male undergraduates as a whole. Now the fraternities and clubs have asked the University to make public announcement at the close of each half-year showing exactly how every one of the fifty-four men's fraternities and house-clubs compares in scholarship with every one of its rivals-not only relatively, but in actual numerical score.

The new system will enable any Freshman who has been invited to join any fraternity or club, or enable his family or friends, or enable alumni, to know exactly how each fraternity or houseclub stands in scholarship as compared with every other.

The fraternities are working diligently to encourage good scholarship among their members by aid and counsel to their younger members and by good house rules.

So that general tendencies rather than mere accidental variations may be reflected, announcement will be made of the numer ical standing of each fraternity not only for the preceding halfyear, but also for the preceding four years.

FACULTIES STILL TO VOTE DEGREES

Degrees must continue to be conferred upon the recommendation of the respective faculties, and this power cannot be delegated by the respective faculties to the Academic Senate-such was the decision arrived at by the Regents on April 11, 1916, when the following report and decision of the Committee or Curriculum and Degrees were received and confirmed:

"We would report that the Regents referred to the Committee on Curriculum and Degrees the recommendation of the Academic Senate that the Academic Senate be authorized to recommend the conferring of degrees in course in the name of the University when the power to recommend is not otherwise reserved by law. Your committee requested legal advice upon this matter from the Attorney of the Regents. In his response to the question laid before him, Attorney Olney says:

"I have for acknowledgement your letter dated October 18, 1915, together with a copy of a memorial from the Academic Senate to the Regents, concerning the proposal that the conferring of degrees in course shall be hereafter recommended to the Regents by the Senate, instead of as heretofor by the respective faculties. "By Section 8 of the Organic Act it is provided that so far as the Affiliated Colleges are concerned degrees shall be awarded to students recommended therefor by the respective faculties of said colleges.

"With respect to the University generally, it is provided by Section 9 of the Organic Act that each professor and instructor of the course, for the completion of which the degree is to be awarded, shall cast one vote upon each application for recommendation to the Board of Regents for the degree. In my opinion,

the word "course" is here substantially equivalent to the word "college" as used generally in the Organic Act.

"From the foregoing, it follows that the Organic Act contemplates that degrees in course shall be conferred upon recommendation of the respective faculties, not only of the Affiliated Colleges, but of the colleges of the University in general.'

"It is, therefore, the sense of the Committee on Curriculum and Degrees that the action requested by the Academic Senate cannot be taken by the Regents.

PREVENTIVE MEDICINE AND HYGIENE

A new Department of Preventive Medicine and Hygiene has been established in the Medical School, headed by Dr. Wilbur A. Sawyer as Clinical Professor of Preventive Medicine and Hygiene. He remains also Secretary and Executive Officer of the California State Board of Health. It is hoped by this action to increase the present effective co-operation between the University and the California State Board of Health in the work of attacking the causes of disease in California. The University has done pioneer work in its organization of a Curriculum in Public Health by which training for careers in that field may be obtained by men whose method of approach is through medicine, sanitary engineering, bacteriology, or chemistry. Evidence of a growing public recognition of the need for better training for public health officers is afforded by the recent action of the Rockefeller Foundation in providing endowment of several millions for a new School of Preventive Medicine and Hygiene at Johns Hopkins University, where the engineer, the chemist, and the bacteriologist, as well as the physician, will receive higher training for public health activities.

The staff of the University of California's new Department of Preventive Medicine and Hygiene will include, in addition to Professor Sawyer, Dr. James G. Cumming, Director of the Bureau of Communicable Diseases, as Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine and Hygiene, and, as lecturers in Preventive Medicine and Hygiene, Chester G. Gillespie, C. E., Director of the Bureau of Sanitary Engineering; Dr. J. C. Geiger, Assistant Director of the Bureau of Communicable Diseases; Dr. John N. Force, Graduate in Public Health, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, and Dr. William C. Hassler, Health Officer of San Francisco.

NEW DEPARTMENT OF BIOCHEMISTRY

A new development of the University of California in medicine is the separating-off of a new Department of Biochemistry from the Department of Physiology, under the direction of Dr. T. Brailsford Robertson, as Professor of Biochemistry.

SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

The faculty of the School of Education, by vote of the Regents on April 11, 1916, was defined as consisting of the members of the Department of Education, of the professors or instructors in other departments who give professional courses approved as such by the President and the Department of Education, and of one member from each department or college or school representing a secondary school subject, but offering as yet no professional courses, this member to be appointed by the President in consultation with the department concerned and the School of Education.

The establishment of a new higher professional degree of "Graduate in Education," to follow after four years of successful professional experience and two full years of graduate study, was approved by the Regents on April 11, 1916.

LANGUAGE TESTS

All students must pass an examination in oral and written expression ("Subject A'') before obtaining Junior standing. Of 733 men who took this examination in December, 1915, just 598, or 81 per cent, passed; of 593 women, 440, or 74 per cent.

A petition signed by 1380 students was presented to the faculty asking that the "Subject B' requirement be abolished-that is, the requirement that all students in the Colleges of Letters and Science, Commerce, and Agriculture, must pass an examination to prove reading knowledge of some one foreign language before they can receive the Junior Certificate. The Academic Senate, however, refused to abolish this requirement, holding that no student is really qualified to undertake advanced studies in the University unless he has equipped himself with the tools represented by knowledge of at least one foreign language.

At the "Subject B' examination on January 15, 1916, just 992 presented themselves for examination, 876 presented examination books, and 409, or 47 per cent, passed. Of the 465 men, 38 per cent passed; of the 404 women, 58 per cent.

KEEPING THE STUDENTS WELL

How frequently people need medical care and how effectively and cheaply preventive medicine may be achieved through sensible co-operation is shown by the past year's experience of the University of California with its Infirmary. During the University year just over, 4500 different students received treatment or medical advice an average of eight times, and 672 were sick

enough to be put to bed-for an average of five days-and the cost to each of the 6286 students was only six dollars for the whole year. In the ten years since the Infirmary was founded by Dr. George F. Reinhardt, deaths there have averaged only one in two years, so effective is preventive medicine in keeping small ailments from becoming serious.

The daily attendance at the dispensary for 1915-16 was 126.3 and the bed average 11.8. Of the students, 71.8 per cent received aid from the Infirmary. The dispensary diagnoses numbered 12,059 and the diagnoses of bed cases numbered 941. There were 121 students who were sick in bed more than once during the year. The largest number of patients in any one day was 24. Only 21 of the 653 house patients left the Infirmary not relieved.

That all the rest of the people of the United States ought to follow the example which the University of California has set in its Infirmary system, by which the 6286 students at Berkeley receive all the medical and hospital care they need to keep them well, in return for a small annual Infirmary fee, is the doctrine preached by Dr. Richard C. Cabot, the distinguished Boston physician, Chief of the Medical Staff of the Massachusetts General Hospital and a member of the Harvard Medical Faculty, in articles in the American Magazine for April and for May which have attracted wide attention.

He declares that only the very poor and the very rich have the best medical attention, because it is only the very poor and the very rich who get "group medicine," or treatment by a group of specialists, with all the modern resources of hospital and scientific laboratory, while most people have no preventive nor group medical care at all. He saw the results of the University's tenyear experiment with the Infirmary "and was astounded," he says, "at the greatness of the reform and at the ignorance of it in other parts of the country."

"After a considerable experience in medical practice here and abroad," testifies Dr. Cabot, "I think I am entitled to say that the work done in the Infirmary of the University of California is not surpassed in any place with which I am acquainted. It was thorough, accurate, up-to-date, kindly, humane work. I saw the students pouring into the clinic, many of them apparently in splendid health. Why, one might ask, were these healthy boys and girls going there? They were going because they needed advice about trifling ailments which, if treated in their trifling states, might very possibly be prevented from getting serious. A clinic such as that at the University of California encourages people to give the doctor that golden opportunity which he so often longs for and so often lacks, the chance to nip disease in

the bud, to strangle it before it can get full headway in the system. The Infirmary, giving first-class treatment at $6 a year, is self-supporting. This, as it seems to me, represents a triumph of organized medicine."

AGRICULTURAL WORK

This year 101 boys' agricultural clubs are conducting cropgrowing contests for the prize of a month's journey of 9000 miles across the continent and back. The thirty clubs which first raise the $250 necessary for their prize-winner's traveling expenses will be permitted to send one representative each on the transcontinental journey, but every club which completes the contest will be entitled to send its six best farmers to the annual convention of the Boys' High School Agricultural Clubs, from October 12 to 14, at the University Farm. Pigs and potatoes are the favorites for the contests this year, other clubs conducting contests in growing corn, beans, vegetables, sheep, sugar-beets, etc.

A "Short Course in Forestry" is to be held annually hereafter, for twelve weeks, in January, February, and March, to aid woodsmen to learn how to plan better systems of fire protection, how to build better trails or make better maps, and how to keep abreast of the latest developments in methods of logging and timber estimating. There will be work in forest management and instruction in elementary silviculture. The course will be particularly valuable for superintendents, foremen, rangers, and those who wish to qualify themselves for such occupations.

It costs as much to feed a poor cow as a good cow. The development of better dairy stock in California is being greatly aided by the important work which the University is doing in the official testing of dairy cows for production of milk and butter-fat. The University now has a staff of sixteen men engaged in this work, as compared with three or four three years ago. These supervisors visit the dairies, weigh and test the milk of the cows, and certify under oath to their production, the College of Agriculture and the breeding association concerned being jointly responsible for the accuracy of the records published. It is increasingly true that pure-bred cows are being sold on the basis of records of production made in these official tests. One such University test recently completed has shown that Tilly Alcartra of Woodland has produced during the past two years 60,278 pounds of milk and 1903.6 pounds of butter-fat, or more than any other cow ever recorded in the history of the world.

The increasing public interest in the great work of agricultural education which is being done by the University of California at