366 



NATURE 



[Aug, 31, 1876 



stances be taken up by the candidates, either as an alter- 

 native or a positive branch of vork. 



Will the Universities help or impede the spread of 

 school science teaching? The Universities adhere at 

 present to their fatal principle that only one-sided know- 

 ledge shall find favour within their walls. A boy who 

 knows nothing but classics, nothing but mathematics, 

 nothing but science, may easily win a scholarship ; a boy 

 who knows all three must seek distinction elsewhere ; and 

 this rule shapes inevitably the teaching of the schools. 

 The science scholarships at Oxford, of which we hear so 

 much, fall mainly to three distinguished schools ; two so 

 large and wealthy that they can overpower most com- 

 petitors by their expenditure on staff and apparatus, the 

 third planted in Oxford, with access to the University 

 museum and laboratory, and with a pick of teachers from 

 the men of whom examiners are made ; and these schools 

 ensure success in science by abandoning other subjects 

 almost or altogether in the case of the candidates they 

 send up. No school which should carry out the recom- 

 mendations of the Commissioners, by giving six hours a 

 week to science, and the rest of its time to literature and 

 mathematics ; no school which should realise its function 

 as bound to develop young minds by strengthening in 

 fair proportion all their faculties of imagination, reason, 

 memory, and observation, could offer boys for any sort 

 of scholarship under the present University system with 

 the faintest chance of success. 



What these institutions are powerful to avert or help- 

 less to bring about is, we repeat, within the scope of 

 the British Association to effect. All institutions, political 

 or educational, will bow to a strongly formed committee 

 of scientific men, formally commissioned by the Associa- 

 tion and speaking with authority, delegated as well as 

 personal, on scientific subjects. Let such a Committee 

 be revived as died on paper in 1871, including the acknow- 

 ledged leaders of pure science, and weighted with the 

 names of such educationalists as have shown them- 

 selves zealous for science teaching. Let their func- 

 tions be — first, to communicate with the head-masters 

 and governing bodies, calling attention to the re- 

 commendations of the Duke of Devonshire's Commis- 

 sion, asking how far and how soon each school is 

 prepared to carry these out, and tendering advice, should 

 it be desired, on any details as to selection and sequence 

 of subjects, teachers, text-books, outlay. Secondly, let 

 them appeal to the Universities, to which many of them 

 belong, as to the bearing of science scholarships and 

 fellowships upon school teaching, and the extent to which 

 such influence may be modified or ameliorated in that 

 re-arrangement of College funds which next session will 

 probably be commenced. Thirdly, let them be instructed 

 to watch the action of Government in any proposal made 

 either in pursuance of Lord Salisbury's bill, or as giving 

 effect to the Duke of Devonshire's Commission, and let 

 them be known to hold a brief for school science in refer- 

 ence to all such legislation. A single meeting of such a 

 committee before the Association separates would settle 

 a basis of action and compress itself into a working sub- 

 committee. The time for papers and discussions is 

 past ; they have done their work. What the schools and 

 the head-masters want is authoritative guidance ; the 

 guidance not only of a blue-book, but of a living leader- 



ship, central, commanding, and accessible, to which they 

 may look with confidence, and bow without loss of prestige. 

 The precision of its dicta will clear up public confu- 

 sion ; its ability, conscientiousness, and popularity will 

 overawe the clergy ; schools and universities will listen 

 respectfully to suggestions echoed by their own best 

 men ; and the three great departments of intellectual 

 culture, equal in credit, appliances, and teaching power, 

 will bring out all the faculties, and elicit the special apti- 

 tudes of every English boy. 



" Hinc omne principium, hue refer exitum ! " 



H ANBURY'S REMAINS 

 Science Papers; chiefly Pharmacological and Botanical. 

 By Daniel Hanbury, F.R.S., &c. Edited, with Memoir, 

 by Joseph Ince. (London : Macmillan and Co., 1876.) 



A NOT inconsiderable contingent to the army ot 

 workers in science has been furnished by London 

 trade. The ranks of our geologists, zoologists, and 

 biologists, have been recruited to a larger extent 

 than many might suppose from city counting-houses. 

 But one would still hardly expect to find the same 

 wholesale chemist's shop in an obscure court out of Lom- 

 bard Street send forth, in two successive generations, two 

 Fellows to the Royal Society. Except, however, in their 

 common love of science, Daniel Hanbury was a very 

 different man from William Allen, the druggist and 

 Quaker preacher, the lecturer on chemistry and inter- 

 cessor on behalf of the rights of conscience with almost 

 all the " crowned heads " of Europe.^ Retaining through 

 life a warm attachment to the religious body in which he 

 was born, H anbury's religion was nevertheless of the 

 closet rather than the forum ; few of his friends ever 

 heard him speak on religious subjects ; and anything in 

 the shape of proselytising was altogether alien to his 

 mental constitution. Essentially a specialist, he was at 

 the same time, what the best specialist must always be, 

 an educated gentleman. 



From the time when, as a very young man, he con- 

 tributed his first essays to the Trattsactions of the Phar- 

 maceutical Society, till his death at the early age of 

 forty-nine, when a long career of usefulness seemed to be 

 before him, the object to which Hanbury set himself was 

 the clearing up of uncertain or disputed points regarding 

 the botanical origin of drugs known to the pharmaco- 

 poeias of this and other countries. Notwithstanding 

 what he and fellow-workers on the Continent have done, 

 it is surprising to find in bow great obscurity the history 

 is still involved of many medicinal substances which are 

 daily prescribed by physicians and dispensed by druggists. 

 The larger portion of the present volume is occupied 

 with papers bearing on questions of this nature ; those 

 which will probably be found of the greatest value to 

 posterity are : — " On the Different Kinds of Cardamom 

 used in Commerce," " On Liquid and Solid Storax," " On 

 the Source of Balsam of Peru," " Historical Notes on the 

 Radix galangce of Pharmacy," and " On the Determina- 

 tion of Pareira hravaP 



Hanbury's inquiries were characterised, above all 

 things, by extreme thoroughness. No amount of research, 



« Mr. Luke Howard, F.R.S., the emineut meteorologist, was also, for a 

 short time, a partner with Allen. 



