1870.] DAWSON — ON SCIENCE EDUCATION ABROAD. 269 



arrangement of its theatre, by means of which 98 students can be 

 employed simultaneously in making experiments with tests, under 

 the direction of Professor Williamson and his assistants. This is 

 only one among many indications which I observed of the tendency 

 to give to examinations and instructions in science a practical 

 character, an evidence that its true nature is being more and 

 more appreciated. 



THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. 



It would be wrong to leave London without referring to the 

 remarkable and unique establishment known as the Royal Insti- 

 tution, founded in 1799, at the suggestion of Count Rumford, 

 and celebrated throughout the world as the theatre of the labours 

 of Davy, Faraday and Tyndall, while in London itself it is known 

 and valued as an agreeable and popular exponent of science by 

 means of its lectures and discourses. The Royal Institution has 

 a good building in Albemarle street, containing its theatre, labo- 

 ratories, library and reading-room. Its function is two-fold. 

 First, it sustains as its professors eminent scientific men, and 

 provides them with the means lor prosecuting original research ; 

 secondly, it provides, by its afternoon and evening lectures, the 

 means of presenting to the more refined and educated classes 

 information as to the latest results of scientific discovery from 

 the lips of the actual discoverers themselves. Its lecture-room is 

 always filled with a cultivated and attentive audience, who have 

 the advantage of learning orally and at first hand what others 

 must gather from reading, or from secondary sources. 



The Royal Institution thus occupies a middle place between 

 the general public and those Scientific Societies, like the Royal, 

 Geological and Linnean, whose objects are strictly scientific or 

 special, and whose meetings are consequently almost entirely 

 composed of scientific men. At the same time, it promotes 

 original research in a manner peculiar to itself, and in the highest 

 degree successful. It undoubtedly exerts a most important in- 

 fluence in keeping those who move in the higher strata of society 

 in London abreast of the science of the day, and thus in procuring 

 moral as well as material support for scientific researches ; more 

 especially for those which, not being of direct educational or 

 practical utility, are liable to be neglected even by the more 

 intelligent portion of a community engrossed in the accumulation 

 of wealth or in the still more laborious pursuit of spending it. 



