ig ae a et EES ES 8 eet 
E.—GEOGRAPHY. 93 
gives for proficiency in Geography, her Diploma * with distinction ’ 
counts towards the B.A. degree in at least as great a proportion as at 
any other University except Cambridge—it counts, in fact, as two- 
thirds of the whole qualification; but—and here’s the rub!—the 
balance has to be made up by proficiency in some other subject up 
to a pass, not an Honours standard. ‘Therefore the resultant degree 
does not stand before the world as one taken in Honours; and, 
although some candidates are notified as distinguished and some not 
in the geographical part of her examinations, the distinction is not 
advertised in the form to which the public is accustomed—namely, an 
Honours list divided into classes. The net result is that an Oxford 
diploma, however brilliantly won, commands less recognition in the 
labour market than would a class in an Honour School or Tripos. 
It should, however, be mentioned—though an infrequent occur- 
rence, not advertised by a class list, makes little impression on public 
opinion—that special geographical research, embodied in a thesis, can 
qualify at Oxford for higher degrees than the B.A.—viz., for the B. Litt. 
and B.Sc.—without the support of other subjects. 
The reason of this equivocal status of Geography at Oxford is 
simply that, so far as the actual Faculties which control the courses 
for ordinary graduation are concerned, Geography is, in fact, an 
equivocal subject. No one Faculty feels that it can deal with the 
whole of it. The Arts Faculties will not accept responsibility for the 
elements of Natural and Mathematical Science which enter into its 
study and teaching—for example, into the investigation of the causes 
of Distribution, into the processes of Surveying, into Cartography, 
and into many other of its functions. Moreover, the traditional 
Oxford requirement of a literary basis for Arts studies is hard, if not 
impossible, to satisfy in Geography. The Faculty of Natural Science, 
on the other hand, is equally loth to be responsible for a subject which 
admits so much of the Arts element, especially into those applications 
of its data which enter most often into the instructional curriculum 
of adolescents—for example, its applications to History and to 
Ethnology. 
At this moment, then, there is an impasse at Oxford similar to 
that (it is caused by the same reason) which prevents the election of a 
Geographer, as such, either to the Royal Society on the one hand, or 
to the British Academy on the other. But ways out can be found 
if there be good will towards Geography, and such general recog- 
nition of the necessity of bringing it into closer relation with the 
established studies, as was implied by the examiners in the Oxford 
School of Literae Humaniores last year, when, in an official notice, 
they expressed their sense of a lack of it in the historical work 
with which they had to deal. Faculties are comparatively 
modern organisations at Oxford as at Cambridge for the control of 
teaching and examining. Before them existed Boards of Studies, 
appropriated to narrower subjects; and, indeed, such Boards have been 
constituted since Faculties became the rule and side by side with 
them. The Board, which at the first controlled at Oxford the Final 
Honour School of English, is an example and a valid precedent. 
