November 3, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



639 



strued that man never adapted himself to that diet 

 as he did to beef. 



It is worth, recalling that any such prejudice 

 in European races is only a thing of yester- 

 day, when discussing such a question as this, 

 since horse flesh was eaten in parts of Europe 

 at least for an apparently unlimited time. It 

 went out of use when it was declared " un- 

 clean " by Pope Gregory III., who died in 741. 

 This is discussed in a paper by Esser, on horse 

 flesh, which appeared in the Journal fur Land- 

 wirtschaft, 43 (1895), No. 3, pp. 349-358. The 

 prohibition was so effective that horse flesh 

 did not assume importance in Europe again 

 until after 1870. 



C. F. Langworthy 



U. S. Department of Agriculture 



ANOTHER TYPICAL CASE 



To the Editor of Science : About a year 

 ago a short article by Professor Pickering ap- 

 peared in Science under the heading "A 

 Typical Case." The point of the discussion 

 was that a man who had been trained to a high 

 technical efficiency in research had been 

 obliged to take a position in which he was 

 overworked and underpaid to such an extent 

 that he had been forced to give up research 

 because of lack of time and funds, particularly 

 the latter. Thus the world at large loses the 

 benefit of his experience and training. 



I am personally interested in a closely re- 

 lated problem which I would like to have con- 

 sidered. I can illustrate it best, probably, by 

 some account of my own experience and I am 

 going to put it on a frankly personal basis, so 

 that due allowance may be made for my own 

 feeling in the matter. My first acquaintance 

 with research was in some preliminary work 

 on a problem in morphology. At that time I 

 was on a fellowship stipend. Marriage at the 

 end of the year made it impossible to continue 

 on such a condition. In connection with high 

 school teaching the line of study was shifted 

 to a rough biological survey of the locality. 

 This was interrupted by a shift in location and 

 the next opportunity for advanced study hap- 

 pened to be in the line of history. A little 

 later the unfortunate acceptance of a position 



with a bankrupt college caused me to be 

 stranded in the middle of the year and I again 

 took up my original problem in morphology. 

 This study was advanced sufficiently by the end 

 of the year to enable publication of a paper 

 which received favorable comment from 

 workers in that line, especially abroad. Over- 

 load in teaching for the next few years pre- 

 vented any systematic research being done. 

 Finally an opportunity came for attendance at 

 another university, expenses being partly met 

 by acting as half-time assistant. The results 

 of research of that year were covered by a 

 paper on regeneration. Since that time I have 

 not been able to command sufficient funds to 

 enable me to attend regular sessions of a uni- 

 versity and support my family. I have had 

 some summer-school study but not of a sort 

 to give residence credit, I am informed. 



For three and one half years now I have 

 been working on a local plankton problem 

 under the advice and direction of a university 

 authority on that subject. For more than two 

 years of that time I have averaged more than 

 fifteen sixty-minute periods per week through 

 fifty-two weeks of the year in study of quanti- 

 tative and qualitative features of the prob- 

 lem. The value of half of that time has been 

 at least trebled through the aid given by my 

 wife in computing and recording. I am hoping 

 to get my own paper into press this year. I 

 have not been able to obtain any university 

 credit for this work because it could not be 

 counted " in residence." I would like to have 

 a Ph.D. degree, because it seems that that is 

 regarded as a necessary factor in finding a 

 position which would enable me to support my 

 family and still carry on the research in which 

 I am so much interested. Since my efforts 

 have almost exhausted my scanty resources, 

 such a point is of very great interest to me. 



I feel quite certain that my case is fairly 

 typical in much the same way as the one men- 

 tioned by Professor Pickering. It may be that 

 I have actually done more research than some 

 of similar experience but there are individuals 

 who have done more than I have. There are 

 also a good many who could do acceptable re- 

 search but who get off in small communities 



