222 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. IV., No. 84. 



Ethnic problems have a natural interest for 

 the American people. Their great task is to 

 fuse together the life of many lands, — to bring 

 political and social union out of the widest 

 diversities that the races of men afford. They 

 follow a true instinct in giving time and 

 public money to such problems. The bureau 

 of ethnology is doing an admirable work 

 in gathering the history of our departing 

 aborigines. There is, however, another field 

 of labor, — one not yet fairly entered on, either 

 by private students or by the ordered phalanxes 

 that are marshalled in the cause of science by 

 the bureaus of the federal government. As 

 the indigenous savages were forced towards the 

 setting sun by the plough-driving Aryans, 

 the shore was crossed by another savage race, 

 the African, that has come to stay for all time 

 in our fields. 



There can be no question that the African 

 in the United States presents us with the 

 greatest and most interesting experiment that 

 has ever been tried by civilized man upon a 

 lower people. Around this race have gathered 

 a host of problems of the utmost importance 

 to pure science, and of infinite interest in that 

 field of nature called sociology, into which 

 science is with such difficulty making a slow and 

 blundering way. Out of the very numerous 

 inquiries that should be made in this field we 

 may note the following, that are at the moment, 

 perhaps, the most important because they 

 concern matters that need to be studied at once. 

 First among these is the question of the origin 

 of our American negroes. There is a great 

 deal that still can be gathered concerning this 

 question. No close observer of the negro race 

 in this country can fail to have noticed the 

 wide diversity of type masked behind the de- 

 ceiving uniformity of hue. Second, we have 

 the problem of the physical and mental change 

 that has come over this people since their re- 

 moval to America. Third, the effects of climate 

 in different parts of the United States upon 

 these black races, — effects on shape, liability 

 to disease, longevity, etc. What to do with 

 and for the negro, and how to do it, is the 



question of all questions most immediately 

 and imperatively before us. We best begin 

 to deal with it by making a scientific study 

 of him. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



*** Correspondents are requested to be as brief as possible. 

 The writer's name is in all cases required as proof of good faith. 



The initiation of deep-sea dredging. 



In a recent number of Science (July 18), Mr. Rath- 

 bun is rather severe upon European naturalists for 

 their supposed ignorance of the fact that the Gulf- 

 Stream dredging* carried on by the Corwin, under 

 the superintendence of the late Mr. Pourtales, were 

 commenced in 1867, the year before the first British 

 expedition in the Lightning; and he speaks of Mr. 

 Pourtales' report of December, 1867, as having been 

 ' utterly ignored ' by European writers. 



It is quite true that no reference was made to this 

 report in the historical account of the subject which 

 formed part of the preliminary report of the dredging 

 operations of the Lightning, presented to the Royal 

 society by Dr. Carpenter on Dec. 17, 1868; for the 

 bulletin of the Museum of comparative zoology, which 

 contained Pourtales' report, had not then reached 

 him. The correspondence between Dr. Carpenter 

 and Sir Wyville Thomson, which led to the cruise of 

 the Lightning (published as an appendix to Dr. Car- 

 penter's report), was carried on in entire ignorance of 

 the fact that Pourtales had dredged down to a depth 

 of three hundred and fifty fathoms a twelvemonth 

 before. In fact, it was only after their return in 

 September, 1868, that they heard for the first time of 

 the work done by Mr. Pourtales in May of that and 

 of the previous year. But a short account of it, re- 

 ceived from Prof. A. Agassiz, was quoted by Dr. 

 Carpenter; and reference was given to a fuller notice 

 of Mr. Pourtales' results in Silliman's journal for 

 November, 1868. 



It will be seen, therefore, that Dr. Carpenter, far 

 from ignoring the researches of Mr. Pourtales in the 

 Corwin, fully recognized their priority to those car- 

 ried on in the Lightning during the autumn of 1868. 

 He could not well refer to a document, which, though 

 published a year previously, had not yet come into 

 the hands of British naturalists, and consequently 

 could not receive from them the credit which Mr. 

 Raihbun says has been denied it. But Mr. Pour- 

 tales' dredgings were noticed in the same number of 

 the proceedings of the Royal society as were those 

 of the Lightning; and I do not well see how their 

 value could have been more fully recognized, consid- 

 ering what was then known about them in this 

 country. 



I freely admit, however, that in ' The depths of the 

 sea,'*the book to which Mr. Rathbun so pointedly 

 refers (though without naming it), it is stated that 

 the dredgings of Mr. Pourtales were ' commenced ' in 

 1868. This is one of several minor inaccuracies 

 which are unfortunately to be found scattered 

 through the work; and, however much they are to be 

 regretted, it must be remembered that at the time it 

 was written the author was in bad health, with his 

 time fully occupied by his professorial duties, and by 

 the preparations for the cruise of the Challenger, 

 which commenced almost before the book was in the 

 hands of the public. In fact, the later chapters, 

 which contain the erroneous reference to the date of 



