of the Commonwealth Edison Company of Chicago, versity at its sixty-seventh annual commencement. were awarded honorary degrees by Northwestern UniDR. FRANK B. JEWETT, president of the Bell Telephone Laboratories, has had conferred upon him by Dartmouth College the honorary degree of doctor of science.

THE honorary degree of doctor of science has been conferred upon Dr. John M. Dodson, professor of medicine in the Rush Medical College and editor of Hygeia, and upon Professor Louis H. Pammel, professor of botany at the Iowa State College, by the University of Wisconsin.

RECIPIENTS of honorary degrees conferred by the University of Michigan include the following: Professor Paul H. Hanus, of Harvard University; Dr. Edward Samuel Corwin, of Princeton University; Dr. Elwood Mead, of the Bureau of Reclamation, Washington, and Dr. Arthur R. Cushny, of the University of Edinburgh.

AT the commencement exercises of Loyola University, honorary degrees were conferred on Dr. Richard Tivnen, of the American College of Surgeons; Marinasuki Chiwaki, dean of the Tokio Dental College, and Florestan Aguilar, dean of the National Dental College of Spain.

THE following members of Stanford University will retire this year under the sixty-five-year age limit rule: Professor Douglas H. Campbell, of the department of botany; Professor Charles H. Gilbert, of the department of zoology; Professor Leander H. Hoskins, of the department of applied mathematics, and Dr. George C. Price, of the department of zoology.

DR. DAVID EUGENE SMITH, professor of mathematics at Teachers College, Columbia University, will retire at the end of the first semester of 1925-26.

DR. WILFORD M. WILSON, chief of the United States Weather Bureau Station at Cornell University and professor of meteorology, has been made professor emeritus.

ABOUT two hundred physicians gave a banquet in Chicago on June 23 to Dr. Dean Lewis, who will leave in the near future for Baltimore, where he has accepted the chair of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School.

DR. P. I. WOLD, professor of physics at Union College, has been elected president of the Union College chapter of Sigma Xi.

AT the ninth annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Internal Secretions at Atlantic City on May 26, Dr. J. B. Collip, of Edmonton, Alta., Canada, was elected president; Drs. Frederick S. Ham

mett, Philadelphia, and Eugene F. Du Bois, New York, vice-presidents, and Francis M. Pottenger, Monrovia, Calif., secretary-treasurer.

DEPUTY GIUSEPPE BELLUZZO, professor at Milan Polytechnic Institute, and a well-known engineer, has been appointed minister of national economy, in the Italian cabinet.

DR. WILLIAM AUSTIN CANNON, research associate of the Carnegie Institution, stationed at the Desert Botanical Laboratory, Arizona, has been transferred to Stanford University to conduct experiments on the relation of roots and grasses to the soil and atmosphere.

f

DR. MURRAY P. HORWOOD, assistant professor of biology and public health in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will conduct a tuberculosis survey of Boston this summer for the Boston Tuberculosis Association..

CAPTAIN CHARLES M. ROGERS, professor of pharmaceutical chemistry and Lieutenant J. Lewis Maynard, instructor in chemistry at the University of Minnesota, both members of the United States Chemical Warfare Service, have been attending a fifteen days intensive training school for chemical warfare officers of the organized reserves, United States Army, at Fort Logan, near Denver. Captain Rogers is gas officer of the 88th division.

DEAN H. R. MANN, of the State College of Agriculture at Cornell University, has left for Europe, where he will represent the International Education Board at various scientific meetings abroad.

DR. PAUL S. WELCH, associate professor of zoology in the University of Michigan, has been granted leave of absence for the academic year 1925-1926. He will spend the year in Europe visiting the principal universities, museums, research institutes and biological stations.

DR. ALEXANDER HAMILTON RICE and the other members of the exploring party to South America returned to New York on July 10.

DR. JOHN J. ABEL, professor of pharmacology at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School, recently gave two public lectures under the auspices of the North Carolina Chapter of the Society of the Sigma Xi, on "The importance of the apparently negligible in biology and medicine."

DR. W. W. CAMPBELL, president of the University of California, gave the Halley lecture at Oxford University on June 17.

A PORTRAIT of William Harvey, discoverer of the circulation of the blood, attributed to Van Dyck, has been presented to Jefferson Medical College by Dr. J. Ackerman Coles, Newark, N. J., in memory of his father. It was a possession of Oliver Wendell Holmes, who for years was professor of anatomy at the Harvard Medical School.

PROFESSOR GILBERT VAN INGEN, since 1908 assistant professor of geology at Princeton University, died on July 9, aged fifty-five years.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL
NOTES

THE board of trustees of Indiana University have made available sums totaling $700,000 for improvements in the medical school and a university library. The funds to be used for the medical school were derived from a gift of $375,000 from William E. Coleman, Indianapolis; a gift of $6,000 from the Eli Lilly Company, of Indianapolis, and from the sale to the state of the building formerly used by the medical college, for $100,000.

RECEIPT of a gift of $250,000 from Mrs. Stephen V. Harkness, completing the $1,000,000 fund raised by the Presbyterian Hospital nurses for the new school of nursing at the Presbyterian-Columbia Medical Center in New York, has been announced by the board of managers of the hospital. Mrs. Harkness's cash gifts to the medical center now total $800,000.

By the will of the late William J. Cooper, of Camden, N. J., Swarthmore College will receive $100,000 for the establishment of a memorial lecture fund.

GEORGE WILKINSON CASE, formerly professor of sanitary engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, has been appointed dean of the college of technology and professor of mechanical engineering.

PROFESSOR A. A. BENNETT, of the University of Texas, has been appointed professor and head of the department of mathematics at Lehigh University.

DR. C. DALE BEERS, Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University, and Dr. Harold Kirby, Jr., Ph.D., University of California, have been appointed instructors in biology at Yale University.

DR. HANNAH E. HONEYWELL, formerly of Columbia University and of the Carnegie Station for Experimental Evolution, Cold Spring Harbor, L. I., has been appointed assistant professor in agricultural and biological chemistry at the Pennsylvania State College.

DR. MARION HINES LOEB, assistant professor of anatomy at the University of Chicago, has accepted the position of associate in anatomy at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School.

DR. HALBERT DUNN, Ph.D. (Minnesota, '23), of the Mayo Clinic, has been appointed associate professor of biometrics in the School of Public Health at the Johns Hopkins University.

PROFESSOR LOUIS WADE CURRIER, assistant professor in mineralogy at Syracuse University for the past four years, has been elected to a similar position in mineralogy at the Missouri School of Mines.

DR. THOMAS ALTY, lecturer in physics at Durham, has accepted an invitation to a chair of physics in the University of Saskatchewan.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE THE DEMONSTRATION OF NEPHROSTOMES IN THE EARTHWORM

WITH the exception of the testes, probably the most difficult structures to demonstrate in the earthworm are the nephrostomes, or funnels of the nephridia. If the removal of a nephridium is attempted either in a living or in a preserved worm, usually the postseptal portion is the only part secured. The delicate tube is readily torn at the point where it passes through the anterior septum. As a result the preseptal part remains when the postseptal portion is removed. The form of the nephridium is difficult to make out in its normal colorless or nearly colorless condition. The following method has been used successfully to demonstrate the entire nephridium in situ. It also simplifies the removal of the entire organ for the purpose of making permanent whole mounts.

A solution of vital methylene blue in distilled water, concentration 1:1000, is drawn into a hypodermic syringe, or into an ordinary dropping pipette whose tip has been heated and drawn out to a fine point. A large specimen of Lumbricus terrestris is he'd firmly in the hand and the needle of the syringe or pipette pushed through the dorsal wall of the worm approximately in the region of the tenth segment. The needle is then turned to a position parallel to the dorsal surface and pushed posteriorly for a distance of ten or twenty segments. The dye is forced into the coelomic cavity with pressure sufficient to render the worm decidedly turgid in the segments affected. The needle is slowly withdrawn, pressure being maintained during the withdrawal. In this way the coelomic cavity in each of several segments becomes gorged with dye.

After ten minutes the worm is killed with chloroform vapor and covered with water. A median dorsal incision is made, the body wall pinned out, and the digestive and reproductive organs removed. The nephrostomes are seen distinctly as deep blue structures. Other parts of the nephridia are colored somewhat less intensely. If one wishes to make an entire nephridium stand out more clearly, the preparation is removed from the water, moistened with a few drops of the dye and exposed to the air for ten minutes. As a result of this treatment the entire nephridium is clearly delineated and, when covered with water, may be examined under the hand lens or the binocular microscope. The preparation will remain in good condition for several hours. If a permanent mount is desired, the organ is carefully excised, and fixed in an 8 per cent. solution of ammonium molybdate. The usual treatment of tissues stained intra vitam with methylene blue is then followed. A simpler way is to fix in corrosive acetic or any other general fixing solution, stain with Delafield's haematoxylin and with eosin, dehydrate, clear and mount in the usual way. The presence of methylene blue in the tissues does not interfere with the use of other stains, since it is decolorized by the acid of the fixing solution and is extracted by the alcohols during dehydration.

WILLIAMS COLLEGE

ELBERT C. COLE

PROFESSOR O. C. MARSH AND
PITHECANTHROPUS

I DESIRE to call attention to a statement in the chapter on "Animal evolution" in "Contributions of Science to Religion," by Dr. Shailer Mathews. On page 200 is the following statement:

Some question as to the authenticity of the published account of the remains of Pithecanthropus erectus arises out of the fact that their custodian, Dr. Dubois, will not permit its further study by his colleagues. The extreme fragility of these valuable relics is perhaps sufficient extenuation for what might appear to be a selfish attitude.

A footnote is appended as follows:

Since this was written news has reached us that at least one leading American anthropologist has been permitted to examine the Pithecanthropus remains; but no report has been made public.

Remembering an article which I had read in the American Journal of Science, but not having present access to files of that journal, I asked Miss Lowes, librarian of Washington and Jefferson College, to look up the reference for me, which she has kindly

done. It will be found on page 475, Vol. I (4th series), 1896, American Journal of Science (Silliman's journal).

The paper, as I remember it, was illustrated with figures of the cranium, femur and molar; and in it Professor Marsh states that at the meeting of the International Zoological Congress, in Leyden, September, 1895, Dr. Dubois, a half an hour before reading his paper, invited him and Professor Flower, of England, to examine the Pithecanthropus material; further, that both he and Professor Flower were in agreement with the conclusions of Dr. Dubois.

If any one will take the trouble to examine the files of the American Naturalist for the years 1895-96 he may be able to confirm my recollection of the opinions of two eminent scientific men concerning Pithecanthropus, Professor E. D. Cope, then editor of the Naturalist, and Dr. Harrison Allen. Professor Cope, the comparative anatomist, did not look upon Dr. Dubois's specimens as simian, but was inclined to refer them to the race of Neanderthal men. On the other hand, Dr. Allen, the human anatomist, saw nothing human in the remains. Of course neither of them had had the opportunity which Professor Marsh later enjoyed, of examining the material. One might, however, conclude, from this disagreement of two eminent authorities in their several lines, that their different opinions really tended to confirm Dubois's decision that Pithecanthropus is "neither beast nor human," but a veritable missing link, even if in a more or less collateral line.

My reason for making this communication is not for the purpose of criticising the chapter on "Animal evolution," which is an excellent presentation of the subject, nor of the volume of which it is a part, which is an admirable and timely contribution to the literature of these atavistic times, but to do what I can to render innocuous any use that might be made of the oversight by the "energetic ignorance" of the present day.

I have lately had occasion to read some of the present-day anti-evolutionary literature, and have been much impressed by its similarity to the erratic writings of opponents of animal experimentation, vaccination and the like. There is displayed the same facility in special pleading and the same disregard of facts. While it is not possible for one to say truthfully of these eccentric people that they are "ever learning," one may be permitted to say that they seem to be "never able to come to a (full) knowledge of the truth."

Of some of these anti-evolution writers I think that it should be said that they write with the best of intentions, albeit, it must be owned, not always in the best of tempers. If any such should chance to see

this communication, I hope, after they have verified the reference, that they will refrain from making unjust charges against Dr. Dubois.

It is not for the anti-evolutionists, however, that I make this contribution, but rather for the information of those who, in these days when state legislatures are attempting to settle scientific questions by majority vote, are called on themselves to be energetic champions of the truth.

And, speaking of state legislatures, while I have not seen the text of the anti-evolution law enacted by the law-makers of the state of Tennessee, and which is impending in other states of the Union, I presume that they have had the foresight to make it illegal for human skeletons, in museums and schools which are supported by public funds, to wear their coccygeal bones.

Augusta, GEORGIA

EDWIN LINTON

FAUNA HAWAIIENSIS

BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM, Honolulu, has on hand a number of incomplete sets of Fauna Hawaiiensis. The following numbers will be sent to libraries or individual scientists on receipt of twenty-five cents in stamps to cover the cost of postage on each volume: Volume I, Nos. 4, 5, 6; Volume II, No. 6; Volume III, Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6. Bishop Museum Memoir, Volume VII, No. 2 (Monographic study of the tribe Lobeloideae, by Joseph F. Rock, 395 pages, 217 plates) may also be obtained for the cost of mailing, forty-five cents.

BERNICE P. BISHOP MUSEUM

HERBERT E. GREGORY

QUOTATIONS

THE ANTI-EVOLUTION TRIAL IN
TENNESSEE

THE mortification which most educated Americans feel about the Dayton trial has at least one offset. This challenging of the truths discovered by scientific inquiry yields at any rate this advantage, that it gives scientific men a better opportunity than they ever had to bring their teaching home to millions. They can unfold the evidence for what they believe, and can get a wider and more interesting hearing for it. Elsewhere in the Times, for example, Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborn states, summarily but effectively, the anatomical and geological proofs of the descent-or ascent— of man. This will undoubtedly be read with an attention that could not have been elicited from the general public had not Mr. Bryan made his ignorant and intolerant assaults upon those who accept evolution as the method of creation.

He has, in reality, given to scientists and teachers a splendid chance. They will now have a larger and more alert popular audience than they have ever known. Such an opportunity for popularizing, in the best sense, scientific truths can rarely have presented itself. Let it be improved by men ready to give the reasons for the faith that is in them. They can explain in a way intelligible to the ordinary mind the process of engrafting the theory of evolution upon all modern thought. They can show how it is to-day the presupposition of inquiring minds in all departments of knowledge. It is taken for granted in every laboratory. It is a part of the baggage which every explorer carries with him into unknown lands. It is the indispensable tool of the modern investigator and the modern philosopher alike. It is the great working hypothesis of science everywhere. Educated men think unconsciously in terms of evolution. The idea of it and applications of it are woven into the intellectual life of the whole world to-day.

All this can be set forth, with the evidence for it and the human benefits to be derived from it, and then the ignorant defiance from Tennessee can be met by the poet's indignant assertion that it is "shame to stand in God's creation and doubt truth's sufficiency." -N. Y. Times.

SCIENTIFIC BOOKS

The Cell in Development and Heredity. By EDMUND B. WILSON, professor of zoologoy in Columbia University. Third Edition, Revised and Enlarged. The Macmillan Co., 1925.

THE grateful and enthusiastic student of cytology can paraphrase Emerson's exclamation concerning Plato by saying of this book: "In Wilson are all things (concerning cells) whether written or thought." The former editions of this work have been recognized for a generation throughout the world as the most valuable and important books on this important subject, and the present volume, coming a quarter of a century after the last previous edition, represents the enormous advances in our knowledge of cytology which have been made during this period-a development that has probably not been surpassed by any other science during the same time.

Students of cytology have known for a long time that Professor Wilson was preparing a new book and they have been waiting anxiously for its appearance. The present volume more than justifies all ex- · pectations. It is, in fact, an entirely new book; the arrangement of materials, the topics treated, even much of the terminology is different from that in the old edition, and the book has grown from nine chapters and 483 pages, in the second edition, to fourteen

chapters and 1,232 pages in the present one.1 Even this statement does not fairly represent the relative size of these two editions, for the former edition was printed in eleven point type, while the present one is in ten point, and the figures, on the whole, have been reduced about one third in size as compared with the previous edition. (The number of figures has grown from 194 to 529, and many of the figures of the old edition have been entirely redrawn). This reduction in size of type and figures is the one and only respect in which the new edition compares unfavorably with the old, but this reduction, as well as the much thinner paper used, was necessary in order to bring the work into a single volume, which, in spite of its more than 1,200 pages, is less than two Ta inches thick.

E

The year 1900, in which the second edition of "The Cell" was published, marks an epoch in the history of biology, for in that year Mendel's law of heredity was rediscovered; only two years later Wilson and his pupils had established the fact that the basis of Mendelian segregation lies in the separation and distribution of maternal and paternal chromosomes in the maturation of the germ cells. Although there was abundant evidence before 1900 that chromosomes were the bearers of inheritance factors, this evidence was general rather than specific, but with the discovery of the cellular basis of Mendelism, this evidence became not only specific but for the first time cytology became a leader rather than a follower in the study of genetics. Again in 1902 to 1905 Wilson and his pupils demonstrated that sex in certain insects is determined by the distribution of particular chromosomes to the germ cells, thus solving one of the oldest and most perplexing problems in the whole realm of biology. Finally, on the basis of this work, Morgan and his associates, working in close relations with Wilson, discovered not only the details of the "architecture of the germ plasm" but also some of the most important features of the cellular mechanism of heredity, variation and evolution. These discoveries represent the high points in the progress of biology during the present century, and of all of them Wilson could truthfully say, though his wellknown modesty would forbid, "All of which I saw and much of which I was." This book has been written out of this experience; it represents not only the mature point of view of the world's leading student and teacher of cytology, but it is to a large

1 The titles of the new chapters are: Chapter 3, "Reproduction and the life cycle"; Chapter 7, "Reproduction and sexuality in lower organisms'; Chapter 10, "Chromosomes and sex'; Chapter 11, "Morphological problems of the chromosomes"; Chapter 12, "Heredity and the chromosomes.''

extent the work of its leading investigator in this field.

It would be impossible in the space appropriate to a book review to deal at all thoroughly with the contents of a book of this size and character; the most that can be done is to point out some of the more general features and conclusions. In the preface Professor Wilson says that the book has been written from the standpoint of a zoological student of cytology and embryology; consequently emphasis is placed on the zoological and embryological phases of cytology rather than upon the botanical, histological, pathological, biophysical or biochemical aspects, though all of these are dealt with in more or less detail. The author says also that, while holding in view the needs of technical students and teachers of the subject, he has tried not wholly to lose sight of the interests of more general readers. But the subject of cytology is such a terra incognita even to scholars in other fields that it is doubtful whether clear ideas can be conveyed to those who have never seen cells under a microscope, and the terminology is so strange and forbidding that the general reader would need to be a capable and serious student to undertake to read such a book as this despite its beautiful style and the excellent glossary of more than twenty-four pages of distinctively cytological terms. But for students and teachers of cytology the book is indispensable; it is a handbook, encyclopedia and guide to practically all important work that has ever been done on cells. For years to come it will be the Bible of cytology, for in all probability there can never again be a single inclusive volume on this branch of science. The book is well documented by footnote references on almost every page, by two or three pages of special references at the end of each of the fourteen chapters and by fifty-eight pages of closely printed general references at the end of the volume. There is an excellent author's index of twelve pages and a subject index of sixteen pages which make it relatively easy to find any reference, topic or illustration in the book.

In a book of such extent as this is, there are naturally many minor features which could be criticized and a number of errors, typographical or otherwise. Most of these are easily detected and would be of more interest to a printer than to a biologist. However, there are a few errors of a more serious character. Wilson himself has called attention to an error at page 758 with respect to the sex chromosomes of a sea urchin, as determined by Tennent, Baltzer and others (SCIENCE, February 13, 1925). The most serious error that I have noted is on page 743 where it is stated that R. Hertwig found that "over-ripe eggs of frogs produce a large excess of females as