Professor N. S. Shaler gave an illustrated lecture last night on the subject of "The Environment of Harvard." This word, environment, said Professor Shaler, has a profound significance. Not only does it imply the physical surroundings of man, but what is still more important, their effect upon his daily life and gradual development. In primitive times this development was dependent on the extent to which individuals and races were affected by the operation of natural laws, one sort of environment. In later times man has to a large extent been able to govern his own environment by artificial means.

Coming to the immediate environment of Cambridge we find natural features in the geologic formations that have influenced seriously the lives of men in this region since the earliest settlements. The deposits of boulders so common about here drove the pioneers to their towns on barren sand plains instead of on the fertile but stubborn hills and valleys. The slow, persevering labor necessary to reclaim the present farm land from boulders and forests has had an almost inestimable effect on the characters of the New Englanders.