March 18, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



467 



direct contact with oflS.cial work and official 

 chemists. In the forty-eight state colleges or 

 universities, partially supported by the fed- 

 eral government through the land grant and 

 Morrill acts, we have, however, practically the 

 same number of very conveniently situated 

 and well-equipped institutions for training, 

 at least the locally needed, public analysts of 

 the future. That their location is especially 

 fortunate for this purpose is due to the fact 

 that nearly all the experiment stations are 

 located in the same towns and in fact are often 

 really departments of the university or college, 

 with a staff made up principally of members 

 of the college faculty. Some of these public 

 educational system extensions, Cornell Uni- 

 versity and the University of California, for 

 examples, must of course be considered as 

 better officered and equipped than many of 

 the others, especially those in the far south 

 and southwest. 



All, however, if their catalogues and the 

 Office of Experiment Stations statistics are 

 trustworthy, have the facilities (departments, 

 professors and laboratories) wherewith to give 

 instruction in the subject of foods, their com- 

 position, nutritive and economic value, meth- 

 ods of adulteration and detection of the same, 

 etc. ; and in the senior year or as post-graduate 

 assistants give the students an opportunity to 

 gain an insight into and a little actual ex- 

 pierience in food investigation work, and also 

 if possible, in methods of rapid legal inspec- 

 tion work at the local experiment station, or 

 at least from the official chemists of these sta- 

 tions. The preparatory subjects, which we 

 may consider as junior year electives, would 

 include organic chemistry and outlines of 

 organic analytical methods (fat extractions, 

 melting point determinations, etc.), histolog- 

 ical botany and microscopy and physiology, 

 especially the subjects of nutrition, digestion 

 and assimilation. In the senior year the 

 really special studies would be undertaken, 

 viz., the study of foods as previously outlined; 

 the natural composition, nutritive and eco- 

 nomic value, utility, methods of adulteration, 

 etc., of foods being taught by lectures, while 

 the methods of scientific investigation and 



rapid legal inspection, especially the use of the 

 microscope and the utilization of histological 

 botany, would be taught simultaneously in 

 the laboratory. 



Whether this senior year specialization led to 

 a special degree, or to the ordinary bachelor's 

 degree in science only, is immaterial. One 

 thing is assuredly certain, however, and that 

 is that such a comparatively simple, wholly 

 possible and practicable course of training, 

 especially if supplemented with actual ex- 

 perience in the local experiment station, would 

 supply a national and soon to be a pressing 

 need for competent trained ' public analysts,' 

 similar to those regarded necessary by the 

 smallest and least pretentious English towns 

 and cities. Then, and then only, will our 

 American Society of Public Analysts acquire 

 a membership and influence sufficient to war- 

 rant its admittance as a section of the older 

 society in the mother country or, perhaps, what 

 is more patriotic, a similar relationship to the 

 American Chemical Society. 



E. O. Brooks. 



State Laboeatoky of Hygiene, 

 Trenton, N. J. 



THE MISUSE OF ' FORMATION ' BY ECOLOGISTS. 



Geologists, paleobotanists and a few botan- 

 ists have several times called attention during 

 the past few years to the persistent misuse by 

 many ecologists of the word ' formation,' when 

 referring to plant societies or associations. 

 Regardless of the sanction of a century or 

 more of usage for ' formation ' in the geolog- 

 ical sense, they have proceeded within the 

 past dozen years to transplant the word, via 

 Germany, into English botanical literature, 

 unmindful of the fact that where employed in 

 the German language it is little or not at all 

 confusing, but when translated into English 

 comes in direct competition with well-estab- 

 lished usage in other fields. The usual reply 

 to these protests has been that this employ- 

 ment of ' formation ' has the sanction of the 

 earlier writers in this ' newly discovered ' field 

 of ecology, and, moreover, is hardly likely to 

 lead to any serious confusion with its use in 

 geology, mineralogy or paleobotany. If those 



