i io SCIENCE AND THE WAR 



any interest in the subject must necessarily have 

 been slain once for all in me, as I am sure it was 

 in scores of others, by the way it was taught ; 

 for the instruction was confided to the ordinary 

 form-master, who doled out his questions from 

 a text-book perfunctorily used and probably 

 heartily despised by a man brought up on strict 

 classical or mathematical lines. Our manu- 

 facturer is brought up in a school of this kind, 

 and it would be a miracle if he emerged from it 

 with any respect for science. Things have 

 changed now, and for the better, as they have at 

 most of the Universities ; but we are dealing with 

 the generation of manufacturers of my age who 

 were largely responsible for the neglects now in 

 question. Well, the boy left his school and went 

 to Oxford or Cambridge, neither of which then 

 greatly encouraged science. Its followers were, 

 I believe, known as " Stinks Men." At any rate 

 it is only comparatively recently that we have 

 seen the splendid developments of to-day in those 

 ancient institutions. One relic of the ancient 

 days gives us an illuminating idea of how things 

 used to be, just as a fossil shows us the environ- 

 ment of its day. 1 Trinity College, Dublin, has 

 fine provision for scientific teaching, and a highly 

 competent staff to teach. But in its constitution 

 it shows the attitude towards science which till 

 lately informed the older Universities. 



1 Since these lines were written, this state of affairs has come 

 to an end and the first Fellow has been elected for his purely- 

 scientific attainments, in the person of the distinguished 

 geologist, Professor Joly, F.R.S. 



