lOlJfl CoNvocATior^ Week Meetings 107 



Pennsylvania spends on its entire educational system less than one tenth 

 of the value of the coal it mines. When a state consumes its natural 

 resources it should reinvest their entire value in education, scientific 

 research and the public welfare. In 1880 forty per cent, of the teachers 

 in our public schools were men; now the percentage is under twenty; 

 in New England and in New York it is under ten. In Germany four 

 fifths of the teachers are men 



It is for the honor and ultimate welfare of Georgia that twenty-five 

 per cent, of its population are children of school age, whereas only seven- 

 teen per cent, of the population of New England and New York — proba- 

 bly less than twelve per cent of their native population — are of this age. 

 Since 1880 Georgia has increased per-capita payment for public school 

 education sixfold ; New York and New England have only doubled theirs. 

 In the past twenty years New York and New England have not increased 

 their expenditure enough to make up for the depreciation in the value 

 of money. Georgia spends each year 6.3 mills on the assessed valuation 

 of its real and personal propert}' on public-school education. New York 

 state 4.7 mills.' ["Real estate is under assessed in Georgia. In New York 

 personal property is scandalously understated, owing to the tax. Personal 

 property in Massachusetts is valued at more than two thirds of the real 

 estate, and in New York at less than one twentieth.] The south is bent 

 under the inherited burden of slavery and the Civil War. But if it 

 maintains its birth rate and cares properly for its children and its health, 

 the center of wealth and civilization will return southward 



The progress of the physical sciences in the nineteenth century will 

 in the coming century be paralleled by advances in the psychological 

 sciences. Science and education have given us democracy; it is the 

 duty and privilege of democracy to repay its debt by forwarding science 

 and education to an extent not hitherto known in the world's history. 



Before the Botanical Section Dr. D. S. Johnson, of Johns 

 Hopkins University, spoke on The History of the Discovery of 

 Sexuality in Plants. He gave a concise and useful review of 

 the develoi^ment of this problem and of its baffling nature for 

 over 2,000 years to " philosophers " who time and again vainly 

 settled it to their own satisfaction by an appeal to the " nature " 

 of things. Only when philosophy was laid aside and its place 

 taken by direct and accurate observations on plants themselves 

 was progress made. From Dr. Johnson's conclusion we quote 

 the following:^ 



The sexuality which was first suspected, and first experimentally proven, 

 in the seed plants, has now been demonstrated in all groups of plants 

 save the bacteria and their allies. The primary feature of the process, 

 the union of the two parental nuclei, is the same in all. The method of 

 bringing together the two nuclei varies widely, this variation sometimes 

 involving even the complete disappearance of externally recognizable sexual 

 organs. During the evolution of plants old methods of accomplishing the 

 approximation of the nuclei have been discarded, and new methods have 

 arisen. In the latter case a fusion of nuclei of closer kinship has often 

 been submitted for the primitive one of more distantly related nuclei. 



3 Science N. S. 39 : 317. Feb. 27, 1914. 



