January 14, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



67 



ZOOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. 



To THE Editor of Science : My attention 

 has just been called to the following statement 

 in Science, No. 157, p. 993 : 



" The student of science may fairly ask whether, 

 when twelve doctorates are conferred in zoology and 

 hut three in Latin and Greeli oomhined, this means 

 that there is less demand for teachers of the classics 

 or that a less exacting preparation is required." 



Such is the comment appended to a mere 

 summary of the Ph.D. degrees conferred by 

 the University of Chicago during its first five 

 years. 



I am surprised to see insinuations of this 

 kind obtruded as 'University News.' Neither 

 ' a student of science ' nor a student of anything 

 worth naming could ' fairly ' indulge in such 

 ambiguous reflections on the basis of figures 

 which he does not understand, and while pre- 

 tending merely to report 'University News.' 

 Moreover, it seems difiicult to assign a proper 

 motive for the remark under any circumstances. 

 Had the reporter, who poses as ' a student of 

 science,' even a reading knowledge of zoology, 

 he would have seen the impertinence of his 

 query. Our zoological theses already published 

 would be sufficient, I think, to ' fairly ' satisfy 

 any one qualified to understand them whether 

 the ' preparation ' here demanded is adequately 

 ' exacting. ' Graduate students from colleges 

 and universities in good standing, who devote 

 from three to five years to their theses, are 

 entitled to be judged by the merits of their 

 work, and are not ' fairly ' open to disparaging 

 conjectures on the part of uninformed reporters 

 of university news. 



If comments were in order in such a report, 

 I should have supposed that the result of ' five 

 years of graduate work ' might have suggested 

 something more appropriate than an invidious 

 comparison between zoology and the classics. 



What excuse for saying ' but three in Latin 

 and Greek combined,' when Latin is not repre- 

 sented in the ' three ' at all ? The author thus 

 insidiously seeks to give point to the suspicion 

 which he casts in his query, realizing that the 

 contrast between zoology and Greek alone was 

 not quite excuse enough for his remark. To 

 one desiring to represent things 'fairly,' what 

 could be more obvious than that no such query 



was permissible on the figures recorded for the 

 first five years of the University's existence, 

 when the different departments could not be 

 supposed to be equally advanced in organiza- 

 tion or to have begun work under equal condi- 

 tions ? What justice could there be, for example, 

 in comparing the 3 in Greek with the in 

 Latin? Would 'a student of science' need to 

 be told that no inference could be drawn from 

 the bare numbers 3 and in this case as to the 

 standards of work upheld by the two depart- 

 ments? And what more senseless than to ask 

 if the indicates ' a less demand for teachers ' 

 or ' a less exacting preparation ?' 



It so happens that zoology has conferred 

 eleven doctorates (the report of twelve is in- 

 correct), nearly double the number in any other 

 department. We are not ashamed of any of 

 them, nor afraid of any just comparison. And 

 while we take due pride in every one of them, 

 it would be nothing less than contemptible to 

 disparage any other department with a smaller 

 record. There is reason for our larger number, 

 but very remote from the suggestion so gratui- 

 tously offered by the reporter for Science. 

 When we came to Chicago we brought with us 

 five candidates for the Ph.D in zoology, some 

 of whom had already spent three years on their 

 research work while in Clark University. Our 

 number for the five years in Chicago is thus to 

 be considerably reduced for comparison with 

 that of any other department. Other circum- 

 stances, which we need not here explain, would 

 readily account for whatever differences re- 

 main. 



If enough has not been said to show the ab- 

 surdity of the comparison made in Science, and 

 the injustice of disparaging comments based 

 upon obviously insufiicient data, then there is 

 but one thing for this 'student of science' to 

 do, and that is, to drop his study of science for 

 the more humble occupation of learning some 

 of the elements of common sense. 



C. O. Whitman. 



XJniveesity of Chicago, 



January 8, 1898. 



[Professor Whitman rebukes the writer of 

 the note in Science for lack of common sense 

 by precept, but not by example. The sentence 



