256 
NATURE 
[JuLy 13, 1899 
After three years in the mill the students obtain a degree, 
gained under conditions calculated to minimise what 
should be one of the most important features in any 
university training: the learning to think and overcome 
difficulties for oneself. There is thus a growing annual 
output of graduates of both sexes who find, often too late, 
that their qualifications only fit them for one career: that 
of swelling the ranks of the already overcrowded and 
underpaid teaching profession. The production of a 
certain number of schoolmasters is a necessary element 
in the educational system of every country, but the 
question is: should this or the advancement of higher 
learning be the main function of a university endowed 
with public funds ? 
Many provincial colleges plead poverty as an excuse 
for overburdening their staffs with pedagogic and tutorial 
work. But these colleges are not too poor to vie with 
each other in the award of small scholarships, many of 
which go to pass students of no great ability. And 
experience, both in America and in this country, has 
shown that if only such objects as endowment of research 
are prominently brought before public notice, support 
will not be found wanting. 
In conclusion, the directions where reform is most 
needed include the following :— 
(1) Discontinuance of matriculation preparation—work 
which naturally belongs to the province of schools and 
crammers. 
(2) Recognition of research work rather than tutorial 
instruction of pass candidates as the main duty of a 
professor outside his class-room. 
(3) Reduction of the hours of class work, both of 
teachers and students. 
(4) Revision of the now precarious conditions under 
which provincial appointments are tenable. 
(5) Attraction of public attention to the importance of 
providing facilities for professorial research. 
(6) The appointment of more and better paid assistant- 
lecturers and demonstrators. 
(7) A more judicious expenditure of scholarship money, 
which should be restricted to honours students. 
If the new university systems of this country are not, in 
the course of a few years, to take a subordinate position, 
and their degrees to sink into disrepute, if, in short, we 
are not to be left in the lurch by our foreign rivals, it 
becomes the duty of all who are responsible for the 
management of our provincial colleges and universities 
to have their attention aroused to a state of affairs which 
too often results in their professors being sweated and 
their students crammed. 
GOVERNMENT GRANT IN AID OF 
ANTARCTIC EXPLORATION. 
Ope following letter, referring to a Parliamentary 
grant in aid of Antarctic exploration, has been 
received by Lord Lister from H.M. Treasury, and sent 
to us by the Secretaries of the Royal Society :— 
Treasury Chambers, July 3, 1899. 
My Lorp,—I am directed by the Lords Commissioners 
of Her Majesty’s Treasury to inform you that the First 
Lord has laid before the Board the memorial signed by 
your Lordship as President of the Royal Society, by the 
President of the Royal Geographical Society, and by 
other distinguished representatives of various branches 
of science, by which memorial application is made for a 
Government grant in aid of the expedition now being 
organised by the Royal Society and the Royal Geo- 
graphical Society for the exploration of the Antarctic 
regions. This application has received the careful con- 
sideration of Her Majesty’s Government, and I am 
directed to inform you that they are prepared to ask 
Parliament for grants amounting, in all, to 45,000/. 
NO. 1550, VOL. 60] 
towards the expenses of the proposed expedition, pro- 
vided you are able to assure them that not less than an 
equal amount will be forthcoming from other sources, so 
as to enable the scheme to be efficiently carried out. 
In making this announcement, I am to call attention 
to the latter part of the speech of the First Lord to the 
deputation which waited on him on this subject, as in- 
dicating that Her Majesty’s Government must not be 
regarded, in making this promise, as inaugurating a new 
era of ‘more extensive grants than formerly from the 
Exchequer in aid of scientific enterprises. Rather, it is 
to be understood that the very exceptional importance ot 
the present scheme, so strongly represented by the 
deputation, is being recognised by the promise of a 
special grant. 
At the present time, it is only necessary to add that 
the applications to Parliament for instalments of the 
grant will be spread over four years, of which 1900-1901 
will be the first. 
I am to ask you to be so good as to communicate this 
decision to the other signatories of the memorial. 
I am, My Lord, 
(Signed) FRANCIS Mowatt. 
LorRD LISTER, 
President of the Royal Society, 
Burlington House. 
NOTES. 
THE Paris Academy of Sciences has been authorised to 
increase its number of national and foreign Correspondants from 
100 to 116. 
THE British Medical Journal announces that Sir John 
Burdon Sanderson, Bart., and Prof. Michael Foster, K.C.B., will 
be entertained at dinner by British physiologists on July 20, to 
congratulate them on the honours recently conferred on them 
by the Queen. The dinner will take place at the ‘‘Star and 
Garter,” Richmond. 
Tue Volta Centenary Exhibition at Como, described in 
Nature of June 22, has been completely destroyed by a fire, 
attributed to the fusing of some electric wires. Practically all 
the precious Volta relics were lost in the flames, notwithstanding 
the precaution taken to preserve the objects by placing them in 
a receptacle of solid masonry. The only things saved were a 
sword of honour presented by Napoleon the First to Volta, a 
picture by Bertini of Volta explaining his battery to Napoleon, 
a cast of the great electrician’s skull, his watch, and a few 
personal relics. Volta’s books and manuscripts, some of which 
were recently bought by the Italian Government for 100,000 
lire, his collection of batteries, the only authentic portrait of 
Volta, his will, &c., were all destroyed. In spite of the 
destruction of the Exhibition, the committee has decided that 
the /étes in honour of Volta shall be continued. The Inter- 
national Congress of Electricians will be held as previously 
arranged. 
Pror. Ewart exhibited a number of his zebra hybrids, their 
dams, sire, and half-brothers and sisters, at the great Agricultural 
Show recently held in Edinburgh. The authorities were little 
prepared for the interest taken in the exhibit, with the result that 
many thousands either failed to see anything of the hybrids, or 
had but a passing glance. The Prince of Wales, accompanied 
by a deputation of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, 
made a special inspection of the mixed family. From a con- 
temporary we learn the Prince was so greatly interested that he 
requested Prof. Ewart to make a similar exhibition next summer 
at the Royal Agricultural Societies’ Show at York. Should 
breeders give up empirical in favour of scientific methods, not a 
