UNDERGRADUATE DAYS 95 



Fellows all received some small emolument from one or 

 other of eight separate Foundations, which were con- 

 solidated under the statutes of 1882, when the emolu- 

 ments of these Foundations were merged in the general 

 funds of the College. As was the habit of the times, 

 nearly all the Fellows were in holy orders and many 

 of them non-resident. 



There is little record of Newton as an undergraduate, 

 but there is at least one significant fact. He was at that 

 time notable for his English Essays, and I believe won 

 a College prize in this subject. It is sometimes said that 

 men of science cannot write English. I don't believe it. 

 Certainly they can and do write better English than 

 literary men write Science. But in any case, Newton 

 was a master of words ; they never dominated him. He 

 used few, mostly Anglo-Saxon words, but he used them 

 with an expert's sense of their meaning. In this, as in 

 other aspects of his work, he showed a quite peculiar 

 sense of the just and the fitting. 



Whilst an undergraduate at Magdalene, Newton oc- 

 cupied the rooms which later were made fireproof and 

 now house the Pepysian Library. He was never in the 

 technical sense a scholar of the College, in fact, he took 

 a " Poll degree," but after taking his degree, the College 

 Order-book of 1854 records : 



Ego Alfred Newton admissus fui in sodalitium hujus 

 Collegii pro Magistro Drury. 



This was a Fellowship known as the ' Norfolk 

 travelling Fellowship," and restricted to those whose 

 fathers belonged to the county of Norfolk ; but the 

 holder was not a Foundation Fellow The funds at the 

 disposal of the Norfolk Fellow were later merged in the 

 general funds of the College when the new statutes of 

 1882 were sanctioned by Parliament. It was only in 

 1877, when he had held the Professorship of Zoology and 



