AnuL 10, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



557 



Masten. The work will be wholly photo- 

 graphic iu character. Prof. David P. Todd, 

 who has charge of the Amherst expedition, has 

 already left New York with a party consisting 

 of Mr. and Sirs. Arthur Curtis James, of New 

 York ; Mrs. D. Todd, Chief Engineer John 

 Pemberton, U. S. N., who goes with the per- 

 mission of the Secretary of the Navy ; Prof. 

 William P. Gerrish, of Harvard, meteorologist 

 and photographer ; E. A. Thompson, of Am- 

 herst, the head mechanician, and Dr. Vander- 

 poel Adriance and Arthur W. Frances, of New 

 York. The party will join the yacht ' Coro- 

 net ' at San Francisco and will sail to Japan by 

 way of Honolulu. The yatch carries a large 

 number of instruments. 



At a postponed hearing on Vivisection before 

 the House Committee of Judiciary of Massa- 

 chusetts, the proposed legislation against vivi- 

 section was opposed by Profs. Bowditch, 

 Theobald Smith and J. J. Putnam, of Har- 

 vard University; Prof. Hodge, of Clark Uni- 

 versity ; Prof. Wilcox, of Wellesley College ; 

 Prof. Sedgwick, of the Massachusetts Insti- 

 tute of Technology, and others. President Eliot 

 is reported by the Boston Transcript to have 

 said that in the last twenty-five years, dur- 

 ing which experiments in physiology had 

 been conducted in Harvard, not a single in- 

 stance of a student bringing any complaint of 

 cruelty against the work done in the physio- 

 logical laboratories had ever come to the knowl- 

 edge of the corporation. There was no abuse 

 of vivisection in Massachusetts. The men 

 whom this bill indirectly accused of cruelty to 

 animals were the most humane, merciful, clear- 

 seeing men in the community, devoted, year 

 after year, to the most humane occupation now 

 existing iu the world. Their profession showed 

 in their faces, aud he appealed to the members 

 of the committee to know whether they thought 

 that the men who had appeared before them 

 could be guilty of the charge implied by the 

 application for such legislation. 



In the first essay in his studies in the Theory 

 of Descent, first published in 1875, Weismanu 

 discussed seasonal dimorphism in butterflies on 

 the basis of direct experimentation and con- 

 cluded that "differences of specific value can 



originate through the direct action of external 

 conditions of life only ; " and that "a periodi- 

 cally recurring change of climate is alone suffi- 

 cient, in the course of a long period of time, to 

 admit of new species arising from one another. ' ' 

 iln a recent essay on the same subject {Neue 

 Versuche zum Saison-Dimorphismus der Schmefter- 

 linge ; Fischer, Jena, 1895), the details are 

 given of fresh experiments and the whole sub- 

 ject is discussed anew with special reference to 

 his constantly expanding views on the ' con- 

 tinuity of the germ-plasm.' The experiments 

 are interesting and carefully recorded, but no 

 theoretical conclusions varying much from 

 those formerly reached are given, except in 

 the distinction he makes between direct seasonal 

 dimorphism and that which is adaptive, when 

 the changes in temperature serve only to open 

 the way to the action of natural selection. 



The third paper in Vol. VIII. of the Bulletin 

 of the American Museum of Natural History 

 is by Dr. J. A. Allen on Alleged Changes of 

 Color in the Feathers of Birds without Molting, 

 and is a careful review of the literature on the 

 subject. Dr. Allen makes it plain that much of 

 the so-called ' evidence ' of change of color 

 without molt is due to careless examination of 

 specimens, much to a wrong interpretation of 

 facts, and that much is pure assertion without 

 any foundation whatever. Considerable alter- 

 ation in plumage is brought about by the wear- 

 ing away of the edges of feathers, slight changes 

 result from bleaching, but while there may be 

 a slight basis in fact for some of the speculations 

 regarding change of color without molt, the 

 cause, in nine cases out of ten, is demonstrably 

 due to molt. ' Intermediate stages ' are caused 

 by the fact that a given molt does not affect all 

 individuals of a species alike, but, owing to 

 conditions of food, health, etc., some birds are 

 carried to a more advanced stage than others. 



Among the lectures to be given at the Royal 

 Institution after Easter are the following: Prof. 

 James Sully, of University College, Loudon, 

 three lectures on ' Child-study and Education; ' 

 Mr. C. Vernon Boys, three lectures on ' Hippies 

 in Air and on Water; ' Prof. T. G. Bonney, two 

 lectures on ' The Building and Sculpture of 

 Western Europe ' (the Tyndall lectures); Prof. 

 Dewar, three lectures on ' Recent Chemical 



