June 7, 1918] 



SCIENCE 



561 



construction and organization of this school 

 shall be, according to the decree, undertaken 

 at once by the governor general so that the 

 necessary funds will be forthcoming as pro- 

 vided for by this law. 



At the seventeenth annual meeting of the 

 North Carolina Academy of Science, held at 

 Greensboro on April 26 and 27, Dr. E. W. 

 Gudger, after ten years' service as secretary- 

 treasurer, was made president for the next 

 year. The other officers elect are: vice-presi- 

 dent. Professor H. B. Arbuckle, Davidson 

 College; secretary-treasurer, Mr. Bert Cun- 

 ningham, Trinity College; additional member.=i 

 executive committee ; Rev. George W. Lay, St. 

 Mary's School ; Professor Gertrude W. Men- 

 denhall. State Normal College and Professor 

 J. J. Wolfe, Trinity College. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 NEWS 



The Rockefeller Foundation has made the 

 following appropriations: Howard College, 

 Birmingham, Ala., $100,000 ; Wake Forest Col- 

 lege, Wake Forest, N. C, $100,000, and Mere- 

 dith College, Raleigh, N. C, $75,000. The 

 board granted $195,000 for state agents for 

 negro rural schools and for the annual mainte- 

 nance of negro schools in the south. It also 

 appropriated $14,000 for farm demonstration 

 work in Maine and New Hampshire. 



At the University of Kentucky Dr. C. A. 

 Shull, of the University of Kansas, has been 

 appointed head of the department of botany; 

 Dr. C. B. Cornell, of the University of Ne- 

 braska, assistant professor of education, and 

 W. D. Funkhauser (Ph.D., Cornell) head of 

 the department of zoology. 



At the University of Chicago, the following 

 promotions have been made: To a professor- 

 ship, Preston Keyes, anatomy; to associate 

 professorships: Herman I. Schlesinger and 

 Jean Piccard, chemistry; to assistant pro- 

 fessorships: Gerald L. Wendt, chemistry; 

 Charles C. Colby, geography, and Morris M. 

 Wells, zoology; to instructorships : Merle C. 

 Coulter, botany; Carl Richard Moore, zoology. 



At the University of Michigan Associate 

 Professor Arthur J. Decker has been pro- 

 moted to be professor of sanitary engineer- 

 ing. Walter C. Drury has been made in- 

 structor in sanitary engineering. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 



-ON THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN AMERICA 



It is not from choice that the writer again 

 ventures to take part in the controversy re- 

 garding the antiquity of man in America, but 

 the reported discovery of remains of man asso- 

 ciated with those of fossil animals of Pleisto- 

 cene age at Vero, Florida, has reopened the 

 question of antiquity and presents such possi- 

 bilities of erroneous interpretation that I feel 

 impelled to offer a word of caution. 



The American aborigines as known to us 

 have occupied every available part of the con- 

 tinent from the Arctic to the Antarctic 

 throughout the long but illy defined period 

 known as the Recent, and their osseous re- 

 mains and the relics of their handicraft have 

 become associated with unconsolidated super- 

 ficial deposits by burial, and by the changes, 

 often very profound, which take place every- 

 where through the action of wind, water and 

 gravity and especially along stream courses; 

 and in the passage of the centuries and mil- 

 lenniums it is patent that the relations of hu- 

 man remains and relics of all classes have been 

 subject not only to minor but often radical 

 changes in their relation to one another and 

 to the original formations and surface of the 

 occupied areas. 



The full significance of these conditions is 

 seldom realized or but imperfectly recognized 

 by those who seek the early traces of man's 

 presence and who venture to reckon the period 

 of his arrival. The stream, for example, that 

 meandered a valley or plain thousands of years 

 ago may ere this have rearranged the mate- 

 rials of large areas along its course. Its chan- 

 nel may have worn its way back and forth over 

 miles of territory, yet the formations thus ef- 

 fected may be so reset, though largely at re- 

 duced levels, as to obliterate traces of dis- 

 turbance. Changes in the chronologic rela- 



