Januaby 11, 1918] 



SCIENCE 



43 



Under the will of Evelyn MacCurdy Salis- 

 bury, of New Haven, widow of the late Pro- 

 fessor Edward E. Salisbury, Yale University 

 is to receive the sum of fifty thousand dollars 

 to found a professorship to be called the 

 Charles J. MacCurdy professorship of anthro- 

 pology, on condition that the university pay 

 to George Grant MacCurdy the sum of twenty- 

 five hundred dollars annually during his life- 

 time. The will also provides for a conditional 

 annual gift of fifteen hundred dollars to be 

 expended at the discretion of Professor Mac- 

 Curdy for the benefit of the anthropological 

 department of the Tale Museum. Another 

 provision is that upon the decease of George 

 Grant MacCurdy the sum of sixty thousand 

 dollars is to be paid to either (1) Yale Uni- 

 versity to found a research fund to be called 

 the Evelyn MacCurdy Salisbury Eesearch 

 Fund in Anthropology ; or (2) the Connecticut 

 College for Women at New London to foimd a 

 professorship of American history as George 

 Grant MacCurdy shall designate by his last 

 will; a power of apportionment as between 

 these two institutions being conferred upon 

 him. 



Mrs. EJNG, of Worthing, has given £1,000 

 five per cent, war stock for the establishment 

 in the University of Cambridge of a scholar- 

 ship for research work on fevers, in memory 

 of her daughter, Neita King, a member of a 

 voluntary aid detachment who died of cerebro- 

 spinal fever in France last May. 



The Harvard University registration is 3,- 

 684, nearly 2,000 less than last year. The Law 

 School shows the greatest decrease, its figures 

 of 856 last year dropping to 296 this year. 

 Two departments show an increased attend- 

 ance, the Medical School, with an enrolment 

 of 386, a gain of 28 over last year, and the 

 engineering and mining department, with 591, 

 an increase of 14. 



"William M. Davis, Sturgis Hooper pro- 

 fessor of geology, emeritus at Harvard Uni- 

 versity, has asked to be relieved of his position 

 as western exchange professor, and his resigna- 

 tion has been accepted. 



Charles Fuller Baker, assistant director 

 of the Botanic Gardens at Singapore, and 

 professor of agronomy (on leave) at the Col- 

 lege of Agriculture of the Philippines, has 

 been recalled to the Philippines to assimie the 

 deanship of the College of Agriculture and the 

 professorship of tropical agronomy due to the 

 mid-year retirement of Dean Copeland. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 



geologic dates in physiographic 

 descriptions 



The protest repeatedly urged by Davis^ 

 against the unwarranted introduction of for- 

 mation names and other irrelevant geologic 

 material into geographic descriptions is, no 

 doubt, heartily seconded by the majority of 

 geographers and physiographers. 



A good thing may, however, be carried too 

 far. 



A case in point, as it appears to the writer, 

 is a description by C. A. Cotton of " Block 

 Mountains in New Zealand," which appeared 

 in a recent niunber of the American Journal 

 of Science.'^ 



Cotton's paper is a most commendable ex- 

 ample of a physiographic description worked 

 out along the lines advocated by Davis. The 

 material is most effectively presented, but, in 

 accordance with Davis's suggestions, all men- 

 tion of geologic age, or dates, either of the 

 block faulting movements or of the forma- 

 tions involved, is deliberately and studiously 

 avoided. 



This may be desirable from the standpoint 

 of a geographer whose sole interest is in the 

 present landscape, but his geological col- 

 leagues are sure to find it disappointing. 



The science of geomorphology has now 

 reached such a stage that it has an interpre- 

 tative as well as a descriptive value. Geolo- 

 gists are coming more and more to rely upon 

 physiographic evidence in interpreting re- 

 cent earth history. Why, then, should a 



1 Annals Assn. Amer. Geogr., Vol. V., 1915, p. 90. 



2 Cotton, C. A., "Block Mountains in New Zea- 

 land," Am. Jour. Sci., 4th Ser., Vol. XLIV., 1917, 

 pp. 249-293. 



