386 
NATOTRE 
[JUNE II, 1914 
ASSOCIATION OF) TEACHERS IN 
PECHNICAT Gi STILO TIONS: 
iif HE eighth annual conference of the Association of 
Teachers in Technical Institutions was held at 
the Central Technical School, Liverpool, during Whit- 
suntide, and was very successful from every point of 
view. 
In the course of his presidential address Mr. P. 
Abbott reviewed the recent developments in educational 
and professional matters. He submitted that the 
education of the adolescent was the first problem of 
the century, and one closely associated with the 
future of technical education. The State must recog- 
nise its responsibility for the complete education of 
the youth; it had so far failed in its duty by bringing 
the education of the child to a dead end at the age 
of thirteen or fourteen. It was not with our elemen- 
tary education that the fault was to be found. There 
must be an extension of the age of full-time instruction 
to fourteen or fifteen, followed by compulsory part- 
time instruction to eighteen or twenty, aided by com- 
pulsion on employers to diminish the hours of work 
to a corresponding degree. The Denman Bill now 
before Parliament would be welcomed as a step for- 
ward, giving, as it does, power to the local authority 
to extend the leaving age to fifteen, to compel attend- 
ance at continuation classes to sixteen, to restrict 
hours of child labour, and to restrict street trading 
for young people. The Bill was defective in its per- 
missive qualities, but represented an advance in educa- 
tional reform. 
We were in the midst of a movement to free tech- 
nical education from the thraldom of external exam- 
inations the results of which, as the President of the 
Board of Education had felicitously expressed it, 
might be called ‘‘ snap-judgments.”” The true function 
of an examination should be one of several factors— 
attendance, home work, laboratory work, etc.—by 
means of which the teacher could satisfy himself that 
the pupil had worked satisfactorily through the 
course. It is not the examination that matters: it is 
the course that is all-important, and the training 
received during the course. 
In an age of continuous progress and change it was 
essential that technical education should possess 
elasticity, flexibility, and adaptability. If teachers 
were expected to mould their work to the requirements 
of a cast-iron syllabus—such as obtained wherever 
external examinations prevailed—these properties could 
not exist. 
It was to the credit of the Board of Education that 
it had taken the initiative by abolishing some of its 
own external examinations. Some remain, and _ it 
was difficult to see what good was obtained by their 
retention. Unfortunately, the abolition of the Board’s 
examinations had induced the growth of certain unions 
of institutions so far beyond their original and osten- 
sible purpose, that they were seeking to impose their 
systems of external examinations upon technical insti- 
tutions and to deprive them of that freedom so neces- 
sary for the proper development of their work. The 
examinations of such bodies were the worst kind of 
external examinations; and these unions, which 
jealously exclude the practising teacher from their 
councils, had become the attractive centres of those 
who still cling to the fallacy that external examina- 
tions are an integral part of technical education. No 
svstem of external examination prevails in America, 
Germany, France, Austria, or Switzerland, and yet 
their technical education is so highly efficient that 
the results cause apprehension in our British indus- 
tries. 
Papers on internal examinations were read by Prof. 
Haldane Gee, and Messrs. Harrison, Bower, and 
NO. 2328, VOL. 93] 
THE 
Small. Mr. W. Hewitt, the director of technical edu- 
cation for Liverpool, read an interesting paper on a 
retrospective glance at the rise of scientific and tech- 
nical education in England. 
Resolutions welcoming the formation of the 
Teachers’ Register and approving the report of the 
Departmental Committee on the. superannuation of 
secondary and technical teachers were carried unani- 
mously, as were those welcoming the Denman Bill, 
and advocating the formation of advisory boards com- 
posed of representatives of teachers, local authorities, 
inspectors, employers, and employees, to draw up 
courses of work, and to assist institutions in the con- 
duct of their internal examinations. 
DEVONIAN OF MARYLAND. 
HE three volumes before us comprise, in the first 
volume, an introduction on the general relations 
of the Devonian (67 pp.), an account of the Lower 
Devonian strata, their stratigraphy (122 pp.), and their 
palzontology (322 pp-), with descriptions of all the 
fossils, whether new or previously known 
The second volume treats of the Middle and Upper 
Devonian, the stratigraphy of the former occupying 
II4 pp. and its paleontology 224 pp. The Upper 
Devonian stratigraphy occupies 196 pp., and the de- 
scriptions of the fossils 165 pp. The third volume is 
filled with plates, seventy-three in number, showing 
all the species which have been found in the Devonian 
of Maryland. 
It will be seen, therefore, that a large amount of 
space is given to the descriptions and figures of fossils. 
The stratigraphy is described from a purely scientific 
point of view; there is no chapter on economics, but 
perhaps that part of the subject is reserved for a 
special memoir. 
The introductory chapter includes a section on the 
palzogeography of the Devonian in North America, 
with eight maps of successive phases, contributed by 
Dr. Ch. Schuchert, but this seems somewhat out of 
place; for the Appalachian portion of Maryland is very 
narrow, and includes but a very small part of the 
long Devonian outcrop in the range, so that as the 
author himself says, ‘if restricted to maps of the > 
State, the palaogeography of Maryland would teach 
very little.” In other words, the State does not 
furnish any basis for such restorations; moreover, 
Dr. Schuchert’s method of restoring ancient lands 
and seas are very different from those employed in 
Europe. 
The authors of this memoir review the classification 
of the Devonian in America; they divide the Lower 
Devonian into two stages, the Helderberg (limestones) 
and the Oriskany (sandstone and shale), this series 
being only about 7oo ft. thick. The Middle Devonian 
consists mainly of shales, in three divisions—the 
Onondaga Shale, the Marcellus Shale, and the 
Hamilton Beds—the average thickness being 1600 ft. 
The Upper Devonian consists of two different types 
of sediment, a lower marine type, which they call the 
Jennings formation, and an upper “‘ continental”’ type, 
called the Catskill formation. The former is com- 
posed of variously coloured shales and sandstones, and 
is from 4000 to 4800 ft. thick, the latter of red and 
grey standstones and shales, from 2000 to 3800 ft, in 
which no fossils have yet been found. 
From the above it will be seen that the Appalachian 
Lower Devonian is a concentrated and largely cal- 
careous formation, the Middle Series of a normal 
varied composition, while the Upper (though marine) 
Text. 
1 © Maryland Geological Survey.” Middle and Upper Devonian. 
Pp. 720+vi plates. Lower Devonian. Text. Pp. 560+xvi plates. 
Rene Plates xvii-Ixxiii. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 
TQ13- 
