March 31, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



517 



works of the great Stagyrite and his successor 

 Theophrastus, are interpreted by these authors, 

 and in their wake by students generally, as 

 applying to ichthyic remains found in strati- 

 fied rock, whereas the original texts speak only 

 of living fishes which burrow in the mud, and 

 are able to survive for a considerable time out 

 of water. Thus the passages were understood 

 by ancient commentators, and the idea that 

 they refer to things fossil has clearly been 

 ' read into ' them by modern historians. 



Lyell's statement of the matter is as fol- 

 fows, omitting criticisms : 



Aristotle, in his treatise on respiration, speaks 

 distinctly of fossil fishes; and his pupil, Theo- 

 phrastus, alluding to such fishes found near Hera- 

 clea, in Pontus, and in Paphlagonia, says that 

 they were either procreated from fish-spawn left 

 behind in the earth, or had gone astray from 

 rivers or from the sea, for the sake of food, into 

 cavities of the eartli, wliere they had become 

 petrified. 



Nothing could more completely miss the 

 sense of the original than the above paragraph. 

 The title of Theophrastus's essay, ' On Fishes 

 that Exist out of Water,' is alone sufficient 

 to exclude the notion of petrified remains. 

 Besides, we have both ancient and modern 

 confirmation of the accounts relative to the 

 taking of ' dug mullets ' and loaches in the 

 same localities. Pomponius Mela, it is true, 

 rejects the reports as improbable fish stories, 

 bvit Strabo, Pliny, Polybius and others corrob- 

 orate them at all points ; and in our own 

 time the facts have been verified de novo. 



What Pliny says on this matter is interest- 

 ing. He mentions a kind of loach, which 

 Cuvier thinks is identifiable with the Cohitis 

 fossills of Linnseus, and observes that it ' fre- 

 quents the waters near the banks of the rivers 

 and makes holes for itself, in which it lives, 

 even when the water retires and the bed of 

 the river is dry; for which reason these fishes 

 have to be dug out of the ground, and only 

 show by the movement of the body that they 

 are still alive.' Nor does he omit in the 

 same connection ('Nat. Hist.,' IX., 83) to 

 quote Theophrastus's statement that ' in 

 Paphlagonia, also, land fishes are dug up 

 which are most excellent eating.' 



Strabo is equally explicit in his account of 

 the ' dug mullets ' of Narbonne, long esteemed 

 one of the principal wonders of the Keltic 

 coast. Thus we read in the fourth book of 

 his ' Geography ' as follows : 



There is a lake near to Ruscino [on the site of 

 which now stands Perpignan], and a little above 

 the sea a marshy district full of salt-springs, 

 which supplies 'dug mvillets'; for whoever digs 

 two or three feet, and plunges a trident into 

 the muddy water, will be sure to take the fisti, 

 which are noteworthy for their considerable size; 

 they are nourished in the mud like eels. 



It is unnecessary to prolong the discussion, 

 or to point out that the views of ancient 

 masters in natural science have been needlessly 

 disparaged through faulty interpretation of 

 the original sources. We are concerned only 

 with restoring to the latter their literal mean- 

 ing. A word may be said, however, concern- 

 ing the formidable array of geological doc- 

 trines attributed by Lyell, in the work quoted, 

 to Pythagoras, of the sixth century, B. C. Of 

 this almost mythical personage we know very 

 little for certain, of his doctrines nothing at 

 all. Those ascribed to him are not Pytha- 

 gorean, but Stoic; not of the hoary sixth cen- 

 tury before our era, but Augustan ; not alto- 

 gether Greek, but- in large part Roman; 

 and in order to form a clear historical perspec- 

 tive it is necessary that these facts be recog- 

 nized. C. E. Eastman. 



Harvard University. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 



The Central Branch of the American So- 

 ciety of Naturalists and atfiliated societies are 

 holding their third annual meeting at Chi- 

 cago from March 31 to April 1. Professor 

 John M. Coulter, chairman of the Central 

 Branch, will deliver the annual address at the 

 dinner on March 31. Special programs have 

 been arranged for the zoologists, botanists, 

 anatomists and physiologists. We hope to 

 print abstracts of the papers, a considerable 

 number of which are announced on the pre- 

 liminary program. 



It is announced that the first John Fritz 

 gold medal will be conferred upon Lord Kel- 

 vin. This medal is awarded by a joint com- 

 mittee of the xVmerican Institute of Electrical 



