908 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXV. No. 649 



his classification of the Ichneumonoidea pub- 

 lished a few years ago has described genus 

 after genus designating manuscript species as 

 types and connecting no known species with 

 them. Dr. Ashmead doubtless intended to 

 describe these species. But he has never done 

 so, and we learn with profound regret that his 

 health is such that he never will be able to do 

 so. Now what is going to be the status of 

 these genera ? There will be those who, inter- 

 preting strictly the laws of priority, will ignore 

 them absolutely, on the ground that they are 

 nomena nuda. There will be others who will 

 attempt to assign them to this place or that, 

 but no one will ever know what their author 

 intended, unless some one, with this purpose 

 in view, laboriously works over the collections 

 on which Dr. Ashmead has based his names. 

 Even then no agreement will be reached 

 among future students as to what is to be 

 done with these genera, which number no less 

 than forty-eight, and like those of Forster 

 they will remain for years a source of con- 

 fusion, error and instability in our nomen- 

 clature. 



Instances might be multiplied, but these will 

 suffice, for I do not intend them as personal 

 criticisms, rather merely as remonstrances 

 against a too prevalent carelessness on a very 

 important subject. In a day when the diffi- 

 culties of the application of the laws of no- 

 menclature, and the increasing confusion in 

 zoological nomenclature are being continually 

 brought home to us on every hand, are such 

 practises on the part of those who are cer- 

 tainly by no means amateurs in systematic 

 zoology to be condoned? 



J. Chester Bradley 

 TJniveksitt or Califobnia, 

 April 24, 1907 



SCIENCE AND POETRY — A PROTEST 



The advisability of correlating literature 

 and science in the schools was at one time 

 a much-debated educational question. The 

 writer has heard seriously advocated before a 

 State Science Teachers' Association the ad- 

 vantage of always having the zoology class 

 read ' The Chambered Nautilus ' when study- 

 ing the Mollusca, though assent was withheld 



by the same speaker from the^ proposition to 

 have the members of every English literature 

 class dissect a nautilus when studying 

 Holmes's poem. That there is nothing poet- 

 ical in the bare facts of nature, and that noth- 

 ing is really interesting unless invested with 

 poetry or fancy, are two ideas that can never, 

 it seems, appear erroneous, except to one who 

 has studied nature at first hand. 



Sugar-coating the supposed pills of scien- 

 tific fact in nature-study literature and teach- 

 ing has been baneful enough, but when ar- 

 ticles in reputable magazines, intended for 

 mature minds, poeticize science to the verge 

 of misrepresentation, it is difficult to know 

 whether to blame the author the more, or re- 

 gretfully to decide that, after all, the general 

 public is still unable to appreciate natural 

 facts as nature presents them. 



A series of three articles in Harper's Month- 

 ly Magazine for December, 1906, and Febru- 

 ary and March, 1907, entitled 'The Intelli- 

 gence of the Flowers,' by Maurice Maeterlinck, 

 have been the inspiration of the protest. 



To say that no flower is 'wholly devoid of 

 wisdom'; that, in order to deprive a flower 

 of reason and will, ' we must needs resort to 

 very obscure hypotheses ' ; that it is in the 

 vegetable world that ' impatience, the revolt 

 against destiny, are the most vehement and 

 stubborn ' ; and that the pollination of the 

 eel-grass is ' a tragic episode,' may be most 

 excellent poetry, and enhance the literary 

 value of an article; may, indeed, for aught we 

 know, be the necessary conclusions of a poet, 

 but to read such statements in cold print con- 

 geals the blood of any botanist. 



Still we might shiver in charity if interpre- 

 tations only, and not facts, were open to ques- 

 tion. We are told, for example, that the tip 

 of the young stem of a seedling laurel tree, 

 because the seed germinated on a perpendicu- 

 lar rock-wall, ' instead of rising towards the 

 sky, bent down over the gulf,' notwithstand- 

 ing its geotropism. 



We learn that dodder ' voluntarily abandons 

 its roots,' and that it will avoid other species 

 and, ' go some distance, if necessary, in search 

 of the stem of hemp, hop, lucerne or flax.' 



In the second article we learn, for the first 



