The Cincinnati Meetings

America’s scientific elite, gathered at Cincinnati for the 75th anniversary meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, heard and saw fresh miracles of the heavens and earth and the creatures that inhabit them.

Evolution and Heredity. The “keynote speech” was delivered by Dr. J. Playfair McMurrich, professor of anatomy at the University of Toronto, President of the Association in 1922 (by custom, the presidential address is given by the president of the preceding year). He devoted his time to a retrospective view of biological science, and particularly to the theory of organic evolution and its place in the scheme of life. Evolution is not dead, he said, nor can it be killed by legislative enactment. Any one who refuses to believe in it today is ignorant or bigoted. In its main outlines it has passed out of the realm of theory into that of fact. Evidence for it is far stronger than in Darwin’s day, and we know more about heredity today than Darwin ever dreamed of.

Much of the present conflict is due to the popular tendency to confuse evolution with Darwinism. The idea of evolution, as opposed to special creation, was known long before Darwin—even to the Greeks, in fact. All that Darwin did was to suggest a plausible explanation of how it might have occurred. Some parts of Darwin’s explanation have since been called in question. The influence of natural selection, his favorite theory, is not agreed upon; his emphasis on Lamarck’s doctrine of the inheritance of characters acquired by environmental factors such as use and disuse is now largely discredited; of the phenomena of variation and the mechanism of the germ-cell he knew little. But whether or not species originate as Darwin thought they did, this “grandest generalization of the 19th century”—the continuous relation of all species to pre-existent life —is an incontrovertible fact. Many laymen do not understand the scientific spirit which calls for constant revision of accepted theory in the light of new facts, but the discarding of unverified hypotheses does not argue lack of confidence in the methods of science.

Dr. McMurrich predicted a great expansion of activity and knowledge in the fields of eugenics and the physiology of ductless glands. The honorary degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred on him by the University of Cincinnati.

Dr. Robert T. Hance, of the University of Pennsylvania, told of an improved technique for studying the chromosomes of chicks. All of the hereditary characteristics of animals are transmitted to their offspring through tiny bodies called chromosomes in the two microscopic germ-cells contributed, one by each parent. Research on chromosomes has become very exact; they can be counted, and their various divisions, pairings and combinations recorded.

Glands. A case of complete reversal of sex in a full-grown animal was described by Dr. Oscar Riddle, of the Carnegie Institution’s Station for Experimental Evolution, Cold Spring Harbor, L. I. A female pigeon was transformed into a male as a result of a tubercular condition affecting the spleen, liver and glands. While sex reversal has been frequently caused in the early egg stage, such changes in adult birds are very rare. It indicates that the hereditary basis of no bodily or mental characteristic may be considered as irrevocably fixed, and it is possible that if the study of glandular heredity advances far enough, many characteristics may be brought under control.

Cases of sex reversal in insects and crustaceans were cited by Prof. C. L. Turner, of Beloit College, who found that 88% of the female crawfish in a Wisconsin lake had developed male characteristics, possibly from disease. The recent work of Professor Crew of Edinburgh (TIME, Oct. 15) in controlling the sex of chickens is another case in point.

Dr. Riddle also announced the discovery of a hitherto unknown function of the thymus, a ductless gland prominent in young children (TIME, June 25), which atrophies at adolescence. A deficiency of thymus in female pigeons prevents their providing their eggs with shells and albumen. If they are fed doses of dried thymus, the eggs become normal.

Surgical transplantation of sex glands has not fulfilled the romantic expectations aroused by sensational reports, said Dr. Carl R. Moore, of the University of Chicago. The rejuvenation effected appears to be temporary. Grafting of male glands inside the bodies of rats, rabbits and guinea pigs resulted in the degeneration of the transplanted glands. The animals were sterilized by their own body heat.

Origins. The “cradle of the human race,” believed by Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborn, of the American Museum of Natural History, and other paleontologists to be in Central Asia, was really in Central Europe, according to Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, distinguished physical anthropologist, of the U. S. National Museum. The earliest known true men lived in Europe, and the skeletons of extinct apes have been discovered there. He set the origin of man at 400,000 or 500,000 years ago.

One of the earliest living presidents of the Association, Dr. Thomas Crowder Chamberlin, of the University of Chicago, dean of American geologists, and now past 80 years of age, lectured on Seventy-Five Years of Geology. The nebular hypothesis of the early gaseous state of the earth, changing through liquid to solid, proposed by Laplace in the 18th Century, has now largely been superseded by an entirely new theory of origins known as the “planetesimal hypothesis,” and largely developed by Dr. Chamberlin. The earth probably never passed through a gaseous state. Volcanic action is local and arises from special causes. The earth’s heat is not a legacy of a white-hot star, but the product of transformations of substance deep beneath the crust. Life has been continuous through all geologic ages, and has not been periodically destroyed or renewed by catastrophes. Cold climates have probably alternated with warm ones, but there is no evidence for universal glacial or torrid stages in the earth’s history, and it is unnecessary to postulate a final winter as the ultimate fate of the globe.

Electrons. The latest physical theories were set forth by Prof. Otto Stuhlman, Jr., of the University of North Carolina, and Prof. W. D. Harkins, of the University of Chicago. The “solar system” theory of atomic structure elaborated by Niels Bohr (TIME, Nov. 19) was generally accepted by the physicists at Cincinnati. Dr. Stuhlman told how he had knocked two electrons loose from an atom when he experimented on a tungsten filament, though ordinarily only one could be released. Dr. Harkins showed motion pictures of the track of the nucleus of a helium atom traveling at a rate 15,000 times faster than the flight of the fastest bullet. Forty thousand photographs were taken of the process. One showed the nucleus of a helium atom colliding with that of an argon atom, with the most terrific force ever recorded experimentally. Yet the argon nucleus was not broken up by the shock, and these miniature solar systems can sustain incredible blows.

Dr. Harkins announced that he had discovered a new kind of light radiation emanating from alpha particles (helium). He calls it the Zeta ray. A 110-candle-power lamp was lighted by holding it a foot away from a vacuum tube containing 2,000,000 cycles of alternating current, in a demonstration of high-vacuum physics by Dr. Willis Rodney Whitney, research director of the General Electric Company. There was no metallic connection between the lamp and the sources of power. This is not radio transmission in the strict sense, but points the way to possible future developments of wireless power transmission.

Sol. A plan for inserting a 13th month into each year, beginning with 1928, was proposed by its originator, M. B. Cotsworth, of Vancouver, B. C. The present year, with its months of uneven length, is inconvenient to present-day business and domestic life, he declared, on account of salaries, rents, accounts and budgets being in many cases on a monthly basis.

Each month under the proposed plan would consist of 28 days, the 13th month to be inserted between June and July and to be known as “Sol.” In leap years “leap day” would be inserted at the end of the new month and there would also be an extra holiday on Dec. 29. Sunday would be the first day of every month. Easter would also be set at a permanent time instead of being governed by the position of the moon as at present.

Presidency. Dr. J. McKeen Cattell, distinguished veteran in experimental psychology and biology, and editor of Science, the Scientific Monthly, School and Society, the American Naturalist and American Men of Science, was elected President of the A. A. A. S. for the coming year, to succeed Dr. Charles D. Walcott, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, who presided this year and will deliver the presidential address next year. Dr. Cattell was dismissed from the faculty of Columbia University in 1917, where he had long held the chair of psychology, for pacifist utterances at variance with orthodox views on the Great War. He sued for recovery of lost salary and received a favorable judgment. He has since devoted himself entirely to his editorial work and to the organization, of the Psychological Corporation.

Further reports of the Association meetings will appear in next week’s issue of TIME.