852 
concluding that the sea bottom is, for the 
most part, utterly dark, but that there are 
scattered areas, often of considerable, extent 
where animal life is aggregated in masses, 
and where the phosphorescent light is of 
sufficient quantity to render the colors, 
laid on as we have seen in broad patterns, 
visible to animals with functional eyes. 
These colors would then be of the same 
utility to their possessors as in the upper 
world, and act as protective, aggressive, 
directive, attractive and alluring agencies. 
We are further justified in maintaining 
that phosphorescence is in all cases of di- 
rect utility to its possessors, and that in the 
fixed eyeless forms it serves to attract food, 
and perhaps in some cases to warn enemies 
of the presence of the irritating nettling 
cells. 
As a sort of compensation for the feeble- 
ness of the phosphorescent light, and for its 
absence over vast areas, many animals, es- 
pecially fishes and crustaceans, are fur- 
nished with very large eyes, or with organs 
which serve as lanterns, or with enormous 
mouths and stomachs to make the most of 
‘a very occasional square meal, or with 
greatly elongated feelers or tactile organs. 
Others still are provided with a luminous 
bait to attract the prey. 
The main thing that I would impress 
upon you this evening is the fact that we 
have a right to expect to find utility for 
‘every character, not rudimentary, possessed 
by animals, a utility not necessarily to the 
individual, but certainly to the species. 
And I would protest most vigorously against 
the vain and impotent conclusion that any- 
thing is useless simply because we have 
been too ignorant or too indolent to find its 
function. I have small patience with a 
statement such as the following taken from 
a recent writer on animal coloration : ‘‘ The 
inevitable conclusion, therefore, from these 
facts appears to be that the brilliant and 
varied colorations of deep-sea animals are 
SCIENCE. 
[N. S. Von. XIII. No. 335. 
totally devoid of meaning ; they can not be 
of advantage for protective purposes or as 
warning colors, for the simple and sufficient 
reason that they are invisible.”’ 
This sort of thing is deeply injurious’ to 
science, because it is a helpless surrender of 
one of the most powerful of all incentives 
to research. If we can loll back in our 
easy chairs and declare that natural phe- 
nomena of widespread occurrence are mean- 
ingless, or, what amounts to the same thing, 
that Nature is guilty of a lot of vapid non- 
sense, we have indeed sold our scientific 
birthright for a mess of exceedingly thin 
pottage, and have stultified ourselves in the 
eyes of the thinking world.* 
C. C. Nurrine. 
STATE UNIVERSITY oF IowA. 
REMINISCENT REMARKS ON THE TOP. 
Some time ago, I wrote a short article in 
this journal,} in which among other things 
I endeavored to give an intelligible explan- 
ation of all that, from an elementary point 
of view, is interesting in the dynamics of 
the top. The treatment of this famous 
and ubiquitous apparatus in all text-books 
known to me is too sketchy and, didacti- 
cally considered, useless. In my judgment 
this is a real gap and well worth filling. 
But my friends have so frequently and even 
quite recently taken me to task for my ex- 
planation, that I feel bound to reassert its 
correctness here. 
Everybody will agree that up to the sec- 
ond order of approximation, and a vigor- 
ously spinning top or gyroscope, in which @ 
is the polar velocity and ¢ and ¢ the para- 
meters of azimuth and altitude, : 
* Most of the facts and sometimes whole paragraphs 
concerning the coloration of deep-sea animals and 
phosphorescence, have been taken from the following 
papers by the author: ‘The Color of Deep Sea Ani- 
mals,’ Proc. Iowa Acad. of Sci., Vol. V1.; ‘ The Utility 
of Phosphorescence in Deep Sea Animals,’ Am. Nat., 
Oct., 1899. 
+ScrENCE, V., pp. 171-5. 
