2 NATURAL SCIENCE [July 



boards of studies. We should not grudge the women any prizes that 

 they won. The competition of the best women would do the men 

 nothing but good. The danger is that alterations would be made 

 in the interests of the weaker of the women, which might enable 

 men to gain degrees with even less work than at present. More- 

 over, a course of study suitable for men may not be suitable for 

 women. So long as women only enter for the tripos examinations, 

 this objection is not serious. But if women are to have degrees, it 

 would be absurd to allow men to take an easy poll degree, and 

 restrict women to the tripos. The training for an ordinary Cam- 

 bridge degree may not be an ideal education for men, although it 

 may do well enough for the average curate and country gentleman. 

 But in an education of that standard the requirements of men and 

 women are very different. If women are to be admitted to poll 

 degrees, then alterations in the examinations for them ought to be 

 made. Hence we are inclined to prefer a separate university for 

 women to a mixed university, at which both men and women would 

 have to put up with an hermaphrodite education suitable for neither. 

 Moreover, if women be allowed to enter the university and share in 

 the scholarships, there is no logical reason why girls should not be 

 admitted in separate classes to the public schools, to the students of 

 which so many of the best scholarships are restricted. 



The Woman of the Future 



One thing is still lacking to " the new woman." It is a beard. 

 But this, according to Dr A. Brandt, she may hope to have in the 

 course of some thousands, possibly hundreds, of years. Many 

 women have beards already. Some take a pride in them, and utilise 

 them as a source of income ; others keep them in check by the use 

 of depilatories, of forceps, or even a razor. As for moustaches they 

 are so common as to pass without remark, and a tender shade upon 

 the upper lip of a brunette may even be regarded as an added 

 beauty. Still, at the present period in the evolution of our race, it 

 is for the most part in old age that the beard comes to woman. 

 The beard does not appear in man before puberty, and increases in 

 strength with age, often compensating for a loss of hair on the head. 

 Dr Brandt, therefore, writing in the Revue Scicntifiquc for May 15, 

 regards the beard not as an ancestral, but as in part a second and 

 in part a senile character. Like other characters that first appear 

 late in the life of individuals, it is likely to be accelerated in its 

 development. In other words, hair will appear on the face at an 

 earlier and earlier age, as time goes on, both in men and women. 

 " Perhaps a day will dawn when we shall think a moustache in a 

 woman less ugly than a bust deformed by the corset." 



