May 6, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



705 



under the foundatioa is sufficiently large and 

 weighty so that no extraneous question should 

 be brought into this discussion, but most of 

 you must have observed with considerable in- 

 terest, if not apprehension, the view adopted 

 by a sister state in respect to private benefac- 

 tions and the resulting indirect private con- 

 trol over public institutions. The plans of the 

 Carnegie Foundation have commended them- 

 selves to us all, and the mode of procedure 

 under these plans has, up to the present, been 

 susceptible of no serious objection from the 

 institutions which are cooperating or from the 

 general public. Nevertheless, a very large ele- 

 ment in public opinion is doubtful of the 

 desirability of subjecting public education to 

 any form of corporate influence which is not 

 itself responsive to public opinion. Lest this 

 feeling should grow so as to jeopardize the 

 usefulness not only of this but of many in- 

 stances of private benefaction, the trustees of 

 the Carnegie Foundation, in the judgment of 

 many disinterested and sympathetic observ- 

 ers, should be very much on their guard 

 against any apparent transcendence of their 

 real functions. In a resent report of the 

 foundation a proof may be found of the deli- 

 cate nature of the ground on which the foun- 

 dation is treading in its official publications. 

 Broad questions of educational administration 

 must be to some extent raised and discussed 

 in connection with the immediate problems 

 of the foundation itself, but that a decided 

 attitude should be taken by its ofEcers as re- 

 gards a problem not vital to its purposes, as 

 was done recently in the matter of federal 

 appropriations to education, will seem to 

 many an act of doubtful propriety, and likely 

 to arouse criticism otherwise unnecessary, if 

 not to bring about an attitude of real hostility 

 on the part of the public toward the work of 

 the foundation. 



" In the situation which now presents itself, 

 the trustees of the Carnegie Foundation will 

 certainly welcome an expression of opinion 

 from all of the accepted institutions cooper- 

 ating in its work, and therefore a motion is 

 herewith made that the executive committee 

 of this organization, representing the differ- 



ent faculties of the Fniversity of Minnesota, 

 be directed to submit to the executive com- 

 mittee of the Carnegie Foundation for the 

 Advancement of Teaching that the service 

 pension as originally planned and put into 

 effect was one of the most admirable features 

 among the many projected by the foundation; 

 that the limitation now imposed is a serious 

 impairment of its scope and nullifies very 

 largely the beneficent object contemplated; 

 that we sincerely regret the action of the 

 trustees in their announcement of the prac- 

 tical withdrawal of such pension; that we de- 

 plore the lack of confidence which has resulted 

 therefrom; and that in our opinion the ser- 

 vice pension should be restored in a form not 

 essentially different from its original." 



In conformity with the above mentioned 

 the executive committee will draw up a set of 

 resolutions and forward the same to the trus- 

 tees of the Carnegie Foundation at an early 

 date. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 Precis d'Emhryologie Humaine. Par F. TouR- 



NEUX. Second edition. Pp. 589, 248 figures. 



Paris, 1909. 



This work, like McMurrich's " The Develop- 

 ment of the Human Body," is a text-book for 

 the student of medicine. The two books have 

 the same general character, being brief, con- 

 cise and accurate statements of the outlines of 

 human embryology. They are of almost the 

 same size for, although the pages of the latter 

 are somewhat larger, the smaller type of the 

 former allows a greater compactness. 



Tourneux has dispensed entirely with a bib- 

 liography, but has more than compensated for 

 its absence by an historical treatment of the 

 subject. Throughout the book he credits to 

 each author, by putting his name and the date 

 of the work in parentheses, his particular con- 

 tribution to the subject. In this way the au- 

 thor succeeds admirably in giving the student 

 an insight into the history of embryological 

 research and in preventing him from feeling 

 that the book is an ultimate authority. 



The book begins with an introduction upon 

 the history of embryology which the author 

 divides into three periods: morphological, his- 



