3o8 



NATURE 



[January 30, 1896 



should be without a chair in the subject which they had raised 

 from dependence on mineralogy to the rank of an independent 

 science. Still more did it astonish me, and the astonishment is 

 unabated, that no one among those who owed money to the 

 discoveries of geology was prepared to spend a penny in the way 

 of gratitude. It was not among the wealthy that Pringle Nichol's 

 genius had kindled the zeal for knowledge. 



I carried my plaint to the Science Commission, the first 

 Universities Commission, and finally to the second Commission, 

 created in 18S9 to "improve the teaching" in the Universities 

 of Scotland. To all the same tale was told, with increasing 

 earnestness as time went on, and the evils correspondingly 

 increased. It was worse than absurd to expect one man to 

 teach two .subjects, either of which was more than any one could 

 follow, even with ample time at his command, so rapid were 

 the advances and so unexpected the specialisations enforced by 

 the discovery of new methods and new fields of inquiry. The 

 medical students were always the more numerous class, and the 

 increasing stringency of the regulations for examinations left me 

 no choice but to devote myself to those whom I had to teach 

 summer and winter. Since 1867 the progress of Geology has 

 been marvellous. Mineralogy has entered on a new phase, 

 Microscopy has assumed an indisputable position as arbiter in 

 problems that never could have been discussed, never perhaps 

 have been raised without its aid. I had no time for the field 

 work, which I had carried on as long as possible. Before the 

 G. A. Clark scholarship was founded I had employed lecturers 

 at my own cost to supplement my class work in Mining and 

 Chemical Geology. Thereafter these graduates did as much 

 as possible when they happened to fake special interest in 

 my subject. After many years of disappointment and drudgery, 

 such as, I hope, my successors will be spared, drudgery which 

 has deprived me of the chance, save at rare intervals, of original 

 work, with joy I hailed the new, the present Commission with 

 its instruction to " improve the teaching," for now surely was a 

 Commission about to secure for this University, for Scotland, 

 for science, what Murchison in loyalty to his native country and 

 to his beloved studies had rendered possible for Edinburgh. 

 The Commission is now approaching the end of its sittings, and 

 I am still the " double-barrelled gun " that Murchison called 

 me when I took leave of him on resigning the Survey appoint- 

 ment I had held. 



In 1874 Mrs. Honyman Gillespie endowed my chair with 

 ;^200 a year in respect of Geology, and named me a trustee on 

 her gift, a position I accepted, as it was through an indirect and, 

 let me add, an unwitting suggestion of mine that the benefaction 

 was decided on. My intervention, later on, in the case of the 

 W. Baxter scholarship was direct. It was made a proviso that 

 the Professor of Natural History should not vacate the geological 

 lectureship in the event of a chair of Geology being founded unless 

 an equal stipend were continued to him during his incumbency. 

 It shows how carefully Mrs. Gillespie and her advisers had con- 

 sidered the circumstances, that they thus removed from the 

 incumbent any inducement to delay for personal reasons the 

 separation of the two subjects, which the endowment was 

 implicitly intended to bring about. After the evidence I sub- 

 mitted to the Commis.sion, I was amazed to learn that they 

 contemplated the creation of a new chair, not of Geology, but in 

 a subject new to the Scottish Universities, not compulsory for a 

 degree but optional ; nay, it is one of six subjects which the 

 candidate for M.A. may select from, viz. English, French, 

 German, Italian, Spanish, History ; a collocation which tempts 

 to the suspicion that the subject of imperative necessity was, 

 after all, an after-thought. Such an addition meant diminution 

 of the fee fund, but' this concerned my colleagues interested in 

 the financial consequences. My concern was that a subject 

 which an unreformed university had deemed of sufficient import- 

 ance to have included twenty years before in the requirements 

 for a degree should be passed over, while the new chair of Patho- 

 logy was the recognition of an exactly parallel want. No ; not 

 exactly, for the pathologist had always had ample opportunities 

 for study and research, undisturbed by the need of teaching even 

 a cognate subject, far less one widely apart from his proper 

 work. Parallel, however, in so far as its relation to a degree, the 

 time this relation had existed and the compulsion of attendance 

 were concerned. In contrast with the position of History, let 

 me tell you the relations of Geology : it is compulsory for the 

 degree of B.Sc. in Agriculture, and the certificate in Engineer- 

 ing Science ; it is optional for B.Sc. in Pure Science and 

 Engineering ; optional also for M.A. Need I say that it is not 



to the addition of History I object, but to the circumstances 

 attending the addition. The new subject was made to hang 

 loosely to the University, yet it was at once rai.sed to the rank 

 of a professorship, and the means of endowing Geology finally 

 diverted. It seemed a first duty to provide for the better teaching 

 of a degree subject, and under this impression I addressed a very 

 strong remonstrance to the Commissioners. When the evidence 

 and correspondence are published , the reading will be curious and 

 interesting. The interest would have been discounted if the 

 meetings of the Commission had been public, but there would 

 have been less disappointment if precedent had been departed 

 from. After my protest had been disregarded another source of 

 help was revealed, the Bellahouston Trust. The trustees have 

 acted with great generosity, and would have doubled their bene- 

 faction by speed had the matter been solely in their hands. It 

 would be wrong to comment on negotiations still pending after 

 two years, but I may say that the salary demanded by the 

 Commissioners as the condition of their consent to the separation 

 of the subjects is not fully realised ; the University has no 

 longer in its power the money, which with the Honyman- 

 Gillespie fund and the Bellahouston gift would have met the 

 requirements of the Commissioners. No doubt a lectureship 

 might be established, and perhaps the legal difficulties might be 

 got over ; but this is not what the subject is entitled to, either on 

 its own merits or in respect of the position it has so long held 

 in the University curriculum. Here the matter rests. 



I hope to have made it clear to those who have blamed me 

 for remissness that I have done all that I can ; that the only 

 wrong thing which has brought me into this impass was my 

 voluntary separation of the two subjects. I was younger and 

 more sanguine then. My colleagues in St. Andrews and Aber- 

 deen are still safe in this respect, and I would advise them to 

 keep as they are ; the new chairs will come more rapidly. 



I regret that no acknowledgments are due to others besides 

 Sir C. Cameron. The General Council of the University has 

 never mentioned the case of Geology ; it would not have helped 

 them to any increase of power. The University Court — I mean 

 that created by the Act — has done what it could to forward the 

 chair ; it erred, as I think, only in assenting to the creation of 

 another chair without giving due consideration to the elder 

 degree subject, rather to the degree subject, for the other is only 

 an option. The position of the Commissioners is "less easily 

 understood, and in the absence of evidence it is but right to 

 conclude that they had sufficient reason for the course they have 

 taken ; what it is will appear in their report. My chief com- 

 plaint goes back of these ; it is directed against the mineral 

 proprietors, who have left till now unfulfilled the duty they owe 

 to science and their city. Had the moderate sum I asked 

 twenty years ago been then contributed, there would have been 

 by this time a well-endowed chair, and Glasgow would have 

 been on a footing of equality with Edinburgh as a school of 

 science. It is painful, by way of contrast, to read of the muni- 

 ficence with which citizens have endowed the Mining School of 

 Chicago, to cite one of the many American colleges where 

 public and private spirit have vied in securing the best training 

 that money and skill can give for their engineers, where the 

 presidents of colleges a.sk and receive abundantly. 



But do not imagine that you will not be taught geology. It 

 is true that you will not learn all that I wish you had opportunity 

 of learning. Not one, but three chairs would really content 

 me ; but, on the other hand, you will have your attention 

 directed to aspects of the science which another might pass by. 

 It is the practical side of the teaching on which the deficiency 

 lies. If I cannot make you go through the methods of micro- 

 scopic investigation as we do in the zoological laboratory, you 

 will hear the conclusions to which microscopists are leading us. 

 You will learn the bearing of biological speculation on geology, 

 the value of fossil evidence from the zoological side, and the 

 direction in which we .shall probably have to travel in that most 

 important quest, that geological grail, the estimate of geological 

 time. 



NO. 1370. VOL. 53] 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 

 Cambridge.— Mr. P. E. Bateman, Fellow of Jesus College, 

 has been appointed an Assistant Demonstrator in Experimental 

 Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory. 



The Conference on Secondary Education, previously arranged 



