[Sidenote: Character and choice of work.]
As to the character of the work in which women do best. It had been said that they would not do well in "abstract" subjects. The tripos in which they have taken the highest distinction is the Moral Sciences,[484] where they have been at the top of the list or alone in the First Class five times, provoking Punch's cartoon in the 'eighties' of a girl graduate entering a first class railway carriage marked "For Ladies only." Their best work has been done in pure mathematics, and, agreeing in this with the men, it is these subjects which they choose for the Second Part of the tripos. In choice of subject the order is as follows (_a_) Mathematics (_b_) Classics (_c_) History (_d_) Natural Sciences (_e_) Languages (_f_) Moral Sciences. The scale of success has been highest in Moral Sciences, then in (_b_) Languages (_c_) Natural Sciences (_d_) Classics (_e_) History (_f_) Mathematics.[485] The classical and mathematical triposes lead to those general tuitional posts for which so many women seek a university education; the languages tripos is easier for those women who go up without the usual school preparation; while the lower places in the history tripos do duty for that "ordinary degree" which is not open to women. It is therefore in the moral and natural sciences that there is distinct evidence of choice of subject: the proportion of women who take the former is overwhelmingly greater than the proportion of men,[486] and the taste of women for the natural sciences is as marked, a fact which might have been foreseen by those who watched the signs of the times many years ago.
The refusal of the degree, of the magic letters _B.A._ and _M.A._, to women, need not be discussed here. That women have the same use for the degree as men is obvious; that it strains their alleged liking for self-sacrifice too far to suggest that they prefer to forgo the legitimate rewards of their work, not less so; and it should not be regarded either as satisfactory or logical that when they do the same work the men only should have the recompense. Dublin university has just offered an _ad eundem_ degree to all women who had qualified themselves for the degree at Cambridge or Oxford--187 have taken the _B.A._, 121 the _M.A._, and three have become doctors of letters or science. The credit of this act belongs to the gallant Irishman, and the coffers of Dublin university have thus been enriched, very warrantably, at the expense of the impoverished coffers of Cambridge which sent the far larger number of graduates.[487]
