April 24, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



671 



T. E. Savage: ' Tlie Toledo Lobe of lowan 

 Drift.' 



T. J. and M. F. L. Fitzpateick : ' The 

 Scrophulariaceae of Iowa.' 



L. H. Ford : ' Smallpox in the Public Schools.' 



' Notes from the Chemical Laboratory of Cor- 

 nell College.' 



W. E. Sanders : ' A Study in Psychopathic 

 Heredity.' 



The membersliip of the academy was in- 

 creased by the addition of the following fel- 

 lows: T. C. Frye, D. W. Morehouse, H. C. 

 Price and B. 0. Lanphear; the new associate 

 members are Lucy M. Cavanagh, Harriet 

 Clearman, Fred Seaver, A. M. Allen and E. 

 E. Buchanan. 



The newly elected officers are: 



President — B. Fink. 



First Vice-President — S. W. Beyer. 



Second Vice-President — ^Maurice Bicker. 



Secretary — A. G. Leonard. 



Treasurer — H. W. Norris. 



A. G. Leonard, 



Secretary. 



THE KELVIN PHYSICAL CLUB OF THE UNIVERSITY 

 OP PENNSYLVANIA. 



The club met on Saturday, February 28, in 

 the Randal Morgan Physical Laboratory and 

 listened to a paper by Mr. Homer M. Derr, on 

 ' Chromatic Interference with Thin Section of 

 Doubly Eefracting Crystals in Polarized 

 Light.' The paper contained in brief the 

 theory of the colors of thin rock sections as 

 seen through a polarizing midroscope and 

 discussed the practicability of using the same 

 as a means of analysis when chemical action 

 was insufficient to detect certain minerals. 



Mr. Derr is constructing a table of the 

 colors up to the fourth order of different min- 

 erals with varying thicknesses for qualitative 

 analysis in petrology. 



At a meeting of the club on March Y, a paper 

 was presented by Mr. J. Frank Meyer, which 

 reviewed the history of electric convection 

 from the beginning to its present culmination 

 in the dispute between Cremieu and Prender. 

 There was a full attendance at the meeting. 

 Jos. H. Hart, 



Becreiary. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



V^riLL-MAKING. 



To THE Editor of Science : Professor Cham- 

 berlain's suggestion in Science, March 6, page 

 391, that wills should be probated during the 

 lifetime of the testator, has been frequently 

 made to legislatures and just as frequently 

 rejected. It was one of the matters consid- 

 ered and rejected by the judges' committee in 

 the recent revision of Colorado probate law. 



In the first place, the suggestion assumes 

 that will disputes and the so-called ' break- 

 ing of wills ' are matters of very common oc- 

 currence, which, though a popular supposition, 

 is to those whose business is the administration 

 of probate law known to be entirely incorrect. 

 An attack upon a will is the exception, and a 

 successful attack even vastly rarer. The few 

 cases of rejected wills are published far and wide 

 in the newspapers, while the thousands admit- 

 ted to probate without contest never are heard 

 of by the public, creating an erroneous impres- 

 sion. I have had personal knowledge of hun- 

 dreds of wills, and while I have heard of such 

 instances and read of them in the newspapers 

 and judicial reports, yet have never personally 

 knovm of refusal to admit a will to probate, 

 except in a few cases in which the paper was 

 not attested by the proper number of witnesses. 

 During the last year I have been constantly 

 in communication and conference with other 

 judges having probate jurisdiction and with 

 probate lav^yers, and have found that to be 

 the common experience. If men failto have 

 their wills witnessed by the statutory number 

 of witnesses, they would be as apt to fail to 

 probate them during lifetime, as it would be 

 only another means of having them witnessed. 

 Then, too, the tendency would be to discourage 

 wills by making the process more complicated, 

 and making it impossible in cases where the 

 testator is far from court and physically un- 

 able to travel, or when death is imminent and 

 time, therefore, limited. Furthermore, the 

 question of its construction and effect could 

 not be properly and safely determined by the 

 court in a purely ex parte proceeding, and if 

 it could, in many cases a decree thus drawn 

 without a knowledge of the future would it- 

 self often come up for construction later on. 



