Apeil 6, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



337 



Corixids. The former feed in their first three 

 stages largely upon the small Crustacea — 

 Ostracods, cyclops and Daphnians, etc.,'^ add- 

 ing to this diet such other forms as they are 

 able to master, including corixids, mosquito 

 larvse and their own weaker brothers, while the 

 source of the food supply of the boatmen^ 

 is found in the brown, sedimentary material 

 on the bottom of the pool. This they scoop 

 up with the flat rakes of their fore-legs. These 

 rakes are the somewhat spoonshaped terminal 

 segments or palce, which are most admirably 

 equipped for their work. An examination of 

 the contents of the digestive tract reveals 

 much of disorganized unicellular plant matter, 

 diatoms, oscillatoria, euglenae, chlamodomonas, 

 and occasionally the shell of an arcella, or 

 the remains of other lowly animal forms. 



Thus, it may be noted that the Corixids can 

 be looked upon as members of the producing 

 class in the waters where they are found. 

 Gathering their food from the slimy ooze at 

 the bottom of the pool, they in turn make 

 forage for the many predatory animals that 

 lurk in the shadowy places or dart in piursuit 

 of their prey. We have witnessed their capture 

 by Notonectids, ISTaucorids and nymphal Belo- 

 stomas, by the larvsB of Dyticids and Gyrinids, 

 and are forced to believe that they take their 

 place with the Entomostraca in furnishing 

 food supply. Their alertness and agility, how- 

 ever, permit them to maintain themselves even 

 in waters swarming with carnivorous forms, 

 while in proper waters, with an absence of a 

 dominating predatory population, they thriva 

 in astonishing numbers. 



More might be said concerning the role 

 played by the aquatic Hemiptera in the soci- 

 ety of water forms, but this will suffice to indi- 

 cate that they have a part not heretofore re- 

 corded — an intimate relation to certain of the 



1 We have reared N. v/ndulata to end of fourth 

 instar in a small Petri dish, its only food being 

 ostracods supplied to it daily by means of a pi- 

 pette. 



2 We have carried a species of boatmen through 

 its entire cycle as many as twelve individuals in a 

 single Petri dish upon such fare. 



Entomostraca, and even to the unicellular life 

 of our ponds and pools. H. B. Hunqerpord 



Cornell Universitt 



the doctrine of evolution and the 



CHURCH 



To THE Editor op Science : In the minds of 

 those who are beginning to be classed among 

 the older men, there stiU lingers the memory 

 of the time when the pulpit hurled its de- 

 nouncements against those men of science who 

 had the temerity to accept the doctrines of 

 evolution as advanced by Darwin and Huxley. 



An interesting instance of the entire change 

 of opinion that has come over the clergy is 

 shown by an experience that occurred at the 

 exercises connected with the celebration of the 

 one hundredth anniversary of the consecration 

 of St. John's Church in Washington City on 

 January 14, 1917. 



A former rector of St. John's, the Rev. Dr. 

 George William Douglas, now a canon of the 

 Cathedral of St. John the Divine in ISTew York 

 City, in a sermon in which he reviewed the 

 history of the church, spoke of a century as 

 being a very short time in comparison with 

 the time during which man had inhabited our 

 earth, quoting Henry Fairfield Osborn's re- 

 cent work on " Men of the Old Stone Age " as 

 his authority, for the number of years. 



It is a far cry to the Oxford meeting of the 

 British Association in 1860 when the learned 

 Bishop Wilberforce attempted so unsuccess- 

 fully to controvert Huxley, the youthful advo- 

 cate of science, then well nigh unknown out- 

 side the narrow circle of scientific workers. 



On Huxley's tomb are these words : 



And if there be no meeting past the grave, 

 If all is darkness, silenee, yet 'tis rest. 

 Be not afraid, ye waiting hearts that weep, 

 For God "still giveth his beloved sleep," 

 And if an endless sleep he will — so well. 



Sir Michael Foster once said: 



Future visitors to the burial place [of Huxley] 

 on the northern heights of London, seeing on his 

 tomb the above Unes, will recognize that the ag- 

 nostic man had much in common with the man of 

 faith. 



It is interesting to note the fact that Osborn 

 was a pupil of Huxley's and by chance was in 



