PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. xiii 



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 Crowing 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. 



(b) 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, arid 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. 



