A good deal of influence has of late been brought to bear by certain New England schoolmasters upon the committee on English composition of the Board of Overseers to lower the entrance requirements in English. Such a step would be retrogressive. Under the present conditions the quality of the English used in examination papers is appallingly bad. To lower the entrance requirements in English would in no way remedy this evil. Harvard College is certainly not the place to teach men to spell properly and to write good grammar. That at least should be done by the preparatory schools. The committee have now under consideration a plan which should work very well. It is to print fac-similes of the examination papers written by graduates of the leading schools, naming in each case the writer's preparatory school. By this means improvement would be made in two ways: the preparatory schools would be stirred up to doing better work; and evidence would be furnished as to which school developed the best method of teaching English composition. As the school which developed the best method would be immediately followed by the other schools, there would necessarily be an improvement all along the line. Clearly then the preparatory schools should be forced to teach their pupils enough English to pass the entrance examinations instead of lowering the requirements in English to suit the convenience of the schools and thus allowing the standard to decline.