,io 



iVA JURE 



\_March 31, i88r 



The sole cause of the existence of such complete 

 courses in other institutions than Oxford — over and 

 above the primary one connected with the income from 

 fees — is that the professor has to submit his scheme of 

 lectures for the ensuing session or year in a general way 

 to his colleagues, who would suggest to him a more 

 complete or more representative program, were his 

 proposals considered insufficient, and might take steps to 

 supplement his teaching by the appointment of a supple- 

 mentary professor (thus diminishing the original pro- 

 fessor's income from fees), were he to prove intractable. 



The keystone of the professorial system, on which all 

 such control and persuasion, co-operation and reciprocal 

 criticism, must rest, is the income from class-fees. In 

 having not only not insisted upon this, but in having 

 actually prohibited the free levying of fees, the O.xford 

 Commissioners have made their scheme for professors 

 absolutely unworkable. They have simply played into 

 the hands of those who have at present a most injurious 

 monopoly of the fees paid by students, and who give in 

 return as little and as inadequate teaching as they please, 

 namely, the confederacy of boarding-house keepers 

 known as " college tutors and lecturers." 



The proposal that professors should examine their 

 classes and report to the Heads of Colleges as to the per- 

 formance of each student was characterised by a spirit of 

 petty interference quite unworthy of the large objects 

 placed before the Commissioners, and has very properly 

 been withdrawn. Such details, together with some other 

 points, might well have been left by the Commissioners 

 to the Councils of P'acuUies, which they so wisely intend 

 to bring into existence. 



It may be urged that if the Commissioners were to con- 

 fine themselves in these and similar matters to creating 

 the organisation which is terribly needed at O.vford, and 

 of which these Councils of Faculties promise to be the 

 most powerful and important part, they might with very 

 great advantage leave the question of terminal examina- 

 tions, and the scale of fees to be charged for lectures, 

 &c., to be worked out by the reorganised University itself. 

 But instead of prohibiting class-fees they should have 

 strengthened the hands of the professoriate in the com- 

 petition with the powerful band who are interested in 

 maintaining the disastrous and absurd system of college 

 tuition and tuition fees. So long as the undergraduate is 

 forced to pay to college tutors a lump sum of 25A a year, 

 he will seek his instruction (whether he finds it or not) 

 from those whom he has been compelled to pay, and not 

 from the professors whom he is not allowed to pay. 



It is clear that with the present body of free-holders it 

 was necessary for the Commissioners to insist on the 

 new principle that a professor is not to be free from 

 responsibility {l.cJirfreihcit, we may observe, does not 

 mean " freedom from teaching," as some writers who 

 in the daily papers have recently appealed to German 

 precedents almost seem to fancy), but is, on the contrary, 

 to be charged with certain duties and to be responsible 

 in a measure to his brother professors for performing 

 those duties in a satisfactory manner. 



ACADEMICUS 



THE INTERNA TIONAL GEOLOGICAL 

 CONGRESS 

 'T'HIS Congress is to hold its second session at Bologna, 

 ■*■ commencing on September 29, tSSi, under the presi- 

 dency of Signor Q. Sella, president of the Accademia 

 dei Lincei of Rome, and under the pationage of His 

 Majesty the King of Italy, who has liberally placed the 

 necessary funds at the disriosal of the Italian Committee 

 of C rganisation, of which Prof. J. Capellini of the 

 Bologna Museum is the president, and General Taran- 

 nelli of the University of Pavia the secretary. 



The movement sprang out of a suggestion made at a 



meeting of the American Association of Science held at 

 Buffalo, New York, August 25, 1876, that an Interna- 

 tional Geological Congress was advisable, to insure 

 uniformity of methods of representing geological pheno- 

 mena, and the value of terms. Towards this end a com- 

 mittee of organisation was formed, of which Prof. 

 James Hall was president and Dr. Sterry Hunt secre- 

 tary, in which EngUnd was represented by Prof. Huxley, 

 and Sweden by Ur. Otto Torell. The result of their 

 deliberations was the first session of the Congress held 

 at Paris, in the Palace of the Trocad^ro, under the presi- 

 dency of Prof. Hebert and the patronage of the Minister 

 of Public Instruction. At the Congress, which lasted six 

 days, two International Commissions were appointed, the 

 one to consider geological cartography, with a view of 

 adopting a comtnon sjstem of signs and colours, the 

 other to investigate the possibility of effecting the uiiifi- 

 cation of geological nomenclature and to consider all 

 matters relating to stratigraphical classification and 

 nomenclature, to a certain extent involving an inquiry 

 into the value and significance of petrological and 

 pateontological characters. A third Commission, entirely 

 French, was : Iso appointed to report on Bologna, on the 

 rules to be followed in establishing the nomenclature of 

 species in mineralogy and palasontolog)'. 



M. Renevier, general secretary of the first Commission, 

 has just published his second report of progress, and 

 states that advantage was taken of the presence of several 

 members of the Commission during the fiftieth anni- 

 versary meeting of the Geological Society of France on 

 April 2, 1880, to hold a meeting of the Coinmission at 

 which five European countries were represented, under 

 the presidency of M. Daubree ; since then, more or less 

 detailed reports from nearly all the committees represent- 

 ing different countries have been received, except from 

 Canada, presided over by Mr. Selwyn, and Great Britain 

 by Prof. Ramsay. In some of these schemes there is a 

 considerable amount of agreement. Quaternary deposits, 

 being represented by a pale green, Pliocene by pale 

 yellow, Miocene dark yellow or orange. Eocene by bistre. 

 Cretaceous by green, Jurassic by blue. Lias by violet, 

 Trias by burnt sienna, Permian and Carboniferous by 

 dark grey, Devonian by brown, or brown stripes on pink,. 

 Crystalline schists by rose carmine. Granite by dark 

 carmine, divisions in the various rocks being expressed 

 by tints of the same colour, or by shading or dotting. 



The General Secretary of the Commission for the Uni- 

 fication of Nomenclature is M. Devalque, who reports 

 that this Commission also met at the Paris Geological 

 Society's anniversary, France being represented by M. 

 Hebert, Switzerland by Prof. A. Favre, and Great Britain 

 by Prof. Hughes. The latter Commissioner, aided by 

 Prof. Prestvvich, has now succeeded in organising a 

 British sub-Commission, who have appointed six com- 

 mittees to inquire into groups of formations, and (i) to 

 draw up a list of the names now in use ; (2) to ascertain 

 the true significance of such names or terins, giving refer- 

 ence to the authors by whom they were used in the first 

 instance, or subrequently with a modified ineaning ; (3) 

 to investigate into the synonomy of such names and terms 

 in the first place as regards the British Isles, and after- 

 wards to inquire into their correlation with them in use in 

 other areas ; and (4) to offer suggestions for the unifica- 

 tion of the nomenclature. As the committees can seldom 

 sit, as their members are scattered, they have been 

 modelled on the principle of the Inquiry Committees of 

 the British Association, and have attached to them one 

 or two "reporters,'' charged with assimilating the views 

 and facts collected by the Committee. The reporters for 

 the British Isles, are for Recent and Tertiary rocks, Messrs. 

 Starkie Gardner and H. B. Woodward ; for Cretaceotis 

 rocks Messrs. Topley and Jukes-Browne; for Jurassic 

 rocks Messrs. Huddlestone and Bl ike ; for Trias and 

 Permian, Mr. De Ranee and the Rev. A. Irving; for 



