112 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 342. 



8H0BTEB ARTICLES. 



THE GEOLOGIC DISTRIBUTION OP POLLICIPES 



AND SOALPELLUM. 



In a valuable memoir on the ' Hudson River 

 beds near Albany and their taxonomic equiva- 

 lents,' published as Bulletin of the New York 

 State Museum, No. 42, April, 1901, Dr. Ru- 

 dolph Ruedemann describes a number of vari- 

 ously shaped valves found in the Upper and 

 Lower Utica Shale of Green Island and Me- 

 chanicsville, N. Y. (p. 578, pi. ii.). These he 

 believes to ' find their homologues in parts of the 

 capitula of the pedunculate cirriped genera 

 Scalpellum and PoUicipes, notably of the latter. 

 On this account the various valves have been 

 united under the caption PoUicipes siluricus, in 

 full consciousness of the enormous gap existing 

 between the appearance of this Lower Siluric 

 type and the next Upper Triassic (Rhaetic) rep- 

 resentatives of these genera.' Confirmation of 

 Dr. Ruedemann' s ascription may be derived 

 from the fact that ' the enormous gap ' does 

 not exist. Early in 1892 Dr. C. W. S. Aurivil- 

 lius * published the descriptions of PoUicipes sig- 

 natus from bed e{ = Lower Ludlow), P. validus 

 from bed c ( = Wenlock Shale), ScalpeUum sul- 

 catum, S. varium, 8. granulatum, 8. strobiloides, 

 8. procerum, 8. cylindricum, and jS*. fragile, all 

 from bed c, of the island of Gotland. The 

 species of 8calpellum are founded on peduncles, 

 PoUicipes validus is represented by a broken scu- 

 tum only, but P. signatus is based on an almost 

 perfect specimen. The occurrence of more 

 than one species of both these genera in the 

 Silurian lends significance to the diversity of 

 form presented by Dr. Ruedemann's specimens. 

 The ornament on his Fig. 18 most nearly resem- 

 bles that of P. signatus, while the rostrum, Fig. 

 22, is also not unlike that species. Figures 16, 

 17, 19 may belong to more than one other spe- 

 cies, while 24 ( with which presumably 25 is to 

 be associated ) may belong to a 8calpeUum, as 

 Dr. Ruedemann seems to hint. In the circum- 

 stances it is specially regrettable that Dr. Ruede- 

 mann has selected no one of these specimens 

 as the holotype of PoUicipes siluricus. If he 

 does not do so soon, confusion is pretty certain 

 to arise. 



*Bihang Sveska Vet.-Akad. Handl., XVIIL, Afd. 

 IV., No. 3. 



Figures 13, 14, 15, are referred to Turrilepas 

 (?)filosus n. sp. A recent examination of the 

 plates of that genus suggests to me that the 

 note of interrogation is fully justified. 



Aurivillius considered that PoUicipes signatus 

 showed a closer approach to the Balanidee than 

 any other of the Lepadidse, but he too, in igno- 

 rance of the 'Devonia.n Protobalanus Whitf., dis- 

 coursed needlessly about the gap in the distri- 

 bution. Now that the range of the Lepadidse 

 has been extended to the Ordovician, we may 

 look confidently for further discoveries. We 

 may also hope that the time has no-w come 

 when even the text-books may awake to the 

 fact that the genera PoUicipes and 8calpellum 

 existed in Palseozoic times. It was pointed out 

 inyour own columns a year ago (Vol. XL, p. 

 984), and in other reviews before that. But 

 perhaps the reviewer and the author reviewed 

 are the only readers of a review. 



My apology for insisting on this is not merely 

 that both Dr. Aurivillius and Professor Lind- 

 strom, who supplied him with the material, 

 have unhappily passed away, but that I had 

 the good fortune to be the discoverer of the 

 beautiful specimen of PoUicipes signatus, when 

 developing a specimen of Gissocrinus verrucosus 

 from the Pterygotus bed of Wisby Waterfall in 

 May, 1891. The very fragile specimen was 

 subsequently licked into shape (no metaphor is 

 intended) by Mr. G. Liljevall, to whom the ex- 

 cellent drawing of it is due. F. A. Bather. 



London, June 5, 1901. 



QUOTATIONS. 



THE salaries OP SCIENTIFIC MEN IN THE 



EMPLOYMENT OF THE GOVERNMENT. 



Within the past few years our Government 

 has come to fully recognize the wisdom of 

 utilizing in every way possible the results of 

 modern science, particularly in the conduct of 

 its internal affairs. The amount appropriated 

 by the late Congress for scientific purposes was 

 somewhere in the neighborhood of $9,000,000 — 

 a larger sum than is devoted by any other Gov- 

 ernment to like purposes. Yet the liberal and 

 enlightened policy evinced by legislation of this 

 sort has been accompanied by a short-sightedness 

 — not to use a less complimentary term — hard to 

 account for in a legislative body made up largely 



