PRESENTATION DAY. At Yale College, Presentation Day is the time when the Senior Class, having finished the prescribed course of study, and passed a satisfactory examination, are _presented_ by the examiners to the President, as properly qualified to be admitted to the degree of Bachelor of Arts. A distinguished professor of the institution where this day is observed has kindly furnished the following interesting historical account of this observance. "This presentation," he writes, "is a ceremony of long standing. It has certainly existed for more than a century. It is very early alluded to, not as a _novelty_, but as an established custom. There is now less formality on such occasions, but the substantial parts of the exercises are retained. The examination is now begun on Saturday and finished on Tuesday, and the day after, Wednesday, six weeks before the public Commencement, is the day of Presentation. There have sometimes been literary exercises on that day by one or more of the candidates, and sometimes they have been omitted. I have in my possession a Latin Oration, what, I suppose, was called a _Cliosophic Oration_, pronounced by William Samuel Johnson in 1744, at the presentation of his class. Sometimes a member of the class exhibited an English Oration, which was responded to by some one of the College Faculty, generally by one who had been the principal instructor of the class presented. A case of this kind occurred in 1776, when Mr., afterwards President Dwight, responded to the class orator in an address, which, being delivered the same July in which Independence was declared, drew, from its patriotic allusions, as well as for other reasons, unusual attention. It was published,--a rare thing at that period. Another response was delivered in 1796, by J. Stebbins, Tutor, which was likewise published. There has been no exhibition of the kind since. For a few years past, there have been an oration and a poem exhibited by members of the graduating class, at the time of presentation. The appointments for these exercises are made by the class. "So much of an exhibition as there was at the presentation in 1778 has not been usual. More was then done, probably, from the fact, that for several years, during the Revolutionary war, there was no public Commencement. Perhaps it should be added, that, so far back as my information extends, after the literary exercises of Presentation Day, there has always been a dinner, or collation, at which the College Faculty, graduates, invited guests, and the Senior Class have been present."