neatness and precision, which cannot but prove of service in any occupation or position in life.

Have we the text-books for school instruction, such as found in other branches of natural history in botany, for example ? No, we have not; nor can we have, nor are they needed. The synoptic tables and brief descriptions that would be required for the identification of our United States species, with only twice the space devoted to an insect that is given to a plant, would occupy, as I have computed, forty volumes of the size of Gray's School and Field Book of Botany. But identification of species is not the end of entomological study. With "Packard's Guide to the Study of Insects" in the hands of the teacher, and with such assistance as would be suggested by it, he could soon prepare himself to give better instruction than that usually obtained from text-books alone. No branch offers such facilities for object-teaching. The objects are almost innumerable - they cost nothing. they even come to you unsought You can take one hundred species of flies alone from your window-panes. Surely, there is no valid reason for not introducing at once this study in our schools.

Is it right, I would ask, in passing, and I use the word in its full import as antithetical to wrong, that the 283 academies and academical departments in our State should be able to report but fifty-one of their number as giving instruction in zoology-less than one-fifth? And yet this is the study that would teach of those wonderful organizations, instinct with life and intelligence, associated with us upon a globe in which the adaptations to their wants are as perfect as are our own, and each with a structure in which God is revealed as unmistakably and as clearly as in the structure of the universe.

In closing this sketch, quite imperfect from the brief time that could be devoted to it, I desire, Mr. Chancellor, to express to you and to your Honorable Board, the obligations and the gratitude of American entomologists for the encouragement that for so many years you have continued to extend to this department of study. The resumption of economic studies under State authority and provision, after an intermission of a term of years, was largely owing to your instrumentality, and to your recognition of their usefulness in the promotion of the agricultural interests of the commonwealth and of the country.

V.

HAS THE COLLEGE A LOGICAL PLACE IN THE AMERICAN SYSTEM OF EDUCATION?

By Prof. OREN ROOT, Hamilton College.

At the last meeting of the National Educational Association, a paper was read entitled "The Relation of Secondary Education to the American University Problem." The first two years of college were there classed as academic; its last two as university years, and the paper foreshadowed the gradual absorption of our colleges by academies on the one side and universities on the other. In thought upon this paper the question arose "Has the American College a logical place in our scheme of education?" Does it belong here? Or, in the complete evolution of the system, is it to be practically blotted out?

The

The history of the American college makes a strong presumption in favor of its continued existence. It came to answer the needs and prayers of our fathers, and has grown with growing demands, widening its stakes and deepening its channels, yet holding the same spirit and filling the same relative place. To whatever call, the American College, so far as its proper province runs, has answered well. It has given leaders in every line of movement, men of affairs as well as men of thought. Even for aggressive scholarship and original research, the American College has served well in its place. What in this regard has been left undone, is largely beyond the proper college province, and it must be remembered that, until recently, the conditions of American life have given little call or inducement to pure scholarly work. burden of proof is upon those who would eliminate the college. The American college, as a class, includes more than bear the name. Our earlier institutions of higher education were, I think, all called colleges, save the "University of Virginia." Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Dartmouth, Princeton, are colleges. Later institutions used the name "university" with one of three notions: (1) To mark the absence of the usual working lines and rigid requirements as the University of Virginia; (2) to indicate the association of different schools under the same general control · as those institutions having theological or medical departments; or, (3) to set up a nominal dignity which might at some time be filled. Our higher institutions are, however, as yet, most of them— whether with or without attachments-colleges, not universities. The American college is an institution of learning with special reference to culture. It takes the youth from the academy or high

school and leads him along the paths of discipline and study to the threshold of his manhood and his work. It is not the German gymnasium; it is not like the sisterhood which, grouped, make Oxford and Cambridge. It has come to form in the matrix of American not German or English life, and is to answer the logic of our needs.

Our primary schools, including "grammar" and "intermediate grades, give the rudiments of knowledge; they save from absolute illiteracy. Our secondary schools, academies, seminaries, high schools, give the elements of knowledge, awaken desire, strengthen mental activities, prepare students for broader work; they furnish the basis for intelligent citizenship. What does the college do? Unless there be a work for the college as distinct and marked as that of grammar school or academy, and leaving place for a properly defined and logically sequent university, then the college must go; go in reality, even though the name survive. It seems to me that the American College has such a work as to justify its perpetuity in substance and in form. This work is distinct from that of the schools, precedent or subsequent, in two lines: (1) In the circumstances and conditions of study; and (2) In the character of the mental growth and the views of knowledge given.

The circumstances and conditions of college study come mainly from the attitude of the institution, its laws and its instructors, towards the student. The grammar school deals with children; the high school with boys and girls; in both there is constantly the attitude "in loco parentis. Work is carefully assigned; methods, manner, times are prescribed; the teacher is present or imminent constantly. In the great majority of high schools there is also the home influence to which the pupil returns daily. The college removes the restraint of presence and constant attention of the teacher; but properly preserves the personal influence of the instructor. The youth at college has usually swung out from home; but is not as yet ready to be thrown wholly upon his own responsibility. It is very easy to win applause from the boys for relaxation of rules and system; but is it well? And does the plaudit outlast the cooler second thought of the boys themselves? No doubt some will go forward steadily, successfully; but how of those who might, but do not? Is it well to pass from detailed tutelage to entire liberty at a bound? In the college where I teach I find occasion frequently to reach personally students who seem to be tending the wrong way. There is no college class where a goodly number does not need some guidance. Such personal influence is not merely a safe-guard; it should be an inspiration, and for young minds this is worth the while.

The college properly differs from the academy in greater freedom, fewer restrictions, more liberty in times and seasons; more latitude as to the amount and style of work and in due time in some choice of subjects for study.

In this relaxation of restraint, however, authority is still asserted and the student is still under guidance. The field and limits of study are prescribed; the results of study are tested; the instructor meets the student in the class-room, and his personal purposes are steadily reinforced. Herein the college has a place which the university does not fill. The university throws the student at once upon his own responsibility; it assumes definite purposes in the student; offers facilities for carrying them out; grants scholastic place and honor to those who do this; it drops those who do not. College work is peculiar in character. Primary grades of school teach mere knowledge; the knowing, thing by thing—a knowledge connected, if at all, by superficial or accidental ties, rather than those essential and generic.

Secondary schools lead the pupils to digest what is learned; more thinking is done; what is gained is digested knowledge. It becomes a part of the student's self and gives power. But the product is not complete. What work has the college?

Its first two years continue the lines of study followed in the preparatory schools; but there is a change in the character of the work. The knowledge appears more in its relations, and is considered in broad connection. Subjects are grasped more as wholes, and behind facts and specific laws underlying related principles are discerned. From the beginning of freshman year what is taught looks forward and outward. If I may illustrate from my own department, geometry reaches on and in the teacher's thought, takes hold on the very advance posts of modern methods; and the students begin to realize mathematics. So in other lines of study. In the advanced years of the college course, new subjects are introduced; the relations become wider and more complex; the student is led in his thinking to go more deeply; but it is a broadening of earlier college work-new only in the subjects treated not in its character or its influence.

Throughout the course the college adds to the knowledge the notion of its relations to other knowledge, and so gives it peculiarly "in situ."

College work, differing thus from that of secondary schools, differs from University work, in the absence of the aggressive, productive character which is the latest phase of mental activity. After digested knowledge and the grasp of its relations, is germinant knowledge whereby the student becomes the self-purposed scholar, an independent worker. This with the majority of college men has always followed college work. The student begins to do; what he has learned asserts right of domain in specific regions and goes forth for conquest. There have always been schools which represented this work on certain lines. The young man puts his brain power upon theology, medicine, law; the schools in these departments direct and strengthen the productive powers and the man becomes a clergyman, a physician, a lawyer. But the same

stage of development comes in some form to every educated man, not stunted; the university concentrates, organizes, directs, facilitates this work. The university has work properly sequent to the college.

The academy cannot do college work because it is properly occupied in supplying material for rapidly growing_powers and in strengthening them through digested knowledge. To call attention too early to the wide relations of each fact and principle confuses rather than strengthens the mind. Those who deal with the freshman class in our colleges soon find how puzzled many students become in the effort to grasp complex relations. They grasp one thing; they grasp another thing; an operation requiring the two in relation often confounds them.

The college has other than academic work.

On the other hand, the university is not adapted to do the college work. There enters the temptation to premature specialization and immature productiveness.

The student untrained in the relations of truth, starts upon narrow lines of investigation, frames theories, draws conclusions and there is developed too often a hobbyrider a narrow man stretched out rather than a broad man built up. The work of the college is other than that of the university.

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The purpose of the college is peculiarly what is called "culture." The academy leaves the youth crude; it may shape his purposes; it does not give polish.

The university sets the youth at work, makes him a unit, specific, independent; it develops angles and sharpens points. Between these two stands the college, broadening knowledge, maturing powers, giving depth and richness to thought and expression. Surely this culture is needed. The immediately practical is not the highest idea of education, nor is the development and outworking of a specialty the only good result of study. To specialize is well, but not at the sacrifice of breadth and culture.

Our grandmothers in their knitting knew when to begin to narrow, and they did it, not too soon or too fast.

I do not believe that American youth can afford to put aside the college stage in their education. I do not crave for my own college that it be a university; I feel that it is better that we perfect, so far as we may, the work peculiar to the American college. I do not believe that the different phases of work in our system of education can be well combined. Primary classes in the academy are rarely as well trained as in the organized primary schools. Preparatory departments have been generally recognized as a burden upon colleges. It is my conviction that collegiate departments in universities are likely to be overslaughed in the sweep of the higher, wider work about them. I hail gladly the coming of American universities; I urge often upon gradutes the need and value of university work. But I cannot grant that the college has not a logical place in our educational system. The American college, "justified of her children," has, to my mind, in character and work, ample claim for continued existence.