ested also in their pupils, and understand how to direct them aright. Above all, the teachers must see to it that their pupils study with the understanding and not solely with the memory, not permitting a single lesson to be recited which is not thoroughly understood, taking the greatest care not to load the memory with any useless lumber, and eschewing merely memorized rules as they would deadly poison. The great difficulty against which the teachers of natural science have to contend in the colleges are the wretched tread-mill habits the students bring with them from the schools. Allow our students to memorize their lessons, and they will appear respectably well, but you might as easily remove a mountain as to make many of them think. They will solve an involved equation of algebra readily enough so long as they can do it by turning their mental crank, when they will break down on the simplest practical problem of arithmetic which requires of them only thought enough to decide whether they shall multiply or divide. Many a boy of good capabilities has been irretrievably ruined, as a scholar, by being compelled to learn the Latin grammar by rote at an age when he was incapable of understanding it; and I fear that schools may still be found where young minds are tortured by this stupefying exercise. Those of us who have faith in the educational value of scientific studies are most anxious that the students who resort to our colleges should be as well fitted in the physical sciences as in the classics, for otherwise the best results of scientific culture cannot be expected. As it is, our students come to the university, not only with no preparation in physical science, but with their perceptive and reasoning faculties so undeveloped that the acquisition of the elementary principles of science is burdensome and distasteful: and good scholars, who are ambitious of distinction, can more readily win their laurels on the old familiar track than on an untried course of which they know nothing, and for which they must begin their training anew. We have improved our system of instruction in the college as fast as we could obtain the means, but we are persuaded that the best results cannot be reached without the coöperation of the schools. We feel, therefore, that it is incumbent upon us, in the first place, to do every thing in our power to prove to the teachers of this country how great is the educational value of the physical sciences, when properly taught; and, secondly, to aid them in acquiring the best methods of teaching these subjects. It is with such aims that our summer courses have been instituted, and your presence here in such numbers is the best evidence that they have met a real want of the community. We welcome you to the university and to such advantages as it can afford, and we shall do all in our power to render your brief residence here fruitful both in experience and in knowledge; hoping also that the university may become to you, as she has to so many others, a bright light shining calmly over the troubled sea of active life, ever suggesting lofty thoughts, encouraging
