The favorite practice indulged in by some instructors of setting a nominal three hour examination paper containing questions whose answers would require at least three hours and a half to be written from dictation with no time allowed for consideration, seems to retain its old time popularity among the said instructors. Nothing is more discouraging to the laboring student than to realize at the beginning of an examination, that it will be impossible to finish the paper in the time allotted. The hasty work done under such circumstances cannot fail to disgust the instructor, and we can say from experience that it disgusts the writer of the paper. It is almost impossible to get a fair estimate of a man's ability from the hasty scrawl which he really feels obliged to hand in, and we fail to see what object the instructor can have in view in setting such a paper, unless he wishes to test the students carelessness, and not of his intelligence. The custom, however, is founded in antiquity and supported by long practice, so we suppose it is idle to expect any change, and the student might as well accept his fate in the same spirit that he submits to other evils.