722 
following problems remain to be solved. 
What is the relation of our chestnut-blight 
fungus to the Hndothia on chestnuts in 
Italy? What species related to or iden- 
tical with the chestnut fungus grow on 
other trees in this country, and how do 
they affect such trees? Is it possible to 
determine authoritatively whether Spheria 
gyrosa and Spheria radicalis Schweinitz 
are identical or distinct species, and are 
European botanists justified in believing 
that the Endothia of Europe is identical 
with either of the species of Schweinitz? 
Some of these questions mycologists may 
be expected to answer hereafter. Others 
may never be answered except by those in 
whom the power of observation does not 
exclude the exercise of a vivid imagination. 
W. G. FarLow 
MORE TROUBLE FOR THE SYSTEMATIST? 
On a former occasion, in an address as 
retiring chairman of Section F of the Amer- 
ican Association for the Advancement of Sci- 
ence, your speaker had oceasion to bid for the 
sympathy of his zoological colleagues, the im- 
mediate cause of distress being a prediction 
on the part of Dr. C. B. Davenport that “the 
future systematic work will look less like a 
dictionary and more like a table of loga- 
rithms.” 
In the ten years that have passed since that 
time, this particular specter has not reap- 
peared, and the systematists have placidly 
gone on their way, apparently oblivious to the 
existence of logarithmic functions. This, 
however, may be due to their general belated- 
ness and ultra conservatism; and it is not 
impossible that the threat of Dr. Davenport 
may still disturb the placidity of their dreams. 
There are other troubles, however, that have 
arisen in the meanwhile, that are not a whit 
less disturbing than the one just mentioned. 
A serious and most important effort to meet 
+Read before the Central Section of the Amer- 
ican Society of Zoologists, at Urbana, Ill., on April 
5, 1912. 
SCIENCE 
[N.S. Vou. XXXV. No. 906 
some of the difficulties of nomenclature has 
been made in the formation of the Interna- 
tional Commission on Zoological Nomencla- 
ture, a thoroughly dignified ‘and able body of 
zoologists, of which Dr. ©. W. Stiles is the 
accomplished secretary and most influential 
American member. In the formation of this 
commission great pains were taken to make it 
truly international and representative. It 
was formally appointed by the most dignified 
body of zoologists in the world, the Interna- 
tional Zoological Congress, and has striven 
earnestly and faithfully to perform its hercu- 
lean task. It has been confronted with al- 
most unsurmountable obstacles, and is cer- 
tainly deserving of praise for its efficiency and 
courage. 
That this commission would meet with seri- 
ous difficulties was to have been predicted. 
In the attempt to formulate general laws it is 
inevitable that there should result individual 
eases of hardship and injustice, particularly 
when the law is inflexibly administered. 
Zoologists, like other men, are apt to be more 
or less restive under restraint, and consistency 
in applying the law of priority enacted by the 
International Commission was bound to in- 
volve irritating consequences. 
These consequences are felt not only by the 
relatively small number of systematists, but 
even more keenly by the morphologists, em- 
bryologists and others who have to use zoolog- 
ical names, although they are spared the pains 
of making them, and are much inclined to 
cling fondly to those which have been ren- 
dered familiar by usage. 
These men are naturally exasperated when 
they are required to call a holothurian a 
“bohadschioidean,” and find it hard to recog- 
nize an actinian under the guise of “ Dagy- 
side.” 
Systematists have always, however, been 
subject to the execrations of their fellow zool- 
ogists along these lines, and at times de- 
servedly so. It is inevitable, on the one hand, 
that classifications and hence names must 
change with the increase of knowledge and, 
on the other hand, it is equally certain that 
pedantie systematists and hair-splitting pur- 
