some months in cooperative state and federal work on war minerals and materials in Virginia. He is a member of the subcommittee of the National Research Council on materials for rapid highway and railroad construction behind the front, and an associate member of the war minerals committee. MR. W. S. FIELDS has resigned as assistant plant pathologist in the Arkansas Experiment Station to take up work as extension plant pathologist under the Bureau of Plant Industry, with headquarters in Mississippi. THE Bureau of Fisheries has engaged Professor J. Percy Moore, of the University of Pennsylvania, for investigation of fishes and other aquatic animals in relation to mosquito control in northern regions. For the present, at least, his investigation will be conducted in the general vicinity of Philadelphia. THE following men have been called for military service from the botanical department of the Michigan Agricultural College: Mr. C. F. Murphy and Mr. C. W. Bennett, graduate assistants in botany, and Mr. Ray Nelson, research assistant in plant pathology. THE geologists of the Ohio Academy of Science for their spring meeting made an excursion to the southern part of the state. The party, twelve in number, left Columbus at noon on May 31 and returned late on June 2. The Silurian formations of Highland county were visited under the lead of A. F. Foerste, and the Mississippian and Pennsylvania of Pike and Jackson counties under the lead of J. E. Hyde and Wilber Stout. Stops were made at the Serpent Mound in Adams county and at Camp Sherman. FOUR curators of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania are now in the army, while two others are in Egypt excavating for the Eckley B. Coxe, Jr., Expedition and can not return until after the war. Dr. Stephen Langdon, curator of the Babylonian section, is in the British army and will remain there during the war. He is professor of Assyriology at Oxford University, but was given permission last year to come to this country and accept the post of curator on condition that he give one course of lectures a year in Oxford. Owing to raising the age limit he was not permitted to leave England this spring and is serving with the colors. Dr. William C. Farabee, who led the museum's Amazon Expedition for three years, has just been appointed a captain in the intelligence corps and will soon leave for service. Stephen B. Luce, of the Mediterranean Section, has been appointed a lieutenant in the Navy and is now in service. H. U. Hall, assistant curator of the American Section, is serving in France with the Keystone Division. THE Royal medals of the Royal Geographical Society, London, have been awarded by the council as follows: The founder's medal to Miss Gertrude Bell, for her important explorations and travels in Asia Minor, Syria, Arabia, and on the Euphrates; the patron's medal to Commandant Tilho, French Colonial Infantry, for his long-continued surveys and explorations in northern Africa. Owing to the shortage of gold the medals will, with the King's approval, be struck in bronze instead of gold, and the balance of their value be given in war bonds. The other awards are as follows: The Murchison grant to Mr. C. A. Reid, for his maps of the Belgian Congo, which he has placed at the disposal of the society; the Cuthbert Peek grant to Mr. G. F. Archer, for his surveys in East Africa connecting Major Gwynn's Abyssinian triangulation with the triangulation of East Africa; the Back grant to Captain Bartlett, for his distinguished leadership after the loss of the Karluk; the Gill memorial to Major Cuthbert Christy, R.A.M.C., for his surveys and explorations in central Africa. DR. WILLIAM TOWNSEND PORTER, professor of physiology in the Harvard Medical School, will be the commencement speaker at Milton Academy on June 15. PROFESSOR WILLIAM S. FRANKLIN, of the department of physics of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, lectured before the Washington Academy of Sciences, on June 7, on "Some needed lines of research in meteorology." DR. E. E. SOUTHARD, of the Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts State Psychopathic Hospital, gave a lecture on May 14 at the University of Chicago on "War neuroses after the war." THE Ramsay Memorial Fund, founded under the presidency of Mr. Asquith to raise £100,000 for Ramsay Memorial Fellowships in chemical science, and a laboratory of engineering chemistry at University College, London, has made considerable progress in recent months. Subscriptions and promises to date amount to £32,600. The latest donations include: M. Eugène Schneider, £500; Lady Durning Lawrence, £100 (second donation); Sir G. H. Kenrick, £100; Académie des Sciences de l'Institut de France (of which Sir William Ramsay was a corresponding member), £80; the Fertilizer Manufacturers' Association, £52 10 s.; his Highness the Maharaja Dhiraj of Patiala, £50. "Memorials of the Life and Work of Sir William Ramsay," by Sir William A. Tilden, will be published shortly by the Macmillans. IN memory of Lieutenant William T. Fitzsimon, Kansas City, who was killed last September, when the German airplanes bombarded the Harvard University Hospital in France, the park commissioners of Kansas City have decided to erect a memorial in the form of a public drinking fountain which will bear an inscription relating the details of Dr. Fitzsimon's work and death. CHARLES CHRISTOPHER TROWBRIDGE, assistant professor of physics in Columbia University, died suddenly on June 2, aged forty-eight years. Dr. Trowbridge was the author of researches on fluorescence and phosphorescene in gases and also on physical aspects of the flight and migration of birds. DR. JOSEPH DENIKER, the distinguished French anthropologist, died on March 18, aged sixty-six years. Dr. Deniker, who was chief librarian of the Paris Natural History Museum, was born in Russia. ALFRED GORDON SOLOMON, of London, known for his contributions to the chemistry of brewing, has died in his sixtieth year. UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS A GIFT of $400,000 to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was announced by President Richard C. Maclaurin at a meeting of the corporation on June 7. The name of the donor was not made public. The income of the fund will be used for general purposes of the institute during the war and thereafter applied to the development of courses in chemistry and physics. THE alliance between Columbia University and the Presbyterian Hospital, which was first made in 1911, and was planned to result in the establishment of a great medical center in New York City, has been cancelled by the managers of the hospital. Columbia University was unable to obtain the money needed for its share of the buildings and rejected the plans proposed as a condition of an endowment from the Rockefeller Foundation. DR. JOHN T. FAIG, professor of mechanical engineering in the University of Cincinnati, has been appointed president of the Ohio Mechanics Institute, succeeding Professor John Shearer, who has been head of the institute for twenty years. Professor Faig is now taking charge of the college of engineering in the absence of Dean Herman Schneider, who is engaged in military service in Washington. DR. F. OCARANZA, professor of physiology at the University of Mexico, has been appointed secretary of the faculty of medicine. He is at the same time secretary of the Academy of Medicine. THOMAS J. MACKIE has been appointed professor of bacteriology in the South African Medical College, Cape Town. DR. T. FRANKLIN SIBLY, of University College, Cardiff, has been appointed professor of geology at Armstrong College, Newcastle-uponTyne, in succession to the late Professor Lebour. DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE DESMOGNATHUS FUSCUS AGAIN IN SCIENCE (N. S., Vol. 47, Apr. 19, 1918, pp. 390-391) Professor H. H. Wilder under the heading "Desmognathus fuscus [sic]" has much to say about the grammatical sins of biologists in the use of systematic names. These I am not defending, nor is it my intention here to analyze the motives which induced the International Zoological Congress to refuse to sanction subsequent correction of such errors. But the case which serves him for a heading is of a different nature. He characterizes Spencer F. Baird's use of the combination Desmognathus fuscus as a "mistake" which was followed by several illustrious men, both anatomists and systematists, among others by Wiedersheim (1887), W. K. Parker (1879), Boulenger (1882), and as late as 1909, by Gadow." I think it can be shown, however, that these illustrious men, as far as the grammar is concerned, were as correct as the other zoologists quoted by him, who wrote Desmognathus fusca, both forms being grammatically correct. 66 The rule governing the gender of Greek composite words is, as I understand it, that the unmutated composites follow the gender of the final component. Thus dermatochelys is feminine because chelys is feminine, chelys being Greek for turtle, and dermatochelys for a leather-back turtle. Mutated composite words, on the other hand, except personal names, are of common gender, that is, they may be used either as masculines or feminines. Thus kallithrix as a zoological appellative may be used either as a masculine or as a feminine noun, notwithstanding the fact that thrix, hair, is feminine. As an example of the above rule, let us examine a familiar word commonly used in forming zoological generic appellatives, for in stance, rhynchos, a beak, a bill (rhamphos might just as well have been chosen). The gender of this Greek word is neuter. Now, were I to describe and classify beaks only, I might speak of a goniorhynchos and of an orthorhynchos according to whether the beak were angular or straight, and these composite words being unmutated would also remain neuters. But when I designate a fish or a bird as as Goniorhynchus or Orthorhynchus meaning a fish with an angular beak or a bird with a straight bill, these appellatives assume the common gender and the specific adjectives may be masculine or feminine according to my choice. Thus it would be grammatically correct to say either Goniorhynchus albus or Goniorhynchus alba, but certainly NOT Goniorhynchus album, in spite of the fact that rhynchos is neuter. Similarly, if one were to speak of a jaw as a desmognathos, its gender is undoubtedly feminine, gnathos being feminine, but naming, as Spencer F. Baird did, a salamander Desmognathus he created an appellative of the common gender and he was at perfect liberty to use the masculine form of the adjective fuscus in conjunction with it. He certainly committed no grammatical blunder “in all its shame." Equally correct was Dr. J. P. Moore when he instituted the genus Leurognathus for another salamander and named the species Leurognathus marmorata.1 It will thus be seen that Baird and those who follow him have not "changed the grammatical gender of the noun gnathos," but have simply availed themselves of their right to select from the common gender of the salamander Desmognathus that which in their opinion was most consistent with general zoological practise. This, it is interesting to note, has been to regard the mutated appellatives formed by combination with gnathos as of the masculine gender. Thus the mammalian genus Perognathus of Wied was originally proposed as masculine and generally so accepted. Erignathus was proposed by Theo. N. Gill as masculine and has been universally so accepted. Among snakes we have Leptognathus, by Duméril and Bibron Günther, Jan and Cope; Lycognathus, Ischdesignated as masculine and so accepted by nognathus and Petalognathus, similarly pro posed, and also accepted by Boulenger. Among the frogs we have Cystignathus fuscus Günther; C. ocellatus Tschudi, Peters; C. labyrinthicus Duméril and Bibron, Reinhardt 1 The erroneous quotation Leurognathus marmoratus in the check list referred to by Professor Wilder was due to a lapsus and the use of the masculine gender in this case was quite unintentional. The incorrect citation of Dunn's D. ochrophæa carolinensis is also greatly regretted. and Lütken, Steindachner; C. pentadactylus Peters; C. mystacinus Burmeister; C. podicipinus Cope, etc. Generic names ending in gnathus are as rare among birds as those ending in ryhnchus and ramphus are common (and needless to say no ornithologist, or other zoologist, has used the latter as neuters), but we have at least Hemignathus which they have accepted as masculine without exception, among them the purist of purists, Dr. J. Cabanis who is responsible for Hemignathus procerus. Finally, giving a few examples from the fishes, I quote Hybognathus accepted as masculine by Girard, Jordan and Gilbert, Cochlognathus by the same authorities, and last but not least Syngnathus proposed as a masculine by Linnæus himself and so accepted by all subsequent ichthyologists. In fact, it is probably not too risky to say that not until Cope discovered that the unmutated gnathos is feminine (reversing his own previous practise), were any of the mutated composites treated as feminine. It is also safe to say that most of the illustrious men who adhered to the masculine gender, when so indicated by the original proposer of the name, knew what they were about and showed proper "respect to the Greek language." LEONHARD STEJNEGER EVOLUTION OF BACTERIA I WAS greatly interested in Professor Buchanan's article in SCIENCE1 entitled "The Evolution of Bacteria." It is not my intention at the present time to take up at length those points raised by him which are admittedly matters of opinion. In matters of classification, there are many possible interpretations of available facts, which can not be easily proved or disproved. The conclusions reached were based on the facts at hand, though it was admitted at the outset that the facts were inadequate. The final answer to these questions can not be obtained at the desk, but in the laboratory. Most of the questions concerning bacterial relationship and descent can be tested experimentally by a study of their metabolic and antigenic characters, 1 SCIENCE, 1918, N. S., XLIII., 320. and it is such investigations that my article was intended to stimulate. Dr. Buchanan did, however, raise certain questions of fact which require some comment. In my argument in favor of the primitive character of bacteria the unique combination of the ability to subsist on simple inorganic compounds plus an extreme sensitiveness to sunlight, which excluded aid from that source, was advanced. This combination does not obtain in either plant or animal cells. Cells so constituted as to live on simple inorganic compounds without the aid of an external source of energy may, it seems to me, reasonably be considered as primitive. The sulphur bacteria, mentioned by Dr. Buchanan, contain a pigment which protects them from sunlight and which according to Englemann apparently functions somewhat like the chlorophyl in plants. Molisch dissents from Engelmann's view but claims that these bacteria must have organic food for their nutrition. Why they should be considered more primitive than the prototrophic bacteria is, therefore, not altogether clear. In regard to the source of the volatile acids and alcohols for bacterial nutrition, I might refer to Kaserer's2 report of nitrifying bacilli which convert (NH),CO, to formic acid and free N, or nitrates. These compounds are not, therefore, necessarily the product of carbohydrate fermentation. The author draws the inference that by utilization of CO, I had in mind oxidation. It requires no profound knowledge of chemistry to realize that such a thing is not possible. What was implied throughout was an ability on the part of the cell to assimilate CO,. Instances of such assimilation are numerous and this power is particularly evident among the nitrogen-fixing bacteria, the energy apparently being obtained from the oxidation of the N with a simultaneous reduction of the CO2. advanced types flourishing in inorganic media containing nitrates and ethyl-alcohol have been described by Hohl1 and by Burri and Stutzer.5 It Because a group has not been extensively studied is no proof that it is not common. is sufficient that representative types have been described. The group may well be common and yet not well known. The diphtheroids, the aciduric bacilli, the cellulose fermenters, are quite common, but were not well known five to ten years ago. The resemblance between the red and yellow bacilli and the red and yellow cocci is only a superficial one. They produce pigments of the same chrome, but the pigments produced by the two classes of bacteria are not of the same type. The pigments produced by the cocci belong to the lipochrome group, give the typical lipocyanin test and their production is not affected by temperature. The pigments produced by the red bacilli do not give the lipocyanin test and their production is markedly affected by temperature. There are in addition marked metabolic differences between these two groups of organisms. The B. prodigiosus and related bacilli are more actively fermentative and many produce gas-largely CO2. They as a rule liquefy gelatin actively while the red cocci as a rule do not. The bacilli are facultative anaerobes, the cocci are almost strict aerobes. The ability on the part of B. aerogenes to fix nitrogen was reported by Lohnis who studied the behavior of a considerable number of bacteria in this respect. In conclusion I grant that my thesis has not been proved. Neither has it been disproved. If it stimulates investigation along these lines the paper will have been justified. I. J. KLIGLER ORGANIC CHEMICALS FOR RESEARCH, OR THE NEED OF A PHILANTHROPIST PROFESSOR ROGER ADAMS has recently published in these columns1 an account of the admirable work which the laboratory of or4 Land Jahr. der Schweitz, 1906, 510. 5 Cent. f. Bakt., II. Abt., 1895, I., 257. 6 Cent. f. Bakt., II. Abt., 1907, XIX., 87. ganic chemistry at the University of Illinois is doing to keep up the supply of certain organic chemicals for research and industrial needs. However, when one compares the limited list which that laboratory is manufacturing with the lists in the catalogues of German chemical firms, the realization comes home that the rarer organic preparations are no longer available and probably will not be available as long as the war lasts, and that, unless some measure is taken to prevent such an occurrence, Germany will again regain her trade in this line after the war. It is well enough to say that we will not use German-made goods, but there would appear to be only one alternative, i. e., the cessation, or at least the slowing up of research in organic chemistry if these essential starting materials are not available, or if they are available at relatively enormous prices. The question therefore arises in my mind: "Why can not some man of wealth make his name blessed by endowing a laboratory which shall prepare these rarer organic chemicals against the needs of research work?" Undoubtedly the German supply houses sold many of these products at a loss before the war, counting the loss as a necessary part of their advertising propaganda, which was meant to build up the idea that Germany was the great chemical center of the world. Our commercial firms, unfortunately, do not see things in that light, and usually refuse to follow paths where a sure and handsome profit does not lead them. If some man of wealth can not be found to whom this suggestion would appeal, what is there to prevent one of our research foundations from supplying the need? How could research and discovery be better furthered in this particular field of science than by furnishing the essential basic materials to a host of research workers in our colleges and universities? If such a plan as is herein proposed were adopted the United States would without doubt secure and retain first rank in the field of organic research. The initial cost would be comparatively small as measured by the scientific results, for the in |