Page:The study of history in Holland and Belgium (IA studyofhistoryin00frrich).pdf/30

 researches upon a subject given out six weeks in advance; for example: is actually known of the Blue Nile? What are the best works upon this river and the best maps of it? The student's discussion must not last more than forty minutes; then the professor gives a detailed and severe criticism of it.

M. Kan, who is a doctor of literature and does not belong to the faculty of science, is assisted by colleagues from that faculty in the more special parts. Prof. J. H. van't Hoff gives a short course in dynamical geography, the constitution of volcanoes, their eruptions, the formation of glaciers, etc. Dr. C. Kerbert, lector of the University, gives some notion of botanical and zoölogical geography. Prof. D. J. Korteweg sometimes adds to this program a course in astronomical geography. To each of these courses one hour a week is devoted.

To sum up, the students who take geography at Amsterdam thus have, according to the year, ten or twelve hours a week in that science, which is completely excluded from higher teaching in Belgium, except at Liège, where it figures in the program as an optional course. It is true that there is also a course in commercial and industrial geography at the mining school at Liège and at the school of arts and manufactures at Ghent.

The preceding notes will suffice, I think, to give an idea of the state of history and geography in the Dutch universities.

We have seen that political and historical geography form part of the program of the Faculty of Arts at Leyden, Utrecht and Groningen, and that in Amsterdam the, teaching of geography, in the hands of a specialist of unquestionable ability, is organized in a very remarkable and complete manner.

But history is undeservedly sacrificed. Excluded from the rank of a specialty with a doctorate, it has not a proper number of students. The discouraged professors, among whom