PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. Xlli 
responsible. If they would abandon the fetich of “ culture-worship ” 
and study the conditions of modern society they would add greatly to 
the inestimable benefits which they now confer upon the community. 
Until the colleges take this step in advance, science will not be well 
taught in the schools, the colleges will not have students capable of 
doing the best science work ; for if they neglect science until they reach 
their college course and give “so many years of exclusive attention to 
other subjects, their powers of observation and of imagination of physical 
phenomena are well-nigh atrophied ; and the loving interest in nature, 
innate in every normal child, instead of being systematically developed 
is well-nigh extinguished.” 
The college can determine not only the subjects to which the 
academies shall in reality devote their attention ; but, by the nature of 
their examinations, they can determine the character of the teaching. 
If the matriculation examination calls for experimental work it will be 
supplied. If the colleges neglect to exercise their power in this respect 
wisely they will lose it. Rival institutions unduly emphasizing the 
neglected work will divide with them their present constituencies. This 
is the experience of Germany, England, and the United States. 
The growing wealth of the country and the keenness of competition 
in the learned professions are indications that the time has come when 
the colleges can safely require science for the entrance examination. 
Harvard has made it optional and the London University has made 
it imperative. 
(6) The present Grade “A” work in the Academies should be 
discontinued and its place should be taken by a more thorough practical 
Science course for Grade “B”. The “ A” work cannot be properly 
‘done in the academies. It is essentially college work and should be 
kept where it belongs. Merely to state that Gage’s Principles of Physics, 
Storer and Lindsay’s Elementary Chemistry, Bessey’s Essentials of 
Botany, Dawson’s Hand-Book of Zoology, Colton’s Practical Zoology, 
Sir William Dawson’s Canadian Geology, Young’s Elements of Astron- 
omy, James’s Psychology, and the Ontario Manual of Hygiene, together 
with twelve other subjects are all to be mastered in our poorly equipped 
academies in one or even in two years is to condemn absolutely the 
present arrangement with regard to Grade “A”. It is but a survival 
from a lower stage of our educational development, and the sooner it is 
allowed to become atrophied by disuse the better. 
