Sept. 21, 1883.] 



♦ KNOV/LEDGE ♦ 



177 



J^ MAGAZINE orSGIENCE ^ 



fe PLAmUfWORDED -£XACTi:( DESCRIBED^ 



LONDON: FRIDAY, SEPT. 21, 1883. 



Contents of No. 99. 



FAGB 



Oar Boya at School. By E. A. 



Proctor 177 



The Sun in a Three-Inch Telescope. 



(//(«».) ByF.E.A.S 177 



The Fiaheriea EihibitioQ. (Illm.) 



By John Ernest Ady 179 



Tricycles in 1883 : Small v. Large 



Wheels. By John Browning 181 



The Birth arid Growth of Myth. 



(/««».) By Edward Clodd I>i2 



Sun Views of Great Britain and the 



Earth. (llUs.) By E. A. Proctor 18i 



PAOB 



Notes on Punctuation. By E. A. 



Proctor 188 



Sea-Anemones. IV. The Daisy. 



(Illiui.) By Thomas Kimber 187 



Jack Ketch. By E. A. Proctor 188 



Eclitorial Gossip 189 



Eeviews ; Our American Cousins ... 190 

 COERBSPONDKNCE : Visual Pheno- 

 menon — Colours of Flowers — 

 Wart Charming — Deaf Cats — 



Letters Eeceiyed 130 



Our Chess Column 190 



OUR BOYS AT SCHOOL. 



By Richard A. Proctor. 



OUR youngsters are returning to their schools, where 

 they are to be taught, besides those subjects which 

 appear in school prospectuses, etc., many things which are 

 not so generally mentioned. A lad may be under an Arnold 

 or a Temple, and learn either directly or indirectly from the 

 example and precept of his masters, to be manly and 

 honest, generous, truthful, and brave. If his own nature 

 unfortunately does not predispose him to good, he yet finds 

 himself surrounded by an atmosphere of honesty and gene- 

 rosity, and breathing it is purified and strengthened. But 

 all our boys are not so fortunate. They may be under 

 head-masters who are weak or worse, who let the 

 masters with whom the boys come more into contact 

 be cruel and vindictive, mean, unfair, and false. Men 

 speak of schools often as if their boys were not likely to 

 be injured in character by weak or bad masters. A 

 generous manly boy may escape the evil influences, direct 

 and indirect, which .such masters (whether headmasters or 

 not) necessarily exert. But he has to breathe an uncon- 

 genial atmosphere. For, where masters are dishonest, a 

 dishonest tone soon begins to prevail among the boys. 

 Honesty is at a discount in such places ; dishonesty pays : 

 it is not in human nature, at least in boys' nature that 

 among boys so placed the prevalent tone should not ere 

 long become dishonest. 



Fathers should talk to their boys over such matters, 

 not to listen to mere faultfinding, but to find in converse 

 with them what sort of tone prevails among their fellows. 

 Of course with many boys such a course fails. But an 

 honest manly boy, who regards Jiis father as a friend not as 

 " the governor," will very soon show, more clearly than he 

 himself perhaps imagines, the nature of his school sur- 

 roundings. One docs not find that a boy worth anything 

 objects to strict if honest discipline. 1 know that my own 

 boys talk with enthusiasm of the strictest of the schools at 

 which they have lieen placed. Go on to talk with them of 

 their school life there, and you presently find that the 

 manly toiu! of the masters was reflected among the boys. 

 Lying and nuibbling, cruelty and treachery took no root 



in a soil so unsuited to them. A boy that can talk 

 of even punishment as "fair," and of his schoolmates- 

 as "good fellows," gives the highest possible praise 

 to the masters of his school, and specially to the 

 headmaster from whom as a rule the rest take their 

 tone. If you send a boy who has been in such a school to 

 one where vindictive ill-tempered and dishonest masters 

 are allowed their own way, where boys are taught by 

 example to give way to their passions, to be treacherous, 

 cruel, and mean, you will very soon learn from him (if you 

 are sensible enough to take interest in his talk of school 

 life) the disgust with which he notes the difference. It is 

 singular, too, how along with falsehood and meanness, im- 

 purity and profanity prevail where the tone among the 

 masters is mean or false, where the better sort are outnum- 

 bered by the worse and too weak to make a manlier tone 

 prevail. Boys who have been at such a school as I have 

 described above, speak with as much contempt of swearing 

 and foul language, as of sneaking or lying : but all these 

 faults flourish as in a kindred soil, where masters are vin- 

 dictive and dishonest. This too may sometimes be seen 

 even at schools where e.denmUi/ a specially religious tone 

 prevails. 



Unfortunately the masters in our schools are not tested 

 or examined at all as to their fitness for the most important 

 part of their work. We know that masters set to teach 

 mathematics, classics, modern languages, and so forth, have 

 a certain degree of familiarity with these subjects ; for they 

 have passed certain examinations in them. But we have 

 no means of knowing beforehand that a master who may 

 have chief or sole charge of our boys at school has learned 

 to control his temper as well as to construe Greek and 

 Iiatin, to teach honesty by his example as eftectively as he 

 may be able to deal with mathematical examples on the 

 blackboard, and to be fair and just as well as to 

 be a ready speaker in French and German. School- 

 boys are often full of tricks, but chiefly when 

 their masters set them the example. Parents should 

 if possible learn what is the tone among the boys at a 

 school before they send their boys there. Though there 

 can be no public examinations to test this, inquiry among 

 the boys will often disclose a good deal. But if previous 

 inquiry has not been possible, friendly talk with sons about 

 their school life will soon show any one who understands 

 boys' ways the real position of afl'airs. If there are many 

 " mean fellows " among the boys, fellows who let others be 

 punished for their offences, who cringe when they are not 

 bullying and bully when they are not cringing, be sure 

 there is something wrong among the masters. Such 

 evidence is far better than actual complaints of unfairness 

 on the masters' part, — for boys, like men, may complain 

 without cause. But among a given number of boys there 

 will always be a large proportion whose characters take 

 their tone from the masters' : they will be among the good 

 fellows if the masters help them that way ; but they will 

 sink into the ranks of the bad fellows, (sneaks, bullies, and 

 cowards) if the masters are of that kind. 



THE SUN IN A THREE-INCH 

 TELESCOPE. 



By A Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. 



SO far our observations have been all made by night : it 

 now only remains to show what may be done with a 

 three-inch telescope while the sun is above the horizon. 

 Naturally the ruler of our planetary system, our great 

 centre of light and heat, the Sun himself, is the first object 



