202 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, xn 



1. United Colleges propose to give just as good an examina- 

 tion and require as much qualification as the Scotch Universities. 

 Why then give their degree a distinguishing mark? 



2. " Academical distinctions ' : in medicine are all humbug. 

 You are making a medical technical school at Cambridge and 

 quite right too. The United Colleges, if they do their business 

 properly, will confer just as much, or as little " academical dis- 

 tinction " as Cambridge by their degree. 



3. The Fellowship of the College of Surgeons is in every 

 sense as much an " academical distinction " as the Masterships 

 in Surgery or Doctorate of Medicine of the Scotch and English 

 Universities. 



4. You may as well cry for the moon as ask my colleagues 

 in the Senate to meddle seriously with the Matriculation. They 

 are possessed by the devil that cries continually, ' There is only 

 the Liberal education, and Greek and Latin are his prophets.'' 



At Bournemouth he also applied himself to writing the 

 Darwin obituary notice for the Royal Society, a labour of 

 love which he had long felt unequal to undertaking. The 

 MS. was finally sent off to the printer's on April 6, unlike 

 the still longer unfinished memoir on Spirula, to which al- 

 lusion is made here, among other business of the Challenger 

 Committee, of which he was a member. 



On February 12 he writes to Sir J. Evans: 



Spirula is a horrid burden on my conscience but nobody 

 could make head or tail of the business but myself. 



That and Darwin's obituary are the chief subjects of my 

 meditations when I wake in the night. But I do not get much 

 " forrarder," and I am afraid I shall not until I get back to 

 London. 



BOURNEMOUTH, Feb. 14, 1888. 



MY DEAR FOSTER No doubt the Treasury will jump at any 

 proposition which relieves them from further expense but I 

 cannot say I like the notion of leaving some of the most impor- 

 tant results of the Challenger voyage to be published elsewhere 

 than in the official record. . . . 



Evans made a deft allusion to Spirula, like a powder between 

 two dabs of jam. At present I have no moral sense, but it may 

 awake as the days get longer. 



I have been reading the Origin slowly again for the nib. 

 time, with the view of picking out the essentials of the argu- 



