September 5, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



319 



problem of fall for the ease in which the 

 orbit is wholly external to the earth. The 

 more complex case of a body falling down 

 a bore-hole, or mine shaft, or the case in 

 which the orbit lies partly without and 

 partly within the earth's crust, is not con- 

 sidered. In view of the difficulties in the 

 way of experimental applications it has not 

 seemed to me worth while to extend the 

 paper so as to include the additions and the 

 modifications essential to these more com- 

 plex cases. 



The limitation referred to arises from 

 insufficient knowledge as to the distribution 

 of the earth's mass in respect to the plane 

 of the equator. For nearly a century it 

 has been generally assumed that this dis- 

 tribution is such as to make the two prin- 

 cipal equatorial moments of inertia of the 

 earth equal. In the absence of adequate 

 information on this point I have followed 

 the current assumption, the effect of which 

 in the ease of a falling body is to make its 

 orbit independent of longitude. But I do 

 not believe this assumption is justified, and 

 I would take this occasion to urge upon 

 astronomers and geodesists the great need 

 for the settlement of this and other ques- 

 tions in geophysics of a systematic gravi- 

 metric survey of the earth. Any inequality 

 in these moments of inertia produces also 

 a necessary prolongation of the Eulerian 

 cycle which figures so prominently in the 

 theory of latitude variations, and it ap- 

 pears to me highly probable that this pro- 

 longation is due quite as much to that in- 

 equality as to an elastic yielding of the 

 mass of the earth. E. S. Woodward 



FUNCTIONS AND LIMITATIONS OF TEE 

 GOVERNING BOAMB^ 



The development of higher education in 

 America during the past quarter of a cen- 



^ Speech delivered (July 9) before the National 

 Educational Association, at Salt Lake City, by 

 Edwin Boone Craighead, LL.D., D.C.L., president 

 of the University of Montana. 



tury has no parallel in history. In no 

 other country have private citizens lav- 

 ished upon universities so many millions 

 for equipment and endowment. In no 

 other country have universities received 

 from state or national governments so 

 many millions for maintenance. The an- 

 nual income of Columbia University is 

 greater than the combined incomes of Ox- 

 ford with her score of colleges — Oxford 

 with a thousand years behind her, the great 

 national university of England. The Uni- 

 versity of Illinois, which twenty-five years 

 ago was scarcely the equal in income or 

 equipment of a first class agricultural high 

 school of the present day, has an annual 

 income far greater than that of the great 

 national university of Germany, at Berlin, 

 an income greater than that of the Sor- 

 bonne — in short, an income far greater 

 than is claimed for any of the ancient and 

 famous universities of the Old World. 

 More money — one may venture to assert, 

 the figures are not at hand — has been spent 

 upon buildings and equipment for the Uni- 

 versity of Chicago during the past fifteen 

 years than has been spent upon the build- 

 ings and equipment for the University of 

 Bologne throughout its thousand years of 

 history. 



But after all, vast endowments and 

 stately halls of granite or marble do not 

 make a university. A real university is 

 the creation of great men. Only in an in- 

 spiring environment which lures to it real 

 scholars and thinkers may a great univer- 

 sity be created or maintained. The finer 

 spirits of the republic of letters will shun 

 and hate the stifling atmosphere of a uni- 

 versity, no matter how vast its endowment 

 or how splendid its buildings, that does not 

 give its professors a feeling of security and 

 of freedom. 



Does the American university offer to its 

 teachers such an environment? Some 

 doubtless do, the vast majority unquestion- 



