HISTORY OF SCIENTIFIC INSTRUCTION. 53 1 



gineering was established by the department at the request of the 

 Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, " with a view of providing 

 especially for the education of shipbuilding officers for her Majesty's 

 service, and promoting the general study of the science of ship- 

 building and naval engineering." It was not limited to persons in 

 the Queen's service, and it was opened on November 1, 1864. The 

 present Royal College of Science was built for it and the College of 

 Chemistry. In 1873 the school was transferred to the Royal Naval 

 College, Greenwich, and this accident enabled the teaching from 

 Jermyn Street to be transferred and proper practical instruction to 

 be given at South Kensington. The Lords of the Admiralty ex- 

 pressed their entire satisfaction with the manner in which the in- 

 struction had been carried on at South Kensington; and well they 

 might, for in a memorandum submitted to the Lord President in 1887, 

 the president and council of the Institute of Naval Architects state: 

 " When the department dealt with the highest class of education 

 in naval architecture by assisting in founding and by carrying on 

 the School of Naval Architecture at South Kensington, the success 

 which attended their efforts was phenomenal, the great majority of 

 the rising men in the profession having been educated at that in- 

 stitution." 



Here I again point out, both with regard to the School of Mines, 

 the School of Naval Architecture, and the later Normal School, that 

 it was stern need that was in question, as in Egypt in old times. 



Of the early history of the college I need say nothing after the 

 addresses of my colleagues, Professors Judd and Roberts- Austen, but I 

 am anxious to refer to some parts of its present organization and their 

 effect on our national educational growth in some directions. 



It was after 1870 that our institution gradually began to take its 

 place as a normal school — that is, that the teaching of teachers formed 

 an important part of its organization, because in that year the newly 

 established departments, having found that the great national want 

 then was teachers of science, began to take steps to secure them. Ex- 

 aminations had been inaugurated in 1859, but they were for out- 

 siders, conferring certificates and a money reward on the most com- 

 petent teachers tested in this way. These examinations were really 

 controlled by our school, for Tyndall, Hofmann, Ramsay, Huxley, 

 and Warington Smyth, the first professors, were also the first ex- 

 aminers. 



Very interesting is it to look back at that first year's work, the 

 first cast of the new educational net. After what I have said about 

 the condition of chemistry and the establishment of the College of 

 Chemistry in 1845, you will not be surprised to hear that Dr. Hof- 

 mann was the most favored — he had forty-four students. 



