July 15, 1922 



NA TURE 



A tradition of Germany's scientific supremacy became 

 firmly established, and for forty years America's most 

 promising young workers, coming under the spell 

 of this tradition, became for life " intellectual subjects 

 of Germany." A reaction had begun to set in before 

 the war, and has acquired considerable force, but the 

 German influence on American science has been pro- 

 found and its effects will be lasting. 



Scientific research is unanimously recognised by 

 American intellectuals as an essential function of the 

 university, but while the material requisites for it 

 have been abundantly supplied, there exist certain 

 other conditions less favourable to its development. 

 Students come up to the university ill prepared as 

 regards both acquisition of knowledge and intellectual 

 discipline. Like many other observers, Prof. Caullery 

 regards secondary school teaching as the weakest 

 part of the American system of education. It is, he 

 says, not merely that the college is burdened with the 

 task of imparting knowledge which should have been 

 acquired in the high school, but that the schools defer 

 too much to the taste, or rather whim, of the pupil. 

 " Americans try to compel the child as little as 

 possible, to present life to it under its most smiling 

 form, to spare it opposition, to make work appear to 

 it under the form of pleasure rather than of duty . . . ; 

 they treat the schoolboy too much like a student, 

 to the detriment of healthy intellectual discipline." 

 The " spoon feeding " which is consequently resorted 

 to in the college (where the student is apt to be treated 

 too much like a schoolboy) is unfavourable to the 

 development of capacity for original work. While 

 this does not prevent the colleges from turning out 

 graduates well qualified to achieve success in life, nor 

 stifle the development of exceptionally gifted in- 

 dividuals, in the average case the college gives " a 

 culture not sufficiently deep to be fertile." 



The connexion between the college and the graduate 

 school of the University,"in which most of the advanced 

 work in pure science is done, is very close. In all 

 except a few of those universities (about thirty) in 

 which a graduate school has been developed, it has no 

 separate teaching staff : its professors are also those 

 of the undergraduate college, although the work is 

 organised quite separately, and is carried out under 

 the superintendence of the Dean of the school. In 

 most universities, moreover, the college tradition, with 

 its emphasis on athletics and the social side of life, is 

 still dominant. Some high authorities in America 

 who believe that the destiny of the universities is to 

 become primarily great schools of research have urged 

 that the time has come to free the graduate school 

 from this domination. Meanwhile there is a clear 

 tendency to create special institutes for research within 

 NO. 2750, VOL. I io] 



more or less narrow limits, some being established 

 within, or in association with, the universities and 

 others with no such connexion. 



As regards the actual contributions to science of 

 American universities, Prof. Caullery notes that in 

 zoology and general biology, the sciences in which he is 

 specially interested, they have produced of late years 

 many very remarkable works. He instances those of 

 Edmund Wilson (cytology), E. Conklin (cell-lineage), 

 R. G. Harrison (experimental embryology), T. II. 

 Morgan (Mendelian heredity and mutations in Droso- 

 phila), Calkins and Woodruff (Infusoria, senescence, 

 etc.), and others. 



Scientific activities outside the universities and 

 colleges are dealt with by Prof. Caullery in a series 

 of interesting sketches of the more important of the 

 research institutes, the Carnegie and Rockefeller and 

 other foundations for promoting research, the great 

 museums, the Federal scientific services, and the 

 scientific academies and societies. From the first 

 category the Mellon Institute for Industrial Research 

 may be selected as an example of an establishment 

 for pure research attached to a university — Pittsburgh 

 — but retaining a large measure of autonomy. A 

 manufacturer having a problem to solve turns it over 

 with a definite sum of money to the Institute, which 

 proceeds to engage the services of a. man of science and 

 provides the requisite laboratories and equipment. The 

 man of science, who is styled a fellow, conducts his 

 researches in secrecy, and the results are the property 

 of the donor of the subvention. The plan is reported to 

 have worked very successfully. 



For an indication of the scale on which scientific 

 research is being fostered by these various bodies 

 (except the Federal services) and by great industrial 

 corporations, one may refer to a bulletin published last 

 year by the National Research Council, now the chief 

 agency for co-ordinating scientific research in America. 

 This bulletin (noticed in Nature of August 4 last) 

 enumerated 170 bodies other than universities and 

 colleges which provided funds for this purpose of the 

 aggregate annual value in 1920 of more than 18 million 

 dollars. The Government (Federal and State) grants 

 for research in agriculture, engineering, and the in- 

 dustrial arts have been estimated to amount to 10 

 million dollars in 1921. 



Our Bookshelf. 



A Text-book of Wood. By Herbert Stone. Pp. vii + 

 240 + 41 Plates. (London: Rider and Son, Ltd.. 

 1921.) 2is'. net. 

 This book deals with the anatomy, physical and 

 mechanical properties, anomalies, defects, and decay 

 of wood. Although intended for " advanced students." 



