

SCIENCE 



Friday, August 17, 1917 



CONTENTS 

 Tlie Future of the Sigma Xi: PaorKSSOR 

 Samuel W. Williston 147 



The WorTc of Dean H. L. Bussell 152 



The Priestley Memorial of the American 

 Chemical Society 154 



Scientific Events: — 



A Structure Possibly Favorable for Oil 

 under the Central Great Plains; Medical 

 Stude7its and Conscription; Psychopatho- 

 logical Examination of Secruits; The Third 

 National Exposition of Chemical Industries. 155 



Scientific Notes and News 158 



University and Educational News 160 



Discussion and Correspondence: — 



The Cost of Boast Fig: Dr. H. P. Armsby. 

 A New Contribution to American Geology: 

 Egbert W. Satles. Botrytis and Sclero- 

 tinia: Pred. J. Seaver 160 



Quotations : — 

 A British Eeport on Industrial Research in 

 America 163 



Scientific BooTcs: — 

 Lester Jones on the Use of Mean Sea Level 

 as the Datum for Elevations: Dr. William 

 Bowie 164 



Proceedings of the National Academy of 

 Sciences 1G6 



Special Articl-es: — 

 Intra-vitam Color Reactions: N. A. Cobb. 167 



Societies and Academies: — 



The American Chemical Society 169 



MSS. Intended for publication and boots, etc.. Intended for 

 rCTiew should be sent to Professor J. McKeen Cattell, Garrison- 

 On-Eudaon. N. Y 



THE FUTURE OF THE SIGMA XI i 



In a few weeks it will 'be tliirty-one 

 years since some students of Cornell Uni- 

 versity, feeling the injustice of the old- 

 fashioned kind of education that gave all 

 its honors, all its encouragement to the 

 students of the liberal arts, planned an 

 honor society in the sciences. They 

 thought, as most of us now think, that 

 not all of good was confined to Latin and 

 Greek, that there was also merit in the nat- 

 ural sciences, that the student of geology 

 or of engineering was as deserving of hon- 

 ors and of encouragement as the student of 

 the classics. As they walked home from 

 the commencement where the honors of Phi 

 Beta Kappa had been liberally bestowed, 

 they conceived a society that would recog- 

 nize in an equal way the merits of the 

 bachelor of science. And the Sigma Xi 

 was born. 



But higher education in America, as in all 

 nations, has developed much since those 

 days, and that exponent of the liberal ed- 

 ucation of those days has also changed. 

 The Sigma Xi of 1886 would find little en- 

 couragement in most of our universities 

 to-day, and we of the Sigma Xi may justly 

 claim some of the credit for that change. 

 The classical education of fifty years ago 

 has but few proponents to-day, for science 

 is now recognized as an essential part of 

 any liberal education. 



Perhaps some of us are claiming too much 

 for science in education ; I half believe that 

 we are. When I received my bachelor de- 

 gree, a good many years ago, my commence- 

 ment speech was a diatribe on Latin and 



1 An address delivered to the initiates of the 

 Yale chapter of the Sigma Xi, April 2, 1917. 



