THE PE OGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



445 



know that our ways of thought and 

 habits of life are chiefly based on the 

 results of modern science. This has not 

 been the result of a sudden revelation, 

 but of a continual growth, scarcely per- 

 ceptible until viewed from a distance. 

 The importance of current political 

 events is magnified by the common in- 

 terest they excite, whereas in art, litera- 

 ture and science time is required before 

 things can be seen in their right per- 

 spective. We can, however, take the re- 

 ports of the three committees of the As- 

 sociation to which small grants were 

 made for research and use these as ex- 

 amples of the scientific work described 

 at the meeting. These committees were 

 on 'Anthropometry,' on 'The Quantita- 

 tive Study of Variation' and on 'The 

 Cave Fauna of North America.' 



The committee on anthropometry is 

 undertaking to make measurements of 

 the physical and mental traits of mem- 

 bers of the Association, and to encour- 

 age such work elsewhere. At the pres- 

 ent time there exists but little exact 

 knowledge of how people differ from 

 each other and of the causes and results 

 of such differences. Much has been 

 written regarding men of genius, crim- 

 inals and other classes, but without an 

 adequate foundation of fact. The mem- 

 bers of a scientific society are a fairly 

 homogeneous class, regarding whose 

 heredity, education and achievements 

 correct information can be secured. The 

 measurements made at the New York 

 meeting, determining such traits as size 

 of head, strength, eyesight, quickness 

 of perception, memory, etc., will supply 

 the standard type for scientific men and 

 their variations from this type. When 

 other classes of the community have 

 been measured, comparisons can be 

 made and we shall know whether scien- 

 tific men are more variable than others, 

 have larger heads, better memory and 

 the like. Work of this character has 

 been carried on at Columbia University 

 for some years. The freshmen, both the 

 men of Columbia College and the women 

 of Barnard College, are measured and 



tested with care, equal attention being 

 paid to mental and physical traits. Then 

 the measurements are repeated at the 

 end of the senior year. Anthropometric 

 work has also been done in Great 

 Britain under the auspices of Dr. Gal- 

 ton and Professor Pearson, and we may 

 perhaps hope that the time will come 

 when we shall have as exact knowledge 

 about human differences as we now 

 have about different kinds of butter- 

 flies. 



Although geologists and botanists 

 have defined hundreds of thousands of 

 species, they have not as a matter of 

 fact until very recently attempted to 

 secure exact measurements of differ- 

 ences, and the committee of the Asso- 

 ciation on 'The Quantitative Study of 

 Variation,' of which Prof. Chas. B. 

 Davenport is the recorder, aims to en- 

 courage such work. It is now over 

 forty years since the facts and argu- 

 ments presented in Darwin's 'Origin of 

 Species' paved the way for general ac- 

 ceptance of the doctrine of evolution. 

 But the objection is hardly less valid 

 to-day than it was then that the evi- 

 dence for evolution is almost wholly in- 

 direct. Over and over again naturalists 

 have been challenged to cite one case 

 where a species in nature has changed 

 within historic times and repeatedly 

 they have taken refuge in the plea that 

 the historic period is too short for a no- 

 ticeable change to have taken place. 

 This plea can be accepted, however, 

 only so long as we have no exact way 

 of measuring race change. When we 

 can express quantitatively the condi- 

 tion of a community to-day, we may 

 hope to be able to say whether any 

 change has occurred after five, ten, or 

 a hundred years. The committee of the 

 Association has especially concerned it- 

 self with a piece of work which may be 

 considered typical. In the headwaters 

 of the Tennessee River there lives a 

 univalor mollusc which is found no- 

 where else in the world and which be- 

 longs to a family of molluscs that was 

 early separated from its marine cogen- 



