15.2 NATURAL SCIENCE. March, 



Pal^ontological Peccadilloes. 



We are glad to find that American scientific men are beginning 

 to protest against the curious methods of some of their fellow-country- 

 men. In the October number of the Illinois Wesleyan Magazine, 

 Professor M. J. Elrod protests against some of the palaeontological 

 work published by the Indiana Geological Survey. " Diligent 

 search," says he, " has failed to reveal a single palaeontological 

 specimen as belonging to the state of Indiana. The collectors have 

 the pleasure of gathering them, attach their own names or have them 

 attached, write descriptions, and the state foots the bill. So far as 

 one is able to observe from reading these reports, no means what- 

 ever are taken to preserve these outside of private collections, and the 

 hundreds of fossils described may at any time be carted out of the 

 state, sold, or bartered away, and no one be the wiser. Yet we com- 

 plain because legislators are not more liberal towards these scientific 

 surveys ! Evidently there are two sides to the question. We cannot 

 wonder at the astonishment of our friends across the water at such 

 proceedings. The wonder is that they have not long since been 

 stopped." 



Professor Elrod also protests against the absurd employment as 

 specific names of the names of obscure individuals and villages. " The 

 bugbear of science," says he, " is its array of names, often meaningless. 

 When proper names are used they are still more meaningless." 

 Certainly, when we find Professor Gorby's appended to thirteen 

 different species in one volume, together with such monstrosities as 

 " Kokomoensis" and "Boonevillensis," it is time, as Professor Elrod 

 says, " to call a halt." As he points out, it is not only the name- 

 givers that are to blame, but also the eponymous individuals whose 

 " not objecting is generally taken as meaning that such a course is 

 acceptable." 



Strata as diagnostic of Species. 



There was once a man named William Smith who wrote a book 

 called " Strata Identified by Organised Fossils." Hence he was 

 known to his contemporaries as " Strata Smith," and to his successors 

 as " the father of British geology." Since his day the principles laid 

 down by him in England, and independently and almost synchron- 

 ously by Cuvier and Alex. Brongniart in France, have been applied in 

 greater and greater detail, so that there are now workers who, like 

 Lapworth and Buckman, work out the succession of the fossils inch 

 by inch through the stratified rocks, and find certain species charac- 

 teristic of definite horizons over large areas. This minuteness of 

 detail is achieved not merely by careful work in the field, but by 

 accurate discrimination of species in the study. Lesser features are 

 now recognised as diagnostic, and two forms that an older generation 

 would have lumped together are now recognised, if not as distinct 



