20 CHEMISTRY 



to consider how the army of skilled chemists which 

 is even now being called for is to be recruited ; the 

 country commands an ample supply of latent 

 scientific talent which requires educating, and the 

 development of this ability, formerly allowed to 

 pass into other channels, should receive careful 

 thought. Our public schoolmasters have in the 

 past very wisely attached great importance to the 

 formation of character in their pupils ; no educa- 

 tional factor is so potent in ensuring an honourable 

 career and an influential position, and to its exis- 

 tence must be attributed the stupendous changes 

 in modes of thought and action which have taken 

 place in this country during the last two years. 

 But it must be made impossible in the future for 

 our schoolmasters to hold aloof from all the rapidly 

 changing exigencies of modern life. It must be 

 insisted upon that the teacher who allows an 

 intelligent pupil to arrive at man's estate without 

 a good colloquial command of at least two modern 

 languages besides his mother tongue has narrowly 

 limited the youth's outlook on life. How difficult 

 it will be to bring this truth home may be surmised 

 from the fact that one distinguished schoolmaster 

 has for many years found it necessary to preach 

 the doctrine that Latin can be used as a means 

 of human intercommunication and has incurred 

 the censure of some of his colleagues by attempting 

 to teach Latin as if it were a language. 



The teaching of science in our schools, which 



