88 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL VI. No. 1178 



Dr. Sam Farlow Trelease has been ap- 

 pointed assistant professor of plant physiology 

 in the agricultural college of the University of 

 the Philippines. He sailed on July 18 and be- 

 gins his work on arriving at Los Baiios. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 



MAN AND THE ANTHROPOIDS 



In our current scientific literature one fre- 

 quently meets the assertion that man is a lin- 

 eal descendant of the anthropoid apes. The 

 evident implication is that the extant an- 

 thropoids, orang, gibbon, gorilla and chim- 

 panzee, are intended. Thus in the issue of 

 " Science," of February 23 ultimo. Professor 

 Stewart Paton remarks: 



The time is rapidly passing, as Yerkes has 

 pointed out, when on account of the disappearance 

 of the higher apes it will be possible to trace the 

 various gradations in our ancestral line. ■ 



The correction of this common error lies 

 all along the line of technical evolutionary 

 thought from Huxley to the present, but it 

 does not seem to have penetrated popular sci- 

 ence. Our leading authority in this field. 

 Professor Duckworth, in his " Morphology 

 and Anthropology," Volume I, page 238, 

 Second Edition, 1915, writes: 



"We must conclude that the existing anthropoid 

 apes, constituted as they now are, did not figure in 

 the ancestral history of man. 



This should relieve our anxieties regarding 

 " our ancestral line." 



While our knowledge of the anthropoids is 

 not as complete as we might wish, the whole 

 of it is against the supposition of the natives 

 of the Congo and of Borneo that man is 

 ascended from the anthropoids or the latter 

 are descended from man. The thraldom of 

 morphology accounts for much biological 

 belief both ancient and modern, but the sci- 

 ence of the present puts much more weight 

 on anatomy and physiology. It appears to 

 be a sound principle that groups showing in- 

 verse developments are not genetically related. 

 Duckworth points out some of these inversions 

 as regards man and the anthropoids, such 



as in dentition, in the spheno-ethmoidal angle, 

 and in the spheno-maxillary angle. Metcljni- 

 koff, while he assumes as a hypothesis that 

 man is descended from " some anthropoid 

 ape," pointed out that the present anthropoids 

 have the os penis which does not appear in 

 man, and that the hymen which is unique to 

 the genus Homo is absent in the anthropoids. 

 Several anatomists have followed Aristotle 

 in holding that the hand places man in a 

 distinct order, while Topinard was equally 

 emphatic regarding the human foot. Ev- 

 idences along these lines are supplemented 

 by pre-historic archeology, as all the older 

 human crania are dolichocephalic, while the 

 crania of all anthropoids are extremely 

 brachycephalio. 



Whether " scientists " are entitled to believe 

 what they please or are to be guided by ob- 

 servations and verifications is perhaps an open 

 question. Weismann accepted generatio 

 aequivoca, although he admitted " all the 

 evidence is against it." Still, many of us 

 believe that a soimd science and a sound ed- 

 ucation demand fidelity to the facts of expe- 

 rience and to those theories alone which grow 

 out of them. Mattoon M. Curtis 



Cleveland 



A GIRDLING OF BEAN STEMS CAUSED BY 

 BACT. PHASEOLI 



During a field trip in Michigan in July, 

 1914, the writer found a peculiar girdling of 

 the stems and branches of field beans to be 

 prevalent in several localities. Specimens 

 were collected from Kent, Newaygo and Tus- 

 cola counties. Since then specimens of this 

 disease have been collected from various 

 parts of the state each year. 



The disease appears at the nodes of stems 

 and branches as small water-soaked spots. 

 These enlarge, encircling the affected parts. 

 Later these diseased areas become amber- 

 colored. This girdling is usually completed 

 by the time the pods are about haK mature. 

 The affected tissue is so weakened that from 

 the weight of the tops the stem breaks at the 

 diseased node. These signs of the disease 

 may appear before any evidence of the bac- 

 terial blight upon the pods. 



