December 4, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



839 



In the case of the majority of works issued in 

 the past, or at periods too remote to bear 

 obvious evidence of having been antedated, and 

 especially of works issued by responsible pub- 

 lishers, the ostensible date must be accepted. 

 This fortunately covers a large part of scientific 

 literature, but strangely and most unfortunately 

 does not always include the proceedings, mem- 

 oirs and other publications of scientific societies, 

 the ostensible dates of publication of which are 

 not to be relied on, a fact now thoroughly well 

 known. There are, of course, many exceptions, 

 when the ostensible date is the correct date, 

 and in many other cases the approximately 

 correct date is determinable. 



Prof. Cope states : ' ' The probabilities are so 

 great that a book is ' offered to the public ' at the 

 date aflBxed to it that it is not safe to assume 

 that it is not, except in two contingencies." 

 One of these is the fraudulent antedating of a 

 book ; the other is that ' ' brovight forward by 

 Dr. Allen, that the government publications 

 which are issued at a date later than that which 

 they carry on their title pages." This latter 

 case Prof. Cope claims 'is not well taken,' be- 

 cause, ' ' although some reports issued by our gov- 

 ernment may bear dates much prior to the dates 

 of issue, it does not follow that the date of print- 

 ing bears any such relation to the date of issue ! ' ' 

 Yet he tells us in another paragraph, as already 

 quoted, that we must accept the date given on 

 the title page as the date of publication ! Some- 

 times a government scientific report is issued 

 reasonably near the date it bears, but, at least 

 in recent years, this is the exception rather than 

 the rule, even with publications issued by the 

 U. S. National Museum. This, of course, is not 

 the fault of the authors, nor even of the Mu- 

 seum,* but is due to the peculiar ways of the 



* The articles in the Proceedings of the U. S. Na- 

 tional Museum are distributed separately to special- 

 ists, and to some extent to libraries, as soon as printed, 

 but of late they are sent out without date. There is 

 nothing on the title pages to show when they were 

 issued. When the volume to which they belong is 

 completed and issued, six months to a year after 

 some of the papers were distributed, the date of dis- 

 tribution of each article is given on a leaf following 

 the table of contents. As the early distribution of 

 ' separates ' of articles is obviously to secure an early 



Government Printing Ofiice. Nor is the United 

 States government the only ofiender ; things are 

 not managed any better under State Printers, 

 and in some cases even worse. Columns of this 

 Journal could be filled with titles of State re- 

 ports on geology and natural history bearing 

 dates one to three years prior to the dates when 

 the first copies were distributed, although the 

 final proofs were read by the authors, and the 

 pages probably printed in conformity with the 

 date on the title page. And during the inter- 

 val between the dates of printing and distribu- 

 tion copies of the works were not to be ' had on 

 demand, ' even by the authors. 



Hence it would seem that no one possessing 

 a knowledge of these facts can candidly con- 

 tend ' ' that the date of printing [should] be re- 

 garded as the date of publication." In the case 

 of ofiicial documents issued by the diiferent 

 States or by the general government, the date 

 of distribution, or publication, is doubtless quite 

 as easy to determine as the date of printing. 



The ' whereases ' preceding the resolution 

 here under consideration, relating to the diffi- 

 culties of determinating ' a rule of distribu- 

 tion,' were not considered in my former com- 

 munication — a fact to which Prof. Cope calls 

 attention — nor are they now, since for the most 

 part they are obviously of little weight, and are 

 sufficiently covered in considering the resolu- 

 tion itself. J. A. Allen. 



American Museum of 

 Natural History, New York, 

 vitality of the spermatozoon. 



An instance that may illustrate some of the 

 physiological properties of the mature male 

 sex cells was observed last summer in the 

 course of instruction in invertebrate zoology at 

 the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods 

 Holl, Mass. Illustration is also given of the 

 rate at which the more interior tissues may 

 harden when the entire animal is subjected to 

 the action of alcohol. 



When the study of Mollusca was begun, a 

 date of publication, the desirability of adding the 

 date is obvious. As this is a matter apparently with- 

 in the control of the officials of the Museum, there 

 may be some practical difficulty in the way of affix- 

 ing a really correct date that is not obvious to the 

 public. 



