654 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



been made and in the last years of the old University of London, 

 partly perhaps owing to my representations, some pressure was 

 being brought to bear on the schools to make such teaching 

 rational and effective. One of the first acts of the newly con- 

 stituted University — one of its most retrograde and unforgiv- 

 able acts — was to undo the good work of its predecessor. 

 The protests made by those of us who had experience of the 

 value of the system under which some knowledge of science 

 was required of all at Matriculation were unheeded ; we were 

 advisedly excluded from all Committees dealing with such 

 matters, and freedom to neglect their duty was conferred upon 

 the schools preparing candidates for matriculation. Freedom, 

 we all admit, is good in the abstract — but freedom is easily 

 abused by those who are not ripe to enjoy it : for the most part, 

 the schools were incapable of running alone — they were and 

 :still are in need of guidance. 



Men like Dr. Wade apparently do not realise the truth of the 

 adage that there are more ways of killing a pig than sticking it — 

 that it is policy sometimes in hunting to approach } T our quarry 

 in indirect ways — that there may easily be more haste and less 

 speed — that it is well sometimes to play a waiting game, to 

 exercise purpose silently. His present experience as a teacher 

 of medical students is not very much greater than mine was 

 when I gave up such work ; since then I have been steadily 

 engaged, I regret to say during five-and-twenty years, in 

 educational research work — constantly making experiments, 

 constantly thinking over and discussing the problems of 

 education. My wits have been sharpened the more in that I 

 have enjoyed an opportunity which has fallen, I think, to no 

 other teacher of chemistry quite in the same degree — that of 

 developing courses for and ministering to the wants of large 

 special classes of students not destined to follow a chemical 

 career, engineers mostly, first at the Finsbury Technical 

 College, then at the Central Technical College. This more 

 than anything else has led me to appreciate the possibility of 

 teaching a subject in relation to its technical uses. I venture 

 therefore to suggest that Rip has been active in retirement, 

 not asleep ; that he is down from the mountains by no means 

 unfit for the fray. 



And in other ways the course events have taken has been 

 such as to impress me with a sense of the gravity of the 



