WE are authorized to make the following explanation of the rule in regard to excused absences from important examinations, which has seemed to many unfair, or at least inexplicable. The rule reads thus:-

"When a student is, for any cause, absent from such an examination, the subject of that examination will stand against him as a condition, to be removed in the usual way by performing the corresponding work in some subsequent year. A student, however, whose absence from examination is excused, may, if he prefer, obtain a special examination; but the maximum mark at any such special examination will be only sixty per cent of the maximum mark of the examination for which it is substituted."

The object of the rule is, of course, to prevent a student from deferring an examination on slight pretexts, for the purpose of attaining a higher mark than he feels able to get at the specified time. The belief that this rule will rarely ever do an injustice, by affecting such as are absolutely incapacitated from attendance on examination on account of severe sickness, is based on the experience of the last five years, that but one Senior has, during that time, been absent from his annuals. It is inferred that valid reasons for absence cannot be more numerous in the lower classes.

This is the reasoning on which the regulation is based. The result of such a rule in the vast majority of cases will undoubtedly be a good one, by preventing that continual postponement of examinations which is alike injurious to the student and troublesome to the instructor, but that injustice to a good scholar might sometimes follow from its rigorous enforcement is certainly possible. It is to be remarked, however, that it is possible for an absentee to attain the maximum mark by allowing the subject of the examination to stand against him as a condition, "to be removed in the usual way." It is, moreover, probable that a large proportion, if not a majority, of the cases of excused absentees will be unaffected by the sixty per cent maximum provision, since the marking will be done on a scale of a hundred, and not of sixty. That is, full credit will be allowed for a sixty per cent knowledge, but all above that goes for nothing. It is likely that most of these men will be perfectly content with sixty, or even fifty-nine per cent.

A question has been raised as to whether a man conditioned at a mid-year examination in a required study, - History, for example, - may not be allowed to pass off his condition at the Fall examination for anticipating the subject, instead of being obliged, as now, to wait till February. This question is under consideration by the Faculty, and will probably be decided at its next meeting.