Febeuaky 28, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



353 



genius of a Grant may be associated with an 

 inability to acquire or even retain wealtli. 

 Inventions vpbich have added enormously to 

 the wealth of the nation have been made by 

 men so poor that they were obliged to borrow 

 money for living expenses. A prominent 

 patent attorney with much experience re- 

 cently said to me that he thought inventors 

 as a class were without business ability, that 

 is, without the ability to turn advantageously 

 the product of their brains into money 

 by means of which they could have leis- 

 ure to do other work. No one can say how 

 much the world has lost by the inability of the 

 properly qualified men to give their best 

 thought to discovery and invention. Had 

 such, a fund as that given for research by Mr. 

 Carnegie been available in the past and 

 been properly administered, the human race 

 would in my opinion have been transformed 

 into something immensely better than we have 

 at present. 



Hence, I believe that research funds, in- 

 stead of prohibiting the payment of the per- 

 sonal expenses of the investigator, should bo 

 mainly devoted to the pasrment of such ex- 

 penses, so that the investigator might be al- 

 lowed to devote his whole time and his best 

 thought to the investigation, even if for only 

 a short time. 



The funds thus administered would have 

 plenty of applicants, and much work would 

 be thrown on the trustees in seeing that the 

 appropriations were made to the proper per- 

 sons and properly used, but this is a task I 

 think the trustees ought to assume. 



H. H. Clayton. 



Hyde Park, Mass., 

 Jan. 21, 1902. 



a rare 'whale shark.' 

 To THE Editor of Science; The National 

 Museum has obtained a skin of a rare 'whale- 

 ehark,' Bhinodon, from an eighteen-foot speci- 

 men found on the beach three miles north of 

 Ormond, Florida, January 25, 1902, this being 

 the first record of the occurrence of the genus 

 on the Atlantic coast of America. The Mu- 

 seum is indebted to Messrs. Anderson and 

 Price, managers of the Hotel Ormond, who 



telegraphed the discovery to the Smithsonian 

 Institution and later had the skin removed 

 and shipped to Washington under instructions 

 from Dr. F. W. True, Head Curator, Depart- 

 ment of Biology. 



Bhinodon typicus was first figured and de- 

 scribed by Dr. Andrew Smith in his illustra- 

 tions of the zoology of South Africa, in 1841, 

 the type being a sixteen-foot example found at 

 the Cape of Good Hope.* Another one of this 

 species taken at the Seyehelle Ids. is known 

 from the teeth only.f 



A genus related to Bhinodon was described 

 by Dr. Theodore Gill in the proceedings of the 

 Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 

 1865, p. 177, under the name Micristodus, from 

 jaws, vertebrae and notes, received by the 

 Smithsonian Institution in 1858, from Cap- 

 tain Stone, and taken from a twenty-foot 

 shark captured in the Gulf of California, 

 where it was known as the 'Tiburon ballenas,' 

 or 'Whale Shark.' 



Barton A. Bean. 



U. S. National Museum, 

 Washington, D. C, 

 Feb. 8, 1902. 



REGENT PROGRESS IN GLACIOLOGY. 



Our knowledge concerning glaciers past and 

 present is gradually being extended by local 

 studies in various parts of the earth. For sev- 

 eral years, systematic effort has been made to 

 record observations on the movements of exist- 

 ing glaciers for the sake of determining the 

 conditions and laws governing their advance 

 and retreat. Harry Fielding Eeid has pub- 

 lished a number of articles bearing on this 

 general topic in recent years. The last of 

 these articles:]: presents a summary of existing 

 knowledge on the present phases of glacier 

 movement in various parts of the world, with 

 reference to advance and retreat. 



Most of the glaciers of the Swiss Alps are 

 retreating. In the eastern Alps about one half 

 are retreating, while about one fourth are sta- 

 tionary, and nearly as many advancing. In 



* Preserved in the Museum of the Jardin des 

 Plantes, Paris. 



t British Museum. 



t ' Variations of Glaciers,' Journal of Geology, 

 Vol. IX., pp. 250-254. 



