394 



NATURE 



{March 8, 1877 



per cent, read for the school of Literse Humaniores 

 (Philosophy,'Classical History, and Philology), 20 per cent, 

 for the school of Modern History, 17 per cent, for the 

 school of Theology, 15 per cent, for the school of Law, 

 7 per cent, for the school of Mathematics, and only 6*5 

 for the school of Physical Science. 



Of the 2,400 undergraduates 24 per cent, hold college 

 scholarships or exhibitions varying in value from 30/. to 

 100/. a year, exclusive of scholarships or exhibitions 

 granted by external bodies. 



There are at this moment 360 fellows of colleges, ex- 

 clusive of heads and professors, of whom 140 (out of a 

 total of 160 college lecturers and tutors) are resident and 

 engaged in teaching. The average endowment of a fel- 

 lowship is 250/. 



There are thirty-seven University professors and six 

 University readers or assistant professors, of whom nine 

 give no definite courses and have no pupils. They are 

 distributed in subjects thus : Theology, five ; Medicine, 

 two ; Law, four, and a reader ; Lit. Human, seven, and 

 a reader ; Mathematics, three ; Physical Science, seven, 

 and four readers ; Modern History, three, and a reader ; 

 Fine Art and Modern Languages, seven. 



Taking the total number of teachers, both collegiate 

 and professorial, and the total number of honour-students, 

 according to the subjects which they respectively teach 

 and pursue (which subjects may be ascertained from 

 the calendar), we find that in Literae Humaniores the 

 proportion of collegiate and professorial teachers to 

 students is i : 5'5 ; in Mathematics, 1:6; in Physical 

 Science, 1:7; in Modern History, 1:5; in Law, 

 I : 15-5. 



Estimating the average annual income of a college 

 lecturer or tutor at 500/., we find that 75,000/. is the sum 

 required to pay at this rate for 150 such persons. This 

 sum is exactly what the scholarship fund (40,000/.), plus 

 140 fellowships of 250/. each amounts to ; so that, prac- 

 tically, the teaching in Oxford colleges is paid for, not by 

 the parents of undergraduates, but by a portion of the 

 collegiate endowments — to wit, the scholarship fund and 

 two-fifths of the fellowship fund. 



The statement recently made by Sir John Lubbock in 

 the debate on the Universities Bill in the House of Com- 

 mons, to the effect that Oxford practically has done 

 nothing for the development of the study of physical 

 science, is amply justified by the above figures ; there 

 are only seven professors and four readers of all the 

 various physical sciences in Oxford ; only one twenty- 

 fourth of the undergraduate students in the place pursue 

 the study of physical science ; and of all the three hundred 

 and sixty fellowships in the various colleges only five are 

 held by persons (exclusive of professors) who have been 

 elected to them in consideration of their attainments in 

 physical science. In four more fellowships the application 

 of mathematics to physics has been allowed to count in 

 establishing a student's claim to such fellowship. 



The public schools teach physical science to so few 

 boys, and teach it so inefficiently, that there are quite as 

 many scholarships for excellence in this subject offered to 

 the matriculating students as there are worthy candidates. 

 The fact that the public schools never teach physical 

 science to all their pupils and only as a rule to the dullest 

 boys in the school, who are carefully selected for this 



study on account of their failure in classics and mathe- 

 matics, is simply due to the fact that' neither the colleges 

 nor the university introduce any branch of physical science 

 into any one of their compulsory examinations. And 

 this fact is further explained by the fact that the college 

 lecturers and tutors, and even the heads of houses, 

 are, with few exceptions, men who have been school- 

 masters, or who hope to be so, and who are identified in 

 every way with the pedagogic profession. 



In fact, using the term without any offensive implica- 

 tion, the College authorities, together with the school- 

 masters, form a " ring " whose interest it is to suppress a 

 class of studies of which they are themselves ignorant. 

 The university professoriate, which should act as a 

 higher body, to control and stimulate the pedagogic class 

 of teachers, is, as already mentioned, a nonentity. There 

 is no such higher power — the " University " is ridden 

 over roughshod by the "Academy for Young Gentle- 

 men." An Oxford Man 



THE BASQUES 

 Essai sur la Langue Basque. Par F. Ribary. Traduit 



du Hongrois par J. Vinson. (Paris : F. Nx&'fitg, 1877.) 

 Basque Legends. By W. Webster. (Griffith and Farren 



1877.) 



THE Etruscans perhaps excepted, there is no race that 

 has had a greater attraction for the ethnologist and 

 the student of language than the Basque. Defended by 

 the mountain-fastnesses of the Pyrenees, with peculiar 

 physiognomy, language, and manners, they seem to be 

 the last waif and stray of a people and family of speech 

 which have elsewhere disappeared. Whence did they 

 come ? and what is their kinship ? are the two questions 

 which have long been discussed warmly and to little pur- 

 pose. Are we to regard them as the descendants of the 

 ancient Iberi, and find their traces, with Wilhelm von 

 Humboldt, in the local names of Spain, of Sicily, and of 

 Southern Italy, or are we to bring them from Africa on 

 the one side, or from America on the other, or finally 

 let them drop from the clouds, or grow up spontaneously 

 on their native soil ? Certain it is that languages like 

 Basque were spoken in the north of Spain under Roman 

 rule ; at least, the town called Graccuris, in honour of 

 Tiberius Gracchus, is a genuine Basque compound of 

 iri or hiri "city," like Iria Flavia, "the Flavian 

 burgh." Exclusive of emigrants in South America, 

 the present Basque population amounts to about 

 800,000, of whom 660,000 are Spanish, and 140,000 

 French. Their language has little resemblance to 

 any other known tongue, whether ancient or modern- 

 Erro claimed for it the privilege of having been spoken 

 in Paradise ; and Larramendi proudly named his gram- 

 mar (1729) "El Impossible Vencido " — "The Impossible 

 Conquered." The native works upon the language, how- 

 ever, were all tainted with mysticism and want of scien- 

 tific method, and it is only of late years that this interest- 

 ing speech has been examined in the light of science and 

 exact scholarship, and grammars composed which treat it 

 in a rational way. Materials for the work have been pre- 

 pared by the researches of Prince Lucien Bonaparte, who 

 has accurately mapped out the several dialects of the 

 language, has noted their individual characteristics and 



