Elemkntaky Pjiysical Soikxck. 331 



Nveie regarded as one. Newton and Boyle and Hooke and Hnygliens 

 did not confine themselves tt» physical experiments, and at the present 

 day the highest pliysics is unintelligible without an intimate knowledge 

 of chemistry. 



I mu.st, however, pass on and urge briefly one other reason and 

 meet one possible objection. Perhaps the most powerful reason for 

 urging the change is the serviceableness of the proposed course both 

 for those who intend at college to study either pure physics or pure 

 chemistry, and for the much greater number for whom school is an 

 entrance to practical life. For both classes, but especially for the 

 latter, the propi>sed course is one of great value, alike for its practical 

 applications, and for the promotion of an intelligent interest in every- 

 day work and general outlook on things. The farmer will find it has 

 immediate bearing on the wetness or dryness, warmth or coldness, 

 richness or poverty of his soil ; and he will be able to see the relations 

 of his methods of cultivation to its physical and chemical condition. 

 The young engineei' who uses coal, oil or gas engine will be able to 

 understand something of the chemical and heat changes on which the 

 work of his engine depends. To a girl who settles down to the 

 pleasures and cares of housekeeping the mysteries of cooking will not 

 be less interesting because more intelligible. For the doctor, of course, 

 it will only be the beginning of a more expanded curriculum on similar 

 lines. And the point to be remembered is that for all of these the 

 proposed course is to be preferred to either of the so-cilled pure 

 sciences taken alone. 



The objection which was anticipated above as a possible one is 

 that our present laboratories would be unsuitable. That, however, is 

 in no way the case. Practically any school laboratory, whether fitted 

 up for physics or for chemistry, would be suitable for the joint coui'se. 

 And there would be the great advantage of a concentration of teaching 

 power. Instead of splitting up our already small matriculation classes 

 into a chemistry section and a physics section, the class would be one 

 in the hands of one man. In regard to the question of the capability 

 of a man who had taken, say, only physics to teach the elementar}^ 

 chemistry required, all that needs be said is that any intelligent 

 teacher can get up in a month all that is necessary, and he will find 

 ample guidance and abundant experimental hints in such books as 

 Perkin and Lean's, while the chemically trained teacher will find no 

 less abundant help in the numerous experimental books on elementary 

 physics and some beautiful and simple experiments illustrative of 

 capillary action in Boys' little book on Soap Bubbles in the Nature 

 Series. 



The consideration of the supposed merits and demerits of the 

 proposed course has occupied so much time that the remarks on the 

 teaching of the subject which I should like to put forward, with great 

 diffidence, must be set down very briefly. The teaching should, I 

 think, have the following characteristics : — 



(1) It should be heuristic in its aim and experiniental in its 

 method. 



