Notes and Comments. 317 
LECLIURES UN DHE PULURE: 
The public science lectures of the present tinies need not 
be of the same kind, or on the same subjects, as those of a 
past generation, but should be adapted to more modern needs 
and interests. Above all they should be intended for the people 
as a whole, and not for students or others who propose to 
devote systematic attention to the subjects of the lectures or 
devote their careers to them. This distinction is not recognised 
in the subjoined remarks by Mr. C.F. Procter (Hon. Sec., 
Hull Scientific and Field Naturalists’ Club), which represent 
the views of many scientific societies as to the present position, 
vet it is most important. 
A WAIL FROM HULL. 
Mr. Procter says: ‘Scientific lectures can only be made 
popular in the sense that you attract the crowd of unscientific 
people, with a profusion of experiments, or, failing that, 
lantern illustrations. People will flock to the Egyptian Hall 
and are vastly entertained and educated a little by an ex- 
hibition of what is often clever scientific acrobatics. Human 
nature loves to see what it cannot understand, and twenty 
vears ago represents a period when the commonplaces of science 
were a wonderland to the average mind. The trend of 
education has altered that, and has sharply divided the same 
people into a minority of scientific enthusiasts who “ ask for 
more,’ and a majority of indifferents who remain cold at a. 
display of the old elementary stuff. Education (and that in- 
cludes very largely the popular science lectures of the past) 
has created in this, as in all arts, a small aristocrac y of intellect, 
or rather, comparatively small. These are not satisfied 
with anything that can possibly be popular. They are long 
past that, but will feverishly attend anything which proposes 
further to explore the deep water. The crowd—the man in 
the street and his women-kind—has had its wonder-bump 
excised in the school laboratory. Modern sensationalism in 
amusement and the plethora of scrappy yet crisp literature 
(which religiously exploits every new thing, scientific or other- 
wise, that may entertain) has calloused this excision. The 
application of the film pictures to microscopy, etc., is about 
the only way to popularise science lectures, but—wh Ly bother ? 
We cannot all be men of science, and the present system 
provides that any who get the call may answer it, whilst popular 
lectures only attempt to entertain individuals of an age who are 
already past the slightest hope of ever being useful scientists. 
The proper thing is already being done by our schools, universi- 
ties, and University Extension lecturers with our budding pro- 
fessors.’ 
1916 Oct. 1. 
