DecemBer 24, 1903] 
versity appointed a syndicate to consider the question of 
conferring degrees on women, with the result that in 1881, 
though degrees were refused, formal admission for women 
to the previous and tripos examinations was granted. And 
up to the present time the privilege of receiving degrees is 
withheld, though women are admitted by courtesy to 
almost all lectures. A syndicate appointed in 1896 
recommended that degrees be conferred by diploma 
without permitting admission to membership of the 
university, but the proposal was rejected by the 
Senate in 1897 by 1713 votes to 662. The concession 
of 1881 still regulates the admission of women to the ex- 
aminations of the university. In order to be permitted to 
take the tripos examinations women must reside at Girton 
or Newnham, and admission to these colleges is only granted 
to students who have passed the previous or some other 
recognised examination. A class list of female students is 
published after the examinations, along with the-list of 
members of the university; the method of arrangement is 
the same in both cases, and certificates are given to women 
stating the class or place in class attained in each examin- 
ation. 
At Oxford, lectures and classes were started for women 
in 1873, and examinations were instituted for them two years 
later. An association for encouraging the education of 
women was formed in 1878, and is still in active existence. 
_ Through the secretary of the association women are admitted 
to nearly all the lectures given in Oxford, and the council of 
the association registers all women students. These 
students are either in residence at Somerville College 
(founded 1879), Lady Margaret Hall (1879), St. Hugh’s Hall 
(1886), St. Hilda’s Hall (1893), or belong to the Society of 
Home Students, comprising students who reside in private 
families and are supervised by the council of the association. 
In 1884, honour moderations and final honour schools of 
mathematics, natural science, and modern history were 
opened to women, and from time to time admission to the 
examinations of other schools was granted, but it was not 
until 1894 that they were free to present themselves for 
examination in all the subjects in which men may take the 
-A. degree. Women are not eligible for degrees. Con- 
gregation rejected a proposal, in 1896, to admit women to 
degrees or to grant them diplomas recording their success 
in the final schools examinations. An important difference 
between Oxford and Cambridge is that at the former, uni- 
versity women are admitted to the pass as well as to the 
honour schools, and for either examination; an outside 
student is equally eligible with those who have studied and 
resided at Oxford. 
As regards the extent to which women avail themselves 
of the facilities offered by the Universities of Cambridge 
and Oxford for their higher education, it may be said that, 
during the session 1901-2, Girton and Newnham together 
had 292 students, while in 1go2 there were at Oxford 228 
registered women students. The whole number of women 
students who took honours in the various triposes at Cam- 
bridge from 1881, the year in which they were opened to 
Women, to 1900 was 1036, and of these 180 took honours 
in natural science, the numbers in mathematics being 250 
and in classics 227. 
The University of London, which received its first charter 
in 1836, was the first English university to recognise the 
claims of women. In 1867 the university was granted a 
supplementary charter, under which it was enabled to offer 
certain special certificates to women. In 1880 women were 
admitted to all the degrees, honours, and prizes which were 
at the disposal of the university, and in 1882 women 
graduates were admitted as members of convocation. 
The University of Durham, by a supplementary charter 
granted in 1895, opened all its degrees except those in 
theology to women. Women are admitted to university 
lectures on the same conditions as men, but to qualify for 
the degrees women must reside at Durham in the women’s 
hostel provided by the university. 
The University of Wales, which came into existence under 
the charter of 1893, admits women to its examinations and 
degrees, as members of the university, on the strictest 
equality with men, and women are equally eligible for any 
office created by the university. Much the same is true of 
the recently constituted universities, such as those of 
Birmingham and Liverpool, and at the university colleges 
NO. 1782, VOL. 69] 
NATURE 
187 
throughout the country no distinction is made between the 
sexes. 
So far as the Scottish universities are concerned, that is 
to say, the Universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, 
and St. Andrews, it is only necessary to say that the Uni- 
versities (Scotland) Act, 1889, included a provision ‘‘ to 
enable each university to admit women to graduation in 
one or more faculties, and to provide for their instruction.” 
An ordinance to this effect was passed in 1892, with the 
result that women are in every case admitted to the degrees 
in arts, science and medicine, and at Aberdeen to the 
degrees in law. The university lectures are, as a rule, open 
to women, but in some cases separate instruction is pro- 
vided for them. . 
Despite current rumours, there are at present in Ireland 
but two universities, Dublin University, or Trinity College, 
Dublin, and the Royal University. The admission of 
women has been approved by the council of Trinity College, 
and a recommendation was brought before the Senate on 
June 9 of this year and sanctioned by an overwhelming 
majority. In the case of the Royal University of Ireland, 
which, like the old University of London was, is purely an 
examining body, all degrees, honours, scholarships, and even 
junior fellowships are open to students of either sex, and 
candidates for medical degrees alone are required to pursue 
fixed courses of study at special colleges. 
Before reviewing the regulations for the admission of 
women to continental universities, a digression, interesting 
at least to men of science, may be permitted. What is the 
character of the education given in schools for girls by the 
women who have had the advantages resulting from the 
concessions now described? What part does science take 
in the curricula of the schools administered by university 
women? It may at least be said that it is becoming in- 
creasingly understood that household management is a 
branch of applied science ; cookery and laundry-work are, in 
some quarters at least, recognised as applications of 
chemistry to domestic needs; and hygiene and physiology 
are appreciated to some extent as the foundations upon 
which the arrangements for the health of the home should 
be based. But the adherence to these commonplace truths” 
is still too much a matter of theory, and the present methods 
of teaching in girls’ schools are based almost exclusively 
upon what has grown up in the schools for boys. Prof. 
Armstrong, at this year’s meeting of the British Associ- 
ation, offered a strong protest in this connection. He said, 
“When I consider what my own children have done at 
school, what girls generally are doing, I am in despair— 
the training is so hopelessly unpractical, so academic, so 
narrow in its outlook. There is so little insight and 
originality displayed by women in diagnosing and pro- 
viding for women’s requirements; female educators are so 
obstinate and difficult to persuade, so limited in their con- 
ceptions.’’ More recently that vigorous and brilliant author, 
Mrs. F. A. Steel, has written: ‘‘ Read through, for in- 
stance, the Education Act—new or old does not matter, 
since any Education Act I have ever heard of errs with equal 
and intolerable ignorance—and see if the one great unalter- 
able difference in physiological life between a boy and a girl 
is even considered. It is not. And yet it is, it must be 
perforce, a potent factor in the whole question of girls’ 
education.”’ 
The fact is that as yet we have not had sufficient experi- 
ence in the direction of girls’ education to come definitely 
to final conclusions. Speaking comparatively, it is a new 
movement, and such warnings as those just quoted, useful 
though they are as hints that caution and a reconsideration 
of the special needs of girls are necessary, should not lead 
to violent changes which are likely to do more harm than 
good. Though many questions raised are as yet insoluble, 
one thing at least seems tolerably clear, and that is the 
desirability of the introduction into all schools for girls of 
instruction in the scientific method. The inculcation of 
habits of exact observation, of accurate measurement, and 
of the absolute necessity for deriving all conclusions from 
sufficient premises, habits which are most easily and satis- 
factorily formed by the study of suitable branches of science, 
will act as the most effective corrective to the feminine dis- 
position to arrive at conclusions intuitively, and to assert 
that a thing is so because it is so. 
It may be pointed out here that there seems, judging 
