HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



55 



a religious spirit, a course of ambulance instruction 

 arouses feelings of deep reverence and increases 

 delicacy. Instead of medical details, which are not 

 necessarily coarse, being dwelt upon, and the mind 

 being filled with suggestions of evil, the pupil should 

 leave the lecture room awed and purified as he would 

 from listening to the Messe Solennelle of Beethoven 

 or the Messiah. The soul ascends to nature's God, 

 the thoughts rise, and the nobler emotions are 

 strengthened. The instruction also gives scope for 

 the display on the part of the student of great 

 ingenuity. Half-a-dozen lectures on astronomy, 

 from the late Richard Proctor, that master of graphic 

 description, familiarised the listener with wonderful 

 details respecting the recognised queen of the exact 

 sciences ; the imagination was overpowered with 

 glowing language, illimitable distances, boundless 

 ages, and brilliant theories, but he was not taught to 

 do something. Now it has been said that education, 

 deserving to be so called, not only ought to teach us 

 something worth knowing, but to do something ; it 

 should be practical, and ambulance instruction is 

 pre-eminently that : it teaches us to help others and 

 to aid ourselves, and shows us something we never 

 before suspected, and which has been purchased with 

 the best thought of hundreds of hard workers and 

 thinkers. The course of instruction suggested by the 

 Association consists of only five lectures, far too few 

 to do justice to the matter, but they can be increased 

 to seven or eight at the discretion of the local 

 managers. The late Lady Brassey, an earnest and 

 wise friend of the Association, suggested that, in some 

 cases, two lectures a week might be given, so that the 

 course would only cover three weeks. In this 

 proposal she showed less than her usual judgment ; 

 but another suggestion of hers I can endorse — that 

 there should be eight lectures. When a class is 

 formed and a lecturer obtained — and the latter should 

 always be a competent and experienced practitioner 

 fairly familiar with platform work, for read lectures 

 are an abomination — the course proper commences. 

 I always suggest that before the technical lectures, a 

 public lecture should be given, not necessarily by the 

 instructor, on the scope of the work and its need, the 

 books that should be read, and the examiner's 

 requirements. When this has been got through, and 

 the students gather together fairly well acquainted 

 with what is before them, and with the importance of 

 mastering it, the lecturer should describe the wonders 

 of the human body, and if he is fully imbued with 

 the spirit of his task— and unless he is, he should 

 not attempt to teach — he will find, without entering 

 into professional details, more than enough to fill 

 many lectures. When this portion of the work is 

 thoroughly done, the pupils are ready for the 

 practical part, and unless thoroughly grounded, the 

 rest of the instruction is dull and difficult of com- 

 prehension. 



( To be continued.) 



NOTES ON NEW BOOKS. 



T^IVE THOUSAND MILES IN A SLEDGE, 

 J- by L. F. Gowing (London : Chatto and 

 Windus). This is a vigorously written book by a 

 well-known journalist. The author, and a friend who 

 has since died, chiefly from the exposure and the 

 hardships of the journey, undertook the perilou 1- , 

 journey from Shanghai in China to Moscow, and that 

 in the winter time and by sledging alone. It is, 

 perhaps, one of the pluckiest journeys on record. 

 The narrative never slacks in interest from beginning 

 to end, and although the author has little or nothing 

 to say about the physical geography, geology, botany, 

 or natural history of the district, he has a keen eye 

 for cities and towns, and the human life which 

 pervades them. Some of his descriptions of the 

 scenery through which he passed are graphically 

 outlined ; but the chief interest in the book lies in its 

 going over some of the ground already familiar to us 

 from the works of Dr. Lansdael and Mr. George 

 Kennan. It is a genuine book of real travel, and one 

 that cannot fail to be enjoyed by all classes of 

 readers. 



The Story of Chemistry, by H. W. Picton, B.Sc, 

 with a preface by Sir Henry Roscoe (London : 

 Isbister, Limited). The fact that the latter scientist 

 franks this nicely got up book is a strong recom- 

 mendation of its merits. It is not a handbook of 

 modern chemistry, as some might imagine ; and 

 perhaps it would have been more correct to have 

 called it the history rather than the story of that 

 useful science. It is, in reality, the literary descrip- 

 tion of the evolution of one of the most useful sciences 

 in the world, from its earliest empirical condition to 

 the latest stages of chemical discovery. Thus we 

 have described the period in the history of chemistry 

 before the alchemists ; next that of alchemical 

 mysticism, followed by chapters on medieval mysti- 

 cism, and another on the decline of this method ot 

 interpreting nature. Mr. Picton then devotes three 

 chapters to the beginning of science : one to the 

 childhood of truth ; three to the conflict with error, 

 and one chapter to the " Triumph of Truth." Next 

 we come to the beginnings of modern chemistry, and 

 we have four interesting chapters on the atomic 

 theory. Lastly we have two chapters on the modern 

 science of chemistry. The author splits up the 

 history of chemistry into nine periods. We have 

 seldom gone through a book with more enjoyment, 

 and are, therefore, prepared to agree with the 

 concluding lines of Sir Henry Roscoe's preface that 

 the author has written just such a book as was 

 needed. 



The Scenery of the Heavens, by J. E. Gore 

 (London : Roper and Drowley). Perhaps no 

 science has, of late years, become more democratic 

 than that of astronomy. When it could only be 

 studied by the aid of telescopes that cost thousands 



