January 6, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



31 



T)ut further inland the Chamcecyparis-Sphag- 

 ■num peat was still forming, at an elevation 

 perhaps three feet above high-tide level, and 

 soundings shovs^ed that the deposit was uni- 

 form from top to bottom. Withirt a very few 

 feet of the seaward edge of the marsh there 

 .are still two or three small stumps which 

 project several inches above the Spariina 

 patens turf which has grown up around them. 

 These constitute a strong argument that sub- 

 sidence is still going on. If there had been 

 no subsidence for 3,000 years, as Professor 

 Johnson thinks likely,* these little stumps 

 would surely have rotted away by this time! 



The Coast and Geodetic Survey has fur- 

 nished data regarding the tides in Quam- 

 quisset Harbor. Spring high water is 2.4 feet 

 above mean sea level. Mean high water is 2.0 

 feet above mean sea level. The highest tides 

 observed were 3.0 feet above mean sea level. 

 These tides at Quamquisset are so low that 

 Professor Johnson's hypothesis of a fluctu- 

 ating high-tide level can not possibly be in- 

 voked in explanation of the submarine peat 

 beds. 



After examining one locality where salt- 

 marsh plants have invaded a fresh-water vege- 

 tation under conditions certainly far from 

 typical, and where all of the fresh-water re- 

 mains are found at extreme high tide. Pro- 

 fessor Johnson has ventured to characterize 

 all the evidence which has been offered for 

 recent subsidence as inconclusive. As a mat- 

 ter of fact his hypothesis has no bearing what- 

 ever on most of the evidence which has been 

 offered. 



H. H. Baetlett 



Bethesda, Md. 



faculty or president? 



The discussion of the merits of control by 

 the faculty or by the president in any educa- 

 tional institution, which has been presented 

 from time to time in Science, was continued 

 by some references in Professor Cattell's ar- 

 ticle in the issue for November 11, and by a 

 short paragraph in the abstract of President 

 Schurman's annual report in the following 



'Science, N. S., XXXII., 1910, p. 709. 



number. There is still another angle from 

 which the matter may be viewed. 



The student body in a college, or university, 

 is a comparatively constant quantity. The 

 great majority of students spend the four 

 years from about eighteen to twenty-two in the 

 institution of their choice. The average age 

 of the student body, taken as a whole, would, 

 therefore, be slightly under twenty, owing to 

 the somewhat greater numbers in the f reshmaa 

 and sophomore classes. Whatever fluctuations 

 there might be from year to year, in conse- 

 quence of an exceptionally large or surpris- 

 ingly small entering class, or because an un- 

 usually large number from the upper classes 

 turned to professional work before graduation, 

 they would be within very narrow limits, so 

 narrow, indeed, that the entire body of stu- 

 dents might be regarded as an individual not 

 quite twenty or just over twenty years of age. 

 The same would be true of a university with 

 the various professional schools and the liberal 

 arts or undergraduate department, although 

 the average would probably be three or four 

 years higher. The student body itself, none 

 the less, would be comparatively stable. 



If we turn our attention to the faculty, we 

 find another fairly constant quantity. Since 

 the retiring age is somewhere about sixty-five 

 or seventy — it might be a little over or a little 

 under — and since the youngest instructor^ are 

 just out of college, the average age of a fac- 

 ulty would be somewhere between forty and 

 forty-five, as a rough estimate. If there 

 should be an unusually large number of young 

 instructors, or an extra large number of eld- 

 erly professors, then the average age would be 

 lowered or raised correspondingly, but in 

 either case it would not be far from the age 

 mentioned above, and from year to year the 

 fluctuations would be within rather narrow 

 limits, so that there would be a fairly stable 

 body to exercise control of whatever sort. In 

 those institutions in which the youngest in- 

 structors have practically no voice in the ad- 

 ministration, the average age would be raised, 

 but the faculty would retain its characteristic 

 of a constant quantity. 



When the problem is presented in this way, 



