334 



SCIENCE 



[N. 8. Vol. XXXVIII. No. 975 



attend these meetings. In order to arrange 

 for these speakers, he must of necessity confer 

 with the heads of the several departments and 

 have them delegate one or more of their as- 

 sistants to do such work at specified times. 

 It wiU be expected that the heads of depart- 

 ments will delegate such speakers unless it is 

 absolutely impossible to do so on account of 

 lack of help. If any given department is con- 

 stantly unable to furnish teachers for exten- 

 sion work, either a lack of ability or a lack of 

 desire upon the part of the department is indi- 

 cated and the department should either have 

 more assistance to strengthen it or it should 

 be otherwise helped by executive action. Thus 

 the superintendent of extension shall have a 

 very strong moral influence delegated to him 

 by the dean and director in persuading depart- 

 ments to do every reasonable amount of exten- 

 sion work, but he should not have any absolute 

 authority to go into a department and disor- 

 ganize it. 



By this same token, the superintendent of 

 extension should be an arm of the executive 

 office and not a department head. 



There should be no department of college 

 extension in the same sense as there are other 

 departments based upon natural division of 

 labor. The function of extension is to extend 

 the work of collective departments and not in 

 itself to be a department. If it is allowed to 

 be a department, it can only do so by either 

 duplicating a part of the essential work of 

 other departments or by usurping the same, 

 and again it becomes a private and public 

 nuisance. 



There are colleges of agriculture in the 

 United States, which if named would at once 

 be recognized as in many respects the strong- 

 est in all, the country in which the superin- 

 tendent of college extension is virtually an 

 assistant to the dean and not head of a coor- 

 dinate department. Two of these greatest 

 agricultural colleges which the writer has in 

 mind have offices of college extension that are 

 seldom talked about, but the colleges them- 

 selves are talked about and the work they do 

 in their respective states is also talked about. 

 The writer can think of other colleges where 



there are separate departments of college ex- 

 tension. The college-extension departments 

 are very much talked about. The colleges they 

 are supposed to represent are not so much 

 talked about. 



As time goes on the personnel of depart- 

 ments and their assistants and executives and 

 all understand that they are servants of de- 

 mocracy. When that time, which is rapidly 

 approaching, is completely here, no college or 

 experiment station will rest content without 

 putting its useful and usable information as 

 rapidly as possible into the hands and hearts 

 and heads of the people where it belongs. 

 This latter work may be accomplished in the 

 doing by an office of agricultural extension, 

 but said office will not function like an ex- 

 traneous department pasted on over other de- 

 partments like a porous plaster. 



A. N. Hume 



South Dakota State College, 

 Brookings, S. Dak. 



A NEW attachment FOR THE HARVARD 

 KYMOGRAPHION 



Certain methods have been used for study- 

 ing the effect of fatigue on the muscle curve. 

 Among these there is the old method of 

 recording a make or break contraction; this 

 method consists of removing the writing point 

 from the drum and stimulating the muscle a 

 certain number of times, say nine. The drum 

 is revolved a few millimeters with the hand, 

 then the writing point is replaced against the 

 drum. This is repeated regularly at every 

 tenth contraction until the muscle ceases to 

 respond. This gives a series of straight lines 

 on the drum formed by every tenth contrac- 

 tion of the muscle. The height of these lines 

 gradually decreases as fatigue comes on until 

 the zero point is reached; but it does not tell 

 of the important changes occurring in the 

 latent period and the period of relaxation. 



This has been overcome on those particular 

 types of European and American kymo- 

 graphions which have the supporting frame 

 for the drum external. On these types of 

 machines an insulated copper wire may be led 



