last month recalls vividly his great services to higher education. Dr. Eliot has now resigned the presidency of Harvard to take effect next spring, when he will have served forty years in the office, and will be in his seventy-fifth year. Mr. Gilman was at the time of his resignation in full vigor of body and mind and was able afterwards to undertake the difficult task of organizing the Carnegie Institution, while performing many other public services. President Eliot has never seemed more competent to direct the affairs of a university than at present; there has not during the past forty years been a time when he has been so gladly followed as a leader. He is likely to remain for years to come the chief influence at Harvard and the leading private citizen of the United States.
At the inaguration of Mr. Gilman as president of the Johns Hopkins University on February 22, 1876, Mr. Eliot said: "In the natural course of your life you will not see any large part of the real fruits of your labors; for to build a university needs not years only, but generations." This is only partly true. The traditions and ideals of the university are a long growth, but they may be transplanted to a new soil and flourish there. Relatively to other institutions at least, it is probable that the Johns Hopkins will never again be so great as it was in the eighties, and Harvard will never again be so preeminent as it is at the close of Mr. Eliot's administration. The seven professors on the faculty of the Johns Hopkins at the beginning far surpassed the average of any present faculty, and the hundred students in the early years, the average of any present student body. This great feat was again repeated by Mr. Gilman when the medical school was organized. Harvard has accomplished more in the past forty years than during the preceding centuries of its history. It set standards of freedom and culture when such standards were most needed. It now shares its leadership with other institutions and will probably fall behind the greater of the state universities.
There is more instinctive admiration for the puritan aristocrat than for the opportunist, but in so far as Mr. Eliot stands for the plan of free electives, for culture prerequisite to the professional school, and Mr. Gilman for a group system of studies leading chiefly to the professional school and research, the majority of scientific men will side with the latter.
Mr. Eliot's position could only be filled by a man of equal distinction after forty years of service. It is probably well that it can not be filled. The constitution of the state of Massachusetts places measures before men. It is-better for the university to be a democracy of scholars, rather than for its scholars to be subject to the will of one man. The Harvard corporation will not purposely reorganize the university on a democratic and representative basis, but they will probably contribute to this end by the president whom they will elect.
SCIENTIFIC ITEMS
We record with regret the death of O. T. Mason, head curator of anthropology in the U. S. National Museum; of Dr. Francis H. Snow, formerly chancellor and professor of entomology in the University of Kansas, and of Professor Berger, the eminent French surgeon.
There was held at the Sorbonne in Paris, on October 4, a meeting in memory of the great chemist, Marcellin Berthelot. M. Raymond Poincaré made an address on his work, and was followed by M. Fallière, president of the Republic.—A bronze tablet to the memory of the late Major James Carroll, eminent for his work on yellow fever, was unveiled in the main medical building of the University of Maryland, on November 11. Dr. William H. Welch delivered the principal address.
