The New York Times says very pertinently of the recent scrape of the Williams College freshmen, that "the incident shows for the hundreth time the imperfection of the present system of examinations and of class organization in our colleges. A lad with a certain gift of smartness can get through a term with a very limited amount of study, and trust to trick and device to save himself from disgrace at the final test." The Times further argues in favor of substituting regular weekly examinations, in place of the present system of annual or of term examinations. Then it says very strongly : "Under such a system, and with other equally necessary reforms, a college degree might be made to represent a certain understood amount of solid acquirement, which it certainly does not now." This is emphatic language, - perhaps too emphatic ; but that the present examination system is an abuse, and very nearly an imposition and a fraud, is an opinion which is coming to be held by so many nowadays that it cannot be laughed away. That it is a necessary reform that the present system of examinations should be abolished, is becoming more and more evident. That this fact is beginning to be appreciated by the public press, and to be discussed by them, is significant. The examination system has indeed been long established ; it has the prestige of the authority of European educators to support it. But in spite of this, it is fast proving itself unsuitable for American methods of instruction. The writer of the article on German student life in the last number of the Crimson, we fear, delivers a true commentary on American students, when he says that there is observable, in both American and German students, one common quality-"a remarkable tendency to shirk work," or at least, to postpone work until the final examination is at hand. This condition of things is plainly to be laid to the charge of the present examination system. The system is a good one if its results are good ; it is to be judged by its results.