the Baptists' Orphans Home of Louisville, thereby erecting a monument more noble and enduring than marble or brass. "Prof. Smith said, 'Life has been very sweet to me. I t comforts me. How I pity those to whom memory brings no pleasure.' He had 'set his house in order,' saying he knew it would be but a short time before death would claim him; but he was ready to go at any hour or day. He leaves the memory of a pure life and a heart full of 'exercized humanity.' " Prof. Edgar F. Smith in his book on "Chemistry in America" places the names of J. Lawrence Smith, Wolcott Gibbs, and Frederick A. Genth in the forefront of American chemistry; in his own words, to him "it has always seemed as if there could not be too much credit given Genth, Gibbs and J. Lawrence Smith for the admirable contributions they made to the development of chemical science in the United States."
Democratic Control of Education Called Evil by Tennessee Teacher.
Dr. Herbert
C. Sanborn of Vanderbilt University, speaking before the American Association for the Advancement of Science recently, severely criticized many of the tendencies of edueation under its present control. "Education in America has ~ a s s e dfrom sectarian control t o that of industrial democracy with results the disastrous nature of which is now only too evident," he declared. "The competition of colleges in education has resulted in advertising methods on the part of institutions and teachers that have been a t times as unscrupulous as those of big business a t its worst. By means of the elective system there has been a waterine of educational stock and a traffic in academic degrees, like that which once prevailed in the field of medicine, in order to meet the demands of the masses for signs of distinction that have come t o lose whatever meaning they may once have possessed. In addition t o this the function of the educator hss come t o be restricted by democracy in many ways that are injurious and even positively vicious." The remedy for the ills he assailed lies, in Dr. Sanborn's opinion, in the capture of the control of education by educators, and he advocated that steps be taken by the men and women who have devoted their lives to instruction and the guidance of research toward becoming masters of their own working conditions.-Science Service Dmg Production Increased by Ultra-Violet Light. Ultra-violet radiation, now widely used for the promotion of human health, has been shown to be able t o promote plant growth as well, and t o increase the production of valuable plant ingredients. Experiments in this field were reported before the Botanical Society of America by Adelia McCrea, of Parke, Davis and Company, Detroit. Miss McCrea planted two crops of foxglove plants, from which the widely used drug digitalis is made. Part of each crop was started under ordinary glass, which shuts out ultra-violet light, and the rest under special glass which transmits ultraviolet. The young plants under the ultra-violet responded a t once, forming new leaves faster than the others did. After they were transferred out of doors and grown t o maturity under similar conditions, both mops were put through the process for extracting the drug. The irradiated plants yielded an extract of notably higher potency than the untreated controls; in the second crop the increase amounted t o as much as 36 per cent.-Science Sem'ce
