932 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXIX. No. 754 



there is not a single species of hardwood here 

 ranking in commercial importance with, the 

 leading eastern hardwoods. Climatic condi- 

 tions in many parts of California are favor- 

 able for the growth of a number of the valu- 

 able hardwoods, and the absence of these trees 

 is due mostly to unfavorable factors of seed 

 distribution. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS 



The General Education Board has offered 

 to give the Johns Hopkins TJniversity $200,000 

 on condition that a million dollars be raised 

 for the removal of the university to its new 

 site at Homewood. 



Mr. N. W. Harris has promised to give 

 Northwestern TJniversity $155,000 if the col- 

 lege will procure the remainder of a million 

 dollars during the coming year. 



The New York Evening Post states that 

 Mrs. D. G. Eichardson, who in the past has 

 contributed liberally to the medical school of 

 Tulane University, has recently given property 

 valued at $55,000, and yielding an income of 

 $3,000 for the endowment of the chair of bot- 

 any. Professor E. S. Cocks fills the newly 

 created chair. 



The debt of Columbia University contracted 

 in part payment of its new site and buildings 

 has been funded, and the United States Trust 

 Company has taken a mortgage of $3,000,000 

 on the blocks owned by the university on 

 Fifth Avenue between forty-ninth and fifty- 

 first streets. The university will pay ofE this 

 debt in thirty annual installments. 



Professor Irving Hardesty, the head of the 

 department of anatomy at the University of 

 California, has been appointed to the head of 

 the department of anatomy in Tulane Uni- 

 versity, Louisiana. 



Dr. George H. Ling, adjunct professor of 

 mathematics at Columbia, has accepted the 

 professorship of mathematics in the newly- 

 established University of Saskatchewan. 



Dr. Prank G. Speck, instructor in anthro- 

 pology, has accepted the position of assistant 

 professor of anthropology in the University of 

 California. 



Walter K. Van Haagen, assistant in 

 chemistry at Lehigh University, has been 



elected associate professor of chemistry at the 

 University of Georgia. 



Professor J. A. Brown has resigned his 

 position at Dartmouth College to accept the 

 chair of physics at the Protestant College of 

 Beirut, Syria. 



Mr. Charles B. Gates, assistant in chemis- 

 try at the University of Wisconsin, has been 

 chosen instructor in chemistry at the Michi- 

 gan College of Mines. 



Professor G. Elliot Smith, E.E.S., of the 

 Government School of Medicine, Cairo, has 

 been appointed to the chair of anatomy in the 

 University of Manchester. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 



ON THE teaching OF THE ELEMENTS OF 



EMBRYOLOGY 



In 1893 Professor A. Milnes Marshall wrote 

 in the preface to his "Vertebrate Embryol- 

 ogy": 



Great attention has of recent years been given 

 to the study of embryology, and yet it is curiously 

 difficult to find straightforward accounts of the 

 development even of the commonest animals. . . . 

 In works professing to deal with human embry- 

 ology it is more common than not to find that the 

 descriptions, and the figures given in illustration 

 of them, are really taken, not from huipan em- 

 bryos at all, but from rabbits, pigs, chickens or 

 even dogfish. 



This latter practise is a most unfortunate one, 

 and has been the cause of much confusion. The 

 student is led to suppose that our knowledge is 

 more complete than is really the case, while at 

 the same time he finds the greatest difficulty in 

 obtaining definite information on any particular 

 point in which he is interested. 



This very temperate statement needs to be 

 repeated to-day with greater emphasis, for the 

 attention given to the study of embryology 

 has increased with the years; it is required 

 from practically every student of medicine 

 and of biology, and it is as difficult as ever, if 

 not more so (for old accounts grow out of 

 date), to find straightforward accounts of the 

 development even of the commonest animals. 

 Now, as then, our text-books leap from fish to 

 man, back to Amphioxus, and forward again, 

 with stops at intermediate stations, amphib- 

 ians, reptiles and birds, in such a way as to 



