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positions with basic salaries of $2,000 to $2,500 a year, as vacancies occur. Applications must be filed with the Civil Service Commission, Washington, D. C., prior to the hour of closing business on April 12, 1921. Prospective candidates should apply to the Civil Service Commission, Washington, D. C., for a copy of form 1312, stating the title of the examination desired.

THE late Professor Emil Fischer bequeathed 750,000 marks to the Prussian Academy of Sciences, the income of which is to be used to aid young German chemists doing research work in organic, inorganic or physical chem

istry.

THE Journal of the American Medical Association reports that the Deutsche medizinische Wochenschrift records that Dr. Lange, of Chicago, has sent to Professor Paltauf, of Vienna, 7,000,000 crowns collected in America. Also that another sum of $10,000 has been forwarded from America to aid the university professors. It was sent to Professor Pirquet for distribution. The Rockefeller Foundation has also appropriated $60,000 for assistance to the Vienna clinics. This sum is said to be equivalent to 40,000,000 crowns at the present rate of exchange. The salaries of the regular university professors at Vienna were increased materially last year, being 45,000 crowns, increasing by 4,000 crowns every fourth year to a maximum of 70,000. The Münchener medizinische Wochenschrift likewise reports that Dr. A. Stein, chief of the Lenox Hill (formerly the German) hospital, has recently sent a large sum collected in America to Frankforton-the-Main to be applied for scientific pur

poses.

WE learn from the British Medical Journal that the London School of Tropical Medicine has arranged to send an expedition to British Guiana to investigate filariasis with the view of obtaining information as to its prevention and treatment. The expedition is being sent at the request, made shortly before he left the Colonial Office, of Lord Milner, who considered that the government required further advice as to the best method of controlling the disease.

At the suggestion of Sir Patrick Manson the expedition will visit also certain West Indian islands, choosing one, such as Barbados, where the rate of attack is high, and another, such as Grenada, where it is low. It is hoped that by comparing and contrasting the circumstances of two such islands light may be thrown on the conditions which favor filaria. The leader of the expedition is Professor R. T. Leiper, director of the helminthology department of the London School of Tropical Medicine; the other members are Dr. G. M. Vevers, demonstrator of helminthology in the school; Dr. John Anderson, Dr. Chung Un Lee, and Dr. Mahommed Khalil of the Egyptian Medical Service. The expedition will sail this month.

SIR ERNEST SHACKLETON is planning a new Polar expedition to the Arctic. He expects to be away for two years. According to the London Times he proposes to leave England in May or June next, and will take with him a dozen men, chiefly those who accompanied him on former expeditions. The Norwegian whaling boat Foca I., bought in Christiania for this new expedition, is now lying at Tromsö, and will be delivered in England next month. In all probability Foca I. will go, in the first instance, to Hudson's Bay, where 150 dogs will be taken on board. Thence the expedition will proceed via Baffin's Bay-which will be reached, it is hoped, by the end of July, provided ice conditions are favorablethrough Lancaster Sound, to Axel Heiberg's Land. Thence Sir E. Shackleton intends to explore the islands eastward to Perry Island, this being the main object of the expedition. These islands have been already visited by Otto Sverdrup, Godfred Hansen, and others, but Shackleton believes that there is still much scientific work to be done in that region. He will procure his equipment in England, and hopes to receive a quantity of the material which the English used in Archangel during the war. He was, it may be remembered, employed by the British government to see that the troops in North Russia were properly equipped for Arctic conditions. Foca I. is said, by experts, to be one of the

best boats in the Norwegian Whaling Fleet. It has a large and spacious deck, so that there will be plenty of room for dogs and sledges. Sir E. Shackleton has told an acquaintance in Christiania that he has given up the idea of exploring the South Polar regions, and in future will devote himself to the Artic.

THE Journal of Industrial Chemistry reports that the International Chemical Conference last June decided to hold the next conference in Poland, at the invitation of Mr. Kowalski. At that time the situation in that country seemed fairly settled, but since then affairs have become disturbed, and the council of the union has decided that the next meeting can not be held in Warsaw. Dr. Parsons has extended an invitation from the American Chemical Society to hold the 1921 meeting in the United States, but European chemists are not in a position to make this move.

There

fore the council has decided to hold the next meeting at Brussels, at the end of June. However, Mr. Paul Kestner, president of the Société de Chimie Industrielle, will attend the Canadian meeting of the British Chemical Society as the French delegate, and will return by way of the United States, where he will attend the meetings of the American chemical societies.

Ar the annual general meeting of the Association of Economic Biologists, as we learn from Nature, the following were elected officers and councillors for the year 1921: President: Sir David Prain. Hon. Treasurer: Dr. A. D. Imms, Hon. Secretary (Gen. and Bot.) Wm. B. Brierley. Hon. Secretary: (Zool.): Dr. S. A. Neave. Hon. Editor (Bot.): Wm. B. Brierley. Hon. Editor (Zool.): D. Ward Cutler. Council: Dr. W. Lawrence Balls, Professor V. H. Blackman, F. T. Brooks, A. B. Bruce, Dr. E. J. Butler, F. J. Chittenden, A. D. Cotton, J. C. F. Fryer, Professor J. B. Farmer, E. E. Green, Dr. G. A. K. Marshall and Dr. E. J. Russell. In view of the very great increase in the publishing costs of the Annals of Applied Biology, it was decided to establish a "Publication Fund," to which all interested in the progress

of biology and in its application to the welfare of man are invited to subscribe. Sir David Prain then delivered his presidential address on 66 Some Relationships of Economic Biology."

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL
NEWS

Ar the Founders' Day Celebration of the Johns Hopkins University, announcement was made that the trustees of the university would supplement the fund of $215,000 raised by the Alumni Association for a memorial dormitory building at Homewood, so that the total cost of the building might be provided for.

In response to the recent appeal of the University of Edinburgh for £500,000, the sum of £200,000 has now been subscribed.

GENERAL LEONARD WOOD has conferred with the trustees of the University of Pennsylvania in regard to accepting the provostship of the university, vacant by the retirement of Dr. Edgar F. Smith.

PROFESSOR FRANK AYDELOTTE, professor of English in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been elected president of Swarthmore College, to succeed Dr. Joseph Swain.

DR. GUY POTTER BENTON, formerly president of the University of Vermont, has been appointed president of the University of the Philippines, with a salary and perquisites of 33,000 pesos (normally $16,500). The place has been vacant two years.

DR. YANDELL HENDERSON, hitherto professor of physiology in the Yale Medical School, has been transferred to the Graduate School of Yale University under the title of professor of applied physiology.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE SECTION L OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE HAVING been secretary of Section A during a number of years when this section covered both of the subjects mathematics and astron

omy the writer fails to see much force in the objections raised in the February 18 number of SCIENCE to the name "Historical and Philological Sciences" for Section L of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. From the fact that the special committee appointed by the President of the Association recommended that the words "and philological" be dropped it appears that the rest of this name would have been satisfactory to the committee. If this is the case the main objection to the suggested name seems to be due to a fear that the philologists might at some future time "step in and give rise to a heterogeneous, incoherent group of workers, having no interests in common.'

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It is not much more than a century ago that the philologists opened for mathematical historians rich fields by the discovery of a key to the cuneiform inscriptions of the ancient Babylonians and the discovery of a key to the writings of the ancient Egyptians. The history of the ancient scientific developments is fundamentally connected with the languages of the people of antiquity and hence there seems to be little reason to object to a closer contact between the philologists and the historians of science, especially during the early stages of the development of the history of science in our country. As an instance of the fruitfulness of this contact it may be noted that L. J. Richardson, professor of Latin in the University of California, contributed an interesting article on "Digital reckoning among the ancients" to the first volume of the American Mathematical Monthly after it became the official organ of the Mathematical Association of America in 1916.

During the Chicago meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science a good beginning was made towards the encouragement of workers in the history of science in our country. It would seem that only the most serious considerations should be allowed to interfere with the continuance of this encouragement under the influence of a strong national organization. In particular,

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FOSSILS-ARE THEY MERELY "PREHISTORIC," OR MUST THEY ALSO BE "GEOLOGIC "? I AM perfectly willing in my proposed definition of "fossils" to accept a substitute for the term "age," as suggested by Professor Field in his contribution to SCIENCE for February 4, if only authorities can agree on what it shall be. Of the various terms used for geological and archeological time divisions-era, period, epoch, age-each have been used as designations for the time since the Pleistocene. LeConte refers to this time indifferently as "Psychozoic era," "age of man," and "recent epoch." Schuchert practically agrees with these designations, Chamberlin and Salisbury call it the "human period," Professor Field in the contribution above referred to, speaks of it in one place as the "Psychozoic era," and in another as "the recent geological epoch." For other coordinate or subordinate divisions we read in various works such expressions as "Quaternary period" and "Quaternary epoch" (Brigham), "Neolithic period," "Gunz glacial stage" (Osborn), "Sixth glacial period" (Geikie), "Reindeer period" (Lartet), "Prehistoric period" (Lubbock).

We see in the above variations in usage the usual fate of recommendations of scientific congresses when they attempt to reform and draft into the exacting service of science words that have long led a life of freedom as a part of our common vernacular.

"Prehistoric," however, is not a term of this character. From the time (1851) when it was

first coined by Sir David Wilson in his "Prehistoric Annals of Scotland" to express the "whole period" (age or epoch) "disclosed to us by archeological evidence as distinguished from that known by written records," down to the present it has retained in scientific literature its original meaning. It distinctly refers to a portion of the human period (epoch or age). I fail to find Dr. Schuchert anywhere using it in any different sense. He certainly nowhere "begins the Psychozoic era" with the "historic period" as claimed by Professor Field. In spite of the latter's protest, there fore, I fail to see wherein I have misstated his position. For in between his "mastodon " (mammoth ?) "preserved in the arctic ice," which is admitted to be a fossil and his "leaf buried in the gutter," which is not, there is a vast deal of time, from younger to older— historic, prehistoric and geologic-from only the last of which-the glacial or interglacial portion-would traces of organisms be considered fossil. Neolithic man is not fossil; some of the remains of Paleolithic man are fossil. Both are prehistoric.

Recurring to the propriety or the practise of using the term "fossil" in other than its strict scientific sense, the question presents itself: how about the use of other geological terms in analogous senses? In an article in the last Geographical Review entitled "Race Culture and Language," the author, Griffith Taylor, is found applying the terms "inlier " and "outlier" (giving credit to geology for the idea) to certain races in Europe. The former is applied to the Basques, because they constitute an island of ancient people surrounded by younger races, and the latter is applied to the Finns because they are a body separated from the main ethnic group to which they belong, and with which they were once continuous. Most of us, I think, will be disposed to congratulate Professor Taylor on the felicity of these expressions, regardless of how much Professor Field may shake his head over the liberty taken with geological terminology.

ARTHUR M. MILLER

UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY

THRICE TOLD TALES

TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: Referring to the letters of Professor Wood1 and Professor T. C. Mendenhall2 (semper juvenis), I too have a story about the Lick Observatory; and following their lead, hasten to make it public; and then will patiently wait for the various transmutations. Perhaps some one will prove a similar occurrence in the days of Archimedes!

Going up to the observatory in the stage with its load of Saturday night tourists, suddenly one of them asked aloud-" Who was this Mr. Lick, any how? Did he invent the telescope?"

Shades of Galileo! It is time to come forth and be filmed as Professor Mendenhall suggests. In the cast we could have a tourist, same species as Professor Mendenhall's "damned fraud" person. He will be shown asking "Who is this Mr. Galileo anyhow? Did he build this leaning tower?"

BLUE HILL OBSERVATORY, February 16

ALEXANDER MCADIE

AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS AND INTERNA

TIONAL EXCHANGE

IN a note just received from Professor Charles Julin, of Liége, he mentions the present unequal international exchange and how difficult it is, in consequence, for the Belgian universities to obtain foreign publications. He says that separata from our American workers will be most welcome, and asks that this suggestion be brought to our students. I think the fact is quite generally appreciated, but it can do only good to bring it again to our attention.

MAYNARD M. METCALF

SCIENTIFIC BOOKS

History and Bibliography of Anatomic Illustration. By LUDWIG CHOULANT. Translated and Edited by MORTIMER FRANK. The University of Chicago Press, 1920.

1 SCIENCE, January 14, 1921.

2 SCIENCE, February 11, 1921.

The purpose of this book is a presentation of the history and bibliography of representations of human anatomy by graphic means. Due consideration has been given both to anatomic illustration and to representations belonging to the graphic and plastic arts.

WHILE engaged in the preparation of the list of the anatomists of the world1 one of the most useful works of reference was found to be J. Ludwig Choulant's "Geschichte und Bibliographie der anatomischen Abbildung," which had been published in 1852 in Leipzig by this energetic physician. It was likewise of great value in studying the sources of anatomical literature2 and in other ways has proven its value as an aid in the study of the history of anatomy. Its importance in the history of medicine is indicated by the nine references to Choulant's work in Garrison's "History of Medicine."

Unfortunately this important work has long been out of print and there are few copies available for the younger generation of students. It was thus with great interest that we welcomed the announcement from the University of Chicago Press of the forthcoming translation of this important historical document by Mortimer Frank, a Chicago physician who had already earned fame by his contributions to medical history. As an associate editor of the Annals of Medical History he made his influence felt in the development of this important journal. His great collection of early medical works and engravings, since his lamented death deposited in the library of the University of Chicago, gave him a grasp of his subject such as few men are given to attain.

Dr. Frank did not live to see his book off the press and his untimely death was greatly mourned by the profession at large but especially was his loss keenly felt by those whose interests were similar to his own. His friend, Fielding H. Garrison, acted as editor and saw the book through the press.

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The book is a handsome volume and the press-work is well up to the standard of the other publication from this press. Garrison's memorial notice of Mortimer Frank introduces the book to the reader. This is followed by Frank's biographical sketch of Choulant, thus making available for the first time in English, the life of this important worker. The succeeding pages are occupied with the translation of the history and the reproduction of the bibliography to which important additions are made, thus revising and bringing the work up to date.

The illustrations of the original publication are well reproduced in the translation and add great value to the work in the hands of students of art. An unfortunate feature is the arrangement of the descriptions of the figures, these being placed in the back of the book with no references to them on the plates. In this arrangement Dr. Frank simply followed Choulant's plan in the German edition.

Choulant's original discussions of the various artists who forwarded the study of anatomy by their illustrative work may seem to the art student somewhat unequal and this same inequality is apparent in the translation; but in making such a criticism one must keep in mind that Choulant's idea was the discussion of the work of each man as he had aided in the development of anatomical illustration. His very brief account of Michaelangelo's work is not in any disparagement of this eminent Italian's work but is due to the fact that the great sculptor left few contributions to anatomical illustration.

The history and bibliography already has its place in the literature and Dr. Frank's translation will make the work available to all students of the subject. While we regret that our fellow worker was not given the joy of seeing the book off the press, yet we may rejoice that he was enabled to leave the work so nearly complete as to warrant the publication of this important contribution.

COLLEGE OF MEDICINE, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

ROY L. MOODIE

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