Certainly for the first time at Harvard College, and probably for the first time at any college in the country, a group of undergraduates has prepared a critical catalog of college courses, which appears in this morning's Crimson as a "Confidential Guide of College Courses."

The Crimson's-guide was prepared by a group of Crimson editors who have felt that in the past discussion of the merits and defects of college courses has been altogether too meagre to be of any value either to instructors or prospective students.

This morning's guide takes up over 40 college courses, including nearly all those courses offered to Freshmen as well as about an equal number of the larger and more important courses open to upperclassmen.

Each criticism was written by an editor of the Crimson whose knowledge of the course and of its instructors justifies him in a statement of opinion. And in each case, the statement of the merits and defects of the courses under discussion is a purely personal opinion based on the reactions of an undergraduate to the subject matter and the methods of instruction of the course under consideration. Some courses may be too highly praised; others too greatly censured.

The Crimson does not pretend to present a categorical statement of the merits and defects of the courses mentioned below. It presents, rather, the personal opinions of a fairly representative group of undergraduates. The Crimson does not endorse these opinions. But it does guarantee that they were written, and are being published, seriously and sincerely, with the desire for the improvement of the courses of instruction at Harvard-College as the guiding motive.

The Crimson considers these criticisms in the light of communications written by its own editors. Consequently, in all fairness, it now throws open its regular communication column to all members of the University who feel moved to carry the discussion further, and praise courses which have been condemned, or censure courses which have been defended.

In arranging its guide of courses, the Crimson has perpetrated another radical innovation by discarding the traditional grouping of the college catalog; and arranging the subjects in alphabetical array, and the courses in numerical succession.

Anthropology 1

Although Anthropology is technically the most human course in college, the way it is taught deserves no such high praise. Not that it is inhuman at all, for Anthropology 1 is one of those mediocre courses which are at once the curse of the University and the backbone of its moderately high level of instruction. There is a bewildering mass of miscellaneous facts to be mastered which from their very nature can not be too systematically coordinated. The course will provoke enthusiasm from those few who have a decided bent for this sort of thing and from the rest the semi-boredom with which the majority of students always regard a course so conducted as to demand much memorizing at the expense of creative thought.

Biology 1

Biology 1 will provide everyone who takes it with a conversational knowledge of such popular topics as evolution, heredity, and parthenogenesis; and to those who like it, will impart an enthusiasm for biological science which will probably lead to further study in the field. Those who dislike it will do so because an occasional lecturer becomes unduly technical, and most of all because in the laboratory they will be forced to spend countless weary hours drawing unimportant pictures of bugs, leaves and frogs' legs with absurd minuteness. The limited conception of the scientific method which they may gain thereby could as well have been acquired in a few weeks instead of a year. Four specialists, most of them human, give a smattering of astronomy, zoology, and botany. The course is relatively new, improving constantly, and can be taken casually.

Chemistry A

The nature of this course renders superfluous any comment other than that given in the University catalog.

Comparative Literature 6a and 6b

These courses are listed for "undergraduates and graduates". This indicates an exceedingly faulty estimate of Dr. Magoun's character on the part of the authorities of the English Department. Although still a young man, he has already pursued scholarship to the point of pedantry, and shows so great an enthusiasm for the mechanics of literature,--bibliographies, card catalogs, and philological dictionaries,--that he seems to have lost any love for literature itself. Doubt- less a valuable aid to graduate students in their highly technical researches, Dr. Nagoun possesses none of the qualities necessary for a teacher of undergraduates. To an undergraduate he seems no better fitted to be a teacher of English literature than is a genealogist to be an historian.