September 9, 1892.] 



SCIENCE. 



15 



The Nomenclature Question. 



I AM glad to see this question brouslit up as it is by Professor 

 Underwood in the number of Science for Aug. 26; for we should 

 have a uniform nomenclature in all departments of natural history. 

 That such is not the case now is apparent to every student who 

 is working in any of its various branches. But I do not wish to 

 discuss the subject in general, but to touch upon one or two points. 

 As to the question of priority, there should be some definite rules 

 by which this should be governed, as has already been said in 

 other of our scientific periodicals, and it will not profit by any re- 

 hashing it here, further than to say that among entomologists it 

 is generally understood that the mere proposal of a name for a 

 genus without characterizing it does not hold against a later name 

 accompanied by a description. 



As to the act of a writer who takes a species already named and 

 puts it into a new genus with his own name after it instead of the 

 name of the original describer, that is an outrage that has not 

 been tolerated among entomologists for some time. I can see no 

 valid reason for retaining such a system of nomenclature in any 

 department of natural history, merely that some reviser may gain 

 a little cheap notoriety. 



A word as to the initial letter of specific names. It seems to 

 me that the name of a species is a proper name as much as the 

 name of a genus; in other words, it is the name of a group of 

 plants or animals, and, if such, is as much entitled to a capital 

 initial as is the name of the genus. JIany of our leading ento- 

 mologists have adopted this view and begin all specific names with 

 capitals; as, for instance, see Edwards's "Revised Catalogue of 

 the Diurnal Lepidoptera of North America," 1884; Kirby's '■ Cata- 

 logue of Diurnal Lepidoptera," 1871 and 1877, etc. I believe it is 

 the correct principle and follow it in all my work in natural his- 

 tory. G. H. French. 



Southern Illinois Normal, Aug. 30. 



The Grand-Gulf Formation, 



This has now become a clearly recognized division of the post- 

 eocene geology of the Gulf States. No subdivisions of it have as 

 yet been attempted in print, though more than three years have 

 elapsed since the writer — then in the service of the U. S. Geo- 

 logical Survey — announced the first discovery of fossil? on Pas- 

 cagoula River and the two branches which form it, Leaf River 

 and the Chickasawhay, near their junction. The exact locality 

 of the largest deposit is Shell Bluff, just below Robert's Ferry and 

 a few miles south-west of the post-office Vernal, in Greene County, 

 IVIississippi. It was then proposed to call it the Pascagoula for- 

 mation, and to regard it as distinct from Dr. Hilgard's Grand- 

 Gulf. Further developments and recent discoveries have con- 

 firmed ine in this view. It was not at first accepted, because 

 there is but the one witness, myself, and attempts to trace it 

 westward and eastward failed to detect the same or similar fofsili- 

 ferous beds on the Mississippi, on Pearl River, on the Alabama 

 River, or on any of the smaller streams of these States. This kind 

 of negative testimony would only go to restrict its extension, and 

 not to overthrow the validity of the distinction if otherwise prop- 

 erly established. 



Many facts, too numerous to be elaborated in this short paper, 

 prove that the great Mississippi embayment had collateral 

 branches in which the variations are too well defined to be disre- 

 garded. The Pascagoula embayment was one. And whilst the 

 main body of the Grand-Gulf formation is of sand, sandy clays, 

 and quartzites due to a fresh-water agency, in the Pascagoula for- 

 mation it presents a marine aspect, where calcareous clays, more 

 or less pure and with more or less distinct evidence of molluscan 

 fossils, prevail. The boundaries of these two will not be at- 

 tempted in this paper. Let us pass at once to some of the 

 strongest and more recent proofs. 



Of the shells discovered at Shell Bluff it may be said only one, 

 the large oyster, could be clearly determined. The rest were in a 

 condition so decayed and friable as to render their transportation 

 in good condition impossible. But as I remember them, the oys- 

 ter approached, yet differed from, the recent 0. Virginiana, among 

 other particulars, in its greater massiveness. Among the other 



shells too rotten to be moved was one strongly similar to a Chiath- 

 odon, though it may turn out to be a Mactra. Another, and 

 the most numerous, was a small shell somewhat resembling in 

 size and outline the Donax so common on our beaches, but with 

 less umbonal development, and with the distinctly visible lines of 

 growth resembling Venus. The difficulty in this case as well as 

 the other is that the hinge could not be clearly made out. 



Borings for artesian wells at Biloxi and other places on the 

 Mississippi coast, and quite recently at Mobile, Ala., solve the 

 difficulty. 



The Biloxi borings, among other things, brought up, from a 

 depth in the neighborhood of 700 feet, fragments of a large oyster, 

 which might well belong to that of Pascagoula, and a very easily 

 recognized Onathodon. 



The boring at Mobile, from about the same depth and just above 

 the water-bearing sands, has yielded similar bits of oyster, and a 

 small shell, evidently the same as that of Pascagoula, and suffi- 

 ciently preserved to be determined. It is a Venus, or very nearly 

 allied to that genus, and if not already found elsewhere and 

 named, the name V. Mohilensis is proposed for it. 



Not having room to go further into detail, I wish clearly to say 

 that I find evidence sufficient to establish the existence of a for- 

 mation of deep-bedded gray clays of partially marine genesis, 

 lying upon the water-bearing sands of the upper strata of the 

 Grand-Gulf formation; that I have traced this clay from Pearl 

 River, Miss., to Conecuh River, Ala.; that it constitutes the 

 cover rendering artesian wells possible, and that it was for these 

 clays that the name Pascagoula was proposed. 



Laueence C. Johnson. 



Meridian, Miss., Aug. 1. 



European Origin of the Aryans. 



My attention has been called to Dr. Brinton's note in Science for 

 June 20 as to the claim of Omalius d'Halloy to have preceded 

 Latham in calling in question the theory of the Asiatic origin of 

 the Aryans. In 1890, when in his lectures on " Races and Peo- 

 ples," Dr. Brinton advanced the claim of d'Halloy, I carefully read 

 over Halloy's articles, as cited by Dr. Brinton on p. 146 of his 

 book, and I came to the conclusion that d'Halloy was not ac- 

 quainted with the theory he is said to have controverted. The 

 dates confirm this conclusion. The articles in question were 

 published in the Bulletins of the Belgian Academy during the 

 years 1839 to 1844, and were recapitulated in 1848. The theory 

 of the migration of the Aryans from central Asia first found defi- 

 nite expression in an article by Pott, buried in a volume of Ersch 

 and Griiber s Encyclopaedia, which was published in 1840, but it 

 attracted no attention till taken up by Lassen in 1847, and by Jacob 

 Grimm in 1848. This was the theory against which Latham 

 contended, whereas d'Halloy's very confused and misty arguments 

 seem to refer, if they refer to anything, to the Caucasian theory 

 broached by Blumenbach in 1781, with the modifications proposed 

 by Adelung in his Mithridates, 1806-1816. 



I think, therefore, we are still justified in asserting that Latham 

 was the first to question the comparatively modern theory that 

 the Aryan race originated in the highlands of central Asia, a 

 theory of which d'Halloy does not seem to have heard, and con- 

 sequently in the second edition of my "Origin of the Aryans," 

 published in 1892, I did not think it necessary to modify my for- 

 mer statements as to Latham's priority. Isaac Taylok. 



Settrington, York, England. 



Acid Prevention of Cholera. 



In previous epidemics the value of sulphuric and sulphurous 

 acids as preventives was demonstrated, and when Koch discov- 

 ered his comma bacillus he also noted that its cultivation was 

 possible only in alkaline media, and that acids destroyed it. In 

 corroboration of these findings, Niemeyer, who wrote long before 

 anything of this nature was known, records that the ileum, or 

 lower small intestine, is the main seat of the pathological changes 

 caused by cholera. This lower small intestine is the most alkaline 

 and the farthest from the normally acid stomach. The large in- 

 testine, being acid, does not suffer. 



