476 



NATURE 



\Oct. 15, 1874 



but this truth can now be enforced by very definite 

 examples. King's College, Cambridge, has a revenue 

 from endowment of 34,000/., and has from 20 to 30 under- 

 graduates ; Exeter College, Oxford, has an endowment of less 

 than 6,000/., and educates 180 undergraduates, from whose 

 payments a profit is derived which exceeds the external 

 income by nearly 6,000/. A comparison also between 

 Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where the sum of 975/. in 

 the year is actually drawn from the endowments to pay 

 the balance of the kitchen and buttery accounts, and 

 Keble College, which has absolutely no endowment and 

 yet exhibits a profit of 500/. on the year's account, equally 

 teaches the lesson that out of tutorial and other fees, and 

 fair boarding charges, an unendowed institution is capable 

 of paying its own way, even in the face of competition 

 with extravagant endowments. It appears, then, that by 

 far the larger portion of the University endowments are 

 not appHed to educational purposes proper, nor apparently 

 is it desirable that more should be devoted to that object, 

 so that those ai'e proved to be not far wrong who have 

 urged that all this wealth is in the main wasted upon 

 sinecures, and is readily available for the direct advance- 

 ment of science and pure learning. At Oxford, the Heads 

 of Houses and Fellows, more than two-thirds of whom 

 are non-resident, receive yearly 131,000/., and the re. 

 mainder of the revenue is expended upon various minor 

 charges which are probably inseparable from the posses- 

 sion of large landed estates and considerable buildings 

 and grounds. It is then to this 131,000/. that the atten- 

 tion of reformers must be directed, and the question of 

 its proper uses becomes the more important when it is 

 added that the Commissioners anticipate that in the next 

 fifteen years the Colleges will receive an increase, due to 

 the falling in of beneficial leases, of 123,000/. It is pro- 

 bable, nay, almost certain, that this total will be consider- 

 ably increased, partly by a general rise in the value of 

 land, and partly through building leases, so that by the 

 end of this century Oxford will have a yearly sum of 

 260,000/. upon which there is no present claim of more 

 importance than those of Headships and Fellowships. 

 If the revenues of Cambridge are treated according to the 

 same principle of calculation, the amount paid to scholars 

 and expended in general purposes being knocked off and 

 the probable increase being included, the Colleges of that 

 University will have at the same date about 160,000/., so 

 that Oxford will then appear even more than now the 

 richer of the two. In our next article we shall point out 

 how this large sum might be yet^further increased, if the 

 connection with the Church of England, which has always 

 hampered to so great an extent the usefulness of the 

 Colleges, were finally severed, and if all the academical 

 endowments were to be strictly applied to academical 

 purposes ; but even without such severance a sufficient 

 surplus is shown to induce the much-desired agreement 

 as to its proper application, so that it may not continue 

 to be wasted, nor diverted, as some have suggested, to the 

 great towns ; a mode of action which will induce all towns 

 to do nothing in order that the Universities may eventually 

 help them, and more than ever justify the French criti- 

 cism that our Universities are nothing more than Hautes 

 Lyct'c's, instead of being, as they should be, the active 

 centres of learning and research. It is to a Liberal 

 Ministry that we owe the Commission which has yielded 



this valuable Report, but according to all appearances it 

 will be a Conservative Government that must undertake 

 the more important task of inaugurating the work of 

 fundamental University Reform. 



METEOROLOGICAL REFORM 



WE would invite our readers' attention to an article 

 which appears in this number of Nature on the 

 necessity for placing Physical Meteorology on a rational 

 basis. 



It forms the substance of a paper brought before the 

 recent meeting of the British Association by Col. Strange, 

 who has taken, as our readers well know, a very promi- 

 nent part in the reconstruction of British Science, and to 

 whom we are indebted for the present very earnest and 

 lucidly argued protest in favour of a more rational way 

 of treating meteorology. 



He begins by dividing meteorology into two branches — 

 one of these relating to weather and climate and their 

 effects on organised life ; while the other deals with the 

 great physical motions of the atmosphere and with their 

 causes. 



To know beforehand the climatic peculiarities of a 

 watering-place or country seat is no doubt of much im- 

 portance, especially for an invalid who is in search of a 

 healthy locality, but this does not constitute physical 

 meteorology. It forms, we venture to think, a more im- 

 portant and certainly a more difficult branch of inquiry 

 to study the earth's envelope as a whole, to ascertain the 

 nature of the movements to which the moveable parts of 

 it are subject, and finally to investigate the physical 

 causes of these. It is in this latter aspect that the me- 

 teorology of the day is so lamentably deficient. The 

 great fault in the present system has been well put by 

 Col. Strange. 



Two thingshave been taken for granted by meteoro- 

 logists. In the first 'place, it has been imagined that the 

 sun affects the earth in only one way, namely, by means of 

 its radiation ; and secondly, they appear to have taken 

 for granted that this radiant influence is a constant 

 quantity. So much indeed have these most importai t 

 factors been overlooked, that we believe no systematic 

 effort has yet been made to measure the sun's radiant 

 influence, and indeed no proper instrument has yet 

 been devised by which this can be done in a satisfactory 

 manner. Without doubt the great question for meteoro- 

 logists is that put by Col. Strange : " Is the sun a constant 

 quantity ? " 



Now, if the evidence in favour of the sun's constancy 

 were absolutely overwhelming, even then the present 

 system would be at fault, inasmuch as no systematic 

 attempts have been made to measure the strength of the 

 solar influence : but how much more is the system deficient 

 when it refuses to investigate an influence which is certainly 

 predominant and most probably inconstant. To give our 

 readers some idea of the evidence in favour of this latter 

 assertion, let us quote the following words from a letter 

 contained in a report presented to the British Association 

 by a committee appointed to consider the question of 

 scientific organisation : — 



" Recent investigations have increased the probability 



