660 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLV. No. 1174 



The new Stanford University Hospital, 

 which, is being erected at a cost of approxi- 

 mately $500,000, will, it is expected, be ready 

 for occupancy about October 1. 



Mr. V. EvERiT IIacy, commissioner of chari- 

 ties and corrections. West Chester County, has 

 undertaken to support three fellowships, of the 

 value of $500, each for work and investigations 

 in the West Chester County penitentiary. 



The following changes have been made in 

 the staff of the anatomical department of the 

 Johns Hopkins University: Dr. Florence E. 

 Sabin has been promoted from associate pro- 

 fessor of anatomy to professor of histology; 

 Dr. Lewis H. Weed, from associate to associate 

 professor in anatomy, and Dr. Charles 0. 

 Macklin, from instructor to associate. Pro- 

 fessor O. Van der Stricht, of the University of 

 Ghent, becomes lecturer in anatomy. Dr. Ed- 

 mund V. Cowdry, associate in anatomy, has re- 

 signed to accept the professorship of anatomy 

 in the Peking Union Medical College which is 

 now conducted by the Rockefeller Foundation 

 of New York. Dr. Eldon W. Sanford be- 

 comes assistant in anatomy. 



Mr. W. G. Waterman, recently assistant pro- 

 fessor of biology at Knox College, has been ap- 

 pointed assistant professor of botany at North- 

 western University. 



Associate Professor William A. Kepner 

 has been promoted to a profesorship of biology 

 in the University of Virginia. 



At the University of Minnesota, Henry T. 

 Moore has been appointed assistant professor 

 and Karl S. Lashley instructor in psychology, 

 with salaries of $2,500 and $1,700, respectively. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 



HERITAGE AND HABITUS 



The word " habitus " as distinguished from 

 " heritage " was defined in 1913 by Gregory"^ 

 as follows: 



The totality of the csenotelic or recent adaptive 

 characters of an animal may be called its habitus; 

 the totality of its paljeotelic characters may be 



iGregory, W. K., "(IV.) Convergence and Al- 

 lied Phenomena in the Mammalia," Sept. Brit. 

 Assoc. Adv. Sci., 1914 (1913), pp. 525-526. 



referred to as its heritage. The habitus tends to 

 conceal remote phylogenetie relationships, the heri- 

 tage to reveal them. Thus, the diverse habitus of 

 Thylacinus, Notoryctes and Phaseolomys concealed 

 their remarkably uniform underlying heritage. 



The habitus of a race of fishes is the totality of 

 their ctenotelie characters, i. e., of all those charac- 

 ters which have been evolved in adaptation to their 

 latest habits and environment. The heritage of a 

 race of fishes is the totality of their palasotelie char- 

 acters, t. e., of all those characters which were 

 evolved in adaptation to earlier habits and en- 

 vironments and which were transmitted in a more 

 or less unchanged condition, in spite of later 

 changes in habits and euvironment.2 



The derivation is, of course, from hahitus, 

 meaning attire, but by a natural extension 

 habitus is taken to mean among other things, 

 e. g., fades (Century Dictionary, p. 2675). 

 The word " habitus " is common property. It 

 is a word of wide significance. Gregory ap- 

 plied it in a limited sense without entirely 

 losing sight of its generally accepted meaning 

 (e. g., habitus of plants). 



The terms habitus and heritage may become 

 very useful and be generally adopted among 

 naturalists. The reptilian heritage of ichthyo- 

 saurs stands in clearest contrast to their ma- 

 rine habitus; so too the mammalian heritage 

 of bats and cetacea, the primate heritage of 

 man, the avian habitus and diapsid heritage 

 of pterosaurs, the struthious habitus and thero- 

 pod heritage of Strouthiomimus, etc. 



Lillie recently uses the term habitus in the 

 same general sense in which Gregory has used 

 it, but the latter gives it a more precise mean- 

 ing, viz., the totality of all characters evolved 

 in response to the latest or final life zone. 

 " Somatic habitus " as used by Lillie means 

 " general bodily characteristics," while habitus 

 in botany means the sum of the adaptive char- 

 acters, much as Gregory uses it. These adap- 

 tive characters are, of course, inherited. 



The words csenotelic and palseotelic, also pro- 

 posed by Gregory, are perhaps still better 

 terms, because they are self-explanatory to 

 those who know even a little Greek. Cseno- 

 telic signifies characteristics evolved during 

 present life habits; pateotelic signifies in- 



2 Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sciences for 1913, p. 268. 



