2S0 The Oxford Museum. 



June. Snow Birds (Plectrophanes Nivalis) first seen 26th October,. 

 Crows did not winter here this year. Wild Strawberries in flower 

 2 7th May, and matured 26th June. Gooseberry in leaf 9th May. 

 Currant tree in leaf 21st May. Plum tree in blossom 26th May. 

 Apple tree in leaf 3rd June. 



The potatoe rot, which manifested itself but partially this year,, 

 commenced in this neighbourhood on the night of the 7th August. 



St. Martin, Isle Jesus, 21st March, 1859. 



ARTICLE XXL— The Oxford Museum. By H. W. Acland,. 

 M.D. and John Ruskin, M.A. (Smith Elder & Co.) 



[Irom the Athenaum.] 



« 



The University of Oxford has distinguished itself by a bold educa- 

 tional movement. Partly by external pressure, partly by internal 

 pressure, partly by internal sympathetic force, " it has greatly 

 advanced those pillars in the learned world which seemed im- 

 movable." In spite of the forebodings of many excellent persons 

 who have a nervous dread of the unknown, the restorative effect 

 of geology, chemistry, natural science, and languages less ancient 

 than Greek and Latin, is beginning to be tried upon the constitu- 

 tion of the University. Oxford is changed for the better. The 

 body for which Mr. Gladstone appears in Parliament is not that 

 for which Sir Robert Inglis sat. The former gentleman does not 

 represent the past so much as the present and the future. He is. 

 not the expression of Palaeozoic Oxford — the Oxford of the insular 

 self-existing period — but Oxford after the attrition of young and 

 vigorous intellect — the Oxford of the later measures — demiurgic 

 Oxford, within the compass of the telegraph and the railway, and 

 distant only an hour and a half from the metropolis. 



The time was in Oxford when to be conscious of German, or 

 not to believe in the Ptolemaic system, was an offence against the 

 Statues and against good manners. What undergraduate dared 

 visit the libraries, though he wa& assessed for them, or ransack 

 the MS. treasures of the Bodleian ? Now and then an adventurous. 

 German lifted the veil of dust, and gained a brief sight of valuable 

 long-buried Sanscrit or Syriac information. For what have not 

 Germans dared ? How have they not affrighted the Dii majores 

 of primeval Oxford! Nolo hanc universitatem Germanizari, was 

 the last famous denunciation of the old time — but like the last 

 bard, that traditional Don has vanished. Few emblems of the- 



