Apeil 10, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



537 



also through efforts expressly directed to econ- 

 omic and social ends, emphasis has been laid 

 in these latter days as never before. This 

 tendency is bound to continue ; and the benefits 

 that will flow from our universities in these 

 ways are quite beyond calculation. But it is 

 not difficult to imagine these results obtained 

 by other instrumentalities, if the institution 

 we call the university were not historically in 

 existence, and ready to furnish them. The 

 thing that the university alone can supply — 

 the thing, at all events, for which neither his- 

 tory nor imagination suggests a possible sub- 

 stitute — is the preservation of high intellectual 

 ideals, the maintenance of noble traditions of 

 science and learning. Of these ideals and 

 traditions university presidents, however 

 masterful, university administrators, however 

 efficient, can not possibly serve as the cus- 

 todians. It is upon the men whose business 

 is not to administer but to teach and to learn, 

 not to manage but to investigate and to in- 

 spire, that we must depend for the keeping 

 alive of the sacred fire. And if we read aright 

 the announcement of its purposes, it is to the 

 strengthening of this conception of the pro- 

 fessor's status that the new association is 

 above all to be devoted. — New York Evening 

 Post. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 The Scientific Work of Morris Loeh. Edited 

 by Theodore W. Eichards. Harvard Uni- 

 versity Press. 1913. 



The many friends of Dr. Morris Loeb will 

 feel very grateful to Professor Theodore W. 

 Eichards for arranging this volume. It is 

 the best monument yet erected to the memory 

 of a man whose life was an inspiration to all 

 who knew him. 



The first part of the volume is a collection 

 of some lectures and addresses referring to 

 chemical research, the Chemists' Club build- 

 ing, the chemical museum and kindred sub- 

 jects. The great idealism of Dr. Morris Loeb, 

 combined with his practical, well-organized 

 methods and conceptions, are well illustrated 

 bj' some passages : 



Pages 95-96: ". . . How, then, can the 



status of the independent commercial chemist 

 be raised in our city? By giving him a cen- 

 tral rally-point; a home that proves to the 

 layman that his is a skilled profession, not a 

 mere job-hunting trade; a place where the 

 manufacturer or merchant can find the man 

 he wants without a rambling search through 

 the city directory. Doubtless, some of our 

 colleagues are so well known that all the busi- 

 ness comes to them which they can handle. 

 But the many additional independent chem- 

 ists, whom our commercial situation demands, 

 can only establish themselves if they can 

 secure proper laboratory facilities, without 

 hiring attics in tumble-down rookeries. . . ." 



Page 96: ". . . Every year scores of New 

 Yorkers graduate in chemistry from our local 

 institutions and return from years of pro- 

 tracted study in other American and European 

 institutions. They are enthusiastic for re- 

 search; in completing their theses they have 

 laid aside definite ideas for subsequent experi- 

 mentation; but they have no laboratory. 

 While waiting to hear from the teachers' 

 agency where they have registered, while 

 carrying on desultory correspondence with 

 manufacturers who may give them a chance, 

 they do not venture upon expenditure of time 

 and money to fit out a private laboratory, 

 which they may be called upon to quit any 

 minute upon the appearance of that desired 

 appointment. Often necessity or tedium will 

 cause them to accept temporary work of an 

 entirely different character and indefinitely 

 postpone the execution of the experiments 

 which they had mapped out. Who will esti- 

 mate the loss of scientific momentum, the 

 economic and intellectual waste, which this 

 lack of laboratory facilities for the graduate 

 inflicts upon New York, as compared with 

 Berlin, Vienna, Paris and London? Either 

 our universities and colleges, or private enter- 

 prise, should provide temporary desk-room for 

 the independent research chemist." 



Pages 98-99-100: ". . . There is still an- 

 other point, however, in which the American 

 chemist is at a great disadvantage as com- 

 pared with the European; the ease of securing 

 material for his research and of comparing his 



