278 THE CANADIAN NATUKALIST. [Sept. 



work. The method is the same, to whatever purpose applied. 

 The same method is necessary to raise, organize, and equip a bat- 

 talion, as to perform a chemical experiment. It is this great truth 

 that the Germans, above all other nations, if not alone amongst 

 nations, have thoroughly realized and applied, In all the vast 

 combinations and enterprises with which they have astonished 

 the world, no one has been able to point to a single deficiency in 

 any one essential element. Every post has been adequately filled 

 and every want provided for ; from the monarch, the statesman, 

 and the strategist, to the lowest grade in the army. This is the 

 method of science, literally the same method which teaches the 

 chemist to prepare his retort, his furnace, and his re-agents, before 

 commencing his experiment." 



WANT OF SCIENCE TEACHING IN CANADA. 



Let us now turn to our own country, and study its means and 

 appliances for the pursuit of practical science. The task is an 

 easy one, for with the exception cf two or three small and poorly 

 supported agricultural schools, this Dominion does not possess a 

 school of practical science. With mining resources second to 

 those of no country in the world, we have not a school where a 

 3'oung Canadian can thoroughly learn mining or metallurgy ; and, 

 as a consequence, our mines are undeveloped or go to waste under 

 ruinous and unskilful experiments. With immense public works, 

 and constant surveys of new territories, we have not a school fitted 

 to train a competent civil engineer or surveyor. Attempting a 

 great variety of manufactures, we have not schools wherein young 

 men and young women can learn mecbanical engineering, practical 

 chemistry, or the art of design, or we are very] feebly beginning 

 such schools. We have scarcely begun to train scientific agricul- 

 turists or agricultural analysts. Our means for giving the neces- 

 sary education to original scientific workers in any department, or 

 of training teachers of science are very defective. Hitherto we 

 have been obliged to limit ourselves to the provision of general 

 academical courses of study, and of the schools necessary for 

 training men in medicine, law and theology. Other avenues of 

 higher professional life are, to a great extent, shut against our 

 young men, while we are importing from abroad the second-rate 

 men of other countries to do work which our own men, if trained 

 here, could do better. Let us enquire then what we are doing in 

 aid of science education, more especially in this commercial and 



