civilization has been running along too long on merely the two golden wheels of art and literature. It needs two more wheels to keep abreast with the rest of the world, a wheel of science and a wheel of industry.

EDWIN F. HOPKINS has resigned as plant pathologist of the University of Missouri to accept a position as plant physiologist with the Marble Laboratory, Inc., of Canton, Pa. He will be engaged in a study of problems related to cold storage.

LEAVE of absence has been granted by the Corporation of Yale University to Dr. Lafayette B. Mendel, Sterling professor of physiological chemisry, to enable him to deliver a course of lectures on the Hitchcock Foundation at the University of California in the late spring of the present university year. It is the intention of Professor Mendel to leave New Haven after the dedication of the Sterling Chemistry Laboratory in April, to join the faculty of the University of California for the intersession, which continues from May 14 to June 23, 1923. Professor Mendel has chosen for his subject "New aspects of the physiology of nutrition."

DR. CHARLES H. GILBERT, of Stanford University, California, who during the past summer has made an extensive investigation of the salmon fisheries in the Alaska Peninsula Fisheries Reservation, created in February, 1922, was in Washington from October 18 to 26 conferring with officers of the Bureau of Fisheries regarding conditions that he had found in the reservation, outlining future work to be taken up there and discussing the regulations necessary for the calendar year 1923. Dr. Gilbert visited Seattle on November 16 and 17 for the purpose of conferring with people operating in the Alaska Peninsula Reservation and discussing permits that will be issued for the operations that will be allowed in the reservation the coming year.

A DANISH Scientific mission, under the leadership of Professor Olufson, accompanied by the French savant, Professor Bourcart, of the Sorbonne, left Paris early in the present month on a six months' expedition in the northern

Sahara, where it will cover a distance of some 3,000 miles. The members of the mission include the botanist, Dr. Gram, and the geologists, Drs. Storgaard and Kayser. The party, which will start from Tunis, intends to make a detailed study of the Shat-el-Jerid. From Nefta it will proceed to Tuggurt, and thence to Wargla, in the Algerian Sahara. Next it will go to Insalah, and endeavor to explore the Hoggar Mountains.

CHAS. R. FETTKE, associate professor of geology and mineralogy at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, Pa., has completed an investigation of the oil resources of

the coals and carbonaceous shales of Pennsylvania for the State Bureau of Topographic and Geological Survey.

DR. CHARLES P. BERKEY, professor of geology at Columbia University, has returned from China where he was with the Third Asiatic Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History.

DR. EDGAR F. SMITH, former provost of the University of Pennsylvania and president of the American Chemical Society, gave a lecture at the University of Pennsylvania on November 3 on Joseph Priestley, under the auspices of the Priestley Club.

A COURSE of eight lectures on "Secretion and Internal Secretion" was given by Professor Swale Vincent, M.D., D.Sc., professor of physiology in the University of London, at Middlesex Hospital Medical School, during November.

DR. JOSEPH S. AMES, professor of physics at the Johns Hopkins University, director, Office of Aeronautical Intelligence of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, spoke on November 23 before the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, on "Recent aeronautic investigations and the airplane industry."

DR. AUGUST KROGH, professor of zoophysiology in the University of Copenhagen, lectured at the University of Pennsylvania on November 14 and 15 on "Nervous and hormonel control of capillary contractility" and on "The exchange of substances through the capillary wall." Dr. Krogh addressed a special meeting of the Entomological Society of Washington

on November 8 on the subject of insect respiration.

DR. HUGH POTTER BAKER, executive secretary of the American Paper and Pulp Association, formerly dean of the New York State College of Forestry, lectured on "Forests and forestry in New England" before the Middletown (Conn.) Scientific Association on November 14.

PROFESSOR ELIAS JUDAH DURAND, chairman of the department of botany in the University of Minnesota, died at his home in St. Paul on October 29, of cancer. He was born in Canandaigua, N. Y., in 1870 and after graduating from Cornell University in 1893 became a fellow, assistant and instructor in botany at the university. In 1910 he went to the University of Missouri as assistant professor of botany, being made associate the next year. In 1918 he was called to the University of Minnesota as professor of botany. He was the author of important contributions to mycology.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL

NOTES

THE annual report of the treasurer of Yale University for the year ending June 30 records an unusually large number of gifts, made to meet the conditions of the $3,000,000 subscribed to general endowment by Mrs. Stephen V. Harkness. As a result of these contributions and the establishment of six new professorship funds in memory of John W. Sterling, '64, of almost $250,000 each, the total of Yale's endowment funds is shown to be $32,662,011.95, an increase of $6,985,001.25 in the last year. Gifts for building and other non-permanent funds received in the same period aggregated $1,651,290.68, while gifts to income amounted to $740,642.24. Included in the latter were contributions of $185,000 from the General Education Board and $30,000 from the Commonwealth Fund to enable the Yale School of Medicine to provide funds for the reconstruction of two wards in the New Haven Hospital, and to build laboratories in that institution, with which the school is affiliated; $70,000 more from the Commonwealth Fund towards the expenses of the department of

surgery; and $286,664 received through 9,493 contributors to the Alumni Fund, the principal of which was also increased by $147,060.41.

THE West Indian Agricultural College, which was formally opened by Sir Samuel Wilson, governor of Trinidad and Tobago, on October 16, has begun its session in a temporary building erected at St. Augustine. Eighteen students have been enrolled, including three post-graduates, and this is regarded as a promising start for a new institution of the kind. Tenders have been invited for the construction of the permanent college building, of which Major H. C. Corlette, is the architect.

DR. CHARLES WESLEY FLINT was inaugurated as chancellor of Syracuse University on November 17.

DR. EDMUND C. SANFORD, president emeritus of Clark College and at present head of the department of psychology, has been appointed acting president of Clark University in the absence of President Wallace W. Atwood. The trustees have granted to President Atwood a four months leave of absence for travel in Europe. President Atwood expects to visit the leading educational institutions of Europe, and will observe teaching methods in western Europe.

DR. STANHOPE BAYNE-JONES, associate professor of bacteriology at Johns Hopkins University, has been appointed professor of bacteriology at the University of Rochester.

DR. HOWARD DE FOREST, formerly of the Indianapolis Normal School science department, and of the botany department of the University of Kansas, has been appointed assistant professor of botany at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

MISS ELIZABETH EVANS LORD, psychologist for the Chicago Juvenile Court, has been appointed clinical and research assistant in the Yale University Psycho-Clinic.

DR. H. STANLEY ALLEN, of the University of Edinburgh, has been called to the chair of natural philosophy in the United College of St. Andrews University, which became vacant at the end of the last academical year by the retirement of Professor Arthur Butler.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPOND

ENCE

RELATIVITY

TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: Like many others, I commonly read whatever, from books to mere notes, by Dr. Edwin E. Slosson, comes to my notice. Generally I am well pleased, but an exception has just occurred. I very much dislike that pleasantly written article on Relativity in the Scientific Monthly for November, 1922. I dislike it because, giving the words used the only meanings recognized by layman and scientist alike, save a few specialists, several of the assertions are sheer nonsense. Certainly no system of equations, however clever, can prove to one of common sense, the existence of a real fourth dimension; that time and space are not wholly independent; that just because we and the Martians may be unable to synchronize our clocks there is no 'now"; that time is "curved"; that a phenomenon may be seen before it happens; that the mere inclusion of gravitation in a more comprehensive expression eliminates it from nature; and so forth, and so on, through a long list of absurdities-absurd, that is, if their customary meanings be given to the words used.

Such expressions catch the attention, because they seem to declare the truth of amazing paradoxes, but they are, after all, mighty poor paradoxes, for their whole secret is nothing but the assigning of strange meanings to familiar words; a sort of cryptic writing. Naturally, all such "crazy" expressions, crazy so long as unexplained, inevitably breed contempt for science and the scientist.

Let us, then, in popularizing the thoughts of specialists, first understand clearly just what those thoughts are, and then put them in the words and circumlocutions of the other fellow. The real relativist is not playing hob with our understanding of nature, however different his descriptions of certain phenomena may seem; but if the language of his average popularizer is to be taken literally, and no hint, as a rule, is given of any other meaning, more topsyturvy indeed than the Land of Alice is this finite, limitless universe that simultaneously will be, was, and is. W. J. HUMPHREYS

TINGITIDE OR TINGIDÆ

IN connection with this subject there are some other points which I think should be mentioned. The Ionic genitive Τίγγιος and the Attic genitive -sw show without a doubt that the word Tiyyi is an -stem. In Latin it would be an i-stem, Tingi, and the genitive Tingis.

That there is a Latin word Tinge of which the stem is Tingit does not concern us for Fabricius did not use it. He could easily have done so had he wished. While these words have the same root they have different stems. The International Rules instruct us to add -idæ to the stem of the name of the type genus. They do not expect us to worry about other words based on the same root. Fabricius was a Greek purist and he based his name on the word TiyyCS, -to (Ionic, -ew (Attic). In writing this word in Latin he did so correctly using Tingis in the genitive. The stem of the name of the type genus is, therefore, Tingi. The family name correctly should be Tingiidæ.

It is unfortunate that Westwood omitted one i in writing the family name but before the days of the International Commission this was sometimes done. We often write Mantidæ for example based on Mantis, genitive -to (Ionic), -sw (Attic). If we follow the International Rules we must insert the other i and write Tingiidæ. And most of us agree that the rules should be followed.

BUREAU OF ENTOMOLOGY

A. C. BAKER

A CHEMICAL SPELLING MATCH

IN SCIENCE for October 20, Dr. L. O. Howard comments in rather facetious vein upon a chemical spelling match described in the number for September 29. He mentions his struggles with chemical names during the twenty years he was permanent secretary of the A. A. A. S. and rather approvingly drags in a quotation from Forel, who seemed to think that no true scientist uses long words. Dr. Howard is more specific and applies this to chemistry. He arouses not the resentment but the sympathy of the chemist because of the suspicion that he is envious of a body of knowledge (call it science

for short) that has such a precisely descriptive and stable system of nomenclature as chemistry.

The chemist, if diligent, can make at least one new compound every day or so and in his spare moments give it a name. Often it is easier than deciding what to call a new baby. The name he gives will generally stick, because only on rare occasions does some other chemist come along and show that the harness got twisted when the radicals were hitched up. Then all that is needed is to rearrange the component parts of the name or to substitute "ortho" for "para" or "meta."

The name tells what the substance is. Doubt

arises when a short and easy name is applied. For the chemist a good name is rather to be chosen than great wealth of description, because it is self-contained. The naturalist must have detailed descriptions, preferably with plates, and is happiest when he can make comparison with "type specimens."

In his spare moments the botanist or zoologist digs around in old books and journals with the hope of resurrecting an old name for some familiar plant or animal. This is called stabilizing the nomenclature. It is done because such and such a congress decided that the race for supremacy and final adoption shall be won, not by a name that has come swiftly down the years and is known by all, but by one that stayed at scratch, hidden in some dusty volume.

Shuffling the cards for a new deal is another delightful diversion. For such names as X........ a....... (Smith) Jones comb. nov. special honors are awarded, particularly to Jones. The pity of it is that somebody else may come along and soon the specimen becomes Y........ b........ (Brown) White comb. noviss. In this way the nomenclature becomes fixed.

What is queer about a chemical spelling match? To name a compound for which the formula is given, or to do the reverse, is good training for the memory. Can one imagine a botanical or an entomological spelling match? Could "aster" or "grasshopper" be drawn in recognizable detail by the contestants? optimistic chemist will concede that the respective drawings could with some confidence be labelled "flower" or "bug," but could an expert name the species? Yet the pitifully un

The

By

The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals. WILLIAM T. HORNADAY, SC.D., A.M. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1922. Pp. x + 328.

If every man devoted to his affairs, and to the affairs of his city and state, the same measure of intelligence and honest industry that every warmblooded wild animal devotes to its affairs, the people of this world would abound in good health, prosperity, peace and happiness.

To assume that every wild beast and bird is a sacred creature, peacefully dwelling in an earthly paradise, is a mistake. They have their wisdom and their folly, their joys and their sorrows, their trials and tribulations.

As the alleged lord of creation, it is man's duty to know the wild animals truly as they are, in order to enjoy them to the utmost, to utilize them sensibly and fairly, and to give them a square deal.

With these reflections, the dean of scientific directors of American zoological parks presents his volume on the minds and manners of wild animals. And with the following picture reproduced here only in part-the curtain

falls:

On one side of the heights above the River of

The great Apes have traveled up the River of Life on the opposite side from Man, but they are only one lap behind him. Let us not deceive ourselves about that. Remember that truth is inexorable in its demands to be heard.

Into this book Dr. Hornaday has put much of his philosophy of life as well as the choicest of his observations on the behavior of wild

animals in nature and in captivity. The moral purpose which impelled the writer to expression is the defense of dumb creatures. Our author takes special pains to humble man by dwelling on his shortcomings. The reader is told that, though endowed richly with mind. and gifts of expression and therefore capable of noble achievement in service and selfdevelopment, man at his worst is the most bestial of animals and more brutal than the so-called brutes.

"The minds and manners of wild animals" will disappoint not a few scientific students of animal behavior because it is not an exact systematic and analytic description of animal experience and action. It will delight almost everyone else by its directness, sincerity and naturalness. For the tens of readers who may get next to nothing from the book because of the "experimentalist bias"-to which the reviewer must plead somewhat guilty-there will be thousands who gain useful knowledge, insight and a more intelligent appreciation of wild animals.

The book should be taken, in the opinion of the reviewer, as a notable contribution to natural history, not as a scientific treatise on comparative psychology. It contains a wealth of amusing, interesting, thrilling and enlightening incidents and personal observations, a somewhat biographical assemblage of reflections and conclusions and a unique thoughtprovoking collection of brief characterizations of animal intelligence and temperament. Such

is the contribution to animal behavior and rights which Dr. Hornaday has made from his almost unexampled wealth of experience as zoologist, hunter and scientific director of zoological gardens. The information presented should be of very considerable practical value to all who have to do with wild animals.

It would be a profitless task to discuss in SCIENCE the scientific grounds of dissatisfaction with a book which is primarily an account of personal experiences with wild animals. Conspicuous among them are terminology, definition, canons of judgment, inferences and generalizations. Such matters every scientific reader will note, but will he nevertheless be

able, as the layman almost certainly will, to enter into and profit by the author's lifetime of intimate contact with wild animals? Let us hope so.

More to the point than a recital of the content of this volume is the injunction, "Read it and thus enter into the author's knowledge, sympathetic appreciation and insights." Truth is great. The ways of observing it are as varied as human intellect and temperament. It were a pity to lose the value of the naturalistic in our praiseworthy attempts to exalt the experimental study of animal behavior and experience.

ROBERT M. YERKES

SPECIAL ARTICLES

PROOF OF THE POWER OF THE WHEAT PLANT TO FIX ATMOSPHERIC NITROGEN

In a series of wheat cultures in solutions, we have recently proved conclusively that wheat plants, even in only six weeks of growth, can fix large quantities of nitrogen from the air. They possess this power whether nitrogen is supplied to the roots or not.

Seventeen years ago, Jamieson1 made the startling announcement, based on experiments, that all green plants possess the power of fixing atmospheric nitrogen. He supplemented this announcement by another to the effect that

1 Report of Agr. Res. Assn., Aberdeen, 1905, et seq.