SCIENCE 



[Entered at the Posi-Offlce of New York, K.Y., as Second-Class Matter.] 



A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER OF ALL THE ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



Eighth Year. 

 Vol. XVI. No. 397. 



NEW YORK, September 13, 1890. 



Single Copies, Ten Cents. 

 $3.50 Pee Ybab, in Advance. 



CORNELL UNIVERSITY AND HER TECHNICAL 

 DEPARTMENTS. 



Some years ago we gave some account of the organization of 

 Cornell University, the " land grant college " of the State of New 

 York, and the seat of those colleges of agriculture and the me- 

 chanic arts the support of which is the prescribed "leading ob- 

 ject " of its foundation and maintenance, while it is still permitted 

 and expected to offer suitable courses of liberal and academic 

 education. Since the date of that article (Science, x. 158, Sept. 

 30, 1887), great progress has been made in all its departments, 

 and especially in those in which we are particularly interested; 

 and we take advantage of an opportunity which presents itself at 

 the moment to exhibit something of this progress and the present 

 condition of the technical school having most interest to our 

 readers. 



Five years ago there were about six hundred students in the 

 University, of whom perhaps a third were engaged in technical 

 studies, while the schools of useful arts were very slowly growing 

 into form. With the increase of the income of the University 

 due to the final harvesting of those financial returns coming of 

 the earlier seeding and care of Cornell and his eminent successors 

 on the board of trustees, and the generosity of Cornell, McGraw, 

 H. W. Sage, Hiram Sibley, A. D. White, and other equally zeal- 

 ous if less able friends, an extraordinary growth began, and has 

 continued uninterruptedly up to the present time ; and we now 

 propose to show what has thus far been effected. The reputation 

 of the University is to-day so far assured that the requirements 

 and the charges for tuition have been purposely made a bar to 

 further growth, except at a moderate rate, the trustees evidently 

 desiring quality rather than quantity: while their funds are now 

 taxed to the utmost to afford those new buildings, and to secure 

 those additions to the equipment, which are necessitated by such 

 rapid progress. The University registered, in 1889-90, 1300 stu- 

 dents, of whom about one half were engaged in technical studies; 

 and of the others, the largest' body were taking the courae in 

 arts, the most thoroughly classical of the many courses offered. 

 Of these, also, some go, later, into technical work ; and it is be- 

 coming very common, and more and more so, for young men 

 proposing to go into the engineering professions especially, to first 

 secure a liberal education. They find the advantage, both in col- 

 lege and later, to more than compensate the time thus demanded 

 in addition to that required for the technical course alone. Such 

 students often take their electives, in the senior and junior years, 

 largely in mathematics and the sciences, and thus practically lose 

 often but two yetirs in attempting the double course. 



The changes with which we are now concerned affect mainly 

 the technical end of the campus; for the growth, though large in 

 other departments, has been so much more in these lines of work 

 that the construction marking material changes has mainly oc- 

 curred there. It is now, however, expected that the law-school 

 and the academic departments must soon illustrate in turn this 

 extension of the growth of Cornell. The agricultural department 

 is waiting for a patron to give it a new building and enlarged 

 equipment, but it is not yet ready to fill much more space with 

 its students. 



A bird's-eye view of the campus from the north-west, over 

 Cayuga Lake, would show the sixty acres of beautiful lawn be- 



sprinkled with buildings, including the dozen or fifteen great 

 buildings of the University proper, and the twenty-five or thirty 

 houses of the professors residing on the grounds. The main 

 buildings are principally at the north extremity of the campus, and 

 the technical departments are housed at the extreme north, on 

 the edge of the Fall Creek gorge, from which are derived water- 

 supply and water-power. Here a great brown-stone building, 

 Lincoln Hall, is appropriated to the College of Civil Engineering 

 and its allied School of Architecture. The three main buildings, 

 Morrill, McGraw, and White Halls, are opposite, forming the 

 main front of the University, toward the city of Ithaca lying in 

 the beautiful valley, at the head of the lake four hundred feet 

 below, and less than a mile away. The great library building 

 given by Mr. Sage to the University as a memorial to Jennie 

 McGraw Fiske, " whose purpose shall not fail," terminates this 

 grand line of great edifices. It will be one of the most conven- 

 ient, as well as largest and most beautiful, buildings for the 

 purpose yet built in any land. Its capacity is for nearly half a 

 million volumes, with ready extension to a million. Between 

 $15,000 and $18,000 will be annually appropriated for additions to 

 the catalogue, and it is expected that it will not only comprise the 

 best of general literature, but will offer the grandest facilities for 

 technical study to be found outside the Patent OfBce library, if 

 not even superior, in lime, to that. 



The principal changes of the year have been the completion of 

 a very large chemical laboratory (with accommodations for what 

 have been of late years the largest entering and undergraduate 

 classes in the United States, introductory laboi-atories, lecture- 

 rooms, analytical laboratories, assay-rooms, and special laborato- 

 ries for advanced work, both in instruction and research); the 

 reconstruction and re-arrangement of the physical laboratories, 

 now filling the great brown-stone building called Franklin Hall; 

 and the extensions of Sibley College. We hope at some future 

 time to be able to give full descriptions of these special laborato- 

 ries, and will now only remark that they are working the largest 

 classes in their several departments ever yet collected in engineer- 

 ing courses, and probably better illustrate what can be done by 

 system and skill in administration, with crowded classes, than 

 any thing else in the University. We must confine ourselves at 

 the moment to the last of this series of changes. 



The outline-plans seen in the illustrations represent the working 

 parts of the College of Mechanical Engineering and the Mechanic 

 Arts as now arranged for a maximum of six hundred students ; 

 the number working during the last year being about four hun- 

 dred, of whom a very considerable number were graduates of the 

 academic courses of this and other universities, or of technical 

 courses in this and other colleges and technical schools, and in- 

 cluding a number of professors of distinction engaged m depart- 

 ments of mechanical engineering elsewhere, who were engaged in 

 the study and practice of laboratory methods as applied in engi- 

 neering. 



The main building, Fig. 1, is shown in heavier line than the 

 shops and laboratories which are adjacent. The work in chemis- 

 try and in physics is given in the great laboratories of the Uni- 

 versity, as is all work in pure mathematics and in languages, thus 

 leaving the professional work only to be done in the Colleges of 

 Engineering. The ground-floor sketch shows the main buUding, 

 165 feet by 45, with its museums, library, and reading-room, in 



