36 SIE WILLIAM EAMSAY 



German university may well be commended to the 

 notice of those students in English colleges who find 

 difficulty in assembling in a lecture room before ten 

 o'clock in the morning. 



But the shadow of the approaching examination was 

 over Kamsay and his fellow-students at this time, and 

 on 26th June he tells his father that even the base-ball 

 club has broken up, "as almost all the members are 

 bound on hard study." On 21st July he wrote that 

 " the Exam, is now past I am happy to say." To those 

 who are unacquainted with the method of conducting 

 examinations in a German university at that time it 

 may be interesting to read his account of the process as 

 given in the same letter : 



" On Monday at 7 it began and lasted till half-past 12 ; then in 

 the afternoon from 3 till 8, so we had a good spell of it. South- 

 worth and I were in together. We went to the Pedells and were 

 shown the questions. They were in chemistry : 

 The resemblances and differences between the compounds of 



carbon and silicium, and 

 The relations between glycerine and its newer derivatives and 



the other compounds containing three atoms carbon. 

 And in physics : 

 The different methods for determining the specific gravity of 



gases and vapours. 

 The phenomena which may be observed in crystals in polarised 



light. 



I managed to answer the first perfectly, the second, however, 

 not so well, and the two questions in physics pretty well. 



Then to-night we had the oral exam. The five professors who 

 compose the faculty were there. Fittig gave some very difficult 



