lectual occupations are a
game which women have entered late, and their lack of practice is
frequently mistaken for lack of natural ability. Writing some years
ago of the women in his classes at the University of Zuerich, Professor
Carl Vogt said:

At lectures the young women are models of attention and
application; perhaps they even make too great effort to carry
home in black and white what they have heard. They generally
sit in the front seats, because they register early, and,
moreover, because they come early, long before the lecture
begins. But it is noticeable that they give only a superficial
glance at the preparations which the professor passes around.
Sometimes they pass them to their neighbor without even
looking at them; a longer examination would prevent their
taking notes.

On examination the conduct of the young women is the same as
during the lectures. They know better than the young men. To
employ a classroom expression, they are enormously crammed.
Their memory is good, so that they know perfectly how to give
the answer to the question which is put. But generally they
stop there. An indirect question makes them lose the thread.
As soon as the examiner appeals to individual reason, the
examination is over; they do not answer. The examiner seeks
to make the sense of the question clearer, and uses a word,
perhaps, which is in the manuscript of the student, when,
pop! the thing goes as if you had pressed the button of a
telephone. If the examination consisted solely in written or
oral replies to questions on subjects which have been treated
in the lectures or which could be read up on in the manuals,
the ladies would always secure brilliant results. But, alas!
there are other practical tests in which the candidate finds
herself face to face with reality, and that she cannot
meet successfully unless she has done practical work in the
laboratories, and it is there the shoe pinches.

The respect in which laboratory work is particularly difficult
to women--one would hardly believe it--is that they are often
very awkward and clumsy with their hands. The assistants in
the laboratories are unanimous in their complaint; they are
pursued with questions about the most trifling things, and one
woman gives them more trouble than three men. One would think
the delicate fi