CORNELL' UNIVERSITY, at Ithaca, Tompkins co., N. Y., went into operation in 1868 as an unsectarian institution. Its charter provides that no officer or student shall be admitted or excluded on any religious or political opinions, and that at no time shall the majority of the trustees be of one religious sect or of no religious sect. Its foundation was partly the land-scrip, representing 990,000 acres, which had been received by the state of New York from the national goiernment under the land grant of 1862; and partly a donation of $500.000 by Mr. Ezra Cornell, of Ithaca; with addi tions by trustees McGraw, Kelley, Selby, and Sage, and president White. Eleven courses of study lead to degrees, viz.: agriculture, architecture, arts, chemistry and physics, civil engineering, literature, mathematics, mechanics, natural history, and philosophy. Those not studying for degrees choose their own course. Five large buildings are devoted to the uses of the university. A sixth is rented to students and others. Sage college is a boarding-hall for lady students, and Sage chapel is a beauti ful building devoted to religious services. The grounds, comprising 258 acres (of which 135 arc used as a farm by the agricultural department), arc beautifully situated upon the upland e. of the village of Ithaca, 400 ft. above Cayuga lake, are valued at $94,000, and the buildings at $570,000. The annual income of the university is about $100,000. There is a laboratory for anatomy. one for botany, one for general chemis try, one for agricultural chemistry, and one for each of the departments of entomology, geology, mechanic arts, and physics. Among the collections are 187 Rau models of plows from the royal agricultural college of Wiirtemberg, the Auzoux veterinary models, models of plants in papier mache, the Sandwich islands herbarium, the Jewett collec tion of fossils, a collection of Brazilian Indian antiquities, the SiInman collection of minerals, the Newcomb collection of 25,000 species of shells, a collection of 850 archi tectural photographs, and collections of models in architecture and free-hand drawing.
The library contains 37,024 bound volumes, and 12,970 pamphlets. On the 1st of Jan., 1880, there were 43 professors and assistant-professors, 8 instructors, 435 students, and 622 alumni. Twenty-live professors and assistant-professors and 7 instructors are engaged in teaching scientific branches; 17 professors and assistant-professors and one instructor in teaching literature, history, and philosophy; and one professor in teach ing military science and tactics. During the year ending Aug., 1879, there were 160 classical or classical students; 166 strictly scientific, and 158 partially scien tific—total, 484. Women are admitted on the same terms as men, except that the former must be 17 years of age. After becoming students, all are upon exactly the same footing, except that women are excused from military drill or its substitute. The first-year class is required to drill two terms of the year three times a week. The three other classes are required to take the same drill or to take extra university work equiva lent to two recitations a week. There is no preparatory department. There are no compulsory relimious exercises of any kind, nor is any religious test allowable in any case. There is, however, a fund of $30,000 for the support of Christian preaching in the chapel, and, except in winter, the pulpit is regularly supplied by the best preachers of the various Christian denominations in turn. Each of the assembly districts of the state (128 in all) may send yearly one student for four years' free tuition; the choice to be made by competitive examination from the best scholars, male and female, in the different academies and public schools, but subject to the usual entrance examination at the university.