Ithaca, N. Y., September 28.--Instruction began at Cornell University September 24 with what promises to be a record enrollment. The past few days have seen hundreds of old and new students pouring into the city and the campus has again assumed an air of life and activity. The registration figures have not as yet been made public, but it is expected that the number of freshmen will far exceed that of any previous year.

Although the European hostilities seem to have had no effect on the number of students entering the University this fall, their effect will be keenly felt by the loss of several members of the university faculty who were rendered unable to return on account of the war. Professor Georges Mauxion, head of the department of design in the College of Architecture and Professor O. G. Guerlac, of the French department, were both called to arms at the outbreak of the war and were forced to return to France to rejoin their regiments. A small number of undergraduates, natives of the belligerent countries, are known to be fighting with their respective armies, but on the whole it is expected that the foreign colony here will be as large this year as ever before. Only one or two cases are known of American students travelling abroad who were marooned and rendered unable to return to this country for the opening of the university.

Anonymous Gift for University.

With the beginning of instruction in Cornell University this year work has commenced on the first unit of an elaborate system of residential halls which when completed will provide accommodations for the entire undergraduate body. The new dormitories, which cover an area of ground amounting to about two ordinary city blocks, will be of the Old English collegiate style, constructed of rough gray stone, and built around large airy courts. The beginning of the work on the first of these buildings was made possible by an additional gift of $50,000 made last summer by the same anonymous benefactor who gave $100,000 for the same purpose last spring.

International law and diplomacy will be the subject of a course which President Jacob Gould Schurman will deliver at Cornell University this year. This is the first time in a number of years that the president has personally conducted a lecture course in the University. As United States Ambassador to Greece throughout all the Balkan trouble, President Schurman has come into close contact with many interesting points in international law and diplomacy, and with the present war raging in Europe, the course promises to be very interesting.

The chemistry department of Cornell University will suffer the loss of a large shipment of apparatus which has been held up in Hamburg, Germany, on account of the war. In the spring a large number of supplies were ordered from different factories all through Germany and would have reached here about the first of September had not the war broken out. The department may possibly be handicapped in its work because of this, but, however, will suffer no shortage of chemicals.