APPLIED SYSTEMATICS — SCHMITT 325 



before you. Our modern municipal waterworks take pains to treat 

 and filter it carefully. Yet accidents happen and plumbing installa- 

 tions have been found faulty, as in Chicago, where carelessness in 

 this respect resulted in 70 deaths from amoebic dysentery a few years 

 ago. 



Whether the water be fresh or salt, pollution not only renders it 

 unfit for use, but, if in sufficient degree, will also destroy the inhabi- 

 tants useful and economically important to man. 



Dr. Ruth Patrick, curator of limnology, specializing in diatoms at 

 the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, as the result of her 

 investigations in certain Pennsylvania streams, was perhaps the first 

 to stress the importance of the specific naming of the organisms present 

 in the evaluation of stream pollution, its kind or type, and duration. 

 She found that the heretofore frequently tried method of using 

 indicator organisms simply did not supply the data needed to make 

 such evaluations. 



All groups of plants and animals living in a stream, particularly the 

 sessile or attached forms, or those which moved about in only a small 

 area, merited serious consideration definitely at the species level. This 

 entailed extensive collecting in relatively shallow water, the area in 

 which the majoritj'' of such forms live, and required the cooperation 

 of a number of experienced taxonomists to identify specifically the 

 material collected, especially the algae, rotifers, worms, mollusks, 

 Crustacea, insects, and fishes. Sooner or later we all discover, as did 

 Dr. Patrick, that there is no satisfactory shortcut to the solution of 

 a biologic problem, ecologic, medical, agricultural, or otherwise, that 

 ignores names of the species involved. 



ENGINEERING 



Ordinarily you would not expect an electric light company to have 

 a biological problem, let alone one in which mollusks were involved. 

 Six or seven years ago a heavily armored power cable lying on the 

 bottom of the bay between Palm Beach and West Palm Beach suffered 

 one of a series of blowouts as the result of the penetration of the 

 outer insulation and the heavy-load casing by marine mollusks. The 

 company's officials naturally wanted to know what manner of shell- 

 fish this was and what could be done to prevent further damage. 

 Though the animal was found to be a new species, which was subse- 

 quently described, it was at once recognized by the expert to whom 

 it was submitted as belonging to a genus of boring mollusks which 

 would quickly be suffocated if the cable were buried several inches 

 below the bottom of the bay. This would also prevent further damage 



