NOVEMBEE 19, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



725 



James Millikin University, to succeed Dr. 

 Galloway. 



J. A. MoYEE, professor of mecliaiiical engi- 

 neering in the Pennsylvania State College and 

 director of the college extension work, has 

 been appointed by Governor Walsh to the di- 

 rectorship of the extension service which is to 

 be organized in Massachusetts. 



James Kendall, D.S., has been promoted to 

 be assistant professor of chemistry in Colmn- 

 bia University. 



Dr. L. G. Eowntree, of the department of 

 medicine of Johns Hopkins University, has 

 been elected professor of medicine and chief 

 of the department of medicine in the Univer- 

 sity of Minnesota Medical School. Dr. Rown- 

 tree will devote practically his entire time to 

 the service of the medical school, although he 

 will have the privilege of seeing a limited 

 number of patients who may be referred to him 

 by physicians. 



At the University of Michigan, Junior Pro- 

 fessors Peter Field, L. C. Karpinski and T. R. 

 Running have been promoted to associate pro- 

 fessorships of mathematics. Drs. Tomlinson 

 Fort and T. H. Hilderbrandt have been pro- 

 moted from instructorships to assistant pro- 

 fessorships of mathematics. Dr. A. L. ITelson 

 has been appointed instructor in mathematics. 



DISCUSSION AND COEBESPONDENCE 



THE PUBLICATION OP NEW SPECIES 



In these days when taxonomic literature has 

 reached such enormous proportions and is 

 growing so rapidly that even the specialist has 

 difficulty in keeping up with the literature of 

 his own particular group, it seems to me that 

 the interests of science would be better sub- 

 served by the use of greater care in selecting 

 the mediiun of publication of new species. 

 The pages of such general magazines as Sci- 

 ence should be devoted to papers of general 

 interest to the scientific, and to scientific 

 papers of a nature unsuited to the special pe- 

 riodicals. For example, with a magazine in 

 America devoted exclusively to Mollusca, why 

 should an occasional new species of mollusk 

 be published in Science, thus compelling the 

 student of mollusks to search the files of that 



bullcy magazine in order to be sure of missing 

 nothing in his systematic work? Why not 

 send it to a magazine especially devoted to the 

 subject? With several excellent bird maga- 

 zines in the United States, why should a tech- 

 nical discussion of the taxonomic status of a 

 bird species appear in Science? With maga- 

 zines exclusively devoted to botany, why -should 

 a new species of plant found in Colorado be 

 published in an annual report of an experi- 

 ment station in a far distant state, a volume 

 in which surely no botanist could be expected 

 to look for such a description if he were work- 

 ing upon the plants of that particular group 

 or that particular region? Are not the diffi- 

 culties of systematic botanical and zoological 

 work great enough without vastly enhancing 

 them by scattering the descriptions of new 

 species? The examples above given are mere 

 samples of scores of similar instances which 

 come to our attention every year, to the dis- 

 couragement of hard-worked students, and 

 especially those remote from very large li- 

 braries. Furthermore, there are altogether too 

 many ephemeral publications of small educa- 

 tional institutions and local scientific soci- 

 eties, having very limited circulation, but pub- 

 lishing strictly taxonomic papers which often 

 fail to reach the attention of specialists for 

 years, and then suddenly bob up to cause con- 

 fusion in nomenclature. To make matters 

 worse, descriptions of new species sometimes 

 appear in leaflets or small pamphlets, pub- 

 lished privately or by some small institution 

 or society and not forming part of any series 

 into which they would be finally bound and 

 thus preserved. What happens to such a leaf- 

 let when it reaches a library? Is it not 

 usually lost ? Is it likely to be easily available 

 to the student of ten or twenty years hence, as 

 it would be if published in The Nautilus, or 

 The Auh, or The Botanical Gazette, or even in 

 Nature or Science? In how many libraries 

 may a student be able to fitnd it in fifteen 

 years? Although many new species are de- 

 scribed at the University of Colorado, that 

 institution has wisely excluded all such 

 descriptions from its Studies and Bulletin, 

 taking the position that they should appear in 



