346 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



cations of physics, and the various other inlets by which 

 scientific thought filters into practical life. That would 

 be easy compared with the task of informing you how 

 you are to make the study of physics the instrument of 

 your pupil's culture ; how you are to possess 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 woodcuts ; 

 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 conscientious they 

 .may be, their written words cannot supply the place of 

 actual observation. Every fact has numerous radia- 

 tions, 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 





