January 16, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



65 



to obtain this minimum. I have known of 

 engineering students who believed that the 

 child is born through the umbilicus. I have 

 sat opjKDsite to an astronomer who refused 

 to finish a glass of dark beer when he learned 

 that in passing from his mouth and stomach 

 to his kidneys the black and foaming fluid in 

 the glass in front of him would have to go 

 through his heart. 



I am inclined to agree with Professor 

 Nichols that general biology, as given by zool- 

 ogists, is a course which is suited primarily to 

 introduce students to animal morphology. 

 But I doubt whether a com-se of this sort half 

 as long, followed in February by an exactly 

 similar course by botanists and introducing 

 students equally to plant morphology, would 

 be a better arrangement. 



To my mind neither the zoologists nor the 

 botanists should give the initial course, for if 

 either or both have a hand in it, it will have 

 the emphasis of a specialist. It will deal 

 primarily with morphology plus a single func- 

 tion, that of reproduction. 



The initial course should be a course in 

 physiology. I may illustrate what I mean 

 by spealiing of zoologists as specialists, by 

 quoting a distinction which I once heard a 

 physicist give of the difference, as he saw it 

 impartially, between zoology, or general biol- 

 ogy, on the one hand, and physiology on the 

 other. The former, he said, dealt with re- 

 production, the latter with all the other func- 

 tions of life. 



Now it is nice to know about amebte and 

 frogs and the germination of seeds, but a 

 lawyer, or an engineer, or a journalist, or even 

 a doctor, can get along and yet know very 

 little of such matters. If, however, he has no 

 notion of his own insides — of what purpose 

 his food serves, and of why he keeps breath- 

 ing — well, he simply is not an educated man. 



Even for the student who is going far in 

 zoology, or botany, I believe that the first 

 great lesson should be in function, with struc- 

 ture included along with, but not emphasized 

 above, chemical and physical basic facts. 



The student should begin, therefore, in that 

 field in which knowledge of function has been 



most highly developed, a field which has the 

 most powerful appeal for a himian being, the 

 field of " human," that is, mammalian, phys- 

 iology as presented par excellence in that 

 marvelous little book, Huxley's " Lessons in 

 Elementary Physiology." 



It seems — at least some of us hope — that to- 

 day we are about to see a displacement of the 

 academic college course in favor of a junior 

 college, which would give such general sub- 

 jects as the languages, American history, ele- 

 mentary chemistry and physics, and the one 

 or two other things that every one should 

 have; to be followed in the senior college by 

 groups of increasingly specialized studies, 

 each group aimed to a definite end. If this 

 is to come, neither the course in general biol- 

 ogy which Professor Nichols condemns, nor 

 the combined elementary zoology-botany which 

 he favors, is entitled to a place in the curricu- 

 lum of the junior college. 



But a brief course in human physiology is. 

 At least, so thinks a physiologist. 



Yandell Henderson 



Tale UNivEBSirr 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



The Fauna of the Clyde Sea Area, being an 

 attempt to record the zoological results ob- 

 tained by the late Sir John Murray and his 

 assistants on board S. Y. Medusa diu-ing the 

 years 1884 to 1892. By James Chumley. 

 Glasgow. Printed at the University Press. 

 1918. Pages vi + 200, 1 map and 3 figiiies 

 in text. 



The former secretary of the Challenger 

 Office and of the Lake Survey of Scotland, 

 Mr. James Chumley, for many years asso- 

 ciated with the late oeeanographer and marine 

 zoologist. Sir John Murray, has compiled the 

 data regarding the latter's explorations of the 

 Clyde Sea Area in a " Eaima " of that region. 

 The work has been financed by the Carnegie 

 trustees for the universities of Scotland. The 

 work contains brief account of the Scottish 

 biological stations at Granton and Millport, 

 which respectively preceded and succeeded the 

 explorations which are here summarized. 



