JUNE 28, 1912] 
and perhaps even upward, may be more 
extended. 
As part of the educational system of the 
state, the state university must admit all 
presenting a high school diploma. It can 
not sift, and exclude the ignorant, for there 
is none ignorant, as the certificates show! 
It can not insist that the boy who would be 
an engineer present himself with a usable 
knowledge of algebra and geometry. It is 
obliged to accept as a working basis the 
popular delusion that all subjects furnish 
equally good preparation for college as well 
as for everything else, that all study is 
equally informing and developing, that all 
students are equally fit. But in so doing, 
in its seeming liberality im keeping its 
front door apparently so wide open, it 
places obstacles in the way of all who would 
enter from any other than the conventional 
school. The seriousness of these obstacles 
is seldom apprehended by others than those 
who encounter them. The boy whose fam- 
ily has traveled, taking him with them—the 
son of an engineer, or a missionary of 
commerce or religion, for example—having 
attended an accredited school for too short 
a time to receive a certificate, or being 
taught in a private school or in still more 
private lessons quite unknown to a regis- 
trar’s office, finds himself unable to enter 
the wide open front door of the usual col- 
lege, state or endowed. Although very 
likely more mature and better trained, of 
wider as well as more definite or first-hand 
knowledge, of broader experience and more 
independent thought, he is refused admis- 
sion unless, by passing examinations to 
which only he and his kind are subjected, 
he convinces the authorities that he knows 
almost as much as a boy from the Bean 
Blossom High School in Posey County. 
The state universities are more or less 
compelled to take the products of the public 
schools unsifted; they can not especially 
SCIENCE 
975 
cultivate and encourage the exceptional 
young person; they must do mainly a 
wholesale business; and they are increas- 
ingly burdened with great numbers of con- 
ventionally trained mediocrities. They are 
necessarily organized to receive, care for, 
graduate and find positions for these. 
Thus they annually produce more teachers 
who will produce more students of the 
same medioere sort. What this weight of 
numbers is may be indicated by the attend- 
ance, in round numbers, on the usual ele- 
mentary course in botany at the followmg 
universities : 
PNVVELSCONSINN N11 (Mr My atic Maite euaaiaats Catt 300 
Minnesota sua aii Ses areata ee a 500) 
INelraskaryi ipo e soie aves versal te talon acedsqatens 350: 
Stamford her ie eagle ead 50 
Botany I. at Harvard, a fairly large 
course (130), is not the equivalent of Bot- 
any I. at the universities above mentioned, 
and the corresponding course has between 
40 and 50 in it. Granting the stimulation 
of lecturing to large numbers, what is the 
effect of attempting laboratory work for so 
many? Providing, in the winter, plant 
material for such numbers, organizing and 
directing the staff of assistants, conferring 
with students in this and in the more ad- 
vanced courses, the head of the department 
and hws colleagues find their time, their 
strength, and finally their desire, for their 
own researches exhausted. There is no 
time for reflection; every one is so busy 
doing that there is no opportunity for 
thinking; every one is working at high 
pressure, but is it worth while? Researches 
come from these laboratories, but they are 
not original. They are the products of the 
changing fashions rather than the fruit of 
individual effort. A glance at the pro- 
grams of the national scientific societies 
proves that isotonic coefficients and chro- 
mosomes have been displaced by mutation, 
Mendelism, and plant-breeding. American 
