proper amount of this tutorial, practical teaching, is a difficulty in
the way of giving proper instruction in Physical Science in such
Universities as that of Aberdeen, which are devoid of endowments; and,
unlike the English Universities, have no moral claim on the funds of
richly endowed bodies to supply their wants.

Examination--thorough, searching examination--is an indispensable
accompaniment of teaching; but I am almost inclined to commit myself to
the very heterodox proposition that it is a necessary evil. I am a very
old Examiner, having, for some twenty years past, been occupied with
examinations on a considerable scale, of all sorts and conditions of
men, and women too,--from the boys and girls of elementary schools to
the candidates for Honours and Fellowships in the Universities. I will
not say that, in this case as in so many others, the adage, that
familiarity breeds contempt, holds good; but my admiration for the
existing system of examination and its products, does not wax warmer as
I see more of it. Examination, like fire, is a good servant, but a bad
master; and there seems to me to be some danger of its becoming our
master. I by no means stand alone in this opinion. Experienced friends
of mine do not hesitate to say that students whose career they watch,
appear to them to become deteriorated by the constant effort to pass
this or that examination, just as we hear of men's brains becoming
affected by the daily necessity of catching a train. They work to pass,
not to know; and outraged Science takes her revenge. They do pass, and
they don't know. I have passed sundry examinations in my time, not
without credit, and I confess I am ashamed to think how very little
real knowledge underlay the torrent of stuff which I was able to pour
out on paper. In fact, that which examination, as ordinarily conducted,
tests, is simply a man's power of work under stimulus, and his capacity
for rapidly and clearly producing that which, for the time, he has got