316 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL. No. 1026 



the absence of tlie humanistic sciences from 

 the freshman and sophomore years, along with 

 the requirement of continuing courses, has 

 operated to keep students out of these subjects. 

 This defect has now been remedied by intro- 

 ducing philosophy into the sophomore year, 

 and a course on " social and economic insti- 

 tutions " into the freshman year. 



The curriculum now adopted is to be re- 

 garded as but a station on the road to a course 

 almost wholly prescribed, and organized about 

 one great central purpose, that, namely, of 

 initiating the student into an understanding 

 of human experience and the moral and intel- 

 lectual problems of the times. President 

 Meiklejohn offers a sketch of the ideal college 

 course, as he sees it coming — merely a sketch, 

 confessedly, which will need correction as the 

 result of abundant discussion. The plan cer- 

 tainly is radical. Of the four-year course, 

 66 per cent, is prescribed, and haK of the 

 remainder must be devoted to the senior 

 " major," which is itself to be a continuation 

 of some junior study. The prescribed work is 

 divided as foUows: 15 per cent, (of the whole 

 curriculum) to mathematics and natural sci- 

 ence, 15 per cent, to literature and 36 per cent, 

 to the humanistic sciences. In favor of this 

 plan, there is this at least to be said, that it 

 follows the trend of the times. While discus- 

 sion has been raging over the relative values 

 of natural science and the classics, the student 

 body, where free, has attached itself to modern 

 literature and especially to the humanistic sci- 

 ences. At Harvard, according to Dean Ferry's 

 figures, 3 per cent, of student registration goes 

 to the ancient languages, 25 per cent, to mathe- 

 matics and science, 28 per cent, to modern 

 literatures and 44 per cent, to " other sub- 

 jects " ; and Professor Hervey has found al- 

 most exactly the same proportions among 

 elective subjects in Columbia College. The 

 emphasis on the " other subjects," in Presi- 

 dent Meiklejohn's plan, may thus be taken as 

 meeting a demand voiced by the students. 

 The question may indeed be raised whether 

 it is worth while, by faculty legislation, to re- 

 quire all students to do what the majority do 

 of their own choice. Another query is sug- 



gested by President Meiklejohn's objections to 

 the elective system. 



Under the elective scheme, no subject is essential. 

 Why study physics hard when other students are 

 getting an education without it? . . . The argu- 

 ment is bad but none the less convincing. 



Under a required curriculum, the difficulty 

 may be to keep the student in ignorance of 

 the fact that the requirements are different at 

 other colleges. It may also be difficult to ex- 

 plain to him why he should specialize on some 

 one subject to the extent of devoting most of 

 his senior year to it, when his classmate is 

 acquiring a liberal education, presumably just 

 as good, without specialization in this par- 

 ticular direction. If the student is genuinely 

 in love with his subject, well and good — or if 

 he sees a vocational value in it; but voca- 

 tional values, we are assured, are to be left 

 entirely aside from the curriculum of a 

 liberal college. E. S. Woodworth 



Columbia University 



SPECIAL ARTICLES 



ON SOME NON-SPECIFIC FACTORS FOR THE EN- 

 TRANCE OF THE SPERMATOZOON INTO 

 THE EGG 



1. While formerly fertilization was consid- 

 ered a single process which could be ade- 

 quately described by the entrance of the 

 spermatozoon into the egg or the fusion of the 

 egg nucleus with the sperm nucleus, we know 

 now, through the methods of experimental 

 biology, that fertilization consists of at least 

 three different groups of phenomena. These 

 are, first, the transmission of paternal char- 

 acters through the spermatozoon. This proc- 

 ess is obviously a function of the chromosomes. 

 Second, the causation of development of the 

 egg, which is apparently independent of the 

 chromosomes since the experiments on arti- 

 ficial parthenogenesis have shown that it can 

 be induced by certain non specific agencies. 

 The causation of development is a complicated 

 process since it requires at least two agencies, 

 one inducing an alteration of the surface of 

 the egg (which sets the chemical processes 

 underlying development in action), and the 



