562 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIV. No. 878 



whicli he enumerates in some detail. In 

 short, the book is so inaccurate that it is an 

 outrage to put it in the hands of a single 

 immature student. This book has been 

 pushed by active and intelligent agents, and 

 also widely advertised; it has doubtless been 

 adopted in many schools. How have the 

 scholars of America dealt with it? The first 

 review I saw was in the Nation, of course 

 anonymous. It was laudatory, and did not 

 indicate that anything was wrong; though I 

 remember a vague reference to some matters 

 on which there might be differences of opinion. 

 I wrote to the editor, pointing out the real 

 character of the book, and received the reply 

 that the reviewer quite agreed with me as to 

 the work as a text-hooh, but reviewed it fa- 

 vorably because he thought it might be useful 

 in other ways ! 



For some time no other review came to 

 my notice, until I received the American 

 Breeders' Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 1. Here, if 

 anywhere, we might expect critical treatment. 

 The review (p. 77) is wholly and extrava- 

 gantly laudatory, without any hint of errors. 

 It ends with the remark that " Dean Daven- 

 port's pioneering work is most valuable, both 

 because of the excellence of his books and be- 

 cause they blaze the trail in this subject." 

 The review is anonymous, and the editor, on 

 being written to, does not defend it. 



Finally, I find a review by Dr . Geo. H. 

 ShuU in Botanical Gazette, September, 1911. 

 Dr. Shull, as might be expected, tears up and 

 scatters to the four winds the treatment of 

 Mendelism, but says that it lacks " the defi- 

 niteness and accuracy which characterizes the 

 rest of the book," and again " It seems un- 

 fortunate that a book otherwise so admirable 

 should propagate such definitions as these." 



I should have had something to say on this 

 matter earlier, but for the fact that Ginn and 

 Company's agent, visiting me here, gave me 

 to understand that the edition would be with- 

 drawn and a corrected one substituted. After 

 a time, suspecting that this was not being 

 done I wrote to the publishers direct and was 

 told (August 21, 1911) that " no revision of 

 it has been called for or made." A later letter 



(September 4) stated that it was Professor 

 Davenport's intention to make some changes 

 and corrections which my earlier letters to the 

 publishers had suggested. There is no indica- 

 tion whatever of any intention to withdraw 

 the edition now on sale. 



Other instances could readily be cited to 

 show that vigilance is the price of accurate 

 text-books. I will mention only one that came 

 before me quite recently. Two books arrived 

 in the same package from the American Book 

 Company. One is Hunter's " Essentials of 

 Biology," the other Sharpe's " Laboratory 

 Manual for the Solution of Problems in Biol- 

 ogy." The authors both teach in the De Witt 

 Clinton High School. Hunter (p. 44) refers 

 to the composite " flower cluster, so often mis- 

 taken for a single flower " ; Sharpe (explana- 

 tion to figure 6) does so mistake it, the legend 

 reading " Curve of variation in number of 

 petals of ox-eye daisy. . . . Number of petals 

 to a flower on line ac." 



t. d. a. cockerell 



University of Colorado 



" am in the depths of the ocean " 

 To THE Editor of Science: In a recent 

 number (August 25) an explanation is offered 

 by Carl Hering as to the supply of dissolved 

 oxygen, necessary for the respiration of fishes, 

 even at great depths in the ocean. The sug- 

 gestion is that the solubility of oxygen in 

 water, being proportional to the pressure, is 

 much greater at considerable depths than at 

 the surface, and therefore the dissolved oxygen 

 diffuses readily downwards. 



There is surely a confusion of ideas here 

 regarding pressure. The pressure to which 

 the solubility of oxygen is proportional is the 

 (partial) gas pressure of oxygen; the great 

 pressure in the ocean depths is hydrostatic, 

 which has but a very slight effect on the solu- 

 bility of a gas. 



The solubility of oxygen, therefore, does not 

 appreciably increase towards the bottom of the 

 sea, but the ordinary process of diffusion from 

 the saturated surface layers may well provide 

 adequate oxygen even at the greatest depths, 

 in view of its uninterrupted action and the 



