September 5, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



231 



and of tanks and poison gas, science is ac- 

 cepted as a paying proposition; but it is still 

 too often looked on as a consultant to be 

 called in special cases, or as a piecework 

 artisan to be paid by the job. The manifesto 

 proclaims a wider and a truer view. It dis- 

 tinguishes between " scientific " and " tech- 

 nical " research — that is to say, between dis- 

 interested and utilitarian explorations of na- 

 ture. The former are demanded by those who 

 know history ; the latter mesmerize the bureau- 

 cracy. Labor demands a program of research 

 in both senses; it declares the value of the 

 advancement of knowledge to be many times 

 greater than its cost; and it insists that many 

 urgent problems can find wise solution only 

 through scientific and technical research. — 

 London Times. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



The Schrammen Collection of Cretaceous 

 Silicispongice in the American Museum of 

 Natural History. By Marjorie O'Connell, 

 Ph.D. Bulletin of the American Museum 

 of Natural History, Vol. XLI., Art. I., pp. 

 1-261, Plates I-XIV., Map and five text 

 figures. Aug. 1, 1919. 



In 1914 the American Museum purchased 

 a collection of 800 specimens of fossil Silici- 

 spongise, comprising 116 genera and 222 

 species, and purporting to be types (Belege- 

 stiicke) used by Dr. Anton Schrammen of 

 Hildesheim in the preparation of his impor- 

 tant monograph on the Cretaceous Silici- 

 spongise of northwest Germany. This mate- 

 rial was entrusted to Dr. O'Connell for 

 arrangement in the exhibition hall of the 

 museum, in the course of which work she 

 undertook a careful comparison of each speci- 

 men with the descriptions and illustrations in 

 Schrammen's monograph. This led to the 

 discovery that the term " Belegestiick " was 

 used in a very loose sense for material repre- 

 senting not only the true types, but also all 

 material collected from type localities, and so 

 included supplementary types (apotjTses) as 

 well as typical specimens (icotypes), the total 

 of 358 tjrpes including only 86 primary types 

 (with only 5 holotypes). This led Dr. 



O'Connell to a careful evaluation of the stand- 

 ing of each one of these si)ecimens, which pro- 

 ceeding has greatly enhanced the value of the 

 collection. But beyond this. Dr. O'Connell 

 has gone most thoroughly into the synonymies 

 of the genera and species, Schrammen's work 

 in this respect being misleadingly incomplete, 

 and so she has produced a distinct contri- 

 bution to the literature of the Silicispongise, 

 and supplemented Schrammen's monograph in 

 a manner for which students of these organ- 

 isms owe her thanks. This constitutes the 

 major part of the work before us, being Chap- 

 ter rV., and comprising pp. 97-207 of the 

 Bulletin. 



The first 97 pages of the bulletin however, 

 are of broader scope, and will be of general 

 interest, not only to students of paleontology 

 but to those of stratigraphy as well. The in- 

 troduction deals with the classification of the 

 sponges and makes the latest classification by 

 Broili (Zittel Grundziige, 1915), and Schram- 

 men available to American students. Chapter 

 I. (pp. 8-30) gives a review of the develop- 

 ment of the science of spongiology, dealing 

 first with the investigations on recent, and 

 then with those on fossil species. The history 

 of investigation on recent forms is divided 

 into five periods: (1) Prom the days of Aris- 

 totle to the seventeenth century; (2) period 

 of determination of systematic position (1600- 

 1750) ; (3) period of anatomical discoveries 

 and classification (1750-1825) ; (4) period of 

 detailed microscopic studies (1825-1874), and 

 (5) period of modem investigations (1875- 

 present), which opens with the first paper pub- 

 lished by P. E. Schulze. The history of 

 palseospongiology is thus summarized by Dr. 

 O'Connell : 



In going through the literature on fossil 

 sponges, one is struck with the close parallelism in 

 the development of thought in the study of fossil 

 and recent forms but one sees epitomized in the 

 paleontological literature of two hundred years 

 what is spread over two thousand years in zoolog- 

 ical literature. The besetting difficulty for both 

 groups of investigators was the determination of 

 the best method of work, and, until this was dis- 

 covered, all classifications were unsatisfactory and 

 often artificial. 



