394 



NA TURE 



[Feb. 24, 1 88 1 



twenty-first anniversary of the publication of your great 

 work, the "Origin of Species." 



However limited the field of our own labours maybe, 

 we cannot but be sensible of the influence which that 

 work has had throughout the whole domain of Natural 

 Science, and especially upon Biology, which, as one great 

 comprehensive Science, may be said to owe its very exist- 

 ence to the fact that you made belief in Evolution pos- 

 sible by your theory of Natural Selection. 



We are glad to think that you have lived to see the 

 almost universal acceptance of the great doctrine which 

 it has been the work of your life to establish ; it is hardly 

 an e.xaggeration to say that every important Botanical or 

 Zoological discovery of the last twenty-one years, particu- 

 larly in the departments of Embryology and Pateontology, 

 has tended to fill up some gap in the evidence you had 

 originally collected, and to make Evolution no longer a 

 theory, but an established doctrine of Science. 



We hope that you may long live to continue your 

 labours and to see the further spread of their influence 

 upon all scientific thought and upon all higher scientific 

 work. 



We are, sir, your obedient servants, 



Thos. Morgan Hocker President 



f. w. hutton 



George H. F. Ulrich 



George RI. Thomson' 



Henry Skey 



Robert Gillies 



C. W. BL.'ilR 



Alexander Montgomery 

 T. Jefferv Parker 

 W. Macdonald 

 Donald Petrie 

 Dunedin, New Zealand, October i, 18S0. 



Vice-Presidents 



Han, Sec, 

 Hon. Treasurer 



Members 



of 

 Council 



DEGREES TO WOMEN 

 \\7E trust the Grace which is to-day to be submitted to 

 '• the Cambridge Senate, advocating the admission 

 of women to receive University degrees, will meet with 

 the appro\al of that body. In fact, as the Times put it 

 yesterday, the point was ruled ten years ago. " Cam- 

 bridge, in conniving at its public examiners examining 

 Girton and Newnham students precisely as if they were 

 Trinity or Johnian scholars, gave in spirit what is now 

 demanded. It seems ungenerous, and not very rational, 

 for a university to let its authorities proclaim a man in 

 the Senate House eighth wrangler, and inform Girton 

 College that the real eighth wrangler was a woman. 

 Even a country clerical passman would not venture to 

 withdraw the existing licence ; all that remains is for the 

 Senate to ratify with a good grace the principle upon 

 which its officials have long and openly been acting." 



The following paper, which has been issued from Cam- 

 bridge in view of to-day's discussion, puts the case as 

 fairly as it can be put : — 



Reasons why the university .should be one of the leading 

 centres of female education. 



I. Because no line can be drawn separating main subjects of 

 study or whole branches of learning into those suitable for men 

 and unsuitable for women, or vice versd. No true classification 

 of human knowledge will admit of the distinction, " Propria 

 quse maribus tribuntur, mascula dicas." 2. Because the Uni- 

 versity as a chief inheritor and transmitter of learning from 

 generation to gen;ration has no right to dissociate itself from 

 any great movement connected with the advancement of learning. 

 The participation of women in the general and particularly in 

 the higher studies of their time must be a great fact and factor 

 in the future of education. 3. Beciuse whatever eJucational 

 resources may be found elsewhere, those of Cambridge and 

 Oxford are peculiar ; and though as long as there was no public 

 demand for these resources except from male students they were 

 properly applied only to male education, now that a demand 

 has sprung up and persistently declared itself on the part of the 

 other sex, the university will incur the reproach of inhospitable 



partiality if it bars its doors, like a monastery, to female appli- 

 cants for admission. 4. Because one of the legitimate wants and 

 aspirations^ of the University — leisure for continued study and 

 research — is likely to be promoted by increasing the amount of 

 remunerative educational work done in the university. The 

 more work, the more \\ orkers, and the more remuneration ; and 

 out of work, workers, and earnings, the legitimate and sure 

 outcome wWl be leisure for the worthiest work aad workers. 

 5. Because the education of women in England must, from irre- 

 sistible national feelings and convictions, ba religious and 

 Christian ; and if female education is centred in the "university 

 a stimulus will be given to the best religious influences in study 

 and life ; and from these the English universities have never 

 fo.- any long period been dissociated. 6. Because any mis- 

 chievous consequences that might be feared, whether to the 

 university or to the students, by the admission of women can be 

 guarded against by suitable regulation-, and still more by 

 responsible authorities ; whereas the diversion of the interests 

 and influences that are gathering round the question of women's 

 education from the univer.-ity to other centres would be an irre- 

 trievable step, isolating the university for the future from a 

 movement of great force and promise. J. L. Brereton 



February ,16 



NOTES 



I At the anniversary meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society, 

 j on the nth inst., Mr. Hind, president, in the chair, the gold medal 

 was presented to Prof. Axel Moller, Director of the Observatory at 

 Lund, in Sweden, for his investigations on the motion of Faye's 

 comet. Prof. MoUer's researches commenced in i860, soon after 

 attention had been directed to this c jmet by the offer of a prize for 

 the accurate determination of its orbit by the Society of Natural 

 Sciences of Dantzic, and they have been continued to the present 

 time, the comet's track at each of the three subsequent returns in 

 1S65-66, 1873, and 1880-Sl, having been predicted with a pre- 

 cision which has excited in no small degree the ladmiration of 

 astronomers ; indeed, at tlie re-appearance in 1873, M. .Stephan's 

 first observation at the Observatory of Marseilles, showed that 

 tlie error of predicted place was le-s than six seconds of arc 

 and after the last revolution, when the perturbations from the 

 action of the planets were greater than in any previous revolution 

 since the comet was first detected by M. Faye in 1843, the 

 agreement between observation and calculation was still very 

 close. One important result of these investigations has been a 

 striking confirmation, from the motion of Faye's comet, of the 

 v.ilue for the mass of Jupiter deduced by Bessel from the elonga- 

 tions of the satellites, the two values according within the limits 

 of their probable errors. Prof. Moller also carried back the 

 accurate computation of the perturbations to December, 1838, so 

 as to ascertain the effect of a pretty near approach to Jupiter 

 in March, 1841, upon the previous orbit, and having done this he 

 examined the probable circumstances of a very near approach 

 of the two bodies near the passage of the node in 1816, to 

 wliich attention had been drawn by Valz soon after the comet's 

 orbit was fairly determined. Thus MoUer's laborious investiga- 

 tions extend over a period of forty-three years, during which he 

 has followed the motion of the cjmet with all the refinements of 

 H-hich the actual state of the science admits. It will be 

 generally accorded that the medal has been well eu'ned in 

 t Prof. MoUer's case. The last occasion on which it was 

 I awarded for investigations of a similar kind was as far back 

 I as 1837, when the Astronomer-Royal presented the medal to 

 Roseuberger for his researches on the motion of Halley's comet. 



j At the anniver.-^ary of the Geological Society on Friday the 

 ; medals were awarded as follows : — The WoUaston medal to Prof. 

 P. Mar;in Duncan, M.B., F.R.S., F.G.S. ; the Murchison 

 medal to Prof. Archibald Geikie, F.R.S., F.G.S. ; the Lyell 

 medal to Principal Da«son, LL.D., F.R.S., F.G.S., ofMcGUl 

 College, Montreal ; and the Eigsby medal to Dr. Charles Barrois 

 of Lille. The WoUaston Fund was awarded to Dr. R. H. 



