Mat 24, 1907] 



SCIENCE. 



827 



H. E. Patten's paper on 'Energy Changes 

 accompanying Adsorption' showed that ab- 

 sorption could be looked upon as a special case 

 of adsorption by combining the inhibition 

 effect with the adsorption effect where both 

 take place in the fine pores of a cellular body. 

 Wliere the pores become very minute we may 

 think of a solid solution as a limiting case of 

 such an absorption effect. A resume of the 

 energy changes accompanying absorption was 

 given. 



On May 1, a special meeting was held at the 

 George Washington University Lecture Hall. 

 This was the first of a series of meetings to be 

 held for the discussion of sanitary matters. 

 W. C; Woodward, M.D., health officer of the 

 District of Columbia, spoke on the ' Health 

 Department of the District of Columbia, 

 its Functions and Organization.' The 

 speaker gave a history of the department; its 

 relation to other branches of the city govern- 

 ment; and told about the work of enforcing 

 the smoke-, food-, marine products-, milk- and 

 slaughter-house-regulations. 



J. A. LeClerc, 



Secretary 



Bureau of Chemistet, 

 Washington, D. C. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 

 ANOTHER WORD ON THE VULTUR CASE 



In Science of May 3 (pp. 708, 709) Mr. 

 Stone makes a brief reply to my article on 

 how the ' first species ' rule works in deter- 

 mining genotypes in ornithology.' Inasmuch 

 as he makes no attempt to traverse the prin- 

 cipal positions there taken, it is perhaps almost 

 ungracious again to open the subject. Eor 

 the expert no reply is necessary, but the gen- 

 eral reader may be misled by some of his 

 statements. 



Of the seven cases he would throw out from 

 my list of twenty-one generic changes made 

 necessary by the first species rule, Spinus 

 may be saved by the rule of tautonomy, and 

 CoVyrnbus may be excluded by the provision 



^ See Science, N. S., Vol. XV., No. 640, pp. 546- 

 554, April 5, 1907. 



exempting Linnsean genera from its scope. 

 E«specting the other five cases, Mr. Stone and 

 I simply hold different views, and the details 

 need not be here discussed. 



In regard to the 'several inconsistencies' 

 he claims to have pointed out in the YuUur 

 case, one I frankly admitted, and explained 

 as a pure blunder; the rest of the 'several' 

 exist only in his imagination. While gryphus 

 is the type of Sarcorhamphu^, founded in 

 1806, it did not become its type at that date; 

 it did not become the type till the other two 

 of the original three noncongeneric species had 

 been removed, and thus does not in the least 

 affect the type of Vultur as determined by 

 my elimination. By the current usage of all 

 ' experts ' in elimination — except Mr._ Stone— 

 aura and papa both go out at 1816, instead 

 of the latter at 1854, as claimed by Mr. Stone. 

 So this 'excellent illustration of the com- 

 plexity of the elimination method and the 

 opportunities it offers even to experts to fall 

 into errors ' fails completely to illustrate any- 

 thing except Mr. Stone's ideas about methods 

 of elimination. J. A. Allen 



New York, 

 April 8, 1907 



SUNSPOT ZONES 



To THE Editor op Science: It occurs to me 

 that Sporer's law of the sunspot zones might be 

 accounted for in this way : When the last ring 

 of planetary material was detached, it seems 

 likely that a part of the material of the sun 

 should have been lifted with this ring, only 

 to fall back into the sun after the moment of 

 parting. In the gaseous mass of the sun this 

 may be supposed to have produced a system of 

 waves of ring-like shape, whose velocity of 

 propagation might be such as to pass from 

 latitudes 30 to 5 in fourteen years. Their 

 paths might perhaps be such as to come nearest 

 to the surface in the latitudes where the sun- 

 spots have their maxima. 



Any such progressive disturbance near the 

 surface of some deep layer in the sun might 

 be sufficient, in connection with the deflective 

 influence of the sun's rotation, to occasion 

 surface eddies, 'cyclones' as suggested by 

 Faye. Or, they might cause 'eruptive' phe- 



