ALLIED RESEARCHES 207 



EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS 



In the list in Appendix I we indicate under 

 the heading of Education certain inquiries of dates 

 anterior to the establishment of the Education 

 Section. The earliest of these, which were made 

 from 1835 onward, appear to have been purely 

 statistical inquiries. The Association always took 

 an active interest in education, but demonstrated 

 it rather through the channel of representation to 

 Government authorities (as will appear in Chapter 

 VII under the dates 1854-55 and others) than by 

 means of actual educational research. Sections were 

 sometimes moved to inquire into the state of educa- 

 tion in their particular subjects. But the same list 

 reveals the extended and valuable results in the 

 direction of research and inquiry into the scope, 

 means, and methods of education which followed the 

 establishment of the Education Section in 1901. 



ENGINEERING AND ALLIED RESEARCHES 



The Association had in earlier years opportunities 

 of making more spectacular contributions to the 

 advancement of mechanical science ' than it has 

 now ; and it took those opportunities. We have 

 referred in an earlier chapter 1 to the preparatory 

 work which enabled John Scott Russell, at the Dublin 

 meeting in 1857, to give details of the construction 

 of the famous steamer Great Eastern, which was then 

 building at his establishment at Millwall. He said 

 that ' the ship, as a naval structure, as far as her 

 lines were concerned, was a child of the British 



1 Chap. Ill, p. 82. 



