that kind of a subject. If ever I have anything to do with it, I will boil it down." And when I got to Syracuse, I boiled it down.

PROFESSOR HIGBEE: I think that is the trouble with descriptive geometry. It is taught as mathematics. But if you apply it and give them practical problems, it becomes as interesting as a romance. Teach them only theory and it becomes a bugbear.

PROFESSOR BENJAMIN: I thought it was mechanical drawing before I went to college, and I think Professor Higbee is right. The real trouble with descriptive geometry is you are required to imagine a lot of things that are not so. If you start with a concrete object, something that you see and feel, you will not have any such trouble. This idea of imag inary planes and surfaces is uncalled for.

PROFESSOR MAGRUDER: If a man has had only mechanical drawing and has to get out the detail drawings for the stones for an arch, or the sheets of a bustle-pipe, do you think he could do it with only the projection drawing such as it is taught to the draftsman in the drafting room of an engineering works? Would he not need a little more training in descriptive geometry?

PROFESSOR BENJAMIN: I do not think I could do it in any way.

PROFESSOR JACOBY: How many students can an instructor hear in one hour?

PROFESSOR HIGBEE: Students were supposed to come to us after they had prepared their lessons thoroughly. If a student made a blunder that showed that he did not know the problem, he was dismissed

and his name was crossed off. In that way the men came pretty well prepared, and the number of men one could hear in an hour depended upon the number of problems they had prepared. I should say that the recitation of each problem would last five minutes; a class of fifty men should have two instructors.

THE HONOR SYSTEM OF EXAMINATIONS.

BY WM. H. SCHUERMAN,

Dean of the Engineering Department and Professor of Civil Engineering, Vanderbilt University.

This system is in quite general use in southern colleges, but the writer is personally familiar only with the methods at Vanderbilt University of conducting examinations and of proceeding in cases of detected or suspected fraud under this system. However, at the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Southern States, held at Knoxville, Tenn., November 1-2, 1906, a paper was presented by Professor W. M. Thornton, of the University of Virginia, on "The Honor System at the University of Virginia in Origin and Use," from which paper, as published in the Proceedings of the Association, extracts will be made to form Appendix II. of this paper.

The honor system has been in use in Vanderbilt University since the opening of the academic department in 1875. The regulations governing examinations in force at present are:

"No book or paper shall be brought into the room, except as prescribed by the examining officer.

"No communication of any kind shall be had by students with each other during examination, nor shall any student not under examination be admitted to the room without the consent of the examining officer. "No student shall leave the room during his ex

amination, except in case of necessity, and with the consent of the examining officer, and no absence shall be longer than ten minutes.

"The plea of sickness shall not excuse a student for failure on examination, and no student may leave the examination room on account of sickness, without the consent of the officer in charge, which consent will entitle the student to another examination.

"No student will be admitted to an examination more than fifteen minutes after the opening of the examination without a satisfactory excuse; and a tardiness of one hour shall be counted as an absence, and shall forfeit the right to an examination altogether.

"No paper will be read which does not have the following pledge, signed by the writer: 'I hereby pledge my word of honor as a gentleman that in this examination on I have neither given nor received assistance; the paper herein recorded was written in full compliance with the letter and spirit of the Honor System.

In addition to the blank pledge, given above, to be filled in and signed by the student, there is printed on the first page of the official booklet used in examinations, the following:

HONOR SYSTEM.

"All examinations are conducted under the Honor System. Students are under pledge neither to give nor receive assistance; they demand that this pledge be faithfully kept by all. To this end they agree to

report to the Students' Honor Committee any real or apparent violation of the spirit or letter of this law." For a good many years, the form of the pledge was the following:

"I hereby pledge my honor that I have not given or received assistance during this examination." This had to be written out by the student himself and signed; but it was found by experience that students would abbreviate or change the form, usually in all innocence, but very rarely with the intention on the part of the student of putting the pledge in such a form that he could persuade himself that he had not violated the letter of his pledge even though he had violated the spirit of the system. Of course it was assumed that papers having on them pledges at variance in form with that prescribed should be thrown out and the students handing them in marked zero on the examination. All, whose duty it is to observe the enforcement by individual members of rules adopted by a faculty, know that such enforcement varies from that of a strict constructionist to whom the alteration of a single unimportant word is sufficient to throw out a paper, to that of a liberal constructionist who will accept any kind of a pledge as sufficient. The writer has known the single word "Pledge" with the student's signature thereto, accepted as sufficient. As evidenced by discussions in faculty meetings at Vanderbilt, the opinion of the majority is that the entire pledge should be given and it is therefore printed on the official examination booklet as given under the regulations quoted before. This booklet is used in the examinations at the ends of the terms; it is the