SCIENCE 



Friday, November 14, 1913 



CONTENTS 



National Academies and the Fr ogress of Re- 

 search: Db. Geoege E. Hale 681 



The Baltimore Meeting of the National Acad- 

 emy of Sciences 698 



Scientific Notes and News 700 



University and Educational News 701 



Discussion and Correspondence: — 

 Absorption of the Sun's Energy 'by Lalces: 

 Professoe E. a. Biege 702 



Quotations : — 



Special Training for Health Officers; Ten- 

 sions at Broion University 704 



Scientific BooTcs: — 



Allen's Commercial Organic Analysis: Peo- 

 FESSOE Otto Folin. Talbot's House Sani- 

 tation: Peofessoe C.-E. a. Winslow .... 705 



Cooperative Investigation of the Mississippian 

 Formations : P. W. De Wolf 706 



Special Articles: — 



On the Acoustic Efficiency of a Sounding 

 Board : PEorEssoE Peank P. Whitman . . . 707 



The American Chemical Society: De. Chaeles 

 L. Parsons 708 



MSS. intendea for publication and books, etc.. intended for 

 re-view should be sent to Professor J. McKeen Cattell, Garrison- 

 On-Hudson, N. Y. 



NATIONAL ACADEMIES AND THE PBOG- 

 EESS OF BESEABCH 



I. THE WORK OF EUROPEAN ACADEMIES 



The Academy of Plato, who bequeathed 

 to his followers the walled garden and ap- 

 pointments in the place named after the 

 hero Hekademus, was at once a school of 

 instruction and a society for the develop- 

 ment of new knowledge. Here he discussed 

 his philosophy with associates and students, 

 while it was still in the making, thus bring- 

 ing them under the stimulating influence of 

 fresh thought, developing and expanding 

 from day to day. Writing of the Old Acad- 

 emy, which included the schools of Plato 

 and his immediate successors, Cicero re- 

 marks : 



Their writings and method contain all liberal 

 learning, all history, all polite discourse; and be- 

 sides they embrace such a variety of arts, that no 

 one can undertake any noble career without their 

 aid. ... In a word the academy is, as it were, 

 the workshop of every artist.i 



The Old Academy was thus the prede- 

 cessor of our modern academies of science 

 and of our universities as well. Its world- 

 wide influence, while of course primarily 

 due to the brilliant thinkers of the day, may 

 certainly be ascribed in part to the fact that 

 its instruction was given in an atmosphere 

 charged with the stimulus of original 

 thought and constantly broadening ideas. 

 The great success of the German univer- 

 sities, and the outflow from them of the 

 spirit of research into every phase of Ger- 

 man life and thought, is undoubtedly due 

 in the largest measure to the application of 

 this principle. Fortunately for the intel- 



1 Cicero, "De Pin.," Vol. 3, as quoted in the 

 Encyclopsedia Britannica, 11th edition. Vol. 1, p. 

 106. 



