The Days of a Man 1907 



in addition the classes in Pure Mathematics, a 

 subject in which he had already acquired an inter- 

 national reputation. I was therefore not surprised to 

 learn of his being called not long afterward to the 

 chair of Mathematical Physics in Columbia Univer- 

 sity. Two years later he became president of the 

 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which im- 

 portant position he held until his early death in 1919. 

 Rutherford Dr. Ernest G. Rutherford, as already implied, has no 

 J** "^ superior in his line, and few peers. Dr. Macmillan 

 Brown of Otago College, whom I did not happen 

 to meet, is one of the highest authorities on the 

 ethnology of the races of Oceanica. 



In New Zealand, as elsewhere, the classics are 

 apparently losing their former exclusive hold. Not 

 long ago an Oxford don characterized it as "a 

 Greekless country," and in the same breath as "a 

 province of Australia" ! This led to a discussion about 

 relative values. Is it, for instance, any worse to be 

 ignorant of Greek than not to know the make-up of 

 the British Empire? 



The F^ry From Wellington I crossed by "the Ferry," a 

 singularly modest name for a whole night's passage 

 over two hundred miles of tortured sea, to Christ- 

 church on the South Island. This considerable city 

 is in a fertile plain devoted to sheep raising, the breed 

 being, however, the English middle wools Hamp- 

 shire, Shropshire, and Southdowns most valuable 

 for their fat and early-maturing lambs. These are 

 shipped to London, where they arrive in (British) 

 springtime, when lambs of the northern hemisphere 

 are only being yeaned. 



Visiting Canterbury College, in its interesting 

 museum I noticed a series of photographs of the pious 



H 236 3 



