July 15. 1875] 



NATURE 



203 



they run the risk of being wholly lost— unless inde- 

 pendently discovered. But he has not time to draw them 

 up with the last possible improvements, nor to publish 

 that Treatise on Light and Sound which we all so eagerly 

 expect. Hence the world has to wait while the author 

 devotes his powers to work which a clerk could do nearly 

 as well ! 



Of these later papers, however, that " On the Long 

 Spectrum of the Electric Light,",,and,^particularly those 

 on the " Absorption Spectrum of Blood," are of very great 

 value, the latter especially for their physiological appli- 

 cations. 



We must not omit to mention that , partly in conjunc- 

 tion with the late Mr. Vernon Harcourt, Stokes has made 

 a most valuable experimental inquiry into what is called 

 Irrationality of Dispersion, chiefly with a view to the 

 further improvement of achromatic telescopes. 



He has also proved, by very exact measurements, that 

 the wave-surface for the extraordinary ray in uniaxal 

 crystals is (at least to the degree of accuracy of his expe- 

 riments) rigorously an ellipsoid of revolution. From the 

 theoretical point of view this is a result of extreme im- 

 portance ; and it is a happy illustration of what we have 

 already said as to the conjunction in Stokes of the expe- 

 rimenter and the mathematician. 



Several of his papers are devoted to the extraordinary 

 and, at least at first sight, apparently incongruous proper- 

 ties of the Luminiferous Ether— more especially with the 

 view of explaining (on the Undulatory Theory) the ob- 

 served Law of the Aberration of Light. He has also 

 reaped an early harvest from the even now promising 

 field of the connection between Absorption and quasi- 

 metallic Reflection of Light — and has furnished the 

 student with an admirably simple investigation of the 

 Conduction of Heat in Crystals. 



It is quite possible that, in hurriedly jotting down our 

 impressions and recollections of Stores' work, we may 

 liave omitted something of even greater value than we 

 have recorded. But if so, does the fact not show the 

 absolute necessity that exists for a reprint of all Stokes' 

 works, collected alike from the almost inaccessible Cam- 

 bridge Philosophical Transactions, the ponderous Philo- 

 sophical Transactions, &c., no less than from the Sitzungs- 

 berichte of the Imperial Academy of Vienna, in which we 

 find Stokes suggesting a preservative for miners against 

 the deadly vapour of mercury ? 



Stokes was President of the British Association at the 



Exeter meeting in 1869. The Address he then delivered 



was a thoroughly excellent and appropriate one ; and its 



modest but firm concluding paragraphs are well calculated 



I to reassure those who may have been perplexed or puzzled 



I by the quasi-scientific materialism of the present day. 



P. G. Tait 



SCIENCE EDUCATION FROM BELOW 



''y HE Science Department of the Committee of Council 

 -L on Education was instituted twenty-two years ago. 

 At that time the general public was far from being alive 

 to its advantages, and for the first seven years it achieved 

 VLiy little. The second term of seven years showed a 

 considerable increase in the number of science schools 

 throughout the country ; but it was onlv_during the third 



septennial period (1867 to 1874) that the importance of 

 such an educational agency became in any sense duly 

 appreciated ; and it is not too much to say that it is now 

 one of the most important scientific organisations in this 

 or any country. 



Still, in the Government schools as elsewhere, science 

 teaching hitherto has had uphill work, nor must we 

 delude ourselves with the pleasing idea that the road 

 is now all smooth and level. It is true that for some 

 years past the extension of education in this direction 

 has| been a popular cry, and a good deal of poHtical 

 capital has been made of it. The international ex- 

 hibitions have been mainly at the bottom of this ; and 

 one of the great benefits derived from those occasions 

 of friendly rivalry has been the diminution of that 

 self-satisfaction which is the greatest bar to progress. 

 Economists have reminded us that we have been relying 

 upon our physical advantages as a nation, rather than the 

 intelligence of our people, in our competition with the 

 rest of the world, and that if we are to maintain our 

 supremacy we must not be behind other nations in the 

 practical applications of knowledge. The argument goes 

 home readily enough to a commercial people, but it is one 

 thing to admit the fact, and another to apply the remedy. 

 The majority of the upper class, from the circumstances 

 of their position and education, are indifferent to the 

 matter. It is foreign to the idea of our older Universities 

 and public schools ; and these have exercised, and still 

 continue to exercise, a direct influence over the middle- 

 class schools. True, the number of professional chairs 

 is on the increase, and opportunities are now afforded 

 of practical study in physical and chemical laboratories ; 

 but it cannot be pretended that these studies yet take their 

 proper rank amongst the rest. The inferior educational 

 establishments naturally take their cue from the superior 

 ones ; indeed, they do so almost as a matter of necessity. 

 They have not only to please the public, but the masters 

 can only impart to their scholars the knowledge they them- 

 selves possess ; and until on the one hand it be required 

 that the pupils should be taught science, and on the other 

 the masters find it to be an indispensable portion of their 

 educational course, the progress of these studies in private 

 schools will be but slow. In our large towns special 

 teachers can be had for the purpose, but as a fact they 

 are discouraged, the subjects they teach being generally 

 regarded as extras and reduced to a minimum so as not 

 to interfere with the regular routine of the school and the 

 work of the resident masters. So long as the time of the 

 boys is to be wasted in making wretched Latin verses, and 

 the amount of their learning is to be measured by the 

 retentiveness of their memory rather than by how much 

 they understand, the hope of progress in this quarter 

 must inevitably be small. 



The operations of the Government department have, 

 however, no direct bearing upon any such schools, unless 

 the principals choose to avail themselves of it as an 

 examining body ; but we believe the indirect influence to 

 be already considerable, and likely to become more so in 

 the course of the next few years. Nothing:^will tend to 

 arouse'the proprietors of our boarding schools throughout 

 the land to the necessity of improving both the quantity 

 and quality of the instruction given in them, more than 

 the upward pressure that will be exerted by those who 



