SCIENCE 



[Vol. XVIII. No. 459 



of the Smithsonian Institution, and other high authorities in 

 the leading- departments of learning. 



While the institution should be a university in the fullest 

 and widest sense, it should difPer from all other universities 

 in one important respect. All universities have their strong 

 chairs, and many rest their reputation on some one leading 

 feature. The leading feature and true reason for being of 

 the national university should be its coiirse of instruction in 

 the science and art of government. This course should 

 differ radically from the usual courses in political economy 

 and political science. These should not be neglected, but in 

 addition to them and of higher range should stand as the 

 basis of university instruction a thorough and exhaustive 

 course in the practical workings of government itself. View- 

 ing government as the great agency for the transaction 

 of the people's business, every department of government 

 business should be fully taught both in its principles and 

 its practice, so that the graduate from the national uni- 

 versity should come forth in full possession not only of all 

 that constitutes true statesmanship, but also of the practical 

 details of each of the many great business operations which 

 the government imdertakes and carries on. 



The administrative offices of the government should be 

 filled as soon as possible from graduates of the university, so 

 that at length the civil service force of the United States 

 should consist exclusively of persons who have had a thor- 

 ough training in the theory and practice of government. 



PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF GEOLOGIC COREE- 

 LATION BY MEANS OF FOSSIL PLANTS.' 



The value of paleontology to geology depends primarily 

 upon the principles by which the paleontologist is guided in 

 the application of his data, and accordingly upon the methods 

 he adopts in bringing such data to bear upon the questions 

 vfhich geology presents for solution. This is especially true 

 of paleobotany, and the chief reason why that branch of 

 paleontology has thus far been so little help to geology is 

 that unsound principles or improper methods have been em- 

 ployed in reasoning from paleobotanical data. 



Among the leading principles by which the paleobotanist 

 should be guided may be mentioned the following: — 



1. It should not be expected that widely separated deposits 

 having similar floras are necessarily identical in age, since 

 the present well-known laws of geographical distribution are 

 likely to have been operative to a greater or less degree in 

 past geologic ages, and the flora of the entire globe has proba- 

 bly never been homogeneous throughout. Different deposits 

 may therefore be homotactically correlated without being 

 contemporaneous, vrhile, on the other hand, those having 

 very different floras may have really been contemporaneous. 



2. The great types of vegetation are characteristic of the 

 great epochs in geology. This principle is applicable in com- 

 paring deposits of widely different ages where the strati- 

 graphv is indecisive. For example, in rocks that are wholly 

 unknown, even a small fragment of a carboniferous plant 

 proves conclusively that they must be paleozoic, or a single 

 dicotyledonous leaf that they must be as late as the creta- 

 ceous. 



3. For deposits not thus widely different in age, as, for 

 example, within the same geological series or system, ample 

 material is necessary to fix their position by means of fossil 



1 Read, by Lester F. Ward, before Section E of the American Association for 

 the Advancement of Science, at Washington, D.C., Aug. 31, 1891; a translation 

 into French was also read in part before the International Congress of Greolo- 

 gists at the same place, Aug. 29, 1891. 



plants. As this is the most common case, it is the neglect 

 of this principle that has led to the greater number of errors 

 and done most to bring paleobotany into disrepute. The 

 geologists have expected too much of paleobotanists, and the 

 latter have done violence to the truth by attempting to satisfy 

 the extravagant demands of the former. On the other hand, 

 where the material is ample fossil plants are as reliable as any 

 other class of paleoutologic data. 



4. The correct systematic determination of fossil plants 

 concerns biology and does not concern geology. Much of 

 the contempt exhibited in some quarters for paleobotany has 

 arisen from tlie impression that there is grea.t uncertainty 

 with regard to the true nature of vegetable remains. This 

 uncertainty is greatly exaggerated even by botanists, who 

 are apt to imagine tliat nothing can be known of a plant 

 without having all its organs and parts before them. But 

 the geologist need not be affected in the least by these dis- 

 cussions, since all that is required from his point of view is 

 that the fossil be definite, constant, and easily recognizable, 

 as is usually the case with plants. Such as possess these 

 qualities and are also characteristic of a given deposit have 

 their full diagnostic value independently of the question 

 whether their true systematic position has been determined 

 or not. 



As regards methods in geologic correlation by means of 

 fossil plants, it is chiefly important that the tables of distri- 

 bution be complete and comprehensive; that is, that they em- 

 brace all the forms found elsewhere, and that all the other 

 localities and formations in which they occur be indicated. 

 It is also important when comparing floras as ancient as the 

 Mesozoic, that those species be enumerated which are obvi- 

 ously related to those of the deposit to be determined. In the 

 discussion of such tables of distribution due regard should be 

 had for the fact that the types of earlier floras often pass up 

 into later ones, and when the latter are much more abundant 

 than the former their occurrence argues much more strongly 

 for the earlier than for the latter date — for the Devonian 

 than the Carboniferous, and for the Cretaceous than for the 

 Tertiary. Many serious errors have been committed by 

 ignoring this principle. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



The public meetings of the Nineteenth Century Club, New 

 York, during the coming season, will be held on the following 

 Tuesday eveninga, viz., Nov. 17, Dec. 15, Jan. 12, Feb. 16, Mar. 

 15, and Apr. 12. There will be six conversational meetings of the 

 members of the club during the coming season, to be held upon 

 the first Friday evening in each month. 



— The following papers were entered to be read at the Novem- 

 ber meeting of the National Academy of Sciences: Some Aspects 

 of Australian Vegetation and The Nomenclature of Vegetable 

 Histology, by G. L. Goodale ; On Certain New Methods and Results 

 in Optics, by Charles S. Hastings ; An Exhibition of the New Pen- 

 dulum Apparatus of the United States and Geodetic Survey, with 

 Some Results of its Use, and On the Use of a Free Pendulum as a 

 Time Standard, by T. C. Mendenhall ; On Degenerate Types of 

 Scapulfi and Pelvic Arches in the Lacertilia, by E. D. Cope ; The 

 Proteids or Albuminoids of the Oak-Kernel (second paper), by 

 Thomas B. Osborne, introduced by S. W. Johnson; Astronomical 

 Methods of Determining the Curvature of Space, by C. S. Pierce; 

 On Geographical Variation among North American Birds, consid- 

 ered in relation to the peculiar Intei-gradation of Coloptes Auratus 

 and C. Gafer, by J. A. Allen ; On the Variation of Latitude, by S. 

 C. Chandler; The Tertiary Ehynchitidae of the United States, by 

 Samuel H. Scudder; On a Color System, by O. N. Rood; Prelim 

 inary Notice of the Reduction of Rutherford's Photographs, by J. 

 K. Rees, introduced by E. C. Pickering; On the Application of 



