Notes

Abstract

AN Exhibition of 50l. a year, tenable for four years, was recently devoted by the Endowed Schools Commission for annual competition between the four schools of Taunton, Tiverton, Exeter, and Sherborne. The details of the competition were left entirely to local trustees, whose names we do not know, but whom we understand to be gentlemen of the county of Somerset. The regulations issued by the trustees are before us. They very properly order that the examination shall be conducted by the Oxford and Cambridge Schools Examination Board. The subjects proposed by that Board include four groups, of which Science is one, and all candidates, whether choosing to take up Science or not, are permitted, if they please, to substitute Botany for Latin Verse, and Physical Geography for Greek Prose Composition. The scheme of the Somersetshiretrustees includes all the subjects named by the Universities except those which come under the head of Science, refusing to permit any branch of science to form part of the examination, whether as an independent topic or as an alternative. We content ourselves for the present with the statement of a fact likely to interest all our readers, those more especially who are aware of the efforts that have been made during the past six years to establish in the county ot Somerset a centre of first-rate scientific teaching.