266 Fifth Conference 



globes round and round, finding out latitudes and 

 longitudes, and learning the names and relative posi- 

 tions of a few constellations. The fatal fault of such 

 instruction was that it did little or nothing to encour- 

 age habits of real observation, and was apt to de- 

 generate into learning lists of names. I dare say you 

 have heard Lord Avebury's story of his showing some 

 of his neighbours and servants in the country the 

 moon and a few of the wonders of the telescope on a 

 starry night, when one of his hearers said: " I do not 

 wonder, Sir John, that clever people should find out 

 the sizes and distances of the stars, and how they 

 move, but what I cannot make out is how you ever 

 could learn their 7ia7nes'\ Names, however, both in 

 astronomy and in other sciences, are constantly mis- 

 taken for things, and the learning of names is often a 

 substitute for the knowledge of realities and of scien- 

 tific facts. 



But even the poor elements of astronomy which 

 used to be taught by the professors of the " use of the 

 globes" had their value. They did something, though 

 not much, to enlarge the range of the learner's thoughts, 

 and to make him sensible of the fact that there are 

 more worlds than ours. It is pleasant to see here 

 and there, though sparsely, in this exhibition, examples 

 of models, drawings and diagrams, and simple appara- 

 tus made by scholars to illustrate the sizes and motions 

 of the heavenly bodies; but, on the whole, we must 

 admit that very few attempts are now made to include 

 any knowledge of the heavens in our schemes of in- 

 struction. It is to be feared that the reason for this 

 neglect is, that the elements of astronomy rarely form 

 any part of a school programme prescribed either by 



