CURRENT LITERATURE.

Evening Post, Volume LX, Issue 102, 27 October 1900, Page 2 (Supplement)

CURRENT LITERATURE.

Th© "emancipated" and enfranchistd woman of New Zealand will 1 be interested in the life story of "A Girl-graduate of Spain" as told in the September number of Maomillan's magazine. So far back as 1784, in the dark days before there iirose champions of women's rights, Dona de Guzman y la Cerda was, at the request of Charles lll.'s Government, honoured by the University oJ Alcala with the degree of Docfcottess in Philosophy 'and Literae Humanibres. The seventeen-y»ar-old aspirant was exempted from residence, but her examination was apparently conducted with due strictness. The official programme, which was dedicated to the king, was drawn up in the following terms': — "The candidate will, in academic language, elucidate before a full hour has elapsed a chapter from Aristotle chosen by sortilege on the previous day. Her conclusion derived from the philosopher's texts she will establish by the best arguments which reason can adduce. She will then produce arguments in reply to the objections presented by the Moderators of tii© Primary Chairs. In conclusion, she will answer, the questions put by the Seven Doctors, in any one pf the following languages — Greek, Latin, French, Italian,. Spanish." Dona yla Cerda was not content with this inadequate test of he.r acquirements, and offered as additional special subjects the philology and grammar of these five languages, rhetoric, mythology, geometry, geography, general philosophy, logic, ontosophy, thoosophy, psychology, physics, general and speoial treatises on uuhnols, vegetables, the* system of the globe, and moral philosophy. She passed through the ordeal with flying colours, and it is amusing to learn that thei'e wore disturbances among the male undergraduates, who were excluded from the ceremony and from participation in the subsequent refreshments. Th© fair dpctoreas — women, be it noted were not doctors, masters and bachelors in those unenlightened days, when the laws of grammar prevailed over the equality of the sexes — afterwards married a Spanish grandue, became a model wife, and unfortunately died at tho ago of thirty-five. Under the title "The Burden of Coal," Mr. Benjamin Taylor contributes to, the September Nineteenth Century a thoughtful examhiation of the great coal supply problem. He points out that between the years 1897 and 1899 thi. M'orjd's annual coal crop was increased to the eaor*

mous extent of 85,500,000 tons., The total output for 1899 was 660,000,000 tons, !&i0,000,000 being supplied by Great Britain, 19,000,000 by India and the colonies, and 1 421,000,000 by foreign countries. In spite, however, of the immense quantity mined there has never before been such scarcity. It is noteworthy that since 1897 tha United States has caught and passed Great Britain in production. The American output last year was 225 million tons, which means that within the last twelve years it has doubled. The cost of production, too, in. the United States is lower than in a^y country of the world except India, viz,, 4s 5d per ton, against 6s 4£d in the United Kingdom and 7s 4^d in Germany. The prodigious increase of industrial energy during the last few years chiefly accounts both for tho great fuel supply and the scarcity.