Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎487r] (98/238)

at the South African College. 311
exactly be compared either with such universities as the
University ot Edinburgh or with such universities as the
University of Oxford. Allowing for this, we may find the
following statistics not uninstructive. The numbers of the
students at Edinburgh, which, as a matter of fact, if only
because of its Medical School, is much more than a merely
Scotch University, stand to the numbers of the population of
Scotland in almostexactly the same proportion as the numbers
of South African College students to those of the popula
tion of Cape Colony, which is something over half the total
population of South Africa. On the other hand, whereas more
than one in every hundred of the inhabitants of South Africa
is a past or present student of the South African College,
less than one in three hundred of the people of England are
similarly related to the University of Oxford, and a good
deal less than one in three hundred and seventy of the total
population of the United Kingdom. The South African
College is thus by far more widely reaching in South Africa
than the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge (which is
about a seventh smaller than Oxford) taken together in the
United Kingdom, though it is less widely reaching in South
Africa as a whole than the University of Edinburgh (the
greatest of the Scotch universities) in Scotland alone.
The position of the College in South Africa will, how
ever, be better understood by examining more in detail its
relation to the several South African professions which its
students may be expected to enter. It may be said at once
that it stands in a satisfactory position as regards the pro
fessions of law and politics, the scientific professions, such
as that of surveyors and mining engineers, and the medical
profession, though at present it does not attempt to give
more than the preliminary training for the latter. In
training men for these four professions alone the College
has obviously a work of vast importance to perform. To show
how great is its eventual influence on South Africa, it will
be enough to mention the names of four of its old students
—the Hon. T. L. Graham, Attorney r -General in the present