July 29, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



L55 



ance of colleges and universities upoij the 

 Carnegie Foundation, for the payment of pro- 

 fessors' retiring allowances, should act as a 

 serious limitation upon their independence in 

 matters of educational policy. Harvard Uni- 

 versity, for example, may be drawing from the 

 foundation fifty thousand dollars a year, at 

 some future date, and its entire budget will 

 naturally be prepared in reliance upon this 

 important contribution; beyond that, every 

 member of the faculty will be adjusting his 

 living expenses with a view to drawing a pen- 

 sion from the foundation after he reaches the 

 retiring age. Is it not inevitable that, with- 

 out necessarily taking an abject attitude 

 toward the foundation, the authorities of 

 Harvard University should be consciously or 

 unconsciously influenced in the directions 

 favored by this large benefactor? Would they 

 not naturally hesitate to incur the displeasure 

 of so powerful a friend? Would such a degree 

 of dependence be agreeable for the graduates 

 and other friends of the university to contem- 

 plate? Such questions as these have sug- 

 gested themselves to many minds since- the es- 

 tablishment of the Carnegie Foundation; and 

 they have lately given place in some qiiarters 

 to emphatic expressions of discontent. 



The Bulletin does not share these appre- 

 hensions. The Carnegie Foundation is con- 

 trolled by a board of trustees who delegate a 

 share of their authority to a small executive 

 committee. This committee, in turn, has 

 been guided largely by the very able president 

 of the foundation, its chief administrative and 

 executive officer. During the first years of the 

 foundation the initiative of the president has 

 naturally been a large factor in determining 

 the scope of its activities. But admitting all 

 this, the power remains vested in the board of 

 trustees, a body consisting mainly of college 

 and university presidents who represent a 

 considerable variety mainly of institutions. 

 For some years President Eliot was chairman 

 of the board. ... 



It is reasonable to expect that in setting its 

 standards of admission to the pension privilege 

 the foundation will make from time to time 

 certain moderate minimum requirements of 



which no healthy institution once admitted 

 can ever complain. As for the investigations 

 and reports and the measuring out of praise 

 or blame, this branch of the foundation's 

 activities will have whatever weight may be 

 derived from the intelligence, impartiality and 

 public spirit of its officers. Taking into ac- 

 count the manner in which the board of trus- 

 tees is constituted it would have been no 

 unprecedented result if the reports of the 

 foundation had been of a purely academic 

 nature, calculated to preserve that self-satisfied 

 attitude into which educational institutions 

 often fall. That, on the contrary, the founda- 

 tion has examined carefully and criticised 

 fearlessly, is, in spite of all the mistakes of 

 fact or errors of judgment its reports may 

 contain, a cause for general congratulation. 

 The good effects upon higher education 

 throughout the country are already visible. — 

 The Harvard Bulletin. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 Preliminary General Catalogue of 6,188 Stars 

 for the Epoch 1900. Prepared by Lewis 

 Boss. Published by the Carnegie Institu- 

 tion of Washington, 1910. 

 This handsome quarto volume is surely no 

 aspirant for popular favor. Ninety per cent, 

 of its bulk is given up to closely printed 

 numerical tables of forbidding aspect to the 

 average reader even of scientific works, and 

 the forty pages of accompanying text will 

 prove a meager diet to the amateur solicitous 

 over the inhabitants of Mars or the terrestrial 

 influence of comets. But, to that limited class 

 of professional astronomers interested in prob- 

 lems of stellar motion, the work must appear 

 as one of singular interest and importance, 

 marking a stage of advancement rendered pos- 

 sible only by a happy union of the ample 

 material resources of the Carnegie Institution 

 with the large experience and assiduity of the 

 veteran author. 



The major portion of the work, a scant 250 

 pages, sets forth by means of half a million 

 flgures and other mathematical symbols the 

 positions and apparent motions for rather 



