232 



SCIENCE. 



[iSr. S. Vol. XXIII. No. 580. 



H. Holmes, Kansas City; H. C. Harney, Kirks- 

 ville; E. R. Hedriek, Oolumbia. 



At the business meeting provision was 

 made for the submission to the members of 

 amendments to the constitution providing for 

 the enlargement of the society so as to inchide 

 teachers of science. In future mathematics 

 and science sections will be held in addition to 

 the general meetings. The next meeting will 

 be held in April or May at Columbia. A 

 more complete report of the meeting may be 

 found in School Science and Mathematics. 

 L. D. Ames, 

 Secretary. 



DlSCUSSIOy AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



HEL.4TI0N OF MUSEUMS TO EXPERTS. 



To THE Editor of Science: The letter from 

 Dr. Holland on ' The Relations of Museums 

 to Experts and Systematists who are Engaged 

 in Working Up and Naming Collections,' 

 published in Science for December 15, seems 

 to me altogether too general and too sweeping 

 for universal acceptance. While I agree with 

 Dr. Holland, fully, in his idea that all ma- 

 terial borrowed from a museum or from a 

 collector should be promptly and scrupulously 

 returned, I think there are many cases in 

 which a monographer or a student of a special 

 group is fully entitled to retain material which 

 may be sent him for identification. We are 

 all supposed to be working for the advance- 

 ment of science — for the establishment of 

 definite facts. If a collector happens to find 

 material which he is incompetent to use, which 

 he can not place and of which he can not 

 recognize the value he should, as a true and 

 philanthropic student, send it to some one who 

 has the ability to use it for the help of other 

 workers. Museum material is worthless so 

 long as it remains unknown and unidentified, 

 and can be made of value only when it is 

 recognized as forming a certain link in the 

 chain. The specialist who visits a museum 

 is in honor bound to leave its specimens in- 

 tact, but the museum maker, the collector, 

 has no right to ask busy workers for their 

 time and labor without some courtesy in the 

 form of a return. In my own work I have 

 sent hundreds of specimens to specialists for 



identification and description of new species, 

 and have never asked, or expected, that the 

 material would be returned to me. I have 

 also worked over many collections made by 

 others and have not hesitated to retain such 

 specimens as I wanted for myself. When a 

 specialist is willing to take the time and 

 trouble to study a collection — at my request — 

 the smallest coiirtesy I can offer him is the 

 retention of the material with which he has 

 worked. If I do not have full confidence in 

 him as an authority in that particular group 

 I do not send him my unstudied material. 

 Of course there are cases in which a collector 

 finds a specimen which he can not place, but 

 which he recognizes as being rare or unique, 

 and then he is perfectly justified in submitting 

 it to an expert and asking for its return, but 

 such cases should not constitute a general rule. 

 Dr. Holland expresses the idea that all ma- 

 terial studied should remain the permanent 

 property of the original owner. It seems to 

 me that a distinction should be made. When 

 a worker in any line visits a museum, or se- 

 cures the loan of material for study, he is the 

 party favored, and can have no claim; but 

 when a museum or a collector asks the special- 

 ist to work a lot of unrecognized material the 

 worker is justly entitled to such reward as he 

 may find in the retention of the specimens to 

 which he has given his time and work. 



S. M. Tracy. 



Bir.oxi, Miss. 



the letters k and w in zoological 

 nomenclature. 



In Science of September 29, page 399, I 

 referred to a practise prevalent in certain 

 quarters, of changing the letters k and w to 

 c and V, respectively, whenever they occur in 

 generic and specific names of animals.' At 



' I there attributed the change of Kogia to 

 Cogia to Dr. D. G. Elliot; but I find that he did 

 not originate it. The form Cogia was used years 

 ago by Wallace {1876), Blanford (1891) und 

 Lydekker (1891). The late Dr. W. T. Blanford 

 had curiously little respect for the original form 

 of names, and even went so far as to alter the 

 name of the well-known ant-genus Pheidole to 

 Phidole, in Col. Bingham's work on the ants of 



