ness at 

 Capping 



The Days of a Man 1907 



and the men chosen are in the nature of things 

 distinctly above mediocrity. But Dr. Ernest G. Ruth- 

 erford, a graduate of Canterbury College, Christ- 

 church, where he was for a time instructor, now pro- 

 fessor in the University of Birmingham and one of 

 the greatest living physicists, noted as an investigator 

 of radium, was recognized in England and America 

 before he was fully appreciated in New Zealand. 

 And I like to recall that somewhat early in his career 

 he visited Stanford on his way to London, at which 

 time I offered him a professorship. But Birmingham 

 proved the more attractive from its nearness to 

 other investigators like Thompson and Moseley at 

 Cambridge. 



Lawless- In Australia and New Zealand, as in England, the 

 ceremony of granting university degrees is known as 

 "capping." By some curious twist of psychology, 

 this function the most solemn and orderly of all 

 university affairs in America is made the occasion 

 for riotous lawlessness in the Mother Country and 

 the Antipodes. Candidates for degrees are then sub- 

 jected to the rudest kind of heckling, and no "prac- 

 tical joke" is too irreverent to be pulled off on these 

 occasions. 



At Sydney, in 1907, while the audience was waiting 

 for the academic procession, two students elaborately 

 dressed, the one as the honored chancellor, Sir Nor- 

 mand McLauren, the other as the dignified registrar, 

 Mr. Barff, appeared on the stage, accompanied by a 

 third in the garb of a young woman. A degree hav- 

 ing been solemnly conferred upon the last, chancellor 

 and registrar kissed her with formal dignity, after 

 which she skipped gayly off the stage. At Melbourne, 

 not long before, capping exercises were broken up 

 C 208 3 



