258 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LIII. No. 1368 



omy the -writer fails to see much force in the 

 objections raised in the February 18 number 

 of Science to the name " Historical and Philo- 

 logical Sciences " for Section L of the Amer- 

 ican Association for the Advancement of 

 Science. From the fact that the special com- 

 mittee appointed by the President of the Asso- 

 ciation recommended that the words " and 

 philological" be dropped it appears that the 

 rest of this name would have been satis- 

 factory to the committee. If this is the case 

 the main objection to the suggested name 

 seems to be due to a fear that the philologists 

 might at some future time " step in and give 

 rise to a heterogeneous, incoherent group of 

 workers, having no interests in common." 



It is not much more than a century ago 

 that the philologists opened for mathematical 

 historians rich fields by the discovery of a 

 key to the cuneiform inscriptions of the 

 ancient Babylonians and the discovery of a 

 key to the writings of the ancient Egyptians. 

 The history of the ancient scientific develop- 

 ments is fundamentally connected with the 

 languages of the people of antiquity and 

 hence there seems to be little reason to object 

 to a closer contact between the philologists 

 and the historians of science, especially 

 during the early stages of the development of 

 the history of science in our counti-y. As an 

 instance of the fruitfulness of this contact it 

 may be noted that L. J. Eichardson, pro- 

 fessor of Latin in the University of Cali- 

 fornia, contributed an interesting article on 

 " Digital reckoning among the ancients " to 

 the first volume of the American Mathe- 

 matical Monthly after it became the official 

 organ of the Mathematical Association of 

 America in 1916. 



During the Chicago meeting of the Amer- 

 ican Association for the Advancement of Sci- 

 ence a good beginning was made towards the 

 encouragement of workers in the history of 

 science in our country. It would seem that 

 only the most serious considerations should be 

 allowed to interfere with the continuance of 

 this encouragement under the influence of a 

 strong national organization. In particular. 



differences of opinion as to the most suitable 

 temporary name of the section which aims to 

 unite the workers in the history of science 

 in our land should not be allowed to curtail 

 seriously the efforts of those who believe in 

 such a union. If the modern mathematicians 

 and the modern astronomers could work har- 

 moniously for so many years it seems clear 

 that the historians of science have nothing to 

 fear from the presence of the philologists, 

 especially in so far as these two types of 

 scientists are seeking common ground. 



G. A. Miller 

 IJNivERSirY OF Illinois 



FOSSILS— ARE THEY MERELY "PREHISTORIC," 

 OR MUST THEY ALSO BE "GEOLOGIC"? 



I AM perfectly willing in my proposed defi- 

 nition of " fossils " to accept a substitute for 

 the term " age," as ' suggested by Professor 

 Field in his contribution to Science for Feb- 

 ruary 4, if only authorities can agree on what 

 it shall be. Of the various terms used for geo- 

 logical and archeological time divisions — era, 

 period, epoch, age — each have been used as 

 designations for the time since the Pleisto- 

 cene. LeConte refers to this time indifferently 

 as " Psychozoic era," " age of man," and " re- 

 cent epoch." Schuchert practically agrees 

 with these designations, Chamberlin and Sal- 

 isbury call it the " human period," Professor 

 Field in the contribution above referred to, 

 speaks of it in one place as the " Psychozoic 

 era," and in another as " the recent geological 

 epoch." For other coordinate or subordinate 

 divisions we read in various works such ex- 

 pressions as " Quaternary period " and " Qua- 

 ternary epoch " (Brigham), " Neolithic pe- 

 riod," " Gunz glacial stage" (Osborn), " Sixth 

 glacial period " (Geikie), " Reindeer period " 

 (Lartet), " Prehistoric period " (Lubbock). 

 • We see in the above variations in usage the 

 usual fate of recommendations of scientific 

 congresses when they attempt to reform and 

 draft into the exacting service of science words 

 that have long led a life of freedom as a part 

 of our common vernacular. 



" Prehistoric," however, is not a term of this 

 character. From the time (1851) when it was 



