June 7, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



907 



can only be made from the tissues themselves. 



The recent investigations of Professor Chit- 

 tenden must be taken into consideration, 

 where it was demonstrated that strength and 

 body equilibrium could be secured by cutting 

 down very materially the nitrogenous part of 

 the ration. Some of these experiments were 

 continued over a long period of time, and 

 showed that strength even increased with the 

 notable diminution of the nitrogenous ele- 

 ments consumed. This is all interesting, but 

 probably not convincing. If we, for the sake 

 of argument, assume that the theory of evolu- 

 tion is a correct one, then we must admit 

 that man to a certain degree is a creature 

 of his environment. Experience shows that 

 when the human animal is allowed to choose 

 his ration with reasonable facility to get what 

 he wants he eats a certain weight of food in 

 which there is a certain proportion of nitro- 

 gen, which it may be said for a man of 150 

 pounds is not far from 18 grams per day. 

 What would be the effect upon the human 

 animal of cutting this nitrogen out by one 

 third or one half in the course of a few 

 generations or of a few thousand or hundreds 

 of thousands of years? It would, perhaps, 

 change in a very marked degree the human 

 animal. That change might be possibly for 

 the better, but certainly it would not represent 

 the animal himself as he is to-day. 



I have just read in the newspapers, which 

 are not always the most reliable purveyors of 

 scientific information, that the recruiting 

 officers in the German Empire have found 

 very few young men in a certain locality suit- 

 able for military service, and the inference is 

 that the high price of meat has probably ex- 

 cluded it from the ordinary diet of the peas- 

 ant, so that the children of the peasants are 

 not receiving the amount of meat food, and 

 presumably of nitrogenous material, which 

 they formerly were able to get. This report, 

 of course, is not worthy of being considered 

 from a scientific point of view, but it shows 

 at least an indication of the trend of thought 

 in this matter. 



The best nourished nations, as a rule, are 

 foremost in literature, science and arts, and, 

 according to numbers, in physical power. 



Those who treat of diet from an economic, 

 as well as scientific point of view, should be 

 very conservative in advocating any change in 

 rations which would lead to a minimum diet 

 naturally chosen or to a reduction of the pro- 

 portion of nitrogen to the other constitutents 

 therein. 



E. L. Faris, 

 Secretary 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 



A PROTEST ON BEHALF OF THE SYSTEMATIC 

 ZOOLOGIST AND THE BIBLIOGRAPHER 



A PAPER recently come to hand on the 

 Nearctic Hemerobiidse, Transactions of the 

 American Entomological Society, XXXII., 

 pp. 21-52, furnishes an opportunity for a criti- 

 cism that is not intended for the author in 

 particular, but as a protest against a par- 

 ticular kind of carelessness that we meet with 

 too frequently in present zoological literature. 

 On page 40 of that paper is described what 

 appears to be a new genus, and is so indicated 

 by the abbreviation 'n. gen.' placed after the 

 name. No other reference to the use of the 

 name is indicated. Any bibliographer or 

 future worker would be very justifiably led 

 into the error of dating this genus, and of the 

 several others in the paper which are all treat- 

 ed in the same way, from December, 1905, the 

 date of the paper. But on turning to page 

 46, we are told in a brief appended note that 

 Dr. Needham has in July, 1905, described this 

 genus under another name. It is then ex- 

 plained that the author published the name of 

 this genus, as well as of the others published 

 in the paper under discussion, in connection 

 with the name of a described species, as early 

 as November, 1904, and that therefore Dr. 

 Needham's name is a synonym. I find no 

 fault with this conclusion, but why I ask, and 

 I demand it in the name of the systematist 

 and of the bibliographer, does he not indicate 

 the date from which the genus originates in 

 the early part of his paper? Why does he 

 indicate as a new genus that which from the 

 standpoint of nomenclature he has described 

 a year earlier? 



Take another instance. Dr. Ashmead in 



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