March 9, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



397 



In the same journal of January 26tli is an 

 abstract of a Royal Society paper by C. E. 

 S. Phillips, on ' Diselectrification produced by 

 Magnetism.' Foil was cemented on the inner 

 and outer surfaces of a glass tube, and powerful 

 magnet poles were inserted through air-tight 

 flanges. When the tube ^vas exhausted below 

 .2" of mercury, and the inner coating was con- 

 nected to the positive side of an electrical ma- 

 chine, an electroscope attached to the inner 

 coating showed a rapid discharge on opening 

 or closing the circuit of the magnet. With 

 higher pressures or when the inner coating was 

 negative there was no effect. When the elec- 

 troscope was attached to the iron of the magnet 

 poles, it indicated that the charge was trans- 

 ferred to these. 



F. C. C. 



ZOOLOGICAL NOTES. 

 BIRD MIGRATION. 



In a recent issue of the Proceedings of the 

 California Academy of Sciences, Leverett M. 

 Loomis gives a fourth part of his ' California 

 Water Birds,' including his deductions from a 

 careful study of their migrations. He concludes 

 that the Shearwaters oif Monterey find their 

 position and shape their course by landmarks, 

 and that birds possess no mysterious superhu- 

 man faculty for determining direction, or else 

 these same Shearwaters would not have been be- 

 wildered in the fog. He also considers that the 

 young are guided from the place of their birth to 

 their winter abode through the experience of the 

 older birds, and that the mere presence of young 

 alone in a locality does not prove that they are 

 migrating independently of the adults, but that 

 older birds have either continued their flight or 

 are migrating farther off. Mr. Loomis sums up 

 by saying that bird migration is a habit evolved 

 by education and inheritance which owe their 

 origin and perpetuation to winter, with its 

 failure of food. 



THE STEREORNITHES AGAIN. 



In the December number of Communieaciones 

 del Museo Nacional de Buenos Aires, Senor Mer- 

 cerat discusses the zoological position of the 

 gigantic birds from the Santa Cruz beds of 

 Patagonia, and considers them as an independ- 



ent ' gens ' of the suborder Ciconiiformes of 

 Fiirbringer. While this is all right, Senor Mer- 

 cerat unfortunately adds that the Stereornithes 

 are a degenerate group of birds, but that they 

 have not progressed so far on their downward 

 course as the so-called Ratitae, and that they 

 present numerous characters similar to those 

 of the Carinatae, combined with others peculiar 

 to the Ratitae. What these ratite characters 

 are, aside from the feeble development of the 

 wings, no one has yet satisfactorily explained, 

 and Mr. C. W. Andrews, in his recent memoir on 

 Phororhacos, shows very clearly that the Ster- 

 eornithes have no kinship with the Ostriches. 

 Size and flightlessness are not morphological 

 characters and have no bearing whatever on the 

 systematic position of the bird. It was a favorite 

 remark of the late Professor Cope that an ani- 

 mal a mile long and an inch wide might belong 

 to the same genus as one a mile wide and an 

 inch long, and this might be paraphrased by 

 saying that a bird with wings twenty feet across 

 might be the nearest relative of a bird with no 

 wings at all. 



P. A. L. 



THE ASSAY COMMISSION. 



The Assay Commission, which is appointed 

 annually by the President to test the weight 

 and fineness of the coinage of the mints in 

 operation during the preceding year, met at 

 the Philadelphia mint on February 14th. The 

 men whom President McKinley designated to 

 serve for the year 1900 were : Senator John 

 P. Jones, of Nevada ; Representative B. J. Hill, 

 of Connecticut ; Dr. H. S. Pritchett, Superin- 

 tendent of the Coast and Geodetic Survey ; 

 Professor S. A. Lattimore, of the University of 

 Rochester; Professor H. H. Nicholson, of the 

 University of Nebraska ; Dr. J. A. Mathews, 

 of Columbia University ; Dr. Cabell White- 

 head, Assayer of the Bureau of the Mint ; Dr. 

 Marcus Benjamin, of the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion ; Hon. John H. Perry, of Connecticut ; 

 Calvin Cobb of Boise, Idaho ; Thomas B. Miller 

 of Helena, Montana ; Edward Harden, of New 

 York City ; E. H. Rich, of Fort Dodge, Iowa, 

 and Francis Beidler, of Chicago. The Com- 

 mission also includes three ex-ofiicio members, 

 viz., the judge of the District Court of the 



