in Gilman Hall, as a permanent memorial of the occasion.

2. An anniversary volume, made up of congratulatory letters to Professor Jennings, together with photographs of the writers, to the end that he personally may have a permanent reminder of the affection and esteem in which he is held by his old students and colleagues. This volume in quarto format is bound in full crushed levant morocco, and contains a large number of letters from all parts of the world.

3. A large silver platter presented to Mrs. Jennings, as a token of the part she has played in her husband's scientific career, and in the lives of his students during their university days.

4. Photographic copies of the portrait, one of which is to be sent to each contributor to the celebration.

On May 28 a subscription dinner was given in Professor Jennings's honor at the Chateau in Baltimore. Some 44 persons were in attendance. Dr. C. B. Davenport presented a remarkably impressive review of Jennings's scientific career and contributions to biology. The anniversary volume was presented. In replying Professor Jennings gave an analysis, at once penetrating and humorous, of the manifold advantages of maturity over youth.

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS

DR. ALEXIS CARREL, member of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, has been elected a national associate of the Paris Academy of Medicine. Under the rules of the academy there may be only twenty national associates, all of whom have heretofore been residents of France.

DR. HIDEYO NOGUCHI, of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, has received the honorary degree of doctor of science from Brown University, as well as from Yale University. Dr. Oswald T. Avery, of the institute, received the honorary degree of doctor of science from Colgate University.

THE University of Pennsylvania has conferred the degree of Doctor of Laws on Dr.

Hobart Amory Hare, professor of materia medica in Jefferson Medical College.

BOWDOIN COLLEGE has conferred the degree of Doctor of Science on Dr. Preston Kyes, professor of preventive medicine in the University of Chicago.

THE degree of Doctor of Science has been conferred by Tufts College on Frank William Durkee, professor of chemistry at the college, and on William Henry Nichols, chairman of the Allied Chemical and Dye Corporation.

HONORARY degrees of Doctor of Science were conferred on June 15 by Colorado College on Professor S. L. Goodale, professor of metallurgy at the University of Pittsburgh, and on Dr. C. A. Hedblom, of the Mayo Foundation. Both are alumni of the Colorado College.

DR. JOHN A. KOLMER, professor of pathology and bacteriology in the graduate school of medicine of the University of Pennsylvania, and director of the pathologic laboratories of the Dermatological Research Institute, received the honorary degree of Doctor of Science at Villanova College.

THE University of Manchester has conferred the degree of D.Sc. on Dr. C. S. Sherrington, professor of physiology, Oxford, and president of the Royal Society; on Dr. Horace Lamb, formerly Beyer professor of mathematics in the university; and on Sir Ernest Rutherford, formerly professor of physics. The degree of Litt.D. has been conferred on Dr. G. Elliot Smith, formerly professor of anatomy.

ACCORDING to Nature the list of honors conferred on the occasion of the King's birthday includes the following names of men known to the world of science: Knights: Professor Arthur Keith, Hunterian professor and conservator of the Royal College of Surgeons; Dr. T. Lewis, hon. consulting physician since April, 1918, to the Ministry of Pensions; Dr. S. Russell-Wells, vice-chancellor of the University of London; Dr. F. Conway Dwyer, expresident of the College of Surgeons, Ireland; Mr. J. B. Harrison, director and govern

ment analyst, Department of Science and Agriculture, British Guiana; and Brig.-Gen. D. J. McGavin, director-general of Medical Services in New Zealand. C.B.: Mr. Ll. S. Lloyd, assistant secretary to the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. K.C.I.E.: Col. W. H. Willcox, late medical adviser to the Civil Administration in Mesopotamia. C.I.E.: Dr. M. N. Banerjee, principal of Carmichael Medical College, Belgatchia, Bengal. Companion Imperial Service Order: Mr. G. J. Williams, senior inspector of mines, Mines Department.

PROFESSOR G. F. FERRIS, of Leland Stanford University, California, is spending the summer collecting and studying scale insects in Texas, in cooperation with the Division of Entomology of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station.

THE British government will devote the sum of 1,000,000l. to fostering cotton-growing in the Empire. The money will be placed at the disposal of the British Empire Cotton Growing Corporation, and will be in place of the government's former promise of 50,000l. a year for five years to the corporation.

UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL
NEWS

DR. LIVINGSTON FARRAND, chairman of the executive committee of the Red Cross, formerly adjunct professor of psychology and professor of anthropology at Columbia University and president of the University of Colorado, has been elected president of Cornell University.

DR. FRANK PIERREPONT GRAVES, dean of the school of education of the University of Pennsylvania, has been appointed commissioner of education of the state of New York and president of the University of the State of New York.

DR. P. J. HANZLIK, of the medical school of Western Reserve University, has been appointed professor of pharmacology in the Stanford University Medical School to succeed Professor A. C. Crawford, who died recently.

DR. W. H. RODEBUSH, who has been for the

past year a research fellow of the National Research Council at the University of California, has been appointed associate professor of physical chemistry at the University of Illinois.

GEORGE M. WHEELER, PH.D. (1921), Bussey Institution, has been appointed instructor in entomology, and William E. Greenleaf, instructor in zoology, in the zoology department of Syracuse University.

DR. R. R. GATES has been appointed to the university chair of botany tenable at King's College, University of London, in succession to Professor W. B. Bottomley. He was appointed university, reader in botany at that college in 1919, and has since that date been in charge of the department in the absence of Professor Bottomley.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE

THE CANNONBALL LANCE FORMATION

TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: In reviewing Stanton's memoir on the Cannonball Lance formation, Dr. Schuchert has advocated drawing the line between Cretaceous and Tertiary at the base of the Wasatch. He has referred to the vertebrate evidence as supporting this view, and as recent researches have considerably clarified and extended this evidence, a brief summary of its present status may be of some aid toward harmonizing the existing conflict of opinion.

The position of these border-line formations has been in dispute not merely for a number of years, as Dr. Knowlton remarks, but ever since they were first discovered. A Cretaceous vertebrate fauna was found associated with a Tertiary flora. Vertebrate paleontologists and palæobotanists took opposite sides; the stratigraphic geologists were divided, and the relations with the marine succession, European standard, theories of diastrophism, etc., have been invoked by both sides for a decision. This discrepancy has been maintained and confirmed by all subsequent work. It should be recognized as the fundamental difficulty. It does not help matters to misrepresent or ignore any part of the evidence, and if Dr. Cross's references to the vertebrate evidence fairly reflect the way in which the U.

S. Geological Survey "considered all available evidence" it is clear that its weight and tenor was not correctly understood.

When the subject was discussed by the Palæontological Society in 1913 I presented a paper outlining the vertebrate evidence, especially with regard to the Paleocene faunas.1 Subsequent researches by Brown, Lambe, Osborn and Parks on the Alberta dinosaurs, by Gilmore on the New Mexican reptiles, by Granger and myself on Paleocene and Eocene mammals, by Stehlin, Teilhard and Schlosser on the Eocene and Paleocene mammals of Europe, by Smith Woodward and myself on the Cretaceous mammals of Alberta, confirm the correlations and conclusions presented in that paper, but strengthen certain views which were then rather suggested than advocated.

1. The Lance fauna is wholly Cretaceous in character. It is entirely a continuation and specialization of the Judith (late Cretaceous) without any new elements, but the amount of evolutionary change in the many phyla that have now been traced through Judith, Edmonton and Lance shows that it is considerably later in time.

2. The earliest placental mammals appear in the Puerco "Lower Paleocene" which may be as old as the Lance or older, although usually regarded as later. The Torrejon and Fort Union faunas, Upper Paleocene, are not much later than the Lance, and the phyletic evolution indicates that they are considerably later than the Puerco. The Tiffany and Cernaysian faunas show a still later stage of the Paleocene faunas.

3. The Paleocene placentals are of primitive and archaic aspect. Although some of their phyla survive into the Eocene, they are as a whole not nearly related to the characteristic and dominant Tertiary Mammalia, and much more primitive. The metatherian mammals (multituberculates and marsupials), a minor but considerable element in the Paleocene faunas, are of distinctly Mesozoic aspect and closely related to those of the Judith and Lance. The reptiles are all Cretaceous families continued from the Judith.

1 Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., XXV., pp. 381-402 Sept. 15, 1914.

4. The true Tertiary mammal fauna appears suddenly at or near the base of the Wasatch, and in the Sparnacian of Europe (London Clay, etc.). It is a new fauna, identical in these two far distant regions, and consists in the main of the modern orders of mammals, which now appear for the first time and evolve through the course of the Tertiary into their present diversity and specialization. The two most important families of Tertiary and modern chelonians (terrapins and tortoises) appear at the same time.

5. The great faunal break lies at the end of the Paleocene, with the incoming of the Cenozoic vertebrates at or near the base of the Wasatch. The European standard has drawn the line above the great chalk formations and below the Thanetian (Cernaysian). The Judith corresponds to the Upper Senonian of Europe, but is older than the Maestrichtian and Danian divisions of the chalk, unquestionably Cretaceous, aside from certain formations of disputed age grouped as Montien. The end of the unquestioned Cretaceous in Western Europe is then considerably later than the Judith, perhaps as late as the Lance or later. Its precise correlation can best be made through comparisons of the marine Cannonball phase of the Lance formation with the Danian, etc. On the other hand the Tertiary as generally recognized in Western Europe begins at least with the Thanetian, containing the Cernaysian fauna, uppermost Paleocene, equivalent to the Tiffany zone at the base of the Wasatch in the San Juan basin. It is therefore a little below the great migrational break indicated by the vertebrate faunas.

There are two criteria generally used in faunal classifications, the extinction of ancient types and the first appearance of new groups. The latter appears to me the more logical and practical. By this standard the Wasatch Sparnacian fauna of the London Clay, etc., is the introduction of the distinctively modern or Cenozoic life, the preceding faunas, even including the Paleocene placentals, being essentially the last stages of Mesozoic life.

This division is not supported by the palæobotanists. Their Cenophytic era, it is well recognized, begins with the upper Cretaceous

(Dakota, etc.); they find a sharp floral break between Judith and Lance at a point where no break occurs in the vertebrate fauna; and so far as I understand no serious break between Paleocene and Eocene. I can hardly venture an opinion as to where the majority of invertebrate paleontologists would draw the line, if based wholly on invertebrate data; in practise most of them draw it at the summit of the chalk succession of western Europe.

The great stratigraphic break asserted by some stratigraphers to exist everywhere at the base of the Tertiary is denied by others of no less ability and experience, and its universality and importance seem to have been much exaggerated.

Is it not possible, where the evidence is thus conflicting, to adopt a compromise by mutual concession? It appears to me that the compromise indicated by Schuchert has the best elements for universal acceptance. It is in accord with the historic and universal European usage, including the Thanetian in the Tertiary, but none of the chalk succession. It conforms to the insistence of the paleobotanists that the Lance and Fort Union should be kept together. It gives a satisfactory practical base for the stratigrapher in the widespread and characteristic Wasatch formations. It places all the dinosaur formations and the bulk of the "Paleocene" faunas in the Cretaceous where the former certainly and the latter in my opinion properly belong; but the uppermost Paleocene faunas are placed in the Tertiary. The replacement of the Cretaceous by the Tertiary vertebrate fauna would thus be a little later, of the Upper Cretaceous by the Tertiary flora a little earlier than the line agreed upon.

W. D. MATTHEW

NEWCOMB ON EXTRA-MUNDANE LIFE

TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: As one long interested in the subject matter covered by the inquiry of Professor Clark, published in SciENCE of May 13, I have read with some care Newcomb's essay to which Professor Campbell refers, in the same issue of SCIENCE. While this essay may be presumed to repre

sent an opinion at some time entertained by its distinguished author, an opinion that merits respect, it seems wholly unresponsive to the request for evidence upon which such an opinion may be based. The author expressly admits that "scientifically we have no light upon the question and therefore no positive grounds for reaching a conclusion." In another place, Popular Astronomy, ed. 1890, p. 528, he amplifies as follows:

The spirit of modern science is wholly adverse to speculation on questions for the solution of which no scientific evidence is attainable, and the common answer of astronomers to all questions respecting life in other worlds would be that they knew no more on the subject than any one else and having no data to reason from, had not even an opinion to express.

It is probable that few astronomers will dissent from either of these statements. Most of them, Newcomb included, will concur in the statement that of the hundred or more millions of celestial bodies known to exist it may be shown with a high degree of probability that, barring our two neighbors, Mars and Venus, no one of them is suited to be the abode of animate beings. As to the numerous worlds alleged to be the abode of life, Newcomb in his essay raises the question: "But where are we to look for these worlds?" and replies to it: "This no man can tell." Nevertheless, as quoted by Professor Campbell, he goes on

to say:

It is perfectly reasonable to suppose that beings not only animated but endowed with reason inhabit countless worlds in space.

A major premise upon which this conclusion might rest would seem to be: We may reasonably suppose anything that does not admit of disproof. In the bald form here stated this premise would doubtless be rejected by those who believe in the plurality of abodes for animate intelligence, but without some appropriate equivalent for it there seems to be a hiatus between the conclusion above set forth and the facts that constitute its minor premise. Possibly Newcomb's own words anent this subject matter, loc. cit., p. 531, may be a less objectionable formula:

Here we may give free rein to our imagination with the moral certainty that science will supply nothing tending either to prove or to disprove any of its fancies.

In this connection one is reminded of a famous apothegm,

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

GEORGE C. COMSTOCK

QUOTATIONS

COOPERATIVE INDEXING OF SCIENTIFIC LIT. ERATURE

WE have shown that the core or umbra of a subject is comprised in a body of homogeneous literature which unquestionably can best be dealt with by its representative professional society, but that outside this core there exists a penumbra of relevant matter dispersed through a literature of gradually increasing irrelevance, with the result that the recovery of the relevant matter can be effected economically only by cooperative effort. The solution, therefore, would appear to be to bring into existence a central bureau which should deal solely with the indexing of periodicals of the non-homogeneous character-and in the first stages of its work, with a restricted list of periodicals assigned to it by the contributory bodies. These bodies would receive from the central bureau entries from the periodicals examined corresponding to their specified requirements. But as the professional abstracts became more fully representative of progress in their respective fields the need for the publication of the corresponding indexes would tend to disappear. The institution, therefore, of a central bureau would ultimately make for economy in all branches of science in which the publication of abstracts is admittedly indispensable.

So far as science is concerned, it will probably be found that the simplest and most effective method for obtaining the necessary index slips would be to invite the Central Bureau of the "International Catalogue of Scientific Literature" to provide them. Indeed, the possibility of cooperation between the "International Catalogue" and the abstracting journals was one of the subjects consid

ered at the conference held last September. Any such arrangement would probably begin with the year 1921, and, as a preliminary, the "International Catalogue" should be brought up to date by the publication of volumes for 1915-20.-Nature.

SPECIAL ARTICLES

THE MOTIONS OF THE PLANETS AND THE RELATIVITY THEORY

CONSTANT reference is made to the motion of Mercury about the sun and to the supposed fact that this motion can not be explained by the Newtonian law of gravitation. This current idea is far from correct: the motion of Mercury can be accounted for fully as well, if not far better, by the Newtonian law than by the Einstein law. The difficulty, which has faced mathematical astronomers for many years, is not how to account for the motion of Mercury, but how to account for that motion without introducing complications in the motions of the other planets.

In 1895 Newcomb 1 showed clearly that the motion of Mercury can be fully accounted for, under the Newtonian law, by one of several possible distributions of matter in the immediate vicinity of the sun and the inner planets. He, however, discarded each such possible explanation of the motion of Mercury because of the difficulties encountered in explaining, at the same time, the motions of the other planets. Each possible explanation of the motion of Mercury introduced a new complication somewhere else in the system.

Now identically the same difficulty is encountered by Einstein. His formulas account for the motion of Mercury, but fail to account for the motion of Mars, and introduce a further complication in the motion of Venus. The supposed explanation of the motion of Mercury by the Einstein formulas has been stressed, but the attendant difficulties in the motions of the other planets have been glossed

1" The elements of the four inner planets and the fundamental constants of astronomy," by Simon Newcomb.