ABSTRACT
In 1899 Lord Rothschild stood in the Senate House at Cambridge and, part in whimsy but much in earnest, told a few home truths to the assembled dons seeking both his money and his moral support. He was afraid that there was a hazy notion abroad that the University of Cambridge, like the sister University of Oxford was composed of an aggregation of Colleges where the Master and Fellows had taken monastic vows. Traditionally Oxford and Cambridge were the natural resort for the complete education of the Anglican gentleman and the normal prerequisite for preferment in Church. Many Oxford science men had not studied science at school, but unlike Cambridge men they were unlikely to win the benefits of a scholarship from this position. At Oxford in the generation before 1850 dedicated men like Charles Daubeny, William Buckland, and Henry Wentworth Acland had pursued their interests in chemistry and geology and taught the few declining students who cared to listen.
