de Lyra; the _Tractatus de Sphaera_, an astronomical work by a thirteenth-century Scotsman, John Holywood (Joannes de Sacro Bosco); and they also studied Priscian, Donatus, Boethius, Euclid, and Ptolemy. In 1431 the _Nova Rhetorica_ of Cicero, the _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid, and the works of Virgil were prescribed at Oxford as alternatives to the fourth book of the _Topica_ of Boethius. By the end of the century Humanism had found a place in the universities, (p. 140) and sixteenth-century colleges at Oxford and Cambridge provided for the study of the literatures of Greece and Rome. In Scotland the medieval teaching of Aristotle reigned supreme in all its three universities until the appointment of Andrew Melville as Principal at Glasgow in 1574, and in 1580 he had some difficulty in persuading the masters at St Andrews to "peruse Aristotle in his ain language." Lectures were either "ordinary" or "cursory," a distinction which, as Dr Rashdall has shown, corresponded to the "ordinary" and "extra-ordinary" lectures at Bologna. The ordinary lectures were the statutable exercises appointed by the Faculty, and delivered by its properly accredited teachers in the hours of the morning, which were sacred to the prelections of the masters. Cursory lectures were delivered in the afternoon, frequently by bachelors; but as College teaching became more important than the lectures given in the Schools, the distinction gradually disappeared. Ordinary lectures were delivered "solemniter" and involved a slow and methodical analysis of the book. The statutes of Vienna prescribe that no master shall read more than one chapter of the text "ante quaestionem vel etiam quaestione expedita." Various references in College and University statutes show that the cursory lecture was not regarded as the (p. 141) full equivalent of an ordinary lecture. At Oxford, attendance on a lecture on the books or any book of the Metaphysics, or on the Physics, or the Ethics, was not to count for a degree, except in the case of a book largely dealing with the opinions of the ancients. The third and fourth books of the Metaphysics were excepted from the rule, "they being usually read cursorily, that the ordinary reading of the other books might proceed more rapidly." The cursory lecture was clearly beloved of the pupil, for Oxford grammar masters are reproved for lecturing "cursorie" instead of "ordinarie" for the sake of gain; and at Vienna, the tariff for cursory lectures is double that for ordinary lectures. At Paris the books of Aristotle de Dialectica were to be read "ordinarie et non ad cursum," and students of medicine had to read certain books "semel ordinarie, bis cursorie." The statutes of Heidelberg contrast "cursorie" with "extense." In the Faculty of Canon Law there was an additional distinction, the ordinary lecture being generally restricted to the Decretum; at Oxford, the book of Decretals is to be read at the morning hours at which the doctors of law are