258 WORK AT CAMBRIDGE 



A duty in the University which fell to him very 

 soon after his election to the Professorship of Zoology 

 was that of Chairman of the Special Board of Biology 

 and Geology, which he occupied with conspicuous suc- 

 cess for many years. 



As to my Chairmanship of the Special Board to 

 which I belong, I was chosen to it years ago, and in 

 every year I have made a bond fide offer to make way 

 for anybody who would like to take my place ; but 

 they seem to think my government divides them the 

 least, and so I am suffered to remain perhaps as a 

 King Log ! But I am bound to say that we are a most 

 harmonious body, and my subjects are content to dis- 

 cuss matters peacefully. We do discuss I can assure 

 you (and on Saturday I sat for nearly 4 hours), but 

 as becomes philosophers. In other Boards I under- 

 stand this is not so, and personal wrangles (to us 

 unknown) are frequent. Seriously speaking, the self- 

 abnegation of our biologists many of them, be it 

 borne in mind, young men of ambition only equalled 

 by their capacity in regard to the interests of the 

 University, hampered as they now are by financial diffi- 

 culties, is beyond any praise that I can bestow.* 



A Cambridge institution in which he always took a 

 keen interest was the A. B.C., more particularly when 

 a Greek play was to be given. Mr. A. C. Benson, the 

 present Master of Magdalene, writing in the Cornhill 

 Magazine,^ recalls his first meeting with Newton during 

 a rehearsal of the Birds of Aristophanes in 1883 : 



We, the performers, were sitting about in full dress 

 at one of the last rehearsals, when a strongly-built man 

 of about fifty, leaning heavily on a stick, with a brisk 

 alert face and bushy grey side -whiskers, came into the 



* Letter to Canon H. B. Tristram, November 26, 1888. 

 f June, 1911. 



