June 1, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



845 



The inferences concerning the inade- 

 quacy of the traditional entrance examina- 

 tions as tests of merit and their great in- 

 justice in many individual cases are too 

 obvious to need comment. The author's 

 suggestions for the improvement of the 

 conditions of entrance to eastern colleges 

 have been stated briefly in the Educational 

 Review for May, 1906.^ In place of any 

 practical suggestions I may be allowed to 

 call attention to the general problem of 

 which the college-entrance problem is but 

 one particular instance. 



The whole matter of the means of se- 

 lecting students for continued education is 

 in great need of scientific study. Pupils 

 are eliminated from special forms of edu- 

 cation and from formal education of any 

 sort at all ages and by all sorts of arbitrary 

 selective agencies, some permitted and 

 others deliberately created by our educa- 

 tional system. The traditional college en- 

 trance examination is but one of a hundred 

 agencies that decide which individuals 

 shall progress to a given kind of educa- 

 tional opportunity. 



In an ideal system these agencies would 

 secure, to each individual continued educa- 

 tion to such extent and in such directions 

 as would be for the greatest welfare of the 

 most deserving. Under present conditions 

 they are at times administered to suit the 

 personal convenience of school principals, 

 college faculties and the like, and are 

 almost always administered without the 

 guidance of scientific knowledge. It is the 

 duty of scientific men to apply the same 

 methods of thought to this question of so- 



' The gist of these was the recommendation that 

 schools be credited on the basis in each case of a 

 systematic record of the actual success in college 

 of candidates endorsed in the past by the school, 

 the records of success in college being sent in 

 from all colleges to some central board. 



cial policy that they would demand in their 

 special science. 



Edward L. Thorndike. 

 Teachers College, 

 Columbia Univebsitt. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS. 

 Methods of Organic Analysis. By Henry C. 

 Sherman, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor of An- 

 alytical Chemistry in Columbia University. 

 New York, The MacmiUan Co. 1905. 

 In this volume of 240 pages is comprised 

 a very considerable amount of information 

 regarding methods of proximate organic 

 analysis. An idea of the scope of the work may 

 be gained from an enumeration of the topics 

 treated. Methods of ultimate organic analysis, 

 analysis of ash, the determination of the 

 nitrogen, sulphur and phosphorus of or- 

 ganic compounds, are first taken up. This 

 preliminary treatment is followed by descrip- 

 tions in considerable detail of selected methods 

 for the estimation and examination of such 

 classes of organic bodies as alcohols, alde- 

 hydes, carbohydrates, acids, oils, soaps, pro- 

 teids and milk. Special prominence is given 

 to processes bearing on food analysis. 



Commendable features are: the free use of 

 references, in the form of both foot-notes and 

 bibliographical compilations; the carefully 

 worked-out procedures; the clear and perti- 

 nent notes and discussions. The isolated stu- 

 dent or casual worker in methods of organic 

 analysis will find the book of especial value 

 in pointing out original and often scattered 

 sources of information. 



Naturally there are some particulars in 

 which every chemist would not coincide with 

 the author's experience or conclusions. Such, 

 for example, are the rather unsatisfactory 

 methods described for the detection of borates 

 and of fluorides on pages 232 and 233, and the 

 summary way in which the two common 

 methods for estimating fusel oil are dismissed 

 as equally unsatisfactory (p. 35). It would 

 have been of interest to food analysts, espe- 

 cially, to have had something from the au- 

 thor's experience with either of these two 

 methods. Such minor points, however, de- 



