July 15, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



79 



were three times as many students in private 

 higli schools as in public high schools, whei'eas 

 now there are more than three times as many- 

 students in the public high schools as in the 

 private high schools. 



The number of students pursuing liberal 

 studies in colleges and universities was 97,122, 

 a decrease of 255 from the number reported in 

 the preceding year. The number of graduate 

 students is, however, constantly increasing, be- 

 ing in 1896-7 4,919, of whom 1,413 were 

 women. There were 8,173 students of the- 

 ology, 10,449 students of law and 24,377 

 students of medicine. 



Dr. Harris is especially iuterested in the 

 introduction of reindeer into Alaska, and de- 

 scribes in some detail what has been accom- 

 plished in this direction. He thinks that the 

 reindeer are useful in training the natives as 

 herders and teamsters and in educating them 

 in habits of thrift, which seems considerably to 

 enlarge the scope of the Commission of Educa- 

 tion. 



This first volume contains 22 special papers of 

 considerable though of unequal value. One of 

 the longest of the articles (158 pp.), entitled 

 ' Some Eecent Contributions of Biology, Soci- 

 ology and Metallurgy to the Curriculum of 

 Colleges endowed by the Federal Government 

 for the Benefit of the Agricultural and Me- 

 chanic Arts,' and written by Mr. Wellford Ad- 

 dis, contains rather a curious collection of mis- 

 cellaneous information. One of the more 

 interesting articles is on college admission re- 

 quirements, showing the great and needless 

 diversity in our 475 institutions. The require- 

 ments vary from those of Harvard and Johns 

 Hopkins down to the college that happens to 

 head the list, which asks for entrance to a 

 course for the A.B. : ' Lessons in English, ele- 

 mentary history of the United States, elemen- 

 tary arithmetic, geography and drawing.' In 

 no department are the entrance requirements so 

 generally unsatisfactory as in science. Could 

 not the A. A. A. S. and the N. E. A. appoint a 

 joint committee that would propose a remedy? 



GENERAL. 



A NEW Museum of Archeology for the Uni- 

 versity of Pennsylvania is being erected at a 



cost of about $500,000. It was begun in Jan- 

 uary of the present year and will be completed 

 early next year. 



Geoege a. Fowler, of Kansas City, has 

 given $21,000 to rebuild the agricultural build- 

 ings of the University of Kansas, recently de- 

 stroyed by fire. 



The Eev. Robert Herbert Story, D.D., pro- 

 fessor of church history in the University of 

 Glasgow, has been appointed Principal of the 

 University, in room of Principal Caird, re- 

 signed. 



Rev. John Whitney has been installed as 

 Rector of the Catholic University of George- 

 town, D. C. 



William Duane, Ph. D. (Berlin), has been 

 appointed professor of physics in the University 

 of Colorado, succeeding Professor W. J. Wag- 

 gener, who has resigned owing to failing health. 



Cornell University has recently been 

 called upon to contribute an unusual number of 

 the members of her instructing staff to other 

 institutions. This has been a particularly try- 

 ing year in her technical and especially her 

 engineering departments. The Sibley College 

 of Mechanical Engineeriug, for example, loses 

 the senior assistant in its electrical engineering 

 department, Mr. Macomber, who goes to the 

 Armour Institute, of Chicago, as professor of 

 that branch ; the senior assistant in the depart- 

 ment of machine design, Mr. H. D. Williams, 

 retires to promote a line of his own inventions 

 of promise and importance ; the next in sen- 

 iority in the same department, Mr. A. T. Briigel, 

 goes to the Pratt Institute, to take charge of 

 similar work there ; two or three others, in- 

 structors, retire to find advantageous appoint- 

 ments elsewhere, while, in the department of 

 experimental engineering, also, the instructor 

 in the study of the ' materials of engineering,' 

 Mr. Houghton, resigns to accept the professor- 

 ship of mechanical engineering in the Arkansas 

 State University. A number of these positions 

 are, at last accounts, unfilled, and it is ex- 

 pected that special care will be taken to select 

 men of practical experience, as well as of talent 

 and education, to carry on work which is, in 

 all cases, greatly specialized. This training of 



