LAST year we looked forward to the completion of Sever Hall in the hope that we should suffer no longer from a lack of ventilation in the recitation rooms, and we still believe that this end might be attained if the new rooms were assigned to meet present needs and not to comply with some rigid system which satisfies no one except the complacent inventor. If preference is given to any department, it ought to be that one for which Sever is best adapted. But this has not been done. It seems that room has been found in Sever for every other department except that of History, while it has been crowded more than ever into the old halls. As nearly all the courses in History are lecture courses, it is of great importance that rooms suitable for lectures should be provided. In Harvard 6, for example, where there are three consecutive hours of lectures every other day, there is not a single desk, and we have to take notes as well as we can with our hands full of books. If the authorities have knowingly sanctioned such an arrangement as this, they deserve unqualified censure; and if they have done it through oversight, they should hasten to correct the error. For if now, when we can have the windows open, the air is extremely unpleasant, if not injurious, how shall we endure it when the winter forces us to keep the windows closed?