328 



SCIEXCE. 



[Vol. VII. , No. 166 



fore stated, has rcted on it. The constitution au- 

 thorizes congress ' to promote the progress of science 

 and useful arts by securing, for limited times, to au- 

 thors and inventors, the exclusive right to their 

 respective writings and discoveries.' There is no 

 limitation of the power to natives or residents of this 

 country. Such a limitation would have been hostile 

 to the object of the power granted. That object was 

 to promote the progress of science and useful arts. 

 They belong: to no particular country, but to man- 

 kind generally. And it cannot be doubted that the 

 stimulus which it was intended to give to mind and 

 genius — in other words, the promotion of the prog- 

 ress of science and the arts — will be increased by 

 the motives which the bill offers to the inhabitants of 

 Great Britain and France." 



I believe that the view expressed by Mr. Morgan 

 in the last paragraph of his communication is correct, 

 and that a " Bill to amend the Eevised statutes re- 

 lating to copyrights " — amending section forty-nine 

 hundred and fifty-two by striking out the words 

 ' citizen of the United States, or resident therein,' 

 and substituting the word ' person ;' amending sec- 

 tion forty-nine hundred and fifty four by striking 

 out the words 'and a citizen of the United States, or 

 resident therein ;' ameuding section forty-nine hun- 

 dred and sixty-seven by striking out the parenthetical 

 clause '(if such author or proprietor is a chVzen of the 

 United States, or resident therein): ' and repealing 

 section forty-nine hundred and seventy-one — would 

 secure to foreign authors protection over their works 

 equal to that now granted to citizens or residents. 

 It is reallv in this way that the bill introduced into 

 the senate by Mr. Hawley grants protection to the 

 works of foreign authors ; the first section being in 

 reality a limiting provision, stipulating that the pro- 

 tection is only granted to authors of such countries 

 as confer equal rights of protection to citizens of the 

 United States, in other words a reciprocity clause. 

 By mistake, the Hawley bill neglects to provide for 

 the amendment of section forty-nine hundred and 

 fifty-two, though careful provision is made for the 

 amendments necessary in the other sections. 



Thorvald Solbekg. 



Washington, DC, March 30. 



The distinction between anatomy and compara- 

 tive anatomy. 



It was not so many years ago that even those hold- 

 ing the highest positions in the profession of medicine 

 regarded human anatomy as the only anatomy en- 

 titled to the name, and that comparative anatomy 

 meant something else altogether. Its teachings were 

 not appreciated by the vast majority of those who 

 studied the anatomy of man, and the great surgeons 

 of those days were rather inclined to look askant at 

 one who indulged in researches into the structure of 

 the 1 lower animals ' But in these days such matters 

 wear a very different aspect, for anatomy means 

 morphology, — the knowledge of the structure of 

 organic forms, — both living and extinct, audit is 

 rarely indeed that we hear of any one attempting to 

 draw hard and fast lines between the anatomy of 

 man, and either any of his own class or other repre- 

 sentatives of the Vertebrata. 



Thanks to the progress biology has made during 

 the last quarter of a century, all literature that has 

 any thing to do with such subjects, actually teems 

 w ith the teachings of morphology. Such being the 



case, one is rather disposed to regard with some 

 measure of surprise the classification that so excellent 

 a work as the Index medicus adopts for its record of 

 such subjects. In its last issue, for instance (Feb- 

 ruary. 1886, p. 54), and I believe it has always ad- 

 hered to the same plan, it makes one section for anato- 

 my, histology, and embryology, and a subsection for 

 comparative anatomy and embryology. Now, in the 

 section-in-chief, we find entered the recent admirable 

 paper by Dr. E. C. Spitzka, on 1 The comparative 

 anatomy of the pyramid tract,' the contribution evi- 

 dently being considered as an ' anatomical one ; r 

 while we find awarded to the subsection Retterer's 

 article entitled " Sur le developpement des tonsilles 

 chez les mammiferes." to say nothing of all the ana- 

 tomical articles from the last number of the Journal 

 of anatomy, of London. 



Now, as fully the larger share of Spitzka's memoir 

 is devoted to the study of the pyramid tract in other 

 animals than man, it would seem, even according to 

 the plan adopted by the Index medicus, that that 

 essay has not fallen into its proper section. The 

 same stricture applies, for a similar reason, to Retter- 

 er's paper. Surely it would seem better to have one 

 section devoted to morphology, to include all contri- 

 butions that refer to the structure of organic forms, 

 and, if necessary, two subsections, — one devoted to 

 histology, and the other to embryology. 



R. W. Shufeldt. 



Foct Wingate, N. Mex., March 33. 



Penetrating-power of arrows. 



You doubtless have read of the wonderful feats of 

 archery ssid to have been performed by savage 

 archers. Cabcca de Vaca, for instance, tells us that 

 the good armor of the Spaniards was no protection 

 against these missiles. Some of the men swore that 

 they had seen two red oaks, each the thickness of 

 the lower part of the leg, pierced through from side 

 to side by arrows. I myself saw an arrow that had 

 entered the butt of an elm to the depth of a span. 

 The same author states that the corpses of the 

 Spaniards were found to have been traversed from 

 side to side by arrows. An instance is given, where 

 an arrow shot by an Indian pierced through the 

 saddle and housings, and penetrated one-third its 

 length into the boiy of a Spaniard's horse. These 

 quotations from Jones's ' Southern Indians ' might be 

 increased to any number, covering a period from the 

 Homeric age to our day, all showing the popular be- 

 lief concerning the power of the arrow. 



I desire very much to induce our archery clubs to 

 institute a series of careful experiments upon the 

 following points : — 



1. How far can an arrow be shot in a calm ? How- 

 far with or against a moderate calm ? 



2. What is the greatest distance at which an 

 arrow can be shot with any degree of accuracy i 

 Experiments should be made both as to the vertical 

 and horizontal. 



3. What is the momentum of an arrow leaving a 

 bow ? (Tested by shooting against a disk attached to 

 a graduated scale.) 



4. W r hat is the penetrating power of an arrow 

 into animals ? This may be tried with horses, cattle, 

 or dogs, which have just died, or with those in an 

 abattoir just about to be slaughtered. 



5. The register of the bow as to length, etc., and 



