86 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVIII. No. 707 



respectively; J. E. Trevor, professor of ther- 

 modynamics. In the Medical College in 

 New York City: O. H. Schultze, assistant 

 professor of pathological anatomy; J. S. Fer- 

 guson, assistant professor of histology; W. J. 

 Elser, assistant professor of bacteriology. S. 

 H. Gage was made professor of histology and 

 embryology, emeritus, and James Law pro- 

 fessor of the principles and practise of vet- 

 erinary medicine, emeritus. Professors Gage 

 and Law retire this year, as has been already 

 announced, according to the provisions of the 

 Carnegie Foiuidation. 



The trustees of Princeton University have 

 made the following appointments : Mr. Henry 

 Jones Ford, of Baltimore, professor of poli- 

 ties, to succeed "Professor Harry A. Garfield, 

 who begins his administration as President of 

 Williams College, his alma mater, next au- 

 tumn ; Henry Norris Kussell '97 and Eaymond 

 Smith Dugan, assistant professors of as- 

 tronomy; Gilbert Van Ingen, assistant pro- 

 fessor of geology; John Gale Hun, Charles 

 Eanald Maclnnes and Carl Eben Stromquist, 

 preceptors in mathematics; John Havron, Jr., 

 instructor in civil engineering, and Frank 

 Irwin, instructor in mathematics. 



C. E. Porter has been appointed professor 

 of botany at the University of Santiago de 

 Chile. 



At University College, London, Mr. H. 

 Deans has been reappointed to lecture on rail- 

 way engineering; Mr. A. T. Walmisley to 

 lecture on waterways, docks and maritime 

 engineering; and Mr. W. N. Blair to lecture 

 on roads, street-paving and tramways, during 

 the session 1908-09. Dr. C. Spearman has 

 been reappointed reader in experimental psy- 

 chology. 



Me. Eichaed Noel Gerrod Thomas has been 

 appointed to a lectureship in physical chem- 

 istry at Balliol College, Oxford. 



M. Eaoul Bricard has been .appointed pro- 

 fessor of applied geometry in the Paris Ob- 

 servatoire des Arts et Metiers. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 



THE MENDELLUJ INHERITANCE OF MUTATIONS 



The revival of Mendel's writings and the 



extensive elaboration of the group of facts he 

 discovered seem to have resulted in a cor- 

 responding neglect of the works of Darwin. 

 A large amount of recent literature of 

 Mendelism and mutation can be read without 

 meeting any intimation that Darwin also 

 studied and interpreted phenomena of the 

 same kind. Darwin lacked, of course, the 

 technical vocabulary of the modern Mendelian 

 cult, but he made many observations and 

 experiments, and collected a large series of 

 pertinent facts from the records of earlier 

 investigators. The conclusions he reached are 

 very definite, and have not been refuted. 



Darwin's fundamental discovery was that 

 normal, constructive evolution is a gradual 

 process. He did not fail to see that abrupt 

 variations and Mendelian inheritance are not 

 in accord with the idea of continuous changes 

 in the characters of species, but he decided 

 that such facts are not of primary importance 

 in evolution. He understood that the char- 

 acters of mutations are not necessarily new, 

 and was aware that no complete inventory of 

 the characters transmitted by a plant or 

 animal can be made from the pedigrees of a 

 few close-bred generations. He associated 

 mutations with reversions and other mon- 

 strosities, and reckoned the Mendelian inherit- 

 ance of mutations as a further evidence of 

 abnormality. 



When a character which has been lost in a 

 breed reappears after a great number of genera- 

 tions, the most probable hypothesis is, not that 

 one individual suddenly takes after an ancestor 

 removed by some hundred generations, but that 

 in each successive generation the character in 

 question has been lying latent, and at last, under 

 unknown favorable conditions, is developed.' 



All the characters above enumerated, which are 



' " Origin of Species," Chapter V. In the first 

 edition (p. 160) the words of the sentence are 

 somewhat different, but the same idea of per- 

 sistent transmission and ultimate reappearance 

 of ancestral characters is clearly conveyed: 

 "... When a character which has been lost in 

 a breed, reappears after a great number of gen- 

 erations, the most probable hypothesis is, not that 

 the offspring suddenly takes after an ancestor 

 some hundred generations distant, but that in 



