Abstract
I THINK the notice in NATURE of Sept. 25 respecting the election about to take place to a Natural Science Fellowship at Magdalen College requires some comment. The amount of academic preferment which falls to the share of science in Oxford is so small, that it might reasonably be demanded that what there is should be thrown open to as many candidates as possible. When, therefore, it was announced that the Fellowship would be given for proficiency in Biology, it might have been inferred that the electors had this object in view. Biology is held, elsewhere than in Oxford, to be the science which treats of the laws governing organization and vital activity; in other words, structure and function in all forms of life, whether vegetable or animal. It was not, perhaps, an unreasonable inference, therefore, to draw from the terms of the notice, that it was the intention of the College to make Biology in its widest sense the foundation of the examination, and to allow individual candidates to exhibit, in addition, such detailed knowledge as they might possess of Zoology, Botany, or even Palæontology. This would not have attributed to Biology a wider meaning than, for example, Mr. Herbert Spencer or the Science and Art Department attach to it. Thinking it desirable, however, to get some official information upon the subject, I wrote to the President, who, after some delay, replied that, in his opinion, as preference would be given to Biology, it would be useless to offer Botany as a special subject. This is not more reasonable than it would be to say, that because Physics was to he the subject of an examination it would be useless to offer Electricity or Heat as a special subject. But the terms of the President's reply were rather ambiguous, and I therefore made some further inquiries. I learnt, as the result, that the College considered it impossible to compare the merits of a candidate who stood on the Zoological, with one who stood on the Botanical, side of the general subject.
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DYER, W. Fellowship at Magdalen College. Nature 8, 464 (1873). https://doi.org/10.1038/008464a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/008464a0
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