June 8, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



881 



two screws DD on tlie disc B, when the bridge 

 can be swung around on Q as a center as far 

 as is desired. 



To aid in setting the amplitude of the 

 fundamental curve, a series of graduations is 

 provided on a disc carried by the swinging 

 arm N, which enables the distance OQ to be 

 read off directly (see Fig. 2). Before a curve 

 is drawn, the disc A may be rotated so as to 

 begin with any desired phase of the funda- 

 mental. Great care has been taken to avoid 

 unnecessary backlash on the part of the vari- 

 ous gears, so that the curves are practically 

 free from any irregularity due to this cause. 



The two side posts marked V in Fig. 2 

 serve as guides to keep the bar S parallel to 

 the paper. The bent rod E can be swung 

 around so as to hold 8 in its mean position. 

 A base-line can then be drawn by simply 

 sliding the board along without rotating the 

 discs. In drawing curves before a class, the 

 lecturer stands behind the instrujuent. For 

 ease in making adjustments, the machine is 

 mounted on a swivel, so that it can be rotated 

 about a vertical axis, adjusted and turned to 

 face the class again. A pencil of soft graphite 

 is most convenient for drawing curves, though 

 a pen can be used. The curves reproduced in 

 Fig. 3 were obtained directly with pens made 

 from glass tubing. 



In Fig. 3 I. represents a group of second 

 harmonics of various amplitudes and phases. 

 Any one of these might, of course, be com- 

 bined with the fundamental curve. In II. 

 the third harmonic is drawn alone, then com- 

 pounded with the fundamental; and in III. 

 and IV. similar curves for the fifth harmonic 



W. G. Cady. 



Scott Laboeatoet of Physics, 

 Wesleyan Univeesity. 



QUOTATIONS. 

 THE TEACHING PROFESSION. 



No greater evil could befall the educational 

 system of this counti-y than that of becoming 

 definitely crystallized into the type of organ- 

 ization exemplified by mercantile and cor- 

 porate enterprise. The evil is imminent, and 

 sometimes seems inevitable, so pervasive are 



the influences that tend to make educational 

 administration a matter of business, and so 

 persuasive is the argument from analogy when 

 addressed to ears predisposed by every familiar 

 association to accept its validity. Material 

 and commercial modes of thinking prevail so 

 largely in our national consciousness, an-d im- 

 pose themselves so masterfully upon our nar- 

 rowed imagination, that most people are ready 

 to accept without hesitation their extension 

 into the domain of our intellectual concerns, 

 particularly into that of the great concern of 

 education. Why, it is naively asked, why 

 should not the methods that we apply with 

 such pronounced success to the management 

 of a bank or a railway prove equally efiScient 

 in the management of a system of schools or 

 a university? Why should there not result 

 from their employment here the same sort of 

 efficiency that results from their employment 

 elsewhere? Why should not the educational 

 fruits of autocratic control, centralized ad- 

 ministration and the hierarchical gradation 

 of responsibility and authority be similar to 

 their fruits in the field of commercial activity ? 

 These questions are not difficult to answer, 

 but it is difficult to frame the answer in terms 

 that the successful man of affairs will find 

 intelligible. The subject is one that he ap- 

 proaches with a prejudiced mind, although his 

 bias is not so much due to perversity as to 

 sheer inability to realize the fundamental 

 nature of the question at issue. He is so 

 fixed in the commercial way of looking at 

 organized enterprise that he can not so shift 

 his bearings as to occupy, even temporarily, 

 the professional point of view. Now the idea 

 of professionalism lies at the very core of 

 educational endeavor, and whoever engages in 

 educational work fails of his purpose in just 

 so far as he fails to assert the inherent pre- 

 rogatives of his calling. He becomes a hire- 

 ling, in fact if not in name, when he suffers, 

 unprotesting, the deprivation of all initiative, 

 and contentedly plays the part of a cog in a 

 mechanism whose motions are controlled from 

 without. Yet the tendency in our country 

 is to-day strongly set toward the recognition 

 of this devitalized system of educational ac- 

 tivity as suitable and praiseworthy, and the 



