(To THE DWI= or THE " SPECreX011."3 Sin,—In consideration of
the great importance of the grace which a fortnight ago was submitted to the Senate, and which induced a large number of members to make tedious and expensive journeys to Cambridge, would you kindly allow me to trespass still further upon your valuable space in order to add to one or two points which I noticed emphasis derived from information recently received? First as to instruction. The chief objection to the admission of women to the University does not lie in the region of such subjects as classics, mathe- matics, philosophy, history, &c. If there is overcrowding at each lectures it may generally be relieved by the introduction of a few extra seats or by adjournment to a larger room. It is the scientific and medical student, dependent for instruction upon ocular demonstration, who will chiefly suffer; and I believe that if a poll of these were taken the majority of non- piacets would be overwhelming. For this reason Oxford does not furnish a precedent that Cambridge should feel bound to follow, seeing that in the former Univereity experimental work, though, of course, indispensable to the students concerned, is by reason of its fewer numbers not of the same importance as it is at the latter; consequently the number of non-ploects might be fairly expected to be correspondingly less. For this reason, too, the opinion of University lecturers is of secondary importance compared with that of undergraduates, who may quite possibly suffer a good deal of inconvenience without even their own lecturers and demonstrators fully realizing the fact. Certainly the lecturer whose only equipment is a text- book and a blackboard is not the one to judge what is going on in an adjacent lecture-room or laboratory where experi- ments are being conducted. Next as to recreation. Mixed
education at a residential University must inevitably lead to mixed athletics and pastimes, hockey, tennis, golf, dancing, not to mention others of a distinct invertebrate nature, croquet and whist drives of the usual unscientific kind. A steady deterioration in the tone of athleticism will immediately set in, accompanied by a substantial increment in the number of sugary temptations which already interfere with strenuous play as well as with serious systematic reading. The lack of female society is admittedly a loss to a considerable number of men, who may from one end of the term to the other never so much as speak to any woman except a bed-maker or a bar- maid, but the remedy will undoubtedly be far worse than the disease if the functions of Alma Mater should be degraded into running a big " home away from home " boarding-house or into organizing entertainments like the M.C. of a P. and 0.
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