 3.30 to 
6 p. m.; Lecture by Professor W. C. Roberts- 
Austen, C.B., F.R.S., in Massey Hall at 8.30 p. m. 

Saturday August 21st. Sectional Meetings, 10 a. m. 
to 1 p. m.; Excursion of Members of Section G. 
(Mechanical Science) to Niagara, 9a. m. to 6 p. m.; 
Excursions to Hamilton and neighborhood, Niagara 
Falls and Muskoka Lake Region, returning on 
Monday morning. Lecture to Workingmen. Lec- 
ture and subject to be announced. 


Monday, August 23d. Sectional Meetings in most 
cases, 10 a.m. to 4p.m; Excursion of Members 
of Section C (Geology ) to Scarboro’ Heights, 1 to 6 
p. m.; Garden Parties; Lecture by Professor J. 
Milne, F.R.S., on Earthquakes, in Massey Hall, at 
8:30 p. m. 

Tuesday, August 24th. Sectional Meetings in most 
cases, 10 a. m. to3 p. m.; Garden Party at Trin- 
ity College, 4 to 6 p. m.; Conversazione in the Uni- 
versity Building, 8:30 to 11:30 p. m. 

Wednesday, August 25th. Some Sectional Meetings, 
10a. m. tol p. m.; Concluding General Meeting, 
2:30 p.m.; Garden Parties, 3:30 to 6 p. m.; Ban- 
quet in honor of Lord Kelvin, Lord Lister and Sir 
John Evans, 8 p. m. 

Thursday, August 26th. Excursions to Niagara Penin- 
sula, Thousand Islands, Ottawa, Montreal, Upper 
Lakes and to Manitoba and British Columbia. (See 
Excursion Guide. ) 


768 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 


Mrs. E. B. Coxe has given Lehigh Univer- 
sity $20,000 asa fund in memory of her husband, 
Eckley B. Coxe, the income of which is to be 
used for the support of poor and deserving stu- 
dents. 


CoLORADO COLLEGE has been given $10,000 
by an anonymous donor to be used for a build- 
ing for women students. 


THE Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
receives, by the will of the late William Tappen, 
Jr., Milton, Mass., $10,000 to be used for de- 
serving students, and is further made the resid- 
uary legatee of the estate. 


THE will of the late Rev. Caleb Bradley, of 
Dedham, Mass., gives $2,000 to Tufts College 
and $2,000 to Gales College. 


Dr. E. FiscHER has been promoted to a full 
professorship of botany in the University at 
Berne, and has been made Director of the 
Botanical Gardens. Dr. Gustav Jager, docent 
in the University of Vienna, has been appointed 
to an assistant professorship of theoretical 
physics, and Dr. Friedrich Grafe, docent in the 
Polytechnic Institute at Darmstadt, to an as- 
sistant professorship of mathematics. 


Mr. A. FrRANcIS Dixon has been appointed 
professor of anatomy in the University College 
of South Wales. It appears that the method 
of election was for three selected candidates to 
appear before the Council, one to be chosen by 
that body. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 


ON SUPPOSED EFFECTS OF STRAIN 
SCOPIC OBJECTIVES. 


IN TELE- 


To THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: In your issue 
of April 23d (page 656) I notice a criticism by 
Professor E. 8. Holden, Director of the Lick Ob- 
servatory, which seems to me to call for a word 
of comment. Professor Holden is inclined to 
discredit the observations of Mercury and 
Venus made by Mr. Percival Lowell and his 
assistants at Flagstaff, principally for the reason 
that they have not as yet been ‘ fully confirmed 
by other observers with other telescopes.’ The 
markings seen by Mr. Lowell he attributes to 


SCIENCE. 


LN. S. Von. V. No. 124, 


a supposed strain on the glass, induced by an 
overtight condition of the adjusting screws or 
of the objective in the cell. 

Now it happens that I personally superin- 
tended the adjustment of the Lowell objective 
in the cell at Flagstaff before the observations 
in question were made, and I am satisfied that 
the screws holding the glass in place were 
barely turned home with the fingers. I desire to 
express it as my belief, founded on long experi- 
ence as a practical optician, that strain in the 
glass is incapable of producing the effect of 
markings on a planetary disc. It is obvious 
that the same class of strain which exists in the 
Lowell must be present also in the Lick objec- 
tive, since both are mounted precisely alike in 
their cells on triangular bearings ; and if such 
effects were produced in the 24-inch glass as 
Professor Holden imagines they would be 
much more apparent in the 36-inch. 

Having worked both of these objectives my- 
self, and expended as much artistic ability on 
the one as on the other, there can be no impro- 
priety in my saying that the performance of the 
Lowell glass is equal to that of the Lick or any 
of our large telescopes. 


ALYAN G. CLARK. 
CAMBRIDGEPORT, MASs., 
May 1, 1897. 


THE LOESS FORMATION OF THE MISSISSIPPI 
REGION. 


To THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: In reply to 
Professor J. E. Todd’s letter in your issue of 
April 30th I wish to offer the following remarks: 

A complete and satisfactory answer of the 
questions presented by Professor Todd would 
require a thorough discussion of the Loess for- 
mation; but the necessarily limited nature of 
this communication, and my own imperfect 
knowledge of the formation in its entirety, will 
admit only of my touching briefly upon a few 
points. 

There is, in portions of the upper Mississippi 
region, particularly in that part of it with 
which I am best acquainted — northwestern 
Illinois, a silt deposit which is spread out over 
the very uneven uplands as an originally nearly 
uniform sheet, and whose relation to belts of 
comparatively thick typical loess along the 


May 14, 1897.] 


main streams is similar to that between the 
gray loamy clay and the ‘loess’ of Missouri. 
The upland deposit is similar in composition to 
the typical loess of the valleys, except that it 
contains a large constituent of fine clay parti- 
cles which partially bind the rounded silt grains. 
This deposit of unusually argillaceous loess, 
besides mantling the upland ridges, descends 
the slopes of the valleys and is present over the 
thick terrace-like deposits of true loess. They 
are separated by a smoothly undulating but 
quite sharp line. This line is present through- 
out northwestern Illinois and in Iowa at Du- 
buque. Without discussing the significance of 
this line, I will call attention to the fact that 
Chamberlin and Salisbury, in making the study 
of the loess of the ‘ Driftless Area,’ recognized 
the distinction between the silt deposits along 
the main streams and on the uplands remote 
from the main water-courses, particularly on 
the east side of the Mississippi river; and in 
reference to their origin they say, on"pages 306-7 
of the 6th Annual Report of the U. S. Geolog- 
ical Survey, ‘‘ the loess-depositing waters were 
neither true lakes nor true rivers, but assumed 
an intermediate fluvio-lacustrine character, pos- 
sessing sufficient onward flow to prevent the 
deposition of a large proportion of the clayey 
constituents of the silt they bore. * * * 
The loess probably represents the debatable 
ground between the two”’ (a lake and a river). 
““The coarser stratified portion along the im- 
mediate valleys of the great streams seems 
clearly on the fluvial side of the line, while the 
broad, loam-like mantle apparently lies on the 
other side.’’ It is this comparatively thin but 
uniform mantle of argillaceous loess or loam, 
on the uplands and in the valleys, for whose 
origin I claim a purely lacustrine or possible 
semi-marine character, largely because, while 
clearly water-laid, it passes within one-half 
mile and less from the top to the base of hills 
100 and even 200 or more feet in height. It 
mantles a region having a range in altitude of 
600 or more feet. 

With special reference to the question of the 
mode of formation of the gray loamy clay of 
Missouri, which I regard as a portion of the 
Loess formation, as also does Professor Todd, I 
wish to make the following statements, which, 


SCIENCE. 


769 


I believe, can easily be demonstrated to be 
facts : 

The drift sheet of northern Missouri was not 
laid down on a perfectly level plain, but on an 
undulating upland, dissected by valleys of 
which the Missouri and Mississippi were ex- 
amples. The Missouri valley, at least from 
Boonville onward, is preglacial inage, and it is 
hardly necessary for me to add that the Missis- 
sippi valley along the entire east border of the 
State is so also. These valleys do not now have 
much drift because it has been removed from 
them by subsequent erosion. 

The line of Professor Todd’s supposed ‘bar- 
vier’ or ridge .from the Osage-Gasconade 
divide to Pike county, Illinois, being traversed 
by two important preglacial valleys—the Mis- 
sissippi and Missouri—loses its effectiveness to 
account for the difference in altitude of the 
loess plains of northern Missouri and southern 
Illinois. 

The gray loamy clay or ‘upland loess’ of 
northern Missouri was laid down on an undu- 
lating plain, some portions of which have a 
decided slope. The ‘fluvial’ theory of its 
origin, which supposes that the area upon 
which it was being formed was dry during a 
large part of the year, and, therefore, that it 
was deposited somewhat like the alluvial silts 
of the Mississippi delta at the highest flood 
stages, is opposed by the inequalities, when 
considered over broad areas, of the surface of 
the sheet of loess or loam. Rivers do not 
wander about except on plains which have an 
even and very slight slope. In order to uni- 
formly sheet with water-laid silt even a very 
slightly hilly region, a lake-like body of water 
is required. That which covered northern 


‘Missouri at the time the ‘upland loess’ was 


deposited may not have exceeded 50 or 100 feet 
in average depth, and may not have covered the 
entire loess region at one time, but its nature 
was decidedly different than that of a river. 
The failure to find beach ridges is far from 
being positive evidence of the absence at any 
former time of the shore line of a great lake, 
or even of the sea. For instance, the ocean 
waters in advancing over Florida to form the 
Columbia sands which mantle the northern por- 
tion of the peninsula, and laterin withdrawing 


from the same area, formed no distinct beach 
ridges; at least none have been observed by the 
writer. In Citrus and neighboring counties the 
marine Columbia sands seem to be composed of 
three members—a lower or red member (formed 
while the shore line was advancing inland), a 
middle or yellow member (formed mainly dur- 
ing the culminating period of the submergence), 
and an upper or white member (formed while 
the shore line was retreating). These rest upon 
an undulating land surface, rising ina distance of 
about eight miles, from séa level at Crystal River, 
to an altitude of about 180 feet A. T., near Le- 
canto, and again descending to nearly sea level 
in the Withlacoochee valley. No prominent 
beach ridges were formed because the shore line 
did not remain at one level on the slope of the 
land a sufficient length of time. This is only one 
of a number of similar cases which might be 
mentioned where the sea advanced upon and 
retreated from a sloping land surface without 
forming beach ridges. ‘ 
In regard to the other objections against the 
lacustrine origin of the Missouri ‘upland loess,’ 
presented by Professor Todd, namely, that it is 
absent from certain areas in the eastern part of 
the State near the junction of the Mississippi 
and Missouri rivers and at a low level, I wish 
to suggest that it may have been there present 
originally as a very thin sheet which has since 
almost disappeared because of erosion. Past 
experience has taught me that when the loamy 
deposit which constitutes the ‘upland loess’ is 
very thin and patchy and approaches closely in 
composition and appearance to the residuary 
clays it is, by many geologists, scarcely recog- 
nized asa portion of the Loess formation. This 
suggestion is justified by the fact that I have 
observed in the region traversed by the Sts 
L. and S. F. railroad, between Cuba and 
Pacific City, a loamy clay, usually free from 
pebbles, apparently separated from the residu- 
ary clay by a sharp line, and overspreading the 
surface of a hilly country like the ‘upland loess’ 
in northwestern Illinois. If this is a portion of 
the Loess formation it indicates that the lake 
or sea waters rose against the northeastern 
corner of the Ozark uplift to an altitude of 
1,000 or more feet, or rather I should say that 
the land went down to that amount below these 


SOIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No. 124. 


waters. 
ought to be investigated. 
FREEPORT, ILL. 


The superficial silts of this region 
O. H. HERSHEY. 


SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 

Birds of the Galapagos Archipelago. By ROBERT 
Rip@way. Proce. U. 8. National Museum, 
Vol. XIX., pp. 459-670, 2 pls. Cover title- 
page dated 1896, but not published till 
March, 1897. 

It was in the Galapagos Islands that Darwin, 
during the memorable ‘ Voyage of the Beagle’ 
in 1835, made the original observations which 
led him to discover and formulate the great 
principle of evolution—to the elucidation of 
which the remainder of his life was.so success- 
fully devoted—and it was the birds of these 
islands which first drew his attention to the de- 
rivative origin of species. Hence to naturalists, 
and particularly ornithologists, the Galapagos 
Islands will ever be classic ground. 

Unhappily, the advent of man, with his reti- 
nue of goats, pigs, cats and rats, has already 
resulted in the extermination of at least one of 
the indigenous birds; others are threatened 
with the same fate. The extinction of an ani- 
mal is always a matter of regret, and in the 
present case is a serious loss to science because 
of certain unsolved problems respecting the ex- 
traordinary and unique interrelations of many 
of the species. - For instance, certain genera 
contain a large number of forms, alike in color 
and markings, but differing in proportions, 
particularly the size and shape of the bill. In 
one genus (Geospiza) the bill presents a series 
of types which at first would hardly be sup- 
posed to fall within the limits of a single family, 
—much less a single genus. This remarkable 
series comprises bills that in form and size re- 
semble those of tanagers, small-billed sparrows 
and huge-billed grosbeaks. But for the exist- 
ence of intermediate forms no one would think 
of placing such diverse kinds in a single genus. 
In one or two of the genera almost every con- 
ceivable stage and step of intergradation exists, 
so that it becomes extremely difficult—if not 
in some cases impossible—to draw the line be- 
tween specific and individual variations. 

Owing to the absence of information concern- 
ing the adaptations and limits of specific varia- 


May 14, 1897.] 


tion among these birds in life, and owing fur- 
ther to the fact that certain species are on the 
verge of extermination, while others doubtless 
still remain to be discovered, it is clearly of 
pressing importance that some competent 
ornithologist should visit the islands and study 
the habits and interrelations of the various 
forms before it is too late. 

In recent years relatively large collections of 
birds have been made on some of the islands. 
Those obtained by the naturalists of the ‘ Alba- 
tross’ in 1888 and 1891, and by Dr. George 
Baur and Mr. Adams in 1891, were brought to 
the U. S. National Museum, where they have 
been critically studied by Mr. Ridgway. The 
result is the present admirable paper entitled 
‘ Birds of the Galapagos Archipelago,’ one of the 
most important ornithological publications that 
has appeared in many years. It is a compre- 
hensive treatise ‘intended,’ as the author tells 
us, ‘to embody practically all that it known of 
the avi-fauna’ of the region. Still ‘‘itdoes not 
claim to be exhaustive, for a great deal has yet 
to be learned before anything like a complete 
exposition of the subject is possible.”’ 

Respecting the conflicting theories as to the 
origin of the Galapagos Mr. Ridgway states : 
‘‘ All writers are agreed that the Galapagos 
Islands are volcanic; nearly all, from Darwin 
to Agassiz, agree that they were uplifted from 
the sea by volcanic action, and that their up- 
heaval therefore antedates the advent of or- 
ganic life upon them. © Dr. Baur, however, be- 
lieves that these islands are the higher points 
of an extensive submerged area, whose subsi- 
dence took place after a fauna and flora had 
been acquired; or, to quote his own words: 
‘At a former period these islands were con- 
nected with each other, forming a single large 
island, which itself at a still earlier time was 
emited to the continent, probably with Central 
America and the West Indies.’ ’’ 

Mr. Ridgway modestly adds that he is ‘‘not 
competent to discuss the relative merits of these 
two opposite theories from the physiographer’s 
standpoint; but if the apparent relationships 
of the fauna have any bearing on the question,’’ 
he believes Dr. Baur’s theory ‘at least worthy 
of serious consideration.’ He calls attention 
to the map accompanying Alexander Agassiz’s 


SCIENCE. Ci 


report on the cruise of the ‘Albatross’ for 1891, 
which shows that the Galapagos and Cocos Is- 
lands stand on a submarine plateau covered by 
only 1,500 fathoms of water, and that this 
plateau reaches northeasterly to within 100 
miles of the present coast of Central America,and 
is only a little more than 30 miles distant from 
the 1,500-fathom coast-line. These distances are 
too insignificant to form any barrier to the free 
passage of birds; hence, if it can be assumed 
that the present submarine plateau was ever 
above the level of the sea it would naturally 
have received its original bird population from 
Central America. Let us see how this accords 
with the facts of present distribution. Mr. 
Ridgway tells us that 38 genera of birds are 
believed to breed on the islands. Of these, 
23 are wide ranging, 6* are peculiar to the 
islands, and 7 are tropical American. Elimi- 
nating the wide-ranging genera, 13 remain, of 
which 6 are peculiar and all of the others trop- 
ical American. Mr. Ridgway then takes up the 
5* peculiar genera and discusses each with re- 
spect to its relationships and probable origin. 
After stating that two of these are clearly of 
American origin, that two resemble both Ameri- 
can and Hawaiian types, and that the remain- 
ing one ‘‘has no very near relative among the 
known continental or West India birds, but in 
general appearance is very much like a smaller 
‘edition’ of the Hawaiian genus Oreomyza,’’ he 
sums up as follows: ‘‘Of the five peculiar 


Galapagoan genera of birds, only two (Neso- 


mimus and Nesopelia) are of evident American 
relationship. The remaining three have so 
obvious a leaning toward certain Hawaiian di- 
cxidine forms that the possibility of a former 
land connection, either continuous or by means 
of intermediate islands as ‘stepping stones,’ 
becomes a factor in the problem. It may be 
that the resemblance of Cocornis, Cactornis and 
Camarhynchus to the above mentioned Hawaiian 
forms is merely asuperficial one, and not indica- 
tive of real relationship. I do not by any 


* By a singular slip the number of peculiar genera 
given in the tables and on page 465 is 6, while two 
pages later it is reduced to 5. The latter number is 
the result of uniting Cactornis with Geospiza after the 
earlier pages were written. By an oversight this was 
not corrected in the proof. 


772 


means claim, on the strength of such evidence, 
a common origin for them, but merely present 
the facts as ‘food for reflection.’ ’’ 

In discussing the extraordinary conditions 
presented in the genus Geospiza, Mr. Ridgway 
states: ‘‘ When it is remembered that the col- 
oration is practically, if not absolutely, the 
same in all of the twenty-odd forms of the 
genus Geospiza, it will be seen that if any segre- 
gation of species is made at all it must be based 
upon measurements; and when it is further 
seen that there is a gradual transition from the 
enormous beak of G. magnirostris to the com- 
paratively minute one of G. parvula and from 
the excessively thick one of G. pachyrhyncha 
(whose lateral outlines approximate an equi- 
lateral triangle) to the slender and curved one 
of G. scandens or the acuminate one of G. 
acutirostris ; and that size of beak is not neces- 
sarily correlated with length of wing, tarsus, 
etc., the difficulty of defining species becomes 
obvious. * * * Having been perplexed by 
these difficulties I have carefully weighed all 
doubtful cases, and whenever there seemed to 
be a well defined average difference between 
specimens from different islands I have not 
hesitated to separate them as local forms. No 
other course, indeed, is practicable; for were 
‘lumping’ once begun there could be no end to 
it, unless purely arbitrary limits were given to 
the species recognized, and if followed to a 
logical conclusion might easily end in the recog- 


nition of a single variable species, equivalent 


in its limits to the genus.’’ 

In an earlier paper Mr. Ridgway united the 
genera Cactornis and G'eospiza because of inter- 
gradation; in the present paper Cactornis is re- 
tained in a subgeneric sense. Mr. Ridgway 
quotes a letter from Dr. Baur as follows: 
“You place the species of these two genera in 
one genus, Geospiza. Ido not think that this 
is natural. Both have their peculiar represent- 
atives on the different islands, and if you 
place them together this peculiar differentiation 
of each is lost sight of. Cactornis is more 
slender than Geospiza and has many more 
black individuals. I would keep the two 
genera apart.’’ Dr. Baur might have strength- 
ened his position by adding that genera should 
be based on degree of differentiation rather 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 124. 


than on the survival or non-survival of inter- 
grades. The present case is unusually ex- 
treme, because a complete chain of intermedi- 
ate ‘species’ is known to exist, connecting the 
slender-billed Cactornis type with the thick- 
billed Geospiza type. But in all cases of de- 
rivative genera the theory of evolution, con- 
ceived on these very islands, calls for the 
existence at one time or another of similar 
chains of intergrades. Whether such inter- 
grades survive, bridging the extremes with 
living forms, or die off, leaving the extremes 
trenchantly defined, is a matter of zoological 
interest, but one in no way affecting the degree 
of differentiation of the extremes, on which 
alone, in my judgment, the question of generic 
distinctness should rest. 

Chronologic lists of the species found on each 
island by the various explorers, from Darwin 
in 1835 to Townsend, Baur and Adams in 1891, 
are given, and also an exceedingly convenient 
tabular statement showing in 16 columns the 
various islands on which each of the 105 
species is known to occur. This is followed by 
the systematic part of the paper, comprising 
keys, maps and careful descriptions of the 
various genera and species. The map used is 
a skeleton, covering considerably more than a 
half page, on which range is indicated by 
heavy-face numerals. Since this map is intro- 
duced about 50 times the waste space at the 
top and bottom adds materially to the size of 
the paper. Two plates are given showing the 
astonishing variations in the size and form of 
the bill in the genera Nesomimus, Camarhynchus 
and Geospiza. The paper closes with a bibli- 
ography of 23 titles. The technical descriptions 
are models of thorough painstaking work, and 
the memoir as a whole easily takes a place 
among the classics of ornithology. 

By an utterly unpardonable blunder, for 
which the author is in no way responsible, the 
cover-title-page is dated 1896, although not 
published until March, 1897. Accidents are 
liable to occur anywhere, but the number of 
papers bearing the cherished imprint of the 
Smithsonian Institution which are permitted to 
appear under ostensible dates that materially 
antedate the actual date of publication is not 
only an injustice to the author and an annoy- 


May 14, 1897.] 


ance to the bibliographer, but is hardly credit- 
able to the spirit of scientific accuracy and fair- 
ness which American science has done so much 


to promote. 
C. H. M. 


The Mechanics of Pumping Machinery. By J. 
WEISBACH and G. HERRMANN. Authorized 
Translation by K. P. DAuustrom, M. E. 
Macmillan & Co. 1897. Pp. 300. 8vo. 
$3.75. 

This work is a translation of the latest divi- 
sion of the Weisbach cyclopedic treatise on En- 
gineering Mechanics. It is intended mainly as 
a text-book, and for use in advanced courses of 
instruction in engineering schools; while it is 
also thought that it may have value to the de- 
signer and constructor in his daily work. The 
translator has added some matter exhibiting the 
progress made in this field since the original 
publication of the book in Germany, and in this 
he has had the aid of Professor Klein’s notes. 
The work includes discussions of early forms of 
water elevators and hydraulic machinery, of the 
theory and action of pumps, both reciprocating 
and rotary, and an account of other less well- 
known apparatus for raising water. The repu- 
tation of the author, Professor Herrmann, the 
distinguished technicist, isa guarantee of the re- 
liability of these discussions, and this guarantee 
is confirmed by examination of the pages of 
this translation, in which these discussions have 
been faithfully brought over into the English 
and in satisfactory form. 

The illustrations are numerous and helpful ; 
the text is by them rendered admirably lucid. 
In general appearance and style the volume 
corresponds to its predecesors in the same 
series and, without being elegant, is creditably 
made up. Its price is moderate and it will 
probably find its place in the library of all who 


possess its companion volumes. 
R. H. T. 


SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS. 


THE JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE NEUROLOGY. 
VOL. VII., NO. 1. 


THE issue for April contains three memoirs, 
besides editorials and reviews. B. F. Kings- 
bury writes on ‘The Structure ard Morphology 


SCIENCE. 


773 


of the Oblongata in Fishes,’ from the standpoint 
of the components of the nerve roots. Some 17 
species of cartilaginous and bony fishes were 
examined, their nerve roots analyzed and the 
components traced to their respective centers, 
along the lines laid down by Strong’s recent 
work on the cranial nerves of Amphibia. It 
will be remembered that Strong reduces the 
sensory nerves of the head to three types: (1) 
the general cutaneous system, innervating the 
skin and terminating in the ‘ascending’ or 
spinal fifth tract of the medulla; (2) the acus- 
tico-lateral system, innervating the lateral line 
canals and the ear and terminating in the tuber- 
culum acusticum of the medulla; (8) the fasci- 
culus communis system, innervating taste buds, 
certain specialized end-organs of the skin not 
belonging to the lateral line system, and the 
mucous and visceral surfaces in general, and 
terminating in the fasciculus communis of the 
medulla, or the cellular aggregates associated 
with it (lobus vagi of fishes). 

Now in the fishes examined, Dr. Kingsbury 
finds these components present, and arranged 
in essentially the same way as in the Amphibia. 
The varied and apparently anomalous conditions 
found in the medulla of the fishes, which have 
so long puzzled the morphologists, have been 
reduced for the most part to variations in the 
relative development of these three. factors. 
The lobus trigemini of the catfishes is regarded 
as a specialized portion of the fasciculus com- 
munis system. These conclusions have been 
reached by a study of the central relations only 
of the nerve roots. It may be added that re- 
searches now in progress at Columbia University, 
upon the peripheral distribution of these roots 
in the bony fishes, have fully substantiated 
most of his discoveries. 

Dr. Kingsbury follows with a second paper 
entitled ‘The Encephalic Evaginations in Ga- 
noids.’ The new and important points are 
two: (1) The presence in the adult Amia of the 
first epiphysial vesicle of Hill and its innerva- 
tion from the left Habena; and (2) the existence 
in Amia and Lepidosteus of lateral cephalic and 
caudal extensions of cavity caudad of the velum 
transversum of Kupffer, constituting consider- 
able diverticula. 

‘The Harly Development of the Epiphysisand 


774 


Paraphysis in Amia,’ by A. C. Eycleshymer and 
B. M. Davis. This paper describes and fully 
illustrates the early development of the same 
structures treated in the preceding article ; 
each, therefore, supplements the other. The 
first vesicle of Hill (i. e., the smaller more 
cephalic vesicle and the one termed ‘secondary 
vesicle’ by Eycleshymer and Davis) arises as 
an evagination from the dorsal wall of the 
other vesicle and some four or five days later. 

It then shifts to the left side (occasionally to 
the right) and in one instance was seen to re- 
ceive nerve fibers from the superior commis- 
sure. A critical review of the theories of the re- 
lation of the epiphysial outgrowths to the seg- 
mental sense organs follows. 

The editor-in-chief gives a few aphorisms on 
‘The Ethics of Criticism,’ which, though trite, 
are not, perhaps, wholly unnecessary. 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 
CHEMICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON; THE 94TH 
REGULAR MEETING, MARCH 11. 

THE first paper, ‘Some Theories of Crystal 
Structure,’ was by Mr. Wirt Tassin. After re- 
viewing earlier hypothesis the author took 
up the more recent structural theory of Federow 
and Schonflies, which requires only that the 
structure of the crystal consist of similar mole- 
cules and allows the chemist and the physicist 
to decide the character of these molecules. It 
was pointed out that the essential difference 
between the Sohnckian hypothesis and that of 
Schonflies was that Sohncke requires that, in a 
system of points which is to have the characters 
required by a crystal structure, around every 
point the arrangement of the remainder is the 
same as around every other point; and all of 
his structures are derived by moving one point 
to another by sliding, rotating and screw mo- 
tions. Schonflies, on the other hand, defines a 
crystal as ‘consisting of absolutely similar 
molecules, so arranged that each molecule is 
environed in the same way by all the other 
molecules,’ so that one part of the system may be 
derived from the other by reflection. Mention 
was made of Harlow’s work and examples 
given, and the paper closed with a list of pre- 
dictions of new compounds which have been 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 124. 


verified and which were based upon theories. 
treating of the relations between form, structure 
and composition. 

As a supplement to Mr. Tassin’s paper, Dr.. 
F. K. Cameron read a short résumé on ‘The 
Effect of Substitution on Isomorphism and 
Crystal Structure in Organic Compounds.’ Sub- 
stitution may cause the system to increase or 
diminish insymmetry or may cause the length- 
ening or shortening of axes. With the substi- 
tution of one or a few atoms by other atoms or 
groups the system generally changes and to 
one of less symmetry. Ifall, or nearly all, the 
equivalent atoms or groups are placed alike 
the derivative generally regains the symmetry 
of the original substance. The effect of sub- 
stitution on crystal structure was illustrated by 
a comparison of the benzo! and of the ammonium 
platino-chloride compounds. Neither (OH) nor 
(NO,) seem to have much morphotropic value. 
Repeated substitution in the platino-chlorides 
often restores the symmetry of the mother sub- 
stance, but the substitution of ethyl brings 
about a complete change. ‘ 

Messrs. Wm. H. Krug and J. HE. Blomen pre- 
sented a paper, entitled ‘A Recalculation of 
Wein’s Table of Starch Equivalent to Copper 
Found Based on the Factor 0.92.’ Starch or 
dextrine can be directly obtained from the cop- 
per found by converting the starch into dex- 
trine and determining the latter with Allihn’s 
solution. This table is based on the factor 0.90, 
which assumes that the formula of starch is 
(C.H.O;)n and that it is all converted into dex- 
trose. Nagelli determined the formula of 
starch to be C,,H,,0,, and if this is correct the 
factor becomes 0.918. Ost, working with the 
Sacchse method, decided upon the factor 0.925. 
In view of all these conflicting data Wiley 
recommends the factor 0.92, a man between the- 
two last cited, which will give the analyst fairly 
accurate results. This factor has been used 
in the recalculation of the table. 

The last paper, entitled ‘Malt Wine,’ was- 
read by Dr. D. J. Kelly. He pointed 
out how Ordonneau, Jacquemin, Tettelin, 
Rommier and Sauer recognized the profound 
changes produced in the fermentation of a 
sweet liquid according to the kind of ferment 
employed. They found that when the juice of 


May 14, 1897.] 


& poorer variety of grape was fermented by 
the aid of the ferment peculiar to a choicer 
kind it became a wine having many of the 
characteristic properties of the better kind; a 
solution of sugar and water, to which appro- 
priate yeast food and then wine ferment was 
added, was fermented and submitted to distilla- 
tion ; the result resembled brandy. When ordi- 
nary malt-wort is sterilized, and then, instead 
of being fermented with the usual saccharomy- 
ces cerevisiz, or brewers’ yeast, is fermented 
with the saccharomyces ellipsoideus, or fruit 
yeast, the resulting liquid resembles a fruit wine, 
and the liquid distilled therefrom a brandy. In 
his recently patented process Sauer ferments a 
sterilized malt-wort by a pure culture of a fer- 
ment derived from the bloom of the sherry or 
the Tokay grape, modifying the old process in 
certain important details, and obtains wine 
specimens of which were submitted to the 
audience and pronounced to be scarcely dis- 
tinguishable, if at all, from the genuine articles. 
Dr. Kelly suggested that possibly the substitu- 
tion of a properly selected grape or other wine 
yeast for that now employed in the process of 
bread making might be found to modify very 
agreeably this article of daily consumption. 
VY. K. CHESNUT, 
Secretary. 


ZOOLOGICAL CLUB, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO— 
MEETING OF APRIL 14, 1897. 


THE results of a study of the marine fauna of 
San Diego Bay, Cal., during January, February 
and March of the current year were presented. 
Specimens of most of the forms alluded to in 
the lecture were exhibited, among others Re- 
nilla amethystina, five new species of Polyclads, 
specimens of the Annelids Phyllodoce, Polyoph- 
thalmus and a huge Amphitrite, with its giant 
commensal Polynoé, specimens of several Crus- 
taceans (two species of Callianassa, Limnoria 
terebrans, with wood showing its borings, Polli- 
cipes polymerus and its egg masses, etc.). Sev- 
eral species of Polyplacophora, Opisthobranchs 
and specimens of Octopus punctatus were ex- 
hibited. Special attention was devoted to the 
Dicyemidez, collected from the kidneys of over 
100 Octopus. It was shown that three species of 
this peculiar group of parasites may be recog- 


SCIENCE. 


775 


nized on the Pacific coast, each belonging to a 
different genus and all new to science. There 
is a species of Dicyema to which the name D. 
coluber may be given and which, like its 
Huropean congeners, has four metapolar cells 
in its calotte. A species of Professor Whitman’ 
genus Dicyemennea and named D. Whitmanii 
has five metapolars. The third species belongs 
toa new genus which will be called Dicyemodeca 
(D. sceptrum, n. sp.). It has siz metapolars an 
the parapolars are very short and broad, clasp- 
ing the bases of the inflated metapolars like a 
collar. All the Pacific Dicyemidz observed have 
orthotropal calottes. Some new facts concerning 
the sequence of the two peculiar forms of embryo 
during the life of the parent Dicyema were pre- 
sented. In its youth Dicyema produces only 
the so-called yermiform embryos, but later only 
infusoriform embryos are developed within the 
axial cell. This is the reverse of the sequence 
formerly advocated by Professor Whitman, and 
would seem to indicate a relationship of the 
Dicyemidz to certain Plathelminths; the series 
of vermiform embryos being perhaps compara- 
ble to the sporocyst and redia generations, the 
infusoriform embryo to the cercarian stage of 
the Trematodes. According to this view the 
adult of Dicyema is still to be found. 

Of the Chordata several forms were exhibited 
—specimens of a huge red Cynthia and masses 
of Ciona intestinalis from the piles at Coronado, 
also several specimens of Branchiostoma (Amphi- 
oxus) elongatum (one measuring 90 mm.), dredged 
near the entrance to San Diego Bay. Consid- 
erable attention was paid to the viviparous 
Teleosts, more than forty species of which 
(Scorpzenidee and Embiotocide) occur at San 
Diego. These are all shore fishes and haye 
become viviparous in adaptation to their littoral 
habitat. If the eggs were laid loosely in the 
water and allowed to float like the pelagic fish 
eggs they would readily drift ashore and perish; 
if attached to the rocks or bottom they would 
easily be destroyed by predaceous members of 
the very rich littoral fauna, unless guarded 
by the parent fish, as in the case of Porichthys, 
or hidden away under stones, as in the case 
of some of the Pacific shore fishes. When 
it is remembered that many of the viviparous 
Teleosts (especially the Embiotocide) live in 


776 


the surf on sandy beaches it will be seen 
that viviparity is a necessary condition of ex- 
istence with these forms. A full series of 
the eggs and embryos of Cymatogaster aggregatus 
and the adults of this and five other species of 
Embiotocidz were exhibited. Attention was 
also called to a number of specimens of the 
singular little blind fish (Typhlogobius califor- 
niensis, which lives in the burrows of Callianassa 
under rocks at Point Loma, near San Diego. 
WILLIAM Morton WHEELER. 


NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—SUB-SECTION 
OF PSYCHOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY, 
APRIL 26, 1897. 

THE Academy met with Professor Thomas R. 
Price in the chair. The following papers were 
presented: ‘Mental Imagery,’ by Mr. W. 
Lay. The paper was a brief report of the 
result of two years’ study andresearch. Of one 
hundred and twenty-five New York artists, the 
speaker found but three or four who exhibited 
the extraordinary degree of the power of visual- 
izing which might be looked for in individuals 
trained to observe things from a purely pic- 
torial standpoint. One hundred and fifty col- 
lege students gave the same result. The speaker 
described the methods and gave the results of 
his experiments on himself to determine in terms 
of what sense the content of his own train of 
thought was chiefly composed. He hasstudied 
also the elements of mental imagery to be dis- 
covered in language and the visual, auditory 
and other imagery in poetry. 

“Visual After-images,’ by Mr. 8. I. Franz. 
The speaker first described a typical after-image 
and referred to the interest the phenomena had 
aroused, as shown by the number of prominent 
scientists that had discussed them. Their im- 
portance was shown both for a correct theory 
of color vision and epistemologically as con- 
necting links between sensation and memory 
and imagination. Experiments on the produc- 
tion (i. e., the threshold) and on the duration 
were then described, and curves showing the 
results obtained were exhibited. The psychic 
relations of the different physical variables (viz. 
time, area and intensity) were discussed. The 
great individual variations, particularly in the 
coloration, showed that the after-image is not 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8S. Vou. V. No. 124. 


simple but exceedingly complex, and that the 
present theories to explain the phenomena are 


inadequate. 
LIVINGSTON FARRAND, 


Secretary pro tem. 


THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF ST. LOUIS. 


AT the meeting of the Academy of Science of 
St. Louis, held on the evening of May 3, 1897, 
21 persons present, Mr. H. Von Schrenk spoke 
of the respiration of plants, with special refer- 
ence to the modification of those growing with 
their roots submerged in water. The lecture 
was illustrated by a demonstration of the liber- 
ation of carbon dioxide in respiration, from the 
roots of an ordinary flowering plant and freshly 
gathered fungi, and the more usual erenchyma 
structures were made clear by the use of lan- 
tern slides. 

Professor F. E. Nipher described a simple 
means of measuring the resistance of a tube to 
the flow of a current of air, when compared 
with an accepted standard, by the use of 
a tubular device similar in principle to the 
Wheatstone bridge, used in electrical instru- 
ments ; the apparatus, in the present instance, 
consisting of parallel tubes filled with air, con- 
nected by a tubular bridge, in the middle of 
which a drop of water was placed, so as to 
change position with the variations in the flow 
of air on the one hand or on the other. 

WILLIAM TRELEASE, 
Secretary. 


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SCIENCE 


EDITORIAL CoMMITTEE: S. NEwcoms, Mathematics; R. S. WooDWARD, Mechanics; E. C. PICKERING, 
Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THURSTON, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry; 
J. LE Conte, Geology; W. M. DAvis, Physiography; O. C. MARSH, Paleontology; W. K. 
BRooks, C. HART MERRIAM, Zoology; S. H. SCUDDER, Entomology; N. L. BRITTON, 
Botany; HENRY F. OsBoRN, General Biology; H. P. BowbitcH, Physiology; 
J. S. BILLINGS, Hygiene; J. MCKEEN CATTELL, Psychology ; 
DANIEL G. BRINTON, J. W. POWELL, Anthropology. 


Fripay, May 21, 1897. 


CONTENTS: 


The Problems of Astronomy: SIMON NEWCOMB.....777 
The Recent Visit of Sir Archibald Geikie: J. F. KEMP.785 
Sir Archibald Geikie on a Comparison between the 
Tertiary Voleanic Succession in Northwestern Eu- 
rope and in Western America: W.¥.MORSELL..788 
Some Phases in Weed Evolution: F. A. WAUGH...789 
The Effect of the Density of the Surrounding Gas on 
the Discharge of Electrified Metals by X-Rays: 
(Gh IDL GHETEEID) coscoossconbcadogadcoanq.acbescqdaaqeeceeasocoN 791 
Current Notes on Physiography :— 
Cornish on Sand Dunes; Philippson on Geomor- 
phology; Thorodssen on Northeast Iceland; Vol- 
canic Phenomena of 1894; Limestone Range of the 
Klonthal, Switzerland: W.M. DAVIis...........-.. 795 
Current Notes on Anthropology :-— 
The Notes on American Ceramics; The Racial 
Geography of Europe; Another Interpreter of 
the Mayan Hieroglyphs: D. G. BRINTON......... 797 
Notes on Inorganic Chemistry : 
Scientific Notes and News :— 
A Permanent Census Bureau ; The Elizabeth Thomp- 
son Science Fund ; General... ..cccccecccceeveesecnesees 799 
University and Educational News..........2.c0seeseeseee 803 
Discussion and Correspondence :— 
Former Extension of Ice in Greenland: RALPH S. 
TARR. Poudré: Lupovic Estzs. Earliest Pub- 
lished Note of the late Chas. E. Bendire: C. H. 
M 


Scientific Literature :— 
Recent Text-books of Physics. Sergi’s Antropologia 
della Stirpe Camitica: D.G. BRINTON. D‘Ken- 
drick’s Elementary Human Physiology. JOSEPH 
W. WARREN. Martin's Story of a Piece of Coal: 
> do SHIR AIS SO fecraconoosanasbsp0o0occcoqseneocanecosennd 805 
Societies and Academies :— 
Biological Society of Washington: F. A. Lucas. 
The Geological Society of Washington: W. F. 
MORSELL. Science Club of the Northwestern Uni- 
versity: THOMAS F. HOLGATE. The Texas Acad- 
emy of Science: FREDERIC W. SIMONDS 
PNGWNBOOKSirasececccuranecteeece ocucecees eee endsestcaecsdeartesst 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended 
for review should be sent to the responsible editor, Prof. J. 
McKeen Cattell, Garrison-on-Hudson, N. Y. 

: 


THE PROBLEMS OF ASTRONOMY.* 

ASSEMBLED, as we are, to dedicate a new 
institution to the promotion of our knowl- 
edge of the heavens, it appeared to me that 
an appropriate and interesting subject might 
be the present and future problems of as- 
tronomy. Yetit seemed, on further reflec- 
tion, that, apart from the difficulty of mak- 
ing an adequate statement of these prob- 
lems on such an occasion as the present, 
such a wording of the theme would not 
fully express the idea which I wish to con- 
vey. The so-called problems of astronomy 
are not separate and independent, but are 
rather the parts of one great problem, that 
of increasing our knowledge of the universe 
in its widest extent. Nor is it easy to con- 
template the edifice of astronomical science 
asit now stands, without thinking of the past 
as well asof the present and future. The 
fact is that our knowledge of the universe 
has been in the nature of a slow and gradual 
evolution, commencing at a very early 
period in human history, and destined to 
go forward without stop, as we hope, so long 
as civilization shall endure. The astrono- 
mer of every age has built on the founda- 
tions laid by his predecessors, and his 
work has always formed, and must ever 
form, the base on which his successors shall 
build. The astronomer of to-day may look 


*An address given by Professor Simon Newcomb 
at the dedication of the Flower Observatory, Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania, May 12, 1897. 


778 


back upon Hipparchus and Ptolemy as the 
earliest ancestors of whom he has positive 
knowledge. He can trace his scientific de- 
scent from generation to generation, through 
the periods of Arabian and medizval 
science, through Copernicus, Kepler, New- 
ton, La Place and Herschel, down to the 
present time. The evolution of astronom- 
ical knowledge, generally slow and gradual, 
offering little to excite the attention of the 
public, has yet been marked by two cata- 
clysms. One of these is seen in the grand 
conception of Copernicus that this earth on 
which we dwell is not a globe fixed in the 
center of the universe, but is simply one of 
a number of bodies, turning on their own 
axes and at the same time moving around 
the sun asa center. It has always seemed 
to me that the real significance of the 
heliocentric system lies in the greatness of 
this conception rather than in the fact of 
the discovery itself. There is no figure in 
astronomical history which may more ap- 
propriately claim the admiration of man- 
kind through all time than that of Coper- 
nicus. Searcely any great work was ever so 
exclusively the work of one man as was the 
heliocentric system the work of the retiring 
sage of Frauenburg. No more striking 
contrast between the views of scientific re- 
search entertained in his time and in ours 
can be seen than that seen in the fact that, 
instead of claiming credit for his great work, 
he deemed it rather necessary to apologize 
for it and, so far as possible, to attribute his 
ideas to the ancients. 

A century and a half after Copernicus 
followed the second great step, that taken 
by Newton. This was nothing less than 
showing that the seemingly complicated 
and inexplicable motions of the heavenly 
bodies were only special cases of the same 
kind of motion, governed by the same 
forces, that we see around us whenever a 
stone is thrown by the hand or an apple 
falls to the ground. The actual motions of 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No. 125. 


the heavens and the laws which govern 
them being known, man had the key with 
which he might commence to unlock the 
mysteries of the universe. 

When Huyghens, in 1656, published his 
Systema Saturniwm, where he first set forth 
the mystery of the rings of Saturn, which, 
for nearly half a century, had perplexed 
telescopic observers, he prefaced it with a 
remark that many, even among the learned, 
might condemn his course in devoting so 
much time and attention to matters far out- 
side the Earth, when he might better be 
studying subjects of more concern to hu- 
manity. Notwithstanding that the inventor 
of the pendulum clock was, perhaps, the last 
astronomer against whom a neglect of 
things terrestrial could be charged, he 
thought it necessary to enter into an elabo- 
rate defense of his course in studying the 
heavens. Now, however, the more distant 
objects are in space—I might almost add 
the more distant events are in - time— 
the more they excite the attention of 
the astronomer, if only he can hope to 
acquire positive knowledge about them. 
Not, however, because he is more interested 
in things distant than in things near, but 
because thus he may more completely em- 
brace in the scope of his work the begin- 
ning and the end, the boundaries of all 
things, and thus, indirectly, more fully 
comprehend all that they include. From 
his standpoint 


“All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
Whose body nature is and God the soul.”’ 


Others study nature and her plans as we 
see them developed on the surface of this 
little planet which we inhabit; the astrono- 
mer would fain learn the plan on which the 
whole universe is constructed. The mag- 
nificent conception of Copernicus is, for 
him, only an introduction to the yet more 
maguificent conception of infinite space con- 
taining a collection of bodies which we call 


May 21, 1897.] 


the visible universe. How far does this 
universe extend? What are the distances 
and arrangements of the stars? Does the 
universe constitute a system ? If so, can we 
comprehend the plan on which this system is 
formed, of its beginning and of its end? 
Has it bounds outside of which nothing 
exists but the black and starless depths of 
infinity itself? Or are the stars we see 
simply such members of an infinite collec- 
tion as happen to be the nearest our sys- 
tem? A few such questions as these we are 
perhaps beginning toanswer ; but hundreds, 
thousands, perhaps even millions of years 
may elapse without our reaching a complete 
solution. Yet the astronomer does not 
view them as Kantian antinomies, in the 
nature of things insoluble, but as ques- 
tions to which he may hopefully look for at 
least a partial answer. 

The problem of the distances of the stars 
is of peculiar interest in connection with 
the Copernican system. The greatest ob- 
jection to this system, which must have 
been more clearly seen by astronomers 
themselves than by any others, was found 
in the absence of any apparent parallax of 
the stars. If the earth performed such an 
immeasurable circle around the sun as 
Copernicus maintained, then, as it passed 
from side to side of its orbit, the stars out- 
side the solar system must appear to have a 
corresponding motion in the other direction, 
and thus to swing back and forth as the earth 
moved in one and the other direction. The 
fact that not the slightest swing of that sort 
could be seen was, from the time of Ptolemy, 
the basis on which the doctrine of the 
earth’s immobility rested. The difficulty 
was simply ignored by Copernicus and his 
immediate successors. The idea that Na- 
ture would not squander space by allowing 
immeasurable stretches of it to go unused 
seems to have been one from which mediz- 
val thinkers could not entirely break away. 
The consideration that there could be no 


SCIENCE. 


T1929 


need of any such economy, because the sup- 
ply was infinite, might have been theoret- 
ically acknowledged, but was not practically 
felt. The fact is that magnificent as was the 
conception of Copernicus, it was dwarfed by 
the conception of stretches from star to star 
so vast that the whole orbit of the earth was 
only a point in comparison. 

An indication of the extent to which the 
difficulty thus arising was ‘felt is seen in 
the title of a book published by Horre- 
bow, the Danish astronomer, some two 
centuries ago. This industrious observer, 
one of the first who used an instrument 
resembling our meridian transit of the 
present day, determined to see if he 
could find the parallax of the stars by ob- 
serving the intervals at which a pair of 
stars in oppposite quarters of the heavens 
crossed his meridian at opposite seasons of 
the year. When, as he thought, he had won 
success he published his observations and 
conclusions under the title of ‘ Copernicus 
Triumphans.’ But alas! the keen criticism 
of his contemporaries showed that what he 
supposed to be a swing of the stars from 
season to season arose from a minute varia- 
tion in the rate of his clock, due to the dif- 
ferent temperatures to which it was exposed 
during the day and the night. The mea- 
surement of the distance even of the near- 
est stars evaded astronomical research, un- 
til Bessel and Struve arose in the early part 
of the present century. 

On some aspects of the problem of the ex- 
tent of the universe light is being thrown 
even now. Evidence is gradually accumu- 
lating which points to the probability that 
the successive orders of smaller and smaller 
stars, which our continually increasing tele- 
scopic power brings into view, are not 
situated at greater and greater distances, 
but that we actually see the boundary of 
our universe. This indication lends a pecu- 
liar interest to various questions growing 
out of the motions of the stars. Quite pos- 


780 


sibly the problem of these motions will be 
the great one of the future astronomer. 
Even now it suggests thoughts and ques- 
tions of the most far-reaching character. 

I have seldom felt a more delicious sense 
of repose than when crossing the ocean 
during the summer months I sought a 
place where I could lie alone on the deck, 
look up at the constellations, with Jyra near 
the zenith, and, while listening to the clank 
of the engine, try to calculate the hundreds 
of millions of years which would be required 
by our ship to reach the star « Lyre if she 
could continue her course in that direction 
without ever stopping. It is a striking 
example of how easily we may fail to 
realize our knowledge when I say that I 
have thought many a time how deliciously 
one might pass those hundred millions of 
years in a journey to the star a Lyre, 
without its occurring to me that we are 
actually making that very journey at a 
speed compared with which the motion 
of a steamship is slow indeed. Through 
every year, every hour, every minute, 
of human history from the first appear- 
ance of man on the earth, from the era of 
the builders of the Pyramids, through 
the times of Cesar and Hannibal, through 
the period of every event that history 
records, not merely our earth, but the sun 
and the whole solar system with it, have 
been speeding their way toward the star of 
which Ispeak on a journey of which we know 
neither the beginning nor theend. During 
every clock-beat through which humanity 
has existed it has moved on this journey 
by an amount which we cannot specify 
more exactly than to say that it is probably 
between five and nine miles per second. 
We are at this moment thousands of miles 
nearer to a Lyre than we were a few 
minutes ago when I began this discourse, 
and through every future moment, for un- 
told thousands of years to come, the earth 
and all there is on it will be nearer to a 


SCIENCE. 


LN. S. Von. V. No. 125. 


Lyrz, or nearer to the place where that 
star now is, by hundreds of miles for every 
minute of time come and gone. When shall 
we get there? Probably in less than a 
million years, perhaps in half a million. 
We cannot tell exactly, but get there we 
must if the laws of nature and the laws of 
motion continue as they are. To attain to 
the stars was the seemingly vain wish of 
the philosopher, but the whole human race 
is, in a certain sense, realizing this wish as 
rapidly as a speed of six or eight miles a 
second can bring it about. 

I have called attention to this motion be- 
cause it may, in the not distant future, 
afford the means of approximating to a 
solution of the problem already mentioned, 
that of the extent of the universe. Not- 
withstanding the success of astronomers 
during the present century in measuring 
the parallax of a number of stars, the most 
recent investigations show that there are 
very few, perhaps hardly more than a score 
of stars of which the parallax, and there- 
fore the distance, has been determined with 
any approach to certainty. Many paral- 
laxes, determined by observers about the 
middle of the century, have had to disap- 
pear before the powerful tests applied by 
measures with the heliometer; others have 
been greatly reduced, and the distances of 
the stars increased in proportion. So far as 
measurement goes, we can only say of the 
distances of all the stars, except the few 
whose parallaxes have been determined, 
that they areimmeasurable. The radius of 
the earth’s orbit, a line more than ninety 
mnillions of miles in length, not only van- 
ishes from sight before we reach the dis- 
tance of the great mass of stars, but becomes 
such a mere point that, when magnified by 
the powerful instruments of modern times, 
the most delicate appliances fail to make it 
measurable. Here the solar motion comes 
to our help. This motion, by which, as I 
have said, we are carried unceasingly 


May 21, 1897.] 


through space, is made evident by a motion 
of most of the stars in the opposite direction, 
just as, passing through a country on a rail- 
way, we see the houses on the right and on 
the left being left behind us. It is clear 
enough that the apparent motion will be 
more rapid the nearer the object. We 
may, therefore, form some idea of the dis- 
tance of the stars when we know the 
amount of the motion. It is found that, 
in the great mass of stars of the sixth mag- 
nitude, the smallest visible to the naked 
eye, the motion is about three seconds per 
century. As a measure thus stated does 
not convey an accurate conception of 
magnitude to one not practiced in the 
subject, I would say that, in the heavens, 
to the ordinary eye, a pair of stars will 
appear single unless they are separated 
by a distance of 150 or 200 seconds. Let 
us then imagine ourselves looking at a 
star of the sixth magnitude, which is at 
rest while we are carried past it with the 
motion of six or eight miles per second 
which I have described. Mark its posi- 
tion in the heavens as we see it to-day ; 
then let its position again be marked 5,000 
years hence. A good eye will just be 
able to perceive that there are two stars 
marked instead of one. The two would be 
so close together that no distinct space be- 
tween them could be perceived by unaided 
vision. It is due to the magnifying power 
of the telescope, enlarging such small ap- 
parent distances, that the motion has been 
determined in so small a period as the 150 
years during which accurate observations 
of the stars have been made. 

The motion just described has been 
fairly well determined for what astro- 
nomically speaking are the brighter stars, 
that is to say those visible to the naked 
eye. But how is it with the millions 
of faint telescopic stars, especially those 
which form the cloud masses of the Milky 
Way? The distance of these stars is 


SCIENCE. 


781 


undoubtedly greater, and the apparent 
motion is, therefore, smaller. Accurate ob- 
servations upon such stars have been com- 
menced only recently, so that we have not 
yet had time to determine the amount of 
the motion. But the indication seems to 
be that it will prove quite a measurable 
quantity, and that before the twentieth cen- 
tury has elapsed it will be determined for 
very much smaller stars than those which 
have heretofore been studied. A photo- 
graphie chart of the whole heavens is now 
being constructed by an association of ob- 
servatories in some of the leading countries 
of the world. I cannot say all the leading 
countries, because then we should have to 
exclude our own, which, unhappily, has 
taken no part in this work. At the end of 
the twentieth century we may expect that 
the work will be repeated. Then, by com- 
paring the charts, we shall see the effect of 
the solar motion and, perhaps, get new 
light upon the problem in question. 
Closely connected with the problem of 
the extent of the universe is another which 
appears, for us, to be insoluble because it 
brings us face to face with infinity itself. 
We are familiar enough with eternity, or, 
let us say, the millions or hundreds of mil- 
lions of years which geologists tell us must 
have passed while the crust of the earth 
was assuming its present form, our moun- 
tains being built, our rocks consolidated, 
and successive orders of animals coming 
and going. Hundreds of millions of years 
is, indeed, a long time, and yet, when we 
contemplate the changes supposed to have 
taken place during that time, we do not 
look out on eternity itself, which is veiled 
from our sight, as it were, by the unending 
succession of changes that mark the prog- 
ress of time. But in the motions of the 
stars we are brought face to face with eter- 
nity and infinity, covered by no veil what- 
ever. It would be bold to speak dogmat- 
ically on a subject where the springs of 


782 


being are so far hidden from mortal eyes as 
in the depths of the universe. But, with- 
out declaring its positive certainty, it must 
be said that the conclusion seems unavoid- 
able that a number of stars are moving with 
a speed such that the attraction of all the 
bodies of the universe could never stop 
them. One such case is that of Arcturus, 
the bright reddish star familiar to mankind 
since the days of Job, and visible near the 
zenith on the clear evenings of May and 
June. Yet another case is that of a star 
known in astronomical nomenclature as 
1830 Groombridge, which exceeds all others 
in its angular proper motion, as seen from 
the earth. We should naturally suppose 
that it seems to move so fast because it 
is near us. But the best measurements 
of its parallax seem to show that it can 
scarcely be less than two million times the 
distance of the earth from the sun, while it 
may be much greater. Accepting this re- 
sult, its velocity cannot be much less than 
200 miles per second, and may be much more. 
With this speed it would make the circuit of 
our globe in two minutes, and had it gone 
round and round in our latitudes we should 
have seen it fly past us a number of times 
since I commenced this discourse. It would 
make the journey from the earth to the sun 
in five days. If it is now near the center 
of our system it would probably reach its 
confines in a million of years. So far as 
our knowledge of nature goes, there is no 
force in nature which would ever have set it 
in motion, and no force which can ever stop 
it. What, then, was the history of this star, 
and if there are planets circulating around, 
what the experience of beings who may have 
lived on those planets during the ages which 
geologists and naturalists assure us our earth 
has existed? Did they see, at night, only a 
black and starless heaven? Wastherea time 
when, in that heaven, a small faint patch of 
light began gradually to appear? Did that 
patch of light grow larger and larger as mil- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 125. 


lion after million of years elapsed? Did it at 

last fill the heavens and break up into 

constellations as we now see them? As 

millions more of years elapse will the con- 

stellations gather together in the opposite 

quarter, and gradually diminish to a patch 

of light as the star pursues its irresistible 

course of 200 miles per second through the 

wilderness of space, leaving our universe 

farther and farther behind it, until it is lost — 
in the distance? If the conceptions of 
modern science are to be considered as 

good for all time, a point on which I con- 

fess to a large measure of scepticism, then . 
these questions must be answered in the 

affirmative. 

Intimately associated with these problems: 
is that of the duration of the universe in 
time. The modern discovery of the con- 
servation of energy has raised the question 
of the period during which our sun has 
existed and may continue in the future to: 
give us light and heat. Modern science 
tells us that the quantity of light and heat 
which can be stored in it is necessarily 
limited, and that, when radiated as the sun 
radiates, the supply must in time be ex- 
hausted. A very simple calculation shows. 
that were there no source of supply the sun 
would be cooled off in three or four thou- 
sand years. Whence, then, comes the sup- 
ply? During the past thirty years the source: 
has been sought for in a hypothetical con- 
traction of the sun itself. True, this contrac- 
tion is too small to be observed; several 
thousand years must elapse before it can 
be measurable with our instruments. Grant- 
ing that this is and always has been the 
sole source of supply, a simple calculation 
shows that the sun could scarcely have 
been giving its present amount of heat for 
more than twenty or thirty millions of 
years. Before that time the earth and the 
sun must have formed one body, a great 
nebula, by the condensation of which both 
are supposed to have been formed. But 


May 21, 1897.] 


the geologists tell us that the age of the 
earth is to be reckoned by hundreds of 
millions of years. Thus arises a question 
to which physical science has not been able 
to give an answer. 

The problems of which I have so far 
spoken are those of what may be called the 
older astronomy. If I apply this title it is 
because that branch of the science to which 
the spectroscope has given birth is often 
called the new astronomy. It is commonly 
to be expected that a new and vigorous 
form ofscientific research will supersede that 
which is hoary with antiquity. But I am not 
willing to admit that such is the case with 
the old astronomy, if old we may call it. 
It is more pregnant with future discoveries 
to-day than it ever has been, and it is more 
disposed to welcome the spectroscope as a 
useful hand-maid, which may help it on 
to new fields, than it is to give way to it. 
How useful it may thus become has been 
recently shown’ by a Dutch astronomer, 
who finds that the stars having one type of 
spectrum belong mostly to the Milky 
Way, and are farther from us than the 
others. 

‘In the field of the newer astronomy per- 
haps the most interesting work is that asso- 
ciated with comets. It must be confessed, 
however, that the spectroscope has rather 
increased than diminished the mystery 
which, in some respects, surrounds the con- 
stitution of these bodies. The older as- 
tronomy has satisfactorily accounted for 
their appearance, and we might also say for 
their origin and their end, so far as ques- 
tions of origin can come into the domain of 
science. It is now known that comets are 
not wanderers through the celestial spaces 
from star to star, but must always have be- 
longed to our system. But their orbits are 
so very elongated that thousands, or even 
hundreds of thousands, of years are required 
for a revolution. Sometimes, however, a 
comet passing near to Jupiter is so fasci- 


SCIENCE. 


783 


nated by that planet that, in its vain at- 
tempts to follow it, it loses so much of its 
primitive velocity as to circulate around the 
sun in a period of a few years, and thus to 
become, apparently, a new member of our 
system. If the orbit of such a comet, or 
in fact of any comet, chances to intersect 
that of the earth, the latter in passing the 
point of intersection encounters minute 
particles which causes a meteoric shower. 
The great showers of November, which 
occur three times in a century and were 
well known in the years 1866-67, may be 
expected to reappear about 1900, after the 
passage of a comet which, since 1866, has 
been visiting the confines of our system, 
and is expected to return about two years 
hence. 

But all this does not tell us much about 
the nature and make-up of a comet. Does 
it consist of nothing but isolated particles, 
or is there a solid nucleus, the attraction of 
which tends to keep the mass together? 
No one yet knows. The spectroscope, if 
we interpret its indications in the usual 
way, tells us that a comet is simply a mass 
of hydro-carbon vapor, shining by its own 
light. But there must be something wrong 
in this interpretation. That the light is re- 
flected sunlight seems to follow necessarily 
from the increased brilliancy of the comet as 
it approaches the sun and its disappear- 
ance as it passes away. 

Great attention has recently been be- 
stowed upon the physical constitution of 
the planets and the changes which the sur- 
faces of those bodies may undergo. In this 
department of research we must {feel grati- 
fied by the energy of our countrymen who 
have entered upon it. Should I seek to 
even mention all the results thus made 
known, I might be stepping on dangerous 
ground, as many questions are still un- 
settled. While every astronomer has enter- 
tained the highest admiration for the energy 
and enthusiasm shown by Mr. Percival 


784 


Lowell in founding an observatory in re- 
gions where the planets can be studied 
under the most favorable conditions, they 
cannot lose sight of the fact that the ablest 
and most experienced observers are liable 
to error when they attempt to delineate the 
features of a body 50 or 100 million miles 
away through such a disturbing medium as 
our atmosphere. Even on such a subject as 
the canals of Mars doubts may still well 
be felt. That certain markings to which 
Schiaperelli gave the name of canals 
exist, few will question. But it may be 
questioned whether these markings are the 
fine sharp uniform lines found on Schi- 
aparelli’s map and delineated in Mr, 
Lowell’s beautiful book. It is certainly 
curious that Barnard at Mount Hamilton, 
with the most powerful instrument and 
under the most favorable circumstances, 
does not see these markings as canals. 

I can only mention among the problems 
of the spectroscope the elegant and re- 
markable solution of the mystery surround- 
ing the rings of Saturn, which has been ef- 
fected by Keeler at Allegheny. That these 
rings could not be solid has long been a 
conclusion of the laws of mechanics, but 
Keeler was the first to show that they 
must consist of separate particles, because 
the inner portions revolve more rapidly 
than the outer. The question of the atmos- 
phere of Mars has also received an impor- 
tant advance by the work of Campbell at 
Mount Hamilton. Although it is not proved 
that Mars has no atmosphere, for the ex- 
istence of some atmosphere can scarcely be 
doubted, yet the Mt. Hamilton astronomer 
seems to have shown, with great conclusive- 
ness, that it is so rare as not to produce 
any sensible absorption of the solar rays. 

T have left an important subject for the 
close. It belongs entirely to the older as- 
tronomy, and it is one with which I am 
glad to say this observatory is expected to 
especially concern itself. I refer to the 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 125. 


question of the variation of latitudes, that 
singular phenomenon scarcely suspected 
ten years ago, but brought out by observa- 
tions in Germany during the past eight 
years, and reduced to law with such bril- 
liant success by our own Chandler. The 
north pole is nota fixed point on the earth’s 
surface, but moves around in rather an 
irregular way. ‘True, the motion is small ; 
a circle of sixty feet in diameter will in- 
elude the pole in its widest range. This is 
a very small matter so far as the interests 
of daily life are concerned. But it is very 
important to the astronomer. It is not 
simply a motion of the pole of the earth, 
but a wabbling of the solid earth itself. 
No one knows what conclusions of impor- 
tance to our race may yet follow from a 
study of the stupendous forces necessary to 
produce even this slight motion. 

The director of this new observatory has 
already distinguished himself in the deli- 
cate and difficult work of investigating this 
motion, and I am glad to know that he is 
continuing the work here with one of the 
finest instruments ever used in it, a splen- 
did product of American mechanical genius. 
I can assure you that astronomers the world 
over will look with the greatest interest for 
Professor Doolittle’s success in the arduous 
task he has undertaken. 

There is one question connected with 
these studies of the universe on which I 
have not touched, and which is, neverthe- 
less, of transcendent interest. What sort 
of life, spiritual and intellectual, exists in 
distant worlds? We cannot for a moment 
suppose that our own little planet is the 
only one throughout the whole universe on 
which may be found the fruits of civilization, 
warm firesides, friendship, the desire to 
penetrate the mysteries of creation. And 
yet, this question is not to-day a problem 
of astronomy, nor can we see any pros- 
pect that it ever will be, for the simple 
reason that science affords us no hope of 


May 21, 1897. ] 


an answer to any question that we may 
send through the fathomless abyss. When 
the spectroscope was in its infancy it 
was suggested that possibly some dif- 
ference might be found in the rays re- 
flected from living matter, especially from 
vegetation, that might enable us to dis- 
tinguish them from rays reflected by matter 
not endowed with life. But this hope has 
not been realized, nor does it seem possible 
to realize it. The astronomer cannot afford 
to waste his energies on hopeless specula- 
tion about matters of which he cannot learn 
anything, and he therefore leaves this 
question of the plurality of worlds to others 
who are as competent to discuss it as he is. 
All he can tell the world is: 


He who through vast immensity can pierce, 
See worlds on worlds compose one universe; 
Observe how system into system runs, 

What other planets circle other suns, 

What varied being peoples every star, 

May tell why Heaven has made us as we are. 


Siuon NEwcome. 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 


THE RECENT VISIT OF SIR ARCHIBALD 
GEIKIE. 

AMERICAN geology has been greatly bene- 
fited and stimulated by visits from dis- 
tinguished European scientists, since the 
early part of the present century. All will 
recall at once Bakewell’s observations on 
the recession of Niagara; Lyell’s two visits, 
with the four volumes of ‘Travels in 
America’ that resulted, and that helped so 
much to establish a good correlation be- 
tween many of our formations and those of 
Europe; von Richthofen’s four years on 
the Pacific coast, and Credner’s four years 
in the East; Posepny’s travels in our min- 
ing districts ; vom Rath’s visits to mineral 
localities, and Geikie’s excursions across 
the lava fields of the Snake River country. 
After an interval of eighteen years, the 
honor of again entertaining the distin- 
guished Director of the British Geological 


SCIENCE. 


785 


Survey has fallen to American geologists, 
and has proved to be an occasion of excep- 
tional interest and importance. 

Some months ago Sir Archibald was in- 
vited by the authorities at the Johns Hop- 
kins University to come to Baltimore and 
open the course of lectures in geology, made 
possible by a foundation established by 
Mrs. George Huntington Williams, in 
memory of her husband, the late, greatly 
lamented professor at Johns Hopkins. The 
purpose of the foundation is to support an 
annual course of lectures in geology which 
are to be given alternately by European 
and American geologists of distinction. 
No more fitting choice for the first series 
could have been made than that of Sir 
Archibald Geikie, to whose cosmopolitan 
sympathies, as shown in his ‘ textbook,’ 
geologists everywhere owe so great a debt. 

Sir Archibald reached New York April 
17th, and on April 19th was given a recep- 
tion by the New York Academy of Sciences, 
as described in an earlier page of ScrmNcE 
(p. 702). Geologists from many institu- 
tions outside of New York united with the 
members of the Academy to make the wel- 
come a cordial and significant one. 

On Wednesday, April 21st, Sir Archibald 
began, at the Johns Hopkins University, the 
course of lectures which was the main 
object of his visit. The subject chosen was 
‘The Founders of Geology,’ and in his 
treatment of the theme the lecturer sketched 
the rise of geological conceptions among the 
ancient cosmogonists, tracing their gradual 
though slow evolution through the middle 
ages, and their vigorous development at the 
opening of the present century. Exhaustive 
studies have been made by Sir Archibald 
upon these special subjects, and much new 
light has been thrown by them upon the 
true relations of modern systems of thought 
to the work of the pioneers in this field a 
hundred years and less ago. The lectures 
will ultimately be published, and space is 


786 


not available at this time to review them, 
but they cannot fail to be of great signifi- 
cance to all thoughtful students of the 
problems before us to-day. 

Previously to the delivery of the lectures 
invitations had been sent by the Johns 
Hopkins University to geologists through- 
out the country, asking them to be present 
and to share in the excursions that were in- 
cident to the occasion. In response, the 
fifty or more whose names appear below ac- 
cepted. While the lectures were being de- 
livered short excursions were conducted 
almost daily to places of geological interest 
near Baltimore, on one of which Sir Archi- 
bald and his companions were the guests of 
the Secretary of the Navy at the Naval 
Academy, Annapolis, and upon one of the 
United States government vessels on a trip 
to view the Cretaceous and Tertiary forma- 
tions along the Severn River. 

A longer excursion was made at the close 
of the lecture so as to illustrate the geology 
of the State of Maryland from the later 
formations of the Coastal Plain, across the 
Archean axis of the Blue Ridge, and the 
Paleozoics as far as the upper Coal Meas- 
ures in the St. George’s field. Through the 
vigorous and untiring efforts of Professor 
W. B. Clark, who is also State Geologist of 
Maryland, the interest of the Governor of 
the State and of the principal railway and 
mining officials had been secured, so that 
free transportation was given on the Balti- 
more and Ohio, the Cumberland and Po- 
tomac,and the Western Maryland Railways, 
as well as on one of the State official steam- 
boats. On Wednesday, April 28th, the 
State vessel ‘Governor McLane’ carried a 
party of forty down Chesapeake Bay to 
view the Cretaceous and Tertiary strata in 
the bluffs along the shore. That evening 
two sleepers were boarded and reinforced 
by about ten additional guests from Wash- 
ington; the party was taken to Cumberland, 
Md., from which starting point the mem- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 125. 


bers visited the St. George’s coal field, as 
guests of President Lord, of the Consolida- 
tion Coal Company. Thursday evening Goy- 
ernor Lowndes, of Maryland, entertained 
the party at a reception in Cumberland. 
Friday was passed among the Cambrian, 
Silurian, Devonian and Triassic exposures 
along the Potomac River, and Saturday the 
President of the Western Maryland Rail- 
road guided the visitors over the Blue 
Ridge mountains, where the Cambrian 
quartzite and pre-Cambrian volcanics are 
so well exposed. The trips closed with a 
visit to the battle-field at Gettysburg. It 
has left a lively feeling of appreciation in 
the minds of all the participants toward 
their generous entertainers, and especially 
toward Professor Clark and his associates 
at Johns Hopkins, whose efforts both be- 
fore and during the trip were unstintedly 
given. The following list of participants 
in the excursions will indicate the very 
general desire on the part of American 
geologists to do honor to the distinguished 
guest : 

F. D. Adams, McGill College, Montreal ; 
Cleveland Abbe, Jr., of Washington; R. M. 
Bagg, Johns Hopkins University; W. S. 
Bayley, Colby University; F. Bascom, 
Bryn Mawr College; George F. Becker, 
U. S. Geological Survey; L. A. Bauer, 
University of Cincinnati; J. M. Clarke, 
Assistant State Geologist of New York; 
Samuel Calvin, State Geologist of Iowa; 
W. B. Clark, State Geologist of Maryland ; 
N. H. Darton, U. 8. Geological Survey; 
J.S. Diller, U.S. Geological Survey ; C. W. 
Dorsey, U.S. Department of Agriculture ; 
8. F. Emmons, U. 8. Geological Survey ; 
O. L. Fassig, U. S. Weather Bureau; Sir 
Archibald Geikie; D. C. Gilman, Johns 
Hopkins University: L. C. Glenn, North 
Carolina; R. T. Hill, U. S. Geological Sur- 
vey; A. B. Hoen, of Baltimore; J. A. 
Holmes, State Geologist of North Carolina ; 
C. W. Hayes, U.S. Geological Survey; J. 


May 21, 1897.] 


©. Hartzell, South Carolina; T. C. Hop- 
kins, Pennsylvania State College; E. V. 
dInvilliers, State Geologist of Pennsyl- 
vania; Lyman C. Josephs, of Newport, 
R. I.; Arthur Keith, U. 8. Geological Sur- 
vey; J. F. Kemp, Columbia University ; 
E. P. King, Portland, Maine; Elizabeth 
Kirkbride, Bryn Mawr College; E. C. E. 
Lord, U. 8. Geological Survey; F. J. H. 
Merrill, State Museum, Albany; W J 
McGee, U. S. Bureau of Ethnology; S. W. 
McCalley, Assistant State Geologist of 
Georgia; E. B. Matthews, Johns Hopkins 
University; J. A. Mitchell, Mt. St. Mary’s 
College, Maryland; F. H. Newell, U. S. 
Geological Survey; W. H. Niles, Massa- 
chusetts Institute of Technology; Edw. 
Orton, State Geologist of Ohio; C. C. 
‘©’ Harra, Carthage College, Illinois; Major 
J. W. Powell, Bureau of American Eth- 
nology; L. V. Pirsson, Yale University ; 
F. B. Peck, Lafayette College; Heinrich 
Ries, Columbia University; Harry Field- 
ing Ried, Johns Hopkins University ; R. D. 
Salisbury, University of Chicago; A. C. 
Spencer, U. S. Geological Survey; T. W. 
Stanton, U. S. Geological Survey; G. O. 
Smith, U. S. Geological Survey; G. W. 
Stose, U. 8. Geological Survey ; J. Stanley- 
Brown, of Washington; G. B. Shattuck, 
Johns Hopkins University; Chas. R. Van 
Hise, University of Wisconsin ; C. D. Wal- 
-cott, U. S. Geological Survey; Lester F. 
Ward, U. S. Geological Survey; T. G. 
White, Columbia University; I. C. White, 
Morgantown, W. Va.; H. 8. Williams, 
Yale University; Bailey Willis, U. S. 
‘Geological Survey. 

As the party was about to disband the 
following letter was drawn up: 


To THE BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS OF THE MARY- 
LAND GEOLOGICAL SURVEY AND THE STATE 
GEOLOGIST : 

Gentlemen: We have spent the last four daysin a 

‘most interesting inspection of Maryland’s geology, 

mnder conditions which your hospitable forethought 


SCIENCE. 


787 


has made peculiarly favorable. Our appreciation of 
the provisions made for the comfort of the party is 
keen, and our enjoyment of the excursion has been 
all that you could have wished it. In twice trayers- 
ing the State of Maryland, opportunity has been af- 
forded us of observing its mineral wealth, and in 
coming in contact with a wide range of phenomena 
illustrative of many of the aspects of geology. The 
field is rich, and it affords opportunities for inquiries 
which may add honor and wealth to the Common- 
wealth, contributing at the same time to the sum of 
human knowledge. The exploitation of these oppor- 
tunities will be safe under your guidance, and we 
wish you a speedy success. 


The paper was signed by Sir Archibald 
Geikie and the entire company of geologists. 

At the close of the Baltimore visit, Sir 
Archibald went, on May 3d, to Washing- 
ton, where, May 5th, he addressed the Geo- 
logical Society of Washington upon the 
subject, ‘Notes for a correlation between 
the Tertiary Volcanic Succession in North- 
western Europe and in Western America.’ 
At the close of the lecture he was tendered 
a reception at the rooms of the U. 8. Geo- 
logical Survey. May 6th Sir Archibald 
visited Bryn Mawr College and briefly ad- 
dressed the students, and May 7th lectured 
before the Philosophical Society in Phila- 
delphia upon ‘ Recent Geological Work in 
the Hebrides and Faroe Isles,’ after which 
the Society entertained him at a conver- 
sazione, at which many visiting geologists 
were present. May 8th he reached New 
York, and, aside from courtesies privately 
extended, was occupied with the rich col- 
lections of the American Museum of Nat- 
ural History. May 10th he lectured in 
Brooklyn on the ‘Geology of the Inner 
Hebrides,’ and passed the remainder of the 
week in visiting Yale University and rela- 
tives in Connecticut. Saturday, May 15th, 
he sailed for England, accompanied by a 
cordial ‘bon voyage’ and an ‘auf wieder- 
sehen’ from his many friends in America. 


J. F. Kemer. 


CoLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. 


788 


NOTES FOR A COMPARISON BETWEEN THE 
TERTIARY VOLCANIC SUCCESSION IN 
NORTHWESTERN EUROPE AND IN 
WESTERN AMERICA.* 


Arter alluding to the remarkably com- 
plete record of volcanic action in Britain, 
the lecturer proceeded to describe the most 
extensive and best preserved of all the vol- 
canic series which is referable to Ter- 
tiary time and is remarkably developed 
from the south of Antrim through the inner 
Hebrides and Faroé islands to Iceland and 
Greenland. A general sequence has been 
noticed in the character of the erupted ma- 
terial. The earliest lavas appear to have 
been basalts, followed by andesites and, 
lastly, dacites. The basalts form extensive 
plateaus, each of which is built up of nearly 
horizontal sheets. The intrusive rocks in- 
cluded gabbros, ranging into peridotites 
and other basic materials, granophyres, 
granites, rhyolites and other acid rocks ; 
the latest intrusions of all returning to the 
original basaltic type. 

The earliest chapter in the Tertiary vol- 
canic history of northwestern Europe brings 
before us the gradual building up of exten- 
sive plateaus of basalt which, in some 
places, reach a thickness of more than three 
thousand five hundred feet. These vast 
outflows of lava appear to have issued 
chiefly from fissures, like those of Iceland, 
but with occasional vents, some of which 
built up cones like those on the surface of 


the Tertiary lava fields of western America. . 


The general characters of the Scottish 
basaltic plateaus were illustrated by a series 
of lantern slides, and some examples were 
also given of Icelandic fissures, particularly 
of the great fissure which supplied the vast 
lava floods of 1783. 

From the great antiquity of these Ter- 
tiary lava plateaus they have undergone ex- 

*Abstract of a lecture by Sir Archibald Geikie given 


before the Geological Society of Washington on May 
5th. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 125. 


tensive denudation and dissection, so that. 
their structure is laid bare along many 
miles of picturesque coast line as well as on 
the mountain ranges of the interior. Hx- 
amples of the results of subaéreal waste 
were displayed on the screen. 

Continuing, the lecturer said that when 
the basalts had accumulated to a great 
thickness the magma appears to have found 
easier passage between the strata at the 
bottom of the volcanic series than upward 
through fissures; consequently, sheets or 
sills are found intercalated among the Ju- 
rassic rocks which form the base on which 
the volcanic series rests, while the lower 
portions of that series have been similarly 
invaded. 

The next epoch in the voleanic history 
reveals to us the uprise of an infinite num- 
ber of successive intrusions of basic material 
in sills, dikes and laccoliths at certain 
points in the midst of the basalt plateaus. 
On the whole, these masses consist of gab- 
bros and dolerites, but they included also: 
some beautiful examples of peridotites.. 
There is no evidence that any of these in- 
trusions reached the surface and appeared 
there in the form of lavas. They seem to- 
have risen by preference at certain points. 
of weakness, such as groups of vents. Hx- 
amples of the relation between the gabbros 
and vents of different sizes are particularly 
observable in the islands of Skye and Mull. 

Illustrations of the scenery of the 
gabbro bosses were shown by means of 
slides, together with a portion of the crest 
of the Cuillin Hills, to show the intri- 
cate manner in which the material had 
been injected. There was probably a long 
interval after the cessation of the gabbro 
intrusions. When the volcanic energy re- 
sumed its activity the composition of the 
underlying magma had completely changed. 
Rocks of a thoroughly acid character were 
now intruded. They took the form of 
bosses, sills and dikes, but there is no 


May 21, 1897.] 


proof in any case that they flowed ont at 
the surface as lavas. Like the gabbros, 
they were developed in special centers and 
preferentially in the areas already chosen 
by the gabbros; hence, the black, rugged 
mountains of gabbro are very generally 
accompanied by more or less regularly 
formed cones of granite and granophyre. 
These two cones not only form a striking 
contrast to the gabbros as regards their 
contour, but also in their colors. They 
range through various tints of yellow and 
russet. The characteristic scenery of central 
Skye, with the dark, rugged outlines of the 
gabbros on the west and the smooth, pale 
cones of the Red Hills on the east, depends 
upon this difference of geologic structure. 

The latest phase in the volcanic history 
is marked by the uprise of another great 
series of basic dikes which, like those of the 
earlier time, follow a generally north- 
westerly direction and rise even through 
the latest masses of granophyre. On the 
flanks of the Red Hills of Skye long, dark 
ribs of rock may occasionally be seen even 
from a distance, which mark the last efforts 
of the Tertiary volcanoes of Britain. 

W. F. Morse xt. 


SOME PHASES OF WEED EVOLUTION.* 

THE common statement that “a weed is a 
plant out of place” is by no means satis- 
factory or final to the student. He is still 
left to ask how it is that certain species 
have such pronounced ability for getting 
out of place. Almost any plant may acci- 
dently get where it is not wanted, but com- 
paratively few usually and persistently get 


in the way. A bad weed species is aggres- 
. sive and persistent. What qualities make 
it so? 


As a partial answer I would suggest 
four life attributes as follows: 1. Great 
reproductive power. 2. Good provision for 


*Notes from a lecture before the University of 
Vermont Botanical Club. 


SCIENCE. 


789 


dissemination. 3. Various protective ex- 
pedients. 4. Variability. 

The statement that a species, to rank as 
a bad weed, should have large reproductive 
power needs no elucidation. It isnot even 
necessary to demonstrate that weed species 
are thus equipped. Dozens of striking 
examples will occur at first thought.* We 
should also remember that many of the 
worst weeds have a double resource for 
their multiplication ; 7. e., they propagate 
themselves by buds as well as by abundant 
seeds. The Hawkweed throws out stolons; 
and a Canada Thistle chopped into 20 pieces 
by the hoe becomes 20 Canada Thistles. 

It is also axiomatic that facility of dis- 
semination is one of the qualities of a weed 
species. 

Some weeds make headway by means of 
special contrivances for avoiding disaster. 
Certain ones can withstand hard drought. 
Others have such deep roots as to be beyond 
the reach of ordinary cultivation. The Dan- 
delion, often cut down by the lawn mower, 
bears its feathery tuft of seeds on a stem so 
short as to escape the gardener. 

But variability is the-chief and most 
significant quality of a weed species. 
Moreover, variability is ultimate. And 
those characteristics already mentioned are 
all involved in variability ; for each one— 
reproduction, dissemination, protection— 
may vary, and through selection be indefi- 
nitely modified. In this sense, however, 
variability is not coordinate with the other 
qualities mentioned. 

Other things being equal, then, that 
species which is most variable is apt to be- 
come a weed. This point may be illus- 
trated, though perhaps not demonstrated by 
reference to some statistics of weed floras. 
Thus, starting with the proposition that 
variability is roughly proportional to the 
number of members in a systematic group, 


*cf. Kerner, ‘The Natural History of Plants,’ II., 
878. 


790 


our hypotheses would lead us to the infer- 
ence that the larger groups would show 
comparatively large quotas of weed species. 
Is the inference true? 

Professor G. H. Perkins’ Flora of Ver- 
mont enumerates 114 families of Pheeno- 
gams and Pteridophytes in the State. Thus 
if the species were equally divided among 
all the families each family would in- 
clude .87 per cent. of the total flora. The 
great family of Composites, however, con- 
tains 10.83 per cent. of all the species in 
the State. Now, if it contained its fair 
proportion of weeds it would have about the 
same percentage. The fact is, it contains 
21.48 per cent. of all the weeds and 33.33 
per cent. of all the very bad weeds. This 
family, at any rate, bears out the theory. 

These figures with some others appear in 
the following table: 


SOME VERMONT WEED SPECIES. 


Per cent. | Per cent. | Per cent. 
Family. of total | of total of bad 
Flora. Weeds. Weeds. 
Crucifere............. 3.00 6.25 16.67 
Leguminosz......... 3.33 4.47 5.55 
Rosacez..............- 4.58 4.47 5.55, 
Composite ........... 10.33 21.43 33.33 
Gramines..........-. 9.42 8.93 iia 
5 Families (6.87 30.66 45.55 72.21 
=4,35 % 


That is, these five great families include 
nearly one-third the Vermont flora, but 
nearly one-half the weed species and nearly 
three-fourths the very bad weeds. 

Of course, this does not demonstrate the 
proposition and there are perplexing excep- 
tions. Thus the largest family in the Ver- 
mont flora, the Sedge family, contains not 
a single species which could be reckoned 
among the weeds. Nevertheless the fam- 
ily is eminent both as to variability and po- 
tential weediness. The sedges crowd out 
pretty much everything else on their own 
ground, and itis only because the agricultu- 
rist seldom enters their favorite territory 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 125. 


that their pernicious possibilities do not be- 
come realities. 

Attention may also be directed to the 
fact that many bad weeds have escaped 
from cultivation. Since cultivation usually 
induces variability, we may suspect that 
this has been one source of aggressive power 
in some weed species. 

Dr. Asa Gray * pointed out that both our 
introduced and our native weeds are, toa 
very great extent, cross-fertilized. This is 
the more striking taken in connection with 
the accompanying statement that most of 
them are, nevertheless, capable of self-fecun- 
dation. The latter capability protects them 
from extinction when cross-pollination is 
impossible, and the former provision gives 
rise to effective variability when other 
plants of proper relationship are near. 

Another surprising fact in the natural 
history of our weeds is the very large pro- 
portion of species introduced from Europe. 
In a list of the twenty worst weeds of New 
Jersey, prepared by vote, under the direc- 
tion of Dr. Halsted, there were elected to 
the twenty highest degrees of noxiousness 
four natives and sixteen foreigners. I have 
examined a similarly-prepared list of the 
eighteen worst weeds of Vermont. This in- 
cluded four indigenous species and fourteen 
foreigners. 

Such a plain fact as this ought to have 
some intelligible explanation. Dr. Gray, 
in his paper mentioned, sets down a 
common reason, namely, that, since the 
greater part of the Eastern States was 
originally tree-clad, the native species were 
such as thrive under forest protection. 
They are, therefore, unable to make their 
way in the cleared fields against immigrant 
species which have been inured to such 
conditions by centuries of thrifty practice 
in the open fields of Europe. 

. Buta stranger fact of weed history exists 


* Am. Jour. Sc. and Arts, 3d Ser., XVIII. (1879), 
161. Reprinted in ‘Scientific Papers of Asa Gray.’ 


May 21, 1897.] 


in the number of species, of which there 
are several, which have come from Europe 
with comparatively clean passports to be- 
come aggressive and troublesome in Amer- 
ica. This is the case with the Hawkweed 
(Hieracewm aurantiacum, Linn.), which is 
just coming into prominence in some parts 
of Canada and the Northeastern States.* 
There are two reasons for this: First, the 
comparatively very rapid changes, which 
practically all America has undergone, 
have largely destroyed the natural equilib- 
rium of species, and this has made it 
easier for capable weeds to creep in. Second, 
the principle pointed out long ago by Darwin 
as ‘the good derived from slight changes in 
the conditions of life,’ applies to the case of 
plants imported from Europe. This ‘ good’ 
accrues to the species through induced 
variability. 

Eyen more interesting points of inquiry 
are revealed when we turn to study the 
migrations of weeds within the United 
States. Merely as a suggestion for further 
work, I have made a few comparisons be- 
tween Eastern weed floras and that of 
Kansas. Professor A. S. Hitchcock + enu- 
merates 209 species of Kansas weeds, of 
which only 51 are foreigners against 158 
natives. Even then nearly all the foreign 
Species are specifically stated to be rare in 
the State. In my own list of the 20 worst 
weeds of Kansas, instead of the remarkable 
proportion of foreign species noted in Ver- 
mont and New Jersey, there are 6 foreign 
and 14 native species. It is also interesting 
to note that exactly half this list is made 
up of native composites. Of course, we 
may expect that, as commerce goes on be- 
tween Kansas and the Atlantic States, the 
proportion of foreign weeds westward will 
increase; but we may feel confident that 
the Daisy, the Hawkweed, and the Kales 
will find no such easy time making head- 


*See Vermont Exp. Sta. Bull. 56 (1897). 
+ Kansas Exp. Sta., Bull. 57 (1896). 


SCIENCE. 791 


way against the sunflowers and ragweeds 
of Kansas as they have had against the 
modest, shade-loving species of the Eastern 
States. The native species of Kansas have 
been used to live in the open country, ex- 
posed to fire and drought and browsing 
herds of buffalo. Now when they find a 
well plowed field, with perhaps a little irri- 
gation, they are fully prepared to occupy 
the ground and hold their own against the 
world. 

Then there is the question of these Western 
species coming east. Sixty-five years ago 
Rudbeckia hirta was unknown east of the 
Alleghenies, yet now it is widely distributed 
in the Eastern States. Coreopsis tinctoria, 
Nutt., is a Western Composite and a bad 
weed, now much cultivated in gardens in 
America and Europe. From these it has 
already shown a tendency to escape, and 
may be counted asacoming weed. Dysodia 
chrysanthemoides, Lag., is said to be coming 
rapidly eastward. Artemesia biennis, Willd., 
also belongs to this list, and has recently 
been collected in the railroad and dock 
yards at Burlington, Vermont. This list 
might be greatly extended. 

It seems probable that the great and 
variable and geologically modern family 
Composite is destined to play an increas- 
ingly important part in the future trans- 
formations of American weed floras, and 
that its representatives will be especially 
prominent among the successful native 
weed species, as, indeed, they already are in 
the weed floras of the Mississippi Valley 


States. 
F. A. WAuGH. 


UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT. 


THE EFFECT OF THE DENSITY OF THE SUR- 
ROUNDING GAS ON THE DISCHARGE OF 
ELECTRIFIED METALS BY X-RAYS. 

Iv has been found that the rate of dis- 
charge which occurs when X-rays strike 
upon a charged body is affected by the 
pressure of the gas surrounding such a 


792 


body. Certain contradictions concerning 
this variation which have been made by 
different experimenters indicated that it 
would be worth the trouble necessary to 
study this phenomenon with care. Perrin 
(C. R. 128, 351 and 878) states that the 
rate of discharge is proportional to the den- 
sity, while Benoist and Hurmusezcu (C. R. 
122, 926 and 123, 1265) state that the rate of 
discharge is proportional to the square root 
of the density. The only data given in any 
of these statements are those in one of the 
articles by Benoist and Hurmusezcu. They 
determined the rate of discharge by noting 


GE 


Rate of Dischar 


S 
an 


Oj 100 200 300 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. Von. V. No. 125. 


that of Perrin, in general it does not obey 
either law. 

The experimental work will be described 
more at length in the Physical Review, and 
only a brief account of the results are here 
indicated. My apparatus consisted prima- 
rily of a charged zinc plate and an electrom- 
eter. The plate was placed inside a box 
of the same metal from which it was insu- 
lated. The plate was connected to the 


electrometer and the box was ground, and 
both plate and box were placed in an air 
receiver which was connected to an air 
pump and a monometer. 


The rays struck 


Pressures in mm. of mercury 


Fie. 1. 


the time it took the leaves of an electro- 
scope to fall from a given initial position to 
a given final position. The voltage to 
which the electroscope was charged is not 
given, but presumably it was large. The 
curve marked B. & H. in Fig. 1 gives the 
results of their experiments. 

In experimenting along this line it was 
soon found that the curve given by plotting 
rates of discharge as ordinates and densities 
of air as abscisse did not have the same 
form under all conditions, and while it may 
under certain conditions obey the law of 
Benoist and Hermusezcu, and may possibly 
under other conditions approximately obey 


the charged plate at nearly grazing inci- 
dence. 

Care was taken to avoid ordinary elec- 
trical leakage and electro-static induction 
due to the action of the induction coil, also to 
protect the electrometer and its connections 
from the action of the X-rays, and from the 
action of the air through which the X-rays 
had passed. 

The zine plate had an area of about 50 
qe.; the sides of the box were 2 cm. from 
the plate. The capacity of the plate, the 
connections and a small condenser placed 
in multiple with the plate was about 400 
electrostatic units. 


May 21, 1897.] 


The rate of discharge was found by noting 
the fall in potential when the rays were 
allowed to strike the charged body for a 
few seconds, usually four, and also by noting 
the fall in potential when the zinc plate 
was connected through a very high resist- 
ance to a constant source of potential and 
the rays were allowed to strike the plate 
continuously. The high resistance was 
secured by winding two wires about each 
other which were covered with cotton insu- 
lation. The resistance through the insula- 
tion was about 5,000 megohms. The re- 
sults from these two methods were in as 


SCIENCE. 


793 


21. The former obeys fairly well the law 
of Benoist and Hurmusezcu, that the rate 
of discharge is proportional to the square 
root of the density. This agreement is 
shown by plotting the rates of discharge as 
given by them. The curve thus found is 
practically the same as that for 40 volts. 
The curve for 24 volts obeys an entirely dif- 
ferent law, having, in fact, a maximum for 
about 200 mm. pressure. This effect seems 
less improbable when we remember that 
the discharging effect for the ultra-violet 
reaches a maximum at about 200 mm. 

Itis known that a metal tends to assume a 


25, 


Potentials in Volts 
Fie. 2. 


fully complete concordance as could be ex- 
pected from the nature of the work. 

That which had the most effect upon the 
relation between the rate of discharge and 
the density of the surrounding gas was the 
potential at which the discharge took place. 
Curves are given in Fig. 1 for the rates of 
discharge when the initial potentials 
were 24,5, 10, ete., up to 40 volts. The 
ordinates indicate the number of volts that 
the charged plate fell per sec., and 
the abscissas indicate pressure in mm. 
of mercury. The difference in the essential 
character of these curves can be seen by 
comparing that for 40 volts with that for 


final potential different from zero when 
X-rays strike upon it. It was thought at 
first that this effect might be complicating 
the phenomena that were being studied, but 
care was taken that the plate from which 
the discharge took place was surrounded by 
a grounded plate of the same metal, and 
the final potential when the plate was dis- 
connected from the source of the E. M. F. 
and the X-rays were allowed to strike upon 
it continuously varied so little from zero as 
to be entirely negligible. 

It is evident that another set of curves 
could be plotted showing the relation be- 
tween the rate of discharge and the H. M. F. 


794 


at different densities of the gas. Thomson 


and Rutherford (Phil. Mag., 42, 392) and. 


others have already studied this subject 
and shown that the current does not obey 
Ohm’s law. As high E. M. F.’s are reached 
the current does not increase in a manner 
proportional to the increasein H.M.F. In 
Fig. 2 I have plotted such a set of curves, 
and it will be noticed that the form of the 
curve is not the same for different densities 
of the gas. Thomsonand Rutherford have 
shown that the form of curve is not the 
same in the cases of air and hydrogen. The 
eurve for air as given by them (Ibid, p. 
404) is similar to the curve given in Fig. 2 
for normal density of the air. That for 
hydrogen is similar to that given in Fig. 2 
for pressure of 250 mm. However, it can 
scarcely be said that the form of the curve de- 
pends upon the density ofthe gas. The curve 
for mercury vapor as given by Thomson 
and Rutherford does, indeed, differ from that 
given for air in the opposite manner from 
that for hydrogen, but their curves for 
chlorine, sulphuretted hydrogen and air 
coincide in form, and the densities of these 
gases differ widely. They infer from their 
theory of this action ‘ that more conduct- 
ing particles are produced by the rays in 
air than in hydrogen, but that the product 
of U, the velocity of these particles, and T, 
a time which is proportional to the time 
these particles linger after the rays are cut 
off, is greater for hydrogen than it is for 
air.” It isaltogether possible that the same 
explanation may apply to the case where 
the same gas is used at different pressures. 
However, experiments to prove this would 
certainly be desirable. They also state that 
“the gases which have large saturation 
curves are those which contain the elements 
which have abnormally large specific in- 
ductive capacities in comparison with their 
valency.” This remark does not seem to 
apply to the case where the same gas is 
used at different pressures. The saturation 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 125: 


currents here do differ, and it is hard ‘to. 
see how either the specific inductive capaci- 
ties or the valencies can differ for air at dif-. 
ferent densities. 

It has also been found that the form of 
the curve between rates of discharge and 
density of air is different for different 
intensities of the rays. The curves which 
have already been plotted were taken with. 
the tube near to the plate to be discharged. 
A series of curves were also taken with the: 
tube at some distance from the plate and 
several inches of board placed between the 
two. These curves were somewhat similar to: 
those shown in Fig. 1, but there was not as 
marked a difference between the curves for 
different potentials. In fact there was no 
curve which showed a maximum for pres- 
sures less than atmospheric pressure. 
It, therefore, seems scarcely advisable: 
to try to get the form of the curves with 
any great degree of accuracy at present, for 
the form depends upon the intensity of the 
rays and there is no way of determining 
this intensity in any standard unit. I can 
define the intensity no better than I have: 
already defined it in stating the rate of dis- 
charge which it produces from a zinc plate 
of given area with an approximate guess at. 
the number of units of capacity in the sys- 
tem of plate, condenser and connections. 

It has been stated by Perrin (C. R. 124, 
454) that the discharge effect can be sepa- 
rated into a surface effect between the gas. 
and. the charged metal, and a volume effect 
throughout the gas. It was, therefore, 
thought that covering the zine plate with a 
thin film of paraffin might change the form: 
of the curve when the density of the air is’ 
changed. This was tried and no such change 
was noticed. It has not been possible to 
keep the action of the tube exactly constant, 
and so one cannot be entirely sure of the 
correctness of the results, but if coating the: 
zine plate with paraffin causes any change 
in the form of the curve it is at least small. 


May 21, 1897.] 


The plate to be discharged was then 
placed in the shadow ofan opaque obstacle, 
and rays allowed to strike only the air near 
the plate. The form of the curve was not 
- different from that obtained when the rays 
were partially screened off from both the 
plate and the surrounding air. These two 
experiments do not corroborate the theory 
of Perrin as given above. 

It is also to be noted that the conditions 
in this last experiment were similar to those 
under which Perrin worked when he found 
the relations between the rate of discharge 
and the density of the gas, but the results 
which I found did not agree with the law 
as given by him. 

There is also a fact in connection with 
this work which is worthy of note, although 
it does not directly bear upon the experi- 
ments here described. After the discharge 
had taken place the plate would often ap- 
pear to recharge to a very noticeable degree. 
The electrometer used was a ‘dead beat’ 
electrometer. The recharging seemed to 
be more noticeable when the original poten- 
tial was small, and the intensity of the rays 
great. My apparatus is not well adapted 
to study this phenomenon, nor have I had 
the time to do so. I hope hereafter to give 
a better proof of the existence of this phe- 
nomenon than I can at present offer, and to 
study the conditions under which it occurs 
more fully. 

The experiments which I have described 
indicate a conduction effect through the gas 
rather than a convection effect due to parti- 
cles thrown off from the discharging plate, 


but it would seem scarcely advisable to at- 


tempt to form a theory to explain these 
phenomena until they have been studied 
more completely. 


Since writing the preceding I have inves- 
tigated more completely the dependence of 
the rate of discharge caused by X-rays upon 
the potential used at different. pressures of 


SCIENCE. 


795 


the surrounding gas. I find that the limit- 
ing value of the current is sooner reached 
when the experiment is carried on at low 
pressures than it is at higher ones, and that 
the limiting values, called by Thomson and 
Rutherford saturation points, are roughly 
proportional to the square roots of the den- 
sity of the gas. 

Stoletow (Journ. de Phys. 9, 471) found 
that in the case of discharge caused by 
ultra-violet light the pressure of the gas at 
which a maximum effect occurred was 
proportional to the potential with which 
he was working. I have tested the dis- 
charge caused by the X-rays in this 
respect, and for this purpose I used much 
greater intensity of radiation than I had 
previously used. I found the pressure for 
maximum effect to be roughly proportional 
to potential of the charged plate. Also 
the intensity of the rays has a very great. 
effect on the point of maximum effect. The: 
greater the intensity the lower was this 
point. 

I have also tried allowing the rays to 
strike the charged body at normal incidence, 
and the results were the same which I had 
previously found when the incidence was 
grazing. 

C. D. Cuixp. 


CORNELL UNIVERSITY. 


CURRENT NOTES ON PHYSIOGRAPHY. 
CORNISH ON SAND DUNES. 

Mr. VaucHAN CornisH discusses the 
formation of sand-dunes (London Geogr. 
Journ., 1X., 1897, 278-309), and throws 
much light on their growth and movements. 
Basing his work on observation and experi- 
ment he discusses the effects of supply 
and texture of sand and of direction 
and strength of wind, and reaches satisfac- 
tory explanations of transverse, longitudinal 
and crescentic dunes (barchanes of Arabia, 
medanos of Peru), adding a suggestive 
hypothesis for the origin by wind-excava- 


796 


tion of the Arabian sand pits (fulje) of hoof- 
print form. Some of these described by 
Blunt are over 200 feet deep, revealing the 
hard floor on which the loose sand lies. The 
horns of the crescentic medanos point in the 
direction of wind motion, because, being 
lower than the middle, they travel for- 
ward faster, and thus run ahead of the 
largermass. The extension of coast dunes 
in ridges transverse to the active winds is 
shown to depend more on the location of 
the sand supply (the beach) than on wind 
intention or ‘sand tactics.’ The longi- 
tudinal dunes of the Indian desert, parallel 
to the dominating wind, exhibit the more 
perfect mastery of the wind over the sand; 
they are best developed where the wind 
is strongest. Transverse dunes are com- 
pared to large ripples of sand and exhibit 
the relative mastery of the sand over the 
wind. The most effective way to check the 
encroachments of blown sands is to pro- 
mote the growth of existing dunes by wattle 
fencing ; thus the advance of individual 
dunes and the formation of new dunes to 
leeward are retarded. 


PHILIPPSON ON GEOMORPHOLOGY. 


Dr. A. Puitiprson, of Bonn, has con- 
tributed a series of articles to Hettner’s 
Geographische Zeitschrift (11., 1896, 512-527, 
557-576, 626-639, 688-703), on the prog- 
ress of the above subject, in which he recog- 
nizes two divisions: a dynamical chapter, 
concerned with the forces at work on the 
surface; and a systematic chapter, con- 
cerned with the classification of forms ac- 
cording to their characteristic features and 
their causes. Geological structure and 
stage of development (by which young, 
mature and old forms are distinguished) 
are not given prominent place. Attention 
is devoted chiefly to the processes by which 
form is determined ; weathering, transpor- 
tation by streams, snow, ice, and wind, and 
the action of the sea, are considered in some 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 125. 


detail, with numerous references to special 
articles; geomorphogeny, rather than geo- 
morphology, being the leading theme. For 
example, under transportation by gravity, 
the determining conditions of landslips are 
briefly stated, but entirely apart from the 
structures and the stages of development in 
which landslips are characteristic and with 
little attention to the forms that they as- 
sume. While rational from the point of 
view of process, such a method seems em- 
pirical from point of view of form and, as 
such, characteristic of the current German 
method of study. 


THORODSSEN ON NORTHEAST ICELAND. 


K. K&EILHACK gives an abstract in Peter- 
mann’s Mitteilungen (xL1r.,1896, 269-275) 
of Thorodssen’s observations in northeast- 
ern Iceland in 1895. The Jokulsa delta 
formerly had a larger population, but is now 
in part laid waste by the gravels of its ag- 
grading distributaries. South of the delta 
flat lava floods of great area spread around 
cones of moderate height; the lavas are 
seen to rest on glaciated dolerite. Indeed, all 
northeast Iceland bears marks of glaciation 
where not covered by younger lava flows 
and ashes. Fissures are noted at various 
points. Hast of the Jokulsa delta the 
broken ground is dislocated on the fissures. 
Lava flows issue from some fissures, and 
small craters are built over them. West of 
the delta fissures were formed during the 
earthquake of January 25, 1885, with small 
displacement of adjacent land blocks. The 
younger lava and tuffs of this region, both 
pre- and post-glacial, continue southward 
to the Vatna Jokull, apparently occupying 
a depressed district between the older ba- 
salts to the east and west. 

VOLCANIC PHENOMENA OF 1894. 

EK. Rupotru, of Strassburg, continues the 
annual report on voleanic phenomena, pre- 
viously prepared by Kniittel (Tschermak’s 
Min. u. Pet. Mitth., xv1., 1896, 365-464). 


May 21, 1897.] 


A special bibliography is given for each im- 
portant volcanic district, followed by a 
brief summary of events, with frequent 
historical review. From an abundance of 
material the following may be noted: 
Falcon island in the Friendly (Tonga) 
islands (20° 20’ S.lat.; 175° 20’ W. long). 
was first noted as a shoal in 1867. In 
1877 smoke was seen ascending from the 
sea surface over the shoal. In October, 
1885, an island had been formed 3,700 
meters long and 75 meters high. At this 
time a terrific eruption was in progress, 
enormous clouds of constantly changing 
form rising over the island; earthquakes 
were felt on the neighboring islands and 
thundering sounds were heard on the 
‘southernmost island of the Fiji group, 325 
kilometers away. In 1886 the island was 
estimated as 2,600 meters long and 50 
meters high ; in 1887 the height was 90 
meters. In 1889 the length and breath 
‘were 2,040 and 1,630 meters; the height 
was 47 meters. The adjacent sea bottom 
was 1,800 meters deep. The island con- 
sisted of ashes and has subsequently been 
greatly reduced by wave action. In 1892 
its height was only eight meters, and its 
disappearance may be soon expected. 


LIMESTONE RANGE OF THE KLONTHAL, 
SWITZERLAND. 

Dr. Cart BuRcKHARDT, a pupil of Heim’s, 
contributes the 35th number of the Beitrage 
zur Geologischen Karte der Schweiz (Mono- 
graphie der Kreideketten zwischen Kl6én- 
thal, Sihl und Linth; Bern, 1896, 205 p., 
maps and plates). It concerns a small dis- 
trict in which the structural features of 
successive eastward portions are, as it 
were, out of joint with each other ; this be- 
ing explained as the effect of a folding and 
shearing on north-south lines, oblique to 
another folding on roughly east-west lines. 
Most of the report is given to stratigraphy ; 
the later pages treat Oberjldchengeologie, but 


SCIENCE. 


797 


less thoroughly than could be wished. A 
more detailed analysis of drainage lines 
might serve to determine the relative date 
of the two systems of folding, which is left 
in doubt. A characteristic feature of the 
work is a number diagrammatic views, 
drawn from nature by the author in a style 
closely resembling that of his master. 
W. M. Davis. 


HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 
NOTES ON AMERICAN CERAMICS. 


Tue device of the potter’s wheel was un- 
known in either North or South America. 
A substitute for it is described as still in 
use among the Araucanians of Chili. It is 
a convex dish which is moved backward 
and forward on a smooth stone. Revolving 
in it, the clay is moulded to asymmetrically 
circular form. (Globus, Feb. 20.) 

A cylindrical mug, with a handle, quite 
like a German ‘ Bierseidel,’ was manu- 
factured by the ancient Araucanians, as the 
same authority tells us; and it is singular 
how exactly this form recurs in the pottery 
of the Cliff-dwellers. Numerous examples 
are in the Museum of the University of 
Pennsylvania. 

Intentional glazing was probably nowhere 
developed into a branch of ceramic art on 
this continent ; but partially glazed speci- 
mens, of ancient date, are not unusual in 
Central American collections. Examples 
are in the Museum just mentioned. They 
seem to be accidental, owing to an abun- 
dance of siliceous matter in the clay. 


THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 


Tur series of articles on this subject by 
Professor W. Z. Ripley, in the Popular Sci- 
ence Monthly, deserves the attention of all 
readers interested in questions of modern 
anthropology. The Europeans of to-day 
offer a peculiarly complicated problem, ow- 
ing to the extensive crossings to which all 


798 


the types have been subjected. Professor 
Ripley undertakes its solution by an analy- 
sis of each of the ethnic elements, such as 
language, skull-form, complexion, hair, 
stature, etc. Numerous maps, diagrams, 
and photogravures put the reader at a 
glance in possession of the relative localiza- 
tion of these traits. The theories of their 
origin and distribution, as advanced by the 
principal students of the subject, are brought 
forward and examined. The author evi- 
dences both a thorough acquaintance with 
the subject and a freedom from bias in 
reaching his conclusions which cannot fail 
to command for them the most careful at- 
tention. 


ANOTHER INTERPRETER OF THE MAYAN 
HIEROGLYPHS. 

Ir is a gloomy duty to chronicle the vic- 
tims to the story of the Mayan hieroglyphs, 
but a duty it is. 

One of the latest is Herr A. Hichhorn, of 
Berlin. He has discovered that about 
24,000 years ago the ancestors of the Mayas 
dwelt on an island in a now dried-up lake 
in Central Asia. They there developed a 
science of astronomy, mathematics and 
philosophy, which they embalmed in their 
heraldric insignia, their hieroglyphs and in 
the grammatic and etymologic construction 
of their languages. On reaching Central 
America, say about 12,000 B. C., they con- 
tinued their relations with Europe until 
1500 B. C., the Pelasgi and Leleges being 
really Mayas. About the ninth century of 
our era the Northmen visited Yucatan, and 
brought from there the Gothic style of 
architecture into EKurope. Mayas, Nahuas 
and Toltecs are, in fact, the same people 
and speak the same secret language, as Mr. 
Eichhorn proves by an analysis of many 
words. Their common calendar system he 
explains with ease. It is entirely theo- 
sophie and symbolic. 


Does the reader wish more? Then let 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 125. 


him buy Mr. Hichhorn’s work, a handsome 
quarto of 128 pages, entitled ‘ Naual, oder 
die hohe Wissenschaft der architectonischen 
und kunstlerischen Composition bei den 
Maya-Volkern.’ (Berlin, Max Spielmeyer. ). 
D. G. Brinton. 
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


NOTES ON INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 

A stupy of ozone from a technical stand- 
point by E. Andreoli appears in the Journal’ 
of the Society of Chemical Industry. Theoret- 
ically, one should be able to produce a kilo. 
of ozone per electric horse-power, but in 
practice only ten or twelve grams are ob- 
tained. By improvements in the apparatus 
for producing ozone, the author increases 
the production to thirty and even fifty 
grams per horse-power, making the cost of 
ozone about three shillings a kilo. Among 
the improvements in the apparatus are pass- 
ing the air directly between the electrodes, 
thus avoiding two glass dielectrics ; a mini- 
mum distance between the electrodes, made 
possible by discarding the glass dielectries ; 
increase in surface (and number) of elec- 
trodes; use of electrodes covered with 
numerous sharp points. The author pro- 
poses a large number of technical applica- 
tions of ozone, such as purification of drink- 
ing water, cleansing of beer casks, prepara-: 
tion of wood for instruments and furniture, 
bleaching of starch and dextrin, oxidation 
of drying oils, purification of wine and 
brandy, ete. It does not appear, however,. 
that any of these proposed uses have been 
tested practically and on a large scale. 


AN investigation, by S. A. Andrée, of the- 
amount of carbon dioxid in the atmosphere, 
abstracted in the Chemisches Central-Blatt,. 
shows but slightly varying quantities at 
different elevations. Air collected on a 
balloon ascent from the height of 1,000 to 
3,000 meters contained 3.23 parts carbon 
dioxid per 10,000; from 3,000 to 4,300: 


May 21, 1897.] 


meters, 3.24 parts, while at the earth’s sur- 
face the amount is 3.03 to 3.20. Nansen 
found, when crossing Greenland, that at 
elevations of 2,300-2,700 meters, and with 
a temperature of —20°, the amount of carbon 
dioxid was as great or even greater than at 
Stockholm. It seems now well settled that 
the old figure of 4 per 10,000 as the con- 
tent of the atmosphere in carbon dioxid is 
decidedly too large, and that the amount 
varies locally within quite narrow limits, 
but with a tendency to increase slightly 
with the elevation. The cause of this varia- 
tion is, as yet, unexplained, but the con- 
sumption of the gas near the surface of the 
earth by plants would seem to be a factor. 


A SERIES of experiments on the resistance 
of cements to sea water was begun in 1856 
at the harbor of La Rochelle, and is de- 
scribed in the Thonindustrie-Zeitung by E. 
Candlot. The experiments consisted in 
placing cubes of cement of different com- 
positions, 60 centimeters long, where they 
would be covered by the sea at high tide 
and exposed to the air at low water. Blocks 
of cement without sand disintegrated more 
rapidly than those containing sand, and the 
best mixture was one volume of cement 
with from one to two volumes of sand. 
Such blocks lasted from twenty to thirty- 
eight years. This mixture corresponds to 
the least porous material, that is, the ce- 
ment suffices to completely fill the inter- 
stices between the grains of sand. An ex- 
cess of lime or magnesia in the cement is 
detrimental ; this occurs when the quantity 
of silica and alumina is insufficient to 
saturate these bases. The best cement is 
that which requires least water for mixing, 
relative to the amount which it can hold 
chemically combined when ‘set.’ Portland 
cement was found to require very little ex- 
cess of water, and hence gave the densest 
and least porous results and the maximum 
durability. 

JE 


SCIENCE. 


799 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 
A PERMANENT CENSUS BUREAU. 


WE are glad to note that Senator Chandler, 
Chairman of the Committee on the Census, re- 
ported favorably, on May 10th, the bill providing 
for taking the twelfth census and for the es- 
tablishment of a permanent census service. 
This bill was drawn up by the Hon. Carroll D. 
D. Wright, Commissioner of Labor, in accor- 
dance with a joint resolution of Congress, and 
demonstrates the advantages of securing ex- 
pert scientific advice in regard to proposed leg- 
islation. The main provisions of the bill are 
as follows : 

It provides for a permanent census office at 
Washington, the duties of which shall be the 
taking of the twelfth and succeeding decennial 
censuses and the collection of other statistical 
information in intervening years. The Director 
of the Census and the Assistant Director are to 
be Presidential appointees, but the latter must 
be an experienced practical statistician. The 
other officers, including five chief statisticians 


“at an annual salary of, $3,000 each, will be ap- 


pointed under the civil service rules. 

The sum of $75,000 is to be appropriated for 
the organization of the office. Itis estimated 
that the annual cost will be less than $500,000, 
and that the decennial enumeration with the 
tabulation of results will cost an additional sum 
of about three or four million dollars. The 
permanent census bureau would consequently 
cost less than the eleventh census, for which 
some eleven and a half million dollars were ex- 
pended. It is estimated by Mr. Wright that 
two million dollars of this sum can be charged 
directly to the fact that the force was not under 
civil service rules. 

The bill provides for taking the census here- 
after on April 15th in place of June Ist, as at 
the latter date the people are scattered from the 
cities. Itis proposed to omit from the decennial 
census certain items regarding vital statistics, 
mortgages, Indians, etc., included in the 
eleventh census, these being in part relegated to 
other bureaus and to the separate States. The 
office would, however, issue annually accounts 
of agricultural products and biennially accounts 
of manufactures. Statistics of deaths and births 
would be obtained from the registration records 


800 


of the separate States and municipalities, sup- 
plemented by such data as the Director of the 
Census may think it advisable to secure. Sta- 
tistics relating to the dependent, delinquent 
and defective classes would be published an- 
nually. It is hoped, further, to secure a quin- 
quennial census of the population with the co- 
operation of the States. 


ELIZABETH THOMPSON SCIENCE FUND. 


Tuis fund, which was established by Mrs. 
Elizabeth Thompson, of Stamford, Connecticut, 
‘for the advancement and prosecution of scien- 
tific research in its broadest sense,’ now 
amounts to $26,000. It is under the care of a 
board of trustees consisting of Henry P. Bow- 
ditch, President; William Minot, Jr., Trea- 
surer; James M. Crafts, Edward C. Pickering 
and C. 8S. Minot, Secretary. As accumulated 
income will be available in November next, the 
trustees desire to receive application for appro- 
priations in aid to scientific work. This endow- 
ment is not for the benefit of any one depart- 


ment of science, but it is the intention of the - 


trustees to give the preference to those investi- 
gations which cannot otherwise be provided for, 
which have for their object the advancement of 
human knowledge or the benefit of mankind 
in general, rather than to researches directed 
to the solution of questions of merely local im- 
portance. 

Application for assistance from this fund, in 
order to receive consideration, must be accom- 
panied by full information, especially in regard 
to the following points: (1) Precise amount re- 
quired. (2) Exact nature of the investigation 
proposed. (8) Conditions under which the re- 
search isto be prosecuted. (4) Manner in which 
the appropriation asked for is to be expended. 
The trustees are disinclined, for the present, to 
make any grant to meet ordinary expenses of 
living or to purchase instruments, such as 
are found commonly in laboratories. Decided 
preference will be given to applications for 
small amounts, and grants exceeding $300 
will be made only under very exceptional 
circumstances. All applications should reach, 
before November 1, 1897, the Secretary of 
the Board of Trustees, Dr. C.S. Minot, Harvard 
Medical School, Boston, Mass., U. S. A. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 125. 


GENERAL. 


THE House of Representatives, on May 11th, 
by a vote of 100 to 39, refused to concur in the 
Senate Amendment to the Civil Service Sundry 
Bill, revoking President Cleveland’s order re- 
garding the forest reservations. Both the 
House and the Senate are evidently in favor of 
the inauguration of an adequate forestry policy, 
and we feel sure that suitable arrangements 
will be made. 


Mr. GALLINGER has reported favorably, from 
the Committee on the District of Colum- 
bia, the bill ‘For the further prevention of 
cruelty to animals in the District of Colum- 
bia.’ It is to be hoped that this bill, which 
proposes onerous and useless restrictions on the 
advancement of the medical sciences, will not 
be passed by Congress. All the representative 
bodies most competent to form an opinion on 
the matter regard the proposed law as useless 
and harmful. These bodies include The Na- 
tional Academy of Sciences, the American As- 
sociation for the Advancement of Science, the 
Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 
and many other societies more competent than 
the Senate to decide whether any cruelty to 
animals has been practiced in the District of 
Columbia. 


By the death of the Duc d’Aumale, on May 
7th, the Institute of France comes into posses- 
sion of the Chateau of Chantilly with its great 
collections, a bequest valued at $8,000,000. 


Proressor B. K. EMERSON, Professor O. C. 
Marsh, Professor S. F. Emmons, Mr. J. BE. 
Spurr, Mr. A. H. Brooks, Professor W. H. 
Hobbs and Professor J. P. Iddings, all of the 
United States Geological Survey, will attend 
the coming International Geological Congress in 
Russia. They will be officially accredited to 
the Congress as representatives of the United 
States, the delegation to include also Professor 
G. P. Merrill, of the National Museum. 


PRESIDENT DAVID STARR JORDAN, Mr. F. A. 
Lucas and Mr. Leonhard Stegneger will again 
this year act as commissioners to investigate 
the condition of the seals, and will leave for the 
Pribyloff Islands on or about the Ist of June. 


THE Civil Service Commission announces a 
competitive examination to fill a vacancy in the 


May 21, 1897.] 


position of anthropologist in charge of the Di- 
vision of Anthropology in the United States 
National Museum. The duties of the position 
_ will be the administration of the division of 
anthropology and the carrying forward of origi- 
nal investigation and study of the collections. 
The salary is $3,500 per annum. Competitors 
will be required to submit their answers to the 
inquiries and their essays on blanks furnished. 
them by the Commission on or before June Ist. 


AT a meeting of the Council of the Australa- 
sian Association for the Advancement of Science 
held at Sidney on March 25th it was decided 
that the commencement of the next annual ses- 
sion be fixed for January 6, 1898. It was de- 
cided further to suspend the rule requiring an 
initiation fee from new members. The Hon. Sec- 
retary, Professor A. Liversidge reported that he 
had written to the Premier quoting the amounts 
of pecuniary and other aids afforded in the past 
to the Association by the respective govern- 
ments of Victoria, New Zealand, Queens- 
land, Tasmania and South Australia, and 
asking for similar support from the mother 
colony. Professor Baldwin Spencer, of Mel- 
bourne University, will deliver a popular lec- 
ture at the meeting on ‘The Center of Austra- 
lia,’ with special reference to its ethnological 
aspects. 

A MEETING of the International Committee 
of Weights and Measures was held at Sévres, 
near Paris, beginning on April 13th. Dr. Wil- 
helm Forster, Director of the Berlin Observa- 
tory, presided, and there were representatives 
present from Germany, Austria, England, Rus- 
sia, Norway, Switzerland and Portugal. 

AN International Congress for the unification 
of methods for the testing of materials will be 
held at Stockholm on the 23d, 24th and 26th of 
August of the present year. 

THE Russian National Health Society pro- 
poses to celebrate, next year, the 100th anniver- 
sary of the discovery of the mineral springs of 
the Caucasus by a conference on balneology and 
climatology. 

THE current number of Nature contains the 
thirtieth article in the series on ‘Scientific 
Worthies.’ The subject of the present article 
is the eminent Italian chemist, Professor Stan- 


SCIENCE. 


801 


islao Carmizzaro. The text, by Dr. T. EH. 
Thorpe, is accompanied by a fine portrait. 


THE Paris Academy of Sciences has nomi- 
nated as its first choice, M. le Colonel Bassot; 
asits second choice, M. Lippmann, for the posi- 
tion in the Bureau of Longitudes, vacant by the 
death of Fizeau. 


THE Paris Société de secowrs des amis des 
sciences, a society whose object it is to assist 
poor scholars and their families, held its annual 
meeting on April 29th, under the presidency of 
M. Joseph Bertram, who made an address on 
‘The life of a scholar in the sixteenth century.’ 


THE New York State Forest Preserve Board, 
which has the important duty of buying 
$1,000,000 worth of Adirondack lands, held its 
first formal meeting on May 7th. Its members 
are Lieutenant-Governor Woodruff, State Engi- 
neer Adams and Forestry Commissioner Bab- 
cock. There were submitted to the Board offers 
of land inthe Adirondacks amounting to over 
$1,000,000 in value, a large part of which is on 
the southern slope of the Adirondacks, the 
region where the Board thinks the larger part 
of the appropriation should be spent. 


THE American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 
at its annual meeting on May 12th, elected the 
following officers for 1897-98 : 

President, Alexander Agassiz; Vice-President, 
Class I, John Trowbridge ; Vice-President, Class II, 
George L. Goodale ; Vice-President, Class III, Augus- 
tus Lowell; Corresponding Secretary, Samuel H. 
Scudder; Recording Secretary, William Watson ; 
Treasurer, Eliot C. Clarke ; Librarian, Henry W. 
Haynes; Councillors, Henry Mitchell, Leonard P. 
Kinnicutt, Edwin H. Hall, in Class 1; Henry P. 
Bowditch, William W. Davis, B. L. Robinson, in 
Class II ; Barrett Wendell, John E. Hudson, Edward 
Robinson, in Class III. 

At the same meeting the following per- 
sons were elected Associate Fellows: In the 
Section of Medicine and Surgery, William 
Osler, of Baltimore, and William Henry 
Welch, of Baltimore, and in the Section of Lit- 
erature and the Fine Arts, Horace Howard 
Furness, of Philadelphia, and Edmund Clarence 
Stedman, of New York. 

THE National Education Association meets 
this summer at Milwaukee, from the 6th to the 
9th of July, which will be convenient for those 


802 


wishing afterwards to attend the meeting of the 
American Association at Detroit. 


Av the annual meeting of the New York 
Hlectrical Society, on May 20th, Mr. H. Bar- 
inger Cox was announced to lecture on the 
Thermopile, with practical illustrations of cer- 
tain novel features. 


TueE valuable ornithological collection owned 
by the late D. von Homeyere has been pur- 
chased in part by Dr. W. Blasius for the Mu- 
seum of Natural History at Brunswick, and in 
part by Dr. R. Blasius for his private use. 


Tue Appalachian Mountain Club, of Boston, 
has arranged for an excursion to Amherst, 
Mass., on May 21st to June 2d, and to Dublin, 
N. H., from June 16th to 21st. The Club gave 
an ‘At home’ on May 19th, at which a collec- 
tion of mountain pictures lent by Mr. Charles 
Pollock was on view, and other pictures were 
shown, including photographs of the moun- 
tains of the moon taken at the Paris Observa- 
tory, views of the Rockies and of the wonder- 
ful Muir Glacier. 

WE regret to record the death of Mr. Hugh 
Nevill, of the Ceylon civil service, who had 
discovered and described many new species in 
zoology and made valuable collections in 
ornithology and conchology. ; 

TuE Directory of Scientific Societies of Wash- 
ington, for 1897, prepared and published by the 
Joint Commission, Mr. J. Stanley-Brown, Acting 
Secretary, bears witness again to the dominant 
position of Washington as a scientific center. 
The number of members of the several societies 
is as follows: Anthropological, 138; Biolog- 
ical, 156; Chemical, 89; Entomological, 41; 
Geographic, 1,040; Geological, 144; Philo- 
sophical, 120; the total membership of the 
societies being 1,728 and the total number of 
persons 1,450. 

D. APPLETON & Co. announce, as a new vol- 
ume in their ‘ Useful Story Series,’ The Story of 
Germ Life, by Professor H. W. Conn. 

Lorp ListER presided at the annual dinner 
of the Royal Literary Fund on May Sth, and 
the speeches made by Lord Lister, the Bishop 
of Stepney, Mr. Traill, Mr. Lockyer and the 
Earl of Crewe were all concerned with the re- 
lations of science to literature. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 125. 


PROFESSOR H. Moissan will lecture at the 
Royal Institution, London, on May 28th, on the 
‘Tsolation of Fluorine.’ 


REPLYING to a question in the British House 
of Commons, Sir Mathew White Ridley said that 
the number of persons licensed to practice vivi- 
section at the present time in England was 145, 
in Scotland 52, and in Wales 1; the number 
holding the certificate dispensing with anzs- 
thetics was in England 86, in Scotland 30, and 
in Wales none. The only figures in his posses- 
sion as regards Ireland were those for 1895; in 
that year the number of licenses was 6, of 
whom one held a certificate dispensing with 
anesthetics. In giving the honorable member 
these figures he might remind him that the cer- 
tificate in question was never given for opera- 
tions involving serious pain, but only for such 
operations as inoculations or hypodermic injec- 
tions. 

GOVERNOR BLACK has signed the bill author- 
izing New York City to make an additional 
bond issue of $2,500,000 for the erection and 
equipment of four high schools. 


Dr. KOLLe, of the Berlin Institute for Infec- 
tious Diseases, has received a year’s leave in 
order to proceed to Cape Colony, where he has 
been commissioned by the Cape government to 
continue the work on rinderpest and leprosy 
begun by Professor Koch. 


A PORTRAIT of Lord Lister by Mr. Ouless is 
said to be among the best pictures at the re- 
cently opened exhibition of the Royal 
Academy. 

THOUGH an egg of the Great Auk was sold at 
auction recently for nearly $1,500, itis by no 
means the rarest of birds, being positively com- 
mon in comparison with the Labrador Duck and 
Pallas’ Cormorant, and the extraordinary value 
attached to its remains is somewhat singular. 
An instance of this was shown at a sale in 
1895, where an egg of the Great Auk brought 
180 guineas, while a well preserved egg of 
Apyornis sold for 36 guineas. 

Dr. W. F. MorsELtL writes that the suites of 
typical rocks of the Educational Series which 
the United States Geological Survey has been 
preparing for several years are ready for distri- 
bution; and the higher institutions of learning, 


May 21, 1897.] 


to which they will go, have been notified of the 
fact. There are nearly 200 sets, of 156 speci- 
mens each. The institutions are expected to 
pay for transportation, but are under no 
further expense. 


ArT the last meeting of the British Astronom- 
ical Association it was announced by the Presi- 
dent (Mr. N. E. Green) that Miss Brown, the 
Director of the Solar Section of the Association, 
had presented £50 towards the expenses of 
erecting an observatory on the site offered by 
the Royal Botanical Society. Mr. J. G. Petrie, 
(Secretary), stated that the President had offered 
to commence the equipment of the observatory 
by presenting his 18-inch reflecting telescope, 
with which he had made many of his drawings, 
and that Mr. Calver had also offered optical 
aid. 


On Saturdays in June and July, when the 
Royal Botanic Gardens are opened to the 
public by payment of a fee, gardeners will be 
detailed to take visitors around the gardens to 
show the points of interest and describe the 
plants. 


THE fifteenth anniversary of the Institution 
of Mechanical Engineers, London, was cele- 
brated by a dinner on April 29th. Mr. E. 
Windsor Richard, the President, occupied the 
chair, and speeches were made by the Duke of 
Cambridge, Sir F. Bramwell, Professor Kennedy 
and others. 


The Psychological Index, compiled by Dr. 
Howard C. Warren, of Princeton University, 
and’Dr. Livingston Farrand, of Columbia‘Uni- 
versity, and issued annually as a supplement to 
The Psychological Review, has been published 
for the year 1896. The bibliography of the lit- 
erature of psychology and cognate subjects for 
that year extends to 145 pages and: contains 
2,234 titles. Psychology is one of the fifteen 
sciences to be included in the International 
Bibliography of Scientific Literature, but, while 
the plans for this great undertaking are being 
matured, The Psychological Index is essential to 
students of psychology and cognate subjects. 


Tue first two numbers of a Zeitschrift fiir 
Criminal - Anthropologie, Gefdngniswissenschaft 
und Prostitutionswesen, edited by Dr. Walter 


SCIENCE. 


803 


Wenge and published by M. Priber, Berlin, 
have been issued. These numbers include arti- 
cles by Dr. Nicke on ‘Lombroso and Modern 
Criminal Anthropology,’ by Professor Preyer 
on the ‘Hand-Writing of Criminals,’ by Dr. 


Penta on ‘The Rational Treatment of Crimi- 


nals,’ by Dr. Paul on ‘ Identification,’ and other 
articles on similar subjects, together with a re- 
view of the literature. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 


THE Governors of McGill University, in ac- 
cordance with the custom of British and Cana- 
dian universities, announce that they are pre- 
pared to receive applications for the appoint- 
ment to the chair of zoology recently founded 
by Sir Donald A. Smith. The annual salary is 
$2,500. Candidates should forward applica- 
tions with testimonials before June 1st to Mr. 
W. Vaughan, Secretary, McGill University, 
Montreal. 


Iv is announced that the College of Physi- 
cians and Surgeons of Chicago will be affili- 
ated with the University of Illinois. 


BARNARD College, New York, has received a 
gift of $140,000 from Mrs. Josiah M. Fiske for 
a building to be called Fiske Hallin memory of 
her husband. This will enable the trustees to 
complete the new quadrangle, the other halls, 
provided by Mrs. Brinckerhoff and Mrs. Ander- 
son, being now nearly ready for occupancy. 
Barnard College has also received $6,000 from 
Mrs. Henry O. Havemeyer for the equipment 
of the chemical laboratory and $2,000 from 
others for the furnishing of the Brinckerhoff 
Hall. 


RossE Hall, Kenyon College, was burned 
May 9th. The loss is estimated at $10,000. 


THE chair of mineralogy and metallurgy in 
Columbia University, vacant by the retirement 
of Professor Thomas Egleston, will be divided, 
Professor A. J. Moses being promoted to a pro- 
fessorhip of mineralogy, and Mr. H. M. Howe, 
a graduate of Harvard University and the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, being 
appointed professor of metallurgy. 


THERE are 450 candidates for degrees this 


804 


year at Cornell University. Of these 136 are 
in the department of arts and sciences and 137 
in the Sibley College of Mechanical Hngineer- 
ing. There are 18 candidates for the doctorate, 
14 in philosophy and 4 in science. 

THE will of the late Miss Brown, of Water- 
haugh, Ayrshire, leaves £5,000 both to the Uni- 
versity of Edinburgh and to the University of 
Glasgow. 

THE Cambridge Syndidate appointed to con- 
sider the question of degrees for women have 
issued a second report, in which they state that 
after carefully considering the discussion of 
their first report they adhere to their recom- 
mendations. The statute recommended is as 
follows: ‘‘ The University shall have power to 
grant, by diploma, titles of degrees in Arts, Law, 
Science, Letters and Music to women who, 
either before or after the confirmation of this 
statute, have fulfilled the conditions which shall 
be required of them for this purpose by the 
ordinances of the University, and also shall 
have power to grant by diploma the same titles 
honoris causa to women who have not fulfilled 
the usual conditions but have been recom- 
mended for such titles by the Council of the 
Senate; provided always that a title granted 
under this section shall not involve member- 
ship of the University.”’ 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
FORMER EXTENSION OF ICE IN GREENLAND. 


I HAD not intended writing on this subject 
again, but Professor Chamberlin’s criticism* 
of my paper in the Bulletin of the Geological 
Society of America calls fora reply. For the 
benefit of those, if there are any, who think 
that problems of Greenland glacial geology can 
be settled at long range, by a comparison of 
photographs, I wish to point out that Professor 
Chamberlin has selected for publication, not 
the view in my paper, which does show some 
ruggedness, but one inserted primarily to show 
glaciated topography. Therefore I can agree 
with some of Professor Chamberlin’s remarks. 

Had my critic sailed along this coast he would 
have seen the Devil’s Thumb as a high peak 

*ScreNncE, p. 748, and in a somewhat different 
form in Journ. Geol., V., 1897, p. 303. 


SCIENCE. 


{[N.S. Voz. V. No. 125. 


with serrated sky line, precipitous front and 
numerous evidences of ruggedness. He would 
not have seen the well glaciated back, which 
my view shows, and would not have known 
that, while in all other places the peak is inac- 
cessible, the ascent from the glaciated back was 
easy. Had he made this ascent he would have 
found even more distinct evidence of rugged- 
ness and, throwing a stone as large as one’s | 
head, would have found that from five to seven 
seconds elapsed before it struck, indicating a 
nearly sheer precipice of perhaps 500 feet. 
Whether this would have been classed as angu- 
lar and unsubdued I cannot, of course, say ; 
but my classification of it, in the view obtained 
from the sea, is distinctly unsubdued. Some 
idea of the nature of this west face (or left side) 
may be gained from the photograph, though the 
cliff is three or four miles from the camera and 
the picture, as printed, far less distinct than 
the original view. Dozens of hills in this re- 
gion have the same characteristics, including 
Fig. I., plate 27 (in my article), in which, how- 
ever, glaciated topography is seen in the back- 
ground on the right, which would not have 
been seen from sea-level, 

I have nothing to say concerning my query 
about the ‘driftless area,’ which, judging from 
the warmth of the reply, seems to be resented. 
Nor do I feel called upon to defend my use of 
the term Deyil’s Thumb. From Professor 
Chamberlin’s remarks one would infer, what 
is not the case, that I had made an error in 
placing names. Geologists would be under- 
taking a very serious task if they attempted to 
verify the maps they use. The Ryder map, 
from which the name is adopted, is based on an 
official Danish Survey, and for the region is quite 
remarkably accurate. Since this map is pub- 
lished in my paper, and a foot-note announces 
my belief that Ryder has made an error in 
naming the mountain the Devil’s Thumb, no 
real confusion will arise in the minds of those 
who read my paper carefully and candidly. 

Professor Chamberlin makes another mistake 
when he says that I insist ‘upon general glaci- 
ation.’ I have never done this, but have 
brought forward evidence which, I believe, 
proves the opposite conclusion to be a generali- 
zation based upon questionable field methods, 


May 21, 1897.] 


so that the work ought to be done over before 
the conclusion can be accepted. 

Since Professor Chamberlin has again and 
again mistaken my position, or has otherwise 
changed the point at issue, and since little of 
scientific value is likely to come of this discus- 
sion, I shall write no more upon this point. 


RALPH 8. TARR, 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY. 


POUDRE. 


To THE EpiToR oF ScrENcE: Mr. Goode’s 
description of what he calls Pseudo-Aurora 
(SCIENCE, January 29, 1897), as seen by him at 
Moorhead, Minn., is abundantly confirmed 
by my own observations at this place. The 
complete manifestation of the phenomena is 
comparatively rare. The finest I ever saw was 
on January 22, 1890, an account of which was 
furnished by me at that time to the American 
Meteorological Journal, and published in the 
February number, and to which the title of this 
article was given by the editor, Mr. M. W, 
Harrington. From this article I condense the 
following extract: After a ten days’ period of 
continued cold weather the thermometer reach- 
ing — 20° to —32° at night, asouth wind set in 
on the 22d, and the temperature rose to +10°. 
During the afternoon and evening the air 
seemed full of small ice crystals; and my recol- 
lection is that I examined them, and found 
them to be, as Goode describes them.minute, 
thin, perfectly clear, hexagonal ice-crystals. 
The reflection of street lamps and electric lights 
made long streams of light, all tending to the 
zenith of the observer; that produced by the 
electric light being so nearly like the Aurora 
Borealis as readily to be mistaken for it. 

Lupovic Estes. 


UNIVERSITY OF NoRTH DAKoTA, April 28, 1897. 


EARLIEST PUBLISHED NOTE OF THE LATE 
CHAS. E. BENDIRE. 


In my obituary of Major Bendire, published 
in ScrENCE of February 12, 1897 (pp. 261-262), 
Istated that ‘‘his earliest published writings are 
in the form of letters to well-known naturalists, 
chiefly Allen, Baird and Brewer.’’ While this 
statement is correct as it stands, the first letters 
mentioned by me were published in 1876. Dr. 


SCIENCE. 


805 


Coues calls my attention to an earlier note I had 
overlooked, one by himself in the American Nat- 
uralist for June, 1872 (p. 370), in which a quo- 
tation is given from a letter about a small owl, 
written by Bendire, from Tucson, Arizona. So 
far as I am aware, this is the earliest publica- 


tion of any of Bendire’s notes. : 
Cr Hee My 


SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 
RECENT TEXT-BOOKS IN PHYSICS. 
Elementary Text-books on Physics. ANTHONY 
AND BRACKETT. Revised by W. F. MAGIE. 
John Wiley & Son. Highth edition. 1897. 
The Elements of Physics. NICHOLS AND FRANK- 
LIN. Volume III., Light and Sound, The 


Macmillan Co. 1897. 

The Outlines of Physics. E. L. Nicnous. The 
Macmillan Company. 1897. 

Problems and Questions in Physics. MATTHEWS 


AND SHEARER. The Macmillan Company. 


1897, 

Intermediate Course of Practical Physics. 
SCHUSTER AND SEES. The Macmillan Com- 
pany. 1896. 

Experimental Physics. W.A. STONE. Ginn & 
Company. 1897. 


First Principles of Natural Philosophy. A. E. 

DoLBEAR. Ginn & Company. 1897. 

In view of the enormous number of new 
books, on all sorts of subjects, which are con 
tinually making their appearance, it is impor- 
tant to inquire whether book-makers, publishers 
and authors are not increasing at an abnormal 
rate. Indeed, it begins to look as if some 
check on their activity would shortly be neces- 
sary for the protection of those old fashioned 
people whose pleasure it is to read rather than 
to write books. Atthe present rate of book pro- 
duction it will not be long before that day, 
which has often been foretold, is actually at 
hand when every man will have time to read 
only his own works, and even now there must 
be some authors who are too busy for that. 

The intellectual, and especially the scientific, 
activity of the present period is in some meas- 
ure finding an outlet in the preparation of text- 
books for schools and colleges, and this is par- 
ticularly true in the domain of the physical 
sciences. 


806 


It is easy for a teacher to convince himself 
that there is no existing book quite suitable for 
his work, and the feeling that he can make one 
which will meet his own wants and those of 
many other teachers is entirely natural. The 
result is a continually increasing number of 
texts, which are multiplying so rapidly that be- 
fore long every class will be using that of its 
teacher for the time being, and no more dread- 
ful catastrophe could overtake the long-suffer- 
ing body of students whose interests are often 
lost sight of by teachers ambitious to become 
authors. 

Although a very general practice, it is by no 
means always a sound one, to insist upon a class 
using the texts prepared by its instructor, and 
this is true even when that text is one of the 
very best of its class. American students are 
often greatly benefited by the use of English 
text-books, and there are many American books 
used with profit in English schools. By usinga 
text prepared by one able scholar and _ sitting 
under the instruction of another the student is 
doubly benefited, and the harm which comes 
from a multiplicity of texts would be greatly les- 
sened if every author were forbidden to use his 
own book. It is quite true that under such con- 
ditions there would be many books never used 
at all, but this would be one of the principal ad- 
vantages of the scheme. 

The above remarks, while suggested by, are 
not considered as specially applicable to, the 
list of new books on Physics which they follow, 
all of which, and many more, have issued from 
the press within a very few months. It may 
safely be asserted that no other science has 
grown and developed during the past ten or 
fifteen years as has this, and this growth is re- 
flected in the very large number of text-books 
and treatises of all grades which have made 
their appearance during the last few years. 
They are easily divided into three classes: 
those that possess real merit and originality of 
treatment and which could not be spared with- 
out serious loss; those that are good, at least 
not bad, and whose existence is harmless ; and 
those that, for various reasons, are undesirable 
and unwelcome, because unsound in either mat- 
ter or method or both. In physics teaching 
and text-books, as in every other department 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 125. 


of education, there appears the fad and the 
‘faddist.’ In these days everybody is running 
after something new, not something good or 
useful. To achieve reputation in educational 
circles it seems only necessary to exploit a 
novelty, but fortunately in science teaching a 
considerable restriction is put upon this ten- 
dency by the inflexibility of natural laws. 
Curiously enough, in the making of books on 
physics that which is really most difficult is 
generally thought to be the easiest and is, there- 
fore, the more frequently attempted. In the 
preparation of an extensive treatise on the sub- 
ject the all important feature is matter, method 
being of only secondary importance; while in a 
text-book method of presentation rises to an im- 
portance fully equal to that of a truthful 
presentation of the principles and facts of the sci- 
ence, especially as it includes the selection of 
just what principles and what facts shall be set 
forth. Yet, although few undertake the pre- 
paration of a treatise, many esteem themselves 
fit to make a text-book. A well written 
treatise will usually include essentially all 
that the author knows about the subject; a 
well prepared text-book will generally repre- 
sent only a small part of his knowledge. 

Unfortunately too many text-books in physics 
contain all their authors know and much more, 
but the latter-day willingness of really able 
scholars to prepare elementary texts will before 
long put an end to their popularity. 

The list of books given above contains several 
that will do to ‘tie to.’ The well-known text 
of Anthony and Brackett, published first about 
ten years ago, has enjoyed extensive and de- 
served approval as a college text-book of 
physics, and in this, the eighth edition, it has 
undergone extensive revision and improvement 
at the hands of Professor Magie, of Princeton, 
who had much to do with its making in the be- 
ginning. The changes are most evident in the 
treatment of electricity and magnetism and in 
the discussion of mechanics and the Kinetic 
theory of matter, in which respects as well as 
along some other lines the book has been prac- 
tically re-written. The methods of treatment 
and the conception of fundamentals have been 
modernized, and the new edition constitutes a 
distinct advance, although the general features” 


May 21, 1897.] 


of the original plan are preserved. The book 
constitutes an excellent college course on 
physics when supplemented, as it is meant to 
be, by full experimental illustrations on the lec- 
ture table. It is inno sensea laboratory guide, 
nor does it imply the existence or use of a 
laboratory. 

For the great majority of students such a book 
and such a course ought to be supplemented by 
the use of a collection of problems illustrating 
the various divisions of the subject, and which 
are quite necessary to fix its principles. 

The Problems and Questions in Physics, by 
Matthews and Shearer, will fairly well satisfy 
the demand for such a collection. The selec- 
tion and arrangement of problems is, on the 
whole, very satisfactory, but the authors seem 
to have been continually in doubt as to whether 
they were not, after all, making a ‘text-book.’ 
Certain subjects are discussed at greater or less 
length, although the same matter will be found 
in almost any standard text. Considerable cost 
and space might have been saved by adhering 
strictly to the plan of a book of problems, and, 
indeed, some of the discussions do not tend to 
clarify the subject in any degree. No student 
can go through this book, however, without 
being greatly benefited. 

Similar in grade to and not differing materially 
in plan from the new edition of Anthony and 
Brackett is the Elements of Physics, by Nichols 
and Franklin, the third and last volume of 
which has just been issued. Light and Sound 
are the subjects considered, and the treatment 
is largely mathematical yet elementary. There 
are no problems or exercises, and the scheme 
assumes lecture-table illustrations and occa- 
sional expansions by the instructor supple- 
mented by actual laboratory practice by the 
student. Those who are familiar with the 
earlier volumes of this series will not need to 
be told that the work is well done and that the 
publication of this volume completes a valuable 
addition to the growing list of available text- 
books for use in colleges and in engineering or 
technical schools. 

Professor Nichols also offers, in the Outlines of 
Physics, a text-book for the use of high schools 
or academies, a thorough knowledge of which he 
hopes may be accepted in lieu of a year of more 


SCIENCE. 


807 


advanced mathematics now required for admis- 
sion to some colleges. There are some serious 
objections to this plan, to which extended con- 
sideration cannot be given in this place, for they 
in no way concern the character of the book 
under consideration. Every question concern- 
ing the relation of the secondary school to the 
college has two very distinct sides, but looking 
at only one of them, namely, the college side of 
the question, it may seem hardly wise to ex- 
change a preparation in mathematics, which is 
undoubtedly more perfectly accomplished than 
anything else in secondary schools to-day, for a 
course in physics, instruction in which is far 
from what it should be. Professor Nichols’s 
book contains a good résumé of the principles of 
the science, and is intended to serve at once as. 
a text-book and laboratory guide. There is 
much difference of opinion among teachers of 
physics as to the wisdom of such a combination, 
many holding that really substantial results in 
the laboratory are only obtainable after a course 
in a good text-book with lecture-table illustra- 
tions, and that encouraging the average student 
to do laboratory exercises from the start is like 
plucking fruit before it isripe. The immediate 
result is unsatisfactory, and subsequent perfec- 
tion is well-nigh impossible. To those who be- 
lieve in the method, however, Professor Nich- 
ols’s book ought to take rank as one of the best. 
of its kind, and, on account of its sound expo- 
sition of fundamental principles, much ahead of 
many that have appeared within the last dec- 
ade. 

Very similar in general character is the Inter- 
mediate Course of Practical Physics, by Schuster 
and Lees, which comes to us from the labora- 
tory of Owens College, Manchester, to which 
physicists are already indebted for a number of 
high-class text-books. This book is extremely 
well done and will be of interest and value to 
all concerned with elementary instruction in 
physics. Itis more nearly a laboratory guide 
than is Nichols’s Outlines and should be used in 
connection with a text book. It may be criti- 
cised for the rather coarse experimentation 
which is occasionally employed. The standard 
of the laboratory should always be high, as the 
value of the work to the student depends al- 
most entirely upon the degree of refinement and 


808 


precision required in its execution No labora- 
tory in which such a book is likely to be used 
can fail to do better in the way of a simple 
pendulum than ‘a string and a leaden bullet ;’ 
and successive values for ‘g’ ought not to 
differ from each other by as much as one anda- 
half per cent. 

Professor Dolbear’s little book on the First 
Principles of Natural Philosophy might impress 
one as being, in text as well as title, a protest 
against the progress of physics during the past 
quarter of a century. Itis true that there are 
some things in it that were not known twenty- 
five years ago, but not many. Throughout the 
volume the author makes no mention of the 
metric units of mass and length, on the use of 
which so much of modern physics depends, de- 
claring himself very decidedly against them in 
his preface. This naturally results in much 
confusion and difficulty, especially in the mat- 
ter of electrical measurements. The funda- 
mental principles of dynamics are presented in 
a confused and uncertain manner, and accuracy 
is sacrificed often apparently to secure sim- 
plicity. 

Mr. Stone’s Experimental Physics is evi- 
dently the outcome of his desire to satisfy the 
demands of the Harvard College entrance 
examinations in physics. The well-known 
‘forty experiments’ prescribed by the Har- 
vard authorities are included with a consider- 
able number besides. The author says that 
the book is the result of nearly ten years’ ex- 
perience in teaching experimental physics, but 
he gives no hint as to how many years he has 
spent in studying the subject. The latter 
query is suggested by the numerous evidences 
of ignorance, or of extremely careless writing, 
which are scattered through the book. 

Without raising the question of the soundness 
of the method adopted, which is that of labora- 
tory work from the start, and before the stu- 
dent knows the simplest elements of his subject, 
it is sufficient to note that if the experiments 
outlined are made with care and reasonable 
precision very many of them will entirely dis- 
prove the principles they are intended to es- 
tablish ; while, on the other hand, if many of the 
principles laid down are accepted without care- 
ful tests the student will acquire many quite 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 125. 


erroneous notions regarding the properties of 
matter and the principles of physical science. 
This is a serious indictment, but in its support it 
is only necessary to refer to the assumption that 
the breaking weights of wires of the same ma- 
terial are proportional to their cross sections ; 
the announcement of the ‘law’ that for a 
given tension the elongation is inversely pro- 
portional to the area of the cross section of the 
wire, and other things similar in character. If 
the author had actually experimented on these 
things, instead of trying to tell others about 
them, he would not make such utterly absurd 
statements. The book contains many excellent 
problems, and now and then a good suggestion 
as to experimental methods. 

There are many books of this type, and they 
all enjoy a common distinction of being, on the 
whole, more likely to create a distaste for real 
work than an appreciation of, and a love for, the 
science of physics. The study of the subject is 
made largely mechanical by having every ex- 
periment explained in the utmost detail, so 
that the student has nothing to do but to put 
the various pieces that he finds, carefully 
placed upon his desk, in the several relations 
explained in the book, and then note the result 
which the book tells him will follow. Occa- 
sionally some unfortunate may note that the 
prescribed result does not follow, but that some- 
thing else happens, and in good time he may 
become a physicist, if not too thoroughly in- 
structed. 

It ought never to be lost sight of that the 
real value of instruction in physics, and espe- 
cially in experimental physics, lies in teaching 
people to think. As a means of accomplishing 
this it has, perhaps, no rival, but both in and 
out of books the shadow is too often mistaken 
for the substance. 


By Guiv- 
1897. 


Antropologia della Stirpe Camitica. 
SEPPE SERGI. Torino, Fratelli Bocca. 
8vo. Illustrated. Pp. 426. 

This well-printed volume is part of an ex- 
tensive study of the anthropology of Africa, 
projected by the distinguished professor of the 
University of Rome. It is devoted to the di- 
visions, characteristics and distribution of that 
branch of the human species which, following 


May 21, 1897.] 


older authorities, he continues to call ‘Ham- 
itic.” To him this is more than a branch; it is 
a separate species of the genus Homo, to which, 
adopting the adjective first proposed by the 
writer of this notice, he assigns the term, 
‘Burafrican,’ indicating that its branches are 
to be found in both Europe and Africa (though 
he modifies the connotation of the term to suit 
his peculiar views). 

Professor Sergi is best known from his phys- 
ical studies of man, but in this volume he as- 
signs linguisticsa prominent place. In his pref- 
ace, however, he iscertainly unfair to his prede- 
‘ecessors in asserting that they have not fol- 
lowed the zoological methods in anthropology. 
The very plan he puts forward as new, and 
his own, is perfectly familiar to readers of 
Darwin and Haeckel, and it can scarcely be 
ignorance of their anthropologic writings 
which led him to insert such a statement. His 
position as a polygenist is, moreover, surely 
inconsistent with the zoological method, as there 
is not a single zoologically specific difference to 
be found between the races of men. There- 
fore, what he calls in his preface ‘the new and 
unexpected fact’ of the specific independence 
of the Hamitie stock (for such it only is—not 
even with pure racial peculiarities) will be re- 
garded as new, indeed, but far from true. 

Nor will his treatment of the purely physical 
traits meet general acceptance. Skull forms 
have become less and less criteria of racial 
classification, and on these he bases most of his 
distinctions. The interesting and ethnically 
important question as to the origin of the blond 
Libyans he treats in a most unsatisfactory man- 
ner.. Basing his opinion on a few local observa- 
tions in Italy (themselves to be explained his- 
torically), he makes the extraordinary assertion 
that we may expect blonds above an altitude of 
401 metres, and that the brown Lybians turned 
blonds by residing above that height! (p. 296.) 

While the work is marred by these and some 
other grave deficiencies, its general composition 
is highly commendable. He divides the Ham- 
itic stock, as others have done, into two 
branches, an eastern and a northern (others 
prefer western, which is more correct). The 
former are the ‘black Hamites,’ as the Somali 
and the Galla. He includes in them the an- 


SCIENCE. 


809° 


cient Egyptians, the Ethiopians and the Abys- 
sinians, in which he will be followed but slowly, 
though no doubt they all partook of Hamitic 
blood at an early date. He also attaches to 
this branch the warlike Massai and the Wa- 
huma. His northern branch embraces the 
Libyans and Berbers (who are, in fact, ethnic- 
ally one), the tribes of the Sahara, the Tuaregs, 
Tebu and Fulbi, and the extinct Guanches of 
the Canary Islands. In these he does not go 
beyond the schemes of earlier writers. 

In his concluding chapter he intimates the 
extension of his ‘Eurafrican species’ into 
Europe, concerning which he proposes to pub- 
lish another volume. The ‘species’ will in- 
clude the ancient peoples of Spain, Italy and 
Greece, Syria and central Europe, but will ex- 
clude the Celts, Slaves, Lithuanians and some 
Germanic peoples (p. 395). They belong to a 
different species! Certainly this is a strange use 
of a zoological term ! 

The work is well illustrated and contains a 
sketch map of the geographic position of the 
Hamites. There is also an excellent index. 

To those readers who are acquainted with 
Professor Sergi’s essay on ‘the Mediterranean 
Stock’ most of the theories in the work before 
us will be familiar. But the numerous facts 
which he has collected bearing on the traits and 
extension of the Hamitic stock will be grate- 


fully received. 
D. G. BRINTON. 


UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


Elementary Human Physiology. By J. G. M‘- 
Kenprick, M.D., F.R.S. W. and R. Cham- 
bers, London and Edinburgh. 1896. Small 
8vo. Pp. 240, with 164 woodcuts. 

This book is based on a small manual on 
Animal Physiology, written by the author 
twenty years ago. The chapters are said to 
have been almost wholly rewritten and ‘ rear- 
ranged to suit the syllabus of the First or Ele- 
mentary Stage, issued by the Department of 
Science and Art.’ Copies of the examination 
papers of the Science department, South Ken- 
sington, for 1890-95 are given in an appendix. 

As to the book itself, it may be said that the 
reviewer took it up with regret, recalling fayor- 
ably a larger work by Professor M‘Kendrick, 


810 


which appeared several years ago. The first 
impression was that this smaller volume was 
written around a set of illustrations of respect- 
able age, but for the most part still serviceable. 
More careful reading, however, makes it clear 
that we are dealing with a pretty good elemen- 
tary presentation of the subject, and that our 
first impression was not altogether just. We 
are ourselves somewhat skeptical of the scien- 
tific value of physiology in the secondary 
schools. Everything depends here upon the 
excellence of the teacher, and a good one will 
find M‘Kendrick’s book useful. It is to be 
sure, quite uneven, and in some places there is 
more detail than can be taken in by the class of 
students which the author seems elsewhere to 
have in mind. Much of the discussion is given 
with evident care and discrimination, and the 
facts presented are in general, despite the 
necessary brevity, quite fully modernized ; even 
argon and the hot and cold spots are not 
forgotten, and the problems of interstitial 
secretion are suggested. There are, to be sure, 
many points on which one may well differ with 
the author, but most of them are perhaps not 
such as to involve serious defects. It must be 
said that the account of the nerve cells is alto- 
gether inadequate. The picture of them (Fig. 
140) is quite in opposition to our present views 
and will make a stronger impression, we fear, 
than the explanation which partially corrects 
them and also shows that Professor M‘Ken- 
drick is well aware what the prevailing view is. 
The description of voice production is unsatis- 
factory and requires fuller illustrations without 
which most young students must find Fig. 164 
hard to understand. 
JOSEPH W. WARREN. 
BRYN MAWR COLLEGE. 


The Story of a Piece of Coal—What it is, whence 
it comes and whither it goes. By EDWARD A. 
Martin, F.G.S. New York, D. Appleton 
& Co. With thirty-eight illustrations. 
16mo. Pp. 168. 

Mr. Martin’s little book shows that the au- 
thor has read widely, has selected judiciously 
and has told the story pleasantly. The narra- 
tion is attractive, and is likely to be commended 
by the readers for whom it is intended. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 125. 


All this makes one regret that the judicious. 
selection was not associated with accurate read- 
ing. There are serious slips in too many places, 
and there is too much of positive assertion 
where modest suggestion would be preferable. 
As for some of his statements, it must be said 
that he should have every opportunity to prove 
them, since many persons would not accept. 
them without hesitation. 

Among other things, he tells us that iron, 
silver and water alone possess the power of ex- 
panding, when passing from the liquid to the 
solid state (p. 80); that no explosions in the 
anthracite region of Pennsylvania were due to 
coal dust (p. 100); that coke if properly made, 
should consist of pure carbon, and that good 
coal should yield as much as 80 per cent. of 
coke in the gas retort (p. 109); that our anthra- 
cite is inexhaustible, and that the ‘mammoth 
vein’ extends for 650 miles along the west. 
bank of the Susquehanna (p. 147). 

Mr. Martin says (p. 152) that Britain will 
feel, with tremendous effect, the blow to her 
prestige when the first vessel laden with coal 
weighs anchor in a British harbor. Three such 
blows were administered in 1896 by one Ken- 
tucky concern, and the attack has been con- 
tinued this year by another. 

J. J. STEVENSON. 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 


BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON, 276TH 
MEETING, SATURDAY, APRIL 24. 


Mr. M. A. CARLETON spoke on ‘Climate as. 
an Element in Wheat Environment,’ his re- 
marks being mainly a comparison of the condi- 
tions prevailing in the wheat belt of southern 
Russia with those found in the western United 
States. He stated that low temperature, ac- 
companied by aridity, prevented the raising of 
spring wheat, and that the successful ripening 
of grain did not depend on the average temper- 
ature, but on the total temperature of the hottest 
months. Mr. Frederick V. Coville presented a 
paper on the ‘Plantfood of the Wild Ducks in 
Chesapeake Bay,’ and particularly of the can- 
vas back and its favorite food of the tubers of” 
the wild celery. <A large portion of the best: 
feeding ground of the upper Chesapeake was de-- 


May 21, 1897. ] 


stroyed a few seasons ago by a combination of 
strong winds and heavy snowfall, followed by 
cold, the result being that exceptionally low 
water was produced, ice formed on the exposed. 
flats, and when the tide finally came in the 
plants were torn away and carried off. Mr. 
Coville noted the conditions under which the 
shallow water could be restocked with the wild 
celery, and stated that it had been successfully 
transplanted to Western lakes, with the desired 
result of causing the canvas backs to linger 
there on their migrations. 

Mr. Coville also described ‘The Water Hya- 
cinth, Piaropus crassipes, as an obstruction to 
navigation in Florida,’ saying that in some of 
the shallow rivers the accumulation of the 
plants impeded the progress of the steamers. 
He showed a view of steamers so surrounded by 
the water hyacinth that they appeared to be 
lying in a meadow, and described the experi- 
ments made with a view to the possibility of de- 
stroying the plants. 

Mr. Lyster H. Dewey described ‘ The Eastern 
Migration of Certain Weeds in America,’ saying 
that the general trend of weed migration in the 
States east of the Rocky mountains, except in 
New England, has been westward, correspond- 
ing with the direction of the progress of cultiva- 
tion and the movement of the supply of field 
seeds. In New England weeds have spread to 
the eastward, as illustrated by the Canada 
Thistle, Carduwus arvensis, and the Orange hawk- 
weed, Hieracium aurantiacum, introduced into 
Vermont and New York, and spreading from 
these States eastward. Yellow daisy, Rudbeckia 
hirta; bracted plantain, Plantago aristata; low 
amaranth, Amaranthus blitoides ; marsh elder, 
Iva xanthifolia ; buffalo bur, Solanum rostratum ; 
squirrel tail, Hordeum jubatum, and Russian 
Thistle, Salsola kali tragus, are given as instances 
of weeds that have spread to the eastward. 
While the westward migration of weeds has 
been largely through impure field seeds, the 
eastward movement appears to be chiefly along 
railroads, in baled hay, grain and wool. 


277TH MEETING, SATURDAY, MAY s. 
THE entire evening was devoted to the pres- 
entation and discussion of a paper by Dr. C. 
Hart Merriam, on ‘Suggestions for a New 


SCIENCE. 


811 


Method of Weighing Species and Subspecies,’ 
which appeared in the last issue of SCIENCE. 
F. A. Lucas, 
Secretary. 


GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 

AT the regular meeting of April 14, 1897, 
Mr. H. W. Turner read a paper on ‘A new 
Amphibole-pyroxene rock and some Orbicular 
rocks from California.’ 

The new amphibole-pyroxene rocks consists 
of original augite and amphibole in grains, of 
nearly equal size, with a little quartz and some 
pyrrhotite. The rock contains numerous phen- 
ocrysts of brown amphibole, which contain in 
a poikilitic manner the constituents of the 
ground mass. This rock is one type of a very 
interesting series of basic igneous rocks found 
in the foot hills of Mariposa county, California. 

Some orbicular rocks were exhibited, as well 
as an inclusion in granite, around which an 
aureole, composed of amphibole, had formed. 
The material of this aureole appears to have 
been segregated from the granite. Two speci- 
mens of dikes were exhibited, the center of 
each of which contained more silica than the 
borders. Reference was also made to dikes in 
the rainy lake region, shown by Lawson to 
have an interior portion more siliceous than the 
borders. It is well known, as a general rule, 
that the less siliceous elements crystallize out 
first in all rock magmas. The walls of the dike 
being cooler, the less siliceous minerals would 
crystallize out first along the border, and the 
more acid minerals be transferred by convection 
currents, or in part crowded out by the already 
erystallized material toward the interior. It is 
evident that along the borders of an intrusive 
area of great size the same phenomenon might 
be shown. We should simply have the case of 
one side of the dike. The laws of thermo- 
chemistry would appear to be applicable to 
this case, inasmuch as the heat generated by 
the crystallization of the minerals might aid in 
establishing convection currents to transport the 
residual siliceous constituents away from the 
already consolidated material. 

Under the title ‘ Laccoliths in Folded Strata,’ 
Mr. W. H. Weed described the occurrence of a 
number of lenticular masses of intrusive rock 


812 


in the axes of folds, in the mountain groups of 
the plains of Montana, and one of the front 
ranges of the Rocky Mountains. In applying 
the term laccolith to such masses there is a 
wide departure from the original use of the 
word. It is therefore used provisionally, the 
right being reserved to designate such concavo- 
convex lenticular masses by an appropriate 
name at a future time. 

The presence of such intrusions is believed to 
be due to causes in marked contrast to those of 
laccoliths. On the normal laccolith the intru- 
sion causes the arching of previously horizontal 
strata. In the masses described the intrusion 
follows or accompanies the folding and is de- 
pendent upon it; that folding is the cause and 
not the result of igneous intrusion. The author 
offers a theory to explain the intrusion of such 
masses, utilizing the discussion of folds by Wil- 
lis and by Van Hise to show that intrusion 
from below would be most easy at the hinge of 
such uplifts or the arch of synclines, and that 
such intrusion could not penetrate far, owing to 
compression near the concave surface of arches, 
so that further intrusion would be along a strata 
or other bed of easy parting toward the center 
of the fold when the presence of an arch due to 
a competent strata of limestone would leave a 
space beneath of little compression and conse- 
quent easy filling by the liquid magma. 

W. F. MorsELL. 

U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 


SCIENCE CLUB OF NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY. 


AT a meeting of the Science Club of North- 
western University, held on Friday evening, 
May 7th, inst., a paper was read by Miss Mary 
E. Gloss on the ‘Mesophyll of Ferns.’ The 
theory of the formation of the palisade tissue 
in intense sunlight does not seem to apply in 
the case of ferns. All the species examined 
were grown in diffused light, with one excep- 
tion ; some have palisade parenchyma and some 
have not; the presence or absence of the pali- 
sade parenchyma was nearly constant through- 
out each of the genera examined, which may 
prove to be a generic characteristic. The pres- 
ence or absence of chlorophyllin tbe epidermis, 
the form and arrangement of the cells of the 
mesophyll, the size of the air spaces and the 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 125. 


thickness of the mesophyll appear to be nearly 
constant in each of the genera examined. The 
genera most carefully examined were Adian- 
tum, Aspidiwm, Nephrolepis and Polypodium. 
The investigation will be continued until a large 
number of genera has been covered. 


THoMAS F. HOLGATE, 
Secretary. 


THE TEXAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 


At the May meeting of the Texas Academy 
of Science, held on the evening of the 7th inst., 
the following papers were presented : 

‘The Properties of the Living Substance,’ by 
Dr. Edmund Montgomery, of Hemstead, Texas. 

‘An Account of some Applications of the Bes- 
sel Functions to Astronomy,’ by Harry Y. 
Benedict, of Cambridge, Mass. 

“A Note on a Generalization of the Numbers 
of Couchy,’ also by Mr. Benedict. 

‘Triazines and Triazoles,’ by James R. Bailey 
and S. F. Acree. 

‘On the Constitution of a By-product obtained 
in the Preparation of Hydrazopropionic Acid,’ 
by James R. Bailey and Henry B. Dechard. 

The last named papers embody the results of 
some original work performed in the chemical 
laboratory of the State University, under the 
direction of Mr. Bailey, the senior author. 

Major Dutton’s address on the ‘The Hco- 
nomics of Concentrated Capital,’ and Professor 
Nagle’s paper on ‘Vertical Curves for Rail- 
ways,’ now in press, will be ready for distribu- 


tion in a few days. 
FREDERIC W. SIMONDS. 


UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS. 


NEW BOOKS. 
Grundriss der Entwicklungsgeschichte der Men- 
schen und der Stiugetheere. OSCAR SCHULTZE. 


Zweite Halfte. Leipzig, Engelmann. 1897. 
Pp. viit+468. M. 6. 

Dynamic Sociology. LestER F. WARD. New 
York, D. Appleton & Co. 2d Ed. 1897. 


Vol. I., pp. x1+706. Vol. II., pp. vii+690. 


Bird Life. FRANK M. CHapmMan. New York, 
D. Appleton & Co. 1897. Pp. xii+269. 
$1.75. 


Gates P. THRUSTON. 
1897. 


Antiquities of Tennessee. 
Cincinnati, The Robert Clarke Co. 
Pp. xv+369. 


3-7 


SCIENCE 


Nrw SERIES. 
VoL. V. No. 126. 


Fripay, May 28, 1897. 


SINGLE COPIEs, 15 cTs. 
ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION, $5.00. 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY’S 


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The Theory of Electricity and Magnetism. 


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the Physical Laboratory, Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts. 


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Price, $3.50 net. 


The aim has been to present a brief connected treatise embodying the essential points of the theory and 
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A TEXT-BOOK OF ELECTRO-MAGNETISM AND 
THE CONSTRUCTION OF DYNAMOS. 


By Dugald C. Jackson, C.E., Professor of Electri- 
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Member of the American Society of Mechanical En- 
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CIENCE 


EDITORIAL COMMITTEE: S. NEwcomB, Mathematics; R. 8S. WooDWARD, Mechanics; E. C. PICKERING, 
Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THURSTON, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry; 
J. Lz ContE, Geology; W. M. Davis, Physiography; O. C. MARsH, Paleontology; W. K. 
Brooks, C. HART MERRIAM, Zoology; S. H. ScupDER, Entomology; N. L. BRITTON, 
Botany; Henry F. Osporn, General Biology; H. P. BowpircH, Physiology ; 
J. S. Bruninas, Hygiene ; J. MCKEEN CATTELL, Psychology ; 
DANIEL G. BRINTON, J. W. POWELL, Anthropology. 


Fripay, May 28, 1897. 


CONTENTS: 
Adaptation in Pathological Processes: WILLIAM 
1BIG \WABIAGIEE 6 noasdaaceccooconencon cotnnooscoooscocoancsesated 813 
The Naples Zoological Station: S. E. MEEK......... 832 


Zoological Society of LONON .............eeecreeeevecrnces 834 


Current Notes on Anthropology :— 


Primitive Symbolic Decoration ; Man’s Speech to 
IBrires- Ds Ge DRINTON ccrseceocserses-ceceecs<rexess 835 


Astrophysical Notes : 


Current Notes on Meteorology :— 


Recent Articles on Kite-flying ; Deforestation and 
Climate ; Acclimatization of the English in Ceylon ; 
Recent Publications: R. DEC. WARD 


Scientific Notes and News 


University and Educational News........scecsecseeeeseees 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 
Distribution of Marine Mammals: WM. H. DALL. 
A Postscript on the Terminology of Types: F. A. 
BATHER. Organic Selection: ROBERT M. PIERCE. 
Euproctis Chrysorrhea in Massachusetts: SAM- 
DEST ELMNSHUA Va eacnvesttecreeesccuetassrasesoses sosasses 843 


Scientific Literature :— 


Das Tierreich: LEONHARD STEJNEGER. How- 
ard’s Study in Insect Parasitism: T. D. A. CocK- 


ERELL. Marine Fossils fromthe Coal Measures of 

Arkansas: FREDERIC W. SImonps. Wheeler 

on the Clay Deposits of Missouri: H. FOsTER 

TATE egos coccobuaceoooszcscoucnococdodosetaocasonouandacabood 846 
Scientific Journals :— 

The American Chemical Journal: J. ELLiorr 

GILPIN. The American Geologist ......1.s.cecssseeee 852 
Societies and Academies :— 

Chemical Society of Washington: V. K. CHES- 


Nur. Entomological Society of Washington: L. 
O. H. Anthropological Society of Washington: 
Sem EIow IV COORMIC Ker sncasaccecsaterseeensceateveseessccnes 855 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended 
for review should be sent to the responsible editor, Prof. J. 
McKeen Cattell, Garrison-on-Hudson, N. Y. 


ADAPTATION IN PATHOLOGICAL PROCESSES.* 

GRATEFUL as I am for the personal good- 
will manifested by my selection as Presi- 
dent of this Congress, I interpret this great 
and unexpected honor as an expression of 
your desire to give conspicuous recognition 
to those branches of medical science not 
directly concerned with professional prac- 
tice, and as such I acknowledge it with 
sincere thanks. 

All departments represented in this Con- 
gress are working together toward the solu- 
tion of those great problems—the causes 
and the nature, the prevention and the 
cure, of disease —which have always been 
and must continue to be the ultimate ob- 
jects of investigation in medicine. It is 
this unity of purpose which gives to the 
history of medicine, from its oldest records 
to the present time, a continuity of interest 
and of development not possessed in equal 
degree by any other department of knowl- 
edge. It is this same unity of purpose 
which joins together into a single, effective 
organism the component groups of this 
Congress, representing, as they do, that 
principle of specialization and subdivision 
of labor which, notwithstanding its perils, 
has been the great factor in medical prog- 
ress in modern times. 

Medical science is advanced not only by 


* Address of the President before the Fourth Trien- 
nial Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons, 
held in Washington, May 4-6, 1897. 


814 


those who labor at the bedside, but also by 
those who in the laboratory devote them- 
selves to the study of the structure and 
functions of the body in health and disease. 
It is one of the most gratifying results of 
the rapid advance in medical education in 
this country during the last few years that 
successful workers in the laboratory may 
now expect some of those substantial re- 
wards which formerly were to be looked for 
almost exclusively in the fields of practical 
medicine and surgery. We already have 
abundant assurance that the steady im- 
provement in opportunities and recompense 
and other material conditions essential for 
the prosecution of scientific work in medi- 
cine will enable this country to contribute 
to the progress of the medical sciences a 
share commensurate with its great re- 
sources and development in civilization. 
The subject of ‘ Adaptation in Pathologi- 
cal Processes,’ which I have selected for 
my address on this occasion, is one which 
possesses the broadest biological, as well as 
medical, interests. Itis this breadth of scien- 
tific and practical interest that must justify 
my choice of a theme which involves many 
technical considerations and many problems 
among the most obscure and unsettled in 
the whole range of biology and of medicine. 
I shall employ the epithet ‘adaptive’ to 
describe morbid processes which bring about 
some sort of adjustment to changed condi- 
tions due to injury or disease. In view of 
the more technical and restricted mean- 
ing sometimes attached to the term ‘adap- 
tation’ in biology, objection may be made 
to this broad and general application of the 
word in pathology; but no more suita- 
ble and convenient epithet than ‘ adaptive’ 
has occurred to me to designate the entire 
group of pathological processes whose re- 
sults tend to the restoration or compensa- 
tien of damaged structure or function, or to 
the direct destruction or neutralization of 
injurious agents. Processes which may 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8S. Vou. V. No. 126. 


be described variously as compensatory, re- 
generative, self-regulatory, protective, heal- 
ing, are thus included under adaptive patho- 
logical processes. These processes are, in 
general, more or less advantageous or useful 
to the individual ; but for reasons which 
will be stated later the conception of patho- 
logical adaptation and that of advantage to 
the individual are not wholly coextensive. 

Within the limits of an address I cannot 
hope to do more than direct attention to 
some of those aspects of the subject which 
seem to me to be of special significance. A1- 
though most striking examples ofadaptation 
are to be sought in comparative and vege- 
table pathology, what I shall have to say will 
relate mostly to human pathology. My pur- 
pose is not to point out the beauties or the ex- 
tent ofadaptations in pathological processes, 
but rather to say something concerning the 
general mechanism of their production and 
the proper attitude of mind regarding them, 
and to illustrate the general principles in- 
volved by a few representative examples. 

It has been contended that the conception 
of adaptation has no place in scientific in- 
quiry ; that we are justified in asking only 
by what means a natural phenomenon is 
brought about, and not what is its meaning 
or purpose; in other words, that the only 
question open to scientific investigation is 
How? and never Why? TI hope to make 
clear by what follows in what light I regard 
this question, and in this connection I shall 
simply quote Lotze, who, beginning as a 
pathologist, became a great philosopher : 
‘« Every natural phenomenon may be inves- 
tigated not only with reference to the 
mathematical grounds of its possibility and 
the causes of its occurrence, but also as re- 
gards the meaning or idea which it repre- 
sents in the world of phenomena.” 

The most wonderful and characteristic 
attribute of living organisms is their active 
adaptation to external and internal con- 
ditions in such a way as tends to the wel- 


May 28, 1897.] 


fare of the individual or of the species. Of 
the countless physiological examples which 
might be cited to illustrate this principle, 
I select, almost at random, the preservation 
of the normal temperature of the body in 
warm-blooded animals under varying ex- 
ternal temperatures and varying internal 
production of heat, the regulation of respi- 
ration according to the need of the tissues 
for oxygen, the influence of the load upon 
the work performed by muscles, the accom- 
modation of the heart to the work de- 
manded of it, the response of glands to in- 
creased functional stimulation, the adjust- 
ment of the iris to varying degrees of illumi- 
nation, the influence of varying static condi- 
tions upon the internal architecture of bone. 

The most striking characteristic of these 
countless adaptations is their apparent 
purposefulness. Even if it be true, as has 
been said by Lange, that ‘‘ the formal pur- 
posefulness of the world is nothing else than 
its adaptation to our understanding,”’ it is 
none the less true that the human mind is 
so constituted as to desire and seek an 
explanation of the adaptations which it 
finds everywhere in organic nature. From 
the days of Empedocles and of Aristotle 
up to the present time there have been two 
leading theories to explain the apparent 
purposefulness of organic nature—the one, 
the teleological, and the other, the mechan- 
ical theory. The teleological theory, in its 
traditional signification, implies something 
in the nature of an intelligence working for 
a predetermined end. So far as the existing 
order of nature is concerned, the mechani- 
cal theory is the only one open to scientific 
investigation, and it forms the working 
hypothesis of most biologists. This theory, 
in its modern form, seeks an explanation of 
the adaptations of living beings in factors 
concerned in organic evolution. What 
these factors are we know only in part. 
Those which are most generally recognized 
as operative are variation, natural selection 


SCIENCE. 


815 


and heredity. That additional factors, at 
present little understood, are concerned 
seems highly probable. The acceptance of 
the explanation of physiological adaptations 
furnished by the doctrine of organic evo- 
lution helps us, I believe, in the study of 
pathological adaptations. 

As the word ‘teleology’ has come to 
have, in the minds of many, so bad a re- 
pute in the biological sciences, and as I de- 
sire, without entering into any elaborate 
discussion of the subtle questions here in- 
volved, to avoid misconceptions in discus- 
sing subjects whose ultimate explanation is 
at present beyond our ken, I shall here 
briefly state my opinion that all of those 
vital manifestations to which are applied 
such epithets as adaptive, regulatory, re- 
generative, compensatory, protective, are 
the necessary results of the action of forms 
of energy upon living matter. The final 
result, however useful and purposeful it 
may be, in no way directly influences the 
chain of events which leads to its produc- 
tion, and, therefore, the character of the re- 
sult affords no explanation whatever of the 
mechanism by which the end, whether it 
appear purposeful or not, has been accom- 
plished. In every case the ultimate aim of 
inquiry is a mechanical explanation of the 
process in question. Notwithstanding valu- 
able contributions, especially within recent 
years, toward such mechanical explanations, 
we are still far removed from the attain- 
ment of this aim. 

The knowledge of the fact that the living 
body is possessed of means calculated to 
counteract the effects of injurious agencies 
which threaten or actually damage its in- 
tegrity must have existed as long as the 
knowledge of injury and disease, for the 
most casual observation teaches that 
wounds are repaired and diseases are re- 
covered from. It is no part of my present 
purpose to trace the history of the specula- 
tions or even of the development of our 


816 


exact knowledge concerning the subjects 
here under consideration. I cannot re- 
frain, however, from merely referring to 
the important réle which the conception of 
disease as in some way conservative or 
combative in the presence of harmful in- 
fluences has played from ancient times to 
the present in the history of medical doc- 
trines. Whole systems of medicine have 
been founded upon this conception, clothed 
in varying garb. There is nothing new 
even in the image, so popular nowadays, 
representing certain morbid processes as a 
struggle on the part of forces within the 
body against the attacks of harmful agents 
from the outer world. Indeed, Stahl’s 
whole conception of disease was that it 
represented such a struggle between the 
anima and noxious agents. What lends 
especial interest to these theories is that 
then, as now, they profoundly influenced 
medical practice and were the origin of 
such well-known expressions as vis medica- 
trix nature and medicus est minister nature. 
It is needless to say that there could be 
no exact knowledge of the extent of opera- 
tion or of the nature of processes which re- 
store or compensate damaged structures 
and functions of the body or combat in- 
jurious agents, before accurate information 
was gained of the organization and work- 
ings of the body in health and in disease. 
Although the way was opened by Harvey’s 
discovery of the circulation of the blood, 
most of our precise knowledge of these sub- 
jects has been obtained during the present 
century, through clinical observations and 
pathological and biological studies. In the 
domain of infectious diseases wonderful and 
hitherto undreamed-of protective agencies 
have been revealed by modern bacteriolog- 
ical discoveries. Here, as elsewhere in 
medicine, the experimental method has 
been an indispensable instrument for dis- 
coveries of the highest importance and for 
the comprehension of otherwise inexplicable 


SCIENCE. 


LN. S. Voz. V. No. 126. 


facts. Very interesting and suggestive re- 
sults, shedding light upon many of the 
deeper problems concerning the nature and 
power of response of living organisms to 
changed conditions, have been obtained in 
those new fields of experimental research 
called by Roux the mechanics of development 
of organisms and also in part designated 
physiological or experimental morphology. 
Although we seem to be as far removed as 
ever from the solution of the most funda- 
mental problem in biology, the origin of 
the power of living beings to adjust them- 
selves actively to internal and external re- 
lations, we have learned something from 
these investigations as to the parts played 
respectively by the inherited organization 
of cells and by changes of internal and ex- 
ternal environment in the processes of de- 
velopment, growth and regeneration. 

In physiological adaptations, such as 
those which have been mentioned, the cells 
respond to changed conditions to meet 
which they are especially fitted by innate 
properties, determined, we must believe, in 
large part by evolutionary factors. In con- 
sidering pathological adaptations the ques- 
tion at once suggests itself whether the cells 
possess any similar peculiar fitness to meet 
the morbid changes concerned ; whether, in 
other words, we may suppose that evolu- 
tionary factors have operated in any direct 
way to secure for the cells of the body 
properties especially suited to meet patho- 
logical emergencies. Can we recognize in 
adaptive pathological processes any mani- 
festations of cellular properties which we 
may not suppose the cells to possess for 
physiological uses? This question appears 
to me to be of considerable interest. I be- 
lieve that it can be shown that most patho- 
logical adaptations have their foundation 
in physiological processes or mechanisms. 
In the case of some of these adaptations, 
however, we have not sufficiently clear in- 
sight into the real nature of the pathological 


May 28, 1897.] 


process nor into all of the physiological 
properties of the cells concerned to enable 
us to give a positive answer to the question. 

While we must believe that variation 
and natural selection combined with hered- 
ity have been important factors in the de- 
velopment and maintenance of adjustments 
to normal conditions of environment, it is 
difficult to see how they could have inter- 
vened in any direct way in behalf of most 
pathological adaptations. 

An illustration will make clear the points 
here involved. Suppose the human race, 
or any species of animal, to lack the power 
to compensate the disturbances of the circu- 
lation caused by a damaged heart-valve, 
and that an individual should happen to be 
born with the exclusive capacity of such 
compensation. The chances are that there 
would arise no opportunity for the display 
of this new capacity, and it is inconceivable 
that the variety would be perpetuated 
through the operation of the law of survival 
of the fittest by natural selection, unless 
leaky or clogged heart-valves became a 
common character of the species. When, 
however, we learn that the disturbance of 
circulation resulting from disease of the 
heart-valves is compensated by the perform- 
ance of increased work on the part of the 
heart, and that it is a general law that such 
prolonged extra work leads to growth of 
muscle, wesee at once that this compensation 
is only an individual instance of the opera- 
tion of a capacity which has abundant op- 
portunities for exercise in normal life where 
the influence of natural selection and other 
factors ofevolution can exert their full power. 

Inasimilar light we can regard other com- 
pensatory and functional pathological hyper- 
trophies; indeed, I believe, also to a consider- 
able extent the pathological regenerations, 
inflammation and immunity, although here 
the underlying factors are,of course, different, 

We may, however, reasonably suppose 
that natural selection may be operative in 


SCIENCE. 


817 


securing protective adjustments, such as 
racial immunity, against morbific influences 
to which living beings are frequently ex- 
posed for long periods of time and through 
many generations. 

These considerations help us to explain 
the marked imperfections of most patho- 
logical adaptations as contrasted with the 
perfection of physiological adjustments, al- 
though I would not be understood to imply 
that the absence of the direct intervention 
of natural selection in the former is the sole 
explanation of this difference. The cells are 
endowed with innate properties especially 
fitted to secure physiological adaptations. 
No other weapons than these same cells 
does the body possess to meet assaults 
from without, to compensate lesions, to 
restore damaged and lost parts. But these 
weapons were not forged to meet the special 
emergencies of pathological conditions. 
Evolutionary factors have not in general 
intervened with any direct reference to their 
adaptation to these emergencies. Such fit- 
ness as these weapons possess for these 
purposes comes primarily from properties 
pertaining to their physiological uses. They 
may be admirably fitted to meet certain 
pathological conditions, but often they are 
inadequate. Especially do we miss in 
pathological adjustments that coordinated 
fimess so characteristic of physiological 
adaptations. So true is this that the pro- 
priety of using such terms as compensation 
and adaptation for any results of patholog- 
ical processes has been questioned. 

A heart hypertrophied in consequence of 
valvular lesion does not completely restore 
the normal conditions of the circulation. 
Experience has shown that a kidney hyper- 
trophied in consequence of deficiency of the 
other kidney is more susceptible to disease 
than the normal organ. What an incom- 
plete repair of defects is the formation of 
scar-tissue, and with what inconveniences 
and even dangers may it be attended in 


818 


some situations! If we look upon inflam- 
mation as an attempt to repair injury, and, 
therefore, as an adaptive process, with what 
imperfections and excesses and disorders and 
failures is it often associated ! How oftenin 
some complex pathological process, such as 
Bright’s disease or cirrhosis of the liver, can 
we detect some adaptive features, attempts at 
repair or compensation, but these overshad- 
owed by disorganizing and harmful changes! 

It is often difficult to disentangle in the 
complicated processes of disease those ele- 
ments which we may appropriately regard 
as adaptive from those which are wholly 
disorderly and injurious. There are usually 
two sides to the shield, and one observer 
from his point of view may see only the 
side of disorder, and another from a differ- 
ent point of view only that of adaptation. 

The conception of adaptation in a patho- 
logical process is not wholly covered by 
that of benefit to the individual. I under- 
stand, as has already been said, by an 
adaptive pathological process one which in 
its results brings about some sort of adjust- 
ment to changed conditions, due to injury 
or disease. This adjustment is usually, 
wholly or in part, advantageous to the in- 
dividual ; but it is not necessarily so, and 
it may be harmful. The closure of patho- 
logical defects by new growths of tissue is 
a process which must be regarded as adap- 
tive. But one would hardly describe as 
advantageous the scar in the brain which 
causes epilepsy. A new growth of bone to 
fillin defects is often highly beneficial ; but 
what grave consequences may result from 
thickening of the skull to help fill the space 
left by partial arrest in development of the 
brain in embryonic life or infancy! We 
see here, as everywhere, that ‘“‘ Nature is 
neither kind nor cruel, but simply obedient 
to law, and, therefore, consistent.”’ 

In turning now to the more special, but 
necessarily fragmentary, consideration of a 
few of the pathological processes in which 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 126. 


adaptation, in the sense defined, is more or 
less apparent, I shall have in view the 
answers to those two questions, What is. 
the meaning of the process? and How is it 
caused ? which confront us in our investiga- 
tion of all natural phenomena. At the out- 
set it must be admitted that our insight 
into the nature of many of these processes. 
is very imperfect, and that here answers to. 
the world-old riddles Why ? and How? are 
correspondingly incomplete and liable to err. 

Although almost all of the elementary 
morbid processes, even the degenerations 
and death of cells, may, under certain con- 
ditions of the body, serve a useful purpose, 
the preeminent examples of pathological 
adaptation, in the sense of restoration or 
compensation of damaged structure or func- 
tion, or the direct destruction or neutraliza- 
tion of injurious agents, are to be found 
among the compensatory hypertrophies, 
the regenerations and the protective proc- 
esses. To this last ill-defined group I refer 
parasiticidal and antitoxic phenomena, and 
some of the manifestations of inflammation,. 
and perhaps also of fever. In the last 
analysis these protective processes, no less. 
than the others mentioned, must depend 
upon the activities of cells. 

As it is manifestly impossible within the 
limits of a general address to attempt a de- 
tailed consideration of any large number of 
these adaptive pathological processes, and 
as such consideration would necessarily in- 
volve the discussion of many technical and 
doubtful points, I have thought that my 
purpose would be best served by the selec- 
tion of a few representative examples. 

The compensatory hypertrophies afford 
admirable illustrations of certain fundamen- 
tal principles regarding adaptations in 
pathology which I have already stated. 
The hypertrophy secures a functional ad- 
justment, often of a highly beneficial charac- 
ter, to certain morbid conditions. This use- 
ful purpose is attained by a succession of 


May 28, 1897.] 


events determined from beginning to end by 
the necessary response of cells and tissues, 
in consequence of their inherent organiza- 
tion, to the changed conditions. Given 
the changed conditions on the one hand, 
and the organization of the cells on 
the other, the result must follow as surely 
as night follows day, and this final result 
influences the preceding series of events no 
more in the one case than in the other. 
That the cells possess the particular organi- 
zation determining the manner of their re- 
sponse to these changed conditions, and, 
therefore, the beneficial character of the re- 
sult, is dependent upon innate properties 
whose fitness for the purpose doubtless has 
been largely fixed by evolutionary factors, 
operating, however, mainly in behalf of 
physiological functions and not directly: to- 
ward pathological adjustments. In corre- 
spondence with this view we find that our 
knowledge of the manner of production of 
the compensatory hypertrophies of various 
organs and tissues stands in direct relation 
to our knowledge of the physiology of the 
same organs and tissues. 

Those compensatory hypertrophies into 
the mechanism of whose production we have 
the clearest insight are referable to increased 
functional activity, and are, therefore, 
spoken of as work-hypertrophies. This has 
been proved for the muscular hypertrophies 
and compensatory hypertrophy of the kid- 
ney, but the demonstration is not equally 
conclusive for the compensatory hypertro- 
phy of other glands. I know, however, of 
of no instance in which this factor in the 
explanation can be positively excluded. 

The relationship between increased func- 
tional activity and hypertrophy is so evident 
in many cases that there is strong presump- 
tion in favor of this explanation of those 
glandular compensatory hypertrophies 
which have not as yet been clearly referred 
to the class of functional hypertrophies. 
‘The very occurrence of compensatory hyper- 


SCIENCE. 


819 


trophy of an organ may direct attention to 
the fact that it is endowed with definite 
functions, and the conditions under which 
the hypertrophy occurs may shed light upon 
the nature of these functions. I need only 
remind you of the significance, from this 
point of view, of the compensatory hyper- 
trophy of the thyroid, adrenal, pituitary, 
and other glands with internal secretions. 
I fail to see why Nothnagel should consider 
a priort improbable the occurrence of com- 
pensatory hypertrophy of one sexual gland 
after loss of the other, even before sexual 
maturity, or why Ribbert, who has appar- 
ently demonstrated experimentally such an 
occurrence, should find it necessary to seek 
the explanation in reflex nervous influences 
or mere hyperzemia. Theso-called second- 
ary sexual characters and the changes fol- 
lowing castration, including the influence 
upon a hypertrophied prostate, point to im- 
portant, even if little understood, functions 
which for the present we can, perhaps, best 
attribute to so-called internal secretions of 
these sexual organs. 

The name compensatory hypertrophy is 
sometimes applied to growths of tissue that 
merely take the place of another kind of 
tissue which has fallen out, as, for example, 
the growth of adipose tissue around a 
shrunken kidney or pancreas, or between 
atrophied muscle-fibres. Here there is only 
compensation of space, but no compensa- 
tion of structure or function. Such hyper- 
trophies and growths are described better 
as complementary than compensatory. 

Familiar examples of pathological hyper- 
trophies from increased work are the hyper- 
trophy of the heart from valvular disease 
and other causes, that of the muscular coats 
of canals and bladders behind some ob- 
struction, and that of one kidney after loss 
or atrophy of the other. 

In order to understand fully the manner 
of production of work-hypertrophy of a part, 
resulting from some morbid condition, it is 


820 


essential to know the nature of the dis- 
turbances induced by the underlying morbid 
condition, how these disturbances excite 
inereased functional activity of the part 
which becomes hypertrophied, and what the 
relationship is between this greater activity 
and the increased growth of the part. 

It is impossible on this occasion to go 
through the whole list of compensatory hy- 
pertrophies with reference to the application 
of these principles. In no instance can the 
requirements stated be completely met in 
the present state of our knowledge. It will 
suffice for an understanding of the principles 
involved, and it is only with these that I 
am now concerned, if I take a concrete ex- 
ample. I select the classical and best studied 
one—compensatory hypertrophy of the 
heart. I trust thatI shall be pardoned for se- 
lecting so commonplace an illustration, as 
the main points involved must be familiar to 
most of my audience; but it is possible that 
the application made of them may not be 
equally familiar. The only matters essen- 
tial to my present line of argument are the 
mechanism of production of the hypertro- 
phy and the general character of the adap- 
tation thereby secured. 

The heart, like other organs of the body, 
does not work ordinarily up to its full ca- 
pacity, but it is capable of doing at least 
three or four times its usual work. The 
excess of energy brought into play in doing 
this extra work is called conveniently, al- 
though not without some impropriety, 
‘reserve force.’ It has been proved ex- 
perimentally that this storehouse of reserve 
power is sufficient to enable the healthy 
heart, at least that of a dog, to accommo- 
date itself at once or after a few beats to 
high degrees of insufficiency or obstruction 
at its valvular orifices without alteration in 
the mean pressure and speed of the blood 
in the arteries. But even so tireless and 
accommodating an organ as the heart can- 
not be driven at such high pressure without 


SCIENCE. . 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 126 


sooner or. later becoming fatigued, and con- 
sequently so dilated as to fail to meet the 
demands upon it. If it is to continue long 
the extra work, it must receive new incre- 
ments of energy. 

The cardiac muscle is far less susceptible: 
to fatigue than the skeletal muscles, but 
that it may become fatigued seems to me: 
clear. 

Leaving out of consideration some doubt- 
ful causes of cardiac hypertrophy, such as. 
nervous influences, the various morbid con- 
ditions which lead to this affection are such 
as increase either the volume of blood to be: 
expelled with each stroke or the resistance 
to blood-flow caused by the pressure in the 
arteries or by narrowing at one of the 
valvular orifices, or both. Unless some 
regulating mechanism steps in, each of 
these circulatory disturbances must in- 
crease the resistance to contraction of the 
cardiac muscle, and it is evident that the 
heart must do extra work if it is to pump: 
the blood through the arteries with normal 
pressure and speed. It is, however, no ex- 
planation of this extra work simply to say 
that it occurs because there is demand for 
it. Increased work by the heart in cases. 
of disease of its nutrient arteries would 
often meet a most urgent demand on the 
part of the body, but here the heart flags. 
and fails. 

The physiologists have given us at least: 
some insight into the mechanism by which 
the heart responds through increased work 
to the circulatory disturbances which have 
been mentioned. These disturbances all 
increase the strain on the wall of one or 
more of the cavities of the heart; in other 
words, increase the tension of the cardiac 
muscle, in much the same way as a weight 
augments the tension of a voluntary muscle. 
Now it is a fundamental physiological law 
that with a given stimulus greater tension 
of a muscle, within limits, excites to more 
powerful contraction, and thus to the per- 


MAy 28, 1897. ] 


formance of greater work. It seems clear 
that this law applies to the muscle of the 
heart, as well as to voluntary muscle. We 
do not know precisely how increased 
tension facilitates the expenditure of 
greater muscular energy. 

Another well-known fact in the me- 
chanics of muscle is of importance in this 
connection. With increase of muscular 
tension under a given stimulus, a point is 
reached where the extent of contraction is 
diminished, although the mechanical work 
done, determined by multiplying the 
height to which the load is lifted by the 
weight of the load, is increased. This law 
applied to the heart, whose contractions 
are always maximal for the conditions 
present at any given time, signifies that, 
with increased resistance to the contraction 
of the muscular wall of one of its cavities, 
this cavity will empty itself during systole 
less completely than before. In other 
words, dilatation occurs, and, as has been 
shown by Roy and Adami, to whom we 
owe important contributions on this as well 
as on many other points relating to the 
mechanics of the heart, dilatation regularly 
antedates hypertrophy. This primary dila- 
tation, however, is not to be looked upon 
as evidence of beginning heart failure, for, 
as these investigators pointed out, it is 
within limits only an exaggeration of a 
physiological condition, and can be subse- 
quently overcome by hypertrophy which, 
in consequence of increase in the sectional 
area of the muscle, lessens the strain upon 
each fibre, and thereby permits it to shorten 
more during contraction. If this result is 
completely secured we have simple hyper- 
trophy. More often the dilatation remains, 
and must necessarily remain, and we have 
excentric hypertrophy, which secures, for a 
time at least, adequate, but I do not think 
we can say perfect, compensation. 

The weight of existing evidence favors 
the view that the power of the heart to 


SCIENCE. 


821 


adapt its work to the resistance offered re- 
sides primarily in its muscle-cells, and not 
in intrinsic or extrinsic nervous mechan- 
isms, although doubtless these latter in 
various ways, which cannot be here con- 
sidered, influence and support this regu- 
lating capacity. Nor can I here pause to 
discuss the influence of blood-supply to the 
cardiac muscle upon the force of ventricular 
contraction, although Porter has demon- 
strated that this is important. 

In tracing the steps from the primary 
morbid condition to the final hypertrophy, 
we have thus far had to deal mostly with 
known mechanical factors. We now come 
to the question, How does increased fune- 
tional activity lead to increased growth? 

Inasmuch as greater functional activity 
is regularly associated with a larger supply 
of blood to the more active part, the view 
is advocated by many that the increased 
growth is the direct result of this hyper- 
mia, and one often encounters, especially 
in biological literature, this opinion ex- 
pressed as if it were an indisputable fact. 
There is, however, no conclusive proof of 
this doctrine, and many facts speak against 
it. The examples from human pathology 
commonly cited to support the doctrine 
that local active hyperemia incites growth 
of cells are, so far as I am able to judge, 
complicated with other factors, such as in- 
jury, inflammation or trophic disturbances. 
Transplantation-experiments, such as John 
Hunter’s grafting the cock’s spur upon 
the cock’s comb, sometimes adduced in this 
connection, are not decisive of this question, 
for here a new circumstance is introduced 
which some suppose to be the determining 
one for all morbid cell-growth, namely, the 
disturbance of the normal equilibrium be- 
tween parts. Local active hyperemia may 
exist for a long time without evidence of 
increased growth in the congested part. 
To say that the hyperemia must be func- 
tional is at once to concede that it is not 


822 


the sole factor. Experiments from Bizzo- 
zero’s laboratory, by Morpurgo and by 
Penzo, indicate that local hyperemia due 
to vasomotor paralysis, or to the appli- 
cation of heat, favors cell multiplication in 
parts where proliferation of cells is a nor- 
mal phenomenon, or is present from path- 
ological causes, but that it is incapable of 
stimulating to growth cells whose prolifer- 
ating power is suspended under physio- 
logical conditions, as in developed con- 
nective tissue, muscles and the kidneys. 

It has been usually assumed that the way 
in which local hyperemia may stimulate 
cell-srowth is by increasing the supply of 
nutriment to cells. The trend of physio- 
logical investigation, however, indicates 
that the cell, to a large extent, regulates its 
own metabolism. If the cell needs more 
food, of course, it cannot get it unless the 
supply is at hand, and in this sense we can 
understand how a larger supply of blood 
may be essential to increased growth, but 
this is a very different thing from saying 
that the augmented blood-supply causes 
the growth. 

It is by no means clear that the question 
as to the influence of increased blood-sup- 
ply upon cell-growth is identical with that 
of increased lymph-supply. The experi- 
ments of Paschutin and of Emminghaus, 
from Ludwig’s laboratory, nearly a quarter 
of a century ago, indicate that local hy- 
perzemia due to vasomotor paralysis does 
not, as a rule, increase the production of 
lymph; and more recent experiments, al- 
though not wholly concordant in their re- 
sults upon this point, tend to the same con- 
clusion. Functional activity, however, has 
a marked influence in increasing the quan- 
tity and affecting the quality of lymph in 
the active part. Our knowledge of the 
physical and chemical changes in working 
muscles and glands enables us to conceive 
why this should beso, for all are now 
agreed that the formation of lymph is due 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 126. 


not simply to filtration from the blood- 
plasma, but also to diffusion, and some be- 
lieve likewise to active secretion by the 
capillary endothelium. Doubtless arterial 
hyperzemia is essential to the maintenance 
of the increased flow of lymph in working 
organs. 

There are difficulties in the way of sup- 
posing that increased supply of lymph in it- 
seif furnishes the explanation of cell-growth, 
and especially of that which characterizes 
hypertrophy of muscles and glands. Pa- 
thologists have frequent opportunities to 
study the effects of all degrees of increased 
production and circulation of lymph asso- 
ciated with venous hyperemia. A kidney 
ora muscle may from this cause be sub- 
jected for months and years to an excess of 
lymph-flow, but there is no demonstration 
of any consequent hypertrophy or hyper- 
plasia of renal epithelium or muscle-cell. 
It is true that the chemical composition of 
the lymph is not the same as that of lymph 
resulting from increased function, and it is 
possible that in this chemical difference lies 
the kernel of the whole matter. It may 
also be urged that in venous hyperemia 
there are circumstances which restrain or 
prevent growth. Nevertheless, if overfeed- 
ing, merely in consequence of increased sup- 
ply of nutriment, were the real explanation 
of work-hypertrophies, one would expect to 
find some evidence of this in the class of 
cases mentioned. 

Ribbert has recently given a new shape 
to the doctrine that local hyperemia ex- 
cites growth. While rejecting the usual 
explanation that it does so by supplying 
more food, he contends that distention of 
the bloodvessels and lymph-spaces, by me- 
chanically disturbing the mutual relations 
of parts, removes obstacles to growth. This 
theory cannot be advantageously discussed 
until the fact is first established that un- 
complicated local hyperzemia does incite 
growth. 


MAy 28, 1897.] 


As the matter now stands, it seems to 
me that any satisfactory explanation of the 
cell growth causing work-hypertrophies 
must start from physical or chemical 
changes in the muscle- or gland-cell itself 
directly connected with the increased func- 
tion. These changes are the primum mobile, 
and, however important increased supply of 
blood or lymph may be in the subsequent 
chain of events, it is not the determining 
factor. The whole problem is part of the 
general one of the causes of pathological 
cell-growth, to which I shall have occasion 
to refer again. 

It is interesting to note that not all kinds 
of excess of functional activity lead to 
hypertrophy. A heart may beat for years 
faster than normal without becoming hyper- 
trophied. Small movements of muscle, 
often repeated, do not cause hypertrophy. 
It would appear that the amount of work 
done in each functional act must attain a 
certain height in order to stimulate growth. 
On the other hand, if the muscle be 
stretched beyond certain limits, it does not 
hypertrophy; on the contrary, it may 
atrophy, as may be seen in greatly dis- 
tended canals and cavities with muscular 
walls. This behavior is also in accordance 
with physiological observations. 

The compensatory hypertrophy of muscle 
seems to be due mainly to increase in the 
size of cells, although there are observa- 
tions indicating that they may also multi- 
ply. That of most glands is referable to 
increase both in number and size of cells. 
Within four or five days after extirpation 
of a kidney, karyokinetic figures may be 
found in increased number in the cells of 
the remaining kidney. 

The general character of the adaptation 
secured by compensatory hypertrophy of 
the heart is sufficiently well known. I 
wish to point out certain of its imperfec- 
tions. I shall not dwell upon the well- 
known abnormal conditions, with their re- 


SCIENCE. 


823 


mote consequences, of the systemic or pul- 
monary circulation, which are present 
during the stage of compensation, nor shall 
I speak of the various circumstances which 
may interfere with the establishment of 
compensatory hypertrophy. 

The muscle of a hypertrophied heart is 
sometimes compared to that of the black- 
smith’s arm, and the statement is made 
that there is no reason inherent in the 
muscle itself why the one should fail more 
than the other. This may be true, but it is 
not self-evident. Exercise may influence 
in various ways the nutrition, function and 


.growth of muscle as well as of other parts. 


Mere increase in bulk is a coarse effect. 
Quality may be improved as well as 
quantity. The biggest muscle is not neces- 
sarily the best or the most powerful. As 
every trainer knows, various conditions 
under which work is done influence the re- 
sult. Increase in the reserve energy of the 
heart, secured by judicious exercise— and 
this is the main factor in endurance—prob- 
ably cannot be attributed mainly to hyper- 
trophy ; indeed, enlargement of this organ 
from exercise is often a serious condition. 
Much more might be said in this line of 
thought, but I have indicated why it seems 
to me unjustifiable to assume, without 
further evidence, that the condition of the 
muscle in pathological hypertrophies is 
necessarily identical in all respects with 
that in physiological hypertrophies. 

There is an important difference in the 
working conditions between most hyper- 
trophied hearts and the normal heart. 
Although the maximal available energy of a 
hypertrophied heart during compensation is 
greater than that of the normal heart, 
clinical experience shows that in the ma- 
jority of cases the energy available for un- 
usual demands—that is, the so-called re- 
serve force—is less in the former than in 
the latter. Sometimes, especially when the 
hypertrophy has developed in early life, the 


824 


hypertrophied heart is at no disadvantage 
in this respect. As pointed out with es- 
pecial clearness by Martius, the significance 
of this alteration in the ratio normally ex- 
isting between the energy expended for 
ordinary needs and that available for un- 
usual demands is that it furnishes an ex- 
planation of the greater liability of the 
hypertrophied heart to tire upon exertion. 
Fatigue of the heartis manifested by dilata- 
tion of its cavities, and when this dilatation 
from fatigue is added to that already exist- 
ing in most cases, relative insufficiency of 
the mitral or tricuspid valve is likely to 
occur, and the compensation is, at least for 
atime, disturbed. The circulation through 
the coronary arteries, whose integrity is so 
important for the welfare of the heart, is 
impaired, and a vicious circle may be estab- 
lished. Notwithstanding the valuable con- 
tributions from the Leipzig clinic as to the 
frequency of various anatomical lesions in 
the muscles of hypertrophied hearts, it does 
not seem to me necessary to have recourse 
tothem as an indispensable factor in the 
explanation of the breakage of compensa- 
tion ; but I shall not here enter into a dis- 
cussion of the general subject of the causes 
of failure of compensation. 

I have described, with some detail, al- 
though very inadequately, the manner of 
production of compensatory hypertrophy of 
the heart, in order, by this representative 
example, to make clear what seem to me to 
be certain general characteristics of many 
adaptive pathological processes, and I beg 
here to call attention especially to the follow- 
ing points. As has been emphasized by 
Nothnagel and others, no teleological idea 
or form of language need enter into the ex- 
planation of the mechanism of the process. 
The final result is the necessary consequence 
of the underlying morbid conditions. We 
have satisfactory mechanical explanations 
for essential steps in the process, and there 
is no reason to assume that other than me- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 126. 


chanical factors are concerned in those vital 
manifestations which at present we are un- 
able to explain by known physical and 
chemical forces. The properties of the cells 
which determine the character of their re- 
sponse to the changed conditions are none 
other than their well-known physiological 
properties. ‘The adaptation finally secured, 
admirable as it is in many respects, and 
perhaps adequate for a long and active life, 
is generally attended with marked imper- 
fections, and, strictly speaking, is not a com- 
plete compensation. It does not present 
that coordinate and special fitness which we 
are accustomed to find in physiological 
adaptations, for the explanation of which so 
much has been gained by the study of the 
factors concerned in organic evolution. 

It may be argued that under the circum- 
stances no better kind or degree of adapta- 
tion can be conceived of than that which 
actually occurs, and that the operation of 
evolutionary factors, with special reference 
to the adjustment of the organism to the 
conditions causing cardiac hypertrophy, 
could not secure any better result. I think 
that it is not difficult to conceive how im- 
provements might be introduced. It is, 
however, permissible to suppose that the 
introduction into the workings of the 
organism of some better mechanism to com- 
pensate the morbid conditions might be at 
the sacrifice of more important physiolog- 
ical attributes of the body. More perfect 
pathological adaptations might in many 
instances involve a deterioration of the 
physiological characters of the species. It 
is often the case that the more highly or- 
ganized living beings lack some capacity 
possessed by those lower in the scale of 
organization to resist or compensate injury 
and disease. This is notably true of the 
power to regenerate lost parts. It is, how- 
ever, along the lines of improvement in the 
physiological characters of the individual 
or species that the opportunity often lies 


May 28, 1897.] 


for securing increased resistance to disease 
or better pathological adaptations. 

It would be interesting to continue our 
consideration of the compensatory hyper- 
trophies by an examination of those of 
glandular organs from points of view simi- 
lar to those adopted for the heart. For 
the kidney, at least, the materials are at 
hand for such a purpose, but, as I desire in 
the limited time at my disposal to touch 
upon other varieties of pathological adapta- 
tion, I must refer those interested especially 
to the investigations of Grawitz and Israel, 
Ribbert, Nothnagel and Sacerdotti as to the 
conditions underlying compensatory hyper- 
trophy of the kidney. I can likewise 
merely call attention to the interesting re- 
searches of Ponfick upon the most wonder- 
ful of the compensatory hypertrophies in 
higher animals, that of the liver. Ponfick, 
as is well known, has demonstrated that, 
after removal of three-fourths of this organ, 
new liver-substance, with normal functions, 
is recreated from the remainder and to an 
amount nearly equalling that which was lost. 

The chapter of pathological adaptations 
in bones and joints I shall leave untouched, 
notwithstanding the admirable illustrations 
which might be drawn from this domain. 

There is no more fascinating field for the 
study of pathological adaptations with re- 
ference to the mechanical factors involved 
than that furnished by the blood-vessels, as 
has been shown especially by the brilliant 
researches of Thoma. With wonderful 
precision can a vessel or system of vessels 
adjust itself to changes in the pressure, 
velocity and quantity of blood, and thereby 
serve the needs of the tissues for blood. 
Under pathological, as well as physiological, 
conditions this adjustment may be brought 
about not only through the agency of vaso- 
motor nerves and the physical properties of 
the vascular wall, but also, when the neces- 
sity arises, by changes in the structure of 
the wall. 


SCIENCE. 


825 


The changes in the circulation introduced 
by the falling-out of the placental system at 
birth are essentially the same as those re- 
sulting from amputation of an extremity, 
and the consequent alterations in the strue- 
ture of the umbilical artery are identical 
with those in the main artery of the stump 
after amputation. The closure of the 
ductus Botalli and the ductus venosus soon 
after birth, and, still better, transforma- 
tions of vessels in the embryo, furnish 
physiological paradigms for the develop- 
ment of a collateral circulation. Many 
other illustrations might be cited, did time 
permit, to show that in the processes of 
normal development, growth and regressive 
metamorphosis of parts, both before and 
after birth, and in menstruation and preg- 
nancy, changed conditions of the circulation 
arise analogous to certain ones observed 
under pathological circumstances, and that 
the mode of adjustment to these changes by 
means of anatomical alterations in the 
vessels may be essentially the same in the 
physiological as in the morbid state. I see 
in these facts an explanation of the relative 
perfection of certain vascular adaptations 
to pathological or artificial states, as may 
be exemplified by changes in a ligated 
artery and by the development of a col- 
lateral circulation.. The mechanisms by 
which the adjustments are secured have, in 
consequence of their physiological uses. for 
reasons already explained, a special fitness 
to meet certain pathological conditions. 
That this fitness should be greater in youth 
than in old age is in accordance with laws 
of life, indicated with especial clearness by 
Minot in his interesting studies on ‘ Senes- 
cence and Rejuvenation.’ 

But these mechanisms are not equally 
well adapted to meet all morbid changes in 
the vessels. Although Thoma’s interpreta- 
tion of the fibrous thickening of the inner 
lining of vessels in arterio-sclerosis and 
aneurism, aS compensatory, or, as I should 


826 


prefer to say, adaptive, is not accepted by 
all pathologists, it seems to me the best ex- 
planation in many cases. But the adapta- 
tion, if it be such, is here usually of a very 
imperfect nature, and it is not surprising 
that it should be so, when one considers the 
improbability of any mechanism developing 
under physiological conditions which should 
be specially fitted to meet the particular 
morbid changes underlying aneurism and 
arterio-sclerosis. 

I shall not be able to enter into a consid- 
eration of the mechanical factors concerned 
in adaptive pathological processes in blood- 
vessels, although perhaps in no other field 
are to be found more pertinent illustrations 
of the views here advocated concerning 
pathological adaptations. The whole sub- 
ject has been studied from the mechanical 
side most fully and ably by Thoma, whose 
four beautifully simple histo-mechanical 
principles are at any rate very suggestive 
and helpful working hypotheses, even if it 
should prove, as seems to me probable, that 
they are too exclusive. I shall call atten- 
tion in this connection only to the inade- 
quacy of the old and still often adopted ex- 
planation of the development of a collateral 
circulation. The rapidity with which a 
collateral circulation may be established 
after ligation of a large artery, even when 
the anastomosing branches are very small, 
is known to every surgeon. This was 
formerly attributed to increase of blood 
pressure above the ligature, but this rise of 
pressure has been shown to be too small to 
furnish a satisfactory explanation, and 
Nothnagel has demonstrated that there is 
little or no change in the calibre of arteries 
coming off close above the ligature unless 
they communicate with branches arising 
below the ligature. Von Recklinghausen 
several years ago suggested a better expla- 
nation. The bed of the capillary stream for 
the anastomosing arteries is widened by 
ligation of the main artery, inasmuch as the 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vox. V. No. 126. 


blood can now flow with little resistance 
from the capillaries of the anastomosing ~ 
branches into those of the ligated artery. 
The result is increased rapidity of blood- 
flow in the anastomosing vessels. Accord- 
ing to one of Thoma’s histo-mechanical 
principles, increased velocity of the blood 
current results in increased growth of the 
vessel wall in superficies—that is, in widen- 
ing the lumen. The tension of the vessel 
wall, which is dependent on the diameter 
of the vessel and the blood pressure, is, 
according to Thoma, thus increased ; and, 
according to another of his principles, this. 
greater tension results in growth of the 
vascular wall in thickness. The changes in 
the walls of the anastomosing vessels seem 
to me to be best interpreted as referable toa 
genuine work hypertrophy, a conception 
which has already been advanced by Ziegler. 
The pathological regenerations constitute 
a large group of adaptive morbid processes 
of the highest interest. Their study has 
become almost a specialized department of 
biology, and occupies a very prominent 
place in the extensive literature of recent 
years relating to experimental or physiolog- 
ical morphology. It has revealed, in un- 
expected ways, the influence of external 
environment upon the activities of cells, as 
is illustrated in a very striking manner by 
Loeb’s studies of heteromorphosis. 
Although the capacity to regenerate lost 
parts must reside in the inherited organiza- 
tion of the participating cells, there are 
observations which seem to indicate that 
in the lower animals this capacity may 
exist independently of any opportunity for 
its exercise during any period of the normal 
life of the individual or species or their 
ancestors, including the period of embryonic 
development. This is the inference which 
has been drawn from Wolff’s observation, 
that after complete extirpation of the ocular 
lens with the capsular epithelium in the 
larval salamander a new lens is reproduced 


May 28, 1897.] 


from the posterior epithelium of the iris. 
There are other observations of similar 
purport. The acceptance of this inference, 
however, seems to me to involve such diffi- 
culties that we may reasonably expect that 
further investigations will afford more sat- 
isfactory explanations of these curious and 
puzzling phenomena of regeneration. Of 
much interest and significance are the so- 
ealled atavistic regenerations, where the 
regenerated part assumes characters be- 
longing not to the variety or species in 
which it occurs, but to some ancestral or 
allied species. For these and other reasons 
Driesch refers the pathological regenera- 
tions to what he calls the secondary self- 
reculations, by which term he designates 
those adjustments of artificially induced 
disturbances which are brought about by 
factors foreign to the normal development 
and life of the individual. 

The view advocated by Barfurth seems 
to me more probable, that the pathological 
regenerations depend upon cellular proper- 
ties pertaining to the normal life of the 
organism. This view is supported by the 
fact that, with a few probably only ap- 
parent exceptions, the regenerations con- 
form to the law of specificity of cells. The 
pathological regenerations occurring after 
birth can be referred to the retention, in 
greater or less degree, of formative powers 
possessed by the cells preeminently in em- 
bryonic life. These powers in general tend 
gradually to diminution or extinction as 
the individual grows older, although in 
some cells, such as the covering epithelium 
of the skin and mucous membranes, this 
loss of regenerative power with advancing 
years is scarcely manifest. Even after the 
cessation of growth the regenerative ca- 
pacity is not wholly in abeyance under 
physiological conditions. Bizzozero has 
studied and classified the various tissues of 
the body according to the activity of their 
physiological regeneration. 


SCIENCE. 827 


In general, the more highly differentiated 
and specialized a cell, the less is its capacity 
for regeneration; but wenow know thatsuch 
differentiation is attended with less sacri- 
fice of its regenerative power than was once 
supposed. Even such highly specialized cells 
as those of striped muscle are capable of 
regeneration. Indeed, in higher animals 
the nerve-cells seem to be the only ones inca- 
pable of proliferation, and even this is not 
certain, for there are competent observers 
who claim that these cells may multiply, 
although there is no evidence that in the 
higher animals they can give rise to func- 
tionally active new nerve-cells. The ease 
with which a part of the nerve-cell, 
namely, its axis-cylinder process, can be re- 
generated is well known. 

The cell-proliferation in regeneration is 
attributed to the removal of resistance to 
growth in consequence of the defect result- 
ing from loss of tissue. It has been pointed 
out, especially by Ziegler and by Ribbert, 
that not only cells in the immediate neigh- 
borhood of the defect multiply, but like- 
wise those at such a distance that it is diffi- 
cult to suppose that the latter have been 
directly influenced by the loss of tension in 
the tissues caused by the defect. Ziegler 
refers the proliferation of the distant cells 
to compensatory hypertrophy, and Ribbert 
attributes it to hyperzemia resulting from 
the presence in the defect of foreign ma- 
terials, such as extravasated blood, exuda- 
tion and necrotic tissue. 

We are brought here, as we were in the 
consideration of the compensatory hyper- 
trophies, to one of the most fundamental 
and important questions in pathology—the 
causes of pathological cell-growth. The 
interpretation of many pathological pro- 
cesses as adaptive or not hinges often upon 
opinions held concerning the underlying 
causes of cell-proliferation. The main 
question at issue is, How far is one willing 
to go in attributing cell-growth to primary 


828 


defects in the tissues, and in interpreting the 
growth as for the purpose of regeneration 
or filling up a defect? Differences of 
Opinion upon this subject are illustrated 
by the different interpretations of the cell- 
proliferations in acute and chronic inflam- 
mations; some pathologists considering 
these to be essentially regenerative and 
compensatory ; others regarding them, at 
least in large part, as directly incited by 
inflammatory irritants and not to be ranked 
wholly with the regenerative processes. 

The doctrine of Virchow was long ac- 
cepted without question, that inflammatory 
cell-growth is the result of the action of 
external stimuli, the so-called inflammatory 
irritants, upon the cells, which are thereby 
directly incited to grow and multiply. The 
attack upon this doctrine has been led most 
vigorously by Weigert, who denies abso- 
lutely the power of any external agencies to 
stimulate directly cells to proliferation. He 
considers that to concede such a bioplastic 
power to external agents is equivalent to 
the acceptance of a kind of spontaneous 
generation of living matter. 

Weigert’s views upon this subject have 
had undoubtedly a most fruitful influence 
upon pathology. It has been such an in- 
fluence as a good working hypothesis, 
whether finally demonstrated to be true or 
not, has often had in the development of 
science. In putting to the test of actual 
observation Weigert’s hypothesis we have 
been led to recognize the frequency and the 
importance of primary injuries to cells in- 
flicted by external agencies. Not only 
various degenerations and necroses of en- 
tire cells, but more subtle and partial dam- 
age of cytoplasm and nucleus, have been 
made the subject of special study. It has 
been recognized that our older methods of 
hardening tissues reveal often only very 
imperfectly the finer structure of cells, and 
new and better methods have been intro- 
duced which enable us to detect more deli- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 126. 


eate lesions of cell-substance which for- 
merly escaped attention, as is well illus- 
trated in recent studies in neuropathology. 
Weigert’s postulate of some primary in- 
jury to the tissues as the immediate effect 
of mechanical, chemical and other external 
agencies, which were formerly regarded as 
the direct stimuli of cell-growth and multi- 
plication, has been fulfilled in many in- 
stances where such damage had previously 
been overlooked or unsuspected. It is his 
belief that in cases where we cannot now 
detect such primary injury more thorough 
search and better methods will enable us. 
to do so. One may, of course, reasonably 
cherish such an expectation ; but at the 
same time we must recognize the fact that 
morbid cell-proliferations occur under cir- 
cumstances where we cannot at present as- 
sociate them with any demonstrable pri- 
mary injury to the tissues—indeed, in some 
cases where our insight into the structure 
of the part seems to be so clear and satis- 
factory that one is very reluctant to admit. 
the existence of an undetected damage to 
the cells. 

Perhaps the most important modification: 
of former pathological conceptions, result- 
ing from the belief that cell-growth is 
caused by primary defects and injuries of 
tissue, relates to the chronic interstitial in- 
flammations or fibroid processes. The older 
view that in these processes the active and 
essential feature of the disease is the new 
growth of connective tissue, which strangles. 
the more highly organized cells of the part, 
has been replaced to a large extent by the 
opinion that the primary and most impor- 
tant lesion is the degeneration, atrophy or 
necrosis of the more specialized cells, whose 
place is taken by the new growth of inter- 
stitial tissue. In many instances, as in 
fibroid patches in the myocardium, and in 
many scleroses of the central nervous sys- 
tem, this latter conception affords the best 
and most natural interpretation of the facts. 


May 28, 1897.] 


There are, however, great difficulties in ex- 
plaining all chronic interstitial inflamma- 
tions by this doctrine, and I must take side 
with those who admit the occurrence, for 
example in the kidney and in the liver, of 
primary interstitial inflammations char- 
acterized by proliferation of the connective 
tissue and endothelial cells. 

Indeed, it seems to me that Weigert’s 
formula is too narrow to cover all of the 
observed facts concerning cell-proliferation. 
Essential features of the theory that cells 
cannot be directly stimulated to growth by 
external agents were present in Boll’s doc- 
trine of border warfare between neighbor- 
ing cells. Weigert’s presentation of this 
theory is in a far more acceptable shape 
than that of Boll. <A still more compre- 
hensive statement of the general theory is 
that cells are incited to growth through re- 
moval of obstacles to growth in consequence 
of some disturbance in the normal relations 
or equilibrium of the cells with surrounding 
parts. The capacity to proliferate must be 
present in the cells, but with the cessation 
of growth this capacity is rendered latent or 
potential by theestablishment of definite 
relations or an equilibrium between cells 
and neighboring parts, including under the 
latter not only adjacent cells, but also base- 
ment-substance, lymphatics, bloodvessels, 
tissue-juices, chemical substances, ete. It 
is evident that under these circumstances in 
only two ways can the cells be incited to 
growth, either by removal of resistance or 
obstacles to growth, or by an increase in 
the formative energy resident within the 
cell, and that in either way energy must be 
used, whether it be employed to remove 
obstacles to growth or to increase the pro- 
liferative forces within the cell. 

It appears to me by no means an easy 
matter to decide in all cases in which of 
the two ways mentioned cell-proliferation is 
brought about. Removal of obstacles to 
growth, not only in the way indicated by 


SCIENCE. 


829 


Weigert, but also by other disturbances in 
the neighborhood relations of the part, 
and very probably by the presence of 
definite chemical substances, may be the 
explanation of all pathological cell-growths. 
Certainly it would not be easy conclusively 
to disprove this view. Nevertheless, I fail 
to comprehend the inherent difficulties 
which some find in admitting the possibility 
of forms of energy, acting from without, 
directly increasing the formative energy of 
the cell; in other words, directly stimula- 
ting the cell to growth and multiplication. 
If such a possibility be admitted, the natural 
interpretation of some examples of cell- 
proliferation is that they are directly caused 
by the action of external forces, in the sense 
advocated by Virchow. 

Students of the problems of pathological 
cell-growth must take into consideration 
not only the facts of human and allied 
pathology, but also those which are so 
rapidly accumulating in the domain of ex- 
perimental embryology and morphology, to 
the importance of which I have repeatedly 
referred in this address. I would call 
attention especially to the observations 
from this source as to the influence of 
various changes of environment, particu- 
larly of definite chemical, thermic and 
mechanical changes in surrounding parts, 
upon the direction of movement and growth 
of cells. The use at present made of chemo- 
tactic phenomena in explaining the direc- 
tion of movement of cells in human patho- 
logical processes is only a very limited and 
inadequate application of these important 
observations concerning tactic and tropic 
stimuli. We shall come to realize more 
and more the operation of these factors in de- 
termining cell-movements and cell-growth 
in human pathology. We already have 
evidence that different kinds of leucocytes 
not only possess different specific functions, 
but also respond in different ways to definite 
tactic stimuli. The long-standing problem 


830 


of the lymphoid cell in inflammation ap- 
proaches solution along these lines of in- 
vestigation. 

A burning question, and one of perennial 
interest, relating to our subject is: How 
far are we justified in regarding acute in- 
flammation as an adaptive or protective 
morbid process?’ There is fair agreement 
as to the essential facts of observation, but 
regarding their interpretation there are 
wide differences of opinion, and when one 
considers the complexity of the process and 
its still unsolved riddles it is not hard to 
see why this should be so. Much depends 
upon the point of view, and in this respect 
there can be recognized a certain antag- 
onism between the purely clinical and the 
purely pathological and experimental views, 
an antagonism, however, which must be 
reconciled by a full knowledge of the sub- 
ject. 

It is not likely that the purely clinical 
study of inflammation would ever lead to 
the idea that the general tendency of this 
process is advantageous to the patient. 
The more severe and extensive the inflam- 
matory affection, the more serious, as a 
rule, is the condition of the patient. The 
surgeon sees his wounds do well or ill, ac- 
cording to the character and extent of 
inflammatory complication. Measures di- 
rected to the removal of inflammatory 
exudation, such as the evacuation of pus 
from an abscess or an empyema, are the 
most successful methods of treatment, and 
their rules are embodied in ancient sur- 
gical maxims. How can one conceive of 
any purpose useful to the patient served by 
filling the air-cells of his lungs with pus- 
cells, fibrin and red corpuscles in pneu- 
monia, or bathing the brain and spinal 
cord in serum and pusin meningitis? If 
nature has no better weapons than these to 
fight the pneumococcus or meningococcus, 
it may be asked, ‘‘ What is their use but to 
drive the devil out with Beelzebub ?”’ 


SCIENCE, 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 126. 


But the pathologist and bacteriologist 
sees another aspect of the picture. An in- 
fectious micro-organism has invaded the 
tissues, where it multiplies and where its 
toxic products begin to work havoe with 
the surrounding cells, and by their ab- 
sorption to cause constitutional symptoms 
and perhaps damage to remote parts. Is 
the destructive process to go on without 
any defense on the part of the body? 
There are attracted to the injured part an 
army of leucocytes from the bloodvessels, 
and perhaps other cells from the neighbor- 
ing tissues, and it has been conclusively 
shown that these cells can pick up foreign 
particles and remove them, and that they 
contain substances capable of destroying 
many micro-organisms. At the same time 
serum accumulates in and around the 
injured area, and this may aid in destroy- 
ing bacteria by its chemical properties, in 
diluting poisons, in flushing out the part. 
Fibrin may appear, and some think that 
this may serve in some situations as a pro- 
tective covering. If these agencies, hos- 
tile to the invading micro-organisms, gain 
the upper hand, the débris is cleared away 
by phagocytes and other means, and the 
surrounding intact cells, which had already 
begun to multiply, produce new tissue 
which takes the place of that which had 
been destroyed. The victory, however, is 
not always with the cells and other de- 
fensive weapons of the body. The struggle 
may be prolonged, may be most unequal, 
may cover a large territory, and the char- 
acters and the extent of the inflammation 
furnish an index of these different phases 
of the battle. 

Such in bald outlines are two divergent 
views of acute inflammation. 

I do not see how we can fail to recognize 
in that response to injury, which we call 
inflammation, features of adaptation. In- 
flammation may be in some cases the best 
response to secure the removal or destruc- 


May 28, 1897.] 


tion of injurious agents, but we cannot look 
upon it as the most perfect mode of protec- 
tion of the body against invading micro- 
organisms. One may inoculate into three 
animals, even of the same species, but pos- 
sessed of different individual resistance, the 
same quantity of the same culture of a 
pathogenic micro-organism and obtain 
sometimes the following results: The first 
one will present no appreciable inflamma- 
tory reaction whatever and no evidences 
of any other disturbance, and examination 
will show that the micro-organisms have 
quickly disappeared. The second one will 
develop an extensive local inflammation 
and survive, but after a long illness. The 
third one will offer little resistance to the 
micro-organism, which rapidly multiplies 
without causing marked inflammation, in- 
vades the blood or produces toxemia, and 
quickly destroys the life of the animal. 
Now, it is evident that the best protective 
mechanism is that brought into action by 
the first animal, but that the inflammatory 
reaction set up in the second one is better 
than the absence of reaction and of other 
defenses in the third animal. 

I can scarcely do more on this occasion 
than to indicate some of the points of view 
from which it seems to me that we can best 
approach the study of inflammation as an 
adaptive process. With inflammation, as 
with other adaptive processes, any useful 
purpose subserved affords no explanation 
of the mechanism of the process. We 
should guard against all ideas which in- 
troduce, even unconsciously, the conception 
of something in the nature of an intelligent 
foresight on the part of the participating 
cells. The response of these cells in in- 
flammation is a necessary and inevitable 
one determined by their innate properties. 
Our efforts should be directed, in the first 
place, toward as near an approach as pos- 
sible to a mechanical explanation of in- 
flammatory processes by a study, on the 


SCIENCE. 851 


one hand, of the properties and mode of 
action of the causes of inflammation, and, 
on the other hand, of the nature and source 
of the cellular properties concerned. We 
may properly inquire whether these prop- 
erties fit the cells to counteract the effects 
of injury, and if so, whence comes this fit- 
ness. Has the fitness those attributes of 
relative perfection which we find in most 
physiological adaptations, or is it character- 
ized by the uncertainties and imperfections 
of so many pathological adaptations? Is 
the character of the response to injury in 
inflammation such as to indicate that the 
agencies concerned have acquired through 
evolutionary factors a special fitness to 
meet the pathological emergencies? Are 
all or only a part of the manifestations of 
the inflammatory processes adaptive? 

It cannot be doubted that there are innate 
properties of certain cells called into action 
in inflammation, such as those manifested 
in the attraction of leucocytes and other 
cells by definite chemical substances, the 
capacity of cell-proliferation from causes 
connected with injury, the power of pha- 
gocytosis and other bactericidal properties, 
which may be adapted to counteract the 
effects of injurious agents. When these 
forces bring about the prompt destruction 
or removal of the injurious substances, and 
the defect is quickly repaired, the adapta- 
tion is complete and unmistakable. When, 
however, the inflammatory irritants and 
their destructive effects persist, and the 
proliferation of cells and accumulation of 
inflammatory products become excessive 
and occupy large areas, the features of 
adaptation are not so easily recognized. 
The mere occupation of territory by in- 
flammatory products is often a serious in- 
jury, and it can be regarded as an adaptive 
feature only when they fill some artificial 
defect. Such occupation may be in itself 
enough to counteract any useful work 
in which these products may be engaged. 


832 


We can reasonably seek, in the relations 
of the body to the outer world, an explana- 
tion of the development of certain proper- 
ties of cells which serve a useful purpose in 
mechanical and other injuries. These 
properties find application also in the normal 
life of the organism. Their exercise in re- 
sponse to injury imparts to inflammation 
important adaptive or protective character- 
istics, but I fail to see in this process any 
such special fitness as would justify extrava- 
gant statements which have been made to 
the effect that inflammation ranks among 
the adaptations of living beings by the side 
of digestion and respiration. 

I have endeavored in this address to pre- 
sent certain general considerations concern- 
ing pathological adaptations. It has been 
possible to bring under consideration only a 
small part of an immense field, and this 
very inadequately. We have seen that in 
the sense in which adaptation was de- 
fined we can recognize in the results of 
morbid processes frequent and mani- 
fold evidences of adjustment to changed 
conditions. These adjustments present all 
degrees of fitness. Some are admirably 
complete ; more are adequate, but far from 
perfect ; many are associated with such dis- 
order and failures that it becomes difficult 
to detect the element of adaptation. The 
teleological conception of a useful purpose 
in no ease affords an explanation of the me- 
chanism of an adaptive process. I have sug- 
gested that the adaptability of this mechan- 
ism to bring about useful adjustments has 
been in large part determined by the factors 
of organic evolution, but that in only rela- 
tively few cases can we suppose these evolu- 
tionary factors to have intervened in behalf 
of morbid states. For the most part the 
agencies employed are such as exist pri- 
marily for physiological uses, and while 
these may be all that are required to secure a 
good pathological adjustment, often they 
have no special fitness for this purpose. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8S. Voz. V. No. 126. 


The healing power of nature is, under the 
circumstances present in disease, frequently 
incomplete and imperfect, and systems of 
treatment based too exclusively upon the 
idea that nature is doing the best thing pos- 
sible to bring about recovery or some suitable 
adjustment, and should not be interfered 
with, rest often upon an insecure founda- 
tion. The agencies employed by nature 
may be all that can be desired; they may, 
however, be inadequate, even helpless, and 
their operation may add to existing dis- 
order. There is ample scope for the benefi- 
cent work of the physician and surgeon. 


Wituram H. WELCH. 
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 


THE NAPLES ZOOLOGICAL STATION. 

- THE Naples Zoological Station celebrated 
with adequate ceremonies on April 14th its 
twenty-fifth anniversary. The exercises of 
the day began at 10 o’clock in the morning 
by a delegation representing the students 
at work in the Station calling upon Dr. 
Dorhn and expressing to him their appre- 
ciation of the privileges which the Station 
afforded them. This delegation consisted 
of representatives of the German, Italian 
and English-speaking peoples, each short 
and pointed address being delivered in the 
language of the representative. Dr. Dohrn 
happily replied, beginning his speech in 
German, continuing it in Italian and clos- 
ing it in English. This delegation then 
waited upon Dr. Hugo HEisig, who has, 
from the beginning, been Dr. Dohrn’s first 
assistant. 

Early in the day the entire Station fleet 
was anchored in the bay near the Station. 
This fleet consists of two small steamers, 
the Johannes Miller and the Frank Balfour, 
and six small fishing boats. In the midst 
of this small fleet was anchored the second- 
class cruiser Fieramosca, sent by the Italian 
government to do honor to the occasion. 

At 2p.m. all at present connected with 


May 28, 1897.] 


the Station, together with many friends and 
distinguished visitors, assembled in the lec- 
tureroom of the Station to listen to the 
speeches prepared for the occasion. The 
room was beautifully and appropriately 
decorated. On each side of the speaker’s 
stand were tables containing telegrams, 
letters and other documents conveying 
greetings and congratulations to Dr. Dohrn. 

The speeches were delivered in German 
and Italian. The opening address was by 
Professor Todaro, of Rome, who was fol- 
lowed by Professor His. The latter gave 
some account of the history of the Station, 
emphasizing its usefulness in advancing 
biology. He was followed by Professor 
Waldeyer, of Berlin, who brought an ad- 
dress from the Berlin Academy of Sciences, 
and who mentioned with some feeling of 
pride that he was one of the first students 
in the Zoological Station, when its resources 
were small as compared with what they are 
to-day. The Syndic of Naples then presented 
Dr. Dohrn with the freedom of the city. 
The audience was then favored with a short 
address by Admiral Palumbo, Under Secre- 
tary of State, after which the Minister of 
Public Instruction presented Dr. Dohrn 
the ‘ Grand Ufficiale della Corona d’Italia,’ 
and brought the congratulations of King 
Humbert. 

The closing speech was made by Dr. 
Dohrn, who delivered it in German. This 
address was printed in Italian and copies 
distributed to members of the audience. 
Dr. Dohrn spoke pleasantly of the people of 
Naples and the many privileges given him 
by the city, making special mention of 
Professor Panceri, whose influence made it 
possible to place the Station in the beauti- 
ful park known as the Villa Nazionale. To 
the Italian and German governments he 
expressed his gratitude for the sympathy 
and aid the Station had received from these 
sources. On the strength of a petition 
signed by Helmholtz, Virchow and DuBois- 


SCIENCE. 


833 


Reymond, the German Parliament granted 
to the Station an annual subsidy which has 
increased to about $10,000 per year. The 
Academy of Sciences in Berlin, the British 
Association for the Advancement of Science 
and the Smithsonian Institution were men- 
tioned for their aid in maintaining several 
tables in the Station. 

Dr. Dohrn referred with much feeling to 
the assistance given him by his father and 
also the father of Mrs. Dohrn, during the 
early years of the Station’s history. Much 
credit was given to Mrs. Dohrn, who always 
gave her sympathy and aid to the interests 
of the Station. The money given her by 
her father to furnish her house was used to 
assist in maintaining the Station during the 
critical period of its history. Much praise 
was also given Hugo Eisig, who when a 
very young man cast his lot with Dr. 
Dohrn, and long before the Station was an 
assured success. His ability, energy and 
kind cooperation have contributed largely 
to make the Station what it is to-day. 

After the exercises were over the stu- 
dents in the Station were taken on board 
the man-of-war. In the evening Dr. and 
Mrs. Dohrn entertained the distinguished 
visitors at tea, and thus ended one of the 
most pleasant and eventful days in the Sta- 
tion’s history. On April 17th the students 
of the station gave Dr. and Mrs. Dohrn a 
dinner at Fusaro. 

During the day the writer heard Dr. 
Dohrn express his delight at the success 
and usefulness of the Station ; that while 
its present condition was all one could 
wish, his hope and aim was to see it 
placed on such a foundation that its future 
usefulness would be assured. It was with 
a feeling of pride that we listened to him 
refer so kindly to an American lady who 
had just written him that she was succeed- 
ing nicely in securing funds with which to 
endow a table in the Station. 

The usefulness of the Station is so well 


834 


known to American biologists that it is 
useless for me to add anything in the way 
of a detailed description of its internal 
management, and yet this little account 
would seem very incomplete without some 
mention of Dr. Lo Bianco, whose knowl- 
edge of the plants and animals in the Bay 
of Naples, and whose skill in capturing 
animals and preparing them for study and 
for museum use is remarkable. 

At present two tables in the Station are 
supported by American institutions -(Co- 
lumbia University and the Smithsonian 
Institution), but these are inadequate to 
meet the demands of American students 
who wish to make use of the Station’s privi- 
leges. Thanks are due Dr. Dohrn, who 
always makes room for deserving Ameri- 
can students when it is possible for him to 
doso. At one time during this year there 
were seven Americans in the Station; at 
present there are four. I believe I voice 
the sentiments of all Americans here at 
present, and those who have been here in 
the past, when I express the wish that 
provisions be made by Americans or Ameri- 
can institutions for American students 


wishing to study here. 
S. E. Mex. 
NAPLES. 


ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. 


THE sixty-eighth Anniversary Meeting 
of this Society was held on April 29th. 
After some preliminary business the Report 
of the Council on the proceedings of the 
Society during the past year was read by 
Mr. P. L. Sclater, F. R. S., the Secretary. 
It stated that the number of Fellows on the 
1st of January, 1897, was 3,098, showing a 
net increase of 71 members during the year 
1896. The number of new Fellows that 
joined the Society in 1896 was 207, which 


was the largest number of elections that 


had taken place in any year since 1877. 
The total receipts of the Society for 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8S. Vou. V. No. 126. 


1896 had amounted to £27,081 which was. 
£123 more than the very successful 
year, 1895. The ordinary expenditure had 
amounted to £23,788 which was an 
increase of £327 over that of the year 
1895. Besides this a sum of £2617 
had been paid and charged to extraordi- 
nary expenditure, of which amount £2600: 
had been paid on account of the construc- 
tion of the new house for ostriches and 
cranes. A further sum of £1000 had also 
been transferred to the Deposit Account, 
leaving a balance of £1066 to be car- 
ried forward for the benefit of the pres- 
ent year. 

The usual scientific meetings had been 
held during the year 1896, and a large num- 
ber of valuable communications had been re- 
ceived upon every branch of zoology. These 
had been published in the annual volume 
of ‘Proceedings,’ which contained 1,110 
pages illustrated by 52 plates. Besides this, 
parts 1 and 2 of the 14th volume of the 
Society’s quarto ‘Transactious’ had been 
published in 1896. A new edition of the List — 
of Animals, containing a list of all the speci- 
mens of the vertebrated animals that had 
been received by the Society during the 
past twelve years, had been published and 
issued to the subscribers to the publications 
in November last. The 32d volume of the 
‘Zoological Record’ (containing a summary 
of work done by zoologists all over the 
world in 1895), edited by Dr. David Sharp,. 
F.R.S., had been published and issued to 
the subscribers in December last. 

The library, containing upwards of 20,000: 
volumes, had been maintained in good order 
throughout the year, and had been much 
resorted to by working naturalists. A large 
number of accessions, both by gift and 
purchase, had been incorporated. 

The number of visitors to the Gardens 
in 1896 was 665,004, being 322 less than 
the corresponding number in 1895. This 
slight decrease was easily accounted for by 


. 


May 28, 1897.] 


the unsettled state of the weather in the 
latter part of the past year. 

The number of animals in the Society’s 
Gardens on the 31st of December last was 
2,473, of which 902 were mammals, 1,132 
birds and 439 reptiles and batrachians. 
Amongst the additions made during the 
past year 18 were specially commented 
upon as of remarkable interest, and in most 
eases new to the Society’s collections. 
Amongst these were a young male Manatee 
from the Upper Amazons, a young male 
Klipspinger from northeast Africa, a young 
female Gorilla from French Congoland, a 
pair of lettered Aracaris from Para, a young 
Brazza’s Monkey from French Congoland, 
a Loder’s Gazelle from the Western Desert 
of Egypt, three Ivory Gulls from Spitz- 
bergen and three Franklin’s Gulls from 
America. A serious loss was occasioned to 
the Society’s menagerie by the sudden 
death, in March last, of the male Indian 
Elephant (Jung Pasha), deposited in the 
Gardens by H. R. H. The Prince of Wales 
on his return from India in 1876, and for 
the past twenty years well known to all 
visitors to the Gardens. ‘ 

A vote of thanks to the Council for their 
report was then moved by Dr. Henry Wood- 
ward, F.R.S, seconded by Lord Medway, 
and earried unanimously. 

The report having been adopted, the meet- 
ing proceeded to elect the new members of 


Council and the officers for the ensuing year.. 


The usual ballot having been taken, it 
was announced that William Bateson, Esq., 
F.R.S., Col. John Biddulph, Dr. Albert Gin- 
ther, F.R.S., Osbert Salvin, Esq., F.R.S., 
and Joseph Travers Smith, Esq., had been 
elected into the Council in the place of the 
retiring members, and that Sir William H. 
Flower, K.C.B., F.R.S., had been re-elected 
President ; Charles Drummond, Esq., Treas- 
urer, and Philip Lutley Sclater, M.A., 
Ph.D., F.R.S., Secretary to the Society, for 
the ensuing year. 


SCIENCE. 


835 


CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 
PRIMITIVE SYMBOLIC DECORATION. 

Two articles have lately appeared which 
are worth a comparison. The one is by 
Mr. C. C. Willoughby, of the Peabody 
Museum, Cambridge, in the Journal of Ameri- 
can Folk-lore for March, on the decorations 
upon pottery from the Mississippi valley. 
It is a recasting of thatread by himself and 
Professor Putnam before the American 
Association in 1895. He points out a va- 
riety of simple designs which he identifies 
as ‘cosmic symbols,’ ‘sun symbols,’ others 
for the winds, the clouds, the bird, the 
band, ete. Of course, the svastika, the 
triskeles and the cross come in as other 
‘symbols.’ 

This is one view to take of the aim of 
primitive decoration, and itis now in the 
ascendant in the United States. But in 
France they think otherwise. In the Bulle- 
tin of the Paris Anthropological Society (1896, 
Fase. 6) M. Regnault has an article on the 
beginnings of ornamental art among primi- 
tive peoples, in which he explains such 
figures as the natural result of crossing 
lines, joining angles, repeating designs, con- 
necting curves, etc., all this in the most 
simple manner and without any occult or 
mystic intent whatever. They were mere 
decorative sketches, ‘only this and nothing 
more.’ 

It is easy to read into barbaric scratches 
the thoughts of later times, and we must 
acknowledge that something more besides 
the figure itself is needed to prove its sym- 
bolie sense. 


MAN’S SPEECH TO BRUTES. 


A PRIMITIVE myth asserts thatin the good 
old times men and brutes conversed together 
understandingly. How limited their inter- 
course by speech now is may be learned from 
Dr. H. Carrington Bolton’s paper in the 
American Anthropologist, ‘The language used 
in talking to Domestic Animals.’ 


836 


He has collected numerous specimens 
from various countries, and reaches some 
interesting conclusions. Thus it appears 
that the terms used in calling animals are 
generally corruptions of their names, and 
usually the expressions addressed to them 
are from the language of the place. Cer- 
tain inarticulate sounds, as the click, used 
with us to start horses, and the chirp, uttered 
to hasten their pace, are in vogue in remote 
lands also, as in India, but with ‘a reverse 
meaning. Hvyen between France and 
Switzerland such examples of counter-sense 
are quoted. This illustrates thatthe adop- 
tion of these sounds is purely conventional, 
and the only curious feature remains that 
the same sound is repeated in widely differ- 
ent localities. There is also evident an un- 
conscious attempt on the part of man to 
lower his language to the comprehension of 
the brute by abbreviations. 

D. G. Brinton. 

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


ASTROPHYSICAL NOTES. 

THE Harvard Observatory makes an im- 
portant contribution to astrophysics in Part 
I. (pp. 1-128) of Vol. XXVIII. of its An- 
nals. This contains a discussion, by Miss 
A. C. Maury, under the direction of Pro- 
fessor EH. C. Pickering, of the spectra of the 
brighter stars photographed with the 
eleven-inch Draper telescope. This labo- 
rious investigation has involved the exam- 
ination of nearly five thousand photographs 
of 681 stars north of 30° south declination, 
and has been in progress for several years. 
From one to four prisms were placed before 
the object-glass, and the length of the photo- 
graphed spectrum, between the hydrogen 
lines 6 and «, was from 2 to 8 cm. accord- 
ingly. 

A scheme of classification was outlined 
by Miss Maury, containing 22 groups of 
spectra, with three ‘divisions,’ a, 6b and c¢, 
into which each group might be subdivided 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Voz. V. No. 126. 


according to the appearance of the lines 
present in it. The groups are presumed to 
represent in some degree successive stages 
of stellar development, I to V containing 
spectra of the Orion type (Vogel’s II b), 
while groups VII to XI, XIII to XVI, and 
XVII to XX respectively include Secchi’s 
first, second and third types. VI and XII 
are considered as transitional groups. 
Group XX is Secchi’s type IV, and XXII 
is Pickerings fifth type—bright-line stars 
and planetary nebule. Typical stars of 
each group are cited, and about forty pages 
are given to a detailed description of the 
characteristics of each group. The desira- 
bility of the introduction of a new classifi- 
cation of stellar spectra may be open to 
question, but there can be no doubt that 
the results of minute study of spectra must 
be expressed in some systematic way, since 
gradations of spectra are perfectly evident. 
Miss Maury is quite justified in thus sys- 
tematizing her work, as she has done with- 
out undue reference to theories of develop- 
ment. It is, however, hardly to be ex- 
pected that this classification will be gen- 
erally adopted. The time has not yet come 
for general agreement on stellar classifica- 
tion. Further laboratory researches and 
theoretical investigations upon lumines- 
cence must be awaited before stellar spectra 
can be interpreted. 

Separate chapters are devoted to the 
Orion lines; * to the solar lines between 2 
3686 and 2 5896 with their occurrence 
and intensity in the stars, to the lines 
in stars of division c, and to the relative 
intensities of lines. Chapter VIII. contains 
a table of the stars in their order by groups 
and subgroups or divisions, followed by 
several pages of valuable notes on indi- 
vidual stars. Chapter IX. is a general 
catalogue of the stars investigated, in order 

*The identification of these lines with those of 


heilum was discovered too late for discussion until 
the close of the volume. 


May 28, 1897.] 


of right ascension, with assignment to group 
and reference to the numbers of the plates. 

The tabular form of statement of results, 
which has become rather characteristic of 
the Harvard Annals, is followed in this 
volume. It is sometimes doubtful whether 
the compactness thus gained compensates 
for the difficulty of understanding the tables 
without minute study of them—a difficulty 
especially felt by foreigners. The notes on 
individual stars would be more convenient 
if the name of the star had been used, be- 

' sides the reference number. 

Although the quantitative accuracy of 
the spectrograph cannot be expected of the 
objective-prism, yet it seems adequate for 
the purposes of the volume under review. 
The objective-prism alone could collect such 
treasures of information as are included in 
the vast number of photographs stored in 
the Harvard Observatory and drawn upon 
in successive annals. 

THE Atlas der Himmelskunde, of which the 
first of its thirty parts is at hand, is chiefly 
devoted to the reproduction of recent as- 
tronomical photographs. The author, A. 
von Schweiger-Lerchenfeld, has had the as- 
sistance of numerous astronomers and in- 
strument makers in preparing this work, 
which promises to fully represent—espe- 
cially by its five hundred excellent engrav- 
ings and half-tones—the instruments and 
results of modern astro-photographic re- 
search. (Wien und Leipzig, A. Hartleben’s 
Verlag.) 

E. B. F. 


CURRENT NOTES ON METEOROLOGY. 

RECENT ARTICLES ON KITE-FLYING. 
THE rapidly increasing interest that is 
being taken in kite-flying is shown by the 
fact that the May number of the Century 
Magazine contains three articles on the sub- 
ject. The first, by J. B. Millet, the only 
one which deals more particularly with the 
meteorologic aspect of the matter, is en- 


SCIENCE. 


837 


titled Scientific Kite-Flying and presents the 
general facts regarding the different forms 
of kites and the methods of work and the 
results obtained at Blue Hill Observatory. 
The second article, Experiments with Kites, is 
by Lieut. Wise, of the U. S. Army, and de- 
scribes the experiments made by him at 
Governor’s Island, New York Harbor, with 
an account of the ascent of January 22, 
1897, on which day Lieut. Wise was lifted 
42 feet from the ground by means of four 
kites. The last article, by W. A. Eddy, on 
Photographing from Kites, concerns the ex- 
periments made with a camera carried up 
by kites and also gives an account of the 
first telephoning and telegraphing through 
a line held by kites. All the articles are 
illustrated and will undoubtedly attract 
considerable attention. Although kites can 
be used for many purposes, the interest that 
meteorologists have in kite-flying is limited 
chiefly to the possibility of elevating self-re- 
cording instruments to considerable heights 
above sea level by this means. It is this 
exploration of the free air by means of 
meteorographs sent up on kite lines which 
has been so actively and so successfully 
carried on at Blue Hill Observatory, as al- 
ready stated in these Notes. 


DEFORESTATION AND CLIMATE. 


Cuimatic descriptions contain frequent 
allusions to the supposed influence of de- 
forestation on climate, although we have 
not as yet enough reliable meteorological 
data to warrant our holding any definite 
opinion as to this influence one way or the 
other. In a lecture on the diamond mines 
of Kimberley, delivered atthe Imperial In- 
stitute, London, on November 16th last, and 
reported in a recent number of Nature 
(April 1), Dr. Wm. Crookes, F. R. 8., re- 
ferred to the deforestation which has been 
going on around Kimberley and to the 
change in climate which is believed to have 
resulted from this deforestation. It is reck- 


838 


oned that over a million trees have been cut 
down to supply timber for the diamond 
mines, and the whole country within a 
radius of 100 miles has been denuded of 
wood, with the most injurious effects on the 
climate, as is generally believed there. The 
absence of trees to break the force of the 
wind and temper the heat of the sun, com- 
bined with the extreme dryness of the air, 
is thought to account for the dust storms so 
frequent in that region in summer. 


ACCLIMATIZATION OF THE ENGLISH IN CEYLON. 


In connection with the acclimatization of 
Europeans in the tropics, to which reference 
was recently made in these Notes, a state- 
ment made by a recent writer on Ceylon, 
who was for many years Judge of the Ceylon 
Supreme Court, may be of interest. The 
quotation, which is from an article in the 
Scottish Geographical Magazine for April, is as 
follows: “‘When all is said, in a tropical 
climate, even of the best, we live, as it were, 
on sufferance, and the climate tells on the 
next generation. For every one of us who 
has his livelihood in Ceylon there comes the 
inevitable day when he must part from his 
children and send them home. This stern 
necessity has been styled a price which we 
must pay our Hastern possessions; and a 
heavy price it is.’”” The pathetic strain of 
such a statement serves to emphasize anew 
the lesson that complete acclimatization of 
northern Europeans in the tropics is im- 
possible. 


RECENT PUBLICATIONS. 


F. H. Biertow: Storms, Storm Tracks and 
Weather Forecasting. Bulletin No. 20. 
United States Department of Agriculture, 
Weather Bureau, 8 vo., Washington, 
1896. Pp. 87. Charts 20. 

I. H. Cuine: Influence of Climatic Conditions 
and Weather Changes on the Functions of the 
Skin. Reprinted from Proc. Texas State 
Medical Association, 1896. Pp. 8. Chart 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 126. 


showing the pathological distribution of 
climate in the United States. 
R. DE C. Warp. 


HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 

THE University of Toronto has conferred the 
degree of LL.D. on Sir John Evans, President. 
of the British Association for the Advancement 
of Science; on Dr. Wolcott Gibbs, President of 
the American Association for the Advancement 
of Science, and on three of the most distin- 


guished English men of science, who are ex- 


pected to attend the Toronto meeting of the 
British Association: Lord Lister, Lord Kelvin 
and Lord Rayleigh. 

THE third annual meeting of the Botanical 
Society of America will be held in Toronto on 
Tuesday and Wednesday, August 17th and 18th, 
1897, under the presidency of Dr. John M. 
Coulter. The Council will meet at 1 p. m. on 
Tuesday, and the first session of the Society 
will begin at 3 p.m. The address of the retir- 
ing President, Dr. Charles E. Bessey, will be 
given on Tuesday evening at 8 o’clock. The 
British Association for the Advancement of 
Science will meet in Toronto, August 18th to 
25th. The opening address is to be given on 
Wednesday evening, August 18th. A fairly 
large contingent of British botanists and some 
Continental botanists of note are expected. 
This meeting will, therefore, probably give un- 
usual opportunities for renewing or forming ac- 
quaintances. All foreign botanists present will 
be invited to sit as associate members of the 
Society and to read papers. This invitation will 
be addressed personally to all whose intention 
to come to Toronto is known, and will also be 
made known through the scientific papers. 

Miss CATHERINE W. Bruce, of New York 
City, has again shown her great interest in as- 
tronomy by sending Professor J. K. Rees, Di- 
rector of the Columbia University Observatory, 
a check for fifteen hundred dollars ($1,500). 
The money is to be used in publishing the ob- 
servations and reductions for ‘Variation of 
Latitude and the Constant of Aberration,’ made 
by Professors Rees and Jacoby and Dr. Davis. 
To this fund for publication there had been 


MAY 28, 1897.] 


contributed previously a donation of one hun- 
dred dollars ($100) by Mrs. Esther Herrman, 
of New York City. Mrs. Herrman’s interest 
in scientific matters has been evidenced by 
many generous gifts to the New York Botan- 
ical Gardens, the New York Academy of Sci- 
ences, etc. The intelligent interest of women 
in all original work in science has been exhib- 
ited abundantly in the past few years, and as- 
tronomy especially has been generously aided 
by the contributions of such women. 


Henry G. BRYANT, of Philadelphia, accom- 
panied by S. J. Entrikin and E. B. Latham, 
has started for Alaska for the purpose of climb- 
ing Mt. St. Elias and making explorations in the 
adjacent region. Mr. Bryant, as is well known, 
has had experience in exploration in Labrador, 
and has made summer trips to Greenland. 
Mr. Entrikin was with Peary in Greenland and 
made an expedition over the inland ice. Mr. 
Latham is a member of the U. S. Coast Survey, 
and goes equipped for geographical work. The 
party will be increased by three or four camp 
hands in Seattle, and will establish a base camp 
on the west shore of Yakatat Bay early in June. 
Their plan is to cross the Malaspina glacier to 
the Samovyar Hills ; from there ascend the Agas- 
siz glacier, and thence up the Newton glacier 
to the divide between Mt. Newton and Mt. 
St. Elias. A camp will be established on the 
divide, elevation about 13,000 feet, from which 
the ascent to the summit of Mt. St. Elias will 
be made. On returning to the Samovar Hills 
the explorations will be continued westward 
through an entirely unknown region until a 
pass is discovered which will enable the ex- 
plorers to cross the St. Elias Mountains and 
gain one of the branches of Copper River. The 
return to the coast will be by way of Copper 
River. The party is well equipped and has 
every prospect of success. 


Dr. E. J. SToNE, F.R.S., the well-known 
astronomer, Radcliffe Observer, at Oxford, 
died on May 9th. Mr. A. D. Bartlett, Superin_ 
tendent of the London Zoological Society’s 
Gardens, died on May 7th at the age of 85. 
He had contributed many yaluable papers to 
the meetings of the Society. Mr. Legrand Des 
Cloizeau, formerly professor of mineralogy at 


SCIENCE. 


839 


the Paris Museum of Natural History, member 
of the Section of Mineralogy of the Paris 
Academy, died on May 8th, aged 79 years. Mr. 
Theodore Bent, known for archeological and 
geographical explorations, died on May 5th 
from the effects of malarial fever, contracted 
while carrying out explorations in Arabia. 


Amone the deaths at the fire in the Paris 
Charity Bazaar was that of Dr. Feulard, a well 
known student of dermatology. He had taken 
his wife out of the building and was killed 
while returning to rescue others. 


Mr. F. D. GoopMAN, F.R.S., has been elected 
President of the British Ornithologists’ Union. 


THE custodianship of the Great Serpent 
Mound in Adams county, Ohio, has been trans- 
ferred by the Peabody Museum of Harvard 
University to the Ferris Memorial Library of 
Madisonville. 

THROUGH the influence of President David 
Starr Jordan arrangements have been made for 
the establishment of zoological gardens in San 
Francisco. 


THE report of the committee of the National 
Academy of Sciences on a forestry policy for the 
United States was ready on May Ist, but has 
been delayed in printing. It is now expected, 
however, that the complete report will be sent 
at once to Congress by President McKinley. 


THE twenty-sixth Congress of the German 
Surgical Society was held at Berlin from the 
21st to the 24th of April. It appears from the 
account in Die Natur that special attention was 
given to the applications of X-rays to surgery. 


In addition to the Section of Neryous and 
Mental Diseases of the International Medical 
Congress at Moscow, there is to be held an In- 
ternational Congress of Neurology, Psychiatry 
and Medical Electricity and Hypnotism, from 
the 16th to the 19th of September, in connec- 
tion with the Brussels International Exposition. 
The English program for this Congress is suffi- 
ciently curious to deserve quotation. Among 
the questions submitted for special discussion 
are: ‘Influence of the Delivery on the Nervous 
and Mental Diseases presented later by Chil- 
dren,’ and ‘The Question of Criminal] Sugges- 
tions: its Origins and Actuel State.’ Among 


840 


items given under ‘ Advice’ are ‘‘ The personal 
communication may not dure longer as twenty 
minutes unless the President finds that the du- 
ration may be prolonged,’’ and ‘‘ Independently 
of the questions treated by the reporters, mem- 
bers are authorized to do personal communica- 
tions.”’ 

In connection with the International Medical 
Congress at Moscow a two weeks’ excursion 
has been arranged to the Caucasus, visiting the 
celebrated mineral baths of which Kislovodsk 
is the center and traversing the region notable 
for its fine scenery. The members of the Con- 
gress will be charged only thirty dollars for 
transportation and for sleeping accommodation 
on the trains and steamboats. 


AT the Child-study Conference held recently 
at Chicago a North American Child-study As- 
sociation was formed with the object of estab- 
lishing State Societies and promoting the in- 
terests of the work. 

Mrs. ELLEN B. FRENCH has bequeathed 
$5,000 to Beloit College on condition that no 
vivisection shall ever be practiced there. Should 
this condition not be accepted the money goes 
to the American Humane Society of Boston. 


THE last of the public lectures of the present 
year before the New York Academy of Sciences 
will be delivered this evening by Dr. Harwood 
Huntington, his subject being ‘The Technology 
of Cotton Cloth.’ 

THE Swiss Zoological Society, founded in 
1894, has undertaken to prepare a Fauna Hel- 
vetica. Preliminary studies are being encour- 
aged with this end in view and are published in 
the Revue Suisse de zoologie, edited by Dr. Be- 
dot. 


THERE is to be held, in conjunction with the 
Brunswick meeting of German men of science 
and physicians, an exhibition of scientific objects 
and instruments. It is expected to make the 
exhibit in scientific photography especially 
complete, this year being the first in which 
that subject is represented by a special section. 


Ir has been the custom at the annual meet- 
ings of the British Medical Association to have 
an exhibition of pathological and anatomical 
specimens, and of apparatus more especially 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 126. 


connected with the teaching and demonstration 
of anatomy, physiology and pathology. This 
year the Museum will be held in the dissecting 
room at McGill University, where ample accom- 
modation and light is afforded to demonstrate 
the specimens to every advantage, while, to 
further aid the exhibition, a special grant has 
been obtained from the general committee. It 
is suggested that a special feature of the year’s 
exhibit should be a collection of photographs 
and micro-photographs, illustrating interesting 
abnormalities of any kind whatsoever. 


AN observatory is to be established at Odessa 
as a branch of the observatory at Pulkowa. 


THE lenses for the great telescope of the 
Yerkes Observatory were shipped from Cam- 
bridge on May 17th on a special parlor car, in 
the care of Mr. Alvan G. Clark and two assist- 
ants. , 


THE Anatomical Society of Great Britain and 
Ireland will hold its annual summer meeting on 
June 10th and 11th. An evening address will 
be given by Professor His, of Leipzig. 


Nature states that the Geological Commission 
of Cape Colony has published a bibliography of 
South African geology, containing a list of 
nearly 600 papers. 


TuHE Berlin Academy of Sciences has granted 
Professor Paschen, of Hanover, M. 1,100 for 
experiments on the energy of the spectra of 
dark bodies, and M. 1,000 to Dr. Hertz for the 
reduction of observations from the Kuffner Ob- 
servatory. 


WE learn from Nature that the Committee of 
the Puffin Island Biological Station have de- 
cided to offer facilities to students and others 
for the pursuit of scientific research at the 
Station during the summer months. The island 
is well situated for the study of both marine 
zoology and ornithology, and the Station is 
provided with sleeping accommodation in addi- 
tion to the usual laboratories. Those wishing 
to avail themselves of the present opportunity 
should communicate with the Director, Profes- 
sor P. J. White, University College of North 
Wales, Bangor. 


THE Italian correspondent of The Lancet 


May 28, 1897.] 


writes of the destruction of Captain Béttego 
while engaged in exploring the basins of the 
Gaya and of the Omo, the regions between the 
Nile and Lake Rodolfo. Captain Béttego left 
Braya in the Benadir on October 12, 1895; 
reached Lug on November 18th, founded the 
station, started on December 27th with 180 
men along the Ganane and the Gava, and kept 
the Geographical Society informed of his suc- 
cesses till April 22, 1896, when it forwarded 
him news of the disasters in Abyssinia. The 
bearer of this reached Lug in May and started 
in quest of the expedition. Meanwhile indirect 
news of Captain Béttego and his column as late 
as October last represented him as having 
gained the south shore of Lake Rodolfo on his 
return journey, and further tidings reached 
London that he was making for the coast of the 
Indian Ocean, till on April 23d King Menelik 
received a despatch announcing that on the 
Ethiopian frontier towards Baro Captain Bét- 
tego had come into conflict with a native tribe 
and had been killed, that two other Italians 
were made prisoners, and that the fourth Italian 
member of the expedition had not been heard 
of. Whether thisis the medical officer, Profes- 
sor Maurizio Sacchi, an able naturalist, is not 
yet known. 


‘WE have already called attention to the Inter- 
national Congress of Mathematicians to be held 
at Zurich. According to the Bulletin of the 
American Mathematical Society the local com- 
mittee announces the following general pro- 
gram: Meetings of the entire Congress will be 
held on Monday, August 9th, and Wednesday, 
August 11th, at which questions of a more 
general character will be discussed. Papers 
dealing with special subjects will be presented 
before the various sections on Tuesday, August 
10th. The Congress will direct its attention 
not only to purely scientific questions, but also 
to matters of an executive and business nature, 
such as questions of bibliography, lexicography, 
terminology, cooperative scientific undertak- 
ings, including historical investigations, com- 
prehensive reports, the publication of treatises, 
the holding of expositions, etc. 


AN article in a recent issue of the London 
Times advocates the renewal of Antarctic ex- 


SCIENCE. 


841 


ploration under the auspices of the British govy- 
ernment. Belgium will send out an expedition 
next September to the neighborhood of the Ant- 
arctic, but it will be a small one and will de- 
vote itself mainly to oceanographic work in the 
vicinity of Graham’s Land. There has been 
some talk of a German expedition, but the col- 
lection of the necessary funds seems to be mak- 
ing slow progress. It is estimated that the 
cost of an expedition need not exceed £50,000. 
The writer of the article says that there is rea- 
son to hope that, if the Government decides not 
to intervene, the Royal Geographical Society is 
prepared to attempt to organize an expedition 
to the Antarctic and so save the credit of Eng- 
land. It was primarily at the instigation of 
this Society that Ross’s expedition was sent 
out over half a century ago, and many other 
expeditions hardly less formidable have been 
equipped under the auspices, and partly or 
wholly at the expense, of this Society. Obviously 
in this case, however, the funds required are 
beyond its means. But there can be little 
doubt that, if the Society is in earnest about an 
Antarctic expedition, there are men able and, 
if appealed toin the right way, willing to follow 
the brilliant example set by Mr. Harmsworth. 
Under its present able, energetic and enthu- 
siastic President, Sir Clements Markham, the 
Society need not hesitate to enter upon this 
enterprise. Moreover, it is impossible not to 
believe that the Government, if once the enter- 
prise were fairly started, would lend its aid in 
one shape or another. 


THE May number of the Engineering Maga- 
zine contains an account taken from French 
technical journals of the Société des Ingénieurs 
Civils de France and its new building. The So- 
ciety was organized in 1848 with a membership 
of 134. The membership now reaches a total 
of 2,724, and the Society stands as one of the 
leading professional organizations of Europe. 
Its monthly transactions, ‘ Memoires et compte 
rendu des travaux de la Société des Ingénieurs 
Civils de France,’ are everywhere recognized as 
the record of the best work of French engineers, 
and membership in the Society is an acknowl- 
edged mark of professional eminence. A new 
building has been recently constructed for the 


842 


use of the Society in Paris, the dedication cere- 
monies having taken place on January 14th, 
President Faure assisting. The cost of the 
building alone was $100,000, to which must be 
added the cost of the ground, $80,000. On 
the ground floor is the large meeting room, 
which, including the communicating conver- 
sation room, measures 72x49 feet, and is of 
interest because of the peculiar construction of 
the floor, whereby it may be mechanically low- 
ered at the platform end and thus in a few min- 
utes be converted into a sloping hall for meet- 
ings. The upper floors, in addition to offices, 
committee rooms, etc., contain ample room for 
the valuable library, a laboratory, a photo- 
graphic room and the residence of the General 
Secretary. The building was constructed in the 
short space of nine months from designs by 
Professor Delman, in the style of architecture 
of Louis XIV. 


Ir is stated in the British Medical Journal 
that a professor of the Paris Natural History 
Museum accidentally discovered an entrance 
into subterranean passages running underneath 
the Jardin des Plantes and a part of the Boule- 
vard Saint-Marcel. The archives of the Mu- 
seum furnish proof that these galleries were 
constructed by the Romans; in the fifteenth 
and eighteenth centuries they were repaired 
and consolidated, and are now in perfect order. 
Nothing is known as to the purpose they served. 
M. Armand Viré, a corresponding member of 
the Museum, asked for permission to use the 
passages as a laboratory for researches on ani- 
mal life inhabiting caverns, and studying the 
successsive phases in the transformation of these 
degenerate forms of life, and the laboratory was 
inaugurated a few days ago. M. Viré, followed 
by fifty invited guests, bareheaded and stoop- 
ing, each carrying a candle, traversed the 
labyrinth of galleries until they reached a round 
hall, the roof of which is supported by a stone 
column. ‘This is the principal laboratory. It 
contains stone tables with perfectly flat surfaces. 
The water supply is assured by a good system 
of pipes. Seine water was in the first instance 
used, but the animals died. They were re- 
placed by others, which were given spring 
water and are in a flourishing condition. 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 126. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY rejected, on May 


21st, the proposal to confer degrees upon women. 
by a vote of 1,713 to 662. 


A COMMITTEE of the Board of Trustees of the 
College of the City of New York has recom- 
mended that eight assistants be appointed to 
assistant professorships, with salaries from 
$2,500 to $3,500, according to term of service. 
The promotions are expected to include Charles 
A. Doremus, chemistry and physics; Ivan 
Sickles, natural history ; and Gustave Legras, 
J. R. Sim and C. R. Smith, mathematics. 

Miss Mary CLoyp BURNLEY, of Swarth- 
more, Penn., who will receive the degree of 
B.A. from the Woman’s College of Baltimore 
in June, has received the fellowship in chem- 
istry from Bryn Mawr College for next year. 
Miss Burnley also receives a summer scholar- 
ship in biology at the Marine Biological Labo- 
ratory at Wood’s Holl, Mass., from the Woman’s 
College. 


Dr. FrecH has been promoted to a full 
professorship of geology in the University of 
Breslau, Dr. Carl Paal to a full professorship 
of pharmaceutical and applied chemistry in the 
University of Erlangen, and Dr. Raphael Frei- 
herr y. Erlanger and Dr. Paul Samassa to associ- 
ate professorships of zoology in the University of 
Heidelberg. Dr. Bredt, of Bonn ,has been made 
full professor of chemistry in the Polytechnic 
Institute at Aix, and Professor Franz Meyer, 
docent in mathematics in the School of Mines 
at Klausthal, has been called to the University 
of K6nigsburg. 

A SPECIAL course in paleontologic geology 
will be given by Mr. Stuart Weller at the Uni- 
versity of Chicago during the summer quarter 
beginning July 1st. The course will be devoted 
to the laboratory study of fossil invertebrates. 
Its aim will be to give instruction and training 
in the identification of fossils and in the in- 
terpretation of fossil faunas. The work will 
be entirely individual in its character and 
will be adapted to the special wants and needs 
of each student. The offering of the course is 
experimental and its repetition will depend 
upon the demand which may be found for it. 
There will accompany this a class-room course 


May 28, 1897.] 


in Geological Life Development by Mr. Weller. 
The usual courses in general and special geology 
will be given by Professor Salisbury during the 
first half of the summer quarter, followed by his 
field course during the second part. 


Mr. Francis H. Scorr writes us that the 
bill before the Legislature to change the name 
of the Michigan Mining School to the Michigan 
College of Mines became a law early in April, 
and the latter is now the proper name of the 
institution. The students and the people of the 
Upper Peninusula generally have accepted the 
new name gladly, considering it much more 
appropriate for the character of the work done 
in the institution. Another bill which has 
been pending for some time regarding the 
charging of tuition has been passed, fixing the 
rate at $25.00 for residents of Michigan, and 
not less than $50.00 or more than $200.00 for 


those residing outside of Michigan. The rate 
is under consideration and, in all prob- 
ability, will be fixed at $150.00. This tu- 


ition fee will correspond with that charged by 
other first-grade technical schools in America, 
such as Columbia College School of Mines, the 
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the Stevens 
Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology. When the school 
was working out its policy, trying to solve 
its educational problems, it was thought 
wisest to charge no tuition, but to col- 
lect as wide a constituency as possible in order 
that there might be all possible chance tomake 
the methods as broad and thorough as could be 
done. It was also deemed hardly just to the 
students educated here to demand tuition until 
the institution was much better equipped for its 
work than the appropriations granted during 
the first decade of its existence permitted. Now, 
that success has been attained in educating men 
for practical work, as is evidenced by the posi- 
tions which its eighty-six graduates hold, as 
given in the last catalogue, the institution seems 
fully warranted in charging hereafter for its in- 
struction. ‘The new law goes into effect imme- 
diately after August 19, 1897, and will, there- 
fore, not apply to students entering previous to 
that time. A prospectus will soon be issued by 
the College, giving the details of the regulations 
finally adopted by the Board of Control. 


SCIENCE. 


843 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
DISTRIBUTION OF MARINE MAMMALS, 

To THE Epiror or ScrieNcE: Without dis- 
cussing the general questions treated in Dr. 
Sclater’s paper in Science of May 14th, it may 
be well to call attention to some errors of detail. 

Dr. Sclater credits the North Atlantic region 
(Arctatlantica) with the exclusive possession of 
the genera Delphinapterus and Monodon and the 
species Balxna mysticetus. 

Monodon, though rare, occurs in the region of 
Bering Strait, while it is not known, as yet, to 
enter Bering Sea. 

Delphinapterus is abundant in Bering Sea, 
often ascending the large rivers which fall into 
that sea. Specimens have been noted in the 
Yukon 600 miles from salt water. 

Balzna mysticetus, though now nearly exter- 
minated, was a short time ago the principal ob- 
ject of the whale fishery of the North Pacific, 
Bering and Okhotsk seas. During the early 
days of the whale fishery several well attested 
instances occurred of whales (B. mysticetus) 
struck in one ocean, as the Atlantic, being after- 
ward killed in the North Pacific, and vice versa. 

It may also be mentioned that less than ten 
years ago a herd of over 200 fur seal were noted 
on one of the Galapagos Islands and an expe- 
dition was fitted out to go there for the purpose 


of hunting them. 
Wm. H. DALL. 


SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, WASHINGTON, 
May 16, 1897. 


A POSTSCRIPT ON THE TERMINOLOGY OF TYPES. 


Mr. Lucas’ remarks might have been more 
intelligible to me had they followed instead of 
preceded the lucid paper by Mr. Schuchert: 
‘What is a type in Natural History?’ (Sct- 
ENCE, N. §8., V., pp. 636-640, April, 1897.) To 
save further misapprehension, permit me to 
add that under ‘type-specimens’ I included 
‘holotypes,’ and at all events the more impor- 
tant ‘cotypes’ and ‘ paratypes.’ 

This slight misunderstanding shows how 
necessary the definition of these terms has be- 
come. It also exemplifies a danger that needs 
constant guarding against, namely, the employ- 
ment of a common word in a restricted or 
altered technical sense. The man in the street 


844 


knows the meaning of ‘type’ and ‘typical,’ 
but the meaning of those terms to the zoologist 
is something quite different. The scientific 
man is constantly hampered by the formalities 
of his science ; and zoology is not advanced by 
the fact that the holotype, and perhaps the 
paratypes, of a species are often aberrant forms, 
i. e., are not typical in the ordinary English 
sense. Of this no instances need be quoted. 

Now while many individuals of a species 
may be typical (in the ordinary sense), we can 
conceive of one form, not necessarily existing, 
that represents a kind of central type, or, as I 
have expressed it elsewhere, a composite por- 
trait of thespecies. It is thisthatis the ‘type’ 
of the man in the street. Instances of this are 
to be found in the statistical tables of Galton, 
Weldon, Bateson and others; a type-formula 
for Ranunculus repens was given by Pledge in 
Natural Science for May, 1897; but some of 
the most interesting are J. M. Clarke’s studies 
of Leptodesma (Amer Geol., April, 1894, and 
Nat. Sci., June, 1894). 

For this kind of type, far removed from a 
type-specimen, we want a name; and as the 
word type has been stolen from us it will save 
confusion to avoid it altogether. J. M. Clarke 
used ‘fundamentum’ as an alternative; but 
other American biologists attempted to use this 
as the equivalent of Anlage, while the funda- 
ment of man in the street is quite a different 
anatomical conception. Perhaps the word 
‘norm,’ with its adjectival form ‘normal,’ 
would give the meaning most nearly, though 
“normal has, of course, its more literal sense of 
‘at right angles to.’ The norm of a species 
varies with locality or with horizon, becoming 
in the former case the norm of a subspecies, in 
the latter case the norm of a mutation. So 
also one can sometimes imagine the norm of a 
genus; and how very different a thing that 
would be from the type-species, at least of many 
genera! The genus-norm also may vary with 
locality. Thus the species of Gissocrinus in 
Gotland group themselves around G. typus, but 
those in England around G. goniodactylus. 

This conception of the norm will probably be 
found at least as helpful as that of the ‘hypo- 
plastotype.’ It would be of value if it did no 
more than draw our thoughts from the weari- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 126. 


some history of human error back to the facts 
of nature. 

With reference to what Mr. Schuchert calls a 
‘plastotype,’ but which I would as lief calla 
“cast o’type,’ or perhaps ‘electr-o-type,’ may 
I put to him the case of a cast made from a na- 
tural matrix which has subsequently been partly 
destroyed, in order to expose its inner recesses 
more fully or to admit of the extraction of the 
cast? Such a cast would preserve features that 
could never again be shown by the matrix, and 
might therefore find a place in the hierarchy 
labelled ‘type material’ by Mr. Schuchert. 

Another question. When the holotype and 
paratypes of a species have gone the way of all 
flesh ; when topotypes are impossible and meta- 
types unknown ; when even its plastotypes are 
not to be had—then what are we to call the 
specimen selected for special description by the 
reviser and reestablisher of the species ? Should 
it not be something distinct from the ordinary 
“hypotype?’ But this subject of hypotypes 
offers so wide a field for the neologist that pru- 
dence bids me cease. F. A. BATHER. 

BRITISH MUSEUM (NATURAL HISTORY). 


“ORGANIC SELECTION.’ 


To THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: In SCIENCE for 
April 23, 1897, J. Mark Baldwin submitted, in 
a paper headed ‘ Organic Selection,’ an hypoth- 
esis which he implies to have originated ‘in 
certain recent publications ’ by H. F. Osborn, C. 
Lloyd Morgan and himselfin the year 1896. The 
hypothesis is based on the idea that characters 
acquired during the life of an individual are, to 
a considerable extent, those characters which 
cause the survival of that individual ; or, in other 
words, that an organism which varies not only 
because of variations in the germ-cell, whence it 
evolves, but also because of the variety of forces 
acting on it while it is so evolving (especially 
after birth), and, on account of these variations, 
survives and reproduces at the expense of other 
organisms, must so survive partly on account of 
the one set of variations and partly on account of 
the other set. On this basis it is argued that, 
as connate characters in general persist, those 
particular connate characters which are identical 
with those acquired characters with which they 
coexist and to the virtue of which the survival of 


MAy 28, 1897.] 


the individual is in part due will persist in the 
next generation; and, furthermore, that there 
will arise, by like processes in successive gen- 
erations, an accumulation of such connate char- 
acters. Hence, it is said there may appear to 
be an inheritance of acquired characters where, 
in reality, there is only an accumulation of con- 
nate characters identical with the acquired char- 
acters which, as it were, shield the connate 
characters while they are accumulating in suc- 
cessive generations. 

My intention is not to discuss the merits of this 
hypothesis, but to say that, if I understand it, 
it is by no means new. It was clearly set forth 
by Herbert Spencer, in his ‘ Principles of Bi- 
ology,’ in the year 1866. Though it may have 
been presented by him or by others before that 
time, in writings of which I am uninformed, it 
will be of interest to examine the following 
statement of it in the work referred to: 


“The working out of the process is here somewhat 
difficult to follow ; but it appears to me that as fast 
as the number of bodily and mental faculties in- 
creases, and as fast as the maintenance of life comes 
to depend less on the amount of any one, and more 
on the combined action of all ; so fast does the pro- 
duction of specialties of character by natural selec- 
tion alone, become difficult. Particularly does this 
seem to be so with a species so multitudinous in its 
powers as mankind ; and above all does it seem to be 
so with such of the human powers as have but minor 
shares in aiding the struggle for life—the esthetic 
faculties, for example. 

‘‘Tt by no means follows, however, that in cases of 
this kind, and cases of the preceding kind natural 
selection plays no part. Wherever it is not the chief 
agent in working organic changes, it is still, very 
generally, a secondary agent. The survival of the 
fittest must nearly always further the production of 
modifications which produce fitness ; whether they be 
modifications thatjhave arisen incidentally, or modi- 
fications that have been caused by direct adaptation. 
Evidently those individuals whose constitutions or 
circumstances haye facilitated the production in them 
of any structural change consequent on any func- 
tional change demanded by some new external con- 
dition, will be the individuals most likely to liveand 
to leave descendants. ‘There must be a natural selec- 
tion of functionally-acquired peculiarities, as well 
as of incidental peculiarities ; and hence such struc- 
tural changes ina species as result from changes of 
habit necessitated by changed circumstances, natural 


SCIENCE. 


845 


selection will render more rapid than they would 
otherwise be.’? (Prin. of Biology, Vol. 1, p. 454.) 
ROBERT M. PIERCE, 
PHILADELPHIA, PA. 


EUPROCTIS CHRYSORRH@A IN MASSACHUSETTS. 


On May 13th Dr. Roland Thaxter brought 
me a few larve he had found on pear trees in 
Cambridge. After examination I identified 
these as Huproctis (Porthesia) chrysorrhaa Linné, 
commonly called the Goldtail, aspecies hitherto 
unrecorded from this country. It occurs locally 
in England, is abundant in central and southern 
Europe, and is also recorded from northern 
Africa and Asia Minor. When found in 
great profusion their ravages are exceedingly 
serious. 

May 15th, Dr. Thaxter and I visited a locality 
in Somerville, not far from the Cambridge line, 
and found the lary extremely abundant on 
pear, and somewhat less soon apple. Wewere 
told that they were noticed last spring for the 
first time and that they fed only on pear and 
apple. The larve feed gregariously and build 
small, tent-like nests. A slight jar causes them 
to drop from the trees and they give rise to 
further annoyance by the urticating power of 
their hairs. The larva may be described briefly 
as blackish with ochreous hairs, dorsal line 
double with pale ochreous, reddish markings, 
subdorsal line broad, with interrupted white 
markings; the tenth and eleventh segments 
have a conspicuous, dorsal, red tubercule. The 
head and thorax of the moth are white; the 
abdomen is white, with a brown or buff anal 
tuft ; the wings are pure white, frequently with 
a black spot on the lower posterior margin of 
the fore wings. The alar expanse is 32-38 mm. 

As previously stated, they have been found 
to feed here only on pear and apple, and the at- 
tempts I have made to effect a change of food 
have, thus far, failed. Abroad, however, the 
species has many food plants, apple, pear, 
plum, hawthorn, bramble, elm, willow, beech, 
oak, hazel nut, and hornbean being among those 
recorded. At present the larve seem to be 
confined to a rather limited area in Somerville 
and Cambridge. Itis difficult to give an adequate 
idea of their abundance, their increase since 
last year, and their destructiveness. If the 


846 


species should become well established it will 
prove especially harmful; vigorous measures 
should, therefore, be taken to prevent its 
spreading. 
SAMUEL HENSHAW. 
CAMBRIDGE, May 17, 1897. 


SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 

Das Tierreich. Eine Zusammenstellung und 
Kennzeichnung der rezenten ‘Tierformen. 
Herausgegeben yon der Deutschen Zoologi- 
schen Gesellschaft. Generalredakteur: FRANZ 
EILHARD ScHULZE. Berlin, R. Friedlander 
und Sohn. 1897. 

Ir is about a hundred years since the last 
editions of Linnzi Systema Nature appeared, 
pretending to give a systematic descriptive 
enumeration of all natural history objects 
known at that time. Those were days when 
one man could undertake such a work includ- 
ing all the known animals, plants and minerals. 
In most cases these editions were baseless and 
uncritical compilations, but, nevertheless, their 
influence was so stimulating that before the 
end of the eighteenth century the task of keep- 
ing these descriptive lists up became impossible. 
The three kingdoms separated first, but even 
the animal kingdom alone got beyond the con- 
trol of the zoologists, and no descriptive list of 
all the animals was undertaken till our days, 
as Cuvier’s Regne Animal did not pretend to 
take cognizance of any but the more common 
or remarkable forms. 

The only publications of recent years, how- 
ever, which, if kept up, would finally present 
in one series descriptions of all known animals 
are the catalogues of the specimens in the 
British Museum, but on the scale upon which 
these volumes are planned it will take ages 
before the task can be completed. 

Recognizing this, the German Zoological So- 
ciety has boldly stepped to the front and not 
only planned, but actually begun, a publication 
which intends to embrace systematic diagnoses 
of all living animals under the title ‘ Das Tier- 
reich.’ The plan of this gigantic undertaking 
is as follows: 

The various groups of animals are to be 
worked up by specialists, a list of sixty-four 
colaborators having already been published. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 126. 


Their work is to be supervised by a number of 
division editors, twenty-one of whom are named. 
At the head of the whole, as editor-in-chief, is 
Dr. F. E. Schulze, of Berlin, assisted by an 
editorial committee consisting of the President 
of the German Zoological Society and Dr. K. 
Mobius, in Berlin. 

In order to obtain uniformity, certain rules 
have been adopted: thus the nomenclature is 
to follow the canons of the German Zoological 
Society; the color designations are to be accord- 
ing to Saccardo’s Chromotaxia, the abbreviations 
are to be uniform, ete.; subspecies are to be 
recognized ; a short diagnosis of each form is to 
be given, accompanied by a list of all syno- 
nyms since 1758, as well as references to the 
most important literature and a brief statement 
of the geographical distribution; systematic 
synopsis of groupsand keys to facilitate identifi- 
cations are to be a special feature, and dia- 
grams and figures in the text will illustrate the 
more difficult points. Every group is to be pub- 
lished as soon as finished, irrespective of its. 
position in the system and as a separate whole, 
with title and index. Upon the completion of 
each division, table of contents and index fol- 
low, as well as a general table and index when 
the whole work is finished. The various parts 
are to be sold separately. The work will be 
published in the German language ; exception- 
ally, however, also in English, French or 
Latin. 

It will be seen from the above that the Ger- 
man Zoological Society has in view a most am- 
bitious and colossal undertaking, which, if it is 
ever brought to conclusion, must prove of in- 
estimable value to zoological science. The 
plan seems well considered and the names of 
the contributors thus far secured promise well 
for the thoroughness of the work to be under- 
taken. But will it ever be finished? Or 
rather, will it be finished within such a period 
that the beginning will not be completely 
antiquated before the editor-in-chief writes: 
jinis on the last page of the last part? We all 
remember the fate of another German under- 
taking of vastly less ambitious dimension, viz.: 
Brown’s ‘Thierklassen,’ which, although be- 
gun in 1859, is not yet completed, and anxiously 
ask whether it may not require more than 


May 28, 1897.] 


one generation to finish the ‘Tierreich.’ The 
prospectus does not even contain an estimate 
as to the aggregate number of volumes or signa- 
tures the whole may embrace, and the present 
reviewer has no means of furnishing such an 
estimate except for a limited branch. The 
first part, relating to birds, having been issued, it 
is possible to calculate the size of the portion 
relating to the class Aves, and to assert that, if 
the same plan is followed throughout, the birds 
alone will fill 10 large octavo volumes of about 
600 pages each. The question then is, How 
many volumes are the other classes to occupy, 
and how many the insects alone? 

The price cannot be considered high, in view 
of the character of the work. Regular sub- 
seribers who bind themselves to take all the 
parts published during the first five years will 
haye to pay an average price of Mark 0.70 per 
signature, or about 18 cents, while the various 
parts will be sold separately at a rate about one 
third higher. On the above calculation the 
birds when concluded would cost about 65 dol- 
lars to subscribers and 87 dollars to others. 

As stated above, the first part is now pub- 
lished and is before us.* It treats of the goat- 
suckers and swifts and is the work of Mr. 
Ernst Hartert, the director of the museum in 
Tring. Ifthe rest of the work is going to keep 
up with the standard set by this beginning 
there can be no doubt that the undertaking will 
be a scientific suecess. But then, Mr. Hartert 
is not only exceptionally fitted for this work, 
but he has also had exceptional opportunities. 
Brought up with German thoroughness, he was 
transplanted to England, where, unfettered by 
national prejudices, he was free to select and de- 
velop the best sides of English methods. Five 
years ago he monographed these very families 
of birds for the catalogue of the British Museum, 


*Das Tierreich. Eine Zusammenstellung und 
Kennzeichnung der rezenten Tierformen. Heraus- 
gegeben von der Deutschen Zoologischen Gesellschaft. 
Generalredakteur : Franz Hilhard Schulze.—1. Lie- 
ferung. Aves. Redakteur: A. Reichenow.—Podar- 
gide, Caprimulgide und Macropterygide bearbeitet 
yon Ernst Hartert, Direktor des Zoologischen Mus- 
seums in Tring (England). Mit 16 Abbildungen im 
Texte.—Berlin. Verlag von R. Friedlander und Sohn. 
1897. 8vo. viii 98 pp. 


SCLENCE. 


847 


with the unrivaled material of that institution 
before him. He has thus had an opportunity - 
to study specimens of nearly all the species he 
treats of, and his work thus partakes but little 
of the character of a compilation. The first 
part of the Tierreich is a condensed review, in 
German, of that monograph brought down to 
date. On the whole, the changes are few, show- 
ing how well the work was done from the start. 
21 species and subspecies are recognized as 
haying been added since 1892, while it has only 
been necessary to add or reinstate five species 
and subspecies described previous to 1892, On 
the other hand, only two or three species then 
recognized as such have now been reduced to 
subspecies. Two additional genera are recog- 
nized, viz.: Cosmetornis, reinstated, and Nan- 
nochordeiles, established in 1896. The changes 
in nomenclature are not many. The author 
has accounted for most of the changes in a 
separate paper published in the Jbis for 1896, 
to which those wishing further detailed infor- 
mation are referred. One important change in 
nomenclature, however, has not been noted 
there, as it was brought about by Dr. Reichenow 
only a short time ago. The latter found that 
Pallas has not established the genus Apus for 
Monoculus apus, Lin., as previously supposed, 
but that Scopoli, who proposed Apus for the 
Swift in 1777, had on a previous page established 
the genus Apos for the Monoculus. Of course, 
the latter is only a lapsus in transliterating 
axovg and is, in every sense of the word, a 
synonym of Apus, which must, therefore, be 
considered preoccupied. Reichenow considers 
the case parallel to that of Picus and Pica, 
names allowable under the codes of nomencla- 
ture, but there is absolutely no similarity be- 
tween the cases. The latter generic appella- 
tions are distinct and separate Latin classical 
names for widely different birds, though the 
philological root of the two words is probably the 
same. But in Apos and Apus it is the same 
word, by some lapsus, or another, mutilated in 
the case of Apos. Were we to accept Reich- 
enow’s ruling weshould haye one species Apos 
apus, the monoculus, and another Apus apus, 
the bird, which would nearly nullify the idea 
of zoological nomenclature, viz.: to have a dif- 
ferent name for each different species. 


848 


While we must thus congratulate the German 
- Zoological Society upon the eminently satis- 
factory beginning of its enormous enterprise, 
and the zoological world at large upon the 
prospect of the assistance and stimulus which 
such a work must necessarily afford, we cannot 
forbear expressing the reservation that the pro- 
motors of the task when expecting that ‘Das 
Tierreich’ may become the foundation and 
starting point of all future systematic research 
(‘Grundlage und Ausgangspunkt aller kunf- 
tigen Systematik’). A work to become, in 
our days, the foundation and starting point of 
future systematic research must break new 
ground, open up new views and utilize new 
material to a much greater extent than it is 
possible in a general work of the scope of ‘ Das 
Tierreich,’ with its necessarily excessive conden- 
sation and also necessarily uneven authority. 
No matter how prominent the monographers 
may be, it is conceivable that the work of many 
may fail to receive the universal acceptance 
_which is essential to the fulfilment of the So- 
ciety’s fond hope. The time is not ripe yet for 
anew starting point. Wearestill in the midst of 
a period of development and upheaval. The 
natural relationships of animals are, to a great 
extent, obscure as yet, and the systematic ar- 
rangement in the work is bound to be greatly 
artificial in many groups at least. Itis even to 
be feared that the very conciseness of the form 
and the consequent unavoidable preciseness of 
the statements, coupled with the superficial 
uniformity of the arrangement, may tempt the 
habitual generalizers, who are deficient in the 
special knowledge which ‘ Das Tierreich’ is des- 
tined to be an expression for, into a belief that 
zoological science has reached a well-balanced 
uniformity which might make it safe to use the 
work asan undisputed authority in all branches 
upon which to build daring and glittering gen- 
eralizations. For the working specialist, it is 
safe to say, no general work, however, well 
executed, will even supersede the Systema 
Nature of Linneus as a starting point. 
LEONHARD STEJNEGER. 


A Study in Insect Parasitism: A Consideration of 
. the Parasites of the White-marked Tussock Moth, 
with an account of their habits and interrelations, 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 126. 


and with descriptions of new species. By Li. O. 
Howarp. U.S. Department of Agriculture, 
Division of Entomology, Technical Series 
(Bulletin) No. 5. [April] 1897. 

One of the first insects which met the writer’s 
eye on landing in New York in 1887 was the 
larva of the white-marked tussock moth (Orgyia 
Hemerocampa leucostigma). It is a beautiful 
creature, but destructive to the shade trees. 
It exhibits ‘warning colors,’ and is not eaten 
by the sparrows; so there is no telling how 
abundant it might become but for parasites and 
diseases. 

Dr. L. O. Howard undertook a few years ago 
to study the life history and parasites of this in- 
sect, especially as observed in the City of Wash- 
iugton. One might have supposed that at this 
late date there was nothing new to be learned 
about so common a creature, but Dr. Howard 
knew better, and the present bulletin exhibits 
part of the new facts ascertained. It is not 
necessary to recount these facts, as the bulletin 
itself can be obtained without difficulty, but I 
should like to emphasize two or three points. 

In the first place, we see that most admirable 
work may yet be done even in the very midst 
of our great cities, and that even new species 
may be obtained in tolerable abundance. Dr. 
Howard, in the present bulletin, records thirty- 
five parasites and hyperparasites of the Orgyia, 
of which no less than nine are described as new, 
all the new ones being from the District of Co- 
lumbia. So even our business men, who have 
but a spare half-hour or twenty minutes at 
noon, can, if they are so inclined, gather a lot 
of Orgyia cocoons and breed parasites, with a 
fair chance of turning up actual novelties! 
Here, indeed, is an exciting and interesting 
pastime for young clerks and such persons 
whose city life is at present rather dull. 

Secondly, we observe that when the various 
factors bearing upon the life of an insect are 
considered together, the interest of the subject 
is enormously increased. It is unfortunate that 
at least nine-tenths of the current literature of 
entomology relates either to dead specimens 
removed from their natural environment, or 
when referring to living insects takes an ex- 
tremely narrow view of the subject. It results 
from this that one of the most fascinating 


May 28, 1897.] 


studies known, and one which yields abundant 
facts of philosophical interest, has the reputa- 
tion in many quarters of being excessively dry 
and unprofitable. It may be laid down as a 
law that no one can take a really intelligent 
view of a group of insects while ignoring all 
those outside factors which influence its being 
and have made it whatit is. Such a one may 
become skillful in determining species, but he 
is like a collector of coins, who should know 
perfectly every kind of coin which he possessed, 
but neither knows nor cares when or by whom 
the coins were made nor what the figures and 
inscriptions upon them meant. 

Thirdly, it is perfectly clear that entomolog- 
ical works of the best kind can no longer be 
written by one man unaided. Dr. Howard 
could by no means have given us so satisfactory 
a treatise had he not been helped by his several 
assistants and investigators. Such help is gladly 
rendered by entomologists to one another, when 
it is known that it will be judiciously used and 
justly credited. Itis a pleasure to assist such 
a man as Dr. Howard, and it is to be hoped 
that all who can cooperate usefully with him 
will make haste to do so. For while many of 
us cannot by ourselves write profitably on 
various subjects, we may together afford the 
materials, which, put together and added to by 
a competent person, will result in the produc- 
tion of an admirable treatise. Those who, like 
Dr. Howard, have shown that they can be 
trusted to use properly the materials or infor- 
mation supplied to them should receive strong 
support; while others (there are such) who per- 
sistently ignore field notes and biological data, 
or do not quote those data correctly, out of 
sheer carelessness, should not be supplied with 
material. 

When the writer began to describe western 
hymenoptera he was solemnly warned that, not 
having access to the type specimens, he would 
be very likely to make synonyms. So far, he 
believes there are not more synonyms among 
his names than among an equal number of those 
proposed by Eastern entomologists—those de- 
tected on sending the types east are very few, 
but even if there were, he believes he would be 
justified, because he gives the exact conditions 
under which the insects were taken, while most 


SCIENCE. 


849 


of those described in the East are credited 
vaguely to ‘Colo.’, ‘N. Mex.’, etc., to the - 
extreme vexation of one working on the fauna 
of this region. It is true, of course, that the 
material so described has been mostly sent in 
with inadequate labels, but the writer knows 
cases enough where the available data were not 
quoted ; and certainly had any serious effort 
been made to get professional collectors to cite 
localities, etc., the information would have 
been forthcoming. This is shown by the fact 
that Mr. W. H. Edwards almost always man- 
ages to get excellent details. Compare Mr. 
Edwards’ accounts of the butterflies taken by 
Bruce with the records of moths collected by the 
same entomologist but published by others. 
Compare also the different reports on the St. 
Vincent material collected by Mr. H. H. Smith.* 

Several other matters might be touched 
upon. How interesting it is to read of the 
indirect influence of the sparrows on the Orgyia, 
of the fluctuation of the several insects from 
year to year, of the way in which the parasites 
abounded in different degrees in different 
parts of the city, and a dozen other things. 
The inadequacy of a bald record that one insect 
infests another is clearly brought out. Thus, 
while it is correct to say that Apanteles hyphan- 
trie and Chalcis ovata both infest the Orgyia 
and Hyphantria, they infest them in utterly dif- 
ferent proportions. 

There is little or nothing to criticise ad- 
versely. Theronia fulvescens, credited to 
Brullé, was, I believe, described by Cresson. 
On p. 52 it is said that the dipterous parasites 
apparently had no hyperparasites. But Hemi- 
teles townsendi was surely such, as is duly indi- 
cated on p. 31. 

The promptness of publication is very much 
to be commended. The Bulletin was trans- 


* Tn the report on the Diptera, Tr. Ent. Soc. Lond., 
1896, Professor Aldrich, reporting on the Dolicho- 
podide and Phoride, gives the altitude, etc., while 
Professor Williston, reporting on the other families, 
generally fails to give any such data. It cannot be 
supposed that Mr. Smith carefully labelled two fam- 
ilies of flies, and was quite careless about the rest ! 
One of the individuals who worked up a group of the 
St. Vincent fauna (not flies) confessed to me that he 
threw away Smith’s minute-locality labels. 


850 


mitted for publication on February 1st, and it 
eomes to hand early in April. This is in great 
contrast with the delay which formerly used to 


occur. 
T. D. A. CocKERELL. 
MesILLA, N. M. 


Marine Fossils from the Coal Measures of Ar- 
kansas. By JAMES PERRINSMITH. (Preface 
by JoHn C. BRANNER, late State Geologist 
of Arkansas.) Pp. 72. Plates xvi.—xxiv. 
This memoir, reprinted January 7, 1897, from 

the Proceedings of the American Philosophical 

Society, Vol. XXXV., No. 152, isalso ‘‘the ninth 

of a series designed to illustrate the investiga- 

tions and explorations of the Hopkins Seaside 

Laboratory, an adjunct of the biological labora- 

tories of the Leland Stanford Junior Univer- 

sity.’’ It was prepared at the request of Dr. 

Branner and deals with the rarer, and therefore 

more interesting, fossils of the Coal Measures. 

In these strata marine species furnish the most 

valuable data for the purposes of correlation. 

Heretofore they had been announced from but 

one locality: now, after a careful study of the 

material brought together by the last (Branner) 
survey, Professor Smith is able to announce 
them from twenty-one additional localities, ex- 
tending from Independence county, on the 
east, to the Indian Territory, on the west. 

Forty-eight genera are represented by ninety 

species, of which forty-eight are found in the 

in the Lower Coal Measures and fifty-two in 
the Upper, ten species being common to both. 

The author characterizes the fauna as poor, such 

as would wander in whenever, by subsidence, 

the shallow waters became more habitable, 
and he also points out that, under the condi- 
tions then prevailing, it could not become well es- 
tablished, as it was frequently forced to migrate. 

In consequence of this, a gradual transition 

from the fauna of the Lower Carboniferous 

Limestone does not exist in this region. No 

attempt is made to classify the beds more 

minutely than into Upper and Lower Coal 

Measures, and even this is at times un- 

certain, especially when their marked simi- 

larity, folding and faulting are taken into 
consideration. Then follows a list of locali- 
ties in which marine fossils were found, 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 126. 


seventeen in the Lower Coal Measures and 
four in the Upper (one of which, Poteau 
mountain, is two miles west of the Scott county, 
Arkansas, line, in Indian Territory), together 
with the names of the fossils, character of the 
deposits, and the names of the collectors. A 
comparison is made with the Permo-Carbonifer- 
ous of Kansas and Nebraska and the strong 
faunal resemblance of the Upper Coal Measures 
of Arkansas to the youngest Paleozoic rocks of 
Nebraska shown. The relations of the Ar- 
kansas deposits to those of Texas are also noted : 
“None of the characteristic ammonite genera 
[of the Permian] were found in the Arkansas 
region, but nearly every fossil found in these 
Coal Measures was also found in Texas. And in 
the Texas Permian nearly all the species except- 
ing the ammonites were found in the underlying 
Upper Coal Measures. This makes the analogy 
between the Upper Coal Measures of the two 
regions very strong.’’ 

In view of this Professor Smith concludes ‘‘that 
while some of the beds in western Arkansas are 
very high up in the Coal Measures, none that 
belong above them are as yet certainly known, 
and the Poteau mountain syncline, across the 
line in Indian Territory, is the only place where 
there is any likelihood of finding Permian de- 
posits.’’ Some very interesting comparisons are 
also made with foreign faunas: for instance, of 
the Lo-ping fauna in China ‘‘nearly all of the 
species are either found in America, or they have 
their nearest relatives there.’’ In this connec- 
tion another point of unusual interest is brought 
out, viz., that many of the species which are 
“very common in America and Asia are un- 
known or rare in Europe, which fact would 
tend to prove a connection with Asia by water, 
and the separation of the European and the 
American Upper Coal Measure deposits by a 
land barrier.’’ Inshort, our author regards the 
two regions, America and Asia, as belonging to 
the ‘‘same zoological province, the Pacific Car- 
boniferous sea.’’? Moreover, ‘‘many of the Ameri- 
can species that are found at Lo-ping are also 
found in the Salt Range beds,’’ thus extending 
the close relationship to India. Of the Upper - 
Carboniferous fauna, at ItaitGba, Brazil, de- 
scribed by Derby, twelve out of twenty-seven 
species of brachiopods are shown to be ‘“iden+ 


May 28, 1897.] 


tical with American forms, although most of 
these are cosmopolitan.’? The Strophalosia of 
this locality by its close relation to Australian 
forms would indicate ‘‘a closer connection with 
the Australian, or Southern, Carboniferous re- 
gion than with the Pacific Province.”’ 

But the classification and age of the Arkansas 
Coal Measures is the most difficult problem the 
author has to deal with and the most un- 
satisfactory, being at best provisional. He 
says: ‘The Coal Measures of Arkansas 
have been temporarily classified by the Sur- 
vey, for the sake of convenience, as Upper, 
or Productive, and Lower, or Barren Coal 
Measures. The division is not based on any 
paleontologic or stratigraphic break, but merely 
on the occurrence or non-occurrence of coal. 

“The divisions that are recognized in Penn- 
sylvania could not be recognized in Arkansas, 
but the strata of the two sections are correlated, 
as far as possible, with the scanty data now at 
hand. 

‘Of the age of the Lower Coal Measures we 
haye only stratigraphic evidence, their position 
above the limestone of the Lower Carboniferous 
and below the coal-bearing beds of the Upper 
Coal Measure being unmistakable. But their 
known fauna and flora have been too limited 
and indecisive to enable us to correlate the 
stages with those of other Carboniferous areas, 
since collections have been made in but few 
places, and these chiefly in sandstones, where 
the preservation of fossils is usually unsatisfac- 
tory and the determination uncertain. 

‘But the Lower Coal Measures correspond 
in a general way to the Strawn and the lower 
part of the canyon division of Texas, to the 
Pottsville Conglomerate series, the Lower Pro- 
ductive Coal Measures, and part of the Lower 
Barren Coal Measures of Pennsylvania. The 
series corresponds, in the main, to the Middle 
Carboniferous limestone of eastern Russia.’’ 

Concerning the Upper Coal Measures of Ar- 
kansas, Professor Smith expresses the opinion 
that they ‘‘correspond to the upper part of the 
Canyon and the whole of the Cisco division of 
Texas.’’ He infers, from the presence of cer- 
tain fossils, that the beds of Poteau Mountain, 
I. T., are probably of the age of those in the 
Lo-ping district, and that the yellow shales of 


SCIENCE. 


851 


Scott county, Arkansas, are probably of the age 
of the Carboniferous Limestone at Moscow and 
the west slope of the Urals. 

Under the heading, ‘ Paleobotanic Evidence,’ 
reference is made to an unpublished report by 
Messrs. H. L. Fairchild and David White on 
the Fossil Flora of the Coal Measures of Arkansas, 
which ‘‘throws much new light on the.strati- 
graphic and regional distribution of species, and 
has been of material aid in correlating the Ar- 
kansas strata with those of other regions.’’ It 
may not be out of place here to express the 
hope that this monograph may soon be printed 
“They prove that all the Coal Measure plants * 
published from Arkansas belong to the horizon 
of the Upper or Productive Coal Measures.’’ 
The position of the Van Buren plant bed is 
found to be below the marine beds of Poteau 
Mountain and above those occurring in the vi- 
cinity of Fort Smith, the last named horizon 
being above that from which most of the coal is 
obtained. While not entirely devoid of plant 
remains, the rocks of the Lower Coal Measures 
furnish but little evidence of a paleobotanical 
kind suitable for correlation purposes. 

The Pacific Carboniferous sea is next dis- 
cussed, including the following topics: Revo- 
lution in Devonian Time; The Carboniferous 
Sea; Upper Carboniferous in the West; The 
Pawhuski Limestone ; The Interchange of Life 
between Hast and West (the most striking 
topic) ; Replacement of Limestone by Coal-bear- 
ing Formations in Western Europe; and Land 
Areas in the West. The Permian Pacific Ocean 
and the Triassic Pacific Ocean are also touched 
upon. 

As to the time of the Ouachita Uplift Profes- 
sor Smith writes : ‘‘The youngest rocks known 
to take part in the Ouachita Mountain system 
belong to the Upper Coal Measures, and the 
disturbance must have taken place at the border 
between the Carboniferous and the Permian. 
Still it is not unlikely that deposits of Permo- 
Carboniferous age may yet be found at some 
places in that region. “a ay a 

‘“This uplift may be of the same age as that 
movement in the Appalachians which cut off 
the Upper Barren Coal Measures of Pennsyl- 

*Exclusive of those described from Washington 
county. 


852 


vania and West Virginia entirely from the west- 
ern sea ; in these deposits no marine fossils are 
found, but only land plants and fresh-water 
Crustaceans and afew fresh-water mollusks.’’ 

A table showing the correlation of the Coal 
Measures of Arkansas and similar deposits in 
Indian Territory, Texas, the Mississippi Valley, 
Pennsylvania, China and other parts of Asia, 
Russia and the Ural Mountains, India and 
South America, closes what may be termed the 
first part of this contribution. The remainder, 
pages 25-72, consists of an annotated list of the 
Marine Fossils of the Arkansas Coal Measures, 
together with a check list showing their strati- 
graphic distribution and the localities of their 
occurrence in Arkansas and elsewhere. Nine 
excellent plates accompany the text. A new 
species of Gastrioceras, G. branneri, and a variety 
of Pronorites cyclobolus, Phillips, called arkansi- 
ensis, are described. A description of the trilo- 
bite Phillipsia (griffithides) ornatea, by Capt. A. 
W. Vogdes, U. S. A., quoted from the Proceed- 
ings of the California Academy of Science,* is 
also inserted. 

By those interested in the organic side of 
geology Professor Smith’s paper will be read 
with much satisfaction. The comparative study 
of faunas, their relations and distribution, is a 
line of investigation which promises much in 


the near future. 
FREDERIC W. SIMONDs. 


UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS. 


Clay Deposits of Missouri. By H. A. WHEELER. 
Missouri Geological Survey, Vol. XI., 622 pp., 
39 pl. Jefferson City, 1896. 

The recent report upon the Missouri clays, 
while essentially economic in character, dis- 
cusses a number of problems of wide scientific 
interest. Among these the nature of plasticity 
as exemplified in clays is perhaps the most im- 
portant. Professor Wheeler finds, as a result of 
physical tests and the microscopic examinations 
of Haworth, that the fine plate theory of John- 
son and Blake + is the only one which satisfac- 
torily explains the facts, and that fineness in 
itself has no real bearing on the plasticity. 

It is found that the fusibility of a clay is a 


* Second Series, Vol. IV., p. 589 et seq. 
tAm. Jour. Sci. (2), XLII., p. 357. 1867. 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S Vou. V. No. 126. 


function not only of the chemical composition, 
but of the fineness of grain and the density. 
The following formula is developed and thought 
to be satisfactory for approximate results, but it 
is held that absolute results can only be ob- 
tained by testing. 


N 


FO eG) 


In this F F represents the numerical value of 
refractoriness. NV represents the sum of the 
non-detrimental constituents, or the total sil- 
ica, alumina, titanic acid, water, moisture 
and carbonic acid. D represents the sum 
of the fluxing impurities or the alkalies, 
oxide of iron, lime and magnesia. D/ repre- 
sents the sum of the alkalies, which are es- 
timated to have double the fluxing value of 
the other detrimentals, and hence are added 


twice. Chas the following values : 

C=1, clay coarse grained sp. gr. over 2.00 
C=, & ri ue et 2.00 — 2.25 
GSB, % aie ue ee “1.75 — 2.00 
CSm, % tihng ae OS 8 OGRA 
@=3, ub GG ee £6 2.00 — 2.25 
CSe us ub te 6 “1.75 — 2.25 


There are a large number of physical tests, 
chemical analyses and detailed descriptions of 
processes, and the work is one of wide interest 


and considerable value. 
H. Foster BAIN. 


SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS. 
AMERICAN CHEMICAL JOURNAL, MAY. 


On Urethanes: By O. FotIn. When sodium 
methylate is treated with acetbromamide the 
yield is not, as might be expected, a hydroxyla- 
mine derivative, but a urethane which is formed 
by a molecular rearrangement during the course 
of the reaction. The purpose of the author was 
to test this reaction, to find out if it was general 
and also the effect of different negative and 
positive groups substituted in the bromamide. 
As a result of a number of experiments with 
different radicals, it was found that the differ- 
ence in the nature of the radical did not affect 
the reaction, which is a general one that can be 
used in the preparation of urethanes. The 
urethanes when treated with phosphorus penta- 


MAy 28, 1897.] 


chloride yield chlorformanilides, thus offering a 
simple and easy method for preparing these 
substances. When free urethane is treated with 
phosphorus pentachloride a more complex re- 
action takes place, a carbamide chloride being 
formed. When urethane and phosgene are 
brought together, three different reactions take 
place, depending to some extent upon the rela- 
tive amounts of the substances present. 

Action of Phosphorus Pentachloride on Aniline 
and its Salts: By J. Etuiotr GILPIn. The au- 
thor has obtained several products by the sub- 
stitution of one or more chlorine atoms of the 
phosphorus pentachloride by residues of aniline. 
When aniline hydrochloride and phosphorus 
pentachloride are heated together a volatile 
compound haying the composition PCI, (NC,;H;) 
is formed. This is unstable and readily decom- 
posed by water. A product, obtained by treat- 
ing the aniline with phosphorus pentachloride, 
PCl (NHe,H;), is, on the other hand, extremely 
stable, resisting, in general, all except the most 
energetic reagents. Derivatives of this sub- 
stance cannot be obtained readily, if at all, as 
it is completely decomposed if any action takes 
place. When heated it forms a black substance, 
containing probably carbon and phosphorus, 
which is remarkable for its stability. Com- 
pounds analogous to the one formed from ani- 
line can be obtained from the toluidenes. 

On the Preparation of Metabrombenzoic Acid 
and of Metabromnitrobenzene: By H. L. 
WHEELER and B. W. McFARLAND. The most 
general method that has been used for the 
preparation of these compounds consisted in 
heating the benzene compound with bromine 
or ferrous bromide in a sealed tube for several 
days. The authors find that the reactions can 
be performed in an open vessel and in a short 
time by using iron as a bromine carrier. This 
is even better than already prepared ferrous 
bromide. The substance is warmed with iron 
wire, and bromine is added slowly until the 
action is complete. The method was tested in 
a number of cases and proved to be one of gen- 
eral applicability. 

On the Non-existence of Four Methenylphenyl- 
paratolylamidenes: By H. L, WHEELER. In 
an article published recently Walther describes 
the preparation of this substance by four dif- 


SCIEN CE. 


853 


ferent methods. Each method, according to 
him, gives a new amidine, and he supposes them 
to be isomers. The author of this paper has re- 
peated the work, as the results obtained by 
Walther are not in harmony with the generally 
accepted behavior of amidines, and finds that 
the products obtained by the first and second 
methods are mixtures, while the third and 
fourth methods yield one and the same product, 
thus showing that instead of four only one ami- 
dine was obtained. 

South American Petroleum: By C. F. Ma- 
BERY and A. §. KITTELBERGER. In the 
present paper Professor Mabery contributes 
further results obtained in his investigations 
on petroleum. ‘This oil was obtained in South 
America and differs in some ways very much 
from the product obtained in this country. 
The methods hitherto used for isolating the 
products failed in some cases, and the exact 
nature of the products could not be determined. 
The inyestigation showed, however, that the 
hydrocarbons present consisted of a series con- 
taining less hydrogen than C, H,,,. and more 
than C,, H,,, with perhaps a trace of these. 

The Action of Certain Alcohols on Asymmeta- 
diazoxylenesulphonic Acid: By W. B. SHOBER 
and H. E. Kiprer. The action of this diazo 
compound with methyl, ethyl and propyl alco- 
hols was studied, and in each case two amides, 
one the xylenesulphon amide, and the other the 
amide of the xylenesulphonic acid of the alcohol, 
were obtained, whether the reaction was car- 
ried on at ordinary temperatures or under pres- 
sure. The methoxyxylenesulphonic acid and its 
salts were made and studied, as were also those 
of the propyl acid. By the oxidation of Asym- 
metamethoxyxylenesulphonamide they  ob- 
tained methoxysulphaminetolnic acid and from 
it prepared its salts. 

The Action of Ethylic Oxalata on Camphor: By J. 
B. TINGLE. Several structural formule have 
been assigned to camphor, and in all of these the 
presence of the group CH, CO is recognized. 
In the study of the related bodies, the diketones 
and keto-acids, the compounds chiefly inyesti- 
gated have contained strongly negative groups ; 
but in the present investigation the author has 
used substances only feeble in this respect, in 
hopes of throwing some light on this class of 


854 


bodies. The results obtained, however, do not 
warrant any strong assumptions either way. 
He prepared ethylic camphoroxalate and the 
free acid, and from a study of their behavior as 
compared with the compounds studied by 
others he drew some conclusions as to their 
probable structure. 

Preparation of Zine Ethyl: By A. LACHMAN. 
The author has improved the method for the 
preparation of zinc alkyls, in which the copper- 
zine couple is used. The difficulties met with 
in working according to the former directions 
are avoided by mixing zinc dust and copper 
oxide and heating ina glass tube in a current of 
hydrogen. In this way an excellent alloy is 
obtained. Some suggestions are given as to the 
preservation and use of the zinc alkyl. 

A Simple Test for the Halogens in Organic 
Halides: By J. H. KAsTLE and W. A. BEATTY. 
The authors have devised a simple method of 
testing for the presence of the halogens in or- 
ganic compounds. The substance, if not vola- 
tile, is heated with a mixture of silver and cop- 
per nitrates. The productis treated with dilute 
sulphuric acid and zinc, to reduce any halogen 
compound of silver, then filtered and tested with 
silver nitrate. If the substance is volatile it is 
heated in an S-shaped tube, the nitrates being 
placed in the bend beyond the substance and 
the two heated alternately, so that the volatile 
substance is distilled into the nitrates. The 
method was found applicable to all classes of 
compounds. 

The following books are reviewed in this num- 
ber of the Journal: Commercial Organic Analy- 
sis, A. H. Allen, Vol. III., Pt. III.; Engineering 
Chemistry, T. B. Stillman; Ptomains, Leuco- 
mains, Toxins and Antitoxins, V. C. Vaughan ; 
A Laboratory Manual of Inorganic Chemistry, 
R. P. Williams; Laboratory Calculations and 
Specific Gravity Tables, J. S. Adriance. 

J. ELLIOTT GILPIN. 


THE AMERICAN GEOLOGIST, MAY. 


‘CHANGES of Level in the Bermuda Islands,’ 
by Ralph S. Tarr. The conclusions of pre- 
vious observers are reviewed and some new 
facts presented. The results, as based upon 
all the investigations yet made, show that the 
Bermudas are underlain by a base rock of shell 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8S. Vou. V. No. 126. 


and coral fragments formed by wave action. 
This shell sand beach was then consolidated 
into a dense limestone and suffered some aérial 
erosion, and was finally depressed and attacked 
by the waves. In the last stage it was partly 
covered by beach deposits of pebbles and 
shells. Then came an uplift of 40 or 50 feet. 
during which land shells lived on the beach 
deposits. Accumulations of blown sand were 
made and the outline of the Bermuda hills per- 
fected by the action of the winds. Since then 
there has been a depression causing much land 
to disappear and the outline of the area to be- 
come very irregular. 

James P. Kimball completes his examination 
of the ‘Physiographic Geology of the Puget 
Sound Basin.’ It describes the following chief 
historic events. The deposition of the Tejon 
strata of the Hocene, their subsequent distur- 
bance, followed by denudation, reaching base- 
level during the glacial period. Glacial drift 
was accumulated in the axial part of the basin. 
Later alternations of level brought about fluvial 
erosion of the drift mantle, then submergence 
below sea level flooded the lower valleys, pro- 
ducing the present type of inlets and sounds. 
In recent times partial emergence has taken 
place. 

E. W. Claypole describes a large Dinichthys, 
considered as belonging to a new species. 

‘On the Genesis of Clay Stones,’ by H. W. 
Nichols. Claystones are regarded as erystal- 
line aggregates whose growth has been modi- 
fied by the large amount of foreign matter 
(clay) present, and the conditions of their for- 
mation are the same as those which would, in 
more favorable positions, lead to the formation 
of an aggregate of calcite crystals of the more 
usual form. There are two conditions which 
appear favorable to the formation of concre- 
tions: (1) the presence of arragonite with the 
disseminated calcite of the clay beds, and (2) 
the presence of unstable humus acids. The 
more soluble arragonite continuously goes into 
solution, thereby over-saturating it with respect 
to calcite, upon the particles of which the cal- 
cium carbonate of the solution is deposited. 
Thus the calcite grows as the arragonite di- 
minishes. 

‘Nomenclature of the Galena and Maquoketa 


MAY 28, 1897.] 


Series,’ by F. W. Sardeson. A supplementary 
discussion to the papers by the same author on 
these formations, showing the confusion arising 
from a shifting nomenclature. 

N. H. Winchell gives a partial bibliography 
with notes on ‘The Age of the Great Lakes of 
North America.’ It is interesting to have the 
various opinions thus summarized for reference. 
The prevailing belief has been that these lakes 
occupy preglacial valleys which have been shut 
off by earth movements and by glacial accu- 
mulations. 

Warren Upham discusses the ‘Relation of 
the Lafayette or Ozarkian Uplift of North 
America to Glaciation.’ Both are referred to 
the Quaternary. 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 
THE 95TH REGULAR MEETING OF THE CHEMI- 
CAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON, APRIL 
8, 1897. 

The first paper, ‘Three Early American 
Chemical Societies,’ was read by Dr. H. Car- 
rington Bolton. 

The first Chemical Society ever organized in 
either hemisphere was founded at Philadelphia 
in 1772, forty-nine years before the Chemical 
Society of London, the oldest in Europe. The 
President was Dr. James Woodhouse, professor 
of chemistry in the medical department of the 
University of Pennsylvania, and the first Vice- 
President was Felix Pascalis Ouvriére, a natural- 
ist born in France and sometime a resident of 
Santo Domingo. On December 10, 1801, 
Robert Hare presented to the Chemical Society 
of Philadelphia his memorable paper on the 
‘Hydrostatic Blow-pipe,’ which was published 
by the Society in the following year as a pam- 
phlet with the title: ‘Memoir on the Supply 
and Application of the Blow-pipe.’ 

In 1811 a second Chemical Society was 
founded in Philadelphia called the ‘Columbian,’ 
under the presidency of Professor James Cut- 
bush. The constitution of this Society provided 
for levying fines on absent members and those 
who refused to accept office when elected. The 
Society numbered sixty-nine members, of which 
thirty-one were foreign chemists, and thirteen 
junior members; these included the most 


SCIENCE. 


855 


prominent chemists and philosophers living on 
both sides of the Atlantic. In 1815 The Co- 
lumbian Chemical Society of Philadelphia pub- 
lished one volume of memoirs; this contained 
twenty-six essays on a variety of topics original, 
speculative and practical. 

The third Chemical Society was the Dela- 
ware Chemical and Geological Society, organ- 
ized at Delhi, New York, in 1821; it was, how- 
ever, short lived and issued no publications. 

Dr. Bolton’s essay contained brief biograph- 
ical sketches of the prominent members of these 
early Societies. 

The second paper, on ‘The Experimental 
Determination of the Hydrothermal Value of a 
Bomb Calorimeter,’ was read by H. W. Wiley 
and W. D. Bigelow. The methods previously 
suggested by other authors for this purpose 
were reviewed and their advantages and disad- 
vantages discussed. The authors employed a 
relatively large body of warm water, instead of 
a very small portion, as had previously been 
used. Two Beckmann thermometers were em- 
ployed, which made it possible to read a tem- 
perature to a thousandth of a degree, so that 
the error which would otherwise arise from the 
slight change of temperature was overcome by 
the accuracy in reading. 

The last paper, on ‘The Influence of Vege- 
table Mold on the Nitrogenous Content of Oats,’ 
wasread by Dr. Wiley. Attention having been 
called several years ago to the large increase in 
the nitrogen in sugar cane grown in the muck 
soils of Florida, an investigation was instituted 
by the Department of Agriculture, in 1894, to 
determine in what way the humus of such soils 
influenced the nitrogen contents of cereal crops. 
The first year’s investigation was preliminary, 
but it showed distinctly that oats grown on soils 
rich in vegetable mold contained a larger per- 
centage of nitrogen than that grown in other 
soils, The total increase is, in general, about 
25%. This was not in the grain alone, but also 
in the straw. The second year’s investigation 
verified this result. The increase was largely 
in amid nitrogen, the percentage of proteids not 
being greatly increased. The results are, there- 
fore, not so interesting from an economic point 
of view. When it is remembered that these 
vegetable soils are extremely rich in nitrogen, 


856 


and when it is further considered that they are 
quite deficient in nitrifying organisms, it is 
fair to conclude that at least a portion of this 
excess of nitrogen which they contain is assimi- 
lated directly from the vegetable mold without 
previous oxidation to nitricacid. Data wasad- 
duced which showed that the addition of phos- 
phatie fertilizers tended to diminish the actual 

percentage of nitrogen in the crop harvested. 
At the end of the regular program Professor 
Warder exhibited some photographs which 
showed the power of various chemical sub- 
stances to absorb X-rays, and explained the 

technique of the manipulation. 

VY. K. CHESNUT, 

Secretary. 


ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON, MAY 
13, 1897. 

THE President announced the death, on May 
3d, of Martin L. Linell, an active member of 
the Society. 

Mr. B. E. Fernow referred to the recent 
increase of pin holes in timber from the 
Southern States, catsed either by some Ptinid 
beetle or a Scolytid, and discussed the possi- 
bility of preventing damage by some system of 
timber management. 

Dr. E. F. Smith showed Beijerinck’s recently 
published paper on the ‘Cecidiogenesis and 
alternation of genera of Cynips calicis,’ and 
briefly reviewed the work. 

Mr. Schwarz exhibited specimens of the 
Meloid beetle, Phodaga alticeps lec., and 
read a letter from Mr. Hubbard detailing the 
habits of this insect. 

Mr. Schwarz presented a paper entitled ‘Two 
genera of beetles new to the United States.’ 
The genera are Cylidrella, family Trogosi- 
tide, discovered by Mr. H. G. Hubbard at 
Yuma, Arizona, preying upon a Scolytid in 
Parkinsonia wood, this genus having been 
founded by Dr. Sharp upon a single species, C. 
mollis, found by Mr. Champion in Guatemala ; 
and Latheticus, family Tenebrionide, found by 
Mr. Hubbard under Mesquite bark at Indio, in 
the Colorado desert of California, the only 
other species of this genus, L. oryzex Water- 
house, having been found in rice brought to 
England from India. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 126. 


Mr. Banks presented a paper entitled ‘ Three 
new lace-winged flies,’ in which the following 
species were described: Chrysopa sabulosa, C. 
Fraterna and Leucochrysa americana. 

Mr. Howard presented a communication on 
“An interesting wax insect from California.’ 

Mr. Ashmead presented a paper entitled 
‘The genera of the Encyrtine,’ which reviewed 
the history of the subfamily and included a 
table of the known genera, to which he had 


added nine. 
L. O. H. 


ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 

THE 264th regular meeting of the Anthropolo- 
gical Society was held Tuesday, May 4, 1897. 
Dr. George M. Kober read a paper entitled 
‘Progress and Achievements in Hygiene,’ in 
which he gave a résumé of the various attempts 
to introduce sanitary measures, either general 
or specific, in various countries at divers times, 
and noted the good results which followed, 
many of them being permanent in character. 

The marked immunity of the Jews was noted, 
and how it had continued even to the present 
day, as evidenced by the extremely low mor- 
tality ; this condition of affairs was attributed 
not so much, to rigid enforcement of the laws 
of health prescribed by the Hebraic law as to 
their racial sobriety producing of a sturdy con- 
stitution, capable of resisting disease to a con- 
siderable degree. The author then recited in- 
cidents tending to prove the assertion that the 
desire to prevent diseases was innate in the hu- 
man race. The relation of medicine and re- 
ligion, the medicine dance, the disposal of the 
dead, cremation and other forms of primitive 
practices were given in detail. 

A ‘General Discussion upon Sanitation among 
Primitive Peoples’ then followed. Mr. Geo. 
R. Stetson said that in equatorial Africa there 
was an absence of filth in persons and places, 
and spoke of the misconception concerning the 
climatic and physical conditions of Africa. The 
endemic and introduced diseases were then 
noted. The general discussion was then taken 
up by Professor L. F. Ward, Drs. McGee, 
Woodward, Magruder and McCormick. 

J. H. McCormick, 
General Secretary. 


SCKRENCE 


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Dec. 1, 1896. Just Published. Sixth Edition of 
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SCIENCE 


EDITORIAL CoMMITTEE: S. Newcoms, Mathematics; R. 8. WooDWARD, Mechanics; E. C. PICKERING, 
Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THURSTON, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry; 
J. Le ContE, Geology; W. M. DAvis, Physiography; O. C. MARsH, Paleontology; W. K. 
Brooks, C. HART MERRIAM, Zoology; 8S. H. SCUDDER, Entomology; N. L. BRITTON, 
Botany; HENRY F. OsBoRN, General Biology; H. P. BowpiToH, Physiology; 
J. S. Brntines, Hygiene ; J. MCKEEN CATTELL, Psychology ; 
DANIEL G. BRINTON, J. W. POWELL, Anthropology. 


Fripay, June 4, 1897. 


CONTENTS: 
On Two Forms of Automatic Microtomes: CHARLES 
SEP GWICK MUNOT cernsasacncsenweecsatiaceseceatecmeress 857 
XII. Deutscher Geographentag. Jena, 1897: F. P. 
(GDI TES, cosccochatansaosednoacocnopocabossoaaneonsoseoes 866 


Status of Forest Reservation Policy : B. E. FERNOW..868 


Current Notes on Physiography :— 
Topographical Map of the Geological Survey: The 
Baraboo District, Wisconsin ; Balch on Ice Caves ; 
Wo bie DAA 706 bacoscoosanpoocnecenososades daoconaceceocoo sed 869 


Current Notes on Anthropology :— 
Ethnography of Madagascar; Studies in Mayan ~ 
Hieroglyphs ; Psychics in the Study of Man: OD. 
Gap RUNTO Neswesnatenntac nar seantarseana eanaaeeses arse 


Notes on Inorganie Chemistry : 
Scientific Notes and News..........0.-+scs-ceceeceseeeeecees 
University and Educational News. 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 
The Discrimination of Species and Subspecies: J. 
A. ALLEN, THEODORE ROOSEVELT. Glacial Man 
in Ohio: CLARENCE B. Moore. The Smithson- 
ian Institution and a National University: BrEN- 
JAMIN IDE WHEELER..........00..s0ccescscereeseoneses 877 


Scientific Literature :— 


Two Outlines of Psychology: JOSEPH JASTROW. 


The Geologie Atlas of the United States............++- 882 
Scientific Journals :— 
The American Journal of Sciencé........0.csecseeeeeee 888 


Societies and Academies :— 
Geological Society of Washington: W. F. Mor- 
SELL. New York Academy of Sciences—Section 
of Geology: RICHARD E. DopGE. The Torrey 
Botanical Club: E.S.BuRGEssS. Boston Society 


of Natural History: SAMUEL HENSHAW. The 

Academy of Science of St. Louis: WILLIAM 

PIREUIGHOAS Eisen ciesasnameaseatacteeasexcspcetanssnceme senate 889 
NEWED OOS taeranentasscaensaacaue-nasenadssveascscacneeereens 892 


MSS. intended tor publication and books, etc., intended 
for review should be sent to the responsible editor, Prof. J. 
McKeen Cattell, Garrison-on-Hudson, N. Y. 


ON TWO FORMS OF AUTOMATIC MICRO- 
TOMES. 

Iris proposed to describe two microtomes, 
one of which has already been widely used ; 
the other, on the contrary, has been put on 
the market very recently. The older in- 
strument may be known as the ‘ automatic 
wheel microtome ;’ the new one has been 
named the ‘ precision microtome,’ and is 
also planned to work automatically. 

A microtome is an instrument of pre- 
cision, which implies that it must be treated 
with extreme delicacy and kept most 
scrupulously clean. It will be found 
usually, when complaint is made against a 
microtome, that the complaint is misdi- 
rected and ought to be, not against the 
machine, but againstthe owner. A modern 
microtome necessarily has several adjust- 
ments, every one of which must be exact 
and secure. If any one of them is imper- 
fect and insecure; if any of the movable 
parts are allowed to become corroded, or 
gummed up with oil, or loose, or clogged 
with dust or dirt of any kind, the micro- 
tome will not and can not work as an in- 
strument of precision. 

The knife used for cutting ought to be 
regarded as an integral part of the micro- 
tome, and as its most delicate and easily in- 
jured part. In accordance with this view, 
there has been added a description of a new 
form of knife, which offers certain substan- 
tial advantages. 


858 


I. THE AUTOMATIC WHEEL MICROTOME 

This instrument was designed in 1886 
and was first made by G. Baltzer, the 
trusted instrument-maker of Professor Carl 
Ludwig. Baltzer, who died recently, con- 
tinued for many years to furnish apparatus 
for the Physiological Laboratory in Leipzig, 
and had, therefore, unusual experience in 
the practical construction of new instru- 
ments. The first automatic microtome 
made by him is still in active service in my 
laboratory. Experience suggested various 
minor improvements, which have contrib- 
uted to render the microtome more accu- 
rate and more convenient. Besides the 
changes which I have introduced, there 
have been several proposed by Professor 
Wilhelm His and by Dr. Spalteholz, which 
have proved especially valuable. It is re- 
markable that. very few available sugges- 
tions have been made by the mechanics 
who have manufactured the machines 
hitherto. The most important change, I 
consider, to have been the increase in the 
heaviness of the construction, for it secures 
greater rigidity, a quality of great impor- 
tance when very thin sections are desired. 

Mr. Francis Blake, of Weston, Massachu- 
setts, is engaged in improving the mechani- 
cal construction of the instrument... The 
changes proposed by him will prove, I 
think, of great value. : 

The automatic microtome is now made 
in Boston, by the Franklin Educational 
Company; Leipzig, by E Zimmerman ; 
Paris, by E. Cogit; Cambridge, England, 
by the Cambridge Instrument Company. 

Over two thousand are now in use. I 
believe that the instruments are in all cases 
well made. I have not, however, had an 
opportunity of testing myself those made in 
England. The first instruments made in 
America were not wholly satisfactory, but 
I believe them now to be made in this 
country fully as well as elsewhere, and 
there are certain details in the American 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 127. 


design, as at present followed, which render 
it, in my judgment, preferable to the Euro- 
pean models. ‘The illustrations give two 
views of the American microtome, as now 
made. The general principle of the instru- 
ment is to keep the knife fixed, and to move 
the object to be cut in a vertical direction, 
supplying it to the knife by an automatic 
feed. The knife is carried by two upright 
standards, united by two cross bars ; in the 
American microtome these are all a single 
casting ; inthe German they are four sep- 
arate pieces screwed together, and, there- 
fore, less securely rigid. The two uprights 
can be adjusted ‘as to their distance from 
the object to be cut. The object, imbedded 
in paraffine, is attached to a brass plate, 
which can be securely clamped at any de- 
sired angle in the machine. The motion of 
the apparatus is imparted by a wheel, which 
may be turned by hand, or by a water or 


-electromotor, but the hand-power is the 


most satisfactory. The wheel is made con- 
siderably heavier and is better balanced in 
the American model than in the others, so 
that the machine works more smoothly and 
evenly to the sensible improvement of the 
cutting. The wheel turns the axle to which 
it is attached, and at the opposite end of 
the axle is a erank working a slide, which 
raises and lowers the vertical carriage. 
This carriage is held by adjustable gibs 
against the vertical ways; it carries on the 
side toward the knife the object-holder, with 
its adjustments to fix the plane of the sec- 
tions; it also carries the horizontal micro- 
tome screw. The head of the micrometer 
screw is a tooth-wheel, each tooth cor- 
responding to a feed of 4, mm. The 
screw is turned by a pawl, which acts upon 
the toothed-wheel; the pawl is worked, as 
may be readily seen in Fig. 2, by the ver- 
tical motion of the carriage, and the number 
of teeth caught at each rise of the carriage 
may be varied mechanically from one to 
six. The American form of pawlis simpler, 


JUNE 4, 1897.] 


more certain and accurate, and less liable 
to get out of order than the foreign form. 

The Zimmerman microtomes are of a very 
high grade of workmanship, and I can 
recommend them with confidence, having 
thoroughly tested them. The Cogit micro- 
tome also appeared to me thoroughly good, 
but I have had no opportunity to test one 
by prolonged use. Zimmerman has added 
to the microtome, as made by him, an at- 
tachment to give a feed of 0.001 mm., but 


it seems to me that the addition is of slight 
value, since the accuracy of the instrument 
cannot be carried so far, because with ver- 
tical ways the precision of movement cannot 
be made so great. No doubt such sections 
(of 0.001 mm.) can be made with the ma- 
chine, but if the object offers any difficulty 
from its size or its hardness the machine 
will fail. For very fine work another type 
of microtome is called for. 


SCIENCE. 


859 


The automatic wheel microtome will 
cause only vexation and disappointment if 
it does not receive the utmost care. I will, 
therefore, mention the most necessary pre- 
cautions. The following are of the first 
importance : 

1. Keep the microtome perfectly clean To 
accomplish this, not only must all dust be 
removed, but also no oil which has become 
thick or gummy must be allowed to re- 
main. A special risk comes from the paraf- 


ali 


Fig. 1. 


fine, small bits of which are very apt to fall 
upon the instrument, and if they are per- 
mitted to lodge on any of the movable parts 
they may easily cause serious injury and 
will certainly prevent even section-cutting. 
Extreme cleanliness is indispensable, and 
to better secure it the microtome should 
always be covered when not in actual use. 

2. Keep the microtome perfectly oiled. All 
the movable parts must be well lubricated 


860 


with clean, fresh oil. The micrometer 
screw should be oiled with porpoise oil, 
which will last for months. For the other 
parts a light paraffine oil may be used. I 
have found that which is known to the 
trade as No. 40 suitable. 

3. All the permanent adjustments must be per- 
fectly set. Of the permanent adjustments 
there are two which require more or less 
constant attention: First, the movable gib, 
by which the carriage is held against the 


SCIENCE, 


[N. S. Voz. V. No. 127. 


affine plate to the movable carriage there is 
a triple clamp, so constructed as to allow 
independent movements in three directions. 
The three screws of the clamp must all be 
tightened, and novices must remember that 
a metal screw cannot be tightened with the 
first turn, but that after a minute or so it 
can be tightened a little more. The knife 
is held by two screws, which must also be 
doubly tightened to ensure the knife being 
firmly held. In my experience with stu- 


“2 J 


il 


H 


| 


i) 
lh 


i 
iN 


EDUCATE 


ee 


u i ONAL 


iN 


Fig. 


vertical way ; that gib should fit as tightly 
against the way as is compatible with the 
free running of the apparatus. If this is 
not done no satisfactory sections can be ob- 
tained, because the action will be irregular. 
Second, the split-ring around the neck of 
micrometer screw must be tightened suffi- 
ciently to prevent any back-lash, but not 
enough to make the screw hard to turn. 

4, All the changeable adjustments must be 
absolutely firm. In order to attach the par- 


dents, it seems to me that about nine-tenths 
of the failures to get satisfactory sections 
are owing to the neglect of the proper 
clamping either of the knife or the object- 
holder, or both. 

5. Avoid cutting on days when the sections 
become highly electrified. Everyone who has 
done much section cutting of objects im- 
bedded in paraffine has encountered the 
difficulty of handling sections which have 
been electrified during the cutting, for the 


JUNE 4, 1897.] 


sections will then jump at any neighbor- 
ing object, especially of metal, and adhere 
to it obstinately. Sometimes the force is 
sufficient to break a ribbon of sections, 
which will then snap at the microtome and 
in an instant be clinging to it in a hopeless 
snarl. The amount of electrification varies 
from day to day, and there are fortunately 
days during which the phenomenon is ab- 
sent. Usually damp days are the best. 
The cutting of any valuable object should 
be reserved for one of the favorable days. 
By laying an inclined plane, some ten inches 
long, of wood or cardboard, with its upper 
edge under the knife and its lower edge 
resting on the table, it will be found that 
the ribbon of sections, even if electrified, 
can be handled with comparative safety, for, 
even if the sections are drawn down by the 
electrical attraction, they will lodge upon 
the plane and usually will become either 
twisted or entangled. 


II. THE PRECISION MICROTOME.* 

The first object of a microtome is to make 
sections of even and known thickness ; the 
second object is to make a sections in large 
numbers of uniform thickness; the third 
object isto make sectionsrapidly. Finally, 
in recent years, there has been a growing 
and justified demand for microtomes to 
make good sections of extreme thinness, if 
possible not over one five-hundredth of a 
millimeter or two microns (0.002 mm.). 
Sections of such tenuity and even possibly 
of less thickness have been made hitherto 
with the microtomes now in use, and I have 
not infrequently encountered the statement 
that the requisite precision was already 
secured by one or another pattern of micro- 
tome. In looking at such sections I have 
observed in a number of cases that they 

*This instrument has been shown at Paris, Liver- 
pool and before the Society of Morphologists at Bos- 
ton. See Comptes Rendus Soc. Biologie, Paris, 1896, 


Juin, p. Report British Assoc. Ady. Sci., Liverpool, 
1897, p. 979. ScrENCE, N.S., Vol. V., p. 106. 


SCIENCE. 


861 


were much thicker than they were stated 
to be, and have learned upon inquiry that 
the scale of the microtome was unknown to 
the operator. In other cases the sections 
appeared to be really as thin as stated, but 
such as I have seen were invariably of 
minute objects, which offered no real diffi- 
culty to fine sectioning. I do not think 
any form of microtome hitherto constructed 
can be relied upon to yield sections 0.002 
mm. thick of objects that are of even mod- 
erate size or that offer much resistance. 

The first step was to gain a more definite 
notion of the practical hints of admissible 
error. Now, upon trial it was found that 
sections which vary more than one-tenth 
from their supposed thickness can, in the 
case of stained animal (vertebrate) tissues, 
be readily recognized by the naked eye as 
uneven. Hence, it is obvious that the thin- 
ner the section the less must be the amount 
of absolute error in the cutting. For ex- 
ample, an error of 0.0002 mm. is the maxi- 
mum admissible for sections of 0.002 mm. 
(500 to a millimeter), though a much 
greater error would not be noticeable in 
sections of 0.02 mm. Applied to the micro- 
tome this means that a roughly made in- 
strument is sufficient for thick sections, but 
the most perfect construction is necessary 
to secure a microtome for fine cutting. Be- 
sides, for greater mechanical perfection, a 
new microtome should also strive to be so 
constructed as to be suitable for both dry 
(paraffne) and wet (celloidine) cutting. 

It seemed to me that progress might be 
made on the basis of the following principles: 

First: The object should be supported 
directly under the knife, and upon a car- 
riage with.a broad base. 

Second: The carriage should move upon 
a horizontal way below the knife. 

Third: The object should be fed to the 
knife by a vertical micrometer screw, which 
should be arranged to work automatically. 

Fourth: The knife should be firmly 


862 


clamped at both ends upon a rigid frame, 
the frame to be made square so as to allow 
the knife to be placed in any desired po- 
sition or at any desired angle.. 

Fifth: A cup, with a drainage tube, to 
be placed under the object-holder to collect 
alcohol and prevent its falling, while the 
apparatus was in use for wet-cutting, upon 
the gears or ways beneath. 

About two years ago I consulted with 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 127. 


has certainly spared neither time nor pains 
to secure a good result. 

In designing the new microtome precision 
was made the prime object. The usual 
sources of error are: (1) in the bending of 
the knife; (2) the yielding of the object 
to be cut, chiefly because it is at the end of 
an arm which acts as a lever; (3) the 
‘jumping ’ of the sliding gear. All these 
defects are at their maximum in the Rivet 


2 


: Fie. 3. 


Mr. Edward Bausch in regard to the pro- 
jected microtome, and we have worked in 
collaboration to solve the many problems 
involved in the practical application of the 
five principles enumerated. Itis a pleasure 
to state that Mr. Bausch has contributed in 
many and in essential ways to the plan of 
the microtome, and its successful production 
is largely due to his zealous interest. He 


type of microtome, of which the best known 
form is the Heidelberg or Thoma-Jung. 
It is believed that in the new microtome 
these three sources of error are materially 
diminished. 

The accompanying illustration, Fig. 3, 
affords a general view of the Precision Mi- 
crotome. The uppermost part of the mi- 
crotome is a square frame heavily made 


JUNE 4, 1897.] 


of cast iron. The knife is held by two 
clamps, which can be fastened at any point 
in the slots upon the upper part of the 
square frame, so that the knife may be 
either at right angles or at any desired in- 
clination to the direction of the draw in 
cutting. As the knife blade is thick and 
strong, and is clamped at both ends, the 
cutting edge is rendered almost immovable. 
Underneath the knife-bearing frame are the 
two horizontal ways, upon which runs the 
sliding carriage. It will be noticed that 
the general construction of the whole ma- 
chine resembles in principle a lathe-bank. 
The carriage itself is a broad platform with 
a raised rim; by its size the danger of tilt- 
ing in any direction is rendered small ; 


SCIENCE. 


863° 


between the two horizontal ways. At the 
bottom of the screw there isa large toothed- 
wheel, which is utilized to feed the screw 
automatically. The toothed-wheel is turned 
either to the right or left, as desired, by 
means of the lever, the long handle of which 
is seen projecting at the bottom of the 
figure. The figure also shows the lever 
resting against a vertical bar. When the 
carriage is moved the micrometer attach- 
ment and the lever are moved along with 
it, and when the lever strikes against the 
vertical bar it is forced to turn the toothed- 
wheel and so work the feed of the apparatus. 
It will be noticed that the vertical bar is 
borne upon an arm, which can be slid to 
and fro upon the body of the microtome 


FIG. 


the raised rim serves to retain the alcohol, 
which drips from the specimen above and 
prevents its falling upon any of the working 
gear ; from the surface of the carriage the 
aleohol is drained off by a tube, which, 
being upon the further side of the instru- 
ment, is not shown in the engraving. The 
object-holder is a square box, and is so de- 
vised that it can be readily lowered or 
raised, and renders it easy to adjust the 
plane of the section after the object has 
been clamped in. As the object-holder is 
supported firmly immediately under its own 
center, the possible leverage is minimized. 
The object is raised by a micrometer screw, 
which works with a vertical tube which 
descends from the middle of the carriage 


4. 


and clamped at any point as wished. By 
these means the lever can be set in action 
at any desired point of the excursion of the 
movable carriage. 

The arrangement for the automatic feed 
is similar to that employed in de Groote’s 
microtome. As modified for the needs of 
the ‘ Precision Microtome,’ the device seems 
to me to leave little to be desired on the 
score of either convenience or accuracy. 
Figure 4 gives the plan of the arrangement. 
The following description of the feed was 
drawn up by Mr. Bausch : 

“The feed arrangement consists of a 
micrometer screw, having pitch of 0.5 mm., 
which elevates the object-holder. 

“The motion of the screw is transmitted 


864 


to the object-holder through a triangular 
bar, moving smoothly but firmly in a tri- 
angular channel, all lateral motion being 
eliminated by means of a wedge. 


‘The construction of this part is exactly - 


the same as that used in the fine adjust- 
ment of the microscope. (The triangular 
bar, wedge and bearing are shown in sec- 
tion in the figure.) 

“The micrometer screw is provided at its 
lower extremity with two metal discs in 
contact, each having one hundred serra- 
tions, the acute angles of the upper disc 
pointing to the right, and those of the 
lower to the left. The discs are revolved 
by means of the lever A, which is pivoted 
loosely on the axis of the micrometer screw, 
and which is provided with a pawl, F. F 
is actuated by thesmall lever shown on the 
upper surface of A, so that when the actu- 
ating lever is thown to the left, F engaged 
the teeth of the upper disc, and motion of 
A to the right elevates the object. The 
spring rachet, E, prevents any backward 
motion of the screw head and may be dis- 
engaged by means of the thumb screw 
shown. 

“ After the screw has been fed up to its 
greatest extent it is quickly returned by 
moving the actuating lever to the right, 
when a small pawl, not shown in the figure 
because beneath the lever, engages the 
teeth of the lower disc, and motion of A to 
the left depresses the object carrier. The 
amount of elevation of the object is con- 
controlled in an entirely automatic manner. 

‘The stop I is a rigid attachment and is 
provided with an index, H. C is a gradu- 
ated disc pivoted around the axis of the feed 
and movable by means of the lever, B. Two 
graduations on C correspond to one of the 
notches on the disc of the micrometer 
screw. 

‘Beginning at zero of the scale, the cir- 
cumference of C has an inclined plane for 
the following purpose : 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 127.. 


“The dise C being set so that the number 
indicating the desired thickness of section 
is opposite the index, the stop post of A is 
held against the stationary stop, I, by the 
long spring ; F engages a tooth of the upper 
disc. If now the lever A is moved to the 
right, F will continue to engage the tooth 
of the disc until the guide post, L, comes in 
contact with the inclined plane on the mar- 
gin of C, which disengages the pawl, F, 
from the tooth of the dise exactly at the 
zero point of the scale. It will thus be seen 
that no matter how far A may be moved, 
F will act only through a certain prescribed 
distance, governed by the position of the 
dise C, and that the amount of elevation of 
the object is definitely indicated by the 
position of H on the scale. 

“The operation of the feed arrangement 
may be made either automatically or by a 
separate movement of A by the hand; the 
former for serial and ordinary sectioning ; 
the latter for very thick sections or for sec- 
tions of irregular thickness. 

“Tf automatic feed is desired, the sliding 
stop on the base of the microtome frame 
(see figure) is adjusted to act as a stop for 
A, carrying it through the required arc, 
when the sliding carriage is moved forward 
and backward for cutting the section. 

‘‘ When the hand feed is used, the adjust- 
able stop may be slid back out of the way, 
or removed from the instrument altogether. 

““The advantages of this feed may be 
summed up, as follows: 

“ Simplicity. 

“ Great accuracy. 

“Short feed (distance objectis elevated by 
movement of one tooth of the disc, being 2 
microns). 

“The feed entirely independent of 
amount of motion given to feed lever, A. 

““ Convenience of setting for any desired 
thickness. 

“Automatic or hand feed at will. 

“‘Object elevated when object carrier is 


JUNE 4, 1897. ] 


being returned to position to begin cutting 
and after the object has passed under the 
knife. 

‘“* Ease with which feed screw may be re- 
turned when fed up to its full limit.” 


Ii. A NEW FORM OF MICROTOME KNIFE. 

To satisfactorily sharpen a knife for fine 
section-cutting is a diffiulty, which we all 
have learned to estimate as serious. The 
valuable article by Moll on sharpening 
in the Zeitschrift fiir Wissenschaftliche Mikro- 
skopie in 1892 (Bd. IX, p. 455) called my 
attention to various possibilities, and at my 
request Dr. F. 8. DeLue tested a number of 
methods. These tests resulted in the adop- 
tion of plate glass and diamontine powder 
mixed with water as the best means of se- 


SCIENCE. 


865 


matic wheel’ microtome. In both knives the 
essential features are the same, the propor- 
tions only being different. The larger knife 
is 330 mm. long; its cutting edge is 185 
mm. long, and it is 12 mm. thick at the 
back. The smaller knife is 160 mm. long; 
its cutting edge 85 mm. long, and it is 10 
mm. thick at the back. These knives have 
the handles of the same cross section as the 
blade; they are alike on both sides, being 
slightly concaved. A knife of this pattern 
ean be laid upon a glass plate, upon which 
a little water with diamontine has been 
rubbed; the knife rests upon its cutting 
edge and upon its back edge, and may be 
perfectly sharpened without any special 
technical skill by simply passing the blade 
to and fro, resting alternately first on one 


curing a satisfactory cutting edge. Plate 
glass seems to have been used from time to 
time, and is especially recommended by 
Moll. The use of diamontine powder was 
suggested by Dr. Lotze (Johns Hopkins 
Hospital Bull., Dec., 1894). 

Having at command a. satisfactory 
method of sharpening, it soon became evi- 
dent that the knives should have a form to 
which that method could be applied con- 
veniently. It was necessary that the knife 
should be: 1, rigid; 2, slightly hollowed on 
both sides; 3, of such shape that it could 
rest its whole length on a plane surface; 4, 
that there should be no edge to be sharp- 
ened, except such as could be used for actual 
cutting. These four requirements are met 
by the pattern illustrated in Fig. 5, already 
made in two sizes, the larger being intended 
for the ‘ Precision,’ the smaller for the ‘ Auto- 


Fig. 5. 


side, then on the other, until the entire edge 
is completely polished. 

The knife is then removed, thoroughly 
cleaned, the glass plate also cleaned and the 
edge finished by polishing on the glass plate 
with water only. The glass plate by itself 
will remove any wire edge which may be 
left by the diamontine powder. 

It often requires considerable time to get 
the first edge on a new knife, for the knives 
as furnished by the manufacturers are never 
quite straight, but after the edge has been 
once obtained it is easily kept in condition, 
provided that it is not allowed to become 
nicked or dented through careless handling. 

There is one precaution in the use of this 
method of sharpening which cannot be 
taken too conscientiously, namely, to keep 
the glass plate while in use absolutely free 
from dust and dirt of every description ; 


866 


the glass itself must be kept absolutely 
clean, only filtered water to be put upon it, 
and the diamontine must invariably be pro- 
tected from the dust. 

A knife is sharpened when its edge ap- 
pears smooth and straight under a magnify- 
ing power of 40-50 diameters. 

When section cutting began a razor was 
the sharpest of familiar tools, and so it 
happened that for years razors were used 
not only for free-hand cutting, but also for 
microtomes. When knives began to be 
made specially for microtomes the razor 
type of thin blade was followed. We now 
know that the razor is the worst possible 
model for a microtome knife and that the 
chisel pattern is infinitely superior, because 
a thin blade is elastic, while a thick blade 
is rigid. With small objects or soft tissues 
the resistance may be so slight that the 
razor will cut them satisfactorily. Or, 
again, if the sections are thick the error 
of the razor may be unimportant, but for 
very thin sections, or for cutting difficult 
objects, the new heavy type of knife may 
fairly be said to be indispensable. 

CHARLES Srep@wick Minor. 


HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL. 


XII. DEUTSCHER GEOGRAPHENTAG, JENA, 
1897. 


Durine the late Easter vacation there 
were gathered together, in the charming 
little university town of Jena, a large num- 
ber of the German Scientists whose work 
touches more or less closely the field of 
geography. When one considers the va- 
riety of subjects represented he must put 
the question : What is Geography ?— What 
has it been in the past and to what future 
fields is the present aspect of the science 
leading. To consider this theme, at length, 
is not the intention of the writer in giving 
a short account of this Congress of German 
Geographers, but he would like to use this 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 127.’ 


question as a connecting thread in the fol-’ 
lowing lines. 

There were nearly 600 members and as- 
sociates in attendance, making this Geo- 
graphentag the third largest in numbers of 
this series of most successful gatherings. 
Only Berlin and Vienna have had a larger 
attendance, and so it was said that Jena 
should be rated as a city with a million in- 
habitants. All those present were not from 
Germany, as eleven other nationalities 
were represented, these justly famous scien- 
tific gatherings naturally attracting for- 
eigners. The addresses given are of such 
merit and given by such men as to induce 
many to come to hear, but it is not forgot- 
ten by the committees in charge that the 
most important feature of such gatherings. 
is to bring the workers in various fields to- 
gether, and to give them opportunities for 
conversation and consultation. The four 
and a half days were very happily arranged 
so as to supply a combination of attractions. 
suited to the wants of all. 

Under the presidency of Geheimrath 
Neumayer the members were led to con- 
sider the investigation of the region of the 
South Pole, and were shown that while 
very little in the way of actual exploration 
had been done by the commission, which was. 
appointed at the XI Deutschen Geographen- 
tag in Bremen, still a large amount of ma- 
terial had been collected, and the way was. 
being prepared for pioneer work in this 
little mapped region. Outline cartography, 
or the separation of land from water areas, 
is one of the early stages of geographic 
science. It is naturally followed: by expe- 
ditions over land in the less known por- 
tions of the continents. This second phase 
of the science was represented at Jena by 
the three following papers: Expedition to 
Central Brazil, by Dr. Herrmann Meyer, of 
Leipzig; German Investigations in Asia 
Minor, by Dr. Heinrich Zimmerer, of Mun- 
chen; Journey through Syria and Ana-: 


JUNE 4, 1897. ] 


toila in 1895, by Roman Oberhummer, of 
Munchen. Many interesting items of geo- 
graphic news were brought back by these 
travelers, but they will not be enumerated 
here, for this sketch cannot go into many 
details. Let us, therefore, note the meth- 
ods of the present explorations as contrasted 
with those of the past. When there were ex- 
tensive areas of unexplored territory it was 
most inviting for an ambitious man to at- 
tempt to cover as much area as possible. 
How thin a covering of the ground was 
made by these early travelers is well known 
by any gne who has tried to find out some 
particular thing from the accounts of their 
journeys. The modern traveler must study 
in more detail a given area of smaller di- 
mensions, or take up some special problem 
in a larger area. An example is seen in the 
minute ethnographic studies made by Dr. 
Meyer in the interior of Brazil. 

In America one is apt to look upon the 
work of the schools in Prussia as so far 
ahead of American schools in methods of 
teaching geography as to be almost a 
model to be followed ; but the exceedingly 
suggestive paper of Oberlebrer Fischer, of 
Berlin, made his audience feel that there 
was much cause for instant improvement in 
the work of the teachers of geography in 
Prussia. The very valuable statistical 
tables presented by Mr. Fischer will shortly 
be published in a separate pamphlet with 
the text. Professor Dr. W. Sievers out- 
lined a plan of extended excursions with 
students to teach them geography by a 
closer examination of typical forms in 
various regions. For the universities of 
middle Germany he suggested three trips 
in successive years, one to the coast, the 
second to the highland, and the third to 
the Alps. Professor Dr. J. Palacky, of Prag, 
spoke of the importance of an herbarium 
arranged according to geographical distri- 
bution of plants for the teaching of geo- 
graphic botany. 


SCIENCE. 


867 


One morning was given up to the discus- 
sion of the Geophysical problems of earth- 
quakes and magnetism. Professors Ger- 
land, of Strassburg, and Supan, of Gotha, 
led the former, and Drs. Ad. Schmidt, of 
Gotha, and E. Naumann, of Miimchen, the 
latter. Many others took part in the dis- 
cussion. Professor Supan outlined a plan 
for the more systematic observation and re- 
cording of the local and more widespread 
earthquakes. Governmental aid is to be 
asked in the carrying out of some such 
plan. These problems bordering upon 
physics and geology would hardly be con- 
sidered geographic in America. As one 
man expressed it at Jena, ‘‘ The subjects 
of earthquakes and magnetism are con- 
sidered under geography in Germany only 
because they belong nowhere else.” Many 
other subjects from various sciences may be 
made geographic by considering them in re- 
lation to their distribution over the earth. 

There were three papers in the field of 
biologic geography: ‘Australian Fauna,’ 
by Professor Dr. Semon, of Jena; ‘The 
distribution of the various animals used in 
transportation and their dependence upon 
geographic conditions,’ by Dr. Ed. Hahn, 
of Lubeck; ‘The animals upon the island 
Borkam, particularly in regard to impor- 
tant observations for the geographic distri- 
bution of animals,’ by Professor Dr. O. 
Schneider, of Dresden. Professor Semon 
presented tables showing the proportions 
of species living only in Australia and those 
living also in other neighboring lands. Dr. 
Hahn made a most interesting presentation 
of the marked geographic control shown in 
the distribution of the various beasts of 
burden in use in different parts of the world. 
Professor Schneider pointed out the impor- 
tance of making a thorough study of the 
species inhabiting the Frisian islands be- 
longing to Germany, before the same are 
connected with the mainland artificially, as 
is contemplated by the government. 


868 


Professsr Dr. J. Walther gave the only 
physiographic paper of the week. He de- 
scribed in most picturesque language the 
present forms of the Thuringer horst, and 
showed how much more the form of this 
elevated block, or horst, of the Thuringer 
Wald, is dependent upon the series of north- 
west-southeast faults of late Tertiary to 
recent time than upon the system of the 
eastnortheast-westsouthwest folds of Car- 
boniferous time. Where, however, these 
planed folds of the Erzinian system are res- 
urrected by the stripping off of the Mesozoic 
strata the forms are in great measure con- 
trolled by the earlier made folds, as, for ex- 
ample, in the Cambrian ridge, Lange Berg. 

Mathematical geography was also repre- 
sented by one paper: ‘The shadow cast by 
mountains and its effect in the Alps and in 
the mountains of middle Europe,’ by Dr. K. 
Peucker, of Vienna. The mathematical 
calculations were too intricate for the 
audience to follow, but the graphic diagrams, 
illustrating the effects of varying trends 
and elevations in different sections, were 
followed attentively. One of the excursions 
was to the immense plant for the manu- 
facture of optical instruments belonging to 
Carl Zeiss, where applied mathematics is 
used to the great advancement of science. 
The various delicate processes connected 
with the grinding and polishing of the many 
forms of lenses, as well as the forging and 
cutting of the metal portions of the instru- 
ments, were all shown and explained. The 
new tele-objectives for photographing at a 
distance or in places difficult of approach 
were examined, and the wonderful details 
seen in photographs made several kilome- 
ters distant were duly admired. The opera 
glasses with long tubes, capable of being 
extended in any direction in a plane at 
right angles to the line of sight, will no 
doubt be highly appreciated in the United 
States, where theater hats are not as yet out 
of date. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 127. 


The longest excursion of the week was 
made to Weimar, where a special perform- 
ance for the benefit of the members of the 
Geographentag was given in the theater, 
which is under the patronage of the Gross- 
herzog and is closely associated with the 
lives of Goethe and Schiller. The points 
of historical interest in Weimar were 
opened to the guests in the same way that 
they had been in Jena. Among the other 
excursions were those to the battle field of 
Jena, to the Ilm graben, to the Saale val- 
ley, to the glass works, as well as visits to 
the collections in the university, the speci- 
mens brought from various deserts by Pro- 
fessor Walther, the zoological and other 
University departments. Walking parties 
in the beautiful suburbs of Jena and some 
social gathering every evening brought the 
workers in geography into closer touch 
with one another. Geographers as well as 
other men in Germany are particularly so- 
cial and companionable after saying ‘ prosit” 
over their beer. 

Geography in Germany attracts men. 
The average attendance at the monthly 
meetings of the Gesellschaft fur Erdkunde 
in Berlin is 400-600. The study of the 
earth in its relation to man should attract 
men ; nothing could be more natural. As 
a science, geography should be made more 
systematic; scientific, but clear and simple 
so that children may understand ; compre- 
hensive, since man is so many-sided ; and 
yet trimmed of allirrelevant matter. Let 
us strive toward a high-ideal development. 
of geography in America. 

F. P. GULLIVER. 

GEOGRAPHISCHES INSTITUT, WIEN. 


STATUS OF FOREST RESERVATION POLICY. 

By the vote of the Senate, on May 27th, 
adopting the conference report on the Sun- 
dry Civil Appropriation Bill, the United 
States government took one more forward 
step in establishing a forest policy; the 


JUNE 4, 1897. ] 


adoption of the report by the House of 
Representatives and the signing of the bill 
by the President being a foregone conclu- 
sion. That bill contains an amendment 
(based upon the so-called McRae Bill, the 
measure advocated by the American For- 
estry Assocation) under which the Secre- 
tary of the Interior is authorized to insti- 
tute a forestry service for the forest reser- 
vations which had been established prior 
to the late proclamations by President 
Cleveland and such as may be made here- 
after. These latter reservations, made 
upon the recommendation of the Committee 
of the National Academy of Sciences, have 
by this amendment been suspended, 7. e., 
the operation of the proclamations has 
been annulled until March 1, 1898, and 
until that time the lands embraced in these 
reservations are to be returned to the public 
lands open to entry and subject to the gen- 
eral land laws. 

A survey of all the reservations, showing 
the distribution of the forests, by the Geo- 
logical Survey is ordered and an appropria- 
tion of $150,000 made for it, the supposi- 
tion being, although not definitely expressed 
in the bill, that such surveys or sufficient 
portions of them can be accomplished be- 
fore March 1, 1898, and give information 
as to existing conditions which will enable 
the President to entirely revoke or else in- 
telligently modify the boundaries and ex- 
tent of the reservations, power to do so be- 
ing expressly given in the bill. 

This entire legislation is, to be sure, a 
compromise measure and extremely crude 
and imperfect, having been precipitated by 
the strenuous opposition of the Western 
delegates to the reservations made by Mr. 
Cleveland’s order. These, it is claimed, 
have been established hastily, without suffi- 
cient knowledge and discrimination, with- 
out opportunity for interested parties to be 
heard, embodying, at least in some cases, 
large areas that should not reasonably have 


SCIENCE. 


869 


been included. To the last the Western 
representatives acted as a unit in discredit- 
ing in every way the hasty action of Presi- 
dent Cleveland and his advisors, and in in- 
sisting that the proclamations be uncondi- 
tionally and forever annulled. 

In spite of the crudities and the emas- 
culated condition of the legislation which 
finally saved the reservation policy and se- 
cures the first beginnings of a forestry ser- 
vice, it must be welcomed as such a first 
step, which may gradually be developed 
into a creditable forest administration. 
Thus, while it appeared a misfortune that 
the Committee of the National Academy 
advocated the extension of forest reserva- 
tions before having submitted their report 
on the necessary administration of the same, 
it may have proved a blessing in disguise. 

There is no specific appropriation with 
which to inaugurate the forestry service, 
unless the $90,000 appropriated for Special 
Timber Agents is construed to be applica- 
ble. 

The manner in which the Geological Sur- 
vey will acquit itself of its difficult task of 
segregating the lands which are properly to 
be reserved or excluded from reservations 
which will have to do with allaying the op- 
position of the Western States and forward- 
ing the establishment of a sound forest 
policy. 

B. HE. Fernow. 


CURRENT NOTES ON PHYSIOGRAPHY. 
TOPOGRAPHICAL MAPS OF THE GEOLOGICAL 
SURVEY. 


By recent Congressional enactment, the 
topographic as well as the geologic maps 
and atlases of the U. 8. Geological Survey 
may be sold to the public. Heretofore the 
distribution of the topographic sheets has 
been somewhat irregular; and, although a 
few years ago the statement was authorized 
that copies of the maps would be distribu- 
ted to schools for use in teaching geography 


870 


as long as the printed editions lasted, this 
proved an insufficient means of placing 
them in the hands of the public. They are 
now sold at five cents apiece for small 
orders, or at two cents each in orders of a 
hundred sheets or more, whether for the 
same or for different sheets. Two dollars 
for a hundred maps is certainly a merely 
nominal price. Nine hundred sheets have 
been printed. Lists of the maps may be 
had on application to the Director of the 
Survey. Orders for sheets must be accom- 
panied by money order or cash for the exact 
sum called for. 

Among the newer sheets may be men- 
tioned Lexington and Stromsburg, Ne- 
braska, including parts of Platte river 
sprawling on in tangled channels its sandy 
‘bed, with dissected uplands on either side 
of its broad valley floor ; Pasadena, Cal., 
showing what appears to bea great allu- 
vial fan spreading out from the base of the 
San Gabriel mountains; Chester, Pa., 
with a number of sub-parallel, transverse 
streams draining the ‘stripped belt’ of old- 
land marginal to the New Jersey coastal 
plain, as if they had been set on the old- 
land rocks by superposition when the plain 
stretched further inland. Many others are 
of equal interest. The San Mateo, Cal., 
sheet (part of the San Francisco peninsula) 
is notable for the delicacy of its contour 
lines, which appear to show much more de- 
tail than usual and in this respect stand 
in strong contrast with the free-hand con- 
tours on the earlier Fort McKavett, Texas, 
sheet. The same is true of the contrast be- 
ween the irregular contours on the Pueblo, 
Col., sheet, edition of 1896, and the over- 
generalized contours of the same sheet, 
edition of 1891. 


THE BARABOO DISTRICT, WISCONSIN. 
“THE drift phenomena in the vicinity of 
Devil’s Lake and Baraboo, Wisconsin,”’ 
(Chicago Journ. Geol., V., 1897, 130-147) 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. Vou. V. No. 127. 


is a paper based on field work by students 
of the University of Chicago, under the 
direction of Professor Salisbury. The 
region is one of varied attractions, in- 
cluding the Baraboo ridge, an ancient 
quartzite monadnock on the peneplain 
of pre-Cambrian North America, sub- 
merged and buried in early paleozoic sedi- 
ments, now exposed again by weathering and 
denudation, and thus, like other ancient 
fossil forms, organic or inorganic, presented 
tous for study. The ridge isirregularly tray- 
ersed by the terminal moraine of the 
Green Bay glacial lobe, and the irregular 
path of the limiting drift ridge is the sub- 
ject of special study. Devil’s Lake lies in 
a deep gorge, excavated in preglacial time 
(probably for the most part, Tertiary) 
across the quartzite ridge ; the agent of 
excavation being apparently the Wisconsin 
River, now displaced by heavy moraines in 
the gorge. The quartzite ridge was some- 
what sculptured in pre-Cambrian times, for 
its slopes still hold a sandstone filling in 
ancient ravines; but we question whether 
the gorge was so largely of ancient origin 
as is implied (p. 141). The greater part 
of its walls are free from sandstone ; and, 
moreover, it would be altogether unlikely 
that an ancient gorge, refilled during 
burial, should have been again discovered 
and occupied by a superposed river. 


BALCH, ON ICE CAVES. 

E. S. Batcu, lately President of the 
Geographical Society of Philadelphia, has 
for some years made a special study of ice 
caves, and now presents a summary of his 
observations and researches (Ice caves and 
the causes of subterranean ice, Journ. 
Franklin Inst., Philadelphia, March, 1897). 
The popular belief that ice forms in these 
caves only in summer is combatted. This 
idea seems to be based on the fact that in 
summer the air of a cave feels cool, while 
in winter it feels warm ; but this is only by 


JUNE 4, 1897. ] 


way of contrast with the external air, and 
not at all indicative of actual temperatures. 
Caves are coldest in winter, but if no water 
then enters, the formation of ice is delayed 
until milder weather outside thaws the 
surface ice orsnow. The fact that ice caves 
are unknown in regions where the ordinary 
winter temperatures is not below freezing is 
taken to prove that their true cause is the 
most manifest one, and that the ice is not 
due to reduction of temperature by evapora- 
tion, and especially that it has nothing 
whatever to do with a lingering of the 
glacial period underground. Further de- 
tails are promised in a later publication. 
W. M. Days. 


HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 
ETHNOGRAPHY OF MADAGASCAR, 


Two interesting articles on the above 
subject may be compared, with special 
reference to the ethnic position of the 
Hovas. 

The one is by Mr. W. L. H. Duckworth 
and appears in the Journal Anthropological In- 
stitute, February, 1897, on some skulls from 
Madagascar in the Museum of Cambridge 
University. His conclusion from his very 
careful measurements is that the Hova 
skull finds its counterpart in the Borneo, 
therefore Malay type, while those from the 
Betsileo and Betsimisaraka tribes have 
marked African traits. 

This is in accordance with the general 
opinion that the Hovas are of Malayan ori- 
gin. Yet Professor Letourneau, in the Bul- 
letin of the Paris Anthropological Society, 
throws overboard all the evidence, linguis- 
tic and physical, which attaches the Hovas 
to the Malayan stock, and claims them as 
purely African, along with the other na- 
tives of the island. His arguments are too 
hasty to carry conviction, and it cannot be 
said that he has seriously shaken the pre- 
vailing opinion. 


SCIENCE. 


871 


STUDIES IN MAYAN HIEROGLYPHS. 


Two short but valuable articles have re- 
cently been published by Dr. Forstemann ; 
the one, the sixth number of his series 
‘Zur Entzifferung der Mayahandschriften ;’ 
the other a paper in Globus, Bd. LXXI., 
No. 5. The latter takes up eight glyphs, 
and sets forth their relations in the Dresden 
Codex, and suggests what they mean, or, 
what they cannot mean, for the logical pro- 
cess of exclusion is here of great use. 

In the former article he examines the 
passage of the Dresden Codex which covers 
the upper thirds of pages 31 and 32. There 
is evidence, which he mentions, that to the 
writer of the Codex this was an important 
paragraph. It deals with large numbers, 
and not with past or present, but future 
time. It can, therefore, be nothing else 
than a prophecy or forecast. What was 
connected with such a calculation can now 
be only surmised, as this portion of the 
literature was transmitted orally. Inci- 
dentally (p. 4) it is shown that the calcu- 
lations of the Dresden Codex date from an 
epoch anterior to those found on the latest 
sculptures of Copan. 


PSYCHICS IN THE STUDY OF MAN. 


Norurtne could be more proper than to 
include in an anthropological library the 
‘Proceedings of the Society for Psychical 
Research,’ although it has a queer repute 
for ghost hunting, ete. The address of its 
President, William Crookes, F.R.S., is a 
pamphlet well worth reading and thinking 
about by the most physical anthropologist. 
It is a study of the effects of environment 
on man, considering how the world would 
look to him if he was the size of a mite, or, 
on the other hand, as tall as a tree; howhe 
could be influenced by an increase or de- 
crease in the power of gravity, and what 
might happen to him if he could manage 
to perceive the millions of vibrations which 


872 


now pass through him without his knowing 
anything about them. 

Such studies ought, indeed, to be the 
foundation of the science of man, involving, 
as they do, the recognition of his limitations 
and also his incalculable capacities. It 
is foolish for scientific men to reject or neg- 
lect them on the ground that they are 
‘visionary’ or ‘spiritualistic.’ What we 
want is to pursue knowledge in every di- 
rection, and to its limits, if we can. 

D. G. Brinton. 


UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


NOTES ON INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 

In many of the acids, especially of the 
less strongly negative elements, the oxygen 
may be replaced in whole or in part by 
fluorin, a pair of fluorin atoms taking the 
place of each oxygen atom. ‘This is true of 
the borates in the third group, all the acids 
of the fourth group except the carbonates, 
the vanadinates, columbates, tantalates, 
arsenates and antimonates in the fifth 
group, the chromates, molybdates, tungs- 
tates and uranates in the sixth. Attempts 
have been made by Weinland and Lauen- 
stein to enlarge this list and their results 
are given in a recent Berichte. 

By the action of hydrofluoric acid on the 
iodates, difluoriodates were formed, of the 
formula KIO,F,, NalO,F, and NH,IO,F,. 
These salts are comparatively stable when 
dry, but are decomposed readily by moisture. 
Efforts to form fluo-periodates, fluo-manga- 
nates and fluo-tellurates have thus far been 
unsuccessful. 

The ordinary cadmium sulfate crystallizes 
with 8/3 H,O, while the sulfates of magne- 
sium, zine, iron, nickel, cobalt and manga- 
nese contain seven molecules of water of 
crystallization. Cadmium sulfate, how- 
ever, forms double sulfates isomorphous 
with the double sulfates of the others. 
Mylius and Funk have just succeeded in 
obtaining a cadmium sulfate with the nor- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 127. 


mal amount of water. A solution of the 
salt, saturated at 70° is suddenly cooled 
to —20°, and by agitation a cryohydrate 
erystallizes out. When the temperature is . 
then allowed to slowly rise, the cryohydrate 
melts, but leaves a granular deposit of 
crystals sometimes several millimeters in 
length, of CdSO,, 7H,0, cadmium-vitriol. 
The crystals are, however, very unstable. 


THE same Berichte contains two additional 
papers by Professor Soderbaum, of Gothen- 
burg, on the acetylid of copper. It was re- 
cently mentioned in this column that he 
had formed a complex compound by the ac- 
tion of acetylene on an ammoniacal solution 
of copper sulfate. He now shows that by 
carrying on the action in quite dilute solu- 
tions in the cold, the precipitate contains 
two atoms of carbon for every atom of cop- 
per, and he takes as its formula C,,Cu,,, H, 
O. The substance is similar to the one 
formerly described as obtained in a hot so- 
lution, but is rather more explosive, and 
the humus-like compound formed by its 
treatment with acids is richer in carbon. 
Professor S6derbaum proposes this method 
for the quantitative estimation of copper, as 
well as its quantitative separation from zinc. 


A new element, Bythium, is announced 
in the Electrochemische Zeitschrift by Theodor 
Gross. A fused mixture of silver sulfid 
and silver chlorid is electrolyzed in a nitro- 
gen atmosphere, using platinum electrodes 
free from iridium. In the melt is found a 
dark gray powder, insoluble in aqua regia 
and in ammonia. Fused with alkaline car- 
bonate it gives a melt soluble in hydro- 
chloric acid, from which hydrogen sulfid 
givesa brown precipitate. The yield of the 
new substance is 5% of the original sulfur 
used.. From the fact that there is a corre- 
sponding loss of sulfur, the author considers 
that this bythium is formed by the decom- 
position of sulfur, though he admits that 
since there is a small (3%) loss of chlorin 


JUNE 4, 1897.] 


in the electrolytic reaction, it is possible 
that bythium may be formed by the decom- 
position of chlorin. An atomic weight de- 
termination will be looked for with interest. 
deaeet 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 

THE committee on international mails of the 
postal congress has decided that natural history 
specimens and articles for scientific collections 
be admitted to the mails as samples. This will 
permit of their being sent at the rate of one 
cent for every two ounces, whereas at present 
it is necessary to pay five cents for each half 
ounce or fraction thereof. It will be remem- 
bered that this amendment to the regulations 
of the Universal Postal Union was proposed at 
the Leiden meeting of the International 
Zoological Congress at the instance of Dr. 
Charles Wardell Stiles, and its adoption has 
been urged by many men of science and scien- 
tific associations. 

In the House of Commons, on May 27th, the 
President of the Board of Trade, Mr. C. P. 
Ritchie, introduced a bill to legalize the metric 
system of weights and measures. 


Two fine specimens, male and female, of the 
rare West Indian seal (Monachus tropicalis, 
Gray) haye been received at the National 
Zoological Park. They were captured on the 
11th of May on Campeche Bank, southern part 
of the Gulf of Mexico. 


On the occasion of a recent excursion of the 
geology classes of the University of Alabama, 
in charge of Professor Eugene A. Smith, the 
public spirit and liberality which are character- 
istic of the authorities of the Louisville and 
Nashville Railroad, were exemplified in placing 
at the disposal of the class a special train, by 
means of which the boys were enabled to visit 
all the mines, quarries and other places of in- 
terest along the mineral branch of this great 
system. 

THE will of the late Judge John Lowell, of 
Newton, Mass., gives $3,000 to the American 
Academy of Arts and Sciences, 


Ir is reported that some of the heirs at law 
are contesting the will of the late Alfred Nobel, 


SCIENCE. 


873 


and that this will delay the distribution of the 
great prizes established by him. 

By the will of the late Charles F. Lawrence 
the town of Pepperell, Mass., receives $100,000 
for the establishment of a library and art gal- 
lery. 

THE Council of the Royal Society has recom- 
mended for election the following fifteen candi- 
dates: Dr. Robert Bell, Assistant Director of the 
Geological Survey of Canada; Sir William 
Broadbent, a London physician and neurologist; 
Dr. Charles Chree, Superintendent of the Kew 
Observatory; Mr. H. J. Elwes, known for his 
contributions to ornithology and entomology ; 
Dr. J. S. Haldane, lecturer in physiology at 
Oxford; Dr. W. A. Haswell, professor of zool- 
ogy in the University of Sydney; Mr. G. B. 
Howes, professor of zoology in the Royal Col- 
lege of Science, London; Dr. F. S. Kipping, 
known for his researches in chemistry; Mr. G. 
P. Mathews, professor of mathematics in the 
University College of North Wales; Mr. G. R. 
M. Murray, the botanist; Mr. F. H. Neville, 
the physicist; Dr. H. A. Nicholson, professor of 
natural history in the University of Aberdeen ; 
Mr. J. M. Thomson, professor of chemistry in 
King’s College; Mr. F. T. Tranten,the physicist, 
and Mr. H. H. Turner, professor of astronomy 
at Oxford. 

THE American Philosophical Society, of Phil- 
adelphia, has elected the following foreign mem- 
bers: Lord Lister; Professor H. C. Rodntgen, 
Wurzburg; Dr. Fridtjof Nansen; Professor 
Theodor Tschernyschew, of the Geological 
Survey of Russia, and Professor A. Karpinski, 
Director of the Geological Survey of Russia. 


Dr. A. FISCHER VON WALDHEIM, professor 
of botany in the University of Warsaw, has 
been appointed Director of the Botanical Gar- 
dens of St. Petersburg. 

IT is proposed to erect a monument to tho 
late Professor Anatole Bogdanov, the eminent 
Russian anthropologist and naturalist, and at 
the same time to endow a prize for scientific 
work in Moscow University to bear his name. 

At the annual meeting of the Brooklyn In- 
stitute on May 28th Professor Shaler, of Har- 
vard University, made an address in memory of 
Agassiz. 


874 


PROFESSOR JOSIAH Royce, of Harvard Uni- 
versity, has been invited to deliver next year the 
Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen. 


M. SovuiLLArt, of the University of Lille, has 
been elected a correspondent in the section of 
astronomy of the Paris Academy in the place of 
Dr. Gyldén. 

THE Botanical Gazette states that the Royal 
Swedish College of Agriculture has conferred 
a gold medal on Professor Jakob Eriksson in 
recognition of his studies of the life histories of 
grain rusts. ; 

Dr. FRANZ BOAS, of the American Museum of 
Natural History and Columbia University; Mr. 
Harlan I. Smith, of the Museum of Natural 
History, and Dr. Livingston Farrand, Columbia 
University, have left New York for an expedi- 
tion to the North Pacific coast, the expense of 
which has been provided for by Mr. Morris K. 
Jessup and which was fully described in the 
issue of ScIENCE for March 19th. 


Nature states that Mr. R. C. L. Perkins, of 
Jesus College, Oxford, who has been for several 
years engaged on behalf of the joint committee 
appointed by the Royal Society and the British 
Association in studying the zoology of the Sand- 
wich Islands has now returned to England. 


At the annual meeting of the New York 
Electrical Society on May 20th Professor M. I. 
Pupin was elected President and Mr. George 
H. Guy, Secretary. There are now 397 mem- 
bers of the Society. 


THE Russian National Health Society pro- 
poses to celebrate next year the 100th anniver- 
sary of the discovery of the mineral springs of 
the Caucasus by a conference on balneology and 
climatology. 

THE 66th annual fair of the American Insti- 
tute will open in Madison Square Garden on 
September 20th, and will continue for six 
weeks. Efforts will be made to secure the ade- 
quate representation of improvements in ma- 
chinery made during the past year. 


THE American Public Health Society will 
hold its twenty-fifth annual meeting at Phila- 
delphia from the 26th to the 29th of October. 
Nineteen subjects have been suggested by the 
executive committee for special discussion. 


SCIENCE. 


LN. 8. Von. V. No. 127. 


THE American Academy of Medicine held 
its 22d annual meeting at Philadelphia, on Sat- 
urday and Monday, May 29th and 31st. The 
proceedings included a discussion on the rela- 
tion of the College to the medical school, in 
which the Medical School was represented by 
Dr. Bayard Holmes, of the College of Physi- 
cians and Surgeons, of Chicago; the College, by 
President Warfield, of Lafayette College, and 
the University by Dr. William Pepper, lately 
provost of the University of Pennsylvania. 


THE fourth meeting of the International Con- 
gress of Technical Education will be held in 
London, beginning June 15th. 


WE have received the first two numbers of a 
Natural Science Journal, published by the At- 
lantic Scientific Bureau, New Bedford, Mass. 
We wish the Journal much success, but its con- 
tents so far are amateurish in character. 


PRoFEsSOR H. Kreutz, who, since the death 
of the late Professor Krueger, has been tempo- 
rary editor of the Astronomische Nachrichten, 
has been appointed its editor by the Prussian 
Department of Education. 


TuHE bill passed by the New Jersey Legisla- 
ture establishing a commission to investigate 
the forests of the State has been vetoed on the 
ground that the work can best be done by the 
Geological Survey. 


THE New York Tribune states that Mr. George 
W. Hammond, of Boston, has given to the Pea- 
body Museum of Harvard University his priv- 
ate collection. It includes large numbers of 
stone implements from the European countries 
and many interesting relics of the Colorado 
cliff-dwellers, as well as specimens from vari- 
ous parts of the United States. It was un- 
derstood that Harvard College could select all 
specimens desired for the Museum, and that 
those not wanted should go to Bowdoin College. 


Ir is announced that a lady has given the 
sum of £70 towards the purchase of apparatus 
for the psychological laboratory in University 
College, London, to which we recently referred. 
Professor Carey Foster has offered temporary 
accommodation in the physical department and 
it is hoped that a lecturer will be secured in 
October. 


JUNE 4, 1897.] 


WE have already called attention to the ap- 
pointment of physicians to visit the New York 
schools. Mr. C. B. Hubbell, President of the 
Board of Education, advocates the appointment, 
under the Board of Health, of ten or twelve 
specialists to examine the eyesight and hearing 
of the children. 

THE daily papers report that an earthquake 
shock of some severity was felt in Canada and 
in the northern parts of the State of New York 
at 10.15 p.m. on May 27th. 

LIEUTENANT Ropert HE. PEARY has received 
leave of absence from the navy for five years. 
He will go this summer to Whale Sound, where 
he expects to find several families of Esquimaux 
who will form a colony further north and will 
spend the year collecting meat, furs, ete., which 

“colony will be the base of supplies for a further 

northward advance. Lieutenant Peary will be 
accompanied as far as Melville Bay by several 
scientific parties, one under Professor G. H. Bar- 
ton, of the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
nology, and one under Professor C. H. Hitch- 
cock, of Dartmouth College. 


It is announced that the Thomson Yates 
Laboratory of pathology and physiology of the 
medical department of University College, 
Liverpool, will be oppened by Lord Lister 
next spring. Mr. Thompson Yates has made 
further donations for interior fittings and for 
apparatus, bringing the amount of his gift to 
$125,000. 

THE town of Dundee has decided to estab- 
lish a bacteriological laboratory, thus granting 
the petition presented to the Town Council by 
the District Branch of the British Medical As- 
sociation. 


THE popular magazines for June contain a 
number of articles of scientific interest. Pro- 
fessor S. P. Langley contributes to McClure’s 
an account of the successful working of his aéro- 
dome, The Century includes three illustrated 
articles: an account by Professor W. O. At- 
water, of the experiments carried out under his 
direction regarding the use of food in the body; 
a description of the Harvard Observatory and 
its branch at Arequippa by Mrs. Todd, and a 
record of personal experience of home life 
among the Indians by Miss Alice C. Fletcher. 


SCIENCE. 


875 


In Harper's Mr. H. S. Williams writes on the 
meteorological progress of the century ; in the 
New England Magazine Mr. G. E. Walsh 
describes forest culture of to-day, and in the 
Arena President David Starr Jordan publishes 
an article on the Heredity of Richard Roe. 


THE Philadelphia Commercial Museum was 
formally opened on June 2d, in the presence 
of President McKinley and a number of other 
distinguished guests. Under the directorship 
of Professor William P. Wilson the Museum 
has assumed much importance and now con- 
contains 50,000 exhibits of raw products and 
many manufactured articles. In addition to 
the collections of the Museum there is a library 
especially rich in statistical publications, con- 
sular reports, etc., and a Bureau of Information 
prepared to answer questions on all subjects 
germane to the scope of the Museum. The 
Museum is now occupying temporarily the old 
offices of the Pennsylvania Railroad on Fourth 
street, but the City of Philadelphia has set aside 
a site an appropriation of $200,000 for a build- 
ing. The primary object of the Museum is to 
bring before manufacturers, dealers and con- 
sumers the products of the world, so that they 
may know what to purchase and what to ex- 
port. In cooperation with our consular ser- 
vice and with the governments of foreign coun- 
tries, the Museum will undoubtedly fulfill an 
important mission, not only for commerce and 
manufactures, but also for science. 


THE first of the two annual conversaziones 
of the Royal Society was held on May 19th. 
Among the exhibits described in the English 
journals were the following: The new process 
(Dansac-Chassagne) of producing photographs 
in color, still kept secret, was illustrated in a 
series of prints in the various stages of treat- 
ment by Sir H. Truman Wood. In regard to 
recent work with the X-rays Mr. A. A. C. 
Swinton showed his new focus tubes, in which 
the distance between the cathode and anti- 
cathode may be adjusted so as to allow the 
production of rays of a maximum penetrative 
value. Mr. Heycock and Mr. Neville showed 
photographs when the X-rays had been allowed 
to pass through a sodium gold alloy, showing 
separately the crystals of gold (opaque) and of 


876 


sodium (transparent) existing in the alloys 
which otherwise appear to be homogeneous. 
Interesting results of the application of pho- 
tography were shown in a somewhat similar 
line of research by Professor Roberts-Austen, 
who, by means of a microscope and camera 
and a highly magnifying apparatus, demon- 
strated the existence of minute diamonds 
(carbon crystals) in steel. A series of pho- 
tographs was shown by Professor Norman 
Lockyer, the diagrams affording testimony 
of the value of the spectroscope and pho- 
tography in enabling a simple classification of 
the stars to be made based upon their ascer- 
tained chemical composition. Photographs of 
the moon were exhibited by the Astronomer 
Royal. M. Guillaume performed an experi- 
ment showing the practically non-dilatable 
character of nickel steel on heating; its appli- 
eation to pendulums is thus suggested. The 
diffraction kaleidoscope exhibited by Mr. C. P. 
Butler used the pure spectrum of white light, 
the colors being reflected at a great number of 
angles. The Marine Biological Association’s 
exhibit included marine animals illustrating 
“commensalism,’ a term used to indicate the 
constant association of animals with one an- 
other often for mutual advantages. Professor 
Oliver Lodge gave a demonstration of Zeeman’s 
discovery of the broadening of spectrum lines 
by the action of a magnetic field on the source 
of light. A sodium flame was placed between 
the terminals of a powerful magnet. On turning 
on the current the normal bands become double, 
triple, or even quadruple. Some excellently 
mounted preparations shown by Dr. Kanthack 
illustrated the mode of action of the Tsetse fly. 
Mr. EH. Edser and Mr. H. Stansfield exhib- 
ited apparatus showing the phase change of 
light reflected at a glass-silver surface. The 
apparatus is a modification of Michelson’s 
differential refractometer, the interfering rays 
being reflected at the back surfaces of the end 
- mirrors. Mr. C. T. Heycock and Mr. F. H. 
Neville showed some experiments on the super- 
ficial color changes of a silver-zine alloy. In 
the meeting room Professor W. E. Ayrton 
gave an experimental demonstration of some 
electric and mechanical analogues, and Pro- 
fessor J. B. Farmer showed lantern slides 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 127. 


from microphotographs illustrating nuclear 
divisions in animal and vegetable cells. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 


THE United States Supreme Court has dis- 
missed the appeal in the Merritt suit, and the 
bequests left by Mrs. Catherine M. Garcelon in 
1891 will now be paid. Bowdoin College, 
Brunswick, Me., will receive $400,000 and a 
hospital will be established at Oakland, Cal., at 
a cost of $600,000. 


AN attempt is being made to break the will 
of the late William Lampson, who bequeathed 
nearly a million dollars to Yale University. It 
is to be hoped that the aged aunt and forty-two 
cousins of Mr. Lampson may be no more suc- 
cessful than were the contestants of the will of 
Mrs. Garcelon! It seems unfortunate that it 
is possible for distant relatives to delay and often 
even to annul public bequests, and that Ameri- 
can courts should be so much more disposed 
than those of European countries to admit ob- 
jections to the validity of wills. 


THE Teachers’ College of New York receives 
$10,000 by the will of the late Mrs. Julia 
Augusta Kemp, and is also made her residuary 
legatee. It is now announced that Mr. Joseph 
Milbank was the donor who, in March, 1896, 
gave $250,000 for enlarging the Teachers’ Col- 
lege. The new building, now nearly completed, 
will be called Milbank Memorial Hall. 


THE Building Committee of the University of 
Montana, at Missoula, has decided to erect a 
main building at a cost of $47,500 and a science 
hall at a cost of $12,500. 


APPLICATIONS for the Savilian professorship 
of geometry at Oxford University, vacant by the 
death of Professor Sylvester, must be received 
not later than June 12th. The salary is about 
$4,500 and the duties are confined to the deliy- 
ery of forty-two lectures. 


Dr. E. G. JANEWAY, President of the New 
York Academy of Medicine, has been elected 
professor of medicine, and Dr. 8. F. Dennis, 
professor of surgery in the faculty of the New 
York University Bellevue Hospital Medical 
College. 


JUNE 4, 1897. ] 


Ir is stated in the daily papers that Dr. 
Antoneo Crocichia has been elected to the chair 
of biology in the Catholic University, Washing- 
ton. 

Dr. J. S. Ety, professor in the Woman’s 
Medical College, New York, has been elected 
professor of the theory and practice of medi- 
cine in the Medical School of Yale University. 


WE learn from the Botanical Gazette that Dr. 
E. B. Copeland has been appointed assistant 
professor of botany in the University of Indi- 
ana in place of Dr. Geo. J. Peirce, who resigned 
to accept a similar position, in charge of plant- 
physiology in the Leland Standford Junior 
University. 


Dr. BEcx, of the University of Lemberg, has 
been promoted to a full professorship of phys- 
iology, and Dr. Konrad Zeisig has been made 
second professor of physics in the Polytechnic 
Institute of Darmstadt. Dr. Deichmiller, ob- 
server in the observatory at Bonn, has been 
appointed associate professor. Dr. Ludwig 
Heim, of Wurzburg, has been called to an as- 
sociate professorship of bacteriology in the 
University of Erlangen. Dr. Hillebrand has 
qualified as docent in astronomy in the Univer- 
sity at Vienna. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 


THE DISCRIMINATION OF SPECIES AND SUB- 
SPECIES. 


Dr. MERRIAM’S paper in SCIENCE for May 
14 (N. S., Vol. V., No. 124, pp. 753-758), en- 
titled ‘Suggestions for a New Method of Dis- 
criminating between Species and Subspecies,’ 
opens up a question of immense interest and far- 
reaching importance, respecting which there is 
room for two widely divergent opinions, both 
susceptible of support by arguments of con- 
siderable weight. Dr, Merriam cites the purely 
conventional and arbitrary rule adopted in the 
A. O. U. ‘Code of Nomenclature’ for deciding 
the status of closely related forms with refer- 
ence to whether they are to be ranked as 
species or subspecies, and calls attention to the 
well-known inconsistencies sometimes resulting 
from its use. The failure of the rule to yield 
always satisfactory results is not due to the prin- 
ciple involved, but to the imperfection of our 


SCIENCE. 


877 


knowledge respecting what closely related forms 
intergrade and what donot. Consequently, itis 
urged, a stable nomenclature for such forms can- 
not be attained under this rule till we have a 
complete knowledge of the relations of such 
forms ; in the meantime their status will be un- 
stable, and their nomenclature, in this respect, 
subject to change as our knowledge of them in- 
creases. 

The first part of the rule as summarized by 
Dr. Merriam (1. ¢., p. 753)—to wit: ‘‘ Forms 
known to intergrade, no matter how different, 
must be treated as subspecies and bear trinomial 
names’’—presents no difficulty of application 
and can be carried into effect without imperil- 
ing stability of nomenclature. The second part 
—namely, ‘‘forms not known to intergrade, no 
matter how closely related [or, rather, how 
closely they resemble each other], must be 
treated as full species and bear binomial names’’ 
—is difficult to apply always consistently. As 
Dr. Merriam says, ‘‘ only ina small percentage 
of cases does an author have at his command a 
sufficiently large series of specimens, from a 
sufficient number of well-selected localities, to 
enable him to say positively that related forms 
do or do not intergrade;’’ and that conse- 
quently ‘‘authors usually exercise their individ- 
ual judgment as to the probable existence or 
non-existence of intergradation,’’ based, of 
course, on the nature of the differences, the 
geographical relationship of the forms, and on 
general grounds —on what is known to happen 
in other similar cases. Hence, naturally, some 
degree of inconsistency results in the use of tri- 
nomials, they being frequently employed where 
conclusive evidence of intergradation is lacking, 
though strongly indicated by the circumstances 
of the case. When later information shows 
that the true relationship of the forms in ques- 
tion has not been correctly indicated, their 
status must be changed, either from that of a 
species to a subspecies, or the reverse, as the 
case may require. But this, while undesirable, 
is not a serious change, since the ‘special’ name 
(specific or subspecific) is necessarily retained— 
a change far less important than the substitu- 
tion of one name for another, as not infre- 
quently becomes imperative from other causes. 

The real question, then, is whether we can 


878 


not well afford to wait for any necessary recti- 
fications of this sort rather than to adopt any 
alternative thus far suggested. I am heartily 
in sympathy with any effort to improve the 
present somewhat unsatisfactory method, and 
am glad Dr. Merriam has raised this important 
question for discussion, respecting which the 
comparison of opinions of experts in this line 
cannot fail to be interesting and profitable. I 
am also glad that Mr. Roosevelt has presented 
‘A Layman’s Views on Scientific Nomenclature’ 
(ScrENcE, N. S, Vol. V., No. 122, April 30, 
1897), believing that such discussions have value 
in rendering clear the ‘reason of things’ under 
our modern phase of systematic zodlogy, as it 
has drawn forth Dr. Merriam’s admirable expo- 
sition of the ‘other side.’ 

I cannot, however, quite subscribe to Dr. 
Merriam’s proposed remedy for this ‘incurable 
inconsistency’ and these ‘inevitable changes’ 
contingent on increase of knowledge. It is 
proposed that we base our recognition of species 
and subspecies on ‘the degree of difference be- 
tween related forms,’ principally on the ground 
that ‘‘a knowledge of this is infinitely more 
important than a knowledge of whether or not 
the intermediate links connecting such forms 
happen to be living or extinct.’’ In other 
words, it would be more useful ‘‘if the terms 
species and subspecies were so used as to indi- 
eate degree of difference, rather than the au- 
thor’s opinion as to the existence or non- 
existence of intergrades.’’ On this point there 
is obviously room for difference of opinion. 
This phase of the subject, however, may be 
waived as aside from the main point, which I 
take to be the feasibility or non-feasibility of 
adopting the ‘ degree of difference’ standard for 
species and subspecies. Yet I would like to 
add, in passing, that to me it is of far greater 
interest to know that the connecting links be- 
tween quite unlike forms still exist, and that we 
have thus positive evidence of their genetic rela- 
tionships, than to know that these forms, in 
their extreme phases, have become so far differ- 
entiated as to present differences as great as 
ordinarily characterize closely related species. 

The real difficulty with the degree of differ- 
ence principle is its elasticity ; it enlarges to the 
widest possible extent the personal equation 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 127. 


element, which is one of the alleged sources of 
dissatisfaction with our present system. Dr. 
Merriam’s paper, taken as a whole, so far 
shows the wide influence of ‘ personal equation ’ 
in such matters that little need be added on 
this point, except by way of further illustration. 
The diversity of opinion respecting the amount 
of difference required to distinguish genera and 
subgenera is notorious; is it likely to be any 
less in the case of species and subspecies, in case 
degree of difference is taken as the basis of 
their recognition? In reply to this, reference 
may be made to the treatment of North Amer- 
ican birds by the authors of the ‘ British Museum 
Catalogue of Birds,’ on the one hand, and of the 
“A. O. U. Check List,’ on the other. In the 
former work some of the most worthless sub- 
species are given the rank of full species, 
while, on the other hand, many of the most 
strongly marked subspecies, and even some 
species, are wholly ignored, being reduced to 
synonyms, with often not a word of comment. 
And this is done not in one group, nor by one 
author, but in all groups and by each of the 
half-dozen or more eminent ornithologists who 
have contributed to this monumental work. 
This does not foreshadow any ‘narrowing of 
bounds’ of the personal equation element, nor 
give much hope of agreement on any ‘ degree of 
difference’ standard for the basis of species and 
subspecies. 

As is well known, not only a great deal de- 
pends on ‘the point of view,’ but also on the 
quantity and character of the material different 
authors may have before them, in relation to 
their conclusions on identical questions. The 
point of view, expertness and amount and kind 
of material are thus factors in the case, so that, 
whether we adopt the intergradation test or the 
degree of difference test, we are not likely to 
reach unanimity of opinion on such matters for 
a long time to come. 

But there are other points that demand con- 
sideration. The advocates of the ‘intergrada- 
tion’ test claim that it is based ona philosophic 
principle, and that the use of a binomial term 
means one thing and the use of a trinomial term 
means another and a very different thing. 

Binomial names are given only to forms 
known or supposed to be non-intergrading—to 


JUNE 4, 1897.] 


fully segregated species; trinomial names and 
forms known or supposed to intergrade, to in- 
cipient species or geographical forms, to species 
still in process of evolution. As said by the 
present writer some years ago (Auk, I., 1884, 
201): ‘‘It hence follows that the terms species 
and varieties [or subspecies] are not inter- 
changeable at will, but expressions for certain 
definite and known facts in nature, grounded 
on a philosophic principle, to ignore which is 
not only unscientific, but is to deprive us ofa 
means of precise definition at a point where 
precision is of high importance.’’ 

Tt thus seems to me better to maintain our 
theoretically hard-and-fast standard for regu- 
lating the status of closely related forms than to 
adopt so elastic and unphilosophic a basis, and 
one withal so eminently open to the influence 
of personal equation,as the ‘degree of difference’ 
criterion must inevitably be, and allow time and 
research to correct the lapses that may occur 


under our present system. 
J. A. ALLEN. 


To THE EDITOR OF ScreNCcE: I have been 
greatly interested in Dr. Merriam’s article as to 
discriminating between species and sub-species. 
With his main thesis I entirely agree. I think 
that the word ‘species’ should express degree 
of differentiation rather than intergradation. 
Iam not quite at one with Dr. Merriam, how- 
ever, on the question as to how great the 
degree of differentiation should be in order to 
establish specific rank. I understand entirely 
that in some groups the species may be far 
more closely related than in others, and I sup- 
pose I may as well confess that I have certain 
conservative instincts which are jarred when 
an old familiar friend is suddenly cut up into 
eleven brand new acquaintances. I think he 
misunderstands my position, however, when 
he says, ‘‘ Why should we try to unite different 
species under common names?’’ He here as- 
sumes, just as if he were a naturalist of eighty 
years ago, that a ‘species’ is always something 
different by its very nature from all other 
species; whereas the facts are that species, ac- 
cording to his own showing in the beginning of 
his article, are merely more or less arbitrary 
divisions established for convenience’s sake by 


SCIENCE. 


879 


ourselves, between one form and its ancestral 
and related forms. 

I believe that with fuller material Dr. Mer- 
riam could go on creating new ‘species’ in 
groups like the bears, wolves and coyotes until 
he would himself find that he would haye to 
begin to group them together after the manner 
of the abhorred ‘lumpers.’ His tendency to 
discover a new species is shown by the allusion 
in the last part of his article to the ‘unknown 
form of wapiti,’ which has been exterminated 
from the Allegheny country. The wapiti was 
formerly found in the Allegheny regions; there 
it was beyond a doubt essentially the same 
animal that is now found in the Rockies. 
Probably it agreed more closely with the wapiti 
of Minnesota, which still here and there sur- 
vives, than the latter does with those of Oregon. 
It may have been slightly different, just as 
very possibly a minute study of wapiti from 
the far south, the far north, the dry plains, the 
high mountains and the wet Pacific forests 
might show that there were a number of what 
Dr. Merriam would call ‘species’ of wapiti. 
If this showing were made, the fact would be 
very interesting and important; but I think it 
would be merely cumbrous to lumber up our 
zoological works by giving names to all as ‘new 
species.’ It is not the minor differences among 
wapiti, but their essential likenesses, that is 
important. 

So with the wolves. Dr. Merriam has shown 
that there are different forms of wolf and coy- 
ote in many different parts of the country. 
When he gets a fuller collection I am quite 
sure he will find a still larger number of differ- 
ences and he can add to the already extensive 
assortment of new species. Now, as I have 
said before, it is a very important and useful 
work to show that these differences exist, but I 
think it is only a darkening of wisdom to insist 
upon treating them allas a newspecies. Among 
ordinary American bipeds, the Kentuckian, the 
New Englander of the sea coast, the Oregonian, 
the Arizonian, all have characteristics which 
separate them quite as markedly from one an- 
other as some of Dr. Merriam’s bears and 
coyotes are separated; and I should just as 
soon think of establishing a species in the one 
case as in the other. 


880 


Some of the big wolves and some of the coy- 
otes which Dr. Merriam describes may be en- 
titled to specific rank, but, if he bases separate 
species upon characters no more important than 
those he sometimes employs, I firmly believe 
that he will find that with every new locality, 
which his collectors visit he will get new 
‘species,’ until he has a snarl of forty or fifty 
for North America alone; and when we have 
reached such a point we had much better rear- 
range our terminology, if we intend to keep the 
binomial system at all, and treat as a genus 
what we have been used to consider as a species. 
It would be more convenient and less cumber- 
some, and it would be no more misleading. 

Dr. Merriam states that the coyotes do not 
essentially resemble each other, or essentially 
differ from the wolves. It seems to me, how- 
ever, that he does, himself, admit their essen- 
tial difference from the wolves by the fact that 
he treats them all together even when he splits 
them up into three supra-specific groups and 
eight to eleven species. He goes on to say that 
there is an enormous gap between the large 
northern coyote and the small southern coyote 
of the Rio Grande, and another great gap be- 
tween the big gray wolf of the north and the 
big red wolf of the south, while the northern 
coyote and the southern wolf approach one 
another. Now I happen to have hunted over 
the habitats of the four animals in question. 
I have shot and poisoned them and hunted 
them with dogs and noticed their ways of life. 
In each case the animal decreases greatly in 
size, according to its habitat, so that in each 
case we have a pair of wolves, one big and one 
small, which, as they go south, keep relatively 
as far apart as ever, the one from the other. 
At any part of their habitat they remain en- 
tirely distinct; but as they grow smaller toward. 
the south a point is, of course, reached when 
the southern representative of the big wolf be- 
gins to approach the northern representative of 
the small wolf. In voice and habits the differ- 
ences remain the same. As they grow smaller 
they, of course, grow less formidable. The 
northern wolf will hamstring a horse, the 
southern carry off a sheep; the northern coyote 
will tackle a sheep, when the southern will 
only rob a hen-roost. In each place the two 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 127.’ 


animals have two different voices, and, as far as 
I could tell, the voices were not much changed 
from north to south. Now, it seems to me that 
in using a term of convenience, which is all 
that the term ‘species’ is, it is more convenient 
and essentially more true to speak of this pair 
of varying animals as wolf and coyote rather 
than by a score of different names which serve 
to indicate a score of different sets of rather 
minute characteristics. . 

Once again let me point out that I have no 
quarrel with Dr. Merriam’s facts, but only with 
the names by which he thinks these facts can 
best be expressed and emphasized. Wolvesand 
coyotes, grizzly bears and black bears, split up 
into all kinds of forms, and I well know how 
difficult it will be and how much time and study 
will be needed, to group all these various forms 
naturally and properly into two or three more 
species. Only a man of Dr. Merriam’s re- 
markable knowledge and attainments and abil- 
ity can ever make such groupings. But I think 
he will do his work, if not in better shape, at 
least in a manner which will make it more read- 
ily understood by outsiders, if he proceeds 
on the theory that he is going to try to estab- 
lish different species only when there are real 
fundamental differences, instead of cumbering 
up the books with hundreds of specific titles 
which will always be meaningless to any but a 
limited number of technical experts, and which, 
even to them, will often serve chiefly to obscure 
the relationships of the different animals by 
over-emphasis on minute points of variation. 
It is not a good thing to let the houses obscure 
the city. THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 


GLACIAL MAN IN OHIO. 


I HAVE read ‘Human Relics in the Drift of 
Ohio’ and Dr. Brinton’s criticism of the same 
in SCIENCE of February 12th. 

The gist of Professor Claypole’s paper is based 
upon the discovery ofa polished stone axe, made 
by a well-digger in Ohio ten years before. 

Not with especial reference to this discovery, 
but apropos of the danger of accepting any 
statement at second hand even from the most 
veracious person (for we are all liable to error), ~ 
I would like to cite two personal experiences 


JUNE 4, 1897. ] 


which occurred during my mound-work in 
Florida. 

At one time I had almost completed the 
slicing-down of a large mound in which no ob- 
ject in any way connected with Europeans had 
been found. 

While my back happend to be turned I heard 
a ery and went to the colored digger from whom 
it came and who, I found, held in his hand an 
iron spike—a sure sign of European contact. 

“From where did this come?’’ I asked. 

The digger did not seem to comprehend my 
question and, as time pressed, I asked a leading 
question, which no investigator should do. I 
inquired again, ‘‘ Did it come from the base ?”’ 

“Yes, sah, from de base,’’ replied the digger. 

I was somewhat nonplussed, for I never had 
(and never have) dug down a mound of any 
size where artifacts of white origin were present 
other than superficially. 

Suddenly an idea struck me. 
base ?’’ I asked. 

“Why, at de top, sah,’’ replied the digger. 

Once in conversation with a very intelligent 
man, the leading citizen of a town on the Ockla- 
waha river, I was somewhat startled at the in- 
formation that the speaker had in his house a 
grooved stone axe found on his place. 

I pointed out that no report had yet appeared 
as to the discovery of a grooved axe in Florida. 
The speaker was positive. He knew he was 
right. I asked him; as a favor, to consult with 
his family at dinner as to the matter and to let 
me know later on. 

In the afternoon he called on me and stated 
that the grooved stone axe was a present from 
a friend in Alabama and that the implement 
found on his place had no groove. 

CLARENCE B. Moore. 


‘(Where is the 


THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION AND A NA- 
TIONAL UNIVERSITY.* 


SINCE our conversation about the organization 
and purpose of the Smithsonian Institution I 
have been thinking much about the matter. 


*A letter addressed by Professor Benjamin Ide 
Wheeler, of Cornell University, to the Hon. Gardiner 
G. Hubbard, Washington, and published here with 
the permission of Professor Whee’er and Mr. Hub- 
bard. 


SCIENCE. 


881 


Certain things seemclear. The Institution is at 
the National Capital; whatever it does must 
represent the best there is in the country. The 
plan of its foundation and the purposes of the 
founder were broad ; it ought, if it can be found 
in any way practicable, to represent more than 
one, two or three branches of scientific knowl- 
edge. The problem is how, with the limited 
fund at disposal, to combine the two things, su- 
preme excellence and wide scope. 

I think I can conceive ofa plan. Whether it 
is practical or not will be for others who are 
nearer at hand and better acquainted with the 
details to determine. 

Since the Institution began its work the con- 
ditions of scientific work in this country haye 
radically changed. There were then but few 
recognized departments of scientific endeavor ° 
now the differentiation of the sciences has ad- 
vanced into great multiplicity. Then a single 
man was able to cover a large field and there 
were Humboldts in the land; now a man may 
not venture to call himself a chemist, but de- 
fines his specialty as Physical Chemistry, Agri- 
cultural Chemistry, Chemistry of Gases, Inor- 
ganic or Organic Chemistry, etc. Then there 
were no universities in the present sense. There 
were no institutions where any large number 
of different scientific fields were occupied by 
advanced investigators. There were colleges 
which taught, not universities which learned. 

It is now no longer possible for the Smithso- 
nian Institution to compete, even in a single de- 
partment, with the larger universities. Accord- 
ing to its present organization it has, and can 
have, but one or two men for one or two de- 
partments. There are now a half-dozen uni- 
versities that can and do employ a considerable 
force of men for each of a large list of scientific 
departments, each of which is equipped with 
laboratories, apparatus and collections. Aman 
who permanently establishes himself in resi- 
dence at Washington at the Institution cuts 
himself off from many associations he would 
find ata university. He loses the opportunity of 
laboratories and carefully assembled collections 
of the literature of his subject. He loses the 
stimulus of teaching and of working with inves- 
tigators and of directing investigations. The 
Smithsonian Institution is not a university and 


882 


cannot become one. It would be vain for it to 
attempt to duplicate the outfit of a modern 
university. 

Its mission and its opportunity is to utilize the 
existing mechanism of the scientific departments 
of all the different American wniversities. In 
some sense also it may coordinate them and 
unite them. 

At present, at least, there seems to be no 
place for a National University at Washington, 
certainly not in the sense that another univer- 
sity should be added to those that now exist 
in the country, like them or only a little better 
than any one of them. 

By coordinating and uniting what now exists, 
the Smithsonian Institution may well furnish, at 
least in reference to the aggressive scientific 
work of the country, the beginnings of such a 
National University as is really needed. 

I think it would be practically possible to 
make a beginning in this direction in the fol- 
lowing way : 

1. Establish and recognize a certain number 
of scientific departments, say fifteen at the 
start. Let all these be recognized as constitu- 
tive parts of the Institution. 

2. Appoint, by careful selection, a committee 
of three men, the most eminent in their lines to 
be found in the country, to represent each de- 
partment. (This the least essential part of my 
suggestions. ) 

3. Make one man the chairman and assign 
him a salary appropriate to the work expected 
of him. 

4, Let these men, the chairmen, remain, if so 
already, professors in active service in the uni- 
versities where they belong. Secure for them, 
from these universities, the right to spend a cer- 
tain portion of each year at Washington, say 
six to ten weeks, in some cases ‘perhaps much 
less. Let their salaries be additional to their 
university salaries, in case their universities 
consent to allow them the time as a vacation ; 
otherwise make these salaries a portion of their 
university salaries. The latter course may be 
necessary in cases where a man isregularly ab- 
sent from his university work as much as one- 
third of the university year. This plan would 
be of advantage to the men, because of the op- 
portunity and the prestige ; to their universities, 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8S. Voz. V. No. 127. 


because of the advantage it would be to the men 
themselves; to the Institution, because of the 
work they would do, better and larger than the 
Institution could secure from men whose entire 
services it would be able to obtain. 

5. Each man put in charge of a department 
would do such work in upbuilding and helping 
his department as he, in consultation with his 
committee, found practical and advantageous to 
do.. Some could devote themselves to the col- 
lections ; some would lecture or arrange courses 
of lectures ; some would organize, stimulate and 
assist work in their departments going on in dif- 
ferent parts of the country. Some would use 
the opportunity to interest the National Gov- 
ernment in enterprise akin to their work, and 
to influence the conduct of those already under- 
taken. 

This is a suggestion of a way to begin what 
would, I believe, develop into something of 
great use to the country, and would furnish a 
true and fit utilization of the existence of the 
Institution in its present habitat and with its 
‘present conditions. 

Sincerely yours, 
BENJ. IDE WHEELER. 


SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 

Outlines of Psychology. By WILHELM WUNDT. 
Translated by CHARLES HUBBARD JUDD. 
Leipzig, Wilhelm. Engelmann. 1897. S8vo, 
pp. 342. F 

An Outline of Psychology. By EDWARD BRAD- 
FORD TITCHENER. New York, The Mac- 
millan Company. 1897. 8vo, pp. 352. 

The fundamental aim and interest in both 
these treatises is the instructional one; while 
by no means limited to this phase of utility, the 
volumes are primary text-books and may be 
judged by their fitness to increase the efficiency 
and attractiveness of the teaching of psy- 
chology. Such a verdict would be much easier 
to reach were there a more complete agree- 
ment as to the content or the methods, the 
order of exposition or the perspective of im- 
portance, of the several trends of investigation 
that lend diversity as well as frequent confusion 
to psychological discussions. But the ‘psy- 
chologies’ are unmistakably converging both 
in matter and manner, and it is becoming less 


JUNE 4, 1897.] 


hazardous to predict the general nature of the 
contents of a volume upon the basis of the oc- 
currence of the word ‘ Psychology’ on its title- 
page. 

The two works are, moreover, quite similar in 
size and scope ; they are equally methodical and 
systematic; they reflect in each case the well 
defined convictions of the author, and the author 
in each case is an experimentalist thoroughly in 
touch with a rigid scientific conception of the 
methods and problems of mental investigation. 
A still further note of agreement is to be found in 
the strong insistence upon the specifically psy- 
chological aspect of the questions considered ; 
physiological considerations are reduced to a 
minimum, and philosophical speculations are, 
in almost all instances, avoided, except when 
they seem to be required to furnish a basis for 
psychological interpretations. The reader never 
loses sight of the fact that the subject under 
discussion, whether sensation or perception, 
whether attention or movement, whether the 
sentiment or reasoning, is always treated as a 
strictly and exclusively psychological problem, 
as a description, classification, interpretation, 
analysis and explanation of a mental process or 
product. This trait gives a very impressive 
sense of consistency, order and completeness 
to the expositions. It arouses the agreeable 
feeling that, in spite of all the discussions and 
controversies, in spite of all schools and atti- 
tudes, there really is a science of psychology ; 
that psychology is not merely a shapeless re- 
gion as yet unoccupied by the adjoining do- 
mains of the sciences and upon which these 
sciences may encroach at pleasure, but a defi- 
nitely organized country with distinetly recog- 
nizable boundary lines. Of course, this agree- 
able feeling is apt to be disturbed when we 
turn to other phases of modern psychological 
literature; but it is a welcome resource, and par- 
ticularly so for the student to have such an ex- 
position to fall back upon. This end is gained 
at a considerable saccrifice of suggestiveness 
and attractiveness; but it is obviously the de- 
liberate plan of both authors, and in both cases 
the plan is well carried out. 

As between the two—for the odium of com- 
parison does not obtain, when the two things 
compared are really comparable—the prefer- 


SCIENCE. 


883 


ence of American teachers and readers will be 
for Professor Titchener’s work. The American 
student seems to require not merely a road-map 
and sign-posts, but a personal guide, or at least 
an illustrated and attractive guide-book; he 
needs not merely an opportunity to go right, but 
an incentive to keep going, as well as frequent 
corrections of tendencies to pursue misleading 
and aimless side paths. Such direction he is 
much more likely to find in Professor Titchen- 
er’s pages than in those of Professor Wundt; 
he is not likely in either case, however, to find 
as attractive a path as he had hoped for, and 
will find many regions through which the path 
is difficult to follow and by no means easy when 
found. Psychology has a very unfortunate 
reputation in the minds of the college student, 
as a study peculiarly difficult, to be pursued by 
methods unusual and intricate. <A perfect text- 
book would minimize the grounds for such a 
reputation by constantly assimilating. the un- 
familiar by the aid of the familiar. Many a 
student who enters upon the study of that sec- 
tion of psychologic optics dealing with the per- 
ceptive powers of the outlying parts of the 
retina fails to obtain the proper results, because 
of his difficulty in fixing his gaze at one point 
and his attention at another, or because he 
allows his eyes to roam about when they should 
be rigidly fixed. The usual and useful method 
of seeing is to focus the gaze and the attention 
together and to allow the eyes freely to move 
about and explore the field of view, but for the 
study of the analysis of space perception it is 
necessary to overcome this tendency and to 
acquire an unusual mode of vision. Such, in 
some measure, is the relation between the daily 
mental experience by means of which every one 
acquires a real acquaintance with mental pro- 
cesses and results and the technical study of 
psychology. But the contrast between these 
two attitudes should not be allowed to interfere 
with the easy and attractive transition from 
one to the other, nor with the correct apprecia- 
tion of the function and place of each. The 
student should not be tempted to observe the 
world by indirect vision, but he should be led 
to acquire the tendency to observe unapparent 
details and to gain an insight into the signifi- 
cance of what is common and obyious. It is 


884 


just here that a strictly systematic, rigidly 
methodical and abstractly analytical text-book 
of psychology will fail as a pedagogical instru- 
ment. If it be a sound psychological doctrine 
that assimilation demands attention and at- 
tention is fed by interest, then the creation and 
maintenance of an interest is an essential of 
every text-book, as it is of every teacher. It 
may be well urged that for this purpose an 
ounce of teacher is worth a pound of text-book, 
but even the teacher is better equipped to 
inspire if he preaches from an inspiring text. 

It remains to indicate very briefly the dis- 
tinctive features and contents of the two books. 
Following an introductory chapter upon the 
nature of psychological problems, Professor 
Titchener devotes three chapters to the simplest 
element of consciousness, sensation, treating it 
in its qualitative and quantitative aspects and 
dwelling as well upon the methods of studying 
sensation. The affective side of mental life is 
considered in three somewhat widely separated 
chapters, first as simple affection, then as feel- 
ing and emotion, and again assentiment. Simi- 
larly the will, the active side of psychic phe- 
nomena, is considered, first as conation and at- 
tention, then as voluntary movement, and (in 
connection with other processes) in the reaction 
synthesis. The elaborations of sensation, the 
complexes to which they lead, are treated under 
the usual headings—perception, ideas, recogni- 
tion, memory, imagination, self-consciousness 
and reasoning. It is thus apparent that the 
method and order of exposition begins with 
the simplest elements of consciousness—the last 
results of analysis—and then considers in turn 
the compounds and elaborations into which these 
elements are built up. 

Professor Wundt’s scheme involves a more 
elaborate systematization. He devotes consid- 
erable space to the general methods and prob- 
lems of psychology by way of introduction, 
and then discusses the processes of mental life ; 
first, as psychical elements (sensation and sim- 
ple feelings); second, as psychical compounds 
(ideas of intensity, space, time, location, etc., 
as also composite feelings, emotions and voli- 
tional processes); third, as interconnection of 
psychical compounds (consciousness, attention, 
association, memory, apperception, ete.); fourth, 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 127. 


as psychical developments (the mind of ani- 
mals, of the child, of society and the race) ; 
and finally concludes by the discussion, under 
the title ‘ Psychical Causalty and its Laws,’ of 
a problem which belongs quite as much to phil- 
osophy as to psychology. 

As a translation inherently difficult the result 
is creditable; but it hardly reaches the ideal 
criterion of the art that conceals art, for the 
book seems un-English on every page. The 
type, the binding, the manner of construction, 
are all unmistakably German and, together with 
the foreign terminology and mode of presenta- 
tion, detract considerably from the possible at- 
tractiveness of the volume to the English reader. 

Viewed as independent contributions to psy- 
chology, both works present a considerable 
measure of originality. The student of Wundt 
will naturally turn to his other writings for a 
more complete exposition of his interpretations 
of psychological problems, but will find in the 
‘Outlines’ (for instance, in the discussion of 
psychological methods and classification) many 
pages that form an essential contribution to his 
published work. Similarly in Professor Titch- 
ener’s volume one recognizes many a doctrine 
and exposition that reflects the outcome of spe- 
cial and original investigation, as well as a 
position resulting from recent research. Viewed 
both as text-books and as contributions to psy- 
chological discussion, the volumes may unhesi- 
tatingly be pronounced welcome and interest- 
ing; the further proof of their utility must 
await the test of time and use. 

JOSEPH JASTROW. 

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. 


GEOLOGIC ATLAS OF THE UNITED STATES. 
Folio 23, Nomini, Maryland-Virginia, 1896. 
This folio consists of four pages of text 

signed by H. N. Darton, geologist, a topo- 

graphic map of the district, a map showing the 
areal geology, and a map showing the distribu- 
tion of underground waters and artesian wells. 

The scale of these maps is 1:125,000. 

The area represented in this folio is about 
938 square miles, which lies partly in Virginia 
and partly in Maryland. In Virginia it com- 
prises nearly all of Westmoreland county, with 
parts of Essex, Northumberland and Richmond, 


JUNE 4, 1897.] 


and in Maryland it includes portions of St. Mary, 
Charles and Calvert counties. It lies entirely 
within the Costal Plain area. The Potomac 
river extends northwest and southeast across the 
middle of the area; the Patuxent river crosses 
its northeastern corner, and the Rappahannock 
river crosses its southwestern corner. To the 
extreme northeastward it extends to the shore 
of Chesapeake Bay. These waters are all tidal 
estuaries. Along the river valleys thereare wide, 
low terraces, capped by the Columbia forma- 
tion, of Pleistocene age. The intervening areas 
are plateau remnants, capped by Lafayette de- 
posits, of supposed Pliocene age. The under- 
lying formations are the Chesapeake and Pa- 
munkey, the latter extending from the west- 
ward only a few miles into the area, along the 
north side of the Potomac river. 

The Pamunkey formation, of which only the 
uppermost beds are exposed, consists in greater 
part of glauconitic marls of Eocene age. It is 
overlain unconformably by the Chesapeake 
formation, which is characterized by fine sands, 
marls and clays, portions of which. consist 
largely of diatomaceous remains. The forma- 
tion is very fossiliferous at some localities. Its 
age is Miocene. The greatest thickness which 
it presents in the Nomini area is about 270 feet, 
but it continues to thicken gradually to the 
eastward. 

The Lafayette formation, which ranges from 
25 to 40 feet in thickness, consists of sandy 
loams of orange, brown and buff tints, often va- 
riegated, containing irregularly disposed bands 
and sprinklings of small quartzite pebbles and 
coarse sands. The pebbles and larger sand 
grains are orange-tinted, mainly by superficial 
staining. The plateau surface, capped by this 
formation and deeply incised and dissected by 
the larger drainage depressions, inclines gently 
southeastward at an altitude ranging from about 
190 feet along the northern and western border 
of the area to about 90 feet along its eastern 
border. Its greatest altitude is 200 feet in a 
portion of Nomini cliffs. It has also in most 
cases a slight slope into each of the river yal- 
leys. 

The Columbia formation is a deposit of loam 
merging downward into coarser materials con- 
taining beds of quartzite, gravel and boulders. 


SCIENCE. 


885 


Its thickness averages about 20 feet. Its surface 
extends from altitudes of 5 to 60 feet above tide 
level. 

The principal economic features are under- 
ground waters, which on the lower lands fur- 
nish flows for artesian wells. Three water- 
bearing horizons are known—one at the base of 
the Pamunkey formation, another 100 feet 
higher in the Pamunkey formation, and a third 
in the lower sandy members of the Chesapeake 
formation. They all dip to the eastward at a 
very moderate rate. There are many artesian 
wells which obtain water supplies from 160 to 
305 feet. On the artesian well sheet of the folio 
distinctive underground contours are given to 
show the depths below tide level to all of the 
water-bearing horizons. 

Other economic resources of the area are 
marls in the Pamunkey and Chesapeake forma- 
tions, diatomaceous deposits in the Chesapeake 
formation which are often sufficiently pure for 
commercial use, brick clays, potters’ clays, sand 
and gravel. 

Folio 26, Pocahontas, Virginia-West Virginia, 

1896. 

This folio, by Marius R. Campbell, consists of 
five pages of text, a topographic sheet (scale 1: 
125,000), a sheet of areal geology, one of eco- 
nomic geology, another of structure sections, 
and, finally, a sheet giving a generalized co- 
lumnar section of the district. 

The territory mapped and described in this 
folio embraces an area of 950 square miles, the 
southern portion of which is in Virginia and 
the northern portion in West Virginia. It is 
located west of New (Kanawha) river, at the 
place where the State line leaves East River 
Mountain, the last of the valley ridges toward 
the northwest, and follows the irregular crests 
of the ridges within the coal field. The south- 
ern portion of this territory is within the limits 
of the Appalachian valley, and its surface is 
marked by linear mountains and narrow vyal- 
leys, which are the characteristic forms of this 
central division of the Appalachian province. 
The northern portion is within the Cumberland 
plateau region, and its surface is that of a table- 
land deeply dissected, so that it now presents 
a confused mass of irregular ridges and hills, 


886 


only the summits of which reach the original 
level of the plateau. 

The geologic structure of this region varies 
as the topography varies. In the northern por- 
tion the rocks are nearly horizontal, their 
northwestward slope being rarely more than 
200 feet per mile, whereas in the southern por- 
tion the rocks have been highly compressed in 
a horizontal direction, forming huge folds, 
which in many places have broken, allowing 
one portion of the fold to slip over the other. 
It is this tilted condition of the strata which 
gives rise to the regular topographic forms of 
the Appalachian valley. The attitude of the 
rocks is shown on the structure-section sheet by 
four sections which cross various portions of 
the territory. 

The geologic history of this region is recorded 
in the rocks, which tell of prevailing marine 
conditions from early Cambrian to late Car- 
boniferous time. There were deposited during 
that time sediments to the extent of 17,000 or 
18,000 feet in thickness, which have since been 
hardened into limestone, shale and sandstone. 
Of this great mass the limestones form about 
6,700 feet ; the shales, 9,500 feet, and the sand- 
stones, about 1,400. On lithologic grounds 
these have been divided into twenty-three 
separate and distinct formations, which are 
shown on the general geologic map by various 
colors and patterns. 

There is little variety in the mineral resources 
of this region. Coal, iron ore and marble con- 
stitute about all of the mineral wealth of the 
territory. A limited area of coarse gray marble 
occurs along the northern front of Big Walker 
Mountain, but no development has been under- 
taken. 

Iron ore occurs in two formations of the 
Upper Silurian rocks. It is of good quality, 
and probably in sufficient quantity to be of com- 
mercial importance, but its inaccessibility has 
prevented development. 

Coal is by far the most important mineral re- 
source of this region. The territory represented 
by this sheet embraces almost the entire Flat 
Top or Pocahontas coal field at present de- 
veloped. All operations are confined to the 
great No. III. or Pocahontas seam of coal, which 
is semi-bituminous and ranges in thickness from 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Voz. V.. No. 127.. 


4to 10 feet. It is exposed along the valley of 
Bluestone river from Pocahontas to the edge of 
the territory, along Tug Fork, in the valley of 
Elkhorn creek, from Coaldale to Kimball, near 
the edge of the area and at’several places on 
the head streams of Guyandotte river. Mining 
is restricted to the Bluestone region and the val- 
ley of Elkhorn creek. In these two areas there 
are at present in operation thirty-seven distinct 
mines, which in 1894 produced 3,096,867 long 
tons of coal. 


Folio 28, Piedmont, West Virginia- Maryland, 1896. 

This folio consists of six pages of text, signed 
by N. H. Darton and Joseph A. Taff, geologists, 
and closing with a series of vertical sections 
showing the positions and thicknesses of the coal 
beds; a topographic map ; a sheet showing the 
areal geology of the district; another showing 
the economic geology ; a third exhibiting struc- 
ture sections, and a fourth containing a columnar 
section and a key to the synonymy of the vari- 
ous formation names. The maps are on ascale 
of 1:125,000. 

The area represented is about 925 square 
miles.. In Maryland it comprises the southern 
portion of Garrett county and a small area in 
the southwestern corner of Allegany county. 
In West Virginia it includes nearly all of Grant 
county, the western portions of Hardy and Min- 
eral counties, the northeastern portion of Tucker 
county, and a narrow area of Preston county, ad- 
jacent to the Maryland boundary line. Its south- 
eastern corner is in a region of Appalachian 
ridges, and it extends northwestward over the 
Allegheny Mountains and the upper Potomac 
coal basin to the headwaters of the Youghio- 
gheny river, a branch ef the Monongahela river. 

The geologic formations comprise members 
ranging from the sandstones in the middle of the 
Silurian to the upper Coal Measures of the Car- 
boniferous. In the southeastern portion of the 
area there are two sharp anticlinal uplifts which 
bring up the Silurian rocks in two prominent 
mountains, New Creek.Mountain and Patterson 
Creek Mountain. To the westward lies the coal 
basin, which extends from the Allegheny front to 
the Backbone Mountain. Along its center is cut 
the deep gorge of the north branch of the Po- 
tomac river. The basin is a relatively shallow 


JUNE 4, 1897.] 


one, but it contains about 3,000 feet of Carbon- 
iferous deposits. To the westward is the anti- 
clinal region of Devonian rocks which underlie 
the characteristic glade country about Oakland, 
Mountain Lake Park and Deer Park. West of 
Oakland is another synclinal basin, containing 
about 2,500 feet of Carboniferous beds. 

The geologic classification does not differ ma- 
terially from that outlined by W. B. Rogers and 
others, but geographic names have been applied 
to all of the formations. The lowest members 
are a series of sandstones and quartzites, which 
have been referred to as No. IV. and ‘Medina.’ 
This series has been subdivided into the 
Juniata formation, consisting of brownish-red 
sandstones and shales; the Tuscarora quartz- 
ite, and the Cacapon sandstones, consisting 
of thin-bedded red sandstones. Next there is 
the representative Clinton formation, which 
has been designated the Rockwood formation, 
asin other folios ; the Lewistown limestones, in- 
cluding representatives of the Helderberg and 
associated limestones, and the Monterey sand- 
stones, Romney shales, Jennings formation and 
Hampshire formation, representing the Devo- 
nian deposits. As the last three formations are 
not sharply separated from one another, the pat- 
terns by which they are represented on the map 
are merged in a narrow zone along their boun- 
daries. The Carboniferous period is represented 
by the Pocono sandstone ; the Greenbrier lime- 
stone ; the Canaan formation, which in a general 
way is a representative of the Mauch Chunk 
shales ; the Blackwater formation, which repre- 
sents the Pottsville conglomerate in greater or 
less part; the Savage formation and Bayard 
formation, which are the Lower Coal Meas- 
ures; the Fairfax formation, or Lower Barren 
Measures, and the Elk Garden formation, a part 
of the Upper Coal Measures. 

The principal coal beds are in the Savage for- 
mation, containing the ‘ six foot’ or Davis coal 
bed ; the Bayard formation, containing the coal 
bed known as the ‘four-foot,’ or ‘ three-foot,’ 
or ‘Bayard,’ or ‘Thomas’ coal, and the Elk 
Garden formation, containing the ‘fourteen- 
foot’ coal bed. 

On the economic sheet of this folio the coal- 
bearing formations are strongly emphasized, and 
underground contours are introduced to show 


SCIENCE. 


887 


the lay of the ‘six-foot’ coal bed in the Savage 
formation for each 100 feet. Other economic 
resources of the area are red hematite iron ores 
in thin beds in Rockwood shales and limestones 
at several horizons, of which the lower member 
in the Lewistown is locally available for cement. 


Folio 29, Nevada City Special, California, 1896. 

This folio, by Waldemar Lindgren, consists 
of seven pages of text, three special topographic 
maps (scale 1:14,400)—the Grass Valley, Ne- 
vada City and Banner Hill—three correspond- 
ing maps showing the economic geology, and 
three others giving structure sections. 

These maps, on a scale of about four inches 
to the mile, have been prepared to illustrate the 
detailed structure of the gold-mining regions in 
the vicinity of Nevada City and Grass Valley. 
Each of them comprises an area three miles wide 
by four miles long, the total area being nearly 
thirty-six square miles. The Nevada City and 
Grass Valley areas fall within the boundaries of 
the Smartsville atlas sheet, while the larger 
part of the Banner Hill area falls within those 
of the Colfax atlas sheet. The relief is that 
common to the middle foothill region of the 
Sierra Nevada—that is, the surface is a very ir- 
regular and undulating plateau, deeply trenched 
by the canyons of the recent river systems. 

Sedimentary rocks, chiefly referred to the 
Calaveras formation, occupy small, usually nar- 
row and long areas imbedded in the predomi- 
nating igneous masses. Granodiorite occupies 
a large part of the Nevada City and Banner 
Hill districts, while a small massif of the same 
rock is found in the Grass Valley district. 
Large areas of diabase, porphyrite and brecci- 
ated forms of these rocks surround and sepa- 
rate the granodiorite areas. In the southwest- 
ern part of the Nevada City district and the 
northeastern part of the Grass Valley a large 
and complicated massif is found, consisting in 
part of diorite, in part of gabbro, pyroxenite 
and serpentine. 

The slates of the Calaveras formation are the 
oldest rocks. Next younger are the diorities, 
gabbros and serpentines. Still later are the 
diabases and porphyrites, and the intrusion of 
granodiorite closes the succession of igneous 
rocks. 


888 


The bed-rock series is, as usual, in places 
covered by several hundred feet of Neocene 
gravels and rhyolitic and andesitic tuffs, the 
gently sloping top of the andesitic ridges form- 
ing a principal feature of the landscape. 

The Neocene auriferous gravels have been ex- 
tensively worked in the Nevada City and 
Banner Hill districts, both by the drifting and 
the hydraulic processes, and considerable 
ground still remains which probably can be 
profitably worked. The gold-quartz veins are 
numerous and belong to several distinct sys- 
tems. They are found in any of the formations 
represented on the sheet, and generally cross 
the contacts without change. In the Banner 
Hill district the veins are narrow but rich, and 
have a general east-west direction and a 
northerly or southerly dip. In the Nevada 
City district the quartz veins have a general 
north-south direction and an easterly dip of 
of about 45°, Large dislocations producing 
over-thrust faults have occurred along several 
of the veins. In the Grass Valley district there 
is one system with a west-northwest direction 
and a steep northerly or southerly dip. On 
this system the celebrated Idaho mine is lo- 
cated. Most of the veins in the central and 
southern part of the district have a northerly 
direction and a flat easterly or westerly dip. 
The veins are often accompanied by strongly 
developed sheeting of the country rock. 


SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS. 
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 


THe June number begins with an article by 
Theo. Holm, the fourth in a series of studies on 
the Cyperacez. This contains a full morpho- 
logical and anatomical study of the species 
Dulichium, and is illustrated by a page of fig- 
ures. J.C. Branner discusses the subject of 
bacteria in relation to the decomposition of 
rocks. The literature of the subject is reviewed 
and references given to various authors who 
have believed that the bacteria played an im- 
portant part in this direction. The author de- 
cides, however, that it is highly improbable that 
any considerable amount of rock decomposition 
is due to this cause. J. H. Pratt and H. W. 
Foote describe a new mineral species from the 


SCIENCE. 


(N.S. Vou. V. No. 127. 


Corundum mine, of Buck Creek, Clay county, 
North Carolina, to which they have given the 
name wellsite, after Professor H.L. Wells, of New 
Haven. The mineral belongs to the zeolites 
and is a silicate of aluminum, barium, strontium 
and calcium, crystallizing in the monoclinic 
system. It is particularly interesting since it 
forms another member of the Phillipsite group 
to which the species Phillipsite, Harmotome and 
Stilbite belong. 

Howard D. Day discusses the magnetic incre- 
ment of rigidity of wires in strong magnetic 
fields. The special subject discussed is ‘‘the 
increase of resistance to torque produced by the 
magnetization of twisted wires of various diame- 
ters, when the magnetic field increases to many 
times the amount needed to bring out the ordi- 
nary magnetic saturation. The object of the re- 
search was to make aclear comparison between 
the phenomenon of magnetization or magnetic 
intensity, on the one hand, and the phenomena 
of magnetic rigidity on the other ; to show that 
the two are quite distinct in character—that 
the former practically subsides in relatively 
weak fields, whereas the latter are not as fully 
complete even in the highest fields applied.’’ 
The apparatus employed is described and fig- 
ured, and the results presented in a series of 
curves. It is seen that ‘‘as the fields become 
stronger the increment of rigidity varies more 
and more regularly with the twist, the tendency 
being that in fields indefinitely large the in- 
crement of rigidity would be proportional to the 
twist applied.”’ 

P. F. Schneider describes a geologic fault at 
Jamesville, near Syracuse, N. Y. The interest 
of the matter lies largely in the fact that this 
region has been shown to be characterized by a 
number of igneous dikes. H. lL. Wells and H. 
W. Foote have two articles on chemical sub- 
jects, the first describing certain double halogen 
salts of cesium and rubidium, and the second 
being devoted to the double fluorides of zir- 
conium with lithium, sodium and thallium. 

A. St.C. Dunstan, M. E. Rice and C. A. 
Kraus give the results of some observations 
made on the broadening of sodium lines by in- 
tense magnetic fields. Their results confirm 
the recently published work of Zeeman. They 
state that using fields ranging from 0 to 7800 


JUNE 4, 1897.] 


C.G.S. units, they have found that the percent- 
age broadening is directly proportional to the 
field strength; the absolute amount for sodium 
in a unit field being 11.46><10 °° Angstrom units. 

A. A. Michelson describes some recent ex- 
periments, haying as their object the discussion 
of the question as to whether there is a relative 
motion of the earth and the ether. Light from 
a certain source was separated into two pencils 
by a plane-parallel glass plate, and carried by 
two equal paths back to the observing tele- 
scope, where the interference fringes resulting 
could be observed. The apparatus was set up 
in a vertical east and west plane, the path be- 
ing 200 feet long and 50 feet high. In order to 
eliminate disturbances due to temperature, the 
path of the light was inclosed in an iron pipe 
exhausted to within 73> of an atmosphere. 
It was then found possible to measure the posi- 
tion of the central bright fringe to within some- 
thing like 5 of a fringe-width. The results 
of the measurements go to show that if there is 
any displacement of the fringes it is less than 
vy of a fringe. Hence it follows that the 
earth’s influences upon the ether extends to dis- 
tances comparable to the earth’s diameter. 
The author concludes by saying that with 
these results before us we are driven to one of 
the three following extraordinary conclusions: 

“1. The earth passes through the ether (or 
rather allows the ether to pass through its en- 
tire mass) without appreciable influence. 2. 
The length of all bodies is altered (equally?) by 
their motion through the ether. 38. The earth 
in its motion drags with it the ether even at 
distances of many thousand kilometers from its 
surface.’’ 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 
GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON, MEET- 
ING OF MAY 12, 1897. 

UNDER the title ‘Physiography of the West 
Coast of Peru,’ Mr. S. F. Emmons described 
some of the prominent physiographic features 
noted by him during a recent and rather hur- 
ried journey along the west coast of Peru as far 
as 16° south latitude, and on a trip on the 
Oroya railroad from Lima up to the western 
crest of the Andes and back. 


SCIENCE. 


889 


First, he noticed the remarkable difference 
in rainfall and consequent change in vegetation 
experienced in the few hours’ sail from the 
mouth of the Guayaquil River, in Ecuador, to 
the most northern part of Peru. From a region 
of copious rains and tropical luxuriance of 
vegetation and often dense forests one passes, 
over night, to a region wheve it rains once 
in seven years, and farther, to where it is 
absolutely rainless. As far as seen, there is no 
tree growth on the west slope of the Andes in 
Peru. In the larger valleys, on the other 
hand, where irrigation is possible, sugar, cot- 
ton, and all varieties of cereals, vegetables and 
fruits flourish under cultivation. The most 
evident cause of this condition of things lies in 
the fact that the wind along the coast blows 
almost continuously from the south, coming 
from a colder to a warmer atmosphere, or one 
whose capacity for carrying moisture is con- 
stantly increasing. Hence there is no conden- 
sation until the wind currents strike the high 
mountain slopes. In Ecuador the influence of 
the highly-charged equatorial currents is felt, 
and near the mouth of the Guayaquil River the 
continental watershed pushes westward to 
within 50 miles of the coast, thus presenting a 
condensing barrier on the land to the north- 
ward-moving currents. 

A second striking feature is the enormous ex- 
tent to which the coast bluffs and the northern 
slopes of the mountains that approach the sea 
are covered by white drifting beach sands borne 
along by the same prevailing south wind. At 
one point these sands, beautifully ripple- 
marked, completely mantled the southeast 
side of a deeply cut mountain valley to an ele- 
vation of four to five thausand feet above the 
sea level, and sand fields were observed inland, 
along north and south depressions in the ele- 
vated plateaux or pampas, 40 to 50 miles from 
the coast. 

Striking evidences of recent elevation and 
subsidence of the coast regions are most fre- 
quent, and where the coast line is formed, as it 
frequently is, of soft and readily disintegrable 
Tertiary beds it is seen to be rapidly wearing 
away under the influence of the long and 
powerful waves of the Pacific Ocean. Near 
Pacasmayo a river valley is seen to have been 


890 


truncated by this wearing action and at the 
same time to have been elevated about 50 feet 
within a comparatively short time. Near 
Lomas a Tertiary plain 15 to 10 miles wide, 
and reaching 500 to 600 feet above tide, be- 
tween the mountains and the sea, has been so 
recently reclaimed from the sea as to have 
scattered over its surface not only beach peb- 
bles, but frequent sharks’ teeth and occasionally 
jawbones of whales, from the latter of which 
the villagers construct the crucifixes they always 
plant upon some prominent headland. Further 
inland there isa broad peneplain nearly 6,000 
feet above the sea level, fringed by an old sea- 
beach of rolled pebbles more or less covered by 
beds of voleanic tuff. 

The geological formations along the coast 
belt, as far as observed, are mostly granites and 
diorites, in places surrounded by horizontal 
or slightly crumpled beds from which fossils of 
probable Miocene and Pliocene age were ob- 
tained. To the former apparently belong the 
very considerable extent of petroleum-bearing 
beds in northern Peru near Cape Blanco. The 
main mass of the western crest of the Andes, 
where observed, consists of closely compressed, 
infolded limestones, slates and conglomerates, 
with intrusive andesites and other igneous rocks. 
These sedimentary beds are thought to be of 
probable Jurassic age, though no fossils were 
obtained. 

The Telluride mining district, in the San 
Juan mountains, was described by Mr. C. W. 
Purington. It is situated in southwest Colo- 
rado, on the line of the Rio Grande Southern 
Railway. It is a mountainous region character- 
ized by precipitous topography. The moun- 
tains rise to 14,000 feet from a plateau of 7,000, 
which bounds the region on the west. The 
rocks are nearly flat-bedded sedimentaries of 
Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous age, overlain 
in the eastern part of the quadrangle uncon- 
formably by a heavily bedded conglomerate, 
200 feet thick, above which lie 2,000 feet of 
andesitic breccias, in part waterlaid, and still 
higher 1,000 feet of volcanic flows, andesite 
and rhyolite. Diorite stocks of large dimen- 
sions have cut all the other rocks of the region 
and are most recent in age. Surface denuda- 
tion has exposed them to view. The centers 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 127. 


of volcanic activity lies to the east of the 
sheet. 

Several well-defined fissure-systems, due to the 
action of extraneous forces, penetrate the rocks 
of the region. The systems are characterized 
by the alternation of widely and narrowly 
spaced zones of fissures. The zones of nar- 
rowly spaced fissures vary from one to ten feet 
in width, and it is along these that the work- 
able veins are found. Relative movement of 
the walls of the closely fissured zones, accom- 
panied by trituration of the included rock, de- 
veloped open space which the ore now occupies. 
The veins carry gold, mostly free, but in part 
combined with metallic sulphides, silver mostly 
in galena and freibergite, less frequently as 
stephanite, pyrargyrite, polybasite, etc. Beside 
iron, lead, copper and zine sulphides, there oc- 
cur as gangue, predominating quartz, carbon- 
ates, barite, fluorite, sericite and other miner- 
als in small amount. Gold and silver veins 
occur closely associated. Accompanying the 
veins the wall rocks are altered, and impreg- 
nated with iron pyrite, occasionally auriferous. 
The values vary between wide limits. They 
must be given in more detail than is possible 
here. The veins show remarkable continuity 
in length, one having been profitably worked 
for a distance of more than two miles. 

The ore is of Tertiary age, is of deep-seated 
origin, and has been deposited from solutions; 
$20,000,000 is a low estimate for the product of 
the district. It has steadily increased in im- 
portance since 1875, and very rapidly within 
the last five years. Formerly silver was the 
principal product ; now much the larger output 
is in gold. W. F. MorseE.t. 

U. 8. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 


OF SCIENCES—SECTION 
1897. 


NEW YORK ACADEMY 


OF GEOLOGY, MAY 17, 

THE first paper of the evening was by Mr. D. 
H. Newland, entitled ‘Occurrence and Origin 
of the Serpentines near New York.’ Mr. New- 
land spoke of the occurrence of Serpentines in 
the vicinity of New York and classified them 
according to origin into two probable divisions ; 
one including those from New Rochelle and 
Hoboken, possibly derived from metamorphosed 
igneous rocks, and second, those from the other 


June 4, 1897.] 


localities more probably derived from some 
form of sedimentary rock. 

The second paper of the evening was by Pro- 
fessor J. F. Kemp, entitled ‘ Notes on Butte, 
Montana, and its Ore Deposits.’ Professor 
Kemp described the geological position of the 
copper and silver bearing ore rocks of Butte, 
and illustrated his talk with a number of lan- 
tern slides made from photographs in the re- 
gion last summer. He spoke particularly of 
the geological succession exhibited in the rela- 
tionship of two forms of granite, an earlier basic 
and a later acitic cut by later rhyolite flows. 

The third paper was by Professor Kemp, en- 
titled ‘ Notes on the Geology of the Trail from 
Red Rock to and beyond Leesburg, Idaho.’ 
This paper brought forth the first account 
known of the geology of about 100 miles of the 
trail mentioned, where the rocks are very 
varied in character, but mostly early Cambrian 
quartzites, together with many igneous rocks 
including Tertiary rhyolites. The ore pro- 
ducing region is found in the valleys where the 
gravels are washed in some places by hydraulic 
force and some gold gained therefrom. 

The last paper of the evening was by Profes- 
sor C. A. Doremus, and was illustrated by a 
series of specimens received from France from 
M. Moissan, representing certain of the metals 
and carbides formed by the electric furnace. 
Some of these were very interesting geolog- 
ically, because of their peculiar properties ; par- 
ticularly the carbonates of aluminum, calcium 
and cerium, which latter, when tested with 
water, produces all the series from marsh 
gas to the heavier petroleum products. The 
specimens exhibited are for final placement in 
the National Museum at Washington, D. C. 

This being the last meeting of the Geological 
Section before the summer vacation, adjourn- 
ment was made until October. 

RICHARD E. Dop@e. 
Secretary. 


THE TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB, MARCH 31, 1897, 


THE first paper, by Dr. Albert Schneider, 
“The Phenomena on Symbiosis,’ and a paper 
by Leonard Barron on ‘ Horticulture in Botan- 
ical Gardens,’ were read by title, owing to un- 
avoidable detentions. 


SCIENCE. 


891 


The evening was occupied by a paper by 
Professor Edward S. Burgess, on ‘ Aster macro- 
phyllus and its allies,’ illustrated by chart of re- 
lationship and by numerous specimens. The 
speaker sketched the history of the species 
Aster macrophyllus, in which it has been the 
custom of American botanists to include all 
large-leaved asters. He showed how diverse 
these asters are and in what confusion their 
assignment to a single species results, and indi- 
cated the characters according to which they 
form two groups, each of several species and 
varieties. 

The paper, which will soon appear in print, 
was discussed by Mr. E. P. Bicknell, who con- 
firmed the distinctions offered, by the results of 
his observations about New York, and by Dr. 
Britton, who paid a tribute to the masterly. 
manner in which Dr. Gray has treated the sub- 
ject of the genus Aster, so far as material was 
then available, and who referred to the special 
need for extended field-work and further colla- 
boration which this genus has long presented. 


APRIL 13. 


Dr. ALBERT SCHNEIDER presented a paper 
entitled ‘Methods employed in the examina- 
tion of powdered drugs and their adulterations.’ 

He described certain microscopic structural 
features which he had investigated with a view 
to find characters by which to distinguish the 
more important drugs, giving details of such 
characteristics determined by him for mace, 
senna, leaves of Eucalyptus globulus, ete. 

Dr. Britton spoke of the utility of this work 
and of its object, in behalf of the new edition of 
the U. S. Pharmacopceia. 

The paper was followed by an early adjourn- 
ment to facilitate the attendance of members 
upon the annual exhibit given by the New York 
Microscopical Society. 

EDWARD S. BuRGEss, 
Secretary. 


BOSTON SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 


THE Society met April 7th, with thirty-two 
persons present. Professor J. Eliot Wolff 
spoke of the occurrence of tourmalines at Mt. 
Mica, Paris, Me., and gave an account of the 
locality, with a history of its discovery. Sey- 


892 


eral varieties were described ; also the miner- 
als formed in the rocks associated with the 
tourmalines. Two kinds of gem tourmaline 
were recognized and their occurrence in cavi- 
ties or pockets noted. Professor Wolff showed 
a series of tourmaline crystals, including two 
of the largest yet discovered ; also a number of 
the original plates illustrating Mr. Hamlin’s 
‘History.’ 

Dr. Charles B. Davenport discussed the réle 
of water in growth. Organic growth was de- 
fined as an increase in yolume. The definitions 
given by others were reviewed and analyzed. 
The processes of growth were analyzed and the 
factors involved in growth noted. The experi- 
ments and observations of plant physiologists 
assign the principal réle to water in the growth 
of plants. Experiments made to determine the 
percentage of water in the body of developing 
tadpoles at different stages show that growth is 
due chiefly toimbibed water. The réle of water 
in the development of organisms and its bear- 
ing on the meaning of curves of growth were 


discussed in detail. 
SAMUEL HENSHAW, 


Secretary. 


THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE OF ST. LOUIS. 


AT the meeting of the Academy of Science of 
St. Louis on the evening of May 17, 1897, 
twenty-six persons present, a committee ap- 
pointed at an earlier meeting presented a short 
biographic sketch of the late Dr. James N. 
Leete, for many years an active and influential 
member of the Academy. 

Mr. J. B. 8. Norton read a paper embodying 
the results of an examination into the effects of 
the tornado of May, 1896, on trees about St. 
Louis, in which it was shown that, while ordi- 
nary winds have some influence on the form 
and strength of trees, in strong winds uproot- 
ing is caused by wet soil, weak spreading roots 
and a large surface exposed to the wind. If 
the roots hold, breaks may occur in the trunk 
or branches, depending on the strength of the 
wood, the form of the tree, the mode of branch- 
ing and the weight and resistance of foliage. 
While the edge of dry leaves presented to the 
wind offers little resistance, when foliage is wet 
and massed this may be very different. Local 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 127. 


variations in these several factors make a com- 
parison of different species difficult. It was 
shown that Acer dasycarpum was badly broken 
on account of its brittle wood and heavy foliage, 
while the weak-wooded Tilias and Liriodendrons 
were also broken. Spreading-topped trees, like 
Ulmus Americana, as a rule, were broken and 
uprooted, though the branches were only bent 
in the tougher-wooded individuals. Asa gen- 
eral thing, conical trees, like Ulmus campestris, 
Liquidambar and most conifers and the strong- 
wooded oaks, were little injured. Taxodiwm 
distichum, from its slender form, strength and 
elasticity, was injured least of all. It wasshown 
that after the tornado, which occurred early in 
the vegetative period, most of the trees contin- 
ued the summer’s growth by producing new 
foliage shoots. While a few died from the in- 
ability to secure food, others indicate injury by 
flowering and fruiting more profusely than 
usual. It was shown that some of the trees 
which were broken have already begun to show 
serious decay where the branches were removed, 
so that the final injury can hardly yet be meas- 
ured. 

The results observed here were compared by 
the speaker with those which have been re- 
ported from time to time in connection with 
severe storms elsewhere. 

The paper was discussed by Mr. H. von 
Schrenk, who submitted some interesting speci- 
mens, slides and drawings illustrating the for- 
mation of a double ring in 1896, resulting from 
the refoliation of the branches denuded shortly 
after the season’s growth had begun. 

WILLIAM TRELEASE, 
Secretary. 


NEW BOOKS. 
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Guide to the Genera and Classification of the 
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The Entropy Temperature Analysis of Steam En- 
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EDITORIAL CoMMITTEE: S. NEwcomsB, Mathematics; R. S. WoopWARD, Mechanics; E. C. PICKERING, 
Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THURSTON, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry; 
J. LE ContE, Geology; W. M. DAvis, Physiography; O. C. MARsH, Paleontology; W. K. 
Brooks, C. HART MERRIAM, Zoology; S. H. ScuDDER, Entomology; N. L. BRITTON, 
Botany; Henry F. OsBorN, General Biology; H. P. BowpitcH, Physiology; 
J. S. Brntrnes, Hygiene; J. MCKEEN CATTELL, Psychology ; 
DANIEL G. BRINTON, J. W. POWELL, Anthropology. 


Fripay, June 11, 1897. 


CONTENTS: 
A Forest Policy for the Forested Lands of the United 
SIZE ceca boc o FOO GRDECRE DOLE CORE AEAC TRO SOC CEDOORDOCEANSCOSOC 893 
The American Physiological Society: FREDERIC S. 
TIT scosoetacat nosonosarcs iooedgog uogne bdo sadgsanoonpacasseon 900 


The Introduction of New Terms in Geology: JOHN 
APD WANN E Rites nseessvaecansansteceansrecsaenaecnsecssnsens 912 


Current Notes on Anthropology :— 
Systematic Anthropology ; Aboriginal Cultivation 
D. G. BRIN- 


of Maize; The Grooved Stone Axe: 


Notes on Inorganic Chemistry : 
Scientific Notes and News :— 
The Toronto Meeting of the British Association ; 
The British Report on the Behring Sea Seal Fish- 
ELITES Mee GENET Alamecassntcnscesccascevesoscssceceacesesacasss 915 
University and Educational News. .......s.sscesecsceees 918 
Discussion and Correspondence :— 
The Potter’s Wheel in Ancient America: H.C. 
MERCER. The Significance of Internal Secre- 
tion: WESLEY MILs. Highhole Courtship: 
HIRAM M. STANLEY. A Question of Classifica- 
OMe LOB Uae lop Ett: Uirweneckadcsarasewccactneeetesacrerss 919 
Scientific Literature :— 
Johnson on The Materials of Construction: 
MANSFIELD MERRIMAN. Davenport’s Experi- 
mental Morphology: J. P. MCMURBRICH........... 921 
Scientific Journals :— 
The Jowrnal of Geology...........s-ssecccscescvcecneavees 925 


Societies and Academies :— 


Torrey Botanical Club: N. L. Britton. Ala- 


bama Industrial and Scientific Society: EUGENE 
‘A. SmitH. The Anthropological Society of 
Washington: J. H. MCCORMICK...........00.00000+ 925 


MSS. intended tor publication and books, etc., intended 
for review should be sent to the responsible editor, Prof. J. 
McKeen Cattell, Garrison-on-Hudson, N. Y. 


FOREST POLICY FOR THE FORESTED LANDS 
OF THE UNITED STATES.* 


THE RESERVED FOREST LANDS OF THE PUBLIC 
DOMAIN.T 
Tue peculiar topographical and climatic 


‘conditions of western North America would 


appear to make the preservation of its 
forests essential to the profitable and per- 
manent occupation of the country. The 
precipitation of moisture west of the one 
hundredth meridian is unequally distrib- 
uted throughout the year; the summers 
are hot and dry, and the whole territory, 
with the exception of the coast region of the 
northwest, is watered so imperfectly that 
forests are restricted to the slopes of high 
mountain ranges or to elevated plains and 
mesas, the valleys of the interior and of all 
the south being practically treeless. In all 
the interior and southern regions precipita- 
tion is insufficient for certain and profitable 
cultivation, and permanent agricultural 
prosperity can only be assured through irri- 
gation. Much of the region is traversed 

* Extracts from the report of the committee ap- 
pointed by the National Academy of Sciences, trans- 
mitted by the President to Congress on May 25th. 
The report is signed by the members of the committee 
—Charles S. Sargent, Henry L. Abbot, A. Agassiz, 
Wm. H. Brewer, Arnold Hague, Gifford Pinchot, 
Wolcott Gibbs. It is dated from Arnold Arboretum, 
Harvard University, May 1, 1897. 

+ In the first part of the report the importance of 
the conservation of forests is considered in the light of 


European studies and the forest administration of 
foreign countries is reviewed. 


894 


by lofty mountain ranges well wooded at 
the north and sparsely wooded at the south. 
Their forests serve to collect, and in a 
measure regulate the flow of streams, the 
waters of which, carefully conserved and 
distributed artifically, would render possible 
the reclamation of vast areas of so-called 
desertlands. Irrigation systems have been 
undertaken in many localities under State 
or corporate control and have been prose- 
cuted until their value has been amply 
demonstrated, although the one essential 
condition of their permanent success, the 
preservation of the forests on high mountain 
slopes, has been entirely neglected. 

Under the authority of Section 24 of the 
Act of Congress, approved March 3, 1891, 
by which the President of the United States 
can withdraw from sale and entry and set 
apart as forest reservations parts of the 
public domain, whether wholly or in part 
covered with timber, seventeen forest re- 
serves, with a total estimated area of 17,- 
500,000 acres, were established prior to 
1894. During the journey made by your 
committee last summer through the West- 
ern States and Territories it became im- 
pressed with the importance of extending 
this reserved area before further encroach- 
ments were made on the public domain; 
and on its return it prepared a short pre- 
liminary report, recommending the estab- 
lishment of thirteen additional forest re- 
serves with an estimated total area of 21,- 
378,840 acres and roughly designating their 
boundaries. On the 6th of February this 
report was submitted by the Secretary of 
the Interior to the President, who, on the 
22d of February, issued proclamations mak- 
ing the recommendations of your commit- 
tee effective. 

Fire ‘and pasturage chiefly threaten the 
reserved forest lands of the public domain. 
In comparison with these the damage which 
isinflicted on them by illegal timber cutting 
is insignificant. Timber can only be cut 


SCIENCE. : 


(N.S. Vou. V. No. 128. 


profitably when the operation is conducted 
on a comparatively large scale; and large 
operations require roads and sawmills, and 
consequently the use of capital, and are 
usually easy to detect and arrest. The 
cutting of timber on the unreserved public 
lands under cover of bad laws or without a 
pretense of legal sanction causes, as we 
shall show later, serious losses to the gov- 
ernment, but so far as we have been able 
to observe it does not now seriously menace 
many of the reserves. 

Fires are particularly destructive to the 
forests of western North America. These 
are composed almost exclusively of highly 
resinous trees, which, when they grow 
beyond the influence of the moisture-laden 
air currents from the Pacific Ocean, ignite 
easily, and, burning fiercely on the surface, 
are quickly killed, while the flames sweep 
forward, leaving standing behind them the 
dead, although unconsumed, trunks to fur- 
nish material for later conflagrations and 
to intensify their heat. The climate, with its 
unequally distributed rainfall and intensely 
hot and dry summers and the peculiarly 
inflammable character of the forests, make 
forest fires in the West numerous and par- 
ticularly destructive, and no other part of 
the country has suffered so seriously from 
this cause. 

Nomadic sheep husbandry has already 
seriously damaged the mountain forests in 
those States and Territories where it has 
been largely practiced. In California and 
western Oregon great bands of sheep, often 
owned by foreigners, who are temporary 
residents of this country, are driven in 
spring into the high Sierras and Cascade 
ranges. Feeding as they travel from the 
valleys at the foot of the mountains to the 
the upper alpine meadows, they carry deso- 
lation with them. Every blade of glass, 
the tender, growing shoots of shrubs, and 
seedling trees, are eaten to the ground. The 
feet of these ‘ hoofed locusts,’ crossing and 


JUNE 11, 1897.] 


recrossing the faces of steep slope, tread 
out the plants sheep do not relish and, 
loosening the forest floor, produce condi- 
tions favorable to floods. Their destruc- 
tion of the undergrowth of the forest and 
of the sod of alpine meadows hastens the 
melting of snow in spring and quickens 
evaporation. 

The pasturage of sheep in mountain for- 
ests thus increases the floods of early sum- 
mer, which carry away rapidly the water 
that under natural conditions would not 
reach the rivers until late in the season, 
when it is most needed for irrigation, and 
by destroying the seedling trees, on which 
the permanency of forests depends, pre- 
vents natural forest reproduction, and 
therefore ultimately destroys the forests 
themselves. In California and Oregon the 
injury to the public domain by illegal pas- 
turage is usually increased by the methods 
of the shepherds, who now penetrate to the 
highest and most inaccessible slopes and 
alpine meadows wherever a blade of grass 
can grow, and before returning to the val- 
leys in the autumn start fires to uncover 
the surface of the ground and simulate the 
growth of herbage. Unrestricted pastur- 
ing of sheep in the Sierras and southern 
Cascade forests, by preventing their repro- 
duction and increasing the number of fires, 
must inevitably so change the flow of 
streams heading in these mountains that 
they will become worthless for irrigation. 

A study of the forest reserves, in their re- 
lations to the general development and 
welfare of the country, shows that the se- 
gregations of these great bodies of reserved 
lands can not be withdrawn from all oecu- 
_pation and use, and that they must be 
made to perform their part in the economy 
of the nation. According to a strict inter- 
pretation of the rulings of the Department 
of the Interior, no one has a right to enter 
a forest reserve, to cut a single tree from its 
forests, or to examine its rocks in search of 


SCIENCE. 


895 


valuable minerals. Forty million acres of 
land are thus theoretically shut out frou 
all human occupation or enjoyment. Such 
a condition of things should not continue, 
for unless the reserved lands of the public 
domain are made to contribute to the wel- 
fare and prosperity of the country they 
should be thrown open to settlement and 
the whole system of reserved forests aban- 
doned. Land more valuable for its mineral 
deposits, or for the production of agricul- 
tural crops, than for its timber should be 
taken from the reservations and sold to 
miners and farmers; the mature timber 
should be cut and sold; settlers within or 
adjacent to the boundaries, unable to pro- 
cure it in other ways, should be authorized 
to take such material from reserved forests 
as is necessary for their needs, and pros- 
pectors should be allowed to search them 
for minerals. 

But it must not be forgotton that the 
public domain of which these reserves form 
a part belongs to the people of the whole 
country, and not to those of any one sec- 
tion. It is right, therefore, that the forest 
reserves should be managed for the benefit 
of the people of the whole country, and not 
for any particular class or section. Steep 
and elevated mountain slopes should not 
be cleared of their forests for the sole bene- 
fit of the prospector or the miner, because 
this by its influence on water flow might 
mean permanent injury to persons living 
hundreds of miles away. A few foreign” 
sheep owners should not be allowed to ex- 
terminate great forests at the expense of 
the whole country, and prospectors and 
miners should not be permitted to burn 
willfully or carelessly forests in which all 
classes of the community are equally in- 
terested. 

Our examination of the Western forests 
shows that the existing methods and forces 
at the disposal of the Interior Department 
are entirely inadequate to protect the for- 


896 


ests of the public domain. Civil employees, 
often selected for political reasons and re- 
tained in office by political favor, insuffici- 
ently paid and without security in their 
tenure of office, have proved unable to cope 
with the difficulties of forest protection, 
and the reserves are practically unguarded. 
Excluded from the provisions of the gen- 
eral land laws and without protection, they 
invite trespass of every kind and demoral- 
ize without benefiting the community. It 
is evident that if the government proposes 
to protect public property in the reserves 
and to enforce any laws or regulations 
which may be enacted for their administra- 
tion, the assistance of the military must be 
called in until an organization can be de- 
veloped in the Interior Department for the 
protection, management and improvement 
of all reserved government forest lands ; 
for without such assistance the experience 
of the past clearly shows that it is idle to 
hope that fires can be restricted, pasturage 
abolished and timber cutting and mining 
regulated in the reserves; and if this can 
not be done their forests will sooner or later 
be ruined and the objects defeated for 
which they have been established. 


PROPOSED SYSTEM OF FOREST ADMINISTRA- 
TION. 

It has been shown that the preservation 
and judicious management of the forests on 
those portions of the public domain which 
are unsuited for agriculture are of great im- 
portance for the flow of rivers needed for 
the irrigation of arid districts, and to fur- 
nish forest products for settlers on adjacent 
arable lands, and for mining operations. 
The cheapness of forest products in the 
United States, and the length of time re- 
quired to produce crops of timber in the 
West, will make the investment of the capi- 
tal of individuals in silvicultural opera- 
tions, for the present at least, a doubtful 
enterprise in those States and Territories 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8S. Vo. V. No. 128. 


where the public domain is now principally 
situated ; and silviculture in western North 
America will only be really sucesssful un- 
der sustained government control and ad- 
ministration ; for, dealing with crops which 
often do not reach maturity until the end 
of one or two centuries, it can only be made 
profitable by carrying out without interrup- 
tion and under thoroughly trained officers, 
plans which must often be followed during 
the lives of several generations of men. 
This stability and continuity of manage- 
ment can only be secured by a permanent 
government administration composed of 
officers of the highest character, entirely de- 
voted to duty. 

Annual taxes on the land of individuals 
demand annual income; and to avoid or 
meet this burden of taxation land which 
should always remain covered with forests 
is often denuded before the requirements of 
commerce justify it, or is devoted to uses 
for which it is ill adapted. Private owner- 
ship, for example, of the redwood-bearing 
land of the California coast region, the most 


_ productive forest land in the world, has re- 


sulted in this land, which should remain 
covered with forest for all time, being 
rapidly converted into indifferent pastur- 
age. The fee of lands which are most 
valuable for the production of timber should 
remain vested in the general government, 
and these lands, if they are managed 
wisely, can be made to supply forest mate- 
rial indefinitely to the agricultural and 
mining populations of adjacent districts and 
to improve in productiveness and value. 
Ultimate self-support of a government 
forest administration is possible in the 
United States, and it may be expected to. 
yield a permanent income if the national 
forests are managed with the intelligence, 
thrift and honesty which characterize the 
forest administration in Germany, France 
and other European countries. At first, 
however, the cost of administration will 


JUNE 11, 1897.] 


exceed the receipts, as is almost invariably 
the case in important economic reforms, 
but outlays may be expected to diminish 
in proportion as the administration is faith- 
ful, intelligent and honest. 

To inaugurate at once a complete system 
of forest administration would be to attempt 
more than is wise or feasible at this time; 
but the necessity of prompt action for the 
protection of the forest reserves from fire, 
illegal pasturage and other depredations is 
urgent, and efficient temporary police meas- 
ures are needed immediately. A plan for 
the temporary care of the forest reserves 
may be wisely based on the experience 
gained in the management of the national 
parks. This clearly shows that it is possible 
to protect forests in the most exposed and 
dificult parts of the public domain with 
small bodies of troops; whereas, before 
soldiers were detailed to police the Yellow- 
stone National Park, all efforts to manage 
it by civil officers of the government had 
shown the futility of any attempts at con- 
trol which did not rest on the moral and 
physical support of the army. = 

The primary object of such temporary 
management would not be to produce a 
revenue, but to protect the reserves against 
fire and depredation. It should be the 
duty of the superintendents to issue 
passes to persons desirous of entering or 
crossing them, and to keep a careful record 
of the names and residences of all such 
persons. Sheep should be wholly excluded 
from the reserves, and cattle should be ad- 
mitted only in moderate numbers and when 
the property of actual settlers on adjacent 
lands. 

The fundamental principle of any gov- 
ernment system of forest management 
should be the retention of the fee of forest 
lands, and the sale of forest products from 
them at reasonable prices, under regula- 
tions looking to the perpetual reproduction 
of the forest. While it is not desirable, 


SCIENCE. 


897 


perhaps, that the government in the im- 
mediate future should enter into competi- 
tion with the private owners of forest 
lands, it is evident that ultimately the sale 
of forest supplies from the government 
timber lands should not only cover all ex- 
penses of government forest management, 
but produce a steadily. increasing income. 

Upon officers charged with the adminis- 
tration of the government forests will de- 
volve the care of immensely valuable public 
property, its improvement under the best 
established scientific methods, police re- 
sponsibility of exceptional delicacy, sur- 
veys, the construction of roads and engi- 
neering works for the protection of moun- 
tain slopes, and the control of numerous 
agents widely separated and not easily 
trained to habits of discipline. Many of 
these duties are essentially military in 
character, and should be regulated for the 
present on military principles. Wise for- 
est management calls for technical knowl- 
edge which must be based on a liberal scien- 
tific education. The forest officers must 
be men of the highest personal character, 
who can be trusted to avoid participation 
in any private business connected, how- 
ever remotely, with forest products. To 
secure the service of men qualified to.meet 
these several requirements will call for lib- 
eral remuneration and permanent tenure of 
office.* 

Topographical and economic surveys 
upon which it would have been possible to 
establish scientifically the proper bounda- 
ries of the reserved lands do not exist and 
their limits have been laid down roughly 
with the idea that they would be modified 
as soon as it was possible to determine ac- 
curately what portions were more valuable 
for the production of minerals and for agri- 
culture and grazing than for their timber 

*A plan for a permanent organization is then 


recommended, a bill to protect and administer public 
forest reserves being given in an appendix. 


898 


growth, and that such lands would then be 
opened to entry and settlement. In all the 
forest reserves visited by your committee it 
saw opportunities to improve their bound- 
aries and found lands which can not be 
permanently reserved without inflicting se- 
rious hardships and losses on the commun- 
ity. Only a small portion of the White 
River Plateau Timber Land Reserve in 
Colorado, for example, is forest land, the re- 
mainder being covered with grasses and 
scattered clumps of oak bushes. Such land 
is, of course, most valuable for pasturage, 
and its withdrawal from use cripples the 
important cattle industry of the region. In 
the Washington Forest Reserve and in the 
Cascade Forest Reserve are mineral de- 
posits which can not wisely be held from 
entry, and near the borders of others there 
are lands more valuable for agriculture or 
fruit growing than for other purposes. 

It is evident that such lands should be 
taken from the forest reserves as soon as it 
is practicable to do so, but before this can 
be done safely those parts of the public 
domain which have been reserved, or which 
may be reserved, should be accurately sur- 
veyed and carefully mapped. Asthe United 
States Geological Survey is the only Bureau 
in the Department of the Interior equipped 
for this work, it can probably most con- 
veniently make these surveys. Their proper 
interpretation is a matter of the greatest 
importance, for on the men who undertake 
it will devolve the duty of establishing the 
final boundaries of the reserved forest lands 
of the public domain. Enormous interests 
are involved in these final decisions, and 
this work can be entrusted only to men of 
the highest integrity, intelligence and public 
spirit. Efforts will certainly be made to 
improperly influence their judgment, and 
they will be subjected to severe temptations. 
The power to open any part of the reserved 
lands to settlement is in the hands of the 
President of the United States, but he will 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 128. 


necessarily base his decisions in such matters. 
on the reports and recommendations of the 
experts who are to study the results of the 
surveys made under the direction of the 
Geological Survey. 

To provide for this important duty, we 
recommend that the President be authorized 
to appoint a commission to be known as the: 
board of forest lands, to consist of an officer 
of the Engineer Corps of the Army, a mem- 
ber of the Geological Survey, a member 
of the Coast Survey and two persons not. 
connected with the public service, and 
that it shall be the duty of this board to 
determine, with the aid of actual surveys 
and such other examinations as may be 
found necessary, the boundaries of those 
parts of the public domain which should be 
retained permanently by the government: 
as forests, and that upon its recommenda- 
tions the President should be authorized to: 
open all other lands to entry and sale. It 
is believed that the character of this com- 
mission can be best maintained at the high- 
est level by limiting the remuneration of 
the two members unconnected with govern- 
ment service to their actual expenses. 

Tn all the forest reserves individuals have: 
acquired more or less perfect title to land, 
and as they may claim that their rights are 
interfered with, or the value of their hold- 
ings diminished by the reservation from 
entry of adjacent lands, opportunity should 
be given them to exchange on an equitable: 
basis their lands or rights for those of simi- 
lar character outside the reservations. 
Several of the forest reserves are within 
the limits of land grants made to railroad 
corporations, and it should be possible for 
the Secretary of the Interior to arrange with 
these corporations to exchange their hold- 
ings within the reservations for similar un- 
reserved lands.* 

* A section on the unreserved forest lands of the 


public domain shows the harm that has resulted from. 
the working of the land laws. 


JUNE 11, 1897.] 


ADDITIONAL NATIONAL PARKS. 

Parts of two forest reserves contain fea- 
tures of supreme natural beauty, and can 
best be preserved for the enjoyment and in- 
struction of the world by creating them na- 
tional parks and governing them under the 
rules and regulations which have proved 
successful in protecting the Yellowstone 
National Park. The first of these is the 
upper slopes of Mount Ranier, in Washing- 
ton, with its glaciers, its alpine meadows 
clothed with flowers, and the fringe of for- 
est which maintains a precarious foothold 
on the steep ridges below the line of its per- 
petual snows. This mountain is one of the 
highest and most beautiful in North Amer- 
ica, and outside Alaska its glaciers are un- 
rivaled in magnitude and interest in the 
United States. Memorials have been pre- 
sented to Congress by the American Asso- 
ciation for the Advancement of Science, the 
Geological Society of America, the Sierra 
Club and the Apalachian Mountain Club 
favoring the establishment of this national 
park, and an act setting aside certain lands 
for it was passed by the Fifty-fourth Con- 
gress at its second session; but the bill, by 
extending to it the mineral-land laws, 
might have destroyed its scenic value, and 
it did not receive Executive sanction. 

The second spot which we believe should 
be made into a national park is that por- 
tion of the Grand Canyon Reserve in Ari- 
zona which is immediately adjacent to 
and includes the walls of the canyon itself. 
These two localities, Mount Ranier in 
Washington and the Grand Canyon of the 
Colorado in Arizona, are each in its particu- 
lar way unsurpassed in interest. Their 
natural wonders should be preserved with- 
out further defacement than is necessary to 
make them easily accessible to the people ; 
and unless mining is prohibited in their im- 
medite neighborhood, and unless they can 
be strictly guarded against fires, their scen- 
ic value will be seriously impaired, As 


SCIENCE. 


899 


this protection can only be secured by 
the adoption of the rules and regulations 
similar to those which govern the national 
parks, we recommend the establishment of 
a Ranier national park and a Grand Can- 
yon national park. 


CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS. 


The Secretary of the Interior, in his let- 
ter of February 15, 1896, asked the Acad- 
emy whether “it is desirable and practica- 
ble to preserve from fire and to maintain 
permanently as forest lands those portions 
of the public domain now bearing wood 
growth for the supply of timber.”’ 

Your committee is of the opinion that it 
is not only desirable but essential to na- 
tional welfare to protect the forested lands 
of the public domain, for their influence on 
the flow of streams and to supply timber 
and other forest products ; and that it is 
practicable to reduce the number and re- 
strict the ravages of forest fires in the West- 
ern States and Territories, provided details 
from the Army of the United States are 
used for this purpose permanently, or until 
a body of trained forest guards or rangers 
can be organized. It does not believe 
that it is practicable or possible to pro- 
tect the forests on the public domain from 
fire and pillage with the present meth- 
ods and machinery of the government. 

In answer to the second question sub- 
mitted by the Secretary of the Interior, 
“ How far does the influence of forests upon 
climate, soil, and water conditions make 
desirable a policy of forest conservation in 
regions where the public domain is princi- 
pally situated ?’’ It is the opinion of your 
committee that, while forests probably do 
not increase the precipitation of moisture 
in any broad and general way, they are 
necessary to prevent destructive spring 
floods, and corresponding periods of low 
water in summer and autumn when the 
agriculture of a large part of western 


900 


North America is dependent upon irriga- 
tion. 

The answer to the third question, 
‘ What specific legislation should be en- 
acted to remedy the evils now confessedly 
existing?’ will be found in the series of 
proposed bills appended to this report. 
They present the following recommenda- 
tions : 

1. That the Secretary of War, upon the 
request of the Secretary of the Interior, 
shall be authorized and directed to make 
the necessary details of troops to protect 
the forests, timber and undergrowth on 
the public reservations, and in the national 
parks not otherwise protected under exist- 
ing laws, until a permanent forest bureau 
in the Department of the Interior has been 
authorized and thoroughly organized. 

2. That the Secretary of the Interior 
shall be authorized and directed to issue the 
necessary rules and regulations for the pro- 
tection, growth and improvement of the 
forests on the forest reserves of the United 
States; for the sale from them of timber, 
firewood and fencing to actual settlers on 
and adjacent to such reserves, and to the 
owners of mines legally located in them for 
use in such mines; for allowing actual set- 
tlers who have no timber on their own claims 
to take from the reserves firewood, posts, 
poles and fencing material necessary for 
their immediate personal use; for allowing 
the public to enter and cross the reserves ; 
for granting to county commissioners rights 
of way for wagon roads in and across the 
reserves; for granting rights of way for 
irrigating ditches, flumes and pipes, and 
for reservoir sites; for permitting pros- 
pectors to enter the reserves in search of 
valuable minerals; for opening the reserves 
to the location of mining claims under the 
general mineral laws; and for allowing the 
owners of unperfected claims or patents, 
and the land-grant railroads with lands 
located in the reserves, to exchange them 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 128. 


under equitable conditions for unreserved 
lands. 

3. That a bureau of public forests shall 
be established in the Department of the In- 
terior, composed of officers specially selected 
with reference to their character and attain- 
ments, holding office during efficiency and 
good behavior and liberally paid and pen- 
sioned. 

4. That a board of forest lands shall be 
appointed by the President to determine 
from actual topographical surveys to be 
made by the director of the Geological Sur- 
vey what portions of the public domain 
should be reserved permanently as forest 
lands and what portions, being more valu- 
able for agriculture or mining, should be 
open to sale and settlement. 

5. That all public lands of the United 
States more valuable for the production of 
timber than for agriculture or mining shall 
be withdrawn from sale, settlement and 
other disposition and held for the growth 
and sale of timber. 

6. That certain portions of the Rainier 
Forest Reserve in Washington and of the 
Grand Canyon Forest Reserve in Arizona 
shall be set aside and governed as national 
parks. 


THE AMERICAN PHYSIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 


Tue fourth special meeting of the Ameri- 
can Physiological Society was held in 
Washington, D. C., on May 4, 5 and 6, 
1897, in conjunction with the fourth Con- 
gress of American Physicians and Surgeons. 
The sessions were held at the Columbian 
University. The following communica- 
tions were presented and discussed : 


A new form of Gastric Cannula. W.T. Por- 
TER. 
Phlorhizin Diabetes in Dogs. G. LusK. 


The continued frequent administration 
of phlorhizin to dogs produces in them a 
form of diabetes in which, during starvation 
or meat nutrition, sugar is eliminated in the 


JUNE 11, 1897.] 


urine in the average proportion of 3.75 g. to 
every one gram of nitrogen. If we neglect 
the small quantity of nitrogen in the feces, 
this means that for every 6.25 g. of proteid 
destroyed in the body 3.75 g. of sugar may 
be obtained, or sixty per cent. of sugar from 
the proteid molecule. This sugar is com- 
pletely fermentable with yeast; it is only 
very slightly affected by boiling with 10% 
hydrochloric acid, and it rotates polarized 
light as does dextrose. If dextrose be fed 
to dogs suffering from this form of diabetes, 
it is almost quantitatively eliminated in the 
urine. If leyulose and galactose be fed, 
dextrose appears in increased quantity in 
the urine, but no levulose or galactose. The 
production of phlorhizin diabetes in starv- 
ing dogs may cause an increased proteid 
metabolism of four hundred and fifty per 
cent. 

Further Contributions to the Physiology of Deg- 

lutition. §. J. Mevrzer. 

Kronecker and Meltzer have advanced 
the view, on the basis of convincing experi- 
ments, that in the act of deglutition fluids 
and semi-solids are not carried down by 
peristalsis, but are rapidly squirted down 
the cesophagus by the rapid contraction 
especially of the mylohyoid muscles. After 
M. discovered the presence of the ‘ squirt- 
ing murmur’ opposite the cardia about 
six seconds after the beginning of degluti- 
tion, the authors supplemented their view 
by the assumption that the fluid remains 
above the cardia until it is carried into the 
stomach by the peristaltic wave. In sup- 
port of this latter view, which was contra- 
dicted by some writers, Meltzer reported 
some experimental observations. In rab- 
bits and dogs the cardiac aperture of the 
stomach was directly observed while the 
deglutition was going on, and it was found 
that the entire swallowed mass was carried 
into the stomach by peristalsis only. Fur- 
thermore, by the removal of a few ribs and 
by the introduction of a ‘speculum’ into 


SCIENCE. 


901 


various parts of the thorax the behavior 
of the entire thoracic cesophagus during 
deglutition could be satisfactorily scruti- 
nized. Meltzer summarizes his observa- 
tions as follows: During each act of deg- 
lutition liquid and air are rapidly squirted 
down into the cesophagus to a point about 
half way between the bifurcation of the 
trachea and the diaphragm and remain 
there until the peristaltic wave carries 
them down into the stomach. 

Movements of the Alimentary Canal. 

bowvpircn. 

This paper was a brief preliminary re- 
port upon the results of some experiments 
performed in the laboratory of the Harvard 
Medical School by Messrs. A. Moser and 
W. B. Cannon, medical students, on the 
movements of the alimentary canal as 
studied by means of the X-rays and a fluo- 
rescent screen. 

For this purpose moist bread, meat, mush 
or viscid fluids were mixed with subnitrate 
of bismuth. Food thus prepared is visible 
during the process of deglutition, and, if 
given in sufficient quantities, serves to out- 
line the stomach and to render its peris- 
taltic movements visible. Observations on 
a goose showed that a bolus of such food, 
swallowed without water, moved slowly 
and regularly down the cesophagus. There 
was no evidence of squirting. The move- 
ment was slower in the lower part of the 
neck. When water was given with the 
boluses the movement was irregular. 
Viscid fluids were swallowed in the same 
peristaltic way. 

Experiments with a cat showed that a 
bolus of meat moved down the cesophagus 
regularly with no interruption or shooting 
movement. In the neck and from the level 
of the apex of the heart to the stomach the 
rate was lower than in the intermediate 
region. When water was added, the bolus 
shot down at irregular intervals, but at the 
level of the apex of the heart the rate 


Vets Ie 


902 


always slackened and the bolus moved 
slowly into the stomach. Thin mush and 
viscid fluids were also carried down by 
peristalsis. Large boluses stopped in the 
lower half of the thorax with each expi- 
ration, and descended with each inspiration. 
The examination of a cat’s stomach filled 
with food mixed with subnitrate of bismuth 
showed the occurrence of a constriction at 
about the middle of the organ, which 
slowly moved towards the pylorus and was 
followed by other peristaltic waves at inter- 
vals of about ten seconds. The food thus 
pressed onward toward the pylorus did not 
pass into the duodenum, but returned 
apparently through the central portion of 
the organ, since the wave of constriction 
was never sufficient to obliterate the whole 
cavity. 

The Reaction of some Animal Fluids. 

CHITTENDEN. 

There is a general assumption on the 
part of physiologists that the alkaline re- 
action obtained with red litmus, in the case 
of many animal fluids, is due in great part 
to the presence of sodium carbonate. In 
many cases this assumption is quite erro- 
neous. Thus, a large number of examina- 
tions of fresh bile from many species of 
animals shows that the fluid never contains 
any sodium carbonate ; although alkaline 
to red litmus, the fluid is invariably acid 
toward phenolphthalein, 1 gram of bile re- 
quiring on an average 0.4 milligram NaOH 
to neutralize the free acid or acid salts pres- 
ent. With lacmoid, however, the reaction 
is invariably alkaline, thus showing the 
absence of free acids. The salts Na,HPO, 
and NaH,PO, undoubtedly play an im- 
portant part in determining the beha- 
vior of the bile toward different indica- 
tors. Asa rule, 5 e.c. of fresh ox bile re- 
quire 0.5 c.c. of =, normal NaOH solution 
to render the fluid neutral to phenolphtha- 
lein and about 3.0 c.c. of #5 normal HCl so- 
lution to make the fluid neutral to lacmoid. 


Rk. H. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 128. 


Human mixed saliva is likewise acid to 
phenolphthalein; on an average 5 ec.c. of 
filtered saliva require 0.6 c.c. of ~, normal 
NaOH solution to render the fluid neutral 
to phenolphthalein. ‘Toward most other 
indicators the fluid reacts alkaline, viz., 
with rosolic acid, litmus, lacmoid, congo 
red, alizarin, etc. 

The submaxillary saliva of the dog, how- 
ever, obtained on stimulation of the chorda 
tympani, is faintly alkaline to phenolphtha- 
lein, but 5 c.e. of the fluid generally require 
1.3 ¢.c. of {> normal HCl solution to render 
the fluid neutral to litmus and lacmoid. 
Succus entericus and pancreatic juice un- 
doubtedly owe their alkalinity in great part 
to the presence of sodium carbonate and 
bicarbonate. 

The Proteolytic Action of Papain. R. H. Curr- 

TENDEN. 

The results of some quantitative experi- 
ments made by Mr. McDermott, designed 
to throw light upon the relative peptone- 
forming power of papain, were reported. 
The following experiment with coagulated 
egg-albumen, in the presence of 0.25 per 
cent. Na,Co, and chloroform at 40°C., may 
serve as an illustration of the character of 
the results. 


24 hours 48 hours 
b e digestion. digestion. 
ao ee) 35.8 per cent...32.8 per cent. 
Neutralization precipitate 1.7 ‘‘ OO 
PLObOOSES .-.-c2.se.scceseeenee 26.7 2 py 
TREYHIO AES, ooognona095000000000 35.8 KY 42.0 ‘* 


Especially noticeable is the behavior of 
deutero-albumose as formed by papain, 
when injected into the blood of a dog, in 
the proportion of 0.5 gram albumose per 
kilo of body weight. Unlike the corre- 
sponding albumose formed in gastric diges- 
tion, this substance does not appear to 
affect blood pressure, neither is there any 
noticeable effect upon the temperature of 
the body. Coagulation of the blood, how- 
ever, is somewhat retarded, although not to 
the same extent as with ordinary deutero- 


JUNE 11, 1897.] 


albumose. Diuresis, on the other hand, 
is very marked and in fifty minutes after 
the injection of the albumose fully 50 per 
cent of the substance is found in the urine 
which rapidly accumulates in the bladder. 
‘On removing the albumose from the urine 
by saturation of the fluid with ammonium 
sulphate a strong reaction for true peptone 
can be obtained, thus showing that in the 
elimination of the albumose from the body 
a certain amount of the substance is trans- 
formed into peptone, presumably in the 
epithelial cells of the kidney. 

A Search for Pexin. J. W. WARREN. 

The presence of pexin, the milk curd- 
ling ferment (otherwise ‘labferment,’ or 
“rennin’) in the digestive apparatus of 
non-mammalian vertebrates has been fully 
demonstrated. In the Bryn Mawr labora- 
tory investigations have been made by 
various students which help to make more 
probable the opinion that there is no verte- 
brate in which the curdling ferment does 
not exist. A similar substance is known to 
occur in many plant juices and also in 
certain microorganisms. This wide distri- 
bution of such a peculiar material or ma- 
terials raises interesting questions as to its 
significance and also concerning the value 
of the clotting of milk as incidental to the 
digestive process. 

Does such a ferment exist among inverte- 
brates? Some little time ago the stomachs 
of a few lobsters were examined in the 
Bryn Mawr laboratory. Chloroform ex- 
tracts were prepared and were found to have 
no curdling action, nor were they made ac- 
tive by acidulation and subsequent neutrali- 
zation in the usual manner. When neutral- 
ized with calcium carbonate (which is pro- 
bably equivalent to the addition of soluble 
calcium compounds) the liquid acquired the 
power of clotting milk. Recently the ques- 
tion has been taken up again. . Fresh earth- 
‘worms were carefully washed, chopped into 
fine pieces and extracted by chloroform 


SCIENCE. 


903 


water. This infusion was inert, but became 
active after treatment which is known to 
transform the zymogen. In another series 
the digestive tract was isolated, opened and 
thoroughly washed, and then put into 
chloroform water. This extract could not 
be made to coagulate milk by any of the 
methods which are ordinarily successful for 
the demonstration of pexin or its forerunner, 
pexinogen. This divergence may be due to 
the accidental exhaustion of the glands in 
the second series, or perhaps to the pres- 
ence of bacteria in the contents of the diges- 
tive canal of the first lot of worms. Other 
less probable explanations might be given. 
The digestive apparatus of oysters and 
clams has also been examined in a prelimi- 
nary way, but thus far only with quite 


. negative result. 


Note upon the Physiological Ejfects of Injections 
of Extracts of the Hypophysis Cerebri. W. 
H. Hower. Read by title. 

Extracts were made of the glandular or 
anterior lobe of the hypophysis cerebri and 
the posterior or infundibular lobe, and the 
effects were tested separately by injections 
into the circulation of dogs under the in- 
fluence of various narcotics. Usually the 
extracts were made by rubbing up the por- 
tion used in a few drops of glycerine and 
diluting this mixture, after it had stood 
several hours, with a greater or less quan- 
tity of normal saline. It was found that 
extracts thus made of the glandular lobe 
have no distinct or constant effect on the 
circulatory organs, while the extracts of 
the infundibular lobe have a marked influ- 
ence on the heart rate and blood pressure. 
When the vagi were intact this effect con- 
sisted usually in a rise of pressure, followed 
quickly by a temporary fall during which 
the heart rate remained unchanged or 
showed some acceleration, and this was fol- 
lowed by very slow and powerful heart 
beats lasting from a few minutes to half an 
hour or more, during which the pressure 


904 


rose gradually to a maximum above the 
normal pressure and then declined more 
slowly. In these experiments the maximum 
rise of pressure varied from 20 to 60 mms. 
Hg. and the maximum reduction in pulse 
rate varied from 40 to 60 per cent. of the 
rate existing before the injection. When 
the vagi were cut, or the animal was atro- 
pinized, the injections caused a rise of pres- 
sure, fullowed in some cases by a temporary 
fall, and then a moregradual but pro- 
nounced rise, together with a slower and 
more powerful heart beat. Under these 
conditions the maximal rise of pressure 
varied from 50 to 90 mm. Hg., while the 
maximal slowing of the pulse ranged from 
17 to 35 per cent. of the rate before injec- 
tion. Animals deeply under ether alone 


behaved in this respect like animals with . 


the vagi cut. The slowing of the heart 
caused by extracts of the infundibular lobe 
seems, therefore, to be due in part to an 
effect upon the cardio-inhibitory center and 
in part to a peripheral effect, differing in 
this latter respect from suprarenal extracts. 
The effect upon the blood pressure seems to 
be due mainly to a peripheral effect, since 
it can be obtained readily in animals with 
the cord severed from the medulla and with 
part of the thoracic cord extirpated. As 
compared with extracts of the suprarenal 
bodies the effect of these extracts are char- 
acterized by their long duration, and the 
longer interval of time that must be allowed 
in order to obtain a similar effect from a 
second injection. 

A Contribution to the Physiology of the Supra- 

renal Capsules. G. P. DREYER. 

The most striking effects of the injection 
of extracts of the suprarenals into blood 
vessels are general vaso-constriction with 
rise of blood pressure, slowing of pulse 
with intact vagi, and acceleration of pulse 
with vagi cut or paralyzed by atropin. 
Is the active substance contained in such 
extracts a product of the normal activity of 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 128. 


the gland cells, 7. ¢., a true internal secretion,. 
or the result of post-mortem changes? If 
the former a greater amount of it would be 
contained in blood coming direct from the 
gland than in blood taken from some other 
systemic vein, and this increase might be 
detected by the effects produced by intra- 
venous injections of adrenal blood as com- 
pared with the effects of similar injections 
of blood from other veins. The author has. 
made a series of such experiments on ten 
anesthetized dogs. Femoral blood and 
adrenal blood were alternately injected into. 
the jugular vein in quantities ranging from 
5 ¢.c. to 40 ¢.c., either into the same animal 
from which it had been taken or into a 
fresh animal. In every case the adrenal 
blood gave an appreciable rise of pressure, 
in some cases exceeding 40 per cent., while 
the inhibition of the heart before section of 
the vagi, or the acceleration after atropine 
injection, were practically constant phe- 
nomena. The variation in the extent of 
the effects must probably be ascribed to 
differences in the secretory activity of the 
gland in the different dogs. Furthermore, 
in general, the effect was greater the 
slower the outflow, from the adrenal vein, 
and apparently greater when the injec- 
tion was into a dog other than the one 
yielding the adrenal blood. Blood from 
the femoral vein gave negative results. 

Gases of the Blood during Nitrous Oxide Anes- 

thesia. G. T. Kump. 

The author’s previous experiments have 
shown that when enough air or oxygen is 
mixed with nitrous oxide to keep an animal 
alive, anesthesia can be maintained for a 
considerable length of time without risk of 
life to the animal. When nitrous oxide is 
replaced by nitrogen, the anzesthesia passes 
off. This shows that nitrous oxide pos- 
sesses specific aneesthetizing properties not 
possessed by nitrogen. 

A more thorough knowledge of the con- 
dition of the system during nitrous oxide 


JUNE 11, 1897.] 


anesthesia has been obtained by drawing 
blood for analysis while the animal was 
connected with a kymograph and breathing 
N,O + air or N,O + pure oxygen. The 
analysis of the blood gases shows that even 
when the animal was so deeply anzesthe- 
tized as to endure stimulation of a sensory 
nerve without pain the blood contained 
enough oxygen to support life. The CO, in 
the blood was greatly diminished. The 
average amount of N,O in the blood during 
anesthesia was 28 vols. per cent. (gas at 
O° C. and 760 mm.). A study of the respira- 
tory exchange indicates that the metabo- 
lism was lowered and that the system 
adapted itself to the small amount of oxy- 
gen present in the inspired air. The theory 
frequently found in text-books that nitrous 
oxide anzsthetizes solely by asphyxia is 
erroneous, and the safety of nitrous oxide 
compared with chloroform or ether merits 
that nitrous oxide, properly mixed with 
oxygen, be given a wider trial even in major 
surgery. 

On the Production of Idioventricular Rhythm in 
the Mammalian Heart. A. R. CusHny. 
The method employed was the stimula- 

tion of the ventricle in the dog by single 
induction shocks at a definite point in the 
relaxation. Asa general rule the ventri- 
cular rhythm was accelerated, and both con- 
traction and relaxation became imperfect. 
Not infrequently, however, the ventricular 
systole was stronger during stimulation 
than before and afterwards, and this was 
explained as being due to the dislocation 
of the auriclo-ventricular rhythm. In the 
great majority of cases the auricle assumed 
the accelerated ventricular rhythm, and the 
auricular systole became remarkably weak. 
This weakness is due in part to the acceler- 
ation of the rhythm, in part to the fact that 
the auricle contracts while the ventricle is 
in full contraction and has, therefore, to 
work against much greater resistance than 
normally. 


SCIENCE. 


905 


The Cause of the Heart Beat. W.T. Porter. 

Any part of the dog’s ventricle, even the 
apical fourth, will contract rhythmically, 
when cut away from the remainder of the 
ventricle and fed with warmed, defibrinated 
dog’s blood through a cannula placed in the 
coronary artery ramifying in the extirpated 
part. Hence: (1) the cause of the rhythmic 
contraction of the ventricle lies within the 
ventricle itself ; (2) the cause of the rhyth- 
mic contraction is not in a single localized 
coordination center; (3) the coordination 
mechanism, whatever it may be, is present 
in all parts of the ventricle ; (4) the integ- 
rity of the whole ventricle is not essential 
to the coordinated contraction of a part 
of the ventricle ; (5) assuming the correct- 
ness of the general belief in the absence of 
nerve cells from the apical half of the ventri- 
cle, the rhythmic coordinated contraction of 
the ventricle is not dependent on nerve cells. 

A thin piece of the beating ventricle of 
the dog’s heart in situ in the living animal 
may be partly severed from the apical por- 
tion in such a way that the isolated piece 
remains attached to the remainder of the 
ventricle only by its nutrient vessels, all 
muscular connections being cut. The heart 
and the isolated piece continue to contract. 
On slowing the heart by vagus excitation, 
the rhythmical contractions of the isolated 
piece may be watched without difficulty. 
Their rhythm then differs from that of the 
remainder of the heart. It follows that the 
rhythmic contractions of the isolated mam- 
malian apex are not due to changes in the 
blood during its defibrination. 

The Recovery of the Mammalian Heart from 
Fibrillary Contractions. W.'T. Porrer. 
Recovery of the dog’s heart, or of any 

isolated part of it, from strong fibrillation 
produced either by electrical stimulation, 
mechanical insult, or sudden deprivation 
of blood supply, is secured by feeding the 
part with defibrinated dog’s blood through 
its coronary artery. 


906 


On the Relation between the Beat of the Ven- 
tricle and the Flow of Blood through the 
Coronary Arteries. W. 'T. PoRTER. 
When an isolated piece of dog’s or cat’s 

ventricle is fed through the coronary artery, 

the flow from the veins is seen to be greater 
during systole than during diastole. In an 

extirpated heart, supplied with blood at a 

constant pressure through the coronary 

arteries, a pulse synchronous with the sys- 
tole may be observed in the superficial 
auricular veins before and after their con- 
nection with the coronary sinus is severed. 

A similar but less marked pulse can be 

demonstrated in the coronary arteries. 

When a vein on the surface of a dog’s ven- 

tricle in situ in the living animal is in- 

cised, and the heart slowed by vagus exci- 
tation, the flow from the cut vein is much 
increased during ventricular systole. These 
observations show that the contraction of 
the cardiac muscle compresses the veins, 
and to a less extent the arteries, in the 
substance of the heart. The systole must, 
therefore, facilitate the circulation through 
the heart muscle. The minimum manom- 
eter fails to show a negative pressure in 
the coronary arteries. The ventricle acts 
on the coronary circulation as a force 
pump, and not, to any noticeable extent, as 

a suction pump. 

The Circulation through the Vessels of Thebesius. 
W. TT. Porter (for F. H. Pratt). 

In nearly all experiments the freshly ex- 
cised heart of the cat has been used. The 
auricles are tied off from the ventricles, and 
both coronary arteries ligated. <A large 
cannula is introduced into the right ventri- 
cle through the pulmonary artery and 
secured by a ligature. This cannula is 
now supported vertically, so that the heart 
shall hang from its lower end, and defibri- 
nated blood poured in from the top, so as 
to fill the ventricle and rise in the cannula 
to a height of several inches. The ventri- 
cle distends, and all the coronary veins be- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Voz. V. No. 128. 


come filled with blood; the coronary ar- 
teries remain empty. The ventricle begins 
to contract rhythmically, slowly at first, 
but gradually attaining the normal rate. 
Suspending the heart in warm normal 
saline solution facilitates the action. The 
blood within the ventricle and in the veins 
becomes venous, and, if contractions are to 
be sustained, must periodically be renewed. 
If a vein is opened, a small but steady out- 
flow of blood occurs. Increasing the load 
beyond that furnished by a blood column of 
four or five inches lowers the force of con- 
traction. Contractile activity may be kept 
up by this method for some time. Hight 
hours after excision is the maximum dura- 
tion so far obtained, and in this case the 
ventricle was still active when left. 

The experiments above described indi- 
cate plainly a nutritive phenomenon ; the 
blood becomes reduced, and must be re- 
newed in order to sustain contraction. 
That the contractions are not due to mere 
mechanical stimulus is proved by the fact 
that Ringer’s solution fails to carry on the 
process. A genuine circulation exists be- 
tween the ventricular cavity and the coro- 
nary veins through the vessels of Thebesius. 
The possibility of a nutrition from the ven- 
tricles direct may serve to explain some 
cases in which thrombosis or other stop- 
page of the coronary arteries has failed to 
destroy the normal activity of the heart. 
This method of nutrition bears a strong re- 
semblance to that found in the frog. 

The Innervation of the Heart of the Opossum 
(Didelphys virginiana). Rerp Hunt (with 
D. W. Harrineton). Read by title. 
(1) Vagus. Standstill of the heart is 

easily produced by stimulation of the peri- 

pheral end of the vagus; the duration of 
the standstill is greater than that usually 
observed in other mammals. The heart 
beats slowly for some time after the cessa- 
tion of the stimulus, 7. e., there is a long 
after-effect. By continuous weak stimula- 


JUNE 11, 1897.] 


tion of the vagus the heart can be kept 
beating at a remarkably slow rate for some 
time and yet the blood pressure remain 
near or even rise above the normal. 

(2) Depressor. In most cases there is a 
separate depressor nerve; it is usually 
formed by two roots, one from the superior 
laryngeal nerve, and the other from the 
ganglion of the trunk of the vagus. Stimu- 
lation of this nerve gives results entirely 
similar to those observed in the rabbit, viz., 
fall of blood pressure and a reflex slowing 
of the heart. 

(3) Accelerator nerve. The anatomical re- 
lations of these nerves resemble in general 
those found on the dog ; stimulation of them 
causes marked increase in the heart rate 
and very frequently irregularity of the 
ventricles from their failure to follow all the 
~ auricular beats. Stimulation of the ac- 
celerators while the heart is being slowed 
by stimulation of the vagus causes an in- 
crease in the heart rate. 

Some Experiments on the Lobster’s Heart. Rerp 

Hunt. Read by title. 

I. Some General Properties of the Cardiac 
Muscle of the Lobster (with Messrs. Book- 
man and Tierny). 1. The latent period 
caused by electrical stimulation is very 
short, varying according to the condition 
of the heart from #; to =}, of a second. 
2. The heart responds to stimulation dur- 
ing every phase of a contraction, whether 
this is spontaneous or has been caused by 
previous stimulation, 7. e., there is no re- 
fractory period (the latent period, however, 
was not investigated as to this point). 3. 
A true summation of contractions is easily 
produced; one contraction can be super- 
imposed upon another until the resulting 
contraction is many times higher than 
any single (maximal) contraction. 4. Com- 
plete tetanus is readily produced, as has 
been observed by Howell for the crab’s 
heart ; the number of stimuli necessary to 
produce it varies greatly according to the 


SCIENCE. 


907 


condition of the heart, 4 to 6 per second 
being sufficient as a rule. 5. The height 
of the contraction varies (up to a maxi- 
mum) with the strength of the stimulus, 
t. €., the ‘all or nothing’ law does not hold. 

Il. The Effect of Changes of Temperature 
upon the Lobster’s Heart (with Messrs. 
Lyman and Williams). Most of the re- 
sults were obtained with hearts removed 
from the body and placed in the lobster’s 
defibrinated blood ; the temperature of the 
blood could be altered as desired. The 
force and frequency of the beat increased 
as the temperature was lowered from that 
of the room (18° C.) toabout 13° C., which 
seemed to be, as a rule, the optimum tem- 
perature for hearts in the body as well as 
for the isolated ones. As the tempera- 
ture was lowered still farther, the beats 
became more rapid but feebler; the tem- 
perature was not carried below 2° C., but 
the heart beat well at this temperature. 
When the temperature was raised above 
the optimum, the beats became fewer and 
irregular and the heart went into heat 
standstill ata remarkably low temperature ; 
upon cooling it beat again, unless it had 
been exposed to a too high temperature. 
The temperature at which a standstill 
occurred varied according to the condi- 
tion of the heart; previous cooling and 
long exposure caused it to occur at very 
low temperatures. The heart was never 
observed to beat above 22° C., although 
it responded to electrical stimulation up 
to 27°. The crab’s heart goes into stand- 
still at a much higher temperature (45- 
50° C.). Sudden changes of temperature 
caused a temporary acceleration. A moder- 
ate degree of tension on the heart caused a 
much more rapid beat. 
The Innervation of the Heart of the Guinea Pig. 

D. W. Harrincron. 

In the guinea pig the average blood pres- 
sure in the carotid artery is 78.25 mm. of 
mercury ; the average rate of heart beat, 


908 


200 per minute; the average number of 
respirations at a temperature of 68° F., 72. 
Both vagus nerves are inhibitory and ap- 
parently equally so. They do not seem to 
be in a state of tonic activity. Stimulation 
of the central end of one vagus gives the 
usual slight fall of blood pressure, with 
slowing of the heart if the other nerve be 
intact. Stimulation of the peripheral eud 
gives different results in different seasons 
of the year. In the fall and early winter 
months vagus excitation results in a gradual 
and moderate slowing but never stoppage 
of the heart, a gradual and moderate fall 
of blood pressure, and on cessation of stim- 
ulation a gradual return to the normal 
rate and blood pressure. In the late 
winter and spring months even with weak 
stimulation the heart is easily and sud- 
denly stopped and held at a standstill; 
the fall of blood pressure is sudden and 
marked; the rise of pressure is generally 
sudden and often far above the normal, with 
a following gradual fall below the normal 
level. The tracings show considerable 
irregularity. A marked depression in the 
vitality of the animals was noticed at this 
time, which seems to be associated with the 
seasons and to be of practical importance, 
in view of the fact that guinea pigs are 
used so largely in experimental pathology. 
The heart ‘escapes’ quickly from vagus 
stimulation, but, on the whole, the latter 
seems to be deleterious to cardiac action, 
leaving the heart weaker and the blood 
pressure lower than normal. After escape 
from one vagus has commenced, stimula- 
tion of the other usually brings the heart 
to a standstill a second time. There is 
some evidence that in the guinea pig there 
is a separate depressor nerve, but further 
work is necessary to make it conclusive. 
Ending of Sensory Nerves in the Viscera with 
special reference to such Endings in the Blad- 
der. (Demonstration.) G. Cart Huser. 
Gaskell, Langley and Edgeworth have 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 128. 


described large medullated fibres in the 

sympathetic system. These large fibres no 

doubt come from the spinal and other sen- 
sory ganglia. Kodlliker suggests that some 
of these fibres are destined to supply the 

Pacinian corpuscles. The author has found 

that the bladder of the frog is a most suita- 

ble object for studying the free ending of 
such sensory fibres. Large medullated 
fibres, which could often be traced through 
several small sympathetic ganglia, found 
in the wall of the bladder, could then be 
followed through their several branchings 
until their terminal branches found between 
the epithelial cells lining the bladder were 
reached. A single nerve fibre was found 

to innervate an area of about +.sq. mm. 

These endings resemble very closely the 

free sensory endings described for the mouth 

and skin. 

The preparations were stained in methy- 
lene blue and fixed in a solution of ammo- 
nium picrate. They were then cleared in 
a mixture of glycerine and ammonium 
picrate, in which solution they were 
mounted. 

Endings of Sensory and Motor Nerves in the 
‘Muscle Spindles’ of Voluntary Muscle with 
demonstration of preparations. G.C. HUBER 
(with Mrs. Dr Wirt). 

In 1860 Weismann described in embry- 
onic striated muscle peculiar fibres with a 
large number of nuclei. Similar structures 
have been found widespread in vertebrate 
muscle and have been called ‘ muscle spin- 
dles.’ Their nature has been variously re- 
garded. They contain muscle fibres within 
a capsule and both motor and sensory 
nerves go to them. 

The author has studied them in the frog, 
snake, cat, dog, rabbit, rat and guinea pig. 
The nerve fibres and endings were stained 
in methylene blue. They were then cleared 
in ammonium picrate and glycerine for 
teasing, or were cut into sections and dou- 
ble stained with alum carminé to bring out. 


JUNE 11, 1897. ] 


the muscle fibres and capsule. In well- 
stained preparations the complexity of the 
nerve ending is too great for description 
here. It may, however, be stated that 
large medullated fibres (sensory), which 
supply these structures, divide often into 
several branches before reaching the spin- 
dle. Within the spindle they lose their 
medullary sheath and terminate in band- 
like structures which are wound around the 
muscle fibres of the spindles, usually mak- 
ing a few turns before ending on these 
fibres. Motor endings also occur on the 
spindle fibres, more often in the terminal 
portion of the spindle. 

It may be suggested that, owing to the 
spiral arrangement of the terminations of 
the nerve fibres going to the spindle, the 
simple contraction of the muscle fibres of 
the spindle and their consequent enlarge- 
ment might stimulate the nerve fibres. 

The Protagon of the Brain. R. H. Currren- 

DEN. 

The author reported a series of results 
obtained by Mr. Frissell in a study of prota- 
gon. The total amount of phosphorus in 
sheep’s brain by direct determination was 
found to be 1.664 per cent. calculated on 
the dry solid matter of the tissue. Of this 
amount 0.234 per cent. existed as protagon; 
1.143 per cent. as lecithin or other like 
soluble bodies; and 0.213 per cent. in the 
form of nucleo-proteids, nuclein and inor- 
ganic salts. The results seemingly indicate 
that protagon contains but a small propor- 
tion of the total phosphorus of the brain 
and that other phosphorized organic bodies, 
such asthe lecithins, are present, preformed 
in the tissue, in relatively large proportion. 
Tf we assume that all of the alcohol-soluble 
phosphorus of the brain, aside from the 
protagon, exists in the form of lecithins, 
we have 72 per cent. of the total phosphorus 
of the tissue present as lecithin, with only 
15 per cent as protagon and 13-14 per cent. 
as nucleo-proteids and inorganic salts. Now 


SCIENCE. 


909 


protagon contains approximately 1 per cent. 
of phosphorus, while distearyl lecithin con- 
tains 4.13 per cent. of phosphorus; hence on 
the basis of the above figures the dry solid 
matter of the brain contains as much or 
even more lecithin than protagon. 

A large number of samples of pure prota- 
gon prepared from the brains of oxen, sheep 
and calves showed an average content of 
phosphorus of 1.12 per cent, thus agreeing 
closely with Rappel’s results. Careful study 
of these samples showed that, contrary to 
previous statements, protagon tends to un- 
dergo cleavage by long-continued heating 
at 45°C. in 85 per cent. alcohol, a certain 
amount of an alcohol-soluble (at 0° C.) 
body richer in phosphorus than protagon, 
being split off while the residual protagon 
obtained by recrystallization at 0° C. con- 
tained a somewhat diminished percentage 
of phosphorus. In other words, the sta- 
bility of protagon is not quite as great in 
85 per cent. alcohol as is generally stated. 
On the other hand, the lability of protagon 
is not sufficiently great to account for all of 
the lecithins or other soluble phosphorized 
principles found in fresh brain tissue. Ob- 
viously these results do not furnish any 
evidence as to whether the lecithin or other 
phosphorized bodies found in the fresh 
brain tissue originate directly or indirectly 
from the metabolism or cleavage of protagon 
during the life of the tissue. 

An Ergometer. J. McKren CarteE.u. 

The instrument exhibited was a dyna- 
mometer made to write on a kymograph. 
The maximum pressure of the thumb and 
forefinger or the movement of a single 
finger could thus be registered, and a series 
of movements showing fatigue could be 
recorded. The curves give the actual 
amount of work done, the height of the 
curves being proportional to the pressure in 
kilograms. The instrument was compared 
with Mosso’s ergograph, and curves were 
shown in which the movements made in 


910 


lifting a weight and in extending a spring 
were simultaneously recorded. It was evi- 
dent that the ergograph curves did not give 
a correct measure of fatigue, and of course 
gave no record when the weight was not 
lifted, whereas the ergometer curves meas- 
ured more nearly the actual course of 
fatigue. The instrument is being used in 
the psychological laboratory of Columbia 
University to study fatigue and the effects 
of sensations and emotions on movements. 
The Form of the Muscle Curve. F.S. LEn. 

Under the author’s direction the curve of 
contraction has been studied with improved 
apparatus in the muscles of the turtle, by 
Messrs. Furman and Turnure, and in the 
muscles of the frog, by Messrs. Beer and 
Gould. In the turtle the curves of dif- 
ferent muscles differ greatly in form and 
time relations. The period of shortening 
is from two to five times that of the frog’s 
gastrocnemius. A feature of interest is the 
enormous length of the period of lengthening 
which, ¢. g., in the pectoralis major, may 
amount to fifteen seconds or three hundred 
times the period of the frog’s gastrocnemius. 
With the present tendency to consider 
muscular relaxation an active rather than 
a passive phenomenon, this whole period of 
lengthening must be taken account of in 
determining the time relations of the mus- 
cular contraction. The turtle’s muscles 
respond more readily to the make of an in- 
duction current than to the break, thus dif- 
fering from those of the frog, and evidently 
possessing less irritability than the latter. 
This fact, as well as that of the very long 
curve- of contraction, is in harmony with 
the sluggish movements of the animal. 

In the frog the curves of different mus- 
cles thus far studied resemble one another 
in form and time relations much more 
closely. Some muscles seem to show a 
physiological resemblance to those of the 
turtle in having a prolonged period of re- 
laxation. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 128. 


The Nerve Impulse in its Relations to the 
Strength of the External Stimulus. COC. W. 
GREENE. 

The electric current which occurs in an 
isolated living nerve when a nerve impulse: 
passes along its course may now be consid- 
ered asa qualitative and quantitative meas- 
ure of nerve physiology. The auther has. 
reinvestigated and extended Waller’s re- 
sults on this action current. Isolated 
nerves of frogs, turtles, cats and dogs, five 
to six centimeters long, were placed across. 
stimulating and leading-off non-polarizable 
electrodes in a moistchamber. The faradic 
stimulating current was measured by an 
electro-dynamometer and the action cur- 
rent by a delicate Rowland galvanometer. 
(1) With equal increments of increase in. 
stimulus above that necessary to produce a. 
minimal deflection to a strength necessary 
to produce a maximal muscle effect there is. 
a very rapid increase of action current and 
by equal increments. (2) With further 
increase in stimulus there is in the action 
current a continued strong increase, at first 
by equal but later by diminishing incre- 
ments. If the results be plotted, the 
stimuli being placed along the abscissa and 
the successive action currents erected as 
ordinates, the curve here shows a concavity. 
toward the abscissa. (3) With still stronger 
stimuli, to tenfold and more, there is only 
a slight further increase in action current 
and by equal proportional increments. This. 
limb of the curve is important in its bear- 
ing on the nature of the nerve impulse. 
Some Observations in a Case of Human Pancre- 

atic Fistula. EF. PFAFR. 

The subject of the observation was a. 
male patient in the City Hospital of Bos- 
ton. Dr. H. W. Cushing had operated on 
the patient for an abdominal tumor. Asa 
result of the operation a fistula formed, 
through which a clear watery fluid was 
secreted. This fluid had an alkaline re- 
action, digested proteids with formation of 


JUNE 11, 1897.] 


peptone, transformed starch into sugar, and 
split neutral fat into fatty acid and glycer- 
ine, thus proving to be pancreatic fluid. 
The flow of this pancreatic secretion was 
observed during 48 consecutive hours. The 
quantities collected each hour were meas- 
ured and the amount of solids and ash de- 
termined in each sample. The quantities 
secreted each hour were represented in a 
curve. This curve showed a striking re- 
semblance to the curve representing the 
flow of bile, observed in a case of biliary 
fistula, which was reported by Dr. Pfaff at 
the last Christmas meeting of the Society. 
The total quantity of pancreatic fluid col- 
lected during 24 hours was much larger 
than is generally admitted for human 
beings. Some observations were also made 
on the composition of the urine and the 
feeces during the time that the fistula was 
patent. 
a-Methyl-quinoline as a Constituent of the Secre- 
tion of the Anal Glands of Mephitis Mephitica. 
T. B. AtpRicH (with WALTER JONES). 
In a paper published recently by the 
author it was stated that the secretion of 
the skunk, Mephitis mephitica, can be sharply 
separated by distillation into two ap- 
proximately equal portions, and the more 
volatile portion was shown to be a mix- 
ture of merecaptans. From the portion of 
higher boiling point the authors have since 
succeeded in isolating a compound which 
can easily be identified as c-methyl-quino- 
line. The method of isolation is as follows : 
The higher boiling fraction of the original 
secretion is shaken several times with a 50 
per cent. solution of caustic potash and 
then washed with water until all the alkali 
is removed. The product thus freed from 
all traces of mercaptans is extracted with 
several portions of very dilute hydrochloric 
acid, and the united acid extracts are evap- 
orated to dryness on a water bath. The 
residue is taken up in a little water that 
has been acidified with hydrochloric acid, 


SCIENCE. 


911 


and is treated with a solution of zine chlor- 
ide, when a finely crystalline precipitate of 
the zine chloride addition product with the 
base is formed, which can be purified by 
crystallization from water. This compound 
is decomposed with an excess of sodium 
hydroxide, and the base thus liberated is 
distilled with steam. The distillate is ex- 
tracted with ether and the ether is allowed 
to evaporate. There remains a practically 
colorless, highly refracting oil whose physi- 
eal properties accord with those of z-methyl- 
quinoline. Two portions of the oil were 
dissolved in hydrochloric acid and treated, 
one with platinum chloride and the other 
with gold chloride. In each instance a 
beautifully crystalline precipitate was ob- 
tained, which on complete analysis gave re- 
sults which show the base to be correctly 
represented by the formula C,,H,N. The 
composition of the double compounds are 
in accordance with the formulas (C,,H,N.- 
HCl), PtCl, and C,,H,N.HCl.AuCl,. 

A compound having the properties and 
composition of this base could only be one 
of the methyl-quinolines and, as only one 
of these isomeric substances forms an an- 
hydrous double compound with platinum 
chloride, the identity of the natural base 
seems to be determined. This conclusion 
was confirmed by comparison of the base 
with artificially prepared «-methyl-quino- 
line. 

Upon the afternoon of Wednesday, May 
5th, in the National Theatre, the Society 
joined with the Association of American 
Physicians and the American Pediatric 
Society in a public discussion before the 
Medical Congress. The subject of the dis- 
cussion was ‘ Internal secretions considered 
in their physiological, pathological and 
chemical aspects.’ The Society was repre- 
sented by two speakers: a paper by Pro- 
fessor W. H. Howell upon ‘The General 
Physiology of Internal Secretions’ was read 
by the Secretary in the absence of Professor 


912 


Howell because of illness; and Professor 
R. H. Chittenden read a paper upon ‘ In- 
ternal Secretions: Considered from a 
Chemico-physiological Standpoint.’ 
These addresses will appear in an early 
number of SCIENCE. 
Freperic §. Lr, 


Secretary. 
CoLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. 


THE INTRODUCTION OF NEW TERMS IN 
GEOLOGY. 

TuE third circular sent out this year by 
the Committee of the International Con- 
gress of Geologists makes this statement : 
““T? inondation de nowveaux termes dans le 
science a atteint de telles dimensions, que bientét 
aucune mémoire d’homme ne sera en état de 
retenir toute la masse des dénominations nou- 
velles et que la lecture de chaque mémoire néces- 
sitera Vemploi d’un glossaire special.”” In an- 
other paragraph new terms are spoken of as 
“evidently nothing more than a useless in- 
cumbrance to the science.’ 

Writers on scientific subjects have often 
heard complaints about their ‘ hard words,’ 
but these complaints have generally come 
from laymen ; we have not before had an 
uprising in our own ranks. In our opinion 
it has come none too soon. One can 
scarcely read a paper on geology nowadays 
without feeling thankful for what is not in 
it, if he reaches the end without running 
upon some new term or some new use of an 
old one. Indeed, we lately saw a review 
of a text-book which the writer ended with 
the remark that not the least of the book’s 
many virtues was the fact that the author 
had avoided the introduction of new terms. 

We Americans have contributed our 
big share to this ‘inundation,’ and have 
aggravated the case by the use of Indian 
words and place-names that are not fa- 
miliar even in this country except locally. 
In order to get an idea as to how far some 
of these words are comprehended by the 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 128 


common run of educated people in this 
country, we have inquired of many persons 
what idea the word ‘ Monadnock’ conveyed 
to their minds. Most of them had seen 
the word, but knew nothing of its original 
meaning. One young man said he didn’t 
know what it meant, but it was the name 
of a big office building in Chicago. Another 
one knew it only as a warship in the 
American Navy. 

Such names are said to be used on ac- 
count of their fastening in the mind certain 
series of facts. But where is this thing to 
end? We now have a bare hill protruding 
from the ice called a ‘Nunatak,’ and if one 
of our term-makers should visit Iceland we 
should soon have ‘ Jékul,’ the name for a 
snow-capped peak. 

A hill with one history is a ‘ Monadnock,’ 
with another it is a ‘ Cotoctin,’ and with 
another it isa ‘Katahdin.’ For as good 
reason we might call a synclinal valley a 
‘Lackawanna,’ a synclinal mountain a 
‘Shickshinny,’ a monoclinal ridge a ‘ Pin- 
damonhangaba,’ and an anticlinal ridge a 
‘ Jacarepagua.’ And when the bewildered 
European geologist doesn’t know what they 
all mean we act the part of one of Bret 
Harte’s characters who inquired of the man 
who hadn’t heard of his partner : 

What? ‘‘Didn’t know Flynn, 
Flynn of Virginia ? 
Look ’ee here, stranger, 
Whar hev you been ?”’ 

New terms are often defended on the 
ground of their being logical. A little 
thought will convince any one that geology 
—not an exact science—can never have a 
logical and precise system of terms. Be- 
sides, the logic of the names of rocks, min- 
erals and releaf features has nothing to do 
with the science of geology as a science, 
while the fixity of a nomenclature is of 
much more importance than any logic or 
special fitness of the words themselves. 

Names are mere conveniences—museum 


JUNE 11, 1897.] 


tags—that may be changed or taken away 
entirely without destroying the value or 
changing the nature of the thing. It is the 
thing itself that is important, not its name. 

Sometimes the desire for innovations, 
when it can find no other changes to make, 
gives an old term a new meaning or substi- 
tutes a high-sounding word for a simple 
one. Occasionally these terms are poured 
fourth in such quantities that it looks as 
though their author had certainly invented 
a new science. Surely nothing can be 
more out of place than this cluttering up of 
scientific literature with verbiage that calls 
attention away from the subject under dis- 
cussion. ; 

Those who have done most for the spread 
of the knowledge of science have used the 
simplest language and, just so far as possi- 
ble, have avoided technicalities. They 
have gone on the principle that what one 
has to say should be so said as to be under- 
stood by as many readers as possible, espe- 
cially if the simplicity of the language 
makes clear rather than obscures the mean- 
ing. 

It is earnestly to be hoped that the more 
sober-minded of our geologists, educational 
institutions and scientific societies will dis- 
courage the use of new terms when they 
are not absolutely necessary. 

Since the above was written we have 
seen Dr. C. Hart Merriam’s timely article 
in Science (May 7, 1897, p. 731) upon a 
‘useless and formidable,’ ‘ disheartening 
and ever increasing mass of terminology.’ 
We beg to commend it to geologists. 

Joun C. BRANNER. 

STANFORD UNIVERSITY, CALIF., May 15, 1897. 


CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 
SYSTEMATIC ANTHROPOLOGY. 
ScuEmeEs, systems, plans, are of value in 
sciences as both indicating the directions in 
which investigations should be pursued and 
the convenient arrangements of ascertained 


SCIENCE. 


913 


facts. Like definitions of scientific terms, 

they are only provisional, suited to the pres- 

ent sum of knowledge, but are none the less 
useful for that. 

In the last number of the ‘ Centralblatt 
fir Anthropologie’ (Heft. 2, 1897) the 
well-known writer, Dr. Emil Schmidt, of 
Leipzig, proposes the following comprehen- 
sive scheme : 

Anthropology, the Study of the Human Species. 

I. Natural Historical Treatment. 

A. Physical Anthropology. 

a. Man as a zoological species. 
b. The Races of Men. 
1. Descriptive treatment, Phylography. 
2. Investigation of physical principles, Phy- 
lology. 
B. Ethnic Anthropology. 
a. Descriptions of Peoples, Ethnography. 
b. Investigation of psychical principles, Eth- 
nology. 

II. Historical Anthropology or Prehistory ; investi- 
gation of the earlier and lower stages of 
humanity. 

The neologisms, phylology and phylog- 
raphy he introduces from %j7, which he 
explains as the physical, while £0vos is the 
social and psychical group. His objections 
to previous schemes are also stated. 

ABORIGINAL CULTIVATION OF MAIZE. 


AGRICULTURE in primitive America is the 
more important as a cultural stage owing 
to the total absence of the pastoral life. 
Maize was usually the principal cultivated 
plant, and for that reason a study by Mr. 
Gardner P. Stickney on its use by the Wis- 
consin Indians (Parkman Club Publica- 
tions, No. 13) merits especial attention. It 
is the result of close reading of the old 
authors and of local investigation. His 
conclusions are that the Wisconsin Indians 
raised it in large quantities, enough for 
their own wants, and an excess, which they 
used in trade; while even those tribes in 
the area of the State who dwelt so far north 
that it was an uncertain crop gave consid- 
able attention to it, and sometimes raised 
it in abundant fields. These tribes belonged 


914 


to the widespread Dakotan and Algonquian 
stocks, and thus we find the aborigines 
carrying the culture of this noted tropical 
plant up to the northernmost limits of its 
possible propagation. 


THE GROOVED STONE AXE. 


THE statement is occasionally made in 
lectures and articles on the American 
aboriginal stone industry that the grooved 
and polished axe, so common in our collec- 
tions, is an artefact peculiar to our conti- 
nent. 

It is true that in its special shape it is 
rare in European collections. They have 
the grooved maul or pounder, but not often 
the polished axe with the groove running 
round near the butt and with a sharpened 
edge. A fine example, however, from south- 
ern Italy, is described and figured by Dr. 
Schoetensack in the ‘Zeitschrift fur Eth- 
nologie’ (Heft I., p.9,1897). That it was 
of local origin was proved by the kind of 
stone of which it was made. He refers to 
its similarity to American specimens, and 
quotes other instances where they have 
been found in the Old World. This is 
but another example where the artificial 
products of early man reveal striking simi- 
larities in all continents. 

D. G. Brinton. 

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


NOTES ON INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 

In the last proceedings of the Chemical 
Society (London), A. HE. Munby describes 
a Bunsen burner for acetylene which has 
proved very satisfactory in his hands. The 
tube is only five millimeters in diameter, or 
a slightly wider tube may be used, provided 
the mouth be curved inwards. With a 
larger opening there is a tendency for the 
flame to strike down. The gas jet is very 
small, delivering only one foot of acetylene 
per hour, under six inches of water pressure. 
The air holes must be large, and with suffi- 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 128. 


cient air a non-luminous flame is given. 
The heating effect of the acetylene gas is 
large, and seems to be about twice that of 
coal gas. Mr. Munby suggests that the use 
of such a convenient source of heat should 
do much to stimulate research in country 
places, where, coal gas not being procurable,. 
heretofore no good source of heat was. 
available. 


In the same number Heycock and Ne- 
ville, who have done so much to further 
our knowledge of alloys, describe the study 
of the sodium-gold alloys with the X-rays. 
Sodium is much more transparent to the 
rays than gold, and X-ray photographs of 
thin sections of the alloy show its crystal- 
line structure very clearly. The authors 
point out that other alloys may be similarly 
studied, and are at present engaged of 
those of aluminum. It is possible that by 
this method our knowledge of alloys may 
be materially extended. 


In a graduating thesis at Washington and 
Lee University, Mr. J. R. K. Cowan takes 
up the question of the presence of tin in 
canned goods, and his results confirm those: 
of previous investigators along this line. 
He finds tin present in every can examined, 
including tomatoes, peaches, apricots and 
sweet potatoes, in quantities of from 60 to 150: 
miligrams per kilo. Granting that this tin is 
present in a form which can be acted upon in 
the human system, and considering the large 
consumption of canned goods, it seems to. 
follow that tin is less toxic than has been 
supposed and that it cannot be a cumulative 
poison. The maximum dose of tin is given 
as half a grain of chlorid, but the amount, 
of tin corresponding to this might often be 
taken into the system during a single meal. 
Very few cases of supposed tin poisoning 
from eating canned goods have been re- 
ported, and it is probable there is little 
danger from this source. In no instance 
did Mr. Cowan detect the presence of lead. 


JUNE 11, 1897.] 


In the last Chemical News Delafontaine 
gives an account of further researches on 
the more deeply colored of the rare earths. 
This recent work was with Fergusonite 
from Bluffton, Texas, and he confirms the 
existence of the element philippium, dis- 
covered by him nearly twenty years ago, 
but whose independent existence as an ele- 
ment has been questioned by Roscoe and 
other observers. It is more closely related 
to terbium and cesium than to other rare 
earths, but is distinguished from both by 
marked reactions and the deep color of its 
oxid and subnitrate. 

Ve, Ibis ll. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 


THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCE- 
MENT OF SCIENCE. 


THE officers of sections at the Toronto meet- 
ing have now been selected, although others 
may subsequently beadded to the list. Allthe 
officers expect to attend the meeting and Ameri- 
can men of science who are able to be present 
will thus have the privilege of meeting many of 
the leaders in science of Great Britain. The 
officers are as follows : 


A.—MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 


President, Prof. A. R. Forsyth, M.A., D.Sc., F.R.S. 
Vice-Presidents, R. T. Glazebrook, M.A., F.R.S.; 
Prof. A. Johnson. M.A., LLD. ; Prof. O. J. 
Lodge, D.Sc., F.R.S. 

Secretaries, J. C. Glashan ; Prof. W. H. Heaton, M.A. 
(Recorder) ; J. L. Howard, D.Se. ; Prof. J. 

G. McGregor, D.Sc., F.R.S.E. 


B.—CHEMISTRY. 


President, Prof. W. Ramsay, Ph.D., F.R.S. 
Vice-Presidents, Prot. H. B. Dixon, M.A., F.R.S.; W. 
R. Dunstan, M.A., F.R.S.; Prof. B. J. Harring- 
ton, Ph.D., F.G.S.; Prof. W. H. Pike, M.A., 
Ph.D. ; Prof. W. C. Roberts-Austen,C.B., 
F.R.S.; T. E. Thorpe, Ph.D., F.R.S. 
Secretaries. Prof. W. H. Ellis, M.A., M.B. ; Arthur 
Harden, Ph.D., M.Se. (Recorder) ; C. H. 
Kohn, Ph.D. ; Prof. R. F. Ruttan. 
C.—GEOLOGY. 

President, Dr. G. M. Dawson, C.M.G., F.R.S., F.G.S. 
Vice-Presidents, Prof. C. Le Neve Foster, D.Sc., 
F.G.S., F.R.S.; Dr. H. Woodward, F.R.S.,F.G.S. 


SCIENCE. 


915 


Secretaries, Prof. A. P. Coleman, Ph.D.; G. W. 
Lamplugh, F.G.S.; Prof. H. A. Miers, 
F.R.S., F.G.S. (Recorder). 


D.—ZzooLoGy. 

President, Prof. L. C. Miall, F.R.S., F.L.S. 
Vice-Presidents, Prof. W. A. Herdman, F.R.S.; Prof. 
R. Meldola, F.R.S.; Prof. E. B. Poulton, F.R.S.; 
Prof. R. Ramsay Wright, M.A., B.Sc. 
Secretaries, W. Garstang, M.A., F.Z.S., (Recorder); 
W. E. Hoyle, M.A.; Prof. E. E. Prince, B.A. 


E.—GEOGRAPHY. 


President, J. Scott Keltie, LL.D., Sec. R.G.S. 
Vice-Presidents, President N. Burwash, LL.D.; Major 
L. Darwin, Hon. Sec. R.G.S.; E. G. 
Rayenstein, F.R.G.S. 

Secretaries, Col. F. Bailey, Sec. R.S.G.S.; Capt. E. 
Deyille, H. R. Mill, D.Se., F.R.G.S. (Re- 
corder); J. B. Tyrrell, M.A. 
F'.—ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 
President, Prof. E. C. K. Gonner, M.A., F.S.S. 
Vice-Presidents, Prof. W. Clark, M.A., LL. D.; Sir C. 
W. Fremantle, K.C.B.; Prof. J. Mavor. 
Secretaries, EK. Cannan, M.A., F.S.8.; H. Higgs, 
LL.B., F.S.8. (Recorder); Prof. Adam 
Shortt, M.A. 


G.—MECHANICAL SCIENCE. 


President.—G. F. Deacon, M. Inst.C.E. 
Vice-Presidents, Prof. W. E. Ayrton, F.R.S.; Prof. H° 
T. Bovey, M.A.; Sir C. Douglas Fox, M. Inst. 
C.E.; Prof. John Galbraith, M.A. 
Secretaries, Prof. T. Hudson Beare, F.R.S.E. (Re- 
corder); Prof. Callendar; Prof. Dupuis ; 

W. A. Price. 


H.—ANTHROPOLOGY. 


President, Prof. Sir W. Turner, M.B., LL.D., F.R.S. 
Vice-Presidents, E. W. Brabrook, Pres. Anth. Inst. ; 
G. L. Gomme, F.S.A.; R. Munro, M.D., 
F.R.S.E. 

Secretaries, A. C. Chamberlain, Ph.D.; H. O. Forhes, 
LL.D.; J. L. Myres, M. A., F.S.A. (Recorder). 


I.— PHYSIOLOGY. 


Michael Foster, 
Sec. R.S. 
Vice- Presidents, W. H. Gaskell, M.D., F.R.S.; Prof. A. 
B. Macallum, M.B., Ph.D.; Prof. A. D. Waller, 

M.D., F.R.S. 

Secretaries, Prof. Rubert Boyce, M.A. (Recorder); A 
Kirchmann, Ph.D.; Prof. C. S. Sherrington, 
M.D.. F.R.S.; Dr. L. E. Shore. 
K.—BOTANY. 

President, Prof. H. Marshall Ward, D.Sc., F.R.5., 

F.L.S. 


President, Prof. M.A., LL.D., 


916 


Vice-Presidents, Prof. F. O. Bower, D.Se., F.R.S., 
Prof. D. P. Penhallow. 
Secretaries, Prof. J. B. Farmer, M.A., F.L.S.; E. C. 
Jeffrey, M.A.; A. C. Seward, M.A., F.G.S.; Prof. F. 
F. E. Weiss, B.Se., F.L.S. (Recorder). 


THE BRITISH REPORT ON THE BEHRING SEA 
SEAL FISHERIES. 


A Parliamentary paper was issued on May 22d 
containing Professor D’ Arey Thompson’s report 
on his mission to Behring Sea. The report con- 
cludes as follows: 

In the foregoing account I have merely set forth my 
observations of the herd and its past history in so far 
as both together show that the alarming statements to 
which utterance has been given in recent years, the 
accounts of the herd’s immense decrease and the 
prophecies of its approaching extinction, are over- 
drawn and untenable. But it is my duty to state to 
your lordship that there is still abundant need for 
care and for prudent measuras of conservation in the 
interests of all. A birth-rate which we estimate at 
143,000 per annum is not great in comparison with the 
drain upon the stock. From one cause or another a 
loss of over 20,000 is experienced among the pups ere 
they emigrate to sea; and though the dangers they 
there encounter are unknown to us, we may take it 
for certain that the risks they run are great and the 
loss they endure considerable. When to the meas- 
ured loss in infancy and to the unmeasured loss in 
youth and age we add the toll taken on the islands 
and the toll taken in the sea, it is not difficult to be- 
lieve that the margin of safety is a narrow one, if it be 
not already in some measure overstepped. We may 
hope for a perpetuation of the present numbers ; we 
cannot count upon an increase. And it is my earnest 
hope that a recognition of mutual interests and a re- 
gard for the common advantage may suggest measures 
of prudence which shall keep the pursuit and slaughter 
of the animal within due and definite bounds. 

The London Times, which is supposed to reflect 
official opinion, publishes a column and a-half of 
editorial comment, ending as follows : 

Our own commissioner is entirely of the same 
opinion [referring to Dr. Jordan’s recommendation of 
further scientific investigation], and is much more 
cautious in the conclusions to which he has come. 
In these circumstances it seems only common sense 
to collect further evidence before we proceed to revise 
the present regulations. Weare ready to admit that 
they may not be the best which itis possible to de- 
vise in the interests both of pelagic and of shore seal- 
ers. But we say that this has not yet been proved, 
and that until it is proved we are under no obligation 
to vary the present rules. The suggestion that we 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 128. 


should surrender the exercise of a lucrative industry 
which is admittedly lawful, without receiving an 
equivalent, merely in order to increase the actual and 
prospective profits of our rivals, is not admissible in 
any event. What would the United States answer to 
a similar proposal in regard to the fishery rights they 
possess on the ‘American Shore’ in New Foundland ? 
They would answer, ‘It is not business.’ 


GENERAL. , 


PROFESSOR W. CROOKES will be nominated as 
President of the British Association for the 
Bristol meeting of 1898. 


PROFESSOR FELIX KLEIN has been elected a 
corresponding member of the Paris Academy 
of Sciences in the room of the late Professor 
Sylvester. 


Mr. ROBERT DouGLAS, known for his work in 
arboriculture and forestry, died on June 1st at 
Waukegan, Ill. He was born in England in 
1813. Mr. Charles Benjamin Brush, formerly 
professor of civil engineering in New York 
University and a well known civil engineer, 
died in New York on June 3d, aged forty-nine 
years. The death is also announced of Sir 
Augustus Wollaston Franks, F.R.S., the arche- 
ologist, at the age of seventy-one years ; of Dr. 
G. Ossowski, the geologist, at Tomsk, on April 
16th; of Dr. Edwin Freiherr vy. Sommaruga, 
assistant professor of chemistry at the Univer- 
sity of Vienna, on May 10th, at the age of fifty- 
three years ; and of A. L. O. Descloizemitt, the 
mineralogist member of the Paris Academy, on 
May 8th, at the age of seventy-nine years. 


THE Rede lecturer of Cambridge University, 
Professor A. W. Ricker, was announced to de- 
liver his lecture on June 9th, the subject being 
“Recent Researches in Terrestrial Magnetism.’ 


WE learn from Nature that at the anniversary 
meeting of the Linnzan Society of London, 
held on May 24th, the gold medal of the So- 
ciety was awarded to Dr. Jacob Georg Agardh, 
emeritus professor of botany in the Univer- 
sity of Lund, known for his researches on 
Alge. 

AN expedition from the biological department 
of the University of New York, under the direc- 
tion of Professor Charles L. Bristol, sailed from 
New York for Bermuda, on June 3d. General 
Russell Hastings has offered the University land 


JUNE 11, 1897.] 


near Hamilton, Bermuda, for the erection of a 
permanent biological station. Professor Bristol 
is accompanied by Dr. Tarleton H. Bean, direc- 
tor of the New York Aquarium, who will make 
collections for the Aquarium; by Walter Rankin, 
of Princeton University ; by Mr W. H. Everett, 
instructor, and by several students of New York 
University. 

Dr. J. E. HumpuHReEY, lecturer in botany in 
Johns Hopkins University, has left Baltimore 
for Jamaica with a party of students which will 
probably be joined later by Professor W. K. 
Brooks. A house for a marine biological 
laboratory has been secured at Port Antonio, 
on the north side of the Island. In other years 
the laboratory has been located at Port Hender- 
son, on the south side, but it is thought that a 
change may offer new materials and oppor- 
tunities. 


News from Adelaide indicates that Charles F. 
Wells and J. W. Jones were killed by natives 
while exploring central Australia. The expe- 
dition of five persons, led by Mr. A. L. Wells, 
was fitted out by Mr. Alfred L. Calvert and 
crossed the inland desert of Australia, starting 
from Cue, West Australia, in June of last year. 


AN expedition fitted out by the Canadian 
government left Halifax on June 2d to investi- 
gate the practicability of the Hudson Bay route 
to Europe, especially for the shipment of grain 
from the Northwest. 


THE New York Evening Post has printed an 
account of the discoveries of Dr. Sven Hedin, a 
Norwegian, who for the past three years has 
been exploring the least known regions of 
Persia, Russian Turkestan and the Pamirs. 
Among other interesting discoveries he is said 
to have found ruins of a city buried in the sands, 
containing valuable manuscripts. 


Ir is reported that Captain Sverdrup will go 
with the Fram to Smith’s Sound next year, 
spend the winter there, and then attempt a 
sledge journey northward. 


LIEUTENANT PEARY will be accompanied this 
summer by a party under the direction of Mr. 
Russell W. Porter, who will make explorations 
in Baffin Land. A party from Colby University 
will also go north with Lieutenant Peary. 


SCIENCE. 


917 


THE New York Aquarium was visited by no 
less than 21,456 persons on Sunday, June 6th. 

It is proposed to enlarge the Missouri Botan- 
ical Garden, so that the land belonging to the 
Shaw estate, over eighty acres in extent, will be 
gradually added to it. It is planned to drain 
and grade twenty-one acres during the present 
season. 

THE will of Mrs. Sarah Withers, of Blooming- 
ton, Ind., bequeaths $40,000 to found a library in 
Nicholasville, Ky., where she was born. Some 
years ago she established the Withers library in 
Bloomington. 


Mr. F. J. WAuz has been sent by the United 
States Weather Bureau to take charge of the 
Maryland State Weather Service, which is con- 
ducted at the Johns Hopkins University, by the 
cooperation of the government, the University, 
the State and the Maryland Agricultural Col- 
lege. 

THE last meeting for the present season of the 
American Mathematical Society was held at 
Columbia University on May 29th. Papers 
were presented by Professor F. Morley, of Hay- 
erford College ; Dr. Emory McClintock, of New 
York, and Dr. E. O. Lovett,.of Johns Hopkins 
University. The regular meeting of the Society 
will be held hereafter in New York on the last 
Saturday in October, December, February and 
April, each meeting to consist of a morning and 
afternoon session, which will allow as much 
time as the present monthly meetings. The 
Chicago Section will hold meetings in December 
and April of each year. The Society holds its 
summer meeting at Toronto on August 16th 
and 17th. 


THE American Medical Association held its 
semi-centennial celebration at Philadelphia on 
June 2d, 3d and 4th. The address by the 
President, Dr. Nicholas Senn, reviewed the 
work of the Association, its past, its present 
and its future. Dr. Austin Flint, of New 
York, gave the address in medicine, and Dr. W. 
W. Keene, of Philadelphia, the address in 
surgery. The Association was also addressed 
by the President of the United States, the Goy- 
ernor of Pennsylvania and the Mayor of Phila- 
delphia. It was reported that only about 
$4,000 had been subscribed to the monument to 


918 


. 


Benjamin Rush, to be erected at Washington, 
but the amount was much increased by sub- 
scriptions atthe meeting. The Association will 
next meet at Denver, under the Presidency of 
Surgeon-General George M. Sternberg. 


A CONFERENCE of the members of the Insti- 
tution of Civil Engineers was held in London 
this year under conditions convenient to many 
who are precluded from attending the weekly 
meetings during the session, and serviceable to 
all by the discussion of a wider range of sub- 
jects than can be dealt with on ordinary 
occasions. The business of the conference 
differed from the ordinary proceedings of the 
institution, papers descriptive of works exe- 
cuted giving place to brief statements concern- 
ing important debatable matters in engineer- 
ing science and practice, introduced with a view 
to eliciting discussion on the questions raised. 
The conference was held on May 25, 26 and 27, 
the morning of each day (from 10:30 to 1:30) 
being devoted to the consideration of the state- 
ments referred to, and visits of inspection 
to engineering works being made in the after- 
noon. The work of the conference was car- 
ried out under the direction of the Coun- 
cil, with the assistance of seven sectional 
committees. The sections were: Railways, 
with Sir Benjamin Baker as chairman ; harbors, 
docks and canals, Mr. Harrison Hayter, chair- 
man; machinery and transmission of power, 
Sir Frederick Bramwell, chairman ; mining and 
metallurgy, Mr. T. Forster Brown, chairman ; 
shipbuilding, Sir William H. White, chairman ; 
waterworks, sewerage and gasworks, Mr. Man- 
sergh, chairman, and applications of electricity, 
Mr. W. H. Preece, chairman. 


A Revue Philanthropique will hereafter be pub- 
lished in Paris by Masson et Cie, edited by 
M. Paul Strauss. The Revue will be published 
monthly, each number containing 160 large 
pages. The first number contains articles of 
considerable scientific interest. 


THERE has been established in Italy a ‘Societa 
Positivista,’ whose object it is to demonstrate 
the importance of science for modern life. The 
society has established a bi-monthly journal 
entitled IJ Pensiero Moderno, published by the 
Society at Via Collegio Romano, 26, and edited 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 128. 


by Professor G. Sergi. Professor Sergi con- 
tributes an introduction and an article to the 
first number. Professor Sergi is also one of the 
editors of a new Revista Italiana di Sociologia, 
which takes the place of the Revista di Socio- 
logia, formerly edited by Professors Sergi and 
Tangorra. 


THE first number of amonthly American X-ray 
Journal has been issued from St. Louis, being 
edited and published by Dr. Heber Roberts. It 
contains a portrait of Dr. Rontgen and a num- 
ber of photographs especially intended for the 
medical profession. 


THE report of the Medical Superintendent to 
the London Metropolitan Asylums Board on the 
use of anti-toxin and the treatment of diptheria 
during the year 1896 confirms the favorable re- 
sults reached the previous year. The percent- 
age of mortality being reduced from 29.6 in 
1894 to 20.8 in 1896. 


Ir has been announced in the Legislative As- 
sembly of Cape Colony that the shooting of 
cattle had been stopped as being a useless at- 
tempt to maintain a clean belt. It was added 
that it was impossible to prevent the rinder- 
pest from’ reaching Cape Colony. 


THE International Fisheries Exhibition at 
Bergen, to which we have already referred, 
will be opened on May 16, 1898. It will in- 
clude the following groups: 1. Fish products. 
2. Fishing apparatus. 3. Vessels employed in 
the catch and their equipment. 4. Preserva- 
tives. 5. Lodging ships, lodging houses and 
station huts. 6. Tank and other transport ves- 
sels. 7. Models and drawings of warehouses, 
salting establishments, smoke houses, ice houses 
and other cold rooms. 8. Machines, tools and 
apparatus. 9. Fish culture. 10. Pleasure 
fisheries. 11. Facts about the fisheries and 
their development. 12. The life-saving service. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 

McGit~ UNiversITy, Montreal, receives 
$100,000 by the will of the late J. H. R. Mol- 
son, who was senior governor of the University. 

THE Rey. FATHER MAcKAY has given $5,000 
to the Catholic University of America for the 
foundation of a scholarship. 


JuNE 11, 1897.] 


THE general board of studies of Cambridge 
University recommend that a University lec- 
tureship in physiological and experimental psy- 


chology, connected with the special board for bi- - 


ology and geology, be established for the term of 
five years from October next, and that the sti- 
pend of the lecturer be £50 a year. 

Proressor H. K. Woure has resigned the 
chair of psychology in the University of Ne- 
braska. Dr. W. B. Pillsbury, now instructor in 
psychology in Cornell University, has accepted 
a similar position in the University of Michigan. 
Mr. F. C. S. Schiller, instructor in logic in Cor- 
nell University, will return to Oxford, haying 
been elected fellow and tutor in Corpus Christi 
College. It is understood that Dr. C. E. Sea- 
shore, now assistant in Yale University, will be 
appointed assistant in psychology in the Univer- 
sity of Iowa, and Dr. J. H. Leuba, lately fellow 
at Clark University, to a position in psychology 
in Clark University. Mr. 8. I. Franz has been 
elected assistant in psychology in Columbia 
University. — 

PROFESSOR WILLIAM S. FRANKLIN, of Iowa 
University, has been elected to the chair of 
physics and electrical engineering at Lehigh 
University, filling the place vacant by the re- 
signation of Professor Harding. Dr. John 
Marshall has been appointed to the chair of 
chemistry in the medical department of the 
University of Pennsylvania, vacant through 
the death of Professor Theodore G. Wormley. 


Miss MAry E. PENNINGTON was appointed 
Thomas A. Scott fellow in hygiene in the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania. Miss Bertha Stone- 
man, now at Cornell University, has been ap- 
pointed to the chair of botany in the Huguenot 
College for Women in Cape Colony. 

Rey. R. E. Jonzs, of All Angels’ Church, 
New York city, has been nominated for the 
Presideney of Hobart College, Geneva, N. Y. 


Proressor J. L. Preyosr has been elected 
professor of physiology in the University of 
Geneva. Dr. P. Francotte has been appointed 
professor of embryology and Dr. P. Stroobant 
professor of astronomy in the University of 
Brussels. Dr. J. J. Zumstein has been pro- 
moted to a professorship of anatomy in the 
University of Marburg. 


SCIENCE. 


919 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 


THE POTTER’S WHEEL IN ANCIENT AMERICA. 


THE paragraph referring to American Ce- 
ramics, by Dr. D. G. Brinton, in Screncn, for 
May 21, 1897, page 797, containing the cate- 
gorical statement that ‘the device of the pot- 
ter’s wheel was (anciently) unknown in either 
North or South America,’ should be noted as 
inadequate. Under the present knowledge of 
the subject, while referring, as a noteworthy 
substitute for the wheel, to a clay dish twisted 
by the Chillian Indians (Araucanians), so as to 
mould the clay ball resting in it (described in 
Globus, February 20, 1897), it would have been 
well to mention a similar device from the South- 
west or Mexico, which, according to Professor 
Putnam, had been in the possession of the Pea- 
lody Museum at Cambridge, Mass., for some- 
time previously. 

More uninstructive is it to ignore the Kabal, 
of Yucatan, a disc of wood caused to turn on a 
slippery board by the bare feet of the (present) 
Maya potter, while the clay sticking to the dise 
and revolving with it is thus made to mould 
itself symmetrically against the stationary fin- 
gers of the worker. This very noteworthy de- 
vice, a primitive potter’s wheel in the full sense, 
was observed and fully explained by the Cor- 
with Expedition of the University of Pennsyl- 
vania to Yucatan in 1895. I illustrated it 
in ‘ Hill Caves of Yucatan’ (Lippincott, Phila- 
delphia, 1896, page 168), having previously de- 
scribed it to archzologists, in the American 
Naturalist, for May, 1895. A correspondence 
with Dr. Brinton upon the significance of the 
Maya word Kabal resulted in his failure to find 
the word in the Spanish dictionary of the Maya 
language, published at the monastery of Motul 
in 1576, upon which he argued, inconsequently 
I thought, that the device had been brought to 
Yucatan by Spaniards. On the other hand, 
the late Bishop of Yucatan and, I think, Cap- 
tain Theobert Maler believed it to be indigenous, 
and I have as yet learned of no discovery of the 
Kabal device in Spain or among the Moors in 
Africa. Under these circumstances, whether final 
investigation shall prove the Kabal to have been 
of European or American origin, the general 
references aboye noted to the potter’s craft in 


920 


the New World, omitting mention of this long 
unnoticed instrument (not yet described in dupli- 
cate, to my knowledge, anywhere else in the 
world), are unsatisfactory. The specimens at- 
testing the interesting process, in the possession 
of the museum of the University of Pennsyl- 
vania, since 1895, cannot be ignored. 
H. C. MERCER. 
INDIAN House, May 23, 1897. 


THE SIGNIFICANCE OF INTERNAL SECRETION. 


THE communication on the above subject 
published in Scrence for April 30th, by Mr. 
Albert Mathews, seems to me not only of inter- 
est, but of importance, because it indicates ina 
comprehensive way some of the directions in 
which our thoughts may move just now to ad- 
vantage. Views not wholly unlike these of 
Mr. Mathews are hinted at in my ‘Animal 
Physiology ’ (1889); but it has been especially in 
lectures to my most advanced class in physi- 
ology that, for ten years, I have been accus- 
tomed to insist on the bearing of the function 
of one part on that of another—a subject gen- 
erally neglected in the books—and also the re- 
lation of the development of one tissue or organ 
as determined by another. Necessarily it was 
impossible, till more recent discoveries had 
been made, to indicate many of the ways in 
which this is brought about, and even yet we 
can do so but vaguely. 

It was very natural, therefore, for me to has- 
ten to read Mr. Mathews’ communication to my 
class and to enforce its teaching by comparison 
with similar expressions of opinion in a paper 
entitled ‘Experimental Cachexia Strumipriva,’ 
published in the Canadian Practitioner in October 
(?) 1895. I venture to think that Mr. Mathews 
will find in this paper views as broad as his 
own, if not more so. To quote a single sentence: 
“No cell is so small, so distant from others, but 
that in some way it makes itself felt, and this 
is to me the most important lesson of all this 
recent development in physiology and medicine 
growing out of the study of the total or partial 
extirpation of organs, of transplantation, of 
feeding of glands, etc.’’ The extension of the 
principle of the influence of the internal secre- 
tion to plants is admirable, in my opinion, and 
in this I am inclined to believe that Mr. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 128. 


Mathews is entirely original. However, while 
Mr. Mathews’ views are broad they are apt, 
if taken alone, to lead to narrowness by their 
very exclusiveness. When he seeks to explain 
the co-ordinated life of plants in this way does he 
also remember the protoplasmic continuum, and 
when he would explain by internal secretion 
the co-ordination in movement, say, of one cell 
with another in simple invertebrates does he 
bear in mind the possibility of explanation 
through molecular impact? Life implies cease- 
less molecular movement. Just now we are 
witnessing, in the medical world, the most re- 
markable development of chemical conceptions 
to explain pathological conditions that has yet 
taken place, but, as usual, with a narrowness that 
is evidence of the evil effects as well as the ad- 
vantages of specialization. The doctrine of 
‘pangens’ has always seemed to mea crude and 
unnecessary hypothesis, and I cannot believe 
that internal secretion alone will supply an ade- 
quate substitute, though it will assist to a better 
understanding of certain results in detail. 

Nearly ten years ago I put forward a view in 
a paper entitled ‘A Physiological Basis for an 
Improved Cardiac Pathology’. (Medical Record, 
October 22, 1887), which, so far as I know, was 
then set forth for the first time in print, though 
it had been earlier taught in my lectures. This 
conception was more fully elaborated in ‘The 
Influence of the Nervous System on Cell Life.’ 
(New York Medical Journal, December 22, 1888.) 

I endeavored to show that we were justified 
in holding that the nervous system exercised a 
constant influence over all cells, tissues and 
organs, either directly or indirectly, in every 
animal provided with such a system, this in- 
fluence being the more important the higher the 
animal in the scale of existence. This theory of 
the constant influence of the nervous system 
over metabolism, etc., has, so far as I am 
aware, not been recognized or, at all events, 
taught by anyone except myself, till it was 
prominently brought forward last October by 
Professor M. Foster, the well-known physiolo- 
gist, in his admirable Huxley lecture. It has 
since been publicly espoused by the distin- 
guished neurologist Gowers, and will, I have 
no doubt, shortly receive the recognition which 
I have long felt it deserved. 


JUNE 11, 1897.] 


To me this is a far more important single 
concept than any other to explain co-ordination 
of all kinds, even the continuance of the healthy 
life of cells in higher animals, unless it be that 
of the influence of protoplasm on protoplasm, 
per se, and directly. Nevertheless, this doc- 
trine of the influence of one cell on another, 
through chemical agency, which the theory 
of the constant effect of the nervous system 
renders clearer for all higher animals, is one 
that is also indispensable and which we are now 
beginning to understand in more detail. The 
main purpose of this communication is to put 
forward as broad a basis as possible for concep- 
tions of the nature of living things, for the 
exact demonstration of which in a way to sat- 
isfy a rigid logic we must still wait, it may be 
long, but which we cannot afford, in the mean- 
time, to ignore without making many errors and 
unduly restricting the field of view. 


WESLEY MILLS. 
McGintL UNIVERSITY, 
MONTREAL, May 13, 1897. 


HIGHHOLE COURTSHIP. 


Som= mornings since I observed two highholes 
on the same branch evidently in courtship. 
The male, as I took it, would give a few clucks, 
and rapidly bob its head up and down four: or 
five times describing about a quarter of a circle, 
and the female then responded with the few 
elucks and corresponding motions. This was 
repeated at short intervals, and they flew to 
another tree, and continued this rather comical 
performance. Mr. Burroughs, in describing this 
courtship of the highhole, speaks of the female 
as ‘unmoved,’ which, however, was plainly not 
so in this case. As the meaning of the head 
bobbing I would suggest that the motion, being 
much the same as when pecking at a tree or in 
the turf, may signify the offering of food. The 
male says, ‘‘Come with me and I will find you 
lots of fat grubs,’’ and the female assents by the 
same acts and signifies mutuality. The whole 
is in the same line of sentiment and action as 
that of the young man who offers his best girl 
ice cream and soda water. I may also mention 
that I have often noticed this spring what I 
supposed to be the male blue jay approach his 
mate with a cluck and transfer to her bill some 
article of food, the whole affair appearing to be 


SCIENCE. 921 


gallantry. It may even be that the kiss is a 
survival of lip-to-lip feeding. 

As to the pugnacity of birds in early spring I 
may mention that some seasons since I observed 
a cock robin fight for some hours his own reflec- 
tion in a cellar window. This season a mirror 
was placed upon a wren’s box which had been 
usurped by a pair of English sparrows. The 
female fought her reflection most furiously, but 
the male showed more intelligence, investigated 
carefully, and would retire around the tree and 
peer out to see if the supposed bird would move 
toward the nest. At nightfall he took his place 
before the mirror, as if on guard. A carefully 
conducted series of experiments with mirrors 
upon birds and other animals would, by provid- 
ing the new environment, be of great value in 


testing intelligence. 
Hiram M, STANLEY. 


LAKE ForREs?T, ILu., May 5, 1897. 


A QUESTION OF CLASSIFICATION. 


To THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: In your issue 
of December. 18, 1896, pp. 918-922, in a com- 
munication by myself entitled ‘A Question of 
Classification,’ through a typographical error I 
am made to say that ‘‘all other students place 
the Dakota formation in the middle of our 
American Upper Cretaceous.’? The word 
‘Upper’ should have been omitted from this 
sentence, as it was my intention to say that 
‘¢all other students place the Dakota formation 
in the middle of our American Cretaceous and 
at the base only of the upper of the two great 
series into which the Cretaceous of this country 
is divided.’’ 

Rost. T. HILL. - 


SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 

The Materials of Construction. A Treatise for 
Engineers on the Strength of Engineering 
Materials. By J. B. JoHNnson, Professor of 
Civil Engineering in Washington University, 
St. Louis, Mo. New York, John Wiley & 
Sons. 1897. 8vo. Cloth. Pp. xv+787, 
with 9 plates. Price $6.00. 

This work is divided into four parts, the first 
treating of the mechanics of the subject, the 
second of general properties of materials, the 
third of methods of testing, and the fourth of 
results of tests. The number of pages in these 


922 


several parts is 86, 215, 167 and 254, the re- 
maining 65 pages being devoted to an appendix 
and index. Although mainly designed for en- 
gineers, it will be useful to physicists and to all 
who have to do with the mechanic arts, for a 
large part of the information that it gives can 
be found in no other book. The task of the 
author in sifting and discussing the vast number 
of tests on record was a difficult one, but it has 
been performed with skill and success. 

Part Lis somewhat disappointing in that it is, 
in the main, occupied with elementary matter 
regarding bars and beams which is found in all 
text-books on the resistance of materials. In 
an advanced work of this kind the engineer or 
physicist would naturally expect to find the 
mathematical theory of elasticity developed to 
a point in advance of that taught in technical 
schools, and especially to see the theory of true 
internal stress in beams set forth. A valuable 
discussion regarding the elastic limit is here 
given, and the results of very recent theoretic 
investigations of combined concrete and iron 
beams are presented. 

Part II, although perhaps giving a fuller ac- 
count of the manufacture and properties of ma- 
terials than other general works on construc- 
tion, has not been prepared with the best care 
and discrimination. For instance, the blast 
furnace is not mentioned, although 14 pages on 
the manufacture of cast iron is quoted from a 
British book on metallurgy. The chapter on 
timber, which fills 97 pages, is a reprint from 
a bulletin of the United States Forestry Bureau, 
and much of this might have been well omitted 
altogether, while the remainder should have 
been properly digested and condensed. Steel, 
cement and paving brick are discussed, how- 
ever, in a very clear and concise manner. 

Part III presents a more complete account of 
testing machines and methods of testing than 
can be found elsewhere in book form. The 
classification and discussions are here most ex- 
cellent, and the presentation of conclusions of 
the European commissions on the question of 
standard specimens and methods is very com- 
plete. Static tests of tension and flexure nat- 
urally receive the greatest share of attention. 
Impact tests, with the exception of the cold- 
bend and drifting methods, seem inadequately 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No. 128. 


treated in view of their growing use and im-. 
portance ; for instance, the flexural test of steel 
rails by a falling ram, where deflections and the 
elongations on the tensile side are measured, 
has long been used in Europe and during the 
past five years has been adopted by some of our 
leading railroads, and hence should have re- 
ceived at least brief notice. 

Part IV gives an admirable digest of the re- 
sults of experiments on materials. A most ex- 
cellent feature, and one which indeed runs 
throughout the entire book, is the presentation 
of results by means of diagrams. These set 
forth the relations between the different proper- 
ties of materials far more clearly than columns 
of figures can do and enable the reader to make 
comparisons which otherwise would be difficult 
or impossible for him to undertake. The tests 
which are discussed are, in the main, those pre- 
cise and comprehensive ones made on metals 
during the past twenty years by Bauschinger, 
Tetmajer, the French commission, and by How- 
ard at the Watertown arsenal, and those by the 
author on timber. Lack of space forbids a 
mention of the conclusions and results here re- 
corded, but it should be said that the care exer- 
cised in selecting the data and the admirable 
method of presentation is alone sufficient to 
render the book an authoritative one. 

The proper definition of the term ‘elastic 
limit’ has long been a puzzling question. 
While generally defined as the limit at which 
Hooke’s law of proportionality of stress to de- 
formation fails to hold good, it has also been 
explained to be characterized by the beginning 
of the permanent set, while in commercial tests 
the so-called yield point, where a sudden mo- 
lecular change occurs, is generally regarded as 
the elastic limit. The author discusses these 
definitions at length, and proposes that the 
term ‘apparent elastic limit’ be used to indi- 
cate that point where the rate of elongation is 
fifty per cent. greater than the rate at the be- 
ginning of the elongation. This definition en- 
ables the elastic limit to be readily marked on a 
stress diagram, and for ductile materials it ap- 
pears to locate a characteristic point which lies 
higher than the limit of elastic proportionality 
and lower than the yield point. The new 
definition, although defective in not referring 


JUNE 11, 1897.] 


to a definite physical phenomenon, has some 
practical advantages, and it will doubtless re- 
ceive extended notice and discussion by en- 
gineers. An authoritative definition of elastic 
limit will probably be established in time by 
the international association recently established 
for the study and unification of methods of 
testing. 

The author lays much stress upon the method 
of judging the quality of a material by means 
of the work required to rupture it, or by its re- 
silience, as Thomas Young called it in 1803. 
The diagram of a tensile test enables this work 
to be computed, and undoubtedly too great at- 
tention has heretofore been paid to the ultimate 
elongation and too little to the ultimate resili- 
ence. The elongation depends upon the form 
and length of the specimen and is far from be- 
ing an absolute measure of the ductility; more- 
over that part of it which occurs after the maxi- 
mum strength is reached is of doubtful value in 
estimating the work ofrupture. It is for these 
reasons that percentage of reduction of area is 
extensively used in commercial tests, it being 
found to be nearly independent of the length of 
the specimen and hence a better index of duc- 
tility. In this direction of investigation great 
advances are to be expected, and the develop- 
ment of impact tests now in progress really re- 
sults from the desire for a better determination 
of the ultimate resilience than the static stress 
diagrams can give. If all tests of metals except 
one were to be abandoned, the simple test of 
bending a cold bar by blows of a hammer would, 
by an overwhelming majority of votes, be the 
one to be retained; further, if this cold-bend 
test be made by a single blow, and if the changes 
of length on the tensile and compressive order 
be measured, a determination of both resilience 
and ductility is obtained, which, though not an 
absolute one, is probably as valuable as that 
given by the common static tension test. For 
these reasons it is thought that the author has 
somewhat overestimated the value of the ulti- 
mate elongation as determined on testing ma- 
chines, and that reliance upon it as an absolute 
measure of ductility is generally too high. 

The space devoted to the different materials 
is about as follows: 124 pages on timber, 43 on 
brick and stone, 77 on cement and mortar, 43 


SCIENCE. 923 


on cast iron, 24 on wrought iron, 87 on steel, 
and 18 on alloys. A timely chapter on the 
magnetic testing of iron and steel, by W. A. 
Layman, concludes the book. There are over 
600 illustrations, of which about one-half are 
the valuable graphic representations and com- 
parisons. From the extended experience of the 
author in laboratory work, and from his record 
as a writer and investigator, it was to have been 
expected that this book would be an excellent 
one. It has, however, more than realized the 
expectations in its Parts III and IV, for here 
are presented such careful and comprehensive 
analyses of modern methods and results that 
the book must at once take high rank as one of 
the standard authorities on the materials of en- 
gineering. 
MANSFIELD MERRIMAN. 
LEHIGH UNIVERSITY, June 1, 1897. 


Experimental Morphology. Part I. By. Dr. C. 
B. DAVENPORT. The Macmillan Company. 
1897. 


The broadening of the biological horizon in 
recent years has necessitated an ever-increasing 
specialization on the part of investigators in 
that department of science. The territory now 
open to study is so extensive that it is beyond 
the powers of any individual to examine all 
parts of it in detail, and, consequently, each 
must choose for himself a portion of greater or 
less extent with which he may expect to be- 
come tolerably familiar. And yet it is impos- 
sible to reap the full benefits of results so ob- 
tained unless they can be correlated with what 
is being accomplished in adjacent fields, and, 
that his work may approach the ideal condition 
of being totus teres atque rotundus, the investi- 
gator of to-day must look to his neighbors to 
supply him from time to time with statements 
of what they have accomplished. Dr. Daven- 
port’s work on Experimental Morphology aims 
to be a statement of this kind, its object being 
to review what has been accomplished in the 
study of the extrinsic forces which determine 
the course of the development of organisms. 
The work, as projected, is to consist of four 
parts, of which the first, now before us, treats 
of the action of external forces, chemical and 
physical, on living protoplasm in general, while 


the other three will consider their influence on 
growth, cell-division and differentiation. 

If the first part is to be regarded as an 
earnest of what is to come, all biologists will 
look forward with interest to the completion of 
the work. The present part gives in successive 
chapters admirable and thorough accounts of 
the various observations and experiments on 
the action on living protoplasm of chemical 
agents, moisture, density, molar agents, 
gravity, electricity, light and heat, and con- 
eludes with an all too brief chapter discussing 
the light thrown by these observations on the 
structure of protoplasm, the conditions which 
limit metabolism, the dependence of proto- 
plasmic movement on external stimuli and on 
metabolism and on the determination of the di- 
rection of locomotion. The action of each 
force is considered under several headings; 
light, for example, being considered as to its 
chemical action, its effect on the general func- 
tions of the organism and its action in control- 
ling the locomotion (phototaxis) ; and the text 
is illustrated by numerous well-chosen figures 
as well as by several tables of which there may 
be especially mentioned No. XVIII., which 
gives the nature of the response to light of the 
various forms which have been experimented 
upon in this connection ; No. XIX., which gives 
the ultramaximum temperature for numerous or- 
ganisms; No. XX., which similarly gives the ul- 
traminimal temperatures, and No. XXI., which 
is a list of species found in Hot Springs with 
the conditions under which they occur. The 
author’s judgment in the treatment of his sub- 
ject is excellent, as he has confined himself for 
the most part to a judicious statement of facts 
and phenomena, with here and there a sugges- 
tive inference or an indication of lines for 
further observation, wisely refraining from 
what would have been more or less profitless 
discussions, the times not yet being ripe for 
broad generalizations on the subjects of which 
he treats. The material which is discussed has 
been well digested and is well arranged, and the 
style, though retaining here and there some- 
what of the flavor of the note-book, is on the 
whole clear and concise. The book is a read- 
able one, and the descriptions and criticisms of 
methods employed in experimentation, and the 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 128. 


bibliographical lists at the conclusion of each 
chapter, contribute materially to the value the 
book possesses for both the morphologist and 
the physiologist. 

It isa question, however, if the title chosen 
for the work is applicable so far as the first part 
is concerned. The action of poisons, heat, light 
and electricity on protoplasm, chemotaxis, rhe- 
otaxis, geotaxis and similar phenomena, as 
well as those of acclimatization to various 
chemical and physical forces, can hardly be con- 
sidered as falling within the domain of mor- 
phology. They are undoubtedly physiological 
questions. Indeed, the ground which Dr. 
Davenport here covers is discussed by Verworn, 
in a somewhat more general manner, in the 
fifth chapter of his Allgemeine Physiologie. 
Neyertheless, the questions discussed are of the 
highest interest to morphologists, and Dr. 
Davenport has placed his confréres under great 
obligations by placing in their hands so lucid an 
exposition of that side of physiology which es- 
pecially appeals to them. : 

Owing to the careful thoroughness with which 
Dr. Davenport has labored, the work is com- 
paratively free from oversights. It is to be re- 
gretted, however, that the author has seen fit 
to confine his attention almost exclusively to 
organisms as a whole, to the neglect of consider- 
able valuable information to be derived from ob- 
servations on vertebrate tissues. The action of 
poisons, for example, on the peculiarly unstable 
protoplasm of the vertebrate nervous system is 
hardly treated with the fullness which its inter- 
est and importance demand, and insufficient at- 
tention is given to the numerous results of gen- 
eral significance which have been obtained by 
the study of electrical stimulation of muscle and 
nerve protoplasm. We miss, too, a discussion of 
the effects of surface tension in producing 
movements of protoplasm, a question which has 
been considered by Ryder in several publica- 
tions. A few typographical errors are notice- 
able, though none are serious, but a great de- 
fect consists in the absence of an index, a de- 
fect which may be remedied in the concluding 
volume. A separate index for each part would, 
however, be a great convenience. 

J. P. McMourrIcu. 

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, May 23, 1897. 


JUNE 11, 1897. ] 


SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS. 
JOURNAL OF GEOLOGY, MAY—JUNE, 1897. 


UnbDER the title ‘The Last Great Baltic 
Glacier,’ Dr. James Geikie replies to the re- 
cent criticism by Dr. Keilhack.* He gives a 
brief re-statement of the evidence presented in 
the Great Ice Age for the belief that the great 
terminal moraines of the Baltic Ridge are prod- 
ucts of an independent glacial epoch, quoting 
Du Pasquier on disputed points. 

The post-Pleistocene elevation of the Inyo 
range and the Waucobe lake beds of California 
are discussed by C. D. Walcott. A series of 
well characterized lake beds in the foot hills of 
the Sierra Nevada are described. The beds 
contain fossils any of which ‘might be recent or 


Pliocene’ as determined by Dall, but of which - 


the probable age is believed to be Pleistocene. 
The beds havea maximum thickness of 150 feet 
and in character resemble the ancient sediments 
of Lake Lahontan. The strata lie at very dif- 
ferent levels. There is evidence of faulting and 
it is believed that there has been recent eleva- 
tion to the amount of about 3,000 feet. In this 
connection the Owen Valley earthquake of 1872 
is recalled. 

In the fifth of his Italian Petrological 
Sketches, Dr. Henry 8. Washington ‘gives a 
general summary. The composition of the 
rocks of the Ciminite-Vulsinite-Toscanite series 
is discussed and its relationships to the Absora- 
kite-Shoshonite-Banakite series as well as to 
other intermediate groups is illustrated by 
analyses and tables. The trachydolerites and 
the leucitic rocks are also discussed as to com- 
position and relationship. 


Dr. H. F. Reid gives a summary of the first 
annual report of the International Committee 
‘on Glaciers. Under each country notes rela- 
tive to the present phase of glaciation is given. 
Of the Alpine glaciers a considerable number 
show the phase of increase. In America the 
glaciers are in general retreating, though some 
show the contrary phase. In 1896 the glaciers 
of Cook’s Inlet, Chileat Pass, and the Glacier 
Bay region, as well as those of Mt. Ranier, Mt. 
Hood and the Selkirk mountains were all re- 
ported as decreasing. 


* Jour. Geol., V., 113-125. 


SCIENCE. 


925 


A sketch of the Geology of Mexico, based 
upon the recently issued reports of the Geo- 
logical Institution of Mexico, is presented by 
Mr. H. F. Bain. 

Among the reviews is an extended discussion, 
by Mr. C. F. Tolman, of the recent papers by 
Dr. G. F. Becker on rock differentiation.* 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 


TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 
28, 1897. 

Proressor L. M. UNDERWOOD, Chairman, 
Professor N. L. Britton, Secretary, pro tem. 

The first paper was by Professor L. M. Un- 
derwood, ‘ Notes on the Ferns of Japan.’ 

The immediate occasion of this paper was the 
receipt during the past year of two separate 
collections of Japanese ferns of about 50 species 
each. 

The insular position of Japan, together with 
a considerable range of latitude, equalling that 
from St. Paul, Minn., to Mobile, Ala., gives 
Japan a larger proportion of ferns than we have 
in the United States, although the area of the 
islands is only that of the northeastern States 
as far as the Virginias, together with about one- 
half of Ohio. 

The ferns are those of temperate climates and 
agree well with those of the adjacent mainland 
so far as the latter are known. A few subtrop- 
ical forms enter the flora, but the really tropical 
species do not reach the islands. 

Many species are common inhabitants of 
Europe as well as the eastern United States, but 
the ferns of Japan offer very little support to 
the once prevalent notion of the great similarity 
to the flora of the eastern United States. In 
fact about as many Japanese species have as 
many near allies in Pacific America as in other 
portions of the country if we exclude the species 
quite generally distributed through the north 
temperate zone. 

Discussing the paper, Professor Britton cited 
a number of instances among spermatophytes, 
in which species supposed to be common to 
Japan and eastern North America had been 


*Amer. Jour. Sci. (4), Vol. III., pp. 21-40, Jan., 
1897. 


926 


shown to be distinct. He maintained that the 
theory of migration, as ordinarily accepted, was 
insufficient to account for such similiarity be- 
tween the floras of the two regions as actually 
exists. Mr. T. H. Kearney, Jr., remarked 
that in comparing the grass-flora of the two 
regions he had found that, exclusive of cir- 
cumboreal species, only two species are in 
common. 

The second paper was by P. A. Rydberg, en- 
titled ‘Floral Features of Western Nebraska.’ 

It is a popular misconception that the country 
from Illinois to the Rocky Mountains consti- 
tutes one undifferentiated region. In fact, 
there are two entirely different regions, viz: 
1. The prairie region, with rich loam and a com- 
paratively good supply of rain and extending 
into the eastern Dakotas, Nebraska and Kan- 
sas. 2. The region of the Great Plains, with 
dry, hard soil and scanty rainfall and com- 
prising the western portion of said States, 
eastern Colorado and Montana and the larger 
portion of Wyoming. 

The plains are mostly covered by short 
grasses, the so-called Buffalo grasses. In the 
hot, dry autumn these become self-cured and 
form an excellent winter pasture for the stack. 
A little hay is cut on the lowlands and fed to 
the animals during snow storms. Otherwise 
the cattle and horses feed out during the whole 
winter. The Buffalo grasses are: the original 
Buffalo grass, Bulbilis dactyloides; Blue and 
Black Grama, Bouteloua oligostacha and hirsuta, 
and ‘ Nigger Heads,’ Carex filifolia. 

In a region where the rainfall is compara- 
tively scant and distributed only during certain 
seasons of the year the plants must be so con- 
stituted as to be able to withstand a good deal 
of drought. In other words, the evaporation 
must either be reduced to a minimum or the 
plant must have special stores of water. The 
plants peculiar to this region may be divided 
into the following groups: 

1. Very hairy plants generally covered with 
thick pannose pubescence, which retain the 
moisture, as species of Hriogonwn, Astragalus, 
Hurotia, Senecio, Evolvulus and Artemisia. 

2. Plants with glaucous foliage having a hard 
epidermis, as Yucca, glauca, Rumex venosus, 
Argemone alba and several grasses. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8S. Vou. V. No. 128. 


3. Plants with white, often shreddy bark, as, 
species of Mentzelia and Anogna. 

4, Plants with very narrow and often inyo- 
lute leaves, as Lygodesmia juncea and rostrata, 
and several grasses and sedges. 

5. Plants with fleshy stems in which the sur- 
face is reduced to aminimum and no leaves, as. 
the Cacti. 

6. Plants with a deep-seated, enlarged root. 
as the Bush Morning Glory, Ipomeza leptophylla, 
and the wild pumpkin, Cucurbita fetidissima. 
Mr. Rydberg had seen a root of the former 
three feet long and almost two feet in diameter. 

7. Plants covered with glands, containing 
essential oils, as Dysodia papposa and Pectis 
angustifolia. The oil is supposed by some to 


_ have a cooling effect, partly by taking up heat 


when evaporated and partly by surrounding 
the plant by a cooler atmosphere, their specific 
heat being much less than the air. 

Two papers followed by Dr. J. K. Small ; 
(a) ‘The Sessile-flowered Trillia of the South- 
ern States,’ (b) ‘Notes on Epilobiacez.’ Both 
papers are published in the April number of 
the Bulletin. 

N. L. BRITTON, 
Secretary pro tem. 


ALABAMA INDUSTRIAL AND SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY, 


THE annual meeting of this society was held 
in the city of Birmingham on the 18th instant. 

Mr. W. M. Brewer read a paper on Copper 
Mining in Alabama, in which he stated that the 
old Woods copper mine in Cleburne county had 
recently been taken in hand by a company which 
was doing a large amount of work in raising the: 
ore, which is a copper-bearing pyrrhotite. 

Mr. T. H. Aldrich gave an account of the 
work in which he has lately been engaged in 
preparing to mine and mill the gold-bearing 
quartz veins of Hog Mountain, in Tallapoosa. 
county. This is a low-grade ore, but it can be 
mined and milled at a very small cost, and as 
the quantity is very great the proposed opera- 
tions are to be on a large scale. In connection 
with this paper, the discussion brought out the 
fact that the working of similar low-grade ores. 
has been very profitably carried on for about a. 
year in the Idaho district, in Clay county, and 
Mr. Aldrich predicts that a number of gold- 


JUNE 11, 1897.] 


mining plants will soon be in successful opera- 
tion in the State. The recent reports of 
the State Geological Survey have shown 
that low-grade gold ores occur in large quan- 
tity at several localities in Alabama, and, 
since the success of the operations at Idaho 
has been fully demonstrated, the attention of 
capitalists has been directed to this inviting 
field. 

Dr. Eugene A. Smith gave a short account of 
his recent visit to northwestern Texas for the 
purpose of inspecting again the sulphur deposits 
of thatregion. Heexhibited some photographs 
taken by him which gave a good idea of the 
character of the scenery there. 

Mr. Charles Geohegan gave to the Society 
some statistics concerning the relative cost of 
making mining engines and other mining 
machinery in Birmingham and in cities farther 
north. 

Mr. J. W. Sibley read an instructive paper on 
the manufacture of vitrified brick, illustrating 
his remarks with a number of specimens of the 
crude material in various stages of its prepara- 
tion and of the finished product. The material 
used in this manufacture is a gray shale, occur- 
ring in the Coal Measures of this State, in the 
vicinity of Coaldale, in Jefferson county. 

Mr. Brewer then gave a report upon his suc- 
cess in the collection of the statistics of mineral 
production in Alabama, under the auspices of 
the State Geological Survey and this Society. 
He announced that for the past month he had 
succeeded in collecting statistics of about 95% 
of the total production, and said that he hoped 
to be able to have complete returns in the 
course of a few months. The statistics are col- 
lected monthly and sent out to the technical 
journals of the country and to the leading news- 
papers of the State. 

Mr. Paschal Shook made the statement that 
the Birmingham Steel Mill Company were 
building two forty-ton basic open-hearth fur- 
naces, which would probably be finished in the 
course of two months. They expect to be able 
to furnish steel billets to all the rolling mills of 
this section. 

In his address the retiring President, Mr. F. 
M. Jackson, urged upon the members of the 
Society to exert themselves to increase the 


SCIENCE. 927 


membership and with it the influence for good 
of this Society. 

Officers for the ensuing \ ear were elected’ as 
follows: President, Truman H. Aldrich, of 
Birmingham; Vice-Presidents, J. W. Minor, 
of Thomas, and J. A. Montgomery, of Bir- 
mingham. 

EUGENE A. SMITH, 
Secretary. 


THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHING- 
TON. 

THE 264th regular meeting of the Society was 
held Tuesday, May 18,1897. Professor Otis T. 
Mason exhibited a peculiar shaped boat from 
the Kootenay river, which in bow and stern 
was not unlike the modern ram or monitor, 
having a double point under water. The little 
model had been in the Smithsonian for forty 
years and was said to be an exact representa- 
tion of the boats in use along certain parts of 
the Columbia river. It is made of the whole 
skin of the pine tree, and thus differs from the 
birch-bark canoe, which is made of pieces. This 
is reversed, so that the bast is outside and the 
bark inside ; the ends are then drawn together 
and cut obliquely or with a slight curve from 
above downward, causing the bottom to pro- 
ject at either extremity, forming a point. 

A line drawn across the Mercator map to 
Asia will strike the Amoor river, where practi- 
cally the same style of boat is found, and the 
question was raised whether it showed contact 
or independent origin, and from the great re- 
semblance it was thought the former, showing 
the migration of canoe forms from Asia to 
America. 

Professor Mason premised these remarks by 
an outline upon the evolution of the boat. In the 
study of progress, water travel divides itself into 
flotation and navigation, the former meaning 
simply keeping above the surface, the latter 
including the higher problem of movement in a 
determined direction. Navigation includes the 
two elements of the hull and of the mechanism 
of movement. Propulsion may thus be repre- 
sented: 


Muscular, man or beast, 
Propulsion 


= wind, sail, steam 
Physical { and electricity. 


as in swimming, pol- 
ing, paddling, row- 
ing or cordeling. 


928 


The types of American aboriginal boats as 
conditioned by exigencies were then considered, 
beginning at the extreme north: 

Kyack, or swift flying or man’s boat for seal 
hunting. Umack, or scow or woman’s boat for 
transportation. 

Canada and northern United States, birch 
canoe, Haida. 

Lower down 
Klinkit, Chinook. 

Inland, Columbia river, Kootenay. 

Missouri river, Bull boat, which is nothing but 
a sort of crate with bull hide over it and pulled 
by a rawhide line, 7. e., towed. 

South in Hast, Pirogue or dugout of soft log. 

South and West, reed float or raft, reed 
catamaran. 

On Pacific side of South America, Balsa. 

In the interior and southward, woodskin. 

The forms of boats are products of several 
causes or exigencies cooperating. The exig- 
ency of water is the study of the kind of water 
and its conduct, and the natives have every- 
where studied the nature of water. The craft 
has resulted by a sort of natural selection. 
Thus at the mouth of the Yukon river the 
kyack is decked over with seal skin to keep off 
the spray; farther up the river is a birch-bark 
kyack partially decked; while still above it is 
an open birch canoe with no decking, on ac- 
count of the rapids. 

Exigency No. 2. Material, thus no Sioux 
made a boat of log, because there are no logs in 
his country, but have buffalo hide, and the pro- 
pulsion is by women swimming, drawing the 
eraft with a line. 

Exigency No. 38. Function or use of boat. 
Thus for its purpose of swiftness the Esquiman 
kyack is built on the same lines as the best 
racing shells. 

Exigency No. 4. Ethnic genius or the par- 
ticular way or style of making by a people or 
tribe. 

Discussed by Messrs Hough, Stetson, Stern- 
berg, Pierce and McCormick. 

Mr. Wells M. Sawyer read a paper on ‘ Jodo- 
cus Hondius Illustrations,’ and exhibited one 
of the early maps of North America, 1607, con- 
taining many curious illustrations. 

The principal of these is one in the lower left- 


on Pacific coast, Dugout, 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 128. 


hand corner of the sheet, showing 13 Indians 
from Brazil preparing a favorite imtoxicant. 
The costuming, form of vessels and details of 
manipulation are truthfully given ; to the right 
is a group of women biting and chewing the root 
which they afterwards spit into the large 
bowl from which others are pouring into an 
olla around which a fire is burning: Hach il- 
lustration is accompanied by a Latin inscription 
of explanation. Another illustration of interest 
to the anthropologist is the throwing stick. 

Discussed by Messrs Mason, Flint, Pierce, 
McGee and Sawyer. 

Mr. James H. Blodgett read a paper on the 
‘Weak Places in our Public Education,’ devot- 
ing the subject-matter principally to the study 
of geography in the public schools; he pre- 
sented a number of old atlases, ranging from 
100 to 20 years old and showing what slight 
changes had been made in the books used in 
1820 and those used to-day and the unfitness of 
the latter for use with our present knowledge of 
such things. 

Discussed by Messrs Flint and McCormick. 

Professor W J McGee gave a paper on ‘Present 
Condition of the Muskwaki Indians.’ These 
Indians, known as the Sac and Fox, were at one 
time independent tribes near the Atlantic, but 
confederated for the purpose of warring against 
the Sioux; the Sac furnishing the principal chiefs. 
up to the time of the Black Hawk War. They 
then moved to Iowa and bought land, and 
vested the title in the Governor of the State in 
trust, ea-officio, and now have about 3,000 acres. 
Their condition is quite primitive, and they 
are what are termed blanket and moccasin In- 
dians. 

They build winter and summer houses, the 
former ellipsoid in form, covered with mats 
made of rushes, sewed with cord manufactured 
by themselves ; the summer house is rectangu- 
lar, covered with the bark of the basswood or 
linden. 

There is a symbolism connected with the 
building of their houses. They have many 
curious beliefs. 

Discussed by Mr. Chas. Moore. 

The Society adjourned for the summer. 

J. H. McCormick, 
General Secretary. 


SCIENCE 


NEw SERIES. 
VoL. V. No. 129. 


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SCIENCE 


EDITORIAL CoMMITTEE: S. NEwcomsB, Mathematics; R. S. WoopWARD, Mechanics; E. C. PICKERING, 
Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THuRSTON, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry; 
J. LE ConTE, Geology; W. M. Davis, Physiography; O. C. MAxrsuH, Paleontology; W. K. 
Brooks, C. HART MERRIAM, Zoology; S. H. ScuDDER, Entomology; N. L. Brirron, 
Botany; HENRY F. OSBORN, General Biology; H. P. Bowpitcu, Physiology; 
J. S. Binuines, Hygiene ; J. MCKEEN CATTELL, Psychology ; 
DANIEL G. BRINTON, J. W. POWELL, Anthropology. 


Fripay, JuNE 18, 1897. 


CONTENTS: 
The Beginnings of American Astronomy: ED- 
ATE DS EL OLDE Nencsmaccanvcccessterenuesctencsssmesses 929 
Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics: JOHN M. 
SIVIEA'GHEVATESTSVAUNIR)-Uerrelerte' enacts enristine isse oesitecimesrasseres 935 


Current Notes on Physiography :— 
Uplands and Valleys of Kansas ; Bell on Canadian 
Rivers; The Plateau of West Virginia; Crater 
Lake and Mt. Mazama, Ore.: W. M. DAvis.....945 

Current Notes on Anthropology :— 

Man and His Environment ; Slavery of the Amer- 
ican Indians: D. G. BRINTON........-....0--0se-e0- 

Notes on Inorganie Chemistry: J. L. H.. 


Scientific Notes and News............-cessceeecensscnscaeeens 


University and Educational News........2.ss0es0e0e0: 9...54 
Discussion and Correspondence :— 
The Distribution of Marine Mammals: THEO. 


GILL, G. 

Potter’s Wheel in America: 
Scientific Literature :— 

Cambridge Natural History, Vol. II.: W.McM. 

Woopwortd. Wilson on the Swastika; de Mor- 

tillet’s L’ Origine de la Nation Francaise : D. G. 

IB RENTON hes stetas selccs cs cone cunecest sccavesciversesseoets cen 958 
Scientific Journals :-— 

The American Chemical Journal: J. ELuLtiorr 

GUDPING -wccceretsacracececcecrascestincrercesceteoesosew ee 961 


Societies and Academies :— 


BAUR, ARNOLD E. ORTMANN. The 
D. G. BRINTON.....955 


The Biological Society of Washington: F. A. 
Lucas. Boston Society of Natural History: 
SAMUEL HENSHAW.... 963 


PN GUOE BOOKS) caer cvevecsue dssoecacesvatotsscouscawetccsen scenes 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended 
for review should be sent to the responsible editor, Prof. J. 
McKeen Cattell, Garrison-on-Hudson, N. Y. 


THE BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN ASTRON- 
OMY. 

Ir is impossible, even in the briefest 

sketch, not to emphasize the debt of Ameri- 

can science and learning to the intelligent 


interest and patronage of our early Presi- 
dents—Washington, John Adams, Jeffer- 
son, Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams. 
The powerful impetus given by them and 
through them has shaped the liberal policy 
of our governments, National and State, to- 
wards education and towards science. Sir 
Lyon Playfair, in his address to the British 
Association for the Advancement of Science 
(1885), has recognized this influence in the 
truest and most graceful way. He said : 
“In the United Kingdom we are just be- 
ginning to understand the wisdom of 
Washington’s Farewell Address to his Coun- 
trymen (1796) when he said: ‘Promote, 
as an object of primary importance, insti- 
tutions for the increase and diffusion of 
knowledge ; in proportion as the structure 
of a government gives force to public 
opinion, it is essential that public opinion 
should be enlightened.’ ”’ 

Until the Revolution (1776) American 
science was but English scienca trans- 
planted, and it looked to the Royal Society 
of London as its censor and patron. Win- 
throp, Franklin and Rittenhouse were, 
more or less, English astronomers. Frank- 
lin was the sturdiest American of the three. 
As early as 1743 he suggested the forma- 
tion of the American Philosophical Society 
of Philadelphia. John Adams founded the 
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 
Boston in 1780. These two societies, to- 
gether with Harvard College (founded in 


930 


1636), Yale College (1701), the University 
of Virginia (founded by Jefferson in 1825) 
and the United States Military Academy 
at West Point (1801), were the chief foci 
from which the light of learning spread. 
Other colleges were formed or forming all 
over the Eastern and Middle States during 
the early years of the century. 

The leading school of pure science was 
the Military Academy at West Point, and 
it continued to hold this place until the 
Civil War of 1861. From its corps of pro- 
fessors and students it gave two chiefs to 
the U. S. Coast Survey ; and the army, par- 
ticularly the corps of engineers, provided 
many observers to that scientific establish- 
ment, besides furnishing a large number 
of professors and teachers of science to the 
colleges of the country. The observatory 
of the Academy was founded by Bartlett, 
in 1841, and much work was done there, 
only a small part of which is published. 
The Coast Survey was a school of prac- 
tice for army officers, and their experi- 
ence was utilized in numerous boundary- 
surveys during the period 1830-50. Colonel 
J.D. Graham, for example, was Astronomer 
of the survey of the boundary between 
Texas and the United States in 1839-40 ; 
Commissioner of the Northeast boundary 
survey 1840-43; Astronomer of the North- 
west boundary survey 1843-47; of the 
boundary between the United States and 
Canada 1848-50; of the survey of the 
boundary between Pennsylvania and Vir- 
ginia 1849-50; of the boundary survey be- 
tween Mexico and the United States 1850- 
51. The names of Bonneville, Talcott, 
Cram, Emory and other army officers are 
familiar in this connection, and their work 
was generally of a high order. It was in 
such service that Talcott invented or re- 
invented the Zenith Telescope, now uni- 
versally employed for all delicate determi- 
nations of latitude. The mechanical tact 
of Americans has served astronomy well. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vout. V. No. 129. 


The sextant was invented by Thomas God- 
fray, of Philadelphia, in 1730, a year before 
Hadley brought forward his proposal for 
such an instrument.* The chronograph of 
the Bonds, the Zenith Telescope of Tal- 
ecott and the break-circuit chronometer 
Winlock are universally used to-day. The 
diffraction-gratings of Rutherfurd were the 
best to be had in the world till they were 
replaced by those of Rowland. ‘The use of 
a telescope as a collimator was first pro- 
posed by Rittenhouse. The pioneer op- 
ticians of the United States were Holcomb 
(1826), Fitz (1846 or earlier), Clark 
(1845), Spencer (1851). Only the Clarks 
have a world-wide reputation. Wurde- 
mann, instrument maker to the U. 8. Coast 
Survey (1834) had a decided influence on 
observers and instrument-makers through- 
out the United States, as he introduced ex- 
treme German methods and models among 
us, where extreme English methods had 
previously prevailed. The system of rec- 
tangular land surveys which proved to be 
so convenient for the public lands east of 
the Rocky Mountains was devised and exe- 
cuted by Mansfield, a graduate of the Mili- 
tary Academy. 

The list of army officers who became 
distinguished in civil life as professors in 
the colleges of the country is a very long 
one. Courtenay (class of 1821 at West 
Point) was professor of mathematics at the 
University of Pennsylvania, 1834—36, at the 
University of Virginia, 1842-43, and was 
the author of admirable text-books. Nor- 
ton (class of 1831) became professor at 
New Haven, and wrote a very useful text- 
book of astronomy in 1839; and the list 

*In 1700 Sir Isaac Newton sent drawings and de- 
scriptions of a reflecting sextant to Halley for his ad- 
vice. At Halley’s death these were found among his 
papers. Hadley’s device (1731) was undoubtedly 
derived from Newton’s MSS. The Royal Society of 
London granted £200 to Godfray for his invention 


which his brother, Captain Godfray, had previously 
put into practical use in the West Indies. 


JUNE 18, 1897.] 


could be much extended. The excellent 
training in mathematics at West Point 
(chiefly in French methods) early made 
itself felt throughout the whole country. 
The mathematical text-books of Peirce of 
Harvard and of Chauvenet of the Naval 
Academy, brought the latest learning of 
Europe to American students. Mitchell 
(class of 1829 at West Point) was the only 
graduate who became a professional as- 
tronomer (1842-61). His direct service to 
practical observing astronomy is small, but 
his lectures (1842-48), the conduct of the 
Cincinnati observatory (1845-59), and his 
publication of the Sidereal Messenger (1846— 
_ 48), together with his popular books, ex- 
cited an intense and widespread public in- 
terest in the science, and indirectly led to 
the foundation of many observatories. He 
was early concerned in the matter of using 
the electric current for longitude determi- 
nations and his apparatus was only dis- 
placed because of the superior excellence of 
the chronograph devised by the Bonds. 
His work was done under immense disad- 
vantages, in a new community (Ohio), but 
the endowment of astronomical research in 
America owes a large debt to his energy 
and efforts. 

The Navy and the U. S. Naval Academy 
(founded by Bancroft in 1845, at the sug- 
gestion of Chauvenet) were very active in 
astronomical work. Chauvenet (Yale Col- 
lege, 1840) published a text-book of Trigo- 
nometry, in 1850, which had an important 
share in directing attention to rigid, elegant 
and general methods of research. His 
astronomy (1863) is a hand-book for all 
students. Walker, Gilliss, Coffin, Hub- 
bard, Ferguson, Keith, Yarnall, Winlock, 
Maury, Wilkes, were all connected with the 
Navy, more or less intimately. Walker’s 
career was especially brilliant; he gradu- 
ated at Harvard College in 1825, and 
established the Observatory of the Phila- 
delphia High School in 1840. He was the 


SCIENCE. 


931 


leading spirit in the U.S. Naval Obsery- 
atory at Washington (1845-47) and intro- 
duced modern methods into its practice at 
the beginning. From the Observatory he 
went to the Coast Survey to take charge of 
its longitude operations, and he continued 
to direct and expand this department until 
his death, in 1853. To him, more than to 
any single person, is due the idea of the 
telegraphic method (‘the American meth- 
od’) of determining differences of Longi- 
tude. His assistant in this work was 
Gould, who succeeded to the charge of itin 
1853. His researches extended to the field 
of mathematical astronomy also, and his 
theory of the planet Neptune (then newly 
discovered) marks an important step for- 
ward. His investigations and those of 
Peirce were conducted in concert and at- 
tracted general and deserved attention. 

The exploring expedition of Wilkes re- 
quired corresponding observations to be 
made in America, and during the period 
1838-42 William Bond, at Dorchester, and 
Lieutenant Gilliss, at Washington, main- 
tained such a series with infinite assiduity 
and with success. The results of Gilliss’ 
astronomical expedition to the southern 
hemisphere (Chile, 1849-52) were most 
creditable to him and to the navy, though 
his immediate object—the determination of 
the solar parallax—was not attained. 

The Coast Survey began its work in 1817 
under Hassler, a professor from West Point, 
who impressed upon the establishment a 
thoroughly scientific direction. Bache, his 
successor (a grandson of Benjamin Frank- 
lin), was a graduate of West Point in the 
class of 1825, and took charge of the Survey 
in 1843. He is the true father of the in- 
stitution, and gave it the practical efficiency 
and high standard which characterized its 
work. He called around him the flower of 
the army and navy, and was ably seconded 
by the permanent corps of civilian assistants 
—Walker, Saxton, Gould, Dean, Blunt, 


932 


Pourtales, Boutelle, Hilgard, Schott, Good- 
fellow, Cutts, Davidson and others. 

Silliman’s (& Dana’s) American Journal 
of Science had been founded at New Haven 
in 1818, and served as a medium of com- 
munication among scientific men. A great 
step forward was made in the establish- 
ment of the Astronomical Journal by Dr. 
Gould on his return from Europe at the 
close of 1849.*  Silliman’s Journal was 
chiefly concerned with the non-mathemat- 
ical sciences; though it has always con- 
tained valuable papers on mathematics, 
astronomy and physics, especially from the 
observers of Yale College—Olmsted, Her- 
rick, Bradley, Norton, Newton, Lyman and 
others. In Mason, who died in 1840 at the 
age of 21, the country lost a practical 
astronomer of the highest promise.} Grould’s 
Journal was an organ devoted to a special 
science. It not only gave a convenient 
means of prompt publication, but it imme- 
diately quickened research and helped to 
enforce standards already established and 
to form new ones. The Astronomical Notices 
of Bruennow (1858-62) might have been an 
exceedingly useful journal with an editor 
who was willing to give more attention to 
details, but, in spite of Bruennow’s charm- 
ing personality and great ability, it had 
comparatively little influence on the prog- 
ress of the science. 

The translation of the Mécanique Céleste of 
Laplace by Nathaniel Bowditch, the super- 
cargo of a Boston ship (1815-17), marks the 
beginning of an independent mathematical 
school in America. The first volume of the 
translation appeared in 1829; at that time 
there were not more than two or three per- 
sons in the country who could read it criti- 
cally. The works of the great mathemati- 
cians and astronomers of France and Ger- 
many — Laplace, Lagrange, Legendre, 

*The Astronomische Nachrichten had been founded 


in Altona, by Schumacher, in 1821. 
{See the International Review, Vol. X., p. 585. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No. 129. 


Olbers, Gauss, W. Struve, Bessel—were al- 
most entirely unknown. 

Bowditch’s translation of the Mécanique 
Céleste, and, still more, his extended com- 
mentary, brought this monumental work to 
the attention of students and within their 
grasp. His Practical Navigator* contained the 
latest and best methods for determining the 
position of a ship at sea, expressed in 
simple rules. American navigators had no 
superiors in the first half of this century. 
Nantucket whalers covered the Pacific, 
Salem ships swarmed in the Indies, and the 
clipper-ships made passages round the 
Horn to San Francisco, which are a wonder 
to-day. Part of their success is due to the 
bold enterprise of their captains (who were 
said to carry deck-loads of studding-sail 
booms to replace those carried away !), but 
an important part depended on their skill 
as observers with the sextant. One of the 
sister ships to the one of which Bowditch was 
supercargo was visited at Genoa by a Euro- 
pean astronomer of note (Baron de Zach), 
who found that the latest methods of work- 
ing lunar distances to determine the longi- 
tude were known to all on board, sailors 
as well as officers. His bewilderment 
reached its climax when the navigator 
called the negro cook from the galley and 
bade him expound the methods of determin- 
ing the longitude to the distinguished 
visitor. 

On Bowditch’s own ship there was ‘a 
crew of twelve men, everyone of whom 
could take and work a lunar observation as 
well, for all practical purposes, as Sir Isaac 
Newton himself.”’? Such crews were only to 
be found on American ships in the palmy 
days of democracy. All were cousins or 


* First edition, 1802. Sumner’s method in navi- 
gation (1843)—a very original and valuable contri- 
bution from a Boston sea-captain—and Maury’s 
Wind and Current Charts, begun in 1844, are two 
other notable contributions from a young country to 
an art as old as commerce. 


June 18, 1897.] 


neighbors, and each had a ‘ venture’ in the 
voyage. But these anecdotes may serve as 
illustrations of the intellectual awakening 
which came about as soon as our young 
country was relieved from the pressure of 
the two wars of 1776 and 1812. An early 
visitor, Baron Hyde de Neuville (1805), felt 
‘an unknown something in the air,’ ‘a new 
wind blowing.’ This new spirit, born 
of freedom, entered first into practical life, 
as was but natural; science next felt its 
impulse, and, last of all, literature was born. 
Emerson hailed it (in 1837) ‘as the sign of 
an indestructible instinct.’ ‘ Perhaps the 
time is already come,”’ he says, ‘‘ when the 
slugeard intellect of this country will look 
from under its iron lids and fill the post- 
poned expectation of the world with some- 
thing better than the exertions of mechan- 
ical skill. Our day of dependence, our long 
apprenticeship to. the learning of other 
lands, draws to a close. The millions that 
around us are rushing into life cannot 
always be fed with the sere remains of 
foreign harvests.”’ 

Benjamin Peirce, a graduate of Harvard 
inthe class of 1829, had been concerned 
with the translation of the Mécanique Céleste, 
and was early familiar with the best mathe- 
matical thought of Europe. He became 
professor in Harvard College in 1833, and, 
after the death of Bowditch in 1838, he was 
easily the first mathematical astronomer in 
the country. His instruction was precisely 
fitted to develop superior intelligences, and 
this was his prime usefulness. Just sucha 
man was needed at that time. Besides his 
theoretical researches on the orbits of the 
planets (specially Uranus and Neptune) and 
of the moon, his study of the theory of 
perturbations, and his works on pure mathe- 
matics and mechanics, he concerned himself 
with questions of practical astronomy, al- 
though the observations upon which he de- 
pended were the work of others. He was 
the consulting astronomer of the American 


SCIENCE. 


933 


Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac from its 
foundation in 1849, and its plans were 
shaped by him to an important degree. His 
relative, Lieutenant Davis, United States 
Navy (the translator of Gauss’ Theoria Motus 
Corporum Celestium (1857) ), was placed in 
charge of the Hphemeris, and the members 
of its staff—Runkle, Ferrel, Wright, New- 
comb, Winlock and others—most effectively 
spread its exact methods by example and 
precept. Professor Peirce undertook the 
calculations relating to the Sun, Mars and 
Uranus in the early volumes of the Ephemeris. 
As a compliment to her sex, Miss Maria 
Mitchell was charged with those of Venus ; 
Mercury was computed by Winlock, Jupiter 
by Kendall, Saturn by Downes, Neptune by 
Sears Walker. 

The Smithsonian Institution was founded 
in 1846, and Joseph Henry was called from 
Princeton College to direct it. There never 
was a wiser choice. His term of service 
(1846-78) was so long that his ideals became 
firmly fixed within the establishment and 
were impressed upon his contemporaries and 
upon a host of younger men. The interests 
of astronomy were served by the encourage- 
ment of original research through sub- 
sidies and otherwise, by the purchase of 
instruments for scientific expeditions, by 
the free exchange of scientific books be- 
tween America and Europe, and by the 
publication of the results of recondite in- 
vestigations. It is by these and like ser- 
vices that the Institution is known and 
valued among the wide community of 
scientific men throughout the world. 

But this enumeration of specific benefits 
does not convey an adequate idea of the 
immense influence exercised by the Institu- 
tion upon the scientific ideals of the country. 
It was of the first importance that the be- 
ginnings of independent investigation 
among Americans should be directed 
towards right ends and by high and un- 
selfish aims. In the formation of a scien- 


934 


tific and, as it were, a moral standard a few 
names will ever be remembered among us ; 
and no one will stand higher than that of 
Henry. His wise, broad and generous 
policy and his high personal ideals were of 
immense service to his colleagues and to 
the country. 

The establishment of a National Ob- 
servatory in Washington was proposed 
by John Quincy Adams in 1825; but 
it was not until 1844 that the U.S. Naval 
Observatory was built by Lieut. Gilliss, of 
the Navy, from plans which he had pre- 
pared. By what seems to have been an 
injustice Gilliss was not appointed to be its 
first Director.* This place fell to Lieut. 
M. F. Maury. Gilliss had been on de- 
tached service for some years, and a rigid 
construction of rules required that he 
should be sent to sea, and not remain to 
launch the institution which he had built 
and equipped. 

The first corps of observers at Washing- 
ton (1845) contained men of first-class 
ability— Walker, Hubbard, Coffin. Gilliss’s 
work as astronomer to Wilkes Exploring 
Expedition (1838-42) at his little observ- 
atory on Capitol Hill, had shown him to be 
one of the best of observers, as well as one 
of the most assiduous. His study and ex- 
perience. in planning and building the 
the Naval Observatory had broadened his 
mind. To the men just named, with Peirce, 
Gould and Chauvenet, and to their co- 
adjutors and pupils, we owe the intro- 
duction of the methods of Gauss, Bessel 
and Struve into the United States, and it is 
for this reason that American astronomy is 
the child of German, and not of English 
science. 

The most natural evolution might seem 
to have been for Americans to follow 
the English practice of Maskelyne and 
Pond. But the break caused by the War 


*He was, however, Director during the years 1861- 
65. ; 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 129. 


of Independence, by the War of 1812, and 
by the years necessary for our youthful 
governments to consolidate (1776-1836) 
allowed our young men of science to make 
a perfectly unbiased choice of masters. 
The elder Bond (William Cranch Bond, 
born 1789, Director of Harvard College 
Observatory, 1840-1859) was one of the 
older school and received his impetus from 
British sources during a visit to England 
in 1815. 

In estimating the place of the elder Bond 
among scientific men it is necessary to take 
into account the circumstances which sur- 
rounded him. He was born in the first 
year of the French Revolution (1789) ; he 
was absolutely self-taught; practically no 
astronomical work was done in America 
before 1838. When Admiral Wilkes was. 
seeking for coadjutors to prosecute obser- 
vations in the United States during the ab- 
sence of his exploring expedition he was. 
indeed fortunate in finding two such men 
as Bond and Gilliss. Their assiduity was 
beyond praise and it led each of them to 
important duties. Bond became the founder 
and Director of the Observatory of Harvard 
College, while Gilliss is the father of the 
United States Naval Observatory at Wash- 
ington, as well as of that of Santiago de Chile, 
the oldest observatory in South America. 
Cambridge, though the seat of the most 
ancient university in America, was but a. 
village in 1839. The College could afford 
no salary to Bond, but only the distinction 
of a title, ‘ Astronomical Observer to the 
University,’ and the occupancy of the Dana 
house, in which his first observatory was. 
established. His work there, as elsewhere, 
was well and faithfully done, and it led the 
College authorities to employ him as the 
astronomer of the splendid observatory 
which was opened for work in 1847. At 
that time the two largest telescopes in the 
world were those of the Imperial Observa- 
tory of Russia (Poulkova) and its com- 


JUNE 18, 1897.] 


panion at Cambridge. Each of these in- 
struments has a long and honorable history. 
Their work has been very different. Who 
shall say that one has surpassed the other? 
We owe to Bond and his son the discovery 
of an eighth satellite to Satwrn, of the dusky 
ring to that planet, the introduction of 
stellar photography, the invention of the 
chronograph by which the electric current 
is employed in the registry of observations, 
the conduct of several chronometric expedi- 
tions between Liverpool and Boston to de- 
termine the Transatlantic longitude, and a 
host of minor discoveries and observations. 

Gilliss visited France for study in 1835, 
before he took up his duties at Washington. 
The text-books of Bond and Gilliss were the 
Astronomies of Vince (1797-1808) and of 
Pearson (1824-29). The younger Bond 
(George Phillips Bond, born 1825, Harvard 
College 1844, Director of the Harvard Col- 
lege Observatory 1859-65) and his contem- 
poraries, on the other hand, were firmly 
grounded in the German methods, then, as 
now, the most philosophical and thorough. 

It was not until 1850, or later, that it was 
indispensable for an American astronomer 
to read the German language and to make 
use of the memoirs of Bessel, Encke and 
Struve and the text-books of Sawitsch and 
Brinnow.* This general acquaintance 
with the German language and methods 
came nearly a generation later in England. 
The traditions of Piazzi and Oriani came to 
America with the Jesuit Fathers of George- 
town College (1844), of whom Secchi and 
Sestini are the best known. 

The dates of the foundation of a few 
observatories of the United States may 
be set down here. Those utilized for 
the observation of the transit of Venus 
in 1769 were temporary stations merely. 
The first college observatory was that of 
Chapel Hill, North Carolina (1831) ; 


* Dr. Bowditch learned to read German in 1818, at 
the age of 45. 


SCIENCE. . 985 


Williams College followed (1836) ; Hudson 
Observatory (Ohio) (1838); the Philadel- 
phia High School (1840) ; the Dana House 
Observatory of Harvard College (1840) ; 
West Point (1841); the United States 
Naval Observatory (1844); the George- 
town College Observatory (1844) ; the Cin- 
cinnati Observatory (1845); the new ob- 
servatory of Harvard College (1846) ; the 
private observatory of Dr. Lewis M. 
Rutherfurd in New York City (1848); the 
observatory at Ann Arbor (1854); the 
Dudley Observatory at Albany (1856), and 
that of Hamilton College (1856). 

These dates and the summary history 
just given will serve to indicate the situa- 
tion of astronomy in the United States dur- 
ing the first half of the present century. 
A little attention to the dates will en- 
able the reader to place an individual or 
an institution on its proper background. 
It must constantly be kept in mind that the 
whole country was very young and that 
public interest in astronomical matters was 
neither educated nor very general. The 
data here set down will have a distinct 
value as a contribution to the history of 
astronomy in America. The develop- 
ments of later years have been so amazing 
that we forget that the first working ob- 
servatories were founded so late as 1845. 

American science is scarcely more than 
half a century old. The day will soon 
come—it is now here—when we shall look 
back with wonder and gratitude to ask who 
were the men who laid the wide and deep 
foundations which already maintain so 


noble an edifice. 
Epwarp. 8. Hoipsn. 
Mr. HAMILTON, CAL., April, 1897. 


INHERITANCE OF ACQUIRED CHARACTER- 
ISTICS.* 
In approaching the subject of ‘The in- 
heritance of acquired characteristics ’ from 
* Paper read at the Boston meeting of The Ameri- 
can Society of Naturalists. 


936 


the plant side, I believe it may fairly be as- 
serted that the botanist is more favorably 
provided with subject-matter for investiga- 
tion than is the zoologist. For thousands of 
years plants have been grown, selected and 
disseminated by man, and have thus be- 
come his companions, in as true a sense as 
have the cat, the dog or the horse. For at 
least a century botanic gardens have ex- 
isted in all the leading cities of the Old 
World, for the avowed purpose of promot- 
ing scientific information along all lines of 
plant life. For a couple of centuries or 
thereby the desire to supply novelties of a 
useful or decorative kind has stimulated 
the nurseryman to practice artificial selec- 
tion, which is just Nature’s method at work 
under high pressure and in the hands of an 
intelligent conductor. Finally, the botan- 
ist, when he pursues his studies afield, deals 
with organisms that are rooted in definite 
areas amid definite environments, and from 
which slow escape by seeding is alone 
possible. 

The present-day student of plant biology 
thus has four rich sources from which to 
draw information for the discussion of such 
topics as that now beforeus. Unfortunately 
much valuable knowledge that might have 
been gleaned is lost to us, since its possible 
practical application in the future was not 
recognized in the past. Now the botanist, 
the horticulturist and the agriculturist are 
joining hands in an effort to gather, to 
preserve, and to utilize their stores of in- 
formation. 

Reviewing in thought his different collect- 
ing fields, every botanist must be impressed 
by the fact that certain types of plant are 
broadly associated with certain surround- 
ings, and particularly is this true of herb- 
aceous plants. 

If he attempts to sort out these groups in 
his mind ke will refer most of them to one 
of the following categories: (1) aquatics, 
(2) shore or littoral plants, (3) sand or 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 129. 


xerophilous plants, (4) shade and humus 
plants, (5) alpine plants, (6) saprophytic 
and parasitic plants. Not merely could 
certain broad principles be laid down for 
each of these divisions ; microscopic study 
would reveal that in minute details striking 
similarities reveal themselves in the mem- 
bers of each group. In what follows I do 
not propose to adhere to the above group- 
ings, but will do so where advisable. 

(1) Aquatic and amphibious plants. The 
Buttercup genus (Ranunculus) meludes about 
469 species, some of which are world-wide 
in distribution. Nearly all are inhabitants 
of dry or moist soil, but a few like A. aqua- 
tilis and R. circinatus are more or less aquatic. 
In Europe the former exhibits striking 
diversity, or heterophylly in the leafage, 
that is largely determined by the relative 
depth of water and strength of water cur- 
rent. When growing in ponds or slug- 
gish streams the submerged leaves are dark 
green, flaccid usually, dissected, and devoid 
of stomata, but at the ends of the annual 
shoots and just below the flowers are several 
floating leaves with expanded, trilobed, 
light green lamina, that greatly resemble 
the basal leaves of many land buttercups. 
Stomata are present over their upper sur- 
faces. In Eastern America the form with 
submerged leaves alone exists, and even 
where the plants may be semiterrestrial or 
completely so, as in the variety cespitosus, the 
lobed leaves of the European variety do not 
develop. Such facts cause us to ponder the 
questions of adaptability and inheritance, 
but do not in themselves lead us far in our 
present inquiry. 

The Bistort genus (Polygonum) is typically 
a terrestrial one, but includes one species, 
P. amphibium, of highly plastic build. When 
growing in rather deep water it forms flac- 
cid leaves on long leaf-stalks, and these 
spring from beside glabrous stipules. On 
dry land firm leaves with short stalks and 
hispid stipules appear. These constitute 


JUNE 18, 1897.] 


the varieties aquaticum and terrestre of some 
manuals. From F. Hildebrands simple but 
pretty experiments* we know that plants 
of the latter variety which have grown for 
years in dry places will, when submerged 
a few feet in water, produce shoots that 
bear in a few weeks the typical floating 
leaves. While stomata are disposed chiefly 
over the lower surface of the leaf in the 
land form, in the aquatic they exist on the 
upper surface. 

Experiments with Sagittaria, Kichornia, 
Potamogeton and others would demonstrate 
that in all there is an extreme plasticity of 
form that permits environmental adap- 
tibility. Comparison with all the species of 
each genus causes us to inquire whether 
one of the variation forms has not been ac- 
quired through response to stimuli, and has 
now become a hereditary condition? We 
need not now stay to answer. 

(2) Shore, littoral or halogen plants. Albun- 
dant along the eastern seaboard is the 
erimson-flowered Gerardia purpurea, that is 
as variable in habit as it is in the selection 
of its situation. Within a distance of 100 
yards, it may be gathered on a dry exposed 
sandy bank, and be then about 12 inches 
high, sparcely branched, faintly red in the 
leaves, and pale pink in the flowers; or ona 
flat shady spot in richer soil, when the stem 
may be 2 feet high, the leaves bright green 
and elongate, and the flowers pink crimson; 
or on a rich alluvial mud, when we get a 
bushy plant 3 feet or more high, that bears 
long narrow leaves and large showy crim- 
son flowers. But in our botanical manuals 
G. maritima is now given as a true species. 
It inhabits saline coast-flats, and may even 
be washed by sea-water without seeming to 
be injured. A distinctly different plant it 
looks from the former. From 1 to 8 inches 
high, it branches little if at all, bears thick 
succulent reddish-green or glaucous leaves, 
and one or several small pink flowers. 

* Bot. Zeitung, 1870. © 


SCIENCE. 


937 


On nearly every coast the two can be 
gathered in close proximity. At Oyster 
Bay the Shore Railroad separates a drained 
shore-flat with abundance of G. purpurea 
from an undrained saline swamp that is 
filled with G. maritima, while near Vineyard 
Haven a drain ditch forms the line of de- 
marcation between the two. Microscopie 
study of both causes one to ask whether 
they deserve to be regarded as distinct 
species. The answer to this may depend 
wholly on what we call a species, but study 
of a finely graded set, gathered fully four 
years ago at Sea Isle, on an inclined bank, 
would lead me to regard them as common 
forms that environment has altered. If 
this be so we should expect that within a 
longer or shorter period a single individual 
in its life time, or seminal descendants of 
such as are gradually ‘acclimatized,’ will 
develop macro- and micro-scopic characters 
similar to those of Gerardia maritima. The 
studies of Lesage* and Russell, | amongst 
others, yield definite proof. Both have 
compared, microscopically, individuals of 
certain species from littoral and inland 
regions, and the changes undergone by the 
shore-grown individuals exactly correspond 
with those exhibited by Gerardia maritima. 

Increase in thickness of the leaf sub- 
stance chiefly through increase in, and en- 
largement of, the pallisade cells; an appar- 
ent reduction, or possibly wider dispersion, 
of the chloroplasts; greater lignification of 
the stem and leaf-bundle elements; enlarge- 
ment of the vessels; reduction in size of the 
intercellular spaces, are typical phenomena. 
The culture experiments of Lesage further 
verify his field observations. Russell frankly 
confesses that those grown by him in saline 
solutions were not so vigorous as those from 
the Paris basin. Even in this, however, 
the resemblance to our plant is perfect. 

But as Gaston Bonnier has well empha- 


* Rey. Gen. de Botanique, Vol. 2, 1890. 
ft Ann. Se. Nat. (Bot.), 1895. 


938 


sized in his paper on Alpine plants, and as 
Lesage’s work shows, great caution must 
be exercised in discussing the morpho- 
logical and physiological relations of species 
which may grow in close proximity. Ger- 
ardia maritima is ‘at home,’ or tries to be, 
on muddy saline banks, where it is usually 
protected by the grassy vegetation around. 
Though we call it a littoral plant, it is 
modified differently from Cassia nictitans or 
Yucca filamentosa, that may be its near neigh- 
bors along sand bars. The mention of 
Yucca can introduce us therefore to that 
great assemblage that we now call desert or 
xerophilous plants. 

At times met with in full view of the 
ocean, they are most frequent and attain 
their most varied development on desert or 
voleanic areas. Let us linger for a little 
over Yucca jilamentosa. Along many miles 
of the dry sandy ocean front of the Caro- 
linas and Georgia it is a familiar plant. At 


one season exposed to moist saline breezes, 


at another to driving winds that hurl the 
sharp sand particles against it, during a 
large part of the year exposed to the full 
glare of hot, sand-reflected sun rays, and 
never enjoying a superabundance of mois- 
ture, though its roots penetrate at least 
five to six feet below the surface, it still sur- 
vives and reproduces itself. But itis quite 
different to the naked eye, and still more so 
microscopically from the plant that we 
grow in rich garden soil. Specimens from 
the ocean beach have a dense, wiry aspect, 
relatively short, broad, somewhat concave 
leaves of a glaucous green hue and that 
end ina hard mucro. Garden plants, on 
the other hand, that have been cultivated 
for many years and that may have been 
themselves reproduced from garden seeds 
or suckers, bear leaves that are long, nar- 
row and soft leathery in texture, of a dark 
green hue and with a soft mucro. Seed- 
lings in the neighborhood of each type re- 
produce their kind. 


SCIENCE. 


LN. S. Vou. V. No. 129. 


No matter what the ancestral form may 
have been or what its natural surroundings, 
we must here admit acquired characters in 
one of the types that are reproduced, and 
our main concern again is to learn whether 
such changes proceed in the life-time of an 
individual or can gradually be acquired in 
either direction by seed selection and prop- 
agation. Such papers as those of Duchar- 
tre*, Hllioty, Hackel,{ Lothelier,§ Sten- 
strom,|| and notably that of Henslow,{ fur- 
nish us with good evidence. For details 
of Henslow’s suggestive paper I would re- 
fer you to the original, but Lothelier’s 
studies deserve comment. He varied his 
experimental methods by making normal 
air his xerophile environment, and saturated 
air his new condition. 

He summarizes his results alike as to sun 
and air exposure as follows: (a) stem and 
leaf substance show a greater amount of in- 
durated tissue in a xerophile state, a reduc- 
tion of this in a moist atmosphere; (b) the 
formation of leaf lobes, and, in such as pro- 
duce them, of spines, is pronounced in a dry 
atmosphere; (c) the epidermal cuticle is 
increased, but the epidermal cells are re- 
duced in size, the xylem is connected by a 
continuous ligneous sheath, and the peri- 
eycle is lignified in dry air, while in moist 
air these features are feebly marked or ab- 
sent. 

It is often stated, and in many cases 
truly, that the battle in the vegetable world 
is that of a plant against its neighbors, but 
with xerophilous plants, that probably cover 
one-sixth of the earth’s surface, the struggle 
is entirely one between the plant and its 
physical or animal surroundings. Our na- 
tive Opuntia has had its stem and branches 


* Bull. Soc. Bot. de France, 1885. 
+ Trans. Bot. Soc. Edin., 1891. 
 +Verhand. d. K. K. zool. bot. Gesell. Wien, 1890. 
2 Rev. Gen. de Botanique, Vol. 5, 1893. 
|| Flora, 1895. 
q Jour. Linn. Soc. (Botany), Vol. 30, 1894. 


JUNE 18, 1897.] 


shortened, its cuticle thickened, its cells 
filled with mucilage, its short swollen 
branches covered with spines, and its now 
small, succulent, centric leaves short-lived 
to the extent of a month or six weeks as a 
gradually perfected resistance to opposing 
agents. Goebel’s experimental results* 
with the Cacti prove that removal of them 
to shade and moisture will materially affect 
their habit. 

(4) Prostrate plants. In my paper on ‘The 
sensitive movements of some flowering 
plants under colored screens,’t I de- 
scribed the variations constantly noted in 
Cassia nictitans when grown in the shade on 
rather moist loam, or in the open on some- 
what retentive soil, or when fully exposed 
to the sun and grown in dry sand. Strik- 
ing microscopic differences characterize 
each. This plant is but one of many that 
show like variations, and not a few of them 
can be studied as one passes along the 
quieter streets of our cities. The somewhat 
loose open growth, ascending branches and 
spreading leaves of Euphorbia maculata when 
it springs up in a moist shady place differs 
from those of the humifuse plant with 
flattly applied leaves that springs up be- 
tween the bricks of our neglected side 
walks. Curiously enough, when the latter 
is attacked by a Uromyces the habit of the 
shade grown plant is assumed. Several 
grasses, Portulaca oleracea and Mollugo verti- 
cillata are all common humifuse plants when 
‘baked’ in dry places. 

(5) Alpine plants. Every botanist who 
has observantly climbed some mountain 
that rises abruptly from the sea front to an 
elevation of 3,000-4,000 feet must have 
been impressed with the change assumed 
by the vegetation as each successive 1,000 
feet is surmounted. On the higher exposed 
elevations dense, tufted, adpressed plants 
with short flowering stems and white or 


* Flora, 1895. 
t Bot. Central., Vol. 61, 1895. 


SCIENCE. 


939 


bright colored flowers are encountered. 
These often exhibit close affinity with low- 
land species of more luxuriant growth and 
delicate foliage. Are these Alpines then, or 
the lowland ones, a product of their environ- 
ment? For the present purpose it will suf- 
fice if evidence can be adduced to prove 
variation transitions from one to the other. 
Thanks to the beautiful researches of Gas- 
ton Bonnier,* supplemented by those of Du- 
four,t Lazniewski,{ Leist,§ Wagner|| and 
Wiesner,4] we can trace surprising varia- 
tions within a short period of growth. 

Bonnier divided certain plants into three 
or more parts; he placed one in alcohol, 
another in a lowland situation, and the re- 
mainder on an alpine height. The marvel- 
ous transformations wrought in the last are 
described in the text and faithfully repro- 
duced in his plates. I will content myself 
with his conclusions. The rhizomes or 
other underground parts, become length- 
ened in order the better to store reserve- 
material, since the aerial period of vegeta- 
tion is short but intense. The aérial inter- 
nodes become greatly reduced; the leaves 
become smaller but considerably thicker ; 
those species that have scattered hairs on 
low ground have them increased in size ; the 
flowers are reduced in size but brightened 
in their red and purple colors. Equally 
marked are the histological changes. 
Here we have explained the origin of 
those specific varieties now designated 
nana, alpina, ete., which reproduce them- 
selves by seed amid their natural surround- 
ings. How far a plant or group of them 
when isolated will remain ‘true,’ or revert, 
or vary further, we have as yet no experi- 
mental data for determining. This much 

* Ann. des Sc. Nat. 7th Ser., Vol. 20. 

} Ann. des Sc. Nat. 7th Ser., Vol. 5, 1895. 

{ Flora, 1896. 

¢ Mittheil. der Naturforsch Gesell. von Bern, 1889, 

|| Sitz. der Kais, Akad. der Wiss. in Wien, Vol. 2, 


1892. 
{/ Ber. der Deutsch. Bot. Gesell., Vol. 9, 1891. 


940 


can be said, that when apparently fixed 
species of alpines are transferred to botanic 
gardens, and cultivated for many years, 
neither they nor their seed progeny seem to 
vary appreciably, though it must be granted 
that a critical comparison has yet to be 
made. But the comparison which Bonnier 
has made* between alpines gathered on 
the Pyrenees, on Jan Mayen and on Spitz- 
bergen, causes us to expect decided differ- 
ences. 

(6) Parasitic and saprophytic plants. Vol- 
umes might be written in favor of the posi- 
tion that these are alone explicable in terms 
oftheirenvironment. Ifthe Weismannian 
is in straights over the origin of species 
amongst the sexless Fungi, more inexplica- 
ble seem the sexually perfect flowering para- 
sites. The highly modified and recent or- 
der Scrophulariacee deserves consideration 
on this continent. To return to the Gerar- 
dias that are all more or less pronounced 
root parasites, such a finely connected series 
of species as G. fasciculata, G. purpurea, 
G. paupercula and G. aphylla show gradual 
degradation of the assimilatory organs, 
as we pass from the Northern to the South- 
ern States. Root, stem and leaf alike all co- 
operate in the degradation changes. That 
their floral leaves undergo like reduction 
suggests a certain rythmic response of the 
entire organism to altered conditions, and if 
we pursue our study to those degraded 
types Epiphegus, Conopholis and Orobanche 
we see how perfect this response may be. 
But comparison of Beech Drops (Epiphegus) 
over a pretty wide area of country will af- 
ford proof that few plants are more variable, 
and also that in any one locality the ac- 
quired variations are reproduced by this 
strictly annual species. 

(7) Fasciated plants. It is now nearly 
nine years since a botanical friend gathered 
a wild, fasciated plant of Polemoniwm cceru- 
leum in north Scotland. Its usually slender 

* Rey. gen. de Botanique, Vol. 6, 1894. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No. 129. 


cylindrical stem was flattened out to a 
width of about 14 inches, and from it started 
a wealth of branches in the axils of the 
numerous leaves. The plant grew and 
seeded. Some seeds were retained by him; 
others were given to the Edinburgh Botanic 
Garden. From both a considerable pro- 
portion of fasciated plants developed. It 
may at once be objected here that such a 
teratological state was congenital in the 
parent plant, but, even granting this for the 
moment, there seemed strong evidence for 
its inheritance by the offspring. Long ex- 
perience in north-central Europe is that 
fasciation is of rare occurrence. Along our 
eastern sea-board, especially on sandy soil, 
with moist substratum, itis frequent. Ina 
single New Jersey meadow 31 specimens of 
the bulbous Buttereup were gathered by 
my student party fully four years ago, and 
prolonged search would have given us more. 
But an inspection of New Jersey sweet 
potatoes in the end of September will reveal 
that from most plants five to eight long 
shoots radiate outward 20-25 feet. Some 
are uniform, cylindrical and slender 
throughout, but half or more of them begin 
to flatten almost imperceptibly about 5-8 
feet from the root region, and are the width 
of one’s hand by the end of a season’s 
growth. They need no further mention, 


since with us the sweet potato is reproduced 


by the tuber. But study of such lists as 
are given in Moquin-Tandon’s and Mas- 
ters’ works on plant teratology indicates 
that plants which, occasionally at least, 
grow on light soil are those in which such 
variationsoccur. De Vries’ valuable paper* 
on the hereditary transmission of fas- 
ciation is scientific proof of what every 
gardener knows to be true. Our now 
greatly appreciated garden cockscombs, 
are just monstrous fasciations of the wild 
Celosia cristata, that has a bushy habit, 
cylindrical stem, numerous leaves, thin 
*Botanisch Jaarbok, 1894. 


JUNE 18, 1897.] 


branches, and rather loose flower panicles. 
The wild plant evidently varies readily 
under cultivation, for several varieties have 
appeared that are perpetuated true from 
seed. But no gardener who sows his cocks- 
comb seeds expects all or even the majority 
to revert to the wild ancestor, though some 
may more or less perfectly at times. The 
suggested presence of a fungus that may 
stimulate to fasciation requires ample con- 
firmation before the view can be accepted. 

(7) Cultivated plants. Hitherto indica- 
tions of characters having been acquired 
have been drawn almost entirely from 
the wild state, but we must frankly 
acknowledge that the cases have been 
few where these characters have been 
proved to be directly inherited. In cul- 
tivated plants we have the strongest pos- 
sible evidence. At the start let me em- 
phasize the well known fact that the wild 
type of many of our cultivated plants 
isunknown. Wheat, oats, barley, corn, the 
banana, peach, gourd and vegetable marrow 
are descendants of wild plants that we are 
still looking for. 

Man in his cultural operations has been 
practicing artificial selection along three 
lines. He has aimed, first, at a heavy re- 
turn from individuals, none of which will 
require special care as individuals, and 
such we call agricultural crops; second, to 
obtain a rich fruit supply from individuals 
that need more detailed attention, and 
these we commonly call fruit crops; third, 
to develop a race of showy or handsome 
decorative plants. The first and second 
operations have been proceeding for thous- 
ands of years, and accordingly we find that 
the species operated on are those whose 
wild state we know least about. Be it 
noted here, however, that artificial selection 
is very different in its results from the 
rigorous and impartial selection that works 
its course in nature. In the latter case 
those forms survive that are balanced to, or 


SCIENCE. 


941 


that rise superior to, their environment. In 
the former man steps in, selects not those 
types that are hardiest, and in general 
features fittest for life’s battle, but those 
only which show variations that please him. 
Such may be the very opposite of desirable 
in a struggle alongside other plants, or 
amid such physical conditions as the plant 
might averagely be exposed to. No wonder 
then that when man steps out and leaves 
to their fate the new species that he has 
evolved, Nature steps in and makes ‘short 
shrift’ of them. of 

Here let me say that many of our most 
keenly debated biological questions will be 
largely settled for us in the near future by 
a diligent study of horticultural and agri- 
cultural literature, which, though at times 
loose, hazy and lacking in exact detail, 
brings us nearer to the subjects of variation 
and heredity than does much of our botan- 
ical literature. The use that Darwin, Mas- 
ters, Henslow and Bailey have made of it 
we all know. 

It is impossible in so vast a field to do 
more than refer to one or two cases. At 
the World’s Fair Horticultural Congress 
M. de Vilmorin read a paper that in some 
points settles for us our position in the pres- 
ent debate. Selecting one of the most un- 
likely of European weeds, the wild Chervil 
(Anthriscus sylvestris), he sowed seeds of it 
in a selected situation, “in order,’ says he, 
“to change its slender and much-forked 
roots into fleshy, straight and clean roots, 
say like those of the parsnip. Among the 
first batch of roots raised from wild seeds a 
dozen were selected with a tendency in 
their roots to larger and straighter bodies. 
Each root was planted separately, and its 
seed harvested separately. Of the dozen lots 
obtained, & or 9 were discarded at once, 
and roots were selected only in such lots 
as exhibited some trace of variation. Again 
a dozen roots were chosen, a drawing made 
of each root, which was afterwards planted 


942 


separately. For the first ten years the 
changes were slight, but now they are 
more and more marked with every genera- 
tion, and in some of the lots the straight 
and smooth roots are the most numerous.” 

Let us briefly trace the history of the 
Chinese Primrose, which was introduced 
into English gardens about 1820, but whose 
natural habitat became known just seven 
years ago. A variable plant in the wild 
state, found growing on dry calcareous 
rocks that are exposed to the broiling sun, 
it might seem’ to give little promise of re- 
ward for horticultural skill. The first two 
batches of seedlings reared greatly ex- 
ceeded expectations, but for years these 
were propagated chiefly by offshoots. Now 
garden seeds are entirely used, and few 
could identify the horticultural prize-taker 
with the wild specimens collected for the 
first time a few years ago by Dr. Henry 
and the Abbe Delavay. 

As a somewhat different method of in- 
quiry we have Schindler’s comparisons of 
wheat of the same variety grown in differ- 
ent regions of the world. He finds that the 
relative amounts of starch and protein vary 
according to the locality, though samples 
taken from any one region closely resemble 
each other. 

(9) Graft plants. In the literature of 
gardening the question has often been de- 
bated whether the stock and graft recipro- 
cally influence each other. Except in a 
few rare cases, the negative position has 
usually been taken, but the experiments of 
Daniels*, if confirmed and extended, will 
go far to demonstrate that deep-seated 
modifications may take place which can be 
transmitted by seed. When he grafted the 
cultivated turnip on the wild garlic mus- 
tard (Sisymbrium Alliaria) the seeds of the 
turnip produced plants that inclined more 
to the wild stock. He next reversed the 


* Rey. Gen. de Botanique, 1894; Comptes Rendus, 
1892. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8S. Von. V. No. 129. 


process by growing the wild plant on a cul- 
tivated stock. He grew plants of the gar- 
lic mustard; some of them he allowed to 
grow on as control plants; others he grafted 
on the cultivated cabbage. Seeds were 
saved and sown from both lots. The for- 
mer faithfully reproduced the features of 
the wild parent. Plants reared from the 
graft garlic seeds were not 80 tall, the leaves 
were not so crowded and bore a distinct re- 
semblance to the cabbage, they were of a 
deeper green color, somewhat plaited, gave 
a less marked odor of garlic and something 
of the odor of cabbage. The roots were 
less woody, the medullary parenchyma was 
less thickened, the vascular cylinder was 
reduced but the bast was increased, the 
bark was more delicate, the chlorophyll 
more abundant, and the intercellular spaces 
were reduced as compared with the wild 
parent. ; 

(10) Cecidial and domatial plants. Wenow 
approach a subject that is still involved in 
considerable obscurity, but the bearing of 
which we believe will greatly aid us in the 
study of many cell phenomena. Plant 
galls, or Cecidia, in the restricted applica- 
tion of the term, include those outgrowths 
on leaves or shoots that are caused by in- 
sects or mites which undergo development 
within masses of vegetable tissue, this tis- 
sue being produced through excretion of a 
chemical substance by the hatched grub. 
Though varying greatly in size, form, con-- 
sistency and relative abundance, they agree 
in that the type of tissue built up by the 
infested plant is diagnostic of the particular 
species of insect whose egg was deposited. 
It is not at all uncommon to find eight to 
ten different galls on one shrub or tree, 
each rearing a distinct insect species with- 
in. 

While these have long been known to 
naturalists, it is only within the past 20 
years that attention has been increasingly 
turned to Domatia. ‘These are plant- 


JUNE 18, 1897]. 


growths that attract insects—commonly 
ants—by offering to them some bait, such 
as watery liquid or honey. In return the 
ants commonly act as a body-guard or gar- 
rison, and thus protect the entertaining 
plant from being browsed down by insect 
enemies. From the investigations of Belt, 
Beccari, Delpino,* Forbes, Schumman, 
Treub and others, we now count the number 
of these as at least 3,000. They fall, how- 
ever, under two distinct categories: (1) 
Domatia which are merely extra-floral 
nectaries, and which may be modified stip- 
ules, or may be outgrowths over twigs and 
leaf surfaces. (2) Domatia in which the en- 
tertained insects puncture or excavate some 
part of the plant. As an outcome, definite 
holes, cavities or galleries arise, from which 
plant liquids may escape, or in which the in- 
sect-garrison may be appropriately housed. 
From the researches of Molliard+ and 
Rathay{ it appears that transition combina- 
tions—and some of them very funny—can 
be traced from Cecidia to both kinds of 
Domatia, but in all we have acquired char- 
acters of a remarkable kind. It always 
appeared to me peculiar and somewhat in- 
explicable, that neither of these should 
be, so far as our knowledge went, trans- 
missible by seeds. One may cut open 
thousands of Cecidia in their season—chiefly 
spring—and always the swelling is found 
to be tenanted by the inciting cause—the 
insect. The publication of Lundstrom’s 
paper § was a welcome one therefore, for, 
though we could wish for wider verification, 
his statements seem to be cautiously made. 
Experimenting with Rhamnus alaternus that 
forms cavernous domatia inhabited by 
mites, he found that seeds infested by the 
mites produced seedlings on which the 
animals propagated rapidly, and at once 


*Mem. R. Accad. Sc. Ist. Bologna, Vol. 8, 1888. 
tAnn. des Sc. Nat., Vol. 1, n. s. 1895. 

tSitz. K. K. Zool. Bot. Gesell. Wien, 41, 1891. 
§ Nova acta R. S. Se. Upsal, Vol. 13, 1886. 


SCIENCE. 


943 


formed their burrows, while other seeds, 
selected and cleaned, gave rise to plants 
that at first showed no signs of domatia, 
and had no mites, but the later-formed 
leaves developed the domatia as usual in the 
axils of the leaf veins. These were smaller 
and poorer in hairs than the normal 
growths, but showed no trace of mite. 
Equally striking is the history of the 
well-known Javan plant, Myrmecodia tuber- 
osa, and even if we accept with Treub that 
a small swelling and water canals exist in 
the unpunctured swelling it seems to me 
extremely likely that this is acquired and 
hereditary. My reasons for this opinion 
are founded on the history of a Bornean 
pitcher plant, Nepenthes bicalcarata, which I 
have studied from cultivated and from 
dried imported leaves. First introduced 
to science and cultivation by Mr. Burbidge, 
it is now grown in collections and thrives 
well. At the junction of the tendril with the 
pitcher and parallel to the latter is an elon- 
gated fusiform swelling. About the middle 
it is pierced, in the wild state, by aneat circu- 
lar orifice that leads into a cavity resulting 
from breaking down of soft, loose, water-con- 
ducting cells. In the cavity ants reside, and 
can safely sip the juice that percolates from 
the liquid-filled pitcher—cavity alongside. 
I have examined a considerable number of 
cultivated plants, and on every leaf was a 
decided swelling filled internally with soft 
cells. No other species of Nepenthes ex- 
hibits such an enlargement. Whether culti- 
vated seeds would reproduce the acquired 
character we are not yet in a position to say. 
As regards Cecidia, we know that these 
arise, not immediately after the plant tissues 
have been punctured by the insect when 
Ovipositing, nor after the egg has been de- 
posited, but only when a larva hatches and 
exudes some specific irritant. That this 
irritant should, nevertheless, start in the 
plant a formation of embryonic tissue that 
develops in as definite a manner as if it 


944 


were a normal growth of the plant, and 
which yet, as Molliard has pointed out, pro- 
duces formations different from the normal 
tissues, is proof that the protoplasmic reac- 
tion of somatic cells to definite chemical 
stimuliis asexact asitisprofound. To cite 
one concrete example from many that Mol- 
liard gives, it can be said that Arabis sagittata 
when attacked by an Aphis shows :— 

(a) An abundance of hairs of special 
form on all the organs. 

(6) A coloration due to a pigment-liquid 
in the epidermal cells. 

(c) Longer life of the floral organs. 

(d) Hypertrophy of cells. 

(e) Transformation of tissue of varied 
consistency, into a uniform parenchyma. 

(f) Death of the sexual cells. 

In a condensed paper like this it is impos- 
sible to touch on such subjects as the 
origin and transmission of plant colors, 
of many heterophyllous modifications, of 
floral numbers and of floral form, nor can 
we treat of plant hybrids, of which proba- 
bly 6,000-7,000 are now known. 

I would sum up the position by saying 
that, while in the earlier illustrations used 
by me evidence was advanced which fa- 
vored the idea of characters being acquired 
even in the life-time of an individual 
and that represented direct environmental 
adaptation, in later illustrations, such as 
those furnished by some xerophilous, some 
domatial, many cultivated and a grafted 
plant, direct proof exists of acquired char- 
acteristics that are hereditarily transmitted 
by seed. I have not considered it neces- 
sary to speak of bud variations and their 
seminal reproduction, as these have been 
so fully dwelt on by Darwin and recently 
by .Bailey. The Neo-Darwinian position 
seems to me superfluous, because it explains 
nothing on an exact basis of cause and 
effect. Itis easy to say, when variations 
or evidences of new adaptability appear in 
a plant, that these are but the expression of 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 129. 


previously latent potentialities, or of varia- 
tions first contracted or assumed by the germ 
plasm, and that subsequently exhibit them- 
selves in the somatoplasm. Possibly were 
the eyes of our understanding enlightened 
we might discover the budding possibilities 
of an orchid or an oak in an alga, but before 
accepting such possibilities it may be well 
to see whether the Lamark-Darwinian prin- 
ciples cannot guide us perfectly and suffi- 
ciently far. Here, however, I would sug- 
gest, in contradistinction to Wallace, that 
indefinite variation must be allowed for. 
Every plant is a structure built up of ex- 
tremely complex chemical bodies that are 
being acted on by external and internal 
stimuli. We can scarcely suppose that 
new or modified stimuli are always produc- 
tive of good and good only. Rathershould 
we consider that in each little plant world, 
as in our larger physical world, volcanic ex- 
plosions occur that are in one sense a 
source of safety for the future, but which 
leave behind beds and streams of debris 
that may be useless or even destructive. 
Various of the plant colors, resins, crystals 
and other frequent compounds may be ex- 
plicable primarily as side issues that were 
for the time useless, even though, as in the 
compounds just named, we find that they 
now function beneficially in the plant 
economy. 

Every candid examiner of the facts must 
admit, however, that sudden and several 
variations often appear in individuals placed 
side by side with their like that show no 
change. I do not see that we possess at 
present a sufficiently exact knowledge of all 
the possible factors that may start variation 
to enable us to explain these. Still this 
should be no deterrent to our accepting the 
position that generally explains ascertained 
facts of structure and function. 

It now remains for me to say a few words, 
as a student of plant cytology, on some of 
the theories that have been advanced to ex- 


JUNE 18, 1897. ] 


plain heredity. Darwin’s theory of pan- 
genesis has been pushed aside as a cum- 
brous impossibility, or at least improbabil- 
ity. Even the modified theories of De 
Vries and others are only tolerated. Weis- 
mann’s view, that the chromatic substance 
is the bearer of heredity, has nearly every- 
thing to be said in favor of it, if it be ac- 
cepted that this substance is found in every 
living cell. But even then, according to 
the Neo-Darwinian, it has only a very re- 
mote connection with the somatic micelle. 
Before resuggesting what has seemed to me 
a good position that explains details of 
structure, I may be allowed perhaps to be- 
come one more of the number of those who 
have attempted to rehabilitate Darwin’s 
pangenesis hypothesis. 

The wandering of his gemmules to and 
from definite positions has seemed cum- 
brous and unlikely, but the most funda- 
mental law of plant and animal physiology 
is circulation, metabolism and ultimate as- 
similation as the physiological groundwork 
of life, growth and heredity. On the plant 
side physiologists have only realized within 
the past quarter-century how potent and 
generally present are ferments of diverse 
composition and action. Thanks to the 
labors of Green, Chittenden and others, we 
further know that highly complex nitroge- 
nous compounds are readily converted 
from solid into liquid form, and can mi- 
grate, in an as yet often mysterious man- 
ner, to definite centers of nutrition to be 
again converted into solids. So far as my 
knowledge of physics and chemistry leads 
me, there is no obstacle to our admitting 
that transfers of complex dissolved ma- 
terials are passing to the protoplasm, and 
through it to the chromatin of every cell, 
more or less affecting its micellar structure. 
It is necessary, therefore, to learn what rela- 
tion, if any, exists between the chromatic 
and plasmatic substance of cells. 

In such plants as Spirogyra and Dionea 


SCIENCE. 


945 


I regard the chromatic substance as being 
demonstrably continuous from the nucleolus 
through the nucleoplasm to the cytoplasm, 
where connections are made with the chro- 
matic center of each chloroplast. The so- 
called pyrenoid-centers in Spirogyra be- 
have to stains and reagents as does typical 
chromatin substance, while radiating chro- 
matic threads pass from them to the nuclear 
chromatin. Furthermore, in Spirogyra an 
extremely fine chromatic thread-work joins 
the pyrenoid centers in it transversely or 
obliquely. What the finer invisible termi- 
nations of it In the protoplasm may be, we 
cannot say, but it appears to me that, if 
physico-chemical laws are not to be thrown 
aside, it is a necessity of the case that the 
delicate chromatic endings in the proto- 
plasm are being acted on, and more or less 
modified according to the nature of the 
stimuli that travel to them. As a result of 
this, a slow, steady but appreciable modifica- 
tion will be effected in the reproductive cells 
which epitomize the molecular structure of 
the entire organism that produces them. 
Joun M. MacraRLane. 
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


CURRENT NOTES ON PHYSIOGRAPHY. 
UPLANDS AND VALLEYS OF KANSAS. 


Tue second volume of the University 
Geological Survey of Kansas concerns the 
western part of the State, occupied by Cre- 
taceous and Tertiary formations. The 
physiographic matter is contributed by 
Haworth; the geological descriptions by 
Prosser and Logan. The Tertiary lies un- 
conformably on the broadly eroded Creta- 
ceous. The surface of the latter, north of 
the Arkansas and west of the paleozoic 
area, presents three ragged east-facing es- 
carpments of moderata height at the mar- 
gins of the Dakota sandstone, Benton 
limestone and Fort Hays limestone, with 
intervening plains gradually ascending west- 


946 


ward. The Tertiary, mostly composed of 
sands and gravels, hundreds of feet in 
thickness, derived from the Rocky moun- 
tains, is explained chiefly as river wash, 
and not asa lacustrine deposit. Its east- 
ward margin is marked by an irregular es- 
carpment formed on the ‘mortar beds’ 
(sand or gravel with calcareous cement). 
Its general surface, away from the river 
valleys, is broadly even. Faint depressions 
or swales occur, holding water for a month 
or so in the year; they are ascribed to un- 
equal settling of the strata, followed by un- 
derground leaching. A further stage of 
this process is seen in the ‘arroyos,’ slight 
depressions of the surface with continuous 
descent, like stream channels, but broad, 
grassy and flat, with low bluff-like rims up 
to their very heads. 

The uplands with their escarpments are 
much dissected by the rivers, giving local 
relief of 250 or 300 feet, and a greater 
variety of scenery than is commonly asso- 
ciated with the Great Plains ; yet it seems 
something of an exaggeration to say of this 
treeless region that “‘ near any of the drain- 
age streams one almost invariably finds a 
varied and pleasing landscape which in 
many respects is rarely surpassed in Amer- 
ica.’”’? Hven some of the larger rivers are 
of inconstant flow; for example, the Cim- 
arron river ‘has water in it throughout the 
greater part of the year in most of its 
course.’ Bear and White Woman creeks, 
one south, the other north of the Arkansas, 
enter the State from Colorado in well-cut 
valleys, and after heavy rains possess a 
large volume of water with much sediment; 
but their valley sides decrease in height 
down stream, and at last the waters and 
sediments are spread out on the even up- 
lands or lost in the sand hills, without join- 
ing any other river. Smoky Hill river is 
working on bed rock for much of its course; 
but the Arkansas has heavily aggraded its 
valley. The report is illustrated with a 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 129. 


number of photographs, whose value would 
have been greater had they been taken 
when possible from higher points of view. 
The last of a number of plates gives a. 
bird’s-eye view of the State, with geological 
areas, rivers, and county boundaries marked. 
on the surface and vertical sections on the 
margin, of much service in elucidating the 
text. ; 
BELL ON CANADIAN RIVERS. 

Rogpert Betz, of the Canadian Geolog- 
ical Survey, discusses the ‘Evidences of 
northeasterly differential rising of the land 
along Bell river’ (Bull. Geol. Soc. Amer... 
VIII., 1897, 241-250), which flows north- 
ward from the upper Ottawa to Hudson 
Bay. Good proof is given that the upper 
Ottawa crossed the present height of land 
in postglacial time and followed the Bell; 
and that its diversion to the St. Lawrence 
is due to a rise of the land in the north or 
northeast still in progress. Some of the 
ragged expansions of the rivers, forming 
lakes, which are commonly explained as. 
the result of drift barriers, are ascribed 
by Bell to backwater flooding in conse- 
quence of the tilting of the land. The 
small relief of the region and the low 
divides between the rivers, combined with 
the resistant character of the ledges where 
crossed by streams, are all favorable to. 
these results. The Bell river, flowing to- 
wards Hudson Bay, has acquired a low- 
grade course through a clay-covered low- 
land of till; it is here and there interrup- 
ted by rapids on hard ledges. At present 
the water becomes deeper (even thirty or 
forty feet), the stream broader, and the 
banks less defined in going up stream from 
from one fall to the next; and this is well 
interpreted as a result of uplift in the 
north. The out-branching ‘ lost channels ’ 
of various east- or west-flowing rivers are 
generally found on the south side of the 
main stream. The Churchill River seems 
to be on the verge of spilling over south- 


JUNE 18, 1897.] 


ward at Frog portage, 500 miles from its 
mouth, and running tothe Nelson. Altoge- 
ther, this is a most interesting and valuable 
contribution to the natural history of rivers. 


THE PLATEAU OF WEST VIRGINIA. 


A REporT by M. R. Campbell and W. C. 
Mendenhall, dealing primarily with the 
‘Geologic section along the New and 
Kanawha rivers in West Virginia’ (17th 
Ann. Rep. U.S. G. 8., Pt. II., 1896, 479- 
511), includes a brief account of the physi- 
ography of the plateau thereabouts, with 
a number of excellent illustrations from 
well selected points of view. The river 
eanyon, for such it truly is in spite of its 
occurrence east of the 100th meridian, is a 
full thousand feet deep, with forested walls 
descending at angles of 35° or 40° to a 
narrow valley floor. Where the river cuts 
down upon harder sandstones it has not yet 
developed a graded channel; elsewhere it 
has narrow belts of flood plain, now on this 
side, now on that. The canyon is sharply 
cutina Tertiary peneplain that was well 
smoothed for a number of miles on either 
side of the river, but further away the 
upland is interrupted by knobs and ridges 
that rise distinctly above it. The dissec- 
tion of the peneplain was permitted by a 
broad arching uplift late in Eocene time, 
its present altitude being 2,600 feet near 
Hinton, but of less amount to the south- 
east and northwest. The river fortunately 
maintained its antecedent course across the 
broad arch, and thus opened the important 
highway through a region that would other- 
wise be difficult to traverse. Agriculture has 
lost much in the conversion of the smooth 
peneplain into a dissected plateau, but min- 
ing has made corresponding gains in the 
exposure given to numerous coal beds on 
the valley sides. 


CRATER LAKE AND MT. MAZAMA, OREGON. 


An account of Crater Lake, by Diller 
(Amer. Journ. Sci., III., 1897, 165-172) 


SCIENCE. 


947 


notes that the Mazamas, a society of moun- 
tain-climbers of Portland, met at the lake 
last summer and gave their name to the 
vanished cone, now replaced by the superb 
caldera. So far as I know, this is the first 
instance of giving a special name to a van- 
ished volcano, although the habit of naming 
extinct lakes is now common. Besides the 
evidence from truncated lava beds and 
headless valleys, which points so unequivo- 
cally to the loss of the Mazama cone, 
Diller adds evidence from glaciation. Not 
only are there moraines in the valleys two 
to five miles down from the river, but the 
topmost rocks of the rim are planed off 
and striated on the outer slope, while the 
cliffs turned toward the lake have angular 
and broken faces. The ice, therefore, came 
from a higher source than any now pres- 
ent, and, judging by the extent of the 
glaciation, Mazama was in the glacial period 
a rival of Shasta and Rainier for the su- 
premacy of the range. It was still active 
during the presence of the ice; for on the 
northeastern rim a glaciated lava flow 
covers two layers of pumice separated by a 
sheet of rhyolite, and all these lie on an 
older glaciated surface. It is suggested 
that the heavy deposits of waste that 
occupy the lower radial valleys were 
washed down by floods that were caused 
by eruptions from the snow-capped moun- 
tain. The caldera is explained by the 
withdrawal of the deep lavas, followed by 
a great cave-in of the upper cone. An 
edition of the Crater lake topographical 
sheet, published by the Geological Survey, 
has been printed with a number of excel- 
lent photographic views on the back. 
W. M. Davis. 


HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 
MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 


Two of the lectures at the National Mu- 
seum, reprinted in the last Smithsonian Re- 


948 


port, are on man and his environment. 
Major J. W. Powell addressed his audience 
on the ‘ Relation of Primitive Peoples to En- 
vironment, Illustrated by American Hx- 
amples,’ while Professor O. T. Mason chose 
as his topic ‘ The Influence of Environment 
upon Human Industries or Arts.’ 

It is needless to say that both lectures are 
learned and instructive. Major Powell ex- 
plains the origin of the activities of culture 
and their modification by the qualities and 
properties of external existences. He refers 
to those forms of environment which ap- 
pear as institutions, opinions and languages, 
and weighs their values. 

Professor Mason begins with man’s cosmic 
environment and its influence on his indus- 
trial activities, and devotes his chief atten- 
tion to the especially American environ- 
ments and their association with aboriginal 
industries. The table which he presents in 
this connection is clear, full and suggestive. 

There is no question of the high value of 
such thoughtful contributions as these to 
the science of man. But sometimes there is 
a danger that man himself may be lost to 
sight in the contemplation of his surround- 
ings. Forty years ago Draper and Buckle 
saw nothing in man but a creature of en- 
vironment; whereas, to-day, the highest 
note of anthropologic science is to chant the 
victory of man over his environment by the 
powers of his psychical nature. 


SLAVERY OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 


In the study of native American ethnog- 
raphy the question of human slavery has 
important bearings. Before the discovery, 
it prevailed in Mexico and northern South 
America, perhaps on the northwest coast. 
The Spanish adventurers did not hesitate 
a moment to enslave the Indians, but 
neither the monarchs of Spain nor the 
Catholic clergy authorized such proceed- 
ings. The latter, indeed, notably Father 
Montesinos and the famous Las Casas, 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 129. 


protested against it in the strongest terms, 
as has been again shown by Dr. Mare F. 
Vallette, in his ‘Studies in American His- 
tory.’ 

An article on ‘Canadian Indian Slavery 
in the Highteenth Century,’ in the Proceed- 
ings of the Canadian Institute, February, 
1897, by Dr. James B. Hamilton, proves 
that Indian slaves were quite numerous 
there until within the present century, 
and, according to the Abbé Tanguay, 
were found also among the Catholic popu- 
lation. They bore the name Panis, that 
is, Pawnees ; as it seems that members of 
this tribe were captured by the Algonkins 
and sold to the early traders, whence all 
enslaved Indians came to be so called. 

None of the northern tribes, however, 
was successfully reduced to a state of 
bondage, and this accounts largely for 
their destruction as a race. 

D. G. Brinton. 

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


NOTES ON INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 


At the conversazione of the Royal So- 
ciety, May 19th, among interesting exhibits 
was one by C. T. Heycock and F. H. Nev- 
ille of a curious alloy of silver and zinc, 
““which would have warmed the hearts of 
the old-time alchemists.”” This alloy is of 
the ordinary color of silver, but when 
warmed up to 300° C. and then suddenly 
cooled it becomes the color of copper. On 
reheating and cooling slowly it resumes its 
original color. The same effect is produced 
by heating in air, in hydrogen or in a 
vacuum. 

TuE Chemical News quotes from the Sani- 
tary Chronicles of the parish of St. Maryle- 
bone, for the month ending March 31, 1897, 
the reports of work done by Dr. Winter 
Blythe on the disinfecting properties of 
formaldehyde, commonly known in solution 
as formalin. One part in tem thousand suf- 


JUNE 18, 1897.] 


fices to preserve milk, soup and similar 
articles for a considerable time. The aque- 
ous solution, when exposed in dishes, has a 
tendency to polymerize, its disinfecting 
qualities becoming by this much impaired. 
It is as a gas that formaldehyde exercises 
its valuable properties most efficiently. A 
comparative trial was made with sulfur 
dioxid and formaldehyde in two rooms in 
which various bacilli were exposed. The 
growth of the typhoid bacillus and the an- 
thrax bacillus were not prevented by sulfur 
dioxid, but were by formaldehyde. The 
fumes of formaldehyde are very irritating to 
the eyes, but in general are far less disa- 
greeable than those of burning sulfur. In 
conclusion, Dr. Blythe considers that form- 
aldehyde is superior to sulfur dioxid as a 
disinfectant, and recommends its adoption 
by the vestry of the parish. 


OBSERVATIONS appear to show that the pro- 
portion of argon in exhaled air is slightly 
less than that in inhaled (1.21% as against 
1.186%). Ithad been suggested as possible 
that argon formed a compound with the 
hemoglobin of the blood. This seemed the 
more probable from the fact that when an- 
alyzed by the Kjeldahl method, where the 
nitrogen is converted into ammonia, the 
amount of nitrogen obtained from hemin is 
less than that by the Dumas method, where 
the nitrogen is measured absolutely. In the 
last Berichte J. Zaleski, of St. Petersburg, de- 
scribes careful examination of preparations 
of the coloring matter of the blood for 
argon, but in no case was a trace of argon 
found, so that some other explanation 
must be sought for the analytical differ- 
ences. 


THE constitution of phosphorous acid has 
been a matter of doubt, for though much 
evidence points to OPH.(OH), its formation 
by the action of water on PCI, points to 
P(OH),. The ester P(OC,H, ), is known, be- 
ing formed, however, not from the acid, but 


SCIENCE. 


949 


by action of Na(OC,H.), on PCl,. Michaelis 
and Becker describe in the last Berichte the 
formation of an isomeric ethyl ester directly 
from phosphorous acid by the successive 
action of lead acetate, giving lead phos- 
phite; ethyl iodid, giving diethyl phos- 
phorous ester; metallic sodium, replacing 
the hydrogen atom, and ethyl iodid, giving 
OPC,H,.(OC,H,),, the diethyl ester of ethyl 
phosphinic acid, a compound differing ma- 
terially from its above mentioned isomer 
P(OC,H,),. From this it appears very 
probable that the true constitution of phos- 
phorous acid is OPH.(OH), with quintiva- 
lent phosphorus, and not P(OH),, with the 
phosphorus atom trivalent. Reasoning 
from analogy the constitution of hypophos- 
phorous acid would be OPH,.OH, which has 
long seemed probable. 


Discussion has been carried on in the 
Berichte between Dr. Emmerling, of Char- 
lottenburg, and Dr. Gosio, of Rome, as to 
the cause of poisoning from fabrics, as 
carpets and wall papers, containing arsenic. 
Several moulds are known to flourish on 
media containing solid compounds of arse- 
nic, among them mucor mucedo and aspergillus 
glaucus. In penicillium brevicaule Dr. Gosio 
finds a mould which, grown on a medium 
containing arsenic, evolves a volatile sub- 
stance with the characteristic garlic odor 
of volatile arsenie compounds, and which 
was instantly fataltoa mouse. The nature 
of this compound is, however, undetermined, 
and Dr. Emmerling doubts its existence. 
His doubts are based on the fact that he 
has obtained no evidence of its existence, 
using the mucor and the aspergillus, though 
he has not experimented with the penicil- 
lium. It is to be hoped that others will 
succeed in obtaining the volatile arsenic 
compound if it really exists, and settle finally 
this long controverted point in toxicol- 
ogy. 

deed bye 8 Le 


950 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 


EFFORTS are being made to collect $50,000 to 
purchase for the Philadelphia Academy of 
Natural Science the paleontological collections 
of the late Professor Cope. The sum of about 
$5,000 has been already received. It would-be 
especially appropriate that these collections 
should be secured by the Academy, where the 
proceeds of the sale will be used for the founda- 
tion of a chair of paleontology. 

A BRONZE bust of Maria Mitchell has been 
unveiled in the Observatory at Vassar College. 
It was cast by the Gorham Silver Company 
from a plaster bust made in 1877 by Miss Mary 
Brigham. 

Dr. JAMES HALL, the Geologist of the State 
of New York, is to sail for Europe on June 24th, 
to attend the coming meeting of the Interna- 
tional Geological Congress at St. Petersburg as 
a representative of the State. 


Lorp Lister and Professor Max Miller have 
been elected members of the Imperial Academy 
of Sciences of Vienna. 


Dr. EDUARDO WILD, formerly Minister of 
Justice and Minister of the Interior of the Argen- 
tine government and now professor in the 
Buenos Ayres University, is in the United States 
as part of an extended tour with the object of 
investigating educational institutions. 

Mr. FREDERICK L. RANSOME has been ap- 
pointed Assistant Geologist in the U. 8. Geo- 
logical Survey. 


A MEMORIAL to Joseph Thomson, the African 
explorer, was unveiled at his birth place, Thorn- 
hill, near Dumfries, Scotland, on June 8th. 
The memorial consists of a pedestal with bas- 
reliefs and a bust in bronze of Thomson exe- 
cuted by Mr. Charles McBride. It is proposed 
further to present a repliqua of the bust in 
marble to the Royal Geographical Society. 

A COMMEMORATIVE tablet to the eminent 
French botanist Duchartre was, on May 23d, 
placed on the house at Portiragnes, where he 
was born in 1806. 

THE Epidemiological Society of London has 
collected funds for a Jenner medal, the design 
for which has been entrusted to Mr. Allen 
Wyon. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 129. 


KARL REMIGIUS FRESENIUS, the eminent. 
chemist, died at Wiesbaden on June 10th. He 
was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1818, and 
had been, since 1845, professor of chemistry in 
the Agricultural Institute at Baden. 


Mr. ALVAN G. CLARK died at Cambridge on 
June 9th, aged sixty-four years. Astronomy is 
deeply indebted to the senior Alvan Clark, who: 
diedin 1887, and tohis two sons. In 1859 Mr. 
Clark began the making of an object glass. 
eighteen and one-half inches in aperture, the 
largest that had up to that time been attempted. 
In 1873 the firm made the twenty-six-inch objec- 
tive for the observatory at Washington, and in 
1880 the thirty-inch refractor for the Imperial 
Observatory at St. Petersburg. These were fol- 
lowed by the thirty-six-inch lens of the Lick Ob- 
servatory and the recently completed forty-inch 
lens for the Yerkes Observatory. The making of 
such lenses was a scientific work of the utmost 
value, and Mr. Clark had also made direct con- 
tributions to astronomy, including the discovery 
of the companion of Sirius in 1862, for which he 
was awarded the Lalande Medal of the Paris. 
Academy. 


WE also regret the following deaths: Dr. 
William Thompson Lusk, President and profes- 
sor of gynecology in the Bellevue Hospital Medi- 
cal College, New York, and the author of many 
important contributions on gynecology, died on 
June 12th. Mr. Richard Christopher Rapier, an 
eminent British engineer, died on May 28th, 
aged 61 years. Mr. Ney Elias, who made im- 
portant geographical explorations in Asia, died 
on May 21st. Privy Councillor von Falke, form- 
erly Director of the Austrian Museum of Art and 
Industry, died on June 1th, aged 72 years. 


Ginn & Co. make the important announce- 
ment that they will publish in the course of the 
present month the first number of The Zoolog- 
ical Bulletin, a companion serial to the Journal 
of Morphology, designated for shorter contri- 
butions in animal morphology and general 
biology, with no illustrations beyond text- 
figures. It is to be expected that there will be 
sufficient material for at least six numbers a 
year of about fifty pages each, form and style 
to be the same as the Journal of Morphology, so 
that articles in whole or in part can be easily 


JUNE 18, 1897. ] 


transferred in case of need. The Journal will 
be edited by Professors C. O. Whitman and W. 
M. Wheeler, of the University of Chicago. 


Natural Science completes its tenth volume 
with the current number, and will hereafter 
be published by J. M. Dent & Co., London. 
Natural Science has undertaken the somewhat 
difficult task of publishing each month an ex- 
tended series of anonymous editorial notes and 
comments. These have always been independ- 
ent and interesting; indeed, the journal through- 
out has demonstrated that science need not be 
dull. Natural Science has given more space and 
more intelligent appreciation to the results of 
American science than any other foreign journal, 
and should have a large circulation in the 
United States. 


In addition to the parties under Prince Luigi 
Amadio and Mr. Henry G. Bryant, now at- 
tempting the ascent of Mt. St. Elias, we are in- 
formed that a party from the London Alpine 
Club and the Boston Appalachian Mountain 
Club will carry out explorations in the Canadian 
Alps, with special reference to the snowfield of 
the Continental Divide. 


PROFESSOR WILLIAM LIBBEY, with a party 
from Princeton University, expects to explore 
during July a mesa or sandstone table land near 
Albuquerque, N. Mex. The mesa rises from 
the plains to a height of more than 7,000 feet 
and has hitherto proved inaccessible, although 
it is thought to contain archeological remains. 


PROFESSOR GEORGE H. BARTON finds that he 
is unable to accompany Lieutenant Peary this 
summer, and the expedition will not include 
the party from the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology. 

THE steamship Windward has left London for 
Franz Josef Land in order to bring home the 
members of the Jackson-Harmsworth expedi- 
tion, who have now spent three winters near 
Cape Flora. The steamship takes with it spe- 
cial stores to be left at Elmwood, in case Dr. 
Andrée should be compelled to seek safe quar- 
ters in Franz Josef Land. 


ACCORDING to Reuter’s Agency, Captain 
Sverdrup has abandoned his original intention of 
exploring this year the unknown tract between 
Franz Josef Land and Spitzbergen. His plan 


SCIENCE. 


951 


now is to go up to Smith Sound, advancing along 
the northwestern part of the coast of Greenland, 
and to spend the winter in exploring on sledges 
that country and the American side of the 
North Pole generally, thus supplementing the 
Fram’s exploration of the Asiatic and European 
side. It is understood that Professor Mohn 
and Dr. Nansen approve the plan, for which 
an appropriation of 20,000 kroner has been 
asked from the State funds, the rest having 
been subscribed privately. 


THE daily papers report, how correctly it is 
not possible to state, that Mr. F. W. Christian 
has returned to Sydney after two years spent in 
exploration in the South Sea Islands, having 
discovered ancient records, hand work and 
weapons that prove that the Asiatic races traded 
in the Islands, and that the ancient Chinese 
immigrated and colonized there and thus 
reached Central America. 


Mr. FREDERICK H. BLODGETT, Secretary of 
the New Jersey State Microscopical Society, 
writes us that the twenty-eighth annual meeting 
of the Society was of special interest. After 
some opening remarks by the President, Dr. J. 
Nelson, Dr. H. C. VanDyck explained his pro- 
jection microscope for polarized light, and a 
series of slides was exhibited by Dr. A. H. 
Chester. A large number of table exhibits was 
shown by members of the Society. 


AMERICAN physiologists, attending the meet- 
ing of the British Association at Toronto, should 
not fail also to be present at the Montreal 
meeting of the British Medical Asssciation, 
which opens on September ist. The subjects 
taken up for special consideration by the Sec- 
tion for Anatomy and Physiology are: Anes- 
thetics, the Teaching of Anatomy and the 
Causes and Modifications of Heart-beat. The 
President of the Section is Dr. Augustus Wal- 
ler, London; the Vice-Presidents are: Drs. F. 
Shepherd, Montreal; T. Wesley Mills, Mon- 
treal; A. B. McCallum, Toronto; A. Primrose, 
Toronto, and J. B. A. Lamarche, Montreal. 
The Honorary Secretaries are: Drs. Robert Hut- 
chison, J. M. Elder and W. 8. Morrow. 


THE thirty-fifth University Convocation of the 
State of New York will be held in Albany on 
June 28th, 29th and 30th. The subjects selected 


952 


for special discussion include science teaching, 
in which Professor W. M. Davis and Professor 
Geo. F. Atkinson will take part, and the Amer- 
ican University with special reference to a Na- 
tional University at Washington. 


GOVERNOR BLACK has signed the bill appro- 
priating $126,600 for the enlargement of the 
buildings of the Craig colony for epileptics. 


THE new tunnel under the Thames at the 
East End of London, constructed under the 
auspices of the County Council, was opened on 
May 22d. f 


THE American Naturalist states that Drs. 
Maxwell and Swan, of Monmouth College, Illi- 
nois, propose to organize a summer school of 
biology, which will be probably located on the 
Mississippi River, not far from Monmouth. 


Ir is said that a bill has been introduced in the 
Minnesota Legislature providing for the appoint- 
ment of expert witnesses, and that the homeo- 
pathic physicians have, with legal advice, pre- 
pared a bill to be presented to the New York 
Legislature. The object of the bill is to provide 
a list of experts from whom witnesses are to be 
selected by the Court and paid by the State. 
The employment of expert witnesses by the 
counsel for the prosecution or defence has been 
unfortunate both for the Courts and for science. 
It would certainly be desirable to devise a plan 
by which the expert witness should be in the 
position of a judge rather than that of a paid 
attorney. 


THE unfortunate relations of politics to sci- 
ence are illustrated by the following note from 
the New York Tribune: ‘‘Senator Elkins and 
Representative Dovener, of West Virginia, had 
a talk with the President about West Vir- 
ginians. They introduced George Bowers, a 
candidate for Fish Commissioner, and Alexander 
Campbell, who wants a Deputy Auditorship. It 
is stated that there are numerous applicants for 
Fish Commissioner, but at the same time it is 
stated that Commissioner Brice stands well at 
the White House. Many prominent Republi- 
cans have requested that he be retained, and 
have pointed to his services as having been de- 
cidedly satisfactory. It is hinted that the 
President will make no change, if at all, with- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 129. 


out giving thorough consideration to the idea. 
of retaining Mr. Brice.”’ : 

THE United States Civil Service Commission 
announces that it will hold a special examina- 
tion on July 28th for establishing a register 
from which appointment may be made to the 
position of Assistant Chief in the Division of 
Soils in the Agricultural Department. The 
salary of this position is $1,800 per annum and 
men only are eligible. All applicants are re- 
quired to submit to the Commission, not later 
than July 15th, an original essay, either printed 
or in manuscript form, consisting of not less 
than 5,000 words and containing a thorough 
treatment of the subject ‘ Environment as affect- 
ing the yield, quality and time of ripening of 
crops.’ This paper should fully cover the rela- 
tion of climate, soil and other conditions to the 
functions of plants, with special reference to the 
commercial aspect of the subject. Only those 
applicants who submit satisfactory essays will 
be admitted to the remainder of the examina- 
tion, which will be held on July 28th. The sub- 
jects and relative weights of the examination 
will be as follows : 


Plant physiology.............csesssseccosessseevenseneees 3 
Chimatolopyprrceccereeoseeeen emesis seiiesseceretseesece 2 
SLOSS dcoeconconctaonconannposonabocasatacoesbonSanconatBoteS 2 


Crops (including production and marketing).. 2 
Languages, German and French, 
(Translated into English) 


All persons desiring to compete in this exami- 
nation should write at once to the United States 
Civil Service Commission at Washington, D. C., 
for blanks and further instructions. 

Dr. H. CARRINGTON Boron recently called 
the attention of our readers to a patent allowed 
by the British office for making gold. An ap- 
plication fora patent to convert baser metals. 
into gold has been made to our patent office, 
but it appears that the Treasury Department 
undertook to test the process and that the patent. 
has so far been withheld. 

WE learn from the London Times that the 
Select Committee of the House of Commons ap- 
pointed to inquire into the administration of 
the museums of the Science and Art Depart- 


JUNE 18, 1897.] 


ment has presented an interim report calling 
attention to the peril of destruction by fire to 
which the priceless collections at the South 
Kensington Museum are exposed. After de- 
scribing the general character of the buildings 
and their inflammable structure, the report goes 
on to observe that the reason why the structural 
alterations necessary for the protection of the 
collections from fire have not been made appears 
to be that the completion of the permanent 
buildings has always been in the contemplation 
of successive governments, and the committee 
regard it as their immediate duty to lay before 
the House of Commons their very strong 
opinion that permanent buildings for the ade- 
quate accommodation of the collections at South 
Kensington should be proceeded with without 
delay. 

A THIRD exhibition of recent geological work 
was opened on June Istat the Paris Museum of 
Natural History. The Times states that Eng- 
land contributes some geological charts and 
India some meteorites. M. Schuck sends speci- 
mens of Transvaal auriferous rocks; M. le- 
Feuvre, Chilian nitrates ; M. Chaefanjon, Cen- 
tral Asian rocks and Chinese coal; M. Chauvau, 
Madagascar gold ore, and the Dutch govern- 
ment a large geological chart of Java. 


THERE will be held at Berlin in October an 
International Congress on Leprosy, to which the 
United States Department of State has been in- 
vited to send delegates. 

THE daily papers report that the movable 
floor of the great dome of Yerkes Observatory 
fell 45 feet on May 29th. The damage is con- 
fined to the floor and the machinery immediately 
connected with it. The cause of the accident 
has not yet been announced. 


In view of the 20th annual convention of 
the National Electric Light Association, which 
opened on June 8th at Niagara Falls, the Elec- 
trical World gives an elaborately illustrated 
review of the electrical installation of the Falls. 
The total horse power of the Falls is estimated 
at about 2,500,000, of which about 52,000 will 
be required for the present installation. This 
will lower the level of the Falls by about two 
inches. At the present time the electro-chemi- 
cal industries use 11,000 horse power, of which 


SCIENCE. 


955 


the most important are those for the manufac- 
ture of aluminium, carborundum, sodium and 
calcium carbide. 

WE learn from Natural Science that a large 
addition is being made to the Bergen Museum. 
To the cost, which will exceed $40,000, the Nor- 
wegian government has contributed half, while 
smaller sums have been given by the munici- 
pality of Bergen and by private persons. The 
number of visitors to the museum was over 
50,000 in 1896. 

A LABORATORY of experimental phonetics 
has been established under the chair of com- 
parative philosophy of the Collége de France. 


THE new Medical School buildings of Guy’s 
Hospital, London, were recently opened by the 
Prince of Wales. The Treasurer stated that 
nearly $500,000 had already been received for 
the endowment fund of the hospital in answer 
to the appeal of the Prince of Wales. 


Wit the concurrence of the Astronomer 
Royal, a site has been fixed in Greenwich Park 
for the new magnetic observatory. 


In a notice of Mr. J. B. Leiberg’s report of 
his botanical survey of the Coeur d’Alene 
mountains, Idaho, in the summer of 1895 (Con- 
trib. U. S. Natl. Herb., Vol. V., No. 1), in the 
current number of the American Naturalist, Dr. 
Bessey remarks: ‘‘It is interesting to note that, 
in spite of the fact that this report has a marked 
economic flavor, all measurements are metric 
throughout. Certainly if the United States De- 
partment of Agriculture can safely use the 
metric measurements in a bulletin dealing with 
topography, drainage, climate, mineral deposits, 
agricultural capacity, agricultural products, 
grazing lands, native food plants, utilization of 
water supply, forest resources, forest destruc- 
tion, forest preservation, etc., botanists need no 
longer fear to make use of such measurements 
in their books, even of the most popular 
character.”’ 


INVESTIGATIONS by Tangl, of Budapest, 
which are reported on in Pfliiger’s Archiv, are 
of interest to those who have the management 
of horses. He finds that digestion proceeds 
more rapidly in the horse if eating is followed 
by active exercise than if it is followed by a 
period of rest. This is the opposite of what 


954 


takes place in the dog and in man, but the dif- 
ference need not occasion surprise, in view of 
the difference in food and habits. 


M. Motssan reported to the Paris Academy 
of Sciences on May 31st that, in conjunction 
with Professor Dewar, he had succeeded in 
liquefying fluorine. 

WE learn from Nature that the British Board 
of Agriculture has issued an order which pro- 
hibits the importation of dogs into Great Britain 
from any other country (except Ireland and the 
Isle of Man) otherwise than in accordance with 
certain provisions set forth. The order takes 
effect on September 15, 1897. After that date 
no dog may be landed in Great Britain from 
any other country without a license from the 
Board of Agriculture, application for which is 
to be made to the Secretary of the Board. 


THE maps of the Orinoco-Essequibo region of 
South America compiled for the use of the 
Venezuela Boundary Commission have been 
published in atlasform. There are seventy-six 
maps in all, of which fifteen are new and made 
especially for the Commission’s use, while the 
remaining sixty-one are fac-simile reproductions 
of old ones selected from the large number 
brought to the attention of the Commission. 


Aw Association of Teachers of Science in In- 
diana was organized in 1896, and held its 
second meeting at Lafayette on February 26th 
and 27th. We learn from the Inland Educator 
that a committee consisting of Professor D. W. 
Dennis, Richmond, Ind.; Professor Dumont 
Latz, South Bend, Ind.; Professor M. B. 
Thomas, Crawfordsville, Ind.; Professor J. T. 
Scovel, Terre Haute, Ind., and Professor G. A. 
Abbott, Evansville, Ind., was appointed by the 
Association to investigate the questions dis- 
cussed and report a course of science study for 
the high schools of the State. The questions be- 
fore the committee are: What subjects should 
constitute a science course? How much time 
should be given to each-? In what order should 
they be considered? How much laboratory 
work should be required ? ete. The committee 
would be glad to hear from every science 
teacher and interested school official in the State 
in regard. to these and kindred questions. 


Natural Science states that Mr. A. Gibb Mait- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 129. 


land, late of the Geological Survey of Queens- 
land, has been appointed Government Geologist 
of West Australia, and is reorganizing the staff 
with the view of making a proper geological 
survey of the mining fields of the colony and 
publishing maps of the same. As a preliminary 
to this a typographical survey is being prepared 
with the assistance of a topographer. Mr. Tor- 
rington Blatchford, of the Sydney School of 
Mines, who has had much practical experience 
of mining geology, has been added to the staff. 
Applications have also been invited by the 
government for the position of Assistant 
Geologist; while as Mineralogist and Assayer 
there has been appointed Mr. Simpson of the 
Sydney School of Mines, late Chief Assistant 
Assayer to the Mount Morgan Co., Queensland. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 

FIVE additional fellowships have been estab- 
lished at the University of Pennsylvania on the 
Harrison Foundation. The University now 
offers nineteen fellowships of the annual value 
of $500 each and five senior fellowships of the 
value of $800. 


THE Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard 
University receives $5,000 by the will of the 
late Miss Edith Rotch, of Boston. 

A MEMORIAL scholarship of the value of $8,- 
000 has been given to Vassar College by Mrs. 
Ann Shepard, of Brooklyn. 

Mr. H. A. MorGan, of the Board of Trustees 
of Wells College, has given the College $30,000, 
covering the debt on the rebuilding of the main 
building in 1890. 

THE Trustees of Syracuse University have 
contributed $32,000 to cover the deficit in cur- 
rent expenses, half of this amount being given 
by Mr. Jno. D. Archbold, President ofthe Board. 


THE nayal authorities have decided to estab- 
lish a post-graduate course at the Naval Acad- 
emy for cadets intended for the construction 
corps, and orders have been issued directing 
Assistant Constructor Hobson to report for duty 
at the head of the department. 

THE catalogue of the University of Minnesota 
for the year 1896 shows that there was at the 
University an attendance of 2,647 students, of 
which number 728 were women. There were 156 


JUNE 18, 1897.] 


students in the graduate departments, 909 in the 
College of Science, Literature and the Arts, and 
181 in the College of Engineering, Metallurgy 
and the Mechanic Arts. 307 degrees were con- 
ferred at the commencement exercises on 
June 3d. 


OF the £30,000 immediately required towards 
the endowment fund of the new Sheffield Uni- 
versity College £24,000 has already been sub- 
scribed. 

Dr. A. HI, Master of Downing College and 
lecturer on human anatomy, has been elected 
Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University for 
the coming year. 

AT Columbia University Mr Herbert M. 
Richards has been appointed tutor in botany ; 
Dr. James Ewing, instructor in clinical micro- 
scopy ; Dr. Charles Norris, tutor in pathology ; 
Mr. Benjamin Jakish, assistant in chemistry ; 
Mr. William E. Day, assistant in physics, and 
Mr. James H. McGregor, assistant in zoology. 

AT the Teachers’ College, New York, Mr. 
Richard E. Dodge has been promoted to a 
professorship of geography, and Mr. C. E. 
Bickle to an associate professorship of mathe- 
matics. 

Dr. CHARLES ST. JoHN, of the University of 
Michigan, has been made professor of physics 
at Oberlin College. 


PROFESSOR WILLIAM A. RoGERs has resigned 
from the chair of physics and astronomy at 
Colby University, and it is reported that he 
has accepted a professorship of physics at Alfred 
University. 

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 

THE DISTRIBUTION OF MARINE MAMMALS. 


To THE EpITOR OF SCIENCE: The interesting 
memoir of Dr. P. L. Sclater ‘on the Distribution 
of Marine Mammals’ (ScrencgE, V., 741-748) ig- 
nores previous investigators, and the general 
reader might, therefore, receive the idea that 
the subject under consideration has been en- 
tirely neglected by other writers, and would 
be also liable to suppose that his ‘six sea- 
regions’ were of equal value. In both postu- 
lates he would be entirely mistaken. The bear- 
ings of marine mammals on zoogeography and 
the differentiation of the ‘regions’ into primary 


SCIENCE. 


955 


and secondary ones have been frequently con- 
sidered by others. 

Dr. Sclater considers that, ‘‘ for the geography 
of marine mammals, the ocean may be most 
conveniently divided into six sea-regions, which 
are as follows :’’ 

‘I. Regio Arctatlantica.’ 


‘TI. ‘* Mesatlantica.’ 
‘TIl. ‘‘ Indopelagica.’ 
‘IV. ‘* Aretirenica.’ 
‘V. ‘* Mesirenica.’ 
‘VI. ‘* WNotopelagica.’ 


The characteristic types of each of these re- 
gions are named, but Dr. Sclater has evidently 
overlooked some sources of information and 
hence has unduly restricted certain forms. Thus, 
the Balzna mysticetus is by no means ‘peculiar 
to Arctatlantis,’ but has been the object of an 
extensive fishery north of Bering strait.* 
Nor are Delphinapterus and Monodon ‘not found 
elsewhere,’ for they also occur in Arctirenia. 
Further, Berardius is not restricted to the 
Notopelagian area, for a species occurs in the 
North Pacifie.+ It follows that these extensions 
of the ranges of the several genera diminishes 
the value of the regions supposed to be distin- 
guished by their exclusive possession. If we 
have regard for the most characteristic aggre- 
gates of sea mammals, we are led to three 
primary divisions, viz: 


Arctalian { I. Regio Arctalantica. 


realm. | IV. ‘¢ Arctirenica. 
Ga II. ‘« Mesatlantica. 
pee J Ill. ‘ Indopelagica. 

e é | Vis ‘¢  Mesirenica. 

Notalian A 
aegis | VI. ‘¢ Notopelagica. 


The Arctalian realm is characteristic from 
the development of the Phocine Phocids, the 
Odobeenids or ‘ Trichechidze’ and the Delphinap- 
terine Delphinids. The North Atlantic and 
North Pacific ‘sea-regions’ are distinguished 
from each other by features of much inferior 
importance. 

The Tropicalian realm is remarkable for 
the development of the existing Sirenians 
and likewise of numerous Delphinine Del- 


*See Dallin SCIENCE (n.s.), V., 843, May 28, 1897. 
{Berardius Bairdii Stejneger, Proc. U. 8. Nat. Mus., 
VI., 75, 1883. 


956 
phinids, and it is also the home of Pho- 
cids more nearly related to the Phocines 


than the Lobodontines (though often asso- 
ciated with the later), but of a more general- 
ized type than either and probably entitled to 
subfamily distinction—the Monachine. The 
subdivisions of this realm, so far as the marine 
cetaceans are concerned, are of very subor- 
dinate importance, and the restrictions of the 
Monachine seals and different families of Sire- 
nians are the most noteworthy characteristics. 

The Notalian realm is specialized by the de- 
velopment therein of a peculiar subfamily of 
seals—the Lobodontine Phocids. 

These three realms were distinguished as 
early as 1875 and named in 1877.* They are 
well fitted for the expression of the facts of dis- 
tribution of the marine mammals, but for those 
respecting other classes two transition realms ap- 
pear to be advisable—the Pararctalian and An- 
tarctalian, and doubtless two others—the Pela- 
galian and Bassalian—should also be recognized. 
If the last are adopted most of the cetaceans 
should rather be relegated to the Pelagalian 
realm. I venture to add the opinion that the 
realms thus advocated are much better compar- 
able with Dr. Sclater’s land-regions than are 
his own sea-regions. 

THEO. GILL. 

Mr. T. L. ScrATer, in ‘his very interesting 
paper, ‘On the Distribution of Marine Mam- 
mals’ (SCIENCE, May 14, 1897), makes the fol- 
lowing remarks on the seals of the Galapagos 
(p. 742): ‘There are well founded traditions of 
eared seals having been formerly met with in 
the GalApagos, while they still occur on the 
coast of Peru and Chili.”’ 

Two species of seals are found on the Gala- 
pagos, as has been stated by J. A. Allen} in 
the extensive work on the North American 
Pinnipeds. Otaria jubata (Forster) and Arcto- 
cephalus australis (Zimmermann), of both speci- 


*See SCIENCE (n. s.), III., 515, 1896. 

fAllen, Joel Asaph: History of North American 
Pinnipeds; A Monograph of the Walruses, Sea-Lions, 
Sea-Bears and Seals of North America; U.S. Geolog. 
and Geogr. Surv. of the Territ.; F. V. Hayden, 
Geologist-in-Charge. Miscellaneous publications— 
No. 12, Washington, 1880, p. 208, 210-211, 367, 769- 
770. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 129. 


mens, have been collected by the Hassler expe- 
dition (1872), which are preserved in the Mu- 
seum of Comparative Zoology, Cambridge, 
Mass. 

Otaria jubata (Forster) is still quite common 
on the Gal4pagos. I have met it on Chatham, 
Charles, Hood, Gardner, Barrington, South 
Albemarle, Duncan, Jervis and James. They 
are found in considerable numbers, especially 
on Hood and Gardner, Barrington and Duncan. 
On the latter some of the rocks, where they 
move about, are polished absolutely smooth. 

I have not seen any specimens of Arctocephalus 
australis (Zimmermann), but whether they are 
extinct or not I do not dare to say. 

The presence of Sphenicus mendiculus (Sunde- 
vall), a penguin peculiar for the GalApagos is in- 
teresting. 

The most extensive data on the seals of the 
GalApagos and the seals of the South Pacific and 
Antarctic Ocean are given by Benjamin Mor- 
rell (a narrative of four voyages to the South 
Sea and South Pacific Ocean, Indian and Ant- 
arctic Ocean from 1822 to 1831. 8°. New York, 
1832).* 

The seals have been mentioned already by the 
first discoverer of the Gal4pagos, Fray Tom4s 
de Berlanga, +} obispo (bishop) de Castilla del Oro, 
on the 10th of March, 1535. He had the order 
from the Emperor Charles Y. to report on the 
government of Pizarro and to write a descrip- 
tion of Peru. The 23d of February, 1535, he 
sailed from Panama. For seven days the wind 
was favorable, but after that a calm set in for 
eight days and the very strong currents drifted 
the vessel far out to the sea. The 10th of 
March they sighted an island and, having only 
water for two days more, they anchored to look 
for water and fodder for the horses. There 
they found nothing but seals, sea-turtles and 
land tortoises so big that each could bear a man 
on its back, and many iguanas, which are like 
snakes. (‘No hallaron sino lobos marinos y 
tortugas y galapagos tan grandes, que llevable 


*Tn 1823 he took in a period of two months about 
five thousand fur-seal skins (Arctocephalus) from the 
Galdipagos. 

+ Marcos Jiménez de la Espada. Las Islas de los 
Galdpagos y otras més poniente. Sociedat Geografica 
de Madrid. 1892. pp. 1-5. 


June 18, 1897.] 


cada uno un hombre encima, y muchas iguanas, 
que son como sierpes.’’) G. BAuR. 
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. 


THE article of Mr. Sclater in ScreNcE, May 
14th, on the distribution of the Seals, Sirenians 
and Cetaceans, disregards the more recent pub- 
lications on zoogeography, especially marine 
zoogeography. It begins with a somewhat in- 
definite statement, that ‘most of the recent 
writers on Geographical Distribution have con- 
fined their attention to terrestrial mammals, or, 
at any rate, have but casually alluded to the 
marine groups of that class.’ I may be allowed 
to state that the deficiency of our knowledge of 
the distribution of marine animals induced me, 
nearly two years ago, to publish a book,* which 
is particularly intended to supply this lack. It 
seems, however, that Mr. Sclater never has seen 
this book. Mr. Sclater seems also to be unac- 
quainted with many other writings on the same 
subject, published since Wallace. I mention 
only the names of A. Agassiz, G. Baur, T. N. 
Gill, Guenther, v. Ihering, J. Murray, Neu- 
mayr, Pfeffer, J. Walther. The natural conse- 
quences of this neglect are most evident. 

I do not think it worth while to enter into a 
closer examination of the theoretical views of 
Mr. Sclater, since all these points have been dis- 
cussed by myself and others so extensively that 
anybody who has followed these discussions 
will see at once that his theoretical views are 
far from being in conformity with current the- 
ories. I shall state, however, a few points in 
the article referred to, by which it is proved con- 
clusively that he did not consult most of the 
writers quoted above. 

1. The term ‘life-district’ (‘ Lebensbezirk,’ 
‘domaine biologique’) seems to be completely 
unknown to Mr. Sclater; otherwise he would 
have treated the Cetaceans separately from the 
Seals and Sirenians. (Compare J. Walther, 
Ortmann, Chap. 3.) 

2. The importance of the action of tempera- 
ture-conditions has been completely overlooked 
by him; otherwise the effect of temperature 
should be shown in his sea-regions. (Compare 
Gill, Pfeffer, Ortmann, p. 37.) 

3. The distinction of autochthonts, immi- 

*Grundztige der marinen Tiergeog aphie, Jena, 
1896. 


SCIENCE. 


957 


grants and relicts (compare Guenther, Ortmann, 
p. 34) is unknown to Mr. Sclater; otherwise he 
would have assigned a different value to the 
eared seals inhabiting the northern Pacific in 
comparison with the other seals; Phoca and 
Trichechus are autochthonts, while the Otariidé 
are immigrants. 

4, It isimpossible to distinguish properly any 
distributional regions, which depend merely on 
a particular group of animals. The outcome 
will always be unsatisfactory. The regions cre- 
ated by Mr. Sclater are a striking evidence of 
the inconveniences of this method, as I have al- 
ready pointed out in the beginning of Chap. 4 
(p. 44-45) of my book. I mention only one in- 
stance: the fact that. Trichechus and Phoca are 
found in the northern parts of both the Atlantic 
and Pacific Oceans is in no way represented in 
Mr. Sclater’s division, although this fact is a 
very characteristic one, and, indeed, is the rule 
for the distribution of littoral polar animals. 
This rule is justified and supported by the phys- 
ical conditions of the polarseas. Nevertheless, 
Mr. Sclater does not pay any attention to it, and 
frames his regions with regard to exceptional 
cases. (Compare eared seals, above, under 3.) 

5. The definition of the Mid-Pacific Sea-re- 
gion of Mr. Sclater is insufficient. In fact, he 
does not give any limits, nor any characteristics 
of this region. 

6. The relations of his Indian Sea-region to 
his Mid-Atlantic Sea-region, due to the geolog- 
ical conditions of former times, and still exhib- 
ited in the distribution of the Sirenians, are not 
referred to at all, and of course no attempt has 
been made to explain them. (Compare Ort- 
mann, p. 67 f.) 

7. Mr. Sclater concludes that the distribu- 
tion of the* Otariidee proves a connection of 
South America with Africa by land. I should 
suggest to him to read the papers of y. Ihering 
on this subject (Archhelenis), before he tries to 
bring the distribution of the eared seals in con- 
nection with this old continent. The old Arch- 
helenis has positively nothing to do with the 
distribution of the sea lions ; the latter are late 
Tertiary, while the Archhelenis was chiefly 
Mesozoic! The absence of any Otariide in the 
middle and northern Atlantic is exclusively due 
to temperature conditions. 


958 


8. In conclusion I should like to direct atten- 
tion to the final statement of Mr. Sclater. 
Having made the (incorrect) supposition that 
the late-Tertiary group of the eared seals has 
been checked in its northward advance in the 
Atlantic by a connection of South America and 
Africa, he says that ‘‘all these facts, with the one 
exception of the supposed Atlantic barrier, would 
tend in favor of the now generally accepted doc- 
trine that the principal masses of land and water 
are not of modern origin, but have existed 
mainly in their’ present shapes throughout all 
ages.’’? No less than three errorsare contained 
in this single sentence, namely: 1. It is impos- 
sible to derive from the distribution of a group 
of Tertiary animals any conclusions as to the 
shapes of the principal continental masses 
throughout all ages. 2. This statement would 
hold for the Tertiary time only if we consider 
that the connection of South America and 
Africa, which is supposed by Mr. Sclater, is no 
important feature. Mr. Sclater admits that this 
Atlantic barrier forms an exception to the rule ; 
but, I should say, such an exception throws the 
whole ruleaside. 3. Itmay be that Mr. Sclater 
himself has accepted the ‘doctrine’ of the per- 
sistency of the continents, but I protest most 
vigorously against calling such a ‘doctrine’ 
generally accepted. A dogma (and this would 
be the proper name for it) that has been contra- 
dicted by students in zoogeography, such as 
Baur, Beddard, Neumayr, v. Ihering and 
others (and I should add, which is rejected by 
almost all geologists) cannot be regarded as 
‘generally accepted.’ 

The distribution of the Seals and Sirenians, 
it is true, has never been investigated from a 
scientific standpoint, but there are only a few 
distributional features which seem to be anoma- 
lous at first sight (Sirenia, Otariidz), and even 
these may be explained readily. The Sirenia 
point to conditions existing in the beginning of 
the Tertiary period, and it is well known that 
this group existed in the Eoceneepoch. The 
distribution of the Otariide is analogous to what 
has been called (improperly) ‘bipolar’ distribu- 
tion. They represent the somewhat rare case 
of an Antarctic group of littoral animals which 
has crossed the tropics along the western coast 
of America and reached the northern Pacific. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8, Von. V. No. 129. 


As to the latter fact Irefer to a special paper 
published by me recently, which is especially 
devoted to this peculiarity of distribution. * 
ARNOLD EH. ORTMANN. 
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, June, 1897. 


THE POTTER’S WHEEL IN AMERICA. 


My neglect to mention the Kabal, pointed out 
in Mr. Mercer’s letter (SCIENCE, p. 919), was not 
an oversight, but for two reasons: First, as he 
mentions, because the word with that meaning 
does not occur in the Maya dictionaries of the 
sixteenth century; and secondly, because the 
Kabal is not a potter’s wheel in its results or in 
a technical sense. 

This is shown in Mr. Mercer’s own work, 
‘Hill Caves of Yucatan,’ p. 77, where he quotes 
Captain Maler as saying that he ‘had found no 
trace of the potter’s wheel in the old specimens 
of pottery,’ anywhere in Yucatan. Mr. Mercer 
brought no potsherds from ancient deposits to 
contradict this; and according to his own words 
the Kabal, as used to-day, does not give ‘ the 
regularity of outline’ which is the artistic aim 
of the potter’s wheel. (P. 164, note.) 

D. G. BRINTON. 


SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 

The Cambridge Natural History. Edited by S. 
F. Harmer, M.A., and A. EH. SHIPLEY, 
M.A. Vol. II., Flatworms, etc. Macmillan 
& Co. 1896. 8vo. Pp. xii+560, 257 figs. 
Volume II. of the Cambridge Natural His- 

tory, the third of the series to make its appear- 

ance, deals with those classes which are usually 
grouped together as Worms or Vermes, and 

Polyzoa. The different classes are treated by 

specialists whose names are familiar. in connec- 

tion with the subjects assigned to them. The 
work is shared by seven authors, as follows: - 

Platyhelminthes and Mesozoa, by F.W. Gamble, 

pp. 1-96, Figs. 1-47; Nemertinea, by Lilian 

Sheldon, pp. 97-120, Figs. 48-61; Nemathel- 

minthes and Chetognatha, by Arthur E. Ship- 

ley, pp. 121-194, Figs. 62-105; Rotifera, Gas- 
trotricha and Kinorhyncha, by Marcus Hartog, 
pp. 195-288, Figs. 106-120; Archiannelida, 

Polycheta and Myzostomaria, by W. Blaxland 

Benham, pp. 239-344, Figs. 121-186; Oligo- 
* Zool. Jahrb. Syst., Vol. 9, 1896, pp. 571-595. 


JUNE 18, 1897. ] 


cheeta and Hirudinea, by F. E. Beddard, pp. 
345-408, Figs. 187-210; Gephyrea and Pho- 
ronis, by Arthur E. Shipley, pp. 409-462, Figs. 
211-231; Polyzoa, by Sidney F. Harmer, pp. 
463-533, Figs. 232-257. 

Fifty pages of Mr. Gamble’s account are de- 
voted to the Turbellaria, twenty-three pages to 
Trematodes, eighteen to the Cestodes and five 
to the Mesozoa, the major part dealing with the 
groups in which the author is most at home. 
A detailed description is given of the structure 
and habits of a common Polyclad (Leptoplana 
tremellaris) and a common Triclad (Planaria 
lactea), together with a general account of the 
different groups. It is to be regretted that the 
same method was not followed with the Rhab- 
docceles, with Mesostoma as the type, a cosmo- 
politan form, which has, perhaps, been the ob- 
ject of study more than any other Turbellarian. 
The account, on the whole, is the best that 
we have for the Turbellaria. But a few 
slips and inaccuracies occur, chief among them 
being the statement that land planarians are 
‘eylindrical,’ and that ‘freshwater planarians 
vary from a quarter to half an inch in Jength,”’ 
whereas it is known that among the common 
European species, Dendrocelum lacteum (Pl. 
lactea of the author) reaches a length of 26 
mm. (lijima), D. punctatum, 5 em. (Hallez), 
and Pl. gonocephala, 25 mm. Again, the 
‘sucker’ of Pl. lactea is said to have been ‘ dis- 
covered by Leydig’ instead of y. Baer or Dugés. 
Among the Rhadocceles no mention is made of 
the fact that certain members of the genus 
Mesostoma are viviparous, and of the relation 
between this condition and the occurrence of 
the thin-shelled ‘summer eggs.’ 

The chapters dealing with the Trematodes 
and Cestodes are comparatively meagre, but 
are an excellent epitome of our knowledge of 
the parasitic flatworms. Structural matters are 
scarcely touched upon, the account consisting 
chiefly of life-histories, the life-history tables 
being novel and instructive. Distomum mag- 
num is said (p. 4.) to be parasitic in sheep (!). - 

The Nemerteans are dismissed by Miss Shel- 
don in twenty pages, a small space for so im- 
portant a group, particularly in the light of 
the extensive recent researches. The classifica- 
tion adopted is that of Hubrecht, although the 


SCIENCE. 


959 


more rational one of Burger is printed, with 
the excuse that this author’s work appeared 
too late to be adequately considered. One para- 
graph devoted to ‘paleontology’ tells us that 
Nemerteans ‘are unknown in a fossil state.’ 

Mr. Shipley’s chapters on the Nemathel- 
minthes and Chzetognatha are valuable compila- 
tions of the natural history of these orders, and 
the recent researches on the problematic Acan- 
thocephala are here brought together for the 
first time. Synoptic tables are given of the 
species of Cheetognatha, and Conant’s list of 
American species finds a place in an appendix 
at the end of the volume. 

In Professor Hartog’s account of the Rotifera 
and their allies the most striking thing is the 
author’s declaration of the relationships of the 
Rotifera with the lower Platyhelminths and his 
comparison of them with the Pilidium of the 
Nemerteans, the older idea of arthropod affini- 
ties being abandoned. A pleasing feature is a 
brief description of the technique for the pre- 
servation of Rotifers. 

The most extensive section in the book com- 
prises Dr. Benham’s chapters on the Archian- 
nelida, Polychzta and Myzostomaria. Under 
the second of these classes the general account 
is prefaced by a detailed description of a typical — 
Polychzete (Nereis pelagica), as in Mr. Gamble’s 
account of the Turbellaria. The classification 
employed is a modification of that proposed by 
by the author in 1894, according to which 
the various families are grouped under two 
‘branches’ and seven ‘sub-orders.’ Following 
a general account of the structure and biology 
comes a systematic portion in which the various 
sub-orders are illustrated by descriptions of 
British species. 

Mr. Beddard’s account of the Oligocheeta 
offers nothing new of importance, the chapter 
being an excellent summary of the general part 
of the author’s recent monograph, and a good 
sketch of a group to our knowledge of which 
he has contributed so much. 

The same author’s chapter on the Hirudinea 
is not so carefully done as that on the earth- 
worms, and at times is careless and almost 
flippant in its treatment. Inter alia we learn 
such bits of natural history as that ‘‘ the former 
extensive use of the leech has led to the trans- 


960 


fer of its name to the doctor who employs it,”’ 
and that ‘‘it has been suggested, however, that 
the term was applied rather by way of anal- 
ogy.’’ Again, in reading of the intelligence of 
the land-leeches of Ceylon we learn that ‘‘ they 
may ascend herbs and shrubs to gain a better 
outlook when they are aware of an approaching 
footstep.’’ The most valuable part of Mr. Bed- 
dard’s account of the Hirudinea is his discus- 
sion of their relationships with the Oligocheta. 

The chapters of Mr. Shipley on the Gephyrea 
and Phoronis are among the best in the book, 
and his treatment of the affinities of these 
troublesome forms is most full and impartial. 
The account also includes a table of genera and 
species. 

The excellent final chapter by Mr. Harmer 
on the Polyzoa is restricted to British forms, 
and concludes with a detailed table for the de- 
termination of British genera. 

Asa whole, the work is to be most highly 
commended and is the best general account of 
‘worms’ that has appeared. If the scope of 
the book had been somewhat more extended so 
as to include, in all classes, other than British 
forms, its value and usefulness would have 
been much enhanced. In criticism it can be said 
that the book is not altogether well balanced 
as to the space alloted to the different classes, 
and that a general introduction on affinities and 
classification in addition to the tables which pre- 
cede the text would have been of value for the 
student. The illustrations, with a few excep- 
tions, are of the highest order and include 
many new ones; as exceptions may be men- 
tioned Figs. 8 and 14, which are little more 
than caricatures. 

W. McM. Woopwortu. 
The Swastika. By THOMAS WILSON. Washing- 

ton, Government Printing Office. 1896. 

This extensive monograph of about 250 
pages, with 25 full plates and 374 figures in 
the text, is from the report of the National 
Museum for 1896. The author is the Curator 
of the Department of Prehistoric Archeology 
in the Museum, and well known to students in 
that branch.- His subject is the hooked cross, 
that figure called in English the ‘fylfot’ (four 
footed), and in the Hast Indies, swastika. This 
the author, in his sub-title and throughout his 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 129. 


volume, claims as ‘the earliest known symbol,’ 
and prepares to point out its ‘ migrations.’ 

The subject is by no means a new one, as 
Mr. Wilson’s appended bibliography abun- 
dantly shows; but there have been so many 
explanations of the origin and significance of 
this figure, and so many claims made for it as 
of historic value in indicating early migrations 
or relations of tribes, that it was quite desirable 
that a calm survey and clear analysis of them 
should be made. Mr. Wilson, by his wide 
reading and acquaintance with prehistoric 
archeology, iseminently qualified to accomplish 
this task ; but by reason of his general theories 
on the origins of culture has, it must be said, 
failed in his presentation. 

Not that his volume lacks in thoroughness, 
or that it is not of very high value to anyone 
who would trace the prevalence of this figure 
in both the Old and the New World. In these 
respects the work is satisfying; it overflows 
with quotations, and is accurate and attractive 
in its numerous illustrations. But all this 
wealth of resource is, in the opinion of many 


“close students of the topic, seriously injured by 


two hypotheses of the author which continu- 
ally interfere with the accuracy of his perspec- 
tive. 

These are, first, that the swastika is always 
to be regarded as asymbol; and, secondly, that 
it ‘migrated’ from one or two centers and was 
in some sense a racial or ethnic figure. 

Both of these hypotheses have been shown 
to be unquestionably erroneous by the latest 
researches in the decorative art of both hemi- 
spheres. The ‘fylfot’ in American, Polynesian 
and Asiatic art has been proved by Von den 
Steinen, Stolpe, Regnault and others to be as 
purely decorative as it is in modern wall paper. 
It has been found in Semitic and Egyptian art, 
whence scholars of Mr. Wilson’s school have 
tried to exclude it. Like other simple linear 
figures, its origin is not single but multiple ; 
and both as a picture and a symbol it has stood 
for widely diverse objects. The mysteriousness 
which has been thrown about it disappears on 
an examination of its origins and meanings in 
many different tribes wide apart in geographic 
location ; and had the author of the volume 
before us, so excellent in many respects, sur- 


JUNE 18, 1897.] 


veyed his vast aggregation of facts in their 
purely objective relations, we are sure he also 
would have reached this conclusion. 

D. G. BRINTON. 


LT’ Origine de la Nation Frangaise. By PROFES- 
SOR GABRIEL DE Mortrcyer. Paris, Felix 
Alean. lyol. Pp. 336. With 18 maps and 
158 illustrations. Price 6 francs. 

In this work Professor Mortillet means to be- 
gin at the beginning, so that he passes as merely 
modern the classical writers and even the dis- 
persion of the Aryans, commencing his history 
of the French people about 230,000 years ago, 
and not willingly admitting any fundamental 
alteration since in the racial type. 

His volume is divided into several parts, the 
first embracing a review of what the Greek 
and Roman writers said about the area he is 
discussing. He recognizes the Ligurians as a 
distinct people, representing, probably, what 
might be called the autochthonous type. On 
the other hand, he believes that Gauls, Celts and 
Germans were a single and exotic type, one 
that at various remote as well as modern dates 
invaded the soil of France and made much 
noise in history, without profoundly affecting 
the primitive inhabitants. 

His chapter on the languages is the least sat- 
isfactory of the book. He does not present 
accurately or even fairly the principles or the 
results of the best school of linguistic ethnol- 
ogy. His treatment of the Aryan question— 
one all-important in the prehistory of Europe 
—is quite inadequate, and is chiefly occupied 
with the opinions of authors now antiquated 
(Pictet, etc.). 

A chapter on the ancient forms of writing 
and alphabets which have been discovered in 
France is abundantly illustrated and full of in- 
terest. His conclusion is that neither history, 
language nor etymology can solye the problem 
of the origin of the French peoples, so he turns 
toward prehistoric discoveries. 

These occupy the latter half of his work. 
Here the author is thoroughly at home with 
his subject. He explains in clear and forcible 
language the doctrine of the development and 
transformation of organic forms up to the semi- 
human Pithecanthropus, and finally, to man, in 
in the early Quaternary. This remote ancestor 


SCIENCE. 


961 


is traced on the soil of France through his 
oldest ‘ Neanderthaloid’ condition, when all his 
tools were of rough stone and his skin still 
hairy, down to a date when he was rudely 
assaulted by some people of higher culture 
arriving from the distant East, bringing with 
them more murderous weapons of polished 
stones and the far-killing bow and arrow. 
These were Neolithic tribes, brachycephali, 
from somewhere between Thibet and Asia 
Minor. They were followed in later days by 
another Asian invasion, from a remoter point 
of the Orient, who introduced bronze and the 
knowledge of tin. 

From the commingling of these various 
streams on the soil of France, Professor de 
Mortillet would derive the present French na- 
tion, allowing, in addition, the known historic 
alliances. His principal point is, that from re- 
motest antiquity, unerased by boreal glaciers 
or Roman swordsmen, by Semitic pirates or 
Allemanian war-lords, there has lived in the 
fertile valleys and on the green mountain sides 
of France the same ‘patient, industrious 
democracy,’ which, by its tenacious energy 
and unflagging labor has placed their nation 
as the leader in the yan of modern civilization. 

There is much in these theories of prehistoric 
migration in conflict with prevailing opinion in 
France itself—much that the author fails to 
support by convincing arguments. But apart 
from all questions of opinion, no reader can be 
disappointed in the remarkable amount of ac- 
curate information gathered in his pages and 
presented in a bright, pleasing style, which will 
render the volume attractive even to those who 
are but incidentally interested in the problems 
it undertakes to solve. 

D. G. BRINTON. 

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS. 
AMERICAN CHEMICAL JOURNAL, JUNE. , 


The Constituents of Pennsylvania, Ohio and 
Canadian Petroleum between 150° and 220°: By 
C. F. MAsery. The author refers to the con- 
flicting statements published with regard to the 
composition of Pennsylvania petroleum based 
partly on the results of investigations on the Rus- 


962 


sian oil and partly on the results of Warren’s and 
Pelonge’s and Cahours’ investigations of Penn- 
sylvania petroleum. He shows that Pelonge’s 
and Cahours’ distillations were not carried far 
enough to obtain individual products and that, 
while Warren’s separations were very thorough, 
his methods of purification were very crude and 
insufficient. In the work here described two 
principal objects were kept in view: the one to 
determine the series of hydrocarbons which 
form the main body of American petroleum, 
and the other to ascertain whether the compo- 
sition of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Canadian 
oils, as regards their principal constituents, is 
the same. The author concludes from the re- 
sults of a very thorough and exhaustive study 
that the constituents of Pennsylvania petroleum 
with boiling-points at 163°-164°, 173°-174°, 


196°-197°, and at 215°-216°, are decanes and: 


constitute the main body of the petroleum 
within these limits, and that whatever other 
bodies may be present are to be found only in 
small quantities. In order to obtain these prod- 
ucts not only was prolonged distillation re- 
sorted to, but the products were treated with 
strong acids and sodium. In the Ohio petroleum 
the same products were obtained; but the 
amount of aromatic hydrocarbonsis greater here 
than in the Pennsylvania oil. In the Canadian oil 
the products were the same as the others up to 
173°. Products boiling at 196° and 214° were 
shown to belong to the series C, H,, and not, as 
the lower members do, to the series C, H2,+». 
Although sulphuric acid is used on the large 
scale in refining oils, no definite information has 
ever been obtained as to its chemical action in 
these cases; but the author suggests some pos- 
sible explanations. The author and Mr. EH. J. 
Hudson have studied the refractive power of 
these products and find that the refractive 
power varies, as the specific gravity does, with 
the purity of the distillate. 

On the Molecular Rearrangement of the Oximes 
by Means of Certain Metallic Salts: By W.T. 
Comstock. The author has found that not 
only does phosphorus pentachloride, strong 
sulphuric acid and several] other reagents effect 
the Beckmann rearrangement of an oxime into 
an amide, but that several metallic salts are capa- 
ble of producing the same results. He has found 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 129. 


that cuprous chloride and bromide and anti- 
mony trichloride effect this reaction with the 
greatest ease. An intermediate cuprous chloride 
addition product is obtained in most cases, but 
this easily breaks down when the benzene solu- 
tion is heated and forms the amide. 


The Action of Urea and Primary Amines ow 
Maleic Anhydride: By F. L. DuNuAP and I. K. 
PHELPS. The authors have continued their 
experiments on a method described by them for 
obtaining imides by the action of urea on the 
anhydrides of dibasic acids. The intermediate 
addition product, which is an acid, was obtained 
in some cases, and attempts were made to pre- 
pare the imide of maleic acid by this method. 
The intermediate product, maletiric acid, was 
easily obtained, but all attempts to obtain an 
imide in quantity sufficient for an examination 
failed. Several products were obtained by the 
action of primary amines on maleic anhydride. 

On the Isomeric Chlorides of p-Nitro-o-Sulpho- 

benzoic Acid: By IRA REMSEN and G. W. 
Gray. The formation of two chlorides of or- 
thosulphobenzoic acid suggested experiments. 
with substituted acids to see if isomeric chlo- 
rides could be obtained from these also. The 
authors have obtained the two chlorides from 
the p-nitro substituted acid in well characterized 
form, and have studied the transformations. 
which take place under the influence of various. 
reagents. Both give the same product with 
water; but when treated with ammonia the 
symmetrical compound forms the ammonium 
salt of the corresponding sulphinide, while the: 
unsymmetrical compound gives the ammonium 
salt of the corresponding cyansulphonic acid. 
The structure of the two chlorides is best repre— 
sented by the following formula: 
_ COCI 
Ss0,Cl 
A number of salts of the sulphinide and sul- 
phonic acid were made and studied, as well as. 
the chloride and amide of the acid. 


CCI, 


C,H; (NO,) and 0,H; (NO2)< ¢g7>0. 


A Study of Ferric Hydroxide in Precipitation = 
By V. J. Hatt. It is well known that many 
precipitates have the power to carry down other 
substances with them, and this is generally ex- 
plained as an act of mechanical inclusion. Re- 
sults obtained in a study of the action of potas- 


June 18, 1897.] 


sium hydroxide on aluminum sulphate have, 
however, led to the conclusion that the act is 
not entirely a mechanical one, but that it is a 
phenomena of strictly chemical nature. In 
the present paper the author has undertaken 
a study of the action in the case of iron hydrox- 
ide. While the results are not sufficient to 
definitely establish the nature of the action, they 
are inconsistent with the theory of mechanical 
inclusion and characteristic of chemical action. 
Reviews of the following books are also con- 
tained in this number of the journal : 

‘The Constants of Nature,’ F. W. Clarke, 
Part V.; ‘The Chemistry of Dairying,’ N. Sny- 
der; ‘Inorganic Chemical Preparations,’ F. H. 
Thorp; ‘Traité Elementaire de Chimie,’ Hal- 
ler et Muller; ‘The Principles and Practice of 
Agricultural Analysis,’ H. W. Wiley, Vols. L., 
II. and III.; ‘Vorlesungen tiber Bildung und 
Spaltung von Doppelsalzen,’ J. H. Van’t Hoff; 
‘ An Outline of the Theory of Solutions and Its 
Results,’ J. L. R. Morgan. 

J. ELLIorTrT GILPIN. 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 


BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON, 278TH 
MEETING, SATURDAY, MAY 22. 


Dr. ERwin F. Smits described ‘ A Bacterial 
Disease of Cruciferous Plants,’ illustrating his 
remarks by means of drawings, diseased plants, 
and cultures of the organism on various media, 
The parasite is a yellow germ and is considered 
jdentical with that isolated by Professor L. 
H. Pammel from rotting turnips. Nearly all 
of Pammel’s statements are confirmed, and 
much new information has been obtained con- 
cerning pathogenesis, symptomatology, host 
plants, manner of infection, thermal relations 
of the organism and its behavior in a variety 
of media. The organism was isolated from 
Maryland turnips and Wisconsin cabbages and 
a parallel series of cultures and experiments 
instituted. The following plants have been 
artifically infected : Cabbage, kale, cauliflower 
turnip, rape, black mustard, and radish. The 
dissemination of the disease is probably due in 
great measure to insects. It has been trans- 
mitted in the greenhouse from diseased to 
healthy plants by means of slugs (Agriolimax 


SCIENCE. 


963 


agrestis) and also by means of the common cab- 
bage worm (lary of Plusia brassice). The 
organisms show a marked preference for the 
vascular system of the plants, and a blackening 
of the veins of the leaves and of the vascular 
bundles of the stem is a prominent symptom. 
The vessels become crowded so full of the 
germs that they may be said to be plugged 
solid. The interior of the turnip rots, and the 
cabbage loses many leaves and fails to produce 
any head. The disease is widespread and 
well known to market gardners. The organism 
is rod-shaped, motile, seerobic ; it does not pro- 
duce gas or acid ; it liquefies gelatin ; it grows 
rapidly at room temperature (20° to 26° C.), 
especially on potato. It grows feebly at blood 
heat, and will not grow in the thermostat at 
40° C. The thermal death point is approxi- 
mately 51° C. It produces a brown pigment 
when grown on slices of turnip, but not when 
cultivated on potato or in beef broth. 

Dr. B. T. Galloway spoke on ‘the Effects of 
Environment on Host and Parasite in certain 
Diseases of Plants.’ 

It was stated that plants in their growth and 
development are controlled by two sets of factors, 
namely, inherited disposition acting from within 
and external influences acting from without. 
Around these factors are centered many com- 
plicated phenomena, and the object of the paper 
was to call attention to some of these in their 
relation to certain physiological and pathological 
problems. Thestatements in the main refer to 
cultivated plants, for in dealing with them in 
questions, such as those under consideration, 
conclusions could not be drawn from the be- 
havior of wild species, except in the most gen- 
eral way. In other words, one of the funda- 
mental tenets of agricultural and horticultural 
practices is that the occurrence and behavior of 
native plants in any given region is not in itself 
sufficient evidence to prove that cultivated 
forms may be successfully grown there. Purely 
local conditions may make the difference be- 
between success and failure in growing the 
crop, and the effects of these conditions must be 
determined by observations and experiments on 
the plant itself. 

The effects of environment on the host and 
the possible changes in the life processes as a 


964 


result of changed conditions were pointed out. 
The effects of the same conditions on the para- 
site were also considered. Finally attention 
was called to the cumulative effects of 
the attacks of parasitic fungi and other or- 
ganisms. It was shown in certain cases that 
when plants are attacked by fungi there is a 
temporary expenditure of vital energy, andasa 
result metabolic processes are brought about 
which may put the host in a more receptive 
condition for further attacks. The following 
case was cited: ‘‘A disease of a greenhouse 
plant is in a specific case due to the attacks of 
a fungus which kills the leaf in distinct spots. 
These spots are frequently so numerous as to 
entirely destroy the plant. The disease de- 
velops naturally under certain rare conditions 
in the greenhouse. ‘These conditions, however, 
can be produced artificially in the case of indi- 
vidual plants, and in such instances the spores 
of the fungus, which are always present in the 
house, will infect and in a short time produce 
the characteristic injuries. Now, by following 
this method for several months and causing the 
new leaves to become infected as they appear, 
the plant eventually gets into a condition when 
it can no longer resist the fungus. Ifthe leaves 
are all cut off at this time the new leaves will 
be attacked as fast as they appear, without tak- 
ing any precautions to surround the plant with 
conditions that will make it susceptible. The 
cumulative effects of the fungus, in other words, 
has probably resulted in bringing about the 
metabolic changes that at the outset had to 
be brought on by conditions of light, heat and 
moisture.”’ 

Mr. V. K. Chesnut presented a paper entitled 
‘The Poison of the Black Nightshade (Solanum 
nigrum. L.),’ being a brief account of solanine. 
This glucoside-like alkaloid, although not a 
remarkably poisonous substance, is the active 
constituent of the plant. It is present in the 
leaf and berry, but in varying amounts accord- 
ing to conditions of growth. Itis greatest in 
heavy-scented plants, but in some the amount 
is so small that the berry is edible, and has 
even an attractive taste. Severe cases of poi- 
soning have, however, attended the use of the 
plant ; soit can not be recommended as a food. 
The variation in chemical composition was at- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 129. 


tributed to the cosmopolitan nature of the 
plant which enables it to thrive well in different 
environments, Attention was called to the fact 
that the berries of Solanum triflorum, a native 
of the Great Plains region, was poisoning cattle 


in Nebraska. 
F. A. Lucas, 


Secretary. 
BOSTON SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 


A GENERAL Meeting was held April 21st, 
fifty-nine persons present. 

Mr. Herbert Lyon Jones spoke of the biolog- 
ical adaptations of our seashore plants, and de- 
fined the physiological differences between them 
and our ordinary plants. The classes and 
characteristics of seashore plants were men- 
tioned, the vertical position of the leaves and 
the reduction of leaf surface noted. 

The danger of too great a quantity of salt in 
the tissues of seashore plants is reduced by 
changes which reduce transpiration of water ; 
adaptations follow the needs of plants; the 
fruit is especially adapted to withstand the 
effects of water. The differences and similari- 
ties between the plants of the seashore and 
desert plants were pointed out and illustrated 
by a series of lantern slides. 

SAMUEL HENSHAW, 
Secretary. 


NEW BOOKS. 
The Chances of Death and other Studies in Evolu- 


tion. KARL PEARSON. London and New 
York, Edward Arnold. 1897. Vol. L., 
pp. xi + 388. Vol. II., pp. 460. $8.00. 


Contribution towards a Monograph of the Laboul- 
beniacex. ROLAND THAXTER. Cambridge 
University Press, John Wilson & Son. 
Pp. 398. 26 Plates. j 


Sight. JosEpH LE CONTE. 
Appleton & Co. 1897. 
$1.50. 


An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry. BER- 
TRAM A. W. RUSSELL. Cambridge University 
Press. 1897. Pp. xvi + 201. 

The Induction Coil in Practical Work. LEwIis 
Wricut. London and New York, The 
Macmillan Co. 1897. Pp. viii + 172. 


New York, D. 
Pp. xvi + 312. 


SCIENC 


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Astronomy; T. C. MENDENHALL, Physics; R. H. THURSTON, Engineering; IRA REMSEN, Chemistry; 
J. LE Conte, Geology; W. M. Davis, Physiography; O. C. MAxrsu, Paleontology; W.K. 
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Fripay, JUNE 25, 1897. 


CONTENTS: 


The American Association for the Advancement of 
ISERGIUHE occoncteacecaccnedocaccocacneeecosnacenonaceéosaosotendd 965 


Internal Secretions Considered from a Chemico-physio- 
logical Standpoint: R. H. CHITTENDEN........... 966 


A Case of Primitive Surgery: FRANK HAMILTON 
(CRERTEIIN 6h cossacn so noqonbcenncacnaonsp anos stonopasosooscnood 977 


The Influence of Environment upon the Biological 
Processes of the Various Members of the Colon 


Group of Bacilli: an Experimental Study: ADE- 
LAIDE WARD PECKHAM.........00s0sccseccssseneceeoss 981 
The Virginia Colony of Helix Nemoralis: T. D. A. 


WOGRMRELD wesstsoctcsscesosasiaatscsececaccarscuotccseseses 985 


Current Notes on Meteorology :— 
Navigation in Fog ; Hydrographic Cloud Types ; 
Recent Publications: KR. DEC. WARD........... 986 


Current Notes on Anthropology :— 
The Antiquity of Bornholm; The Chaco Tribes; 
The Celts and their Wanderings: D. G. BRINTON..988 


Reientifie Notes and News\...-<-.<c----0+cu-sa++-cseeeseans 989 
University and Educational News. ........c.ssceeceesenees 992 


Discussion and Correspondence :— 
Js the Loess of either Lacrustine or Semi-marine 
Origin? J. E. Topp. Monument to the late 
Buys-Ballot: A. LAWRENCE RotcH. Organic 
Selection: C. LLOYD MORGAN.........s0scceeeeeeee 993 
Scientific Literature :— 
Merrill’s Treatise on Rocks, Rock-Weathering and 
Soils: J. B. WooDwortTH. Chapman on Bird 


Life: HARRY C. OBERHOLSER.......-.....eeeseeeeee 995 
Scientifie Journals :— 
The American Journal of Science......cscoccsevsecoeee 998 


Societies and Academies :— 
The New York Academy of Sciences: J. F. 
Kemp. Zoological Club of the University of 
GHiCHG Ones encecnc selene <ccus taecaersenes seprcosens ster ste taet 999 


New Books 


MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended 
for review should be sent to the responsible editor, Prof. J. 
McKeen Cattell, Garrison-on-Hudson, N. Y. 


THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE AD- 
VANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 

THE preliminary announcement of the 
forty-sixth meeting, to be held at Detroit, 
from the 9th to the 14th of August, has 
been prepared by the Permanent Secretary. 
The arrangements have in large measure 
been already announced in this JouRNAL, 
and we hope to print later the provisional 
programs of the Sections. The approach- 
ing meeting has aroused much interest in 
Detroit and throughout the State. Strong 
local committees have been appointed and 
excellent arrangements have been made for 
the meetings and for the entertainment of 
members. 

The first meeting of the Couneil will be 
at noon, on Saturday, August 7th, at the 
Hotel Cadillac, which will be the head- 
quarters of the Association. The offices of 
the local committee and of the Association, 
as well as the halls for the general sessions 
and rooms for all the Sections, will be in 
the Central High School of the city of De- 
troit. This new school building is most 
admirably adapted for the purpose, and has 
a large number of halls of a suitable size for 
the meetings of the Sections; while the 
Auditorium Hall accommodates over two 
thousand persons. 

On the morning of Monday, August 9th, 
the first general session will be held at 10 
a. m. Owing to the death of Professor 
Edward D. Cope, the President of the Asso- 


966 


ciation, Professor Theodore Gill, of Wash- 
ington, D. C., as Senior Vice-President, will 
call the meeting to order and introduce the 
President-elect, Professor Wolcott Gibbs, of 
Newport, R. I. Addresses of welcome will 
be made by Mayor William C. Maybury 
and Hon. Thomas W. Palmer, and Presi- 
dent Gibbs will reply. Announcements by 
the General, Permanent and Local Secreta- 
ries will be made and after adjournment 
the Sections will be organized. 

On the afternoon of Monday, August 9th, 
the Vice-Presidents of the Sections will 
make addresses as follows: 

At half-past two o’clock. Vice-President Barus, be_ 
fore Section of Physics: ‘Long Range Temperature 
and Pressure Variables in Physics.’ Vice-President 
McGee, before Section of Anthropology: ‘The Sci- 
ence of Humanity.’ Vice-President White, before 
Section of Geology and Geography: ‘The Pittsburg 
Coal Bed.’ 

At half-past three o'clock. Vice-President Beman, 
before Section of Mathematics and Astronomy: ‘A 
Chapter in the History of Mathematics.’ Vice- 
President Colburn, before Section of Social and Eco- 
nomic Science: ‘ Improvident Civilization.’ Vice- 
President Howard (nominated by Council to fill 
vacancy caused by the death of Dr. G. Brown Goode) 
will give by request of the Council an address before 
Section of Zoology, subject to be announced. 

At half-past four o’clock. Vice-President Mason, 
before Section of Chemistry: ‘Sanitary Chemistry.’ 
Vice-President Atkinson, before Section of Botany: 
‘Experimental Morphology.’ Vice-President Gal- 
braith, before Section of Mechanical Science and 
Engineering: ‘Applied Mechanics.’ 


On Monday evening Dr. Theodore Gill 
will give a memorial address on the life and 
work of the late President of the Associa- 
tion, Professor Edward D. Cope. 

The meetings of the Sections will follow 
on the mornings and afternoons of Tues- 
day, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. 
It is expected that on two days of the week 
the Geological Society of America and the 
American Chemical Society will hold meet- 
ings occupying the time of Sections H and C. 

The usual receptions and excursions have 
been planned, including a visit to Ste Claire 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 130. 


Flats, on Saturday after the adjournment. 
It is expected that the members of the As- 
sociation at Detroit will go in a body to 
Toronto to join in welcoming the members 
of the British Association to America. For 
this purpose special rates will probably be 
secured by steamer and train from Detroit 
to Toronto. 


INTERNAL SECRETIONS, CONSIDERED FROM A 
CHEMICO-PHYSIOLOGICAL STANDPOINT* 


In considering this subject from achemico- 
physiological standpoint allow me at the 
outset to emphasize the fact, now well 
established, that the symptoms which fol- 
low the simple removal of a physiologically 
active gland from the body result wholly 
from the loss of the gland. You may re- 
call that when attention was first drawn to 
the possibility of producing the typical 
symptoms of myxcedema in monkeys by re- 
moval of the thyroid gland there was a 
tendency to assume injury to the sympa- 
thetic or other nerves of the neck as an ex- 
planation of the phenomena, rather than to 
admit the possibility even of a general or 
limited disturbance of the metabolism of 
the body through chemical changes asso- 
ciated with removal of the gland. It was 
not until the experiments of Murray made 
clear the fact that the effects resulting from 
the removal of the thyroid in man could be 
overcome, in part at least, by administra- 
tion of the gland-substance that scientific 
investigation took the proper turn and a 
full realization of the possible importance of 
the so-called ductless glands and their in- 
ternal secretions began to dawn upon the 
mind. To-day, however, we recognize their 
functional activity asa necessary element 
for the welfare of the body. Their removal, 
or any impairment of their function, may 
produce even more disturbance of physio- 
logical equilibrium than a corresponding 
disarrangement of glands formerly consid- 


*Read at the Fourth Triennial Congress of Ameri- 
can Physicians and Surgeons, May 5, 1897. 


JUNE 25, 1897.] 


ered of greater physiological value. Fur- 
ther, it needs to-day little argument to 
support the view that such power as these 
physiologically active glands possess is due 
to definite chemical compounds elaborated 
by the glands as products of their individual 
secretory or metabolic activity. As with 
other glands having more obvious functions, 
the secreting cells plainly manufacture cer- 
tain specific products, but in the case of the 
internal secretions these products find their 
way into the blood andlymph, by which 
they are distributed throughout the body, 
and thus made available either in con- 
trolling or regulating the general nutrition 
of the economy or to serve some more specific 
purpose of equal importance for the welfare 
of the organism. This being so, it is equally 
probable that in the general and specific 
metabolism going on in all the tissues and 
organs of the body the various products 
formed and absorbed by the blood and 
lymph may contribute somewhat to the 
welfare of the body prior to their excretion. 
In its broadest sense, therefore, internal 
secretion must be looked upon as something 
common to all active tissues, the ordinary 
katabolic products of both circulating and 
morphotic proteids, for example, no doubt 
exerting some physiological action during 
their transit from the place of their forma- 
tion to the organ which serves for their ex- 
cretion. It is well, perhaps, to give full 
recognition to this possibility, for physio- 
logical equilibrium in the broadest sense is 
clearly dependent upon the harmonious 
action of a large number of related parts, 
and experiment only can determine, and 
perhaps then imperfectly, how far the 
products of one gland or tissue are essential 
for the well-being of the whole. Weknow, 
however, that certain organs with the 
products they elaborate can be dispensed 
with, while the removal of other organs in- 
volving no greater surgical interference is 
quickly followed by marked disturbances 


SCIENCE. 


967 


and later by death. Czerny had no diffi- 
culty in removing the stomach from dogs, 
the health of the animals remaining unim- 
paired when the cesophagus was properly 
joined to the intestine. Similarly, Schafer 
and Moore* have recently shown that both 
parotids and both submaxilliary glands may 
be removed from the dog without any dis- 
turbance of nitrogenous metabolism, or 
without any apparent effect upon carbohy- 
drate digestion. Evidently these glands do 
not possess any intrinsic internal secretion 
necessary to the life of the animal or having 
any important action on the metabolic pro- 
cesses of the body. If they do furnish an 
internal secretion it obviously must be one 
common in function to that supplied by 
some other organ. In the present discus- 
sion, therefore, we may advantageously 
limit the term ‘internal secretion’ simply 
to those specific products which, being 
manufactured in certain definite glands, are 
plainly endowed with well-defined physio- 
logical action. 

Let us first consider the thyroid gland 
upon which more work has been done than 
upon any other similar structure. Dating 
from 1883, when Kocher and Reverdin pub- 
lished their well-known observations on the 
effects of thyroidectomy in the human sub- 
ject, it has gradually become apparent that 
there are two distinct ways in which the 
effects of the operation may be manifested.+ 
Thus, in some animals, as in most carnivora, 
complete removal of the thyroidal tissue is 
followed by a rapid development of symp- 
toms indicating a marked irritation of the 
nervous and muscular systems as mani- 
fested by tetanus, epileptiform convulsions, 
ete., terminating in death. In other cases 

*Proceed. Physiol. Soe ; Journal of Physiol. Vol. 
19, No. 4. 

{+ Compare Roos: Ueber die Einwirkung der Schild- 
driise auf den Stoffwechsel nebst Vorversuchen tiber 
die Art der wirksamen Substanz in derselben. Zeitschr. 


f. physiol. Chem. Band 21., p. 19. This paper con- 
tains numerous references. 


968 


slowly developing changes are observed 
corresponding to myxcedema. Hence, in 
some animals thyroidectomy is followed by 
such a marked disturbance of physiological 
balance that death results very quickly, 
while in others the development of symp- 
toms is very slow, giving rise to chronic 
effects which may endure for months. Evi- 
dently, aside from the more acute and toxic 
effects which may immediately follow the 
operation, there are more gradual disturb- 
ances of metabolism which eventually lead 
to the complete breaking down of the ani- 
mal. That the symptoms thus produced 
are dependent upon the withdrawal from 
the system of certain specific products is 
evident from the fact that after extirpation 
of the thyroidal tissue the mere feeding of 
thyroid glands, or the subcutaneous and 
intravenous injection of thyroid extracts, 
suffices to quickly dispel the myxoedemal 
swellings, the rough thickened condition of 
the skin, the muscular and mental apathy, 
ete.* With dogs the convulsions which 
follow extirpation of the thyroids are quickly 
checked by the subcutaneous injection of 
thyroid extracts. Experiments along these 
lines with extracts of dead tissue have, as 
you know, made it very evident that the 
thyroid gland forms some one or more spe- 
cific substances, the absence of which from 
the body sooner or later renders life impos- 
sible. Where, however, the animal, as a 
dog, is provided with accessory thyroids 
the entire thyroid gland may be removed 
without death resulting, providing one of 
the parathyroids is left, but if both para- 
thyroids. are excised then 40 per cent. of 
the thyroidal tissue proper must be left in 
order to have the dog live.f. Evidently, 


*See Kent: Thyroid extractafter Thyroidectomy, 
Proceed. Physiol. Soc ; Journal of Physiol. Vol. 15. 
Also Meltzer: Ueber Myxédem. Centralbl. f. Physiol. 
1894, p. 698. 

+ Edmunds: Observations on the Thyroid and Para- 
thyroid of the Dog. Journal of Physiol. Vol. 22. 
Proceed. Physiol. Soc. June 27, 1896. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 130. 


the thyroids and accessory thyroids have 
more or less of a common function, the one 
being able to fulfil the purpose of the other 
to a certain degree; a fact which in itself 
may be taken as evidence of the importance 
of thyroidal tissue and the care exercised 
by nature in preventing its complete sup- 
pression. 

The very nature of the physiological re- 
sults which follow the removal or accom- 
pany the atrophy of the thyroidal tissue 
suggests the formation of one or more toxic 
substances to which the well marked symp- 
toms are due; substances which are either 
not formed in the presence of thyroidal tis- 
sue or else being formed are either neutra- 
lized (physiologically) or decomposed and 
rendered inert by substances furnished by 
the thyroid gland. Such a view obviously 
implies a difference in the character and 
possibly in the extent of the metabolic 
changes going on in the body, and we 
may, therefore, advantageously consider the 
character of our knowledge upon this sub- 
ject. A careful study of the literature 
shows quite clearly that certain definite 
statements are justified. Thus, Leichten- 
stern and Wendelstadt* found by feeding 
thyroid glands to healthy obese individuals 
that a marked loss of body-weight resulted. 
Roos, experimenting with normal dogs, ob- 
served that in feeding the gland substance 
for several days there was a marked in- 
crease in the excretion of nitrogen through 
the urine, also of sodium chloride and of 
phosphoric acid (P,O,). On dogs with the 
thyroids removed, this action was still more 
marked, so far as the excretion of nitrogen 
and chlorine was concerned, also in the loss 
of body-weight and in the excretion of 
water, but the excretion of phosphorus fell 
behind the normal. Further, in an ex- 


*Ueber Myxcedem und Entfettungskuren mit 
Schilddriisenfiitterung. Deutsch. med. Wochenschr. 
1894. No. 50. 

} Loe. cit. 


JUNE 25, 1897.] 


periment with a goitre-patient, otherwise 
healthy, Roos observed on feeding thyroid 
glands a similar tendency towards increased 
excretion of nitrogen and chlorine with a 
marked increase in the output of phos- 
phorie acid. Mendel, Napier, Ord and 
others, making observations on myx0e- 
dema patients, likewise noted that the use 
of thyroid preparations by subcutaneous in- 
jection, by glycerin extracts, etc., as a rule, 
not only led to a betterment of the symp- 
toms, but gave rise to a marked diuresis, 
loss of body-weight and increased excre- 
tion of nitrogen or urea. Denning, * 
likewise, found that while different indi- 
viduals reacted somewhat differently under 
thyroid feeding, yet there was a general 
tendeney toward increased excretion of 
nitrogen as well as a loss of body-weight. 
It was also noted that the excretion of 
nitrogen and urea was not always parallel. 
Occasionally albumin and sugar appeared 
in the urine. In one case the volume of 
urine excreted rose at once 200 cc. per day, 
the pulse rate increased 22 per cent., while 
the nitrogen excreted rose 15 per. cent dur- 
ing the feeding period. Similarly, in 
Basedow’s disease, Scholz observed under 
the influence of thyroid feeding in a patient 
29 years old diuresis, increased excretion of 
nitrogen and sodium chloride with a marked 
decrease in the excretion of phosphoric acid. 
Magnus Levy} likewise records that a 
healthy individual taking thyroid tablets 
for 19 days lost 7 pounds body-weight with 


*Ueber das Verhalten des Stoffwechsels bei der 
Schilddriisentherapie. Mtinchener med. Wochenschr. 
1895. No.17. Also No. 20. 

+ Ueber den Einfluss der Schilddriisenbehandlung 
auf den Stoffwechsel des Menschen insbesondere bei 
Morbus Basedowii. Centralbl f. innere Med. Band 
16, p. 1041 and p. 1069. 

{ Ueber den respiratorischen Gaswechsel unter dem 
Einfluss der Thyreoidea, sowie unter verschiedenen 
pathologischen Zustiinden. Berliner klin. Woch- 
enschr. 1895, p. 650. See also Richter: Zur Frage 
des Eiweisszerfalles nach Schilddriisenfitterung. 


SCIENCE. 


969 


some increase in O, and Co, exchange. In 
three cases of Basedow’s disease, on the 
other hand, oxygen consumed and carbonic 
acid excreted were greatly in excess of the 
normal. Fritz Voit,* by carefully con- 
ducted experiments on healthy dogs, found 
that the feeding of fresh thyroid glands 
produced a marked increase in the output 
of carbonic acid as well as of nitrogen. 
Michaelson + found after extirpation of the 
thyroid in hungry cats the Co, excretion in- 
creased, while J. L. Smith | has observed 
that when thyroidectomy is performed on 
cats there is a marked disturbance of the 
heat-regulating mechanism. 

From these and other observations that 
cannot be recorded here it is very plain 
that the administration of thyroid gland 
and thyroid extracts to normal individuals, 
and especially to thyroidectomized animals 
and individuals in whom the thyroid glands 
are diseased, producesa very noticeable effect 
upon the metabolism of the body, leading to 
a marked loss of body-weight, an increased 
excretion of water, nitrogen and carbonic 
acid, and also of sodium chloride. This 
great diminution of body-weight is by no 
means due wholly to loss of water nor to 
removal of fat, for if a healthy individual 
is fed upon a diet rich in fats and carbo- 
hydrates the well-known proteid-sparing 
power of the latter foods is not able to keep 
down the loss of nitrogen when thyroids 
are administered. Proteid material is still 
broken down in increased quantity, and not 
from any individuality of the person ex- 
perimented upon, but plainly under the ex- 


Centralbl. f. Physiol. Band 10, p. 49. Also Due- 
ceschi: Beitrag zur Erforschung der Stoffwechselvor- 
giinge bei thyroidectomirten Thieren. Ibid. Band 10, 
p. 217. 

*Stoffwechseluntersuchungen am Hund mit frischer 
Schilddriise und Jodothyrin. Zeitschr. f. Biol. Band 
35, p. 116. 

} Jahresbericht f. Thierchemie. Band 19, p. 335. 

{On some effects of Thyroidectomy in animals. 
Journal of Physiol. vol. 16, p. 378. 


970 


citing influence of the thyroid.* The gland 
substance evidently causes an increased 
decomposition of the tissue proteids, thus 
showing a certain resemblance to the action 
of phosphorus on the organism (Roos). At 
the same time the loss of body-weight 
under thyroid feeding is far greater than 
can be accounted for by the increased proteid 
decomposition, from which, in conjunction 
with the increased gaseous exchange, we 
must infer an increased breaking down of 
fatty tissue in accord with the prevalent idea 
that thyroids tend toreduce obesity. This, 
furthermore, is in harmony with the well- 
known fact that increase in proteid metabo- 
lism is almost invariably associated with 
increase in the metabolism of non-nitroge- 
nous matter. 

The significance to be attached to this 
increase in proteid metabolism, however, is, 
I think, something more than a mere quan- 
titative one. ‘The very fact that there are 
quantitative changes renders it quite proba- 
ble that there are also qualitative changes, 
and that the presence or absence of the thy- 
roid gland or its equivalent from the body 
may modify the line of metabolism. Upon 
this point, however, we know very little ; 
we simply infer. Still there are some facts 
in connection with the proteids of the blood 
which are worthy of a moment’s considera- 
tion. Thus, it has been shown by compari- 
son of the proteids of normal dog’s blood 
with those present in the blood after extir- 
pation of the thyroids that in the period 
preceding the convulsions the percentage 
amount of serum-albumin is increased and 
the globulins decreased. In the second 
period, on the other hand, when the cramps 
or convulsions appear up to the end, there 
is a progressive increase in the amount of 
globulin and a decrease of serum-albumin 
as well as of the total proteid. Hence, there 

* Bleibtreu und Wendelstadt. Stoffwechselversuch 


bei Schilddriisenfiitterung. Deutsche med. Wochen- 
schr. 1895, p. 348. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 130. 


is at first an increase and then a decrease 
of the albumin quotient. From this it 
would appear that in the first stages there 
is an abatement of the metabolism of the 
tissues, followed by an increase, and that 
possibly in the incomplete breaking-down 
of the proteid material intermediate toxic 
products appear which are the cause of the 
cachexia.* Further, according to Formanek 
and MHaskovec,t in the thyreopriva ca- 
chexia, resulting from the extirpation of 
the thyroids in dogs, the number of red 
blood corpuscles is systematically dimin- 
ished, while the leucocytes are increased, 
aud the dry residue of the blood as well as 
the iron and hemoglobin are diminished. 
In connection with the diminution of heemo- 
globin there is an acceleration of respira- 
tion and of the pulse, which, however, in 
the terminal stages of the cachexia dimin- 
ishes. The iron liberated by the decom- 
position of the red blood corpuscles is de- 
posited in the organs of the body, especi- 
ally in the spleen and lymph glands. Ifthe 
blood is taken for examination during a con- 
vulsive seizure, on the other hand, it shows 
a reversal of the above conditions; it is 
thicker, contains more solid matter, as well 
as iron and hemoglobin. If extract of the 
thyroid is injected into the operated animal 
there is an immediate increase in the num- 
ber of red corpuscles and a betterment of 
the animal’s condition. Hence, the thy- 
roid is evidently concerned in hematosis, 
and it is quite possible that the decompo- 
sition of the blood which takes place in- 
duces certain alterations in the formation 
of the end-products of metabolism, so that 
poisons result which give rise to intoxica- 
tion of the organism. Just here it may be 


* Beitrag zur Lehre tiber die Function der Schild- 
driise, Jahresbericht f. Thierchemie, 1895, p. 375. 

+ Ducceschi: Ueber die Bluteiweissstoffe des 
Hundes im Verhiltniss mit den Folgen der Schild- 
driisenexstirpation. Centralbl. f. Physiol. Band 9, 
p. 359. 


JUNE 25, 1897.] 


mentioned that some recent observations on 
the feeding of thyroids in insanity tend to 
show that the percentage of the small mono- 
nuclear cells or lymphocytes of the blood 
are increased while the multinuclear neutro- 
philes are correspondingly diminished under 
the action of the drug, thus suggesting that 
the gland-tissue or its active principle has 
a direct stimulating influence upon those 
tissues of the body directly concerned in 
the production of the lymphocytes, viz, the 
lymphatic or adenoid tissues.* 

In addition to these changes, emphasis 
must be laid upon the apparent connection 
between the thyroid gland and phosphoric 
acid metabolism. Thus, the increased ex- 
eretion of P,O. after feeding thyroids to 
normal animals, and the great decrease in 
the case of animals with the thyroids re- 
moved, is naturally suggestive. The facts 
may be explained in two ways: either the 
metabolism of phosphoric acid and its ex- 
cretion are retarded in the absence of the 
gland, so that there is a retention of P,O, in 
the body, or else the organism can assimi- 
late sufficient phosphoric acid only in the 
presence of the substance or substances 
furnished by the thyroid gland (Roos). It 
has been suggested, as you know, that the 
activity of the thyroid gland is a toxic one, 
but that this action is normally paralyzed 
by some one or more products of its own 
metabolism. The view that in the absence 
of the thyroid gland not enough P,O, can 
be assimilated for the wants of the body finds 
a certain degree of confirmation in some of 
the symptoms noticeable in cretinism and 
myxoedema; viz, the retardation in bone-de- 
velopment and the slow calcification in creti- 
nism. On the other hand, the tendency 
toward tetanus might perhaps be explained 
on the ground of an acute P,O, retention in 
the central nervous system similar to that 
of uremia; or, equally plausible, as due to 


* Perry: Some studies of the blood in Thyroid 
feeding in Insanity. Medical Record, August, 1896. 


SCIENCE. 


971 


a marked deficiency of P,O, in this tissue. 
Thus, in Basedow’s disease the observations 
of Kocher that administration of sodium 
phosphate leads to a marked betterment of 
all the symptoms are directly pertinent. 

Further, we must not overlook the fact 
clearly shown by Halliburton,* in connec- 
tion with Horsley, that after thyroidectomy 
there is a distinct tendency toward an in- 
erease in the percentage of mucus in the 
tissues of the body, especially marked in 
the connective tissues and salivary glands. 
While this increase is not as great as at one 
time thought, it is still distinctly recogniza- 
ble and affords additional evidence that the 
thyroid plays some important part in the 
kataboliec processes of the body, and that 
when it is removed or diseased the normal 
chain or rhythm of metabolism is broken. 
As to the chemical nature of the products 
which are directly responsible for the re- 
sults attending thyroidectomy or associated 
with a morbid condition of the thyroid we 
have no direct knowledge, and as to their 
physiological character we can only infer 
from the nature of the symptoms which re- 
sult. Itis to be presumed that the toxic 
products are formed not in the thyroid, but 
in the tissues of the body and as a result 
of perverted metabolism due to atrophy or 
alterations of the thyroid gland. The latter 
evidently furnishes something which either 
directly neutralizes toxic products common 
to the body, or far more probably prevents 
their formation through an influence upon 
the line of metabolism, or to give due weight 
to all the views which have been advanced, 
both suggestions may be correct. 

What now is the chemical and physio- 
logical character of the protective products 
which thyroidal tissue evidently manufac- 
tures? To this question there are many 
conflicting answers; still out of the chaotic 
mass of material available I think it is pos- 


*See Halliburton’s Handbook of Chemical Physiol., 
p. 505, ; 


972 


sible to draw certain definite conclusions. 
In the first place if must be remembered 
that the epithelial cells of the thyroid gland 
apparently manufacture a so-called colloid 
secretion which evidently finds its way into 
the blood through the lymph, presumably 
carrying with it the active principles. This 
secretion obviously cannot be collected for 
study, but such active principles as it 
contains may be sought for in the gland 
itself, since we have every reason to 
believe in their ready solubility. By his- 
tological methods applied to sections of the 
thyroid it has been shown that the colloid 
matter gives the general proteid reactions, 
that it is very soluble in dilute alkaline 
fluids and readily dissolved by gastric 
digestion.* Our knowledge of the chemical 
composition of the thyroid gland, and hence 
presumably of the colloid secretion, is due 
mainly to the work of Bubnow,} Gourlay,{ 
Notkin,§ Moscatelli,|| Frankel,4j and es- 
pecially Baumann and Roos,** and Hutch- 
inson.}}+ To briefly summarize the present 
state of our knowledge, ignoring minor 
points of difference, I think it is quite clear 
that the thyroid gland is especially charac- 


*Langendorft; Beitrag zur Kenntniss der Schild- 
driise. Du Bois-Reymonds Archiv f. Physiol., 1889, 
Supplementheft, p. 219. 

{Beitrag zur d. Untersuchung der chemischen 
Bestandtheile der Schilddriise des Menschen und des 
Rindes. Zeitschr. f. Physiol. Chem., Band 8, p. I. 

{The Proteids of the Thyroid and the Spleen. 
Journal of Physiol., Vol. 16, p. 23. 

Zur Schilddriisen-Physiologie. Virchows Archiv. 
Band 114. Supplementheft, p. 224. 

||Beitrage zur Kenntniss der Milchséure in der 
Thymus und Thyreoidea. Zeitschr. f. physiol. chem. 
Band 12, p. 416. : 

{/Tbyreoantitoxin, der physiologisch wirksame 
Bestandtheile der Thyreoidea, Wiener klin. Woch- 
enschr., 1895, No. 48. 

**Ueber das normale Vorkommen des Jods im 
Thierkorper. Zeitschr. f. physiol. Chem. Band 21, 
p. 319 and 481. Band 22, p. 1. 

tfThe Chemistry of the Thyroid Gland and the na- 
ture of its active constituent. Journal of Physiol. 
Vol. 20. p. 474. 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Vou. V. No. 130. 


terized by the presence of a compound 
proteid of peculiar constitution, and that 
this -substance which Hutchinson ealls 
‘colloid matter’ is the active constituent 
of the gland. There is also present another 
proteid, a nucleo-albumin, in small amount, 
which Hutchinson- considers as probably 
contained in the cells of the acini. In 
addition there are certain extractives to be 
found, viz., xanthin, hypoxanthin, inosite,* 
volatile fatty acids, paralactic acid, suc- 
cinic acid and calcium oxalate ; bodies, how- 
ever, of no special physiological signifi- 
cance. 

The chief interest centers around the 
above mentioned proteid material, which is 
plainly of a peculiar kind, since it tends to 
hold a certain amount of iodine in combi- 
nation and yields on decomposition a pecu- 
liar non-proteid substance carrying with it 
most, if not all, of the iodine and endowed 
with marked physiological action. This 
latter substance, to which Baumann has 
given the name of thyroiodin, later changed 
to iodothyrin, is especially characterized, 
chemically, by its great resistance to 
ordinary decomposing agents. Digestion 
of the thyroid gland with active gastric 
juice yields the iodothyrin as an insoluble 
residue, but still active. The gland can 
even be boiled an entire day with ten per 
cent. sulphuric acid without loss of the ac- 
tive principle, the latter separating from the 
cooled fluid as a fine flocculent precipitate 
almost wholly insoluble in cold water and 
acid, soluble in hot alcohol and readily 
soluble in dilute alkalies. When purified 
by repeated precipitation, re-solution, etc., 
the body may contain as much as ten per 
cent. of iodine. In the gland, according to 
Baumann, iodothyrin exists in great part 
combined with albumin and in smaller 
amount with globulin, and these com- 
pounds are likewise physiologically active, 


*Tambach. Pharmaceutische Centralhalle, March, 
1896. 


JUNE 25, 1897. ] 


although less so than the iodothyrin itself. 
The iodothyrin of Baumann is thus a non- 
proteid cleavage product of a more complex 
body, naturally present in the gland and 
characterized by containing both iodine and 
phosphorus (0.5 per cent.). Aqueous and 
glycerin extracts of the gland contain iodo- 
thyrin or the mother-substance, although 
they do not take up all of the substance. 
Extraction of the gland with 0.75 per cent. 
sodium chloride solution, frequently re- 
peated, removes all of the iodine-contain- 
ing substance, and the residual tissue has 
little or no effect upon goitre.* 

That iodothyrin possessesall the peculiari- 
ties associated with thyroid-therapy is, I 
think, pretty thoroughly established. The 
experiments of Roos} upon animals, and 
the clinical observations of Leichtenstern 
and Ewald, have clearly demonstrated the 
physiological power of the substance. Its 
action on goitre, { as tested in over a hun- 
dred cases, is very noticeable. In the 
parenchymatous form a few day’s treatment 
suffices to greatly reduce the size of the 
swelling. Normal dogs in nitrogenous 
equilibrium, treated with iodothyrin, suffer 
a marked loss of body-weight, an increased 
excretion of nitrogen, NaCl and P,O,, while 
diuresis is equally marked (Roos). Further, 
comparative experiments by Fritz Voit,§ 
most carefully conducted on dogs in nitroge- 
nous equilibrium, with fresh thyroid and io- 
dothyrin show that the latter has practically 
the same action as the former in increasing 
the decomposition of fat and in stimulating 
the metabolism of proteid matter. In 


*Roos: Zur Frage nach der Anzahl der Wirk- 


samen Substanzen in der Schilddriise. Mtinchener 
med. Wochenschr., 1896, p. 1157. 
+ Ueber die Wirkung des Thyrojodins. Zeitschr. 


f. physiol. Chem. Pand 22, p. 18. 
{See Ewald und Bruns: Verhandlungen des Con- 
eresses fiir innere Medicin, 1896, p. 101. 
2Stoffwechseluntersuchungen am Hund mit frischer 
Schilddriise und Jodothyrin. Zeitschr. f. Biol. Band 
35, p. 116. 


SCIENCE. 


973 


myxcedema the physiological action of 
iodothyrin is equally pronounced. Thus, 
in one case,* a 16-year-old patient received 
for 6 days 2 grams of iodothyrin (= 0.6 
milligram iodine) daily. In the fore-period 
of 3 days she received 18.02 grams of nitro- 
gen and excreted 17.88 grams. In the 
iodothyrin period she ingested 16.2 grams 
of nitrogen and excreted 20.0 grams, while 
in the 3 days after-period she consumed 
15.65 grams of nitrogen and ingested 21.59 
grams. In 10 days the body-weight fell 4 
pounds. In the treatment of obesity iodo- 
thyrin has likewise been effective.t It has 
also been clearly established by experiments 
on dogs that iodothyrin will cut short the 
various symptoms produced by thyroid- 
ectomy, noticeably the convulsions.{ As 
Baumann and Goldmann§ have shown, 
dogs with thyroids removed do not manifest 
symptoms of tetanic convulsions so long as 
iodothyrin is given regularly each day in 
doses ranging from 2 to6 grams. Further, 
in such cases the withdrawal of the iodo- 
thyrin, or a marked reduction in the amount 
administered, is generally followed by an 
appearance of the convulsions. The dosage 
required to remove or overcome the tetanus 
of a dog suffering from thyroidectomy is 
greater the more vigorous the symptoms 
and the longer the administration has been 
delayed after the appearance of symptoms. 


*Treupel : Stoffwechseluntersuchung bei einem 
mit Jodothyrin (Thyrojodin) hehandelten Falle von 
Myxoedem und Mittheilung einiger Thierversuche 
mit Jodothyrin (Thyrojodin). Minchener med. 
Wochenschr., XLIII. 38, p.885. See also Notkin, 
Virchows Archiv. Band 144, Supplementheft. 

+See Grawitz: Beitrag zur Wirkung des Thyro- 
jodin auf den Stoffwechsel bei Fettsucht. Mutinchener 
med. Wochenschr., 1896, No. 14. Also Henning Ibid., 
1896, No 19. 

{ Hoffmeister: Deutsch. med. Wochenschr., 1896, 
No. 22. Hildebrandt; Berliner Klin. Wochenschr. 
1896, No. 37. 

21st das Jodothyrin (Thyrojodin) der lebenswich- 
tige Bestandtheil der Schilddrise? Miinchener med. 
Wochenschr., 1896, p. 1153. 


974 


The negative results obtained by Gottlieb * 
have ‘been recently shown to be due to the 
employment of a poor preparation. 

Does the physiological action of the thy- 
roid gland reside wholly in this so-called 
iodothyrin or its antecedent? In attempt- 
ing to answer this question we must give a 
moment’s attention to Frankel’s so-called 
thyreoantitoxin. + This, as you may remem- 
ber, is a crystalline body of neutral reac- 
tion obtained from the proteid-free extracts 
of the thyroid gland. It is soluble in 
water and alcohol, but precipitable by ether 
and acetone, and from its composition it has 
been suggested that it is a guanidin deriva- 
tive. Frankel ascribed to this substance 
the physiological activity of the thyroid 
gland, since he obtained a suspension of 
convulsions with thyroidectomized cats on 
injecting this body. Further, Drechsel { 
has made a preliminary communication to 
the effect that the proteid-free extract of the 
thyroid from pigs contains two crystalline 
substances in small amount, which when 
fed to thyroidectomized animals appear 
somewhat active, although not strongly so. 
Drechsel therefore suggests that possibly 
there may be three active substances present 
in the thyroid, viz, two bases, one identical 
with Frankel’s antitoxin, and Baumann’s 
iodothyrin. He would thus ascribe to the 
thyroid several associated functions and 
corresponding to each a distinct chemical 
substance. Theoretically, of course, this is 
quite plausible, but Drechsel’s compounds 
have not been further heard from and there 
are many recent observers who fail to find 
any physiological action whatever with the 
proteid-free extract from the gland.§ More- 
over, careful comparative study of the ac- 

* Deutsch. med. Wochenschr., 1896, No. 15. 

+ Wiener klin. Wochenschr., 1895, No. 48. 

{Die Wirksame Substanz der Schilddrtse, Vor- 
laufige Notiz. Centralbl f. Physiol. Band 9, p. 705. 

@See Hutchinson : The chemistry of the Thyroid 
Gland and the nature of its active constituent. Jour- 
nal of Physiol., Vol. 20, p. 491. 


SCIENCE. 


LN. S. Vou. V. No. 130. 


tion of thyreoantitoxin and iodothyrin in a 
myxoedema patient showed that while the 
former was entirely without beneficial ac- 
tion the latter produced all the results 
characteristic of thyroid feeding. * Further, 
Roos, } by experiment on a normal dog in ni- 
trogenous equilibrium, found that thyreoan- 
titoxin was wholly without influence on me- 
tabolism, while iodothyrin given to the same 
animal under like conditions caused at once 
a marked increase in the output of nitrogen, 
NaCl and P,O,. In other words, thyreo- 
antitoxin shows with certainty none of the 
properties of the thyroid gland, while iodo- 
thyrin is apparently the physiological 
equivalent of the gland. Indeed, in its ac- 
tion on goitre iodothyrin is more effective 
than the gland itself, since when the gland 
is taken it must first undergo digestion to 
liberate the iodothyrin and some may be 
lost by putrefactive changes in the intestine. 

What now is the significance of the 
iodine contained in the so-called iodothyrin? 
Iodine is not a common constituent of the 
animal body, and its discovery by Baumann 
in the thyroid gland toward the end of 1895 
was the first intimation of its presence in 
the human organism. So far as known, itis 
not normally present to any extent in other 
tissues.{ Traces, however, are found in the 
thymus of the calf (Baumann).§ Barrell 
has likewise reported the presence of traces 
in the spleen, adrenals and the ovaries of 
pigsand cows. The amount, however, is very 
small as compared with that found in the 
thyroid. Calling the amount of iodine in 1 
gram of fresh thyroid as 1, the spleen con- 
tains j,, the adrenals ;3,5, and the ovaries 

*Magnus Levy: Deutsche med. Wochenschr., 
1896, No. 31. 

+ Miinchener med. Wochenschr. 1896. No. 47. 

{Drechsel has reported finding a distinct trace of 
iodine in the hair of a syphilitic patient treated for a 
long time with postasium iodide. Centralbl. f. Physiol. 
Band 9, p. 704. 

2Vorkommen von Jod in den Ovarien. Chemisches 
Centralblatt, 1897. Band 1, p. 608. 


JUNE 25, 1897.] 


gu-ss per gram of fresh tissue. Jodine has 
likewise been detected in the human hy- 
pophesis.** 

In human thyroids, on the other hand, 
as well as in the thyroids of sheep, oxen 
and pigs, iodine is most generally present 
in quite appreciable amount, and pure 
iodothyrin may contain as much as 10 per 
cent. of the element. In iodothyrin the 
iodine is in close combination with the rest 
of the molecule and is not easily split off 
even by the action of alkalies. It is notice- 
able that the thyroids of sheep (and of other 
animals) vary greatly in their content of 
iodine. Thus in sheep coming from Frei- 
burg 1 gram of dry thyroid gland contained 
on an average 0.9-1.3 milligrams of iodine, 
while the thyroids from Paris sheep con- 
tained 1.15-1.2 milligrams of iodine per 
gram of dry gland, and those from Elberfeld 
1.5-5. milligrams per gram of dry tissue. As 
judged by the rate and intensity of physio- 
logical action 0.25-0.3 milligram of iodine 
in the form of iodothyrin is equal to 1 gram 
of fresh thyroid gland. Further, according 
to Baumann, doses of 1 milligram of iodo- 
thyrin which contain only =, milligam of 
iodine will produce a decided effect upon 
goitre after 3-4 applications, thus clearly 
indicating that it is not the iodine per se 
that is effective, but rather the iodine com- 
pound. 

The content of iodine in human thyroids 
is likewise variable, the determining factor 
being apparently the locality in which the 
individual lived. Thus, in 26 adults dying 
from various causes in Freiburg the aver- 
age amount of iodine in the thyroid was 
0.33 milligram per gram of dry tissue, while 
in Hamburg the average from 30 adults 
was 0.85 milligram per gram of dry tissue. 
In Berlin, average of 11 adults, 1 gram of 
dry thyroid contained 0.9 milligram of 

*Schnitzler und K. Ewald; Ueber das Vorkommen 


des Thyrojodins im menschlichen Kérper. Wiener 
Klin. Wochenschr., 1896, p. 657. 


SCIENCE. 


975 


iodine. It should be noted, however, that 
in the Freiburg cases the average weight 
of the gland was 8.2 grams with a total 
content of 2.5 milligrams of iodine. In 
Berlin, on the other hand, the average 
weight of the dry gland was 7.4 grams with 
a total content of 6.6 milligrams of iodine 
per gland, and in Hamburg the dried gland 
weighed only 4.6 grams, with 3.83 milli- 
grams of iodine. 

Recently Weiss* has reported the results 
from fifty analyses of thyroids of adults and 
children in Silesia, the average weight of 
the dried gland being 7.2 grams and with 
an average content of 4.04 milligrams of 
iodine. 

From a large number of observations 
among children and adults in different 
localities in Germany, Baumann concludes 
that in Freiburg, where goitre is endemic, 
the weight of the thyroid is the largest and 
its content of iodine the lowest, while in 
Hamburg and Berlin, where goitre is not 
endemic, the reverse holds good. Asa rule, 
in cases of goitre only minimal and almost 
always relatively small amounts of iodine 
are to be found, from which Baumann 
draws the conclusion that between the 
iodine-content of the thyroid and the oc- 
currence of goitre there is a certain definite 
relationship. 

I understand, however, that additional 
results, not yet published, tend to show 
that in some cases of goitre the content of 
iodine is far beyond the normal, thus im- 
plying the existence of two abnormal con- 
ditions : one in which the iodine-content 
is below, and another in which it is far 
above the normal. In old age the content 
of iodine frequently falls to a minimum, ap- 
parently in harmony with the degeneration 
of the gland. The largest amount of iodine 
is found between the ages of twenty-five 


*Ueber den Jodgehalt von Schilddriisen in Schlesien 
Chemisches Central-Blatt, 1897. Band 1, p. 298. 


976 


and fifty-five.* Many circumstances, how- 
ever, combine to modify the content of 
iodine in the thyroids, especially the 
proximity to the sea-shore with the greater 
abundance of sea food, etc., and this fact, 
coupled with the well-known circumstance 
that in the thyroids of some children iodine 
is wholly wanting (Baumann), and this 
without any apparent effect upon the 
activity of the gland, renders one somewhat 
skeptical as to the real virtue of the iodine. 
Blum,; however, states that artificial com- 
pounds of iodine, with various forms of 
proteid matter, exert a beneficial influence 
upon parenchymatous goitre as well as upon 
the tetanus and myxoedema induced in dogs 
by thyroidectomy. The iodine in iodothy- 
rin is certainly not active as iodine; the 
amount is too small, and it may, perhaps, 
be questioned if the amount of iodine in the 
thyroid gland can be taken as a measure of 
the amount of active substance present. In 
this connection it may be mentioned that 
animals with the thyroids removed have no 
power of retaining the iodothyrin admin- 
istered by mouth or subcutaneously, the 
iodine compound appearing in the urine 
either unaltered or in some modified form 
(organic). 

To summarize, the thyroid gland manu- 
factures one specific substance of marked 
physiological power—the so-called colloid 
of Hutchinson—a body which, though con- 
taining phosphorus, is not a nucleo-proteid; 
neither is it allied to mucin. It is peculiar 
in that it contains iodine. This body when 
acted upon by gastric juice or by boiling 
acids is split into a proteid and a non-pro- 


*See Baumann: Ueber das Thyrojodin. Muinch- 


ener med. Wochenschr., 1896, No. 14. 

+ Ueber Halogeneiweissderivate und ihr physi- 
ologisches Verhalten. Miinchener med. Wochenschr. , 
49, 1099. 

{Baumann und Goldmann, Loc. cit. See alsoH. 
und M. Frenkel. Jod im Harn nach Einnahme von 
Thyreodintabletten. Berliner klin. Wochenschr., 
XXxili, 37, p. 827. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 130. 


teid part, the latter containing all of the 
phosphorus and the larger proportion of the 
iodine of the original colloid. According 
to Hutchinson both parts of the colloid are 
physiologically active, but the non-proteid 
part, the iodothyrin of Baumann, is un- 
questionably far more active than the pro- 
teid part of the original molecule. This 
substance is apparently the physiological 
equivalent of the thyroid gland. Lastly, — 
our history would be incomplete without 
some reference to the theories of Notkin.* 
This reference, however, may be a brief 
one, since the theories though ingenious 
are now known to rest upon a false founda- 
tion and have no present value. 
Concerning the other internal secretions of 
the body I have little to say, partly owing 
to lack of time and partly because there is 
very little definite chemico-physiological 
knowledge at our disposal. Our knowledge 
has not as yet advanced sufficiently to ad- 
mit of making dogmatic statements regard- 
ing the exact chemical nature of the active 
principles present in the adrenals, testacles, 
ovaries, pancreas, pituitary body, etc., or 
of the exact action of extracts of these 
glands upon the metabolic phenomena of 
the body. Allow me to say, however, in 
reference to the adrenals that there is some 
evidence of the existence of two distinct 
physiologically active substances, one in- 
soluble in 90 per cent. alcohol, possibly the 
sphygmogenin of Frankel, which increases 
blood-pressure while the other, which is 
readily soluble in alcohol, causes paralysis 
of the heart and muscles and death by 
suffocation.t In this connection it will be 


* Zur Schilddriisen-Physiologie. Virchows Archiv, 
Band 144. Supplementheft, p. 224. This paper con- 
tains a very full bibliography. Notkin’s theories are 
well combated by Hutchinson, Journal of Physiol., 
Vol. 20, p. 490. 

{+See S. Frankel: Beitrige zur Physiologie und 
physiologischen Chemie der Nebenniere. Centralbl. 
f. Physiol. Band 10, p. 486. Du Bois: Note prélimi- 


JUNE 25, 1897.] 


remembered that Oliver and Schafer * 
have shown that the active principle (or 
principles) is non-volatile and that its ac- 
tivity is not destroyed by mineral acids or 
gastric digestion, while alkalies gradually 
diminish it. According to Marino-Zuco,+ 
the toxic action is due to the presence 
of neurin glycerophosphate. There are 
also some grounds for believing a brenz- 
eatechin-like body to be present, { which 
may exert some physiological action. 
Lastly, in extracts of the testis a peculiar 
nitrogenous body has been detected, free 
from oxygen, known as spermin and which 
is claimed by Poehl§ to have a marked in- 
fluence upon metabolism and to act as a 
true physiological stimulus. Further dis- 
cussion of these points at the present time, 
however, would have little value. 
R. H. CHirrenDEn. 
YALE UNIVERSITY. 


A CASE OF PRIMITIVE SURGERY. 


Dourine the first period of my residence 
among Zuii Indians, in the autumn of 1890, 
I was called in to assist two medicine men 
or priests in the performance of a peculiarly 
interesting surgical operation. 

A man belonging to the clan into which 
I had been adopted had for several months 
been suffering from the effects of either a 


naire sur l’action des extraits de capsules surrénales. 
C. R. Soe. de Biol., 1896, p. 14. 

* The physiological effects of extracts of the supra- 
renal capsules. Journal of Physiol., Vol. 18, p. 370. 
See also B. Moore: On the Chemical Nature of the 
physiologically active substance occurring in the 
suprarenal gland. Ibid., Vol. 17. Proc. Physiol. 
Soc., March, 1895. 

y Archiy. d. Biol. Ital., Tome 10, p. 325. 

{ Brunner: Chem. Centralblatt., 1892, I., p. 758. 
MihImann: Deutsche Med. Wochenschr., 1896, No. 
26. 

2Compt. rendu. Tome 115, p. 129. Zeitschr. f. 
Klin. Med. Band 26, p. 133. Centralbl. f. d. Med. 
Wissensch., 1892, p. 950. See also Bubis: Sperminum 
Poehl in chemischer, physiologischer und therapeu- 
tischer Beziehung. Ibid., 1894, p. 703. 


SCIENCE. 


977 


contusion or a strain of the right foot, 
caused by a throw from his horse. This 
had at first given little trouble, then had 
appeared as an ordinary stone-bruise on the 
right side of the foot just below the instep. 
The inflammation had, however, extended 
until the whole foot and the lower part of 
the leg had become excessively swollen, so 
much so as to cause the skin to glisten from 
stretching, save ata point over and around 
the original injury, at which point a malig- 
nant and putrid sore had developed, the 
odor of which was extremely offensive, and 
both the foot and the leg were now of livid, 
purplish-red hue in places, suggestive of 
actual decay. As a layman in medicine I 
should have said that the case was now one 
of advanced mortification, and from the 
general condition of the patient I should 
have inferred that blood poisoning was 
likely soon to ensue. 

I gathered from the conversation of the 
two old surgeons who had been called in, 
and who had in return requested my at- 
tendance in order that I might give ‘ ease 
medicine’ and ‘add with (my) breath 
strength and endurance to (my) clan- 
brother,’ that it was these appearances, 
this apparently ‘decaying condition’ of the 
man’s extremity, that had determined them 
to perform the operation. 

When I entered the room the patient was 
lying on the floor and, although in extreme 
agony, turned his face toward me expectantly 
and with a smile, uttering the customary 
words of welcome. His head was pillowed 
in the lap of his little old white-haired 
mother, who was gently stroking his fore- 
head and talking to him in the endearing 
phrases of mothers to little children. At his 
side was a small bowl containing a clear 
but bright red liquid (made, I afterwards 
learned, from an infusion of willow-root 
bark) in which half floated, half stood, a 
cane sucking-tube about six inches long. 
The old surgeons were removing certain 


978 


bandages from the foot and washing off a 
yellow powder made from pollen and a cer- 
tain bitter root, with which the sore had 
been dressed. They bade me sit at the right 
side of the man, so as to lay my hands on 
his left breast and to occasionally breathe 
into his face and administer to him my 
‘white medicine’ (which contained an opi- 
ate). 

Then they produced, from a buckskin 
pouch and a roll of rags, a much shattered 
bottom of a dark-colored glass bottle and 
two or three broken nodules of obsidian, also 
several neat splints of cedar and masses of 
freshly gathered, clean yellow pifon gum, 
as well as a carefully tied bundle of willow- 
root bark and some of the yellow roots and 
pollen I have before mentioned. With a 
blunt-pointed knife, used vertically, one of 
them detached, by tapping, a number of 
small, thin, sharp flakes or chips from the 
bottle-glass and obsidian. Six or eight of 
these diminutive flakes were now selected 
and mounted, each in the cleft end of one 
of the cedar splints; some so as to form 
straight lancets, but others at right angles 
to the splint handles. The blades of one or 
two of these latter were wrapped round and 
round with sinew near the point of inser- 
tion in the splint, so that only a limited 
portion of the edge or tip of each protruded. 
These and the other improvised surgical 
instruments were laid out in due order on 
the floor. A quantity of shredded cedar- 
bark, buckskin scrapings, and old, soft rags 
were provided; also a large bowl of fresh 
water, and another filled with the red 
liquid and containing a small gourd dipper. 

Everything being in readiness, the two 
priests closed their hands over their mouths 
and breathed into them, as does a man on 
a cold day, uttering, meanwhile, short invo- 
cations, for strength of wind or breath for 
the patient, and for power of wind or breath 
of guidance for themselves; literally the sup- 
plication was: “Their [The Being’s] wind 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vout. V. No. 130 


of life, by its power may his will be strength- 
ened and he quieted be, and likewise by it 
may our methods and good fortune straight 
be made!”’ Bidding the man ‘Stay himself 
with endurance,’ since ‘Things must be as 
they must, poor child,’ and telling me also 
to ‘Stay him,’ with my ‘ Breath of relation- 
ship and sympathy,’ they set to work with- 
out further delay. 

First, they bathed his foot to clear it of 
the astringent yellow powder, and to cleanse 
the sore in order that they might be the 
better able to inspect it. Then, very delib- 
erately, they diagnosed the case, frequently 
comparing notes. It was from this diag- 
nosis that I learned their reasons for at- 
tempting the operation. They believed 
that the flesh of certain muscles in the 
foot had died or were dying from the 
violence done them, and were therefore 
‘wi-wi-yo-a’ (worm-becoming, worm-turn- 
ing) in the depths of the foot. Accord- 
ing to this theory, their plan was to make a 
double, or inverted T-shape, incision so that 
the integument could be lifted up from the 
affected parts in two flaps, the ‘ dead flesh’ 
removed, the ‘decayed’ or ‘black blood’ 
fully extracted, the worms and the ‘seed of 
their kind’ found and utterly uprooted. 
They thereupon mapped out with their 
fingers the lines of the incisions they pro- 
posed to make. One of them gently bade 
their patient anew to ‘Stay himself,’ while 
the other seized his foot with both hands and 
turned it up, stretching the skin by pressure; 
then the first grasped one of the obsidian 
lancets (mounted sidewise and wrapped 
with sinew so that the point protruded just 
sufficiently to sever the skin) and deliber- 
ately, but with deft and even stroke, slashed 
down from the ankle about two and a-half 
inches, along a line corresponding in direc- 
tion with that of the tendon of the little 
toe. He then quickly made another slash 
from the instep straight down to the middle 
of the first cut. Catching up one of the 


JUNE 25, 1897.] 


other kind of lancets, he deepened both in- 
cisions, avoiding with the utmost skill the 
crooked vein that descended over this por- 
tion of the foot, and also the tendon lying 
over the tarsal and metatarsal bones. The 
wound was then squeezed strongly by the 
assistant, while, with water poured over it 
and with wads of the cedar bark used as 
sponges, he washed away the pus and serum 
that gushed forth, and then with the scraped 
buckskin stanched the flow of blood. 
Having at the outset tenderly admonished 
their patient, these men seemed thereafter 
to be oblivious of his agony, to hold in view 
only his ultimate betterment. And the 
patient himself seemed almost as oblivious 
of them, although from suffering his face 
was drawn and ashen in color, and great 
drops of perspiration stood on his forehead 
while his breath came in short quick gasps. 
Yet he no more changed his grimly set but 
acquiescent expression than would one of 
the totem-animals of his ancestry, whose 
stoicism—as under all circumstances his 
kind ever do—he sought to emulate. The 
old surgeons took up one after another of 
the straight lancets, and with them dis- 
sected away the proud flesh and other dis- 
eased tissue, removing it cleanly, without 
severing vein or artery or tendon, until 
they had fairly exposed the bone itself. 
Here they found a swollen and diseased bit 
of nerve or tendon. They ruthlessly cut it 
out and examined it critically; stuffing 
some cedar-bark into the wound, they laid 
their lancets down and discussed thorough- 
ly, and in an interested, leisurely manner, 
the question as to whether it was already a 
worm or only a ‘becoming’ worm. After 
deciding that whether worm or ‘ becoming- 
worm’ it was not the chief or sole source 
of the disease, they laid it carefully aside 
on some ashes in a hollow potsherd. 
Then removing the bark and calling 
upon me to squeeze water into the wound 
they proceeded until the bone was plainly 


SCIENCE. 


979 


exposed. They found the periosteum in- 
flamed and discolored, and, therefore, 
with evident satisfaction, they proceeded 
to scrape it until every particle of the 
discoloration was removed. It was 
claimed that in the substance of the ma- 
terial thus scraped away the deepest source 
of the disease and ‘seat worms’ was found. 
This was also placed on the ashes with the 
fragment of nerve or tendon. Then one of 
them took a small fetish, or medicine-stone, 
from his wallet. It was an ovoid object of 
banded aragonite, much resembling a ringed 
worm or maggot. He laid it in the wound. 
He presently took it out, lifted it aloft with 
an air of triumph, and carefully placed it on 
the ashes with the ligament and bone- 
scrapings. The incision was now held open 
and thoroughly washed out, and then the 
chief operator, dipping up gourdfuls of the 
red liquid, filled his mouth therewith, and. 
repeatedly sprayed the wound by vigorous- 
ly blowing the fluid into it. All dissected 
surfaces were then washed, dried with the 
scraped buckskin, washed and dried again, 
until it not only became, but actually 
looked, clean, and was sprayed yet again 
with the red fluid. Finally, the openings 
were filled up, or rather stuffed, with the 
pifion-gum softened by warmth of the 
breath and in the hands, that were the 
while kept constantly wet with the red 
fluid. More of this gum was spread on 
narrow strips of cloth, and with these the 
wound was neatly closed as with adhesive 
plaster. The entire foot was sprinkled or 
thickly dusted over with the yellow pol- 
len and root-powder, and then bandaged 
with long strips of the old rags as neatly as 
it would have been bandaged by a surgeon 
among ourselves. 

The procedure of these primitive sur- 
geons, if we consider the antiseptic treat- 
ment involved in their copious sprayings 
with the willow-bark infusion, in the fill- 
ing of the wound with purifying pifion 


980 


gum and the remarkably effective closure 
of the incisions thereby, and in the sur- 
face-coating with the astringent yellow 
powder, would certainly seem to have 
been, almost from beginning to end, as 
strictly rational also as would have been 
those of one of our own surgeons. But in 
reality they were nothing of the sort. If 
we except the exceeding ingenuity and 
courage and the anatomic knowledge and 
skill displayed by these surgeons in their 
operations, the theories upon which they 
based their procedure were, from our point 
of view, irrational in the highest de- 
gree. They were a combination of em- 
piric and thaumaturgic modes, chiefly the 
latter. 

These men believed, according to the 
general philosophy of their people, founded 
on the superficial appearance of things, 
that blood—good, fresh, red blood—was the 
source of ‘new flesh.’ They believed that 
when the blood became thinned and black 
it was weakened and spoiled and must 
therefore be removed and replaced with 
fresh blood ; that as blood is the source of 
new flesh, so is water the first source of 
new blood, of life itself, since nothing can 
live without water, howsoever abundant 
sustenance of other sort may be. There- 
fore, since the willow never lives apart from 
springs or other continuous sources of wa- 
ter, it must contain within its roots, its 
sources, the very essence, the very source 
of life. An infusion of its roots and bark 
becomes brightly red. Itis imagined, there- 
fore, to be the source of new life-blood, of 
flesh-forming blood itself, and to be effec- 
tive for the renewal of decaying or ‘ worm- 
turning’ flesh. The employment of the 
‘fire-feeding’ and, therefore, ‘ purifying 
and maturing’ pifion gum, and of the cool- 
ing and hardening yellow (or ‘winter’ root) 
powder and sustaining pollen, also quite, 
accorded to like ways of reasoning, was as 
strictly sustained by practical results, and 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 130. 


therefore seemed, in turn, to prove the pro- 
priety of such reasoning. 

They also believed that the violence of 
the man’s injury had so weakened the part 
injured that it was infested with worms or 
else was killed and turning to worms. This 
belief was also based on appearances. Dead 
flesh putrifies, is filled with pus, or with 
thin, fluid, black or dead blood, stinks, 
and is always likely to be, with these 
people infested with worms (maggots). 
A festering sore arising from violence, real 
or imaginary, done to the part in which it 
occurs exhibits all these characteristics, 
and, if unchecked, leads to death. Such a 
sore, if malignant and deep, causes pain as 
of the bones. Its seed, then, must be deep- 
seated or in the bones themselves; this 
seed must be removed, else it will grow and 
cause death. Any pain like that arising 
from such a sore, though no sore be ap- 
parent, must be caused also by unseen 
worms or some worm born of violent 
injury, as by a magical or ghostly ar- 
row. 

There remain to be explained two or three 
of the manifestly irrational operations in- 
volved in the procedure. One was the 
treatment of the pain-causing worm-fila- 
ment—or diseased nerve—and the ultimate 
“source of worm-turning’ in the bone they 
scraped ; the other was the use of the mag- 
got-fetish or medicine-stone. The sup- 
posedly incipient maggot and the infectious 
seed-substance of his kind in the bone 
were placed on the ashes, because fire-ashes 
are considered, in themselves, to be dissolv- 
ing and destructive, and (among other 
quaint reasons) tend toward ‘clogging’ or 
‘hindering escape;’ for no worm or in- 
sect can progress through, or escape from, 
fine ashes. With the scraping of the bone 
everything had been done that was humanly 
possible to remove the infection; but some- 
thing more must be done, some potency 
applied, to absorb any remaining infection. 


JUNE 25, 1897. ] 


Therefore the fetish-stone, as a sort of spir- 
itual sponge, was introduced. 

And I would here enter a plea for the 
primitive medicineman. He is not usually 
the arrant knave or juggler so frequently 
pictured by travellers. His so-called ‘tricks’ 
are not attempts at deception. They are 
solemn operations by which he is himself 
as much deceived as are any of his wit- 
nesses. We are told that these earliest 
practitioners suck, knead or cut their pa- 
tients, and end by pretending to find and 
extract, and by triumphantly holding aloft, 
some grub, insect or other small object— 
frequently a minute fetish-stone like the 
one I have described, that ‘they claim’ to 
have actually extracted from the diseased 
part. We aliens are the only ones of their 
witnesses who are deceived by them in the 
way we accuse them of deceiving, for what 
they really attempt to do is either to ex- 
pose, or otherwise make as uncomfortable as 
possible, the animate seat of the disease, 
and then to furnish it with a decoy, as it 
were, a vehicle or body of escape, as a 
killed and squeezed-out body of one of its 
own kind, or else in the form of its kind 
as seen in some ancient and more potent 
and nearly natural object resembling it, 
Sometimes, again, living insects or worms, 
or fetishes that are supposed to be living, 
ravenous and inimical to the worms of dis- 
ease, are introduced, that they may prey 
upon and destroy these worms and the 
seed-substance of their kind. This is es- 
pecially apt to be the case when thick pus 
is abundant and parasites are forming; for 
the squeezed-out pus itself resembles worms 
more or less, portions of it even in mass, 
being streaked, seeming to contain their 
forms inembryo. It, also, is therefore held 
to be the seed-plasm or substance of worms, 
and the proof of this is alleged to lie in the 
fact that, if exposed, like dead flesh, it 
speedily turns to worms. 

The subsequent treatment received by 


SCIENCE. 


981 


the man whose case I have described, at 
the hands of his primitive doctors, was 
quite as much in keeping with this sort of 
philosophy as had been their operation. 
His wound was, of course, dressed, cleaned, 
copiously sprayed, and, I may add, ‘ Spirit- 
ually disinfected,’ every day. But, in ad- 
dition to this, he was put on diet—the 
freshest or ‘newest’ possible corn food— 
and was, for the first four days, deprived 
of salt (this, too, being abundant in pus- 
like excreta) and all flesh-food, and was 
thereafter until perfectly cured—for he re- 
covered with amazing rapidity—denied all 
meat containg fat and other non-muscular 
tissue, since these, as well as old and so-to- 
say ‘decrepit’ seeds, are supposed to be, 
of themselves, peculiarly liable to ‘ worm- 
turning.’ 
FRANK Hamittron CusHina. 
PHILADELPHIA, March 15, 1897. 


THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON 
THE BIOLOGICAL PROCESSES OF THE 
VARIOUS MEMBERS OF THE COLON 
GROUP OF BACILLI: AN EXPERI- 
MENTAL STUDY. 

THE results found in the following pages 
have been made possible by a grant from 
the Bache fund of the Smithsonian Institu- 
tion. The disposal of the grant mentioned 
is left to the discretion of Dr. John 8. 
Billings and Dr. §. Weir Mitchell. The 
topic of this research was submitted to these 
gentlemen at the beginning of the year, and 
from time to time they have been kept in- 
formed of the progress of the work. It is 
with their approval that this paper is pre- 
sented for publication. The research of the 
past year has been a continuation of the 
studies begun in the fall of 1895, upon the 
variability of bacteria. 

The colon group of bacteria have been 
chosen for this study, and particular atten- 
tion has been paid to those forms which ap- 
pear to be modifications of the typical colon 


982 


bacillus which have undergone functional 
derangement as a consequence oftheir en- 
vironment. A short résumé of our experi- 
mental work is given in this paper, but we 
fear that it is insufficient in regard to the 
details of experiments and the results ob- 
tained to maintain our conclusions. 

From the observations and deductions of 
several competent investigators, the patho- 
genesis of the colon bacillus is due to culti- 
vation in the living fluids of the animal 
body, which are supplied with an unusual 
amount of proteid substance by the process 
of inflammation. We have made experi- 
ments with the members of the colon group 
to ascertain to what extent the proteolytic 
activity can be increased by growth upon an 
artificial medium containing large amounts 
of proteid material. The medium used for 
our experiment was a bouillon free from 
sugar and containing a large per cent. of 
fresh peptones derived from beef muscle by 
the action of trypsin. These peptones, ac- 
cording to Péré, are capable of forming 
more indol than those produced by the 
action of pepsin or any other enzyme. 

Series of cultures comprising, severally, 
the typical colon bacillus, transitional forms 
of the colon group, and the typical typhoid 
bacillus, have been carried through a series 
of cultures in this medium, each culture be- 
ing changed to fresh media every seventy- 
two hours, and the old culture tested for 
indol for the purpose of obtaining an approx- 
imate estimation of the proteid digestion. 

The result of these experiments was that 
under these conditions the proteolytic func- 
tion is increased in activity, so that cultures 
of the typical colon bacillus gave, in the 
second generation, after growth for three 
days in 25 c. em. of the medium, an indol reac- 
tion of a blood-red color in some instances, 
and requiring in every culture from 10 to 
15 e.cm. of a 0.1 per cent. indol solution to 
give the same depth of color to 25 ec. em. of the 
sterile medium. ‘Transitional forms of the 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 130. 


colon group which have hitherto been sup- 
posed to be devoid of the indol-producing 
power, after cultivation for three or four 
generations in this medium gave a marked 
indol reaction. Seventeen different speci- 
mens of the typhoid bacillus, obtained by 
us from some of the best known laboratories. 
in this country, gave also a marked indol 
reaction after passing through a series of 
changes in this medium. 

Result of excess of one function. The re- 
sult of the excessive discharge of one func- 
tion, viz., proteolysis, which has been pro- 
duced by growth in the fresh peptone 
bouillon free from sugar, is, first, an increase 
of the proteolytic activity as shown by the 
increased amount of indol produced in typi- 
cal colon cultures, and the production of 
indol by organisms supposed to be devoid 
of this property: viz., atypical forms of the 
colon bacillus, and the typical typhoid ba- 
cillus; secondly, after the maximum of indol 
production is reached, a decrease in proteo- 
lytic activity occurs, shown by the lessened 
amount of indol, and, finally, after several 
generations, the attenuation and premature 
death of the organism takes place. 

Indol production as an index of pathogenesis. 
An experiment relating to this question has 
been carried on for over a year with a viru- 
lent culture of the colon bacillus. The cul- 
ture was tested for indol and virulence as 
soon as it was isolated. ‘Theindol reaction 
was very marked, and 0.5 c. em. of a bouillon 
culture proved invariably fatal to guinea 
pigs of 500 grammes weight. It was then 
kept for five months on agar-agar with but 
few changes, when it was again tested. A 
faint indol reaction was obtained, and 1 to 
2 c. em. of a bouillon culture was required to 
kill an animal of 300 to 500 grammes weight. 
This culture was then placed in the alkali- 
peptone solution and changed to fresh me- 
dium twice in seven days, when tests were 
again made. The color of the indol reac- 
tion was very intense, and0.3 c.cm. of an 


JUNE 25, 1897.] 


alkali-peptone bouillon culture about twen- 
ty-four hours old killed animals weighing 
from 200 to 300 grammes. This experiment 
was repeated with the same result, viz., the 
indol production and pathogenesis were both 
increased by growth in a medium containing 
an unusual amount of proteid material so 
prepared as to be especially suitable for 
bacterial assimilation. The amount of indol 
produced by this culture was not greater, 
however, than is found in other cultures of 
the colon bacillus which are non-pathogenic. 
The estimation of the virulence of this or- 
ganism by the amount ofindol formed seems 
for this reason impracticable. 

Cultures from typhoid spleens. We have 
found by our experiments that the colon 
bacillus grown in an excess of proteid ma- 
terial in an artifical medium undergoes a 
disturbance of equilibrium in function, with 
first an increase of proteolytic activity and 
later an apparent suppression. Cultures ob- 
tained from the pathological tissues of man 
and animals also present characteristics 
differing from those of the typical colon 
bacillus obtained from the healthy colon. 
For the purpose of demonstrating this modi- 
fying effect upon cultures of bacteria be- 
longing to the group under discussion, we 
have obtained cultures from organs that 
have been undergoing inflammation for a 
considerable period of time, viz., typhoid 
spleens, and have noted their reactions both 
upon carbohydrate and proteid foods. We 
have tried to classify these cultures accord- 
ing to these reactions, and with the follow- 
ing results: Cultures corresponding to the 
typical colon bacillus in reaction have not 
been found among the cultures studied. A 
group of cultures were obtained which gave 
one or more of the prominent reactions of 
the colon bacillus, and appeared to belong 
to the transitional series of the colon group. 
A second group gave the characteristic mod- 
ifications in function that are found in at- 
tenuated cultures of the colon group. A 


SCIENCE. 


983 


third and larger group gave the reactions of 
the typhoid bacillus. May not the cultures 
of the first and second group be colon cul- 
tures which have been modified in function 
by growth in an excess of proteid food? 

Our final test for the differentiation of our 
cultures obtained from typhoid spleens is 
the serum test, to which the investigations 
of Widal have recently drawn so much atten- 
tion that it has become a well-known and 
popular diagnostic procedure in typhoid 
fever. We have reversed this test, and 
have used a specimen of blood which was 
obtained from a genuine case of typhoid 
fever, and which had given a characteristic 
reaction with the typhoid culture used by 
us for the diagnosis of typhoid fever by the 
so-called method of Widal for testing our 
cultures. 

The result of this test showed that only 
about one-third of our typhoid cultures 
gave what is regarded by us as a positive 
reaction, although every culture except one 
showed a distinct agglutination of the 
bacilli and some degree of cessation of 
motility. A comparison of the reactions 
given by the typhoid cultures with those of 
our cultures from typhoid spleens shows 
that of 28 cultures derived from typhoid 
spleens, and giving all the cultural reactions 
of typhoid bacilli, 18 gave a positive reac- 
tion, while 10 did not fulfill the require- 
ments of this reaction in regard to cessa- 
tion of motion. Two cultures classified as 
transitional colon cultures gave as typical a 
reaction as any of the cultures tested. 

Our tests upon the series of typical and 
atypical colon bacilli show that in one cul- 
ture of each series a reaction was obtained 
which seemed as striking as any reaction 
obtained by us with typhoid cultures. 
Several of the other cultures differed from 
the control drop by presenting indications 
of a reaction. 

CONCLUSIONS. 


Assuming the typical colon bacillus and 


984 


the typical typhoid bacillus to represent 
the types of this group that present the 
greatest divergences in biological peculiari- 
ties, we conclude, as others also have done, 
that there is a series of closely related forms 
that may be regarded as intermediate or 
transitional, and which serve to establish 
a biological relationship, either near or re- 
mote, between these two typical members. 

From our own studies we are inclined to 
regard the typical colon bacillus as the type 
of this group, for the reason that its func- 
tional equilibrium, as observed in the intes- 
tine, is so permanent a quality that it may 
readily be perpetuated under what is ordi- 
narily regarded as favorable artificial cir- 
cumstances, and that with the continuance 
of such conditions there is no conspicuous 
tendency on the part of this organism to 
deviate from what we regard as its norm ; 
whereas, on the other hand, with all the 
other members of the group with which we 
have worked there is not only a lack of 
uniformity in the adjustment of the func- 
tions, but such as exists is readily disturbed 
under artificial environment, though it 
must be borne in mind that even with the 
typical colon bacillus we have also shown 
functional modifications to be possible under 
particular conditions. 

That when the members of the colon group 
are cultivated under circumstances favor- 
able to the development of both the func- 
tion of fermentation and that of proteolysis, 
fermentation invariably takes precedence 
and no evidence of proteolysis is manifested 
until after fermentation has ceased. 

That the cultivation of all the members 
of the colon group under circumstances that 
favor the development of one function, viz., 
that of proteolysis, at the expense of 
another, viz., that of fermentation, results 
first in apparent increase of vigor; but this 
is of temporary duration and is quickly fol- 
lowed by the decline and death of the cell. 

The result of this increased activity of 


SCIENCE. 


[N.S. Von. V. No. 130. 


the proteolytic function is the formation of 
much larger amounts of indol by typical 
colon cultures than has ever been obtained 
by us by any other method. 

By the method of experimentation through 
which we were enabled to accentuate the 
proteolytic activity of the typical colon 
bacillus, as caused by an increase of indol 
formation, we have also induced the func- 
tion of indol formation not only in atypical 
colon bacilli that have been devoid of it 
but in every specimen of typical typhoid 
bacilli to which we had access as well. 

We feel justified in regarding one of the 
differential tests between the typhoid and 
colon bacillus, notably that of indol forma- 
tion on the part of the latter and the ab- 
sence of this function from the former, as 
of questionable value, for the reason, as 
shown above, that by particular methods of 
cultivation indol production has been shown 
to accompany the development of a number 
of specimens that we have every reason to 
regard as genuine typhoid bacilli. 

Asa result of our own experiments, to- 
gether with the observations of others, there 
can be no doubt that the bacillus coli com- 
munis at times possesses pathogenic proper- 
ties, and that by artificial methods on 
treatment it may often be brought from a 
condition of benignity to one of virulence, 

The spleen of a typhoid patient has al- 
ways been regarded as the only trustworthy 
source from which to obtain the typical 
typhoid bacillus. While we believe this to 
be true, still our investigations show that 
other members of the colon group may also 
be present in this viscus ; in fact, from such 
spleens we have isolated practically all of 
the varieties of this group with which we 
are acquainted. 

From our experience the value of the 
serum test for the differentiation of typhoid 
and colon bacilli would seem to be ques- 
tionable. We are inclined, however, to at- 
tribute the irregularities recorded above as 


JUNE 25, 1897. ] 


due more to the method of application than 
to defects of the principles involved ; for, 
as stated, by the use of dried blood, as in 
our experiments, it is not possible to make 
the test with constant and accurate, or even 
approximately accurate, dilutions of the 
serum. Our irregularities may be in part 
due to this defect. We therefore lay less 
stress upon this than upon the other fea- 
tures of our work. 
ADELAIDE WARD Preckuam, M.D. 


LABORATORY OF HYGIENE, 
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


THE VIRGINIA COLONY OF HELIX 


MORALIS. 


NE- 


THE now well-known colony of the Euro- 
pean Helix nemoralis at Lexington, Va., has 
twice before been the subject of articles by 
the present writer. (Nautilus, November, 
1889, and December, 1894.) It was shown 
in these articles that many new variations, 
different from those observed in Europe, had 
occurred ; and the colony consequently be- 
came of great interest to students of evolu- 
tion. Unfortunately, Professor Morrison, 
who was studying these snails, removed 
from Lexington in 1890, and, having the 
misfortune to lose his collection by fire, paid 
no further attention to the matter. It is 
only now that I am, through the kindness 
of Mrs. John M. Brooke, of Lexington, ina 
position to give some account of the colony 
subsequent to the date mentioned. 

In order that every reader may under- 
stand what follows, I will explain the sys- 
tem of band-formulz used for recording the 
variations. The typical shell has five bands 
and the formula is 12345. The absence of 
a band is indicated by 0, thus 10345. Two 
or more bands united are bracketed to- 
gether as (12)345. A rudimentary band is 
expressed by a small figure below the line, 
as 1,345, A split band is expressed by 
doubling the number, as 123345. An extra 


SCIENCE. 


985 


band, not assignable to any of the normal 
five, is expressed by a X, as 123 45. 

Mrs. Brooke sends me a series of shells 
gathered by herself at Lexington in 1896 


and 1897. They are as follows: 
A. With a yellow ground-color = Jibellula. 
Uibeliula V2345 2. cescocnscoeeosensseee 70. 
LOW 123 (4D) ccarscsosancdesieceee 21. 
Son LOBED Ms ye. seca. eeeeeetonee 10 
CEST RY BS pc oonaccasoadhoossotoc §) 
OBL Sheccscdonnacndng003008 6. 
£8) OOOO: Acccetcccscsccesceees 5 sent, but 
Mrs. Brooke says they are 
plentiful. 
Be NTR ES ssoqpobacecnoq00060030 4, 
Whe LOBAD n csevosaceveesecemseatt 3. 


*«  12,3(45) nov. formula.. 2, the form- 
ula shows only near the 
mouth of the shell. 


CON OAD i, devcieseeatecs: «fasecnte 2. 
Soo) ((L23))\ (45) Reaeteaeenscceees 2, juv. 
Ss” (G2) 3 (45) iivceseeweercess 2, one is juv. 


*libellula (12),3,,45 nov. formula,..1, the formula 
shows only near the mouth. 


Kemet 83 (4) \e Omen Mts ee il 
Cem OSA i avestcweceercecateeccees 1. juv. 
SORT OA ia oe ah teed hs 1. 
HOS (02345 vesciewesceeestecesaens iL 
SOMME (O56 (45) ei ile 
OPP O0S00: 3 <cccoacnetecteceseess i. 
RUE OS00N eee ee ee il. 
US" ABB: (25) adoodancooacgdcbsos 1, juv. 


*(¢ | (22)045 nov. formula..1. 


B. With fawn-colored ground = petiveria. 


petiveria 12345............+.. 1. = brissonia, Mo- 
quin-Tandon. 
Sie) 123 (4D) ee seaeaec 1. = arcelinia Locard. 
poten (6L-2)) 3 (45) Bewceeces 1. = brookea, n. 0. 
C. With pink ground = rubella. 
rubella OO000........22s0eceeeee 2. Quite pale. Mrs. 


Brooke says they are extremely scarce. 


The three forms above marked with an 
asterisk are new to the Lexington list, and 
are all new formule of the split-band type, 
like the previously found new variations in 
the colony. All of the rest were formerly 
obtained by Professor Morrison. 

The examination of the above list brings 
out the apparent fact that the new split- 
band variations are now comparatively rare 
in the colony, though still much more fre- 


986 


quent than such forms are in Europe. On 
the face of things, it certainly appears as if 
the colony were reverting to the Huropean 
type. At the same time, it must be re- 
membered that Morrison’s remarkable vari- 
ations were picked out of a very large num- 
ber of shells—a far larger number than those 
sent by Mrs. Brooke. Unfortunately Profes- 
sor Morrison never published the detailed 
statistics he had accumulated, but from data 
he sentme I gather that there were about 100 
split-band shells to 2100 others, 7. e., about 
4.8%. The split-band forms in Mrs. 
Brooke’s lot above are about 4%, and are 
not nearly so remarkable as many of Mor- 
rison’s. But Mrs. Brooke probably put 
aside the best variations ; in fact, she sends 
for my inspection the following, taken by 
her at Lexington at various times, and new 
to the list for that locality, three being 
new formule: 
rubella 12045. I have taken a young example of this 
in England—at Beckenham, Kent. The for- 
mula was recorded before from Lexington 
with a different ground-color. 
rubella 003,0. The formula was recorded from 
Europe by Roebuck. 
10045. Very pale ground color. 
bination. 
petiveria 1 (23)(45). = goupilia Moquin-Tandon 
Also in France. 


of A new com- 


a 00305 = gabillotia, Locard. Also in 
France. 

¢  (123)(45). = Jowea. Moquin - Tandon. 
Also in France, England 
and Ireland. 

3 1(283)(45)). 

libellula 00(3* )00. nov. formula 
a 00305 = bruguieria, Moquin-Tan- 


don. Also in France and 
England (Kent). 

‘«  (12),3(33)3(45) nov. formula. This is 
the most remarkable 
shell sent by Mrs. 
Brooke. It seems to 
have been found dead, 
and so may date back to 
earlier times. 

‘003055. The formula has been recorded 

from Europe by Kreglinger. 
tc. (12)x 3(45) nov. formula. 


SCLENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 130. 


While the percentage of split-band forms 
may seem small, European collectors will 
appreciate their relative abundance in the 
Virginia colony, and the large number of 
different formule in the latter which have 
not yet been seen in Europe. Very many 
more split-band formule are now on record 
from the Virginia colony than from the 
British Islands all together, notwithstand- 
ing the collecting that has been done in the 
latter country. 

I regret that itis not possible to definitely 
assert as yet whether the peculiar varia- 
tions of the Virginia colony are losing 
ground, but such seems to be the case to a 
slight degree at least. Certainly there is 
no evidence of their increase. Probably Mrs. 
Brooke will be able at a later date to give 
us more conclusive statistics. 

The reader will observe the names (as 
goupilia, lowea, &c.) given to the different 
combinations of color and banding. These 
were first introduced by Moquin-Tandon ; 
and many were added by Locard, but a 
very large number of combinations have no 
such names. I find that they are rather 
useful, as they can be remembered better, 
and are not so easily written or printed 
wrongly as the formule, etc., they represent. 
If I were writing a large treatise on the vari- 
ation of H. nemoralis, I should be inclined 
to prefer names to formule when discussing 
distribution and other matters. 

The colony of H. nemoralis at Burlington, 
N. J., is very different from the Virginia 
one, and so far as known contains nothing 
peculiar. Specimens sent tome by Mr. W. 
G. Binney belonged to rubella, guettardia and 
cuvieria. 

T. D. A. CockERELL, 


N. M. Aer. Exp. STA. 
MESILLA, N. M., April 20, 1897. 


CURRENT NOTES ON METEOROLOGY. 
NAVIGATION IN FOG. 
A paper by Prof. E. C. Pickering, on 


JUNE 25, 1897.] 


‘Navigation in Fog,’ contains some in- 
teresting suggestions regarding the pos- 
sibility of determining the distance and 
direction of one vessel from another in a 
fog by means of a calculation based on the 
velocity of sound. If, for instance, two fog 
horns, A and B, are placed, one east and one 
west of a given point in a north and south 
channel, and each two miles distant from 
the point, and these horns are blown simul- 
taneously and automatically at regular in- 
tervals of about a minute, a captain who is 
trying to work his ship through the chan- 
nel can readily get his bearings. Suppos- 
ing that one horn has a higher pitch than 
the other, and that a vessel is one mile east 
of the channel between the two horns, the 
captain of the vessel will hear the high- 
toned whistle A five seconds after it is 
blown, because it is only one mile distant, 
but B will not be heard for 15 seconds, 
since it is three miles off. If both horns 
are heard together the vessel is in the mid- 
dle of the channel. Another application of 
this same method of determining positions 
of vessels is suggested in the case of one 
vessel attempting to pass another in a fog, 
and in the case of the calculation of a ship’s 
distance from shore when the ship’s time is 
within a second or two of that on shore, 
and when a whistle on shore is blown at 
the exact beginning of each minute. The 
determination of the velocity of the wind is 
also noted as being a useful application of 
this same method, especially in the case of 
very high winds, which are apt to injure 
anemometers. Professor Pickering’s sug- 
gestions are worthy of serious consider- 
ation. 

HYDROGRAPHIC OFFICE CLOUD TYPES. 

THE Hydrographic Office of the Navy has 
issued a set of colored cloud views, classified 
according to the international nomencla- 
ture, for the use of its observers at sea. 
There are twelve different views, printed 
on one sheet, the whole sheet measuring 


SCIENCE. 


987 


23 x 28 inches, and the individual pictures 
3£x 5} inches. These cloud types are not 
reproduced from photographs, but from 
paintings. The set is an admirable one, 
some of the cloud forms being even more 
typical than those in the new Cloud Atlas, 
while the reproduction of the pictures of the 
original views gives several of the pictures a 
more natural appearance than the corre- 
sponding forms have in the Atlas. The 
alto-stratus, which in one of the views in 
the Atlas is yellowish, has its proper color 
of grayish-blue on the Hydrographic Office 
sheet. The price of the sheet is 40 cents. 
The views are also published on separate 
pages, with descriptive text, bound, and 
cost 60 cents in that form. 
RECENT PUBLICATIONS. 


On Obtaining Meterological Records in the 
Upper Air by Means of Kites and Baloons. 
A.L. Rotcu. Proc. Amer. Acad. Arts and 
Sciences, Vol. XXXII., No. 13, May, 
1897. 8yo. Pp. 245-251. 

An account of the kite work at Blue Hill 
Observatory and of the ascents in Europe 
by means of ‘ ballons sondes.’ 

Difference in the Olimate of the Greenland and 
American Sides of Davis’ and Baffin’s Bay. 
R.S. Tarr. Am. Journ. Sci., Apr., 1897. 
Pp. 315-320. 

The Greenland side has the milder cli- 
mate, owing to ocean currents and winds. 
Meterologie. W.GRraprert. Leipzig, 1896. 

Small 8vo. Pp. 149. 

Although much condensed, this new text- 
book is well written and presents the newest 
theories and facts. 

NOTE. 

Owing to the departure of the compiler 
of these notes for a somewhat extended 
scientific tour in South America, the reg- 
ular publication of the Current Notes on 
Meteorology will be suspended during the 


next six months. 
R. DEC. Warp. 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


988 


CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 
THE ANTIQUITIES OF BORNHOLM. 


BornHoLm is an island in the Baltic sea, 
about 23 miles long, under the government 
of Denmark. A study of its antiquities 
has been published at Copenhagen this year 
by E. Nedel, a continuation of his previous 
publications (Eifterskrift til Bornholms Old- 
tidsminder, quarto, pp. 166. Illustrated). 

This local study has a general interest 
not merely for the abundant material it 
presents for comparison, but for the very 
regular superposition of archzeologic layers 
it reveals, from an early stone age through 
the bronze age and the first and second iron 
ages. The earlier stone relics are cutting 
instruments of an extremely primitive 
model, where the cutting edge is produced 
by the natural cleavage of the stone with- 
out any attempt at chipping or rubbing. 
It is not clear from the text whether a 
stratum was found containing these exclu- 
sively, as it is well known such teshoas, as 
they are called in American archeology, 
occur in all periods. 

These researches do not carry the an- 
tiquity of man in-the locality beyond the 
manufacture of pottery and the domestica- 
tion of animals, therefore not beyond re- 
ceived dates. The volume is handsomely 
illustrated and a fine example of antiqua- 
rian work. 


THE CHACO TRIBES. 


ATTENTION has been called several times 
in these notes to the studies of Lafone 
Quevedo on the ethnography and dialects 
of the tribes inhabiting the Gran Chaco. In 
a private letter received from him recently 
he remarked that the problem of the re- 
lationship of the Chaco languages is now 
virtually solved, although some corners of 
the area remain a little obscure from lack 
of material. 

The languages are divided into two great 
groups, morphologically distinct, the one 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 130. 


expressing the grammatic relations by suf- 
fixes, the other by prefixes. 

I. Suffixal group. 

1. Lule (extinct). 

2. Vilela (or Chulupi). 

II. Prefixal group. 

1. Abipone. 

2. Mocovi. 

3. Toba. 

4. Mbaya (and probably Mataco, Paya- 
gua and Lengua). 

The prefixal group belongs to the great 
Guaycuru stock, as I have classed its mem- 
bers in my ‘ American Race,’ p. 315. 

A large amount of linguistic material has 
been collected by Lafone Quevedo, and it is 
to be hoped that it will soon be published 
for the benefit of the scientific world. 

THE CELTS AND THEIR WANDERINGS. 

Tus question has been several times dis- 
cussed in these notes, and, as itis a primary 
one in European ethnography, it is well to 
quote, from the ‘ Centralblatt,’ the results of 
the latest studies presented in an article of 
H. Mollier, of Lyons. 

Five hundred years B. C. the Celts pos- 
sessed central Europe, from the Rhine to 
the Danube, and from the North Sea to the 
Alps. About a hundred years later, pressed 
by Germanic tribes on their north, two 
streams of migration poured out from them-— 
the one into Italy, Illyria, southern France, 
northern Spain, and northern Britain; 
the second, continuing several centuries, in- 
to Belgium, northern France and southern 
Britain. 

The primitive physical type of the Celt 
was tall in stature, skull dolichocephalic, 
hair blonde and complexion fair. The fact 
that the southern branch, especially in 
France, so widely departed from this, was 
owing to their constant intermixture with 
the Ligurians, who are supposed to be non- 
Aryan, and other peoples descended from 
the ancient dwellers in the stoneage. The 
primitive Celts were, of course, closely allied 


JUNE 25, 1897. ] 


with the primitive Germans. Broca’s 

Celtic type is in fact Ligurian, and the 

Galatz were true Celts, with the original 

blonde traits. D. G. Brinton. 
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 

THE Senate Committee on International Ex- 
positions has reported a bill providing for the 
representation of the United States at the Paris 
Exposition of 1900, and recommending an ap- 
propriation not to exceed $500,000. As re- 
ported, the bill provides for a Commissioner-Gen- 
eral at a salary of $10,000 a year, an Assistant 
Commissioner-General at $6,000, and ten scien- 
tifie experts at $2,500 a year each. 

A BIOLOGICAL station containing aquaria, 
laboratories, rooms for collections and library 
is in course of erection near Sebastopol, on the 
Black Sea. It is expected that the building 
will be opened for scientific work during the 
present year. 

THE third circular issued by the general com- 
mittee of the Seventh International Geological 
Congress recommends that special attention be 
given to a unification of geological and petro- 
graphic nomenclature. The guide to the ex- 
cursions is expected to appear immediately, and 
will extend to about 500 pages, with many maps 
and illustrations. The free tickets on the rail- 
roads will be valid from July 22d to October 17th. 
It is stated that university students cannot take 
part in the excursions, but there will doubtless 
be accommodation for all geologists. The ex- 
cursions to the Ural regions and to the Crimea 
are each limited to two hundred persons. 


ACCORDING to the New York Medical Record 
the following are the names of those who have 
been invited to deliver orations at the general 
sessions of the Moscow Congress: Lauder 
Brunton, of London, on the ‘ Relationship be- 
tween Physiology, Pharmacology, Pathology 
and Clinical Medicine;’ Nicholas Senn, of 
Chicago, on the ‘ Diagnosis and Surgical Treat- 
ment of Acute Forms of Peritonitis;’ Krafft- 
Ebing, of Vienna, on the ‘ Etiology of Progres- 
sive Paralysis ;’ Danilevski, of Khartoy, on 
‘The Action of Electric Rays on the Animal 
Organism at a Distance ;’ Lombroso, of Turin, 


SCIENCE. 


989 


on ‘New Horizons in Psychiatry ;’ Leyden, of 
Berlin, on the ‘ Present Modes of Treating Con- 
sumptives and their State Control ;’ Herzen, of 
Lausanne, on the ‘ Significance of Physiological 
Psychology for Medical Education. Robert, of 
Barcelona, and Lukianoy, of St. Petersburg, 
have not yet announced the titles of their ad- 
dresses. Virchow, of Berlin, and Roux, of 
Paris, have been invited to deliver orations, but 
no word had been received from them by the 
Moscow committee at the time the above an- 
nouncement was made. 


PROFESSOR M’KENDRICK, of the University 
of Glasgow, has been awarded the MacDougall- 
Brisbane prize by the Royal Society of Edin- 
burgh in recognition of his published researches 
in connection with sound and the phonograph. 


Dr. Happon has been granted £300 from 
the Wort’s Travelling Scholars’ Fund, of Cam- 
bridge University, for an anthropological expe- 
dition to the Torres Straits. 


PROFESSOR VIRCHOW is at present at Brinn, 
engaged in examining the prehistoric remains 
in the neighborhood. 

Iv is reported that Mr. Edward Mcillhenny, 
accompanied by Mr. W. E. Snyder and Mr. 
Norman G. Baxton, proposes to leave San 
Francisco on June 25th for Point Barrow, 
Alaska. He expects to spend two years mak- 
ing collections of the fauna and flora of north- 
eastern Alaska. It is said that the collections 
are for the National Museum and the Univer- 
sity of Pennsylvania. 

De. Fritz MULLER, the botanist, died at 
Blumenau, Brazil, on May 21st, at the age of 76 
years. Dr. J. Lewis Smith, formerly clinical 
professor of the diseases of children in the 
Bellevue Hospital Medical College, and the 
author of many contributions to this subject, 
died in New York on June 11th, at the age of 
69 years. M. Leopold Maney, correspondent 
of the Paris Academy for geography and nayi- 
gation, died in May. 

THE works of Alvan G. Clark & Sons will be 
continued under the supervision of Mr. Carl 
Ludlin, who for twenty-five years has been en- 
gaged as a maker of lenses under the firm. 

THE Board of Trustees of the University of 
Rochester have sanctioned the establishment of 


990 


a fresh-water biological station at Hemlock 
Lake, under the direction of Professor Charles 
W. Dodge. 

AN International Congress of Librarians will 
be held in London from 13th to 16th of July. 
Dr. Melvil Dewey will be one of the representa- 
tives of the United States government. 


THERE has recently been opened at the Crys- 
tal Palace an exhibition in commemoration of 
the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, in 
which the progress made by science during the 
reign is said to be well represented. 


THE Rey. Professor Wiltshire has presented 
his valuable geological library, containing 
about 1,500 volumes and pamphlets, to the 
Woodwardian Museum, Cambridge University. 


THE Drapers’ Company has offered to erect 
a new building for the accommodation of the 
Radcliff Library at Oxford, at a cost of £15,000. 


THE library building of the University of 
Iowa was struck by lightning on June 19th and 
destroyed by fire. The physical laboratory 
was on the first floor of the building. The total 
loss is estimated at $100,000. 

THE second ‘International’ Congrés olym- 
pique will be held at Havre during the last week 
of July. The subjects to be discussed are physi- 
cal exercises and games in their relation to 
pedagogy and hygiene. 

A RONTGEN Society was inaugurated in 
London on June 23d. Professor Sylvanus P. 
Thompson was elected President, and forty- 
four members were enrolled, of whom about 
one-half were made officers. 

THE Academy states that the third part of 
the late George John Romanes’ ‘Darwin and 
After Darwin’ is in the press. The subject- 
matter consists of post-Darwinian questions, 
Isolation and Physiological Selection. 


A NUMBER of Swedish zoologists have pre- 
pared a volume of contributions to zoology as 
a Festschrift on the occasion of the eightieth 
birthday of Dr. Wilhelm Lilljeborg. 


THE annual visitation of the Royal Obserya- 
tory at Greenwich took place on June 5th, and 
the Astronomer Royal submitted his annual re- 
port for the year ending May 10th. 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Von. V. No. 130. 


As we have announced, a census of the Rus- 
sian Empire was taken on February 9th, none 
having been taken since 1851. The total popu- 
lation is now given as 129,211,113, having 
about doubled in a period of forty-six years. 

AT the annual general meeting of the Victoria 
Institute on June 2d, Lord Kelvin made an ad- 
dress on the ‘Age of the Earth as an Abode 
fitted for Life.’ Lord Kelvin maintained the 
position taken by him thirty years ago, that this 
earth could not have been a habitable globe for 
more than thirty million years. 

Ir is reported that Professors Koch’s anti- 
toxin treatment for the rinderpest has proved 
to be of no value. ‘Nine-tenths of the cattle 
north of Cape Colony have been exterminated, 
and it is feared that Cape Colony will fare no 
better. There is great mortality from fever in 
the region, supposed to be due to pollution from 
the numbers of cattle which have died from 
rinderpest. 

THE British Medical Journal states that at the 
conference of Ministers of Agriculture repre- 
senting the Australian colonies, recently held 
at Sydney, it was decided that the colonies 
combine in offering a reward of £5,000 to any 
person who discovered and made known a 
satisfactory remedy for the tick disease which 
has caused so much destruction amongst cattle. 


THE New York Independent addressed a 
number of ‘representative’ men and women, 
asking what, in their opinion, was most char- 
acteristic of the period of Queen Victoria’s 
reign. As might be expected, the replies differ 
greatly, one holding it to be the growth of 
democratic politics, another the security that 
has been given to the monarchy, one the grind- 
ing, bleeding system of rule in India, and an- 
other the growing attachment between the 
mother country and her colonial empire ; but 
one-half of those who reply, including such 
diverse points of opinion as those of President 
Eliot and Madame Patti, hold that the most 
important characteristic of the past sixty years 
is the progress of science and its applications. 
In the same number of the Independent there is 
published an admirable article by Professor 
Newcomb on ‘Science during the Victorian 
Era.’ 


JUNE 25, 1897.] 


THE General Secretary of the Italian Geo- 
graphical Society asks us to contradict the re- 
port that Dr. Nansen did not lecture at Rome 
because the Society was unable to pay the ex- 
penses. The Society conferred upon Dr. Nan- 
sen its great gold medal, a silver medal on each 
of the officers and a bronze medal on each of 
the men. Dr. Nansen, in a letter from Christi- 
ania (April 21st), expressed his thanks for the 
honor, and his regrets for being unable to go to 
Rome to receive them, as he should have liked 
very much to do had his time allowed, as he 
hopes it will on some later occasion. 


THE plans of operation for the United States 
Geographical Survey for the ensuing year, 
which were formulated by Director Walcott as 
soon as the Sundry Civil and Indian Appropria- 
tion Bills became laws, have been approved by 
the Secretary of the Interior, and the Survey’s 
work in the several branches for the field season 
of 1897 and the fiscal year is now under way. 
Following is a synopsis of the sums appro- 
propriated for the Survey in the bills named 
and the purposes for which they are used: For 
topographic surveysin various portions of the 
United States the Sundry Civil Bill carries 
$175,000; for geologic surveys and researches 
pertaining to the geology of the country, $100,- 
000 ; for the continuation of the investigation 
of the gold and coal resources of Alaska, $5,000 ; 
for paleontologic researches, $10,000 ; for chem- 
ical researches, $7,000; for gauging streams 
and determining the water supply of the United 
States, $50,000, and for the annual report of 
the mineral resources of the United States, 
$20,000. There are also in this bill the usual 
allowances for engraving and printing, prepar- 
ing illustrations, etc. In addition to these 
items, which relate to lines of work already 
under way and carry the same sums as 
are carried in the bill for the present year, 
there are in the Sundry Civil Service bill just 
passed provisions for new or special work as 
follows: For surveying the public lands desig- 
nated .by Executive order as forest reserves, 
$150,000, and for surveying the boundary line 
between the States of Idaho and Montana, 
$7,650. In the Indian bill there is an item for 
completing the topographic and subdivision sur- 
veys of the Indian Territory, $100,000. This 


SCIENCE. 


991 


has reference to the survey of the lands of the 
Choctaw, Creek and Cherokee Nations, which 
was begun in April, 1895. There is also in the 
same connection provision for the resurvey of 
the lands of the Chickasaw Nation, in the same 
Territory, $141,500, or in all for the Indian 
Territory surveys, $241,500. Of the provisions 
for new work above mentioned, the only one 
that is of special importance is that relating to 
the survey of the public lands designated by the 
President as forest reserves. This provision 
grows out of the prolonged contest in Congress 
on the subject of the disposition of the forest 
areas of the West, and the question of abroga- 
ting or modifying President Cleyeland’s order 
of February 22, 1897, setting aside a number of 
forest reserves. Congress suspended certain of 
these great reserves and the work is to be con- 
fined to these. There is to be a topographic 
and subdivision survey, followed by a survey 
of the forest areas. The appropriation for this 
work, like the appropriation for most of the Sur- 
vey work, was made immediately available, and 
the work will not have to wait until July 1st. 
The delay in the passage of the appropriation 
bills will have the effect of shortening the field 
season of the Geological Survey a month or two 
and, it is presumed, will somewhat curtail the 
output of work, at least in some directions. 
The Indian Territory survey, which has been 
going on in the field and in the office all the year 
round since it was commenced, has suffered 
quite appreciably, it is understood, owing to 
the peculiar conditions governing it. The 
appropriation for this work for the year 
1896-97 was practically exhausted in April, 
and for two months the work was under sus- 
pension. 

Proressor EpwARD L. NicHots, President 
of the New York State Science Teachers’ As- 
sociation, has, in accordance with the vote of 
the Association at its last meeting, appointed a 
committee of nine to consider and report at the 
next annual meeting on the following topics: 
(1) Science as an Entrance Requirement to Col- 
leges; (2) Science Teaching in the Secondary 
Schools ; (8) Nature Study in Primary Schools. 
The following are the members appointed : 
Leroy C. Cooley, Chairman; Albert L. Arey, 
George F. Atkinson, Anna B. Comstock, Rich- 


992 


ard E. Dodge, William Hallock, Charles B. 
Scott, Ralph S. Tarr, John L. Wilson. 

WE learn from Natural Science that the sixth 
meeting of the Nederlandsch Natuur en Genees- 
kundig Congress, corresponding to the American 
and British Associations for the Advancement 
of Science took place at Delft, on April 22d, 23d 
and 24th. The general President was Pro- 
fessor J. M. Telders, and the five sections were 
presided over respectively by W. A. van Dorp, 
of Amsterdam ; W. Kapteijn, of Utrecht; P. 
P. C. Hoek, of Helder; H. Treub, of Amster- 
dam, and K. Martin, of Leyden. The sectional 
meetings were held in the various laboratories 
and lecture-rooms of the Polytechnic School, in 
both morning and afternoon. Several of the 
sections had very attractive programs; among 
the most interesting papers in Section II. (Bio- 
logy) may be mentioned one by Professor 
Hubrecht on ‘ Primates and Lemurs,’ and one 
by M. C. Dekhuijzen, of Leyden, on methods 
of investigating the micro-organisms in fresh 
water. The Section for Physics and Chemistry 
had an able paper by Col. C. F. Geij van Pittius, 
on various explosives, and one by H. A. van 
Tjsselstein on an interesting form of telephone. 
The paper which formed the last of the series 
on Saturday was of special interest, a lecture 
by Professor M. W. Beijerinck, on luminous 
bacteria. 


UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 


Ir is rumored that a union between New York 
University Medical School and the Belleyue 
Hospital Medical College will not be carried 
into effect. 

THE name of the Maine State College at 
Orono has been changed to the University of 
Maine. 


Dr. J. L. GoopNieHT, who has been Presi- 
dent of the West Virginia University, at Park- 
ersburg, for two years, and Dr. J. A. Myers, 
who has been Director of the State Experiment 
Station for nine years, have been removed by 
the Board of Regents of the University. It is 
said that this action is due to political reasons. 


Dr. JAMES WoopRow ,on reaching the age of 
seventy years, has resigned the ‘presidency of 
South Carolina College. President Craighead 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vou. V. No. 130. 


and Professors Tompkins and Wright have re- 
signed from Clemson College. President Craig- 
head has been elected President of the College 
of Wisconsin. Dr. W. H. Hervey has resigned 
from the presidency of the Teachers’ College, 
New York. 

Proressor A. C. ARMSTRONG, now professor 
of philosophy at Wesleyan University, has. 
been appointed to a professorship in the de- 
partment of history in Princeton University. 
EK. M. Weyer, of the University of Leipzig, 
and M. Matsumoto, of the University of Tokio 
(Japan), have been made assistants at the Yale 
Psychological Laboratory. Mr. Muir, now of 
Halifax University, has been appointed to the 
chair of psychology in Mount Holyoke College. 

THE American Society for the Extension of 
University teaching offers at the University of 
Pennsylvania a summer meeting from July 6th 
to 30th. Thirty-eight lectures are announced, 
and many of the courses will prove of scientific 
interest. Conferences on the teaching of 
geography will be led by Professors W. M. 
Davis and R. E. Dodge. Professor W. F. 
Magie will give two lectures on Medieval 
Science. Professor J. T. Rothrock will lecture 
on forestry and Professor W. P. Wilson on Muse- 
ums. In psychology, courses of lectures are 
announced by Professor Lightner Witmer, Pro- 
fessor J. Mark Baldwin, Professor KE. B. Titch- 
ener, Mr. R. P. Halleck and Miss Laura Fisher. 


THE New York Board of Education has an- 
nounced the courses of study for the three new 
high schools which will be opened in Septem- 
ber. Three courses are offered—classical, com- 
mercial and general. ‘The first mentioned fills 
the requirements of the classical courses in the 
colleges and includes five hours in physics or 
chemistry in the fourth year. The commercial 
course requires two hours in physiology and 
four hours in biology in the first year and three 
hours in physics in the second year. The gen- 
eral course offers a larger number of electives. 
A student can take four hours in science in the 
first year, seven in the second, four in the third 
and four in the fourth. It is not clear to us 
why the student in the third year may take 
fifteen hours in languages and in the fourth 
year nineteen, while he is confined to four 
hours in science. 


JUNE 25, 1897]. 


DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 


IS THE LOESS OF EITHER LACUSTRINE OR SEMI- 
MARINE ORIGIN ? 


To THE EpiTor OF SCIENCE: Mr. Hershey, in 
your issue of May 14th, urges anew the claims of 
the lacustrine and submarine hypotheses for the 
origin of that still problematic deposit, the loess. 
The former has been considered for the last 
forty or fifty years, and the barrier has not yet 
been found to separate it from the sea. The 
latter has been discussed for twenty-five years 
or more, and no trace of marine fossils have yet 
been found to corroborate it, though if it were 
true nothing would seem easier. 

The undersigned committed himself to the 
lacustrine view in 1875 by naming a hypothet- 
ical lake covering the loess of western Iowa and 
Nebraska, Lake Missouri.* Even as late as 
1891+ he argued for a similar body of water for 
the deposition of the extramorainic drift as well 
as of the loess of the same region. But a study 
of Lake Agassiz and of Lake Erie satisfied him 
that the position was untenable. Perhaps the 
strongest reason for changing his opinion was 
the absence of all shore lines, like beaches or cut 
slopes. These are a conspicuous feature in the 
eases studied, but none have been found con- 
nected with the loess. When we think how a 
single storm builds a beach ridge sometimes on 
the shores of lakes no larger than the one pos- 
tulated ; when we remember, also, how little 
eroded much of the plateau of northern Mis- 
souri seems to be, we can accept neither his sup- 
positions that they may have been entirely re- 
moved by erosion, nor the still more improbable 
one that no beaches were formed, ‘‘ because the 
shore line did not remain at one level a suffi- 
cient length of time.’’ In his appeal to western 
Florida as an instance of the latter case he ad- 
mits that the surface is ‘undulating,’ which 
rouses the suspicion that a more comprehensive 
study of it would prove that character to be the 
result of beaches much eroded, though probably 
modified by dune action, and possibly by solu- 
tion of the underlying rock. 

He refers to a deposit which he has observed 


*Proc. A. A. A. §., 1875. 
+ Proc. Iowa Acad. Sci., 1891, p. 5, and Am. Geol., 
1892. 


SCIENCE. 


993 


1,000 feet A. T. between Cuba and Pacifie City, 
Mo., as closely resembling the ‘upland loess’ 
of northwestern Illinois. Before we admit the 
extension of a loess-depositing gulf to that alti- 
tude—for such a body of water as would cover 
that and the clayey loam of Illinois could not 
have been separated from the ocean—let us con- 
sider some of the things involved in such a 
view. It involves the submergence of St. Louis 
500-600 feet, of northern Illinois nearly the 
same, unless there was an elevation in that di- 
rection instead of a greater depression, as has 
been more commonly argued. It implies strong 
wave action, especially around the Ozark uplift. 
It implies remarkably discriminating erosion to 
have removed so completely the loess and drift 
from the nooks of that irregular shore, when it 
failed to do so from the slopes and summits al- 
most overhanging the gorge of the Missouri in 
Boone county, Mo., or that of the Mississippi, in 
Pike county. i 

Before entertaining so violent a supposition, 
why not refer the Cuba deposit to some local 
lake, such as may be found in any residuary 
area, or to an ‘adobe’ formation, or to ‘ eolian 
loess,’ which no doubt accumulates in many lo- 
calities to moderate thicknesses. 

Moreover, the gulf theory demands that the 
sea submerged points, 1900-2000 A. T. in 
northeastern Nebraska, and 1300-1400 in north- 
eastern Iowa. And this, too, in regions which 
shortly before and not long after had vigorous 
streams flowing at considerably lower levels. 

Against the fluvio-lacustrine or flooded river 
theory for the Missouri ‘upland loess’ Mr. 
Hershey presents the objections, first, that it 
was ‘laid down on an undulated upland, dis- 
sected by valleys,’ and second, the ‘inequali- 
ties, when considered over broad areas, of the 
surface of the sheet of loess or loam.’ The 
former must be more or less true in any super- 
imposed drainage. And any alluvial plain is 
far from even or level. The delta of the 
Mississippi has a general slope toward the sea 
of eight inches to the mile, with local slopes 
for a few miles five times as great. The 
fluctuations of water level have a range of 
50 feet or more in some places. Moreover, 
when we become acquainted with the habitual 
creeping, or glacier-like, movement of clays and 


994 


loams, it does not seem so. incredible that the 
loess and clayey loam are the delta-like accu- 
mulation of great streams, fed from the glaciers 
on the north and the Tertiary silts on the west. 

I am surprised to learn from Mr. Hershey’s 
letter that in northwestern Illinois the ‘upland 
loess’ ‘is present over the thick terrace-like 
deposits of true loess down along the streams.’ 
Chamberlin "and Salisbury, as I understand, 
make the terraces subsequent to the former, and 
however that may be in that region, there is 
clear evidence from fossils and rearranged ma- 
terial that such is the case along the Missouri. 
It is a common thing for all terraces to be 
capped by a finer loam, the last deposition of 
the flood which laid down the coarser material 
below, or of some subsequent flood which 
barely submerged them. 

Mr. Hershey assumes without question the 
pregiacial age of the troughs of the Missouri 
and Mississippi through this region. This has 
not yet been proved. The evidence to the con- 
trary is given at some length in- my report 
which he reviewed, and I need not repeat here. 
I would add only a few words. The rock 
bottom of the Missouri through the State of 
Missouri, and of the Mississippi below the mouth 
of the Des Moines, is nowhere known to be 
lower than is known to be sometimes reached 
by ‘the scour’ in floods of the present day, 
viz., 80 or 90 feet. 

The interesting preglacial channel west of 
Keokuk, first reported by General Warren, is 
interesting, but instead of proving that most of 
the present Mississippi channel is preglacial, 
rather shows the contrary, for its course at 
Quincy and below corresponds in depth and 
size with the new channel at Keokuk rather 
than the old one, and that has evidently been 
cut since the glacial epoch. Wemay as reason- 
ably search for the continuation of the old 
channel toward the east as toward the south, 
for bed rock opposite Quincy is 45 feet below 
low water. 

Before closing I would state that I am not 
over-confident concerning the Osage-Gasconade 
divide, and am only sorry that circumstances 
have not permitted my further study of the 
problems involved. Butas far as our present 
knowledge goes, it still seems to me much more 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 130. 


tenable than the theory which I understand Mr. 
Hershey to propose. 
J. E. Topp. 


STATE UNIVERSITY, VERMILION, 8. D., 
May 31, 1897. 


A MONUMENT TO THE LATE BUYS-BALLOT. 


To THE Epiror or ScimENcE: The Royal 
Dutch Meteorological Institute is about to re- 
move from the old buildings at Utrecht, where, 
during forty years Professor C. H. D. Buys- 
Ballot labored so indefatigably for meteorology, 
to the new establishment at de Bilt, near 
Utrecht. Buys-Ballot, who may be called the 
founder of meteorological science in the Nether- 
lands, is known to students of that science the 
world over from the law bearing his name, 
which connects the direction of the wind with 
the position of the storm center. His noble 
character, combined with a charming person- 
ality, endeared him to his colleagues, and won 
the respect and affection of a wide circle of 
acquaintances, which included the writer. 
A provisional committee, composed of his 
former associates, believing that the memory of 
such a man is honored outside of his own 
country, has invited an international committee 
to aid in obtaining funds for the erection at 
Utrecht of a monumental bust of the great 
meteorologist. The American members of this 
committee are Professor Willis L. Moore, Chief 
of the United States Weather Bureau at Wash- 
ington, and the undersigned. Subscriptions 
sent to either one of us will be acknowledged 
and forwarded to the Dutch committee. 

A. LAWRENCE RoTcH, 

DIRECTOR OF THE BLUE HILL METEOROLOGICAL 

OBSERVATORY, READVILLE, MAss. 


ORGANIC SELECTION. 


I Am unable to agree with Mr. Robert M. 
Pierce that the passage he quotes from Mr. 
Herbert Spencer’s ‘ Principles of Biology ’ sets 
forth the same conception that Professor Mark 
Baldwin dealt with in ScrENcE for April 33d. 
Mr. Spencer’s position, I take it, is this: Ac- 
quired characters are inherited; there is a 
natural selection of acquirers, the fittest of 
whom survive to transmit their acquired char- 
acters; hence evolution is rendered more rapid 
than it would otherwise be. This is primarily 


JUNE 25, 1897. ] 


Lamarckism, with natural selection as ‘a second- 
ary agent,’ and as such it differs widely from 
the hypothesis with which Professor Mark 
Baldwin is concerned. 

C. LLtoyp MORGAN. 


UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, BRISTOL, ENG. 


SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 


A Treatise on Rocks, Rock-Weathering and Soils. 
By GreorceE P. Merritt. New York, The 
Macmillan Company. 1897. Pp. 411. 25 
pls., 42 figs. in text. $4.00. 


Professor Merrill is already known to the 
public as the author of ‘Stones for Building 
and Decoration,’ of a guide to the geological 
collections of the United States National Mu- 
seum, and to geologists as well by his valuable 
contributions to the subject of rock-weathering: 
The present work is a résumé of his own inves- 
tigations of rock disintegration and decomposi- 
tion rounded out by an abstract of the litera- 
ture of the subject. The book is a welcome ad- 
dition to the already numerous aids to the study 
of rocks. It is particularly important in its 
bearing upon the sedimentary rocks and the 
soils which have not as yet received the careful 
examination which has been bestowed upon the 
igneous rocks. 

The author’s plan is in its outlines simple 
and logical. The igneous rocks are treated as 
what may be termed original rocks, from whieh 
all others are derived. Following them is a 
description of the metamorphic, vein and clas- 
tic rocks. After this is given the manner of 
disintegration and decomposition of these rocks. 
In general, the text follows a natural cycle of 
change in those rocks which are exposed to the 
direct action of the atmosphere and surface 
processes. 

Unfortunately, the details of the plan have 
led to much repetition of subject-matter, which 
might have been ayoided by a little attention. 
This duplication is particularly brought to mind 
by the similarity of the phrase when it appears. 
Thus we read in regard to slaty cleavage : 

P. 155. In such cases the bedding is not in- 
frequently indicated by the dark bands or ‘ rib- 
bons’ which are so evident on a split surface. 

Again: 


SCIENCE. 


995 


P. 171. In such cases the true bedding plane 
is often determined only by the dark bands, or 
ribbons, by which the split slates are traversed. 

Eskers and kames are described on p. 290 
and again on p. 356 in essentially the same 
words, 

Some terms are used before they are ex- 
plained, as, e. g., metamorphism, in the intro- 
ductory chapter. This is particularly notice- 
able in the notes upon the occurrence of minerals 
and from the pedagogical standpoint is a defect 
in the book. Furthermore, it is redundant and 
unnecessary, since the information is given again 
in its proper place in the chapter on rocks. 

A few passages in the text are so clearly am- 
biguous as to be explained only on the ground 
of careless proof-reading. Thus, on p. 108, 
there is the meaningless statement concerning 
the manganese oxides, ‘‘ which, though wide in 


in their distribution, are found in such abun- 


dance as to constitute rock masses in compara- 
tive rarity.” 

Again, on p. 36, we read of concretions 
‘which may not so closely simulate animal 
forms as to be very misleading.’’ Often for not 
in this sentence would bring the statement into 
the realm of the understanding. More blind 
yet is the statement on p. 236 that ‘‘ oligoclase 
always gave way before the oligoclase.’’ 

There are several other slips which one may 
expect to find in a first edition, as, on p. 64, the 
phrase ‘apparently evident,’ and on p. 292, 
‘where the included débris is deposited on 
melting,’’ the context shows that we should 
read ‘on the melting of the ice;’ on page 163 
we find Hozoon Canadenses for Eozoon Canadense, 
elsewhere correctly given. 

On p. 393 the reference to the ‘common 
earthworm’ is sufficiently clear without the 
parenthetical phrase, ‘the angleworm of the 
New England disciples of Izaak Walton,’ ten 
words of undisguised padding. 

The statement on p. 356 regarding the Rhone 
would lead a student unfamiliar with the course 
of that river to suppose it was a subglacial 
stream, like the Yahtse in Alaska perhaps, 
whereas only its uppermost torrential portion 
occupies this relation to the ice. But the En- 
glish of a scientific book is perhaps something 
aside from its real self. Happily there is less 


996 


to find fault with in regarding the book from 
this standpoint. 

The chapter on Igneous Rocks is a handy 
compendium of recognized types. The classi- 
fication makes mode of occurrence and age of 


secondary importance, and in this respect dif’ 


fers from while it gains in clearness upon the 
classification of Rosenbusch. While this por- 
tion of the book is rich in reference to rock 
types, it will hardly serve (as the author him- 
self indicates by reference to special treatises) 
as a means of identifying igneous rocks. 

The chemically formed rocks are described 
along with the clastic rocks under the heading 
of Aqueous Rocks. From the point of view of 
the genesis of these two groups of rocks it seems 
objectionable to classify them in this manner. 
Many of the chemically formed rocks are 
closely allied to the igneous rocks. Moreover, 
in geology, the term ‘aqueous rocks’ has been 
from the days of Lyell intimately associated 
with the fragmental rocks alone. The same 
extension of use for this term would embrace 
igneous rocks, in which the action of water is 
largely concerned. 

It is to be noted that Griswold is misquoted 
in regard to the origin of the novaculites of 
Arkansas. Instead of supposing these rocks to 
be ‘a chemical deposit in the form of a siliceous 
slime on a sea-bottom’ (p. 111), this geologist, 
according to the very report quoted by Profes- 
sor Merrill, makes the novaculites a deposit of 
very fine fragmental silica, almost without 
other materials laid down far from the shore- 
line in the form of mud or ooze. In the case of 
other quotations it is sometimes doubtful as to 
which author the work in a certain district is to 
be referred. One must look up these refer- 
ences, aS, of course, the exhaustive student 
will take care to do. 

The author introduces a few terms not before 
used in text-books. Colluvial, a name pro- 
posed by Professor Hilgard and here restricted 
to talus and cliff débris and avalanche material, 
appears to be inappropriate for deposits which 
owe their transportation to gravity rather than 
to running water. The time has undoubtedly 
come when this class of detritus should be given 
a distinctive name implying the mode of depo- 
sition, but the idea of water action, so clearly 


SCIENCE. 


[N. 8. Vout. V. No. 130. 


expressed in colluvial, is contradictory to the 
essential fact which distinguishes these deposits 
from alluvium. Regolith isa term proposed by 
the author for the superficial deposits or uncon- 
solidated materials, the products of disintegra- 
tion and decomposition. It is difficult to realize 
that this term has advantages over those it is 
designed to displace, since the superficial de- 
posits of the earth form a very imperfect blanket, 
pierced by every outcrop of bed-rock and moun- 
tain peak, worn through along every rocky river 
bed and sea-cliff. We might take a hint from 
the quarryman’s ‘topping’ and our ‘epigene 
processes’ to speak of the epilith, if we must 
have a Greek word for the ‘ waste’ of the land. 

Professor Merrill clearly points out the differ- 
ence between metamorphism and weathering, 
and between atmospheric decay proper and 
those deep-seated changes which are sometimes 
included under this head. 

Special importance is attached to the distinc- 
tion between decomposition and disintegration 
in the case of the feldspars. Orthoclase may 
pass into the state of fine silt without actual de- 
composition. Such breaking up must be dis- 
tinguished from decomposition, as it takes place 
in the lime-soda feldspars. Fournet is quoted 
as stating that hornblende yields less readily to 
decomposition than feldspar, while Becker holds 
the opposite as true. It may be noted here 
that in the Carboniferous arkoses of New Eng- 
land, derived from disintegrated hornblendic 
granitites, hornblende is invariably absent from 
the bleached basal sediments, the feldspar frag- 
ments having been evidently strong enough af- 
ter the breaking down of the granitite to with- 
stand transportation along with grains of quartz. 
It can hardly be said that the heavier but 
smaller hornblende grains would be altogether 
assorted out from the quartz and feldspar by 
mechanical means. The hornblende must have 
decomposed before the transportation of the 
particles. 

The concretionary forms of joint-blocks in 
some igneous rocks and the huge granite bosses 
are thought by Professor Merrill to be alike an 
effect of weathering. Even the spheroidal 
structure of basalt, though admitted in defer- 
ence to the opinion of some writers to be an 
original structure, is apparently in the author’s 


JUNE 25, 1897. ] 


mind when accompanied by a weathering of the 
rock, to be regarded as a secondary effect. 

All that Professor Merrill has to say regard- 
ing the processes and products of weathering is 
timely and important. From the difference in 
kind of weathering in cold and warm climates, 
a matter which has been studied by the geolo- 
gists of India, it is pointed out that the study of 
the sedimentary rocks may be made to furnish 
a clue to past climates. It is to be regretted 
that there is not a chapter on the application of 
this principle to ancient rocks. The writings 
of Pumpelly, the work of Willis, Hayes, Camp- 
bell and others, together with the published 
evidence of ancient periods of base-levelling 
with peneplains and their complementary clastic 
records, constitute a basis for an interesting and 
valuable résumé. 

As an extension to the treatment of the sub- 
ject of rock-weathering in standard text-books 
on geology, this work can well be recommended 
to the student. For the student of agriculture 
and soil problems, it will probably give him as 
much of geology as he needs to know for practi- 
cal purposes. 

The book is well illustrated with diagrams 
and photographic reproductions. The mechan- 
ical execution of the book leaves nothing to be 
desired. There is a fairly complete index of 
authors cited and of subjects. 

J. B. Woopwortsu. 

HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 


Bird Life; A Guide to the Study of Our Common 
Birds. By FRANK M. CHAPMAN. With 
seventy-five full-page plates and numerous 

* text drawings by ERNEST SETON THOMPSON. 
New York, D. Appleton &Co. 1897. 12mo., 
cloth, pp. xii+ 269. $1.75. 

Confessedly addressed to the uninitiated 
rather than to the scientific ornithologist, this 
little volume nevertheless possesses an attraction 
for anyone interested in birds. The author ap- 
parently aims to present his subject in such a 
manner as to aid and incite further study and 
observation, the numerous footnote references 
in the first part of the book rendering the litera- 
ture on the various subjects easily available. 
The whole is pleasantly written, and in lan- 
guage sufficiently untechnical to be easily com- 


SCIENCE. 


997 


prehended. The first seventy-three pages treat 
of birdsin general; the rest contain accounts of 
more than a hundred common Eastern species. 
The opening chapter briefly outlines the place 
of birds in nature, first with reference to their 
taxonomic position and phylogeny; then with 
reference to their relations to man, as profit- 
able objects for scientific study, as valuable and 
efficient aids of the agriculturalist and as beings 
that appeal strongly to the zsthetic: emotions. 


’ Under another caption are discussed the ‘ Fac- 


tors of Evolution,’ this being succeeded by an 
enumeration of the principal forms, variations 
and uses of the wing, the tail, the feet and the 
bill, illustrated by numerous text figures. Ina 
chapter on the ‘Colors of Birds’ are detailed the 
changes and differences in colors due to age, 
season, molt, food, climate, haunts, habit and 
sex. Migration forms the subject of Chapter 
IY., and is discussed with regard to extent, 
manner and origin. This is followed by a 
short treatise on the ‘ Voice of Birds,’ attention 
being called to both song and call notes. Under 
the next heading, ‘The Nesting Season,’ the 
value of observations during the breeding sea- 
son is emphasized, and the time of nesting, 
mating, the details of nest and eggs and the 
care of the young, each in turn receive atten- 
tion. Instructions on ‘ How to Identify Birds,’ 
with suggestions upon points for observation, 
are also added, together with a field key to 
common land birds of the eastern United States, 
this taken, with additions and alterations, from 
the author’s ‘Handbook of Birds of Hastern 
North America.’ 

In the remaining portion of the book particu- 
lar attention is devoted to some 125 species, these 
little biographies ranging from a few lines to 
nearly a page and a half, with usually a short 
account of the family to which each belongs. A 
number of other birds are incidentally noticed. 

The 75 full-page plates with which the vol- 
ume is adorned figure 99 species. In praise of 
their artistic finish, fidelity of form and minute- 
ness of detail much might be said, and, though 
all are not of equal excellence, we are inclined 
to consider as not extravagant Mr. Chapman’; 
claim that for beauty and accuracy these, as a 
whole, excel any black and white bird drawings 
that have ever been published in this country. 


998 


Furthermore, we think it not too much to say 
that the illustrations alone are more than worth 
the price of the book. Beneath each plate are 
added essential particulars of the size and colors 
of the species represented, this being evidently 
intended to supply, for purposes of identifica- 
tion, what is lacked by the pictures themselves. 

In a work of such general excellence we are 
somewhat surprised to notice certain careless 
statements, as, for instance, that the number of 
shore birds known is 100, instead of more than 
250; that the species of kingfishers are 108, in- 
stead of about 200; and that those of humming 
birds are 400, whereas above 500 really exist. 
These slips are, however, too few and of too 
little consequence to seriously detract from the 
value and usefulness of the volume. It is with- 
out doubt the best guide to the study of birds 
yet published, in this country at least, and 
should prove, as surely it will, indispensable to 
the beginner in ornithology. Furthermore, it 
can scarcely fail to increase the author’s already 
enviable reputation for the felicitous combi- 
nation of scientific accuracy with popular de- 
scription. 

Harry C. OBERHOLSER. 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 


SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS. 
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 


THE July number opens with a paper by A. 
de Forest Palmer, Jr., on the pressure coefficient 
of mercury resistance. The author calls atten- 
tion to the discrepancy existing between the 
only determinations of the pressure coefficient 
previously published, namely, those of Barus, 
who obtained .00003 for the commercial mer- 
cury up to 400 atmospheres, and Lenz, who 
found .0002 for pure mercury between one and 
sixty atmospheres. In the experiments here 
described the mercury was carefully purified 
and distilled in a vacuum, and the pressures 
were obtained by means of the ‘Screw com- 
pressor’ of Barus, which is capable of indicating 
pressures up to something over 2,000 atmos- 
pheres. The Carey Foster method of measur- 
ing resistance was found most reliable. The re- 
sults of the experiments are contained in two 
extended tables, and are further tabulated in a 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Vou. V. No. 130. 


special chart. Taking 6 as the increment to 
unit resistance of one atmosphere increase in 
pressure, the equation obtained is as follows: 
P=— .0000382 — 5 x 10-%¢ 

where the last term, owing to its extreme 
smallness, is probably only approximately ac- 
curate. This result is very closely that of 
Barus, and the difference can be accounted for 
by the slight impurities in the commercial 
mercury used by him. 

C. R. Eastman describes, with a series of 
figures, some remarkable Ctenacanthus spines 
from the Keokuk Limestone. Theo. Holm 
gives a fifth paper of his Studies in the Cypera- — 
cee, devoted to Fuirena squarrosa Michx. and 
F, scirpoidea Vahl. It is accompanied by two 
pages of illustrations. S8. L. Penfield, of 
New Haven, and A. Frenzel, of Freiberg, 
Saxony, have a paper in which they show that 
the mineral chalcostibite (wolfsbergite) is iden- 
tical with guejarite; they further give a de- 
tailed description of the form of the chalcosti- 
bite from Huanchaca, Bolivia. 

H. W. Fairbanks has two papers, the first. 
describing a striking case of contact meta- 
morphism on Black Mountain, of the El Paso 
range, a spur of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, 
extending easterly into the Mojave desert. This 
is illustrated by a figure showing the diabase 
dike, with a slaty zone adjoining, of hard, firm 
rock, into which the soft tufa has been baked. 
The second paper describes the tin deposits at 
Temescal, southern California. The tin depos- 
its here lie nearly in the center of a rudely 
semicircular area of granite about two milesin 
diameter and connected on the east with the 
great body of similar rock extending indefinitely 
in that direction. Thesedimentary rocks along 
the edge of the granite area consist of quartzite, 
mica schist and conglomerate of unknown age. 
A part, at least, of the slates and limestones of 
the Santa Ana range are Carboniferous. The 
semicircular area of granite and portions of the 
adjoining porphyry have been fissured in a gen- 
eral northeast and southwest direction along 
almost innumerable lines, and a black vein 
matter deposited. The veins are generally small, 
varying from one-fourth to a few inches in thick- 
ness, but in the case of the main tin-bearing 
vein an enormous size is reached at Cajalco 


JUNE 25, 1897.] 


Hill. As the hill is approached the veins be- 
come larger and finally culminate in this eleva- 
tion, which is about 300 by 250 feetin diameter 
at the base. The veinstone of which it is mostly 
“composed rises in prominent and bold crop- 
pings. With one or two unimportant excep- 
tions, the material of which this, as well as the 
other veins, is formed consists wholly of tourma- 
line and quartz, with which the tin ores are lo- 
cally associated. The larger veins, and the Ca- 
jalco in particular, are very irregular in size, 
sometimes appearing to be mere bunches in the 
granite. A few hundred feet northeast of the 
hill the vein has narrowed to six or eight feet, 
and it is here that the large body of tin was 
first discovered and the main shafts sunk. A 
slide prepared from one of the smaller veins, 
which in the hand specimen appeared to con- 
sist wholly of tourmaline, showed bunches of 
tourmaline crystals radially arranged and im- 
bedded in interlocking quartz grains. 

T. Wayland Vaughan has a paper on the out- 
lying areas of the Comanche Seriesin Oklahoma 
and Kansas, in which he describes numerous 
localities in the region indicated, and sup- 
ports Mr. Hill’s conclusion in regard to the Cre- 
taceous age of the deposits. He concludes that 
the supposed ‘Jurassic’ of Marcou ‘‘has been 
proven not only not Jurassic, but that it be- 
longs to Cretaceous beds above his so-called 
Neocomian, which is far above the base of the 
American Cretaceous.’’ 

W. G. Mixter has an extended article on 
electrosynthesis, or chemical union, affected by 
means of electricity, but not, as distinguished 
here, that brought about by the heat of the 
electrical discharge. The special apparatus em- 
ployed is described, and the eudiometric obser- 
vations made with a mixture of hydrogen and 
oxygen, of carbonic oxide and oxygen, methane 
and oxygen, ethylene and oxygen, acetylene and 
oxygen. A comparison is made in several cases 
between the number of molecules oxidized and 
those of oxygen consumed, and it is concluded 
that the same electrical current causes the 
oxidation of a different number of molecules of 
the gases, the variation being as one to two, 
while the oxygen consumed varies as one to 
seven molecules. In conclusion the author 
regards the molecular change involved in elec- 


SCIENCE. 


999 


trosynthesis ‘‘to be analogous to those occur- 
ring in synthesis effected by heat or light where 
combination takes place at a temperature far 
below that at which the gaseous molecules dis- 
sociate.’”? W. Lindgren describes monazite 
from the gold-bearing gravels near Idaho City, 
in Idaho, where its occurrence is analogous to 
that observed at other points, as in the eastern 
United States, Brazil, the Ural Mountains, ete. 
It doubtless forms an original constituent of the 
granite of the Idaho basin. 


SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 
THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 


THE last meeting of the Academy until Oc- 
tober took place in the lecture room of the De- 
partment of Physics, Columbia University, June 
7th. Professor William Hallock described ‘ A 
New Method for Projecting Views of the Moon.’ 
A hemisphere about 6 or 8 feet in diameter had 
been prepared and had been whitened. Using 
this for a screen, Dr. Hallock projected upon it 
views of the moon with a powerful arc-light 
lantern, adjusting the distances so that they 
just fitted the spherical surface. The natural 
features of the moon were reproduced with ex- 
traordinary vividness and lost all the flattening 
that is unavoidable with plane surfaces. The 
only drawback is the lack of sharp focus on the 
edges of lunar photographs. Adopting a sug- 
gestion of Professor Rood, Dr. Hallock had 
gone off at one side of his spherical screen, 
while a view of the moon was projected upon it, 
and had photographed it, thus securing a view 
of half the lunar surface, as if it had been taken 
at a point in space at right angles to the line 
connecting the moon and the earth. It gavea 
fairly true picture of one quarter of the moon 
from this pointofyiew. Professor Rood had also 
suggested the value of projecting photographs of 
diversified topography of the earth on suitably 
inclined screens, with the object of reproducing 
their true relations in space, so as to aid topo- 
graphic mapping. Such projections when 
viewed from above would give a bird’s-eye 
view of a landscape in its true relations. Dr. 
Hallock will communicate a full account of 
these devices to an early issue of SCIENCE. 

Miss F. R. M. Hitchcock next presented a 


1000 


paper on the atomic weight of tungsten, which 
will appear in the Transactions of the Academy. 
The tungstic trioxide was prepared from so- 
dium tungstate and gave no traces of silica, 
niobic or tantalic oxides, iron or manganese, the 
alkalies or alkaline earths, or molybdenum. The 
acid was transformed to ammonium salts. By 
fractionating these, the following atomic weights 
were obtained, quantities of from 1.5 to 5 
grams being used. The different series had 
been subjected to a different, previous prepara- 
tion. 


SERIES A. SERIES B. 
1st Fraction 182.34 182.34 
2d. Se 182.77 174.63 
al =< 6 179.92 181.87 
4th ce 183.45 181.79 
4a es 174.87 
5th BY 177.87 
5a f 176.79 


Another portion of the trioxide, fractionated 
by a different method, gave on successive re- 
ductions and oxidations of the same portion the 
following series, in which it will be noted that 
the weights increase with the oxidations and 
diminish with the reductions : 


REDUCTION. OXIDATION. 
At. W’t. 182.68 184.65 
177.25 185.26 
174.00 191.61 


The results of fifty determinations gave at- 
omic weights ranging between 154.064 and 
191.61. A series of experiments, that were 
only briefly referred to, established the fact 
that in all preparations of WO, nitrogen was 
present, even after repeated reduction. Miss 
Hitchcock was led to conclude that as regards 
volatility, metallic tungsten is more volatile 
than the oxide. Wolframite was found to con- 
tain both hydrogen and nitrogen, and scheelite 
has large quantities of nitrogen. 

J. F. Kemp, 
Secretary. 


ZOOLOGICAL CLUB, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, 
MEETING MAY 19.—ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS 
PRESENTED.—ORIGIN OF THE PRONEPHRIC 

DUCT IN SELACHIANS. 
THERE have been different opinions as to the 
origin of the Pronephric Duct in Selachians. 

Acanthias embryos were used in making a re- 


SCIENCE. 


[N. S. Von. V. No. 130. 


newed study of the subject. The Anlage of 
the Pronephros consists of segmental out- 
growths of the somatic layer of the somites 
from the seyenth to the twelfth segments. 
These are connected with the ectoderm at thei 
outer edge. This fusion early disappears. The 
tip of the distally growing duct was constantly 
fused with the ectoderm. One case of Karyo- 
kinesis between ectoderm and duct was found. 
Growth also takes place throughout the length 
of the duct. Frontal sections showed six 
Pronephric tubules on the right side with 
aortic diverticula between. Connected with 
the aorta there were also found structures 
which may be interpreted as glomi. 

From the facts here given we conclude that 
the earliest Anlage of the Pronephros fuses 
temporarily with the ectoderm and may pos- 
sibly receive some few cells from it. The first 
part of the duct proper seems to share to some 
slight degree in the mesodermal origin of the 
anterior region. So far as the duct develops 
distally the connection of its tip with the ecto- 
derm is maintained. This fusion would be suf- 
ficient evidence of a genetic relation for those 
who accept the principle of the teloblastic 
growth of organs. On the appearance of the 
paper by Rabl the preparations were again ex- 
amined carefully, but without finding any 
grounds for abandoning the view that there is 
a genetic connection between the duct and the 
ectoderm in Selachians. 

Emity RAY GREGORY. 

Dr. Whitman followed with a paper on ‘The 
Development of the Wing-bars in Pigeons.’ 


NEW BOOKS. 

Catalogus Mannalium tam viventium quam fos- 
siliwm. E. L. TROUESSART. Fasciculus II. Car- 
nivora, Pinnepedia Rodentia 1. Berlin, R. 
Friedlander & Sohn. 1897. Pp. 219-452. M. 10. 

On the Origin of the European Fauna. R. F. 


ScHARFF. Dublin University Press. 1897. 
Pp. 427-514. 
Some Observations of a Foster Parent. JOHN 


CHARLES TARVER. Westminster, Archibald 
Constable & Co., 1897; New York, The Mac- 


millan Co., 1897. Pp. x + 282. $1.75. 
Electro-métallurgie. AD MineT. Paris, Gau- 
thier-Villars et fils. 1897. Pp. 195. 


SCIENCE. —AD VERTISEMENTS. 


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The Physical Review. 


| A JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL AND 
THEORETICAL PHYSICS. 


CONDUCTED BY 
EDWARD L, NICHOLS, ERNEST MERRITT, AND FREDERICK BEDELL, 


XXIV. May—June, 1897. 


TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


On the Absorption of the Extraordinary Ray in Uniaxal 
Crystals. Oscar M. Srpwart. 

On the Conversion of Electrical Energy in the Dielectrics. 
I. RICHARD THRELFALL. 

Minor Contributions: (1) The Application of the Inferom- 
eter to the Measurement of Small Angular Deflections 
of a Suspended System. F, L. O. Wadswerth. (2) Some 
Determinations of the Slide Modulus of Glass, and the 
Shortening of Glass Fibers with Age. W. 8. Franklin 
and L. B. Rete (3) The Most Sensative Arrange- 
ment of a Wheatstone Bridge with Special Reference to 
the Bolometer. C. D. Child and O. M. Stewart. (4) 
Demonstration of the Doppler Effect. R. W. Wood. 


Published Bi-monthly, Annual Subscription, $3.00. 


PUBLISHED FOR CORNELL UNIVERSITY. 


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Columbia University, pedagogically, consists of a college and a university. The college is Columbia College founded 
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Science. 


The point of contact between the college and the university is the senior year of the college, during which year 
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Ill. THE PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS. 


The faculties of Law, Medicine and Applied Science, con- 
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all students, as well those not having pursued a course of 
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1. The School of Law, established in 1858, offers a three 
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law, international law, public and private, and comparative 
jurisprudence. The degree of Bachelor of Laws is conferred 
on the satisfactory completion of the course. 

2. The College of Physicians and Surgeons, founded in 
1807, offers a four years’ course in the principles and practice 
of medicine and surgery, leading to the degree of Doctor of 
Medicine. 

3. The School of Mines, established in 1864, offers courses 
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