the several colleges, and which have jurisdiction over distinctively collegiate matters.
In 1909 the invested funds of the university amounted to about $8,594,300, yielding an annual income of about $428,800; the income from state and nation was about $232,050, and from tuition fees about $336,100; the campus and buildings were valued at about $4,263,400, and the Library, collections, apparatus, &c. at about $1,826,100.
The university was incorporated by the legislature of New York state on the 27th of April 1865, and was named in honour of Ezra Cornell,[1] its principal benefactor. In 1864 Cornell, at the suggestion of Andrew D. White, his fellow member of the state senate, decided to found a university of a new type—which should be broad and liberal in its scope, should be absolutely non-sectarian, and which should recognize and meet the growing need for practical training and adequate instruction in the sciences as well as in the humanities. He offered to the state as an endowment $500,000 (with 200 acres of land) on condition that the state add to this fund the proceeds of the sales of public lands granted to it by the Morrill Act of 1862 for “the endowment, support and maintenance of at least one college, where the leading object shall be . . . to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts . . .”[2] The charter provided that “such other branches of science and knowledge may be embraced in the plan of instruction and investigation pertaining to the university as the trustees may deem useful and proper,” and Ezra Cornell expressed his own ideal in the oft-quoted words: “I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study.” The opposition to Cornell’s plan was bitter, especially on the part of denominational schools and press, but incorporation was secured, and the trustees first met on the 5th of September 1865. Andrew D. White was elected president and the entire educational scheme was left to him. Dr White’s ideals in part were: a closer union between the advanced and the general educational system of the state; liberal instruction of the industrial classes; increased stress on technical instruction; unsectarian control; “a course in history and political and social science adapted to the practical needs of men worthily ambitious in public affairs”; a more thorough study of modern languages and literatures, especially English; the “steady effort to abolish monastic government and pedantic instruction”; the elective system of studies; and the stimulus of non-resident lecturers. On the 7th of October 1868 the Cornell University opened with some confusion due to the condition of the campus, and to the presence of 412 would-be pupils, many of whom expected to “work their way through.” The brilliance of the faculty and especially of its non-resident members (including J. R. Lowell, Louis Agassiz, G. W. Curtis, Bayard Taylor, Theodore D. Dwight, and Goldwin Smith, who was a resident professor in 1866–1869), was to a degree over-shadowed during the fifteen years 1868–1882 by financial difficulties. But Ezra Cornell himself paid many salaries during early years, and provided much valuable equipment solely at his own expense; and because the state’s land scrip was selling too low to secure an adequate endowment for the University, in 1866 he bought the land scrip yet unsold (819,920 acres)[3] by the state at the rate of sixty cents an acre on the understanding that all profits, in excess of the purchase money, should constitute a separate endowment fund to which the restrictions in the Morrill Act should not apply; and in 1866–1867 he “located” 512,000 acres in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Kansas. In November 1874 he transferred these lands, which had cost him $576,953 more than he had received from them, to the university. This actual deficit on the lands owned by the university steadily increased up to 1881, when, after the trustees had refused (in 1880) an offer of $1,250,000 for 275,000 acres of pine lands, they sold about 140,600 acres for $2,319,296; ultimately 401,296 acres of the land turned over to the university by Cornell were sold, bringing a net return of about $4,800,000. The university was put on a sound financial footing; the number of students, less in 1881–1882 than in 1868 at the opening of the university, again increased, so that it was 585 in 1884–1885, and 2120 in 1897–1898. The presidents of the university have been: Andrew Dickson White, 1865–1885; Charles Kendall Adams, 1885–1892; and Jacob Gould Schurman.
CORNET, a word having two distinct significations and two
etymological histories, both, however, ultimately referable to
the same Latin origin:—
1. (Fr. cornette, dim. of corne, from Lat. cornu, a horn), a small standard, formerly carried by a troop of cavalry, and similar to the pennon in form, narrowing gradually to a point. The term was then applied to the body of cavalry which carried a cornet. In this sense it is used in the military literature of the 16th century and, less frequently, in that of the 17th. Before the close of the 16th century, however, the world had also come to mean a junior officer of a troop of cavalry who, like the “ensign” of foot, carried the colour. The spelling “coronet” occurs in the 16th century, and has perhaps contributed to obscure the derivation of “colonel” or “coronel.” The rank of “cornet” remained in the British cavalry until the general adoption of the term “second lieutenant.” In the Boer republics “field-cornets” were local subordinate officers of the commando (q.v.), the unit of the military forces. Elected for three years by the wards into which the electoral districts were divided, they had administrative as well as military duties, and acted as magistrates, inspectors of natives and registration officers for their respective wards. In 1907, the “field-cornet” system was re-established in the Transvaal; the new duties of the “field-cornets” are those performed by assistant magistrates, viz. petty jurisdiction, registration of voters, births and deaths, the carrying out of regulations as to animal diseases, and maintenance of roads. The “field-cornets” are appointed by government for three years.
2. (Fr. cornet, Ital. cornetto, Med. Lat. cornetum, a bugle, from Lat. cornu, a horn), in music, the name of two varieties of wind instruments (see below), and also of certain stops of the organ. The great organ “solo cornet” was a mixture or compound stop, having either 5, 4, or 3 ranges of pipes; occasionally it was placed on a separate soundboard, when it was known as a “mounted cornet.” The “echo cornet” was a similar stop, but softer and enclosed in a box. In German and Dutch organs the term cornet is sometimes applied to a pedal reed stop.
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| From Capt. C. R. Day’s Descriptive Catalogue of Musical Instruments, by permission of Messrs. Eyre & Spottiswoode. | |
| Fig. 1.—Cornetto Muto. | Fig. 2.—Cornetto Curvo. |
(a) Cornet or Cornett (Fr. cornet, cornet à bouquin; Ger. Zinck, Zincken; Ital. cornetto) is the name given to a family of wood wind instruments, now obsolete, having a cup-shaped mouthpiece and a conical bore without a bell, and differing
entirely from the modern cornet à pistons. The old cornets were of two kinds, the straight and the curved, characterized by radical differences in construction. There were two very different kinds of straight cornets (Ger. gerader Zinck, Ital. cornetto diretto or recto), the one most commonly used having a detachable cup-shaped mouthpiece similar to that of the trumpet, while the other was made to all appearance without mouthpiece, there being not even a moulded rim at the end of the tube to
- ↑ Ezra Cornell (1807–1874) was born in Westchester county, New York, on the 11th of January 1807. His parents were Quakers from Massachusetts. He received a scanty education; worked as a carpenter in Syracuse and as a machinist in Ithaca; became interested (about 1842) in the development of the electric telegraph; and after unsuccessful or over-expensive attempts to ground the telegraph wires in 1844 solved the difficulty by stringing them on poles. He organized many telegraph construction companies, was one of the founders of the Western Union Telegraph Company, and accumulated a large fortune. He was a delegate to the first national convention of the Republican party (1856) and was a member of the New York assembly in 1862–1863 and of the state senate in 1864–1867. He founded a public library (dedicated in 1866) in Ithaca, and died there on the 9th of December 1874. Consult Alonzo B. Cornell, True and Firm: A Biography of Ezra Cornell (New York, 1884).
- ↑ New York’s share amounted to 990,000 acres. The Morrill Act prescribed that the proceeds from the sale of this land should not be used for the purchase, erection or maintenance of any building or buildings.
- ↑ He had previously—in 1865—bought scrip for 100,000 acres for $50,000, on the understanding that all profits which might accrue from the sale of the land should be paid to the university.
