A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 137 



were scattered through the several classes. The 

 number of regular day students rose in the sessions 

 1852-3 and 1853-4 to seventy-one. 



So early as the year 1854, Professor Copley 

 Christie and I applied for permission to open classes 

 for the teaching of our respective subjects to work- 

 ing men in the evening. The trustees sanctioned 

 our application, and the result of this first experi- 

 ment of the utility of such teaching is shown by the 

 fact, that our precedent has been followed ever 

 since. In my natural history class, the number of 

 evening students rose in 1855 to eighteen, and in 

 1860 to forty-one. 



The session 1854-5 showed a small decrease in 

 the number of day students. This decline con- 

 tinued until 1856-7, when they sank to thirty- 

 three little more than half the number with 

 which we started in 1851-2. There was evidently 

 something seriously wrong. One fact was un- 

 questionable, school education in Manchester was 

 at that time at a very low ebb ; of course the 

 schoolmaster of the day ridiculed this explanation ; 

 but it was a fact. The students were not prepared 

 for those higher standards of education which a 

 collegiate institution demanded, and below which its 

 professors could not descend. The teachers of the 

 schools retorted by declaring that we could not 

 know anything about their teaching, because they 

 were not such fools as to send their upper students 

 to us. Ere long the truth of our assertions 



