July 14, 1893.J 



SCIENCE. 



2 1 



into the substance of the brain. In young just hatched I never 

 found any. In young from two to three weeks old I found them 

 in their stomachs and the alimentary canal. When about ready 

 to fly I found coiled perhaps two or three on the brain.' 



Further on in his note to me he says: " I was surprised to learn 

 of your finding them in Botiirits — but I should not have been 

 for I consider them primarily a fish parasite and developed from 

 the eggs taken with the fish into the stomach of the bird, and 

 hence like Trichina spirul i s 6.ndiug their way to the brain." 



Professor Jenks called my attention to a note he published on 

 this find in his " Popular Zoology," but which I bad overlooked. 

 He also gave me the address of Dr. W. Cahall of Philadelphia who 

 had published an article on the subject, based largely on the 

 material Professor Jenks obtained from Florida There is only 

 one point in Dr. Cahall's article ^Journal of Nervous and Mental 

 Diseases for June, 1889), that I wish to speak of, and that is 

 that while 19 out of 20 Snake Birds have these brain parasites 

 they do not seem to affect them unfa' orably. This was not 

 the case with the Bittern. It was poor in flesh, of inferior size 

 and deficient in intelligence. 



That birds do get parasites from fish I might add the following 

 case of circumstancial evidence: When skinning a perch {Perca 

 flavescens), I found in the muscles a number of encysted parasites, 

 the cysts white and about an eighth of an inch long A short 

 time afterwards in skinning a wild duck I found a similar if not 

 the same parasite in the pectoral muscles. The two parasites 

 were of the same size and color and seemed to be the same. 



G. H. French. 

 Carboudala, 111. 



The International Botanical Congress at Madison. 



In looking over the 'Circular and General Programme of the 

 Forty -Second Meeting of the American Association for the Ad- 

 vancement of Science" just distributed, I am surprised to read 

 on page 12, under the beading '•International Botanical Con- 

 gress," the following statement: -'The congress will consider 

 questions of general botanical interest, but papers embodying the 

 results of research will be excluded. The International Standing 

 Committee upon Nomenclature, appointed last year at the Genoa 

 Congress, is expected to present a report at this time." This is all 

 that is said in the circular to indicate what we may expect to hear 

 at the Congress. 



The Botanical Gazette, in an editorial,' urges " If any botanist 

 has a suggestion . . . now is the time to give it expression. . . . 

 Silence means apathy." I fear a certain class of our botanists 

 have been silent too long, judging from the above statement. It 

 seems to me outrageous to announce a programme from which all 

 original research is excluded. No scientific man cares to listen 

 to papers which are merely "a play of words," not the results of 

 research. I should consider it an insult to our foreign guests to 

 ofl'er such a programme. The one subject suggested, nomen- 

 clature, is indeed about the only one possible under such restric- 

 tions, being truly void of all scientific research. 



Botanical congresses do not come every year, especially in 

 America, this being the first ever held here, if I am rightly in- 

 formed. This being the case, it seems to me, as a matter of 

 course, that this should be the time and place for a discussion of 

 the vital questions of physiology, morphology, anatomy, etc., 

 that this should be the time for an extreme efliort on the part of 

 every American botanist. If we desire to gain standing as true 

 botanists among the true botanists abroad, our supreme effort 

 should be directed to botany, not as appears to be the intention, 

 to a mere machine of botany. It would seem a better restriction 

 if all papers not the result of research were excluded. 



Papers from America have long presented this characteristic — 

 no "result of research." Nomenclature and fljristic is truly all 

 that we have thus far accomplished. One is, unfortunately, 

 compelled to believe that " Free Lance " " accidentally omitted to 

 include botany when he said: "The Entomological Society is 



1 Botauioal Gazette, vol, xvll. (November, 1892), p. 384. 



2 " On the Organization of Science," by A. Free Lance, Edlnbui'gb, 1892, 



recruited very largely from the ranks of ' collectors' who notori- 

 ously infest entomology far more than any other branch of natu- 

 ral history." The omission is at least unfortunate. The follow- 

 ing sentences of the paragraph are so pithy and to the point that 

 I cannot refrain from quoting them also: " The great majority 

 of these have probably no interest in science generally, but care 

 only for those things relevant to butterfly collections (herbaria, 

 in our case). They would never become Fellows of the Linnsean, 

 and care chiefly to discuss 'collector's' topics, that would be quite 

 out of place in that society; so that the Entomological Society 

 affords them a soft purgatorial limbo, midway between the para- 

 dise of science and the inferno of popular nescience." 



I trust that I missunderstand the word research as used by the 

 committee, but it would seem desirable that they should better 

 explain what is meant. It may be intended that all papers con- 

 taining reseai-ch should be presented to Section G of the American. 

 Association, fearing that if the congress were not restricted Sec- 

 tion G would be scantily patronized. Tbis, however, does not 

 seem a reasonable interpretation, for if there is a limitation on the 

 congress, we should expect it to be open only to the best papers 

 of most general interest, which could readily be decided by a 

 committee on programme; lesser papers and papers of local ia- 

 terest being referred to Section G. 



The claim cannot be made with justice that nomenclature has 

 more than a factional interest. The majority of good botani-sts 

 of the world pay no attention to nomenclature, and to them a 

 discussion of its intricacies would be dry and worthless in the 

 extreme. If such factional questions are to be the only ones con- 

 sidered, the congress should not be called a '• Botanical Congress," 

 but a Somenclature Congress. Whatever may be intended, it is 

 an unfortunate use of words. 



It is announced that a separate circular v/ill shortly be dis- 

 tributed to botanists, giving further information. It is to be 

 hoped that a clear explanation of this point will be given. 



H. J. Webber. 



Subtropical Laboratory, U. S. Depirtment of Agriculture, EustU, Fla. 



A Plea for a Fair Valuation of Experimental Physiology in 

 Biological Courses. 



During the discussion of the biology question, one point has 

 interested me more than any other, namely, that none of the 

 parties who have taken part in the discussion have teen able ta 

 avoid speaking at the same time of evolution and of natural selec- 

 tion. This thinking of biology, with constant reference to those 

 two features of Darwinian teaching, has led me to believe more 

 strongly than ever that my view of the matter is not very much 

 wrong. However, an article in this journal, entitled "Biology in. 

 our Colleges : A Plea for a Broader and More Liberal Biolosiy," 

 induces me to take up my pen once more and explain matters a 

 little more closely. 



The tendency of the above-named paper 'is — a i^lea for sys- 

 tematic biology," but it is marked by such a number of wonder- 

 ful views on the different lines of physiological investigation that 

 many specialists vyill really I e at a loss about what they shall 

 think. ".Systematic zoology has gone, or, if still tolerated in a 

 few colleges, is restricted to a very subordinate position." I 

 imagine that the biologist would not know what to do if syste- 

 matic work, both zoological and botanical — the latter holds still, 

 says the article, " an honored place in many universities, though 

 evidently on the wane" — was not carried on, so that we could 

 know how to lay our hands upon the different forms for further 

 study. But the methods of such a work may be wrong, t-nd, 

 fatally, often are so, namely, when it presents itself merely as 

 simple regristation work, which strikingly has been called 

 museum zoology or botany. Systematic work of any kind is to 

 be valued just as much as morphological or physiological wo k, 

 and so, even if it is done still —as in fact it is in ninety-nine cases, 

 out of a hundred — after the old Lintsean principles. On the 

 other hand, a biological classification, or even only a morphologi- 

 cal classification, which employs biological characters of the forms, 

 is to be more highly valued. 



There is no doubt but that any naturalist enjoys the " delight 



