tion, and he is well-known as a writer on engineering subjects.

ERVIN LOUIS PHILLIPS was appointed professor of military science and tactics. Mr. Phillips graduated from Cornell University with the degree of A.B. in 1891 and was soon after commissioned Second Lieutenant of Cavalry in the United States Army and assigned to the Sixth Regiment. In 1893, after two years of service in the west, he entered the United States Infantry and Cavalry School for Officers at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, graduating in 1895. He then spent six months in travel abroad and later upon his return to Kansas, he acted as secretary and treasurer of the United States Cavalry Association for two years. Mr. Phillip's war service began in 1898 and included both the Spanish War and the Philippine Insurrection. He has since served a second tour of duty in the Philippines covering two years, and since 1905 has been engaged in cavalry work at Fort Myer, Va. In July, 1898, he was raised to the rank of First Lieutenant and in 1901 he received a further promotion to a captaincy, since which time he has been with the Thirteenth Regiment.

SUTHERLAND SIMPSON was appointed professor of physiology in the Ithaca Division of the Medical College. Born in 1863 in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, Mr. Simpson took his bachelor's degree in science at the University of Edinburgh in 1894. The following year he began the study of medicine at Edinburgh and in 1899 he obtained the additional degrees of Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery. He was then appointed assistant in physiology to Professor Schäfer at the University of Edinburgh and in 1902 he was made lecturer in experimental physiology, having in the meantime taken the degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1901, which he later supplemented by the degree of Doctor of Science in 1903. Professor Simpson is a member

of the English Physiological Society and of the British Medical Association and has published numerous original contributions to the literature of physiology.

ANDREW HUNTER was appointed assistant professor of biochemistry. A native of Edinburgh, where he was born in 1876, Mr. Hunter studied at the University of Edinburgh from 1892 to 1901, receiving the degree of M.A. in 1895, B. Sc. (summa cum laude) in 1899, and M.B. and Ch. B. in 1901. During 1901-1902 he was house physician at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and later became assistant to the professor of physiology at the University of Edinburgh. From 1905 to 1908 he was engaged in biochemical researches as Carnegie Research Fellow in the Universities of Berlin, Heidelberg and Edinburgh, and he comes to his present position from the University of Leeds, where he has been serving as demonstrator of physiology. Professor Hunter is a member of the English Physiological Society and besides being the author of various papers on biochemical subjects he has since 1906 acted as one of the reviewers on the staff of the Zentralblatt f. d. gesamte Physiologie u. Pathologie des Stoffwechsels.

The number of members of the instructing staff is as follows:

During the forty years of the existence of the University the instructing staff, excluding the Medical College in New

York City which was founded in 1898, by decades has been as follows:

Emeritus

Assct. Asst.

Professors Professors Profs. Profs. Lects. Insts. Assts.

Year

1868-1869

19

These figures show an undue increase in the proportion of instructors and assistants to the teachers of professorial rank. In other Reports attention has also been called to the fact that professorial salaries have not advanced with the increase in the cost of living. This replenishment of the ranks of the instructing staff with junior teachers on small salaries and the failure to provide suitable salaries for the men of professorial rank, are menacing the dignity, importance and attractiveness of the teaching profession in America. If intellect is to be well-trained in America there must be tangible evidence that the public set a fair value on highly educated men. Otherwise the best brains of the country will be lost to the teaching profession. As Burke has well said, "the degree of estimation in which any profession is held becomes the standard of the estimation in which the professors hold themselves." Hence it is scarcely an exaggeration to assert that the provision in Colonel Vilas' magnificent bequest to the University of Wisconsin for the establishment of certain professorships with salary of not less than $8,000 each, will, if it becomes at once effective, mark an epoch in the development of a proper standard for the estimation of professors in the United States.

The problem of securing men of the highest character, ability, and training to fill professorial vacancies is at best a

difficult one. Cornell has never limited itself to the graduates of the University, to the State in which it is located, or even to America. Two years ago a gentleman in France was appointed to a professorship; this year Leeds University, England, and Edinburgh University, Scotland, have furnished two professors. The effect of this policy of selecting professors without any restrictions upon the field of choice was described by The Evening Post, in an editorial on that subject in its issue of March 13th, as follows:

"In the East, Cornell and Johns Hopkins, comparatively new institutions, have been similarly free and untrammelled in their choice; and this policy of taking their own wherever they could find it has been one great cause of the rapid progress of these two Eastern institutions.'

EDUCATIONAL LEGISLATION

During the year both the University Faculty and the Faculties of the separate Colleges have given much consideration to educational problems which were pressing for solution. One after another was the subject of prolonged deliberation and discussion, first in committee and afterwards in special Faculty meetings. Detailed and interesting accounts will be found in the reports of the Deans, especially in the report of the Dean of the University Faculty (Appendix II) and the report of the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (Appendix III). Here there is space only to summarize results.

(1) In the first place, the requirements for admission to all the Colleges have been revised and, with slight deviations, made uniform throughout the University (except in the Medical College in New York City, which in and after September, 1908, is to admit only graduates in arts or science or others of equivalent education). This revision had become imperative for several reasons. One of them, though not intrinsically the most important, was that the published

requirements for admission were lower than the demands made upon the great majority of matriculants in consequence of the restrictions under which certificates of admission were received by the University or granted by the Regents or other accrediting authorities. A more substantial consideration was that the existing formulation of entrance requirements lacked the flexibility necessary for correlation with the courses as now generally arranged in the public high schools, especially of the State of New York and in the west, and as a result of this rigid prescription a candidate for admission not infrequently found himself unable to secure credit for solid work on which he had spent two or three years as a pupil in the high school. Furthermore, while the educational validity and efficacy of the existing entrance requirements were not disputed, it was believed that a different grouping would not be inferior in this respect while in other respects it was decidedly preferable. And, lastly, it was thought better that the unit in terms of which the entrance requirements are defined should be that which in recent years has come into general use throughout the country, namely, "the equivalent of a course pursued throughout one year in a secondary school with five recitations a week." These and other considerations led to the action finally taken by the Faculties of the different Colleges. Fifteen units are prescribed for admission and, in the College or Arts and Sciences (which may be regarded as typical), these are defined as follows: English, 3 units; history, 1 unit; algebra, 1 unit; geometry, 1 unit; foreign languages, 4 units; elective, 5 units (these "elective" units to be taken from a list of subjects which includes, in prescribed quantities or units, physical science, additional mathematics, additional foreign languages, etc.) In the Colleges of Engineering and the College of Architecture, also, fifteen units are prescribed but here the number