year now expended by the hospital and medical school for running expenses, and providing a building fund of $1,000,000.

DR. LEE I. KNIGHT, of the department of botany, University of Minnesota, has been appointed chairman of that department.

DR. HARRY F. LEWIS, A.B. and A.M., Wesleyan University, and Ph.D., Tilden, Illinois, has been elected associate professor in chemistry at Cornell College.

DR. JOSEPH L. MAYER, chief chemist of the research and analytical laboratories of the Louis K. Liggett Co., New York, has been appointed professor of analytical and pharmaceutical chemistry in the Brooklyn College of Pharmacy where he has been associate professor of analytical chemistry for several

years.

S. C. OGBURN, JR., graduate of the University of North Carolina, has been appointed instructor in chemistry at Washington and Lee University.

JAMES L. HOWE, JR., who has been for three years assistant professor of chemistry in Washington and Lee University, has accepted the professorship of chemistry in Hangchow Christian College, China.

H. P. PHILPOT, assistant professor at University College, London, has been appointed to the professorship of civil and mechanical engineering at the Finsbury Technical College; and A. J. Hale, chief assistant in the department of applied chemistry, has been appointed to the professorship in that department.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE

THE CHERT PITS AT COXSACKIE, N. Y.

A REMARKABLE series of chert pits and two large quarries two miles south of Coxsackie, N. Y., is being examined by the archeological staff of the State Museum of New York under the leadership of State Archeologist Arthur C. Parker.

These pits are on the property of the West Shore Railroad and cover the greater portion of an elongate hill a mile in length and some one thousand feet in width. The hill is cov

ered with the refuse of aboriginal excavations. The steep slopes are covered in places to a depth of six or more feet with the rock broken from the pits and quarries. One immense dump is more than a hundred feet long and eight feet in thickness and contains besides the waste rock the rejected blocks of flint and many broken or partially completed implements. Broken rock occurs in such quantities that the railroad purchased the property thinking it an enormous bed of broken stone suitable for road bed ballast.

Mr. Parker is making a survey of the hill in order to make a relief model of it for a museum exhibit. The artificial nature of the broken stone was discovered by Mr. Jefferson Ray, of West Coxsackie, who made a collection of 1,500 chipped chert implements from the workshop sites on the flats below the hill.

The site is an exceedingly old one and must have been worked by three or four hundred Indians at a time for a period of 500 to 1000 years, judging from the large quantities of flint found upon it. The site is a remarkable one and is a unique archeological monument that will well repay visitation by archeologists and geologists interested in securing data bearing on the stone age.

STATE MUSEUM, ALBANY, N. Y.

EVERETT R. BURMASTER

THE USE OF AGAR IN FACILITATING THE REMOVAL OF A SWALLOWED FOREIGN

OBJECT

OPPORTUNITY of experimentation and observation in the use of agar in assisting in the removal of a foreign object from the stomach came to the writer in the case of a child, four and one half years old, who had swallowed a safety pin. The pin was an ordinary nickeled pin, one and one half inches long, and was closed.

According to the best medical practise the use of purgatives or cathartics in such emergency is to be avoided, as such would tend to liquefy and remove the bowel content leaving the object unsupported; and moreover any

purgative acting by irritation of the bowels might cause such peristalsis as to allow the pin to become caught in the contracting action in such a manner as to become permanently imbedded. The removal by natural action is deemed best, aided by the feeding of much bulky food to stimulate natural peristaltic action, and to form encasement for the foreign object.

In accordance with these principles the Ichild was induced to eat as much bulk-forming food as possible, as shredded wheat, oatmeal, bread and milk, potatoes, carrots, spinach and celery. Milk was allowed after the appetite had become satiated with the solid food.

In order to make more certain the removal of the object, as well as to hasten the action, it was conceived that the addition of agar to the diet would be highly beneficial. Since agar is not digested and swells to several times its bulk its effect would be not only to hasten peristalic action by natural stimulation, but its added bulk would assist in encasing the object and in carrying it along. It was reasoned that its effect would be of especial value in those portions of the digestive tract in which the digestible food is in the state of emulsification.

At evening and morning meals therefore, there was added to a little of the prepared cereal, three heaping teaspoonfuls of chocolate-coated granular agar. This was eaten by the child readily and with relish.

As the child tended somewhat toward constipation, the removal of the previous fecal matter was hastened by the use of a glycerol suppository. The later actions were wholly normal. The first feeding occurred in the evening, soon after the swallowing of the object. Bowel action occurred as follows: 16 hours, 23 hours, 40 hours, at which time the pin appeared. The stools were copious and of a moist, compact, firm structure-an ideal consistency to carry a foreign object. As bowel action occurred twice daily, instead of the usual once; and as the bulk of each was at least twice normal; it is evident that the

bowel content had been increased by fourfold, due in a large measure to the agar.

It is not to be supposed that the safe removal of the object was due wholly to the agar, though this probably at least hastened its removal. As the experiment was wholly satisfactory however it would lead to the recommendation of the use of agar for this purpose. In the case of the removal of objects more dangerous, or more difficult of removal, it might prove a decisive factor. LEROY S. WEATHERBY

DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY,
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

AN INCONSISTENCY IN TAXONOMY IN the classification of animals we are often very inconsistent in the use and evaluation of characters as we apply them to different groups. This is more apparent between widely separated groups than closely related ones. Thus in the subgroups in one class of the vertebrates, osteological or other anatomical characters may be largely used, while in another class such internal characters may be almost entirely subordinated to external ones. Sometimes, to be sure, certain characters have not the same value in one class that they have in another, but the main reason for the inconsistency lies in the less skilful or less thorough handling of one group as compared with another. The truth is, classification became unfashionable long before the groups, especially the larger ones, were well formulated. Among groups as small as genera there are probably few cases so extreme as the following.

There are two genera of sharks, Mustelus and Cynias, that are strikingly similar in all external characters. We refer them to different genera because they differ in regard to a modification of the yolk sac in the young. In Mustelus the yolk sac is modified to function as a placenta by which the young forms a connection with the walls of the mullerian duct of the mother. This so-called placenta is absent in Cynias, or, more correctly speaking, the yolk sac is unmodified.

On the other hand, we place two mackerel together in the genus Scomber even though

one of them possesses an entire organ that is absent in the other. Scomber scombrus is without a swim bladder; Scomber japonicus has a well-developed one.

This is a most glaring inconsistency. On one hand, to separate two genera on the basis of a mere modification of an organ that is possessed by both of them, and on the other hand, to include in one genus two forms, one of which possesses an organ that is absent in the other. Making this inconsistency more marked is the fact that in the case of the sharks it is only during a part of the life of the animals (when they are with young) that the character of the 'placenta,' upon which the genus is based, can be ascertained. In the mackerel the presence or absence of the swim bladder can be seen at any time by simply opening the abdominal cavity.

On the whole, workers in vertebrate taxonomy seem to be more chary than those in invertebrate, in making use of internal characters in classification. The fact that a character is not readily apparent should not influence its use if animals are to be arranged in their true relationship.

Such a marked structural difference as the possession of an organ as compared with the suppression of it certainly should be considered of generic weight. Therefore it would seem well to raise the subgenus Pneumatophorus Jordan and Gilbert, to generic rank. The American species, Scomber colias and S. japonicus, would thus stand Pneumatophorus colias and P. japonicus.

in which D is the difference between the means of the parental races, σ, is the standard deviation of F1, and σ, is the standard deviation of F2. This method gives in general a smaller number of genetic factors than the method which I suggested, and its use is simpler. Applied to the examples which I cited, it gives, in the case of seed weight of maize, 4 or 5 factors instead of "about 15"; and in the case of weight of rabbits in three different crosses, 3, 14 and 22 or 23 factors, instead of 56, 80, and 176, respectively. I am greatly indebted to Dr. Wright for the correction. W. E. CASTLE

THE CURVE OF DISTRIBUTION

TO THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: An explanation of the irregularities in the curve of the distribution of the heights of 221,819 men, taken from insurance statistics, to which Professor Boring called attention in SCIENCE for November 12, 1920, may possibly be found in the nature of the measuring devices used by the examining physicians. One of the three leading types on the market and at least one other are graduated in inches alone instead of in feet and inches. The tendency for men who use these scales to read off the round number, 70 inches, instead of 69, and 60 inches instead of 59, might be great enough to account for the "bumps" in the Gaussian curve at 5 ft. 10 in. and at 5 ft.; and the lowering of the average height which would result from the correction of these exaggerations might change the ideal curve sufficiently to bring the bump at 5 ft. 8 in. within the normal limits of error for a curve whose unit of measurement is so large in comparison to the total range of variation.

PASADENA, CALIF.

CARL H. P. THURSTON

QUOTATIONS

DYES FOR BACTERIOLOGY

BACTERIOLOGISTS in this country and in the United States of America are anxious about the supply of chemical dyes used in their work. Animal tissues and the microbes which may infest them, as seen under the microscope, present to the eye an almost uniform appearance of pale translucency. A skilled treatment with dyes and mordants reveals the otherwise invisible differences of structure and composition. Particular cells and granules, bacteria and spores, have affinities for particular stains, and betray their presence by the colors they absorb. The presence, the quality, and even the phase of an infection or of a morbid state are thus detected, and the processes are a necessary part of research, diagnosis, and treatment. But the reactions are delicate, and their value depends on a high purity and standardization of the reagents employed. The materials are almost entirely the aniline dyes used in textiles. Before the war Grübler in Germany had examined these and selected those that might be of use to biologists. The total bulk of the trade is very small, and the German manufacturer had taken so much trouble to standardize his products and secure their purity that he had a practical monopoly and was able to charge a high but legitimate price. When the war came, in 1914, a few fortunate institutions had in hand a stock of the Grübler reagents sufficient to meet their wants. But the greater number of biologists were soon in difficulties. Here and in the United States several manufacturers, partly from patriotic motives and partly from the attraction of the great difference in price between the crude textile dyes and the microscope stains, began to supply the demand. There is no reason to suppose that their output was inferior to the German products. But it varied from manufacturer to manufacturer in its precise qualities. The users got results which were not exactly comparable with those obtained from the Grübler products or with each other. The total demand, moreover, is so small in bulk that it is hardly worth dis

tributing. The situation has given rise here and in America to a desire for the free importation of German bacteriological stains, on the one hand, and, on the other, to fresh efforts to maintain national independence in this branch of scientific work. The Society of American Bacteriologists is endeavoring to secure cooperation in determining on a reliable standard brand of each kind of stain, and in discouraging the marketing of variants. A similar course in this country would be very convenient.-The London Times.

SPECIAL ARTICLES

THE SECOND-YEAR RECORD OF BIRDS WHICH
DID AND WHICH DID NOT LAY DURING
INDIVIDUAL MONTHS OF THE PUL-
LET YEAR

The egg output of the commercial poultry plant is due in part to birds in their first and in part to birds in their second year. At some time during the first year the number of pullets is reduced to the number which is to be retained as hens during the second year.

It would be of obvious advantage if the birds sold from the flock as pullets could be those which if retained would make the poorest record in their second year. If the birds destined to be the highest producers in the second year could be selected on the basis of some criterion recognizable in the first year, it should be possible to raise the average production of the flock as a whole by increasing the average production of the hens.

In the course of a general investigation of the problem of the prediction of the egg production of the domestic fowl from the records of short periods, we have availed ourselves of the opportunity of considering the relationship between first and second year laying activity presented by the data of the Vineland International Egg Laying and Breeding Contest. As one phase of this work we have sought to determine to what extent the simple criterion of laying versus not laying in any month of the first year may be used 1 Other phases of the investigations will be reported in detail elsewhere.

in predicting the record of the second year. The criterion has already been considered in relation to the prediction of first year egg record. While our immediate purpose is the 2 Harris, Blakeslee and Kirkpatrick, Genetics, 3: 42-44, 49-56, 1918.

consideration of the second year production of birds which did and of those which did not lay during given months of the first year, it seems desirable to give the mean first year productions of these birds as well. For comparison the results deduced from the data