SUNDAY EVENINGS 107 



evenings saved Zoology as the science of living animals 

 in Cambridge. Often there were awkward pauses, but 

 the Professor sat through them all, making paper spills 

 out of old letters, and smoking pipe after pipe. To him 

 the little Russian cigarettes were merely "hors d'ceuvres," 

 the real business was tobacco in a pipe, and he held very 

 strong views about pipe racks. The bowl of the pipe must 

 be supported so as to be lower than the stem, and the 

 numerous racks that supported his innumerable pipes 

 exemplified this principle. These Sunday evenings were 

 a little formal and a little dull, we were all a little afraid 

 of the Professor, and much more afraid of ourselves. 

 Sitting in that semicircle of seats it was difficult if not 

 impossible to break up into groups, and yet those Sunday 

 evenings and some others which I attended in Oscar 

 Browning's rooms at King's and in Vine's at my own 

 College helped me more than I can say. He was, in the 

 real and the best sense, a man of the world, and hence 

 he was able to help us and did help us in many ways, 

 not in the least zoological. 



In politics and in daily life Newton was a Conserva- 

 tive, even a Tory, he took little part in party affairs, 

 having more important things to trouble about, but he 

 resented and opposed any change in " the daily round, 

 the common task." Alterations in the College dinner, 

 the introduction of an organ into the chapel, the presence 

 of ladies at divine service, all met with his disapproval 

 and his dissent, and neither were silent. For many 

 years he presided as the first Chairman of the Board of 

 Biology and Geology constituted under the statutes of 

 1881. He was a just and equable chairman, better, 

 indeed, in the chair than out of it, but he never approved 

 of the existence of the body he presided over, and 

 nothing would induce him to vote either for or against 

 so new-fangled an idea as a Doctor of Science. His 



