210 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVIII. No. 7H 



the $106,687 given as "The Annual Appro- 

 priation for Salaries of Instructing StafE " is 

 actually spent for the salaries of the instruct- 

 ing staff. 



The absurdity of the conclusions raises the 

 question of what is meant by " The Annual 

 Appropriation for Salaries of Instructing 

 Stafi," which has been used as the basis of 

 classification of the American colleges and 

 universities. One would naturally think that 

 it means the money spent on the salaries men- 

 tioned. If it does mean this, it is clear that 

 Bryn Mawr College has received too advanced 

 a position in the classification. 



With great latitude allowed, the phrase 

 might i>erhaps be interpreted as meaning 

 money available for salaries though not neces- 

 sarily so spent. This interpretation is par- 

 ticularly improbable in the case of Bryn Mawr 

 College. Its alumnje have been trying dur- 

 ing the last few years to obtain gifts of money 

 from the friends of the college for an endow- 

 ment fund, the interest on which is to be used 

 to increase the salaries of the professors. In 

 order to retain the older and better known 

 members of the faculty in spite of ofEers from 

 other institutions, the alumnae vsdsh to have 

 the salary of a professor raised from $2,500, 

 which has been the salary attaching to that 

 grade, to $3,000. They have already accumu- 

 lated nearly $100,000 toward this fund. If in 

 the foregoing calculation we insert $3,000 in 

 the place of $2,500 as the salary of a professor, 

 it appears that an annual appropriation of 

 $106,687, if available, would not only have met 

 this increased demand but would also have 

 sufficed to have given the instructors of lower 

 ranks, namely, lecturers, readers and demon- 

 strators, an average salary of $2,412.46. 

 Making similar changes in the two other 

 academic years considered, this average salary 

 could have been $2,260.38 and $1,871.50. The 

 calculation leaves no doubt that Bryn Mawr 

 College if it had $106,687 actually available 

 annually for the salaries of the instructing 

 staff would be able, unaided, to raise the sal- 

 aries as the alumnse desire. 



David Wilbur Horn, 

 Associate and Associate Professor of Chem- 

 istry in Bryn Mawr College, 1901-7 



AIR-SHIPS, PAST AND PRESENT 



To THE Editor of Science: In a review of 

 " Air-ships, Past and Present " presented in 

 Science, July 3, 1908, pp. 20-21, I notice that 

 O. Chanute, the reviewer, gives 21,100 feet as 

 the greatest altitude above the earth's surface 

 heretofore attained by kites. 



I do not know whether this statement was 

 made in ignorance of the Weather Bureau 

 kite flight of October 3 last, or not; but in 

 any case you may wish to note in your 

 journal, if not already there recorded, the fol- 

 lowing facts : 



On October 3, 1907, one of the international 

 dates for scientific kite flights, the Weather 

 Bureau observers at Mt. Weather, Va., suc- 

 ceeded in raising a meteorograph to an alti- 

 tude of 23,110 feet above mean sea level by 

 means of kites. At that altitude the wind 

 was WNW, the temperature — 5.4° P. For 

 the flight 37,300 feet of piano wire was used 

 and the number of kites required to lift were 

 eight having a total lifting surface of 505 

 square feet. Cleveland Abbe, Jr. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 Heredity. By J. Arthur Thomson, Kegius 

 Professor of Natural History in the Uni- 

 versity of Aberdeen. New York, G. P. Put- 

 nam's Sons. 1908, 



So much interest is now concentrating on 

 the problems of heredity as a result of the 

 abundant and important observations that 

 have been carried on in recent years, follow- 

 ing the leads of Mendel, DeVries and Galton, 

 that a critical estimate of our present knowl- 

 edge of the phenomena of inheritance can not 

 fail to be of interest. Such an estimate Pro- 

 fessor Thomson endeavors to give in the 

 volume before us, which the author speaks of 

 as an " introduction to the study of heredity," 

 and which, it may be said at once, is a book 

 well worth careful reading, bringing together 

 as it does in a concise form the results of 

 observations widely scattered in scientific 

 periodicals, not always readily accessible and 

 all more or less deterrent to the layman. 



The author has endeavored to approach his 

 subject sine ira et studio and to a large extent 

 he has been successful. He avowedly sails. 



