November 12, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



469 



Mosquitoes of North and Central America 

 and the West Indies, published by the Car- 

 negie Institution of Washingrt^on, and in that 

 connection observations of a somewhat sim- 

 ilar character by several other authors are 

 mentioned (see pages 126-129, Vol. I. of the 

 MonogTaph). 



L. O. Howard 



THE WORKS OF AMEGHINO 



The Minister of Public Works of the Prov- 

 ince of Buenos Aires, Argentine Republic, is 

 financing the publication of a complete edition 

 of the scientific writings and correspondence 

 of Florentine Ameghino (1854^1911) the dis- 

 tinguished South American paleontologist. 

 The editorial work has been undertaken by 

 Alfredo J. Torcelli, and Volumes I. and II. 

 have been issued; though printed in 1913-14 

 they have just been received. Volume III. will 

 be devoted to " The Antiquity of Man in La 

 Plata," originally issued in two volumes in 

 1880-81. 



The publication of such a work, stupendous 

 as it is, will prove of inestimable value to those 

 workers who entered the field after Ameghino 

 had published his first papers, copies of which 

 are rarely found in an ordinary scientific li- 

 brary. His writings number 179 essays and 

 books written in Spanish, French and Eng- 

 lish; some of them large volumes. Ameghino 

 was a voluminous writer and he seldom pub- 

 lished short papers. While the nimiber of 

 papers is not large compared to some Euro- 

 pean writers; Hermann Schaaffhausen for in- 

 stance, wrote 314 contributions along the 

 lines of anthropology; yet in content they 

 compare favorably with the productions of 

 any one scientific writer of modern times. 



The first volume is entitled " Vida y Obras 

 del Sabio," an octavo of 391 pages; printed on 

 a poor quality of paper, and containing a com- 

 plete account of the life and activities of this 

 noted South American scholar. There is like- 

 wise appended a description of the elaborate 

 funeral ceremonies with which his native city 

 nourned the loss of this eminent man. 



The second volume with the title: " Primeros 



Trabajos Cientificos," is much larger, com- 

 prising 770 pages. One regrets the poor qual- 

 ity of the drawings; but it must be remem- 

 bered that Ameghino's drawings, of which 

 there were thousands, were made by his own. 

 hand, untrained to do such work, and under 

 unfavorable conditions, working in the back 

 room of his stationery shop in. La Plata. The 

 drawings originally poor and not well pro- 

 duced at first, are not all we would like, but 

 are still of great value as an aid in interpret- 

 ing Ameghino's ideas. 



The third volume will comprise the XXIV th 

 memoir, and since there are 154 memoirs to 

 follow one can, with a little simple mathemat- 

 ics, compute the approximate size of the 

 series. An interesting sidelight to Ameghino's 

 restless mental activity is given in Memoir 

 XXIIL, with the title " Taquigrafia Ame- 

 ghino," which appears to be an attempt on his 

 part to reduce the Spanish language to short- 

 hand; the characters having a marked re- 

 semblance to those used in some American 

 shorthand systems. It is to be hoped that his 

 shorthand system was successful. But of its 

 use in the commercial world of Spanish-speak- 

 ing peoples, I know nothing. How many liv- 

 ing paleontologists have devised a system of 

 such far-reaching importance to another 

 world than their own? 



Florentine Ameghino was a wonderful man, 

 and I am sure we wish Alfredo J. Torcelli all 

 the. success in the world in his " honorable 

 autant que difficile travail." 



EoY L. MOODIE 



Department of Anatomy, 

 Univeksity or Illinois, 

 Chicago 



SPECIAL ARTICLES 



THE FREE-MARTIN AND ITS RECIPROCAL: 

 OPOSSUM, MAN, DOG 



In 1917 the writer purchased a large fat 

 opossum, presumably a male, but actually a 

 sex-intergrade possessing the following char- 

 acters: externally, normal penis, empty scro- 

 tum, small malformed pouch, head rather like 

 that of a female; internally, reproductive 

 organs distinctly of the female type, infantile 



