THE JUNIOR SCHOLARSHIP EXAMINATION PAPERS.

Press, Volume LVI, Issue 10262, 3 February 1899, Page 4

THE JUNIOR SCHOLARSHIP EXAMINATION PAPERS.

The results a! the Junior Scholarship examinations, which we publish this morning, have been" delayed for sereral days by another, blonder on the put of the University officials or their agents. The Committee of the Senate met in ; Dnnedin on Monday, only to find that the results in English were not yet to hand. Enquiry elicits the fact that the box containing th« papers had been, aa

Wβ are informed, "stewing in the sun" among lumber on Auckland wharf, very much as though it were a stray case of oranges. The examination in the various i centres closed about the middle of December, and there seems no reason why the\papers should not have been corrected in Wellington, and despatched to the various examiners before the Christmas holidays set in. let Professor Egerton, the examiner in English, was obliged to spend the greater part of January in sending telegrams, and worrying up the University officials and shipping agents; it was not till near the end of the month that the box turned up as already described. No one need have been surprised had the box not turned up at all, and the Mataura fiasco been repeated on a smaller scale. It had been sent as ordinary cargo, apparently in the most casual way. Some years back papers intended for the perusal of Melbourne examiners were despatched in a sailing vessel, and the publication of results. was delayed for weeks. On another occasion papers intended to reach the London examiners in January were mis-addressed and travelled halfway round the world, being finally impounded, we believe, in»lndia. The result on that occasion was a delay of nearly hajif a year. It is only twelve months since a box, intended to be sent by the Rimutaka, was left in a shed on the Wellington wharf, and finally found rest, quite in a casual way, in £he purser's cabin of the Mataura, where in all probability it remains to this day, under the waves of the Pacific. And now, within twelve, months of that disaster, we have another blunder, which happily had no -worse result than a few days' delay, but. might easily have entailed very serious consequences. We confess we are unable to Understand the carelessness of the University officials in these matters. If expense is pleaded as an excuse for sending these valuable packages from place to place as ordinary cargo, a little consideration should show them that one disaster like the Mataura incident costs more to the University than mail charges would amount to in a decade. Moreover, it should purely be possible to arrange with the Shipping Companies to carry these papers on special terms, and so have them under the eye of responsible officials. It seems to us that a candidate for examination under the University can never feel" certain that his papers will ever meet the eye of an examiner, or, at the least, that there will not be tiresome delays before he knows his fate. As we have already pointed outj this is the third or fourth blunder within a few years. We hope that dt may be the hist. \