Nov. 4, 1869 | 
NATUKE 
19 
school. For the first year the teaching may be viva voce, 
with easy problems and abundant experiment ; care being 
taken that each week’s lectures shall be reproduced on 
paper, and great attention being paid to correct drawing. 
In the second year the teaching will be more minute and 
more extended, and a good book will be mastered. At 
the end of this time the class is fit to pass creditably the 
Oxford Local Examination for juniors, and has done with 
mechanics for the present. The third and fourth years 
will be given to inorganic chemistry. The third year will 
include only lectures in the class room ; a text-book being 
used, experiments being shown by the master, but no 
laboratory work being. done by the boys. The fourth 
year’s work will be conducted entirely in the laboratory, 
each boy manipulating with his own instruments at his 
own table. At the expiration of these two years the class 
will be qualified for the chemistry examination in the 
London University Matriculation. The fifth year is given 
to botany. If a good book is used, if each boy works for 
himself with lens and knife, if Henslow’s Schedules, or a 
modification of them, are regularly filled up; above all, if 
plates are not made to do the work of living plants, the 
pupils will at the year’s end thoroughly understand the 
principles of classification, will know the characteristics 
of at least all the British orders, and will be able with the 
help of Bentham or Babington to make out almost any 
English flower. The boys who have completed this 
course will be from 16 to 17 years old. Some of them 
will now be leaving school; those who remain will give 
the rest of their time to physiology. They will begin with 
human and will pass to comparative physiology, using in 
the first Professor Huxley’s valuable little book; dependent 
for the second, of which no school manual exists, on the 
skill and method of their teacher. But whether at the 
earlier or the later age, they will pass out into the world 
immeasurably superior to their contemporaries who know 
not science, with doors of knowledge opened which can 
never again be closed ; with a fund of resource established 
which can never be exhausted ; with minds in which are 
cultivated, as nothing else can cultivate them, the priceless 
habits of observation, of reasoning on external phenomena, 
of classification, arrangement, method, judgment. 
The subject of books and apparatus, involving as it 
does the question of expense, is of the highest practical 
importance. Apparatus need not cost much ; but it may, 
and if possible it should, cost a great deal. While poor 
and struggling schools may begin cheaply and proceed 
eradually, institutions which can-spend money on racket 
courts and gymnasiums ought not to grudge it on museums 
andbotanic gardens. We have taught mechanicsefficiently, 
that is to say, we have passed our classes for the last three 
years in the Oxford Local, with a good air-pump, a set of 
pulleys, models of the force-pump and the common pump, 
with Keith Johnston’s scientific maps, and with the 
diligent use during the second year of Newth’s “ Natural 
Philosophy.” But we have lost no opportunity of making 
the boys acquainted with machinery ; from the crane and the 
water-mill of our daily walks, to the steam engine and the 
spinning jenny of the manufactory; for he who has not 
examined engines at work will never understand them 
clearly, or describe them correctly. For teaching chemistry, 
a laboratory is absolutely essential. No matter how rough 
or shabby a room, so that it be well ventilated, have gas 
and water laid on, and will hold from sixteen to twenty 
boys. I hold in my hand the model of a cheap laboratory 
table, on the scale of two inches to a foot. It is about 
nine feet by three, and contains eight compartments, each 
two feet by sixteen inches, with two slight shelves, and a 
special recess for the teacher. It costs about 4/7. If made 
for twice the number of boys, it may be made at about 
nine shillings per boy. The general laboratory stock, in- 
cluding a still, a stove or furnace, gas jars, a pneumatic 
trough, a proper stock of retorts, crucibles, tubing, &c., 
and the necessary chemicals will cost under 127, Each 
pair of pupils must have also between them a set of test 
tubes, a washbottle, a spirit lamp, a waste basin beneath 
their table, and twenty-four bottles of test solutions, while 
each boy has his own blowpipe, tripod and stand, pestle 
and mortar, and three beakers. These will cost each boy 
about eight shillings. He will replace everything that he 
breaks, and will receive the value of his stock from his 
successor when he quits the class. The text-book used 
should be Roscoe’s, or Williamson’s, and a large black 
board is quite indispensable. In botany the book for the 
boys’ use is Professor Olivers Lessons; but the teacher 
will find great advantage from Le Maout’s “Lecons de 
Botanie.” An excellent modification of Henslow’s Schedule 
is published by Professor Babington for the use of his 
Cambridge classes, and Lindley’s “ Descriptive Botany,” 
price one shilling, is a most useful help. Every boy should 
be furnished with a small deal board, a lens, and a sharp 
knife. The botanical microscope which I exhibit, including 
a lens fixed or movable, a black glass stage, two dissect- 
ing needles and a forceps, is made by Mr. Highley, of 
Green-street, Leicester-square. If they are ordered by 
the dozen he will furnish them at six shillings each, Flower 
trays, such as I hold in my hand, should be kept constantly 
in use; the boys being encouraged to bring in wild flowers, 
and to place them in their appropriate niches. Their cost 
per tray, holding eighteen bottles, is under two shillings. 
Fitch’s diagrams designed for the Committee of Council 
on Education, which cost 2/. 9s. the set, are a valuable 
help to the lectures; and for schools which have large 
purses or liberal friends, Dr. Auzoux’s Models of Plants 
and Plant Organs, ranging in price from 20 to 100 francs, 
and ten times the size of life, form a luxuriant assistance to 
beginners, which only those can appreciate who have worn 
out their eyesight and their temper over a composite floret 
or theglume of a small grass. The same excellent modellist, 
whose catalogue is on the table, provides every organ neces- 
sary for the study of comparative and human physiology ; 
and his prices ought not to be beyond the reach of any 
prosperous school. In any case a skeleton will be neces- 
sary, and will cost about £5; and if the Committee of 
Council were to authorise the reproduction of such typical 
physiological cases as, from the skilful hands of Mr. 
Charles Robertson of the Oxford Museum, drew so many 
admirers in the Exhibition of 1862, these would find im- 
mediate purchasers in many of our schools. At present 
teachers want the skill or the leisure to make their own 
preparations, and they cannot buy them. A good set of 
meteorological instruments costs from £16 to £20, but 
these, with astronomical apparatus, are a costly luxury, 
and may be left out of the list of indispensable necessities. 
I cannot think that any school, professing to teach science 
systematically, will be long satisfied without a typical 
museum. As scientific work proceeds, specimens of all 
kinds, some purchased for lecture work, others given by 
friends or collected by the boys, will gather and increase, 
till the class-room cupboards and shelves are choked, and 
a special room must be devoted to them. Here will be 
arranged, in one place rocks and fossils, in another trays 
of minerals, in a third zoological specimens, in a fourth 
physiological preparations. The dricst corner in the 
room will be assigned to the Herbarium, a small library 
of scientific reference will give promise of the future. 
Everything not typical will be rigorously excluded ; every 
case will be so carefully arranged and so plainly labelled 
as to tell the history of its contents to the eye of the least 
instructed observer. And it will be hard if some corner 
of the playground cannot be laid out as a botanic garden. 
In the crowded school premises which we are happily 
leaving I have found room for nearly four hundred plants, 
and at the new school to which we are about to migrate, 
I shall riot in two acres of garden ground, with a pond for 
water plants and a sheltered rockery for ferns. _ Hs 
It remains only to examine the mode of obtaining 
teaching power; a point which presses heavily on many 
