NOVEMBEB 26, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



749 



agriculture your regulated and cultivated 

 waters, both inland and marine, may prove 

 to be more productive even than the great 

 wheat lands of Manitoba. 



Inland waters may be put to many uses : 

 sometimes they are utilized as sewage out- 

 lets for great cities, sometimes they are 

 converted into commercial highways, or 

 they may become restricted because of the 

 reclamation of fertile bottom-lands. All 

 these may be good and necessary develop- 

 ments, or any one of them may be obviously 

 best iinder the circumstances; but, in pro- 

 moting any such .schemes, due regard 

 should always be paid to the importance 

 and promise of natural waters as a per- 

 petual source of cheap and healthful food 

 for the people of the country. 



W. A. Herdman 



REFORM IN BYDNET UNIVERSITY 

 CoNSroERABLE agitation has been going on 

 for several years in New South Wales for a 

 reform in the constitution and policy of the 

 University of Sydney, and this unrest has at 

 last taken the definite shape of a bill before 

 the legislature of the state. The University 

 of Sydney, founded in the early fifties, can 

 boast of as antiquated a system of government 

 as if it had been in operation for five hundred 

 years. It is governed by a senate, a body 

 corporate consisting of sixteen members who 

 are elected and have a life tenure of office. It 

 pursues a conservative and exclusive policy, 

 making no allowances for the difference be- 

 tween British and Australian conditions. 

 Where there are many colleges, as in America, 

 there is little to be appreheoded from the 

 oligarchical government of a few; but where 

 there is but one, as in New South Wales, with 

 a practical monopoly of higher education, the 

 absence of any democratic or social adaptation 

 is- severely felt. Sydney University does not 

 employ Australian professors and does not 

 teach Australian subjects beyond necessity. 

 The minor lecturers are Australians who have 

 won the highest honors at home and abroad, 



but they are not allowed to aspire to the title 

 and office of a professor. A British committee 

 that had been requested to make nominations 

 for a vacant chair recently nominated an 

 Australian, whose name was rejected by the 

 senate in favor of the man named by the 

 committee as its second choice. The second 

 nominee declined in order to show his disap- 

 proval of the proceeding, and a third choice 

 became necessary. Again, Australian litera- 

 ture and history oiler an attractive harvest, 

 but they are not taught by the University of 

 Sydney; Australian economics fares no better, 

 and the local Australian spirit is not under- 

 stood. 



The amending bill is extremely moderate in 

 its provisions for reform, and by no means 

 satisfies the radical or national party, which 

 in Australia is for practical purposes the labor 

 party. It provides that the government's an- 

 nual appropriation towards the revenues of 

 Sydney University shall be increased from 

 £10,000 to £20,000; that chairs of agriculture 

 and veterinary science shall be established, the 

 latter chair having been already filled by ar- 

 rangement between the government and the 

 university; that the fees of students shall be 

 reduced; that the tenure of office of members 

 of the senate shall be limited to eight years, 

 four to retire at the first election and four 

 more every second year until the whole con- 

 stitution of the body is changed; and finally 

 that the electors shall vote by letter, and that 

 every graduate of the institution over the age 

 of twenty-one years shall be entitled to vote. 



It is probable that the present amending 

 bill is but a step in the direction of state 

 absorption of the university. Whatever may 

 be best elsewhere, this is what is needed in 

 Australia. At the same time, it is not to be 

 forgotten that Sydney University has always 

 maintained a high standard of scholarship and 

 efficiency within its aims; that the average 

 salary of its professors is over a thousand 

 pounds a year, representing a higher rate of 

 payment than that of the best of American 

 universities; that in 1907 it had 1,165 matricu- 

 lated students; that its staff consisted in that 

 year of 15 professors and 68 lecturers, of whom 



