428 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXV. No. 637 



may accomplish much, if he can avoid a pre- 

 cipitate. We hope that when he finds his dis- 

 coveries are being used, ' the true scientific 

 spirit' will yet allow him to continue his ex- 

 periments and his philosophy. 



Q. I. AND J. P. Simpson 

 Bear Ckeek Farm 



relations of salary to title in american 

 universities 



Having just read the interesting discussion 

 in Science of February 15, under the above 

 title, I venture to suggest that there is yet 

 more to be said. 



University men possess different kinds of 

 value, e. g. : (1) Some are principally of value 

 to the student body in attendance on their 

 classes. (2) Some are valuable more particu- 

 larly to picked individuals in the university 

 and out of it. Such may be said in a certain 

 sense to have as many students as those whose 

 classes are thronged, but they are in many 

 places. (3) Some will be exceedingly valuable 

 to posterity, but their work is comparatively 

 useless to the present generation, because it 

 has not learned to value or use it, or because 

 it will only reach its greatest significance and 

 utility after it has been carried on for two or 

 three generations. 



From the standpoint of the state, all these 

 classes of men are of value and should be sup- 

 ported. If there is any difference in their 

 value, no doubt the pioneers, those of the third 

 class, are the most valuable; but it requires 

 very little reflection to see that these, from a 

 psychological necessity, will be the least valued 

 by presidents, trustees and the community at 

 large. To properly estimate the value and 

 importance of an ' infant industry ' in the in- 

 tellectual field requires imagination of such 

 quality that those doing the work do not al- 

 ways possess it, and outsiders almost never. 



It is quite possible to argue that the concern 

 of the university is only with the students in 

 attendance, so that all values must be deter- 

 mined by the standard applicable to the first 

 of the above classes. This notion, however, 

 is surely passing away, and with it the possi- 

 bility of correctly estimating the money value 



of university men. The larger outlook also 

 serves to convince us that the actual worth of 

 certain professors, having in view their total 

 influence upon contemporaries and posterity, 

 exceeds any sum that can be thought of as 

 payment. On the other hand, the needs of 

 the great and the small are not so very diverse. 



There is one kind of payment which should 

 no doubt difller greatly according to the char- 

 acter of the man and his work. This is for 

 the support of the work itself. One man may 

 need expensive apparatus, or journeys to dis- 

 tant lands, while others may have no use for 

 these things. This is not necessarily de- 

 pendent in any way on the eminence of the 

 man himself, but rather on the character of 

 his labors; only, of course, he should be able 

 enough to use well the means provided. 



T. D. A. Cockerell 



Uni^'eksity of Colorado, 

 Boulder, Colo., 

 February 18, 1907 



SPECIAL ARTICLES 



RIVER CAPTURE IN THE TALLULAH DISTRICT, 



GEORGIA 



The head-waters of the Savannah Eiver 

 have been frequently referred to as an example 

 of drainage transferred from the gulf system 

 to the Atlantic through the process of stream 

 capture. Dr. 0. Willard Hayes, in his paper 

 on ' The Southern Appalachians,' published 

 as a National Geographic Monograph, cited 

 this case as an instance of recent capture and 

 ascribed the falls on the Tallulah Eiver (one 

 of the head-waters of the Savannah) to the 

 fact that the newly acquired drainage had 

 not been in possession of the captor sufficiently 

 long for the falls to be worn down to grade. 

 In a paper entitled ' Drainage Modifications ' 

 (Jour. Geol., 1896) Mr. M. E. Campbell notes 

 this capture under the heading ' remote 

 changes shown in the streams of the Atlantic 

 slope.' Mr. Chas. T. Simpson (Science, 

 1900), in discussing 'The Evidence of the 

 Unionidae regarding the Former Courses of 

 the Tennessee and other Southern Elvers,' 

 reports the finding of mollusks similar to the 

 Tennessee and Coosa Eiver forms in the 



