NATURAL SCIENCE: 



A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress. 



No. 35. Vol. VI. JANUARY, 1895. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



Research Degrees at Oxford. 



ON November 27, in a congregation of the University of Oxford, 

 the first stage of a new statute respecting the conferring of 

 degrees on persons who have gone through a " course of special 

 study or research," was passed by a large majority. The subse- 

 quent moulding of the statute possibly may make this new provision 

 less practicable and less useful than its friends desire ; for there seems 

 to be a lamentable absence of definiteness in the proposals and a 

 lamentable presence of conflicting interests among the supporters of 

 the change. Still it would be difficult to overestimate the possible 

 importance of this new movement in the old University. It opens 

 the door to the conferment of the distinction of a degree upon 

 students who are not merely receiving instruction of the same order 

 and imparted by the same methods as are customary in the higher 

 forms of public schools. It affords the University the opportunity of 

 being something more than a continuation school. 



Of the dangers that seem to hang round the new statute we may 

 point out two or three. The first is connected with the management 

 of the new arrangements. It is proposed that a new delegacy 

 be appointed. This is the merest fatuity ; there already exists in 

 the University the proper authority. The Boards of Faculties, as 

 constituted by the University Commission, are not only the legal 

 bodies, but by their composition contain exactly those people best 

 qualified to judge of the fitness of individuals to pursue research and 

 of the quality of the research carried out. The Boards of Faculties 

 represent the interests of studies. Delegacies invariably contain 

 persons who see in their duty to the University the mere safeguarding 

 of the vested interests of colleges. All who know Oxford know that 



