June 16, 1922] 



SCIENCE 



643 



which they are willing to share with ns and 

 which we grreatly need . . . The separation 

 between the laboratory man and the systemat- 



■ ists already imperils the work, I may say the 

 sanity of either." 



It is true that the accumulation of facts 

 in regard to each one of hundreds of thou- 

 sands of individual species shows endless vari- 

 ety in the details of modified divergence. It is 

 therefore impossible to condense in a single 

 phrase all that we know of its phases, unless 

 with Darwin we use the term "Natural Selec- 

 tion" as the antithesis to supernatural creation 

 and adjustment, thus including in one word 

 not only the results of the Survival of the Pit, 

 but also all other natural processes which may 

 be coincident with it. 



As a matter of fact, no phenomenon of 

 nature is better understood than that of the 

 origin of species, taking the word species in 

 its original and natural definition as a definable 

 form of animal or plant life as now existing 

 on the globe. In the study of any one of these, 

 we find the inherent factors of heredity and 

 variation, the survival of individuals adapted 

 to their environment, thereby perpetuating in 

 a general way their particular traits. The 

 gi'oups thus foi-med lose their unity through 

 "biological friction," "mating by propinquity," 

 isolation, segregation or by whatever term we 

 choose to indicate the effects of barriers. There 

 is no better term than the one used by Moritz 

 Wagner, "rdumliche Sonderung." Thus taking 

 the inherent life forces into consideration, 

 adaptation is the result of sifting, species- 

 moulding the result of bars to free movement 

 within the species. Independent of the matter 

 of adaptation, sundering separates groups 

 with some differences in parentage and subjects 

 them to new incidence of selection, so that in 

 a longer or shorter time specific differences, 

 usually non-adaptive, appear and become per- 

 manent. Whether the special variations are 

 great or small in degree, mutations or fluctua- 

 tions, is a secondary question, the latter most 

 usually, but neither can become permanent 

 except through rdumliche Sonderung. 



The origin of individual species of animal 



' or plant runs closely parallel with that of indi- 

 vidual words in a language. Each one of these 

 springs from a "root"; through ancient docu- 



ments (fossil records) the roots of words can 

 be traced more perfectly than the roots of ani- 

 mal or plant species. Yet one may know the 

 derivation of thousands of words while yet 

 "expressing agnosticism" as to the origin of 

 language. 



The laws of distribution as to words or spe- 

 cies alike may be summed up in simple pi'opo- 

 sitions. Every word and every species is 

 found in ever5' part of the globe, unless (a) it 

 has never found its way there, (6) it has failed 

 to maintain itself, or (c) maintaining itself, it 

 has been, through environment sifting or ob- 

 struction (selection or segregation), trans- 

 formed into something tangibly different. 



The Origin of Species for the most part is 

 defined by proposition (c). The origin of any 

 given species of the British fauna or flora, for 

 example, can be traced from England to the 

 Continent of Europe just as sm'ely though not 

 as accurately as a given word in the English 

 language. The biological i-elations of words 

 differ from those of animals or plants, but 

 rdumliche Sonderung produces corresponding 

 results in both cases. 



David Starr Jordan 



THE KAIETEUR FALLS 



To THE Editor op Science: I read with 

 much interest in a recent issue of Science the 

 account of the expedition of the New York 

 Zoological Society to the Tropical Research 

 Station at British Guiana. In this account was 

 included a description of a visit to Kaieteur 

 Palls, which were claimed to be the highest in 

 the world. It seems a little unfortunate that 

 the writer overlooked the fact that he has in 

 his own country a magnificent waterfall which 

 is several times as high as the one he described. 



Quoting directly from the article, we find, 

 "The Kaieteur Palls are the highest in the 

 world, eight hundred and ten feet in all, about 

 five times as high as Niagara." The statistics 

 published by the Department of the Interior 

 of the U. S. government give the height of the 

 Yosemite Palls in the Yosemite Valley in Cali- 

 fornia as more than twenty-five hundred feet 

 in all, while the first sheer drop is fourteen 

 hundred and thirty feet. I do not want to go 

 on record as discouraging any one from visit- 

 ing the Kaieteur Palls if the opportunity pre- 



