496 



NATURE 



[Oc/. 22, 1874 



net revenue of 6,000/., under the authority, it is true, of 

 recent Acts of Parliament, is devoted to Uvings and 

 churches ; a considerable deviation, as the Commis- 

 sioners observe, from the intention expressed in the will 

 of the benefactor. The returns of the value of the Profes- 

 sorships are equally significant, for the five Divinity 

 Chairs are each endowed with 1,500/. and a house, 

 whereas the average of the remaining Professorships can- 

 not be more than 500/. without a residence. It may here 

 be incidentally mentioned that the collective income of 

 the Oxford Professors from all sources amounts to 25,000/., 

 of which only 450/. comes from fees, and more than half of 

 this latter sum from the fees of the four Science Professors. 

 Concerning the number of Fellowships confined to 

 those who have taken or who have promised to take 

 orders, this Report is entirely silent, on the same prin- 

 ciple apparently as it omits to state what proportion 

 of the College endowments is appropriated to the en- 

 couragement of Physical Science. For information on 

 this latter topic, recourse may be had to the Report of 

 another Royal Commission lately published, and the 

 University Calendars yield some evidence on the former 

 point. As to Oxford, it has been calculated that with 

 the exception of Merton, where for the future all 

 Fellowships, as well as the Headship, will be entirely 

 open, nearly half the Fellowships are what is com- 

 monly called clerical, and all the remaining Headships 

 are confined to clergymen. The proportion in the 

 different Colleges is veiy irregular, but the reader will 

 hardly be surprised to learn that, in accordance with 

 what has been intimated above, at the four wealthiest 

 Colleges the proportion is as high as two clerical fellows 

 to one lay. 



All these facts, and there are more of the same charac- 

 ter, seem to point one way : that when the reconstruction 

 of the Universities becomes a matter of public and not 

 special interest, and when the uses to which their endow- 

 ments are put shall be fundamentally reconsidered in the 

 light of modern experience, one of the first questions 

 which the nation will have to decide for itself will be 

 whether so large a portion of academical property shall 

 in the future be limited to purposes which certainly are 

 not educational, and nowhere else than in England 

 would ever be thought to be academical. That the Col- 

 leges themselves cannot be permitted to settle these great 

 questions at their own sweet will is abundantly made 

 clear by the facts recorded in this Report. It may be 

 granted that the reformed statutes of a few of the Ox- 

 ford Colleges, which are appended at the end of this 

 volume, promise to abolish certain of the more prominent 

 evils in their constitution, which evils indeed nowhere 

 find any active defenders ; but in none of these schemes 

 is adequate importance attached to the duty of encou- 

 raging original research, the one part of its academical 

 functions which Oxford neither performs nor regrets to 

 have left unperformed. Moreover, the well-intentioned 

 activity of some three or four of the less wealthy Col- 

 leges affords no guarantee that the greater institutions 

 will not continue in their wasteful courses, and permit 

 fresh vested interests to be acquired daily. Perhaps 

 public opinion is not yet fully ripe, and perhaps those 

 who have interested themselves in these subjects are not 

 yet sufliciently unanimous ; but for the future, at any 



rate, no excuses of this kind ought to be tolerated. The 

 Commission on Scientific Instruction and the Advance- 

 ment of Science has thrown into shape a scheme of 

 reform which, though primarily adapted to the case of 

 original research in the physical sciences, is capable of 

 being extended to similar branches of genuine study, and 

 to the outline of that scheme many prominent men, 

 statesmen and others, have given in their adhesion. 

 This Commission has now in its Report given us all the 

 materials requisite for discovering where the necessary 

 funds shall come from ; and from henceforth it will be only 

 due to laziness, or to individual perversity, if a definite 

 scheme of University Re-organisation, conceived in the 

 interests of unencumbered investigation and mature study, 

 is not soon presented for the acceptance of the public. 



SEDLE Y TA YLOR'S " SO UND " 



Sound and Music : a Non-mathematical Treatise. By 

 Sedley Taylor, M.A. (London : Macmillan and Co.) 



FINDING from the title-page and preface that this 

 work, though non-mathematical, undertakes to give 

 an account of the acoustical discoveries of Helmholtz, 

 we acknowledge having felt some misgivings when we 

 commenced the perusal of it. We will presently inform 

 our readers whether we found our fears justified or not by 

 the book itself ; but we must first state why we felt them. 

 The recent reasonable and even necessary outcry for 

 popular scientific education in this country has led to the 

 publication of a perfect shoal of elementary treatises. 

 Everyone who has a smattering of knowledge or who has 

 access to a consulting library considers himself thereby 

 fitted to write a treatise. For one such that is written by 

 a man thoroughly competent as far as knowledge and 

 experience can qualify him, we have half a dozen written 

 by popular lecturers, or rather showmen, in whose eyes 

 sensational experiments sensationally described form 

 the really attractive portion of science ! Besides these, 

 we have a dozen others — some the work of those fluent 

 writers who can master a new subject in a week, 

 complete an octavo treatise on it by the end of the 

 month, see it through the press, and proceed imme- 

 diately to repeat the process on something newer still ; 

 the others, the original work of uninstructed but aspiring 

 men, who have learnt too little to be aware either of what 

 science is or of their own utter ignorance of it. This is 

 no fancy sketch, but, as all competent to Judge will allow, 

 an exceedingly unpleasant reality. In some subjects, no 

 doubt, competent men have the field (as yet) left almost 

 to themselves. It is only now and then that an ignora- 

 mus ventures to produce a treatise on Hyperdcterminants, 

 Vortex Motion, or Specific Inductive Capacity. Yet, if 

 books on such subjects could command a host of eager 

 and igno7'ant purchasers, there would soon be a supply 

 from quarters hitherto undreamt of. But anyone and 

 everyone can write on such simple matters as heat, light, 

 electricity, or (more to our present purpose) sound and 

 music. " Bother Helmholtz, and Clerk-Maxwell, and 

 Thomson," cries a public athirst for sensation, and whose 

 palate is already dead to all but the most potent spices ; 

 " we want excitement, knowledge too if it comes pain- 

 lessly, but excitement ; " which (viz. the sensation and 

 the excitement) are precisely what that same public will 



