452 



NA TURE 



[March 12, 1896 



but to secondar)' education generally." The work completed 

 during the past year on the County Council Farm at Hutton 

 lias been very successful, both as regards the instruction given 

 and the amount of research work carried out. It seems rather 

 anomalous that while Preston devotes no part of its share of the 

 Customs and Excise Fund to the purposes of education, yet, as 

 the report shows, the County Committee make a grant of ;^650 

 a year to the Harris Institute in that town. Surely the borough 

 authority will not abstain much longer from following so good 

 an example. 



We learn from the February number of the London Technical 

 Education Gazette, that seventeen secondary schools in dififerent 

 parts of the metropolis have been aided by grants from the 

 Technical Education Board of the London County Council. 

 These grants have been very useful in encouraging the establish- 

 ment of laboratories and science lecture-rooms in schools which 

 have hitherto been without these advantages, and in improving 

 the equipment and teaching in schools in which practical science 

 has been taught. We notice with much satisfaction that in a 

 large number of these schools physical laboratories have been 

 provided, and that every facility is being given for the study of 

 practical physics as well as chemistry. Too much stress cannot 

 be laid upon the incompleteness of that practical science teach- 

 ing which confines the student's attention to elementary qualita- 

 tive analysis, and we note that it has been already found that 

 " the influence of the Board's grants is as much apparent in the 

 character of the teaching given in the several schools as in the 

 appliances available for such teaching." The old method of 

 teaching practical chemistry is giving place " to a more rational 

 system, in which the laboratory and the lecture-room are 

 brought into close relation, and in which the importance of 

 measurement is insisted upon as the basis of all scientific work." 

 Two at least of the schools receiving aid are for girls. A 

 laboratory and lecture-room in James AUen's Girls' School, 

 Dulwich, and a laboratory for practical science and school of 

 domestic economy at the Camden School for Girls, have been 

 equipped at the cost of the Board. The London Committee 

 are, in this matter, as in so many others, setting the country 

 local authorities an example which we hope soon to see emulated. 

 The development following upon these grants can be seen at a 

 glance from the statistics collected by the Board's science 

 inspector, and published in these columns on February 13 



(P- 357). 



The cost of the new technical school at Salford, which is to 

 be shortly opened by the Duke and Duchess of York, is likely 

 to amount to ^70,000. This amount is in excess of the antici- 

 cipated cost, and the original loan of ;i^5S,ooo, sanctioned by 

 the Local Government Board, is to be augmented by a further 

 one of ;i^i3,500. Even then the difficulty of the expenses of 

 maintenance will have to be faced. The experiences of the 

 Salford Committee show only too plainly the necessity for legis- 

 lation to prevent the appropriation of accumulated funds from 

 the technical education grants of former years for ordinary 

 purposes in the district. The Technical Instruction Committee 

 of Salford had up to March 1894, been holding in reserve 

 moneys received under the Local Taxation (Customs and Excise) 

 Act of 1890, but the corporation becoming involved in financial 

 difficulties, laid hands on these moneys, which amounted to 

 ;!^ 1 2,000. It is now left to the Committee to meet a heavy 

 annual expenditure out of their revenue from the rate of a penny 

 in the pound, the fees, grants, and other sources of income. 



As a supplement to last week's account of what has been 

 done for the support of education by some of the London Livery 

 Companies, it is interesting to note the efforts in the direc- 

 tion of (probably) the only surviving provincial Company of the 

 same type — the Master, Wardens, and Commonalty of Mer- 

 chant Venturers of the City of Bristol. The supreme import- 

 ance, for a commercial and manufacturing people, of what is 

 now known as "technical instruction" seems to have been 

 realised in Bristol earlier than in most other parts of England ; 

 for as long ago as 1856 there was founded in that city the Bristol 

 Diocesan Trade School (afterwards called the Bristol Trade and 

 Mining School), for the express purpose of providing sound and 

 systematic education for the industrial classes. The school, 

 being appreciated by those for whom it was intended, soon 

 acquired a more than local reputation, and steadily grew in 

 numbers, up to the limit which its buildings and its finances 

 imposed. In 1880, when this limit had been reached, it hap- 

 pened that the Merchant Venturers — whose work of creating, 



NO. T376. VOL. 53] 



and governing for centuries, the port of Bristol was then accom- 

 plished — resolved to devote their energies for the future to the 

 furtherance of education ; and, seeing the position of the Trade 

 and Mining School, and the great value of the kind of teach- 

 ing which it supplied, agreed to adopt it. Accordingly, at an 

 outlay of some £45,000, they provided it with new buildings, 

 upon a larger site, and with a more complete equipment ; they 

 also undertook to maintain it and develop it upon existing lines ; 

 and they gave it their own name. The Merchant Venturers' 

 Technical College, as it is now called, has a junior de- 

 partment, a senior department, and a multitude of 

 evening continuation classes ; so that any boy, or young 

 woman, destined for an industrial occupation of whatever 

 kind — whether as architect, engineer, designer, chemist, dress- 

 maker, or the like — may both begin and finish his or her entire 

 education within its walls. The total number of students now 

 exceeds 2000. In keeping with the special object of the in- 

 stitution, its curriculum is limited to comparatively few of the 

 main branches of knowledge, and necessarily leaves out many 

 of the most important. It hardly touches, for instance, the 

 fascinating realm of literature, ancient and modern, or the subjects 

 of music, medicine and law ; and it ignores altogether the whole 

 range of the mental and moral sciences. But ample provision 

 for the teaching of all these exists, or can be made, in the other 

 schools and colleges which Bristol is so fortunate as to possess, 

 and thus the Merchant \'enturers are enabled to occupy, with 

 undivided attention, their own restricted field of operations, and 

 to carry out, with ever-increasing thoroughness, their scheme of 

 industrial or technical education sketched out forty years ago. 

 Not a term passes without some addition to the apparatus with 

 which their College is equipped, and hardly a session without 

 provision for some newly- recruited trade or class ; and it is an open 

 secret that, as soon as the necessary land can be acquired, the 

 extent of the buildings, and the convenience and efficiency of 

 every department, will be very largely increased. It may well 

 be supposed that no eff"ort will be spared to enable the College t<j 

 keep the lead, which it has hitherto held, in matters pertaining 

 to technical instruction, or to ensure that, in this respect, it 

 shall remain without a successful rival in the West of England. 

 The Merchant Venturers, like their brethren in London, have a 

 position to justify, a character to maintain, a distinguished past 

 which they must not disgrace ; and it is likely that, in the new 

 work to which they have set their hands, they will evince the same 

 activity and perseverance, and the same prudent liberality in 

 furnishing means for the attainment of their ends, as characterised 

 them in olden times, when their ventures were mostly for their 

 own private gain, rather than, as now, for that of the 

 community. 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS. 



American jfounial of Science, February. — Researches in 

 acoustics, by A. M. Mayer. This paper, dealing with the 

 variation of the modulus of elasticity with change of tempera- 

 ture, and the acoustic properties of aluminium, was read before 

 the British Association at the Oxford meeting. — On the improb- 

 ability of finding isolated shoals in the open sea by sailing over 

 the geographical positions in which they are charted, by G. 

 W. Littlehales. Suppose that A discovers, in the open ocean, a 

 shoal r miles in radius, and determines the geographical position 

 of its centre subject to extreme errors of /n miles in longitude 

 and n miles in latitude ; and that B, who is able to establish his 

 geographical position within the same limits of extreme error 

 as A, attempts to find the shoal again by proceeding to the 

 geographical position assigned to it by A, what is the probability 

 that he will find it? The author works out this probability 

 mathematically, and finds a general formula for it. If r = i 

 mile, and in and n = 10 miles, B would stand one chance in 

 6173 of coming within two miles of the shoal. This shows that 

 the reported non-existence of a charted shoal must be accepted 

 with great care. — The counter-twisted curl aneroid, by Carl 

 Barus. A curl aneroid, less than a metre long, provided with 

 a mirror for registry, will indicate variations of atmospheric 

 pressure of a thousandth of a millimetre of mercury, pro- 

 vided the mounting is sufficiently free from tremor, and the 

 temperature is kept constant to a few thousandths of a degree 

 during the interval of observation. The conditions are made 

 much less severe if the coiled tube, after being twisted, is kept 

 untwi.sted by a spiral spring. Effects of viscosity and rigidity 

 may be thus compensated. 



