716 



SCIENCE. 



rX. 8. Vol.. will. No. -tt>(!. 



ability to think well and do Aviselj^ Their 

 earnings and perhaps their usefulness to 

 their emplo.yers, may be not so great for a 

 short interval as those of the men who are 

 taught more of empiricism and artisanship 

 and less of rational science during their 

 college courses, but the advantage soon 

 flows in a strong current towards the sci- 

 entifically trained. 



The men who are responsible for this 

 third type of electrical engineering courses 

 may reasonably cry to be delivered from 

 judgment upon the success of their work, 

 which is based on the average earnings of 

 the graduates during their first year out 

 of college. The medical schools and law 

 schools are judged by the attainments of 

 their graduates reached in a decade or 

 even in a quarter of a century, and this 

 also should be the basis upon which to 

 judge the worlc of the electrical engineer- 

 ing courses of this third and highest type. 



Do not believe for a moment, however, 

 that I would teach all theory and no prac- 

 tise. The earlier parts of this paper prove 

 the contrarj'. In truth, right theory and 

 the best practise are one, and practise 

 which is out of accord with right theory is 

 mere rule of thumb and can be bettered. 

 The best college course in electrical engi- 

 neering is the one which so teaches the 

 fundamentals that right theory may be 

 fully grasped, and which constantly illus- 

 trates the bearing of theory by examples 

 derived from good practise. The adminis- 

 tration of such a course requires thought- 

 ful, clear-headed men, who are acquainted 

 with the principles and right practise of 

 pedagogy as well as trained in the prin- 

 ciples and experienced in the practise of 

 engineering. 



My discussion of the subject makes it 

 clear that there is a wide variance between 

 the methods of the colleges which support 

 electrical engineering coui'ses. Complete 



unit\- is not only impossible but would un- 

 doubtedly be undesirable, since scope foi' 

 individuality is as essential here as in the 

 control of industrial enterprises; but the 

 cause of sound college training for elec- 

 trical engineers would be advanced by any 

 action which clearly places the true aims 

 of the college courses in electrical engineer- 

 ing before the authorities of all of our col- 

 leges which support such courses. And I 

 may add that many of the greatest weak- 

 nesses of electrical engineering courses are 

 due to the fact that the executive heads of 

 the colleges or universities do not always 

 understand what engineering truly stands 

 for, and they equally often have no fair 

 conception of the soundness of training 

 that is required for its practise. 



DuGALD C. Jackson. 

 UxiVERsrry of Wiscoxsix. 



BRITISH ASSOGIATIOJi^ FOR THE ADVANCE- 



MEXT OF SCIENCE— SECTIOX OF 



AXTHROPOLOGY. 



The seventy-third annual meeting of the 

 British Association was held in Southport, 

 Lancashire, September 9-16. As will be 

 seen by the dates, the meeting lasts a whole 

 week, from Wednesday to Wednesday. 

 Professor Johnson Symington, of Queen's 

 College, Belfast, presided over the anthro- 

 pological section. His address, published 

 in a recent issue of this journal, was a 

 plea for a more thorough and systematic 

 collecting of human brains for purposes of 

 detailed and comparative study; also a 

 more thorough study of the cranial cavity 

 in relation to the outer surface of the skull, 

 on the one hand, and, on the other, its 

 relation to the brain itself. It is known 

 that definite areas of the cerebral cortex 

 are connected Avith the action of certain 

 groups of muscles ; and that the nervous 

 impulses, starting from the organs of sight, 

 hearing, smell and touch, reach defined 

 cortical fields. But all these do not cover 



