JuLy 31, 1902] 
NATURE 
333 
received during the last five years by the twelve colleges which 
participate in the grant amounts to close upon one million 
sterling. (2) The total number of day students attending the 
colleges during the session ending in July, 1901, was 7825, as 
against 7186 attending during the session ending July, 1896. (3) 
The advance in the standard of work is more striking than the 
advance in numbers. This advance is best shown by the larger 
number of university degrees obtained by students. The aggre- 
gate figures for the two periods are as follows :—1891-6, 1437 
degrees ; 1896-1901, 2186 degrees. 
Position of Teachers.—Nothing has impressed us more than 
the enormous amount of routine work which the majority of 
university colleges exact from their teachers. There are, it is 
true, several exceptions. In certain colleges and in particular 
departments in which the number of students is small, the pro- 
fessors and their assistants have a good deal of leisure, and are 
able to undertake literary and scientific work with the support, 
in some cases, of fairly satisfactory libraries and laboratory 
appliances. In the larger and more successful colleges and 
departments the pressure upon the time and thought of the 
teachers is unduly great. If the head of a department is to 
maintain a high standard of teaching and to ensure a creditable 
list of examination successes he has little leisure for private 
work, and especially is he obliged to be assiduous in his duties 
because the students of the university colleges belong, for the 
most part, to a social class which exacts the maximum return in 
results for the fees paid. As to the effect of too much work 
upon the teacher there is no room for doubt. It tends to sap 
his intellectual vitality by leaving him neither time nor energy 
to draw fresh inspiration from the study of the work of others 
or from his own investigations. A fresh and unharassed mind 
is, above all things, necessary for research. 
There is another respect in which, as it appears to us, the 
colleges are not serving their own best interests by overworking 
their teachers. The stipends which they offer are, for the most 
part, distinctly moderate. The opportunities for continued study 
and research are, except in London, inferior to those which 
Oxford and Cambridge afford. It can hardly be expected, nor 
is it to be desired, that a man of real capacity should look upon 
an appointment at a provincial college asa settlement for life. 
Rather should he regard it as a stepping-stone to preferment. 
If the colleges were to realise that the smallness of the stipend 
which they offer would be more than compensated in the eyes of 
an ambitious man by larger opportunities of qualifying for pre- 
ferment, they would attract to their service young men of the 
greatest promise. If the probability of the advancement of its 
professors and lecturers to more lucrative and important posts is 
kept in view and their duties so arranged as to allow them 
leisure to display their capacity for original work, the colleges 
may count upon a supply of young men of the greatest ability 
who will occupy their chairs for a certain number of years while 
waiting to be called to a wider sphere. 
Research.—We have found it difficult to give any adequate 
idea of the amount of original research in science which has 
been carried out by the teachers and students of the several 
colleges during the quinquennium under review. The greater 
part of the research work carried out at provincial colleges is 
done by heads of departments, and we recognise that a summary 
of each professor’s own work would have greatly increased the 
value of our report. For several reasons, however, we have 
not felt ourselves at liberty to attempt this. In the first place, 
the leisure and, therefore, the opportunities for research, which 
the professors enjoy vary immensely. In the majority of cases 
we should say that the professor’s duties are far too arduous and 
incessant to allow him to do much work of this kind. In the 
second place, we find that certain professors hold that it is the 
duty of the head of a department to work through his students. 
To them he conveys his ideas and affords constant assistance in 
carrying them out. <A teacher who adopts this point of view 
may publish nothing under his own name, although all the work 
which emanates from his laboratory is really inspired by him. 
Students and Original Research.—With regard to the question 
of the desirability of encouraging students to undertake original 
investigations, we find that teachers hold diametrically opposed 
views. Some consider that to set a student to such work is to 
rob him of the opportunity which his student days afford of 
acquiring information. Others look upon experience in research 
as the best training which any student can receive. The amount 
of research work done by students depends, therefore, to.a certain 
extent upon the position which professors take with regard to 
NO. 1709, VOL. 66] 
this question. It may also be noted that the effort and 
originality required to produce ‘‘a paper” in some subjects 
is very different from that required in others. Probably the 
scope for original work in science is greatest in chemistry and 
least in physiology. In chemistry, too, the making of new 
substances and the investigation of interactions is a training in 
the science to a much greater extent than is similar work in any 
biological subject. 
University Colleges and Secondary Schools.—We find that the 
relations of the more important provincial colleges to the 
secondary schools of their districts have become distinctly closer 
in the last five years. Not merely do more pupils pass from the 
secondary schools to the colleges, but reciprocity of representa- 
tion on the governing bodies of schools and colleges is becoming 
more frequent, and there has been a certain amount of inspec- 
tion of secondary schools carried out by members of the staff of 
several of the colleges. Another significant fact is that there 
have been of late several instances of denominational colleges, 
especially training colleges for the Nonconformist ministry, 
settling near university colleges in order that their students may 
attend university courses in arts and science. These facts point 
to the increasing importance of university colleges as educational 
centres. 
Oniversity Colleges and Technical Education.—In an ever- 
increasing degree the university colleges are serving to co- 
ordinate the various agencies for higher education into an 
effective whole. They serve to focus educational forces. 
Particularly is their integrating action noticeable on the techno- 
logical side, and although their results in this direction are not 
the phases of their activity which we were commissioned 10 
investigate, they are, in our opinion, so desirable that we 
venture to call attention to them. Technical institutes are 
growing up in all large towns. When they are not in direct 
connection with the university colleges, where such exist, there 
is inevitably a certain amount of rivalry, with consequent friction, 
overlapping and waste of energy. The scientific direction of 
technological studies is a matter of national importance. In the 
technical departments of a university college, technical educa- 
tion is lifted to a higher plane. The head of a technical depart- 
ment, who is also a member of a college staff, and in close touch 
with the heads of departments of pure science, takes a higher 
and wider view of his own work, and inspires a more scientific 
spirit in his pupils. Further than this, the more capable of his 
pupils have the opportunity of prosecuting the study of the pure 
sciences as far as their inclination or financial resources allow. 
Not infrequently they discover in themselves an aptitude for 
science which would never have been suspected had they not 
joined a technical department for the purpose of acquiring in- 
struction which would enable them to earn a living. In depart- 
ments which would at first sight appear to be the most distinctly 
technical, we found that researches were being prosecuted which 
were helping to solve questions of general interest to men of 
science, the results reaching far beyond the interest of the 
particular industry to which the department belonged. Every 
year the boundaries which separate pure science from applied 
science become more indistinct. The physicist, the chemist 
and biologist make discoveries which prove to be unexpectedly 
useful in their application, while the technologist, going farther 
and farther afield, undertakes researches, the applications of 
which he cannot foresee, in the hope that he may light upon 
results which commerce can turn to account. 
UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 
INTELLIGENCE. 
THE pass list of the D.Sc. examination of the University of 
London contains the following names :—Mixed mathematics, 
Louis N. G. Filon (Granville scholarship); experimental 
physics, G. J. Parks, W. Watson ; chemistry, R. H. Aders, 
R. M. Gaven, C. H. Desch, E. J. Russell, J. Wade, Martha 
Annie Whiteley; botany, F. E. Weiss ; zoology, H. S. Harrison 
(Sherbrooke scholarship), H. H. Swinnerton; physiology, 
Florence Buchanan, F. G. Hopkins; geology, C. A. Matley, 
E. W. Skeats. 
Tue Annual Calendar of the McGill College and University, 
Montreal, for the session 1902-1903 is a volume of more than 
four hundred pages filled with details of the buildings and 
equipment of the various departments, and the courses of work 
