January 25, 1918] 



SCIENCE 



93 



cliair is to be nominated for election by the 

 council by an expert board, of which Sir Wm. 

 Osier is chairman. 



At the request of the federal government a 

 free course in wireless telegraphy will be given 

 at Bowdoin College. Professor Charles C. 

 Hutchings and Professor Ehys D. Evans are 

 to be in charge of the course. 



Dr. KAV>fOND Pearl, biologist in the Maine 

 Agricultural Experiment Station, and at pres- 

 ent at the head of the statistical department 

 of the United States Food Administration, has 

 been appointed head of the department of bi- 

 ometry and vital statistics in the new school 

 of hygiene and public health of the Johns 

 Hopkins University. 



Dr. Philip A. Shaffer, of Washington Uni- 

 versity, has been called to the national service. 

 He has been succeeded by Dr. A. Canby Robin- 

 son, associate professor of medicine. 



Mr. Andrew Boss has been appointed vice- 

 director of the Minnesota Experiment Sta- 

 tion in addition to his present duties. 



Dr. C. H. Shattuck, recently head of the 

 department of forestry at the University of 

 Idaho, has accepted an appointment as pro- 

 fessor of forestry in the University of Cali- 

 fornia. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 



A SUGGESTION TO MORPHOLOGISTS AND 

 OTHERS 



Ix the course of a year I look over a good 

 many zoological papers on different topics 

 outside of my own work — papers on genetics 

 or the many asi^ects of embryology or ecology 

 — and I am impressed with a general care- 

 lessness which exists among the writers on 

 one point which probably seems unimportant 

 to many of them but which to me seems of 

 very considerable moment. The jwint is that 

 very few of them give the name of the tax- 

 onomist who identified the species with which 

 they have been working, nor do they indicate 

 the preservation of typical material of the 

 adult form so that the specific identification 

 can be tested at any time. 



Confusion has already resulted from this 



lack, and more will come. In many cases 

 very great uncertainty exists as to the exact 

 species with which the writer was work- 

 ing. If I were to write a paper in which the 

 name of a beetle was given, my accuracy 

 would be attested by the fact that I inserted, 

 in parenthesis, " Determined by Schwarz " or 

 " by Casey " or " by Fall," or, if it were a Pro- 

 tozoan, the same tiling would happen if I 

 inserted in parenthesis "Determined by Cal- 

 kins," or, if it were a cactus, " Determined b.y 

 Rose " or " by Trelease," or if it were a fly. 

 " Determined by Knab " or " by Aldrich " 

 or " by Johnson " or " by Malloch " or " by 

 Parker" or "by Townsend." Such a state- 

 ment as this would at once set at rest any 

 question of accuracy, and would at the same 

 time indicate the probable place at which 

 representative specimens could be found in 

 case of accident to the author of the paper 

 or in case he should not himself preserve such 

 material. 



I have never done any embryological work, 

 and in the recent work on chromosomes and 

 the like I do not know how important it is 

 that specific identification should be made of 

 the forms studied; it may be entirely unim- 

 portant, if the genus is all right. But know- 

 ing, for example, that there are more than fifty 

 species of Drosophila in the United States, 

 it gives me an idea of inexactness when I see 

 so many of these recent genetic papers, 

 having to do with this genus, in which no 

 species is mentioned. The writers seem to be 

 entirely indifferent on this point. 



Beginning with Howard Ayres's well-known 

 paper " On the Development of (Ecanthus 

 niveus and its Parasite Teleas," in which he 

 writes in one place of teleas as " a parasitic 

 Ichneumon fly " and in another as one of the 

 " Pteromalidae," a pajier which was awarded 

 the Walker Prize for 1883, and concerning 

 which it must be said that no true teleas has 

 ever been reared from (Ecanthus eggs,''- and 

 extending down to the present day, hundreds 



1 It is quite possible that the parasite which 

 Ayres had was Polynema bifasciatipenne Girault, 

 a species belonging to an entirely different family 

 — the Mymaridse. — L. O. H. 



