July 21, 1898] 



NATURE 



2S5 



my way, and could wipe out the traditions of the past, I should 

 vary that entrance examination. I should hold on to the old 

 tradition of the university that it was ready to receive everybody 

 who was likely to profit by its instructions. I should make the 

 examination look, not backward as it does now, but forward, 

 and should only insist that the lad must give such proofs of 

 intelligence and industry as to lead to the hope that the years of 

 university life would not be spent in vain. When the lad has 

 really entered the university (at times he does not do so until he 

 has spent two or even three years at the place in preparation, 

 and sometimes goes away from the place without having really 

 l)een admitted), it seems to me there should be a still wider 

 scope for his studies. He has even now, it is true, an oppor- 

 tunity to take a degree in one or other of several branches of 

 learning, but in each case he must follow out a particular schedule 

 which has been laid down, and which compels him to walk along 

 a particular path and no other. If he wishes, for example, to stu(^y 

 mathematics with philosophy, he would find that he could not 

 do so, for in the examinations mathematicians have nothing to do 

 with philosophy, and philosophy nothing to do with mathematics; 

 and so in other things. I venture to think that this is not a 

 satisfactory condition of things, and that throughout the whole 

 academic course there should be a freedom of the young mind to 

 develop in the line in which it was intended to develop. When 

 I urge this upon my friends, they all say " It is very good, but 

 it is impossible ; the examination machinery would become so 

 complicated as to break down." But I would ask the question, 

 Are examinations all in all ? Were the examinations made for 

 universities, or were universities made for examinations ? I 

 myself have no doubt about the answer. I trust that this new 

 university, which can walk with freedom along new lines, will 

 find some way of so arranging studies and examinations that the 

 two will not conflict, and that anybody coming here will find that 

 the particular gifts that have been given to him, and which 

 it was intended should be developed, will meet their fullest 

 expansion. 



Lastly, there was another feature which the old university 

 possessed and which I may also call an essential feature of a 

 university, that is, the spirit of inquiry. No university can 

 prosper as a university that not only does its best to favour 

 special inquiries when these are started within it, but also in the 

 whole course of its teaching develops, or strives to develop the 

 spirit of inquiry. Now here again I fear that examinations — 

 such at all events is my experience — are antagonistic to inquiry ; 

 and I would suggest that in arranging examinations one ought 

 always to look ahead to see how far one can possibly order those 

 examinations so as to favour the teaching which teaches in the 

 real and true way, teaching by regarding each bit of learning as 

 in itself an act of inquiry, and so as to favour in the highest degree 

 actual inquiry when it is taken in hand. This of course is 

 antagonistic to one function of examinations, namely, that of 

 putting young men to compete against each other. You 

 cannot so judge inquiries as to put the inquirers in any class 

 list or in any order ; the most you can do is to give an inquiry 

 the stamp of approval of the university, a testimony that the 

 inquiry has been carried out in a satisfactory way. It is true that 

 in this way you lose that which is sometimes thought to be of 

 great value, emulation between the scholars ; but if you take 

 away that kind of emulation you substitute for it another one far 

 more strong and effective, that emulation that comes of striving 

 with nature. I take it that the good which is done to a lad in 

 starting him upon an inquiry is infinitely greater than any which 

 can be gained by competition with his fellow students. Here I 

 am glad to say a good word for my own university ; for we have 

 in a very quiet way, and unobserved, secured the adoption of an 

 enactment which allows a lad to enter the university and obtain 

 his degree and all which follows upon that without entering into 

 a single examination. At the present moment it is possible for 

 one, it is true under exceptional circumstances, to come to the 

 University of Cambridge in England, and if he convinces a 

 competent body of judges that he is a person likely to carry on 

 incjuiry in a successful manner he can enter the university as a 

 student, and if he satisfies another body of men after a time that 

 his inquiries have resulted in a real contribution to knowledge he 

 can secure his degree. He can get that without ever having 

 touched a written examination paper, and I am proud that we 

 are able to offer that to the world ; for it has happened again and 

 again that a man who had real genius for a particular line 

 of inquiry stumbled over the preliminary studies of which I have 

 spoken, knocked at the door of our university in vain and was 



NO. 1499, VOL. 58] 



sent away. Now such an one would be admitted, and I 

 venture to say that in the long run the university will be the 

 gainer. 



These, then, are some few thoughts concerning universities and 

 their methods. I say I have purposely learned nothing about 

 your enactments, but from what I know of your short past I feel 

 confident that this university will in the future be conspicuous for 

 progress. May I hope that it will carry on education along some 

 of the lines which I have indicated to-day, and perhaps some day 

 we in the old country may mend our ways after your pattern. 



UNIVERSIT Y AND ED UCA TIONA L 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



The Calendar of the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical 

 College for the Session 1898-99 has just been issued. 



Dr. R. a. Harper, of Lake Forest University, has been 

 appointed to succeed Prof. C. R. Barnes in the chair of Botany 

 in the University of Wisconsin. 



Mr. H. R. M. Borland has been appointed junior 

 assistant in the chemical and metallurgical department of the 

 Bristol Merchant Venturers' Technical College. 



Mr. Herbert Bolton, who for the last eight years has 

 held the post of assistant keeper in the Manchester Museum, 

 has just been appointed to the curatorship of the Bristol . 

 Museum. 



We learn from the American Naturalist that Miss Phoebe- 

 Hearst has given a building for the School of Mines to the 

 University of California. The building will be fully equipped at 

 her expense. 



Pfeiffer scholarships in science have been awarded, in con- 

 nection with the Bedford College for Women, London, to 

 Winifred E. Watts and Margaret Foster. The Reid fellowship,., 

 tenable at Bedford College, has been awarded to Margaret 

 Lyal Dale. 



Dr. Charles Hunter Stewart, who for the past tern 

 years has acted as chief assistant in the Bacteriological' 

 Laboratory connected with the chair of Medical Jurisprudence 

 and Public Health in Edinburgh University, has been appointed; 

 to the new professorship of Public Health and Sanitar}' Science- 

 at Edinburgh University. 



The Science and Art Directory (revised to June 1898) has; 

 just reached us from the Department of Science and Art. Im 

 it is to be found, as usual, full information as to the regula- 

 tions for establishing and conducting science and art schools; 

 and classes. Several minor alterations have been made in- 

 the regulations, and attention is called to these by the ms« ©ff 

 italic type. 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS. 



Memoirs of the Novorossian {Odessa) Society of Naturalists^ 

 vol. XX. — On the origin of limans in the Government of 

 Kherson, by M. Rudski. A " liman " is the local name for 

 small bays on the sea- coast which are now separated from the 

 sea by a bar, and offer very interesting peculiarities of structure 

 and fauna. Various hypotheses having been made as to their 

 modes of formation ; these hypotheses are discussed, and new 

 observations on the oscillations of the limans are given. — Notes 

 on an excursion to Crimea, by the same. Chiefly on the geo- 

 logical changes going on in the coast-line. — Note on the 

 meteorite of Savchinskoye, by R. Prendel (with a photograph o4 

 it). — Geological description of the Odessa district, by Prof.. 

 Sintsoff. A great deal of attention is paid to the hydrology of the 

 region, and especially to the limans (with a geological map). — 

 The Protozoa of the Haji-bei and Kuyalnik limans. No less-. 

 than 130 species were found in the former, which contains a 

 greater number of marine forms, and 75 in the latter.— Chemical, 

 researches in the Marmora Sea, on board the Selanik, by A_ 

 Lebedintseff. Preliminary report, from which it appears that the 

 existence of bacteria producing sulphuretted hydrogen in the water 

 and the mud of the Marmora Sea cannot be doubted. — On a 

 globular syenite on the Bazavluk, by M. Sidorenko. — On the 

 salinity of the Haji-bei and Kuyalnik limans, by Prof. Werigo. — 

 Physical and chemical exploration of the Odessa limans, by A^ 



