Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

patrolled the DR. At the end of each term we had to get ‘signed up’ to confirm that
we had indeed done the requisite ‘part’ to an adequate standard. The two of us
started on an arm the first term and went on to do leg and then I think, thorax (the
chest). This experience proved useful later when I worked on large animals, or even
in understanding medical problems, affecting these parts. I would have gone on to
do head & neck and abdomen, but at the end of the first year I chose to drop
anatomy and end my short career in medical science.
The reasons were twofold. As I have said the Anatomy teaching was not good
enough, but also I found it virtually impossible to combine Anatomy with Zoology,
because both subjects entailed many hours a week of practical work. In addition I
was not very happy with the amassing of detail without a strong basis of science.
However, there were some elements that stimulated me, for example the functional
anatomy being taught elsewhere by people like Le Gros Clark, Wood Jones and J Z
Young. In contrast our Professor was known as "butcher" Harris, a nickname said to
derive from the fact that he had first learned anatomy in his father’s shop. He was
intentionally rather crude and made a misery of the lives of the women students
attending his courses, by telling jokes and dirty stories at their expense. But he was
also a knowledgeable and interesting man. When he retired from the Cambridge
Chair he became Professor of Anatomy at Alexandria, Egypt! It was in one of
Harris's lectures that I first heard of the elephant seal - in connection with its
polygynous (harem breeding) habits, turned to effect in one of Harris’s stories, and
investigations on that species became the object of my first research project some
years later.
Like most of my friends I had a fervent dislike of exams, but I was quite well
organized about my work and didn't do an excessive amount of last minute revision.
I remember one morning, during my first year I think, when I was walking down
King's Parade, at about 9.30 am, that a Porter from St Catharine's came up to me:
"You should be in an examination now, Sir, and we've been looking all over for you.
You'd better get along there right now." I had completely forgotten, but I went along
to the examination room more than half an hour late, did my best with the paper,
and can't have done too badly. Sydney Smith swore that there were Freudian
undertones to this behaviour, that I so disliked exams that my subconscious had
made me forget; I don't think it was so complicated, and in fact I must have been
quite relaxed to forget completely in this way! However, I don't suppose it happens
often and I never made that mistake again.
The Tripos system at Cambridge meant that most students reading Natural
Sciences did Part I in two years, some took three years. It consisted of a mix of three
or four related subjects, though there was and still is a wide range of choice. We
went on to specialize in one subject for Part II, in my case Zoology, in which we
could choose several from a number of specialized options; this could be done in one
or two years. One had to be ‘in residence’ three terms a year for three academic years
to get a degree. I took two years over Part I and one year over Part II.
For my second year I took up Botany in place of Anatomy. Fortunately I had
already done a great deal of botany (self-taught) at school, and had obtained my
college scholarship largely on the botanical papers. So I managed to get a second in
Part I Botany in one year without much work, having already done much of it at
school. The Botany course was largely classical, with an emphasis on morphology
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