George Salmon. 349 



attended his lectures on conies and on elementary theoretical 

 dynamics.* 



Thus his qualifications were such that his election to the Professor- 

 ship of Mathematics was a foregone conclusion had he become a 

 candidate. However, about the same time the Archbishop King's 

 Lectureship in Divinity fell vacant, and understanding that a junior 

 Fellow who was his senior by two years would not apply, Salmon 

 relinquished his claims on the Professorship, as he believed he would 

 certainly obtain the Lectureship. The junior Fellow changed his mind 

 after the chair of mathematics had been filled up, and the less dis- 

 tinguished but more senior man succeeded to the Lectureship. To 

 Salmon's bitter and lasting disappointment he was forced to remain a 

 tutor. At last, in 1866, after twenty-five years of tutorial drudgery, 

 Salmon was made Regius Professor of Divinity, and consequent on his 

 appointment he resigned his Fellowship. 



It may be asked how such a state of affairs could have been 

 tolerated : why did Salmon's university abuse his keen intellect by 

 compelling him to deliver elementary lectures to small classes in 

 mathematics, or, as it may have been, in logics or in classics 1 Why 

 was the initiative of a strong man cramped and dwarfed by twenty-five 

 years service in subordinate positions 1 The answer is that just before 

 Salmon's election to Fellowship great changes had taken place which 

 retarded enormously the rate of promotion in the university. The rate 

 of promotion may be most conveniently measured by the reciprocal 

 of the period elapsed from election to Fellowship to co-option on the 

 Board. At present the period averages 39 years. In Salmon's case, 

 had he been able to retain his Fellowship, it would have been slightly 

 shorter, and after 35 years' service he would have attained a place on 

 the governing body. At the time of Salmon's election to Fellowship, 

 the average period was about half its present amount, and not very 

 long before it was much shorter still. The causes of this startling 

 growth of stagnation are due to the cessation of church preferments, to 

 the abolition of the celibacy statute, and to a levelling-up process in the 

 method of paying the tutors. The salary of a tutor used to depend 

 very largely on the number of his pupils. A tutor lectured his own 

 pupils, and no limit was imposed on their number. Doubtless this 

 arrangement was in many ways defective, and it was discarded for the 

 present plan, on which a tutor does not derive any very great pecuniary 

 advantage from a large chamber of pupils, does not necessarily teach 

 his own pupils, and cannot accept more than a definite proportion of 

 the matriculating students. On the other hand, an unsuccessful tutor 

 in the olden times had little inducement to remain in College unless he 



* " Proc. London Mathematical Society." Ser. 2, vol. i, p. 23. 



