SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. V. No. 127. 



Some of the big wolves and some of the coy- 

 otes which Dr. Merriam describes may be en- 

 titled to specific rank, but, if he bases separate 

 species upon characters no more important than 

 those he sometimes employs, I firmly believe 

 that he will find that with every new locality, 

 which' his collectors visit he will get new 

 ' species, ' until he has a snarl of forty or fifty 

 for North America alone ; and when we have 

 reached such a point we had much better rear- 

 range our terminology, if we intend to keep the 

 binomial system at all, and treat as a genus 

 what we have been used to consider as a species. 

 It would be more convenient and less cumber- 

 some, and it would be no more misleading. 



Dr. Merriam states that the coyotes do not 

 essentially resemble each other, or essentially 

 differ from the wolves. It seems to me, how- 

 ever, that he does, himself, admit their essen- 

 tial difference from the wolves by the fact that 

 he treats them all together even when he splits 

 them up into three supra-specific groups and 

 eight to eleven species. He goes on to say that 

 there is an enormous gap between the large 

 northern coyote and the small southern coyote 

 of the Rio Grande, and another great gap be- 

 tween the big gray wolf of the north and the 

 big red wolf of the south, while the northern 

 coyote and the southern wolf approach one 

 another. Now I happen to have hunted over 

 the habitats of the four animals in question. 

 I have shot and poisoned them and hunted 

 them with dogs and noticed their ways of life. 

 In each case the animal decreases greatly in 

 size, according to its habitat, so that in each 

 case we have a pair of wolves, one big and one 

 small, which, as they go south, keep relatively 

 as far apart as ever, the one from the other. 

 At any part of their habitat they remain en- 

 tirely distinct; but as they grow smaller toward 

 the south a point is, of course, reached when 

 the southern representative of the big wolf be- 

 gins to approach the northern representative of 

 the small wolf. In voice and habits the diflTer- 

 ences remain the same. As they grow smaller 

 they, of course, grow less formidable. The 

 northern wolf will hamstring a horse, the 

 southern carry off a sheep; the northern coyote 

 will tackle a sheep, when the southern will 

 only rob a hen-roost. In each place the two 



animals have two different voices, and, as far as 

 I could tell, the voices were not much changed 

 from north to south. Now, it seems to me that 

 in using a term of convenience, which is all 

 that the term ' species ' is, it is more convenient 

 and essentially more true to speak of this pair 

 of varying animals as wolf and coyote rather 

 than by a score of difierent names which serve 

 to indicate a score of different sets of rather 

 minute characteristics. 



Once again let me point out that I have no 

 quarrel with Dr. Merriam' s facts, but only with 

 the names by which he thinks these facts can 

 best be expressed and emphasized. Wolves and 

 coyotes, grizzly bears and black bears, split up 

 into all kinds of forms, and I well know how 

 difficult it will be and how much time and study 

 will be needed, to group all these various forms 

 naturally and properly into two or three more 

 species. Only a man of Dr. Merriam' s re- 

 markable knowledge and attainments and abil- 

 ity can ever make such groupings. But I think 

 he will do his work, if not in better shape, at 

 least in a manner which will make it more read- 

 ily understood by outsiders, if he proceeds 

 on the theory that he is going to try to estab- 

 lish different species only when there are real 

 fundamental differences, instead of cumbering 

 up the books with hundreds of specific titles 

 which will always be meaningless to any but a 

 limited number of technical experts, and which, 

 even to them, will often serve chiefly to obscure 

 the relationships of the different animals by 

 over-emphasis on minute points of variation. 

 It is not a good thing to let the houses obscure 

 the city. Theodore Roosevelt. 



Washington, D. C. 



glacial man in ohio. 



I HAVE read ' Human Relics in the Drift of 

 Ohio' and Dr. Brinton's criticism of the same 

 in Science of February 12th. 



The gist of Professor Claypole's paper is based 

 upon the discovery of a polished stone axe, made 

 by a well-digger in Ohio ten years before. 



Not with especial reference to this discovery, 

 but apropos of the danger of accepting any 

 statement at second hand even from the most 

 veracious person (for we are all liable to error), 

 I would like to cite two personal experiences 



