136 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



successively disappear. This period is often 

 limited only by the beginning of growth the 

 next spring. Most leaves fall in consequence 

 of the formation of a distinct joint, usually 

 at the base of the leaf stalk. In very many 

 of our trees the weakened twigs also are an- 

 nually cast off by a similar process. This is 

 especially observalile in the willows, which 

 are often spoken of as having brittle branches, 

 although their wood is tough except where 

 the joints referred to occur. The cotton- 

 wood and white elm show the same peculiar- 

 ity well, the joints being formed at the be- 

 ginning of the year's growth, so that the 

 growth of from one to seven or eight years 

 is often pruned off by a gale in autumn ; 

 and it is observable on oaks and many other 

 trees. There seem to be two reasons for 

 this provision : The fallen twigs of species 

 that grow in wet places have been observed 

 to strike root, thus serving as natural cut- 

 tings for the propagation of the species ; on 

 the other hand, it is clearly an advantage to 

 the tree to lose weak branches that would 

 make at best but a poor growth, while shed- 

 ding and otherwise interfering with the de- 

 velopment of the stronger shoots. 



Standards for Professional Schools. 



President Eliot, of Harvard University, in a 

 recent address before the Xew England As- 

 sociation of College and Preparatory Schools, 

 pointed out as one of the evils of the present 

 system of management the fact that the re- 

 quirements for admission to the scientific, 

 technological, and agricultural schools of the 

 country are, as they always have been, much 

 lower than are exacted by the classical col- 

 leges. It is another evil that the schools of 

 law and medicine have been, as a rule, " wide 

 open to anybody walking into them from the 

 street, without passing any admission exami- 

 nation whatever, or submitting to any inquiry 

 into previous academic training. . . . This is 

 the condition we have to confront; Three 

 grades of attainment are required for the 

 three different classes of institutions for the 

 higher education the colleges have the best 

 grade, the scientific schools the next best, 

 and the schools of law and medicine the 

 lowest." The feasibility of finding a remedy 

 for these conditions is held to be largely de- 

 pendent on the colleges, scientific schools, 

 and secondary schools co-operating. " Im- 



agine the nine principal subjects, represented 

 in these nine conferences " (which are held 

 within the association), " actually put on an 

 equality with each other in seriousness, dig- 

 nity, and disciplinary value ; and imagine a 

 great variety of four-years' courses, all made 

 up from the schedule of the combined con- 

 ference recommendations, and carried out in 

 hundreds of high schools and academies. 

 Should it make any difference to a college 

 whether a given candidate for admission to 

 the college had studied this set of four or 

 five subjects recommended by the confer- 

 ences for a four-years' course, or- that set of 

 four or five subjects, both sets being taught 

 in the manner recommended by the con- 

 ferences ? Should it make any difference 

 whether the candidate for admission pre- 

 sented to state the case in an extreme way 

 Latin, Greek, English, French, and Ger- 

 man, or mathematics, physics, natural his- 

 tory, and history ? Clearly, if the recom- 

 mendations of the conferences had been 

 effectively carried out, the education re- 

 ceived by the youth who had taken the first 

 group should be just as good as that of the 

 youth who had taken the second group. . . . 

 I need not say that we are not in sight of 

 such a condition of things now. Most of 

 you are perfectly familiar with the kind of 

 substitute which is now offered to a boy in a 

 high school for the classical course, which 

 consists of Latin, Greek, mathematics, with 

 a little history, and possibly the elements of 

 a modern language. The substitute now of- 

 fered ordinarily consists of English, mathe- 

 matics, history, geography, botany, zoology, 

 astronomy, geology, mineralogy, political 

 economy, ethics, and perhaps the elements 

 of one or two modern languages an extraor- 

 dinary number of scraps of miscellaneous 

 subjects, instead of a limited number of sub- 

 stantial subjects, each treated with some 

 thoroughness. Our adverse opinion concern- 

 ing the possibility of making subjects equal 

 for training value is really founded on our 

 own convictions of the great superiority of 

 the old-fashioned, solid classical programme 

 in the academy and the high school, to the 

 scrappy, ineffective programmes which are 

 substituted for the classical programme in 

 the inferior courses of our high schools and 

 academies. . . . We shall never attain to an 

 equality of subjects until the English or 



