Chapter VII: Part 7

The Report of Colonel Bruce, which was issued three years ago, shows that the sleeping-sickness which devastates Central Africa, from the West Coast to the East, is also conveyed by a species of tsetse fly. Writing over a hundred years ago of Sierra Leone, Winterbottom mentions the disease. ‘The Africans,’ he says, ‘are very subject to a species of lethargy which they are very much afraid of, as it proves fatal in every instance.’ Early last century it was recorded in Brazil and the West Indies; and in all probability the deaths which our slave-owning ancestors used to attribute to a severe form of home-sickness, or even to a broken heart, were in reality caused by sleeping-sickness. The severity of the disease, which always terminates fatally, is shown by the fact that in a single island--Buvuma--the population has recently been reduced by it from 22,000 to 8,000, whilst whole districts have been almost depopulated. In one year the deaths in the region of Busoga reached a total of 20,000; and it is calculated that although the disease was only noticed in Uganda for the first time in 1901, that by the middle of 1904 100,000 people have been killed by it. The disease is caused by the presence of a second species of _Trypanosoma_ in the blood and in the cerebro-spinal fluid. The existence of this parasite has now been proved in all the cases recently investigated. Apparently the _Trypanosoma_ can live in the blood without doing much harm, and only when it reaches the cerebro-spinal canal does it set up the sleeping-sickness. It is also found in great numbers in the lymphatic glands, especially those of the neck, which in patients infected by the parasite are usually swollen and tender. From the similarity of the parasite to that causing the cattle disease of South Africa, the idea at once arose that the _Trypanosoma_ was conveyed from man to man by a biting insect. Along the lake shores a species of tsetse (_Glossina palpalis_) abounds; and it was noticed that if the fly, having fed off a sleeping-sickness patient, bit a monkey, the monkey became infected. Further, flies which were captured in a sleeping-sickness district were also capable of conveying the disease to healthy monkeys. The proof that sleeping-sickness is due to a _Trypanosoma_ known as _T. gambiense_ present in the cerebro-spinal fluid of the patient, and that it is conveyed from man to man by _Glossina palpalis_, seems now complete. Fortunately, like its congener, _G. palpalis_ is confined to certain districts. The knowledge of these, and of the habits of this species of fly, will suggest preventive measures; and the brilliant research of Colonel Bruce and his colleagues, Captain Grieg and Dr. Nabarro, may yet save the much-tried African continent from the most fatal of recent diseases.

Finally, we come to a last class of disease which is of the utmost interest to the agriculturist and settler, and yet at present is but little understood. These diseases are caused by various species of a Protozoon named _Piroplasma_, and the diseases may collectively be spoken of as piroplasmosis. When they are present in cattle they are spoken of in various parts of the world as Texas fever, tick fever, blackwater, redwater, and many other French, German, Italian, and Spanish names. Heartwater in sheep is a form of piroplasmosis. Horses also suffer, and the malignant jaundice or bilious fever, which makes it impossible to keep dogs in certain parts of this country, is also caused by a _Piroplasma_. Finally, under the name of Rocky Mountain fever, spotted or tick fever, the disease attacks man throughout the west half of the United States.

The organisms which cause the disease live for the most part in the red blood-corpuscles, but they are sometimes to be found in the plasma or liquid of the blood. Unfortunately, we know but little about the life-history of the _Piroplasma_, or of the various stages it passes through, but we do know how it is transmitted from animal to animal and from man to man.

We have seen that the carrier or ‘go-between’ in the case of the malaria is the mosquito, and in the case of the sleeping-sickness is the tsetse fly. The _Piroplasma_, however, is not conveyed from host to host by any insect, but by mites or ticks, members of the large group of Acarines, which include beside the mites the spiders, scorpions, harvestmen, and many others.

The ticks differ from the insect bearers of disease inasmuch as the tick that attacks an ox or a dog does not itself convey the disease, but it lays eggs--for I regret to say here, as with the _Anopheles_, it is the female only that bites--and from these eggs arises the generation which is infective, and which is capable of spreading the disease. The tick which conveys the _Piroplasma_ from dog to dog is called _Hæmophysalis leachi_. The brilliant researches of Mr. Lounsbury have shown that even the young are not immediately capable of giving rise to the disease. The female tick gorges herself with blood, drops to the ground, and begins laying eggs. From these eggs small six-legged larvæ emerge. These larvæ, if they get a chance, attach themselves to a dog, gorge themselves, and after a couple of days fall off. If their mother was infected they nevertheless do not convey the parasite. After lying for a time upon the ground the larval tick casts its skin and becomes a nymph, a stage roughly corresponding with the chrysalis of a butterfly. This nymph, if it has luck, again attaches itself to the dog and has a meal, but it also fails to infect the dog. After a varying time it also drops to the ground, undergoes a metamorphosis, and gives rise to the eight-legged adult tick. Here at last we reach the infective stage; the adult tick is alone capable of giving the disease to the animal upon which she feeds, and then only when she is descended from a tick which has bitten an infected host. Think what a life-history this parasite has! Living in the blood-corpuscles of a dog, sucked up by an adult tick, passed through her body until it reaches an egg, laid with that egg, being present while the egg segments and slowly develops into the larva, living quiescent during the larval stage and the nymph stage, surviving the metamorphosis, and only leaping into activity when the adult stage is reached. This most remarkable story probably indicates that the _Piroplasma_ undergoes a series of changes comparable to those of the malaria organism when it is inside the mosquito; what these stages are we do not at present know, but Dr. Nuttall and Mr. Smedley at Cambridge, and many other observers elsewhere, are at work on the problem, and soon we shall have more light.

With regard to bovine piroplasmosis, Koch, and others have distinguished redwater fever, which is conveyed by _Rhipicephalus annulatus_, and in Europe probably by _Ixodes reduvius_ from the Rhodesian fever, which is conveyed by _Rhipicephalus appendiculatus_, and I regret to say by a species dedicated to myself, _Rhipicephalus shipleyi_.

The heartwater disease of sheep and goats is similarly conveyed by _Amblyomma hebræum_, the Bont tick, and many farmers accuse _Ixodes pilosus_ of causing the well-known paralysis from which sheep suffer in the early autumn; and there are many others, diseases such as the chicken disease of Brazil, which is so fatal to poultry yards, and which is conveyed by the _Argas persicus_.

I will not weary you with more diseases. I think I have said enough to show that within the last few years a flood of light has been thrown upon diseases not only of man and his domestic animals, but upon such insignificant creatures as the mosquito and the tick. I have tried to show how these diseases interact, and how both hosts are absolutely essential to the disease. We can now to a great extent control these troubles; the old idea that there is something unhealthy in the climate of the Tropics is giving way to the idea that the unhealthiness is due to definite organisms conveyed into man by definite biting insects. We have at last, I think, an explanation of why Beelzebub was called the Lord of Flies.

THE DANGER OF FLIES

_And Moses said, Behold, I go out from thee, and I will entreat the
Lord that the swarms of flies may depart from Pharaoh, from his
servants, and from his people, to-morrow._--EXODUS.

It is one of those facts which not unfrequently occur in science that we know less about the life-history and habits of the commonest insects than we know about scarce and remote species. For instance, the life-history of the common house-fly, one of the most widely distributed insects in the world, is as yet very incompletely known.

It was Linnæus who first described this insect and named it _Musca domestica_, and de Geer who, in the middle of the eighteenth century, first described its transformation. In 1834 Bouché described the larva of the insect as living in the dung of horses and fowls. In 1873 the well-known American entomologist, A. S. Packard, reinvestigated the question, and L. O. Howard has recently written on the subject. In our own country C. Gordon Hewitt is publishing a monograph on the house-fly, which will, when completed, fill a long-felt want. Packard noted that in the August of 1873 the house-fly was particularly abundant, especially in the neighbourhood of stables. He was able to observe the insects laying their ova in clumps containing some 120 eggs in the crevices of stable manure, ‘working their way down mostly out of sight.’ The eggs hatched in about twenty-four hours, but he noticed that those hatched in confinement required from five to ten hours longer, and that these larvæ when hatched were smaller than those hatched out in the open. The eggs are oval and cylindrical, one twenty-fifth to one-twentieth of an inch long and about one-hundredth of an inch wide, and of a dull, chalky-white colour.

The little larva has not been seen emerging from the egg-case, but probably, as in the case of the meat- or blow-fly, _Musca vomitoria_, the eggshell splits longitudinally and the maggot pushes its way out. The length of the newly-hatched larva in its first stage (or instar) is seven-hundredths of an inch, and it remains in this stage about twenty-four hours, when it casts its skin and appears as a larger maggot three-twentieths of an inch long. In this condition it remains from twenty-four to thirty-six hours. After a second moult the maggot attains the length of one-quarter of an inch, and in this stage it remains five or six days. During its life the larva moves actively about amongst its surroundings, eating up the decaying matter, but avoiding bits of straw and hay. There is some evidence to believe that, if pressed for food, larvæ may devour one another. After living altogether some five to seven days, the larva somewhat suddenly turns into a dark brown pupa or chrysalis. The transition takes place very rapidly--in the course of a few minutes--and the pupa remains enclosed in the last larval skin. After another period of five to seven days in normal circumstances the insect hatches out, at first running around with soft and baggy wings, which, however, soon stretch out, harden, and dry. It is worthy of note that whereas Howard found the complete metamorphosis to take ten days, and Packard from ten to fourteen days, in the cooler climate of Manchester Hewitt finds it takes from twenty to thirty days. The last named gives some interesting particulars as to the effect of the weather upon the rate of development. It is believed that many flies pass the winter in the pupa state; the adult fly also survives the cold weather hidden away in cracks and crevices, from which it may from time to time emerge when the sun shines warmly.

When the larvæ are reared in too dry manure, they attain only one-half their usual size. Too direct warmth and the absence of moisture and available semi-liquid food also tend to dwarf them.

A word may be said about the distribution of the insect. It is practically cosmopolitan. As Mr. Austen records:

‘The British Museum collection, though very far from complete,
includes specimens from the following localities: Cyprus;
North-West Provinces, India; Wellesley Province, Straits
Settlements; Hong Kong; Japan; Old Calabar; Southern Nigeria; Suez;
Somaliland; British East Africa; Nyassaland; Lake Tanganyika;
Transvaal; Natal; Sokotra; Madagascar; St. Helena; Madeira; Nova
Scotia; Colorado; Mexico; St. Lucia; the West Indies; Pará, Brazil;
Monte Video, Uruguay; Argentine Republic; Valparaiso, Chili;
Queensland; New Zealand.’

It is carried all over the world in ships and trains, and seems to be equally at home in the high latitudes of Finmark or in the humid heat of Equatorial Brazil.

The diseases which flies convey from man to man--which rendered them by no means the least formidable of the plagues of Egypt, and fully justified Beelzebub’s title of the ‘Lord of Flies’--are for the most part conveyed mechanically. The proboscis acts as an inoculatory needle. No part of the life-history of the disease-causing organism must necessarily be carried on in the body of the fly; it is conveyed mechanically and without change from an infected to a healthy subject. The mouth parts can pick up the anthrax bacillus, and if the fly then alight upon a wounded surface it will set up woolsorter’s disease. It, together with the flea, is accused of transmitting the plague bacillus, not only from man to man, but from rat to man. Flies are active agents in disseminating cholera; and anyone who has watched them clustering around the inflamed eyes of the children in Egypt, or in Florida, will not readily acquit them of being the active agents in the spread of inflammatory ophthalmia or of ‘sore eye.’

It is worthy of note that after exhaustive experiments on the tsetse fly (_Glossina palpalis_), which conveys that most fatal of diseases, sleeping-sickness, Professor Minchin and his colleagues, Mr. Gray and Mr. Tulloch, have come to the conclusion that the Protozoon (_Trypanosoma gambiense_) which causes the disease does not--as might be expected--pass through certain stages of its life-history in the fly, but is mechanically conveyed upon the biting mouth parts of the insect. The deadly parasite is, indeed, so easily cleaned off these appendages that a single bite is sufficient to wipe them off. A tsetse fly which has bitten an infected person will set up the disease in the next person (or monkey) it bites; but the insertion of the proboscis, quick and instantaneous as it is, serves to clean it--to wipe off adhering trypanosomes, and if it now bite a second person (or monkey), it fails to convey the disease. This is a most important discovery, and contrary to what we should have expected; but our knowledge of the history of the genus _Trypanosoma_ is still too small to justify generalization, difficult as it is to avoid it. The diseases which in our country are disseminated by flies are all bacterial and all mechanically conveyed.

In passing, it is worth recording that, contrary to the usual statement that tsetse flies are confined to the continent of Africa, Captain R. M. Carter[8] has recently brought some back from the Tabau River and from other localities in South Arabia. Mr. Newstead has recognized the specimens as belonging to the species _Glossina tachinoides_. It evidently does not live on big game here, since, except the gazelle, game is absent. The Bedouins say that it bites donkeys, horses, dogs, and man, but not camels or sheep. It is at times so troublesome as to force the natives to shift their camps.

The common house-fly has been known for some time to be an active agent in the dissemination of bacterial diseases. In intestinal disorders--such as cholera and enteric fevers, which are caused by micro-organisms, the flies convey the bacteria from the dejecta of the sick to the food of the healthy. In the recent war in South Africa they are described in the standing camps as dividing their activities ‘between the latrines and the men’s mess-tins and jam rations.’[9] In the Spanish-American War in Cuba, and in the South African War, and in several recent outbreaks of enteric fever in the British army in India, flies have been proved to be the carriers of the _Bacillus typhosus_. Dr. Veeder[10] writes:

‘In a very few minutes they may load themselves with dejections
from a typhoid or dysenteric patient, not yet sick enough to be in
hospital or under observation, and carry the poison so taken up
into the very midst of the food and water ready for use at the next
meal. There is no long roundabout process involved. It is very
plain and direct; yet when thousands of lives are at stake in this
way the danger passes unnoticed.’

Similar records come from the Boer camp at Diyatalawa in Ceylon. The bacilli are conveyed direct, just as they might be by an inoculating needle. They do not pass into the body of the fly, neither do they undergo any part of their life-history in its tissue.

Dr. Sandilands[11] has recently investigated outbreaks of epidemic diarrhœa. He points out that the prevalence of diarrhœa follows the earth’s temperature, and does not follow the temperature of the atmosphere. It is a well-known fact that this illness is more prevalent in the houses of the poor than in the mansions of the rich. As Dr. Newsholme, late Medical Officer of Health for Brighton, said:

‘The sugar used in sweetening milk is often black with flies which
have come from neighbouring dust-bins or manure heaps; often from
the liquid stools of diarrhœa patients in the neighbouring
houses. Flies have to be picked out of the half-emptied can of
condensed milk before it can be used for the next meal. When we
remember the personal uncleanliness of some mothers, and that they
often prepare their infants’ food with unwashed hands, the
inoculation of this food with virulent colon bacilli of human
origin ceases to be a matter of surprise.’

Compared with cow’s milk, which nourishes a very numerous progeny of bacteria, the bacterial content of Nestlé’s milk is very low, according to Dr. Sandilands. In certain seasons the cow’s milk is exposed to temperatures which favour an enormous multiplication of bacteria, and yet it is not then a frequent source of diarrhœa--in fact, mere numbers have little or no influence on the incidence of the illness. The greater number of cases are due to infection conveyed from some patient in the near neighbourhood and conveyed mechanically by flies.

The great attraction of the sweetened condensed milk for flies to some extent explains the greater prevalence of infantile diarrhœa among children fed on this preparation.

As was stated above, one of the most remarkable features in the prevalence of infantile diarrhœa is that it follows the rise and fall of the earth’s temperature, and not that of the air. In the same way the number of house-flies does not reach its maximum with the first burst of hot weather. The prevalence of these insects follows rather than coincides with periods of great heat. The flies, in fact, lag behind the air temperature and persist for a time after the hot weather has ceased. In other words, the meteorological conditions associated with an increase or a diminution of the prevalence of diarrhœa exercise a similar influence on the prevalence of flies.

The transference of the _Filaria bancrofti_, whose presence in the human body in the adult stage is associated with various diseases of the lymphatics, the most pronounced of which is the terrible elephantiasis, is due to more than one species of gnat or mosquito. It is true that no one has ever seen the actual transference of the _Filaria_ from the biting organs of the _Culex_, _Anopheles_, _Panoplites_, or _Stegomyia_ into the human body, but the circumstantial evidence is so strong that on it any jury would convict. Noè and Grassi have demonstrated a similar mode of infection for the _Filaria immitis_, which exists in the adult stage in such incredible numbers in the cavity of the right side of the heart of dogs, especially in tropical and in sub-tropical countries, that it is difficult to see how the circulation can be maintained at all. It is therefore interesting to note that the proboscis of our common house-fly frequently harbours a larval nematode which has been described by Carter[12] under the name of _Habronema muscæ_; and again (if it be the same species) by Generali[13] under the name _Nematodum sp._ (?), and again by Piana,[14] who is inclined to think it is the larval form of _Dispharagus nasutus_ (Rud.). What the further history of this parasite is we do not conclusively know, but, judging by analogy--and in the case of the grosser parasites it is not always wise to do that--the nematode probably develops in some higher animal which eats the fly. Piana brings forward a good deal of evidence that this is the domestic fowl.

Another parasite which attacks flies is the fungus or mould _Empusa muscæ_, whose growth is fatal to the insect. The hyphæ penetrate into the body, and as they grow weaken the fly until it is unable to lift a leg, but remains glued by its viscid feet to the object upon which it rests. The fungus spreads and radiates out in all directions, covering the fly as with a velvety pile, and giving off countless minute spores, which are blown away, to alight, if they are lucky, on a further victim.

I think enough has been said to prove that flies are a very real danger to our community. I have refrained from giving the appalling statistics of our infant mortality, partly because of the difficulty of discriminating between the claims of the flies and those of other agencies which affect the lives of our babies--_e.g._, the insurance companies which do a large trade in insuring infants. Legislation has not attempted to control the latter. Sanitation might do much to destroy the former. In well-administered towns slaughterhouses no longer ‘fill our butchers’ shops with large blue flies’; they have been replaced by abattoirs, under proper inspection. Stables should also be segregated or controlled. The practice of backing the mansions of Berkeley Square by stable yards should either be given up, or the manure-heaps in which the flies breed should be under cover so close as to prevent the access of the fly. A layer of lime spread over the manure effectively prevents the fly laying. Creolin, in its cheap commercial form, is also recommended, sprayed over the manure-heaps every two or three days. It not only deters flies from ovipositing, but should they succeed in doing so it kills the resulting larvæ.[15]

Ross has shown us how to clear Ismailia of malaria; the Americans have rid Havana, for the first time in a century, of yellow fever; the same could be done with flies, if only the people liked to have it so. The motorcar, with all its destruction of nervous tissue, its prevention of sleep, its danger to life and to limb, has one great merit--it affords no nidus for flies.

CAMBRIDGE

‘_Our dear Cambridge._’
COWLEY:
‘On the Death of Mr. William Hervey.’

The grant of a charter to the Victoria University in 1880 marked the beginning of a new era in English education. Not to speak of Scotland and Wales, there are in England to-day six Universities which bring the new learning and the old to the very doors of the vast populations which surround their seats. Birmingham claims the Midlands; Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, and Sheffield instruct the manufacturing and commercial centres of the North; while the University of London, full of new aspirations, does its best for the huge and somewhat apathetic population of the capital. The calculated prodigality of the State endowments of Germany, the individual generosity of the citizens of the United States, the vigour of the young Universities of Canada, have smitten the national conscience, if not with shame, at least with fear. But, while so powerful a lever as the dread of industrial decay may have been necessary to overcome the intellectual inertia of the country, the consequent impetus given to the study of science and (it may be hoped) of letters is not dying away, but rather taking permanent shape; and it is now impossible to say, as was said in 1903 by one of the members of the Mosely Educational Commission, that ‘in this country ... we seem to be doing nothing for its own sake, and least of all in education.’

The new edition of the ‘Endowments of the University of Cambridge’ suggests other, though kindred, reflections. The book has for its basis a series of documents, beginning with the year 1293, and ending with the year 1904. The learned Registrary has prefaced the account of each bequest with an explanation, and, by his discriminating comment, has invested his material with something of that charm which characterizes all his work. In one aspect his book serves, and is intended to serve, as a history of the progress of education in Cambridge; and the large amount of new matter which has been incorporated since the previous edition of the ‘Endowments’ in 1876 is, in this aspect, highly satisfactory. Yet, though it is a mistake to suppose that the flow of benefactions to the ancient Universities has entirely ceased, the fact remains that Cambridge has twice appealed--once in 1898, and once again in the spring of 1904--for help, without which she cannot meet her national responsibilities. Oxford has at last been constrained to confess that she is in a similar, if not yet so dire, a strait; and it is easy to understand the effort which it has cost her, as well as her sister University, to sue _in formâ pauperis_.

In truth, the neglect, almost absolute, of Oxford and Cambridge, while the new Universities are finding generous benefactors, either leads to the conclusion that the old Universities are condemned and found wanting, or has its origin in a profound misconception of their efforts and resources. It may be urged that neither alternative is true; that the needs of the new Universities are more urgent, and that the needs of Oxford and Cambridge will in turn receive attention. But a delay of a few years may in these days involve damage which will not be repaired for more than one generation. Of Cambridge, at any rate, it is asserted that she is at the end of her means, that in the last forty years she has, in her efforts at development, strained her resources to the utmost, and that without assistance, which, to be effectual, must be both prompt and generous, no further advance is possible. Science has emptied the University chest, yet, as the late master of Trinity Hall said, ‘Science is still hungry and aggressive.’ As the result of her straitened resources Cambridge can no longer satisfy the just demands either of science or of letters. When we compare this state of things with that in Germany, where the University of Berlin enjoys a State endowment of £170,000 per annum, or in the United States, whose Universities have received from private benefactors alone £42,000,000 sterling in the last thirty years, apart from large funds provided by the State, we are forced to recognize that much yet remains to be done in England.

It is not difficult to suggest some reasons for the comparative neglect of the older Universities in the matter of benefactions. In the first place, neither of them can appeal to local patriotism; and an appeal on the wider ground of national efficiency is not so easily nor so effectively pushed home. Next, it is hard to imagine that a University whose colleges enjoy a corporate income of something like £300,000 a year can be in serious want of funds. Moreover, if this deficiency really exists, it is generally regarded as the result of the squandering of revenue on an extravagant system of ‘prize fellowships’--that is, fellowships given as the reward merely for a high place in examination, and held by barristers, doctors, and civil servants, professors and lecturers in other Universities, and even successful men of business--persons who do not contribute in any way to the efficiency of the University as a teaching or as an investigating body.

* * * * *

We propose briefly to examine the University balance-sheet, the college system, and the question of the fellowships, and to endeavour to give the candid inquirer some ground for a judgment on the claims of Cambridge. But we must first discuss what is perhaps the most serious obstacle to the satisfaction of her needs. This obstacle is the belief, apparently ineradicable, that the older Universities teach and care for nothing but the ancient languages, theology, and mathematics. For the persistence of this belief the daily press and public speakers are in a great measure to blame. Scarcely a week passes without an allusion which betrays, if not a culpable levity, a most unfortunate ignorance. Cambridge men have listened with amazement to the covert attacks on Cambridge science, and have wondered how long it may be before Cambridge letters are also disparaged. Of late, too, another note has been heard; and, notwithstanding the just aspiration of the new Universities to a many-sided activity, alike in the literary and scientific fields, an attempt, which must be stigmatized as ungenerous and illiberal, has been made in the press and on the public platform to limit the functions of the ancient Universities, and to drive them back into the grooves of the thirties and forties, from which Cambridge, to say nothing of Oxford, has so completely escaped. Whatever the reason may be, it is at least certain that Cambridge is frequently written and spoken of as if she were still the Cambridge of 1850.

It has been suggested, even in responsible journals, that Oxford and Cambridge would do well to keep to the older lines of education, and to leave newer studies to their younger rivals. The obsession of men’s minds by an ideal which passed away half a century ago can alone account for the impression that the policy of restriction to the ancient learning is in any way possible, or has been possible for these fifty years. Those who know Cambridge may well be astonished that responsible persons should gravely speak of the University of Newton and Charles Darwin, of Maxwell and Rayleigh, as still shrouded in medieval shadow.

It cannot be too often repeated that since the Commission of 1850, or rather since the promulgation of the new statutes in 1856, the University has advanced without pause to claim as her own the whole field of modern knowledge; and that it is the rapidity of her advance which has depleted her treasury. The state of things before 1850 need here be referred to only for purposes of contrast. The only avenue to an honours degree was then the Mathematical Tripos, or, for students of classics, the Mathematical combined with the Classical Tripos. Science formed no part of the regular course of instruction. Adam Sedgwick himself, pre-eminent geologist as he afterwards became, knew nothing of geology when admitted to his professorship. When he was appointed to his chair, classics, mathematics, and, in a less degree, theology and law, were well endowed; but effective provision for modern studies or for science there was none. In 1851 was founded the Disney professorship of archæology, and the creation of this chair may fairly be considered to be the first step towards the recognition of the sciences of ethnology and anthropology. The imperial value of ethnological and anthropological research is incontestable, and to this research no more important contribution has been made than by the bands of Cambridge travellers and students.

Mention has been made in the first place of the studies more closely related to the ‘humanities,’ because it does not seem generally to be realized how thoroughly even the ancient learning is to-day imbued by the scientific spirit. But, so early as the year 1851,[16] new avenues to an honours degree were opened by way of the Moral Sciences Tripos (embracing at present psychology, logic and methodology, political economy, ethics, metaphysical and moral philosophy and psychophysics), and the Natural Sciences Tripos (embracing chemistry, physics, mineralogy, geology, botany, zoology, human anatomy, and physiology). In 1857 the Sadlerian professorship of pure mathematics was founded by the consolidation of an old endowment; and Cayley was the first occupant of the chair. In 1863 the block of buildings known as ‘The Museums’ was commenced, with a view to providing accommodation for the professors of the natural sciences; additions were made to the original buildings in 1877, 1880, 1882, 1884, and 1890, as new branches of science became important. In 1858 the ‘Civil Law Classes’ were replaced by the Law Tripos; the professor of civil law and the Downing professor of the laws of England were given a colleague by the creation of the Whewell professorship of international law in 1867; and the Law School has since 1904 possessed a worthy habitation, built partly at the expense of the University, partly by the help of eminent Cambridge lawyers, and completed by the generous donation of the law library by Miss Squire. In 1866 the professorship of zoology was founded.

The School of Medicine has grown continuously; and its progress is associated with the great names, to mention no others, of Sir George Humphry, Sir George Paget, and Sir Michael Foster. In 1883 were founded the professorships of surgery, physiology, and pathology. The diploma of public health was instituted in 1875, and the diploma in tropical medicine--the first of its kind in the kingdom--in 1904. The latter diploma is destined to a brilliant future in Cambridge; and the University, together with the schools of tropical medicine in London and Liverpool, is doing much to raise the scientific standard of research in a study so vitally important to the teeming populations of our tropical possessions. The students attending the School of Medicine in Cambridge number nearly four hundred, despite the high standard of the attainments necessary for qualification. In 1904 important new buildings, with provision for bacteriology, pathology, and public health, were opened by the King.

The year 1869 was marked by the foundation of the Slade professorship of fine art, and the professorship of Latin. The endowment of the latter chair is but £300 a year, half provided by the University and half by the friends of the late Dr. Kennedy, the famous headmaster of Shrewsbury School. That the University should have had to wait till 1869 for the foundation of a chair of Latin, and that the parsimonious contribution of £150 a year was all that could be spared towards the stipend of the professor, scarcely lends colour to the prevailing belief that the University, kindly and naturally as she may be disposed towards the old learning, squanders on the teaching of ancient languages resources which ought to be otherwise employed. In 1875 the Historical Tripos was founded; and the School of History, starting under the influence of Seeley, has become one of the most popular avenues to an honours degree. A professorship of ancient history was founded in 1898.

The Historical Tripos already provided in some measure for the study of political science and political economy as component parts of a liberal education. But latterly the need for a more thorough study of economic conditions has been felt to be imperative for those who look forward to a career in the higher branches of business or in public life; while, as regards the professional economist, it has been realized that his work as a student must be carried much farther than has hitherto been customary, if he is to attack with success those problems which bring his science close to reality and to the needs of the practical man. A Tripos in Economics has therefore been established, the first examination for which was held in 1905. The advanced portion of it includes such subjects as modern methods of production, transport and marketing, trusts, the recent development of joint-stock companies, railway and shipping organization and rates, banking systems, stock exchanges, investment markets, international aspects of credit and currency, tariffs and bounties; and it is expected that, as in the second parts of most other triposes, a mass of new work, the result of current research, not yet available in text-books, will be placed before the students.

The Medieval and Modern Languages Tripos dates from 1886. It provides for the study of English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Russian. A colloquial test has recently been added. The Semitic Languages Tripos was established in 1878; the Indian Languages Tripos was founded in 1879, and merged in the Oriental Languages Tripos in 1895. The University founded a professorship of Sanskrit in 1867; and a chair of Chinese has existed since 1888. The University possesses the finest Chinese library in the world outside of China, the gift of Sir Thomas Wade. Provision is made for the teaching of Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Hausa, Burmese, and the Indian vernaculars of Bengali, Hindustani, Marathi, and Tamil. The teaching of living Oriental languages for the benefit of practical students is carefully co-ordinated under a recently appointed director of studies; and not only are the most necessary languages taught in their living forms by competent scholars, but these latter are assisted by a staff of carefully selected native _répétiteurs_. Towards the expenses of this work the University contributes about £2,800 a year. A professorship of Anglo-Saxon was founded in 1878.

In 1871 the chair of experimental physics was founded, a chair held in succession by Clerk Maxwell, Lord Rayleigh, and J. J. Thomson; and in 1874 the famous Cavendish laboratory, the munificent gift of its late chancellor to the University, was opened. The laboratory was designed by Maxwell; and the chancellor himself, soon after its completion, provided all the instruments which were immediately required. In 1894 the area of the laboratory was increased, the cost being defrayed, in part, by a sum of £2,000 saved by Professor Thomson out of fees received from students; but the constant pressure on the available space by research students coming from all quarters of the globe rendered further extension urgently necessary, an extension which Lord Rayleigh’s generous gift of the Nobel Prize has now enabled the University to undertake. Astronomy has a traditional home in Cambridge; and the observatory, which in 1706 found a strange temporary site over the gateway of Trinity College, began to be built on its present site in 1822. The observatory, which takes its regular share of the work mapped out for the observatories of Europe, has received important additions in the shape of both building and equipment in recent years.

In 1875 the professorship of mechanism and applied science was established; and in 1878 the first engineering workshops were built in the University, and fitted with machine tools and other necessary equipment. In 1894 the new engineering laboratories were opened during the tenure of the professorship by Dr. Ewing, now director of naval education. In 1894, also, the first examination for the Mechanical Sciences Tripos, which gives a degree in honours to students of engineering, was held. In 1899 the generosity of Mrs. Hopkinson and her family made possible the addition of a much needed new wing to the laboratory. The buildings of the department now contain lecture-room accommodation which seats about 360 students simultaneously, a drawing-office for a class of ninety, two rooms for elementary heat and mechanics, a boiler-room, an engine-room with ten heat-engines of different types, arranged so that the measurement of all quantities concerned may be systematically made by the students, a large room for dealing with strength of materials and with hydraulics, a dynamo-room fitted with various kinds of dynamos, a motor-room fitted with motors of all the usual types, and several other rooms for special purposes. The greater part of the staff have had practical engineering experience of some kind; and it is usual during the long vacation for one or two members of the staff, as well as a number of the students, to go into a drawing-office or into works in order to keep in touch with practice. The school numbers at present more than 250 students, and supplies young engineers with a scientific training to various public services, as well as to mechanical and electrical firms.

The University chemical laboratory was built in 1887; and, while planning it, the professor of chemistry spent some months in visiting the newest laboratories on the Continent and in America. The importance of botany has of late years so greatly increased that its study is represented in Cambridge by a professor, a reader, and two University lecturers, besides demonstrators, assistant demonstrators, and attendants. In 1904 botany was housed in a separate building of its own, the finest devoted to that science in the United Kingdom, and one of the finest in Europe. The physiology of plants, bacteriological research, and the cultivation of hybrids and seedlings, are completely provided for. The extensive botanic garden belonging to the Senate is at the disposal of the staff and the students, the more distinguished of whom, after completing their degree course in Cambridge, start on a course of research in this country or abroad. The importance of the department as touching agriculture on its scientific side can hardly be overestimated.

The professorship of agriculture was founded in 1899, and endowed for a term of years by the munificence of the Worshipful Company of Drapers, a body which, with commendable breadth of view, recognizes alike the importance of applied scientific instruction for the artisan and of scientific investigation in all forms of the national activity. The department of agriculture is conducted on the most practical and progressive lines. It provides instruction in the principles of agriculture for the sons of landowners, farmers, and others. It conducts experiments on crops and live stock, making every effort to secure the intelligent co-operation of farmers. The University experimental farm, for the use of which the department is indebted to the generosity of a member of Clare College, has an area of 140 acres. The County Councils of Cambridgeshire and nine neighbouring counties co-operate in the work and assist it by subsidies. The field experiments of the department extend over ten counties. Parties of farmers visit the experimental plots every season in order to see the results of the experiments and to discuss them with members of the staff; and reports which summarize these results are widely distributed in the districts concerned. Of the suitability of Cambridge as a site for a school of agriculture, and of the importance of the work undertaken by the school, it may be well to leave the late professor to speak for himself.

‘I have but recently become a member of the University, and, like a
good many others, I at one time doubted the possibility of founding
a thoroughly satisfactory school of agriculture in one of the old
English Universities. But I no longer doubt; and as one who, before
coming to Cambridge, was a teacher or student in five British
Universities, I will venture to say that nowhere else do such
opportunities exist. Apart altogether from the exceptional
facilities for the study of science possessed by the University,
and apart, too, from the exceptional practical skill of the farmers
in the surrounding counties, the old University appears to me to be
more disposed to extend a helping hand to agriculture than many of
her younger sisters; and nowhere has a more friendly reception been
given than at Cambridge to the new organization fostered by the
activity of the Board of Agriculture....

‘American experience leaves no room for doubt that modern
scientific methods are capable of greatly increasing the prosperity
of agriculture, and that the farmer has no better ally than the
laboratory worker. But, if we wish to make these benefits ours, we
must cease to be satisfied with imported information; ... we must
aim at securing for agriculture the services of British
specialists, men who will give their whole time to the study of one
subject under the conditions which prevail in our own country. To
the extent of our resources this has been the policy of our
agricultural department in Cambridge.

‘We are in the centre of the finest land in England; we already
have an organization by which we reach the farmer; we know his
wants; and the University has supplied us with well-qualified
teachers of applied science. If we were in possession of suitable
laboratories, properly equipped for research, we should find
competent investigators and willing assistants among the younger
members of the University who are always ready to engage in
original work, either with the view of gaining knowledge or in
order to qualify themselves for appointments.’

In considering the development of all these departments, and the foundation of the chairs and other teaching posts made necessary by them, it must be remembered that the professorships already existing before 1850 included, among others, those of chemistry, anatomy, botany, geology, mineralogy, medicine, physic, political economy, moral philosophy, modern history, Arabic, and music; that these chairs had, before the Commission of 1850, no very important duties attached to them; and that in the last fifty years each has been adapted to its place in the University system, and each has in turn become a new centre of activity round which, to use a convenient term unfamiliar in Cambridge, a ‘faculty’ has crystallized. To many important developments it has been possible to allude only in the most cursory manner. The merest mention must suffice for the diploma in geography; the diploma in mining engineering, with its provision for practical experience in mines in this country or abroad; the diploma in forestry, which is a logical outcome of the development of the botanical and agricultural schools; the provision for military studies, and the Day Training College for teachers. The latter has both a primary and a secondary department, and the certificate given by the University in the theory, history, and practice of education, and for practical efficiency, attracts teachers in great numbers from all parts of the country.

* * * * *

Development so wide and so rapid as that which we have sketched has been of necessity costly. The expenditure since 1862 on buildings devoted to science alone must have considerably exceeded £300,000, the greater part having taken place in the latter years of the period; and it must be remembered that the University has had also to equip and maintain the observatory, the cost of which is not included in the amount just mentioned, and to spend large sums on the University library. Except in one or two cases, in which a special benefaction fund had been appropriated to adornment by the desire of the benefactor, these buildings have been erected with the strictest regard to economy. The amount expended cannot be said to be an inordinate sum for a modern University to have spent on scientific buildings and equipment. Yet even this expenditure would have been impossible without external help.

The cost of the maintenance of the buildings erected and of the very inadequately paid staffs, now presses on the limits of the available income; and it is contended that but little more can be attempted for many years, if ever, without external aid. We will proceed, then, to a rough analysis of the resources of the University and colleges, and of the allotment of these resources. Before doing so, however, it may be well to state that the colleges provide adequately, but not extravagantly, for the teaching of classics and mathematics, for elementary teaching in many other subjects, and for individual assistance to the student and supervision of his work in the subjects taught in the University. The collegiate system also ensures a close contact and intercourse between teacher and student not otherwise or elsewhere attainable. The University, in its teaching aspect, may be regarded as an organization for providing instruction in all those branches of knowledge the teaching of which cannot be economically undertaken by the colleges. Thus, for the teaching of science, and for the provision of costly laboratories, the University is responsible; and the higher and more specialized teaching in most other departments is also provided by the University. The ancient endowments are, in the main, college endowments; but the history of the development of modern subjects is also the history of the development of the University; and it is the University rather than the colleges which is at present in need of substantial financial help. But to suppose that the colleges do not heartily co-operate in the University teaching would be erroneous; at the present time one college may be better organized than another for this particular purpose, but the colleges may safely be trusted soon to come into line.

The corporate income of the seventeen colleges is, roughly, £310,000 per annum. This, with a sum of about £52,000 (called the Tuition Fund), received annually from the lecture and laboratory fees of the 3,200 students, and £30,000 received annually by the University for degree and other fees, constitutes the whole available income for college as well as University purposes, if we except certain Trust Funds for the endowment of some professorships, and those funds of the nature of charities of which the colleges are merely administrators.

The corporate income of the colleges consists of (1) endowments, usually in the form of estates, which bring in £220,000 a year; (2) fees, rent of rooms, profits on kitchens, and so forth, which bring in £90,000. But the colleges are great landowners and have the outgoings of landowners. Though the expenses of the estate management are only about 7 per cent. of the revenues arising from the estates, yet £130,000 a year are spent on management, repairs, and improvements on the estates, rates and taxes,[17] interest on loans, and the maintenance of the costly college buildings in Cambridge. Many of the latter are national monuments of surpassing interest, the proper care of which is a duty to the nation. When allowance has been made for the inevitable expenditure under these heads, there is left only £180,000 for all other purposes. The fellowships and the stipends of the heads of houses absorb £78,000; and the contributions of the colleges towards scholarships, as determined in the main by statute, and as distinct from any separate endowment, account for £32,000.

An analysis of the distribution of the fellowship money may conveniently be deferred for the moment; but it may be stated that the sum spent on scholarships finds, inside the University at least, many critics. The expenditure on scholarships is undoubtedly, however, in the main, a fulfilment of the intentions of their founders, and, if we may judge by the recent expenditure of County Councils, is in accordance with public feeling. After deduction of fellowships and scholarships, there is left of the corporate income a sum of £70,000. Of this sum, £32,000,[18] or nearly one-half, is paid as a direct contribution to the University; but, as will be seen immediately, the colleges contribute to the University in many other ways. Of the £38,000 remaining, £4,000 goes to supplement the Tuition Fund of £52,000 received from the students as fees; the sum of £56,000 so obtained is applied to the provision of college and University lecturers. A large proportion of these fees is paid to the scientific departments of the University; and of the fees so paid the greater part is assigned as a contribution to the maintenance of the several departments, and not, directly at least, to the payment of lecturers.

Deducting the sum of £4,000, contributed by the colleges to the Tuition Fund, we have left over of the corporate income a sum of £34,000, or about £2,000 per college, available for the payment of college officers and servants, the expenses of the college libraries, printing, and other expenses. If, then, it can be shown that the £78,000 spent on the fellowships is not extravagantly allotted--and of this more below--it is clear that the colleges can contribute but little more than they do at present to the University teaching.

An idea of the serious effect of the fall of agricultural rent on the college incomes may be gathered from the fact that one of the larger colleges has in the last thirty years suffered a loss of revenue amounting to £10,000 a year.