November 21, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



473 



accounted for if the H nuclei were outriders 

 of the main nucleus of mass 12. The close 

 approach of the a-particle leads to the dis- 

 ruption of its bond with the central nucleus, 

 and under favorable conditions the H atom 

 would acquire a high velocity and be shot for- 

 ward like a free hydrogen atom. Taking into 

 account the great energy of the particle, the 

 close collision of an a-particle with a light 

 atom seems to be the most likely agency to 

 promote its disruption. Considering the 

 enormous intensity of the forces brought into 

 play in such collisions, it is not so much a 

 matter of remark that the nitrogen atom 

 should suffer disintegration as that the a-par- 

 ticle itself escapes disruption. The results, 

 as a whole, suggest that if o-particles or 

 similar projectiles of still greater energy 

 were available for experiment, we might ex- 

 pect to break down the nucleus structure of 

 many of the lighter atoms. 



Ernest Rutherford 



SECOND AWARD OF THE ELLIOT 

 MEDAL 



The Elliot Medal is awarded annually by 

 the National Academy of Sciences to the 

 author of the leading publication of the year 

 in zoology or paleontology. The first award 

 was made for the year 1917 to Frank M. 

 Chapman for his volume " The Distribution 

 of Bird-Life in Columbia," published by The 

 American Museum of Natural History. The 

 second award for the year 1918 was to William 

 Beehe, of the New York Zoological Society, 

 on the completion of the first volume of his 

 work on the " Pheasants." 



In presenting Mr. Beebe to the Academy 

 for the award. Professor Henry Fairfield 

 Osborn made the following remarks : 



Daniel Giraud Elliot, to whom the Academy 

 is indebted for the Elliot Medal, was a lead- 

 ing ornithologist and mammalogist of the old 

 school. He produced a series of splendid 

 monographs on birds and mammals, and 

 closed his scientific career with an exhaustive 

 revision of the Primates. "With the exception 

 of a journey in Africa the greater part of his 

 life was spent in museums, yet I believe if he 



were living he woidd not hesitate a moment 

 to award the Elliot Medal for the Year 1918 

 to William Beebe on the completion of the 

 first volume of his great work " A Monograph 

 of the Pheasants." 



This is a profound study of the living 

 pheasants in their natural environment in 

 various parts of eastern Asia. There are 

 nineteen groups of these birds; eighteen were 

 successfully hunted with the camera, with 

 field-glasses, and when necessary for identi- 

 fication, with the shotgun. The journey 

 occupied seventeen months, extended over 

 twenty countries, and resulted in a rare abim- 

 dance of material, both literary — concerning 

 the life histories of birds — and pictorial, 

 photographs and sketches. The journey ex- 

 tended over 52,000 miles; it ended in the 

 great Museums of London, of Tring, of Paris, 

 and of Berlin, for the purpose of studying the 

 type collections. Thus the order of the work 

 was from nature to the museum and to man, 

 rather than from man and the museum to 

 nature. It is this distinguished note of 

 direct observation of natural processes, under 

 natural conditions, which is needed to-day in 

 biology to supplement the note of the labora- 

 tory and of experiment. Living birds and 

 living mammals have as much to teach us in 

 their natural surroundings as they taught 

 Darwin and Wallace and we must endeavor 

 to keep the eyes and minds of these great 

 naturalists in our modes of vision. 



The monograph covers the blood partridges, 

 the tragopans, the impeyans, the gold and 

 silver pheasants, the peacocks, the jungle 

 fowl, and the history of the ancestry of our 

 domestic fowls. It has important bearings 

 on the Darwinian theories of protective color- 

 ation and of sexual selection, and on the De 

 Vries theory of mutation. The fiill-grown 

 male and female characters, the changes of 

 plumage from chick to adult, the songs, court- 

 ships, battles, nests and eggs of nearly one 

 hundred species are included and systematic- 

 ally described. The illustrations are by lead- 

 ing American and British artists. The 

 haunts of the pheasants are shovro in the 

 author's photographs ranging from the slopes 

 of the Himalayan snow-peaks, 16,000 feet 



