738 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXIX. No. 749 



cated their intention to continue it through- 

 out a third year; the progress of the others 

 has exceeded that of the first two and has sur- 

 passed expectations. 



Most of these fellowships have arisen 

 through letters of inquiry from the various 

 companies. I have not gone out seeking fel- 

 lowships in general. Had I done so it is not 

 unreasonable to suppose that by this time 

 there might have been from thirty to fifty. 

 Owing to the fact that these fellowships have 

 no relation to ordinary fellowships and that 

 the scheme is essentially a new one, it has 

 been deemed advisable to establish them at 

 intervals. Proceeding in this way, and learn- 

 ing as one went, the scheme has undergone a 

 natural and advantageous development. The 

 degree to which it has been systematized, its 

 effect upon the chemical department, the re- 

 sults of the relations of the different researches 

 and reseachers to one another, and the wholly 

 unexpected interactional relation of the do- 

 nating companies to one another I shall re- 

 serve for a future communication. While it 

 should be said that as yet this scheme of in- 

 dustrial fellowships is wholly experimental and 

 tentative, it ought also to be said that the two 

 years' experience has not shown that it is any 

 other than a sane and practical relation be- 

 tween the university and industry to the ad- 

 vantage of all concerned. 



Egbert Kennedy Duncan 



Univeesity of Kansas, 

 April 10, 1909 



ELEMENTARY EMBRYOLOGY COURSES 



The publication of Professor Lillie's "De- 

 velopment of the Chick," and the excellent 

 character of his treatment of the subject, sug- 

 gests comment upon the custom of using the 

 chick for introducing students to embryology. 

 Since the days of von Baer and before, the 

 chick has been used for embryological study 

 more than any other form. This has probably 

 been due in part to its familiarity and to the 

 ease of obtaining embryos of any desired age. 

 Foster and Balfour's very valuable, though 

 poorly written, " Elements of Embryology," 

 based on the chick, for so long the only avail- 



able text-book for immature students, fastened 

 more firmly the custom of using the chick in 

 introductory embryological courses. Now 

 comes Lillie's fine treatment of the same sub- 

 ject, which is likely to establish the chick in 

 almost undisputed possession of these courses. 



Chick embryos are easy to obtain and easy 

 to manipulate and much has been written 

 about them; they also have decided resem- 

 blance to human embryos. Yet in spite of 

 these advantages I can not but feel that chick 

 embryos are peculiarly ill-adapted to the use 

 of students beginning the study of embry- 

 ology. The embryo chick is a highly special- 

 ized form adapted to a very peculiar environ- 

 ment within an egg shell and still further 

 distorted from the general vertebrate type by 

 the presence of the huge yolk' mass. These 

 special adaptations are of great interest, but 

 it has been my experience that they assume 

 an undue prominence in the minds of stu- 

 dents and prevent their readily grasping the 

 general phenomena of development of verte- 

 brates, unless some less specialized form, as 

 for example, the frog, has first been studied. 



The first three years I taught elementary 

 embryology we began with the chick and u^ed 

 it chiefiy, if not exclusively. Since then, each 

 year, after a brief consideration of the cell, 

 its organs, and its behavior in mitosis, and a 

 rapid survey of cleavage and gastrulation in 

 half a dozen forms, we have taken up the 

 embryology of the frog, using Marshall's 

 " Vertebrate Embryology," modified and sup- 

 plemented, of course, by the lectures. The 

 laboratory work has covered the same ground 

 as the classroom work. After completing 

 the study of organology in the frog, two 

 weeks to four have been given to the chick and 

 two or three lectures to comparisons with the 

 development of mammalia. 



The point I would like to emphasize is that 

 I have found that the students in these later 

 courses got a far better grasp of the embry- 

 ology of the chick in two weeks' study follow- 

 ing careful work upon the frog, than they ever 

 succeeded in obtaining when they began with 

 the chick and devoted all the time to this sub- 

 ject, and of course they got a far more ade- 

 quate conception of the embryology of verte- 



