340 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



you how you are to make the study of physics the in- 

 strument of your pupil's culture; how you are to pos- 

 sess its facts and make them living seeds which shall 

 take root and grow in the mind, and not lie like dead 

 lumber in the storehouse of memory. This is a task 

 much heavier than the mere recounting of scientific 

 achievements; and it is one which, feeling my own 

 want of time to execute it aright, I might well hesitate 

 to accept. 



But let me sink excuses, and attack the work before 

 me. First and foremost, then, I would advise you to 

 get a knowledge of facts from actual observation. 

 Facts looked at directly are vital; when they pass into 

 words half the sap is taken out of them. You wish, 

 for example, to get a knowledge of magnetism; well, 

 provide yourself with a good book on the subject, if 

 you can, but do not be content with what the book 

 tells you; do not be satisfied with its descriptive wood- 

 cuts; see the operations of the force yourself. Half 

 of our book writers describe experiments which they 

 never made, and their descriptions often lack both 

 force and truth; but, no matter how clever or consci- 

 entious they may be, their written words cannot supply 

 the place of actual observation. Every fact has numer- 

 ous radiations, which are shorn off by the man who 

 describes it. Go, then, to a philosophical instrument 

 maker, and give a shilling or half a crown for a straight 

 bar-magnet, or, if you can afford it, purchase a pair of 

 them; or get a smith to cut a length of ten inches 

 from a bar of steel an inch wide and half an inch 

 thick; file its ends smoothly, harden it, and get some- 

 body like myself to magnetise it. Procure some darn- 

 ing-needles, and also a little unspun silk, which will 

 give you a suspending fibre void of torsion. Make a 

 little loop of paper, or of wire, and attach your fibre 



