210 Opening of the London School of Mines. 



I. 



Opening of the Governmhit School of Mines, and of Science as 



applied to the Arts, 



This important National Establishment was lately opened 

 by Sir Henry de la Beche, C.B.. F.R.S., &c., the Director- 

 General, and its main founder, in an Inaugural Discourse, in 

 which he gave a lucid and interesting account of its nature 

 and objects. He mentioned the following as the branches of 

 knowledge to be taught, viz., Chemistry, Natural History 

 applied to Geology, Mechanical Science, Geology, Metallurgy, 

 Mineralogy, and Mining, by means of a staff of able and 

 distinguished Professors, who have at their command an ex- 

 tensive and very valuable Museum of Practical Geology, with 

 complete and amply-furnished Chemical Laboratories, an 

 Office of Mining Records and of Geological Surveys. That 

 Sir Henry has been fortunate in the selection of Professors 

 is shewn by the names in the programme of the School. 



II. 



Copies of several of the Introductory Lectures delivered 

 in the Museum of Practical Geology of the School of Mines 

 have reached us. We now lay before our readers one of 

 these, as a specimen of the style of lectures delivered in this 

 promising establishment. It is the excellent lecture of our dis- 

 tinguished friend and former pupil. Professor Edward Forbes, 

 " On the Relations of Natural History to Geology and the Arts^ 



*' Natural History is a vast and continually-extending science. It 

 embraces Zoology, Botany, and much of Geology. The sections of 

 it are subdivided into studies, each of which, if pursued to its full 

 development, would more than occupy a lifetime. No single man 

 can, in the present state of knowledge, grasp the details of all the 

 natural history sciences, or even of one of their great sections. But 

 the principles that pervade all are the same. The same laws govern 

 the animal and vegetable kingdoms. The same laws regulated the 

 phenomena of animal and vegetable life through the geological past 

 that now regulate them in the historical present. That such is true, 

 is for the naturalist to demonstrate. The zoologist, the botanist, 

 and the geologist contribute the elements of the demonstration, but 

 the great pervading principles of the entire science demand a com- 

 bined study of the three kingdoms of nature. The task assigned 

 to me in this Institution is the exposition of these principles ; their 

 illustration, by examples drawn from existing and extinct forms of 

 life ; and the teaching of such details of zoology and botany, recent 



