SCIENCE 



OCT i U 1920 



Friday, October 15, 1920 



CONTENTS 

 The Scientific Teaching of Science: De. C. G. 

 MacAethue 347 



Levulose Sirup : J. J. Willaman 351 



Resolutions of the Pan-Pacific Scientifio Con- 

 ference 352 



Samuel Sheldon: Erich Hausmann 355 



Scientific Events: — 



The California Institute of Technology ; 

 The Seekscher Foundation for the Promo- 

 tion of Besearch at Cornell University ; Aus- 

 trian Meteorologists' Appeal for Aid; The 

 Oilman Memorial Lectures on Geography . . . 356 



Scientific Notes and News 358 



University and Educational News 362 



Discussion and Correspondence:— 



An Institution for Tropical Besearch: De. 

 F. S. Eaele. Mills and Fishways: Robert 

 T. Morris. Efficiency in Thermal Phenom- 

 ena: E. H. LoCKWOOD. The Helium Arc as 

 a Generator of Sigh Frequency Oscilla- 

 tions : G. M. J. Mackat 363 



Scientific BooTcs: — 



Winternitz on the Pathology of War and 

 War Gas Poisoning: De. Alwist M. Pap- 



PENHEIMER 367 



Special Articles: — 



The Take-all Disease of Wheat in New York 

 State: E. S. Kirbt and H. E. Thomas .... 368 



The American Chemical Society: Dr. Chaeles 

 L. Paesons 369 



MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 

 review should be Bent to The Editor of Science, Garrison-on- 

 Hudson, N. Y. 



THE SCIENTIFIC TEACHING OF 

 SCIENCE 



Science, with its introduction of the lab- 

 oratory, was expected to revolutionize teach- 

 ing. But the ever-recurring distrust of the 

 new has given us a curious combination in our 

 scientific departments of the modern labora- 

 tory, the medieval lecture, and a degenerate 

 form of the Socratic quiz. And the student 

 feels them about as far apart in content as in 

 origin. While the head of the department is 

 lecturing to him on chlorine, the second man 

 in the department is directing him in the 

 manufacture of sulfur dioxide, and some 

 assistant, once a week, is extracting from his 

 brain all it contains of hydrogen sulfide. An 

 unsavory mess it is! 



If we could accept as the purpose of educa- 

 tion the development — perhaps it is more 

 accurate to say the restoration — of the right 

 mental attitude in the student, we could bring 

 order out of this chaos. For we should then 

 see that the dogmatic handing on of facts 

 through lecture and text-book inculcates the 

 wrong attitude of mind in the student. A 

 student will much more rapidly develop the 

 right mental attitude by discovering facts for 

 himself, even though they were known before, 

 than by memorizing a multitude of facts dis- 

 covered by other people. Men prate a good 

 deal these days about the conservation and 

 development of our natural resources, and are 

 curiously neglectful of our greatest resource, 

 humanity's power of creative thinking. The 

 little child is, of course, the scientist, par 

 excellence, curious, experimental, creative. 

 Our education must retain and build on the 

 curiosity and experimental eagerness of the 

 child, and develop his power of creative 

 thought. We can never know what the new 

 generation has to contribute to us till we give 

 it greater opportunity to express itself. We 

 think when we have let a student choose his 



