508 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVII. No. 430 



be Oucumites glohulosus, altliougli I am free 

 to confess that is not the name I had in- 

 tended it to bear! I would write the name 

 and its authority as C. glohulosus (Knowlton) 

 Cockerell, and I may add, that, in my judg- 

 ment, Professor Cockerell has himself further 

 complicated the issue by intentionally pub- 

 lishing a combination in a field in which he 

 has at most only a passing interest. 



F. H. Knowlton. 

 Washing TOisi, D. C. 



THOSE MANUSCRIPT NAMES. 



To THE Editor of Science: I am much 

 averse, to using the pages of scientific papers 

 for nomenclatorial discussion, but since Pro- 

 fessor Cockerell's and Dr. Bather's articles 

 indicate that I introduced MS. names merely 

 to upset them, a few words may not be 

 amiss. Dr. Bather says ' It (Filistata 

 oceanea) appears first on page 50 of Mr. 

 Banks's paper.' Such is not the case, and in 

 this very paper (p. 60, bottom) I refer to an 

 unpublished name of Marx but am careful not 

 to introduce it. Dr. Marx (as I state) pub- 

 lished a list of spiders from the Galapagos 

 Islands in 1889 which includes six MS. 

 names. In order to make my paper on the 

 spiders of these islands complete it was neces- 

 sary to note previous publications. In order 

 to show how many spiders were known from 

 these islands I collated the previous lists 

 (Butler's and Marx's) with my material, in 

 so showing that three of Marx's published 

 names were synonyms of previously de- 

 scribed species, and two others were the same 

 as those I would describe below. In sinking 

 five of the six previously published names 

 (every one of which is still a nomen nudum) 

 under described species I believe I was doing 

 a service. My ease is not unique ; I can men- 

 tion dozens; commonly, however, the MS. 

 name is referred to after the description. 

 And the paper and inli wasted in so doing- are 

 as nothing to the time and type wasted in 

 the two articles which are the mismated par- 

 ents of this one. ISTathan Banks. 



EXPLORATION OF OKEFINOKEE SWAMP. 



To the Editor of Science: Some of your 

 readers may be interested to know that the 



vast wilderness, several hundred square miles 

 in extent, known as Okefinokee Swamp, in 

 southeastern Georgia, so long avoided by 

 botanists and other scientists — though men- 

 tioned as long ago as 1791 in the writings of 

 William Bartram — has at last been penetrated. 

 In company with Mr. P. L. Bicker, of the 

 U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, and a guide, I 

 entered the swamp near the center of its east- 

 ern margin on August 6, and came out at the 

 same place on the 8th, having in the mean- 

 while been about a dozen miles into the in- 

 terior and secured a considerable number of 

 interesting plants and photographs. 



One of the first features of the swamp to 

 attract my attention was the fact that all the 

 thousands of cypress trees seen were un- 

 doubtedly Taxodium imhricarium, a species 

 whose distinctness from the old T. distichum 

 I have recently attempted to show (Bull. 

 Torr. Bot. Glul, 29: 383-399, June 20, 1902). 

 According to the theory there proposed (see 

 pp. 389, 395) this would seem to indicate that 

 the Lafayette formation underlies the swamp, 

 or at least that part of it visited by us; but 

 direct evidence on this point is still want- 

 ing. This formation was actually observed 

 however a few miles east of the swamp, and it 

 is reasonable to suppose that it underlies the 

 whole area. 



Lumbering operations in the swamp seem 

 to have been suspended for the last few years 

 (owing mostly, it is said, to the death of the 

 principal promoters of the scheme for de- 

 foresting and draining it), and fortunately 

 the natural conditions have been very little 

 altered thereby. The fauna seems to have 

 suffered considerably from the ravages of 

 sportsmen, but the flora is practically intact, 

 and the swamp offers a number of most inter- 

 esting problems in many branches of natural 

 science. 



Poland M. Harper. 



FoLKSTON, Charlton County, Georgia, 

 August 11, 1902. 



SOUTHERLY DE'^aATION OF FALLING BODIES. 



Readers desiring a somewhat fuller his- 

 torical account of experiments and theories 

 relating to the southerly deviation of falling 



