July 10, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



57 



committee in miking the recommendations are as 

 follows : 



1. We have great respect for those who have 

 left the institute without completing a course and 

 have nevertheless been successful in their pro- 

 fession; but we do not believe that, in general, 

 such men feel the need of a degree or wish the in- 

 stitute to lower its present high standing among 

 engineering schools by granting unearned degrees. 



Eeplies to inquiries sent to all of our graduates, 

 who are engaged in educational work and who are 

 in a position to feel the responsibilities and ap- 

 preciate the importance of maintaining collegiate 

 standards, show that there is no general demand 

 on the part of graduates that such degrees should 

 be granted and that many graduates are strongly 

 opposed to the plan, 



2. A Bachelor's degree as granted by an engi- 

 neering school is essentially a certificate that the 

 recipient has completed a course of study in prep- 

 aration for the practise of engineering. Such a 

 certificate can not honestly and honorably be 

 granted to one who has not completed the work 

 specified as necessary. 



3. It does not seem possible to devise any 

 method of granting the Bachelor's degree to one 

 who has not completed a specified course of study, 

 without lowering the value of the degree for the 

 regular student and for those who have fully 

 earned the degree. 



4. If the definite requirement of a completed 

 course of study were once abandoned there would be 

 no definite halting point in the process of reducing 

 the arbitrary and fluctuating requirements that 

 might from time to time be substituted. The re- 

 sult would probably be an undignified struggle to 

 modify the requirements so as to meet exceptional 

 cases and in the process we should be likely to 

 cause as much disappointment as satisfaction 

 among our non-graduates. 



5. We have received information from 60 of 

 the prominent universities, colleges and technical 

 schools as regards their practise in the matter. 

 Of these, 44 do not confer the Bachelor degree on 

 any one who has failed to complete a prescribed 

 course; 14 grant degrees with more or less regu- 

 larity on the basis of subsequent merit, one has 

 granted two such degrees and one has granted de- 

 grees in two instances for a large amount of sub- 

 sequent research. 



A study of the replies leads us to believe 

 that in general the institutions which grant 

 unearned Bachelor's degrees find the system a 



source of difficulty and dissatisfaction and 

 some of the replies are decidedly apologetic 

 and defensive. 



We believe the existence of such a system 

 is a discredit to higher education in general 

 and that the movement is away from it. One 

 leading imiversity has already abandoned it 

 after long trial, and another is endeavoring to 

 get rid of it. We think that it would be a 

 serious mistake for the institute at the pres- 

 ent time to adopt what we regard as a dis- 

 credited and discreditable practise. 



W. L. Jennings 



MULTIPLE FACTORS VS. " GOLDEN MEAN " IN 

 SIZE INHERITANCE 



Groth's preliminary note on the " golden 

 mean" in the inheritance of sizes in Science 

 of April 17, 1914, pp. 581-584, deserves the 

 attention of geneticists. Its publication is of 

 such recent date that I need only call attention 

 to one or two points that seem to me of par- 

 ticular moment. 



In brief, Groth's hypothesis is that the mode 

 of inheritance in F^ not only of surfaces and 

 volumes, but also of linear dimensions is to be 

 expressed by ^ab rather than by a + 6/2 

 where a and h are parent sizes. The hypoth- 

 esis is based upon measurements of a large 

 number of tomato fruits of parental and F^ 

 plants. It wiU certainly be worth determining 

 whether Groth's expression fits size characters 

 in other plants. A hurried examination of 

 data, both published and unpublished, derived 

 from my own studies of seed size in beans and 

 maize, indicates that F^ sizes are nearer the 

 average than the geometric mean of the parent 

 sizes. But my object now is not to lay stress 

 upon any possible agreement or disagreement 

 between my results and those of Groth. It is 

 rather with the relation of Groth's hypothesis 

 to the idea of multiple factors that I am here 

 concerned. 



That Groth's hypothesis is essentially Men- 

 delian is shown by the fact that his size 

 factors are assumed to segregate in equal 

 numbers in the gametes of F^ plants. That 

 he regards his hypothesis as entirely unlike 



