642 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. LV, No. 1433 



and Mrs. G. C. Payne, of the International 

 Health Board. The expedition will be under 

 the direction of Dr. W. W. Cort. The party 

 will leave the United States early in June and 

 will return about the first of October. The 

 headquarters in Porto Rieo will be Utuado, 

 where a small hospital has been furnished by 

 the Porto Rican Department of Sanitation for 

 laboratory and living quarters. The expedition 

 will work in cooperation with Dr. R. B. Hill, 

 director for Porto Rico of the International 

 Health Board, and Dr. W. P. Lippitt, commis- 

 sioner of liealth of Porto Rieo. The work of 

 the expedition will include a continuation of 

 the researches on the life of hookworm eggs 

 and larvie in the soil which were begun in 

 Trinidad during the summer of 1921. Field 

 studies will also be made of the sources of 

 human infestation under the conditions in 

 Porto Rico. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 NOTES 



By the will of Sejnnour Coman, of Chicago, 

 the University of Chicago is made trustee of 

 his residuary estate estimated to be approxi- 

 mately $145,000, the net income from which is 

 to be used for scientific research with special 

 reference to preventive medicine and the cause, 

 prevention and cure of diseases. This bequest 

 is to be known as the Seymour Coman Re- 

 search Fund. By the will of Alexander D. 

 Thomson, of Duluth, Minn., the sum of $50,000 

 is bequeathed to the university for use in the 

 medical department, to be expended under the 

 direction of Dr. Wilber E. Post, a graduate 

 and trustee of the university, and Dr. Herman 

 L. Ki-etschmer. 



It is reported that Wake Forest College 

 School of Medicine is entitled to receive the 

 principal of a trust fund, amounting to 

 $1,375,000, which was created in 1892 by Jabez 

 A. Bostwick, a director of the Standard Oil 

 Company. 



Dr. D. Wright Wilson, of the Johns Hop- 

 kins University, will succeed Dr. John Mar- 

 shall in the chair of chemistry in the Medical 

 School of the University of Pennsylvania. 



G. F. Reddish, Ph.D. (Yale '22) has been 

 elected associate professor of bacteriology, and 



Paul A. Warren, Ph.D (Michigan '22) has 

 been elected professor of botany in the Medical 

 College of Virginia. 



Dr. Calvin P. Stone, of the University of 

 Minnesota, has been appointed assistant pro- 

 fessor of psychology at Stanford University. 



W. L. Eikenberrt has resigned as associate 

 professor in the School of Education of the 

 University of Kansas, to take the position of 

 professor and head of the science department 

 in the Pennsylvania Normal School at East 

 Stroudsburg, Pa. 



Dr. Colin G. Fink has been appointed lec- 

 turer in electrochemistry and will have charge 

 of that division of the department of chemical 

 engineering of Columbia University, teginning 

 on July 1. He will continue his services as 

 secretary of the American Electrochemical 

 Society, office facilities having been an-anged 

 at Columbia for this. 



Professor Mayer, who has recently held the 

 chair of physiology in the Strasbourg Faculty 

 of Medicine, has been appointed successor to 

 the late Frangois Franck at the College de 

 France. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPOND- 

 ENCE 

 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



The recent address by Professor Bateson, at 

 Toronto, lias been variously interpreted. Among 

 other things he is quoted as saying that "as to 

 the origin of species we have no clear answer to 

 give. Faith has given place to agnosticism . . . 

 Although our faith in evolution remains un- 

 shaken, we have no acceptable account of the 

 origin of species." 



This statement must mean one of two things. 

 It may be a large and generous gesture dis- 

 claiming for science any approach to omni- 

 science, for the most that science can do is to 

 record the "observed sequence of events." Or 

 we may interpret it as a revelation of the 

 speaker's ignorance of the researches of field 

 investigators and of students of geographical 

 distribution generally. It is evident that 

 Bateson fails to distinguish between these and 

 the taxonomists who, mostly in museums, have 

 as he says "built up a vast edifice of knowledge 



