730 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIII. No. 854 



dent Van Hise that college presidents should 

 be entrusted with the power of appointment 

 and removal because they invariably use it in 

 the interests of efBeiency and justice, it is 

 possible to believe so for other reasons. In 

 the first place, if the president makes the ap- 

 pointments responsibility can be brought 

 home to an individual; whereas, if the faculty 

 made them, it would be distributed among 

 a body of men, and individuals could evade it. 

 Then the president ought to be better able to 

 perceive the needs of the whole institution 

 than the faculty; for the views of faculty 

 members are sure to be narrowed by an in- 

 evitable tendency to give undue importance 

 to their own and allied subjects. A still more 

 important reason for the president's making 

 the appointments, however, is the fact that he 

 is not like members of the faculty influenced 

 by a fear of competition. It is natural that 

 professors on whom the task of recommend- 

 ing appointments falls should prefer docile 

 mediocrity to men of ability sufficient to de- 

 velop into rivals for the positions they hold. 

 Intellectual men are proverbially jealous, and 

 the keenness with which they scent rivalry is 

 remarkable ; so it is not to be wondered at that 

 promising men find the gateway to teaching 

 closely guarded against their entrance, and 

 that those who succeed in slipping by soon 

 find their path so obstructed that many of 

 them retire in disgust. This is something for 

 the president to correct. His penetration 

 should be sufficient to detect this practise; his 

 courage, decision and dignity sufficient to 

 suppress it and to replace it by a spirit of 

 earnest emulation between teachers of the 

 same as well as different subjects. Unfortu- 

 nately college presidents do not seem now to 

 be selected because they possess inspiring 

 moral and intellectual qualities, but, one is 

 often tempted to believe, because they can 

 clothe popular fallacies and meaningless com- 

 monplaces in language of seeming profundity, 

 or because they are skilful in a sort of emas- 

 culated machiavellism. When the public 

 learns to take its responsibilities to education 

 more seriously, we shall have college govern- 

 ing boards and college presidents who dis- 



charge their duties more intelligently, and 

 this in turn will ensure faculties of higher 

 effectiveness; so that the whole machinery 

 will acquire a nicety of adjustment that will 

 enable its various parts to work together 

 without the friction that takes place between 

 them now. 



It would seem, then, that President Van 

 Hise is right in saying that the present ma- 

 chinery of education needs no external modifi- 

 cations, but it is impossible to accept his 

 implication that educational results are satis- 

 factory. As a matter of fact, present results 

 are very poor, not only in the matter of ap- 

 pointments and removals, but in a general 

 way as well. The only way to improve them, 

 however, is to render the real guiding power 

 of education — public opinion — more intelli- 

 gent. 



Sidney Gunn 



Massachusetts Institute 

 OP Technology, 

 March 3, 1911 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



A NEW TRANSLATION OF ARISTOTLE's " HISTORY 

 OF ANIMALS " ^ 



" The History of Animals," by Aristotle, 

 much as it is referred to by naturalists as well 

 as others, has never appeared until lately in a 

 fitting English dress. At last a translation 

 has been published from the pen of a scholar 

 who combines, to an eminent degree, the prin- 

 cipal qualifications necessary for such an 

 undertaking — an adequate knowledge of the 

 Greek language and acquaintance with the 

 Grecian fauna. D'Arcy Wentworth Thomp- 

 son, professor of natural history in University 

 College, Dundee, is the man to whom we are 

 indebted for the new work. It " has been 

 compiled at various times and at long inter- 

 vals during very many years " and was so long 

 delayed that we had almost despaired of see- 



^ The works of Aristotle translated into English 

 under the editorship of J. A. Smith, M.A. [etc.], 

 and W. D. Boss, M.A. [etc.], Vol. IV., Historia 

 Animalium by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, 

 Oxford, at the Clarendon Press, 1910. 8vo, pp. 

 XV + iSe'-eSS' + 151.— $3.40. 



