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New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 186, 20 October 1876, Page 15

A rather good story is told anent a late examination held at a university not a hundred miles from London. At their examination it is not always that the best men g"et through ; for although a candidate may be quite up in his subject, sometimes through the crotchety ideas of the examiners questions are put which no one but the Wandering Jew could answer. At one of the higher examinations, a few days ago, one of the candidates was startled "by having, amongst other queer queries, this one submitted to him ;—"; — " Give a critical abstract of the researches of Lawes, Gilbert and Pugh (f( f Philosophical Transactions, 1861 ') on the sources of nitrogen of vegetation/ The bothered candidate, who could hardly be expected to carry in his head all the periodical literature of this century, answered something to this effect: — "1 have never heard of those gentlemen, and I don't take in the ' Philosophical Transactions ;' but if you want to know what J know about the sources of nitrogen of plants, here it is." The candidate, who is a man of position, and well known in the literary and scientific world then gave such a voluminous account of the nitrogen of vegetation, that he startled the examiner, who literally disappeared for a fortnight, at the end of which time he reappeared and intimated that the candidate might pass. — ' Overland Mail.'