14 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LI. No. 1305 



At the dedication of the new pathological 

 laihoratory of the Philadelphia General Hos- 

 pital the principal address was delivered by Dr. 

 William H. Welch, of The Johns Hopkins Uni- 

 versity, who spoke of the important part played 

 by morbid anatomy in the advancement of 

 medicine. Drs. Arthur Dean Bevan, Chicago, 

 and Louis B. Wilson, Rochester, Minn., also 

 spoke. 



• Nature records the death on November 25 of 

 Frederick Webb Headley, at the age of sixty- 

 three years. Mr. Headley spent nearly forty 

 years of hjis life as an assistant master at 

 Haileybury College, where he succeeded in 

 maintaining a body of active boy-naturalists in 

 the college. He was the author of " The Struc- 

 ture and Life of Birds " and " Life and Evolu- 

 tion." 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 NEWS 



Mb. John Markle has agreed to provide the 

 sum of five thousand dollars a year for five 

 years beginning January 1, 1920, for the con- 

 tinuation of the mining engineering course at 

 Lafayette College, which was suspended dur- 

 ing the war. 



It is planned to establish a school of engi- 

 neering under the joint direction of the Car- 

 negie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, the 

 U. S. Bureau of Mines and the coal operators 

 of the Pittsburgh District. 



Delegates from French and Swiss universi- 

 ties met recently ait Geneva and made arrange- 

 ments for interchange of students and pro- 

 fessors with credits for corresponding work. 



Dr. Meyer G. Gaba, who was an instructor 

 in mathematics at Cornell from 1915 to 1918, 

 has been appointed associate professor of 

 mathematics at the University of Nebraska. 



Dr. James Playfair McMurrich, professor 

 of anatomy in the University of Toronto, has 

 been elected dean of the faculty of arts. 



Dr. T. Harvey Johnston has been appointed 

 to the new professorship of biology at the 

 Queensland University. Dr. Johnston was one 



of the traveling commissioners sent abroad by 

 the Queensland government to investigate the 

 Prickly Pear problem. 



At the University of Cambridge Dr. F. H. A. 

 Marshall, fellow of Christ's College, has been 

 appointed reader in agricultural physiology, 

 and Mr. P. Lake, of St. John's College, reader 

 in geography. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 



THREAD MOULDS AND BACTERIA IN THE 

 DEVONIAN ■ 



While making a comprehensive survey of 

 the comparative histology of the skeletal paks 

 of ancient vertebrates, in conjunction with the 

 study of paleopathology, my attention was at- 

 tracted to the enlarged and distorted shapes of 

 many lacunae in the carapace of Borthriolepis 

 and Coccosteus. Closer examination under the 

 oil immersion revealed the occurrence of thread 

 moulds and bacteria in the almost disrupted 

 lacunar spaces, and since these organisms have 

 never before been noted in the osseous elements 

 of such ancient vertebrates, a brief description 

 will be given of them here. There is a great 

 gap in our knowledge of ancient bacteria espe- 

 cially between the Pre-Cambrian bacteria de- 

 scribed by Walcott and the Carboniferous 

 forms described by Renault, so that we know 

 nothing of the occurrence of bacteria especially 

 in bony material during the early and middle 

 Paleozoic. 



The occurrence of thread moulds (Mycelites 

 ossifragus) in the hard parts of invertebrates 

 and vertebrates, from molluscs to man, has been 

 noted for more than eighty years and the liter- 

 ature is very extensive. The canals made by 

 the penetrating moulds, known as the canals of 

 Boux or Wedl, have been noted by Kolliker in 

 the hard parts of invertebrates, fossil and re- 

 cent, by Triepel in recent human bones, by 

 Shaiier in ancient human teeth, by Senders in 

 a Neolithic skull, by Roux in the skeletal parts 

 of vertebrates. Carboniferous to recent. They 

 have been recently seen in the bony parts 

 of Devonian vertebrates, doubtless they have 

 a very wide distribution and may be regarded 

 as one of the most ancient types of organisms 

 in existence There is nothing peculiar in 



