Naturelle, Faculté de Médecine, Institut Pasteur, École Normale Supérieure, and the various libraries of the laboratories of the Université de Paris and the Collège de France. Besides these rather specialized libraries there are others, such as the Bibliothèque Nationale and the Bibliothèque de l'Institut de France, which contain biological periodicals and books.

While the franc has been reduced to about one fourth of its pre-war value, the funds which these libraries receive for the purchase of books have in some cases remained the same as before the war, in others been but inadequately increased. This creates a very acute condition for these institutions. Were it not for the liberality of the Rockefeller Foundation, one could find almost no current American and English periodicals in France. As it is, the current issues of certain journals, such as the Anatomical Record, the Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, Genetics, etc., are not found at all in public libraries. Others, such as the Biologisches Centralblatt, Archiv für mikroskopische Anatomie und Entwickelungsmechanik, Journal of Morphology and Physiology, Journal of Comparative Neurology, Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, Nature, Die Naturwissenschaften, SCIENCE, etc., are found only in one or two libraries.

American scientists could do much, if they would, to alleviate this temporary curtailment of scientific literature. In many American institutions several members of the biological departments get the same journals and, after reading them, lay them aside unbound, often not to be consulted again, since those journals are kept also in the department library. If such journals were regularly sent to some library in Paris or some other part of France they would have a thousandfold value for science. Duplicates of SCIENCE, the Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Wistar journals, etc., would be most welcome. Such journals could be sent to the biological libraries of the Université de Paris (Laboratoire d'evolution des êtres organisés, Anatomie comparée, Zoologie, Biologie expérimentale, Physiologie, Botanique), to the other Parisian libraries enumerated above and to those in other university towns.

Another scheme which, however, would entail some sacrifice on the part of publishers, would be to adopt the plan recently put into practice, for Isis, by its eminent editor, Dr. G. Sarton. This would consist in giving special temporary low rates of subscription to countries with a low exchange. To the honor of French editors it may be said that, even under the difficult financial conditions in which they find

themselves at the present time, they have adopted this plan for countries whose exchange is lower than France's, such as Roumania and other Balkan states. If such a plan were adopted in America, it would permit French libraries to subscribe to American journals, which it is impossible for them to do at present. One must remember that French journals can be had for about half the price which must be paid for corresponding American, English or German publications.

Finally, a system of exchanges could be started between American and French universities and scientific libraries. French scientists would gladly cooperate in such a scheme.

No greater good could be done to French science than to help rebuild its libraries. While the war has left almost no harmful trace on American science, French scientists are laboring under the double load of decreased personnel and very small funds. The present state of science absolutely requires international cooperation; much could be done for France by America in helping it to keep a position in which it can again produce a Lamarck, a Pasteur, a Claude Bernard.

RAOUL M. MAY,

Parker Fellow, Harvard University

UNIVERSITÉ DE PARIS, PARIS, FRANCE

ANALYZED SOUND

LAST year I submitted a communication under the title, "Analyzed sound in nature," consisting of a series of descriptions of musical echoes from natural sounds, such as waves and waterfalls, in which so many pitches were included as to give no impression of musical sounds when directly heard. In this communication the reports of five individuals were included. Since then similar observations have been reported in SCIENCE by Professor Yandell Henderson (September 26, 1924) and Professor C. Macfie Campbell (May 22, 1925).

This spring a report has come to my notice which seems to me of exceptional interest in connection with my own observation, included in the communication of July 4, 1924. That observation was that on July 27, 1903, while walking along the shore of the river near the middle of the Big Horn Canyon, I heard a loud howl beginning at a high pitch and ending in a low pitch, and that the howl reversed itself when I stepped back over the same ground. The howl proved to be nothing more than the roar of the river, something in my surroundings placing the notes of high pitch in one place and those of a low pitch in 1 SCIENCE, July 4, 1924.

another. In a book entitled "Locating the Iron Trail," by Edward Gillette (Christopher Publishing House, Boston, 1925), three trips through the Big Horn Canyon are described. Besides Mr. Gillette's trip on the ice, there is the account of the trip in which my observation is mentioned (see pages 110 and 111), and the description of one of the two previous trips by boat, written by J. W. Newell. That trip was made in August, 1893. The following passages from Mr. Newell's account seem to me of great interest in connection with this problem of analyzed sound. On page 92, in the description of their passage down the river before reaching the canyon, there appears the following:

As we approached the ferry, a group of men came down to the bank and hailed us. They had heard through the newspapers that a party of Sheridan men were out on an excursion with its itinerary including a passage through Big Horn cañon on a boat, and they wanted to know if we were "it." With the very best of intentions they warned us to turn back and abandon the proposed passage in a boat, and particularly such a boat as we had. They said it was too heavy and clumsy to be safely taken over the numerous rapids; that it would be dashed to pieces on the rocks and that we would all be drowned before we had proceeded a mile. They repeated some of the stories we had heard before leaving home, and told of unearthly noises that were reported to have come out of the cañon on the wings of the wind-howls and screams which made the hair stand on end-and could have emanated from no human being or animal known to exist at that day and age of the world.

One of them was sure that some supernatural beings or forces which nothing human could withstand would be encountered in the depths of the cañon, and that if we persisted in going we would never be heard of again. He kindly volunteered to inform our folks at home of the day and date of our passing in case we never came out. Later we imagined we could explain the sounds that had been heard, as being produced by perfectly natural causes.

On pages 95 and 96, apropos of shots fired at mountain sheep, there appears the following:

Our shots echoed and reverberated from the wall on one side to the opposite wall until it seemed as though a dozen shots had been fired.

While the report of a rifle is so magnified in the cañon, a shot fired up the mountain side is not heard below. The unearthly sounds in the cañon which chill the blood and almost cause nervous prostration, no doubt came from the roar of the rapids being reflected by the walls of the cañon acting as a sounding board in places. The sounds are startling, being unusual, and cause one to imagine them as coming from an unknown animal of enormous size.

LOSS OF VIRULENCE IN FUNGI THERE is a general idea among plant pathologists that many fungi lose their virulence, at least in some degree, when grown in culture. Definite and authentic cases of this phenomenon appear to be not easy to find. Burkholder1 has recently studied a strain of Fusarium, which was originally isolated from a bean plant, and which after six years in culture had largely lost its power to infect beans. When grown for a month as a parasite on beans, it regained its old virulence. This change in physiological behavior was accompanied by certain morphological changes.

The manner in which a fungus can be so changed requires explanation. At first glance it looks like the inheritance of environmental effects. But changes due to environmental factors have been found not to be inherited in other plants, and many of us do not believe in the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Cases similar to the one noted by Burkholder have been cited by some writers in support of the idea that external influences may affect the genetic constitution of organisms. Before such evidence can be accepted careful investigations should be made of some of these cases. In an extensive series of trials the author2 found that he was unable to affect a change in the spore characters of Pestalozzia Guepini by selection. More recently he has found selection within pure lines. of a species of Helminthosporium equally ineffective. This indicates that the genetic constitution, of some fungi at least, is not readily affected by external factors.

As a tentative theory explaining the loss of virulence in culture, the following is proposed. Mutations have been found to occur in several species of fungi which have been carefully studied. Stevens3 has found them in Helminthosporium, Bonar in Brachysporium and the author2 in Pestalozzia. When a fungus, normally parasitic, is grown as a sapro1 Amer. Jour. Bot., 12: 245–253, 1925.

2 Genetics, 7: 142-201, 1922.

3 Bull. Ill. Nat. Hist. Survey, 14: Art. 5, 1922. 4 Amer. Jour. Bot., 11: 123-157, 1924.

phyte, mutations occur which give rise to saprophytic strains. These will thrive while more actively parasitic strains will tend to die out, and loss of infecting power of the culture will occur. When again grown as a parasite, the fungus will regain its virulence, through the development of parasitic strains which originate as mutations, while the saprophytic strains will perish. It may be expected that different organisms will vary greatly in the time required to lose, and regain virulence depending on the frequency of mutation in the species. In some forms, loss of virulence does not occur. Dr. Erwin F. Smith reports a potato rotting organism which is as virulent, after eighteen years in culture, as it was when first isolated. The proposed theory likewise may prove an explanation of attenuation in bacteria.

At present none of the sudden changes observed in fungi has been studied cytologically, so we do not know whether or not they are capable of explanati on a basis of chromosome behavior. For convenience they are therefore called mutations.

The author proposes to investigate known cases of loss of virulence and to test the above theory. He is especially anxious to hear from those who know of well-substantiated occurrences of this phenomenon. CARL D. LARUE

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN

SPONGILLA LACUSTRIS IN MASSACHU

SETTS: A CORRECTION

IN a recent note1 to SCIENCE, we described the occurrence of the fresh-water sponge, Spongilla lacustris Linn., from the Sudbury River near Concord, Massachusetts. Since then Professor Ira Remsen has called our attention to the fact that his study of the water supply of Boston in 1881 revealed the presence of a sponge, which was at that time identified by Professor W. G. Farlow as Spongilla fluviatilis Auct. Although there are no descriptions of spicules, gemmules or habits of growth in his report,2 a colored plate gives conclusive evidence to our minds that he was dealing with the same sponge as the one we described. Further evidence of the identity of the two sponges may be the occurrence of the peculiar "cucumber" odor associated with both.

Revisions in sponge taxonomy since 1881 have restricted the name "fluviatilis" to the genus, Ephydata, formerly called Meyenia by Carter, so that there is no longer any confusion between Ephydata fluviatilis and Spongilla lacustris, due chiefly to the difference in their habits of growth. American synonyms for

1 SCIENCE, lxi, 391; 1925.

2 Document 143, City of Boston, 1881; Report of Joint Standing Committee on Water.

It is gratifying to note that two of the great universities, Michigan and Chicago, have chosen as presidents men of exact scholarship-one a man of proved administrative ability also, and the other of a turn for practical affairs, but primarily a scientist of the purest type. The former, Dr. Clarence C. Little, the new president of the University of Michigan, a graduate of Harvard and a postgraduate student in science, conducted researches in genetics for many years, and became the assistant director of the Carnegie Institution for Experimental Evolution before he accepted the presidency of the University of Maine. His success there gives promise that the University of Michigan will have not only a competent administrator but a scholar who has gone out to the verge of human knowledge in at least one sector of the great field, and is able to appreciate the problems in every other sector, for the method of advance must 3 Potts, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., Philadelphia, 1887.

be the same whether one use a microscope, a telescope, a retort, a syllogism or an algebraic equation.

The University of Chicago has gone for its new president, Dr. Max Mason, to the University of Wisconsin. He is also preeminently a man of research, with a varied experience as a teacher, both in Eastern institutions and in the Middle West. His going to Chicago gives new emphasis to the purpose which has guided its development since its renaissance under that great scholar and teacher, Dr. William R. Harper, a purpose which has expressed itself in the motto "Let knowledge grow that life may be enriched,” and has exemplified itself in practice by calling to university professorships such men as Chamberlin, Michelson, Hale and Millikan.

The faculties of the first of all American universities of the purest type were gathered about a teacher of mathematics, a teacher of Greek and a teacher of chemistry who were the first of scholars in their respective fields.

And the University of Chicago

owes its swift rise to its policy of gathering men of first-rate scholarship as its master teachers. This precedent has been followed in selecting the new leader. He is a mathematician, and if he needs defense in these days when all scientists are under Fundamentalist suspicion, it may be found in an admirable address delivered by David Eugene Smith before the Mathematical Association of America some years ago, entitled "Religio Mathematici." According to him, mathematics but increases the faith of a man who has faith, and while it shows him his finite nature with respect to the Infinite (for example, shows him that he can not construct a seven-edged polyhedron and is only combating the everlasting truth in trying to do so), it puts him in touch with immortality in the form of mathematical laws that are eternal.

In the midst of all the changes in things thought to be unchangeable it has been true, it is true and will be true throughout the universe and forever that (a+b)2=a2+2ab+b2. This is but one illustration of the immortality of law. A great mathematician, other things being equal, ought to be best prepared

from facts compared the laws to trace
Where long procession leads to Deity,

and so best prepared to lead on in further quest of truth.-Editorial from The New York Times.

marine fishes of our eastern seaboard. The term Gulf of Maine as here used "covers the oceanic bight from Nantucket and Cape Cod on the west to Cape Sable on the east, thus including the shore lines of northern Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and parts of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia." The 150 fathom contour has been chosen as the arbitrary offshore boundary of the region. Some 178 species are treated.

Looked at as a faunal work, this book is an adequate review of the cold-water group of fishes which is at home north of the long arm of Cape Cod, and penetrates only to a limited extent south of that cape, then mainly in winter. Descriptions of the species make of it a handbook for their ready identification, and it is very consistently illustrated with figures of each, and in many cases of their larval forms or fry also. It is comparable (except that fresh-water fishes are not included) to "The Fishes of North Carolina," by H. M. Smith, issued in 1907 by the North Carolina Geological and Economic Survey, and should prove equally useful. The two practically do not overlap; on the other hand they supplement one another admirably, one dealing with the cold-water, the other with the warm-water fauna of our eastern coast, north of Florida.

Advances have recently been made in knowledge of the breeding and life histories of marine fishes. Considerable data on this subject given by Bigelow and Welsh, when not new, is at least recent, and may conveniently be referred to in this volume. The young of sea fishes still offer a wide field for inquiry, in which Mr. Welsh was particularly interested, and that branch of the science of ichthyology has suffered an irreparable loss in his death. Fish migrations, a problem allied to oceanography, and one which has important economic bearings, is frequently discussed. Such discussion here is particularly interesting in view of Dr. Bigelow's knowledge of oceanography.

We look forward to the second part of this bulletin, which, as we understand it, will deal with the general biology and oceanography of the Gulf of Maine. As a memoir on the fishes this first part is complete in itself, ending with eighteen pages of bibliography and an index.

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

J. T. NICHOLS

SPECIAL ARTICLES

MUSCULAR FIXATION OF THE STUTTERER'S VOICE UNDER EMOTION

It has been long known that stuttering is increased by an emotional experience. This fact should give

one a clue to an experimental attack upon the nature of the trouble. The voice of the stutterer can be studied under controlled emotional circumstances and, by a sufficiently refined technique, it ought to be possible to determine how these affect the voco-motor mechanism. This mechanism in its entirety is, of course, too complex and too extensvie to be brought within the scope of one experiment, but a part of it can be subjected to a single study.

In the study, of which this is a preliminary report, I undertook to compare the changes produced in the voice of the stutterer under emotional conditions with the changes produced in the voice of the non-stutterer under like circumstances. These changes in the voice were detected and studied by means of the photographic method of recording speech. Nineteen stutterers and eighteen non-stutterers were studied under identical circumstances. The unemotional condition was as free from anything conducive to emotional arousal as possible. The observer was placed at ease by an explanation of the mechanics of the photographing apparatus, conversing about current topics, asking questions relative to athletic and scholastic interests and other quieting talk. When the observer seemed to be completely at ease he was required to sing a sustained "ah" into the photographing apparatus and a picture of this sound was taken.

Immediately following the obtaining of this photograph, the observer was emotionally upset; first, by questioning and suggestions, second, by the firing of a pistol, and third, by an electrical shock. He was now asked to produce a tone as nearly like the one before as possible and a picture of this tone was taken.

The pictures of the voice were studied from the standpoint of fluctuations in wave length or pitch and measured with adequate precision. When I undertook the study I anticipated, in harmony with the fact of the emotions increasing stuttering, that the stutterer's voice would be much more upset after the emotional shock than the non-stutterer's. That is, I thought I would find greater variability in pitch. in the case of the stutterer than in the case of the non-stutterer when the two had been subjected to the same emotional circumstances. To my surprise just the reverse was true, namely, that the stutterer has far less variability in pitch after an emotional shock than he does before, while a non-stutterer has more fluctuation in pitch after an emotional shock than before.

Thus we see that instead of the emotional upheaval producing a muscular lability in case of a stutterer, it produced a muscular fixation wherein

successive waves three to a square. Figure 1-N gives the wave-length fluctuations of a non-stutterer under the non-emotional condition, while Figure 1-E gives the wave-length fluctuations of the same nonstutterer after the emotional upset. It is easy to see the greater number and extent of changes in wavelength or pitch for Figure 1-E. Figure V-N gives the wave length fluctuations of a stutterer under nonemotional conditions while Figure V-E gives wavelength fluctuations of the same stutterer after the pistol shot and the electrical shock. In these two figures, notice the marked elimination of wave-length changes for Figure V-E. Whether this muscular fixation in the case of the stutterer extends to muscles other than those controlling voice production this study can not answer. Neither can it answer the question, What is responsible for the muscular fixation of the stutterer after an emotional shock? This latter question, however, is being investigated at the present time.

STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA

LEE EDWARD TRAVIS