636 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL. No. 1035 



Dr. T. E. Hodges, president of the Univer- 

 sity of West Virginia, has resigned to be- 

 come a candidate for eongressman-at-large. 



Professor James William Toumey has 

 been elected director of the Yale School of 

 Forestry for five years, in place of Henry S. 

 Graves. Professor Toumey has been acting 

 director during Professor Graves's absence 

 as United States forester. 



Professor M. A. Eosanoff, for the past 

 seven years director of the department of 

 chemistry in Clark University, has accepted 

 a professorship of chemical research in the 

 Mellon Institute of Industrial Research and 

 the graduate school of the University of 

 Pittsburgh. Dr. Eosanofi's students have re- 

 signed fellowships at Clark and have followed 

 him to Pittsburgh. 



Dr. Homer F. Swift has been appointed 

 associate professor of the practise of medi- 

 cine in the College of Physicians and Sur- 

 geons of Columbia University in succession to 

 Dr. Theodore C. Janeway, now of the Johns 

 Hopkins Medical School. 



Dr. Alwin M. Pappenheimer has been ap- 

 pointed professor of pathology in the College 

 of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia Uni- 

 versity, to succeed Dr. James W. Jobling, 

 who has become professor of pathology in 

 Vanderbilt University. 



In the University of California Dr. Walter 

 Lafayette Howard, since 1905 professor of 

 horticulture in the University of Missouri, 

 has been appointed associate professor of 

 pomology. Dr. Jacob Traum, until recently 

 of the staff of the division of pathology of 

 the Bureau of Animal Industry of the United 

 States Department of Agriculture, has been 

 appointed assistant professor of veterinary 

 science, and will devote his time to investiga- 

 tions in regard to tuberculosis in the domestic 

 animals. Eoland S. Vaile, until recently col- 

 laborator in the United States Bureau of 

 Entomology, has been appointed assistant 

 professor of orchard management. He will be 

 attached to the Graduate School of Tropical 

 Agriculture at Eiverside. 



At the Massachusetts Institute of Technol- 

 ogy in the department of mechanical engi- 

 neering, E. W. Brewster and Arthur F. Petts 

 have been named assistants, and Henry M. 

 Wylde, Eobert T. Gookin and Walter Haynes, 

 assistants in inorganic chemistry, food analy- 

 sis and electrical engineering, respectively. 

 Dr. Charles A. Kraus has resigned as assist- 

 ant professor of physico-chemical research. 



DISCUSSION AND COBRESFONDENCE 

 evolution by selection of mutations 



Hugo de Vries, in his Brussels address de- 

 livered last January and printed in Science 

 of July lY, with an annotation by the author 

 replying to a criticism of his theory by Edward 

 C. Jeffrey, objects to evolution by selection of 

 fluctuating variation on the ground that this 

 is too slow a process for the length of geologic 

 time. 



He does this without offering any evidence 

 that evolution by selection of mutations would 

 be any faster process. He admits that " it is 

 hardly probable that these jumps are numerous 

 in a state of nature as it now surrounds us." 



Is there any more presumption in favor of 

 a more rapid rate for evolution proceeding by 

 jumps separated by long intervals from each 

 other than by evolution proceeding by constant 

 though imperceptible steps? 



Until we are in possession of such quantita- 

 tive data we are not in a position to affirm how 

 much change may or may not take place in 

 organisms in a given period of time. 



Croll, I think it was, offered a word of 

 caution here. It was to the effect that no one 

 was in a position to say offhand what might 

 or might not take place in a million years. 



It has always seemed to me that Herbert 

 Spencer pretty effectually answered the "not- 

 time-enough objection " to evolution, even by 

 the slow process of imperceptible change in 

 organisms; by a comparison of ontogeny with 

 phylogeny and the drawing of a conclusion 

 in accordance with the simple " rule of three." 



Taking the development of man in his indi* 

 vidual history of 40 weeks from germ cell to 

 fully developed human being, as an epitome 

 of the development of the animal kingdom 



