August 12, lOOi.] 



SCIENCE. 



197 



the number of students at Oxford, where 

 the old curriculum has remained largely 

 intact, with the rapid increase in the num- 

 ber of university students where applied 

 education has developed, he will not doubt 

 the correctness of these statements. Ap- 

 plied education is mainly fed by a new 

 constituency. While applied education 

 may attract a few students, who otherwise 

 would have gone into the courses of liberal 

 arts, the tremendously increased momentum 

 of the educational movement produced by. 

 the large numbers that flock to the univer- 

 sities probably has broi;ght to the liberal 

 arts more students than have been lost to it 

 by the rise of applied knowledge. 



While all this is true, it is fortunate that 

 in this university the College of Letters 

 and Science became so firmly established 

 before agriculture and engineering were 

 developed. So strong are the liberal arts 

 and pure science, that I have no fear that 

 the College of Letters and Science will 

 lose its leading position in the university. 

 For this college the union of the great His- 

 torical Library, ,the University Library 

 and the Wisconsin Academy Library is 

 most fortunate. This superb joint library 

 is doing for the liberal arts what the 

 various science bviildings with their equip- 

 ment have done for the pure and applied 

 sciences, affording opportunity for the 

 highest grade of Avork, an opportunity util- 

 ized by the students in those departments in 

 which men of university caliber occupy the 

 chairs. As evidence of the increasing 

 power of the College of Liberal Arts is the 

 recent growth of graduate work, the stu- 

 dents in which, with few exceptions, are in 

 the College of Letters and Science. 



During the current year the schools of 

 economies and political science, of history, 

 of pharmacy, of education and of com- 

 merce, which had been organized under 

 the administrations of Chamberlin and 

 Adams, have been merged in the College 



of Letters and Science. These changes 

 place all of the economic work done in 

 the university in the Department of 

 Political Economy; all of the botan- 

 ical and chemical work heretofore done 

 in the School of Pharmacy under the 

 Departments of Botany and Chemistry, 

 respectively. The purpose of the change is 

 to correlate the work in these various lines 

 with the work in the liberal arts, thus 

 unifying the College of Letters and Science 

 without weakening its various courses in 

 any way. The courses in commerce and 

 in pharmacy now have the same relation 

 to the other courses of the College of Let- 

 ters and Science, that the courses in civil 

 engineering and electrical engineering have 

 to the course in general engineering. The 

 graduate work of the university, being lo- 

 cated in all of the colleges and represent- 

 ing their culmination, has been organized 

 into a school. 



The catalogue of the present year shows 

 an attendance of 3,150 students, and an 

 instructional force of 228, while this com- 

 mencement there will be conferred in 

 course 361 degrees, of which 334 are bach- 

 elors, 17 masters and 10 doctors. If 

 we contrast these numbers with those of 

 fifty years ago, an instructional force of 4, 

 56 students and 2 baccalaureate graduates, 

 is it surprising that we should cry: 'and 

 ye shall hallow the fiftieth year. ... A 

 jubilee shall that fiftieth year be unto you' ? 

 And with our joyfulness there is a pro- 

 found feeling of thankfulness to the state 

 that has had the wisdom to be guided by 

 men of such breadth of view as to provide 

 liberally for the education of its children 

 and of all others who care to share its edii- 

 cational hospitality. 



While the achievements of the past fifty 

 years are sufficiently great for celebration, 

 the ideal of the state university is still 

 more worthy of celebration. A score of 

 years ago it could not have been said of 



