NATURE 



509 



THURSDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1875 



THE INAUGURATION OF THE YORKSHIRE 

 COLLEGE OF SCIENCE 



''T^HE formal opening of the College of Science at 

 J- Leeds by the Duke of Devonshire, which we briefly 

 announced last week, is an event of no mean importance 

 to the co'.mty, and of no small interest to the rest of the 

 community, inasmuch as we must regard it as another 

 indication of the great educational movement which has 

 already been experienced by Manchester, Newcastle, 

 Birmingham, and Bristol, and is beginning to be felt 

 more or less strongly in every industrial centre through- 

 out the country. This movement, as Mr. Foriter tells us, 

 is not merely to give education to the captains of in- 

 dustry ; it is to increase the culture of every individual 

 working man and working woman in the land, and to 

 give them not elementary education alone, but skilled 

 knowledge to enable them to earn their living as effi- 

 ciently as possible by affording them the key to the stores 

 of knowledge. 



It really appears that at last, in this county utterly de- 

 void of any organisation for anything but the lowest 

 education, there are persons who are gradually realising 

 the fact, the statement of which has been dinned into 

 our ears by the best informed minds for more than a 

 quarter of a century, that the industrial supremacy of 

 this country depends on other factors than natural 

 resources, mental vigour, industry, and perseverance. 

 The illustrious Liebig more than a generation ago, 

 and in the very town which witnessed the ceremony of 

 last week, warned us how impossible it was for England 

 permanently to preserve this supremacy unless she be- 

 stowed more attention on the sciences which formed the 

 basis of her chief industries. Nothing could be happier 

 than the coincidence that Dr. Playfair, who then inter- 

 preted this memorable saying of the great German philo- 

 sopher, should be present to see the Yorkshire people 

 establishing an educational organisation, which is in no 

 small degree the outcome of the counsel given to them so 

 long ago. Truly the bread cast upon the waters has 

 returned to Leeds after many days. And now let the 

 promoters of the Yorkshire College take heed to the 

 words of counsel given by the many eminent men whom 

 they invited to take part in the opening ceremony. If 

 the county is as earnest in furthering its welfare as we 

 believe it to be, the institution ought not to remain long 

 on its present limited basis : we hope and trust that the 

 opinion of its President, Lord Frederick Cavendish, that 

 to restrict the College to natural science would make it 

 " a one-legged, one-sided concern," is shared by the rest 

 of the Council. We do not want a Yorkshire College of 

 Science, but a Yorkshire College in which science will be 

 found in its proper place. It must be remembered that the 

 whole duty of these local colleges is not limited to the in- 

 struction in the particular sciences which more directly 

 relate to the manufacturing industries of the districts in 

 which they are placed ; they must be made to act as nuclei 

 for higher culture by the establishment of chairs of Art and 

 Literature. As Dr. Playfair told the people of Leeds, 

 "a College of Science, such as we are inaugurating to-day. 

 Vol. XII. — No. 311 



is admirable in itself, but it is not complete. Perhaps 

 it even focusses the light too strongly on a particular spot, 

 and for this reason it intensifies the darkness around. 

 Its directors are too enlightened men not to see this, and 

 I am sure they will aid in the co-ordination of your other 

 educational resources." We are aware that the estab- 

 lishment of an institution on so broad a basis as we have 

 indicated is a work of time and patience, but that it can 

 be accomplished, and in the face of great disadvantages, is 

 evident from the example of Owens College. There are 

 doubtless special difficulties in the case of the Yorkshire 

 College ; no John Owens has yet come to its aid with a 

 munificent endowment, nor has it the advantage of being 

 connected with an established institution in the manner 

 that the Newcastle College is affiliated to Durham, or the 

 proposed Bristol College to Oxford. 



Yorkshiremen are proverbially a hard-headed race, with 

 a keen eye to immediate practical benefits, but they must 

 have patience, not forgetting that institutions similar to 

 their own College have had their day of small things, and 

 that it has needed much money and much time before 

 their advantages have been fully realised. We have just 

 one more word of advice and caution. The wealthy 

 manufacturers who, roused by the fear of foreign compe- 

 tition and the cry for technical education, aid the strug- 

 gling institution with their money, may be too apt to 

 demand the establishment of technical classes as the 

 condition of their support ; and in consequence of the 

 outside pressure thus exerted on the government of the 

 College, it may be driven to regard such classes as 

 the main feature of the work of the professors and lec- 

 turers. 



We would counsel the College authorities to weigh well 

 the words of the gentleman whose advice they specially 

 asked. Dr. Playfair warned them against giving the Col- 

 lege too much of a technical character, at least in its 

 infancy. ** The object of education, even in a technical 

 school, is not to teach men how to use spinning jennies 

 or steam-hammers, but it is to give a cultured intelligence 

 which may be applied to work in life, whatever that may 

 be. Teach science well to the scholars, and they will 

 make the applications for themselves. Good food becomes 

 assimilated to its several purposes by digestion. Epic- 

 tetus used to say that though you feed sheep on grass, it 

 is not grass but wool which grows upon their backs. So 

 if this College teach science as abranch of human culture, 

 it will reappear as broad cloth, worsted, puddled iron, or 

 locomotives, according to the digestive capacities of the 

 Leeds manufacturers who consume it." 



BURTON'S ''ULTIMA THULE," 

 Ultima Thiilej or, a Summer in Iceland. By Richard 

 F. Burton. With Historical Introduction, Maps, and 

 Illustrations. Two vols. (Edinburgh and London : 

 W. P. Nimmo, 1875.) 



OF the 780 pages which make up these two handsome 

 volumes, only one half is occupied with an account 

 of Capt. Burton's doings in Iceland during the summer, 

 June to September 1872, which he spent there. No one, of 

 course, can conceive Capt. Burton having any temptation 

 to the production of a mere big book, and we have no 



