326 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIX. No. 1000 



sity); William K. Tate, A.M., professor of 

 rural education (now professor of elementary 

 education. University of South Carolina). 



DISCUSSION AND COSBESPONDENCE 

 GRADUATE WORK IN AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES 



The university registration statistics pub- 

 lished by Professor Tombo in Science, Janu- 

 ary 23, 1914, allow, among other things, an 

 interesting and instructive comparison of the 

 amount of graduate work being done in the 

 thirty universities tabulated. The number of 

 non-professional graduate students may be 

 taken to represent the amount of research 

 that is being done in a university, for, in 

 general, a university will attract non-profes- 

 sional graduate students in proportion to the 

 activity in the graduate departments. The 

 relative amount of emphasis laid on graduate 

 work in each university can be seen at a 

 glance in the table below, where the thirty 

 universities in question are arranged in ranli 

 according to the ratio of non-professional 

 graduates to undergraduates, *. e., the num- 

 ber of graduates to every hundred under- 

 graduates. The first column gives the ratio 

 of graduates to undergraduates based on the 

 figures given under " College, Men," " College, 

 Women " and " Non-professional Graduate 

 Schools" in Professor Tombo's table.^ The 

 second column gives the total enrollment listed 

 under these three heads, corresponding pre- 

 sumably with the enrollment of purely aca- 

 demic students. 



Total 

 University Ratio Students 



1. Johns Hopkins 123 397 



2. Pennsylvania 107 1,504 



3. Columbia 102 2,960 



4. New York 52 1,076 



5. Illinois 32 1,097 



6. Chieago 28 2,183 



7. -Cornell 28 1,435 



8. Cincinnati 27 789 



9. Yale 24 1,736 



10. Wisconsin 18 1,894 



11. Harvard 17 3,403 



12. California 15 3,146 



13. Washington 15 438 



14. Princeton 14 1,443 



1 Science, p. 126. 



15. Ohio State 13 1,018 



16. Nebraska 13 i 443 



17. Pittsburgh 12 438 



18. Iowa 11 1^293 



19. Virginia H 439 



20. Michigan 9 2,745 



21. Missouri 9 1 473 



22. Minnesota 8 1,648 



23. Stanford 8 1,877 



24. Tulane 8 345 



25. Northwestern 8 1,173 



26. Indiana 7 1,200 



27. Kansas 6 1,729 



28. Syracuse 6 1,415 



29. Texas 5 1,597 



30. Western Eeserve 1 826 



The ranking of the universities obviously 

 does not correspond in every case with the 

 amount of productive scholarship that is 

 issuing from a university, but, as far as the 

 enrollment figures are correct, it would seem 

 to indicate the relative emphasis that is being 

 put upon graduate work. A correlation of 

 the totals as given in the second column with 

 the ratios of the first column gives a coefficient 

 of about .046, or practically no correlation at 

 all. This might be interpreted to mean that 

 the universities possessing enormous under- 

 graduate departments do not as a rule show an 

 increased activity in graduate work, such as 

 the number of undergraduates should warrant, 

 presuming, of course, that the ultimate ideal 

 of a university is held to be productive 

 scholarship. 



Rudolf Pintner 



Ohio State University 



the cause of the peculiar SOUND MADE BY 



nighthawks when volplaning 

 All are familiar with the resonant sound 

 made by the nighthawk as he cavorts through 

 the air. It may be described as a guttural 

 " woof." 



It has been a contested point as to whether 

 this sound was produced by the open mouth 

 or the wings. As it occurs at the point where 

 the bird swerves upward in his downward glide 

 and at no other time, it is very evident that 

 the mouth plays no part, otherwise the sound 

 would occur at other times. 



