LOAN SCHEMKS OF CKRTAIN RAND liUILDlNG SOCIETIES. 397 



The existence of Building wSocieties which charge lo per 

 cent, for their loans so as to be in a position to pay high divi- 

 dends to their shareholders depends vipon the failure of the 

 class of borrowers for whom they cater to recognise that, consi- 

 dering an ordinary loan on first mortgage can he raised at 7 per 

 cent., a 10 per cent, rate is excessive. The i^recariousness of the 

 ])osition created by charging more than their money is worth is 

 shown by the case of a wise borrower who takes up an ordinary 

 bond at 7 per cent., and usues the Building Society only for the 

 purpose of forming a sinking fund either in the Savings Bank 

 department at 4 per cent., or by taking investor's shares earning, 

 say, 8 per cent. 



Borrowers are, of course, the life of a Society of this nature, 

 and if, as is seen to be the case with those which oiTer a 10 per 

 cent, amortisation, it pays borrowers to make other arrangements, 

 the position of such Societies becomes essentially unstable. 



Eugene Woldemar Hilgard. — Prof. E. W. Hil- 

 gard, Al.A., Ph.D., Pi..D., formerly Director of the Agricultural 

 Experiment Station of the University of California, died on 

 January 8th, three days after attaining his eighty-third year. 

 Born when Liebig was thirty years old, Hilgard was for fortv 

 years the contemporary of the father of modern agricultural 

 chemistry. During those forty years he became so thoroughly 

 imbued with the ideals which formed the motive power of 

 Piebig's enthusiasm and fame that the editor of the United 

 .States Experiment Station Record* could truly say that his 

 death marks " the ])assing of the last of the earlier group of 

 pioneers in agricultural education and research." To-day, 

 wherever agricultural chemistry is studied, the name of 

 Hilgard, like the names of Gilbert and Pawes, ]>ossesses a wide- 

 spread recognition approximating to that of I>iebig himself. In 

 Germany, the land of his birth, and in the United States, the land 

 of his adoption ; in Scandinavia, Hungary, and France ; in Britain 

 and in her colonies, his name and work have been honoured and 

 esteemed. Piebig was fifty years of age when Heidelberg 

 bestowed on young Hilgard the degree of Ph.D., and during the 

 Piebig centenary Heidelberg reissued this degree to Prof. Hil- 

 gard as a " golden degree," in recognition of a half-centtu-y's 

 work for science, while the Academy of Sciences of Munich 



* (1916) 34 [4] 301. 



