48>. 



NATURE 



[September 9, 1920 



unless the difficulty can be overcome, either the 

 regional system for matriculation must be abandoned, 

 or those who matriculate at this university will find 

 that they cannot proceed to a degree in various other 

 universities as matriculated students. 



Three courses are open : — First, all universities 

 might adopt similar reformed regulations ; but this 

 suggestion may be dismissed as a counsel of perfec- 

 tion outside the range of present practical politics. 

 Secondly, this innovating university might abandon 

 its reformed ways and drop into line with subject- 

 marks, instead of group-marks, and several compulsory 

 subjects ; but this, to my mind, would be educationally 

 calamitous. Free, untrammelled experiment, spon- 

 taneity, and autonomy are essential to educational 

 life and progress, whereas cast-iron uniformity and the 

 repression of individuality in universities and schools 

 are deadly and should be utter anathema. The third 

 course obviates all difficulties. Let each university 

 make its own regulations for its own matriculation, 

 but let it regionally examine students in such wise as 

 to grant the greatest latitude allowed by the most elastic 

 scheme, and issue certificates qualifying for matricula- 

 tion either in its own domain, or both therein and 

 at various other universities, or at only certain uni- 

 versities, or at only one. Every university in the king- 

 dom could then regionally matriculate students for 

 every other, subject to such regulations as these : 

 " Unless you pass in subjects x and y you cannot 

 proceed to universities A, B, C, D ; unless you pass 

 in * and y and z you cannot proceed to E and F ; 

 uqless you pass in w and x you cannot proceed to 

 G," and so on. 



When the pass conformed with the requirements of 

 the examining university a certificate of matriculation 

 at that university would be issued ; when otherwise, a 

 certificate entitling the student to matriculate at the 

 universities specified therein. This suggestion 

 assumes, of course, both that the papers set by each 

 university in any subject reach the same standard, 

 and that the percentages of marks qualifying for a 

 pass are the same ; and I believe that approximately 

 such uniformity in England has already been obtained, 

 except that the Previous and Responsions are ap- 

 parently easier than the matriculation examinations 

 of the other universities, although, with qualifications 

 and conditions, they are, curiously enough, accepted 

 by these. 



Subject, then, to such very practicable working 

 arrangements, and in view of the extent to which 

 co-ordination already obtains, surely the universities 

 should take another step forward and agree to 

 delimit their respective areas and to refuse candi- 

 dates for matriculation from another "region," and 

 similarly, of course, to refuse to undertake tutorial 

 classes for adults and extension-lectures in another 

 region. As things are at present, London figures as 

 a sort of poacher on the preserves of all its neigh- 

 bours, since it holds its matriculation examinations at 

 provincial centres all over the country, and sweeps 

 into its net the natural matriculation prey of its sister 

 (or daughter) universities — at the cost of the shocking 

 congestion already described. -Here clearly we find 

 pre-regional practices surviving anachronistically in 

 regional times. The explanation is that (i) originally 

 there were no provincial universities, and there- 

 fore London most properly consulted the convenience 

 of provincial students; and (2) the London matricula- 

 tion long since attained a kudos that does not attach 

 in the lay mind to the matriculations of the newer 

 universities. The trouble, I suspect, lies not so rriuch 

 with those who intend to proceed to their degrees — 

 since sO many of the matriculations will secure their 

 entrance to any of the universities, and the Final 



NO. 2654, VOL. 106] 



degree eclipses utterly any matriculation kudos — as 

 with the large number who intend to go no farther, 

 but desire the matriculation certificate as a proof that 

 they have reached a certain standard of school educa- 

 tion. Now, however, all these matriculations have 

 been approximately standardised with the precise object 

 of rendering these " First School certificates " equiva- 

 lent ; and all that is necessary in order to bring the 

 lay public up to date is that the universities should 

 proclaim this fact by delimiting their regions and 

 refusing extra-regional matriculation candidates. 



I anticipate no agreement with my views, but only 

 contemptuous contradiction, from those who think in 

 traditional grooves and have not realised the differ- 

 ence between 1920 and 1890 or i860; but I submit 

 that universities must play a vastly larger part in 

 national life henceforward than in the past, must 

 lead and direct and inspire education and research 

 of all sorts and all grades, and must function as the 

 pulsating heart and controlling brain, each of its 

 own region ; that their extra-mural activities in 

 several directions must be enormously increased; and 

 that only by covering the country with a network of 

 regional universities, each responsible for its own 

 region, can we enable each fully to develop its func- 

 tions of guiding and inspiring secondary education 

 and adult education and research of all sorts in its 

 region. 



I most specifically confine my proposals for regional 

 distribution of candidates to the matriculation ex- 

 amination, not only because it will frequently happen 

 that after schooldays a change of residence will bring 

 the undergraduate into another region, but also because 

 it has rightly been urged that each university, besides 

 covering the general courses, should aim at making 

 some one "school" a specialty, and that education 

 would be hindered rather than helped, and energy 

 dissipated, if every university sought to collect a few- 

 students in each of several uncommon subjects — e.g. 

 tropical medicine or palaeobotany — instead of bidding 

 all the comparanvely few students of each such sub- 

 ject betake themselves to whichever university may 

 have been led to establish a special school or depart- 

 ment for the study thereof; and because, as I have 

 said, free experiment and varied curricula are 

 eminently to be desired — given, of course, that all 

 standards should be approximately equal in the sense 

 that a given degree should always imply equivalent 

 brains and equivalent training, and that educationally 

 cheap and nasty degrees should be unknown — and 

 every matriculated student from whatever part of the 

 country should be free to enter whatever university 

 best fitted his own inborn proclivities and mental 

 bent. 



In fine, I suggest that divide et impera must be 

 the motto of the universities if education in its very 

 widest sense is to hold true imperial sway. 



Frank H. Perrycoste. 



Higher Shute Cottage, Polperro, R.S.O., 

 Cornwall, August 20. 



Portraits of Myriapodologists. 



Your correspondent, Mr. S. Graham Brade-Birks 

 (Nature, September 2, p. 9), will find a portrait of 

 George Shaw in Thornton's " New Illustrations of 

 the Sexual System of Linnseus," and a photo-portrait 

 of J. E. Gray in " Portraits of Men of Eminence " 

 (1863). Also large engraved portraits by Maguire of 

 J. E. Gray (1851) and John Curtis (1850), both in the 

 collection of the General Library of the British 

 Museum (Natural History). B. B. Woodward. 



4 Longfield Road, Ealing, W-S, September 3. 



