388 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. LVI, No. 1449 



executive of one of our important health de- 

 partments, information upon the incidence of 

 tuberculosis in his state for the past decade. 

 In his reply he stated, among other things, that 

 recently there had been a very marked and 

 quite inexplainable decline in the tuberculosis 

 death rate. The statement struck me as sin- 

 gular, for it is difficult to conceive of a sudden, 

 conspicuous decline in the death rate of a dis- 

 ease of the nature of tuberculosis, without a 

 reasonable explanation for it. A very 'brief 

 search for an explanation soon revealed the 

 fact that the experience of the particular 

 health ofiScer to whom I had written was not 

 peculiar to his state, but was demonstrable for 

 practically all our registration states, as well 

 as for the most of our larger centers of urban 

 population. 



If one will chart by years the mortality rates 

 for tuberculosis for a period covering the past 

 fifteen or twenty years, for almost any of our 

 states or cities that keep correct records and 

 that have 'been active in the suppression of 

 tuberculosis, it will be seen that in the main 

 there was a steady decline until 1917 and 1918. 

 During 1918 and 1919 there was a sharp up- 

 ward trend to the curve, followed in a year, or 

 at most two years, by a marked downward 

 direction of the curve — much steeper in its 

 descent than that preceding 1917-1918. With 

 a number of such charts before one, the reason 

 for the recent decrease in the death rates from 

 tuberculosis 'becomes obvious. The pandemic 

 of influenza of 1918-19 carried off, in a brief 

 period, a large number of tuberculosis subjects 

 that would otherwise have lived on and their 

 deaths been so distributed through later years 

 as not materially to have disturbed the uniform 

 downward direction of the tuberculosis curve 

 that preceded the period of the great pandemic. 



From the standpoint of results, advan- 

 tageous to the race alone, and disregarding all 

 hrmiane considerations, this may be viewed as 

 the beneficent influence of a great plague. The 

 least resistant of the population succumbed, 

 those more resistant and physically better 

 fitted to survive, did so. The human material 

 thus left is probably the most promising that 

 has existed for generations, in so far as the 

 permanent lessening of tuberculosis among it 



is concerned; and we can expect that the curve 

 for tuberculosis death rates in the future will 

 be for a time much more sharply downward 

 than ever before, and that its average level for 

 a number of coming years will be much lower 

 than that preceding the epidemic of influenza, 

 providing, of course, there is no abatement of 

 those widespread activities that have been so 

 instrumental in lessening the incidence of the 

 disease in the past. 



For the anti-tuberculosis worker, the present 

 appears to offer a golden opportunity. 



A. C. Abbott 

 School of Hygiene and Public Health, 

 University of Pennsylvania 



OLD GLACIATION IN THE CORDILLERAN 

 REGION 



To THE Editor of Science: The communi- 

 cation by Thomas Large on the above subject 

 in the September 22 issue of Science prompts 

 me to write that in 1916 I found till with stri- 

 ated 'boulders and pebbles in the brickj'ard near 

 the normal school at Cheney, Washington, be- 

 yond the limits here reported by Large. I 

 brought this matter to the notice of the Geo- 

 logical Society of America at the Albany meet- 

 ing in December, 1916, and the following brief 

 statement concerning it appears in the pro- 

 ceedings of that meeting {Bull. Geol. Soc. 

 America, Vol. 28, p. 143) : 



In northern Washington the occurrence of a 

 very old drift, probably Kansas, was established 

 by the discovery of till and striated stones on a 

 high divide southwest of Spokane, in the vicinity 

 of Qiency. Boulders had been observed in this 

 region, and the possibility of glaciatdon had been 

 suggested by M. K. Campbell in the Northern 

 Pacific Guide Book. 



Frank Leveeett 



Ann Arbor, Michigan, 

 September 25, 1922 



SOME SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THE GEOL- 

 OGY OF CALIFORNIA AND PARTS OF 



THE DUTCH EAST INDIES 

 If we compare the Sierra Nevada with the 

 Malay Peninsula, 'the Coast Range with the 

 Barissan Mountains of West Sumatra and the 

 great valley of California with the plains of 

 East-Sumatra, it is obvious that the topograph- 



