Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 61.djvu/292

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286
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

human blood resembling that found in animals suffering from the tsetse fly disease. Several of the exhibits were more or less connected with America. Thus Dr. Roberts showed lantern slides in natural colors of the Canyon of the Colorado and the Yellowstone Park, and similar American scenes painted by Miss Breton were exhibited. Professor Schuster exhibited a Rowland grating of one meter focus arranged to show the lines of iron in the flame of a Bunsen burner. Professor Lankester exhibited models of deep-sea fishes, based in part on the figures and text of Goode and Bean's 'Oceanic Ichthyology,' while the Royal Astronomical Society exhibited photographs of the nebula surrounding Nova Persei taken at the Yerkes Observatory.

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY.

The Rev. Dr. Francis L. Patton, who succeeded the Rev. Dr. James McCosh as president of the College of New Jersey in 1888, resigned the presidency of Princeton University on June 9, and the trustees immediately elected as his successor Dr. Woodrow Wilson, McCormick professor of jurisprudence and politics. It would be pleasant to join in the general expression of surprise at President Patton's resignation, of admiration for his administration and of eulogy of his successor. But principles are more important than men; and this journal represents certain principles at variance with the policy of the authorities of Princeton University. President Patton's resignation was not a surprise to those familiar with the inside history of the university, nor do they regard the material growth of Princeton in money and men during the past fourteen years as due to him. Dr. McCosh was in advance of his church and his college; he did much to forward the teaching of organic evolution and of psychology as a science. Dr. Patton was once a hunter down of heretics in his church; the ethics that he teaches are but little concerned with the principles of evolution or of psychology. He has an acute mind of a scholastic turn and an attractive individuality; but his influence at Princeton has not been great.

Through the loyalty of its alumni, Princeton has increased in wealth and in numbers under President Patton's administration; but nothing has been done to justify the change of name from college to university. Fourteen years ago Harvard, Yale and Princeton might with some reason have been mentioned as our leading institutions of learning; now Princeton can be ranked with Harvard, Columbia and Chicago only by those who gain their information from the pages of the daily press devoted to athletic sports. Princeton has no school of law or of medicine. The theological seminary in the village represents the least progressive elements in the Presbyterian church. The last catalogue of Princeton University contains the names of 117 graduate students, but sixty-eight of them live in the halls of the theological seminary. Princeton has a school of science; but its students must take thirteen and a half hours in language (including Latin) as compared with eight hours in science; they are not permitted to begin the study of physics until the junior year.

There is reason to doubt whether President Wilson will accomplish at Princeton what President Hadley may be expected to accomplish at Yale. Dr. Wilson is a brilliant essayist; like his predecessor, he is one of the few college presidents who can speak with credit on the same platform as President Eliot. But from the scientific point of view, there is not a great difference between the literary-theological and the literary-legal mind. When Dr. Eliot in 1869 resigned the professorship of chemistry in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was installed as president of Harvard University, he laid down a program of