392 



SCIENCE, 



|_v"ol. VII., No. 169 



sufficient warrant in using at least his munificent 

 gift in supplementing the special instruction with 

 general instruction, and rounding it out into the pro- 

 portions of a university." 



Now, proceeding on this theory, under the head 

 of ' Organization,' President White gives a list of the 

 departments which he thinks ought to be established. 

 Conspicuous in this list, on p. 5 of the report, is the 

 department of medicine and surgery, and the de- 

 partment of law. Then on p. 13 of the same report 

 I find, in the list of professors, the appointment of 

 whom he recommends, — a 'professor of municipal 

 law.' and a 'professor of constitutional law.' For 

 the purposes of this presentation it is, of course, 

 needless to speak of the other departments contem- 

 plated in the plan of organization. 



Now, I have read all the speeches, and I believe 

 all the reports, of President White ; and I believe 

 there is not a passage in one of them, from first to 

 last, that contradicts, either in letter or in spirit, 

 the doctrine here set forth. I will go further, and 

 say that through them all is to be seen the same 

 spirit as that manifested in the ' plan of organiza- 

 tion.' This is my answer to ' H. N.'s ' grandiloquent 

 inquiry, "Where are the traditions and the law and 

 charter of Cornell ? " 



It has never been claimed, and is not now claimed, 

 that the technical departments are of secondary im- 

 portance ; but, as I asserted in my address at New 

 York, I hold that these departments have now so far 

 been provided for, that the time has arrived when 

 attention should be called to the needs of other de- 

 partments. I do not mean by this that the uni- 

 versity is to cease its appropriations for the technical 

 schools. So far as I know, it has no such intention. 

 This, indeed, may fairly be inferred from the fact 

 that at the present moment the trustees are taking 

 steps for the immediate erection of an ample build- 

 ing for the veterinary department, and to add four 

 rooms to the agricultural museum. We shall do 

 still more in the same direction, but it is not the pur- 

 pose of the trustees to limit the activities of the uni- 

 versity to a single one of those interests, comtem- 

 plated at the time of its organization, and, indeed, 

 throughout its history. 



No revolution is taking place at Cornell. On the 

 contrary, its trustees are trying to develop it strictly 

 along the line of its fundamental law, its charter, 

 and its traditions. Surely it is late in the day for 

 this university to be turned from such a purpose by 

 any hint that its charter is in danger. 



C. K. Adams. 



Cornell university, April 26. 



Popular astronomy. 



I think the author of the article ' Popular as- 

 tronomy ' {Science, April 23), in his chivalric defence 

 of the rights of Professor Newcomb and myself, has 

 really done a serious injustice to Dr. Ball in virtually 

 charging him with deliberate plagiarism and "a 

 continued effort to conceal the theft, which is petty 

 in the extreme," by slight alterations of the borrowed 

 material. No one personally acquainted with Dr. 

 Ball could possibly suspect him of intentional wrong 

 in the case : I believe him to be totally incapable of 

 anv thing dishonorable. 



Judging from my own experience, which, though 

 not extensive, has been exactly to the point, a very 

 simple explanation will account for the apparent 



appropriation of other people's language, which is 

 the foundation of the charge. In preparing for 

 lectures to college classes and to popular audiences. 

 I collect all the material I can find, and, in speaking, 

 use it liberally. Of course, I indicate in a general 

 way my obligations and sources of information ; but 

 it is quite impossible, while speaking, to point out 

 every place where I am using language suggested 

 by my reading. In fact, not having the matter 

 written out, it is not possible (for me at least) to quote 

 accurately the words of my authority ; and, 

 after a few repetitions of the lecture, the quasi 

 quotations become modified by changes that make 

 them conform to my usual forms of expression, and 

 render them, so far as consciousness is concerned, 

 quite as much my own as any other part of the 

 lecture. At the same time they would be quite 

 recognizable by one familiar with the original. 



Now, in making a book upon the subject upon 

 which one has been lecturing, he will inevitably 

 write pretty nearly what he would say if standing 

 before an audience, and in this wa3 T will quote, un- 

 consciously and more or less inaccurately, passages of 

 considerable length from the works he used in his 

 original lecture-preparation. The only way I know 

 of to do justice in the matter, is first to put into the 

 preface of the book a full general acknowledg- 

 ment of obligations, and then to go over the manu- 

 script, lecture-notes in hand, hunting up and mark- 

 ing all these unconscious quotations, and restoring 

 them to their original form. 



Dr. Ball seems to have failed in doing this thor- 

 oughly, and hence, no doubt, the oversights which 

 have led to the charge of guiltily disguised plagia- 

 rism. I am sure he meant no wrong, and I am 

 greatly complimented and flattered by his approval 

 and use of my work. C. A. Young. 



Princeton, N.J., April 24. 



As Sir Eobert Ball is on the other side of the 

 Atlantic, I deem it proper to say that he has satis- 

 factorily explained the circumstances alluded to in 

 the last number of Science. Although this explana- 

 tion only refers to the copying of passages from my 

 ' Popular astronomy,' I have no doubt that his re- 

 marks would apply equally to the close parallelism of 

 passages in his book, and in Professor Young's trea- 

 tise on the sun. His statement is as follows : — 



"Your sketch of the discovery of the companion 

 of Sirius I transcribed some years ago, before I had 

 any thoughts of writing my book. The passage 

 about Tycho I had, however, more recently taken. 

 When I came to prepare the materials for the press, 

 I lost sight, it seems, of the source of these passages, 

 and treated them as if the language had been my 

 own. 



" Not until yesterday, when I read the review in 

 the New York Nation, did I know that my book con- 

 tained any passage virtually yours, except that 

 duly acknowledged on p. 231 " 



I suppose this is an inadvertence of which any of 

 us might be guilty who are in the habit of copying 

 passages for use in popular lectures, or as memoranda 

 for any other purpose. S. Newcomb. 



Arsenic in wall paper. 



A note in Science (April 23, p. 371) says, " The in- 

 vestigation before the Massachusetts legislative com- 

 mittee on the subject of arsenic in wall-paper indi- 



