;66 



NA TURE 



[October 4, 1906 



English type, the German type, and the American 

 type. We have no reason to be ashamed of the Scottish 

 t3'pe. But while it is legitimate for us, especially at the 

 celebration of our 400th birthday, to plume ourselves on 

 work done and service rendered, we must not forget that 

 others also have been making progress, and are even now 

 passing us in the race of efficiency. Scotland is no longer 

 the only country in the world that can justly boast that 

 its main industry is education ; and our universities have 

 still, perhaps, something to learn in the way of relegating 

 a greater proportion of their work to the practical activities 

 of life. I do not speak from a merely utilitarian point of 

 view, and I know that it is the proper function of a 

 university to foster even those studies which may be de- 

 scribed as ends in themselves. If it were not for what 

 universities do in cherishing abstract and theoretical learn- 

 ing, some of the practical applications of that learning 

 resulting in the great triumphs of modern scientific activity 

 would never have been made. I know also that the uni- 

 versities, for example, of the New World have something 

 to learn from those of Europe in the direction of more 



ation of much of their educational activity. The reward 

 they have is that — fully as much as we do here — they find 

 their alumni in every walk of life, not in the ' learned pro- 

 fessions ' only ; and some of the most notable benefac- 

 tions which the American universities have lately received 

 come from men whose desire it is to connect them still 

 more closely with practical work. As a recent illustration 

 of this spirit, let me refer to the great gift that was made 

 the other day by my friend Sir William Macdonald to 

 McGill University, Montreal. It consists of a college of 

 agriculture situated about ten miles outside the city, and 

 comprises, besides all the necessary buildings erected in 

 palatial style, some six hundred acres of ground. The 

 whole benefaction amounts to some 600,000/., and secures 

 to the agricultural interests of the country that they shall 

 be developed hand in hand with those of a university which 

 has already done so much for engineering and other prac- 

 tical sciences." 



At the various festive meetings of the crowded four 

 days— the receptions at the two colleges and at the 



-View of Marischal College. (Frc 



r the top of the bo 



1 front.) 



solid attainment and a higher standard, at least in certain 

 departments of study. But speaking for the moment as 

 one who has lived for many years on the .American con- 

 tinent and has watched with close attention the growth 

 of one of our greatest universities in Canada, I may be 

 allowed to record my conviction that universities on the 

 other side of the Atlantic enjoy a considerable advantage 

 in the ease and readiness with which, unhampered as they 

 are by any venerable traditions, they can adapt themselves 

 to the practical needs of the various constituencies which 

 they seek to serve. They found out long ago that law 

 and medicine and theology are not the only legitimate 

 points of academic study ; and in their faculties of applied 

 science they are training their young men to do work that 

 is most loudly called for. They have never accepted the 

 view that universities must necessarily be institutions 

 cloistered and apart from the main current of public life 

 and service. On the contrary, they make a training for 

 citizenship and for public usefulness the basis and found- 



NO. 1927, VOL. 74] 



Art Gallery, the Town Council banquet, and Lord 

 Strathcona's gigantic dinner-party of two thousand 

 four hundred guests — there was renewed opportunity 

 to realise the cosmopolitan nature of the concourse and 

 the generosity of the response made to the Univer- 

 sity's invitation. Among the famous men wlio were 

 present as delegates we may note the following, 

 taking them in order of the institutions repre- 

 sented : — 



(i) Great Britain and Ireland : — Universities : Oxford, 

 Prof. Henry Goudy, Prof. Arthur Thomson ; Cambridge, 

 Prof. Henry Jackson, Dr. James Adam, Dr. William L. 

 Mollison ; Durham, Rev. Dr. Henry Gee (Master of Uni- 

 versity College, Durham) ; Edinburgh, Prof. Alex. Crum 

 Brown, Prof. George Chrystal, Prof. James Cossar Ewart, 

 Sir Thomas Richard Eraser, Dr. Thomas Smith Clouston ; 

 Glasgow, Sir T. McCall Anderson, Prof. Archd. Barr, 

 Prof. John Cleland, Prof. John Ferguson, Prof. Samson 



