SEPTEMBER 4, 1902] 
NATURE 
453 
in connection with this phenomenon that the country experienced 
almost the only few days of warm weather of the summer, but 
while the water was decidedly warmer in the north-west thin 
elsewhere, the air temperature was higher over England than 
over the south of Ireland, and still higher than in the north of 
Treland. 
RECENT EDUCATIONAL REPORTS. 
THE protracted discussions in the House of Commons, the 
numerous leading articles in the newspapers and the fre- 
quent public speeches of politicians, concerned with the subject 
of education, with which we have been provided during the past 
six months, are evidence enough that English people are at least 
beginning to be interested in the important question of the pro- 
vision made by the State for the education of its citizens. But 
interest alone is not enough, it must be intelligent ; and to 
ensure this it is important that the instructors of public opinion 
should themselves be well informed, both as to what is actually 
happening in the schools and colleges of our own country and 
as to the systems of education in other lands. For these and 
similar reasons, the special reports published from time to time 
by the Board of Education, under the editorship of Mr. Michael 
E. Sadler, the director of special inquiries, have a peculiar 
value just now; while the general reports of H.M. Inspectors 
serve admirably to remind Members of Parliament that despite 
the changes which may be necessary in our educational adminis- 
tration, good, thorough work is even now being accomplished in 
most of our State-aided schools, whether elementary or 
secondary. 
The two volumes dealing with education in the United 
States of America are concerned more with general principles 
and tendencies than with specific details as to methods of in- 
struction. Though this will detract from their value to practical 
teachers, it gives greater opportunities to insist upon the necessity 
for the possession by our legislators of proper, high ideals as to 
the function of education. As Mr. Sadler says in a paper he 
contributes to the second volume, ‘‘a national system of educa- 
tion which made money-getting its central aim would deserve 
all the contumely which history in a more enlightened future 
would be certain to heap upon it.” American educators are 
showing the world that it is possible at the same time to develop 
the higher faculties, to have a due regard to the pleasures of 
cultivated leisure, to encourage ‘‘sweetness and light,” and 
yet thoroughly to equip their young men with a knowledge of 
recent advances in pure and applied science, so that without 
difficulgy they may take an honourable part in the production of 
those nfaterial comforts without which the most cultured would 
find it hard to live. 
Two factors, among many others, preeminently contribute 
to the success of American education. In the first place, there 
is the munificence of wealthy Americans. Mr. Percy Ashley, at 
the end of his article on American universities, tabulates the 
total amount of benefactions reported during the years 1890- 
1gor. During these eleven years, very nearly twenty-three 
millions of pounds were given to higher educational institutions, 
not including libraries and museums, and more than two millions 
went to the Leland Stanford University alone. These princely 
sums are largely devoted to the encouragement of research ; as 
Mr. Ashley says :—‘‘ In all the arrangements for research work 
the United States is much under German influence ; and it is 
greatly to be regretted that England should be so far behind 
. . . In spite of the establishment in recent years of degrees 
avowedly for research by Oxford-and Cambridge, there is still no 
place where organised research work is carried on in England 
. . . It must be said that the research work of the American 
universities is probably the part of their activity most worthy of 
study by those interested in academic progress in England. It 
must be admitted, however, that the material attractions to 
research and an academic career are far stronger in the United 
States than here.” 
1 ‘Special Reports on Educational Subjects.’ 
the United States of America.” Part i. Pp. 538. 
“Education in the United States of America.’”” Part ii. 
2s. 6d. (Eyre and Spottiswoode.) 
““General Reports of H.M. Inspectors on Elementary Schools and 
Training Colleges for the year rgor.’’ Pp, 234. (Eyre and Spottis- 
Vol. x. ‘‘ Education in 
Price 2s. 3¢. Vol. xi. 
Pp. 624. Price 
woode.) Price 1s. 
‘General Reports of H.M. Inspectors on Science and Art Schools 
and Classes and Evening Schools.” Pp. 98. (Eyre and Spottiswoode.) 
Price 54d. 
NO. 1714. VOL. 66] 
The second factor in the success of American education to 
which reference has been made is the recognition of the exist- 
ence of a science, as well as anart, of education. Sir Joshua 
Fitch points out in his introductory paper that ‘* America may 
be regarded as a laboratory in which educational experiments 
are being tried on a great scale, under conditions exceptionally 
favourable to the encouragement of inventiveness and fresh 
enthusiasm, and to the discovery of new methods and new 
truths.” The experimenters are, moreover, well trained for their 
work, There is little scepticism as to the value of training for 
teachers in the minds of American authorities, and some idea of 
the pains taken to make the training as helpful and practical as 
possible can be obtained from Dr. Russell’s account of the 
admirable Teacher’s College of Columbia University, included 
in Part i. of the report. Among the numerous proofs, con- 
tained in these pages, of the success attained by the teachers 
proceeding from American training colleges, President Hadley s 
opinion may be quoted :—‘‘Our best American schools of 
technology are no longer places for shop work, but places for 
the training of thinkers—of men who may not know how to do 
the particular things which will first be wanted of them, but 
who are in possession of that general knowledge which will 
enable them to learn more thoroughly the real bearings of any 
new problem as it arises. They have become less technical 
and more scientific.” 
The space available allows only the briefest reference to 
the general reports of H.M. Inspectors. Attention must, 
however, be called to the remarks of Mr. Pullinger, Chief 
Inspector of science and art schools in the northern division 
of England, on the work of evening continuation schools. He 
finds that many of the pupils in these schools ‘‘come for 
warmth, for the comforts of an attractive, well-lighted room, for 
the monthly lantern lectures and for the free trip to Blackpool 
at the end of the session.” The schools have been variously 
described as ‘‘ gather-’em-in-at-any-price-schools” and as ‘“‘a 
sort of shelter for homeless boys and girls.” Mir. Pulkinger 
wishes ‘‘to state emphatically that the supply of really educa- 
tional night schools is most inadequate.” When it is remem- 
bered that the evening classes of our technical schools have 
largely to rely upon the preliminary training given to their 
students at these evening continuation schools, the immediate 
necessity for their improvement becomes evident, and it is to be 
hoped that the Board of Education will refuse its grants to all 
schools where the chief aim is recreative. { 
SNOW-WAVES AND SNOW-DRIFTS.1 
THE primary object of a visit to Canada at the end of 1900 
was to continue the investigation of terrestrial surface waves’ 
and wave-like surfaces, without, however, confining attention 
entirely to the study of such forms or motions of the snow as 
might be wave-like in character. 
In Canada a geographical distribution of the kinds of snow- 
was noticed. Near Montreal the snow was, on the whole, only- 
moderately dry, and during December did not differ very much, 
from what wasseenin Scotland, on the Pentland Hills and near 
Grantown-on-Spey, during February, 1900, except that the 
freshly fallen flakes did not cling together to form mottling and 
rippling. The forms of the snow-drifts, or banks, in the 
neighbourhood of obstacles were not very dissimilar. The 
same general character of snow was observed as far west as 
Port Arthur, 1000 miles by rail from Montreal, the surface of 
the snow being generally soft. Near Winnipeg and westwards, 
at least as far as Medicine Hat, the appearance of the snow- 
banks accumulated in. the neighbourhood of obstacles was 
strikingly different. Here the snow was almost perfectly dry and 
the snowfall light. The prairie was often swept quite bare ot 
snow in the neighbourhood of the banks, and the surface of the 
snow on the prairie was generally hard and rough. Butvfor its 
whiteness, the landscape resembled a desert with low isolated 
sand-hills more than a snow-scene in England. Much of this 
snow was granular, like sand, as the result of processes which it 
had undergone since its deposition. 
On reaching the Rockies, the snow was seen to resemble 
more that of eastern Canada, but afterwards it became, 
apparently, still more moist, so that, in the next range, the 
1 Abridged from a paper by Dr. Vaughan Cornish, read before the Geo- 
graphical Society on May 12 and published in the August number of tle 
Geographical Journal. 
