December 20, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



861 



well as indoor experimentation. All of 

 these interests should be associated and 

 fostered under one university and they 

 should be as close to a metropolis as pos- 

 sible. The voice of the pessimist or of the 

 short-sighted individual should not be 

 heeded for a moment. McGill is really 

 cramped for space. Toronto with all the 

 land she had originally, has not sufficient 

 room at the present time to accommodate 

 her new hospital. Columbia has had to 

 move and will have to move again. Johns 

 Hopkins University has not been able to 

 locate all of the various departments in 

 one group. The older universities of Eu- 

 rope suffer from the same failure of 

 imagination. Minnesota has already had 

 to buy at a very great advance in price, 

 additional land for the agricultural depart- 

 ment and is now doubling the size of her 

 campus, upon which are located the other 

 departments, at an expense of one half 

 million dollars, and the end is not yet. 



UNIVEESITT BUILDINGS 



In planning buildings everything will 

 depend upon the recommendations of the 

 commission as to the nature, scope and 

 methods of teaching which are to be im- 

 mediately employed. Manitoba will be dif- 

 ferent from other universities if she is able 

 to anticipate and keep up with the demands 

 for building and equipment. She will 

 doubtless make adequate immediate provi- 

 sion for those departments which are con- 

 sidered most essential, namely, those for 

 which the local need and local opportunity 

 are greatest. 



No one can forecast the development of 

 the province, but it will doubtless seem 

 strange to outsiders, and to Manitobans 

 themselves, as they consider it seriously, 

 that a people with the optimism for which 

 Manitoba is celebrated, has not long ere 

 this made definite satisfactory provision 

 for the education of its students along those 



lines which will be of most value to the 

 development of the province. Optimism to 

 be effective must be consistent and if the 

 good things predicted for Manitoba come 

 true— and we all believe that they will 

 come true — it is time that Manitobans dem- 

 onstrated an actual practical belief in 

 their predictions by the exercise of an opti- 

 mistic university policy, casting aside all 

 short-sighted, personal, denominational, 

 political and commercial prejudice. The 

 prairie province will probably profit more 

 by the experience of the states to the south 

 of her than she will by imitating too closely 

 the methods of the older English or Euro- 

 pean universities, since these were founded 

 at an early period of world development in 

 which conditions were not comparable in 

 any degree to those of to-day. Students of 

 public economy and social development see 

 in the older universities much to admire in 

 the way of tradition and in the way of 

 cultui-e and past accomplishment, but the 

 very traditions and associations which ap- 

 peal so much to us of the western world are 

 really, when seen at close hand, frequently 

 not to be differentiated from narrow preju- 

 dice which prevents them from meeting 

 their own national or local demands and 

 renders utterly impossible a satisfactory 

 reconstruction so as to cope with respon- 

 sibilities which a state might reasonably 

 place upon her university. The younger 

 universities in England, which are perfect- 

 ing their professional and technical schools 

 so rapidly, will lack for many years the in- 

 tangible and often mythical something 

 known as culture, but will furnish brains, 

 utensils and methods which will count for 

 far more in the total of British develop- 

 ment. Much must be done by the older 

 English universities if they are to keep 

 pace with the newer universities and tech- 

 nical schools, although they are loath to 

 admit that anything so new and utilitarian 

 can in any sense rival them. 



