SCIENCE 



Friday, October 23, 1914 



CONTENTS 



Science and Practise: PRorEssoB Ross G. 

 Harrison 571 



Fublic Health Education: Professor George 



C. Whipple .■ 581 



Scientific Notes and News 588 



and Educational News 592 



Discussion and Correspondence: — 



Heredity and Environment: Dr. Henry 

 Lefpman. a Feminized Cockerel: Dr. H. 



D. GooDALE. A Third Order Bainbotv: 

 Dr. H. W. Parwell. A Solar Halo in 

 Virginia: A. W. Freeman 593 



Scientific BooTcs: — 



Allen's Photo-eleotrioity ; Hughes's Photo- 

 electricity: Professor Ernest Merritt. 

 Pearson's Tables for Statisticians and 

 Biometricians : Dr. J. Arthur Harris. 

 Walker's Crystallography: Professor 

 Charles Palache. Smith's Industrial and 

 Commercial Geography : Professor J. Paul 

 GooDE 596 



The Committee cm General Science of the 

 National Education Association: Professor 

 John P. Woodhull 601 



Indiana University Expeditions to North- 

 western South America: Arthur Henn. . . . 602 



Special Articles: — 



Possible Factors in the Variations of the 

 Earth's Magnetic Field: Dr. S. E. Williams. 

 Changes of Drainage in Ohio: Dr. George 

 N. CoFFET. The Poisonous Nature of the 

 Stinging Hairs of Jatropha Urens: Dr. 

 Otto Lutz 606 



MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 

 reTiew should be sent to Professor J. McKeen Cattell, Garrison- 

 On-Hudson, N. Y. 



SCIENCE AND PRACTISE^ 



The Society of Naturalists at this meet- 

 ing celebrates its thirtieth anniversary, an 

 occasion which in itself perhaps calls for 

 no special felicitation, but one on which we 

 should 'all rejoice on account of the safe 

 passing of a crisis in its life. Not many 

 years ago its very existence was threatened, 

 and now the society finds itself securely es- 

 tablished for a definite purpose. Conceived 

 by its founders as a means to bring to- 

 gether workers in biology for the discus- 

 sion of topics of common interest, it was 

 confronted almost at the outset by a condi- 

 tion in which there appeared to be no such 

 topics, so rapidly did the organization of 

 more special societies from its midst take 

 place. It seemed as if its career were to be 

 that of the ephemerid, a sacrifice to its own 

 fecundity. Ultimately, however, as a re- 

 sult of an experiment suggested by the late 

 Professor Penhallow, when president of the 

 society, a process of regeneration took 

 place, not an exact restitution of all that 

 had been lost by autotomy, but rather a 

 sort of heteromorphic growth, which, while 

 preserving the old shell, transformed the 

 main functional activity of the organism 

 to a new sphere, specialized but neverthe- 

 less having much common ground of inter- 

 est. It is particularly appropriate that 

 the society should have taken up the field 

 of genetics as its own, for what has its 

 career been but one long persistent effort 

 in practical eugenics? Though its early 

 experiences did seem to resemble a self- 

 destroying schizogony, we now look upon 



1 Address of the president of the American So- 

 ciety of Naturalists, Philadelphia, 1913. 



