SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVI. No. 938 



UNIVEBSirr AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS 



Mrs. a. D. Juilliard, of New York, has 

 given $100,000 to Colorado College for a new 

 gymnasium as a memorial to her father, the 

 late Frederick H. 'Cossitt. 



Fifty thousand dollars have been be- 

 queathed to the University of Pennsylvania, 

 for two additional dormitory houses, by the 

 late Dr. Eichard A. Cleeman, as a memorial 

 to his brother, Ludovic C. Cleeman. 



The Ehode Island State Board of Educa- 

 tion has awarded at Brown University schol- 

 arships, under the new law providing for an 

 annual appropriation of $5,000. The recipi- 

 ents of these scholarships number twenty-two, 

 and each is required to make declaration of 

 an intention to follow teaching as a vocation 

 and to give a promise of serving the state as a 

 teacher, principal or superintendent for at 

 least two years. 



St. John's College has offered £500 as a 

 contribution to the equipment of the Solar 

 Physics Observatory on its installation in 

 Cambridge. 



Professor Lewis Perry, who holds the chair 

 of English at Williams College, has been of- 

 fered the presidency of "Wells College, Aurora, 

 N. T. 



Mr. W. B. Hardy, M.A., Gonville and 

 Caius, has been appointed university lecturer 

 in physiology at Cambridge University. 



DISCUSSION AND COBEESPONDENCE 



ON ortmann's "notes upon the families and 



genera of the najades " 



For the malacologist struggling along with 

 the current unnatural and erratic classifica- 

 tion of the " river-mussels," Ortmann's 

 " Notes upon the Families and Genera of the 

 Najades " ' clears up many difficulties. While 

 it has long been admitted that the only key to 

 the natural genera lay in the differentiation of 

 the soft parts, it has remained for this author 

 within the last two years" to break the tram- 

 mels of convention and indicate the funda- 

 mental points of Naiad classification. 



^ Ann. Carnegie Mus., XIII., No. 2, July, 19]2. 



= "A New System of the Unionidse, " Nautilus, 

 XXIII., 1910, pp. 39-42. 



At the outset Ortmann calls attention to 

 the difficulty of correlating the characters of 

 the shell with the relationships as indicated 

 by the anatomy and mentions the occurrence 

 of analogous types in unrelated species. In 

 the current number of the Proceedings of the 

 Malacological Society of London the writer 

 has discussed this problem with the view of 

 showing that in the more primitive forms the 

 shells were ponderous, subquadrate and pos- 

 sessed a well-developed hinge, while in the 

 more specialized forms the shells are com- 

 paratively thin, posteriorly elongate, the hinge 

 tending to become edentate. It has happened 

 in several instances, however, that the degen- 

 eration of the hinge has not proceeded pari 

 passu with the specialization of the anatomy, 

 but has been accelerated or retarded. 



The peculiar structure of the gill of the 

 Margaritanidse is discussed in some detail. 

 In the writer's opinion the oblique arrange- 

 ment of the synapticul© connecting the two 

 lamellse is not to be correlated with the water 

 tubes of the more specialized Naiad gill, but is 

 merely an incidental feature. Ortmann states 

 that the gills are without septa, but his draw- 

 ings show them in rudimentary form. They 

 are, however, only united at infrequent inter- 

 vals, due to a tendency for one or more of the 

 faint but regular bead-like papillss scattered 

 along their length to develop sufficiently to 

 fuse with its neighbor on the opposite plate, 

 forming one of the scattered interlamellar 

 tissues described. A more extensive fusion of 

 the papillss would result in the structure oc- 

 curring in Hyria. 



The family Unionidae, as admitted, might 

 with considerable propriety be broken up into 

 several natural groups. The Lampsilinse are 

 not at all closely allied to the other genera and 

 seem fully entitled to family rank. The group 

 represented by Quadrula and that by Pleuro- 

 hema and ElUptio are allied and should be 

 placed in the Quadrulidse (Quadrulinse Von 

 Ihring) though the two latter genera might be 

 regarded as forming a distinct subfamily 

 owing to the restriction of the brood-pouch to 

 the outer gills. The European Unioninse are 

 more closely related to the Anodontinse and to 



