Editorial Com incut. 189 
tity or similarity of geological solar climates with those of the 
present. 
Professor VVortman suggests that the hypothesis of the or- 
igin of life at the poles "should be known as the Scribnerian 
theory of the place of the origin of life," on the assumption 
that Mr. Scribner was the first to propose it. Aside, however, 
from the nearly simultaneous publication by Dr. Warren, it is 
admitted by Dr. Warren (p. 59 ) that professor Philip Spiller 
in 1868 and 1873 published "identical reasonings." 
N. H. w. 
CHARLES EMERSON BEECHER. 
It becomes our painful duty to record again the death of 
one of our editors. At this writing we know nothing of the 
details of Dr. Beecher's death. The telegraphic despatches of 
our daily papers have made the bare announcement. He was 
born October 9th, 1856, at Dunkirk, N. Y., and died February 
14th, 1904, at New Haven, Connecticut. 
He was professor of paleontology and curator of the geo- 
logical collections of Yale University. He graduated at the 
University of Michigan in 1878; received the degree of doctor 
of philosophy from Yale in 1889; he married September 12th, 
1894, Mary Salome Galligan. He was the author of "Studies 
in Evolution," 1901, one of the Yale bicentennial publications, 
and of many papers in scientific journals and proceedings of 
scientific societies, principally on modern evolution and the 
classification of brachiopods and trilobites, and on the develop- 
ment and detailed structure of trilobites etc., a number of which 
have appeared in the American Geologist. His loss is a very 
severe blow to American paleontolog}-. 
