June 20, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



943 



intellectual distinction." Make bim drop his 

 conferences on " punctuation, grammar and 

 the split infinitive " (I suppose the last two 

 words refer to the latitude of Boston ; the rest 

 of the country does not bother itself about the 

 split infinitive) and let his students " criticize 

 their own compositions and those of one an- 

 other " on these points, as the " educator " 

 does. Let him " read themes less and play- 

 golf more," and let him, like the " educator," 

 disseminate the culture of sweetness and light. 

 Give him the right kind of a text-book, with 

 some logic in it, even with the " Barbara, 

 Celarent " — ^which is a good thing to have in 

 the text-book for reference, although it need 

 not be memorized. 



Why should not such a man be found? A 

 teacher, or an educator, like every other man, 

 is the product of heredity and environment, 

 also of habit and of the kind of boss he has — 

 which last may be considered part of his en- 

 vironment. The heredity of the teacher, in 

 Boston at least, is all right; his environment 

 is fairly good, but his teaching habits are bad 

 and he has not been properly bossed; there- 

 fore he is unhappy. He is supposed to be 

 teaching English composition, but he is not; 

 he is reading " themes " and correcting errors 

 of grammar and punctuation; he is doing the 

 work that should have been done in the gram- 

 mar school. " This man of solid thoughtful 

 mind is the only real teacher." Yes, but he 

 is unhappy, and he needs a boss to direct him 

 how and what to teach, and how to " educate," 

 and how to he happy, though a teacher. 



Can a boss be found? Why not? Is there 

 not in Harvard some authority that can get 

 the " teachers " and the " educators " together 

 around a table and say to them : " Show us 

 the results of your teaching and educating. 

 Do your graduates have ' mechanical perfec- 

 tion in technique' and there stick; have they 

 style, or do they ' write with the mechanical 

 regularity of one pumping into a bucket ' ? 

 What proportion of them write even passable 

 English? If the results are not what they 

 should be, get together, you teachers and edu- 

 cators, and plan a better method. If you 



can not plan one, do as the football players do, 

 hire a coach to plan the method, and let hijtn 

 be your boss until you can show results with 

 it." 



" Some day there will be a shaking among 

 these dry bones." Why not now? 



WnuAM Kent 



MONTCLAIE, N. J. 



UNIVERSITY LIFE IN IDAHO 



To THE Editor op Science: Permit me to 

 state, in reference to the question of veracity 

 between President James A. MacLean, of the 

 University of Manitoba, and Professor V. L. 

 Kellogg, of Stanford University, that at the 

 request of Professor Kellogg I furnished him 

 with a rather full statement of the facts con- 

 cerning my recent separation from the Uni- 

 versity of Idaho. From what I wrote him he 

 prepared his article published by you under the 

 caption " University Life in Idaho." It con- 

 tains no material statement not furnished by 

 me, and none which I do not at the pfesent 

 time fully believe to be true, notwithstanding 

 President MacLean's denial. In fact, most of 

 the details are matters of common knowledge, 

 which no one could deny in Moscow, Idaho, 

 though it might be done in Winnipeg. 



As it is obviously impossible to try the case 

 in your columns, I must be content to assume 

 full responsibility for the essential correctness 

 of Professor Kellogg's article. 



J. M. Aldeuoh 



Bureau of Entomology, 

 Washington, D. C, 

 June 8, 1913 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 The Space-Time Manifold of Relativity, the 

 Non-Euclidean Geometry of Mechanics and 

 Electromagnetics. By Edwin B. Wilson 

 and Gilbert N. Lewis. Proc. Amer. Acad. 

 Arts and Sci., Vol. 48, No. 11. November, 

 1912. Pp. 120. 



Probably the most startling scientific con- 

 clusion of the past was the assertion that the 

 earth moved. Even yet, while every on© 

 would probably assent passively to this state- 



