WEIGHING STUDENTS.

It appears that by the authority of Dr. Hamlin, the President of Middlebury College, a weighing-machine is to be added to the apparatus of the college, and each student is to be weighed once every month.

The ostensible reason for this monthly weighing is that the Faculty desire to ascertain the effect of the meals eaten by the students upon their health. If the students grow fat it will be assumed that their diet is too rich, and if they grow thin it will be regarded as evidence that they are not sufficiently fed. Whether the real end in view is to ascertain upon how little food a student can thrive, and to confine him to precisely that quantity, is not known, but there is certainly room for suspecting that this is Dr. Hamlin's design.

There are those who insist that Dr. Hamlin really cares nothing about investigating the effect of diet upon his pupils, but that his object in setting up a collegiate weighing-machine is to substitute weighing for the old-fashioned methods of examination. The weighing-machine will afford, in some respects, a fair test of the progress which the students have made in the higher studies-such as base ball and rowing-and Dr. Hamlin may intend to assign collegiate honors to the students who succeed in training themselves down to the best possible weight. There is a good deal that is plausible in this view of the matter, and the advent of the weighing-machine may thus mean that Middlebury intends henceforth to give greater prominence to the higher studies.

The real truth is, however, that the weighing-machine is designed to detect the presence of British gold in the pockets of the students. Dr. Hamlin has asserted that the Cobden Club bribes our college students to write free trade essays. Doubtless he suspects that some of his own students have the price of their shame in their pockets, and he intends to satisfy his mind by weighing the suspected men. This is an excellent plan, and it is to be hoped that the weighing-machine will prove trustworthy and that Dr. Hamlin will thus be spared the necessity of passing his students through the crucible and detecting their British gold by chemical processes.[N. Y. Times.