TO THE BOARD OF OVERSEERS:

The President of the University has the honor to submit the following report for the year 1913-14:

During the past academic year the Faculty of Arts and Sciences has lost by death Benjamin Osgood Peirce, Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, a physicist eminent in all eyes but his own, the simplicity and elevation of whose character have left as keep a mark on his students and colleagues as his fruitful labors for thirty-two years. The Faculty of Medicine has lost death Thomas Morgan Rotch, Professor of Pediatrics, who taught that subject in the Medical School continuously for thirty-six years, and led the way for this country in scientific feeding of children. The beautiful Infants' Hospital close by the School is a memorial to him, as well as to his son whose name it bears. Since the opening of the present academic year Charles Sedgwick Minot, James Stillman Professor of Comparative Anatomy, has also died. A teacher in the School since 1880, his fame as an embryologist rose steadily throughout his life in this country and abroad.

The only resignations of professors during the year have been those of Bruce Wyman, Professor of Law, who had been a teacher in the Law School ever since his graduation therefrom in 1900; and Myles Standish, Williams Professor of Ophthalmology, who had taught in the Medical School more than twenty years.

In the course of the past year there have been thirteen appointments to professors' fairs. Nine of these have been cases of promotion of men who had already served as assistant professors. Austin Wakeman Scott was made Professor of LAW; Robert Williamson Lovett, Professor of Orthopedic Surgery; George Andrew Reisner, Professor of Egyptology Rd Edward Murray East, Professor of Experimental Plant Morphology; while Frank Lowell Kennedy was appointed Associate Professor of Engineering; Carles Wilson Killam, Associate Professor of Architecture; Charles Leonard Moulton, Associate Professor of Mathematics; Simon Burt Wolbach, Associate Professor of Bacteriology, and Heinrich Conrad Bierwith, Associate Professor of German. The other four professors were appointed from outside the University. Kirsopp Lake was made Professor of Early Christian Literature; William Ernest Hocking, Professor of Philosophy; Felix Frankfurter, Professor of Law, and Roger Irving Lee, Professor of Hygiene.

Interesting Exchange Professors.

The exchange professors sent by us during the year were: to Berlin, Archibald Cary Coolidge, Professor of History and Director of the University Library; to Paris, Maxime Bocher, Professor of Mathematics; and to the Western Colleges, Clifford Herschel Moore, Professor of Latin. From abroad we received singularly interesting men: from France, Fernand Baldensperger, Professor of Modern Comparative Literature at the Sorhonne; from Germany, Ernst von Dobschutz, Professor of the New Testament at the University of Halle; and from the Western Colleges three men of professional rank: Harry Waldo Norris, Professor of Zoology at Grinnell; Erastus Gilbert Smith, Professor of Chemistry at Beloit; and Homer Edwards Woodbridge, Professor of English at Colorado. The new provision for a professor from Japan brought us Masaharu Anesaki of the University of Tokyo, who bears here the title of Professor of Japanese Literature and Life.

In regard to the Western exchange two facts are noteworthy. At the request of the other four colleges, Carleton College in Minnesota has been added to the group; and it has been found that older men, of more advanced academic standing than had at first been contemplated, desire to come here for a half-year. This is both significant and gratifying.

Number of Students Unchanged.

As usual the report upon the condition of the University begins with Harvard College, the centre upon and about which the other schools are grouped; and the report for the College begins properly with the Freshman class, since that year more than any other determines the tone of college life. For some time the size of the entering class has remained substantially the same, a fact which does not appear clearly from the figures in the annual Catalogues, because the basis of class rating has been changed. Until a couple of years ago all undergraduates who had not removed their conditions at entrance were rated as Freshmen, under the impression that a dislike of appearing in the Catalogue in that guise would provide a strong stimulus to making up conditions early. But students care little about the rating in the Catalogue, and, short of sending a man away, probation has proved to be the only effective form of penalty for neglect of duty. In view of a marked rise in the minimum standard of work in College, any immediate increase in the number of students entering could hardly be expected. It is enough that there has been no falling off. Experience, however, appears to show that a demand for more work does not permanently reduce, but in time tends to enlarge, the attendance, and it is gratifying to report a growth in the size of the class entering in September, 1914. The number of new Freshmen is 664, being 83 larger than last year. The increase is in part due to the fact that the percentage of rejections, which was excessive last year, has been reduced to the normal for the last few years. Perhaps the growth in size is due in part also to the opening of the new Freshman Halls.

Younger Men Better Students.

The report of the Chairman of the Committee on Admission contains much that is interesting, and among other things a statement of the average age of candidates. It appears that those who were admitted averaged about eighteen and a half years old, while the rejected were about nineteen. The difference ought not to surprise anyone familiar with the problems raised by the age of students. Carefully compiled statistics referred to in the report of last year show that the men entering College young are on the average better, both in their studies and their conduct. On the whole they are the more intelligent and industrious youths; and this appears in the examination for entrance, as well as in college work. Yet even those who are admitted come too late. This subject was discussed in the last annual report, but it will bear repetition. With the long period of special training now required in every profession, there is a universal cry that men are beginning their careers in life too old, and that the period of education is too long. Disease and death are not postponed because a man starts upon the practice of his profession a year or two later than is necessary. His period of active life, his achievements and his usefulness, are simply curtailed to that extent; and a part, at least, of the time wasted could be saved in the school days before coming to college. Boys of ordinary capacity could, by beginning young enough, be ready to enter college a year earlier than most of them do now, and they would be perfectly competent to pursue the courses even of the best colleges. The advantages, indeed, would seem to be almost wholly in favor of entering college young. Seventeen is a more appropriate age than eighteen to begin the life of college. The real pleasures are more fully and innocently enjoyed. Under a proper environment the moral dangers are in fact less. The means of education are quite within the reach of the youth who is well prepared for admission at that time; and, paradoxical as it may appear, he is in fact more likely to take advantage of them. He is at the period of life when his intellectual powers are growing rapidly, and when it is a natural process to develop those powers by exercising them without too much regard for the direct use to be made of the knowledge acquired. In short, there is a normal time for general education. A man who is too old, if a serious student, seeks to prepare directly for his career to study his profession: or if not, is in danger of treating his studies lightly. Much has been said about maturity, but that is the result less of age than of environment and responsibility. Maturity may easily become over-ripe. Finally the boy who enters college older begins life later; unless, indeed, he cuts down his time in college. If twenty-one is the best age to begin the study of a profession,--and the signs of the times seem to point to this,--then one must enter at seventeen or remain only three years. In the last analysis the practical problem for the community at the present day is narrowing itself down to shortening the college course or entering younger, to the question whether it is better to stay longer in school or have a fourth year in college. The question needs no answer for those who believe that the Senior year is the most profitable, not only because it is the last, but because it is the fourth.

489 in Freshman Halls.

A hope was expressed last year that one of the objections of parents to sending their sons to college young,--a fear of the sudden transition from school and home to college,--would be in great part removed by the new Freshman Halls. Three of these halls, holding 489 students, have been completed and were filled at the opening of the academic year. As all Freshman not living at home or specially excused were required to reside there, the assignment of rooms involved much labor and discretion. Save that students coming in considerable numbers from any one school were required to distribute themselves among three halls, and that the cheapest rooms were reserved for men of limited means, the Freshmen were assigned rooms, so far as possible, in accordance with their preferences. Professor Yeomans, the Assistant Dean in charge of the Freshmen, and Mr. Brandegee, the Regent, succeeded in doing this in a way that is highly satisfactory. Owing to the increase in the entering class the halls cannot contain all the Freshmen, in spite of the large number of them who live at home. A score of men have been given rooms in other college dormitories with the privilege of taking their meals at, and being in other respects members, of one of the halls; while there are a few more wholly outside. It is probable, moreover, that a number of those who live at home would now be in the halls if there had been room for them. It is highly important, therefore, that the original plan should be completed as soon as possible by the construction of a fourth hall.

As yet it is too early to form a final opinion on the effect of these halls upon the student body; and in fact their complete influence cannot be measured until a class entering them has passed through its whole college course, for their object is not merely to improve the Freshman year, but to fit the men more rapidly to make a good use of their life in college. So far the halls appear to be producing the results for which they were designed. Many of the present Freshmen were prejudiced against them from a dread of freedom and of school-boy regulations. This has disappeared, and the men as a body are well pleased, looking upon the halls as a privilege. There is, however, no benefit in life without some corresponding loss, and complaints are heard that while the Freshmen mix freely in their several halls, they see little of the men in the other halls and nothing of upper classmen. This is true; but as a rule Freshmen have in the past seen little of most of their classmates, and still less of the older classes, while those men with whom they have been chiefly brought into contact have had antecedents similar to their own. A man does well if in the first three months of college he makes the acquaintance of one hundred and fifty classmates of all kinds, almost all unknown to him before, and with experiences quite unlike his. That the Freshman Halls have enabled him to do. There ought to be time enough in the rest of the year for men in the different halls to draw together, and later to come into close contact with upper classmen. We can rely on the Freshmen not to neglect the abundant opportunities there will be for this. By being more gradual the fusion ought ultimately to be more complete. In fact, it was mainly to prevent immediate segregation on the basis of similar origin that the halls were built.