January i6, 19 13] 



NATURE 



555 



THE WEATHER OF 1912. 



THE almost complete absence of summer weather 

 and the frequent rains at almost all seasons 

 have rendered 1912 memorable. The bad weather was 

 more noticeable by contrast with the magnificent 

 weather of igii. The summer contrast for the two 

 years was dealt with in Nature for September ig, 

 '1912, pp. 71-73. 



SCIENCE TEACHING IN PUBLIC 

 SCHOOLS.^ 



T N tlie period of more than sixty years during' which 

 -•■ I have watched the progress of education in this 

 country, no feature seems to me to stand out more 

 prominently in that progress than the entrance and 

 establishment of science in a recognised place in the 

 tuition of our public schools. At the beginning of the 



London Results. 



The Greenwich observations given in the foregoing 

 table are taken from the reports of the Meteorological 

 Office. The mean temperature for the year is 5o'9°, 

 which is o'8° in excess of the average. From June to 

 October inclusive July was the only warm month. 

 In both .'Vugust and September the deficiency was 

 45°, and in the two months combined there were only 

 five warm days. December, with the mean of 45'6°, 

 was 5'8° in e.xcess of the average. There have only 

 been two Decembers since 1841 with a higher mean ; 

 these were 46'2° in 1852, and 45'8° in 186S. The 

 e.xcess of temperature in March was 44°, and the 

 month in some districts was the mildest during forty 

 years. There were only twenty-eight days with frost 

 during the year. 



The wettest months of the year were August, 

 January, December, and March. There were only five 

 days without rain in August, and only ten dry days 

 in December. The driest month was April, with a 

 total rainfall of o'o4 in., and at some places in the 

 south-east of England the month was rainless. 



The year's sunshine was 1364 hours, and the 

 sunniest month was April, with a duration of 225 

 hours, which is 85 hours in excess of the average, 

 and it was double the duration registered in August, 

 which, with its 114 hours, was the least sunny month 

 of any from April to October inclusive. 



The summary for the year given by the Meteoro- 

 logical Office from the results for the fifty-two weeks 

 ended December 28 shows that the greatest excess of 

 rain in any district was 9*57 in. in the south-west of 

 England, whilst in all the English districts, 

 except the north-west, the excess was more 

 than s in. The west of Scotland was the 

 onlv district with a deficiency of rain, and 

 there it was less than an inch short of the average. 

 The duration of bright sunshine was deficient over 

 the entire kingdom ; the greatest deficiency amounted 

 to o'gh. per. day for the year in the north-east of 

 England, and o'Sh. per day in the east of Scotland, 

 the south-west of England, the south of Ireland, and 

 the Channel Islands. 



Ch.\S. H.tRDlNG. 



NO. 22SS, VOL. 90] 



period the teaching of even the rudiments of a know- 

 ledge of nature formed no part of the ordinary curri- 

 culum of study. Here and there; indeed, there might 

 be found an enlightened headmaster or other teacher 

 who, impressed with the profound interest and the 

 great educational value of the natural sciences, con- 

 trived to find time amid his other duties to discourse 

 to his pupils on that subject, and sought to rouse in 

 them an appreciation of the infinite beauty, the endless 

 variety, the ordered harmony, and the strange mystery 

 of the world in which they lived. He might try to 

 gain their attention by performing a few simple experi- 

 ments illustrative of some of the fundamental prin- 

 ciples of. physics or chemistry, or by disclosing to 

 their young eyes some of the marvels which they might 

 discover for themselves among the plants and animals 

 of the countryside. Such broad-minded instructors, 

 however, were rare, and were far ahead of their time. 

 There were then no special science teachers, no 

 school laboratories, no proper school museums. The 

 range of instruction in the public schools still lay 

 within literary lines, pretty much as it had existed 

 for centuries ; excellent, indeed, so far as it went, but 

 somewhat out of date, and no longer in keeping with 

 the modern advance of knowledge and culture all over 

 the world. Boys left school, for the most part, p'o- 

 foundlv ignorant of nature, save in so far as they 

 had been able to pick up information by the way, 

 from their own observation, reading, or reflection. 

 At the universities they fared little better. Chairs for 

 the cultivation of various branches of science had 

 indeed been founded there. But the duties of the pro- 

 fessors were usually considered to consist chiefly or 

 solelv in the delivery of lectures, which were some- 

 times dull enough, and, where not required in reading 

 for degrees, would attract but scanty audiences. An 

 enthusiastic or eloquent professor might gather around 

 him a goodly company of listeners as, in geology, 

 Buckland used to do at Oxford and Sedgwick at 

 Cambridge. But the laboratory work and experi- 



1 From the pr.-sidential address delivered to the Association of Public 

 ■^rho-i Sci.nce-ma.ilers on January. 8 \xy Sir Archibald Geikie, K.C.B., 



