August 25, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



273 



Place. The dining quarters and the kitchens 

 will be far enough advanced to accommodate 

 the number of undergraduates who formerly 

 took their meals at " Commons," comprising 

 about one thousand students. 



Dr. Walter A. Jessup, dean of the college 

 of education at the State University of Iowa, 

 has been elected president of the university, 

 to succeed Dr. Thomas H. Macbride, the 

 botanist, who retires at the age of sixty-eight 

 years. 



Howard 0. Parmalee, of Denver, has been 

 elected president of the Colorado State School 

 of Mines at Golden. 



At Dartmouth College, Charles N. Haskins 

 has been promoted to be professor of mathe- 

 matics on the Chandler foundation, Norman 

 E. Gilbert has been promoted to be associate 

 professor of physics and Arthur B. Meservey 

 to be assistant professor of physics. Carl C. 

 Porsaith has been appointed instructor in 

 biology. 



W. S. Miller, of the department of anat- 

 omy, at the University of Wisconsin, has been 

 promoted from associate professor to professor 

 of anatomy. 



Stanley C. Ball, Ph.D. (Tale, '15) has been 

 appointed instructor in zoology in the Massa- 

 chusetts Agricultural College. Frank N. 

 Blanchard (Tufts, '13) has resigned from the 

 department in order to enter the graduate 

 school of the University of Michigan. 



Dr. T. G. Moorhead has been elected pro- 

 fessor of the practise of medicine in the School 

 of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, 

 in the place of Sir John Moore, who has 

 retired. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 



NORTH AMERICAN FAUNAL AREAS 



A very interesting discussion of the geo- 

 graphical distribution of the fresh-water 

 faunas of North America 1 has recently been 

 published by Mr. Louis Germain. This author 



i"L'Origine et la Distribution Geographique 

 des Faunas d'eau Douce de L'Amerique du 

 Nord, " Annales de Ge'ographie, No. 32, XXIII- 

 XXIV. annee, pp. 394-406, 1915. 



reviews the works on this subject by American 

 authors in a very able manner and the paper 

 is a valuable contribution to the literature of 

 this subject. There are several statements, 

 however, which probably will not be accepted 

 by all American zoologists. Germain accepts 

 Simpson's 2 division of the continent into the 

 Pacific, Atlantic and Mississippian regions as 

 representing the best and only natural division 

 into faunistic areas. The subdivisions by 

 Dall 3 and Baker 4 are believed to be too com- 

 plex; and the latter author is criticized for es- 

 tablishing so complex a subdivision of the ter- 

 ritory based on the data supplied (apparently) 

 by a single small division of animals. But the 

 facts are that the map on page 57 of the 

 Lymnsea monograph was made not only from 

 data furnished by the Lymnaaas, but also by 

 all of the families of basommatophorous mol- 

 lusks, Planorbis, Physa, etc., the data for 

 which was secured while working upon the 

 Lymnseid monograph. Not only, however, do 

 the families of Basommatophora fit into this 

 detailed scheme, but it is quite possible that 

 all of the fresh-water mollusks, gastropods as 

 well as pelecypods, may be included. The 

 Amnicolidas, Pleuroceridse and Viviparidse, as 

 well as the great Unionidse family, have many 

 groups of species which are confined to some 

 one of the divisions indicated by the map in 

 question. 



As the, writer has already stated in the 

 Lymnaaa monograph, the distribution of fresh- 

 water mollusks, or for that matter of any fresh- 

 water group of animals, can be understood 

 only by a study of the river systems, past and 

 present. It is more frequently the natural 

 divides separating river drainages that form 

 the boundaries of faunal areas rather than the 

 presence of mountain chains, which indeed do 

 not always afford a barrier, but a means of 

 communication, as, for example, Two Ocean 

 Pass in Wyoming, at the summit of the con- 

 tinental divide, where the head waters of the 



2 C. T. Simpson, ' ' Synopsis of Naiades, ' ' p. 

 505. 



a W. H. Dall, ' ' Land and Fresh- water Mol- 

 lusks of Alaska, "p. 1. 



* F. C. Baker, "Lymnseidse of North and Middle 

 America," p. 56. 



