714 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXrV. No. 882 



Recent scientific appointments at West 

 Virginia are: Wm. H. Alderman, formerly of 

 the Experiment Station at Geneva, N. T., to 

 be professor of horticulture; Isaac S. Cook, 

 formerly of Ohio State University, to be as- 

 sociate professor of agronomy; Roland P. 

 Davis, formerly of Cornell University, to be 

 associate professor of structural and hydraulic 

 engineering; E. Dwight Sanderson, dean of 

 the College of Agriculture, to be also, begin- 

 ning January 1, 1912, director of the Agricul- 

 tural Experiment Station. 



Dr. Harold E. Eggers, of the Memorial 

 Institute for Infectious Diseases, Chicago, has 

 accepted an appointment as professor of path- 

 ology in the Harvard Medical School of China 

 in Shanghai and will enter on his duties as 

 such on February 1, 1912. 



Mrs. H. C. McPherson has been made in- 

 structor in botany at the Oregon Agricultural 

 College. Mrs. McPherson, vs^ho is the wife of 

 Dr. H. C. McPherson, of the political economy 

 department, held a graduate scholarship in 

 botany at the University of Chicago until 

 1909, when she went to Michigan Agricultural 

 College as instructor in botany. 



Davis Spence Hill, Ph.D. (Clark), recently 

 professor of psychology and education in the 

 University of Tennessee, has been elected to a 

 similar position at Tulane University. 



Mr. T. G. Bedford, M.A., Sidney Sussex, 

 has been appointed demonstrator of experi- 

 mental physics, and Mr. J. A. Crowther, M.A., 

 St. John's, and Mr. H. ThirkiU, B.A., Clare, 

 assistant demonstrators of experimental phys- 

 ics, at Cambridge University. 



Dr. Eugen Kurz, of the University of 

 Miinster, has been appointed head of the ana- 

 tomical laboratory of the German medical 

 schools at Shanghai. 



DISCUSSION AND COBBESPONDENCE 



THE EXILED NATURALISTS OP PORTUGAL 



A DOCUMENT has recently been circulated, 

 bearing the names of twelve Portuguese nat- 

 uralists,^ who have been exiled from their 



^ A. Luisier, A. O. Pinto, A. Eedondo, A. Silvano, 

 C. Torrend, C. Mendes, K. Zimmermaim, J. S. 



country by the new government, " on the pre- 

 text that they are Jesuits." Five have gone 

 to Brazil, three to Belgium, two to Spain and 

 two to Holland. These men were professors 

 in the colleges of S. Fiel and Campolide, in 

 Lisbon, and were known for their work in 

 diilerent branches of biology, and especially 

 for the journal Broteria, which they published. 

 Perhaps the best known is J. S. Tavares, but 

 it appears that all had done work on the fauna 

 and flora of Portugal. In the course of years, 

 they had established an excellent library of 

 works on natural history, a laboratory for 

 microscopic work, and had accumulated large 

 collections, especially of Orthoptera, Lepidop- 

 tera, gall-insects and botanical specimens. 

 The government ordered the arrest of these 

 professors, and confiscated all their scientific 

 possessions. " ISTos livres, nos revues, nos in- 

 struments, nos collections, nos manuscrits, 

 meme les plus intimes, nous les avons perdus ! " 

 Two commissions were appointed, it seems, to 

 discuss the questions involved. That on S. 

 Fiel, where the principal collections were, did 

 not include a single naturalist; instead, it 

 consisted of a veterinarian, a physician, a pro- 

 fessor and two lawyers, presided over by a par- 

 ticular enemy of the college. The Minister of 

 Justice said to one of the arrested men, " If 

 your collections are lost to you, they are not 

 lost to science." Unfortunately, however, the 

 collections were accumulated for special ends, 

 and it will not be possible for others to make 

 the best use of them. In many cases the 

 specimens are not labeled, and in others they 

 are marked with numbers, abbreviations, etc., 

 intelligible only to their original owners. 



" C'est pourquoi, les naturalistes de la Bro- 

 teria protestent bien haut devant le monde 

 savant centre I'injustice sans nom sont ils 

 sent les victimes; ils protestent au nom de 

 leurs droits violes, ils protestent au nom de la 

 science ! " 



It is probable that there is another side to 

 this question, but granting the accusations of 

 their enemies, that they are Jesuits, and (I 

 suppose) opposed to a republican form of gov- 

 Tavares, J. Foulquier, M. Martins, M. Eebimbas, 

 P. VieiUedent. 



