January 16, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



93 



consin. Nearly 4 per cent, of the academic 

 work at Yale is in Greek, while at Wisconsin 

 it is less than half of one per cent. The 

 general popularity of this subject in the eigh- 

 teen institutions compared is seen to be 2 per 

 cent. The eighteen institutions selected by 

 Dean Ferry are Amherst, Bowdoin, Bryn 

 Mawr, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Har- 

 vard, Johns Hopkins, Mount Holyoke, Ober- 

 lin, Princeton, Smith, Stanford, Wellesley, 

 Wesleyan, Williams, Wisconsin and Yale. 



Tn making out the present table a number 

 of subjects of small popularity have been ex- 

 cluded, such as Sanskrit, Slavic languages, 

 archeology, anthropology, art, music, Semitics, 

 Egyptology, veterinary science, history of sci- 

 ence, etc. Their total value is 3 per cent., so 

 that the sum of the recorded work for column 

 P is 9Y instead of 100; but, for each subject 

 included, the value of P was made out on the 

 basis of 100. The total for group I., as re- 

 corded in Dean Ferry's table, is seen to be 

 24.50 instead of 24; for group II., 46.78 in- 

 stead of 47 ; for group III., 28.72 instead of 26. 

 It will be noted that everywhere the tendency 

 seems to be for students to crowd their work 

 into group II., the amount of work taken in 

 this group being nearly as great as in both of 

 the other groups put together. Apart from 

 the interesting humanistic character of the 

 subjects included, they are wholly free from 

 the intricacies of grammar and especially of 

 mathematics. 



English naturally leads in importance, with 

 16 per cent.; and mathematics, in spite of its 

 rigors, presents 8 per cent. These high rates 

 are partly accounted for by the fact that in 

 most, if not all, American colleges these two 

 subjects are prescribed, at least for freshmen; 

 so that here the assumption of freedom of 

 election is in large measure to be discarded. 



For the 16 subjects represented in the 

 table, with total value 97, the average per- 

 centage obtained by dividing 97 by 16 is a 

 little over 6. This number may hence be 

 taken as a rough standard for comparing the 

 student demand for different subjects; or, for 

 the average extent to which a subject may be 

 studied, whether prescribed or elected. This 



average of 6 per cent, is not reached by as- 

 tronomy, Greek, geology, physics, Bible, 

 Latin, political science or biology. It is 

 reached by philosophy and chemistry. It is 

 exceeded by economics, Germanic languages, 

 mathematics, Romance languages, history and 

 English. 



The table shows that the study of astron- 

 omy, so nearly universal in the senior classes 

 of American colleges two generations ago, has 

 now nearly vanished, being only half as much 

 pursued as that of Greek; and this in turn 

 was a subject of the first importance among 

 our grandfathers. The popularity of astron- 

 omy is expressed by 1.87 at Mount Holyoke, 

 a woman's college, where the teaching of this 

 subject seems to be conducted with much 

 pedagogic skill. It is least at Wisconsin, 

 where the percentage number is only 0.11, 

 despite the fact that the professor in charge, a 

 man of international reputation, has done 

 much original work. 



Geology, a department of science which, as 

 taught in our colleges, can not be compared 

 with astronomy in mathematical difficulty, 

 seems to maintain in these a degree of popu- 

 larity about the same as that of Greek, 2 per 

 cent., or one third of that of chemistry and of 

 philosophy. 



Physics and Bible study are apparently of 

 equal popularity, about half of that of mathe- 

 matics, and two thirds of that of chemistry. 

 The demand for Bible study is by far greatest 

 in institutions for women. It is expressed by 

 8.01 at Wellesley; 6.62 at Mount Holyoke; 

 5.88 at Oberlin. It is only 0.21 at Yale, where 

 Y. M. C. A. influence is most widely diffused 

 and voluntary attendance on morning chapel 

 exercises throughout the annual session is 

 maintained by popular demand. It is only 0.06 

 at Princeton, the presbyterian stronghold, 

 which is fortified additionally by the power 

 of the adjacent theological seminary. 



The average percentages just discussed 

 should be interpreted only as variables which 

 indicate the modern academic trend. The 

 range of variation for the particular list of 

 colleges compared is worth noting in the first 

 and last columns of the table. In every indi- 



