AMHERST COLLEGE, one of the best known of the so called small New England colleges, is situated in a beautiful am phitheatre of hills in the town of Amherst (q.v.), Massachusetts. It was founded in 1821 but did not receive its charter until I 8 2 5. Like most early colleges of New England, it was established with the chief aim of preparing students for the ministry. Al though soon after its founding the college began to widen the scope of its activities, it has preserved to the present day the idea of a liberal as opposed to a vocational training. Consistent with this purpose it has never added graduate or professional schools, adhering strictly to a course leading to the degree of A.B. with an ever real, though diminishing, emphasis upon the ancient classics.
The college grew rapidly for a score of years, but then experi enced a period of reaction which nearly cost the institution its life. There was a revival under the presidency of the eminent geologist, Edward Hitchcock (1845-54) and another reaction at the time of the Civil War. Since then its history has been one of quiet, but steady growth.
In 1927 it numbered 75o students and a faculty of 7o teachers. The material resources of the college amounted to $3,000,000 in buildings and equipment, and to $6,600,000 in invested funds. Its buildings consisted of four dormitories, five halls devoted to administration and instruction, two large laboratories, one of which is divided between physics and chemistry (a new chemistry laboratory being in process of construction), and the other be tween biology and geology, a library, chapel, church, a gymnasium equipped with a natatorium and squash courts, a large indoor athletic field and skating rink, a music building and an observa tory. The library, thoroughly modern in its appointments, con tained app .oximately 15o,000 books. The observatory is equipped with two domes, one housing a telescope with an i8in. Clark objective, and the other with a Tin. telescope (Clark objective) for student use. The geological and biological building contains the famous Hitchcock ichnological collection, the Adams shells, a part of the Audubon collection of birds, an extensive mineral collection including a rare assortment of meteorites, and fossil groups arranged to illustrate the theory of evolution. About Iooac. of land are devoted to athletic sports, the larger portion being used for intramural sports upon which the college lays an ever increasing emphasis.
For its size (6,000 graduates in the first hundred years), the college has had an exceptional number of graduates of distinction, among others being Henry Ward Beecher and Calvin Coolidge. It has been eminent in foreign missionary work, especially in the field of education. The Syrian Protestant college (now the American university) of Beirut, Syria, was founded by Daniel Bliss of the class of 1852; the Doshisha, the first institution of higher learning in Japan, by Joseph Neesima of the class of 1870; and Robert college, in Constantinople, owed a very large part of its early success to President George Washburn of the class of 1855. (G. D. 0.)