January 16, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



115 



other. Professor H. C. Lord, of the Emerson 

 McMillan Observatory, Columbus, Ohio, and 

 the writer began a series of investigations 

 with a view to determining where it should 

 have fallen. We secured reports from some 

 twenty-five or thirty observers scattered 

 over the states mentioned above; none of 

 them, however, were expressed very definitely 

 in terms of angular measurements, excepting 

 those of Professor Lord and myself, and we 

 evidently had not noted the altitude and 

 azimuth of the meteor at exactly the same 

 point of its descent. Satisfied, however, that 

 if any pieces came to the earth, they must 

 have fallen somewhere between Lexington and 

 a point in Elliott County, Ky., where an ob- 

 server saw the meteor to the west of him, I 

 was induced to hunt down a rumor that it 

 had fallen in Bath County, and was rewarded 

 by finding -that it had indeed come to earth 

 in the extreme southern portion of that 

 county, and had been picked up by the man 

 who saw it strike the ground. The exact 

 point struck was a stone in the road in front 

 of the home of Mr. Buford Staten, five miles 

 due south of Salt Lick, Ky. 



The stone (for it is an aerolite) is roughly 

 8J X 6 X 4 inches, has a volume of 1,642 c.c, 

 and now weighs, with some pieces chipped ofi 

 for analysis, 5,725 grms., or about 12 lbs. 

 lOj oz. It exhibits the usual black crust or 

 varnish, the pittings, the grayish interior, and 

 shows on analysis the disseminated nickel- 

 iferous metallic iron. 



It is interesting to note that, though the 

 approximate place of this aerolite's fall was 

 not determined by calculations based upon 

 observations giving the azimuths of the point 

 where it appeared to burst as seen from dif- 

 ferent stations — the meteorite itself having 

 been brought in before our investigations had 

 reached the calculating stage — ^yet had it not 

 been seen to strike the earth, it is not im- 

 probable that it would soon have been found 

 as a result of special search. A projection 

 of the lines of observation in accordance with 

 the azimuths of the Columbus and Lexington 

 determinations (S. 15 degrees W., and N. 81 

 degrees E.) cross in the southern portion of 

 Bath County, Ky. 



Note. — Since writing the above the metorite 

 has been purchased by Mr. Henry Ward for 

 the Ward-Coonley Collection of Meteorites 

 now on deposit in the American Museum of 

 Natural History, New York city. 



Arthur M. Miller. 



State Cou.ege or Kentucky. 



AN APPLICATION OF THE LAW OF PRIORITY. 



The first serious attempt to make regula- 

 tions for the nomenclature of zoology was 

 by a committee of the British Association for 

 the Advancement of Science in 1842. Since 

 then these rules have been both changed and 

 added to, and may still be modified by the 

 action of future zoological congresses. Nom- 

 enclature can never be stable so long as the 

 rules are subject to modification. Why then 

 not apply the law of priority to these rules, 

 and declare that the 1842 rules of the British 

 Association must stand, since they have the 

 priority. Of course there were earlier at- 

 tempts, just as there were binomials before 

 LinnEeus and Darwinism before Darwin, but 

 all acknowledge that the 1842 action was the 

 first serious work on zoological nomenclature. 

 Therefore, following the law of priority, they 

 should not be changed. Additions, of course, 

 should be allowed, and these should also fol- 

 low the law of priority. This would forever 

 prevent change. The scheme of having a 

 zoological congress to meet at intervals, for 

 the discussion and decision of questions, per- 

 mits of change; and no one can tell how slight 

 or how great these changes may be in the fu- 

 ture. Stability can only be obtained by 

 deciding that something already accomplished 

 can not be changed. Nathan Banks. 



CURRENT NOTES ON PEYSIOQRAPRY. 



glacial channels in western new YORK. 



Fairchild's recent work on the ' Pleistocene 

 Geology of Western New York ' (' N. Y. State 

 Museum, 20th Eep. State Geol.,' 1900 (1902), 

 103-139, plates and maps) includes the most 

 complete statement yet made regarding those 

 remarkable channels worn by rivers that fol- 

 lowed temporary courses along the depression 

 enclosed by the spurs of the Allegheny plateau 

 on the south and the face of the retreating 



