Septembee 4, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



333 



tion is quite indefensible as a permanent 

 social condition. Nevertheless, capital, dis- 

 tinguished as a provision for offspring, is a 

 eugenic institution; and unless human in- 

 stinct undergoes some profound and im- 

 probable variation, abolition of capital 

 means the abolition of effort; but as in the 

 body the power of independent growth of 

 the parts is limited and subordinated to the 

 whole, similarly in the community we may 

 limit the powers of capital, preserving so 

 much inequality of privilege as corresponds 

 with physiological fact. 



At every turn the student of political sci- 

 ence is confronted with problems that de- 

 mand biological knowledge for their solu- 

 tion. Most obviously is this true in regard 

 to education, the criminal law, and all 

 those numerous branches of policy ajid ad- 

 ministration which are directly concerned 

 with the physiological capacities of man- 

 kind. Assumptions as to what can be done 

 and what can not be done to modify indi- 

 viduals and races have continually to be 

 made, and the basis of fact on which such 

 decisions are founded can be drawn only 

 from biological study. 



A knowledge of the facts of nature is 

 not yet deemed an essential part of the 

 mental equipment of politicians; but as 

 the priest, who began in other ages as medi- 

 cine-man, has been obliged to abandon the 

 medical parts of his practise, so will the 

 future behold the schoolmaster, the magis- 

 trate, the lawyer, and ultimately the states- 

 man, compelled to share with the naturalist 

 those functions which are concerned with 

 the physiology of race. 



William Bateson 



THE STATUS OF BTPOTHESES OF POLAB 

 WANDEBINGS 

 PoR the past century, hypotheses which pos- 

 tulate a wandering of the earth's axis of rota- 

 tion -within its body have been advocated by 

 various geologists and biologists as an explana- 



tion of past climatic and biotic changes. 

 Astronomers, on the contrary, have in general 

 been opiwsed to hypotheses of polar migration ; 

 for in their opinion, not only is there no 

 astronomic evidence pointing toward such 

 instability of axis, but extensive and progress- 

 ive wanderings are regarded as mechanically 

 impossible. Geologists and biologists may 

 array facts which suggest such hypotheses, but 

 the testing of their possibility is really a prob- 

 lem of mathematics, as much as are the move- 

 ments of precession, and orbital perturbations. 

 Notwithstanding this, a number of hypotheses 

 concerning polar migration have been ingeni- 

 ously elaborated and widely promulgated with- 

 out their authors submitting them to these 

 final tests, or in most cases even perceiving 

 that an accordance with the known laws of 

 mechanics was necessary. Others, of more 

 logical mind, recognizing the need of mathe- 

 matical justification, have thought to find a 

 qualified support in the work of Kelvin and 

 G. H. Darwin. The chief point of this paper 

 lies in showing that the work of Darwin, in- 

 stead of permitting hypotheses of polar wander- 

 ings, offers the most convincing proof which is 

 available that migrations of the axis of the 

 earth suflBciently extensive to be of geological 

 importance have not occurred. Darwin, in his 

 conclusion, granted the possibility that the 

 pole may have worked its way in a devious 

 course some 10° or 15° away from the geo- 

 ■graphic position which it held at the consolida- 

 tion of the earth, and he states that it may as 

 a maximum have been deflected from 1° to 3° 

 in any one geological period. This extreme 

 limit to migration was purposely based upon 

 those assumptions which might be geologically 

 possible and which would i)ermit the greatest 

 changes in the axis of rotation. A reexamina- 

 tion of those assumptions in the light of forty 

 added years of geologic progress suggests that 

 the actual changes have been much less and 

 are more likely to be limited to a fraction of 

 the maximum limits set by Darwin. His 

 paper seems to have checked further specula- 

 tion upon this subject in England, but, appar- 

 ently unaware of its strictures, a number of 

 continental geologists and biologists have car- 



