Feb. 23, 1871] 

NATURE 
323 

Professors of Physics at different Universities havc 
usually selected their best students to assist them in thcir 
private laboratories, to the mutual advantage of professor 
and student, but I believe that Prof. Clifton was the first 
to propose, more than three years ago, that a course of 
training in a physical laboratory should form a part of the 
regular work of every student of Physics. 
This system was adopted and at once put in action at 
King’s College, on a very considerable scale for a college 
with no endowment whatever, and has been working for 
now nearly three years. Two large rooms adjoining the 
Museum of Physical Apparatus were fitted up for a 
Physical Laboratory, and a third room was built for a 
store and battery room. Fixed tables in both large rooms 
are supplied with water and gas, and with pipes passing 
to gasholders containing oxygen and hydrogen, also with 
thick copper wires insulated from one another passing to 
the battery room, so that in electrical work the fumes from 
batteries are entirely got rid of. 
The principal instruments have their fixed places on 
the tables, and a description of the measurement to be 
made is given to each student, and while in progress 
his work is examined by the professor or demonstrator. 
The course of study includes the subjects of pneumatics, 
heat, light, electricity, and magnetism, and with the regular 
class, a Cefinite order in each subject is kept to as nearly 
as possible. When, as has sometimes heen the case. there 
are twelve or more students beginning their laboratory 
course at the same time, it is necessary to deviate from 
the regular course, and to set some to begin with heat, 
some with light, and others with electricity. For some 
experiments, such as the determination of the relation 
between the pressure and volume of a gas, or the measure- 
ment of the expansion of a gas for given changes of 
temperature, requiring the use of the manometer and 
cathetometer, it is found better to have two students 
working together, each student making in his turn and 
so checking every part of the measurement or determina- 
tion. 
The accuracy of the results obtained has been very 
great, and is an eviderce of the interest taken in the 
work by the student, and of the value of such a course of 
study as a mental training, to say nothing of the actual 
knowledge gained. Every student is required to produce 
fair results, and to give an account of the methods which 
he has employed, before he is allowed to proceed to another 
part of the subject. Besides the students pursuing the 
regular course there are several who wish to devote their 
aitention to some one branch, such as Electricity. In 
this subject, after making determinations of Resistance, 
Strength of current, and Electromotive force with simple 
galvanometers, they pass to more delicate measurements 
with Thomson’s Galvanometers and Electrometers, such 
as the experimental determination of equi-potential lines 
on a conducting surface uniting two poles of a battery, 
and perform all the tests and measurements required in 
connection with Telegraph lines and cables. 
The moreadvanced students carry oninvestigations inthe 
Laboratory, such as the measurement of the effect of heat 
in al ering the magnetic polarity of dia-magnetic bodies, 
or in altering the rotation of the plane of polarisation of 
a beam of polarised light as it passes through sugar 
solutions, 

Students are encouraged to combine their work in the 
Physical Laboratory with their work in the Mechanical 
Workshop, and are enabled to design and construct appa- 
ratus, and their inventive powers are exercised often with 
great success. From experiments with Attwood’s Machine 
one stud’ nt has designed and made for himself.a new form 
of governor for an engine, another has designed an Induc- 
tometer for measuring the time required to produce the 
maximum induced current in a wire by the action of 
another current. 
The success of the Laboratory system of teaching may 
be judged from the quality of the work done by the 
students, who are mostly from sixteen to eighteen years 
of age, and are always eager for the work, as well as 
from the fact that in the last term there were twenty- 
three students in the Laboratory, and the numbers are 
steadily increasing. 
It will be seen that to the student of Electricity or any 
branch of Physics, every opportunity is offered of pur- 
suing the object which lies before him, and that the advance 
which may be made by him is dependent only on his own 
exertions, W. G. ADAMS 

MORELLUS GEOMETRY 
The Essentials of Geometry, Plane and Solid, as taught tn 
French and German Schools, with shorter Demonstra- 
tions than in Euclid ; adapied for Students preparing for 
Examination, Cadets in Military and Naval Schools, 
Technical Classes, &c. By J. R. Morell, formerly one 
of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools. (London : 
Griffith and Farran, 1871.) 
WORK with this attractive and somewhat ambitious 
title cannot fail to attract attention, appearing, as it 
does, at a moment when very commendable efforts are 
being made to improve the teaching of Geometry in our 
schools, and to prepare the public mind for an important 
reform which will necessarily involve the adoption of text- 
books more suited to modern habits of thought and in- 
quiry than the Elements of Euclid. It will, no doubt, 
therefore be expectantly read by many, and the fact that 
the author is already widely known as a writer on philo- 
sophy and grammar, and was formerly one of Her 
Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools, will tend to raise expec- 
tations, and will lend it an authority to which, as we shall 
presently sev, it is by no means entitled. Our duty to 
students preparing for examination compels us, in fact, 
to warn them that this book can render them no essential 
service whatever, but, on the contrary, may do them 
incalculable mischief ; and our sympathy with the praise- 
worthy efforts above alluded to—our desire to prevent un- 
deserved discredit from being attached to those efforts— 
obliges us to dissociate this one from them, and to criticise 
it with all due severity. 
The plan and general arrangement of the book are 
open to the severest criticism ; we deem it unnecessary, 
however, to dweil thereon, for the work is so destitute 
of the most essential of all “Essentials of Geometry ”— 
accuracy and clearness—that no possible rearrangement 
of its materials could redeem it. We shall consequently 
draw attention solely to the deplorable looseness of ex- 
pression, indicative of hopeless inaccuracy of thought 
with which almost every page is disfigured, 
