MEMOIR 
18 
then Lecturer in Biology to the College, which at the same 
time counted among its Fellows Henry Nottridge Moseley, 
F.R.S., and Edwin Ray Lankester, F.R.S., both of them 
biologists of greater fame. The former, sometimes referred 
to irreverently in the letters as ‘the Moa’, had been Naturalist 
to the Challenger Expedition from 1872 to 1876, and 
becoming Linacre Professor of Anatomy in 1881 was to play 
a leading part in shaping Spencer’s undergraduate career. 
Coming up with the other freshmen in the Michaelmas 
Term of 1881, young Spencer finds himself in pleasant 
rooms overlooking ‘the Broad’, and is delighted with his 
companions, making friends at once with a dozen, ‘and that 
is plenty, for you have no idea of what a time they take up’. 
He has his first taste of boating—‘such splendid exercise and 
such an entire change also’. He learns to mind his manners 
when ‘Mrs. Rector’ gives a ‘perpendicular’, meaning ‘an 
evening-dress entertainment most awfully stiff, in which the 
gentlemen, standing up, screw their necks about and talk to 
the ladies, sitting down, for the space of two or three hours— 
such agony!’ Within the year, too, he assists at certain cele¬ 
brations of a riotous character consequent on the College 
Eight going Head of the River. ‘About nine we started a 
bonfire in the middle of the Quad, clearing out all the faggots 
we could lay our hands upon and also getting rid of some 
old furniture out of the lecture rooms. This was an eminent 
success . . . though I am thankful it does not come often.’ 
For Spencer had come to Oxford to work. ‘Six hours per 
diem', he confides to the friend of his youth, ‘is very good at 
Exeter; seven hours denotes a “smug”; anything beyond that 
is considered the mark of a madman.’ It would appear, 
however, that Spencer’s own allowance of time for reading 
verged on that of the madman. He had to tackle preliminary 
examinations in classics and divinity, and is very glad when 
they are over, and he starts on biology for his Finals, and 
