OcTOBER 19, 1916] 
common standard for entrance to the separate univer- 
sities. The various universities are represented on 
the board, and about five practical teachers are. co- 
opted, so that the schools and universities are kept in 
touch with one another. According to the Morning 
Post of October 13, Birmingham University is to be 
included in the operations of the board, and thus 
another step is taken in the direction of securing a 
uniform standard for entrance to a university. We 
also learn from our contemporary that the Vice-Chan- 
cellor of Liverpool University, who is the chairman of 
the Joint Board, stated at a special meeting of the 
Liverpool University Court on October 12 that the 
University authorities at Bristol proposed recently 
that the Bristol University should be included in the 
scheme, but a final decision had been postponed until 
after the war. 
Aw address by Sir Henry A. Miers on ‘‘ The Place of 
Science in Education” is printed in Education for 
September 15. In outline the views expressed may 
be summarised as follows:—In elementary schools 
science can be little more than common-sense think- 
ing about, and intelligent interest in, the ordinary 
events of everyday life, the main aim being to en- 
courage a feeling of the necessity for personal trial 
and effort in understanding what is seen and done. 
In secondary schools there should be a systematic 
course of experiments, especially in the physics and 
chemistry of ordinary life, in order to encourage a 
habit of reasoning from what has been observed. This 
systematic course should be preceded by an introduc- 
tory course dealing with ‘scientific facts and ideas. All 
the work here outlined should precede the division of the 
school into ‘moderns ”’ and ‘‘classics."’ On the modern 
side real scientific training is obtained from the labora- 
tory work which becomes essential, but on the elassical 
side science might well deal with general principles 
through the history of science and discovery, the whole 
subject being taught in language of a literary char- 
acter freed from technical phraseology. Such a 
scheme involves the teaching of general elementary 
science in the preparatory schools. 
In the Fortnightly Review for October the subject 
of science and the réle to be assigned to it in the 
curriculum of the higher schools and universities is 
considered in a suggestive article entitled ‘‘ Education 
To-day and To-morrow,” by Mr. P. E. Matheson. 
Reference is made to the manifesto issued a few 
months-ago pleading for a larger infusion of scientific 
knowledge into the public service, and it is suggested 
that whilst the critics have made good their complaints 
of serious defects in our war administration some 
of the criticisms are to be met by other means than 
educational reform, as, for example, the conversion 
of men of business to the belief that scientific research 
pays. Mr. Matheson admits that unless we have mor 
science in the schools we shall perish. But it is de- 
clared that we are up against faults of character and 
a disbelief in the value of disciplined intelligence. Yet 
we cannot hope for a cure for these defects either in 
respect of employers or of persons in the higher ser- 
vice of the State unless it be through the schools and 
as a result of systematised training, not only in 
languages, history, literature, and mathematics, but 
also in the facts and potentialities of scientific know- 
ledge, together with the due training of hand and eye, 
and accompanied by those formative agencies which 
promote self-reliance and sterling character. The 
article is a welcome indication of a more liberal atti- 
tude towards the claims of science in the schools and 
universities. 
THE annual congress of the Textile Institute, which 
met at Leeds on October 13, was in the main con- 
NO. 2451, VOL. 98] 
NATURE 
143°. 
cerned with the question of scientific research in the 
application to the needs of the textile industry. Much 
has been done of late years in the encouragement of 
research in the great textile schools of Manchester. 
for cotton goods, and in those of Leeds and Bradford 
for woollen and other animal fibres, but there is still 
to lament the indifference of manufacturers to the fruit 
of such research and ito the importance and value of 
skilled, scientific labour. Dr. Sadler, in welcoming the 
delegates, pleaded for better appreciation on the part 
of manufacturers, and for a higher scale of remunera- 
tion for those engaged in research in our universities 
and in the technical colleges attached thereto. When 
shall we have an English example such as that of the 
firm of Zeiss, in Jena, which in the course of years 
has contributed considerably more than 100,000. to the 
University of Jena as a mark of its appreciation of the 
value of the seientific assistance it has received there- 
from? It is not merely in the adoption of ingenious 
mechanical contrivances to displace hand labour and 
so to increase production, the invention of which is 
shared by the textile-producing nations, but the ques- 
tion goes far deeper than this, in the closer investiga- 
tion of the fibres with a view to their more successful 
treatment; in the discovery and scientific manipulation 
of new fibres, even to the production of artificial fibres ; 
and in the skilful adaptation of material, hitherto re- 
garded as waste, to the production of saleable goods. 
In the latter aspect of the question the superior chem- 
ical training and skill of our foreign competitors on 
the Continent have enabled them to compete most seri- 
ously with important branches of our textile trade, 
especially in respect of the dyeing and finishing of 
textile goods. The future of the coal-tar industry was 
the subject of an address by Prof. A. G. Perkin, wir 
maintained that the production of synthetic dyes, in 
which Germany had outdistanced this country so com- 
pletely, wds due to the neglect of the manufacturer, 
the chemist, and of the technical schools. We needed, 
said Mr. J. H. Lester, of Manchester, a better organisa- 
tion of industrial education, research and co-operative 
agencies of all concerned on scientific lines, in order 
to ensure the maintenance and progress of our indus- 
tries. There was not, said another speaker, Dr. M. O. 
Forster, a sufficient supply here of well-educated, clear- 
brained, intelligent young men of sound character and 
real perseverance in the chemical world. 
Tue attention which is being directed to educational 
topics in the public utterances of men distinguished 
in various forms of national activity is, it may be 
hoped, an indication that the importance of a sound 
and well-balanced system of national education in this 
country is beginning to be understood. On October 
11 Lord Haldane delivered the first of a series of 
lectures on after-war problems, arranged by a joint 
committee of Birmingham University and the 
Workers’ Educational Association. He said it was his 
wish to devote his remaining days to being a mis- 
sionary on the great question of education. We re- 
member, however, that though, when president of the 
British Science Guild, he was an advocate of increased 
attention to education and science by the State, he did 
little, when he possessed political power, to see that 
the nation was given the fullest scientific and educa- 
tional equipment. In his address on October 11 he 
maintained that what we want is training, and it is 
the mental training of the future generation that is 
going to count. When peace comes, he con- 
tinued, we shall hear no more in Germany 
about 16-in. guns, but a great .deal about continuation 
schools. The Germans are training up a generation 
of skilled workmen with whom we cannot compete. 
We must take care to train the children of our work- 
ing classes in at least as good a way as the Germans 
