The University of Pennsylvania has placed itself in a very peculiar position. It attempts to assert that hereafter, if they do not receive an answer within sixty days to their challenge to row an eight-oared race, they will be champions of all the American colleges. In other words, they intent to ignore the claims of the old and tried oarsmen of Harvard and Yale, merely because these latter parties have too many previous engagements to accept the challenge of this last aspirant for aquatic honors. College boat races cost more than any other kind of amateur contests because they make no money in return for the expense incurred. For this reason, any one college cannot undertake more than one or two races a year. Now Harvard is already saddled with two races for the coming summer and finds its hands full to keep its present engagements, and Yale seems to find enough to occupy all its attention to prepare for the race with us. For these reasons we think that the position taken by Pennsylvania is entirely unwarranted, and we need take no further notice of their claim, simply continuing in our old routine of races on the Thames.

The aspiring university has called upon public sentiment to sustain them in their claims and we can do no better than refer them to the editorial taken from a leading paper for an idea of what the outside world thinks, which we print in another column.