Makch 24, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



427 



question." Without detracting from tlie ulti- 

 mate desirability of some such scheme as that 

 proposed by Professor Riesman, may it not be 

 more easy and advisable for us at once to 

 adopt the principle of planning for the effec- 

 tive use of the summer vacation by all stu- 

 dents in our technical schools, and of making 

 three such periods a prerequisite for gradua- 

 tion ? Our students will not be deprived of any 

 more life, liberty and the pursuit of happi- 

 ness than they will have to relinquish when 

 they do graduate if we give them two vacation 

 periods of approximately two weeks each, one 

 immediately following the end of the school 

 year, the other immediately preceding the 

 next. 



The chief objection to this scheme will come 

 from those who want the summer for play — a 

 class for whom we are not planning our col- 

 lege work — and those teachers who will claim 

 that it is impossible to place the men. 

 " Why ? " " Oh, because industry doesn't 

 want them." " Well then, train men who will 

 be in demand; our best equipped institutioils 

 meet with little difficulty," 



The scheme outlined has the merit of being 

 the ideal toward which many of our institu- 

 tions are even now striving, but complete suc- 

 cess demands the wholeheartedness of com- 

 bined effort and determination. 



Lancaster D. Burling 



Geological Survey of Canada 



german geologists and the war 

 To THE Editor of Science: Some idea of 

 the terrible way in which the war is depleting 

 the ranks of German men of science can be 

 gained from a study of the lists of German and 

 Austrian geographers and geologists enrolled 

 in military organizations which have been pub- 

 lished in the " Geologische Rundschau." 

 These lists, which can be found in the num- 

 bers published on December 8, 1914, February 

 26, 1914 and December 14, 1915, combined with 

 a short list in the ISTovember, 1915, number of 

 Der Geolege, contain a total of 237 names. Of 

 this tetal, 54 are reported killed and two miss- 

 ing and probably dead, a mortality of almost 

 twenty-five per cent. 



The number of the Geologische Rundschau 



just received (published on December 14, 

 1915), contains portraits and obituaries of 

 three young German geologists who are well 

 known to many of the profession in this coun- 

 try through their participation in the excur- 

 sions and meetings of the Twelfth Interna- 

 tional Geological Congress held in Canada in 

 the summer of 1913. They are Curt Alfons 

 Haniel, privatdozent in geology and paleontol- 

 ogy in the University of Bonn, killed in action 

 near Laon on December 29, 1914; Siegfried 

 Martius, assistant in the Mineralogical-Petro- 

 graphical Institute at Bonn, fatally wounded 

 at Ypres on October 23, 1914; and Adolf A. 

 Riedel, a student just completing the work for 

 his doctorate at Munich, a man of unusually 

 attractive personality and of great intellectual 

 promise, who was killed in northern France 

 on ITovember 21, 1914. Another participant 

 in the International Congress, Dr. Wilhebn 

 Paulcke, of Karlsruhe, has been reported 

 wounded and the recipient of the Iron Cross. 



A further indication of the serious character 

 of the German losses is given by the state- 

 ment of the last number of Der Geologe 

 (ISTovember, 1915) that 75 of the personnel of 

 the Royal Prussian Department of Mines had 

 lost their lives up to April 1, 1915. This pe- 

 riodical also reports that Dr. Quitzow, editor 

 of Der Geologe and Der Geologen-Kalender 

 had not been heard from for a year, after being 

 in action on the eastern front. 



Walter L. Barrows 



Trinity College, 

 March 14, 1916 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



The Feehly Inhibited: Nomadism, or the 

 Wandering Impulse, with Special Reference 

 to Heredity: Inheritance of Temperament. 

 By Charles B. Davenport. 

 The author argues that " all cases of nomad- 

 ism can be ascribed to one fundamental cause 

 — ^that those who show the trait belong to 

 the nomadic race " made up of those pos- 

 sessed of the nomadic impulse. This impulse 

 '■ depends upon the absence of a simple sex- 

 linked gene that ' determines ' domesticity." 

 The data for the argument are family-histor- 



