who do great honor to their professions, the place of their education and themselves, in Divinity, Law, Medicine, etc., etc., in this and various other colonies, both on the American Continent and West India Islands; and the College is annually increasing as well in students as reputation."

Dr. Samuel Johnson writing in July, 1760, described the building as one hundred and eighty feet long, thirty wide, and three stories high. It was intended to have been one side of a quadrangle, inclosing a court.

The College continued in operation until the 6th of April, 1776, when the Treasurer received a message from the Committee of Safety, informing him the premises must be ready within six days, for the reception of troops. The students were dispersed, the library and apparatus were deposited in the City Hall, and the building was used for a military hospital.' The college record of that year remarks: "The turbulence and confusion which prevail in every part of the country effectually suppress every literary pursuit," and but faint traces of life are found during the eight years that followed.

Its revival is identified with the proceedings of the first Board of Regents, from 1784 till 1787, during which period the College had no other Trustees. Yet nothing was left undone by this Board in their efforts to restore order, and to organize the institution upon a broad and liberal basis.

On the 14th of December, 1784, they decided to establish the four faculties of Arts, Divinity, Medicine and Law, the first to comprise seven Professorships, and the second to consist of such as the different religious societies in the State might provide. The third was to have seven Professors and the fourth three. There were to be besides these, nine extra Professors, a President, a Secretary and a Librarian; and this grand scheme of University education was agreed upon, when the entire income of real and personal property of the College did not exceed the sum of £1,200.*

During the three years under the Regents no President was appointed, and at the commencements of 1786 and 1787, the graduates received certificates to be exchanged for diplomas, whenever there was a President qualified to sign them.

Most of the apparatus and books were lost by this removal. Some six or seven hundred volumes were found thirty years afterward in a room in St. Paul's chapel, but no one could tell how they came there.

Moore's Hist. of Columbia College, p. 68.

The act of 1787 reörganizing the Board of Regents upon a new plan, very nearly the same that now exists, gave a separate Board of Trustees to the College, and on the 21st of May of that year, William Samuel Johnson, LL. D., was elected President.1 On the 12th of November he signified his acceptance of the office. There were then three Professors in the Arts, and three in Medicine, but none in Law or Divinity. An extra Professor of German was employed, but without fixed salary.'

During the next twenty years no event of particular interest occurred in the College, which gradually acquired strength, and its affairs became settled.

In 1792 the College received a grant of £7,900 for specific objects, and £750 per annum for salaries.

In 1801 it shared with Union College in a land grant at Lake George, Ticonderoga and Crown Point.

In 1809 the requirements for admission were very much raised, to take effect the next year, and a new course of study and discipline was established.

On the 23d of March, 1810, the college charter was revised, its Trustees named and their powers and privileges defined. Former grants were confirmed, former acts consolidated, and the law of 1787 relating to the Regents of the University, so far as it concerned this College, was repealed. The value of real estate to be acquired was not to exceed the sum of $20,000 a year, and the land received from Trinity Church was not to be granted for a longer term of time than sixty-three years.

In 1812 the Provost was made eligible as a Trustee.

In 1814 the College received the grant of a tract of twenty acres of land which had been acquired by the State from Dr. Hosack as a

'Mr. Johnson was a son of the Rev. Dr. Samuel Johnson, the first President of the College.

Of the thirty-nine students, nearly half of them in the freshman class, five lodged and boarded in the College, and five had rooms and studied there. The yearly income at that time was about £1,330.

3 Act of April 11 (chap. 69), Laws of 1792. Of the above sum, £1,500 was for a library, £200 for chemical apparatus, £1,200 for a wall to support grounds, and £5,000 for a hall and wing to building, making in all £7,900.

Chap. 85, Laws of 1810.

Chap. 6, Laws of 1812. The office of Provost was created in June, 1811, to supply the place of President in his absence, and to conduct the classical studies of the senior class. It was discontinued in 1816.

6 Chap. 120, Laws of 1814.

Botanical Garden, upon condition that within twelve years buildings should be erected upon these grounds and the establishment moved thither. This obligation was released February 19, 1819.' The Botanical Garden, then a rural spot some three miles "out of town," is now in the midst of a densely-built and wealthy part of the city, and affords the source of a most substantial income to the College.

From 1817 to 1820, extensive alterations and repairs were made, and new buildings were erected. In 1827 it was resolved to establish a grammar school, and in 1829 a building was erected upon the college grounds for this use. It shared in the distribution of the Literature Fund many years and was continued until 1864.

In 1830 extensive modifications were made in the course of studies, and the time of daily attendance of the professors was much increased. The course of study in existence at the time was denominated the full course, and a scientific and literary course was introduced, the latter being open to other than matriculated students, and to such extent as they might think proper to attend. This arrangement did not, however, appear to meet with public favor, and in 1843 it was discontinued."

3

In 1843 Mr. Frederick Gebhard endowed a professorship of the German language and literature by giving $20,000. It was first filled in 1844 by the appointment of John Louis Tellkampf, J. U. D. In 1852 the restriction in the act of 1810, in relation to land received from Trinity Church, might be released with the consent of its corporation, and in 1857' the trustees were allowed to purchase land in the nineteenth ward, between Forty-ninth and Fiftieth streets, including the premises of the New York Institution for the 1 Chap. 19, Laws of 1819.

Report in the Literary and Scientific course of Columbia College.

Deaf and Dumb. This purchase, since extended,' now includes the ground between Madison and Fourth avenues. The College was removed from its down-town location, where it had remained for more than a century, and the premises there are now covered with fine blocks of buildings devoted to business purposes. The course of study was much enlarged at this time and new professorships created.

In 1872' permission was given to sell the lands then owned and remove to a new site, but the buildings since erected seem to indicate that this intention was abandoned.

In the fall of 1858 a post graduate course of instruction was opened, but the time had not yet come for success, and after one year the scheme was relinquished. During the year a course of lectures was delivered by Prof. Arnold Guyot upon Comparative Physical Geography, in its relations to History and Modern Civilization, and by George P. Marsh upon the English Language. In May, 1858, a Department of Law was established, and in 1860 the College of Physicians and Surgeons was united with the College, as we shall separately notice. In 1863 a School of Mines was established, and in 1880 a School of Political Science. In 1881 a new library building was erected, and on its completion, the several libraries of the College were consolidated into one collection and placed under efficient management.

Early in 1884 Lewis M. Rutherford, of New York city, presented to the College an equatorial refracting telescope, of thirteen inches aperture, supplied with a correcting lens for photographic work, to which belong two micrometers for position measurements; a transit instrument of three inches aperture, by Stackpole & Bro.; a Dent siderial clock; a micrometer for measuring photographic plates, and other apparatus the whole increasing the value of the instruments in the Observatory by about $20,000.

Columbia College has, at the present time, a School of Arts, a School of Mines, a School of Law, a School of Political Science, and a School of Medicine, employing a President and one hundred and forty-five Professors, Instructors and Assistants, and had the last year, in all its departments, 1,456 students. '

3

By chap. 51, Laws of 1860, power was granted to acquire adjacent lands. 2 Chap. 96, Laws of 1872.

3 We are indebted to Moore's Historical Sketch of Columbia College, and a volume issued in April, 1884, entitled "Hand-book of Information as to the Course of Instruction in Columbia College, and its Several Schools," for much of the information given in the above sketch.

Alumni Association.

"The Association of the Alumni of Columbia College," was incorporated May 21, 1874, with corporate powers, limited as to income to $20,000 a year.

The Elgin Botanic Garden.

In 1801 Dr. David Hosack, Professor of Botany and Materia Medica in Columbia College, having made an unsuccessful attempt to secure aid from the State, undertook at his own expense to establish a Botanical Garden, as subservient to the purposes of medicine, agriculture and the arts." He purchased from the corporation twenty acres of ground, on the Middle Road between Bloomingdale and Kingsbridge, and distant from the city as then settled, about three miles and a half. From the diversity of soil and surface it was thought well adapted to most kinds of plants growing in temperate climates. For those requiring protection, hot-houses were to be erected.

As described by Dr. Hosack, in the spring of 1811, there had then been erected a conservatory and two spacious hot-houses, the whole having a front of one hundred and eighty feet; and the entire establishment was surrounded by a belt of forest trees and shrubs, both native and exotic. Outside of these was a stone wall, two and a half feet thick, and seven feet high.

It being deemed an object of public utility, the Medical Society of the city and county of New York, the Common Council, the Governors of the New York Hospital, the State Medical Society, and many citizens, in 1810, memorialized the Legislature for its purchase. These efforts led to the passage of "An Act for promoting Medical Science in the State of New York," dated March 12, 1810, and directing the Commissioners of the Land Office to

The project of a Botanical Garden was brought before the Legislature in 1794, by the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture and Manufactures," at the instance of Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill, but without success. In an address delivered by him in February, 1798, before that Society and Members of the Legislature, he expressed regrets that their efforts to establish a Botanical Garden and Experimental Farm had been unsuccessful, and refers to the efforts made in foreign countries for the support of botanical gardens, as worthy of imitation.

Dr. David Hosack was elected Professor of Botany in the Medical School of Columbia College in 1795, and soon after made application to the State for aid in the establishment of a Botanical Garden in the interest of Agriculture and Medical Science. Failing to obtain public aid, yet strong in faith that the measure would be duly appreciated when it became better known, he undertook its establishment from his private means in 1801, with the result stated in the text.