560 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol, XXIV. No. 618. 



own share in terminologic discussion. Later 

 I may comment upon certain points, e. g., 

 the alleged ^obscurities of the system' (which 

 — in view of my long preaching and practise 

 of clearness as the first essential of all scien- 

 tific composition — you must pardon me for 

 regarding as subjective), and the nature and 

 extent of my philologic transgressions (in 

 which connection I may refer to a paper read, 

 by invitation, before the American Philolog- 

 ical Association last winter). Now, in view 

 of the fact that all my publications upon the 

 subject either have been sent you or are other- 

 wise accessible, I must express surprise and 

 regret that the foot-note (translated from His) 

 should cite only three of my less extended con- 

 tributions (two of them privately printed), 

 without mentioning the earlier, the later and 

 the more comprehensive, e. g., the article 

 ■^ Anatomical Terminology ' by S. H. Gage and 

 myself, in the first edition of the ' Reference 

 Handbook of the Medical Sciences,' 1889, our 

 ' Anatomical Technology,' 1882 and 1897, my 

 ' Neural Terms, International and National ' 

 {Journal of Comparative Neurology, 1896), 

 and ' Some Misapprehensions as to the Sim- 

 plified Nomenclature of Anatomy' (1898), 

 Science, April 21, 1899. The several reports 

 of the committees of the Association of Amer- 

 ican Anatomists, the American Neurological 

 Association and the American Association for 

 the Advancement of Science should have been 

 specified, and it would have been simple jus- 

 tice to name Mrs. Gage, Gerrish, Gould, 

 Huntington, Leidy, the Spitzkas, father and 

 son, and others. Finally, American students 

 should be aware that the subject was definitely 

 brought before the American Association for 

 the Advancement of Science as long ago as 

 1880, and that a committee of that body was 

 appointed in 1884, three years prior to the 

 date when, as stated by you, ' Germany took 

 the lead.' 



In my ' Neural Terms ' and ' Some Mis- 

 apprehensions ' I tried to give due credit to 

 earlier simplifiers, Barclay, Owen, Henle, etc. 

 When you and some other anatomists in this 

 country take equal pains to inform yourselves 

 fully as to the facts and principles involved, I 

 believe you will concede that the good and en- 



during features of the neurologic portion of 

 the [B N A] had been previously adopted or 

 proposed by me, and you will realize that the 

 unprejudiced consideration of the terms pre- 

 ferred by me would have been more advan- 

 tageous to anatomy and more creditable to 

 yourselves than their premature condemnation. 



A copy of this letter will be sent to Science 

 and American Medicine. 



Very truly yours, 



BuET G. Wilder. 



October 11, 1906. 



left-handedness. 



To the Editor of Science: The question of 

 right-handedness has been brought to my no- 

 tice, and I should like to inquire whether any 

 of your readers has actually counted the num- 

 ber of left-handed men and women in a tribe. 

 Very few implements of savagery are reliable 

 witnesses. The throwing sticks of Eskimo 

 men and the short-handed skin dressers of the 

 women are infallible, since they fit only one 

 hand. In the National Museum, among a 

 great number of throwing sticks — from east 

 Greenland to Sitka, only two are left-handed 

 and both are from the same locality. There 

 is not a left-handed woman's implement in the 

 museum. O. T. Mason. 



October 20, 1906. 



SPECIAL ARTICLES. 



THE RELATIVE MERITS OF THE ' ELIMINATION ' 



AND * FIRST SPECIES ' METHOD IN FIXING 



THE TYPES OF GENERA WITH SPECIAL 



REFERENCE TO ORNITHOLOGY. 



In attempting to fix the types of any group 

 of genera we shall find that a large number 

 are monotypic, another lot have had their 

 types designated by their authors, a few are 

 fixed by the rule of tautonomy^ and a certain 

 number are left without any indication of a 

 type — usually complex heterogeneous genera of 

 the older authors. It is these that are always 

 giving us trouble and these alone with which 

 the problem of fixing types is concerned. 



It seems to me that it is the duty of those 

 engaged in nomenclatural work to-day to es- 

 tablish our names on as firm a basis as pos- 



^'See Science, V., No. 16, pp. 114-lf5, July 18, 

 1902. 



