SOME BEGINNINGS IN SCIENCE. 763 



tenance of the body. This necessity comes more speedily upon 

 workingmen than on men of leisure, earlier upon children than 

 upon mature persons. An infant at the breast could be entirely 

 deprived of food for only a short time without serious harm, 

 while a sound man, with other conditions favorable, can bear a 

 privation of several days. 



A time of several hours passes between the taking of food and 

 its complete utilization in the body. During this time, especially 

 after hearty meals, the mental vigor is diminished in a marked 

 degree. Later it gradually rises, and the susceptibility to fatigue 

 diminishes. 



When now we look back at the conditions we have discovered 

 that control mental vigor, we conclude that our children are ex- 

 posed by the extent and arrangement of study -work in the schools 

 to great perils for their mental and physical development. The 

 questions that press upon us on this matter are of such impor- 

 tance that we all have reason to give them our full, undivided 

 attention. We are only at the beginning of a real hygiene of 

 mental labor, but the results we have obtained in this research, 

 fully indicating the nature and operation of the dangers, point 

 with equal clearness to the character of the preventive and reme- 

 dial measures which should be sought and applied. 



SOME BEGINNINGS IN SCIENCE. 



By Pkof. COLLIER COBB. 



LONG before the sciences were pressing their claim to equal 

 rank with ancient learning at Harvard, before Jefferson had 

 seen the establishment of the University of Virginia working 

 under the system of elective studies which he had planned, or 

 before the magnificently endowed institutions of technology were 

 giving what Herbert Spencer regards as knowledge of most 

 worth, we find the beginnings of these things in the newly estab- 

 lished university of a State that could boast of only two schools 

 which taught more than the three R's and the very rudiments of 

 the English language. 



This modern plan of instruction offered by the University of 

 North Carolina more than one hundred years ago was the work 

 of a committee of six. Two of this committee were graduates of 

 Princeton, one a graduate and ex-professor of the University of 

 Pennsylvania, two had been students of Harvard, but their edu- 

 cation at Cambridge had been interrupted by the Revolutionary 

 War, and the sixth was an eminent lawyer. The names of these 

 men were Samuel McCorkle, David Stone, Alfred Moore, Samuel 



