The publication of annual reports by the president and treasurer of the college to the governing boards has been until very late years a custom peculiar to Harvard. Yale, on the contrary, was in the habit of issuing reports of this kind only at rare intervals of five years or more. There the college has been treated more as a close corporation than is the case at Harvard. This fact led to a lengthy discussion in the columns of various newspapers some time ago, in which the insignificant number of bequests that had been made of recent years to Yale was attributed to it. Harvard, on the other hand, has laid open the minutest details of her administration to the public scrutiny, and thus has invited public confidence. The result of this has been the numerous bequests that have been bestowed upon her during the past. Men of wealth feel greater readiness in endowing an institution of this sort than one where the whole government is kept a close secret. And the fact that Harvard is demanding more money is no indication of weakness, but, on the contrary, to quote the Advertiser, this demand is "but a gauge of its progress and an indication of its healthy expansion."