472 



SCIENCE. 



[X. S. Vol. XXI. Xo. 534. 



as suggested by Oltiiianns. The Conjugatse 

 furnish a perplexing problem, but the speaker 

 preferred to regard this group as forming an 

 order of Chlorophycese rather than as a sepa- 

 rate class, in view of present evidence. 



Edward W. Berry, 



Secretary. 



THE SCIENCE CLUB OF THE UNIVERSITY OF 

 WISCONSIN. 



The fifth meeting of the club for the year 

 1904^5 was held in the large auditorium of 

 University Hall, on February 23, at 7 :30 p.m. 

 The paper of the evening, by Dr. TJ. S. Grant, 

 of Northwestern University, dealt with the 

 subject ' The Lead and Zinc Mines of South- 

 western Wisconsin.' Dr. Grant presented the 

 main results of a careful survey of this region, 

 which during late years has again become an 

 important factor in the domestic lead and 

 zinc production. The work was done under 

 the direction of the Wisconsin Geological and 

 Natural History Survey and a full account of 

 the results obtained will be given in the near 

 future in a bulletin published by the survey. 

 The paper was discussed by various members 

 of the university faculty and others, after 

 which a business meeting of the club was held. 



F. W. WOLL, 



Secretary. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



BLUNDERS IN THE SCIENTIFIC RECORDS. 



The systematic zoologist and zoogeographer 

 of to-day who is trying to utilize for general- 

 izations the facts which have been accumu- 

 lated by previous generations is constantly 

 baffled — and often led astray by the insuffi- 

 ciency of the material gathered, the lack of 

 detail and accuracy in the labeling, and the 

 often downright erroneousness in the record- 

 ing. The last is particularly vexatious, be- 

 cause once put into print, it is almost im- 

 possible to eradicate such errors. The everlast- 

 ing recurrence in zoogeographical text-books 

 of the allusion to the toad once falsely stated 

 to have come from the Hawaiian Islands, and 

 to the two-handed lizard alleged to inhabit 



Colorado, are familiar exami^les of these un- 

 dying errors. 



A rather flagrant case of erroneous locality 

 record was exposed some time ago. In 1881 

 Dr. Victor-Lopez Seoane startled the zoolog- 

 ical world by describing a bold snake from the 

 Philippine Islands. It was stated to have 

 been collected by his brother at Manila, and to 

 say that the case puzzled the zoographers is to 

 put it mildly. It was soon discovered that it 

 belonged to a West Indian genus, Epicrates, 

 and in my ' Herpetology of Porto Rico ' (1904) 

 I showed conclusively that the snake miist 

 have come from Porto Rico, being identical 

 with E. inornatus which is peculiar to that 

 island. Dr. Seoane's brother is a Spanish 

 naval officer, a general in the marine corps, 

 and this circumstance explains the mixing up 

 of the Philippine and the Porto Rican 

 localities. 



A parallel to this blunder has just come 

 imder my notice. In 1890 Dr. Seoane again 

 described (in the Memoires de la Societe 

 Zoologique de France, III., p. 260, pi. vi) a 

 new species from the Philippine Islands, col- 

 lected by the same brother. This time it was 

 a toad which received its name, Bufo panay- 

 anus, from the island of Pan ay, the alleged 

 tyi>e locality being Iloilo. He correctly com- 

 pared it with B. gutturosus from Santo Do- 

 mingo, but failed to profit by this resemblance 

 to the West Indian species, of which he re- 

 garded it as the ' oriental pendant.' While 

 recently completing a list of Philippine 

 batrachians and, therefore, looking up the 

 original records, I was struck by the similarity 

 of Seoane's figures to the Porto Rican toad 

 Bufo lemur and a comparison with specimens 

 of the latter easily demonstrated their identity. 

 The relationship to Bufo gutturosus from 

 Haiti, which is quite close, is thus easily ac- 

 counted for, and the ' oriental pendant ' done 

 away with. Bufo pa7iayanus finds a final rest- 

 ing place in the synonymy of Bufo lemur, and 

 the list of Philippine batrachians is one 

 species poorer! 



Leonhard Stejnegeb. 

 U. S. National Museum, 



\\'ASniNGTON, D. C, 

 Marcli G, 1905. 



