June 27, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



979 



The presidency of Tulane, vacant by the 

 resignation of President Craighead a year ago, 

 has been filled by the election of Professor 

 Robert Sharp, dean of the graduate school, act- 

 ing president during the past year, and for 

 thirty-two years a member of the faculty. 



Mr. George Wheeler Hinman, until re- 

 cently editor and proprietor of the Chicago 

 Inter-Ocean, has been elected president of 

 Marietta College to succeed the late Alfred T. 

 Perry. 



Miss Josephine T. Berry, of the Washing- 

 ton State College, has been elected professor 

 of nutrition and home economics at the Uni- 

 versity of Minnesota. 



Harry 6. Hake, of the University of Illi- 

 nois, has been appointed assistant professor of 

 electrical engineering at Washington Univer- 

 sity. Joseph C. Stephenson has been ap- 

 pointed instructor in zoology. 



At Vassar College Winifred J. Robinson, 

 Ph.D. (Columbia, 1910), has been advanced 

 from instructor to assistant professor of 

 botany. 



Mr. W. a. MacDonald, B.S.F. (Michigan 

 Agricultural College, 1913), has been appointed 

 instructor in forestry in the New York State 

 College of Forestry at Syracuse University. 



DISCUSSION AND COBBESPONDENCB 

 the laws of nomenclature in paleontology 



To the Editor of Science : In the course of 

 an interesting and able communication by 

 Dr. Matthew upon " The Laws of Nomencla- 

 ture in Paleontology " in Science of May 23, 

 1913, pp. 788-792, the following paragraph 

 occurs on page 792. The italics here are those 

 of the present writer. 



Deinodon Leidy is determinable as to family, 

 but is not determinable genericaUy, as the genera 

 of carnivorous dinosaurs are now distinguished. 

 The same is true of a whole series of genera and 

 species described by Leidy and Cope from the 

 Judith River. The treatment of types and re- 

 ferred specimens of these genera by paleontolo- 

 gists as specifically distinguishable or identical has 

 sadly misled Dr. Peale in his recent discussion of 

 the vertebrate evidence as to the age of the Judith 

 Eiver beds, leading him to present as conclusive 



evidence of identity in age a correspondence tm 

 fauna which to those who know the nature of the 

 specimens on which the lists are based is no evi- 

 dence at aU. 



Inasmuch as the writer hereof is mentioned 

 in this paragraph and this mention may lead 

 to some misapprehension, the following notes 

 are presented. Now as to Deinodon, it is 

 submitted that what has been done or is to be 

 done with this genus in the future does not 

 seem to enter the case. Suffice it to say 

 that not only is it mentioned generically by 

 Hatcher and others, but Hatcher in Bulletin 

 257 of the U. S. Geological Survey (p. 85) 

 gives also a number of species of the genus, 

 and I believe that I am not assuming too 

 much when I take it for granted that others 

 who have referred to these species, or any of 

 them, were referring to the same thing. That 

 the paleontologists may have been at sea in 

 regard to the exact determinations, and that 

 the material is fragmentary and imperfect 

 was as well known to me at the time of 

 writing as to the paleontologist himseK, but 

 as the names are a matter of record I think 

 I was justified in using them, no matter what 

 becomes of them in the future, especially as 

 Hatcher, Osborn and others have made im- 

 portant deductions from their occurrence. 

 These remarks apply to the whole series of 

 genera and species referred to by Dr. Matthew. 

 It is rather interesting to have a vertebrate 

 paleontologist make the statement that " cor- 

 respondence in fauna is not conclusive evi- 

 dence of identity in age," especially as it 

 rather confirms the statement made by me in 

 my article on the Judith River formation 

 (^Journal of Oeology) wherein, in discussing 

 the evidence of vertebrate fossils on the ques- 

 tion of the age of the Judith formation, I say : 



Either the beds are identical in age or verte- 

 brate paleontology has no place in stratigraphio 

 geology and non geologia sine paleontologia be- 

 comes non paleontologia sine geologia. 



The writer does not pretend to be a verte- 

 brate paleontologist, nor is he able or willing 

 to pass upon the value of the material studied 

 by them, but he submits that he must be con- 

 fined to what has been published by them, aa 



