July 15, 1880] 



NATURE 



25* 



missioners to interfere with what is regarded as one of the 

 points which they are bound to consider. At the same time it 

 is believed that the Commissioners are favourable to the almost 

 complete abolition of clerical tests, and if this is one result of 

 their deliberations, it seems to us their appointment will not have 

 been in vain. The memorial on the subject, with 8cx3 signatures, 

 presented to Mr. Gladstone, could scarcely be more influential. 

 Among the names are those of Sir G. Jessel (Master of the 

 Rolls), Sir Henry Thompson, Dr. Risdoa Bennett (President of 

 the Royal College of Physicians), Mr. Darwin, Prof. Huxley, 

 Mr. A. R. Wallace, Dr. W. B. Carpenter, Dr. Abbott, 

 numerous members of Parliament, the Presidents of the 

 Congregational and Baptist Unions and the Dissenting 

 Deputies, the professors of most of the Nonconformist 

 colleges, and several hundred graduates of the Univer- 

 sities of O.xford, Cambridge, London, and Scotland. It 

 seems clear that the days of this remnant of an age of in. 

 tolerance are numbered, and that in the near future Oxford 

 and Cambridge will be as untrammelled by antiquated restric- 

 tions as the London and Victoria Universities. The central 

 institutions of these bodies have developed with a marvellous 

 rapidity, one cause of which, we must believe, has been the 

 perfect liberty of teaching. University College, as we intimated 

 last week, feels urgently the necessity of more elbow-room, and 

 yesterday the foundation of Victoria University was celebrated 

 at Manchester, where Owens College, the nucleus of the Uni- 

 versity has developed quite as rapidly, at least, as her elder sister 

 of London. When Oxford and Cambridge have been brought 

 as much abreast of the age as the two younger institutions, an 

 impulse will be given to higher education in this country, and 

 an encouragement to research in all departments of learning and 

 science, that in time will bring us on a level with Germany 

 in respect of University education. 



No more satisfactory token of the rapid progress of liberal and 

 just ideas as to the proper functions of universities could be de- 

 sired than the tone of the leading article in the Times of Tuesday 

 in connection with the Victoria University ceremonies at Man- 

 chester. After giving a melancholy picture of the disastrous 

 effects of the existing system at Oxford and Cambridge, both on 

 crammers and crammed, the Times gives what is evidently its 

 ideal picture of university life. "Let us imagine," the leader 

 concludes, "a body of professors employed not in examining or 

 in cramming, but in original research or original work of some 

 sort, pushing forward the bounds of knowledge, adding new ideas 

 to the possessions of the human mind, creating, in short, and net 

 merely appropriating or aiding and testing the appropriations of 

 other people. The stimulus of such work as this would be felt, 

 we may be sure, by all who come in any sense within its range. 

 The example would be contagious. Original workers will 

 be in no want of pupils, whether they seek for them 

 or not. When valuable ore is being dug there will always 

 be some one with a due sense of its worth ready and pager 

 to pick it up. It is for the promotion of such work as this that 

 great funds and great institutions most properly exist. The 

 professions and trades of the country have their own appointed 

 rewards. The successfal barrister or the successful merchant 

 may or may not have been a university student. It is not in 

 any case the chief duty of a university to assLt him in the attain- 

 ment of his rank, first to sharpen his tools for him and then to 

 keep him in funds during the interval while he is waiting to use 

 them. The professions and trades can hold their own very well 

 without such adventitious help as this. Original work is not so 

 directly remunerative ; to the individual engaged upon it it may 

 not be remunerative at all. It often bears fruit slowly, hut it 

 bears it abundantly in the end. It need^, therefore, and 

 justifies the special encouragement which a university can most 

 obviously provide. The Victoria University has its life before it. 



It can choose its own course. It may become a machine for 

 turning out second and third-rate intelligences, a sort of pro- 

 crustean bed, so constructed as to bring its sons as nearly as 

 possible to the same intellectual stature and equally to forbid 

 any of them from falling far short of it or from exceeding it. 

 Or it may propose to itself another aim, and may seek princi- 

 pally to aid in the creation of knowledge rather than in its 

 distribution, and even weighing out." We are pleased to find 

 the views we have so long advocated finding acceptance in so 

 influential a quarter, and we commend the article to the earnest 

 consideration of the University Commissioners. 



The second annual meeting of the Index Society was held on 

 Friday last, the 9th inst., in the rooms of the Society of Arts, 

 when His Excellency the American Minister, Mr. J. Kussetf 

 Lowell, presided. The Report contained an account of the work 

 already accomplished and of that which is in hand or can be put 

 in hand when the list of subscriptions is enlarged. Many of the 

 Indexes issued through the Society refer to literature and history 

 matters, but science is not overlooked. A Handbook of the 

 Literature of Botany, by Mr. Daydon Jackson, the secretary of 

 the Linnean Society, is just ready for the press, and a companion 

 volume for meteorology is proposed. Indexes of Logic and 

 Anthropology also find a place in the list of schemes. Besides 

 the formal business at the meeting, resolutions were passed for 

 the appointment of committees to consider the best means of 

 carrying out the following objects :— (1) The indexing of bio- 

 graphical collections, especially those contained in the Gentle- 

 man's Magazine and the Annual Register : (2) the indexing of 

 Roman antiquities and remains in Great Britain ; and (3) the 

 opening of an office to contain the printed and MS. indexes. 



We have already called attention to the fact that the friends'of 

 the late Prof. Alfred Henry Garrod, F.R.S., being desirous of 

 possessing some memorial of him, it has been agreed, after due 

 consideration, that this object will be best effected .by the re- 

 publication in a collected form of all his separate memoirs and 

 papers, both zoological and physiological, prefaced by a bio- 

 graphical notice and portrait of the author. A committee has 

 been formed to carry out this object, consisting of Prof. W. H. 

 Flower, LL.D., F.R.S., P. L. Sclater, Ph.D., F.R.S., Dr. A. 

 GUnther, F.R.S., O. Salvin, F.R.S., F. M. Balfour, F.R.S., 

 Prof. E. A. Schifer, F.R.S. , G. E. Dobson, E. R. Alston, 

 Prof. F. Jeffrey Bell, W. A. Forbes, secretary. It is estimated 

 that Prof. Garrod 's collected papers will form a volume of about 

 500 pages, royal octavo, illustrated by twenty-five plates and 

 numerous woodcuts. Each subscriber to the fund will be en- 

 titled to receive a copy of the work for every guinea subscribed. 

 Intending subscribers are requested to forward their names, and 

 to state the amount they are willing to subscribe, to the Secre- 

 tary of the Garrod Memorial Fund, 11, Hanover Square, 

 London, W. 



Dr. J. H. Gladstone, F.R.S., has presented 100/. to the 

 Research Fund of the Chemical Society. 



The French Government has allotted M. Pasteur the sum of 

 50,000 francs for the purpose of enabling him to carry out his 

 researches on the contagious diseases of animals. 



Wishing to devote himself exclusively to scientific pursuits. 

 Admiral Mouchez, director of the Paris Observatory, has asked 

 to be placed on the retirement list, a request which has been 

 granted by the Ministry. 



The well-known mathematician. Prof. C. W. Borchardt, died 

 at R\idersdorf, near Berlin, on June 27. He was formerly 

 Professor of Mathematics in the Military Academy, and of late 

 years Professor in the University of Berlin. Since 1856 he was 

 editor of the Journal for Pure and Applied Matketnatics, the 

 oldest of the existing mathematical periodicals. 



