STEALING MARKS I note on page 131G of the September number of the JOURNAL OF CHEMIEDUCATION a clipping from the IIigh-School Teacher quoting the Kadelphian Revim as authority for the statement that Washington & Lee has abandoned the "honor system." I want to assure you that the statement is absolutely false and that there has never been a thought of abandoning it. Considering that our students come from prep schools throughout the country, i t is not remarkable that there are occasional cases to be dealt with by the Student Executive Committee, but most of the freshmen take to it like ducks to water. I think its working is about 99.44% pure! The mere intimation that it has been abandoned here is so serious that I hope you can see your way clear to correct the statement in an early issne of the JOURNAL. Yours very cordially, JAS. LEWISHOWE CAL
DEm. OF CHEMISTRY AND LEE UNIVERSITY WASHINGTON LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY
Chemistry Aids in Biological Studies. The chemist has been of much assistance to the biologist in the past, and can be of even greater assistance in the future if the two sciences are brought into closer cooperation, Prof. George Barger of Cambridge University told his colleagues a t the recent meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science a t Cape Tom, South Africa. In the past, the resources of chemistry have been applied largely first to questions of the construction of organic substances and then, as more delicate methods of analysis have been evolved, t o an attempt t o study the mechanism of the living organism a t work In the first field success has been so great that vast industries are now founded on the applications of organic chemistry; in the second, the battle is still going forward. Prof. Barger suggested that if botanists would become chemists they might find some problems in supposedly non-chemical parts of botany easier of solution. Up t o the present, no one has attempted t o determine the species of a difficult flower, but som? specialists in the lowly lichens have found chemical methods handy. Bacteriologists also regularly find the chemistry of their microscopic organisms useful in determining identity. But methods lor determining what a higher plant is by potting a bit of it into a test tube have still to he worked out.-.%enre Service
