1887.] on the Work of the Imperial Institute. 113 



part of the German factory, and the results of the work carried on 

 by and under the eminent professors and teachers at the universities 

 and technical colleges are closely followed and studied in then- 

 possible bearings upon the further development of the industry. 



The importance attached to high and well-organised technical 

 education in Germany is demonstrated not only by the munificent 

 way in which the scientific branches of the universities and the 

 technical colleges are established and maintained, but also by the 

 continuity which exists between the different grades of education ; a 

 continuity, the lack of which in England was recently indicated by 

 Professor Huxley with great force. Nearly every large town in 

 Germany has its "Real Schule," where the children of the public 

 elementary schools have the opportunity, either by means of exhi- 

 bitions or by payment of small fees, of receiving a higher education, 

 qualifying them in due course to enter commercial or industrial life, 

 or to pass to the universities or to the polytechnic or technical high 

 schools, which, at great cost to the Nation, have been developed to a 

 remarkable extent in recent years, and have unquestionably exercised 

 a most beneficial influence uj)on the trade and commerce of the 

 country. A most important feature in the development of these 

 schools is the subdivision of the work of instruction among a large 

 number of professors, each one an acknowledged authority in the 

 particular branch of science with which he deals. Thus, at the 

 Carlsruhe Polytechnic School — one of the very earliest of its kind 

 — which was greatly enlarged in 18S3 — the number of professors 

 is 41 ; and at Stuttgart the teaching staff of the polytechnic school 

 amounts to 65 persons, of whom 21 are jjrofessors. 



The important part taken by the German universities in the 

 training of young men for technical pursuits has often been dwelt 

 upon as constituting a striking feature of contrast to our university 

 systems. The twenty-four universities in the German Empire, each 

 with its extensive and well-equipped science deiDartments and ample 

 professional staff, contribute most importantly to the industrial train- 

 ing of the Nation in co-operating with the purely technical schools. The 

 facts specified in the Report of the Technical Education Commission 

 that, in the session 1883-4, there were 400 students working in 

 the chemical laboratories at Berlin, and that, during the same 

 session, 50 students were engaged in original research at Munich 

 (where the traditions of the great school of Liebig are worthily main- 

 tained), illustrate the national appreciation of the opportunities pre- 

 sented for scientific training ; and the expenditure of 30,000/. upon 

 the physical laboratory, and 35,000/. upon the chemical department, 

 of the New University of Strasbourg, serves to illustrate the unsparing 

 hand with which the resources of the country are devoted to the pro- 

 vision of those educational facilities which are the very life-spring of 

 the industrial progress whence those resources are derived. 



In France, advanced education had been allowed to sink to a low 

 ebb after the provincial universities had been destroyed in the great 

 Vol. XII. (No. 81.) i 



