Book V. Polygons and circles 17

---- Total for plane geometry 161

Legendre made, therefore, practically no reduction in the number of Euclid's propositions, and his improvement on Euclid consisted chiefly in his separation of problems and theorems, and in a less rigorous treatment of proportion which boys and girls could comprehend. D'Alembert had demanded that the sequence of propositions should be determined by the order in which they had been discovered, but Legendre wisely ignored such an extreme and gave the world a very usable book.

The principal effect of Legendre's geometry in America was to make every textbook writer his own syllabus-maker, and to put solid geometry on a more satisfactory footing. The minute we depart from a standard text like Euclid's, and have no recognized examining body, every one is free to set up his own standard, always within the somewhat uncertain boundary prescribed by public opinion and by the colleges. The efforts of the past few years at syllabus-making have been merely attempts to define this boundary more clearly.

Of these attempts two are especially worthy of consideration as having been very carefully planned and having brought forth such definite results as to appeal to a large number of teachers. Other syllabi have been made and are familiar to many teachers, but in point of clearness of purpose, conciseness of expression, and form of publication they have not been such as to compare with the two in question.

The first of these is the Harvard syllabus, which is placed in the hands of students for reference when trying the entrance examinations of that university, a plan not followed elsewhere. It sets forth the basal propositions that should form the essential part of the student's preparation, and that are necessary and sufficient for proving any "original proposition" (to take the common expression) that may be set on the examination. The propositions are arranged by books as follows: