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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIV. No. 623. 



was paid; I have never asked for reimburse- 

 ment. This case is not mentioned for the 

 purpose of excusing my own delay, but as 

 affording an explanation of why university 

 professors are sometimes slow, and to suggest 

 at the same time that slowness may not be 

 quite as bad as haste when that haste brings 

 forth slip-shod results. 



Here again the slowness of the professors 

 is liable at any moment to be made an excuse 

 for invading our fields of operations. Thus 

 the whole tendency of -the survey^s policy of 

 haste is towards more haste and poorer work. 



I acquit Mr. Walcott of any intention to 

 discredit professors by his policy. With his 

 intentions, however, we have nothing to do; it 

 is with his methods and results that we are 

 conceo-ned. We can not discredit the source 

 of instruction and keep the instruction effi- 

 cient. This wholesale discrimination against 

 the universities can have no other results than 

 those mentioned: discredit t® the professors, 

 eventual loss of efficiency and a corresponding 

 reaction upon the universities and upon sci- 

 ence. 



Finally, if this policy were confined to the 

 geological survey proper there would be less to 

 fear from it. But unfortunately the geolog- 

 ical survey has expanded far beyond the 

 legitimatci fields of geologic work. Forestry, 

 irrigation, water-supply, reclamation and en- 

 gineering have been added to its functions, 

 and it has occasionally looked longingly to- 

 ward the Coast and Geodetic Survey, and I 

 know not what more besides. This expansion, 

 under Mr. Walcott's policy, simply increases 

 the field of its possible powers of demoraliza- 

 tion for education and science. 



Furthermore, this same policy is already 

 being put into active operation in the Car- 

 negie Institution, and Mr. Walcott is now a 

 candidate for the position of secretary of the 

 Smithsonian Institution, where he could be 

 counted upon to put it in still further practise. 

 With a great overgrown national bureau al- 

 ready committed to this policy and with these 

 two endowed institutions of research under 

 similar control, the university professors of 

 the sciences in this country and the universi- 



ties themselves are face to face with a serious 

 problem. 



In connection with this question I have fre- 

 quently been reminded that the geological 

 survey has come to be a great scientific trust; 

 that trusts and trust methods are in the air, 

 and that there is little hope of success in 

 fighting them, especially in view of the sup- 

 port commanded by the millions of dollars 

 they receive every year. Very true; but there 

 is also in this same air protest, rebellion and 

 resentment against these high-handed meth- 

 ods, and especially so when they are paid for 

 out of the national treasury. 



J. C. Branner. 

 Stanford Univebsitt, California, 

 November 22, 1906. 



evolution (cook) and mutation (waagen). 



Dr. O. F. Cook recently has published^ a 

 reply to my criticism of his views published 

 some time ago,^ but it only evades the main 

 point at issue, and introduces, in its stead, a 

 new topic, which had not entered the discus- 

 sion before. 



While I practically said, with reference to 

 a previous article of Dr. Cook's,' that his dis- 

 tinction between ' evolution ' and ' speciation,' 

 although correct, is not new, and objected to 

 the term ' evolution,' he meets this with the 

 rejoinder, that there is a distinction between 

 ' heterism ' and ' evolution ' ; and since he re- 

 gards this distinction as new, as a progress 

 in science, he claims the right to use the old 

 term evolution in a new, restricted sense. 



However, also this new point in the dis- 

 cussion does not justify Dr. Cook, for it is 

 not new to science. ' Evolution,' as he under- 

 stands it, has been often classed with ' varia- 

 tion,' as I have also done in my previous 

 article. Nevertheless, as Dr. Cook main- 

 tains, there is a distinction between ' evolu- 

 tion,' the ' progressive transformation of 

 species ' in time, and ' heterism ' (or variation 

 proper) of coexisting individuals. But in this 

 sense ' evolution ' is absolutely identical with 



1 Science, September 7, 1906, p. 303. 

 '^ Science, April 27, 1906, p. 667. 

 ' Science, March 30, 1906, p. 506. 



