o
provision in the University for the instruction of women. They were not
permitted to attend the classes available to men. Indeed, women's
education was then under discussion and debate in Great Britain and the
United States. It had many supporters but it had also many opponents.
The agitation for the higher education of women on equal terms with men,
particularly in the liberal arts, went back to the days of Defoe's
"Essay on Projects" in which he included a section on "an Academy for
Women." It had echoed from his time down through the eighteenth century
until 1791 when Mary Wollstonecraft published her systematic treatise,
"A Vindication of the Rights of Women." Thereafter the original plea
merely for education became but a minor part of a larger demand for the
franchise and for general equality; and instead of a sober emphasis on
the necessity for learning, there was a somewhat hysterical clamour that
women "should be admitted side by side with men into all the offices of
public life with respect both to kind and degree." This agitation soon
gathered abundant ridicule by the advocacy, led by Amelia Jenks Bloomer,
of reform in women's dress, which would make it, as far as possible,
the same as that of man, and would consequently be an outward and
visible sign of the equality of the sexes.

[Illustration: _Dr. Alexander Johnson
Vice-Principal of McGill University_ 1886-1903]

The derision and scorn incurred by the movement because of the unwise
zeal of some of its advocates had not yet passed in the fifties. In
Canada, the question of higher education for women was avoided, or
regarded with doubt or indifference. But Principal Dawson was an earnest
and enthusiastic believer in women's education, and early in his
connection with McGill he formed plans for the providing of facilities
to make such education possible in the University. Because of the
indifference and the opposition to what was looked upon as a useless
innovation, these plans were slow in maturing and in actual
accomplishment. The Principal, however, persevered; circumstances were
favourable, and in the end his hopes were fulfilled.

In Montreal at that time there was a girls' school, presided over by
Hannah Willard Lyman, who later received an appointment to Vassar
College. In this school no adequate course of instruction was given in
Natural Science. Miss Lyman was desirous that her students should
receive some knowledge of that subject, and she aske