NOVEMBBE 6, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



645 



the nerves issuing from the brain, which re- 

 quire careful reexamination at leisure, and 

 passing over as not worthy of comment the 

 lapsus calami on page 235 to which he calls 

 attention, and the importance of which he 

 magnifies, as it is abundantly corrected else- 

 where, I wish to protest against the misrepre- 

 sentations contained in his article, founded 

 upon a total failure to understand my mean- 

 ing and attitude. 



Dr. Hay labors to make it appear that I 

 suggest that Diplodocus was an animal " with 

 three pairs of nostrils." I never suggested 

 such a thought and no fair interpretation of 

 my words could lead to it. In my paper I 

 simply called attention to the obvious fact 

 that two openings in the bones of the skull 

 apparently leading into the narial cavity 

 occur on either side in advance of the large 

 posterior opening, which Professor Marsh in- 

 terpreted as the nasal aperture. They are 

 there! Dr. Hay is at liberty to amuse him- 

 self at his leisure in endeavoring to explain 

 them as he pleases. I did say of the foramina, 

 which I named " the mesial foramina of the 

 maxilla," that they might possibly have had 

 " a function supplementary to the function of 

 the true narial opening." This does not 

 necessarily imply that they were nostrils open- 

 ing from the nasal cavity into the outer air. 

 Whether they were nares, or were covered by 

 tegument in life, I did not venture to say. It 

 is quite conceivable that the large opening 

 which Professor Marsh has interpreted as the 

 true narial opening may have been covered 

 by tegument and that one or the other of the 

 smaller pairs of anterior openings may have 

 been the true functional nares, as was long 

 ago suggested, if I remember correctly, by the 

 late Dr. Baur. In attempting to make me to 

 have suggested that Diplodocus had three 

 pairs of functional nares Dr. Hay is traveling 

 quite beyond my text, and this " fanciful 

 proposition," as he is pleased to call it, is the 

 creature of his own imagination. I object to 

 have him thus misinterpret me. 



Dr. Hay devotes a paragraph to a foot-note 

 on page 245 which he does not quote, but 

 which he garbles. This foot-note is as fol- 

 lows : " Bphenodon has no external ear, agree- 



ing in this respect with many other recent 

 reptilia and ophidia. It is possible that 

 Diplodocus had no external ear." I might 

 have omitted the word " many," and have 

 written the word " probable " instead of the 

 word "possible," but then I do not claim 

 omniscience. Omniscience is not one of my 

 fads; and besides I know, as Dr. Hay should 

 also know, that we have in some of the 

 batrachia and lacertilia folds of skin partially 

 covering the tympanum, suggesting and ap- 

 parently to a certain extent functioning as 

 rudimentary outer ears, and that in the 

 crocodilia there is provided an opercular flap, 

 which distinctly functions as an outer ear. 

 I think my temperate statement may stand as 

 I left it. It does not imply, as Dr. Hay tries 

 to twist it into implying, that I held the ridi- 

 culous opinion that there exist reptilia with 

 outer ears fully developed, as for instance, in 

 the mammalia. Dr. Hay in his article is 

 evidently making an attempt to be " funny." 

 He ought first to be sure that he understands 

 what he is talking about. 



W. J. Holland 

 Caenegie Museum, 



PiTTSBUEQ, Pa., 



October 20, 1908 



ON THE ENCOTJEAGEMENT OF ME. CHAELES D. 

 SNYDEE 



In a recent paper^ Charles D. Snyder has 

 published the following statement: 



If we believe that any given physiological ac- 

 tivity is due to some particular physical change, 

 we need only to determine at which velocities the 

 action proceeds under various temperatures and 

 then compare these results with the velocities of 

 (probable) physical processes under similar 

 changes of temperature in order to test for our- 

 selves the correctness of our view. 



He here refers to a foot-note which reads as 

 follows : 



See the author's original communication, 

 ArcJiiv fur Anatomie und Physiologie, Physiol. 

 Abh., 1907, p. 113. In this paper the idea of 

 comparing temperature coefficients for possible 

 physical causes underlying physiological actions, 

 as outlined above, was clearly expressed. It was 



* Snyder, Chas. D., Am. Jour. Physiol., Vol. 22, 

 No. 3, p. 309, August, 1908. 



