398 
NATURE 
([Feb. 22, 1883 ; 
of that of political and social life, which, strangely enough, 
it never seems to occur to anybody to teachachild. I 
would have the history of our own country and of all the 
influences which have been brought to bear upon it, with 
incidental geography, not as a mere chronicle of reigns 
and battles, but as a chapter in the development of the 
race and the history of civilisation, Then with respect to 
zesthetic knowledge and discipline, we have happily in 
the English language one of the most magnificent store- 
houses of artistic beauty and of models in literary excel- 
_ lence which exists in the world at the present time. I | 
| the general feeling of the members of the Association. 
have said before, and I repeat it here, that if a man cannot 
get literary culture of the highest kind out of his Bible, 
and Chaucer, and Shakespeare, and Milton, and Hobbes, 
and Bishop Berkeley, to mention only a few of our illus- 
trious writers—I say if he cannot get it out of those writers, 
he cannot get it out of anything ; and I would assuredly 
devote a very large portion of the time of every English 
i " h dels of English writing | 
Sepa nescarrrul study:of the models of Enghaiaating | this is received, information will be given to the Members of the 
of such varied and wonderful kind as we possess, and 
what is still more important and still more neglected, the 
habit of using that language with precision and with force 
and with art. I fancy we are almost the only nation in 
the world who seem to think that composition comes by 
nature. The French attend to their own language, the 
Germans study theirs; but Englishmen do not seem to 
think it is worth their while. Nor would I fail to include 
in the course of study I am sketching translations of all 
the best works of antiquity or of the modern world. It 
is a very desirable thing to read Homer in Greek; but if 
you don’t happen to know Greek, the next best thing is to 
read as good a translation of it as we have recently been 
furnished with in prose. You won’t get all you would get 
from the original, but you may get a great deal, and to 
refuse to know this great deal because you cannot get all | 
| screw shaft. 
seems to be as sensible as for a hungry man to refuse 
bread because he cannot get partridge. Finally, I would 
add instruction in either music or painting, or if the child 
should be so unhappy, as sometimes happens, to have no 
faculty for ‘either of these, and no possibility of doing 
anything in an artistic sense with them, then I would see 
what could be done with literature alone; but I would 
provide in the fullest sense for the development of the 
zesthetic side of the mind. In my judgment these are all 
the essentials of education for an English child.’’ Prof. 
Huxley concluded by saying that if the educational time 
permitted, there were one or two things he should be | 
inclined to add to these essentials (which fitted an Eng- | 
lishman to go anywhere or to enter on any career) ; among 
these additional subjects he mentioned Latin and German. | 
Beyond that, let each man take up his special line. 
NOTES 
THE Emperor of Germany has raised Prof. Helmholtz to 
noble rank. 
THE two English observers, Messrs. Lawrence and Woods, 
detailed to secure photographs of the total eclipse of the sun on 
May 6, left Southampton for Panama on Saturday last. The 
operations will be exclusively photographic. The Treasury only 
determined to grant the necessary funds some fifteen days before 
the last date on which the observers could sail ; the instruments 
sent out, therefore, were most hurriedly put together ; and the 
greatest praise is due to Messrs. Hilger and Meagher for their 
work against time. 
stating the work to be done for every second from ten minutes 
before totality till ten minutes afterwards, have been sent with 
the observers. _ If all goes well more than fifty photographs will 
be secured, 
In reply to the Memorial addressed to the Council of the 
British Association on the subject of the proposed meeting of 
the Association in Canada in 1884, signed ~by 144 members of 
Detailed instructions and a time table | 
the General-Committee, Mr, Bonney states that the ‘Council of 
the British Association are fully alive to the difficulties which will 
attend the visit to Canada decided upon by the General Com- 
mittee at Southampton in August last. As this decision was 
obtained in accordance with the usual forms and does not appear 
to contravene the expres; wording of the rules of the Associa- 
tion, the Council feel bound to recognise it as a valid one, and 
believe that they would not be justified in summoning a special 
| meeting of the General Committee to reconsider the question. 
They have, however, in effect already taken steps to ascertain 
In the 
month of November last, after a consultation with Sir A. T. 
Galt, the High Commis-ioner for Canada in this country, the 
officers of the Association addressed to their intending hosts in 
Montreal a number of questions, upon the answers to which the 
success of the projected visit must greatly depend. To the-e 
questions they are now daily expecting a reply. As soon as 
Association, and inquiries made as to their willingness to visit 
Canada. The replies will enable the Council to judge whether 
it will be possible to hold a successful and fairly representative 
meeting at Montreal. 
M. RAout PicTer has recently tried, on the Lake of Geneva, 
a specimen of his ‘‘ rapid vessel,” the general idea of which was 
indicated a short time ago. The vessel is figured in Archives 
des Sciences for January, and M. Pictet gives details of the theory 
and working. With a length of about 67 feet, and a width of 
13 feet, this vessel is peculiar chiefly in having a bottom that is 
of parabolic form lengthwise, the concavity downwards; trans- 
versely the bottom is nearly straight; the sides are vertical. 
A keel reaching from about the middle of the length, incloses a 
Among other results M. Pictet shows that the 
force of traction of this vessel is always less than that of an 
ordinary vessel of the same general form and going at the same 
rate. The advantages of the parabolic curve only become 
apparent at a certain speed, depending on the width, leng h, 
and tonnage, and the parameters of the parabolic curve. The 
force of traction passes through a maximum, at a certain velocity 
for each vessel; beyond that point, the work of the motor, and 
so the expenditure of fuel, diminishes, though the speed in- 
creases. Experiment has yet to decide the linits of this 
second period. The emergence of the vessel, very small for 
small velccity, grows very quickly when a speed of 5 metres 
(say 17 feet) per second has been reached; and it converges 
rapidly towards an upper limit. The recoil of the screw for 
different velocities increases to a maximum, then constantly 
diminishes and tends to become zz/ for an infinite velocity. 
For other features of the action we must refer to the original. 
‘The engine we note proved faulty, and in several of the experi- 
ments the vessel was towed by a steamer, at velocities rising to 
| 27 kilometres (say 17 miles); when this last is reached, an 
economy of one-half is realised (growing from 16 kilometres). 
THE recent death of the Rey. Titus Coan, an aged and 
much-esteemed missionary at Hilo, Hawaii (where he laboured 
nearly forty-eight years), has been announced (Am. Fourn. Sct.). 
He tcok a deep interest in the volcanic mountain at whose foot 
| he lived, and at each eruption was generally the first on the 
ground to observe and report on the movements. Three times 
he ascended to the scenes of the eruptions connected with the 
summit crater. Though not a geologist, his accounts (many of 
them in the journal named) have always been of geological 
value. He was the principal historian of the great eruption 
of Kilauea in 1840, and the summit eruption of 1843, when 
the flow was uninterrupted for twenty-five miles and con- 
tinued six weeks, It was after the latter eruption that he 
made the very important observation (since confirmed) that 
