July 9, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



37 



specimens came from, is some one hundred 

 and twenty-five miles from the southern boimd- 

 ary, in the center of the state. Regarding the 

 specimens from Beulah, Colorado, which Black- 

 man recognized as " the same variety of S. 

 heros " as those collected in Kansas, the alti- 

 tude of this place (over 5,000 feet) would 

 strongly preclude the possibility of S. heros, 

 * sub-tropical form, being found there. Also, 

 the fact that Blackman does not record any 

 difference in the germ cells of these Colorado 

 specimens from those collected in Kansas 

 would prove that they were one and the same 

 species. 



Horace Gunthoep 

 Washburn College, 

 TOPEKA, Kans. 



QUOTATIONS 



THE ENDOWMENT OF BIOCHEMICAL RE- 

 SEARCH IN ENGLAND 



Our university correspondent at Cambridge 

 sends us the announcement of a munificent 

 benefaction aihout to be made for research in 

 biochemistry. A minimum aggregate expendi- 

 ture of £165,000 is contemplated, and this 

 sum, if necessary, will be supplemented. The 

 scheme includes the erection of buildings on 

 a site to be provided by the university, equip- 

 ment, provision for maintenance, £25,000 for 

 the endowment of a professorship, and £10,000 

 for a readership. The money comes from the 

 residuary estate of the late Sir William Dunn, 

 banker and merchant, and Liberal member for 

 Paisley. The testator died in 1912, leaving a 

 fortune valued at a million pounds, and ap- 

 pointing the directors of the Commercial 

 Union Assurance Company as trustees, with 

 some discretionary powers as to the disposal of 

 his residual estate. There were pencil altera- 

 tions in the text of the will, and it was only 

 after a lawsuit that the trustees were able to 

 act. They appointed an advisory committee 

 under the chairmanship of Sir Jeremiah Col- 

 man, and many schemes were considered. 

 Ifumerous and substantial gifts have been 

 made to well-known philanthropic institutions, 

 but the trustees reserved a large sum to pro- 

 vide a lasting and fitting memorial of Sir 



William Dunn's generosity and to carry out his 

 expressed wishes for the alleviation of human 

 suffering and the encouragement of education. 

 The benefaction to Cambridge should serve 

 both these objects. Certainly it represents one 

 of the most munificent and complete gifts ever 

 made to one of the older universities. Only 

 last month we congratulated the University of 

 Oxford on Mr. Edward Whitley's offer of 

 £10,000 towards the endowment of a chair of 

 biochemistry, and on a donation of £5,000 

 from the British Dyestuffs Corporation to the 

 laboratory of organic chemistry. We may 

 hope that the friends of Oxford and of scien- 

 tific research will do something to equalize the 

 good fortune that has come to Cambridge. 

 The chemical activities of the living cell and 

 the living tissues provide a limitless field of 

 research. Knowledge of them is only begin- 

 ning, and until the methods and results of 

 biochemistry have been developed, the practise 

 of medicine will remain empirical, and fash- 

 ions in drugs will change as quickly as fash- 

 ions in ladies' hats. The old universities have 

 the tradition of research, and their spirit of 

 detachment supplies an atmosphere suitable to 

 inquiries not too closely bound to immediately 

 utilitarian objects. We rejoice in the great 

 opportunity given to Cambridge, and do not 

 doubt but that she will prove worthy of it — ■ 

 The London Times. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



Die Stdmme der Wirhelthiere. By Othenio 

 Abel. Publ. 1919 by Verein wiss. Verlegn., 

 W. de Gruyter and Co., Berlin and Leipzig. 

 914 pages, 669 text figures. 

 It is to be regretted that there is no good 

 comprehensive modern text-book in English 

 dealing with vertebrate paleontology. The re- 

 searches of the last twenty years have perhaps 

 made less change in fundamental viewpoints 

 and theories in this than in some other 

 branches of science. But they have added 

 enormously to the data of facts upon which 

 it rests, and knit closer its relationships with 

 the cognate sciences, geology on one side, 

 zoology and comparative anatomy on the other. 



