highly specialized researches, and they have fostered a spirit of popular interest in the progress of science quite beyond anything that could have been expected two decades ago, when empiricism still reigned supreme and distrust of the utility of scientific investigation was widespread. An illustration of the value of this work is shown by the recent report of the Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station, which now has forty or more problems under investigation, covering such questions as the effect on nutrition of animals and man of a single plant ration, the mineral needs of animals, the methods of ripening cheese, the improvement of market milk and the causes and prevention of animal disease. The quiet, modest labors and persistent patience in the field and the laboratory of these untiring workers are doing as much for the welfare of the state as are the efforts of those who shine conspicuously in the legislative halls.

College Men May Learn Army Life

A plan by which college men may receive military instruction in camp this summer at little expense to themselves is being laid before the students and officials of the principal universities of the country by Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood, chief of staff of the army, acting for Secretary of War Garrison. The general arrangements for putting into effect this novel and revolutionary idea, which originated with Gen. Wood, are now practically completed.

It is proposed to establish two experimental camps solely for college men, one in the east and the other in the west. Student soldiers to the number of 2,000 will be taken to Gettysburg immediately after the joint encampment of union and confederate veterans. About 500 more will be encamped at the Presidio of Monterey, Cal. The periods of instruction will be about eight weeks.

The purpose of the experiment, which will be made an annual event if this summer's trial proves successful, is to increase the present inadequate numbers of citizens who have had sufficient train

ing to qualify them for efficient service in time of war. It is proposed to build up, if possible, a great body of well educated young men, who shall have acquired some military instruction through these camps, and then draw upon them in time of war as material for commissioned officers of volunteer troops. All the military instruction and exercises of the college men will take place in the morning, about four hours each day. Afternoons and evenings the students will have to themselves.

It is proposed to make the exercises of a highly interesting character, dispensing with all possible drillground work. The students will be given uniform outfits and the regular army rifles, but no one will pay any attention to how they step or how they carry their guns. The exercises in the field will be varied frequently with lectures on military subjects by the best officers available for the purpose in the whole United States army. The college men will be told all about the causes of war, why a nation's policies bring it into conflict with the forces of another nation, something of strategy and tactics, and the principles which govern campaigning in the field.

The students, owing to the absence of any appropriation for these camps, will be obliged to pay their transportation to the point of encampment and return, and also their subsistence. It is expected that the subsistence will cost each man about $1.75 per week.

Topographic Maps for School Use

For teaching the geography of the United States in the public schools and colleges a strong effort is being made by the United States Geological Survey to foster the use of the Government topographic maps. These maps contain so many details of local interest, showing even the school houses and farm houses as well as every wagon road with which of course the school children are familiar, that it is said to be an easy matter for teachers to enlist the interest of the pupils in this new type of school map. From an understanding of the particular maps representing their own localities

it is but a succession of short steps to lead the pupils to an appreciation of the different types of country portrayed on maps of other sections of the United States. Most of the standard atlas sheets of the Geological Survey of recent issue are printed on the scale of 1 mile to 1 inch, a scale which shows the physical features of the country in very interesting detail.

With these maps the pupils can determine the altitude of their homes and the steepness of hills and mountains, estimate the grade of wagon roads, work out simple engineering problems such as the drainage of swamps, select dam sites for the construction of reservoirs to supply water to imaginary towns or for irrigation, lay out imaginary trolley or railroad lines or canals along the most feasible routes, establish lookout and signal stations on high points for the control of forest fires, and plan many other similar activities.

The Geological Survey has published 2,200 topographic atlas sheets, covering about 40 per cent of the United States, and on receipt of $3 from any teacher it will supply 50 different maps selected with special reference to the particular requirements of the class it is proposed to instruct in this new kind of geographic study. This selection will include, besides the maps covering the area where the school is situated (provided such a map is published), other maps showing all the physiographic forms to be found in the United States-seacoast areas, hilly country, high and precipitous mountain country, swampy areas, regions of innumerable lakes, areas showing dense forests, areas with woodlands interspersed with many streams, lakes and other natural features.

If less than 50 maps are desired, a special selection of a less number will be made on request and furnished at the retail rate of 10 cents a copy. Most of these maps, each of which on the 1-mile scale covers about 225 square miles, or 150,000 acres, have been made at a cost for surveying and engraving of $3,500 to $6,000 each, and the wholesale price of 6 cents apiece covers only about the cost

of paper and printing. If the areas were surveyed and the maps published by a commercial concern, these maps would need to be sold for not less than $2 to $3 each. The Survey also sells an excellent wall map about 4 by 6 feet, unmounted (in three sections), for 60 cents. This may be included in any wholesale order as part of the $3. Applications should. be made to the Director of the United States Geological Survey, Washington, D. C.

Dean Otis E. Randall, who assumed office at Brown University with the beginning of the presSome Proposed ent college year, is

Reforms for

Brown University advocating several departures in connection with the university that if carried out will place Brown in the ranks of the radical colleges as regards methods of education. Among the new Dean's favored policies are a much more elastic system of entrance requirements, the abolishment of the Ph. B. degree, which is now given at Brown, stricter regulation of the fraternities, and the organization of non-athletic undergraduate activities under a general supervisor to correspond to the graduate manager of athletics in most colleges.

Dean Randall, in a recent address, discussed these matters and advocated a number of changes in the near future. He said:

"For years our requirements for admission have been too rigidly specific, so much so that many thoroughly good students are kept out of college altogether, or at least out of the college of their choice, both at Brown and elsewhere. The fundamental principle underlying entrance requirements is to find out just when a young man is ready to undertake college work, and not to find out when he has covered a specific amount of ground, and to do this we must change the present requirements."

The Dean has already presented to the Brown Faculty a recommendation for more elastic requirements, which he expects will be adopted. They will approach the Harvard requirements, neces

sitating a specific amount of work in English, history, mathematics, and certain languages, and allowing a wider range for the rest of the subjects.

Dean Randall has openly expressed his disapproval of the Ph. B. degree offered at Brown, and has urged that the degree be abolished and its courses combined with the A. B. courses, giving the latter degree on a wider range of subject matter. He holds that this change should be made at the same time that the entrance requirements are altered to "satisfy a demand for the different sort of education that is being demanded today from that which was asked for when the present order was instituted."

His recommendation for the organization of the non-athletic activities is as follows:

"It seems to me that the college should exercise over the non-athletic organizations the same sort of control which we now exercise over the athletic organizations, that there should be appointed by the Board of Fellows a young graduate of business experience and a man familiar with college affairs who might be held responsible for the general supervision of these organizations. If I should report to you the unbusinesslike methods which have been followed by students. in charge of these organizations and the disgraceful consequences which have followed you would see very clearly how important it is that something in this direction should be done at once.

"Care should be exercised not to limit in any way the student's opportunities or to dampen his enthusiasm, but to provide an advising and guiding hand in all phases of the work where the student through inexperience is likely to fall into error. In this way we may utilize these forms of student activities as media through which to offer to a large number of students a type of instruction

Omitting the "h" after "c" in words. like chameleon, chaos, echo, etc., making them "cameleon," "caos" and "eco." Dropping the final silent "e" after a single consonant preceded by a short vowel, making bade "bad" and forgive "forgiv." Pronouncing "gh" as "f," as in "lafter," for laughter. Dropping the initial letter in words beginning with "gn" or "kn," and pronouncing "n" as in "nash" for gnash, "nack" for knack. Pronouncing "ph" as "f," thus affecting a multitude of words like "telefone,' "telegraf," "fonograf," etc. Dropping double final consonants and giving "eb" for ebb, "cuf" for cuff, "eg" for egg, etc. Dropping the silent "w" from words. beginning with "wr," producing forms like "retched" for wretched, "riter" for writer and "rong" for wrong.

Another conspicuous change is the dropping of the "o" in the termination "ous" giving "enormus,' "famus," "glorius," "ridiculus," etc. Final "some," too, becomes "sum," like "fulsum," "gladsum," "handsum." Other silent letters are dropped in special cases and the preterits ending in "nced" and "rsed" pronounced, respectively, "nst," "rst," are recommended to be spelled as in "danst," "convinst," "forst," "pierst" and "evidenst."

I

wish to tell, as far as I may, without exposing any of the secrets of my fraternity, exactly what a Greek letter fraternity is and what its purpose is and something of what my own has accomplished since its organization. The Greek letter fraternity of which I am a member, Delta Kappa Epsilon, was founded at Yale University 69 years ago and has extended its chapters over the United States and a part of Canada until it now has 42 active chapters, and is about to establish the forty-third chapter. Since its organization it has taken into its circle, up to and including the year 1912, or a part thereof, about 18,000 men, and, inasmuch as some have seen fit to charge the fraternities with being organizations having baleful influences and improper and even undemocratic tendencies, I wish to give the public some statistics relative to my fraternity and the men it has taken into its fold-these statistics are taken from the history of the fraternity, published in the year 1910.

I find that out of this 18,000 who joined this fraternity when they were young and impressionable, and apt to be led astray by any pernicious teachings or influences, such as are charged by the ignorant or malicious, there have come forth:

One President of the United States.
Nine diplomats and Ambassadors.
Thirteen Ministers of Foreign countries.
Sixteen United States Senators.

Nine Cabinet officers of the United States. Fifteen heads of United States Government departments.

Fourteen Governors.

Fifteen Generals.

One Rear Admiral. Fourteen bishops.

Six United States Circuit Judges. Seven United States Distrit Court Judges. Twelve Chief Justices of highest State courts.

Fourteen Associate Justices of highest State courts.

Fifty-three members of the United States House of Representatives.

Nineteen presidents of universities and colleges.

Twelve deans of colleges and universities. Thirty-six eminent educators and professors.

Eleven publishers of National reputation. Seven eminent librarians.

Seventeen editors of National fame. Twenty literary men of National reputation.

Fifteen prominent clergymen (not bishops). Sixteen eminent physicians and surgeons. Thirty-three prominent lawyers of more than local distinction.

Thirteen judges of high courts.

Forty bankers, and 100 other men of prominence, whose achievements and reputations have given them a high place in the Nation.

This list does not include a large number of useful and successful men of local prominence, but, taking the list as I have given it, does it not strike any fair minded man as more than strange that, if my Greek letter fraternity is an institution of baleful influences and pernicious tendencies, it could have ever produced in 69 years from its ranks men who have occupied 538 position of prominence and honor and trust in our Nation, to say nothing of the hundreds who have reached

places of honor and trust of local note and lesser magnitude, such as the humble position to which I have attained in my chosen profession? In other words, is it not extraordinarily strange that this society of such "corrupting influences and questionable principles" should have initiated about 18,000 men in 69 years and have 1 out

of every 33 of them attain to National prominence, or more than local prominence, in his field of labor? And bear in mind that of this 18,000 about 2000 are either undergraduates, or recent graduates.

The truth of the whole matter is, these Greek letter fraternities consist of chapters, or groups of young men in the various colleges and universities who are banded, under a fraternal tie, for mutual assistance and friendly encouragement. The fraternity seeks, by reason of this tie, to gather together congenial spirits who make every honorable effort to bring out and develop the very best there is in every young man joining it, both by encouragement and assistance in the matter of his studies and in his efforts to win honorably the different prizes, medals and honors offered for excellence in college activities, and by strengthening the moral conduct of its members, should they be inclined otherwise. In short, the Greek letter fraternity was organized for the purpose of giving the boy, and it does give him, a number of companions who stand ready to render him, as far as it is possible to do so, the aid and assistance the boy's parents or an older brother would expect to give him while in college. If he has talents the fraternity seeks to develop them honorably, in order that he may win honors and thereby reflect credit upon his fraternity. And just here let me state that in my experience of four years in my fraternity, I now recall several timid boys who, taken in hand. by older members of the club, developed wonderful talents in debating, oratory and writing, and won many college honors for whch they would have never striven, under other conditions.

I undertake to say that the Greek Letter Fraternity actually gives the boy more congenial, close and interested companions, bound to him by lasting ties that make friends, than any young man will make by mere acquaintance or association with the student body,

and at the same time there is nothing in its teachings or tendencies to prevent any member from having and maintaining the warmest friendships for men not members of his fraternity, or of any fraternity, as such friendships are brought about by contact and association while in college, nor does it do so. I make the bare bold statement that if any fraternity man fines his friendships and his associations exclusively to the fraternity of which he is a member, you will find him to be a young man who is unfortunate enough to be born without social instincts-this is the young man's fault and not that of the fraternity, but it is indeed the fraternity's loss, because it does not seek such unpopular men for membership in its circle. I now present the fraternity from the side of the faculty and the college.

Every prominent college or university in the United States, except one, within my knowledge, welcomes in its midst the Greek letter fraternities; that exception is Princeton University, and inasmuch as there appeared in the public press recently an article from a newspaper writer citing Princeton and stating that President-elect Woodrow Wilson "fought out the fraternities at Princeton." I would like to ask him or any other person interested to make inquiry and he will find that Mr. Wilson had nothing whatever to do with the barring of fraternities at Princeton; he will further find that Mr. Wilson in a well known address, which I have before me as I write this article, while speaking of the alleged evils charged to the Greek letter fraternities, declared emphatically that such evils can not be controlled or eliminated by legislative enactments of any kind, for the reason that it is a physical impossibility to prevent men, young or old, from gathering in groups and congenial circles, and that an attempt to do this by legislation, or to "sweep one's house clean in this regard" would be to "open the door for other and