558 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



corresponded with the chief-engineers of the Waterstaat as to the results ob- 

 tained in their experience in the use of cresoted timber in all our marine 

 works, in large quantities and during some tens of years. They all unani- 

 mously agree that the teredo will not penetrate timber thoroughly impregnated 

 with creosote; but that, to obtain the best results, the work must be thor- 

 ough, as they had observed that the teredo had destroyed piles only superficially 

 injected. 



" Fir, if the sap be first withdrawn in a vacuum and then treated with hot 

 oils under a heavy pressure, can be most thoroughly creosoted ; but oak is more 

 difficult. Still, I have often seen heavy oak-piles where the creosote had entered 

 into the very heart. 



" Creosoted wood is also used in our country for railway-sleepers and tram- 

 ways, and everywhere with the best results. They last four or five times longer 

 than when unprepared, while experience shows that wood treated with sulphate 

 of copper or chloride of zinc (Burnettizing) is neither protected from the teredo 

 nor the influences of humidity and of the atmosphere." 



SCIENCE IN THE ENGLISH SCHOOLS. 



THE rejection of Sir John Lubbock's motion for the addition of ele- 

 mentary science, or, rather, as the matter was more happily put by 

 Dr. Lyon Play fair in the course of the debate, of elementary knowledge 

 of common things, to the subjects for which grants are given under the 

 education code, although an inevitable and foregone conclusion, is not 

 on that account the less to be deplored. As happens in many similar 

 cases, the argument was all on the side of the minoritv, and Lord G. 

 Hamilton, in opposing the suggestion on the part of the Privy Council, 

 was only able to say that its adoption would, perhaps, entail some tem- 

 porary uncertainty about the subjects in which inspectors would be 

 required to examine and children to pass. If schools existed for the 

 convenience of inspectors, or oven in order that children might not be 

 troubled by uncertainties, the objection would have been a valid one ; 

 but upon any other supposition it seems to tell against, rather than in 

 favor of, the contention which it was intended to support. The nation 

 is spending large and rapidly-increasing sums of money upon schools, 

 and it will every year become a matter of greater urgency that these 

 sums should not be misapplied, either by the omission from the code of 

 subjects which would be useful or by the inclusion of others which have 

 no apparent tendency to promote the attainment of the ends to which 

 education is supposed to be directed. These ends, in the case of a 

 peasant-child, are presumably to render him a more useful and a better 

 conducted member of society than he would become by the unaided 

 light of Nature ; and it is obvious that the means to their attainment 

 are twofold first, to cultivate the intelligence in such a way as to facili- 

 tate the acquirement and the application of knowledge ; and, secondly, 



