November 14, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



453 



decayed tree trunks as would the other 

 materials. 



In 1897 I was asked by the A. A. A. S. 

 to go down with a committee of the Society 

 to inspect Mr. Volk's work. This I did in 

 company with Mr. H. C. Mercer, Professor 

 Arthur Hollick, of Columbia University, and 

 Professor William Libbey, of Princeton. 

 Five days were spent upon the ground. Mr. 

 Volk ventured (what is a very hazardous 

 thing for a scientific man to do), to prophesy 

 what we should find. He let us select our 

 ground, which we did in several places, and 

 had extensive excavations made under our 

 own eyes. What Mr. Volk prophesied was 

 that in the upper foot of disturbed soil we 

 should find numerous artifacts of flint and 

 jasper and some pottery, but that below that 

 we should find nothing of that kind but 

 would find occasionally worked pieces of 

 argillite. This proved to be exactly the case. 

 We found in the lower portion of our ex- 

 cavation sixteen chipped fragments of argil- 

 lite, all covered with deep patina. We found 

 also some broken pebbles which had been 

 battered to indicate use by man. We also 

 found five flakes of quartz which may have 

 been used as implements but were of an 

 entirely different type from those on the 

 surface. All this accorded with the general 

 facts as reported by Mr. Volk, and to us 

 were perfectly convincing evidence of the 

 accuracy of his observations, and confirma- 

 tory of the testimony of Dr. Abbott concern- 

 ing the prevalence of argillite in the undis- 

 tiu-bed glacial strata, establishing a sharp 

 distinction between the occupation of palaeo- 

 lithic man and that of the aboriginal Indians. 



The work of Dr. Abbott and Mr. Volk 

 illustrates the importance of having local ob- 

 servers interested in discoveries to be made 

 about their own doors. They were both busi- 

 ness men who turned aside to make and 

 record observations which could be made only 

 by those who were on the ground; and their 

 observations have been carefully recorded and 

 published, and their collections preserved 

 where they are open to the observation of all 

 scientific men, namely in the Field Museum 

 of iffatural History in Chicago, the American 



Museum of Natural History in New York 

 City, but more than anywhere else in the' 

 Peabody Museum in Cambridge, Massachu- 

 setts. Aside from the volume already noted, 

 Mr. Volk published reports of his early dis- 

 coveries in the proceedings of the A. A. A. S. 

 in 1894 and in the Mem. Intern. Congress 

 Anthropology, 1894. In addition to "Prim- 

 itive Industry " Abbott's discoveries are re- 

 corded in Rep. Smithsonian Inst., 1875 ; " The 

 Stone Age in New Jersey," 1877; Bep. Pea- 

 body Museum, 1877 and 1878; Proc. Boston 

 Soc. Nat. Hist., 1881 and 1883; Am. Natural- 

 ist (Extra), 1885; Proc. A. A. A. 8., 1889; 

 Archceologia Nova Ccesarea, 1907, 1908, 1909. 

 Gr. Frederick Wright 

 Oberlin, 



October 6, 1919 



SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 



INTERNATIONAL SCIENCE AND THE WAR 



An 'appeal has been addressed to the mem- 

 bers of the academies of the allied nations and 

 of the United States by 177 members of the 

 academies of neutral nations — Holland, Nor- 

 way, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Switzer- 

 land' — represented in the International Asso- 

 ciation of Academies, the opening and con- 

 cluding paragraphs of which are as follows: 



In the autumn of 1813, when for years a most 

 bitter war had been raging between France and 

 England, the English chemist Humphry Davy set 

 out for Italy via Paris. His biographer relates 

 what follows about his experiences in the French 

 capital: "Nothing could exceed the cordiality and 

 warmth of Davy 's reception by the French savants. 

 On Nov. 2nd he attended a sitting of the First 

 Class of the Institute and was placed on the right 

 hand of the President, who announced to the 

 meeting that it was honoured by the presence of 

 ' le chevalier Davy. ' Each day saw some reception 

 or entertainment in his honour. ... On Dec. 13th, 

 1913 he was with practical unanimity elected a 

 corresponding member of the First Class of the 

 Institute. ' ' 



On October 2, 1918, when a most bitter war rag- 

 ing between France and Germany for four years 

 had practically come to an end, it is stated in a 

 meeting of the French Academic des Science, that 

 "elle a 6t6 unanime a declarer que les relations 

 personnelles sont pour longtemps impossibles entre 

 les savants des pays allife et ceux des empires cen- 



