18G8.] SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS. 275 



than scientific. The boys can bring neither mineralogical, nor 

 chemical, nor anatomical knowledge ; nor have they observed 

 enough of rocks to make geological teaching sound. The most 

 that they can acquire, and this the majority do acquire, is the 

 general outline of the history of the earth, and of the agencies by 

 which that history has been effected, with a conviction that the 

 subject is an extremely interesting one. It supplies them with an 

 object rather than with a method. 



Of the value of elementary teaching in chemistry there can be 

 only one opinion. It is felt to be a new era in a boy's mental 

 progress when he has realised the laws that regulate chemical 

 combination and sees traces of order amid the seeming endless 

 variety. But the number of boys who get a real hold of chemistry 

 from lectures alone is small, as might be expected from the nature 

 of the subject. 



Of the value of experimental teaching in physics, especially 

 pneumatics, heat, acoustics, optics, and electricity, there can be no 

 doubt. Nothing but impossibilities would prevent the immediate 

 introduction of each of these subjects in turn, into the Rugby 

 curriculum. 



Lastly, what are the general results of the introduction of 

 scientific teaching in the opinion of the body of masters ? In 

 brief, it is this, that the school as a whole is the better for it, and 

 that the scholarship is not worse. The number of boys whose 

 industry and attention is not caught by any school study is 

 decidedly less ; there is more respect for work and for abilities in 

 the different fields now open to a boy ; and though pursued often 

 with great vigour, and sometimes with great success, by boys 

 distinguished in classics, it is not found to interfere with their 

 proficiency in classics, nor are there any symptoms of over-work 

 in the school.. This is the testimony of the classical masters, by 

 no means specially favourable to science, who are in a position 

 which enables them to judge. To many who have left Rugby 

 with but little knowledge and little love of knowledge, to show as 

 the results of their two or three years in our middle school, the 

 introduction of science into our course has been the greatest 

 possible gain : and others who have left from the upper part of 

 the school, without hope of distinguishing themselves in classics 

 or mathematics, have adopted science as their study at the 

 Universities. It is believed that no master in Rugby School 

 would wish to give up natural science and recur to the old 

 curriculum. 



