HA RD WICKE' S SCIENCE- G OSSIF, 



35 



ment in quality (and consequent demand for quantity) 

 has been mainly wrought by a judicious expenditure 

 of a sum not exceeding ;^ii,ooo a year in providing 

 the country with dairy schools, where the pupils are 

 trained in the theory and practice of dairy work, and 

 are taught to make butter and cheese of the best 

 quality during all seasons of the year. 



These facts are eloquent appeals for technical 

 education, properly so called, which is something 

 very different from that which is advocated by certain 

 ■"professors and college men," who having added 

 modern science to their classical attainments are con- 

 descendingly willing, in obedience to the law of 

 demand and supply, to transfer a certain portion of 

 their university culture to the neglected artizan. 



Such repetition of college text-book science is very 

 ■different from the technical education that has been 

 supplied with such admirable results to the dairy 

 farmers of Denmark, and equally different from that 

 which is demanded by our artizans. It is different 

 from the technical education that is so well supplied 

 in this country to another and very important class — 

 our medical students. 



In medical schools, the technical professors are 

 practical physicians and practical surgeons. What 

 would become of a medical school in which these 

 professors were mere bachelors or masters of arts, or 

 bachelors or masters of science, or wranglers, or 

 fellows, however distinguished, of their colleges, but 

 without any practical experience in the actual treat- 

 onent of the sick and injured. In such schools there 

 are, of course, the " preliminary scientific " classes, 

 and the preliminary scientific examinations in 

 chemistry, botany, natural history &c., but this is 

 not the technical education of the student, and does 

 not bear that name. The technical education, pro- 

 perly so called, follows this. 



A corresponding distinction is demanded in the 

 education of artizans and men of commerce. Let 

 the "professors and college men" do their part of 

 the work, but let us have no pedantic assumption of 

 its completeness or superiority. It is merely subor- 

 dinate and comparatively easy. All they are capable 

 of teaching is within reach of all ; the difficulty of 

 technical education comes after their work is done. 

 It is the difficulty of finding men with practical 

 technical knowledge, who can teach what they know 

 on a scientific basis. Good work is being done in 

 the less pretentious classes of the Polytechnic and 

 other similar institutions, where theory and practice 

 are firmly welded together ; but, on the other side, we 

 have some sad examples of what I am justified in 

 designating as learned charlatanism, where mere 

 college cram is offered for what it is not, and men 

 devoid of technical knowledge are pretending to be 

 technical teachers. 



Besides the Danish dairy schools, I may refer to 

 the horological universities of Switzerland, where 

 highly skilled practical and scientific watchmakers 



are the leading professors, aided in subordinate 

 capacity by ordinary "college men," who do the 

 preliminary or introductory teaching. I emphati- 

 cally repeat the word subordinate, knowing from long 

 practical experience as a scientific teacher of artizans 

 that, unless their preliminary scientific teaching is 

 strictly subordinated to practical demands, it becomes 

 worse than useless, it only disgusts those it pretends 

 to teach, and drives them to the conclusion that pure 

 science is dreamy, useless theorizing, that practical 

 men should treat with contempt. 



Electrical Superstitions. — The melancholy 

 collapse of " The New York Electric Sugar Refining 

 Company" is such a glaring 7'eductio ad absurdiim of 

 the wild expectations of electric visionaries that it 

 may do some good as a warning. "Shut your eyes 

 and open your purses " was the cool demand of the 

 promoters of this model company, and dupes were 

 actually found so eager to do so that the lOO-dollar 

 shares were run up to 300, mostly in this country. 

 The friend who was to have made the fortunes of 

 these true believers refused to disclose his method, 

 beyond telling them that he poured raw sugar into 

 the top of his machine and electrified it somehow, 

 when hocus pocus, presto, prestissimo ! it ran out 

 from the bottom fully refined. He told them that 

 the machine was made and working ; he supplied 

 eye-witnesses who had seen it working ; he had fully 

 succeeded, was actually at work ; all he required 

 was that outside — especially this side — investors 

 should share the enormous profit, and thereby re- 

 lieve him of the burden of excessive riches. 



The New York "Evening Sun" tells us that 

 "just how many were interested in the scheme does 

 not appear. They realized about 250,000 dollars." 

 When "Mrs. Friend and all who had been connected 

 with the company had disappeared," leaving word 

 that they had "gone West," it was discovered that 

 the "raw sugar" put into the top of the machine 

 was "refined sugar chiefly in cubes," and that there 

 was no electrical apparatus whatever. 



I need not enter upon any further commercial 

 particulars, as the above are quoted from a detailed 

 account published in the "Times" of Jan. 5th, and 

 will be well known before this is published, but I 

 will improve the occasion by again pointing out the 

 monstrous folly that so widely prevails, of regarding 

 electricity as something more wonder-working, more 

 mysterious than the other familiar energies of Nature, 

 such as light, heat, or gravitation. It is far less 

 potent than heat or light, far less mysterious and far 

 less wonderful than gravitation. 



The mystery of gravitation is absolute. No human 

 being can form any approach to a thinkable idea of 

 the nature of the link that binds our earth to the 

 solar orb through a distance of nearly one hundred 

 millions of miles, and which holds together the other 

 and vastly greater orbs at distances a million and 



