404 
GENETICS: C. B. DAVENPORT 
For these starfishes we are indebted to the United States National 
Museum. They form part of a much larger series carefully selected for 
us by Mr. Austin H. Clark. The other specimens of the series are yet 
to be analyzed. These four, however, fall into place with the Tobago 
echinoderms and with those previously published. The progressive en- 
richment in magnesia, following increase of temperature, is unmistakable. 
1 This paper is here published by permission of the Director of the United States Geologi- 
cal Survey. 
2 Clarke and Wheeler, Washington, U. S. Geol. Surv,, Profess. Paper, No. 102, 1917. 
ON UTILIZING THE FACTS OF JUVENILE PROMISE AND FAMILY 
HISTORY IN AWARDING NAVAL COMMISSIONS 
TO UNTRIED MEN 
By C. B. Davenport 
STATION FOR EXPERIMENTAL EVOLUTION. CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON 
Read before the Academy, April 17. 1917 
We are about to organize an army of 1,000,000 men and to add greatly 
to our navy. Within the next few months, over 20,000 commissions 
will be given, largely to men who have never seen service. It is of pri- 
mary importance to the conduct of this war that they should be properly 
selected. In our civil war incompetence of ofhcers was responsible for 
thousands of unnecessary deaths. 
In the past, appointments have been made largely as political favors, 
a very bad method of selecting. As Mahan says: *'In the stringent and 
awful emergencies of war, too much is at stake for easy tolerance." In 
this paper I suggest a new method of selection in its particular applica- 
tion to untried naval officers. This method is, in brief, the utilization, 
among other data, of the facts of juvenile promise and family history. 
The basis of this paper is the study of the biographies o f 30 naval offi- 
cers, and genealogies and supplementary data relating to their families. 
It appears at once that naval officers are of different types — there are 
naval fighters (like Nelson, Farragut, Porter and Cushing), naval ex- 
plorers (like Sir John Franklin, McClintock, and our own Wilkes), 
naval inventors (like Dahlgren), naval diplomats (like Hornby) and so 
on. Of the 30 officers 14 are clearly fighters, and these are utilized in 
this study. 
The essential traits of successful fighting naval officers are (1) Love 
of the sea — ^perhaps an elementary instinct, but not yet fully studied: 
(2) nomadism, whose inheritance is known to be sex linked; (J) hyper- 
kinesis, which is inherited as a dominant trait: i.e., does not skip a 
