280 The Highest Education and its Difficulties . [May, 
show a completely different character, as we have already 
explained at some length. This character is maintained and 
even intensified in the papers for Trinity Term, 1880. It is 
right here to observe that Prof. Ray Lankester, being him- 
self an Oxford man and having taught biology in that univer- 
sity, cannot be ignorant of what could under the circum- 
stances be fairly expected from the students. It has been 
said that genius adulterates philosophy. Might it not, in a 
somewhat similar spirit, be urged that a man may be too 
learned, too able to examine average young men ? It is 
important to note that the papers for Michaelmas Term, 
1880, show a different character, much more like that of the 
papers set by Dr. Pye Smith. This return to more moderate 
demands upon candidates is perhaps due to the faCt that 
certain teachers of biology in the university, without making 
any attack upon the examiners, memorialised the Board of 
Studies on the extreme difficulties besetting the study of the 
science under the existing conditions. Itis difficult to formu- 
late any absolute rule to prevent in future any such pertur- 
bations of the career of students as that we have just been 
describing. In a science which is growing so rapidly and 
undergoing such important changes as biology, it is not easy 
to seleCt a set of text-books and decree that the answers to 
the questions propounded must be contained in these works 
and these only. Something must naturally be left to the 
discretion — not the indiscretion — of examiners. Between a 
list of questions which form no test of proficiency and 
another which might puzzle men of established reputation if 
required to be answered on the spur of the moment, lies a 
golden mean not too narrow nor hard to discover. 
One final reflection may be allowed us. Suppose a student, 
who has passed such severe examinations as those for 
Michaelmas Term, 1879, and Trinity Term, 1880, were to 
become a candidate for an appointment in a museum. 
Would he be bound to undergo the “ preliminary” scrutiny 
usual in “ open competitive examinations ?” Would his 
proficiency in orthography be tested by requiring him to 
write down a quantity of matter dictated or rather gabbled 
over by a “ familiar” of the Civil Service Commission 
blessed with a questionable pronunciation and with an enun- 
ciation beneath all question ? 
