Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/195

Rh number from South America.

The American college was directly modeled on the corresponding institutions in England and Scotland, and it would probably have been an advantage, both educationally and from the point of view of international relations, if we had kept in closer touch with the British university. The will of Cecil Rhodes was an attempt to promote artificially such relations, and there is every reason to believe that it will meet with a fair degree of success. Ninety students from the United States residing at Oxford will contribute to the development of the university and will bring back to America the traditions of English education and culture. From the point of view of this journal, the entrance requirements and part of the curriculum at Oxford are a medieval survival, and the opportunities for advanced work in science are limited. But no one who has been brought intimately in contact with the Oxford life can fail to realize its charm. The influence on a few American students scattered over the whole country will surely be of advantage to them and to our relations with Great Britain. The American university presidents who have been given control of the administration of the Rhodes scholarships have decided to require residence at an American college before the student proceeds to Oxford. This is contrary to the intentions of Mr. Rhodes and appears to be scarcely justifiable from an educational point of view. For undergraduate work, Oxford possesses peculiar attractions. It would be better for a student to go through the B.A. course at Oxford and then pursue graduate studies in Germany or America, rather than to reverse the order. It may be remarked incidentally that Cambridge now offers admirable opportunities for research students in the natural and exact sciences, quite equal to those of the German universities, and that these should be more largely used than is at present the case.

A few years since America was almost outside the limits of European vision. In order to meet foreign scholars it was necessary for us to go abroad. But these conditions are changing rapidly. European men of science, and scholars singly and in groups, are continually going up and down over the land. The most eminent representatives of science and learning from Great Britain, Germany, France and other nations visit us in order to teach and to learn. Just now, for example, we are entertaining the educational commission organized by Mr. Mosely. Some thirty of the more active and eminent British educators were invited by Mr. Mosely to visit America as his guests, in order to make a study of our educational system from the primary school to the university. The commission includes scientific men, such as Professors Armstrong, Ayrton, Frankland and MacLean. A visit of this character will conduce to Anglo-American amity and the improvement of educational methods. An even more interesting event is promised for next year, when more than a hundred leading European men of science and scholars will visit the United States to take part in the Congress of Arts and Science, organized in connection with the St. Louis Exposition.

The has had the privilege of printing two of the four Huxley Memorial Lectures, given before the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain—that on Huxley by Lord Avebury and that on the 'Improvement of the Human Breed' by Dr. Francis Galton. The latter subject is continued by the last lecture of the series given by Professor Karl Pearson, who in general is carrying forward the quantitative work on heredity which owes so much to Dr.