retirement. As part of his salary an annuity is paid for by the university at the rate perhaps of $300 a year, and his salary is that much larger than the sum he receives. The income of the Carnegie Foundation should be administered in some such way. One of the most important results of the scheme will be the pressure brought on the state universities to establish pension systems. The College of the City of New York has already provided liberal pensions, and the example will doubtless be followed elsewhere.
If eleemosynary features can be eliminated from the Carnegie Foundation, the matter is reduced to a phase of the world-wide conflict between individualism and socialism. Should the college teacher be taken care of by society, or should he take care of himself? Much can certainly be urged in favor of life tenure of office, fixed salaries and pensions for university professors. They are thereby set free to do their work, exempt to a considerable extent from anxiety over their material support, from commercial standards, from intrigues and possible injustice, from hasty work, from fear of the consequences of free speech. There are many who will develop the highest scholarship and produce the best research work under these conditions. But there are some who go to sleep comfortably in such a utopia and others who find it irksome. It tends towards dependence on the part of the professor and despotism on the part of the administration, to small salaries, to petty rivalries for honors in place of the serious competition of real life, to a kind of panmixia, where all are chosen who are called and there is but little selection of the best. Probably most people who take thought look forward to socialism as a necessary outcome of the increased complexity of social conditions, but there will be division of opinion as to whether steps in this direction such as Mr. Carnegie's foundation should be welcomed or regretted.
THE CONFERENCE OF ANATOMISTS AT THE WISTAR INSTITUTE.
The conference of anatomists held on April 11 and 12 at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy, Philadelphia, portends an important step in the advancement of the science of anatomy in America. The men called to this conference differ widely in their interests, in their methods of work and interpretation, yet all are interested in the one great problem of anatomy in its broad sense. They were selected for this reason, as representing the various phases of activity in morphology. They were invited by the Wistar Institute of Anatomy at the suggestion of its director, Dr. M. J. Greenman, to meet in Philadelphia and discuss the relations which the institute might, with mutual advantage, bear to other forces in the promotion of anatomical research.
The following anatomists took part in the conference:
Dr. Edwin G. Conklin, professor of zoology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa.
Dr. Henry H. Donaldson, professor of neurology, University of Chicago, Chicago, Ills.
Mr. Simon H. Gage, professor of embryology, Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y.
Dr. G. Carl Huber, professor of embryology and histology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.
Dr. George S. Huntington, professor of anatomy, Columbia University, New York City.
Dr. Franklin P. Mall, professor of anatomy, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.
Dr. J. Playfair McMurrich, professor of anatomy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.
Dr. Charles S. Minot, professor of embryology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass.
Dr. George S. Piersol, professor of anatomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa.The belief of the institute authorities that there is much of common value to be gained by a cooperation of the institute with the anatomical forces of America is shared by many others, and it is the common opinion that the Wistar Institute, on account of its independent organization, will be of great value in supplementing the work
