German schools. There the professor not infrequently delivers a loose, often rambling, often too dry, often too agreeable lecture, the object of which, in ordinary cases, is merely to point out to the pupil what direction he should give to his studies. He is expected to go home, and, with the lecture as his guide, to pore over his books, obtaining his real information from them. The cases where the lectures of the professor are expected to be the only or principal source of knowledge are comparatively rare. Here it is very different. The lectures are sometimes all the student has. They must, therefore, be very full in fact, but also well condensed in language, or the course would become interminable. This necessity is far from being a disadvantage. The lectures delivered in New York have the value of original examinations into the sciences they discuss; and when they are published, as is to be hoped they will be in good time, the body of mining science, as contained in American text books, will be very different from that possessed by any other country.

"I have spoken above of the immense labor required to carry on a mining school, and the heterogeneous character of its operations. Of this the school under discussion is a good example. Where there was not a specimen, a crucible, or a furnace, six years have sufficed for the collection of seventy-five thousand specimens, illustrating geology, mineralogy and metallurgy; of models of furnaces, machines, crystals, geometrical sections; of a library of three thousand volumes; of laboratories for assay and for chemical operations, which are larger and better than those of any other mining school in the world. The value of all these must be close on two hundred thousand

dollars, and the work has been enormous. Nor can a good school be established with less labor or less expense. But the results are commensurably great. Among all the most famous schools in the world, there is not one so well supplied with apparatus, and not one where all the departments are carried on with the same equal care. able as it may seem, no school in Europe-unless that in St. Petersburg is to be excepted-can compare with this in the appointments either of its chemical or its assay laboratories.

Remark

"If the other schools which are to be founded in this country are established with equal care, fifty years will see a great change for the better in American mines. The enormous losses which are to-day experienced, even in the best conducted works, and the absurdities which are perpetrated in the name of mining, will pass away with the ignorance that causes them."

School of Medicine-Columbia College.

In 1767, the Governors of the college established a Medical School, which continued in existence till November, 1813, at which time the Trustees agreed to incorporate it with the College of Physicians and Surgeons. There was no Faculty of Medicine in the college from 1813 to 1860. In this latter year it was revived by the adoption of the College of Physicians and Surgeons as the Medical Department of the college. The following is a brief historical sketch of the College of Physicians and Surgeons :

The college was chartered March 12th, 1807, by the Regents of the University of the State of New York, pursuant to an act of the Legislature, passed March 24, 1791. The officers were elected May 5, 1807; and the first course of lectures, commencing November 7th, of the same year, were delivered in a small two-story building in Robinson Street. About the close of the session, however, the college, having received from the Legislature an endowment of twenty thousand dollars, was enabled to purchase an edifice in Pearl Street better adapted for their purposes, which was for

mally opened for the reception of students in November, 1808.

The Medical Department of Columbia College having been discontinued in November, 1813, the union of the two schools, as recommended by the Regents of the University as far back as April Ist, 1811, was, at length, consummated March 7th, 1814, and a commodiously-arranged brick building on the north side of Barclay Street, near Broadway, secured for the new organization.

This alliance, however, proved to be of but short duration, since some of the Faculty withdrew, and, under the authority of Queen's College, New Jersey, established the "New Medical Institution" in a large building in Duane Street. This latter school suspended in 1816.

At this crisis in its affairs, the Regents of the University reorganized the college under an entirely new charter, which gave its management to a Board of twenty-five Trustees, whose tenure of office was subject to the will of the Regents themselves.

In February, 1821, to the dissensions between the college and the New York County Medical Society, which began sometime during 1819, there succeeded new causes of discord between the Trustees and the Faculty. These culminated in the resignation of the entire Faculty in April,

1826, and the appointment of a new corps of Professors a few months afterwards.

The original Faculty, soon after their resignation, revived the Medical Institution, under the auspices of Rutgers (formerly Queen's) College, New Brunswick, New Jersey; but, by legislative enactment, the diplomas were afterwards rendered so manifestly illegal that the Faculty abandoned the contest, and the school ceased to exist.

By a new provision in the Constitution, the Faculty were henceforth excluded from seats in the Board of Trustees, which was now to be composed of a majority of gentlemen who did not belong to the medical profession. As a result, both bodies have since worked in unison for the common good.

The college removed from Barclay to Crosby Street in November, 1837, where its sessions were held up to the inauguration of the present edifice (Fourth Avenue, corner of Twenty-third Street), January 22d, 1856.

Since then nothing noteworthy in its history occurred until the Legislature, by an amendment of its charter, March 24th, 1860, delegated the authority of the Regents to the Trustees; and, in June of this year, also, the institution was constituted the Medical Department of Columbia College, and now bears the title of the "College of