84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



only when the fruit begins to ripen and the calyx to assume its charac- 

 teristic shape, that they can be readily identified by safe specific marks. 

 Throughout, in short, all the clover traits remain almost the same, ex- 

 cept iu the matter of the fruiting pods. This is the one weak point of 

 the genus, and this is therefore the place where natural selection has 

 been able to produce fresh differentiating effects. Such a brief con- 

 sideration of one small group of plants may serve to bring the general 

 principle with which we started into the definite relief of concrete ap- 

 plication ; and it may also serve to show the vast variety of detail 

 with which Nature effects the self -same object, even within the narrow 

 limits of a single family or genus. — Gentleman's Magazine. 



THE PROBLEM OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 



By C. a. EGGERT, 

 pkofessok of modeen languages in the university of iowa. 



FEW subjects have of late engaged the attention of the most 

 thoughtful people of this country in a higher degree than the 

 question prominently brought before the public by the recent attempt 

 of the Harvard faculty to open the doors of that famous institution to 

 applicants who might come prepared in all the branches hitherto re- 

 quired for admission, except Greek, for which study they would have 

 had to offer an equivalent in scientific and mathematical work. It has 

 been generally admitted that this work would have been more severe 

 than that required for the Greek, but the opponents of the measure 

 have, nevertheless, assured the public that to omit the Greek would be 

 detrimental to American scholarship, and equivalent to building the 

 educational structure on an unstable foundation. Some of these oppo- 

 nents have gone so far as to assert that the customary college degree, 

 Bachelor of Arts, stands as definitely for Latin and Greek as the degree 

 M. D. stands for the study of medicine. Now, inasmuch as the col- 

 lege is the school in which, according to the best authorities, our young 

 people are expected to gain a higher degree of education tlian the lower 

 schools, academies, and high -schools can give them, the question, 

 What constitutes the basis of higher education ? is answered by the 

 opponents of the Harvard measure in favor of the traditional Latin 

 and Greek course, and that only. But the very fact that men of such 

 high standing in the domain of education as President Eliot and his 

 associates hold a different view should be sufiicient to entitle this view 

 to respectful attention. It is, of course, easier to fall back on well- 

 known authorities, and the usage of the past, than to examine care- 

 fully into a subject that evidently has at least two very characteristic 

 sides ; but if the subject is one that so greatly affects the rising gen- 



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