52 PETER GUTHRIE TAIT 



service in their pastoral work than most of the theology and church history 

 they learned in their divinity course ; and one maintains that a science 

 degree in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy is probably more useful to 

 a clergyman than a B.D. degree. This man, however, passed through 

 Tail's laboratory, and was not an average specimen of the divinity student. 



Before 1892 every Arts student was compelled to take Natural 

 Philosophy as one of the seven sacred subjects ; and even after 1892, although 

 a certain amount of option was allowed to students, the majority who entered 

 for the ordinary degree still passed under the spell of our great interpreter 

 of Natural Law. Nevertheless, partly owing to the severity of the newly 

 established preliminary examinations, partly to this introduction of option, the 

 numbers of those attending the Natural Philosophy Class immediately fell off. 

 From the outset Tait had little sympathy with the details of the New Regula- 

 tions. In the diminished class which he met during the last eight years 

 of his professoriate he saw one bad result of the University Commissioners' 

 handling of the situation, and he never ceased to deplore that many students 

 would hereafter pass out into the world with the degree of Master of Arts 

 who had had no opportunity of learning the grand principles of Natural 

 Philosophy. A great deal might be said in favour of this view of University 

 study, more even now than formerly, when scientific developments bulk so largely 

 in our modern civilisation. The difficulty mainly lies in the multiplicity 

 of subjects now taught, all of them alike valuable as means of culture. 



When Tait resigned his Chair in 1901 he was teaching the sons of 

 men whom he had taught in the sixties and seventies ; and it was with 

 feelings of laudable satisfaction that he realised how he had served his 

 University for two generations, and had impressed on the minds of fully 

 nine thousand intelligent youths the great truths associated with the names 

 of Archimedes, Newton, Carnot, Faraday, and Joule. 



TAIT AT ST ANDREWS 

 BY J. L. Low 



It is the morning of a St Andrews' day in September; the early 

 "haar" which had covered the Links like smoke has given place to 

 sunshine and warmth, and the golfers are glad as they march in well 

 matched parties, each player hopeful that he will make some notable per- 



