25 NOVEMBER 1949, Page 5

As advertisements in the Spectator and other papers have indicated,

a set of applications for Professorial posts at the new North Stafford- shire University College has been lost. That at least is how I should put it. The advertisement actually says "A bundle of papers . . . have been lost "—phraseology which inspires, not my Muse but another, to this: How singular that learned men should lose

This bundle. And as singular, 'tis true, The noun that with a plural verb they use.

Has Stoke a Chair of Grammar vacant too ? Legitimate, I think ; though " bundle " in this context comes rather near being a collective noun.

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