NA TURE 



409 



THURSDAY, MARCH i, i! 



PHYSICAL SCIENCE AND THE WOOLWICH 

 EXAMINATIONS. 



WE are glad to learn that several Members of Parlia- 

 ment are interesting themselves in this important 

 matter, and that Sir John Lubbock and Sir Henry 

 Roscoe have both put down notices of motion calling 

 attention to the changes that it is proposed to make in the 

 regulations for admission to Woolwich. We hope and 

 believe that their efforts will result in a rectification of 

 these ill-conceived regulations. 



We have already shown in our previous articles on 

 this subject how completely the new regulations fail to 

 find any justification, so far as their treatment of 

 experimental science is concerned. We have demon- 

 strated, by an examination of the professional course 

 of training which the successful cadets will go through 

 when at the Royal Military Academy, that of the subjects 

 of general education experimental science stands below 

 mathematics alone in practical importance for Woolwich 

 cadets ; whilst even a cursory inspection of the results of 

 past examinations is sufficient to reveal the hollowness of 

 the suggestion that in scientific subjects marks may be 

 easily obtained by superficial study or cram. When we 

 consider that the results of applying similar regulations 

 in the case of the Sandhurst examinations are, or ought to 

 be, familiar to the War Office authorities, it is astonish- 

 ing that their extension to the scientific branches of the 

 army should ever have been seriously contemplated. 



The deliberate adoption of this scheme for selecting 

 young men for a highly scientific profession, after the 

 experience of several years had so completely established 

 that it is eminently calculated to reduce the chances of 

 candidates of scientific power to a minimum, can only be 

 regarded as a remarkable example of official blundering. 

 The rectification of the mistake is the more imperatively 

 required because the treatment of natural science — that is, 

 of candidates whose abilities are rather scientific than 

 linguistic or mathematical — in public examinations has 

 hitherto been altogether unsuited to the real wants of 

 the age. Science in examinations being to a great 

 extent a non-paying subject, the quality or even the 

 existence of science teaching is regarded, at the best, 

 as a matter of secondary importance in many or most of 

 our schools. The question, therefore, deserves the closest 

 attention from all who hold that it is absolutely essential 

 that there shall be a steady and sure advance in the 

 standard of elementary science teaching in this country. 



In his reply to Mr. Howorth, the Secretary of State for 

 War is stated to have said that these Woolwich regula- 

 tions had been considered by a " strong Committee." It 

 would be interesting to know of whom this Committee 

 consisted, and whether it was strong from a military 

 or an educational point of view. Such information as we 

 have been able to obtain leads us to conclude that 

 it was a military Committee, and that though, as such^ 

 it was no doubt eminently fitted to come to wise con- 

 clusions on military questions — such, for example, as the 

 proper training to be given to successful cadets after 

 their admission to the Royal Military Academy — it was 

 Vol. XXXVII.— No. 957. 



by no means composed of men equally fitted by ex- 

 perience to deal with the other side of the question. It 

 is surprising to find that this important change, which 

 will profoundly affect much of the higher school work 

 of the country, was apparently decided upon with- 

 out, or almost without, consultation with those most 

 experienced in such questions This helps us to under- 

 stand how it has happened that regulations not altogether 

 unsatisfactory, and to which many places of education 

 had adapted themselves, often at considerable expense 

 and trouble, are suddenly to be displaced by others that 

 are open to the gravest objections. 



The new regulations seem to have almost every order 

 of fault. They will be unfair to the candidates, leading 

 to the rejection of those best fitted for the work to be 

 done. It is to be feared, too, that they will encourage 

 residence and study abroad, with the consequent loss of 

 the valuable moral and physical training that can be had 

 only in England. They will also act prejudicially on the 

 general tendency of school education. We hope we may 

 soon hear that better counsels have prevailed, and that 

 these unfortunate regulations are to be replaced by 

 others more in accordance with modern needs and 

 ideas. 



TEA CULTIVATION IN INDIA. 

 Die Theekuliur in Britisch-Ost-Indieti, iin fiinfzigsten 

 Jahre ihres Bestandes, Historisch, Naturwissen- 

 schaftlich, tmd Statistisch. Dr. Ottokar Feistmantel. 

 (Prague: O. Beyer, 1888.) 



THE subject of tea cultivation in India is one to which 

 innumerable writers have devoted their attention, 

 and not the least valuable portion of Dr. Feistmantel's 

 work, "Die Theekultur in Britisch-Ost-Indien," is the 

 bibliography of the subject with which, while re- 

 cording his indebtedness for much of his information 

 to many of the English and German authors enu- 

 merated, he commences his remarks. In his preface 

 he explains that in the course of an address on the 

 products and exports of British India, recently de- 

 livered by him in Prague, he alluded to the fact that 

 on the Continent of Europe tea was generally known- 

 only as either Russian or Chinese, and that it was barely 

 known that India produced a large and annually increasing 

 quantity of high-class teas, which are largely used in- 

 London for mixing with and improving China tea. The 

 correspondence which ensued when these remarks were 

 reported by the local press induced him to publish the 

 present work as the result of information he had the 

 opportunity of collecting while serving in India for eight 

 years as palaeontologist to the Geological Survey. 



It is Dr. Feistmantel's aim to place before the German- 

 speaking peoples of the Continent as complete an ex- 

 position of the conditions of the tea industry in India as 

 has already been laid before English-speaking people by 

 other writers ; and he therefore begins with an abstract 

 of the early history of the tea-plant in India, the dates 

 of its first discovery as an indigenous shrub, and its first 

 introduction into the different districts in which it is now 

 cultivated. He mentions the first export from India to 

 England in 1838 of twelve chests of tea, which sold for 

 19J. id. per pound. 



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