22 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIX. No. 992 



this year be made by July 1. After that date 

 the various applications will be sifted and an 

 attempt made to choose the most likely ninety 

 applicants. It has alse been decided to 

 increase the requirements for admission in 

 chemistry and, in addition to the 150 hours of 

 laboratory -work in inorganic chemistry now 

 required, an additional 90 to 100 hours of labo- 

 ratory work in organic chemistry will be re- 

 quired of all students desiring to enter the 

 school after October, 1914. 



Beginning next year the two-year courses in 

 the college of agriculture at the Ohio State 

 University will be lengthened to three years. 

 The Tuesday before October 15 is the date 

 set for opening and the Friday before March 

 15, that for closing. Farmers' sons may, with 

 this change made, come to school after harvest 

 and complete the year's work before the spring 

 work begins on the farm. No attempt to ex- 

 tend the subject matter is intended, and the 

 length of the course is practically the same, 

 but boys from the country may engage in 

 practical farming while taking the agricultural 

 course under the new system. 



Plans are being perfected for the centennial 

 of the first conferring of degrees by the Tale 

 medical school. Special exercises will be held 

 in Woolsey Hall on Monday afternoon of 

 commencement week from 4 to 6, and histori- 

 cal addresses, the conferring of honorary de- 

 grees, exhibits and other features will be ar- 

 ranged. 



Mr. a. W. McCoy (A.B., A.M., Missouri) 

 instructor in geology at the "University of 

 Missouri, has been elected instructor in geo- 

 logy at the University of Oklahoma. 



The General Board of Studies of Cambridge 

 University have appointed Dr. Assheton to 

 be university lecturer in Animal Embryology. 



DISCUSSION AND COBSESPONDENCB 



REPLY TO A RECENT CRITIQUE OF AN OLD REVIEW 

 IN SCIENCE 



In the current number of the Bulletin of the 

 American Mathematical Society, December, 

 1913, pages 147-151, Professor E. B. Skinner 

 makes erroneous statements regarding my re- 



view in Science^ of Professor L. W. Reid's 

 " The Elements of the Theory of Algebraic 

 Numbers," and also regarding the history of 

 the subject. 



1. In my review I had said: 



After stating formally theorem A and devoting 

 fifteen lines to its proof, the author informs ns 

 that the ' ' theorem therefore fails. ' ' Similarly, on 

 pages 250-251, theorems are formally stated and 

 later shown not to hold in general. This peculiar 

 style of pedagogy is decidedly a novelty to the 

 reviewer. 



Quoting only the first sentence and that in- 

 correctly, Professor Skinner insists that the 

 quotation puts the author in a wholly errone- 

 ous light. But the entire passage certainly 

 makes clear that I was merely questioning the 

 wisdom of this peculiar style of pedagogy. 

 There was no need whatsoever for any com- 

 ment in Science on the bare fact that the 

 author stated a formal theorem in italics, 

 devoted a half page to a " proof," and then 

 indicated that the proof failed and that the 

 " theorem " itself was false, repeating the same 

 process on pages 250-251. I think I was justi- 

 fied in presupposing upon the part of a reader 

 of my review that small degree of acumen 

 which would enable him to conclude unguided 

 that if an author devoted considerable space to 

 a false theorem, the failure of the theorem was 

 regarded by him as of sufficient interest to war- 

 rant attention. It is unfortunate that the 

 author and Professor Skinner speak also of 

 general theorems which they nowhere state ex- 

 plicitly and which if stated would be false, 

 except in the very simplest cases, as they well 

 knew. 



2. In my list of important topics omitted 

 from the book, I included erroneously that of 

 class number. It occurs first on page 434, just 

 seventeen pages before the end of the book. 

 One may be pardoned for not looking at the 

 end of a long book for a topic which should 

 play a fundamental role in the whole theory. 



3. The last paragraph of my review has 

 gone through a remarkable metamorphosis in 

 the hands of Professor Skinner. What I 

 actually said was: 



1 Science, N. S., Vol. XXXIII., pp. 188-89, 

 February Z, 1911. 



