History of the University of Michigan, by the late Burke A. Hinsdale, with biographical sketches of the regents and members of the university Senate from 1837 to 1906, ed. by Isaac N. Demmon.

48

UNIVERSI'T OF MICHIGAN

[Chap. v/I

operation only five years. The Lawrence Scientific School, founded at Cambridge in I847,
conferred the degree of Bachelor of Science in
I85I, for the first time in the United States.'
The " Report to the Board of Trustees of the
University of Rochester on the plan of instruction to be pursued by the collegiate department," presented
September I6,
1850, recom-,
mended a scien- '* t"',.
tific course that. d
should lead to the
degree of Bachelor of Science.,
This report was '
duly adopted, but
the degree was F l
not conferred un- Y
til I856. The.
movementatAnn
Arbor was made,.
more quickly -
than the movement at Rochester: the new
degree was not
announced bythe
University of
Michigan until
1852, but it was
conferred in 1855,
Michigan being
the second institution in the country to confer it.
For the time
the practical reforms that Dr. THE TAI
Tappan effected
in the Department of Literature, Science, and
the Arts were tenfold more valuable than the
1 Professor N. S. Shaler, who first became connected with
the Lawrence Scientific School in 1858, and is now its head,
writes in a private letter that he has always understood that
"the degree of Bachelor of Science came to be introduced
into our system through the influence of Louis Agassiz, who
had much to do in shaping the plans of this School." He
says he " recalls conversations with the elder Agassiz, which
implied that he was responsible for the innovation, and that
he hoped, through the education which should lead to the
degree, to break up the old collegiate routine."

lofty University ideal that he held up to the
people in the annual catalogues and in his
public addresses.
Means were taken to beautify the University
grounds. The forty acres of land given to the
state, in I837, formed part of a farm, then
under cultivation. Ten Brook, who was in
Ann Arbor in the
- early days, writes
i —, that in 1841 the
remains of a, peach orchard,. were on the tract,
' a and years afterward, he says,
"some professors' families were
suppliedwithfruit
from these trees;
while the whole
ground around
the buildings,
as late as 1846,
en harvests of
wheat, which the
janitor had been
allowed to grow
for the purpose
of putting the
ground in a proper condition to
be left as a campu S."2 Unfortunately, little
taste or judgment
was shown in
dealing with the
'AN OAK matter The
Board of Visitors
for I848 urged that measures be taken to plant
suitable trees, but its exhortations were not
then heeded.3 Previous to that time, some
trees had been planted, but they were unfortunately chosen, and they hastened into the sear
and yellow leaf. In I854 a vigorous effort
was made to supply the lack of trees for
2 American Universities. Ten Brook. p. 145.
8 A System of Public Instruction and Primary School Law
of Mich/igan. F. W. Shearman. p. 169.

FPP