IV . NOTES BY THE EDITOR. 



American department was sufficient to vindicate the character 

 of our country for unsurpassed inventive faculty, displaying 

 original thought and the productive idea in mechanism. This 

 was admitted by qualified and impartial observers, whether Eng- 

 lish, French, or German; and it was candidly confessed that 

 mechanical engineers must go to the American department for 

 novelties and bold inventions in this branch of practical science ; 

 so that the feeling of disappointment was soon changed into one 

 of pride and admiration. 



Dr. Playfair, in a letter published in the " London Times," draws 

 attention to the fact that the evidences of progress in the mechanic 

 arts, as illustrated in the Paris Exhibition, are much less marked in 

 the English department than in the collections of some other nations. 

 This difference he traces to the superior facilities offered in the lat- 

 ter for scientific and technical education. Professors Tyndall and 

 Frankland, and Mr. Scott Russell, confirm the opinion of Prof. 

 Playfair in this respect. The same sentiments are expressed in 

 the "Journal of the Franklin Institute" for September, 1867, as 

 the following extracts will show : " There seems to be overwhelm- 

 ing testimony, from the best authority, in proof of what is in 

 itself eminently probable, namely, that they who know the most 

 will learn the most in addition, and that the. most valuable discov- 

 eries and inventions will be reached b} 7 those who, having a sound 

 knowledge of general principles and of previous labors, can de- 

 vote their whole force to the development of the new and the pos- 

 sible, and waste no energy on the redevelopment of what has been 

 already exhausted, or the devising of combinations utterly ineffec- 

 tive, because ignoring the actual properties of matter and the 

 essential laws of force. An hour's study of the patent reports, or 

 of any publication announcing indiscriminately all new inventions, 

 will show us that far more than half, even of those exhibiting: 



7 O 



considerable ingenuity and practical acquaintance with the special 

 subject treated, would have-been either abandoned or improved, 

 had the deviser possessed even a very general groundwork of 

 scientific knowledge. 



" In our collegiate establishments more attention should be 

 given to physical studies, even at the expense of a diminution in 

 the classical departments. When universities and the like were 

 first established, the only learning which existed and could be 

 made the subject of study and instruction was the classical. 

 Chemistry was unborn ; geology, mineralogy, and like branches, 

 uot even imagined ; the laws of light, heat, and electricity, utterly 



