April 8, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



591 



dass aus unhefruchteten Arheiterelern von Lasius 

 niger Fabr. mederum Arbeiter entstehen. Also 

 wieder ein Dogma verfr-iihter Verallgemeinerung, 

 dass in Nichts merfliesst !* 



Surely I may be permitted to express as a 

 probability what the most eminent myrme- 

 cologist states in such emphatic language. 

 That I was well aware of the remote possibili- 

 ties mentioned by Castle, and of others which 

 he does not seem to have surmised, is clear 

 from my express statement that the observa- 

 tions of Tanner, Eeiehenbach and Mrs. Corn- 

 stock are ' by no means final.' It would have 

 been natural for a less captious critic to sup- 

 pose that the views advanced in my paper were 

 not determined solely by the observations cited 

 from other authors, but to some extent by my 

 own experiences, which though less tangible 

 and less readily formulated at the present 

 time, are not less suggestive to me of the trend 

 of future investigation. 



Academic convictions like those advanced 

 by Castle can be of service only in prejudging 

 a field of inquiry; they can be of no imagin- 

 able use in stimulating or furthering research 

 except indirectly through the spirit of contra- 

 diction aroused by their dogmatic character. 

 If Castle had any new facts, or original inter- 

 pretations of old facts, for that matter, to 

 bring to bear on the problems under discus- 

 sion, I should be the first to welcome them. 

 We need something more, however, than 

 mere discussions of possibility and probability, 

 if we are ever to dispel the mystery that en- 

 velops many of the instincts and reproductive 

 processes in the social hymenoptera. 



William Morton Wheeler. 



American Museum of Natural History, 

 March 24, 1904. 



■S'EGETABLE BALLS. 



To THE Editor of Science: Can any of 

 your readers refer me to any published men- 

 tion or description (other than in Thoreau's 

 'Walden') of those balls of matted vegetable 

 matter formed on the sandy bottoms of shal- 

 low ponds, apparently under the action of 

 wave-motion? In what ponds or lakes (other 

 than Flint's or Sandy Pond, in Lincoln, 



* The italics are mine. 



Mass.) are they known to occur? Have they 

 any recognized names? Of what materials 

 are they mainly composed other than Brio- 

 caulon leaves? Any information will be very 

 welcome. W. F. Ganong. 



Northampton, Mass. 



SPECIAL ARTICLES. 

 RIGHT-EYEDNESS AND LEFT-EYEDNESS. 



I WISH to solicit the aid of the readers of 

 Science in securing answers to the follow- 

 ing questions concerning left-handed persons 

 they may know : 



1. Name, or at least initials, residence, 

 sex, age and occupation? 



2. Is the left-handedness complete or only 

 for some of the acts usually performed with 

 the right hand by right-handed persons? 



3. Is the left-handedness the result of acci- 

 dent to the right hand or arm, or did it exist 

 from infancy? 



4. With which eye is a gun sighted, a 

 board or yard-stick proved straight, or a table 

 level, etc. ? 



5. With which eye, without glasses, is the 

 vision of letters across a room in a good 

 light the clearest ? (Alternate covering either 

 eye, not closing it.) 



6. If glasses are worn for distant vision, 

 the oculist's prescription, and , the relative 

 sharpness of vision of each eye with the 

 glasses ? 



Right-handed persons are, I believe, nat- 

 urally right-eyed, and the left-handed are left- 

 eyed. There is little doubt as to the first, 

 but I have found it difficult to get data con- 

 cerning a sufficient number of the left-handed. 



The fact of right-eyedness or left-eyedness 

 has, it seems to me, much greater significance 

 than the similar conditions pertaining to the 

 hands, but, so far as I can learn, nobody has 

 even thought of it, much less discussed its 

 many suggestive implications. Indeed, I 

 question if the right-handedness or left-hand- 

 edness is not a simple result of the ocular one- 

 sidedness which preexisted and made necessary 

 the paramount use of the one or the other 

 hand. Both conditions, moreover, seem to me 

 probably the simple result of the usual loca- 

 tion of the speech-center in the left-brain. I 



