352 



NOTES AND COMMENT 



University of Minnesota 

 Elvin Charles Stakman: A Study in Cereal Rusts: Physiological Races. 



University of Nebraska 

 Raymond John Pool : A Study of the Vegetation of the Sandhills of Nebraska. 



Tulane University 



Eleanor Elmire Reames: On Fresh-water Chlorophyceae and Cyanaphy- 

 ceae of the Southern States. 



The research subjects taken up by candidates may generally be taken 

 to fall in one of three groups. First the person or persons directing 

 such research may have made their laboratories prominent in the ad- 

 vance of knowledge in certain phases of the subject and beginning in- 

 vestigators are encouraged to take up some problem in connection with 

 those already under attention. Secondly an advanced worker may go 

 to a laboratory because of its facilities for carrying out research upon a 

 subject already fixed upon by him and in which he has already made 

 more or less progress. Lastly the head of a department finding a num- 

 ber of candidates on his hands at the beginning of the collegiate year 

 who have no special bent, aptitude, ability or interest in any special 

 subject is compelled to cast about for something which may be handed 

 over to the student with a fair certainty that at the end of two or three 

 years he will have piled up sufficient material to made a composition 

 upon which a board may grant a degree (the formality of which is the 

 chief desire of the student) without discredit to the department or the 

 institution. The relative value or weight of the theses accomplished 

 under these several conditions are so obvious as to need no discussion 

 here. The reader with a general knowledge of the character of the work 

 carried on by the leaders in botany and allied science at the various 

 universities included in the list will find a gratifyingly small number of 

 subjects of the third class, although not so many of the second class 

 are obvious as might be desirable. 



The character of the doctorates is indicative of a movement in re- 

 search and soundless of procedure which may well account for the fact 

 that botanical science has held its own with candidates for a degree 

 while the total in the other natural sciences has fallen from 235 to 193 

 in number (See discussion of this subject in "The Plant World" for 

 December, 1912.).— D. T. M. 



