SCIENCE 



147 



; oummer by the resignation of 



Jtj'ernald. Mr. William H. Eoever, 

 , vVasHngton, '97), PLD. (Harvard, '06), 

 aS been appointed assistant professor of 

 mathematics to take the place of Dr. Wer- 

 nicke, who has resigned. Dr. Roever has been 

 for the last three years instructor in mathe- 

 matics at the Massachusetts Institute'of Tech- 

 nology. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 



MEANING OF THE SPANISH WORD GAVILAN 



In a recent translation of a Spanish manu- 

 script in the Bancroft Library of the Uni- 

 versity of California, entitled " A Mission 

 .Eecord of the California Indians," by Dr. A. 

 L. Kroeber,^ the following sentence occurs 

 (p. 4) : " They have a gTeat desire to assemble 

 at a ceremony regarding a bird called vulture 

 (gavilan)." And in a foot-note it is stated 

 that the bird " is more probably the eagle 

 than the California condor, which the word 

 gavilan properly indicates." 



As a matter of fact the word gavilan means 

 neither eagle nor vulture, but among Spanish 

 and Spanish-Mexican people is the ordinary 

 common every day word for hawk. In the 

 same language eagle is aguila (pronounced 

 ag'-il-lali), but the California condor has no 

 name (because it does not inhabit either Spain 

 or Mexico), although the Spanish-speaking 

 people of southern California usually call it 

 vultur, or vultur grande. 



There is no doubt, however, that several of 

 the early Mission Padres failed to distinguish 

 the eagle from the large hawks, and used the 

 name gavilan indiscriminately for hoth; hence 

 Dr. Kroeber is entirely right in assuming that 

 the ceremonial bird of the Mission Indians of 

 Southern California is the eagle. It is the 

 golden eagle {Aquila chrysdetos) . 



In another place in the same article (p. 7, 

 foot-note) Dr. Kroeber states: " Boscana, 

 however, describes the bird as much resem- 

 bling the common buzzard, but larger, which 

 clearly makes it the condor." This seemingly 



' Univ. of Calif. Publications, American Arche- 

 ology and Ethnology, Vol. 8, No. 1, May, 1908. 



natural inference is entirely erroneous. Buz- 

 zards are large hawks — not vultures — and the 

 bird we in America call " turkey-buzzard " is 

 not a buzzard at all, but a vulture. Boscana's 

 '■' common buzzard " is a large hawk closely 

 related to our red-tail, and the bird he de- 

 scribed as "much resembling the common 

 buzzard, but larger," was of course the golden 

 eagle. Had he meant the turkey-buzzard he 

 would have used the Spanish-Mexican word 

 aura (pronounced ow'-rah), which is the 

 name by which the turkey-buzzard is known 

 among the Spanish-speaking people of Cali- 

 fornia. C. Hart Meerum 



QUOTATIONS 



PROFESSORS SALARIES 



The finger tips of that virgin science, com- 

 parative college economics, have again been 

 kissed by the investigators working for the 

 Carnegie Foundation. " The Financial 

 Status of the Professor in America and in 

 Germany" is the theme of that institution's 

 second bulletin, and the statistics therein 

 arrayed baptize the new field of research with 

 the good old family name, " the dismal sci- 

 ence." The scenes unrolled do not conduce to 

 gayety or pride. About a third of all Ameri- 

 can colleges report that their full professors 

 receive an average salary of less than $1,000 a 

 year, while a scant half confess to paying be- 

 tween $1,000 and $2,000. Elaborate computa- 

 tions, based on fairly complete evidence, show 

 " that an American teacher who has gone 

 through colleg-e, taken a post-graduate course 

 and prepared himself for the profession of 

 teaching may hope to obtain at the age of 

 twenty-eight a salary of $1,250, at thirty-one a 

 salary of $1,750, at thirty-three a salary of 

 $2,250, and at thirty-five — at which age the 

 able man will have gained his professorship — 

 a salary of $2,500." His German colleague, 

 having survived the long ordeals of the 

 Privatdocent, receives an income whose pur- 

 chasing power is about 50 per cent, greater. 



But such summaries bring few new griefs; 

 everybody has long known in a general way 

 that American college professors as a class 

 have to seek odd jobs during vacation and 



