Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/253

 sities. With these aspirations I most thoroughly sympathise, but I would remind those who put forward the claim to a new designation that their proposal will gain a readier assent if it include also the demand for a higher scientific culture in those who shall obtain the higher denomination. At a time when the means of scientific instruction in the Medical College have been improved to so high a degree of efficiency (we welcome with satisfaction to the membership of the Senate to-night some of the Professors on its staff, gentlemen of high academic distinction) any proposal that does not contemplate some elevation of the standard of scientific requirement must be regarded as out of harmony with the progressive spirit of the time. There is perhaps no profession in which the same designation is susceptible of a greater variety of meaning, and in expressing my hearty sympathy with the aims of the medical graduates of the University, I venture to hope that the meaning which they will seek to attach to the degree which they desire the University to institute will be worthy of the high position of their College as one of the foremost medical schools in India, and of the progressive character of the science which they represent. I cannot close this review of the past academical year without alluding to the new departure that has been made in the recently instituted diploma in Agriculture. In the comprehensive scheme which our learned Chancellor placed before you a year ago, the institution of a Degree in Agriculture was included in the enumeration of our needs. The diploma which has recently been instituted may be regarded as the first instalment of the fulfilment of that programme. The discussion of this question, gentlemen, is fresh in the recollection of most of you, and I shall not traverse ground that has been so recently gone over. With much that was said with reference to the aims of University education by those who opposed this addition to the recognised studies I must thoroughly concur, and I would remind them that the scheme now sanctioned leaves that doctrine intact. No degree in Agriculture has yet been instituted, and it is not likely that any proposal to institute a degree will come before us that does not satisfy the high requirements which they have rightly insisted upon. The form in which the recognition has been granted has been purposely selected to prevent any such result. I think I am not misinterpreting the general feeling of the Senate when I say that until Agriculture is prepared to take its place in the science curriculum of the University, and to satisfy its full requirements it cannot expect the recognition to which it will naturally aspire. Its future as a department of University study will depend on the development of scientific agricultural instruction to a position in which