July 29, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



149 



granting of honorary degrees by our colleges 

 to men outside of academic life has any reason 

 to be, and surely it has, it is because such 

 academic recognition is an expression of ap- 

 preciation on the part of the personnel of the 

 college of the things in which alone the re- 

 sults of their labors take on the garb of reality. 

 As an expression of this kind of appreciation 

 the function of the college in the granting of 

 honorary degrees contributes vastly more to 

 the credit of the college when wisely per- 

 formed than to the sum of honor that rests 

 upon those who do the world's work and carry 

 its heavy dignities. 



Quite the most absurd notion respecting 

 this conferring of honorary degrees is the 

 more or less confused idea of many a circum- 

 scribed academician that it is the making 

 rather than the marking of a distinction ; and 

 growing out of this pitifully foolish idea is 

 the exaggerated dread of the prostitution of 

 this really vital function of our acadernic 

 institutions. 



Let one read the words of President Van 

 Hise (Science, July 15, p. 92) and consider 

 whether anything could be more stimulating 

 to a group of young graduates at a time when 

 everything conspires to awake in them the 

 most serious emotions. If the granting of 

 honorary degrees is not a vital function it 

 may easily be made such, and as such its 

 greatest, perhaps its only benefit would accrue 

 to the institution performing it. 



It is a general impression, and perhaps it 

 is true, that the number of engineers is dis- 

 proportionately small among those who at 

 each commencement season receive honorary 

 degrees. If it is true, it is to be hoped that 

 some of our larger schools of engineering may 

 consider it. In any ease it would be appro- 

 priate for our Society for the Promotion of 

 Engineering Education to look into the 

 matter. W. 



^ ' PTERIDOSPERM.'i.PHYTA.' 



To TPiE Editor of Science: In proposing 

 the name ' Pteridospermaphyta ' (Science for 

 July 1, 1904, p. 25), Professor Lester F. Ward" 

 does not seem to have" noticed that Oliver and 



Scott have published ' PteridospermEe ' as the 

 name of the group, in a paper presented to 

 the Royal Society, January 21, 1904, entitled 

 ' On the Structure of the Paleozoic Seed 

 Lagenostoma Lomaxi, with a Statement of the 

 Evidence upon which it is Referred to Lygino- 

 dendron.' Abstract preprints of this paper 

 were distributed early in the year, were pub- 

 lished prominently in Nature, 69 : 334, Feb- 

 ruary 4, 1904, and reviewed in the Botanical 

 Gazette, 37: 237, March, 1904. The name 

 was further established by Oliver in a paper 

 entitled ' A New Pteridosperm,' published in 

 the New Phytologist, 4: 32, January, 1904, 

 and also reviewed in the Botanical Gazette 

 (1. c). 



It was proposed by Oliver and Scott to 

 establish ' a distinct class,' under the name 

 Pteridospermse, to ' embrace those paleozoic 

 plants with the habit and much of the internal 

 organization of ferns, which were reproduced 

 by means of seeds.' John M. Coulter. 



SPECIAL ARTICLES. 

 AUTOTOMY, regeneration AND NATURAL 



selection. 

 History warns us that it is the customary fate 

 of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as 

 superstitions; and as matters now stand it is 

 hardly rash to anticipate that in another twenty 

 years the new generation, educated under the 

 influences of the present day, will be in danger 

 of accepting the main doctrines of the ' Origin of 

 Species ' with as little reflection and it may be 

 with as little justification as so many of our 

 centemporaries twenty years ago rejected them. 

 —Huxley, 1880. 



Huxley's prophecy has not been quite ful- 

 filled, for the fate of natural selection as a 

 scientific account of organic adaptations still 

 depends on the testimony of witnesses. Never- 

 theless, the warning of 1880 is a wholesome 

 stimulant to take before considering some 

 recent objections that selection accounts 

 neither for the process of self-mutilation, so 

 common among the Crustacea, nor for the 

 ability of living things in general to repair 

 injuries by the restoration of lost parts. 



These two processes, autotomy and regenera- 

 tion, have been studied by those who consider 



