2.-0 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXII. No. 55G. 



It seemed to me to be of interest, now, to 

 test the strength of assortative mating with 

 respect to a character in which there is known 

 to be conscious selection. The ages of the 

 two members of the pair at once suggested 

 itself. It possesses an added interest because 

 of the former work upon the age at death. 

 I accordingly tabulated the ages of twenty- 

 five hundred couples as given at the marriage 

 license office at Chicago during the spring of 

 1904. Grouped in three-year classes they are 

 as shown in table. 



The data are a little unsatisfactory because 

 of the unfortunate but undeniable proneness 

 of humanity to a lapse of honesty in the 

 matter of age, especially in this connection. 



The writer has on hand data which show 

 that this principle applies to certain insects 

 and spiders as well as to man. So that we 

 are doubtless dealing here with a real biolog- 

 ical factor as well as one of sociological in- 

 terest. Frank E. Lutz. 



Station fok Expeeimental Evolution, 

 Cold Speing Hakbor, N. Y. 



CURRENT NOTES ON METEOROLOGY. 

 PROGRESS OF KITE AND BALLOON METEOROLOGY. 



A FEW years ago no one would have fore- 

 seen that a regular publication would be 

 started in 1904, devoted to the physics of the 

 free air, and even to-day scientific men gen- 

 erally must be surprised to see the quantity 



table of age at maeeia6e. 

 Wife. 



So that the figures, instead of telling the 

 exact truth, show us the state of things, modi- 

 fied somewhat by man's ideas of how he thinks 

 they had better be. This undoubtedly 

 raises the coefficient of correlation slightly. 

 It possibly also accounts for some of the ex- 

 treme skewness of the curve for the wife's age. 

 However that may be, the coefficient of 

 correlation between the ages of man and wife, 

 as given, is .T64. If this be compared with 

 that of stature (.280), span (.199), forearm 

 (.198) or longevity (.223), it will make it pos- 

 sible to appreciate more clearly the precise 

 extent of the unconscious assortative mating. 



and the quality of the contributions which 

 deal with the meteorological conditions of the 

 free air. A recent number of the Beitrage 

 zur Physik der freien Atmosphdre (No. 3, 

 1905), besides the paper on cyclonic and anti- 

 cyclonic temperatures by Clayton, mention of 

 which was recently made in these notes, con- 

 tains a study of the results obtained during 

 synchronous kite flights from Berlin and 

 ITald (Jutland) from the summer of 1902 to 

 the spring of 1903, and also a short note, by 

 Professor Hergesell, on recent observations on 

 the meteorological conditions of the high 

 warm stratum of air which was first noticed 



