74 



NA TURE 



[November 19,1908 



taken in these matters in Australia. The Royal 

 Societies of South Australia and New South Wales, 

 the advisory committee re Fisheries and Game Acts 

 in Victoria, and the Linnean, Zoological, and Animals' 

 Protection Societies of New South Wales are all takingf 

 an active part in furthering the good cause. An 

 influential deputation, headed by Prof. W. Baldwin 

 Spencer, F.R.S., has already waited upon the Prime 

 Minister of the Commonwealth, on August 4, in 

 reg'ard to the prohibition of the exportation of the 

 skins and plumes of Australian birds, and was most 

 favourably received. It must not be supposed, of 

 course, that nothing has already been done to secure 

 the preservation of the native fauna of Australia ; 

 this is bv no means the case. Some of the most 

 interesting animals, such as the platypus and the 

 Ivre bird, have, we believe, been more or less pro- 

 tected for a long time, but it is felt, and rig-htly, that 

 existing legislation is not sufficient, and that if the 

 native fauna is not to disappear in the near future, 

 much more vigorous action must be taken. We wish 

 ihs new movement in this direction every success, 

 and cannot doubt that it will be followed by excellent 

 results. .Arthur Dendv. 



VROF. WU.U.Ul EDWARD AYRTOS, l-.RS. 



ON Sunday, November 8, Prof. .Vyrton died at 

 the age of sixty-one. During the last four 

 years he was in danger on account of excessive blood- 

 pressure. The immediate cause of death was in- 

 lluenza, followed by bronchitis and heart failure. 



He was the son of an able barrister and the 

 nephew of the Rt. Hon. .Acton .Ayrton, a Minister in 

 Gladstone's (government from i86g to 1874. I have 

 before me the history of the .Ayrton family for the 

 last three hundred years, a family of able lawyers, 

 musicians, surg'eons, clergymen, university dons, and 

 schoolmasters. He went to I'niversity College 

 .School, London, where he gained numerous prizes; at 

 University College he fjained the .\ndrews exhibition 

 in 1865 and the Andrews scholarship in 1866. He 

 passed the first n..A. examination with honours, and 

 then became a pupil of Lord Kelvin in preparation 

 for the Indian Telegraph .Service. His eulogistic 

 account of how Lord Kelvin dealt with his students, 

 published in the Times about the bcg'inning of this 

 year, was greatly praised in Nati'RE a short time 

 ag'O. In style and force it will compare favourably 

 with anything written in the English language. 

 He was not only a fine writer, he was also a brilliant 

 speaker. He seldom needed notes in speaking. 

 'I'Wenty years ago, at the Paris Exhibition, he g.ave 

 a long lecture in French, using no notes, and French 

 critics described it as being nearly perfect in style 

 and enunciation. In India he did good work with 

 the late Mr. Schwendler, and became electrical 

 superintendent of the Telegraph Department. In 

 1872-3 he was on special duty in England, and 

 acted also for Lord Kelvin anil Prof. Jenkin, the 

 engineers of the Great \\'estern Telegraph Cable. 

 From 1873 to 1878 he was professor of natural 

 ])hilosophy and instructor in telegraphy in the 

 Imperial College of Engineering, Tokio, Japan. 



1 gave a short account of .Ayrton 's Japanese labora- 

 tory in a paper read before the Society of .Arts in 

 January, 1880. I venture to think that nobody in- 

 terested in the history of scientific education can 

 afford to neglect that paper. It describes the educa- 

 tional ideas which had gradually been developed in 

 Japan. .At (Glasgow and Cambridge and Berlin 

 there were three great personalities, but, except for 

 these, the laboratories of Kelvin, of Maxwell, and of 



NO. 2038, VOL. 79] 



Hclmholtz were not to be mentioned in comparison 

 with that of .Ayrton. When I went to Japan in 1875, 

 what I found were fine buildings, splendid apparatus, 

 carefully chosen and often designed by himself, and 

 earnest, diligent students; I found also a never- 

 resting, energetic, keen-eyed chief of great originality 

 and individuality. It is no wonder that Maxwell 

 jestingly said that the electrical centre of gravity had 

 shifted towards Japan. It must be remembered that 

 at that time there were not half-a-dozen people in 

 Great Britain who had experimented in electricity. 



Before 1875 he had published papers on telegraphy ; 

 after 1875 his investigations were mainly on elec- 

 trical phenomena, sometimes without, but oftener 

 with, a practical bearing on engineering. 



From 1879 to 1884 .Ayrton was professor of ap- 

 plied physics at the City and Guilds Technical Col- 

 lege, Finsbury. It may already be forgotten that 

 the system of instruction created there was radically 

 different from anything which previously existed. It 

 is now to be found in every technical college of this 

 country. .Students learnt by actually doing things in 

 the laboratories and workshops. The most im- 

 portant thing leading to success was that there were 

 no outside examiners. Hitherto professors had 

 merely shown experiments at the lecture table. In 

 one or two mechanical laboratories a few students 

 looked on whilst the professor broke specimens with 

 a 200-ton testing-machine or made tests on a steam 

 engine. Only a few volunteer students had a chance 

 of making experiments in physics anywhere. Ayrton 

 gave interesting work to all students, and induced 

 them to think things out for themselves. The 

 motors and dynamos and other contrivances which 

 were tested were not so small as to be toys, and 

 they were not so large but that they could be left 

 in charge of the average student without fear of 

 disaster. The preliminary work was particularly 

 Ayrton's invention, and as to this his book on 

 Practical Electricity ought to be consulted. He said : — 

 in the study of mechanics and other parts of .science 

 we deal with weight, inertia, stress, colour, &c., and 

 a boy's senses have made such things tangible. But 

 in electricity we deal with something almost abstract, 

 and there must be a regular training which will 

 make the things which we call current and voltage 

 and resistance and magnetic induction just as 

 tangible to the student as weight is. 



Again, .Ayrton never tried to create the ]ierfect 

 engineer. He aimed at creating a learner, a person 

 with developed common sense, a man who would 

 learn engineering when he had the chance of prac- 

 tice, a man whose education would go on until he 

 died, a man who could use books, a man fond of 

 reading. It is dilTicult now to say how much of 

 his system is due to colleagues like .Armstrong and 

 myseif. We had the same ideas, we never quar- 

 relled, we never seemed to differ in opinion ; on any 

 given question we seemed always to come to the 

 same conclusions. No mere chemist taught chemistry', 

 no mere mathematician taught mathematics, no 

 mere physicist t.aught physics, no mere specialist 

 taught anything at that college. Practical and de- 

 scriptive geometry and graphics were taught, and 

 almost no deductive geometry or geometrical conies. 

 Ninety per cent, of the usual work in algebra and 

 trigonometry was put aside as unnecessary trickery. 

 .Analytical conic sections gave place to the calculus 

 study of curves in general. Before 1879 squared 

 paper was expensive ; in 1879 Ayrton arranged that 

 it could be bought at sixpence a quire. Every sub- 

 ject was taught through the other subjects. I am 

 afraid that the average student would have failed to 

 pass any outside examination in any of the subjects, 

 but he had a wonderful power of using on any new 



