uary 5th, 1918, the following were elected to serve for the ensuing year: President, William B. Scott; Vice-Presidents, Albert A. Michelson, George Ellery Hale, Joseph G. Rosengarten; Secretaries, I. Minis Hays, Arthur W. Goodspeed, Harry F. Keller, Bradley Moore Davis; Curators, Charles L. Doolittle, William P. Wilson, Leslie W. Miller; Treasurer, Henry La Barre Jayne; Councilors, to serve for three years, Bertram B. Boltwood, Ernest W. Brown, Francis B. Gummere, Herbert S. Jennings.

OFFICERS of the Geological Society of America for 1918, were elected at the recent meeting, as follows: President, Whitman Cross, Washington, D. C.; First Vice-President, Bailey Willis, Stanford University, Cal.; Second Vice-President, Frank Leverett, Ann Arbor, Mich.; Third Vice-President, F. H. Knowlton, Washington, D. C.; Secretary, Edmund Otis Hovey, New York; Treasurer, E. B. Mathews, Baltimore, Md.; Editor, Joseph Stanley-Brown, New York; Librarian, Frank R. VanHorn, Cleveland, Ohio; Councilors (1918-1920), Joseph Barrell, New Haven, Conn., R. A. Daly, Cambridge Mass.

THE officers of the Brooklyn Entomological Society elected at the annual meeting on January 10 are as follows: W. T. Bather, president; W. T. Davis, vice-president; Chris. E. Olsen, treasurer; J. R. de la Torre Bueno, recording secretary; R. P. Dow, corresponding secretary. Publication Committee: R. P. Dow; Editor, C. Schaefer and J. R. de la Torre Bueno.

PROFESSOR R. A. SAMPSON has been elected president of the Scottish Meteorological Society.

THE portrait of Professor Thomas C. Chamberlin, head of the department of geology at the University of Chicago, referred to in a recent issue of SCIENCE, will be presented to the university at the June convocation.

MAYOR HYLAN has appointed Dr. J. Lewis Amster, of the Bronx, health commissioner of New York City, to succeed Dr. Haven Emerson. Dr. Amster is a graduate of the Cornell University Medical School, class of 1902.

DR. R. W. SHUFELDT, of Washington, D. C., having made application for duty on the active list of the Medical Corps of the Army, has been assigned by General Gorgas to the Army Medical Museum. His work will consist in modernizing the present collection and preparing for the incoming medical and surgical material from the front.

THE following committee on the supply of organic chemicals for research during the war has been appointed by the American Chemical Society: E. Emmet Reid, chairman, Roger Adams, H. L. Fisher, J. W. E. Glattfeld, W. J. Hale.

AT the ninth annual meeting of the Amercan Phytopathological Society a movement was started which indicates that plant pathologists are not merely ready but determined to transform their assets and resources into war energy. In order that crop production may be increased by a more concerted effort than ever before put forth to stop the enormous leaks due to plant diseases, a War Emergency Board of seven members was created. The members of the board with the regions which they represent and the special lines of activity which they will supervise are as follows: Chairman, H. H. Whetzel, Cornell University, for the northeast, College and Extension Education; F. D. Kern, the Pennsylvania State College, for the central east, Man-power Census and Publicity; H. W. Barre, Clemson College, for the south, Southern Problems and Needs; G. H. Coons, Michigan Agricultural College, for the central states, Fungicides and Machinery, Supplies and Prices; E. C. Stakman, University of Minnesota, for the great plains, Emergency Research; H. P. Barss, Oregon Agricultural College, for the west, Western Problems and Needs; G. R. Lyman, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Plant Disease Survey, and Crop Loss Estimates.

VILHJALMUR STEFANSSON, the arctic explorer, according to Captain A. Lane, who arrived on January 15 at Fairbanks, Alaska, from the Arctic Ocean, bringing direct news from the explorer, was preparing to make a 300-mile dash over the ice north and west of the western Canadian Arctic coast during the

chair is to be nominated for election by the council by an expert board, of which Sir Wm. Osler is chairman.

Ar the request of the federal government a free course in wireless telegraphy will be given at Bowdoin College. Professor Charles C. Hutchings and Professor Rhys D. Evans are to be in charge of the course.

DR. RAYMOND PEARL, biologist in the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station, and at present at the head of the statistical department of the United States Food Administration, has been appointed head of the department of biometry and vital statistics in the new school of hygiene and public health of the Johns Hopkins University.

DR. PHILIP A. SHAFFER, of Washington University, has been called to the national service. He has been succeeded by Dr. A. Canby Robinson, associate professor of medicine.

MR. ANDREW Boss has been appointed vicedirector of the Minnesota Experiment Station in addition to his present duties.

DR. C. H. SHATTUCK, recently head of the department of forestry at the University of Idaho, has accepted an appointment as professor of forestry in the University of California.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE A SUGGESTION TO MORPHOLOGISTS AND

OTHERS

IN the course of a year I look over a good many zoological papers on different topics outside of my own work-papers on genetics or the many aspects of embryology or ecology -and I am impressed with a general carelessness which exists among the writers on one point which probably seems unimportant to many of them but which to me seems of very considerable moment. The point is that very few of them give the name of the taxonomist who identified the species with which they have been working, nor do they indicate the preservation of typical material of the adult form so that the specific identification can be tested at any time.

Confusion has already resulted from this

lack, and more will come. In many cases very great uncertainty exists as to the exact species with which the writer was working. If I were to write a paper in which the name of a beetle was given, my accuracy would be attested by the fact that I inserted, in parenthesis, "Determined by Schwarz" or "by Casey" or "by Fall," or, if it were a Protozoan, the same thing would happen if I inserted in parenthesis "Determined by Calkins," or, if it were a cactus, "Determined by Rose" or "by Trelease," or if it were a fly, 'Determined by Knab or "by Aldrich ” or "by Johnson" or "by Malloch " or "by Parker" or "by Townsend." Such a statement as this would at once set at rest any question of accuracy, and would at the same time indicate the probable place at which representative specimens could be found in case of accident to the author of the paper or in case he should not himself preserve such material.

I have never done any embryological work, and in the recent work on chromosomes and the like I do not know how important it is that specific identification should be made of the forms studied; it may be entirely unimportant, if the genus is all right. But knowing, for example, that there are more than fifty species of Drosophila in the United States, it gives me an idea of inexactness when I see so many of these recent genetic papers, having to do with this genus, in which no species is mentioned. The writers seem to be entirely indifferent on this point.

Beginning with Howard Ayres's well-known paper "On the Development of Ecanthus niveus and its Parasite Teleas," in which he writes in one place of teleas as "a parasitic Ichneumon fly" and in another as one of the "Pteromalidæ," a paper which was awarded the Walker Prize for 1883, and concerning which it must be said that no true teleas has ever been reared from Ecanthus eggs,1 and extending down to the present day, hundreds

1 It is quite possible that the parasite which Ayres had was Polynema bifasciatipenne Girault, a species belonging to an entirely different family -the Mymaridæ.-L. O. H.

of papers have been published with almost equal lack of precise and attested knowledge of the identity of the form treated.

Of course some workers are more careful than others. E. B. Wilson seems to me to be a man who wishes to know exactly what he is working with. The same may be said for J. T. Patterson and for S. I. Kornhauser and others, but on the whole I think that this suggestion is worth while and I hope that it will appeal to many.

L. O. HOWARD

SCIENTIFIC BOOKS

The Anatomy of Woody Plants. By EDWARD CHARLES JEFFREY. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. October, 1917. With 306 illustrations. Pp. x+478. Price $4.

This work, by the well-known professor of plant morphology in Harvard University, has been expected with much interest. The expression in the Preface, "Woody or so-called vascular plants," suggests that the two terms are synonymous, and, as a matter of fact, herbaceous forms are by no means neglected, though special prominence is given to the woody types, in accordance with the author's belief in their primitive nature.

Great stress is laid throughout on the supposed "Canons of Comparative Anatomy " formulated in Chapter XVII. It is even stated in the Preface that " any conclusions not in harmony with them have ordinarily not been considered " (with certain exceptions). This at once indicates the highly deductive character of the treatment, though the word "induction" is often used. The book, in fact, is essentially an able exposition of the views of Professor Jeffrey and his school; it will therefore be read with the most advantage by those who are in a position to read critically.

The general plan of the book is as follows: After a short chapter on the cell, we come to the tissue-systems. Next follows a chapter on wood in general, succeeded by four on the secondary wood and one on the phloem. The epidermis and the fundamental tissues occupy Chapters IX. and X. Then we have a chapter

on the definitions of the organs, succeeded by three on the root, stem and leaf, respectively. Then follow two chapters, which it is a welcome surprise to find in an anatomical textbook, on the microsporangium, and on the megasporangium and seed. We then arrive at the important Chapter XVII., which lays down the author's "Canons of Comparative Anatomy." The arrangement of the next twelve chapters is systematic, from the Lycopodiales to the Monocotyledons. Chapter XXX. is an anatomical structure and climatic evolution; Chapter XXXI. treats of the evolutionary principles exhibited by the Compositae, and the last chapter is devoted to anatomical technique. The arrangement involves a certain amount of repetition, which, however, serves to bring out the points on which the author desires to lay special stress.

In defining the tissue-systems the author returns to Sachs's old divisions, the epidermal, fibrovascular and fundamental systems. The stele, so prominent as an anatomical unit in the work of the last quarter of a century, thus disappears; it is rarely mentioned and is not to be found in the index. This striking reversion in terminology is intimately connected with the author's theory that the pith is of common origin with the cortex and so does not belong to the central cylinder.

Much attention is given to the wood (especially the secondary wood) as this is the tissue for which the best fossil evidence is available; The libriform fibers are derived from tracheides, not from parenchyma as Strasburger held. Evidence is given also for the origin of xylem-parenchyma and of the so-called medullary rays from tracheides, and some excellent new figures of Lepidodendroid structure are furnished, in support of this view.

The statement (p. 49 and elsewhere) that tangential pits are absent in Paleozoic woods, is erroneous; they have long been described in Pitys antiqua and also occur in Mesoxylon multirame and doubtless in other species. In Chapter VII. there is an excellent comparative account of xylem-vessels in Gnetales and Angiosperms.

The epidermis is said to be of "relatively slight phylogenetic interest." Yet the stoma is probably the most conservative organ' of plants.

The common term medullary rays is repeatedly condemned, on the ground that their relation to the pith is only a semblance," due to obsolescence of the primary wood. This may be true, but the relation is of very old date, for it was already well established in the Calamites and some of the Cycadofilices. From the author's point of view the wide ray is a compound one, derived from the aggregate type of ray; the vascular bundles were not originally separate, and the statements of Sanio and Sachs as to the bridging over of the primary gaps by interfascicular cambium are rejected. They are, however, true, as a description of the facts, and hold good for the young Calamite as well as for more modern plants.

On the general question of the relation of herbaceous to arboreal types, it may be pointed out that there is no proof that our existing herbaceous Lycopods came from arboreal ancestors; the herbaceous Selaginellites was contemporary with the arboreal Lepidodendreæ. The siphonostele is held to have primitively possessed phloem on the inner as well as the outer surface. This type of structure, however, is rare among Paleozoic plants.

In the chapter on the Microsporangium the author adopts the view that the higher plants arose from forms like the thallose Liverworts, and quotes Bower's "Origin of a Land Flora" in support of this theory. No mention is made of Professor Bower's subsequent change of view.

The "Canons of Comparative Anatomy" which the author insists on are three in number-Recapitulation, Conservative Organs and Reversion. The doctrine of recapitulation in the development of the individual of the history of the race is well known, though no longer accepted without question. The author points out that negative evidence is of little or no value, but doubts may arise as to what testimony is negative; in a pineseedling, for example, short-shoots are absent,

but foliage-leaves on the main stem are present.

Among conservative organs the leaf is first cited, and then the reproductive axis. The present writer is given the credit for the latter idea; it belongs rather to Solms-Laubach, but neither generalized the conclusion, which was confined to the peduncles of Cycads. Floral axes are subject to modifications of their own, and are not necessarily conservative. As regards the root, the primary structure is no doubt highly conservative, but it does not follow that the same is true of its secondary modifications.

The word "reversion" is used in a peculiar sense, for certain effects of wounding, believed by the author and some others to be reminiscent of ancestral characters. This doctrine has hitherto been employed only in support of certain controversial opinions, and has not yet been adequately subjected to impartial criticism.

The worst of all such canons is that every writer applies them as suits his individual views, and treats inconvenient cases as exceptions.

In the systematic part of the book we first come to the author's well-known division of the higher plants into Lycopsida, without, and Pteropsida, with leaf-gaps in the vascular ring, a classification widely accepted, though it is now realized by many botanists that Sphenophylls and Equisetales have little in common with the Lycopod group.

The author's doctrine of the cortical origin of the pith is applied even to the Lycopods, where the evidence seems peculiarly unfavorable to this interpretation. It is a pity that the exact developmental processes involved are not more clearly explained.

The author's views on the evolution of the Osmundaceæ are well expounded, and a strong case made out, which would have been more convincing if the facts on the other side, brought forward by Kidston and GwynneVaughan, had been dealt with.

The lower seed-plants are divided into Archigymnospermæ, including Cycadofilicales, Cycadales, Cordaitales and Ginkgoales, and