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Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. [Sess. 
along with some other Scottish professors, to take part in the inspection 
of secondary schools. It was in the course of his labours in this connection 
that the idea occurred to him of a simultaneous written examination so 
arranged that he might be able to report on all the schools he visited 
in a uniform manner ; and when he came to write his report on the schools 
he had visited, he sketched a complete scheme for the Leaving Certificate 
examination which was immediately taken up, and in most of its essential 
features ultimately adopted by the Department. The importance of this 
step can be more fully appreciated now, after the lapse of a quarter of a 
century, than was possible at the time. 
The institution of the Leaving Certificate examination was almost 
immediately followed by the Universities (Scotland) Act, 1889, by which 
another Commission, this time armed with executive powers, was brought 
into being. The result, as is well known, was a fundamental change in the 
Scottish University system. A series of ordinances were issued, which 
reorganised the finance and internal management of the Universities, 
greatly widened the curriculum, by introducing into it an elaborate system 
of options, set up a new system of Honours degrees, and admitted women 
to lectures and graduation. 
The administrative work involved in bringing all these changes into 
operation required much time, labour, and executive capacity ; and when 
Professor Chrystal was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Arts on the 
resignation of Professor Campbell Fraser in 1891, he had a formidable duty 
to face. It is the simple truth to say that, so far as Edinburgh was con- 
cerned, the task of carrying out the reforms embodied in the new ordinances 
fell very largely on the new Dean, and, as the Minute of Senatus drawn up 
at the close of his twenty years’ term of office records : “ To his knowledge 
of public opinion, to his mastery of the educational problems of the day, and 
to his unwearying zeal and administrative capacity, it was mainly due that 
these changes were successfully accomplished.” 
It was not long before some even of the fundamental alterations made 
by the Commissioners called urgently for revision, in view of the rapid 
developments that were taking place. In 1907, as the result of much 
consideration and many years’ toilsome experience, the Edinburgh Uni- 
versity Court formulated a very important new ordinance giving power 
to establish a three-term session and to overhaul completely the scheme 
for graduation in Arts. The reforms foreshadowed in that ordinance did 
not become effective until the beginning of the session 1909-10, the 
details having had to be worked out in the interval through the 
Senatus. On Chrystal, as Dean .of the Faculty of Arts, rested the 
