492 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



is given to learning elementary mathematical concepts before rushing 

 on to complicated theory and partly perhaps to the fact that those who 

 teach mathematics in the colleges are almost always those who never 

 have occasion to apply it? 



The groups of individuals who made up the small army of 2,800 

 persons registered at the Cambridge meeting were varied. First of 

 all there were the well-known men of science like Lord Kelvin, Lord 

 Eayleigh, Professor Thomson, Professor Forsythe, Professor Dewar 

 and many others. Next in interest came the large group of younger 

 men, probably mostly from Cambridge University, who were to be 

 seen in many of the sections. The great body of associates was made 

 up, as is the case in meetings of the American Association, of the 

 wives, daughters and friends of the members. The women associates, 

 as in America, were in greatest evidence in the social functions, the 

 ■ excursions and in a few of the sections, particularly in that devoted 

 to educational science, the last section organized in the British Asso- 

 ciation. On Thursday morning before this section Dr. Kolossy, of 

 Budapest, read his paper before an audience of about fifty men and 

 three hundred women. 



Considering the present relation of public education in England 

 to the church it was quite natural that the president of this section 

 should be the Lord Bishop of Hereford, himself a teacher of experi- 

 ence. The papers before this section were however devoted to ele- 

 mentary educational questions rather than to problems of educational 

 science, and the discussions which were had, particularly when they 

 touched on such subjects as the education of women or the function of 

 manual training, sounded curiously like those to which we were accus- 

 tomed in the LTnited States twenty-five or thirty years ago. The ques- 

 tions which occupied the larger part of the time were in large measure 

 local and concerned themselves with details of educational work rather 

 than with fundamental underlying theories of education. This also 

 is perhaps to be expected in a country which has placed its work of 

 education in large measure in the hands of a single section of the 

 protestant clmrch. 



To an American visitor the large number of curates of the estab- 

 lished church who appeared in the meetings of the association formed 

 a pleasant picture. This presence does not mean any widespread study 

 of science on the part of the clergy, but is rather a natural outgrowth 

 of the association of university men. A large proportion of those who 

 graduate at the universities enter the church, and it is to be expected 

 that in a gathering which brings together distinguished scientific men, 

 as well as those interested in a general way in science, there should be 

 a number of the clergy. Their presence also serves to emphasize an- 

 other feature of the association which the American is likely to over- 

 look, and this is the fact that the British Association finds its strength 



