346 



NA TURE 



[Septemuer I. 1923 



atiord a guarantee against disturbance by possible 

 future building operations. The Admiralty has 

 undertaken to meet the wishes of the Commons and 

 Footpaths Preservation Society by acquiring an 

 equalarea of land adjacent to the common and adding 

 it to the common so that the total area of the common 

 will not be reduced. 



Academic Biology. 



UNDER the title " The Dry-rot of our Academic 

 Biology," Prof. W. M. Wheeler delivered a 

 most provocative address to the American Society 

 of Naturalists, which is printed in Science (vol. 57, 

 pp. 61-70). The address may have been written 

 under the reaction from the author's labours upon a 

 volume of iioo pages upon ants, but it provides food 

 for thought for the teacher of biology. The title 

 seems to have been chosen in part with an impish 

 desire to lead the librarian astray, so that future 

 students of the fungi may find it " reposing un- 

 ashamed between such monuments of cryptogamic 

 erudition as the 74 folio volumes of Professor Farlow's 

 ' Toadstools of God's Footstool ' and the 27 quarto 

 volumes of Professor Thaxter's ' Laboulbeniales of 

 the Universe ' " ; in part to indicate Prof. Wheeler's 

 foreboding as to the devastating effect of academic 

 biology upon the young minds exposed to the danger. 



Apparently 25 per cent, of the young men and 

 women graduating in the United States have had at 

 least the equivalent of an elementary course in 

 botany or zoology, but of these very few exhibit a 

 vital and abiding interest in biological inquiry. This 

 seems to have led to this interesting analysis of the 

 relative ineffectiveness of biological teaching (tinged, 

 perhaps, with the after effects of eleven hundred pages 

 upon ants !). Some of the suggested defects will 

 certainly provoke sympathetic response in Great 

 Britain, for instance the complaint that biologists are 

 compelled to be most active pedagogically during the 

 annual " glacial period," with a consequent reliance 

 upon preserved material of convenient types and a 

 great restriction of field studies. The mature 

 student who, after four years in a divinity school, 

 relinquished attendance upon a course in genetics 

 because the professor's mental processes were so 

 similar to those of his divinity teachers when they 

 held forth on predestination, salvation through grace, 

 etc., is cited as part of a general indictment which 

 suggests the reflection that the best culture medium 

 for the academic dry-rot fungus consists of about 

 equal parts of narrow, unsympathetic specialisation, 

 and normal or precocious senile abstraction. There 

 are redeeming features, however, and the author 

 rejects a friend's remedial proposal that staffs should 

 be completely changed and buildings burnt out or 

 thoroughly disinfected every 25 years ! Another 

 tendency which is deplored is the migration of the 

 American graduate to the German laboratory and 

 the teaching of authority, instead of spending the 

 few precious post-graduate years among the problems 

 provided at her door by the flora and fauna of the 

 tropics. 



Two positive suggestions for improvement are made : 

 first, that teaching should be more ecological in a 

 very wide sense of the term, and botany is certainly 

 moving very rapidly in this direction in Great 

 Britain ; secondly, that opportunities should be 

 provided for the amateur naturalist to meet the 

 young student both in the laboratory and in the 

 field, and so counteract the paralysing influence of 

 academic formalism by his unprofessional enthusiasm 

 and interest. 



NO. 2809, VOL. I 12] 



University and Educational Intelligence. 



London. — The work of the Ramsay Memorial 

 Department of Chemical Engineering at University 

 College will begin in October. The department has 

 been instituted with the object of enabling young 

 graduates in chemistry and engineering, who have 

 already obtained a good training in the fundamental 

 sciences of chemistry, physics, and mathematics, to 

 direct their studies and investigations towards the 

 application of the principles of physical < ' \ to 



the scientific design and operation of th tus 



and processes of chemical industry in gemrai. Mr. 

 E. C. Williams, of the University of Manchester, has 

 been appointed professor in charge of the department. 

 An assistant lecturer, who must have had an engineer- 

 ing training, will shortly be appoint'-! '"• i'"i"-r«ity 

 College Committee. 



The Folland scholarship in metallurgy, in connexion 

 with the University College of Swansea, is to be 

 offered in competition on September 10 and following 

 days. The scholarship is of the annual value of 50/., 

 and tenable for three years. Further particulars are 

 obtainable from the Registrar of the College. 



A LIMITED number of grants in aid to junior 

 assistants in chemical works and laboratories in or 

 near London, desirous of extending their knowledge 

 of chemistry, will shortly be allocated bj- the com- 

 mittee of the Salters' Institute of Industrial Chemistry. 

 Applications must be sent before September 15 to the 

 director of the Institute, Salters' Hall, St. Swithin's 

 Lane, E.C.4. 



Applications are invited by the Royal College of 

 Physicians of Edinburgh for the Parkin prize, value 

 100/., which is open to competitors of all nations, for 

 the best essay on " the curative effects of carbonic acid 

 gas or other forms of carbon in cholera, for different 

 forms of fever and other diseases." Competing essays, 

 which must be written in English, must reach the 

 Secretary of the College not later than December 31 

 next, bear a motto, and be accompanied by a sealed 

 envelope bearing the same motto outside, and the 

 author's name inside. It is stipulated that the suc- 

 cessful candidate shall publish his essay at his own 

 expense, and present a printed copy of it to the college 

 within the space of three months after the adjudication 

 of the prize. 



Much of the scientific information latent in govern- 

 ment publications fails to reach those to whom it 

 would be of the greatest utiUty. An example of how 

 such information can be made more generally access- 

 ible is the index issued by the I'nited States Bureau 

 of Education to documents having a bearing on the 

 subject of home economics. This (revised March, 

 1923) includes not only 55 of the Bureau's own 

 pamphlets, but several hundreds of others issued by 

 the Department of Agriculture, the Bureaus of 

 Standards, of Mines, and of Fisheries, the I-^bour 

 Department Children's Bureau, the Public Health 

 Service, the Federal Board of Vocational Education, 

 and the American Red Cross. 



" The janitor of a modem school building is, next 

 to the principal, perhaps the most important oflftcer 

 in the school." This pronouncement by Dr. Dresslar, 

 an American authority on school hygiene, is quoted 

 with approval by the author of " The School Janitor : 

 a study of the functions and administration of school 

 janitor service," Bulletin, 1922, No. 24 of the I.'nited 

 States Bureau of Education. The writer goes on to 

 show that although the average annual salar\- of 

 school janitors is 980 dollars, or more than 50 per cent. 



