SCIENCE 



Friday, September 17, 1920 



CONTENTS 

 The British Association for the Advancement 

 of Science: — 

 Fossils and Life : Dr. P. A. Bather 257 



Atlantic and Pacific Salmon: Professor 

 Henry B. Ward 264 



Joseph Pantel: J. H. Fodlquier, S.J 266 



Scientific Events : — 



Tribute to the Memory of James Wilson; 

 Sesearch in Aviation; Varieties of Wheat; 

 Lectures at the New York Botanical Garden. 267 



Scientific Notes and Neios 269 



and Educational News 271 



Discussion and Correspondence: — 



Galileo's Experiment from the Leaning 

 Tower: Edw. A. Partridge. The Booming 

 Lizard of Australia: "Walter H. Bone .... 272 



Quotations : — 



The British Association 273 



Special Articles: — 



Experiments in the Transplantation of the 

 Sypothesis of Adult Sana pipiens to Tad- 

 poles : Dr. Bennet M. Allen 274 



The American Chemical Society: Dr. Charles 

 L. Parsons 276 



MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 

 review should be sent to The Editor of Science, Garrison-on- 

 Hudson, N. Y. 



FOSSILS AND LIFEi 



THE DIFFERENTLY OP PALEONTOLOGY 



Like botany and zoology, paleontology de- 

 scribes the external and internal form and 

 structure of animals and plants; and on this 

 description it bases, first, a systematic classifi- 

 cation of its material; secondly, those broader 

 inductions of comparative anatomy wbicb con- 

 stitute morphology, or the science of form. 

 Arising out of these studies are the questions 

 of relation — real or apparent kinship, lines of 

 descent, the ho"5^ and the why of evolution — • 

 the answers to which reflect their light back 

 on our morphological and classifieatory sys- 

 tems. By a different approach we map the 

 geological distribution of genera and species, 

 thus helping to elucidate changes of land and 

 sea, and so barring out one hypothesis of ra- 

 cial descent or unlocking the door to another. 

 Again, we study collective faunas and floras, 

 unravelling the interplay of their component 

 animals and plants, or inferring from each as- 

 semblage the climatic and other physical 

 agents that favored, selected, and delimited it. 



All this, it may be said, is nothing more 

 than the botany and zoology of the past. 

 True, the general absence of any soft tissues, 

 and the obscured or fragmentary condition of 

 those harder parts which alone are preserved, 

 make the studies of the paleontologist more 

 difficult, and drive him to special methods. 

 But the result is less complete: in short, an 

 inferior and unattractive branch of biology. 

 Let us relegate it to Section ! 



Certainly the relation of paleontology to 

 geology is obvious. It is a part of that gen- 

 eral history of the earth which is geology. And 

 it is an essential part even of physical geology, 

 for without life not merely would our series of 

 strata have lacked the coal measures, the 



1 Prom the address of the president of the Geo- 

 logical Section of the British Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, Cardiff, 1920. 



